Reading, You’re Doing it Wrong
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Four Important Lessons I’ve Learned from Fairy Tales
Lesson 1: Never Trust a Wolf. People like David Attenborough would have you believe that wolves are harmless creatures, wonderful examples of nature at its finest – strong, noble, dignified. Well, he’s wrong. Fairy Tales have taught me that wolves are evil, nasty and cunning beasts who will stop...
The Sensational Somerset Celebration of Literature
Look at this for a roll call of kids and YA authors: Deb Abela, Felice Arena, Tim Baker, Tristan Bancks, the multiple person who is Angelica Banks, David Burton, Peter Carnavas, Nick Earls, Carmen Gray, Dave Hackett, Leanne Hall, Jacquie Harvey, Nicole Hayes, Jack Heath, Megan Jacobson, Andy Jones,...
Aurealis Awards
I’m extremely pleased to note that ‘The Laws of Magic’ series has been shortlisted for the inaugural Sara Douglass Book Series Award. From the Aurealis Awards website: This Award is named for one of Australia’s best known speculative fiction writers. Sara Douglass was the flagship author of the HarperVoyager...
Fantasy and the Pharmaceutical Industry
After a recent trip to the chemist I’ve become convinced that the pharmaceutical industry has hundreds of Fantasy writers working for it. I’m not sure if this has been a deliberate policy of recruiting down-at-heel Fantasy writers whose last trilogy was cut short after Book 2 or if hordes...
Radio Times
A couple of weeks ago, I was asked in to 774 ABC Melbourne for Raf Epstein’s monthly ‘Read with Raf’ book club, to chat about ‘The Martian’. I’d sent in a review based on my blog piece and Raf enjoyed it enough to want more. Raf, Alicia Sometimes and...
10 Australian YA Dystopian/End of the World Novels Not To Be Missed
Ah, definitions, definitions, definitions! It’s always the way with genre fiction that we have to grapple with definitions and borders and ruling in and ruling out. It’s funny how mainstream fiction doesn’t get all het up about things like, but that’s an issue for another day. This selection of...
10 Australian YA High Fantasy Novels Not To Be Missed
In singling out High Fantasy, I’m really genre splitting here and trying to show that Fantasy is a vast and varied offering, with all sorts of subtleties, approaches and flavours that non-genre readers are perhaps unaware of. By High Fantasy, I mean the full on Tolkienesque epic, complete with...
Writing: External World vs. Internal World
As is my wont, I’ve been thinking deeply about this whole business of writing – again. As a result of this I’m ready to make a Big Statement. <Clears throat> All narrative writing is a balance between describing the External World and the Internal World. Obviously, more explanation is...
10 Australian YA Science Fiction Titles Not to be Missed
Looking for Australian YA Science Fiction rather than Australian YA Fantasy? Here are some top titles with some well-known books next to some you may be unaware of. Displaced Person – Lee Harding. What happens when you start to vanish along with everyone else? Identity, sense of self, sense...