Over on the Pair of Ragged Claws blog I heard that the UK Times had published a Top 100 Best Books of the Decade list and, being a real sucker for such lists, I went over and had a good prowl. I’d already been warned to be a bit disgusted by some of the rankings, but at least the #1 pick, Cormac McCarthy’s The Road, is a well-deserved winner (and if you haven’t read it, make sure you do before you see the movie).
But looking up from the bottom of …

I’ve been curiously anticipating the announcement of the 2008 Man Booker Prize winner since I heard a Book Show podcast a week or two ago – an interview with an academic who’s headed to the UK to research the judges’ notes and behind-the-scenes documentation of the Booker. During this podcast there was much discussion of what kind of book wins the Booker, especially in recent years – for example, an ethnic writer from a place like India is seeming to have more chance these days than a white, resident Brit.
(Incidentally, …

You might remember that one of the goals I successfully met this year was to submit a novel to the Australian/Vogel Literary Award contest. I did it – albeit a novel that I think needs a lot of revision, but at least a full verison exists thanks to the deadline of the contest – and the act of sending in that manuscript really meant a lot to me. And I hope to enter the Vogel with a new novel every year until I can’t (which, with an upper age limit …

In the ongoing saga of unpacking my boxes of books, I’ve come across yet another interesting (and practically historical!) find. Back in 2000 and 2001, I was living in Perth (having never left it – I did so in mid-2001) and I was just starting to get back into writing after not doing much since I left high school. It was good timing, because at the same moment, writing online was just starting to take off.
I’ve just unearthed my writing diary from 2001 – appropriately, it was a Dymock’s “Booklovers’ …

Having lived overseas for so long, I’m still catching up with how the world of writing works here in Australia, and that explains why the Australian Book Industry Awards slipped under my radar last month. But now that I’ve become aware of them, I noticed something especially interesting to me – that Scribe Publications won the gong for 2008 Small Publisher of the Year.
Curiously, I’d never heard of Scribe until several of the writers I listened to at the Perth Writers Festival mentioned that their Australian publisher was Scribe, and …

I’ve always thought that with two grandmothers who lived into their 90s and a mother and father who both look and act considerably younger than they are, my longevity was unquestionable. I’ve been calculating my superannuation requirements assuming a long, long life, but I’ve just read a story that suggests maybe I should start planning my pensioner years with a shorter span in mind!
The good news is the distressing fact that I might die younger than expected only works if I actually becoming a “real” novelist. So if things don’t …

Unpacking some boxes last week, I found a magazine I bought when I was thirteen years old. It was the June 1989 edition of an American magazine called The Writer, and I read it in bed the other night – chuckling my way through most of it.
I was shocked by how much the writing life has changed in less than twenty years. In most ways, I’m glad it has, because the advent of the internet, and blogs (I wonder what we would have guessed a “blog” was back in ‘89) …

I’ve just read a scary story about literary ignorance in Britain. Published at Ananova, some of the most frightening results of a survey of 3000 people are:

One third of people didn’t know Shakespeare wrote plays (many thought he’d been a king!)
A quarter didn’t know John Keats was a poet
And for me, the most shocking, is that more than two thirds didn’t know A A Milne was a writer. Hello?! Winnie the Pooh?!

The scariest part is that I suspect the results might be even worse here in Australia – both …

I just caught up with the news that American novelist Norman Mailer died on Saturday, which struck me as unusual timing. Why? Because it was just last Friday that I started reading one of his books for the first time.
Weirdly, I came to know Norman Mailer through his appearance in an episode of the Gilmore Girls that I saw (dubbed) in Germany. He struck me as a grumpy old soul but intriguing, and I’ve been meaning to grab one of his books for ages. Last week at the library An …

I’ve been too busy doing “pay-the-mortgage” writing recently to get back into fiction, but after what I heard today there might be little point: the book chain I loved as a kid, Angus & Robertson, has asked small Australian publishers to pay a fee to have the chain stock their books.
When I publish a novel in the future (notice I say when, not if) the chances are good that a small Australian publisher will pick it up; does this mean my childhood dream of seeing my book in an A&R …