Fiction World News
Australian Book Industry Awards are interesting …
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 [...]
Why fiction writers should change to non-fiction
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 [...]
The writing life, 1989 to 2008
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 [...]
Who was that Shakespeare guy again?
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, [...]
Did I jinx Norman Mailer?
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 [...]
Small Australian publishers losing out
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 [...]