Month: May 2024

Well, how was the solar storm over the weekend? I was lucky enough to have friends with clear view in Hobart who sent glorious aurora photos. It remains on my bucket list as something I want to experience first-hand.

It’s been a week of banging out a lot of words. A lot of ugly and awkward first draft words — but at least one chapter stands out from the rest. I really do write trauma with beauty and lyricism (and a strange kind of ease?).

I hope I’m able to thread that through the rest of the novel when I return later this year for the second draft.

I am now in the final six(ish) chapters. There is a (probably unrealistic goal) of finishing the novel this weekend. Not that I am in a hurry to be done with Jack and Lucy, but more so that the second novel — the characters are already jumping up and down for my attention.

I was laughing today at the commonalities between this novel and the last. They both have a makeover moments. Both novels have a wedding toward there end. Both novels things go south very quickly after that wedding (my main characters are attendees, not the focus of the nuptials). No one dies in this novel though … well not during the run time of the novel.

It will be good to be back writing about other things once the novel is done. And to sit with clients again.

Today’s first page share from my legacy collection This Once Precious Life is Kissed by the Sun. Back in the day, it was the longest story I had written. It appeared in the Ticonderoga anthology Dead Red Heart and it was my first Australian publication. It was a big deal, because it had the biggest names in Australian horror at the time.

It was inspired by the 90’s amphetamine chicks in Fortitude Valley, questions of how would vampires emmigrate to Australia and why would they come to one of the sunniest places on the planet (especially my home state of Queensland), the movie Daybreakers and the sheer chaos which is Schoolies on the gold coast (and what happened to a friend years ago when he found himself, a guy in his late 30’s accidentally on holidays during Schoolies).

If you’d like to read ahead (or read all the way to the end) you can hit the button below to access online options, including my favourite, Kobo, and Apple’s darling, iBooks.

Thanks for reading (and hopefully listening/watching).

May the big astro that’s still left to play out this week be al lin your favour.

PS: this is what one looks like after three hours sleep and writing 6500 words in the last day and a bit!

Happy New Moon!

After a week of battling my brain and writing words that were more a hindrance than a help, this week is looking a little more easeful.

I’m house/dog sitting for friends down the road and it’s a treat to spend three weeks in a beautiful home with a lush garden. This will also be where I finish the post-trauma romance (which may one day, actually get a proper name — between friends we just say “Jack and Lucy” and we all know what we are talking about).

This is a first draft and it’s allowed to be brain vomit — still there are moments where it shines and there’s fleeting affirmation I’m not terrible at what I do.

The first 3000 words ofThe Spy’s Wooden Mistress (and what she remembers) has been submitted for our final Season of the Wolf workshop. It’s so different to anything I have done before, and is also research heavy, so I will pick through it with a view to be done with a draft by the end of June.

That’s where most of my words are going (with a smattering in my journal). The depth work words show up in The Tarot Primer, a private Signal group. If you’d like to get on that group, hit reply and I can send you the link.

Today’s first page share from my legacy collection This Once Precious Life is She Would Be Grass. It is micro fiction and I think comes in at 125 words. I’ll leave it to you to decide if a story can be told in that many words.

If you’d like to read ahead (or read all the way to the end) you can hit the button below to access online options, including my favourite, Kobo, and Apple’s darling, iBooks.

Thanks for reading (and hopefully listening/watching).

I hope this week is treating you very well (today I feel as though I have finally been spat out the eclipse portal!)

All my words are still being ploughed into projects behind the scene.

I’m into the final quarter of my post-trauma romance novel (that still remain unnamed!). It currently sits at almost 65,000 words.

I’m hoping it will be done earlier than the 18th of May deadline, but we will see. There is still a lot of story to go down before I get to the end.

I havealso earmarkedThe Spy’s Wooden Mistress (and what she remembers) for my portfolio piece for Season of the Wolf, meaning I need to find at least another 2000 words for it before next Friday. I have written one new letter for it (to replace the one originally in there). We’ll see what happens.

Everyone I share the premise with lights up with delight. If you missed it last week, it’s a WW2 spy story mashed up with the Norwegian folklore of the huldra (a half woman half tree). It is a story of liminality and what is means to live at the margins.

Today’s first page share from my legacy collection This Once Precious Life is The Meek Shall Inherit the Earth. It is set along the Brisbane River and I loved dropping so many local landmarks into such a short story.

It’s barely 1200 words. A mid-alien invasion survival story intersected with a teenage pregnancy.

It asks who actually is the meek, and what earth will they inherit.

It was originally published in the CSFG anthology Never Never Land.

If you’d like to read ahead (or read all the way to the end) you can hit the button below to access online options, including my favourite, Kobo, and Apple’s darling, iBooks.

Thanks for reading (and hopefully listening).

I hope this week is treating you very well. 

I am loving the slowness of this time of year for me; the exceptional food, conversations and the glorious sunny Autumn weather, book-ended by crisp mornings and cool evenings.