“I can’t believe it,” I told my writing group angrily, waving my iPad at them melodramatically. “My online critique colleagues said that my writing had too many adverbs!”
Category: Writing
Publication News! – “The Peripheral People”
I have a short story published! ‘The Peripheral People’ is in the current issue, 63, of Andromeda Spaceways Inflight Magazine. It’s also the sequel to ‘The Torgaine of Ysengarth’, a story I wrote back in 2006. However, you don’t need to read the first story to enjoy this fine issue of ASIM. It’s a semi-comical story about a witch who travels around different worlds and solves peoples’ problems… the way she thinks is best for them. Imagine a strange combination of the Doctor and Granny Weatherwax. I hope you check it out and enjoy it.
The City of Tomorrow, Chapter 1
I’ve got the first chapter of my novel here to tempt people into reading the entire thing and sending me feedback. It’s an urban fantasy, about a detective investigating the murder of a city. The entire MS is about 120K words. If that sounds like your cup of tea, please let me know!
The Case of the Infodumping Suspect
My current project is a fantasy-ish detective novel, written in the first person. Currently I’ve got the problem where the detective finds a suspect and has to get a large chunk of information from them. There’s a couple of ways of presenting this to the reader, with the goal of making this as interesting as possible.
Sara Douglass (1957-2011)
I heard that Sara Douglass passed away from cancer. I first noticed her book ‘BattleAxe’ with a highly garish cover, at the old Angus & Robertson at the top of the Queen Street Mall. (Last time I went there, that entire bookshop was gone.) Flipping through, I saw that Sara was Australian. Someone who’d written a thick, chunky fantasy novel. BattleAxe was good stuff – a strong action-line, vivid battles, and story that kept me enthralled. I haven’t re-read them since I was a teenager, but I still remember the imagery of the Icarii, the Star Dance, WolfStar’s machinations, Gorgrael’s threats and lonely rule over the icepack and the wonderful themes of magic returning to a land.