Critical examination of bookish events, news and debate.
Last week, I was wondering why I had such a methodical approach to reading short story anthologies. Having just read four anthologies back-to-back, I found myself adding up the number of stories I enjoyed, calculating what percentage that was of the whole, and the result reflected my reading enjoyment of…
A friend recently asked me to review a short story anthology. Never having done this before, I didn’t know how to start. So I got pen and paper ready, took notes. Having now read four anthologies back-to-back, I’ve discovered something about the way I read and enjoy them… For some…
Creating dreams, and pursuing them… Last Saturday at the 2011 NSW Writers’ Centre Speculative Fiction Festival, Pamela Freeman (Blood Ties, Deep Water and Full Circle) said that speculative fiction was: the kind of story that my mother would say weakens your hold on reality For me, this summarised the entire…
A multimedia storytelling project that might just inspire you. A short time ago, I received an intriguing message through the Northern Beaches Writers’ Group website (which is the critique group I run in Manly, Sydney). The message was from a rather clever cookie at the University of Technology Sydney (UTS),…
What I learnt at Conflux 7: From Here to There Looking back over the four-day writing festival that was this year’s Conflux, it might be quicker to list what I didn’t learn during my stay in Canberra. But I’m not a negative kind of person so, although it’ll take longer,…
What type of women are you, and what are you not? Different women respond to the same female character in different ways. Of course they do, because not all women are the same. So how do you write a realistic female character that will appeal to most women? Women are…
Huh? What’s the third wave of the web…? I’ve been reading a lot lately about ‘the third wave of the web’, which we’re apparently only just entering. You might have noticed it perhaps, crashing over the publishing world like a tidal wave?! Unstoppable, it’s left behind it a trail of…
