I’m heading off to Sydney in a couple of days, and one of the highlights will be the official in person launch of Satin, next Tuesday, March 14, at 4pm at the gorgeous Better Read than Dead bookshop in Newton. Lorena and I will both be there, to read from and talk about the book, sign books, and meet readers! Everyone is very welcome, we’d love to see you there! It’s a free event but the bookshop would appreciate it if people can register if possible(though of course you can also just turn up, if you run out of time) Here’s the registration link.
We’ll also be celebrating Satin through school visits, organised by the wonderful people at The Children’s Bookshop. And calling into city bookshops to say hi. It’s going to be a great week!
And those reviews just keep coming–we had another couple of lovely ones very recently, here and here. Seems readers are really taking Satin to their hearts, which warms our hearts, too…
The rest of the program is great too, with sessions on true crime, historical fiction, how to get a book project back on track, and more. See the full program here. Concurrently with the Festival also is the High Country Writers’ Retreat.
I am much looking forward to the Dubbo Writers’ Festival, which is on this coming weekend, 9-11 September, in Dubbo of course! The theme is ‘Shorts’–with a feast of practical workshops on short fiction, short poetry, short blog posts, as well as consultations with publishers, an In-Conversation, and a ‘submissions spur’. I’m presenting at several events, see below. You can get tickets and the full program via this link here.
I’m really looking forward to the 2021 conference of the Historical Novel Society of Australasia, which this year is fully online, and happening over two weekends, with bootcamps, manuscript assessments and masterclasses happening on the weekend of 16/17 October, and the main conference program on the weekend of 23 and 24 October. This is the first time the conference has been run online–it was a decision HNSA wisely made early this year, given the uncertainty surrounding the running of events.
HNSA runs absolutely wonderful conferences, and over the years I’ve had the privilege several times of presenting at these biennial events. This year is no exception, and I’m going to be appearing on both weekends, as part of an absolutely amazing program which I’m very proud to be involved in. Wearing my publisher hat, I’m going to be presenting the all-day Publishing Bootcamp on October 16, then, also wearing the publishing hat, I’ll be one of the judges in the popular First Pages Pitch Contest on October 23. Later on October 23 (quite late in fact!) I’ll be one of a group of people talking about translating historical novels in the Lost in Translation panel: I’ll be focussing there about the experience of being involved in helping to bring about the publication of a brand new English translation of the wonderful Jules Verne’s Mikhail Strogoff. Then on October 24 I’m chairing a panel called The Dark Heart, which looks at historical novels set in the 1830’s and 40’s in Australia, especially the convict period. It’s certainly going to be a very busy couple of weekends!
Check out all details of the wonderful program for the 2021 HNSA Conference here: it’s a real cornucopia of fabulous offerings! And of course, because it’s virtual, you can access it from anywhere. Registrations are open now: don’t miss out!
Alex Patrikios of the wonderful literary group #LoveOzYA interviewed me via Zoom the other day, to talk about The Ghost Squad–she had great questions, and I really enjoyed our chat! The interview is now up as a transcript on the #LOveOzYA website, and you can also see clips of the video, exploring such things as research, speculative fiction tropes, and the writing life, at their You Tube channel. Here’s an extract from the interview, about the inspiration and research behind the book:
Was there a particular moment of inspiration that sparked the idea for THE GHOST SQUAD?
A while back, I went to this little museum in Rome, which is called the Museum of Purgatory. Of course in Catholic doctrine, purgatory is a sort of halfway house between heaven and hell. This particular museum was quite a weird little place, and (I learned) this priest in the 19th Century had tried to show proof that purgatory existed and he did with burned handprints on a piece of fabric, supposedly of people who had tried to send messages from purgatory.
But this is now: people don’t believe a burned handprint on a piece of fabric is proof. So I thought, okay, what would cause a disturbance in the electronic systems — monitoring machines and other things like that in hospitals — so I had a look, and found out about electronic magnetic pulses(note: caused by solar storms). I found out about the Carrington Event, and also that a lot of governments actually have contingency plans for when the next one hits. I read stuff from both NASA and the British Government, about what they plan to do in the event of an electromagnetic pulse.
When I saw the Carrington Event had happened around the same time you saw this big interest in seances and spiritualism, in the Victorian times, I thought, okay, this is kind of ‘ghosty’ stuff — and maybe in my lifetime, it would trigger something similar.
Everything sort of fell into place after that.
Apart from that kind of research — NASA, government documents — did you also look at popular movies or shows that have that speculative flavour, and try to examine the genre itself?
Absolutely! Also the novel came out of a creative practice Phd, so that was the creative part of it, but the academic part of it was all about afterlife fiction for young adults. Really fantastic books, like Neal Shusterman’s Everlost trilogy, Yangsze Choo’s The Ghost Bride, and Lynette Lounsbury’s Afterworld.
I watched a lot of films and TV series — things like The Glitch, and the French series The Returned, and even Lost have examples of (afterlife fiction). That was fun! I had so much fun doing ‘research’, reading all these great books and watching all these terrific TV series and films.
I also read a lot of folklore and (material) from religious and spiritual traditions. I had three years to do the Phd, which was fantastic, because it meant I could really develop the book in the very rich and complex way that I wanted to do.
In my latest post on the international blog Writer Unboxed, I write about how you can make illustrated video talks using Powerpoint visuals and audio, and use them as part of your author strategy. Hope you might find it interesting and useful!
I’ve made a video presentation about the inspirations and sources behind my retellings in French Fairy Tales, which includes both personal and family connections, as well as information about the tales themselves. Hope you enjoy!
And by the way, on November 7, at 2-4 pm(Australian Eastern daylight saving time) I’m running an online creative workshop for the New England Writers’ Centre, via Zoom, on how to retell fairy tales and how to adapt them for your own fiction. You can check out details here.
We held the virtual launch of A House of Mud yesterday, and it was fabulous! The launch consisted of a live Q and A Zoom event (not recorded) plus a series of pre-recorded videos which you can view at any time. The videos feature Peter Creamer of publisher Little Pink Dog Books, myself, and illustrator Katrina Fisher, and also includes a reading by me, and a book trailer. You can view it all here: hope you enjoy!
It’s launch time for The Snowman’s Wish! And I’m very happy to be hosting the virtual launch on this blog, in collaboration with my publisher, Dirt Lane Press. The virtual launch consists of three videos released at 10 am today, but which you can view at your leisure any time today–and well beyond!
The book is being launched by Australian Children’s Laureate, multi-award winning author Ursula Dubosarsky, and you’ll hear from her in the first video, then from me, in the second, as the author, taking you through the book’s creative and production process, and highlighting my co-creator Ronak Taher’s superb illustrations. The final video is a reading I did of the book. So–welcome, thank you for joining our celebrations–and we hope you enjoy!
The book is now available in all good bookshops and library suppliers across Australia. You can read a review of it here.
I’m delighted to announce that I’ll be part of the lineup next week for the fabulous CBCA NSW Branch Lunchtime Storytime readings on Facebook. I’ll be reading Once Upon An ABC, my picture book with illustrator Christopher Nielsen(Little Hare) and though I’m a bit nervous about it, I’m really looking forward to it! Tune in at the CBCA NSW Facebook page on Friday June 5 at 12pm to hear my reading live: but if you miss that, the video will also be available for later viewing on the page or on the CBCA NSW website. (Availability ends by July 31).
And check out all the other great authors and illustrators who will participate that week too, as well as those who took part in the weeks before.
Feathers of the Firebird 