Recently we spoke with Joanna Penn – author, speaker and entrepreneur. She writes thrillers under the name JF Penn and uses her actual name for her non-fiction blog books on writing and entrepreneurship. She’s also runs the super popular Creative Penn website and is in high demand around the globe
Allison Tait is a writer of fiction, non-fiction, magazine features, blog posts and is also a co-host on our top-rating podcast, So you want to be a writer. Usually she’s the one asking the questions, but today – following last month’s launch of the first book in her new series,
Judith Rossell is an uber-talented writer and illustrator of children’s books, as well as being a presenter for our Writing Picture Books course in Melbourne. Her latest book, Withering-by-Sea, is launching this month so we asked her to paint us a picture of what it’s all about. Once she’d finished
You know that feeling you get when you see an email telling you that you’ve won three million euros? That little moment between reading the subject line and realising that you don’t actually have a prince for a nephew, but you think “oh my god I’ve won three million euros!”? We get
Karen M Davis is an ex-cop who took on writing and smashed it with her first novel, Sinister Intent – released in 2013. Now her second book is out, and Karen recently spoke to us about Deadly Obsession and her approach to writing. Hi Karen, tell us about Deadly Obsession,
Last week, Fiona McFarlane’s The Night Guest was shortlisted as a finalist in the 2014 Prime Minister’s Literary Awards, adding to the long list of accolades already this year for this debut novel. We thought it would be a good opportunity to share some gems from our podcast interview with
Recently we locked Deborah Rodriguez, author of The House on Carnaval Street, in a padded room and yelled questions at her through an intercom. Okay, some of that isn’t true, but the author and question bit are. And most of her adventures are usually crazier than that anyway. Here’s how
If you Google ‘CM Lance’, you’ll actually find two writers – one is a male who lives in the U.S. and writes about wizards, and the other is a female Australian author. She has been an astronomer, a Unix computer specialist and now a novelist (so, just the usual career
“There’s a story here. There’s definitely a story here.” That was Jennifer Smart’s hunch, having worked behind the screens in film and television for many years, including five years on Home and Away. And she was in a position to know – having even penned two scripts of the hit
In episode 15 of our top-rating podcast, So you want to be a writer, Allison Tait spoke with two authors at the same time: Kim Wilkins and Kimberley Freeman. But rather than talk over each other, it was all very orderly. That’s because it was the same person. Dr Kim
Laura Greaves’ Facebook page name says: “Laura Greaves Writes Books”. And actually, it’s pretty appropriate because she says that’s all that she has ever wanted to do. Her latest book is Be My Baby and we thought we’d sit her down and ask her precisely nine questions about that with
A few weeks back, we spoke with established author Elizabeth Farrelly on the release of her first young fiction book, Caro Was Here. Elizabeth completed a course at Australian Writers’ Centre that provided inspiration for this one, and she chats about that and the book right here… So, tell us
Earlier this year, in episode 4 of our top-rating podcast, So you want to be a writer, we spoke with internationally published author Allison Rushby.
Now, many writers begin self-publishing and end up with a traditional publishing book deal. However, Allison has done it the other way round – choosing after 14 years as an author to self-publish for the first time this year when the rights to four of her earlier books reverted to her. Then, on a roll, she chose to self-publish her new young adult novel, Being Hartley, at the same time.
Allison provided some valuable insights into the relative strengths of both of these two publishing methods, and writing in general – which we have summarised here.
If you think that manuscripts are judged solely on the merit of the story alone, we think you should be sitting down for this next paragraph.
It doesn’t matter how many on-trend zeitgeist-welding hipsters your story possesses, if a manuscript offends in some other way, it may never be read. We’re talking about things that distract a reader from delving any further.
You see, for editors, it’s hard work wading through countless manuscripts each week. And your goal as a writer is to not make that job any harder!
Once a lawyer, then an actor, now a writer, it’s fair to say that Australian author and playwright Sofie Laguna has worn plenty of hats over the years. And even within her writing persona, she has never been one to stick to the same thing – bouncing from picture books to plays, young reader series to adult novels.
With such an interesting journey to date, we figured she’d be an interesting person to chat with – especially with the release of her latest adult novel, The Eye of the Sheep. And we weren’t wrong.
Hugh Howey is the author of the best-selling book WOOL, which started life in the ebook jungles of Amazon as an online novelette. This was before it became a global sensation and the first instalment in a three-book series known as the Silo series. Hugh’s second book in this series,
Great news: our new half-day course, Writing Australian History is coming up in November! So to get the inside story, we asked presenter and historical guru, Pamela Freeman, a few questions around this fascinating genre…
Hi Pamela. There seems to be lots of Australian historical stories appearing in mainstream media currently (e.g. Gallipoli and ANZAC Girls etc). Why do you think they’re so popular at the moment?Historical fiction generally has become more popular worldwide, often due to television shows like The Tudors and Da Vinci’s Demons (although I wouldn’t call that history!).
In Australia generally, people are becoming more interested in history; the number of people going to the Dawn Service for Anzac Day, for example, has gone up and up over the last ten years or so. And then, of course, we had the 60th anniversary of World War II, and now the 100th year anniversary of World War I, which is sparking even more interest. The media are riding the centenary wave, but I think they’re being successful because people are genuinely interested in the past and, in particular, in the people from that past – how they differed from us and how they were the same.
We all do it. When writing our own work, we get so close to it that forests and trees blur into one, and it can be very hard to be objective. That’s why workshopping can be such an important part of the manuscript writing process.
Writing workshops are a valuable tool that even published writers swear by. They’re usually simply a weekly meeting of a small group of writers, designed to critique their work. Feedback is given, and a forum for discussions is opened on how to improve key skills.
A workshop could theoretically operate much like a book club, being as serious or as social as its members allow. But to work effectively, it really needs to be work, not play – allowing writers to analyse and test what’s working – especially things such as a character believability or and plot pacing.
Kylie Mason is a Sydney-based freelance editor with a long history of working with Australian publishers, both on staff and on a freelance basis.
Despite having a master’s degree in creative writing, it’s the editing that gets her up in the morning. “I love getting involved with stories, I love getting involved with writers, and I love the way writers think,” she says.
We had a chat with Kylie about being a paid pair of eyes in episode 7 of our top-rated podcast So you want to be a writer. And here’s what we discovered.
Many people might get to the age of 50 and look at their successful career, grown-up kids, stable life – and happily put their feet up. But not Sara Donovan. In fact it was this rather domestic alignment of the planets that saw her come to revisit a lifelong feeling.
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