2015: Done and Dusted

It’s been a complicated year. There have been downs as well as ups, but this post is all about the ups. So here we go. From here on it’s all good news! 2015 was the twentieth anniversary of the launch of my first novel, The Unknown Soldie

“On the Dangers of Literature Addiction” (speech)

(This speech was presented at the Voices on the Coast opening night on Thursday, July 18. Photo to right by George Ivanoff.) I’m deeply honoured to be talking here tonight, on this occasion acknowledging twenty years of turning the spotlight on kid

“Why Fantasy & Science Fiction?”

This is a lightly edited transcript of a speech I gave at the Public Library Services annual readers advisory seminar held at the NSW State Library on March 18th. The topic was science and science fiction, and I was invited to share my personal exper

Reach for the Skies

Tonight I spoke at an Adelaide Festival of Ideas event called “Looking to the Stars: In Search of Our Place in the Universe” as one of fives guests, the  others being planetary scientist Phil Bland, polymath Paul Davies, consumer trend f

Flashback 2003: “A Day in the Life of…”

(This speech was first presented at Brisbane Writers’ Festival. The title was the brief, and this is how I chose to exploreit.)   This is the story of a very odd couple.  Like all relationships between identical siblings, theirs is an une