2017 in Words

Some people freak out when they turn 50. I was looking forward to it. Perhaps because causal echoes from the future were telling me that life was about to take a marked uptick? I refuse to rule it out. 2017 is the year I went to Antarctica, Myanmar,

Writing the Impossible

[tl;dr: My novella “Impossible Music” has just been published, and it’s different from anything I’ve ever written before.] As anyone who’s confronted the void of a blank page will know: there’s nothing more awful than an open brie

Fuzzy Lollies (The Adventures of Canberra Sean)

So! I survived my eminent writer’s residency in the nation’s capital. I even Storified it, and this is the most comprehensive account of my adventures, containing photos, videos, all manner of of things. The tl;dr version goes something l

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

Passion’s Price

David McDonald chaired a wonderful session at the last Conflux about the price writers pay for their art, inspired by a series of moving guest posts on his blog. I was honoured to be part of the panel, and even more honoured subsequently to be asked

Guest Post: Juliet E. McKenna

This is new territory, opening up my site for guest posts. And who better to start with than brilliant British Fantasy Award-winner Juliet E. McKenna? She’s kindly given us a glimpse into her creative process (and now I feel weirdly like eating

“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

A love-letter to writing.

This is what happens when you give a writer open slather to talk about anything they want. Sometimes we just want to be all soppy and romantic. Does that work when it’s not about a person, but about writing itself? I don’t know. Take a lo