Aussiecon4 – editing panels.
Hi all, I attended two sessions on editing at Aussiecon4. Editing the Novel. Panellists were: Simon Spanton editor at Gollancz; Zoe Walton a publisher at Random House; science fiction author and freelance editor Jean Johnson; and Ace editor Ginjer Buchanan. They started the discussion by answering the question of how long a book should be. […]
Stop to smell the roses
Hi all, It’s one of those rare occasions that I have the house to myself. On these occasions, I usually take a holiday from my disciplined program of exercise, knowledge gathering and writing activities. I usually watch a few videos, listen to some music, have a few drinks, think about life and writing, and watch […]
Aussiecon 4 – The market sessions
Hi all, I have finally gotten around to writing a post about three marketing sessions I attended at Aussiecon4. My first attempt got lost on a click on my mouse and since then I have been busy. Well, busy for me. The three sessions I attended were enlightening. They emphasised how hard it is to […]
Aussiecon 4 – The Climate Change Panels (Part 2)
Hi all, I attended four climate change sessions at Aussiecon 4, two of them I wrote about in my last Aussiecon post. Designer Planet: Averting Climate Change with Geoengineering. This session was conducted solo by science fiction author Gregory Benford. He is also an astrophysicist in the Department of Physics and Astronomy at the University […]
Aussiecon 4 – The Climate Change Panels (Part 1)
Hi all, I attended four panels on climate change at Aussiecon. Kim Stanley Robinson appeared on three of them. He appeared to be a committed environmentalist who hopes that humanity, and Americans in particular, will change their behaviour to solve the problems of climate change. I personally don’t have that much faith in our solving […]
Aussiecon 4 – Young Adult Panels.
Hi all, At Aussiecon 4 I attended three panels specifically targeted at writers of young adult fiction.Border Crossing: YA Authors Writing for Adults.Panelists: Cory Doctorow (Canadian sci-fi novelist), Alison Goodman (Australian fantasy novelist) Marianne De Pierres (Australian sci-fi novelist) and Bec Kavanagh as moderator It seems that whether a book is classified as YA or […]
My writing week 3 (36) – More on Aussiecon
Hi all,I caught a cold at Aussiecon: my brain must have been too busy processing information from the 18 panels I attended to direct my immune system. I tried to write this post yesterday, but my brain was too busy directing my immune system to stop me accidentally deleting it half way through. I have […]
Red Queen, H.M. Brown, A review.
Hi all, I decided to read Red Queen, by Australian author H.M. Brown, after reading a review of it in The AGE. The review was positive and said that the novel had won last year’s Aurealis award for best horror novel, but that is not what had me wanting to read it, it was the […]
My vote for the Hugo nominated novella.
Hi all, I finally finished reading the best novella nominees for the Hugos. They were not small, with the average size being about 100 pages. I thought a couple of the nominees were more fantasy than science fiction. I had only heard of two of the authors before, Nancy Kress and John Scalzi. The novellas […]
My pick for the movie Hugo
Hi all, I watched Moon two nights ago, the last of the five movies nominated for this year’s Hugo. The other nominees are: Up, Avatar, District 9 and Star Trek. Up is an animated fantasy film with some science fiction elements. It is about an old grump who is about to be forced out of […]