Just Another Week in Suburbia and The Hachette Manuscript Development Program
The Hachette Manuscript Program is a joint initiative between Hachette Australia and the Queensland Writers Centre, which involves a week of workshops on writing, editing, publishing, marketing, agents, among other things. Entrants submit fifty pages. If they’re chosen, they submit the rest of the manuscript, then go to Queensland to participate in the Program. In 2013, I submitted Just Another Week in Suburbia and “Prudence” (the book I wrote immediately after) and, as had become my wont, didn’t expect anything. However, Just Another Week in Suburbia was shortlisted. It was gratifying given it was the novel I’d designated as THE ONE (as in the one where I was determined that…
116,990
One of the hardest things in writing is being honest with yourself and, much more importantly, your writing. The problem is sending your writing out into the world, where the following will judge it: family friends peers the reading public critics. These forces influence the writer in different ways. Some of my books have heavy sex scenes. I often wonder how my family feels about me producing those. Do they walk around thinking, Wow, he’s really depraved? Any number of elements in a story could stun, repulse, or frighten a family member who thought they knew the writer. I think this sits at the forefront of a lot of writers’…