• The Story Behind the Book

    “This” Announcement

    I haven’t blogged since my dearest friend Blaise passed away. Outside of my tribute to her, writing – as a practice – just seemed meaningless. It took a couple of months before that internal narrative began to chug again, however sporadically. It hasn’t genuinely sparked my imagination yet. There were things I was working on, and things I wanted to begin, but I’ve (since) found trouble getting into them. The best I’ve managed is some rants about football and one Star Wars review. I’ve focused on revision – the last redraft of a new novel (which Blaise, always my primary alpha reader, was halfway through reading), and then various scripts.…

  • The Story Behind the Book

    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…