• The Story Behind the Book

    Just Another Week in Suburbia: The Publishing Journey ~ Part 1

    The publishing journey is about the stupidest fucking journey you could ever aspire to take. It’s like asking somebody to kick you in the crotch, thanking them for it, grinning inanely, and then asking somebody else to treat you the same. When I was younger, more inexperienced, and stupider, I held an unflappable belief I’d be published. I think most authors at a similar stage in their careers feel similarly. It’s just a matter of time. This is naivete talking. Or we can go back to that stupidity thing. Then I got older and learned more about writing, and that my writing at that stage was shit. Not hopeless. Not…

  • The Story Behind the Book

    Just Another Week in Suburbia: Methodology and the Other Characters

    I don’t start writing anything until I have a rough idea of the story I want to tell. As I write, ideas will occur to me that might or need to happen later. I dot point these. In the case of Just Another Week in Suburbia, which was set over seven days, I also drew up a table with columns for each day, and would dot-point where applicable. (Things still changed.) Often, I’ll realise that something needs to be foreshadowed earlier or revised. I’ll make a list of these revisions, and attend them at the beginning of each writing session. That helps me get straight back into the writing since…