Next up is my first Furious Fiction entry for March 2018: Walpiri. This is my first entry into the competition. I’m not sure I quite captured what I was after, but I only had 500 words and three days, so maybe I was shooting too high. I’ve simplified since. The elements for this month: The...
Read MoreBaba Yaga Quirky crime thriller (novel, 90,000 words) Gin Moody is not your average detective; in fact, she’s not a detective at all. She’s the gravel–voiced, fifty–nine year–old former Olympic weightlifter who runs the high school canteen. But she used to be a cop, a long time ago. Which is why principal Charles Schneider needs...
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I am very pleased to announce that the first draft of my third novel, Blood Artist, is complete! It has been a total blast to write this crime thriller, and I know you are going to love it. As a special treat, here is the first chapter. I hope you enjoy! There is, of course,...
Read MoreIt was nearly three years ago that I wrote this article in praise of the music in the 2015 war–on–drugs thriller Sicario. Sicario: Day of the Soldado is the sequel to that film, and it was with great excitement that I fronted up to my local cinema to see what could possibly be done to...
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My fifth CAPITAL YARNS blog post is up. This time the topic is how to raise children while also trying to find time to write. If you have kids, this should all sound horribly familiar. If you don’t have kids, stop reading now because this may put you off entirely… Original post is here: actwritersblog.com/2016/04/19/writing–with–kids/....
Read MoreSince the beginning of the year, by popular demand*, I have been blogging about my entries into the Australian Writers Centre’s Furious Fiction competition. In May’s Furious Fiction, I finally cracked the winners’ circle. No, I didn’t win the five hundred dollars. But my entry, CARDIAC ARREST, was long–listed for the big bucks. (For my...
Read MoreWhere has the time gone? It’s been over a year since my previous post. That’s a long time. And I wish I had an excuse for it. I wish I could say my silence was writing related, that I’ve signed some publishing agreement that forbids me from talking about my soon–to–be–published work. Or I wish...
Read MoreWhat the heck is a rhyming story? Isn’t that just a poem? I had no idea, but I decided to enter the inaugural NYC Midnight Rhyming Story Challenge anyway. I’ve had success in the NYC Midnight Short Story Challenges in previous years (stroll back through my posts to see my winning entries), so I was...
Read More(Shortcut to story: Holidays with Rover). When the email announcing the first Furious Fiction of the year popped into my inbox, I was in a car with my little family driving to a caravan park on the South Coast of New South Wales. I doubted I would have time to submit an entry, so all...
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My family and I are looking to buy a new house. It was a hard slog the first time we did it nearly a decade ago, so I thought there was a good chance we were facing another long, monotonous, dispiriting experience. In many ways I was right. In one surprising way I was very,...
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