My first foray into screenwriting has been a success! Of sorts. I took part in the 2019 NYC Midnight Screenwriting Challenge, and although I didn’t win (or come close) judges did find my entry worthy of an honourable mention. So here is my short comedic screenplay Catfish, for your (script) reading pleasure. For reference,…
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Since 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…
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(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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Long sentences are bad, we are told. The enemy of plain English. Today the average sentence is 14.4 words long, and that’s less than a quarter of what it was 200 years ago. The UK Government has gone as far as to mandate a maximum count of 25 words in official publications. (For reference, if…
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The winners of the 2017 NYC Midnight Short Story Challenge have just been announced, and I am pleased to announce I am one of them! Sort of. My final story landed me an ‘honourable mention’, sufficient for a handful of minor prizes, but just outside the cash. I’m totally excited about the outcome and proud…
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My word of the week is sonder. It’s not even a real word. According to the Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows, sonder means: The realization that each random passerby is living a life as vivid and complex as your own—populated with their own ambitions, friends, routines, worries and inherited craziness—an epic story that continues invisibly around…
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Have you met Joseph Herscher and his whimsical machines? I think it’s time the two of you became acquainted. Introducing…The Page Turner: Joseph uses ordinary household objects to create the most innovative, amusing, excessive and unnecessary machines you will ever see. In 2008 he created his first famous kinetic monstrosity—Crème That Egg—a complex, rickety, apartment-spanning…
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If you, like me, love receiving a barrage of writing-related emails, or adding more expert writing advice to your already-can’t-quite-keep-up-with-it-all Facebook/Twitter feed, then have I got a belated Christmas gift for you. Below are five of my favourite online writing resources. Don’t dally – go sign up to their e-newsletters and social media feeds right…
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I just hatched a Pikachu from a 2km egg. The moment has changed my life. Let me explain. My boys and I have been playing Pokemon Go for a few weeks now. We have traveled dozens of kilometres together, caught hundreds of pokemon, battled a few gyms, hatched countless eggs. I even spend my lunch…
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Another article I wrote for the ACT Writers Centre, this time about my experience at the inaugural Canberra Writers Festival over 26-28 August 2016. The 2016 Canberra Writers Festival was my first major writing event. Among all the author interviews, book launches, panel discussions, writing workshops, festival artists, pop-up bookstores, signings, corridor networking, macaron towers,…
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