Steven Lochran's Blog, page 7

Author At Large

This past weekend proved to be a busy one, with events to attend on both Saturday and Sunday. First up was National Bookshop Day, where I had been asked to be a celebrity bookseller for the Younger Sun bookshop in Yarraville. I was only there for an hour, but what an exciting hour it was!

Stepping behind the counter, I immediately reverted to my retailing days, acting like it was my first shift as a new employee and I was duty-bound to work out exactly how the till operated as quickly as possible. Eventually I remembered that I was there in a capacity other than simply manning the register and started actually, y’know, talking to customers and mentioning the fact that, yes, that was my book stacked up on the counter.

The defining moment came when, while talking to a woman and not-so-subtly dropping the fact that I was the author of Vanguard Prime: Goldrush, the young man she was with turned in surprise and said “Really?!”

“Yep,” I replied, and I didn’t get the chance to say much more than that as he ran out of the store to go get his friend. Earlier in the day, the staff at the Younger Sun had set up a blackboard out the front where kids could write the names of their favourite books, and as it turned out the boy who had just fled the store had a friend who’d written down “VP: Goldrush” as his favourite book, without even realising that I was in the store!

When the two guys came back in and explained the story, I don’t know who was more excited – them or me! (actually, I do know. It was me). It was a thrilling moment in a very fun day, and I can’t think the staff at the Younger Sun enough for letting me come in and stuff up their transactions for them!

The next day, I headed out to Eltham Bookshop to participate in a Q&A led by Leanne Hall, the author of the beautiful and brilliant This is Shyness and Queen of the Night. Leanne had read Goldrush in advance of the event and made for a very enthusiastic interviewer – so much so that she actually brought along her own mask in a bid to get included in a future entry in the series!

Author Leanne Hall, aka ‘Supersonic’ / ‘Sam’s Sister’

That’s even more dedication than I’ve managed to muster up so far, having rejected all requests from my publisher to don a spandex costume in an effort to promote the book – trust me, that’s a sight nobody wants to see…least of all me!

I thoroughly expected only a few spare faces to turn up for the Eltham Bookshop Q&A, but store owner Meera is note to be underestimated in her ability to organise an event, with a good-sized crowd turning out to hear Leanne ask astute, articulate questions and for me to blather in response. Many thanks have to go out to Meera, Leanne, and the staff of the Eltham Bookshop for such a fun and successful event.

Meera of Eltham Bookshop and me.

The next time I’ll be out and about will be at the Ballarat Writers’ Festival on September 1st. In the meantime, I’m chatting with other booksellers about some other possible events, and I’m also preparing for my television debut – more on that in the future!

‘Til next time.

My Other Car is a Batmobile

Wednesday night saw me at Tim’s Bookshop in Canterbury, where I got the chance to talk to parents and students from Our Lady’s primary school. One of the best things about it was the Q&A afterwards, where I answered questions ranging from “So what happens in your story?” (something I should probably have covered better in the talk) to “What car do you drive?” (I only realised today I missed the opportunity to say “A Batmobile”).

 

One of the topics I covered was the fact that in Year 2 I was placed in a catch-up class for students who were struggling with their reading and writing skills. I’d had trouble picking up that particular ability in Year 1, so I was behind the other students when I moved up to the next grade. Thankfully, the catch-up class worked and I took to reading and writing with a previously undiscovered enthusiasm.

 

I thought it was important to let the kids know; just because you’re not immediately good at something doesn’t mean you never will be. Also, I drive a Batmobile – not the Toyota Camry that I said I did.

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This weekend, not only will I be at the Younger Sun for National Bookshop Day, I’ll also be In Conversation with Leanne Hall at the Eltham Bookshop at 3pm on Sunday. We’ll be discussing Vanguard Prime: Goldrush and the road to publication. Make sure to come visit!

Where I’ll Be On National Bookshop Day

Saturday 11th August is National Bookshop Day, and I’ve been invited to be a “celebrity” bookseller at The Younger Sun Bookshop. I put quotation marks around “celebrity” as I fully expect nobody to know who I am, and the fact that Andy Griffiths is following me means there’ll no doubt be a huge crowd of kids shouting “We want Andy! We want Andy!”.

Not that I’m complaining, mind you! I can’t wait to meet everyone who comes in, as well as hopefully sell some books (whether they’re mine or somebody else’s). There’s a lot of talk these days about the challenges that bookshops are facing. Let’s show them our support!

I’ve copied the details for The Younger Sun’s National Bookshop Day event below;

 

Join us to celebrate the bricks and mortar bookshop on National Bookshop Day, Saturday 11th August 2012. To thank you for being ace and supporting your local bookshop we’ve got a bunch of fun things planned, including celebrity booksellers, treats and competitions. We are also taking part in ‘The Lost Thing Passport’ competition in conjunction with many other wonderful Melbourne independent bookshops. The passport is inspired by Shaun Tan’s magical book The Lost Thing. Get your passport stamped at participating stores and you could WIN A SIGNED SUITCASE EDITION OF SHAUN TAN’S THE ARRIVAL as well as gift vouchers from participating stores. The winner will be drawn at the end of Book Week on 24th August.

You can also go in the draw to WIN A BOOK A MONTH FOR A YEAR on us if you buy a book from the Sun Bookshop or the Younger Sun on the day.

We will have super special celebrity author booksellers Josephine Rowe (Tarcutta Wake, How a Moth Becomes a Boat) and Chris Flynn (Tiger in Eden) at the Sun Bookshop 2:30pm-3:30pm.

We are also very pleased to announce Kate from the Younger Sun will be returning to the shop to join in the fun on the day. As well, we have a whole list of awesome celebrity booksellers for the Younger Sun! They are:

Cath Crowley 10.00am – 11.00am

Danny Katz 11.00am – 12.00pm

Clare Saxby 12.00pm – 1.00pm

Steven Lochran 1.00pm – 2.00pm

Andy Griffiths 2.00pm – 3.00pm

The Ideas Shoppe: Genealogy of a Book

For ages now, I’ve been meaning to do two things. 1) Write up a list of books that were influential on Vanguard Prime: Goldrush (out now, of course!). 2) Write the first in a regular series of posts entitled ‘The Ideas Shoppe’, in which I discuss the process of writing, focusing primarily on where inspiration comes from.

And then I thought – why not make them the same post?

Before I plunge into it, I think I should take a moment to explain the title. Even before I got published, I was aware that one of the questions that anyone in the creative field gets asked the most is “Where do you get your ideas from?”. It’s a question that can be phrased in many different ways, and it’s a question that can be easily dismissed with the knee jerk response “Oh, I go down and buy them at the Ideas Shop”.

Of course, it’s a sarcastic answer, but I have to admit that I find the idea of the Ideas Shop an enticing one. I love the image of a glowing, golden boutique at the end of a cobblestone lane where you can buy inspiration by the jar. But in lieu of that, I’ll offer what insight into the creative process that I can – but only after adding a ‘ppe’ to ‘shop’ to give it the proper old world aesthetic!

So without further ado, please find ten books that helped me in the creation of Vanguard Prime: Goldrush. 

(Please note: Not every book in this list is appropriate for young readers. In fact, there are quite a few that are very specifically meant for adults. I like to think that people find books as they’re ready for them, so if something feels like it may not be right for you, give it some time and try it again in a few years. Also, if the formatting is a little off in this post, please bear with it!)

  1. Tomorrow, When the War Began by John Marsden

My dad bought this book for me when I was 11, and I was totally hooked. The best thing about John Marsden’s writing  is that he doesn’t pull any punches. He deals with themes of race, sexuality and violence in a mature, level-headed manner, never talking down to his readership. It gave me a lot of confidence to not shy away from some of the darker places I wanted to go to in Vanguard Prime – though not necessarily as dark as the places Marsden goes in this series.

 

2. JLA by Grant Morrison, et al.

This was my first exposure to the genius that is Grant Morrison, the Scottish writer that many a fanboy refers to as ‘the God of Comics’. His work has gotten increasingly polarizing over the years, with quite a few readers as ready to dismiss it as praise it – but I am firmly in the ‘fan’ camp. And though his modern work can be arguably esoteric and cerebral, his run on JLA (short for Justice League of America) is as accessible as it is epic.

Published in the ‘90s, it can appear a little dated now (especially when the blue-skinned electric Superman suddenly pops up) but it remains a high-point in the history of comics publishing.

 3. Artemis Fowl by Eoin Colfer

This was the book I bought when I decided I was going to write a YA book and I wanted to get a sense of what else was out there. I’d been meaning to read it for years and finally got the chance as part of my research. What’s bold about this book is the anti-hero that Colfer presents us with as his protagonist.

Moral complexity is something that’s not always afforded in books for younger readers. Eoin Colfer is fearless in showcasing a character that many adults may not necessarily approve of, but that kids will no doubt relate to when they read his troubled backstory.

 

4. The Time Traveller’s Wife by Audrey Niffenegger

I had never experimented with voice very much in my writing, sticking almost entirely to Third Person Past Tense. This was the book that convinced me to attempt First Person Present Tense, something that I’d been a bit snobby about in the past.

It helps that Niffenegger’s story is as complex as it is emotionally engaging, with a pair of characters that have a great sense of reality to them, despite the outlandish premise.

 

5. On Writing by Stephen King

I’d always been a bit dismissive of Stephen King’s work. I remembered reading It when I was too young to be reading it, and even then being underwhelmed by the decision to include a drawing of the moment someone writes “It” in blood on a bathroom wall, which amounted on the page to someone scribbling in felt pen on a piece of grid paper. As I got older, I smirked at the way almost all his main characters were middle-class white men who were either from Maine, or writers, or both.

But somewhere along the line that started to change. It had a lot to do with the number of writers who would cite his On Writing as having had a great impact on their work (including Neil Gaiman, a personal hero). Curiosity getting the better of me, I borrowed On Writing from the local library and found myself pleasantly surprised by it.

Part autobiography, part mission statement, On Writing is a book I would heartily recommend to anyone who has ambitions of becoming a writer. Even those who have previously failed to connect with King’s work will find something to relate to and learn from in these pages.

 6. Third Transmission by Jack Heath

Another book that showed me the places you can take the YA genre, with Jack Heath demonstrating a canny knack at action-based storytelling, incorporating cool sci-fi ideas and a teenage protagonist.

 

 

 

7. Neuromancer by William Gibson

I’m so envious of Gibson’s prose. He describes everything with crystal clear clarity that still manages to be poetic, and he makes it look so easy. This is such an influential book (this is where the term ”cyberspace” was first coined) and yet people generally remain somewhat oblivious to it. The movie that’s meant to be in the works may change that, but only if the filmmakers manage to nail the complex plot that’s coupled with an incredible sense of atmosphere.

 

 

8. Shade’s Children by Garth Nix

Like Artemis Fowl, I read this shortly before starting work on Vanguard Prime in order to get a handle on the YA genre, and what I found was an uncompromising, dystopian tale of kids doing whatever they need to in order to survive. In that sense, it has a lot in common with Tomorrow, When the War Began, but with much more of a sci-fi bent.

 

 

9. Watchmen by Alan Moore, Dave Gibbons, et al.

I first read this about ten years ago, before the movie came out but long after it had left an indelible mark on the comics industry. Despite being a product of Cold War paranoia, it remains a fantastic example of world-building, taking standard superhero archetypes and fleshing them out so that they read like real people, thwarted dreams and all.

 

 

10. The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay by Michael Chabon

There are many things to marvel at in this Pulitzer-prize-winning novel, not the least of which is the thoroughly authentic comic book character that Chabon has his two main characters create. The Escapist is such an interesting character and so perfectly captures the excitement of the Golden Age of comics that it’s actually disappointing that he wasn’t a genuine product of the era and that there aren’t more adventures of his to thrill to. I wanted the characters in Vanguard Prime to feel as well-realised and genuine as the Escapist is in this book. I can only hope that I managed that.

 So that’s it!

Of course, this list doesn’t count the film and TV works that also bore some influence (including The West Wing, Neon Genesis Evangelion, Justice League Unlimited, The Spectacular Spider-Man, Doctor Who, and everything Joss Whedon’s ever done) and the music I’d play to fuel my imagination.

I guess we’ll just have to save all that for the next visit to the Ideas Shoppe.

A Launch, Some Links, and a Little Movie Talk

On Wednesday night, in the Sun Theatre in Yarraville, we had the official launch for Vanguard Prime: Goldrush. It was a great night, which you can read about here, as well as see photos like this one, where I swear I’m less stunned than I seem to be;

And that’s only the first of more events to come. Make sure to keep an eye on the Events page if you want to have me scribble in your book. Also, while I’m on the subject, thanks again to everyone who came out to show their support! I can’t express enough how much it meant.

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The reviews for Vanguard Prime: Goldrush just keep on comin’! Check out what Emily Gale has to say on the Readings website, and if you’re curious about the VP team and want to learn a little more about them, take a look at this post on the Penguin Teachers’ Corner blog. The PDF they link to contains a bio for every member of the team, with exclusive information that wasn’t covered in the book! You know this is exciting because I’m using exclamation marks!

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The more I think about The Dark Knight Rises, the more I realised I enjoyed The Amazing Spider-Man more. I still fully intend on seeing TDKR a second time, however, as the first viewing wasn’t done on an IMAX screen and I need to know what that experience is like. I did, however, see Amazing Spider-Man in 3D, which wasn’t as thrilling or immersive as I expected it to be. My fiance, however, thought the 3D was great, which was surprising given that she usually hates 3D.

Of course, there was three big superhero movies this year, with Avengers being the big winner. My experience of watching The Avengers was a curious one. As a fanboy, I loved it. As a writer, it frustrated the hell out of me; not because the script bothered me, but because there were quite a few overlaps with my book, which was in the editing stage at that time.

The end credits hadn’t even started rolling before I was thinking of all the rewrites I’d have to do to differentiate it from this multi-billion-dollar-earning movie. The good thing is that it all worked out for the best. Vanguard Prime: Goldrush ended up being a stronger book due to the rewriting I had to do, even if I had a small heart attack at the prospect.

We’re about to start editing Book 2. I’m keeping a close watch on the multiplexes.

 

The Dark Knight, Reviews, and Interviews

I finally got the chance to see The Dark Knight Rises on the weekend, and as much as I enjoyed the movie it’s impossible to watch it now without thinking of Aurora, the terrible events that took place there, and the victims who are either no longer with us or will never be the same.

One of those victims is Caleb Medley. Caleb, left in critical condition after the shooting, is facing a $2 million dollar hospital bill as he’s one of the estimated 50 million Americans without health insurance. His friends and family have set up a website where you can read more about Caleb and make a donation towards his medical costs, or simply send him some words of support.

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On a lighter note, Vanguard Prime: Goldrush is in bookshops now and has already received its first review, and 4 out of 5 at that!

I had a brief “career” as a movie reviewer years ago and always found it perplexing when filmmakers would react with hostility towards negative reviews. I have a slightly better understanding of it now. Not that I plan on ever reacting with hostility, but now I know how exposed you feel in sending a piece of yourself out into the world and having it indifferently dissected. Hopefully it’ll get easier with time…or maybe I’ll just stop Googling myself.

One thing that makes it easier is the beautifully-crafted armour that Penguin’s dressed the book in. Illustrator Chad McCown has posted the full, wraparound cover image, sans text. I think you’ll agree, it’s impressive to say the least. As much as I love how all the characters are depicted, I especially love the Knight of Wands and Gaia on the left, and the moody silhouette of Major Blackthorne in the middle.

And while I’m updating you on all things Vanguard Prime, I feel I should point you in the direction of the very first interview I’ve done for the book, with Megan Burke of Literary Life. There are more interviews to come, and I’ll make sure to link to them as they go up.

One piece of media that took me completely by surprise was the listing of the Vanguard Prime book launch at the Sun Theatre in Jason Steger’s column. Surely this is only in the online version, I thought to myself. Not so! I picked up this weekend’s edition of The Age and sure enough, there it was! I’m still recovering from that one.

 ‘Til next time…

The Passage of Time (Or, The Novel Has Landed)

Biggest indicator of a lack of research? Starting a sentence with the words “According to Wikipedia”.

But! According to Wikipedia (and a bunch of psychologists and stuff) one’s perception of the passage of time is relative to one’s age. In other words, the older you get, the faster it feels like time is passing. That seems like a particularly cruel characteristic of the human mind – that you only start appreciating the time you have on Earth at the same point you realise that it’s running out.

This semi-morbid observation is a long way of saying…Vanguard Prime: Goldrush is being released tomorrow.

That piece of information again; my book, the first in a new series that I’ve been going on about for what feels like aaaaages now, is going to be available in bookshops everywhere (well, all good bookshops everywhere. Well, all good bookshops in Australia. And New Zealand.) from tomorrow, July 25.

…I may have gotten a little too detailed there.

In any case, the older I get the faster time passes, making it feel like only yesterday that the offer came through from Penguin. I’m sure it’ll be only a blink of the eyes before Book 2 is released and Book 3 after that.

Which reminds me; there’s been some confusion about the series being a trilogy. While I’m signed for three books, my hope is that the series is popular enough to warrant additional entries. So if you read it, and you like it, make sure to recommend it to everyone you can so the story can be continued.

Also, if you read it and like it, then come along to any of the events that’ll be happening over the next few weeks/months. I’ve added details about the event with Eltham Bookshop, and will be adding details about a second Sun Bookshop event momentarily (yep, that’s a second event, after the launch…which you can still RSVP to!).

So with all that said, I think it’s time to go off and celebrate. I’m gunna crack open the fancy M&Ms.

 

I’m Not Racist, But…: On Race & Genre Fiction

I have to admit, I was a little hesitant in writing this post.

Race is an incredibly sensitive topic and it’s very easy to come across as either self-righteous or horribly misguided…especially when you’re a pasty Australian guy who’s so pale he’s practically blue. But I’ve had this idea brewing in my head for quite a while now and I thought it was best to express it. If that expression comes off as a little garbled or preachy-sounding, I hope you’ll bear with me.

Growing up a white, middle-class kid – and a boy, at that – I never had to search very far to see myself reflected in the fiction I consumed. From He-Man to James and the Giant Peach, there were white, fair-haired representations of heroism in plentiful abundance.

In fact, every main character in just about everything I read or watched contained a white male hero facing off against the threat of the day. Quite often he’d be aided by something as exotic as a girl, equally fair-haired, or perhaps a talking animal sidekick. People of colour, however, were few and far between…though sometimes they’d be included in a villainous capacity by especially dunderheaded storytellers.

As I got older, I started taking notice of race a bit more. My preteen brain was blown when I discovered that Spawn, the Image comics character created by Todd McFarlane, was a black man…or at least he had been before he’d been killed by his employer and resurrected as a soldier of Hell (long story).

Not only was Spawn black but so was his supporting cast, including the wife he’d left behind on Earth and the best friend who’d married her in Spawn’s absence. Though I’m embarrassed to admit it now, I was a little confused at the time as to why McFarlane, a white guy, would make all his main characters black. Didn’t that make it harder for him to relate to them? Didn’t it make them harder for him to write?

I also remember loving The Lion King around the same time, and being frustrated by the critics who denounced the racist and homophobic overtones contained in the film. How could The Lion King be racist? It was all about animals, not people! Of course, it didn’t occur to me that if you take a bunch of negative cultural stereotypes, apply them to your villain characters and get those characters voiced by actors of colour, you’re practically begging to be accused of racism.

It wasn’t until uni that I started looking beyond the surface details of plot and the knee jerk defensiveness of saying “It’s just a story” (four of the worst words to ever say about storytelling; stories are more than a series of events told to keep us entertained. Stories can be weapons. They can be balms for the soul. They can enlighten and broaden the mind. Stories are never just stories).

At uni, I learnt about post-feminist and post-colonial theory. I learnt to analyse the themes of a work, to look at it from angles other than the straightforward. But it was outside of uni – in fact, it was an essay I found online – that really opened my mind to the issue of race.

Shame by Pam Noles, written in response to the TV adaptation of the Earthsea books, is a deeply personal piece where the author ruminates on the depiction of race in science-fiction and fantasy. When I read it in 2006, it changed my world view.

Vanguard Prime doesn’t come out for another two weeks (July 25th! Bookshop near you! /shamelessplug) so the characters I’m about to discuss won’t mean much to anyone at this stage, but when I was creating them I kept in mind the story Pam Noles told about being a child desperately looking for a depiction of herself in the stories she loved.

Sam Lee is a 14-year-old kid whose sudden manifestation of superpowers forever changes his life. Invited to join the superhero team Vanguard Prime, he finds himself rubbing elbows with the idols of his youth. Those idols include Agent Alpha, the VP universe equivalent of Superman or Captain America.

When creating Agent Alpha, I initially went to the obvious place of picturing a white male with a shiny white smile and slick blonde hair. Very vanilla. Very predictable. Very boring. In this post-Obama world, wouldn’t the more interesting thing be to take the Superman paradigm and place an African-American in that role? And so Agent Alpha became, in his secret identity, Michael Malik Khalid.

And then there’s Sam himself. The name “Sam Lee” generated quite naturally. The thing that kept repeating in my head when I was trying to work out who the main character of the book would be were the words that Stan Lee, creator of Spider-Man, said about what made the world famous Wallcrawler so popular; that, beneath the mask, he could be anybody. Black, white, Asian. Anybody. It doesn’t matter.

As noble an idea as that is, it lasts about as long as it takes for Spider-Man to remove his mask…and then you discover that his name’s Peter Parker and that he’s another middle-class white guy (at least, that’s still the case in the mainstream Marvel universe. In the Ultimate imprint, Peter’s recently been replaced by Miles Morales, a half-black, half-Hispanic kid. When the announcement of this change was made, it was sadly met with a great many accusations of it being due to “political correctness”…I think the same people who use the excuse “It’s just a story” are the same people who rail against “political correctness”).

I wanted to offer kids from any background the feeling of inclusiveness that Stan spoke of when he talked about the notion of Spider-Man being “anybody”. Partly in tribute to the man himself, but mostly because of its ethnic ambiguity, I chose the name ‘Sam Lee’ for my main character. The majority of the book is written from Sam’s point-of-view, and beyond his clothes he never describes his appearance. Prose could provide the ambiguity necessary for any kid, anywhere, to place themselves in Sam’s shoes.

Of course, I couldn’t help but slip in a sly reference to what I felt Sam’s cultural background was…a reference that the editor who read the manuscript picked up on and asked me about when we sat down to discuss the book. That information would eventually be passed onto the book’s designer and illustrator; you can keep things as vague as you want in the text, but the reality of the situation is that you’re going to have to put an image on the cover, aren’t you?

Not one but two people close to me commented on Sam’s Asian appearance. They asked if that was an attempt to sell the book overseas, specifically to the Asian market or to manga fans. And I can’t think of a more perfect example of why we need more racial diversity in genre fiction, if not fiction in general, than that.

Not thinking about race is a luxury that’s afforded to white people because we’re the ones on top. We’re everywhere, and so are our stories. Try and subvert that, even just a little, and it results in consternation, if not outright hostility. You need look no further than the response to the mere suggestion of Donald Glover being cast as Spider-Man, or the actual casting of Idris Elba as Heimdall in Thor, or the racist rumblings about the casting of The Hunger Games film, as evidence of that.

I have one more phrase to add to the list alongside “It’s just a story” and “political correctness”. It’s “I’m not racist but…”. Is there any other phrase that’s more likely to preface a racist statement? The only way I can think of it being used in anything but a bigoted fashion is “I’m not racist, but I really think we could use some more ethnic diversity in this story.” Then I’d agree. And I’d probably get accused of being PC as a result. Not that I’d mind.

The Lessons of History

As I was driving to work this morning, I caught a few minutes of a talkback segment discussing the cutting of history classes in the Victorian education system…or at least that’s what I thought it was about. Turned out it had more to do with the teaching of Australian history rather than history in general, but it was enough to get me thinking.

The idea of History being an increasingly unpopular subject – spurious though that idea may be – doesn’t strike me as being all that absurd, even though I studied both Modern and Ancient History right through to graduation. The reason it rings a note of truth is the pressure we put on kids to decide right now who and what they want to be, forcing them into a position where they select courses based on a myopic criteria of what’s most practical for getting them into uni, leaving subjects like History to fall by the wayside.

I remember spending Years 11 and 12 under an increasing sense of pressure, like every test I took and every assignment I handed in was a building block towards my future. If I chose the wrong course, if I got the wrong grade, my career prospects and my entire life would suffer as a result.

Well, I did choose the wrong courses. I did get the wrong grades. And while I would never minimize the importance of education, I would also say to kids to relax. It’ll be okay. If you haven’t worked out what your passion is, if you haven’t worked out exactly what you want the arc of your life to be, it’ll be okay. Life doesn’t end at 18 because you got a C when you needed a B. It doesn’t end because you took History instead of Geometry or Economics. It doesn’t end because you don’t know what exactly you want to do for the rest of your life right now.

And if you don’t know what you want to do, work out first what you’re passionate about. It’ll flow from there. I had no idea what I should do after graduating, but I always loved to write. I ended up studying Creative Writing at uni, despite it not being the most practical choice to make. My first book is getting published in two weeks time. Things work out.

History is easily confused for fate, but only when looking over it in retrospect. When you’re living it, it’s hard to know what choices to make, and impossible to know where your path will lead you. But remember; there is no test big enough, no final score bad enough, that will keep you from ultimately living a happy and fulfilling life.

And now, with all these words of worldly wisdom said, I’ll shuffle back off to the retirement village to reminisce about the days where music was something you could buy and physically own, and mobiles were something to be hung above a baby’s crib.

‘Til next time.

Where I’ll Be & What I (Haven’t) Been Doing

With the release of the book getting closer and closer (July 25th! Have I mentioned that lately?) events are starting to lock into place. Kicking things off will be the launch at the Sun Theatre and Bookshop on 1st August, which everyone is more than welcome to attend…just make sure you RSVP! From there, there’ll be events with the Eltham Bookshop, Tim’s Bookshop and a few others that I’ll need to confirm details for before posting about.

 

I’ll also be appearing at the Ballarat Writers and Illustrators Festival as part of the Sports Stars and Superheroes panel, details of which can be found on the Events page. And though it may be a bit early to talk about it, I’ll also be recording my first television appearance in the next month. More details to follow!

 

When I first set up this website, I had lofty ambitions of blogging with great regularity and bedazzling wit, much like other authors such as Neil Gaiman and Jay Kristoff. I really don’t know how they do it, because keeping to a regular schedule has proven pretty tricky for me so far. Now that the book’s release is nearly here, I’m going to make a real effort to post more…and if I don’t, make sure to harass me into action!