I’m Back
It wasn’t any deliberate decision on my part, but it’s been almost a year since I’ve posted anything on Memoranda. I’ve been busy with Day Job and various other activities, including starting work on a completely new novel1. I’ve been reading a lot, but each time I sat down to share my opinion of a book, I thought, ‘Does anyone need to know this? Why would they care what I think? The author of this bestselling book is doing just fine without my recommendation.’ And then I’d wander off to do something else.
I’m not certain what I’ll be doing with Memoranda this year, but I’d like to keep it going, if only because it’s the closest thing I have to a social media presence now that BookTwitter is dead. Where are all the readers, authors, publishers and agents now? Facebook? Instagram? TikTok? None of those options appeals to me. Am I meant to join Bluesky? I do have an account at Substack so I can read posts there, but have zero interest in posting my own Substack pieces. Readers and writers—where are you hanging out now?
Anyway, while I’m figuring this out (and also to remind myself of how WordPress works), this month I’ll be re-posting a blog series written back in 2012 when I was Writer in Residence at Inside A Dog, the website of the Melbourne-based Centre for Youth Literature. Sadly, the Centre for Youth Literature was shut down five years ago after it lost government funding, which meant the demise of not just Inside A Dog and its archives, but The Inky Youth Literature Awards and Reading Matters, an excellent biennial conference that hosted YA authors from all over the world. This blog series was written when The FitzOsbornes at War was released in Australia and it’s aimed at teenage readers, a behind-the-scenes look at writing historical fiction. Unfortunately, I can’t re-post all of the great discussion that appeared in the comments of the original posts, but feel free to add your own comments.
Next: How to write a historical novel in seven easy steps
I’m not going to talk about this yet, because I don’t want to jinx it. But it’s been an absolute joy to work on so far. ↩
