There was me thinking my books from Amazon were bobbing across the ocean to me, when in actual fact they were jet setting across instead. Yesterday, I heard a thumping on the front door. Honestly, I thought the end of the world was upon us and everyone was being asked to evacuate, the [...]

Filed under: Books & Movies, Personal | 6 Comments »

Fifteen years ago, approximately, I read Illusion by Paula Volsky and loved it. This month I read it again and can see why I loved it so much. The book is 700 pages long, and for me that means a lot of time and effort and any book which requires these things better [...]

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It’s something I’ve never done…purchase books online…until now. I always buy them when I see them, and that is usually when I see them in op shops, not book stores. However, I’ve wanted to get my hands on two books that I’ve never seen in Australia (admittedly, I never got around to asking [...]

Filed under: Books & Movies, Personal | 6 Comments »

Last week I made a public goal and called it A Four Day Plan. In other words, I gave myself four days to complete the items on the list. The plan included 1) finding a suitable publisher for Amulet of Kemet and then submitting the story, and, 2) to rewrite the ending of [...]

Filed under: My Writing:, Other Projects, Personal | No Comments »

As the saying goes, “better late than never”, and that’s how I view this submission. I should have done it within days of the rejection, but I was waist deep in website coding at the time and have only gotten around to doing the necessary research today.
This afternoon, I submitted Amulet of Kemet to [...]

Filed under: My Submissions, My Writing: | 4 Comments »

During a recent visit to the past (reading the archives of this blog) I came to realise that a post makes no sense at all to visitors if the writer says “the other day I mentioned a book” but never repeats the name of that book in the current post (and the visitor can’t find [...]

Filed under: Books & Movies, My Writing: | 1 Comment »

I went under the hood of Now Reading and worked out how to get rid of that solid disc beside the image. I also fixed the spacing and highlighted heading so that the page is easier, and more pleasant, to look at. The image in the sidebar is now centred so that looks [...]

Filed under: Books & Movies, General:, My Writing:, Other Projects | 2 Comments »

I’ve been plotting novels and short stories for some years now, but that doesn’t mean I think I know everything that needs to be known on the subject. Because of this, I continually borrow books from the library, or purchase them if they are being sold at the right price, to ensure I’m not [...]

Filed under: Characterisation, Editing & Rewrites, Planning, World Building, Writing for Children, Writing: | 7 Comments »

A few months ago Lee Carlon installed a plugin called Now Reading. Every time I’ve visited Lee’s blog since then (which on average is at least twice a week), I’ve been reminded that I wanted to install the plugin here too, but one thing or another always seemed to be more important and it [...]

Filed under: Books & Movies, General: | 3 Comments »

In recent weeks I’ve found my memory isn’t so bad and I’m sleeping more soundly, which helps me focus on everyday things a lot easier. As my mind is calmer, I find myself wanting to use a calmer template on this website too. I think it’s safe to say that this is the [...]

Filed under: General: | 11 Comments »