Category: Articles

A writer has many challenges when creating a consistent, self-sustaining fantasy world for a story. Some are easy to anticipate, but others sneak up on you. After months of preparation, mapping, outlining and imagining, many a Fantasy writer has leaped into the first draft intoxicated by the joy of...

Writers have many challenges. Getting a pencil to a perfect sharp point. Coming up with alternatives to ‘Once upon a time’ to start a story. Finding time to count our enormous sacks of money. Things like that. With The Extraordinaires, my most recently released series I encountered a challenge...

After my last post on Historical Fantasy was enjoyed by so many, I thought I’d walk across the line and look at Alternate History, especially seeing as I made the distinction between it and historical fantasy. And just a word on the Alternate/Alternative debate. Frankly, I think ‘Alternate’ doesn’t...

I’m happy enough with my Extraordinaires series being called Steampunk, but I’m more and more coming to think of it as Historical Fantasy. And by Historical Fantasy, I don’t mean Alternate History (stories in a world like our own that has taken a different historical path) or standard Fantasy...

I’m about to make a distinction that is bound to be argued with, disagreed with and flat out rejected but, nevertheless, I’m going ahead because I think it’s useful, especially for beginning writers. Character is one of the vital aspects of storytelling – this isn’t the controversial bit, by...

The Boy’s Own Paper was a long-running (1879-1967) magazine that, in some ways, helped to establish and perpetuate the essence of the British schoolboy. Originally, its purpose was educative and it never really lost this function. Science, history, sport and geography featured heavily in its stories and articles, but...

I’m excited to be able to tell you all about my new book, to be released by Random House Australia in April 2014. It’s called Machine Wars, and it’s unrelated to any of my other series. Machine Wars is a return for me to writing for a slightly younger...

After reading Steampunk why wouldn’t people w ant to dress up in Steampunk fashion? After all, well-crafted, traditional garments made with care have a certain allure, and when one adds the overlay of techno-wizardry that is so much part of the Steampunk ethos, then a playful, distinctive way of...

As a Fantasy writer, I spend a great deal of time thinking about and playing around with magic – how it works, who can do it, the necessary limitations it has and the cost it must incur to the user. So it’s a natural step to start thinking about...

If you’re writing Fantasy, names can be a real headache. You want names that are distinctive, evocative and resonant, without sounding ‘just made up’, and that put a real strain on the old creative gland. The answer lies, as it almost always does when writing Fantasy, in History. For ...