Ah, definitions, definitions, definitions! It’s always the way with genre fiction that we have to grapple with definitions and borders and ruling in and ruling out. It’s funny how mainstream fiction doesn’t get all het up about things like, but that’s an issue for another day. This selection of...

In singling out High Fantasy, I’m really genre splitting here and trying to show that Fantasy is a vast and varied offering, with all sorts of subtleties, approaches and flavours that non-genre readers are perhaps unaware of. By High Fantasy, I mean the full on Tolkienesque epic, complete with...

As is my wont, I’ve been thinking deeply about this whole business of writing – again. As a result of this I’m ready to make a Big Statement. <Clears throat> All narrative writing is a balance between describing the External World and the Internal World. Obviously, more explanation is...

Looking for Australian YA Science Fiction rather than Australian YA Fantasy? Here are some top titles with some well-known books next to some you may be unaware of. Displaced Person – Lee Harding. What happens when you start to vanish along with everyone else? Identity, sense of self, sense...

I don’t often post book reviews on my blog, but I’m making an exception here as my response to The Powder Mage series of books is complicated and possibly centres on some important aspects of writing Fantasy, especially fantasy with an historical context. Brian McClellan’s The Powder Mage series...

  At last – I’m excited to let you know that the entire The Laws of Magic series is now available as audiobooks! The fine people at Audible have turned the adventures of Aubrey, George, Caroline and Sophie into quality audio texts, and you’ll find them here: Blaze of Glory Heart of Gold Word of...

I’ve been doing some research on the great picture palaces of 1930s/1940s Melbourne. Recently, I stumbled across the wonderful Harold Paynting Collection at the State Library of Victoria and discovered these images of the long lost Padua Theatre, Brunswick, Victoria.  Thanks to people like photographer Lyle Fowler, we can gaze...

And here’s the back cover for Leo da Vinci Vs the Ice-cream Domination League, with lots of teasers. The fabulous Jules Faber does the illustrations, and the book is due out from Random House Australia in August....

When advising or teaching people about writing, I often emphasise the usefulness of doing preparatory work before starting to write. With Fantasy and Science Fiction that can mean considering details of the world in which the story will take place. Listing aspects of the world can mean thinking about...