Australians win more WOTF awards per entry than any other country. For real. That's something I learned just today. And you know what? I'm not surprised. We've been taking home the gongs for over twenty years now, and I've lost track of how many winners we've had all up. There were three this year alone. Three.

So what's our secret? Any guesses? I'm ( Read more... )

Here's my schedule for the rest of the year:

• SwanCon 36/Natcon 50 (April 21-25) 
• LA Times Festival of Books (April 30-May 1)
• Auckland Writers & Readers Festival (May 11-15)
• Sydney Writers' Festival (May 16-21)
• Aurealis Awards (May 21)

I'm on the road again for the next ten days or so.  Here are some things I've been meaning to post properly about but hadn't got around to.  My apologies.  See you when I get back!

• an Astropolis reviewing contest
• an interview with me and a couple of awesome Writers of the Future winners in LA, on Starship Sofa
• another interview, this time about the SA ( Read more... )

So I discovered last week that bits of roasted cacao beans taste really, really nice when mixed with Old Gold, and ever since then I've been making my own chocolates. But in the meantime, work goes on:

Stephen Baxter, Pamela Freeman, Pat Rothfuss and I compare notes on SF vs F over at The Second Bookgeeks SF and Fantasy Author PanelVoyager online ( Read more... )

Here's a Venn diagram drawn by Charles Brown (of Locus fame) at the latest Writers of the Future workshop. He was trying to capture how Commerce and Art relate to the professional writer, or at least how we try to position ourselves with respect to each:


( Read more... )

Gary Reynolds of the excellent Concept Sc-fi blog has just posted a conversation we had before I left for the US, in which we discuss (among other things) Star Wars, the process of writing a novel, and the worst thing I've ever written. As part of the interview, I posted a link to a never-before-released piece of music I wrote on my trusty old ( Read more... )

This time tomorrow, I'll be winging out of Melbourne on my jaunt to Denvention, followed by the Writers of the Future XXIV celebration, and capped off with a launch of The Force Unleashed.

(Speaking of which, here's the first review, and here's a quick interview about the joy of writing for computer games. Thanks, Graeme ( Read more... )

Recently I've been slack when it comes to promoting upcoming appearances. My apologies. When I'm nose-down, it's easy to forget about the real world until it comes along and bites me on the arse. Here then, to avoid a nip on my nethers, are some events at which I'll be appearing in the coming weeks. Maybe I'll see you at one of them.

Gencon ( Read more... )

When I was in the States earlier this year for the release of Writers of the Future Volume XXIII, I was whisked away one morning to a magnificent recording studio, thrust in front of a microphone, and handed a copy of Volume XIX ( Read more... )

L. Ron Hubbard's Writers of the Future Contest had a huge effect on me, early in my career, and it continues to inspire and surprise me now, fifteen years later. I have to pinch myself, sometimes ( Read more... )