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Hi all, I’ve finished editing chapter seven of Stalking Tigers – that’s if I can resist the temptation to go back to the start of that chapter and go through it again. I can always find something to change. The chapter ended up 1500 words longer, so much for cutting it back. I am thinking about dropping out of critters.com and devoting my critiquing efforts to just KSP, where I am waiting for someone to put up the first few chapters of a science-fiction novel, rather than start critiquing mid-novel. I had a look at the Conflux virtual mini con , an online speculative fiction forum, held over last weekend. James Minz, a senior editor with Baen Books who also worked at Del Rey and Tor Books, had some interesting comments. He was asked: what makes a gem stand out from the slushpile? He said “it's all about the storytelling. If there's strong story, the rest is negotiable. Don't get me wrong, you don't know how to use the English language properly, you're...

Hi all, Over the past few months my vision has been losing focus, especially after a bout of conjunctivitis about two months ago. I began to interrogate my eyes by reading with one or the other closed and discovered the left eye, the one most badly affected by conjunctivitis, had an opaque patch, right in its centre. It was like trying to read through badly scratched spectacles. I noticed too, that the world become a lot clearer when I just peered at it from the right eye. I made an appointment to see an optometrist, but got a bad dose of bronchitis, missing both it and work. As I waited for my bronchitis to disappear, I thought the opaque spot was probably the reason my eyes felt tired a lot of the time, as the left eye strained to see through the fog and the right wondered what was up with its partner. I also noticed my eyesight seemed hazier on cloudy days. I remembered being told a few years ago that I had cataracts slowly forming on my eyes. The optometrist assured me that...

Hi all, I spent most of last week catching up on things I had put off while sick, so there wasn't much time for writing. I'm still a few days behind in my newspaper reading. I don't chuck them until read, so they can pile up. I once got eleven weeks behind, but after some months I eventually caught up. I find reading newspapers very necessary for my writing, not just the stuff on writing and books, but anything that might give me an idea of future trends. For example, I reckon if you are writing a science fiction book set on Earth in the near future you will need to include the effects of global warming in it or give an explanation of how science fixed it (because it looks very unlikely that any useful global agreement to stop it will eventuate). If you write a book set 50 or so years from now, you will need to extrapolate the possible effects of nanotechnology, genetic engineering, cloning, virtual reality, artificial intelligence, medical advances, population changes, ot...

Hi all, Once again, bronchitis limited my writing exploits last week. I had been turning on my computer and editing for a few minutes each day just to continue my run of writing every day, but at the end of last week I went back to the start of a chapter and found that editing while in a bronchitis daze is not a great idea, I had missed heaps. I had arranged to join a critiquing group, based in WA, and received confirmation last week. This group have the advantage of no weekly/monthly quotas and novels are critiqued a couple of chapters at a time. After taking about four months to critique an entire novel on critters, I think sectionalising them is better for both the critiquer and critiquee . I found a few familiar names in the group's participants as I have networked with them using facebook . The past two and a half weeks have been a waste of time, they might as well have not happened. Unfortunately, my bronchitis...

Hi all, Steven Amsterdam's novel Things We Didn't See Coming , is on a short-list of five for the Age Book of the Year Awards. The novel "makes use of science fiction and apocalyptic themes" and much of it is set in the near future. The Age also says his writing "recalls the work of writers such as Aldous Huxley and Cormac McCarthy". I saw Steve speak at the Emerging Writer's Festival and he either didn't mention the speculative fiction nature of his novel or I missed it. So out of the 30 or so writers I saw speak over nine sessions two wrote science fiction. Steve told us about his long road to being published (see previous posts). I wonder how much of that was due to his novel being science-fiction? It's great to have an Aussie science fiction novel achieve mainstream acclaim. I have a number of reasons to buy Things We Didn't See Coming: readers of this blog would know that I am into apocalyptic fiction and I enjoyed the suspense and ble...

Hi all, Well its official, worst cold ever. I have missed work for two weeks - I wonder if they missed me. I've even resorted to health food store remedies, like marshmallow root tea, in an attempt to get rid of it. It is improving a little day by day. When I am not coughing or blowing my nose I am usually dozing. My attention span is about ten seconds. I've been turning on the computer and briefly checking my emails and facebook and myspace and then spending about 15 minutes attempting some editing of Stalking Tigers - just to say I've done some writing - and then turning the computer back off and lying back down on my bed. I've been feeling so tired I don't even have the energy to be grumpy. I look forward to getting my life back. Graham.

Hi all, I've got bronchitis, with one of the worst coughs I can remember having. Maybe it's some kind of germ revenge after I got over the flu and conjunctivitis in only a week earlier this winter. I have spent most of the past five days in a daze, which is not that conducive to writing. I've already erroneously deleted this blog post once. Anyway, last week I finished redrafting chapter seven of Stalking Tigers. Now I just have to edit it. I came across a problem near the end of the chapter when I realised the characters had left out a stage in what they were doing. Perhaps nine out of ten readers wouldn't have noticed it, but I decided to include it anyway. This created the problem of them probably not having enough time to complete everything I had them doing on that day. As their physical activities are linked to character and plot development, I feared I would have to rearranging a lot of chapter eight and then nine and so on, but I managed to fit everyt...