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How did Zoo City win the 2011 Arthur C. Clarke award? Not that it’s a bad book, it is a very enjoyable, imaginative and well-written novel. The problem is science does not drive its plot, so it is not science fiction. If anything, the novel is fantasy, as its plot’s two main drivers are magic and spiritualism. Lauren Beukes sets Zoo City in an alternative version of her homeland, South Africa. In this alternative version, criminals are identifiable by the animals attached to them. Not physically attached, but an animal and its master are psychically linked. The animal feels what the human is feeling. The animal has to be close to its owner or they both will panic. The animals also instil minor magical abilities in their owners. The animals reminded me of the Daemons in Philip Pullman’s Dark Materials series. Beukes acknowledges that similarity by mentioning that series within the novel. But Zoo City is nothing like Dark Materials. Zinni is the book’s protagonist. She is an ...

A request on my blog’s Facebook page asked if I could follow up my last post with lists of just the bestselling fiction books of 2014. As I write adult and young adult fiction I decided to include both in the following lists. Note: I could only find the top nine bestsellers in Australia.   Australia 1. The Fault in Our Stars by John Green (193,700) 2. Gone Girl by Gillian Flynn (156,900) 3. The Narrow Road to the Deep North by Richard Flanagan (127,300) 4. Gone Girl (movie tie-in) Gillian Flynn (119,800) 5. The Fault in Our Stars (movie tie-in) by John Green (113,100) 6. The Great Zoo of China by Matthew Riley (106,100) 7. The Book Thief by Markus Zusak (101,000) 8. Looking for Alaska by John Green (98,500) 9. Personal by Lee Child (95,500). Six are adult novels. Four are different versions of the same two books. Three have Australian authors. Five had film versions out last year. Only one would be considered to have literary merit ( T...

The 2014 top-ten bestseller lists for books in Australia, the UK and the US point to a book buying world dominated by movies, games and children/teenagers. Top-ten bestsellers in Australia.   1. The 52-Storey Treehouse by Andy Griffiths and Terry Denton (232,900)   2. The Long Haul (Diary of a Wimpy Kid Book Nine) by Jeff Kinney (221,800) 3. The Fault in Our Stars by John Green (193,700) 4. Gone Girl by Gillian Flynn (156,900) 5. Minecraft: The Official Construction Handbook (135,600) 6. The Narrow Road to the Deep North by Richard Flanagan (127,300) 7. Minecraft: The Official Redstone Handbook (127,300) 8. Minecraft: The Official Combat Handbook (124,100) 9. Minecraft: the Official Beginner’s Handbook (123,400) 10. Gone Girl (movie tie-in) by Gillian Flynn (119,800). Four of the books were manuals for the game Minecraft. Two versions of Gone Girl made the list. The top two are children’s books. Only two of the top-ten had Australian authors. Three...

In an attempt at motivation, I have decided to do a monthly blog post on my writing efforts for the previous month.   Novel Writing. I am currently writing a young adult novel, Branded. I wrote the first chapter of it as part of a writing for young adults subject in a Master of Creative Writing I finished in 2007. I then filed the chapter away as I concentrated on other writing. I pulled it back out for last November’s National Novel Writing Month, adding just over 50,000 words in that month. In January I added a further 4816 words. An average of 155 words a day. The novel is now just under 60,000 words. It has five parts and I have just started part four.   It looks like it will be somewhere between 90,000 and 100,000 words. I am still very much enjoying writing it, especially after I just managed to get most of the dysfunctional group of characters back to working with each other. Non-Fiction Writing. I had two articles up ...