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  (I have made a few edits to this post - the original post was written when I was very tired and fed-up with the world and the whole debate is very messy.) There is a lot of controversy surrounding the Hugo awards this year. For those of you who don’t know, the Hugos are science fiction awards for best novel, best short story, best movie etc. Books and movies are nominated for the Hugo by people who either attend that year’s Worldcon, or who pay a non-attending membership fee. Basically it’s a popular vote, so the books and films nominated are probably not the best that came out that year, just popular with members of Worldcon. Over recent years a few writers have decided they are upset with what they deem to be leftist science fiction that is winning the Hugos, so they decided to try and influence the awards by getting people to nominate a selection of science fiction that suited their views of what science fiction should be. I personally prefer science fiction that ex...

  Novel Writing.   In March I added 5848 words to Branded , a science-fiction, young adult novel. So I improved on February’s 4841 words. I averaged 188 words per day in March compared to 173 words per day for February and 155 words per day in January. The novel is now just under 70,000 words. It has five parts and I am probably just over halfway into the forth part. It looks like the novel will be about 100,000 words, the first draft at least. I am still very much enjoying writing it. The dysfunctional group of characters are barely getting on at the moment, but one of the causes is about to be removed.   Non-Fiction Writing.    I wrote one article for Divine in March. It was about a lack of actors with disabilities playing characters with disabilities, especially in Australian movies and television. I contacted a few people in the industry for the article and about half of them got back to me. I learnt a lot about the issu...