Votive Lamp, Sri Lanka by A. Davey (Alan Coogan) via Flickr Today is Independence Day in Sri Lanka. A commonly held idea is that most of our problems as a nation come from the colonists and so that therefore today is a day to celebrate our freedom from being a colony. Coconut trees in Sri Lanka by YoTuT via Flickr ...

This entry is part 10 of 10 in the series Australian Women Writers Challenge 2013Amanda Curtin is the author of Inherited, which I reviewed a couple of weeks ago for the AWW 2013 challenge. I first met her through the Society of Editors (WA) on whose committee she had served for something like 16 years. Amanda is also taking part in the ...

This entry is part 9 of 9 in the series Australian Women Writers Challenge 2013Ann-Marie Priest’s Great Writers, Great Loves I am not entirely sure where I picked it up from. But I live in Fremantle where there are three Elizabeth Bookshops and a plethora of other bookstores and secondhand bibliophile’s havens (or heavens if you prefer). Its prior home ...

This entry is part 8 of 8 in the series Australian Women Writers Challenge 2013Who won the haul? That’s what you want to know right? What haul? This haul! Which I have to say is a pretty amazing haul. But what I found amazing were your comments. Thank you guys. It was really interesting to see what your favourite poems ...

So the lovely people at Book’d Out kickstarted this off. Basically each blog involved runs a competition of some sort and the point is to give away a book by an Australian author to a lucky winner or a book voucher or something like that. This means not only do I have to come up with the means by which ...

Amanda Curtin’s Inherited Precision is what comes to my mind, first. Amanda Curtin likes to write about connections, between person to person, between person and object, person and landscape. And about how those connections make us feel. Or why they are unique to us. Why they don’t make any sense or at least a different kind of sense to others. ...

Sholes’ First Typewriter (1872) by Eric Fischer via Flickr Discovered: WA JOURNALIST JOB: The Albany Advertiser in Western Australia has a journalist role they want filled by the end of January/start of February. It has two mastheads & a glossy magazine so falls between a daily paper and a weekly. You need to have done a degree in Journalism/Media/Communications/English, a ...

Don’t be afraid to fail. Before you freak out on me about what horrible consequences there are to failing, listen. 1) A fear of failing often stops people from trying in the first place. So they fail to follow a dream, to move to a new place, to start a new life, to leave an unpleasant situation, to ask ...

Last week’s review for the Australian Women Writers Challenge 2013 was Marj McRae’s Not A Man. This week, I got to ask Marj a few questions about her writing process and about the novel itself. Marisa: Where did you get the idea from? It’s about an eunuch.  Marj: Not a Man is about a eunuch, and so many people have ...

Or any other conference really. And by network, I mean meet, chatter, gossip with, not just pop up, deliver your 15 word elevator speech, exchange cards and dash off again. And for those who are still a bit behind, this is the 6th National IPEd Editors’ Conference we are discussing which will be held in Perth in Fremantle in April ...

Why: Because Katie Gard reminded me that I promised to do this if I took on the AWW 2013 challenge. Current word count: Somewhere between 31,000 and 32,000 because I haven’t typed in everything I have written and the word count tends to double when I do. Usually. Process: I write the most important bits of dialogue, action and description in the scene ...

Not A Man by Marj McRae “The hero is an eunuch.” said the author Marj McRae. “Wait, what?” was my reaction. She emailed me the link, I downloaded Not A Man in e-book form and dove in. An eunuch – I expected there to be a few descriptions of not so very nice things – violence and rape. I mean, ...

This being the start of 2013, of course everyone is talking about New Year Resolutions. In fact, come December 1st everyone starts ruminating on this topic. And then of course there is a lot of angst over what one hasn’t done yet and that horrible nagging feeling that somehow you are running out of time to do X, Y and ...

Kerry Greenwood’s Unnatural Habits I discovered Greenwood quite by chance somewhere around 2007. And ever since I have eagerly awaited the next installment of a Phryne Fisher or Corrinna Chapman mystery. You can just imagine how thrilled I was when ABC started airing the TV series of Phryne Fisher last year. Accordingly I was excited to find a new ...

So I mentioned to a writing group that I am part of on Facebook that I am trying to do this challenge. And I asked them to suggest titles. Because otherwise I was going to be stuck. And they have come up trumps. Now I am only going to review certain books in certain genres so I can say now ...

The challenge is to read, review and promote Australian female writers in 2013. You can sign up here. I guess a special part of this challenge is that as I am an Australian female writer, I should try to get my book finished as well. So I won’t just be reviewing, I will be writing as well. Wish me luck!

So I suddenly saw that the BBC wanted to cancel the science Q & A radio show The Naked Scientists and that they had organised a massive #savethenakedscientists mexican twave where they tried to get one tweet retweeted around the world within the hour that they usually have their show on the air. Here are the tweets because it’s going ...

I have a sudden irresistible urge to buy pens. That gush with ink with colours seeping into white woven fibres on the page. Paper was meant to be written, scribbled, scrawled, drawn on, meaning overflowing arbitrarily declared boundaries. Everything ever present or absent on a page means something, and contributes to a larger idea and even more amazingly, can be ...

Taking the Mic by Sean Rogers 1 via Flickr Yes, ok, I know it seems odd. and it must have seemed odd when this status popped up on my Facebook profile the other day. Apparently editors can rap. Who knew? *is killing herself laughing* It started with past Society of Editors (WA) President, Robin Bower, who is on the ...

Hi everyone, One of the projects taking up my time these days is organising the 6th IPEd National Editors Conference which will be in Perth in April 2013. We have international and national writers, publishers and editors attending and it’s going to be absolutely fantastic. We opened registrations yesterday so if you are in Perth in April and are keen ...