Monthly Archives: November 2013

Review: “Ink Black Magic” by Tansy Rayner Roberts

November 26, 2013 · by · in Reviews · 1 Comment

New from Fablecroft, Ink Black Magic is both an entertaining fantasy romp in the Pratchett mode, and an absolutely fascinating book for anyone who is interested in the art of writing and popular fiction. As a tale in its own right, Ink Black Magic is a light, quick-moving comedy which riffs off familiar territory and […]

Launching In A Small Town

November 23, 2013 · by · in Bastion Stuff, Writing stuff · Leave a comment

Well, now. That was interesting.    (Signing a book for Mayor Barry Jarvis) I don’t know how many other writer-types live out in the boonies, but if this post helps anybody, so much the better.  I wasn’t wholly convinced that a small town without a book store (other than the newsagent) was a great place […]

Path Of Night Rolling Onward

November 20, 2013 · by · in Writing stuff · 6 Comments

Okay. So Path Of Night is the first book in a series, out through small press. My goal is to keep the series ticking over with a book every six months to a year (or thereabouts given a bit of time once the Masters degree is done) to raise a profile out there in author-land, […]

Learning From The Mistakes Of Other: “Battlefield Earth” Edition

November 18, 2013 · by · in Learning From The Crapmeisters, Writing stuff · 9 Comments

As promised, I’m embarking on a project. I am demonstrating to anybody mad enough to read this blog that it is possible to learn valuable things about writing from some very popular works… just not the ones you might expect. No: I’m not waxing lyrical about Joyce or Dostoyevsky, or even Cordwainer Smith (whose books […]

Review: The Rook – Daniel O’Malley

November 14, 2013 · by · in Reviews · 2 Comments

The RookBy Daniel O’MalleyFrom Harper Collins Publishers The Rook is a debut novel from Australian writer Daniel O’Malley, and a remarkably assured and enjoyable debut it is. The back cover calls it a ‘supernatural detective thriller’, and mentions an ‘adept use of humour’, and for once the cover notes are actually pretty damned close to […]

Learning From The Mistakes Of Others

November 12, 2013 · by · in Learning From The Crapmeisters, Writing stuff · 4 Comments

There seems to be some kind of time-honoured tradition which insists that those who would become writers (or artists, or musicians, I guess) have to learn their trade by studying The Great Predecessors. And so we read Shakespeare and Byron, Joyce and Hemingway and Woolf and so forth, and we sweat and we strain and […]

Review: Man Of Steel

November 10, 2013 · by · in Reviews · 19 Comments

  I rarely bother to attend the cinema any more. We have only one cinemaplex in Launceston, and it shows nothing but the shiniest and latest and crappiest and Hollywoodest movies. Of course, sometimes I wouldn’t mind seeing those — but since it costs me well over a hundred dollars to do so with my […]

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