I watch a fair bit of pro-wrestling. Partially because I’m a fan and partially because it’s an extraordinarily complex sequential narrative with decades of continuity, and I like figuring out what I can learn from it as a writer. If you’ve got twenty minutes to spare, Max Landis does a phenomenal job of explaining the […]
As someone who has taught in my fair share of university creative writing programs, I read Ryan Boudinot’s Things I Can Say About MFA Programs Now I No Longer Teach In One with a certain amount of recognition. You see, I, too, have experienced the disappointment that is students asking for books that don’t require as much […]
Some friends were posting John Cleese quotes to my twitter feed this morning, which put me in mind of my trip to the UK at the end of 2013. One of the things I was really excited about was going to see the Globe theater – not the original, but a pretty awesome remake – ’cause I’m […]
Taylor Negron died earlier this week. Odds are, if you’re aware of his work, it’s in the form of recognising him as one of those “hey, it’s that guy” actors who appeared in iconic bit parts. You never really learn their name, you just recognise them when they appear on screen and, occasionally, fire up […]
Quickflix has a copy of Cast a Deadly Spell available as part of its movie streaming package. This is worth the $9.99 I give them every month right now. It may even be enough to tempt me back, from time to time, once Netflix debuts and (hopefully) offers a slightly better range of streamable media […]
Very occasionally, you come across books that fit your interests so very perfectly that it’s almost like the author had you in mind when they wrote it. That’s pretty much the experience I had when I first heard mention of Christ Fausts’s Hoodtown, a novel in the hard-boiled tradition that’s set in a ghetto where […]
I used to be the vocal part of the #TrashyTuesdayMovie experiment over on twitter, but a lot of the logistical and planning behind the series of films we watched was done by my former flatmate, Adam. He took a kind of evil joy in finding terrible-but-interesting films and grouping them into themes, then sat there and took […]
Australian romance readers don’t really need me to tell them about Anna Cowan. Her first novel, Untamed, picked up the Favourite Historical Romance award at the 2013 Australian Romance Readers Awards and earned Cowan the Favourite New Author gong as a follow-up. Untamed has also picked up a litany of reviews on the vast majority […]
We don’t often think in terms of following publishers. Writers, yes, ’cause it’s their names on the cover and we’re trained to follow the individual rather than the company that produced their work. Writers get branded; publishers…well, with the exception of Harlequin, the Penguin classics line, and some of the work being done by Angry […]
Years ago, in the early days of Twitter, the #FollowFriday hash tag became a way of directing people towards tweeters who were doing interesting things. Over the years its become something less than that – The Oatmeal charts its demise pretty well – but the original concept has some merit. The internet is built on […]
Once, many moons ago, it was pointed out to be that my objections to the romance genre were largely the result of lingering, passive sexism and a considerable snobby streak. I’m okay with being a snob, but the sexism thing bothered me. Self, I said, you cannot dismiss the entire genre just because it’s not […]
THE HYPOTHESIS Ladies and Gentlemen, I posit that you will not find a clip that packs more 80’s music video cliches into three minutes than Cameo’s Back and Forth, released in 1987. THE EVIDENCE This has it all: big hair; bad fashion; Flashdance leotards; synchronized dancing; a vaguely glam metal guitarist performing a home invasion where he plays riffs […]
