News & Upcoming Events

Hornets Attack Your Best Friend Victor and Other Things We Called the Band is probably the longest title I’ve ever used for a short story, and it’s still shorter than the working title I used all through the first draft. The finished version is currently published at Speculate, the short-story series hosted by Evil Girlfriend Media.

The title for this one is a pretty direct homage to REM, who used the name Hornets Attack Victor Mature to book a secret gig in their home town back in the 80s. It’s the sort of thing one picks up when one is seventeen and obsessively reading band biographies, and it stuck in my head for twenty-two years before I finally started building a story out of it to justify the mental bandwidth it’s taken up over the years.

So, let’s just rip this band-aid off: I’m leaving my job at Queensland Writers Centre at the end of next week.

*Takes a deep breath*
*Exhales meaningfully*
*Gets a little misty-eyed*

It doesn’t seem that long ago that I started with QWC, coming aboard to work on a arts project on a six month contract. I thought I would finish up at the end of 2011, pack up my stuff and head off to Melbourne for the next phase of my life. Instead, I kept signing new contracts and getting new gigs. Managing the Australian Writers Marketplace. Convening the GenreCon writers conference and shepherding it through its first three years. Going out and talking to writers, new and established, about business and craft and networking and all the other things I’m passionate about when it comes to writer’s careers.

I got to meet and befriend an incredible number of talented writers, publishers, and agents. I got to give people advice in my first year, then have them come back and tell me how it helped a few years later.

QWC has, for the last five years, been a pretty sweet gig for someone with my interests. I’m still vaguely shocked that I made the decision to leave. It basically took a perfect storm of someone offering me a similarly interesting gig doing social media content, with compatible hours that still allowed for writing, and a better paycheck attached. The better paycheck helped make the decision, what with the mortgage and all. And even then I was on the fence, because…well, lets be honest, 2017 is a GenreCon year and I love running that event.

Then, when I told my boss I was leaving, they were all, “so if I wanted you to come back and work on GenreCon…”

Which means, essentially, I’m leaving my job at QWC next week, except for the bit that I really, really enjoy. And I’ll still be convening Genrecon in 2017 and getting a chance to implement the program that’s half-built already, in my head. That makes the whole leaving thing a little less sad.

But just a little. It’s been a great five years and I’ve had the chance to meet all sorts of awesome people. If you were part of that, thank you. You all fucking rocked.

And with that, I’m off to Melbourne for the weekend to catch up with peeps. See you all when I get back to Brisbane next week, yeah?

JESSICA JONES

I stayed up and watched all of Jessica Jones in one hit on Friday night.Turns out, and I’m still paying for that – no matter how many times all-nighters kick me in the arse, I just can’t wrap my head around the fact that they’re no longer an option.

Still, totally worth it. I regret nothing.

The Netflix/Marvel shows are…well, not really shows. They’re more like thirteen hour movies and this is far more prevalent with Jessica Jones than it was in Daredevil. The arc here is distinct and heavily focused – where Daredevil‘s arc genuflected in the direction of episodic television, taking its time building up to the revelation of a big-bad being behind everything, Jessica Jones goes straight for the throat. When it comes to bad guys, it’s all David Tennant, all the time, and the story is driven by Jessica’s reaction to his arrival.

Let me just say: the plotting in this is exquisite. Little, throw-away things prove to be the foundation upon which big things are built. No character is wasted.

HORN & BLEED ON KINDLE

News from Twelfth Planet Press – both Horn and Bleed are now for sale via the Amazon kindle store. Which is awesome, ’cause I’ve got a folder full of emails from people all, like, yo, why can’t I get this on kindle? and now the answer is yo, you can and they can be all yo, that’s awesome, while I ponder this sudden proliferation of the word yo in our dialect.

BULLETS FOR THE DEAD

I’m not saying this movie seems like it would appeal to a number of people that I know, but lets break this down:

First: Gun-slingers.

Second: Zombies.

Third: Gunslingers +  Zombies + two young Queensland film-makers putting together their first feature film.

There is no world that exists where that combination doesn’t appeal to a huge swathe of my friends. It certainly appeals to me, and I’m quietly excited for the film’s release.