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Placid Point and the Rules of Self-Publishing

Over the past year or so, wisdom has been accumulating in the blogsphere about who should self-publish, what they should self-publish, and when. The advice seems to amount to this: If no-one else is going to publish it (because, say, it was commercially published once but is now out of print, or it’s new but [...]

Review: Voyager by Stephen J. Pyne

(This review first appeared in the New York Journal of Books.) Voyager: Seeking Newer Worlds in the Third Great Age of Discovery by Stephen J. Pyne is a book that aims to set the West’s exploration of the Solar System in its historical context. Pyne, a historian at Arizona State University, has an “organizing conceit” [...]

Self-Published vs Commercially-Published: The editor is what matters

In the brave new world of electronic publishing – in which we live right now – picking up an unknown book by an unknown author has become a much bigger risk than it used to be in the old, print-only days of a couple of years ago. This is because, on the major retails sites, [...]

Time Dilation is Not a Writer’s Friend

G’day mates. It’s a bright and sunny winter’s morning as I write, Independence Day in the US, and just another gorgeous 5th July here in Australia. Since I’ve been neglecting my readers lately, I thought I’d throw in a simple update on my writing life just to keep things moving along. My head has been [...]

The Fourth is Strong With Me

Today, May 4th, is the second anniversary of the commencement of this blog. I started it on my return from a writer’s retreat which I credit for kick-starting my career as a published author. So this anniversary is my day for taking stock of how all that is going. Here is what I wrote in [...]

Review: The Dream of Perpetual Motion by Dexter Palmer

(This review first appeared in The New York Journal of Books on 28th April 2010.) The Dream of Perpetual Motion is a steampunk fairytale set in an alternative twentieth century. It is the story of a reluctant hero, Harold Winslow, whose life is controlled by the mad genius, Prospero Taligent. Harold’s sad and dysfunctional family [...]

Starting a New Novel

Where do you get your ideas? Although no-one has ever asked me, I thought I’d answer the question anyway. I’ve just started writing a new book – a new trilogy in fact – and I’ve been watching myself as the process of coming up with the story unfolds. And this is how it happened. Almost [...]

Hangin’ With the Monkeys

What do you do when you’re trying to build a career as a science fiction writer and you suddenly go nuts and write a children’s book? I’m sure we’ve all done it. Right in the middle of writing your latest high-energy space opera, your brain goes on the fritz and out pours a Rgency bodice [...]

Amazon, Kindle, eBooks, and Me

I’m developing a relationship with Amazon. It used to be a simple relationship. I bought books from them. Well, not quite simple. I occasionally bought books when their low price plus the exorbitant cost of shipping to Australia worked out better than a local bookshop, or it was a book you just couldn’t get here. [...]

The Twitter Tour Starts Now

The TimeSplash Non-Stop 24-hour Round-the-World Twitter Tour starts soon. The process is complicated but all you need to know is that I’ll be in your timezone between 7pm and 8pm during the next 24 hours. To shout out to me as I go by, send me a tweet on Twitter. This is my Twitter ID:  [...]