Category: Blog

Me: ‘Wicker! Yes! Monster romance! That’s what we’re doing here.’
Lecturer Dom on the left: ‘Among other things.’
August Update
TAFE/University of Canberra
I’m back to work with TAFEQld/University of Canberra students and we have a new batch. They’ve added some visual arts students to the mix for this round, so expect some lovely illustrations for the re-release.
I was describing the gist of the series and the nature of our main characters and what they got up to. The lecturer Dom is sitting at the front enjoying the reaction to some of the things I said. At the end of my talk I said ‘And you thought I was a sweet little old lady, right?’
Legal Wrangle
My Intellectual Property Expert lawyer came back with a plan and a scary letter for me, and the letter’s been sent to Harper-Collins Australia, UK and US. It’s twelve pages of majestic legal audacity and I’m in awe of my lawyer’s skills.
My lawyers are confident that the publishers can’t hold on to the world rights of the rest of the series if Australia’s given them back, because I sold them to Australia in the first place.
Now we have to wait and see what the publisher comes back with. A friend is willing to bet actual cash money that they will completely ignore this and hope it goes away.
Dark Heavens Re-Release

I am working hard on revising the Dark Heavens series for re-release. I will keep the Patrons updated on the draft covers as they come through from the artist, and everybody updated when we have some art from the TAFE/University of Canberra students.
I’ve made it clear this semester that I’d like to place ‘Dark Heavens’ in the immensely popular ‘cultivation novel’ space  and I’m describing it as ‘Pursuit of Jade meets Crocodile Dundee’. And then my business partner Debby adds (every time) ‘but not as pretty as the male lead in ‘Pursuit of Jade! He’s way too beautiful!’ – Which is true.
CapriCon Rockhampton August 29

I’ll be at Capricon Rockhampton on August 29 for the whole day. I love that they’ve added a space for furries, and I wish the other cons did this.
Many thanks to the Rockhampton Regional Council for the invite, I cannot wait!
Join the Patreon for as little as $2 a month to read new ‘Dark Heavens’ before it’s released
 

 
It’s cold and Miss Pixie has taken to climbing inside my jacket while I’m playing games. Look at that satisfied face.
 
July Update
CapriCon

I’m booked to attend Capri Con in Rockhampton as a guest! I’ll be there all day on Saturday August 29th. I won’t have many books as I still haven’t had any new copies of ‘Dark Heavens’ printed, but I will be able to share my experience and answer any questions. I’ve never been to Rockhampton before so I’m really looking forward to meeting the Central Queensland fans!
No Books
I have very few copies of the Harper-Collins ‘Dark Heavens’ books remaining, and as the rights have been returned to me, they can’t print any more, and I can’t obtain any more author copies. I won’t have the new editions done and released (in between everything else) until next year. I think I have about five copies of ‘White Tiger’ left.
If you’re thinking of rushing to purchase a ‘first edition’ – don’t bother. The new ones will be revised, updated, better written and will have much better updated covers. I’ll be making hardcovers and special foiled editions with sprayed edges – because I can.
I am starting to receive emails asking me where the first trilogy books are. The answer is: they’re down. You can’t buy them anywhere.
I’m honestly considering posting on social media requesting that everyone stop buying the second trilogy as well so that Harper-Collins are forced to give me the rights back.
New Releases
You’ve probably noticed that I’m relatively quiet on social media right now: this is because I am absolutely flat-out with basically two jobs right now.
The main one is fixing everything ready for big releases next year. I am:

Reformatting all of ‘Dark Heavens’ and revising the text
Typesetting all of these books so that I can create new print versions – a ‘twentieth anniversary edition’ with entirely new covers
Writing a Jade spinoff, about her two husbands (currently being read by Patrons on Patreon) – did you know that if you come up to me at a con and suggest a story that you’d like to read, I may go ahead and do it? This story is a direct result of a fan request.
Writing the next book after ‘Serpent Princess’ called ‘Queen of Hell’ (Patrons are reading that one too)
Revising Katie’s edits of the second ‘Council of AIs’ novel, ‘Bodies of Stone and Water’. This one is ready to revise and typeset. Fun fact: Throughout this editing process, Katie referred to the book as ‘Bonesaw’ from the initials ‘BOSAW’.

The second job is Essential Self-Publishing, which is basically funding all of this. Here’s my most recent assisted release, ‘My Eyebrows Jumped Ship’ by Patrizia Smrekar:

This is a wise, hilarious, and deeply relatable narrative on the displeasures of aging. Patrizia is an absolute hoot and was a lovely person to work with. The cover illustration is by local Gold Coast artist Liv Lorkin.
With Essential, I take advantage of my experience with self-publishing all of my books to assist others. I take their Word documents and covers and create the books to sell across all the self-publishing platforms, then give them their accounts back. It’s incredibly rewarding!
(Oh yeah I need to add this one to ‘my books’. I’ve been so busy with <waves hands> that I haven’t updated that website.)
Legal Challenge
You might recall that I’m attempting to gain all of the rights to all my books back. The rights setup is complicated, mostly because I made some novice mistakes twenty years ago.
I saw my (expensive big firm) lawyer this week, and to be honest his expression as I recounted my situation has been one of disbelief. ‘They don’t even reply to you??’
As it stands:

I have the first trilogy (Dark Heavens) back for all world regions. I’m hard at work revising them to create a twentieth-anniversary revised edition. The cover artist has me in her queue and will be working on the cover in August. Itta from TAFE is doing some flyleaf illustrations (and posters) for the special edition that I’m sharing in the Patreon-only newsletter.
I have the Australian rights back for the second trilogy (Journey to Wudang) but Harper-Collins UK own the world rights (everywhere outside Australia) and they won’t give them back – after fifteen years of ignoring me – because ‘books are still selling’. The lawyer is honestly horrified at this attitude.
I have the Australian rights back for the final trilogy (Celestial Battle) but Harper-Collins US (not UK, and the reason for the two different companies owning the rights is both stupid and complicated) own the rest of the world.They don’t respond to emails at all, and don’t answer their phone. The lawyer went from horrified to flabbergasted.

Note that through this, Harper-Collins Australia have been responsive, understanding and supportive. I think they’re as gobsmacked by the other companies’ behaviour as we are.
The lawyer is writing me a (mind-blowingly expensive) letter on Scary Letterhead ™ and we’ll see how they respond.
Putting all the stuff together for the lawyer has effectively been Job Number Three for me.
Currently Playing:

I don’t have much time for it, but when Pixie is safely cuddled inside my jacket I’m playing a little gem of a game on Steam called ‘Shrodinger’s Cat Burglar’ by a local Brisbane studio. This quantum puzzle game is just the right level of challenging and Pixie was absolutely no help at all in solving the puzzles.
If you’d like to read pre-release chapters and out-takes, you can join the Patreon here. Patrons get a special newsletter with additional content, and you can read many of my posts with a one dollar subscription!

Masterpiece!
June Update
It’s been hard for me to watch everyone enjoying Oz Comic-Con Adelaide and Melbourne and being unable to go myself. I am slowly revising all of the old Dark Heavens books because…

All of the formatting for early books is so broken and
It’s 2026 and some of the stuff that was normal back then … will no longer fly.

Things I’ve changed:

I explain things that people have, over the years, had difficulty with. Why did the Tiger only give Emma a token amount in a lai see at Chinese New Year? Because he’s respecting her boundary after she told him no to dating him, and he’s not attempting to ‘buy’ her.

I’ve clarified Leo’s illness. At the time I was writing the books, AIDS was a death sentence. During the 1980’s the Reagan administration knew about preventative measures and didn’t share them with the gay community. Thousands died. Leo was one of the casualties. In the novels he is now at the final stages and no amount of treatment can save him. I still have to go back to books 4-6 and work out what to do with Emma’s infection.
(This was a major sticking point with media people. AIDS can be cured now! Why is this such an issue??)

The ‘Western Palace’ <ahem> scene in book 2 is now much more consensual. It was edgy back then but it no longer works. I’m planning to have some fun jazzing up some other scenes in later parts of the series. I have ideas.

I’ve graphically described what Emma’s ‘halfway to snake’ form looks like at the end of book 2, and I hope it’s worse than you ever imagined.

It’s slow going because my small business assisting people to self-publish – I need the extra income with all the upcoming expenses, including legal expenses – is keeping me busy during office hours. I’m working on reformatting and revising ‘Dark Heavens’ in the evening and weekends.
Covers!
The most fun part must be having new covers made – but this is so nerve-wracking. Covers cost hundreds of dollars and have to be right first time. The mockup at the top of the email is my design for book 1. What do you think? Won’t that look great on Amazon?
I kid. That’s what I’ll be providing to the cover designer, with a written description.
As well as new ‘cultivation-style’ covers, I’m planning to do special editions with added illustrations inside the front and back covers. Here’s my high-art suggestions for those illustrations:

Fireworks on Hong Kong Harbour (I just realised this is a flyleaf illustration and I don’t need blurb space. Ooops. Time to redo)

Leo, Emma and Simone inside the training room, and a Snake Mother visible in the mirror behind them. This one may not work. Also Mothers are really complicated.
For Book 2, I’m thinking Emma and John on the balcony of their suite overlooking the desert in the Western Palace. I have a few ideas for the flyleaf illustrations but I’m concentrating on having the books reformatted as I go.
What I’d really like to do is a sprayed edge across the entire series. One huge illustration to go across the pages of all the books as they sit on the shelf. I think Kaligraphic can do it for me if we have the book sizes finalised. That would be marvellous.
So: what are your ideas for cover designs for the series? Provide stick figures if you like! All suggestions most welcome! I need major illustrations for the covers, and then more minor illustration for two flyleaf illustrations for each book.
And nine books altogether. I am such a nut doing this.
Legal Matters
Update on legal matters: I have a high-powered copyright lawyer trying to get me the world rights back for books 4-9. I have the rights to books 1-3 worldwide, so let’s start there. 4-9 I have the Australian rights, but not the rest of the world.
I can’t do any conventions until I have books to sell – I can’t order author copies as Harper-Collins are no longer printing them – so it may not be until next year that I will have Dark Heavens to sell again.
Bodies of Stone and Water
Katie is editing ‘Bodies’ right now and that will be published soon as well. I’ll have so many new books for you next year – including a new Dark Heavens novella that the Patrons on Patreon have been reading!
 

Cooler weather is here and my editorial assistant goes straight to her heated butt warmer every morning.
May Update
World Rights
Here we are again.
Before we begin, Harper-Collins Australia (after being reminded for more than a year) finally and cheerfully gave me back the Australian rights to the entire nine book series – including audiobook rights, so I own the Australian rights to all nine books and the audiobooks. Bolinda audio have already been in touch with me about that.
It’s a long story, but Harper-Collins UK own the world rights for the first six books of the ‘Dark Heavens’ series. Ask me in person if you see me about this saga, because it’s a wild story.
UK has agreed to give me the world rights back on the first three books, and the audiobook rights back for the first six.
They’re withholding the book rights on the second trilogy – books 4 to 6 – ‘because it’s still selling’.
The obvious nuclear option is to put them on blast on socials asking people to stop buying them, but I won’t. I’m seeing a lawyer on the 19th about it. I will keep you updated.
Harper-Collins US own the print and audiobook world rights for the final three books in the series and they haven’t responded at all. (Not to me, by the way, to Harper Australia. They don’t respond to another branch of the same company!)
Cover Illustration Project Grant Progress
I’m in the process of compiling a list of possible Australian emerging illustrators to contact if and when my ‘Emerging Artists Showcase’ grant is approved. Many thanks to the fans who suggested illustrators for me!
I’ve been informed by the grant committee that I’ll hear from them by the 5th of June.
Wish me luck.
‘Dark Heavens’ Progress
If you own a digital copy of ‘White Tiger’, you’re probably aware that the formatting is all over the place. Multiple lines of dialogue are all on the same line throughout the book. This is because it was first released before digital books were a thing, and Harper-Collins plugged the final print .pdf file into InDesign (or something) and saved it as an .epub, completely screwing up all the formatting.
It has been a HUGE job (in between publishing books for my self-publishing clients) to fix all this formatting. Book 1’s formatting is particularly heinous.
At the same time:

I’ve put back a little vignette where Emma uses her skills for the first time (at Dreamworld). Looking back, this little story item should never have been removed.
I’ve ramped up the sexual tension. With glee. I’ve learned a great deal since book 2, and I’ll be shifting some stuff around to make the sex scene much more consensual.
I’ve added some foreshadowing for later plot points in the series that I completely wasn’t planning at the book 1 stage. (I originally planned for Emma to be John’s Serpent but that kind of became a bit too obvious.)

In fact, when I was writing book1 I thought the entire series would be three books altogether. My fault for not being able to stop talking.
Back to work! Some of the books I’m currently working on with my self-publishing business are ‘family history’-type memoirs and these are so rewarding to produce.
 

Click on the image to see a video of Carter doing the honours of being our first test subject in the motion capture suit. Now to map the character models onto his frame!
April Update

Again wish me luck everyone, my grant application has been submitted and I’m hoping that I’ll be able to feature emerging Australian illustrators as the new cover artists for Dark Heavens.
TAFE Update

See the video above of Carter being our first experimental subject in the motion capture suit! All of this equipment is available to students as part of the course. There are no classes for two weeks, so when I return in a week and a half I am expecting great things from the animation team.
Itta has been working non-stop on adding to the artwork and the mechanics for Jade in the sidescroller game:

… And I just adore everything he comes up with..
Bodies of Stone and Water
… Is complete, and with my editor (and friend, and fellow writer) Katie Fraser. I’ve designed the ‘Council of AIs’ books to be readable in any order. Here’s our blurb (still working on it, though):
‘It’s a disposable placeholder mind for prototype testing. As soon as alpha testing is complete, we’ll delete it and install something useful in the body.’
Ninety-five-year-old Carol Weaver is unwillingly taken to New Zealand by her husband to undertake an experimental rejuvenation procedure. Billionaire Nick Laird is generously offering free trips to his advanced cybernetic and space exploration facility for anyone who wishes to be young again.
When Carol wakes after the procedure, she discovers that she is an uploaded mind in an android body – and the real Carol is dead. She’s now a piece of equipment, owned by Laird, that looks exactly like his ex-girlfriend, Ruth Sharpe.
Carol must find a way to free herself from Laird’s control and stop him from capturing Ruth, uploading her mind into Carol’s body – and killing her.
(Katie and I are having some back-and-forth about this, in the best possible way.)
It’s hard to compress the whole awful situation that Carol is in – into a hundred words. I need prospective readers to appreciate exactly how much trouble Carol is in. I hope it works!
(These 100 words have received more editing than multiple chapters in ‘Serpent Princess’!)
‘Dark Heavens’ Re-edit
Goodness it’s been a long time. Twenty years for ‘White Tiger’.
While I’m re-publishing them, I have to put new ISBNs on all of the books. They are supposed to disappear completely when the traditional publishers take them down, and imagine my surprise when I looked up ‘White Tiger’ today and found the US Harper-Voyager edition with the non-starter Angry Robot blurb that not only makes false claims about the plot, it spells Emma’s name wrong.
So I have a choice. I’m well aware of the confusion: the first book isn’t about the White Tiger. Ditto the second and third books not being about the relevant deities (in fact, at the time, I added more about them so the covers imposed on me would make more sense).
I now have the option to rename them to their original names. This will of course cause confusion for both existing and new readers, but it would be worth it to have titles that are actually relevant to the books and their contents.
Anyway, the original titles were: Book 1 ‘Dark Heavens’ (heh) Book 2 ‘Seven Stars’ Book 3 ‘Silver Serpent’. These titles actually make way more sense and are more relevant to the storyline.
So should I change them, and have each title labelled as ‘originally released as: White Tiger’ or something? Or just re-release with the existing (irrelevant) titles? Hard choice.
Also, I can now stop the confusion about the fact that Dark Heavens is three trilogies, and just make it one series of nine books. Books 1-9. What I have wanted since day one.
Feel free to let me know what you think about the re-name (to go with the new covers) and — I feel quite good about this. After twenty years, I will finally have more control.
And I’m definitely adding out-takes that the Patrons have seen that are (in my opinion) really good.