February Update

 

2024 is here, and I already have bookings for a variety of workshops, presentations, and appearances. The first big one is Genrecon Brisbane, Held from 23-25 February (that’s in two weeks!)

I will be at Genrecon for both days, and will be chairing a panel called ‘Master of Your Own Universe’ on Sunday morning the 25th at 9am, with  Lynette Noni, C S Pacat, and Kate Armstrong. It should be a great deal of fun! It’s held at the State Library of Queensland, and sponsored by the Queensland Writers Centre.

Genrecon is a trade-centred convention that focuses on ‘genre’ fiction: Sci fi, fantasy, horror, crime and romance. (So all the fun books.) It’s a chance for writers, publishers, and enthusiasts to gather and share knowledge, experience and love for the art. It’s two full days (with an event on the Friday night before) and I cannot recommend it enough, if you want to become the best genre writer you can possibly be!

‘Serpent Princess’

No news on this front, as I have yet to hear back from Harper-Collins about whether they will purchase it or not. The highest-level patrons have already read it, and the responses were overwhelmingly positive!

Blog Post: the Hugos

I am completely unsurprised that my blog post about how people don’t want to annoy the Chinese Communist Party has received very little response: nobody wants to annoy the CCP.

Last year, the World Science Fiction Convention was held in Chengdu, China, and it was full of controversy, not the least of which was the obviously-political disqualification of the front-runner – as well as a bunch of other works – that weren’t able to receive Hugo Awards (Because Reasons).

I’ve written a post about it, and it’s called ‘Why China Sucks At Innovation, So It Bought The Hugos’. It’s a follow-up to my surprisingly prescient post, ‘The Hong Kong Protests, a Quick (And By No Means Complete) Summary‘, from back in 2019. I even put the quote from ‘Minds of Sand and Light’ at the top … about how the Party (of course no relation, no siree) buys control over things.

Anyway! That’s all for now. I have yet to finalise Oz Comic-Con for this year, and will share that as soon as it’s locked in. I have a workshop at Logan Libraries in April, and awriter’s festival in Kyogle (yay regional festivals!) in May, and will share more information about them in future newsletters.