Category: Blog

The greenscreen room at TAFE Qld where we’ll be able to do motion capture as part of the game or animation we create.
 
June Update
Thank you so much Adelaide and Melbourne! I had two terrific Oz Comic-Cons back to back and I haven’t had so much fun in a while. Thanks particularly to Patron Naomi in Adelaide who came along to the con to spend the day helping out (and saying ‘Sexy, sexy space dragons’ many times.) High-level patrons get entry to attend a con with me for a whole day, helping or hanging out or looking at the show.
I didn’t have much of a chance to take any photos at either convention, because I was so busy talking to people about my books (I have barely any voice now). But it was wonderful to share my stories and the special edition of ‘Serpent Princess’.
I’ve sold completely out of copies of ‘White Tiger’ and I’ll need to order some more! And I only have two copies of ‘Serpent Princess’ in the foiled edition left as well, so time to do a big stocktake and work out what I need to order.
Animation/Game with TAFE Qld/ University of Canberra
Thanks to everyone who filled out the survey from here and from the conventions. Debby Lo-Dean from the production company came along to Melbourne to help out and take surveys so that I could concentrate on selling books.
We’ve visited the TAFE Qld campus at South Bank in Brisbane, where second-year game development students in a course run by the University of Canberra will be doing an assignment to produce a ‘three minute vertical slice’ of a video game of their choice of style based on the Dark Heavens Universe. They have all sorts of terrific equipment including the greenscreen room pictured above where we will be able to do motion capture – and we already have some fine martial arts practitioners lined up to do the motion capture for us.
And yes, I will share whatever they come up with if I’m able so you can see!
I’ll be visiting the campus once a week during second semester to help the students. The the game sample, combined with the results of the survey, will be part of a grant application to Arts Council Australia or Screen Queensland to get further funding for either an animation or a game based on the ‘Dark Heavens’ universe. If you haven’t filled in the survey (but most of you have already) here it is:
The Survey!
Feel free to share, because the higher the number of responses we receive, the more likely we are to receive the grant to proceed.
My next Oz Comic-Cons are Brisbane and Sydney in September, and until then I’ll be working on the sequel to ‘Serpent Princess’ which I’ve tentatively titled ‘Queen of Hell’, the sequel to ‘Minds of Sand and Light’ which is titled ‘Bodies of Stone and Water’ (and nearly finished), and the Emma out-takes (which the Patreon patrons have already read) into a novella probably called ‘Serpent Empress’.
I’m also mentoring through the Queensland Writers Centre and helping people self-publish their books through my side business, Essential Self-Publishing.
Busy busy!
 

Thanks very much, Coughing Guy On the Plane
May Update
Sincerest apologies for not providing either an April newsletter or a Patreon update, I was knocked completely flat by COVID after coming home from Perth. Nobody who was close by caught it, which is a relief.
I am definitely wearing a mask on future plane trips – because I have two Comic-Con weekends back-to-back coming up, and I can’t afford to catch anything with so much happening!
Thank you so much Adelaide, and this young woman absolutely made my day:

Hello Kitty tee-shirt and ‘get lost demons’ attitude and everything! Arielle is the first time I’ve seen a ‘Simone as an adult’ cosplay and I love it! She’s asked for the images of Simone’s swords to 3D print replicas, and the cover designer, Ashton, was happy to oblige. The bar has been set!
Oz Comic-Con Adelaide and Melbourne

 
I will be in Adelaide May31 and June 1 (at the showground) and in Melbourne June 7 and 8 (at the convention centre). I will have plenty of copies of ‘Serpent Princess’ – paperback, hardcover, and foiled special edition – at both shows, so come up, say hello, and check out my new ‘Dark Heavens’ novel!
Possible Game/Animation
It’s complicated, but a local company has purchased the game and animation (just the game and animation rights, not the film rights, Hollywood have the film rights and aren’t letting them go) to ‘Dark Heavens’. They are planning to create a proof-of-concept with perhaps a trailer and some concept art that they can present to possible financing partners – along with plenty of evidence that there a great many of you who love the series.
What they need from us (well, you) is an idea of how many of you there are, and what you want. Would you prefer a game? What sort of game? Animation? They want the final product to be fan-driven, and they need to be able to demonstrate interest from my fanbase so they can approach funding partners.
If you’d like to help out, here’s the link to the survey:
The Survey!
And if you have a friend who loves the series but doesn’t receive the newsletter, they can fill it in too. I’ve been made aware that the newsletter signup broke on my website with no notification to me (and I’ve been so busy with other stuff that I never noticed that subscriptions had stalled), so the more people who do the survey the better.
If we have lots of responses to the survey, we have evidence that I have a fanbase and we have an established audience who are ready to dive into a visual version of the Dark Heavens universe.
See you all in Melbourne and Adelaide! I’ll have a whole album full of cosplay photos for my next newsletter.

It was a tough few days but we came through the other side. These stairs were usually under sand to the first landing…
March Update
It’s remarkable how much disruption one storm can cause.
Hong Kong is hit by cyclones (typhoons) at least once and up to three times every season, but it’s rare to see the level of disruption that we had here in South East Queensland: here, most of the  beach is now gone and people are still without power, a week later.
If you look at a photo of Hong Kong, you’ll see that most of the high-rises there aren’t ‘glass curtain-wall’ construction – although some of the newer and more trendy office buildings are. Hong Kong’s buildings have concrete surrounds to stop the windows from being blown out by typhoons.

Some of them have really tiny windows because they know the damage that glass can cause when it falls.
Just before I returned to Australia, there was a massive typhoon that broke many windows in Wan Chai and everybody was sharing opinions on the stupidity of glass curtain walls on these new buildings.
Most of the power cables are underground in HK as well (and constantly being dug up in Wan Chai and Tsim Sha Tsui!). I lived there for ten years and we never lost power once. Here in SEQ many of the powerlines are above-ground and they led to massive power outages when they went down.
I’m not criticising South East Queensland, as a cyclone here is such a rare event – and the infrastructure so spread out – that it’s probably not economically feasible to have underground power lines everywhere.
But having lived in Hong Kong and experienced only minor inconvenience from typhoons did make me a little more blasé about cyclones here. I did charge everything up but I walked right past the little gas steamboat stoves in the Chinese grocery without buying one because I thought I wouldn’t need one (when I absolutely did).
I did have a workshop booked for Saturday the 8th at Helensvale, and power was out everywhere, and the government asked us to stay home. That was completely cancelled, which was unfortunate.
We came through other side, however, and now I’m preparing for Oz Comic-Con Perth in April.

I’ll be at Perth Convention Centre April 5 and 6, and I will have many hardcover and special collector’s edition copies of ‘Serpent Princess’! If you’d like to order a foiled copy to collect at the show, that’s an option on my store. Isobelle Carmody, Katie Lowe and Amanda Bridgeman will be there so come and say hello!
You can order the special foiled edition, standard hardcover, and paperback copies of ‘Serpent Princess’ on my store. My theme updated and broke everything on my site and I had to rush to sort it out and when I find time I’ll redo my site to make the store easier to use.

The foiled edition is just gorgeous!
Patrons are already reading the sequel to ‘Serpent Princess’ and once I’ve sent out all of their gift copies for being Patrons, I will definitely be adding to the story. Hm… maybe a love <ahem> scene between Simone and Michael? My job is the best in the world.
 
 
 

Unenhanced cover on the left, boosted saturation on the right. I’m sorely tempted to boost it just a tiny bit more – I’ll keep you updated.
February Newsletter
Wouldn’t you know it – this morning I came into my office to work on the newsletter, and the C drive on my desktop computer had failed. I spent a frustrating few hours narrowing it down to whether it was just the hard drive (an easy but fiddly fix) or the entire motherboard (a big, expensive, out-of-action-for-a-few-days fix).
Fortunately it was the disk, but of course my backups aren’t working correctly so there’s a good chance I’ll have to re-install everything.
It’s not possible for me to lose writing files, however, because everything important is on the cloud.
So I’m doing the newsletter on my trusty laptop, and we have a lot of news!
‘The Serpent Princess’ is Out!
My little book is out in the world. Digital sales have been good, and the lowest star rating I’ve received is three stars, which is a relief. New readers don’t seem to be having many issues with joining the Dark Heavens universe with this one, so yay!
Muddy Colours on the Print Covers
As you can see from the image above, the printed covers by IngramSpark (both paperback and hardcover) had muddy, unsaturated colours that really didn’t do Ashton’s lovely design justice. I spoke to an expert who reassured me that printers often have this problem with blues, so I boosted the vibrance and saturation of the cover and the result is the much brighter version on the right. I have an order for the hardcover with this enhancement so those who have ordered the standard (non-foiled) hardcover from the shop will be receiving it soon.
I’ve warned the print shop who are doing the special edition about this issue, and they’ve assured me that they’ll be able to fix it. Half of the foiled covers are already sold – not including the ones reserved for high-level patrons!
My Goodreads Author Account
Update: Many thanks to Tez Miller who fixed this! She’s a librarian on Goodreads and updated the blurb for me. Thanks so much Tez!
It’s been an infuriating week for tech letting me down. I have an author account on Goodreads that I created forever ago, and that broke spectacularly when Goodreads was purchased by Amazon. I was immediately locked out (this was about three-four years ago.) I contacted their help and they insisted – despite the fact that I sent them screenshot of me being locked out – that I wasn’t locked out. After two weeks of frustrating nothing, I gave up, because the books were up and I didn’t use Goodreads as an author anyway.
Then Serpent Princess came out, and Goodreads scraped the blurb from another site and mangled it. Words are missing, and because I can’t access the account, I can’t go in and fix it.
I contacted Goodreads again, and they said very sorry, has been escalated, looking into it, will find what is wrong.
They said that two weeks ago and keep saying the same thing.
So yes, the blurb on Goodreads is incorrect and unfortunately there is nothing I can do about it.
World-Building in Helensvale

As part of the program for the Queensland Writers Centre’s Genrecon event, I will be presenting a workshop on ‘Fantasy Worldbuilding’ at Helensvale Library on March 8 at 10.30 am. Click on the link to reserve your place!
Oz Comic-Con
Quick note: I will be doing all Oz Comic-Con cities this year except Canberra. If you would like me to bring you a foiled hardcover of ‘The Serpent Princess’, let me know through my website so I can reserve you one! My carrying capacity is limited when I’m travelling – books are expensive to ship – and there’s a chance they may sell out quickly.
But I’ll be very happy to reserve one for you!
Patrons are already reading the sequel, with much John and Emma.
 

The yellow parts will be gold foil on the special edition hardcover.
January Update
I have final cover for both digital and print, and a blurb, and an edited manuscript – now it’s time to put it all together and actually publish this!
The tentative release date is January 29 (Chinese New Year – the Year of the Snake), and I’ll let you know as soon as it’s up on a separate email, so you can pre-order if you like.
Here’s the full hardcover design, as it looks with the guides for the printer:

There are some minor typesetting errors here, but this is what the final hardcover dust jacket will look like. I love Ashton’s idea of putting the tagline: ‘So she saved the world. Now what?’ in big letters on the back. As I noted above, on the special edition hardcover, the yellow parts will be gold foiled. It will also have sprayed page edges, and again Ashton has outdone herself:

As well as a digital and paperback version, there will be two hardcover versions: I will have one without the foils and sprayed edges, published on Ingram, that will be available in all bookstores (and my online store when I add it. I’m planning to refresh my website so it has a full online store). The other hardcover will be foils and sprayed edges, and I’ll have that printed specially, and it will only be available for purchase from me at a con or from my website. It will be really expensive to print with all those additional features. Either way, it’ll be up for sale in digital and print probably at the end of the month.
I’ve created a new series for this title, it’s book one of ‘House of the North’. I’m already full of ideas to expand this storyline to include what other members of the family are up to, pulling the threads all together with the main John/Emma arc. Now that I have complete editorial control, I can do that!
Here’s the back cover blurb:
So she saved the world. Now what?
Only one warrior is capable of defeating Princess Simone in single combat: her father, the God of Martial Arts, who has been training her since she was a child.
The great war between the Heavens and Hell is over, and the Asian Celestial realm is free. Simone led the Resistance against the demons that led to their defeat, but at a great personal cost – she’s contaminated by demon essence, no longer an Immortal and exiled from the Heavenly realm. She’s revered by grateful Celestial residents, but all she wants is a normal life on the Earthly plane, where she can study to be a marine biologist, and spend time with her loving family and supportive boyfriend.
Fate has other plans for her, and she will be unwillingly drawn into a global conflict between the gods of the Asian Heavens and the demons of European Hell.
‘Serpent Princess’ is a fresh new entry point into the fan favourite ‘Dark Heavens’ universe. Join the Asian Gods of the Celestial House of the North for this lovingly crafted homage to Hong Kong’s iconic martial arts dramas, and the captivating world of Wuxia fantasy.
I am fully expecting MANY people to ask me if this is ‘standalone’. At this stage: yes it is. It will be a new ‘entry point’ to the Dark Heavens universe, kind of a (heh) ‘Dark Heavens, Next Generation’. (I nearly inserted a Picard facepalm here.)
So feel free to recommend it to your friends if they want a taster of the ‘Dark Heavens’ series: they can read it without reading any of the other books (but I don’t mind if they do, of course).
Here’s what the full paperback will look like:

Ashton’s done a fabulous job.
Anyway, keep an eye out for my social media posts with a release date if you’d like to pre-order.