Category: Dragon Empire

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.

TAFE is back in session! Here’s the ‘3D pixelart’ game team working to expand the game beyond the tutorial and create a combo system for the combat.

March Update
The rights to the entire nine-book ‘Dark Heavens’ have been reverted to me, which means that Harper-Collins can no longer sell them.
I don’t own the cover art that they created for the series, and I’d like to create new covers for every single book. (I will also re-format the interiors and maybe take out some of the edits that I wasn’t happy about all that time ago? And add back in stuff that was deleted that should be there?)
This means I can’t release them myself until this is done.
In the meantime, I need to arrange for new covers! Wish me luck, I’ll be applying for a grant from the Gold Coast. I’ll try to feature emerging or mid-career artists in a ‘showcase’ where each artist can do a ‘cultivation’-style illustration, that I can pass to Ashton, my graphic designer, in the US to finalise for cover design. Each artist will receive both payment and a feature on the cover that they illustrate.
Wish me luck, I’m currently gathering support letters and preparing the grant documentation. It will probably be turned down, and then I’ll have to pivot to Plan B.
If you know anyone who can do quality ‘cultivation’-style illustrations, let them know this opportunity may be up for grabs!
Oz Comic-Con

As I can’t obtain printed copies of the original series until I re-release them, I’ve had to hold off on Comic-Cons for the first half of this year. I won’t be attending Perth or Adelaide, I’m afraid. Hopefully I’ll have some really special editions of Dark Heavens – all of them – for cons later in the year. Ashton loves doing foils and sprayed edges.
Of course Patrons will be receiving complimentary copies of everything as part of their subscriptions. I may even do special art prints for them. They’re now reading a new fan-requested novella about how Jade fought all cultural norms to marry two gods.
Watch this space as I work though the process.
TAFE is Back!

The semester, many of the students who produced ‘Dark Heavens’ based projects are back for ‘Professional Practice 2’. Here’s the projects that are happening:

The 3D Pixelart ‘learn martial arts on the Mountain’ game will be expanded beyond the tutorial so you’ll have a chance to play as Emma and fight some real demons! They’re planning a cool combo system and some great demon designs.

The Jade sidescroller is getting WAY more pixels and detail, and moving up to having a series of boss battles. The students will also include some combos in this one as well.

The animation team, who produced some exciting concept designs, will be moving to actual motion-capture and animation creation. Cannot wait to see what happens there.
One student who wasn’t in Professional Practice 1 last semester is doing a project that’s a mass fighting game similar to Diablo. (The Archivist would approve.) In it, the main character is a tame demon who will have to balance their celestial and demonic natures so that they don’t go too much either way.

I will keep you updated!

Pixie the therapist helping me to recover.

February Update
Life comes at us fast sometimes. One minute I’m putting together slides for my workshop at the Queensland Writers Centre next week, and the next I’m arranging for my daughter to come up for a couple of days to assist me while I have a procedure done in hospital under twilight sedation.
Long story short it’s nothing terminal or morbid or anything, it was just a very early melanoma. But I wasn’t aware that this tiny circular piece of pigmentation on my cheek would require a massive incision to avoid nasty scarring!
So it’s been skin check, biopsy, booking into surgery, and at the same time the optometrist referred me to an ophthalmologist because I may have glaucoma and need laser surgery or cataracts (that didn’t happen, my eyes are fine. For now.)
I have the juiciest black eye you have ever seen. My friends and family rallied around me but it’s been a tough couple of weeks negotiating this while I was getting the self-publishing business back into motion, and preparing for Genrecon.
All good now! To work!
Genrecon Giveaway Prize Winners

Queensland Writers Centre were kind enough to give me a couple of tickets to Genrecon to give away, so congratulations to Sue Johnston and Stephen Scott on their wins. I wish they’d given me more tickets!
Genrecon is next weekend the 21st and 22nd of February at the Thomas Dixon Centre in West End, Brisbane, and it will be a great deal of fun. I’ll be hosting a discussion as well as appearing in a couple of panels – black eye and all.
Rights Reversion Issues
When the rights for ‘Dark Heavens’ revert to me, I will have to rush to re-jacket, re-edit, re-typeset and re-publish the entire series. Until then, the books will completely disappear from all outlets – and all of my reviews will disappear as well.
Unfortunately the upshot of this is that it will probably take me about six months to release new editions, and in the meantime I won’t have anything to sell at Perth and Adelaide Oz Comic-Con. I’ll definitely be attending the cons later in the year (Melbourne, Sydney, Brisbane) but I don’t think I’ll have any books to sell for the first half of this year!
I will keep you updated on the process. Wish me luck I can find a cover designer who is both good and affordable.
The University of Canberra students will be returning in March, so watch this space for updates on their progress in Professional Practice 2.
New Novella: ‘Her Two Kings’
I’ve started a new novella about Jade’s shameless flaunting of Celestial protocol by dating two men in a new novella called ‘Her Two Kings’, and anyone with a $1+ Patreon account is already reading extracts!

Best part of the holiday break – many yum chas with my daughter overlooking the Broadwater
January Update
I hope you all had a fabulous end of year break, and I’m gearing up to get to work in 2026!

Genrecon 2026
Genrecon is held on the 21st and 22nd of February in Brisbane, and is a celebration of all things ‘genre’ – science fiction, fantasy, horror, crime and romance. It’s run by the Queensland Writers Centre (which I have close professional relationship with) and will be located at the Thomas Dixon Centre in West End, Brisbane, not far from the State Library building where the Writers Centre is located.
I’ll be hosting a ‘Chatterbox’ discussion event on Fantasy, and will be panellist at two of the panels – one on digital publishing, and one on Journeys to Publication.
The Writers Centre have also asked me if I’d like to promote some free tickets to the event, so watch this space as we arrange the giveaway.
Workshop: Choosing Your Publishing Path
As part of the Genrecon additional program, I’ll be presenting a full-day workshop on the publishing process on the Thursday before the event at the Queensland Writers Centre. I’ll be talking about the different options for publication – trad, indie or self publishing – and then the further options like audiobooks and overseas translations available to authors. Come along and ask me anything about the publishing journey.
This is particularly relevant for me because I started a small additional business in 2025 helping people to self-publish their books through Essential Self-Publishing. I just spend the holiday break updating my rates and putting more of my happy clients onto the page. As part of the service I provide a half-hour consultation on the best journey for each client, and many people ask the same questions when looking for advice. I can provide these answers to the people in the workshop – and take it much further for the entire publishing journey. I’m very much looking forward to presenting it!
‘Dark Heavens’ in 2026
This is really big for me, both exciting and terrifying and it will be a whole lot of work. Under the terms of the contract that I have with my publisher, they have six months after me requesting the rights back – to give them back to me. This includes all the audiobooks and the overseas publications.
When I do gain the rights back, I will have to rejacket the entire series. I’ll need new book covers for every single book, and if I do special editions (because of course I will) I’ll probably want to add illustrations on the interior flyleaves of the books as well. This will both be expensive and difficult, but I’m excited to have the series relaunched the way that I wanted it to appear in the first place.
I’m on the hunt for an artist who can do manhua/xianxia style illustrations with a Western twist, so let’s see if I can find that…
I’m also booked for Oz Comic-Con 2026 and Semester 1 of the media course at University of Canberra is starting up in March. so it looks like it will be a busy year for me!