Opportunity for Writers

The QWC Hachette Mauscript Development Program has opened again. This is not genre specific, in fact it is not even fiction specific, so you might have a non-fiction book to submit.

Submissions close 5pm, Thursday 12th July.

You can download the Application Guidelines here and the Application Form here.

Flappers With Swords: Tansy’s Blog Tour

I recently embarked upon a boutique blog tour, to celebrate the international Kindle release of my Creature Court Trilogy. I had great fun talking about history, women, and some of the crunchier (and occasionally, sillier issues I came across while writing the Creature Court series, and fantasy fiction in general. I thought I’d put the links up here as well.

If any new readers discovered me and my Kindlicious editions of the Creature Court books in recent weeks, do let me know! These things make authors very happy.

Much gratitude to everyone who has written a review for the Creature Court books on Goodreads or Amazon, and an extra special multitude of thanks to the many awesome bloggers who let me borrow their space & their readership to help get word of my books out there. You all rock!

Calling writers of childrens and young adults books

Text Publishing have opened their Children and Young Adults Writing Competition again. See here for details.

‘Both published and unpublished writers of all ages are eligible to enter with works of fiction or non-fiction. Judged by a panel of editors from Text Publishing, the winner will receive a publishing contract with Text and a $10,000 advance against royalties.’

You can see the 2008, 2009, 2010 winners to get an idea. It closes June 1st, so set yourself a deadline and submit.

Aurealis Award night

I had to tear myself away from revision work on the latest novel (I’m really in the flow!) to go to the Aurealis Awards last night – but so glad I did! The turnout was amazing – people from every state, a who’s who of spec fic in Australia. I’ve never seen an Awards night better attended by authors and publishers. It was so great to catch up with friends!

Our own Margo on the left there, Kate Forsyth in the middle and Kaaron Warren on the right.
The venue is the old Independent Theatre in North Sydney, with its spectacular ceiling. Not sure if it’ll come out in this photo-

That’s when people were filing in, and Rob Hood’s first bit of video was showing on the screen. (The first time video clips were used was in the Brisbane Aurealis Award nights, if I remember.)
ROR was fairly quiet in the awards list this year – hey, we gotta be fair, we did so amazingly well last year. Trent received an Honourable Mention for best Horror Novel, which in this particular year meant one of the 2 best Aus horror novels published. (Especially honourable when he wasn’t even supposed to appear in that category!) Tansy went up along with Alisa Krasnostein and Alex Pierce to collect the Peter Macnamara award for major contribution to the growth of Aus spec fic in any form … in this case, the form of their feminist spec fiction podcast, Galactic Suburbia (check it out if you haven’t already!) Here’s the presentation –

Alisa on the left, Tansy in centre, Alex sort of hidden behind Tehani Wessely. Tehani not only presented that award but was official judge-wrangler for the awards in general.