writer | editor | artist
In Dying in the First Person, Samuel is a translator of his brother’s works, which are written in the language of Nahum. Nahum doesn’t exist in the real world: at least, not outside the boundary of my imagination. It is a language that the two brothers created when they were young. Or, depending on how you…
May is coming, and with it, the release of my new novel, Dying in the First Person, which is being released by my fabulous publisher, Transit Lounge. This may send me mad (if I’m not already). Writing this book has been a long, slow process. It has been written during a period of extraordinary change in my life. I…
The life of a writer is, as you probably know, a lot of time of quiet, pyjama-clad desperation punctuated by occasional bursts of socialising or special events. Today is a special event day, with pyjamas. Today, the author copies of Dying in the First Person arrived. Let me set the scene for you: B and I…
I’ll be presenting a paper on the life and work of Barbara Newhall Follett as part of the Forgotten Lives/Biographies symposium being held at USQ on April 28th this year. This paper developed out of a research interest that informed the writing of Dying In The First Person, in particular, children who have created paracosms (fully imagined alternative…
I listened to a lot of classical music while I was writing Dying in the First Person. Mostly ABC Classic FM – so whatever they were playing when I sat down to write seeped into my consciousness and infected the prose. Perhaps as a consequence the main characters also listen to, and talk about, and write about,…
Well, it’s been a while since I posted anything, but I’ve been busy. Promise! My big news is that the new novel is as close to being ready as it can get. Edits done. Cover designed. Release date locked in. Transit Lounge have done a beautiful job of transforming my rough and ready manuscript into…
There are an enormous number of general empirical propositions that count as certain for us. One such is that if someone’s arm is cut off it will not grow again (L Wittgenstein, On Certainty) There were nine of them to begin with. Children, that is. Ten, if you count poor Dora, dead before she began. There were…
Here’s a list of upcoming (short) publications you’ll see from me. I had a short story (The Nature of Things) published in Volume 13, Issue 5 of the Review of Australian Fiction, alongside a wonderful piece by Jessica White (When The World Shivered). This short story is a piece of historical realism set just prior…
I have the most amazing news! Next year, in May*, my new book, Dying in the First Person, will be released by Transit Lounge. I received the edits yesterday, and they confirm everything I believe about the enormous benefits of a good editor. They make the work better; they work with the text (and with…
There was a long road into the forest, and I drove down it in my old ute, with the children in the back, bouncing and laughing as we made our way down the rutted dirt road to our new house. The house was made of stones. We walked around the outside, putting our hands into…