I’ve been invited to be a guest speaker at an Emerging Writers’ Festival event in Brisbane called Digital Writers: taking your words online. It’s a very exciting idea, but it needs some funding and the whole project is currently being crowdsourced. You can support the event simply by buying a ticket to attend. Here’s the event explained:
On 15 October, the Emerging Writers’ Festival want to run a mini-conference called Digital Writers: taking your words online. The event will equip writers with ideas and inspiration about sharing their work and words with audiences online. Panel discussions full of practical advice will explore how to write for online audiences, and where the opportunities are in the digital space. Our talented line-up of writers will share how they use new technologies to create, to market and to make money by their writing.
From blogging and tweeting to online journalism, and everything in between, Digital Writers is an event for writers wanting to use the online space to take their writing to the next level.
The line up of speakers are experts in online writing, publishing and marketing, including:
Sophie Black, Editor, Crikey.com.au
Andrew McMillen, Freelance Journalist
Jason Nelson, digital and hypermedia poet
Simon Groth, novelist & If:Book Director
Alan Baxter, spec. fiction author
Karen Pickering, commentator & editor
Christy Dena, Director, Universe Creation 101
Lisa Dempster, blogger & festival director
Daniel Donahoo, writer, blogger & geek
& more to be announced
As you can see, it’s a cool idea and very useful for writers both established and emerging. I’m honoured to have been asked to be a part of it and really hope it can all go ahead. So, how do you help to make it happen? Simple. Just by paying a few dollars in support or pledging now with $45 which will buy you a ticket to attend. All the details are here: http://www.pozible.com.au/index.php/archive/index/2214/description/0/0 You’ll also find a video there, and that video includes a moment of me in my garden. That alone must be worth the visit, right?
Support writing and writing events in Australia by getting involved. Just a few dollars and you’re earning the good karma. For every dollar pledged, a good thing will happen to you.*
*This is not a guarantee, but it is my fervent hope.
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I am really excited to be announcing this one. I’ve got a story forthcoming in the crime/mystery anthology, The One That Got Away, from Dark Prints Press, edited by Craig Bezant. I’m excited for several reasons. Of course, it’s always fantastic to sell a story, especially to a publisher like Dark Prints. It’s also a great concept:
I’m am still bouncing around and Snoopy Dancing because I have a story reprinted in the Year’s Best Australian Fantasy & Horror from Ticonderoga Publications. It’s going to be an awesome book and is out just about any time now. As part of the release celebration, editors Liz Grzyb and Talie Helene have assembled a Recommended Reading List for stories that didn’t quite make it into the collection, but are equally worthy. It’s always the case with collections like this – there are so many worthy stories and only a certain amount can be edited together into a book. It’s become normal now for these editors to also release a list of other stories they would have included if space, money, etc. had allowed.
It’s important to me that statistics are as accurate as possible. After all, 76% of statistics are made up on the spot, including that one. But I’m a stats nerd, so when we have a census, we need it to be as close to truth as possible. With that in mind, I entreated my minions on Twitter to make sure they did the right thing on census night. If you have no religion, I told them from a lectern of self-recognised authority, make sure you put No Religion. Don’t mess up the stats by putting something stupid like Jedi or Pastafarian (bless His Noodly Appendage). I was very quickly corrected by a number of minions. It doesn’t matter, they said, because putting Jedi would automatically get counted as No Religion anyway. I was outraged. What about the actual practicing Jedi out there? Suddenly their voice is not being heard.
The NZ based 
