Being a woman and a winemaker can be a useful point of difference, says Fran Austin, owner and winemaker at Delamere Vineyards in partnership with husband Shane Holloway. While some people are cynical about it, she and many other women in the industry accept that it can generate marketing. The Fabulous Women in Wine Society … More Women in Wine
My major accomplishment today has been to write a quarterly planner for writing projects. It might not sound like much but it has made me feel better directed and more motivated already. I don’t really go in for those inspirational sayings: Fail to plan, and you plan to fail, and all that gumpf. But the … More Quarterly planner templates for writers
Ann Patchett is the kind of novelist we’d all like to be – successful, award-winning, a nice person by all accounts, and she writes a bloody good book. I read Commonwealth last year with no expectations, and found myself engrossed in a family saga. Well here’s another one – The Dutch House, every bit as … More The Dutch House by Ann Patchett – book review
If your short stories consistently fail to hit the mark in competitions, it may be that the writing is falling into the common traps. This is what I found when I was a judge in the Tasmanian Short Story competition, which attracts entries from all over Australia. In a recent post we looked at how … More Four Tips on Writing a Short Story
Unbelievably, it’s fifteen years since we took the plunge and moved to Tasmania. We loved it from the moment we got here and haven’t looked back. Here are eight things we’ve loved the best. Gained a Sense of Space We’ve got five acres. That sounded huge when we first got here, but now we realise … More Eight things we’ve done since moving to Tasmania
Do your short stories consistently fail to hit the mark in competitions? When judging the Tasmanian Short Story competition, I found that many entries fell into the same classic traps, falling short of the mark and sending them to the bottom of the slush pile immediately. Here are my two top tips on how to … More How to begin a short story
Years ago, I saw a picture of Richard Burton sitting on a sunlit step at his house in Switzerland, reading. There was none of the posing of Insta-friendly celeb photos. He wore a warm, soft, creamy cardigan and his attitude was one of complete absorption in the book held loosely in one hand. Alongside that … More How Richard Burton made me want a library of my own
I wanted to do something a little different. We were asked to write a short piece introducing ourselves, for the second unit in my Masters of Creative Writing with Deakin University. So I ‘rang Martin Amis’ and had him interview me as we stood on the rooftops, he in Paris in the 1970s, and myself … More Martin Amis helps you get to know me
There are two points of the year when authors sink into a funk, and that’s March and October when we’re paid. Did you know that writers receive approximately ten percent of the Recommended Retail Price of their book? After publishers take off the costs of production, printing, distribution and marketing and a bit of cream … More The Constant Hustle of Publishing
It’s hard writing a book and even harder marketing one. If you’ve got paperbacks or hard copies out there in bookshops or online, well done. You’ve probably been on a long slog to get to that point. It’s hard work selling books as well and you have to feel for bricks and mortar booksellers. They’re … More On the Shelf
