Tag: short stories

• January 30, 2023

  How many spreadsheets does it take to get published?

  

  Truth be told, the answer to that question is none. When I was first published I had zero spreadsheets. No submission tracker or pitch tracker. Nothing. I didn’t even know how much I liked spreadsheets yet. These days my love affair with spreadsheets is in full flight (I had one for my son’s first foods […]
• November 10, 2022

  Angela Slatter on Authority in Fiction

  

  Recently I’ve been trawling back through some of my most admired author’s blogs to try and piece together their literary career. So I can replicate it exactly and ride their coattails to success of course. One of those author’s is the fabulous fabulist Angela Slatter. When I was in my late teens possibly early twenties […]
• August 3, 2018

  On Reading ‘A Strong Urge To Fly’ by Alan Baxter

  I read ‘A Strong Urge To Fly’ from Alan Baxter’s collection Crow Shine last night on the train home from Sydney. I’d started in late in the commute and finished just before getting to my stop. A good thing too, because I was so engrossed I would have had to sit on the platform in […]
• July 10, 2018

  VLOG: Editing Short Stories

  Last week I spent a beautiful sunny Thursday editing one of my short stories. I’d gotten some great feedback from some writer friends and was ready to get stuck into the editing process. If you want to hear about how I write short stories to begin with, I have a video on that too. Happy […]
• June 22, 2018

  4 questions to ask before you give up on a story

  I get it. Rejection is tough. Sometimes you start to wonder, is my story good enough? Is it good at all? Should I just give up and move on to the next thing. I’ve talked about rejection before. I’ve talked about how sometimes a rejection letter can be the most motivating thing you receive, I’ve […]
• May 18, 2018

  Arranging Short Story Collections

  Hello Dreamers, I’ve been knocked out with the flu for the last week so forgive me if this post is a little incoherent. Last month I wrote and submitted my first short story collection and I wanted to tell you how I went about ordering my stories for submission. I’d expected it to be a […]
• May 11, 2018

  How I wrote a crime story when I’m a fantasy writer

  When I won the Thuderbolt Prize for Crime Writing last year a lot of people started to think of me as a crime writer. If any of you have read my other published short stories you’ll know I’m much more of a speculative fiction writer. So, how did I come to write a crime story? […]
• April 16, 2018

  I’m Writing a Short Story Collection!

  Hey Dreamers, I’ve been working on a short story collection lately and I really wanted to share with you a little of my process so far. It has been a major goal for me this year to gather all my short stories together into a cohesive collection for publication. I spent the first few months […]
• February 6, 2018

  Showing Hearts has been published!

  Two weeks ago Volume 18 of FIVE:2:ONE hit the stands with my name on the contents page. It was a long slog from acceptance (mid last year) to publication but it was worth it to see me name in an honest to goodness Amazon listing. The story, ‘Showing Hearts’ is about a pair of ex-lovers. […]
• November 23, 2017

  NaNoWriMo 2017: Day 22

  I can’t say I did much yesterday. I tinkered a little with my short story but I intend to look at it properly in December. Gotta give it time to breath. It might be a bit of a short turn around but I want to submit it to the Young Explorer’s Adventure Guide which is due […]