Nice when a romance starts off knocking the Bechdel test on the head. Two women are on a desert planet, hunted by some pretty nasty aliens. They aren't as alone as they thought on the planet when they discover another alien injured and on the verge of death, that is unless they help him. First off this is a much darker romance than I'm used to. There is some extreme violence which is tempered with friendly conversations between the women. I could have done without all the swe

I love that it is set in New Zealand. As a kiwi I can appreciate the subtle hints of the setting like bacon and egg pie. I've been collecting New Zealand authors and making a list. It isn't often that one finds me completely by accident on Goodreads. We have a adrenaline junkie who is suddenly saddled with a niece and nephew. Seeing his future as endless boredom he is driven to extreme measures. An Adventure park in rural New Zealand. Okay so New Zealand is known for its extr

It is Christmas and that always brings out the South African in me. We eat Koeksisters and Braai boerwors. It made me think about things only South Africans would understand and I came up with this list of things we all mastered some time in our lives 1. The perfect amount of milk in our Pronutro Pronutro is breakfast cereal that is crushed maize. My favourite was the chocolate flavoured. But too little milk and you were eating maize flour and too much and you were drinking y

I made this mistake once. Wrote a cool protagonist who was blind and by the end of the book he had his sight back. I was wrong. First of all I only used the disability as a plot device instead of thinking of the character and how it would really effect them. Then I committed the cardinal sin. I made it go away. People with disabilities can't just put them down and move on. They have to live with them day in and day out. To minimise a disability that it can just go away. That

I've got a friend at work who is doing her Masters of Creative Writing. I'll admit I'm jealous but I offered some advice that her thesis piece shouldn't be a novel that is her baby but rather a throw away idea. The whole thing behind that is that it doesn't have to be perfect. Your precious baby that you have been thinking about for a decade or more it is never going to see the light of day if it is the first thing you tackle. Instead take a alright idea and write that first.

I got my second rejection the other day. Don't feel bad for me this is a good thing. First off I hardly ever enter competitions because I write things that are too long. Secondly I am terrible at flash fiction so I wasn't surprised. Especially when the comments were that I needed to flesh it out. I was already at the word limit. I can't do short. But the other comment they had was that they didn't get the whole Dragons collecting thing, that a woman would happily be 'owned' a

With Christmas just around the corner I thought I would help people out with offering tips for buying presents for book lovers. Pretty much everything on Etsy A lamp shaped like a book or glows. An Embosser. T-shirts There are so many T-shirt that are based on books. I love them and would have a whole cupboard filled with them. Below are some links to different sites that have T-shirts for that book lover in your family. CafePress RedBubble Society6 Zazzle Literature Art I go

I work at a school and we always lament at the shocking lack of communication. It has reached legendary levels but even when communication does happen it is often terse and can be taken the wrong way. I've been thinking about this with Beta reading. I'm usually quite harsh when I do Beta reading. I have to remind myself to point out the good stuff along with the buts that don't work. I recently did some Beta reading and I even pointed out the nitty gritty stuff and the author

I think I spent ten minutes trying to say your name correctly. Don't feel bad it took me three days to learn how to pronounce my home town. Tell us about your latest novel or project: My latest novel is a 65K project called Icon of Clay. It is the third book in my The Children of Clay series. In this novel, Bridget Blade is a reincarnated god, who has been forced into hibernation by her husband and the military but wakes up unexpectedly, decades ahead of schedule. Bridget now

I don't usually go to writers groups. I've taken workshops and played with groups online but mostly I write by myself and share my wins with a local author at my workplace. But recently I joined a group. They are awesome, not just because they give feedback freely but because they talk about the same things that interest me. It is this group that have compiled this Anthology. I don't know most of the writers in the book as I'm still new to the group and to frank I'm terrible