Blessed, I am. Apart from the goddam coldest weather I’ve experienced since I was in the north of Scotland, PerthNova rocked and rolled. Being the second leg of the double, we all got to know each other a little better and I’d like to say to Leah and Christine and Charisma and Eliza and Rick and Michael and Sharon, you are all special people. To my peeps of old, Ju, Kendra and Russ and Liz and all the Perth con goers – it was an absolute pleasure. Special thanks to those that braved brain freeze in the seminar room to come to my talk. Bring space blankets next year. Lastly to Dan, Missy, Fel, Jenny and my Supafamily – next year can’t come quickly enough. Wilson, please send crimson guard photos! Roy, please send group photos!
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The Big 4 Interviews are still running over at my YA site, Burn Bright. The latest is with bestselling author Garth Nix and previous interviews Had a wonderful, busy time. Met some great people who I get to hang out with again this weekend. Particularly nice chats with Sharon You know, eventually you run out of ways to kill characters. You’ve had it up to here with bad guys and their unhappy childhoods. You’re The pressures of writing a novel are not necessarily what non-writers think. It’s not the alcohol, the hours, the loneliness, the recreational drugs that get you. It’s that sudden worry…. Didn’t I write this before? Learning to write novels should, in theory, be like learning to write a bike. Master the basics, take off the stabilisers and free wheel down the nearest hill, until the time comes to slog up the other side. And yet the opposite seems true. Every writer I know is worried he or she won’t be able to do it again next time out. The more books you write the harder it gets. It’s second album syndrome. (Multiplied by the lesser known third, fourth and fifth album syndrome.)
And if you’re staggeringly lucky – and I was – it hits the right desk, at the right time, when the right editor had a slot for that kind of book. All of those are key. Your book being good isn’t enough. The editor has to like that type of book and not already have one like that on her lists. By the time we hit our second novels most of us know how lucky we got first time round. And we know just how damn hard it is to write a book, rewrite that raw copy, edit the result and send it off. And by our third books? We’re worried we’re repeating ourselves. Not realising that’s precisely what most publishers want us to do. This adds complications as we start to think this character reminds me of that one. Didn’t I use that plot device before? And that takes me back to where I came in. As a writer you worry you’ll run out of original ways to kill characters. Ideas for novels are ten a penny. Enough plotting software, character schemes, writing aids and how-to books exist to make us all bankrupt if we bought them all. The arrogance of assuming someone will want to read this I take for granted. The really hard bit about writing is discarding, Didn’t I do this before? And replacing it with, I can do this again. Jon Courtenay Grimwood was born in Malta and christened in the upturned bell of a ship. He grew up in the Far East, Britain and Scandinavia. Apart from novels he writes for magazines and newspapers. He travels extensively and undertakes a certain amount of consulting. Until recently he wrote a monthly review column for the Guardian. Felaheen, the third of his novels featuring Asraf Bey, a half-Berber detective, won the BSFA Award for Best Novel. So did his last book, End of the World Blues, about a British sniper on the run from Iraq and running an Irish bar in Tokyo. He has just delivered the Fallen Blade, the first of three novels set in an alternate 15th-century Venice His work is published in French, German, Spanish, Polish, Czech, Hungarian, Russian, Turkish, Japanese, Finnish and American, among others. He is married to the journalist and novelist Sam Baker, currently editor-in-chief of Red magazine. They divide their time between London and Winchester… The Marianne Delacourt site has relaunched with a fabulous design by Austin Designworks. I was particularly happy to be able to find Scott Sigler has been and gone at Parrish’s Patch and you can read the chat here. You can also read Bec Stafford’s interview with popular Australian performance poet, Zenobia Frost over at my YA site. All interesting reading for the middle of the weekend. I played my first basketball games in two years on Saturday. What astounded me most was how much my skills have dropped away in that time. Fitness, yes, well you expect that … but the ball felt like a hot potato in my hands. I did manage a few blocks, but that was the extent of my usefulness. It felt great to be on the court though, and the girls were all moaning as much as me about aches and pains, so we struck a symphony of accord.
I had internet plans for this evening; blogging, newsletter prettying, researching … and then NCIS came on, my feet got warm and I ate casserole. Now my eyelids are now heavy and the screen is starting to blur. Bed is calling. I will, however, stir myself up enough to mention that some goodies are just around the corner. Bec will be posting her interview with fascinating performance poet, Zenobia Frost over at Burn Bright in the next few days. I’ve also posted a mini review there on Betrayed from the House of the Night series.  Marjorie Liu My guest bloggers on this (MDP) site will be visiting soon, beginning with a writer whose work I love to bits, Jon Courtenay Grimwood. I don’t want to give away too many surprises but some of the other wonderful upcoming guests include Marjorie Liu, Charles Stross and Marv Wolfman. Meanwhile, the Tara Sharp/Marianne Delacourt website is about to be re-launched with a beautiful, fun design by Austin Designworks. To celebrate the birth of the real Tara Sharp home, the second whodunnit, Fully Loaded is … well … fully loaded and ready to go online with the launch. Come by and meet Tara’s cousin Crack. Lastly, don’t forget that if you wish to pre-order the Glitter Rose short story collection, just go to Twelfth Planet Press website (international orders taken). The book is a limited edition, with some beautiful colour and black and white internal illustrations.
I really enjoyed this article put together by IO9 from interviews with writers on well known TV series. In fact, here is the blurb straight from the website: For this roundtable, we recruited writers and producers from all over: rookie “baby” writers like Deric A. Hughes (Warehouse 13); mid-level writer-producers like Zack Stentz (Fringe,Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles); co-executive producers like Amy Berg (Eureka,The 4400); and top-level wizards who’ve run their own shows, like Jane Espenson (Caprica, Battlestar Galactica, Buffy the Vampire Slayer), John Rogers (Leverage, The Jackie Chan Adventures), and Javier Grillo-Marxuach (The Middleman, Lost). And here’s what they had to say.
The answer to the latter is most likely no … which then got me thinking about changing paths in life. It takes a lot of courage to try something new as you get older, and you realise, not only your own limitations, but how much time and skill is required to even begin to be adequate at something. Or maybe its all about confidence. Certain skills must be transferrable?? I’d love to hear from anyone who has changed their profession, or changed the slant of their profession, and how they found it. Did it work? Did they bomb out? What have they learned? Dancing with Skeleton’s has a super review of Nylon Angel and a pretty picture of the first edition cover, which I love. “Marianne de Pierres has created a very believable and nicely detailed context, a dystopian future that has a nice plausible feel to it. Parrish Plessis is a great character, tough, uncompromising and really good in a fight, she is also thoroughly confused and trying not to be stupid. She has the drive required to push the story forward and the depth of personality to be consistently engaging. The plot threads that wind about her are very well constructed and are balanced very carefully with opportunities for the cast and context to come to the fore. And speaking of Parrish, it’s been mooted by certain parties that Parrish should take on Zombies. Now that is something I could really get into. But when will get time to do this one?
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Awards 
Aurealis Award - 2010 Best Science Fiction Novel 
Davitt Award - 2010 Best Crime Novel Events Marianne will be appearing at SwanCon (Doom Con)April 5th - 9th 2012 Marianne will be a guest at Supanova Pop Expo in 2011/2012 Marianne will be a guest at Bundaberg WriteFest
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