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.

Other than that, I’m heading to Sydney and Perth in the next two weeks for Supanova. Looking forward to seeing everyone and exercising my jaw. Check out the programme here. I’ll be presenting on seminar on Fiction Writing.

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.

I loved reading this; it made me wishful and scared at the same time. How would I go in a room full of incredibly sharp story minds? Would I be clueless? Cliched? Would I be able to summon a single original thought? And more importantly … will I ever get the chance?

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?