People are telling me they like the way Night’s End starts, so I thought I’d share it outside of the book because I’m fueled by positive praise. You can get Night’s End on Kindle, iBooks, and Kobo here: https://www.books2read.com/NightsEnd. The Russian stood in front of him like this kind of thing happened every day. Like being in front of a vampire was a thing that a man could get used to. Like he didn’t really care how this turned out — maybe they could hit the bars after, shoot some pool, but they’d need to agree on what kind of drinking they’d be doing. Dragomir liked that about him. Of course, drinking could come later. Right now, they were in a shack, tucked between two warehouses. The lighting outside was poor, which was the idea, and the lighting inside wasn’t Read More …

I watched Jessica Chastain today speaking truth to power. Yeah, I’m a bit late to the party – it’s been a busy past couple weeks. Me seeing it late is not the important thing here 🙂 The important thing is her message. In case, like me, you’ve been living under a rock, here’s the relevant bit: Say that, @jes_chastain. https://t.co/H7QHnEE5JA — Ava DuVernay (@ava) May 29, 2017 “The one thing that I really took away from this experience is how the world views women … when we include more female storytellers, we will have more of the women that I recognize in my day to day life. Ones that are more proactive, have their own agency … their own point of view.” This is important to me, because when we’re not equal it’s just not fair. I was raised with Read More …

A friend and I (hey Cassie!) have been talking a little about how women should, or could, be represented in media. Getting this right is *important*, not just because “girl power” or whatever, but because it’s the right thing to do. Our conversation has ranged a little more broadly into the territory about how you would write characters that are outside your spectrum of experience (e.g., different races, or sexualities). It’s a complicated issue. I’d like there to be a good and easy solution to it, but I think the best thing we can do is to keep talking to each other and our kids about it. And, maybe maybe, listening to women on how they’d like to be represented. I … feel like it might be rude of me to have an opinion on this either way, because I’m Read More …

You’re looking at one 2017’s Sir Julius Vogel Awards finalists. Thank you for all the nominations — you fucking rock. I wouldn’t be here without the rest of you telling a group of strangers how much you loved my book. The SJV team have made me a finalist in two categories — Best Novel (for Night’s Fall) and Best New Talent. Being nominated is big. Being a finalist is hyooooge. Especially when you consider the people I’m rubbing shoulders with (http://www.sffanz.org.nz/sjv/sjvNominations-2017.html). Lee Murray’s Into the Mist. I loved this one. Sarah Feyermann’s Innocents. Juliet Marillier’s Den of Wolves. Kirian Oliver’s Daybreak Rising. The odds of me winning when stacked against that list is tiny, but leave me with my dreams, just for today. Best new talent has me stacked against Eileen Mueller (https://www.facebook.com/EileenMuellerauthor/), Laya Rose (https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/16113376.Laya_Mutton_Rogers), and Darian Smith (http://darian-smith.com/). I don’t Read More …

Those of you not living with a survival cult or in a bunker probably noticed International Women’s Day. This is one of my favourite days of the year because it always opens my eyes to the gangsta stuff women are doing – not just have done, past tense, but are doing just in, you know, their day jobs. I’d like to present you with a list of stuffs that celebrate women being generally awesome, so we can take IWD into International Women’s Week, and perhaps even International Women’s Year. These are little examples you can share with your friends, your co-workers, your kids, that kind of thing. Don’t feel like you need to say, “Hey, there’s a chick being awesome here.” You can totally just say, “This is a cool thing,” because all of these are cool things that are Read More …

Hey. This almost slipped by me: Sir Julius Vogel nominations are open (2017 edition). I could use your help. The SJVs are fuelled by a little social proof: to get judges to look at your stuff, people need to nominate you (and like with all social proof, the more the merrier). They’ve made it a bit easier this year with a handy web form — I’d love it if you could give me a nomination. It won’t hurt for you to nominate other people as well; it’s not a use-once vote, so get busy with your favourite authors’ work. Doing this takes less than two minutes and would really help me a lot. My eligible work is Night’s Fall, and if you need some help with the fields here are some suggestions for how to fill it out. The form is here: https://goo.gl/forms/iGCXIa870UWCwVsE2 Read More …

A video that might be more interesting to writers – a quick glimpse of my “creative process.” Like that’s an actual process rather than some scary face-rolling on the keyboard. I re-write a scene, making it (fingers crossed!) not suck. Note: creation video sped up a *tiny* bit – I am not a line printer in disguise.   If you prefer YouTube, that’s okay with me: the video’s better quality there too for whatever Weirdness of Facebook™ reason.

  Yo. Want to see one of my books before it hits the streets? Team ALPHA (Advance Review List) applications are open again. http://hit.parrydox.com/teamalpha for more information or to apply.

It’s a funny world, and I don’t mean ha-ha funny, but epic-small funny. Stephen Dillon crossed my radar as a radical giver-of-time-for-stuff-bigger-than-himself by way of us both knowing Lee Murray. He’s the brains – and, let’s be honest, pretty much the muscle too – behind The Refuge Collection. Besides being an excellent collection of genre fiction set around a mythical town called Refuge, it’s a project that’s attracted a great many authors and artists to his banner to help out charity. Before we hit the pimp my ride part of the show, let’s do some quiet introductions… First up, tell us a little about how you got into this publishing-for-charity gig. Did you approach it as a writer, or from a different angle? Where did the idea come from? I was writing a bunch of stories at the same time, which Read More …