How the Pied Piper of Tucson Led Me to My Story
When I started my YA thriller Half in Love with Death, I’d already abandoned two novels about a young girl who falls in love with a man who may be a murderer. Every time I tried to write it I…
When I started my YA thriller Half in Love with Death, I’d already abandoned two novels about a young girl who falls in love with a man who may be a murderer. Every time I tried to write it I…
By the time you read this post, I’ll have visited my protagonist’s hometown, Leipzig, Germany. I expect the city will be strange to both of us—I’ve never been there and he, Viktor, left home in 1942 to join Hitler’s army….
The question I get the most about my novel-in-progress is, “Why is it set in an alternative world?” My story takes place in the country of Silmara, not to be found on any map except ones I’ve drawn (alas, cartography…
“Your use of the word ‘bloke’ is a mess,” Lincoln wrote to me over Facebook chat. I met Lincoln when I was on campus at Macquarie University, just outside of Sydney. I did my junior year abroad there seemingly a…
Apocalyptic stories of rising sea levels and choking dust storms come to mind when most people think about climate fiction, the emerging genre often referred to as cli-fi. Dystopian anarchy where nations battle over water resources appear in books and…
Fiction readers expect more of characters than they do of people in real life. In life you can have a person who does inexplicable self-destructive or transgressive shit, and friends and colleagues just shake their heads and say, “Oh, that’s…