Overcome Your Fear In The Recording Studio
There was a time when I was afraid of the recording studio. I thought that it would show me up for my inadequacies. I thought I wasn’t good enough. I was wrong. Studios are friendly places. They are full of like-minded people trying to create something and you, as a...
Acting, Opportunities And The Advantages Of Persistence
I could have been an actor. It just didn’t pan out that way. Life doesn’t always give you the chance to take every offer that comes along. Fate hangs it tantalisingly in front of your face and then whips it out from under your nose. Then you are left with...
Prince’s Legacy: Coincidences And A Strange Development
After working for six months on my new book, I have experienced a strange coincidence. Life throws the strangest things at you. When I started writing about Anais Blue, I never expected one of the characters in the book would die. I don’t mean die in the book, but in...
Stop Chasing The Muse
Yesterday I was reading an article about writing and the subject of the muse came up. muse noun ˈmyüz 1 capitalised : any of the nine sister goddesses in Greek mythology presiding over song and poetry and the arts and sciences 2: a source of...
How To Make Yourself Creatively Accountable
If you are trying to make a living with a creative endeavour you need to hold yourself accountable for what you do. Writing requires enormous dedication. There is a large percentage of the population who have thought about writing a book. Supposedly this figure is...
How to Surrender to Triumph and Failure
I am about to spend another weekend in the recording studio. A few months ago we began working on a new album. At that first recording session, I was forced to question whether what I was doing was a triumph or a failure. The owner of the studio is a guy called Milan....
A Tale of Two Plates
Precisely four hundred years ago one of two plates began a startling journey around the planet. This morning I find myself in a stairwell at the Rijksmuseum. I intended to write in the library but it’s closed as it is a public holiday. It kind of sucks but at...
The Curious Case Of Constable W. H. Willshire
William Willshire was one particularly bad egg. Central Australia in the 1880s was considered the outer frontier. In some ways it still is, and continues to be most people’s image of what epitomises the Australian outback. When William Willshire went to serve as...
The Passing Of Daisy Bates
During the writing of Loreless I did an enormous amount of research, much more then I could ever actually use in the book. I have decided to share some of this information, and at the same time, give you a bit of an insight into the writing process. In the book there...
Patti Smith Does The Paradiso
First off, it’s not called the Paradisio. It’s the Paradiso. Ok, it’s only one extra syllable, but if you know it, it’s irritating. I’m sure she knew it, or maybe it was just another one of those times when a tourist misinterprets something. She was in a foreign...
Great Uncle Josiah Goes To War
My great-uncle Josiah was in his sixties when he enlisted. Like many men during the Great War he faked his age in order to be accepted. What made his story different from most was that he lowered it. Most men put their ages up. He said he was forty-four. I don’t know...
The Not So Great War
Over a hundred years ago, my grandfather went off to war. He was young, and possibly, panting at the bit to go. He may have gone earlier if it hadn’t been for age restrictions. It was to be a great adventure. Every able-bodied man wanted to be part of...
What Is Synchronised Drowning?
It’s the weekly swimming lesson and I am sitting on a balcony above the pool. I have a birds-eye view of everything. I am watching my daughter flailing through the water and trying to remember what that was like. She looks so uncoordinated. It looks like synchronised...
Coping With Expat Sickness
I can’t relate to my birth country anymore. I feel like a stranger there. Not only that, I don’t feel that I belong there anymore. It must be some form of expat sickness. It’s a strange thing really, being so disjointed. Maybe that’s not the right word. Disowned? Also...
10 Best Films At Rotterdam Independent Film Festival, 2016
For the past few years I have religiously spent a few days at the end of January in Rotterdam at the International Film Festival. This year was no different. Well, it was a bit different. I usually go at the beginning of the 10 day festival, this time I went at the...
The Library
Here I am again in the library. Not just any library. This one is special. When I first decided to write seriously this was one of my first discoveries. Like a lot of discoveries, you want to keep it to yourself. If too many people know about it then it won’t be a...
Hobby Is A Dirty Word
Yesterday, I had a bit of a moment. My so-called hobby was challenged. Over the past few months I have steadily been building up momentum as an author. I set up a website. I have had my book edited, I have had a cover designed. I have absorbed oceans of tips on...
Writing From An Indigenous Perspective: Part 1
My biggest struggle with writing Loreless has been the question whether I have the right to write from an indigenous perspective. There are many opinions on this subject. The Chant of Jimmy Blacksmith One of the authors I researched when I started was Thomas Keneally...
We Can Be Heroes
The week that was, last week, was quite something. We lost, or I lost, I don’t know what your opinion is on this, two heroes. If I stand corrected, it was actually three. One was buried and the others actually did the passing on. I suppose you could consider them...
You Are The God Of Your Creative Universe
I went to see author T. C. Boyle speak towards the end of last year. It was the first time I had been to a book launch or an evening with sort of event. I didn’t expect to discover an important lesson in how to control my creative universe. A part of me went...
Hope Rules, OK?
Loreless is about hope. The tantalising thought that change can still happen drove me to write the book. I still hope. I still believe that change will come. The basic idea for the book came to me almost 25 years ago and my feelings have not changed. I continue to...
Trapped
I'm stuck, trapped. I thought I knew where I was going but I’m not so sure anymore. The future is dark. I can’t see it. A heavy curtain has fallen in my path. I try to push it aside but it has so many folds I can’t seem to find the opening and draw...
How To Become A Publishing Expert
There seems to be no end of people online with an opinion on writing. And not only about what the best methods are for putting words on the page, there are also literally thousands giving advice on publishing. I’m no publishing expert but it is clear to me that...
Writing The Message You Need To Deliver
I am on a crusade. I am a divine messenger. I have just discovered this. A few weeks ago I was just writing. Now I am experiencing it as a higher calling. I won’t say that it is truly biblical but the analogies are there. There has been a change in my thinking. I was...
Why There Is A Left And Right Way To Be Creative
As a child I had a learning disability. Somehow it was picked up at a very young age. I have very vague memories of it. I was sent to a specialist as there seemed to be a problem with how I used my brain. I was using both sides of it at will. I would do certain things...
Painting The Problem We All Live With
Yesterday I made a discovery. I came across a very special painting by an American artist who was active in the middle of the twentieth century. Norman Rockwell worked predominately for magazines and illustrated their covers. In order to make a living as an artist he...
The Infancy Of A Novel
Loreless, the novel which I have struggled to complete, began a long time ago in a galaxy far, far away. Well not exactly, but I was on another part of the planet and it was a great distance from where I am now. It actually bothers me how long it has taken to get to...
Invoking Parkinson’s Law
Mr. Parkinson had it all worked out. Government departments have a peculiar way of working. There is a certain amount of work to be done. It makes no difference if you have a week to do it in or a year. The work will get done in the prescribed amount of time. It will...
The Bureaucrat
He peered up at me from his little hole and hissed, “Tip”. “Huh?” Again, this time a little louder and a lot more snake-like. “Tip!” The penny dropped. “Aah.” We had just spent the best part of an hour trying to get...Discover a part of Australia you never imagined existed.
Read Loreless
Do you like stories about witches? Ghosts? Powerful entities? You must meet Anaïs Blue.
