At the moment, everyone is talking about the decision to change certain words in some of Roald Dahl’s books. This decision had apparently been made by his publisher in conjunction with Dahl’s family. Having heard some of the terms they were changing, it didn’t seem a big deal to me at first. However, when I heard they were changing things like ‘black cloak’ to make it just a cloak, that seemed a little over the top. I assume their objection was to the use of the word ‘black’ possibly being seen as racist, especially since they were also removing ‘white […]

Happy new year to all and sundry! Are you looking forward to 2023? What do you think it will bring you? Are you a writer? Do you have any writing goals for 2023? Are you a reader? Do you have a goal for your reading for this year? My first order of business for this year is to write a short story for an anthology that I’m editing with Emily Larkin. It’s for my publisher, Wombat/Rhiza, and it will feature Dystopian and Steam Punk stories. You can read more about the anthology here. If you’re a writer, you may want […]

I think a lot of people will be glad that we’ve finally reached the end of 2020. I know I am. I hope that next year will prove a lot easier for many of us. We haven’t had it as bad as many people out there who’ve lost jobs and livelihoods, and here in Australia, we’ve done pretty well overall with managing the virus, so much so that my time shopping this morning looked pretty normal for this time of year. And it’s a relief to know that there are a few promising vaccines on our horizon. Hopefully they’ll help […]

When COVID-19 hit and we all went into lockdown, I thought it would be a great chance to find some new reads. I bought a few books back in March this year, but found, to my dismay, that most of them didn’t engage me. I even bought a book from one of my favourite authors but didn’t feel the desire to keep reading it. I was so relieved when Stephenie Meyer chose this year to release Midnight Sun, Twilight from Edward’s point of view. I’m a huge Twilight fan and had been waiting for this book for years. It didn’t […]