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Writing An Author Bio
Happy Monday! So, if you caught my post last week, you’ll know that I recently received an honourable mention in the inaugural Fiction War—hurray! I received an email from the event coordinators not long afterwards which requested that all finalists submit an author biography and issued a mental sigh of relief that obviously this wouldn’t apply to me, and I wouldn’t have to figure this out, because I’m not a finalist… But I sent them a reply email, just to confirm. Turns out I still had to do one. The sticking point? I’ve never written a biography about myself before. I mean, to give you some idea of where I…
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Aussie Expats Update – Writing Wins & December Socialising
Friiiiiiday! AND December, the month of Santa, chocolate, eggnog, presents, a brief stint of holidays for both James and I (which is a serious change from Aus, where our long break is over Christmas) and maybe a white Christmas (come on Oklahoma, you can do it!). Needless to say, I’m excited. Part of that could be to do with the fact that I’ve submitted my Ancient History assignment (after a real struggle!) and I’m feeling a little more on top of my study—I had to pay the piper this week after our frivolities in Kansas last week—and we put up our tree together yesterday. Okay, okay, it doesn’t sound like…
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The Final Waiting
The moonlight shattered around the darkness of her shadow on the ground. In the still air, the silence—peace, or simply violence without a voice?—felt as fragile as a frozen pane of glass, and she breathed softly, lest it fracture. A bird whistled to itself far above, then stopped abruptly, as though it too knew what lay at stake. A whisper of a breeze caught at her clothing, the raking of icy claws across her skin making the tiny hairs stand on end. She fought against the shiver that threatened to rattle its way up her spine: she needed to be still, still and silent. She was waiting again, below the…
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Aussie Expats Update – Seeing some more of the USA!
Happy Friday everyone! I hope Thanksgiving (for the Americans amongst us) was a day of family, friends and food for all concerned: we were lucky enough to get invited over to a friend’s house for the afternoon/evening and thoroughly enjoyed both the excellent company and some amazing food (thank you Anne and Paul!). I feel that I’ve been remiss in not posting regularly over the past two weeks, but I’ve been feeling a little flat and uninspired from a writing point of view. We were also travelling this week and the time just seemed to vanish, so hopefully I’ll be able to find my groove again next week. While I…
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Aussie Expats Update – Archery Adventures, Food Bank & Fantastic Beasts
Everybody, How, on earth, is it Friday again?? Don’t get me wrong, Fridays are awesome (although, one might argue, somewhat less so if you’re not actually working and therefore you don’t deserve to celebrate Fridays as much—and thus you also probably should be continuing to write/study over the weekend anyway), but right now it feels like the year is disappearing. Days and weeks and even months are vanishing like delicious, multicoloured gobstopper rings, and soon it’ll be Thanksgiving, then Christmas, then NYE… and then 2016 will end. I’m looking forward to doing a ‘2016 Recap’ post prior to that point, because this one has been a bit of a doozy…
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A Poem for Humanity
I haven’t written a poem in a while, but a combination of what’s been going on in the world recently and my psychology studies brought this together for me: we’re really just a bundle of nerve endings and electricity, of muscles and bones and chemicals, and somewhere beneath all of that, our thoughts, our loves and hates, our fears and hopes – our soul. Humanity Place them all ‘neath a microscope one by one. Beyond differences, an assault of similarities: kidneys, lungs and heart. Further in, a twisting acid helix underwrites an interplay of the invisible. Search a spangled web of brain tissue to try and find where thoughts…
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Aussie Expats Update – Projects New and Old, and Babysitting!
Happy Friday everyone! Remembrance Day (the Australian version of Veteran’s Day, for any Americans who are confused by that term) was yesterday back home, but since it’s the 11th here, it means a chance to think about what armed servicemen and servicewomen have sacrificed for their countries and their loved ones. Especially for us, that’s pretty important—in a world rent by conflict, it’s vital that we remember what the cost of peace and democracy here, and what responsibilities we each individually have to make the world a better, safer and more accepting place in order to honour those who have fought for, and protected, our way of life. But it…
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Racism, Marginalisation and Diversity in Writing: Who owns what?
Welcome to the newest iteration of ‘Ana’s Deep and Thoughtful Mondays’! I spent a lot of time over the weekend wrestling with what’s been happening in writing communities across social media recently, but unsure of whether I should write about it—and if I was going to, how to do so. While taking a quick tour of my Twitter feed this morning, I saw a blog post by Kaelan Rhywiol: her raw and open honesty in considering some of the issues that have been rife throughout the writing community helped inspire me to commit my own thoughts to paper (it’s a truly excellent piece and deserves reading). For this, I’m very grateful.…
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Aussie Expats Update – America, Five Months In
Five months, human beings. We have been living in America for FIVE MONTHS. I’ll lay it out straight for you: I’m not feeling very warm towards America right now. By that I mean, I’m feeling pretty cold. The reason? This morning, I took a friend into hospital early in the day. For reference, she’s about three or four years older than me and also for your information, I’m pretty hungry: which as anyone knows, is dangerous ground. Anyway, we get into prep and I’m just sitting off to the side, doing some work, when one of the nurses goes to me—“Oh, so are you Mumma?” OH MY EFFING GOD: NO. …
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Failing and the Intimidation of the Great Big Writing World
I got my results back from the NYC Midnight Flash Fiction Challenge in the early hours of this morning (only the score, as feedback will come later this week), and it would be a mild understatement to say I’m a bit disappointed. I thought that maybe there was some possibility that I would knock this one out of the park and make it into the top 5 to head to Round 3. I got zero. I wasn’t expecting that. I also didn’t know I was going to be as disappointed as I am (I wonder if it’s just a case of bad timing with a number of other things that…
