<![CDATA[JACQUI GREAVES - Blog]]>

<![CDATA[JACQUI GREAVES - Blog]]>Sat, 03 Oct 2026 13:11:45 +1000Weebly<![CDATA[Ghost Assassins of Bijou]]>Wed, 30 Sep 2026 23:39:07 GMThttps://www.jacquigreaves-author.com/blog/ghost-assassins-of-bijou

Sondrine: Ghost Assassin of Bijou is the first of five space opera / cosy Sci Fi novellas that form the ‘Ghost Assassins of Bijou’ series. I’ve written the series so that, even though they overlap in time and space, each of the first four novellas stand-alone but when read together form a mosaic. The final novella in the series, pulls all the threads together.

The inspiration to write Sondrine came from my own awareness that where once I’d drawn attention in public, I’m now more likely to be overlooked, ignored, spoken over, and bumped into and jostled. In other words—I’ve become invisible. I’ve come to understand that it’s not an experience limited to me. Multitudes of older women pass through the world unseen.

Enraged, I decided to explore how that invisibility could be weaponised. From that, the Ghost Assassins were born.

The Ghost Assassins are menopausal and post-menopausal women who carry out contract killings across the known universe. In Sondrine’s words…
“I’ve yet to visit a planet or moon that errs from the universal truth that in patriarchal societies, older women dress in dull and bulky outfits. By imitating their appearance, we assassins pass ghost-like through worlds, seldom seen. Even if we’re noticed, we’re never remembered. The disguises also provide plenty of hiding places for the tools of our trade.”

Sondrine is partnered with Alta, a belosa, who is a living, sentient ship, “a sort of enormous cuttlefish”. The belosa, a species endemic to the planet Bijou, possess the ability to traverse the folds in time and space, which makes them unique in the known universe.

In this first instalment of the Ghost Assassins of Bijou, the nature of the partnership between the ghost assassins and the belosa are changed forever, and cracks appear in the foundations of the 500-year-old practise of the ghost assassins.

If you’re a fan of Martha Wells’s Murderbot Diaries and Becky Chambers’ Wayfarers series, then you’ll love Sondrine: Ghost Assassin of Bijou.

Sondrine: Ghost Assassin of Bijou launches on October 19, 2026, available as ebook and paperback.
Order your copy HERE.

]]><![CDATA[A month of poetry]]>Sat, 05 Sep 2026 01:57:50 GMThttps://www.jacquigreaves-author.com/blog/a-month-of-poetryAugust was poetry month in Aotearoa New Zealand, and I participated in two poetry focussed workshops. Each very different that the other.

At the first, we talked about the art of stepping outside of yourself and inhabiting the consciousness of another. We discussed how changing our point of view can stretch our imagination and alter our vocabulary. This led us to explore how changing the habits we develop when writing can clarify our voice.

At the first workshop, we used images from gorgeous glossy art books to inspire our poetry. The first image that caught my eye was the impressionist painting, The Woman with Red Mask by Rufino Tamayo. It portrays a masked dark-skinned woman sitting upright in a chair. She's holding a mandolin and is naked, apart from a red cloth, which folds around her hips and across her lap. The portrait is painted in reds, burnt oranges and blacks (check it out HERE), it’s bold and beautiful and inspired me to write a poem about a woman who although exposed is not seen.

Our next exercise was to write from the perspective of an historical figure or a person at the time of an historical event. I wrote about the fall of the Berlin Wall:

The wall has fallen
Too late for her
The space between exposed
Where bullets had found their target
In tangles of barbed wire
Too late for her
The wall has fallen

The second workshop was a more academic, guided approach to the creation of a poem. We discussed how a poem tells a story in a way that combines meaning with musicality, the importance of a hook that captures the reader, connecting our words creatively with our senses, and using unexpected and interesting imagery.

During the writing exercise, the presenter guided us with verbal prompts to create a poem based on a memory, using a tone of voice I describe as ‘meditative’. It’s not the first time, I’ve been exposed to this approach, where the presenter’s voice is omnipresent stepping us through a set process. Unfortunately, as a visual person, it just doesn’t work for me and at the end of the session all I'd distilled from the three pages of scribbles in my notebook was two lines:

A fin slices through our calm
Rippling the smoothness of the sea.

BUT…in the week that followed...those lines changed and more were added. I took the first draft to my critique group and we joyously played with the sounds and shapes and order of the words. We searched for words that had more than one way of being interpreted and we considered how the rhythm and pace could match the oceanic setting. After several word experiments and edits, I now have a poem that reflects the magic and emotion that lives within that special memory.

So my lesson for this month is that writing workshops, even if they don’t work for me in the moment, will always leave me richer—especially if a friend comes along to share the experience!]]><![CDATA[Strange Points of View]]>Sun, 02 Aug 2026 05:07:44 GMThttps://www.jacquigreaves-author.com/blog/strange-points-of-viewMore and more often of late, a story demands that I crawl into the mind of something, or someone, very ‘other’. It’s taken me a number of years to become confident enough to delve into minds that are in-human. Sure, I’ve written stories, long and short, from the perspectives of zombies, elves, witches and fairies but, I didn’t find inhabiting those characters difficult as they’re all very human. To increase their ‘otherness’, I added non-human types of cultural, spiritual or behavioural elements to their character. And, sometimes, magic—because magic always defines a character as special.

The first, non-human-type character I wrote was a mythical cat. A week or so back a friend commented that cats are stupid little demons in fur coats with rebellious toddler energy—they also operate in stealth mode. Having shared a house with many a cat, they're familiar beasties whose interests include; sleeping, eating, cuddling, prowling and hunting (and shagging for the unfixed). But every cat has its own strange foibles. Heidi, the tabby of my childhood, hated it when I coughed. Once, when I was sick in bed and in the midst of a coughing fit, she unfurled from her spot at my feet, marched up my body and bit me on the nose, she then returned to her spot, curled up and went back to sleep. Evil Eddie, the farm tabby, liked to help muster the sheep. He also took delight in hiding behind doors so he could leap out and shred our legs when we walked past...but his favourite trick was to take swipes at the dogs from the safety of the hammock. Evil Eddie was a prolific hunter and dragged home a multitude of rats, rabbits and possums, and, to my embarrassment, a neighbour’s chickens. So, all that to say that writing from the point of view of a cat is something that I’m comfortable with. But for several years, that’s as deep into the ‘other’ that I was willing, or able, to go. Until…I started writing the Ghost Assassins of Bijou novellas.

Some of the most important characters in those manuscripts are belosa—cuttlefish-like creatures that have chosen to leave their ocean home to partner with a ghost assassin and travel the universe. I’m a marine biologist by trade and I’ve spent many, many years in, on and around the sea. Despite that, I’ve had exactly one experience of snorkelling with cuttlefish (which was super cool and is a memory I treasure). So, these aren’t characters that I’m at all familiar with. The scientist in me rose to the challenge and I plunged into research mode. I read a multitude of papers about cuttlefish anatomy, perception, behaviour and intelligence. Once I’d inhaled enough to give me a starting place, I went on to develop complex individual characters based on species-appropriate motivations, a set of cultural mores to guide them and a non-homogenous society. Then, I added another layer…but spoilers!

While writing Outer Death (my almost-complete novel-in-flash), I’ve inhabited several strange and difficult points of view. One of the hardest for me was occupying the mind of a racist, misogynistic billionaire. It not only made me physically uncomfortable but, I found it harder to think like that man than to imagine myself as a belosa. Two of the most recent stories I’ve written for Outer Death, feature very different but less traumatising perspectives. The first is written from the hive-mind of fungi. The second from a singular evolved octopus, who encounters the fungi from the previous story. As I did for the belosa, I returned to the basic principles of what drives each species and what limits them achieving their goals. From there, I built the characters, layering in intelligence and adding eccentricities. In both cases, I’m delighted with the result. Is it weird that I better understand the motivations of a fungus than a billionaire bent on accumulating wealth at the cost of the planet?

Other tricks I use express a species otherness are by using words and phrases in ways that twist our perceptions and by asking a myraid of ‘what if’ questions. For a marine species, what if the seafloor doesn’t rise, but the sea surface presses down? What if octopuses think in base-8 and use tentacles as a measure of both time and distance? What if fungi used their vast mycelial network to share eons of knowledge and know-how to protect earth from the human-plague? What if microbial mats on the deep-ocean floor have no concept of time? What if it’s not me writing this blog, but it’s the collective consciousness of the bacteria that occupy this moving bag of meat and bones? Oops, I've circled back to zombies.]]><![CDATA[Suddenly...]]>Sat, 04 Jul 2026 07:28:33 GMThttps://www.jacquigreaves-author.com/blog/suddenlyI hate finding the word 'suddenly' in a story.

That hideous, lazy word throws me right out of the story and makes me grunt in annoyance. There are three reasons why:

A general dislike of –ly adverbs.
It’s telling me what’s happening rather than showing me.
It loses all power when it’s misused and overused.

Let me dive deeper—
Adverbs that end in –ly are often redundant. For example in the phrases, ‘she whispered quietly’ or ‘she shouted loudly’ the adverb repeats the information contained in the verb. They’re often used to prop up a weak verb rather than rephrasing a sentence. Instead of ‘She quickly ran to his side’ the reworded ‘She sprinted to his side’ is much stronger. This type of adverb is often used to hedge a statement. The hedged phrase, ‘The room was fairly dark and cramped’ can be simplified as ‘the room was dark and cramped’ or, even better, ‘shadows filled the cramped room.’ The worst –ly adverbs tend to be used: in dialogue tags, she said meekly; as intensity words – extremely, terribly, happily; or to describe actions – I raised my sword and he suddenly stopped.

Which segues to my second reason for despising the word ‘suddenly’. Using it is telling me what’s happening instead of using words to show me. ‘I raised my sword and he stopped mid-stride’ shows me an image of how he stopped. He could have also ‘screeched to halt’ or ‘skidded to a stop’ all three examples show us how he stopped and we understand that the stop was sudden. ‘Suddenly’ shows us nothing.

The third reason for my disdain for the word ‘suddenly’ is how it becomes meaningless when overused. I’m part of a book club that spawned out of my local writers group. We’ve been reading award-winning and highly-acclaimed novels to critique what about them works (or doesn’t). We look at structure, theme, language, dialogue, style, plot etc. Two of the books we’ve read this year were riddled with the word ‘suddenly’. I got so annoyed that I counted how many times it was used—in both books—the word ‘suddenly’ was used 32 times. Used that often, any jarring punch that should be associated with the word loses its impact. If every action or observation happens ‘suddenly’ then the value of the term is lost. Instead, that suddenness becomes commonplace and expected rather than rare and shocking.

There are stronger and more evocative words and phrases out there to express that sense of abruptness. It’s OK to use as many dreadful adverbs you like in your first draft. Use them as place-keepers but please edit them out for stronger words and phrases in your second draft. And, to stop me grunting at your book or story in disgust, make sure that you replace or delete all (or most) of your suddenly’s before you hit save on your final manuscript.]]><![CDATA[Handling Rejection]]>Tue, 02 Jun 2026 05:32:08 GMThttps://www.jacquigreaves-author.com/blog/handling-rejectionIn the business of being a writer, rejection is something you have to learn to handle from the first time you submit a story or a poem to the market. It’s a rare writer who never receives that email containing something like, ‘…unfortunately, while we enjoyed your story, it’s not what we’re looking for at this time…’ or ‘Thank you for giving us a chance to read your story. We received over 500 submissions, and had to make difficult choices…’

As I write this, I’m coming off two rejections yesterday and a third this morning for my own work, followed by a funding rejection for a community project I’m working on. So the subject is very real!

No one likes being rejected—it stings—and it’s hard not to take it personally. After all, you wrote the best poem/story in the world and they had the audacity to say No!

The thing is…it’s not personal! It’s about the publication: its market, its theme, the cohesiveness of the contents, the relative quality of the submissions, the fit, the preferences of the editorial team, the space available etc. It’s not unusual for editors and publishers to receive hundreds of submissions for limited publishing space (made worse by the explosion of Generative AI).

Those of us who have yet to reach the heady heights of being invited to submit are all chasing the crumbs. A recent piece of mine made it past the first cut and onto the short-list. That short-list was 80 submissions long with around half of those having to be rejected—mine included.

Having a submission accepted is the exception!

So, if you’re enduring rejection after rejection then yay you! Because it means you’re writing and submitting and that’s most of the struggle.

Rejections are the norm and you need to find your own way to handle them, but here’s some tips that might help.

Unless you’re keen to burn all your bridges, never, ever write an abusive email in response to a rejection. Editors and publishers talk to each other and your name will be shared. The only time I ever respond to a rejection is if the editors have offered up specific comments on the piece, and for that, I might thank them for their time and thoughts.

If you need to, go ahead and take a minute to breathe, go outside for a walk, or pour yourself a glass of wine—I do! But, once you’ve shaken off the disappointment, get back to it. Don’t let rejections derail your writing or submitting. For every rejection I get, I aim to send out a new submission—for balance.

If I can’t find a home for my short stories and poems then I tuck them away in a file for ‘later’. None of my darling stories and poems are ever killed off entirely. For me, ‘later’ could be rewriting, re-editing and submitting to a different market or keeping it for my own collection of short stories.

This year, I set a personal goal of submitting at least two or three stories and poems to a paying market every month. One signal of being on track is the steady flow of rejection emails I’m receiving. So tomorrow, I’m going to check out the market for calls that catch my imagination or line up with stories I’ve already got tucked away, and I’ll get right back into writing and submitting.
]]><![CDATA[Sometimes, I just need a little bump]]>Mon, 04 May 2026 04:04:07 GMThttps://www.jacquigreaves-author.com/blog/sometimes-i-just-need-a-little-bumpIt's been decades since I first experienced the saturating joy of a bumper boat. That summer, the youthfulness and the waterpark are all long gone, but my memory of the day is strong—almost tactile. I wasn’t keen at first, I’d tried bumper cars and found them too jarring in their physical violence, but in the aquatic version those violent hits were softened. Neck-wrenching jolts were transformed into tilts and spins that altered trajectories. The presence of other bumper boats, pool edges to ricochet off, waves, and the risk of capsizing resulted in the same excitement, but the aggression was less intense.

That long-forgotten memory flared when I reached out to a writing colleague for help with a writing blank. My friend tossed me a couple of ideas, which we bounced back and forth, and I came away with a list of subjects and approaches. Thanking her, I declared, ‘Sometimes, I just need a little bump’, which spun off into the subject for this blog.

Writing is a solitary exercise and sometimes it’s lonely. It’s like being the only boat in the pool. The fun of bumper boats comes from the bumping and the chasing, not the boating. Without anyone to bounce writing ideas off, I tend to putter around avoiding the harsh edges—despite knowing my direction and purpose need challenging.

A month or so back, I was working on a personal essay for an upcoming anthology. It was a subject close to my heart and one which I never imagined I’d have trouble writing on—but I did. I got entirely stuck and after weeks of writing in circles was close to abandoning the project. Instead, I cast myself into the advice pool and got the boat-tilting thump I needed to spin me off in a new direction. The essay I ended up submitting had no resemblance to the original version. It has been short-listed for the anthology. Finalists will be announced later this month.

All it took was a nudge.

But, not every bump I’ve had has been helpful, some have been bone-shattering. Several years ago, someone I’d trusted to critique a short story for me took it a step further. Instead of highlighting what didn’t work for them or asking me questions, they did a total rewrite—one that changed the theme and nature of the story. They’d dragged me from my pool into their bumper car rink and slammed into me from behind. As a new writer, it shook my confidence and I scurried back to my writing silo to lick my wounds. It taught me that I need to trust the people I share my work with, because not everyone shares my values, or knows me well enough to understand what I need.

At times, I’ve tried to engage non-writing friends and family in discussions about ideas for stories—it never works. They’re happy to read what I write but they have no interest or capacity to engage in the process. I’m privileged to have a tight circle of writer friends who I trust to give me a prod where and when I need it.

It’s not that I don’t have my own ideas and approaches, I do, but sometimes we all find ourselves adrift and becalmed, or circling away from the point. When that happens, getting a little bump in the right direction, being drenched by a wave of new ideas, or being shunted hard enough to spin off to a different approach, can make all the difference between not finishing a project and having it published. ]]><![CDATA[When a Poem Works Best]]>Mon, 02 Mar 2026 02:19:07 GMThttps://www.jacquigreaves-author.com/blog/when-a-poem-works-bestWhen my mum died, I found some stories and poems written by Junior Jacqui. All of them were speculative. One of the poems was very dark—literally and figuratively. It spoke of being pursued in the darkness and ended in death. Click HERE to read a lightly edited and re-formatted version of it. I was twelve when I wrote it, but the fears it represents are heavy for a Jacqui of any age.

In recent years, I’ve returned to poetry as a way to express my darkest fears and deepest angers. The poetic form works when I can’t construct words into the sentences, paragraphs and sections that prose demands. I find it easier to express my rage, terror and grief when I’m not constrained by structure. I don’t write long poems, and while I’ve experimented with different poetic forms, for poems from my gut, free form works best.

My poems are often visceral reactions to events that exist beyond my power to control—death, misogyny, environmental destruction, natural disasters, and right now…fucking wars. These pieces flow from a deep well of empathy that some days brings me to my knees as I despair for the future.

I’ve talked before about how writing helps me make sense of the world and, how I use it as a release. My short-stories tend to be commentaries crafted with research, logic and order. In contrast, my poems are a blast of pure emotion, intended to leave the reader with deep feelings.

While the essence of what I need to express is almost always captured in the first sitting—the result is often too raw. It takes multiple visits to polish off the sharp angles and jagged edges. When editing, I agonise over word choices and line breaks and rhythm. I’m not sure my poems are every truly finished.

All this to say that for a multitude of unhappy reasons, I’m writing poetry because, right now, that’s what I need.
]]><![CDATA[Writing Feminist Speculative Fiction]]>Sat, 31 Jan 2026 23:48:45 GMThttps://www.jacquigreaves-author.com/blog/writing-feminist-speculative-fictionI’m an unapologetic feminist writer of speculative fiction.

When I first read The Handmaid’s Tale in the 1980’s, it was very much an impossible fiction. Then, when I re-read it in the mid-2010’s, it made me cry because it had become a very possible version of reality. Globally, women and other minorities are having their hard won rights stripped away. Even supposedly democratic countries, like Aotearoa New Zealand, are systematically dismantling our legal rights. In countries ruled by conservative, religious-fascists, it’s even more horrifying.

Modern feminist speculative fiction requires more than passing the Bechdel test. It’s also more than just confronting the patriarchy and challenging misogyny. Over my lifetime, feminist speculative fiction has progressed from the comparative binary of dystopias and role-reversed separatist utopias, to intersectional fiction that considers race, gender, class, disability, sexuality, colonial history and ageism.

In much of my recent writing, I’ve combined that intersectionality with the concept of a separatist utopia. This comes from my belief that women/minorities need to save ourselves before we save the world, and we can’t do that when we’re in imminent danger.

In my stories, much like women preferring to meet a bear in the woods, my female characters often prefer to engage with the unknown of a cyborg, an alien or a monster than with human men who have demonstrated only violence, oppression and discrimination.

Literature, in the right hands, can be subversive—if it wasn’t there would be no calls for so-called ‘dangerous’ books to be banned. Through stories we can: create templates for rebellion, resistance & disruption; offer up cautionary tales; and, interrogate reality through metaphor—where rage and trauma are magic, ‘others’ are monsters, history is reclaimed & fates rewritten through time travel. Authors of feminist speculative fiction, are perfectly placed to offer hope and alternatives in the guise of fiction. Where speculative fiction asks, “what if?” feminist speculative fiction adds, “Why not?”

If you’re interested in reading my published feminist works, check out:

In Remains to be Told: Dark Tales of Aotearoa, my short story Fires of Fate is retribution horror, where men are punished for their environmental damage.

In Byline: An anthology of poetry and prose from Tauranga Writers my poems, Her Husband (2023) and A Year of Death (2024), both deal with retribution for domestic abuse.

In my short story collection Letters from Elsewhere:
A Letter From Elsewhere: a street kid taken by aliens, prefers to die, the only human on a distant planet, than return home. The letter she sends home is described as fake by the new Christo-fascist regime.
The Abyss: retribution horror for rape.
Star Killer: where taxidermy becomes retribution for rape.
Redundant: retribution horror, where the spider/wasp is a metaphor for exploited women.

Some fantastic feminist speculative fiction that I’ve read:
The Mere Wife by Maria Dahvanna Headley. Retelling of Beowulf where Grendel’s mother is a returned servicewoman whose child is the product of rape from when she was held captive. She chooses a solitary life on a mountain until the small town kills her son. Blurs the line between literary and genre fiction.

The Stanger by Kathryn Hore. Feminist western set in an apocalyptic future. A walled off town, run by men, is steeped in lies maintained by fear. A woman rides into town, challenges the town’s view of the outside world and the patriarchy.

Upright Women Wanted by Sarah Galley. Another feminist western set in an apocalyptic future. Queer librarian spies spread resistance propaganda under threat of death by bandits and fascists.

The Binti Trilogy by Nnedi Orokafor. A young woman escapes family expectations to attend university on another planet. Attacked en-route, she saves herself, by assimilating with the attackers, further ‘othering’ herself.

Sister, Maiden, Monster by Lucy Snyder. A cosmic, plague horror told from the point of view of three women whose lives intersect in ways they don’t understand. Highlights gaslighting, violence against women and medical abuse (inserting IUD w/o pain relief). ]]><![CDATA[Learning to be a critical reader]]>Sat, 03 Jan 2026 03:08:41 GMThttps://www.jacquigreaves-author.com/blog/learning-to-be-a-critical-readerA group of local women writers, including me, have established a writer’s book club. The intent is to meet once a month to discuss an agreed book from a writer’s perspective.

My mum was a voracious reader and raised me the same. She read me stories every night and taught me to read before I went to school. Into adulthood, many of our conversations revolved around what we’d been reading and we’d often mail favourite books back and forth across the country. Like her, I’m a fast reader—often too fast. Sometimes, I have to go back and read a paragraph two or three times because my eyes skip over the words too fast and I miss stuff.

I used to read anything and everything but have become more focussed as I’ve aged. These days, I’ve given up struggling through hefty tomes of literary fiction and only read books that interest me. Most of the time that means I read speculative fiction—but not always. If I don’t enjoy a book, I don’t bother finishing it. There are far too many great stories out there for me to waste my time on something that doesn’t work for me. But, I’ve never been very good at figuring out what I didn’t like and why.

Even after I began to write, I still read for the entertainment and not to understand craft or to critique technique. It’s only been in the last decade that I’ve learned to read with a more purposeful eye. In part, I learned through having my own work critiqued and then returning the favour. Later, I helped edit and proof read the annual anthology put together by my local writers’ group, and in 2025, I took up the opportunity to be a judge for the British Fantasy Awards. In 2026, I’ll be a judging convenor for Aotearoa New Zealand’s inaugural Te Pae Tawhiti Awards for speculative fiction.

Books that I love are often written from an odd perspective, they have well-written and engaging characters and enough world-building for me to be able to envision scenes. The story-line keeps me engaged and often twists and turns in unexpected ways. I don’t mind tropes, but I like to see them from a different view. I like the odd and off-kilter. Extra points for themes that challenge the patriarchy, racism, homophobia, transphobia, unfettered capitalism and/or confront ultra-conservativism.

Things that make my eyes glaze over and distract me are clunky and overwritten prose, massive chunks of information dumping, and extended descriptions of settings that don’t serve to advance the plot or contribute to a characters development. I now know that these are what I skim over when I’m reading for pleasure. I want action and dialogue to tell me the story, not extensive unbroken blocks of unrelenting text. If the character is in a forest, I want to experience the forest, I don’t want to stand outside the forest margins while it’s described to me in painful detail.

I dislike stories where a ‘thing’ happens, but nothing and no one changes as a result—what’s the point? Even flash fiction needs a purpose. Not long ago, I read a short story by a well-known and much-loved author. The words sparkled and glittered and the descriptions were rich and generous. But nothing fucking happened! I read it twice to be sure I wasn’t missing something. Nope, it was just a bunch of pretty words with no story or character arc—less satisfying than candy-floss.

Two other things that annoy me are unadulterated filtering (I don’t want to be told what the character saw or felt, I want to experience it), and an over reliance on adverbs instead of strong verbs (I’d be delighted to I never see the word “suddenly” ever again). I read the latest novel from one of my favourite authors last month and flinched at every adverb that told me what was happening instead of showing me. Sometimes even our hero’s let us down!

Learning to read critically means that I now understand what causes me to wince at words, skim over chunks of text or put a book down. I’m looking forward to a deep-read of our first book for book club and to hearing from others about their thoughts on the same book.]]><![CDATA[Lessons From World Fantasy Convention]]>Wed, 26 Nov 2025 03:10:19 GMThttps://www.jacquigreaves-author.com/blog/lessons-from-world-fantasy-conventionIn the early months of 2025, my friend, and multiple award-winning writer-extraordinaire, Lee Murray ONZM, suggested that we attend the World Fantasy Convention in Brighton, UK. My first instinct was to say no because it’s fucking expensive to travel to the other side of the planet from Aotearoa New Zealand.

I’m so bloody happy that I changed my mind.

First, I got to travel with Lee, who shares my love of the weird and bizarre. We drove terrifying narrow roads, circled roundabouts searching for the exit, were kept company by ravens, wandered presque-lost across Bodmin Moor, laughed, ate all the cheese and revelled in ancient myths and legends brought to life in the curated landscapes of the south-west and south of England. She also held my hand throughout the Convention and introduced me to everyone—even people she was meeting for the first time herself. Being Lee’s friend meant that her friends, new and old, also became mine.

Second, after the disappointment of the 2020 WorldCon (CoNZealand), which thanks to Covid was virtual instead of local and in-person, it was incredible to experience a writers’ convention of a global rather than local scale.

I came away with new friends, personal contacts with several publishers, a deeper appreciation of the industry I’m part of, and some great book recommendations. Creative conversations in the bar, around tables, in the hallways and over food proved to be incredibly valuable. Both experienced and new writers were generous with their time and thoughts, and showed genuine interested in me and my writing projects. By the end of the fourth day, I was shattered but also reinvigorated with possibilities and ideas.

I spoke on two panels. The first was Feminism and Feminist Themes in Genre Fiction. I made the mistake of being too reliant on the page of notes I’d prepared, so panicked when they didn’t align with the first question I was asked. It threw me off. I was embarrassed and took a while to calm down and order my thoughts into something that made sense. I came away thinking I’d done a shit job. On the last day of the Con, I sat next to a horror writer who told me that the Feminism panel had been her favourite session. Redemption!

The second panel was Older People in Fantasy and Horror. By this stage, I was more relaxed and had managed to squash down much of my imposter syndrome. Also on the panel were, Juliet Marillier (Lifetime Achievement Award Recipient) and the UK’s master of horror, Ramsey Campbell. The room was packed. I only used my notes to refer to a few figures about the average age and sex of readers and for the rest of the panel talked from my experience of being older and writing older characters. I had fun, and given the audience response, they did to.

I don’t think I’ll ever be someone who speaks or sits on a panel without notes at hand, but what I learned was that I can trust myself. I have a wealth of lived experience in all manner of things and know stuff others don’t. I may not be able to give you a clear, concise and academic definition of what feminist genre fiction is—but I know how to write it.

I attended a heap of panels, some book launches and both the British (for which I was a judge) and the World Fantasy Awards (for which Lee was a judge) ceremonies. So there was lots of learning and clapping involved. My favourite of the panels I attended were Weird Fiction, Animals in Fantasy and Embodying the Non-Human. There’s a theme there!

It was a surprise to me that not everyone goes to Cons to attend panels, readings and book launches—some attendees spend the entire Con hanging in the public spaces—they go for the conversations, to make contacts, seeking opportunities for collaboration, and to develop relationships. Writing’s such a solitary pursuit, and yet success requires putting yourself out there. I’m not so good at that, but I forced myself to start conversations with strangers and talked about the Ghost Assassins of Bijou novellas to anyone who’d listen. I’d also taken a few copies of my short story collection, Letters From Elsewhere, with me and gave them to some lovely people.

The experience confirmed for me the extra challenges writers from Aotearoa face in being so physically distant from major markets. It’s so hard for us to raise our voices and be seen, when no one knows who we are. We can’t just catch a train or drive to next month’s Con to cement those relationships. Without substantial financial assistance or the Ghost Assassins of Bijou getting picked up and becoming a best-seller, it’s very unlikely I’ll attend another big international Con in the next few years so, for now, all I can do is rely on social media, my blogs and newsletters, and keep submitting my writing to keep my name in the forefront of people’s minds.]]>