Category: Writing

Measuring Success

8/2/2025

As a writer, I carve time out of my life to invest in my craft. Each completed poem, short story, chapter, or novella is driven by hope and belief—because, for most writers in my situation, that time is unpaid and there’s no guarantee of publication.

It’s a sad truth, but publication doesn’t always come with payment. As for many other industries, publishing budgets are increasingly tight. Many markets that previously paid for short stories no longer do and magazines and publishing houses are shuttering at a depressing rate. It’s not impossible to sell stories and make money from writing, but it is difficult. The average income for writers in Aotearoa New Zealand is less than $15K per annum. The best way to make money from writing books is to already be famous. This means that measuring my success against income, can be a bit depressing.

So, what does success look and feel like for writers who, like me harbour grand ambitions but aren’t (yet) already household names. There are numerous ways for an author to measure their success, and they can range from the personal to the very public.

Some days, success is as simple as getting words onto a page. If those words come together into coherent sentences, paragraphs, and stories then all the better. If those words are poetic and lyrical or move me to tears, or fill me with joy or fury, then all the better. Even more satisfying is when my critique group scribble love hearts in the margins of my manuscripts.

For many writers, success lies in the freedom to create stories that push boundaries and challenge views and explore the impossible. Writing can also be a form of catharsis, allowing writers to explore prejudices, address societal challenges, and resist injustices. Much of my own writing helps me navigate the world and imagine better ways for humans to live and interact. Until five years ago, I seldom had happy endings to my stories. Now, I like to at least leave my readers with a hint of hope, because that’s what I need. I have to believe that things can and will get better.

It's important for readers to be represented in fiction, but it’s rare to find stories featuring strong, independent, post-menopausal feminists with fluid sexuality. Offering that representation through my writing is one of my personal measures of success. Part of my legacy is my writing. I hope my stories and poems endure and stand the test of time. Even if only one woman finds something in one of my pieces that fills her heart or changes her course for the better, then I consider that a success.

Not all writers seek to be published but anyone who does will attest to the absolute joy of your first accepted submission. Those hours of work honing my craft are rewarded when someone I don’t know reads my work and deems it worthy of publication. For me, that spark of joy still explodes with every successful submission. With publication comes exposure, connecting with readers and the chance of awards.

While there are intrinsic and private rewards for practitioners of creative arts, it’s the extrinsic, or public, rewards that are most often used to measure success. These come in the form of reviews and awards, which in turn open doors to opportunities for not only sales, but for grants and residencies. Headlines aren’t written about writers who sit at their desk and produce glorious prose and poetry. No. Headlines feature writers who win prizes. Despite multiple nominations and applications, and making several shortlists, I’ve yet to win any awards, grants or residencies for my writing. My external measures of success are: reader feedback, both direct and through reviews; the subscribers who faithfully open my newsletters every month; and securing a literary agent.

Do I want more? Hell, yes!
Am I passively waiting for it? Hell, no!

I volunteer to judge awards, so I get to critically assess the best fiction in my genres.
I travel to overseas conventions and conferences to connect with writers and others in the publishing industry, which when you live in Aotearoa New Zealand is both financially and temporally expensive.
I attend workshops and courses to hone my skills.
I send out a monthly newsletter and write a monthly blog to connect with my readers.
I apply for residencies and grants so the people with the funding know who I am.
I submit stories and poems to paying, and sometimes non-paying, markets.
I write. I write. I write.
I’m not waiting for success to find me. I’m pursuing it.

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Finding a Character's Voice

4/1/2025

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What makes each character in a story shine? In part, it’s their voice. Voice is how characters wield dialogue, and it should be supported by the narrative. When reading a character’s internal thoughts or dialogue, we should recognise them. Their voice should be distinct not only from the other characters, but also from the author’s voice.

When faced with someone playing their music too loud, one character says, “Would you mind turning that down a little please?” While a different character shouts, “If you don’t turn that shit down right now, I’ll fucking do it for you!” Straight away, we can differentiate the characters and not only surmise something about each of them but also about their relationship with the person playing the music. These characters employ their dialogue in very different ways — one polite, the other aggressive.

It's obvious that a cleaner on a generational spaceship woken from cryo-sleep to clean up after a bloody coup will speak in a very different way to a witch offering a potion to a lovelorn knight. The differences will exceed their locations, languages and accents. Almost everything will be different: the tone, urgency and rhythm of their speech; the vocabulary they use; the structure of their sentences. But what if it’s two cleaners woken from cryo-sleep? How can their voices be distinct?

The background of a character should be reflected in their voice. Their age, gender, culture, and education will influence their word choice. Think about the way older men often interrupt and speak over young women. The vocabulary of working-class people shouldn’t be simplified or dumbed down — but it should be used differently to upper management and company owners. In the same way, racist tropes should be avoided. It’s enough to say ‘She spoke with a French accent’, rather than…ow you say?…err…to write in ze way she en fait speaks…bah dis donc!

The temperament of a character influences not only the words they use, but the way they deliver those words. When they get angry do they shout and annunciate every single word? Perhaps they stutter when nervous or afraid? Much is revealed about a character by their tone of voice — are they arrogant or timid by nature? What happens when a character finds themselves outside their comfort zone? Do they talk more or go quiet? Are their sentences shorter or do their sentences trail off to silence? All of this tells us something about the character and sets them apart from the crowd.

Turns of phrase, tics, and slang are very effective in distinguishing characters, but they should be used judiciously and not over laboured. The same applies to habitually mispronouncing words. I once had a conversation with a woman who talked about visiting the ‘gully’ on an airplane, it took me a while to figure out she meant the ‘galley’. The same woman was someone who if a sentence only needed ten words, then she’d use thirty. If I was to write her as a character, the obvious foil to her verbosity would be to have a character who only spoke in clipped sentences, grunted or used gruff words.

Describing a character’s body language through narrative is another way of distinguishing their voice. Do their emotions play out on their face or are they unreadable? How a character walks and moves can tell us a lot about them and can differentiate them from other similar characters. Another physical attribute that distinguishes a character is their speaking voice. Is it low or high-pitched, raspy, booming or soft? The discordance of a character’s speaking voice being at odds with their physical appearance creates a unique and memorable character.

Every character, even minor ones, should have their own voice. One of the best ways to research character’s voices is to people watch. Sit in a café or a park or wherever people congregate and pay active attention to the conversations around you. Take notes.

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A Year of Writing with a Critique Group

2/2/2025

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Just over a year ago, I committed to writing an additional four novellas in the five book Ghost Assassins of Bijou collection by year’s end. That meant committing to writing a novella, of around 25,000 words, every three months. I’m an inherently lazy human being and a slow writer, so the task I’d set was daunting.

Then, by the delightfulness and serendipity that is fate, I was invited to join a critique group with two local speculative fiction authors – both of whom are vastly more experienced, lauded and awarded than I am. We meet for two hours every fortnight to critique and offer feedback on each other’s work. When we can’t meet in person, we meet online and once or twice we’ve relied on electronic feedback only.

Despite our early decision to limit our submissions to 4000 words, or a short story, that didn’t last past our first get together. I’ve routinely bombarded them with over 10,000 new or rewritten words each session. They never complain (well not to me anyway!) and at times were disappointed when I didn’t give them the next chapter.
It’s been amazing! I’ve learnt so much.

When I look back at their comments from the beginning of last year, the pages of my manuscripts are littered with corrections to grammar and sentence structure, and comments pointing out inconsistencies and problems with my plotting. The most recent feedback was much less grammatical, and more about tweaks to the storyline aimed at keeping the reader satisfied. I still can’t quite get my head around run-on sentences but I’m much better at comma placement.

My critique crones have gifted me ideas for literary devices to keep dry details out of the prose and others that weave poetry into the prose in ways that I never would have had the courage to attempt on my own. They’ve kept my characters’ voices true and the plot holes tiny. Best of all though, they’ve littered my pages with ticks and scrawled love-hearts in the margins when they find a phrase or section that they enjoy.

For the first few months I was terrified I was bringing very little to the group. I’m neither an expert in grammar nor spotting plot-holes and need time to chew over new ideas – but I have other skills. I’m good at world-building and character development, I possess a strong aversion to the overuse of -ly adverbs, and I know when a story needs more tension. I also do my best to be generous with ticks and love-hearts in the margins.

So – did I meet my goal of writing four novellas in a year?

Not quite.

With rewrites for consistency through the collection, it took an extra month. I’m now in the process of doing final edits and lay-out and writing the synopses for each novella and one for the collection.

Could I have done it without my critique crones?

Maybe.

But, without them, it would have been a set of pretty stones rather than a collection of polished jewels.

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Memory, Self and Character Arcs

10/1/2024

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One of my recent characters was the recipient of the memories of others. She had trouble distinguishing her own memories from those that weren’t her own. At times, she questioned who she was and struggled with her new identity.

So, to inform my writing, I spent some time reading and thinking about memory and the self. We rely heavily on our memories to tell us who we are, but there are some problems with that. Memories aren’t reliable and even if we think they are, they can only tell us who we were.

[Disclaimer: None of my musings consider the impact of brain injuries or disease on a person’s memory and sense of self. While both of those exist in my family, the following is based on my personal experience with my own memories and what they mean to my sense of self.]

I’ve got clear memories of events from my childhood that I just didn’t experience. What I actually have of those events are photographs and stories told over and over by my parents. So, I know that, for me, all it takes to construct a false memory is a visual cue and a good story.

At the other end of my memory spectrum, I’ve got massive gaps. I ran into a friend a while ago and they were recounting something we’d shared that had a profound impact on their life. I have zero recollection of whatever it was, even now after they reminded me…it’s a gigantic black hole. It was awful, and it hurt their feelings that I couldn’t remember.

I think because I’m a visual learner unless there’s a visual reminder, or a powerful emotional connection to the moment, event or activity, then it just doesn’t stick. So, if I’m the just sum of my memories then, at best, I’m a patchwork of half-truths and gaping holes. Surely, I’m more than that?

One thing I’m certain of is that I’ve occupied this body through everything. I know it well and can point to every scar and tell you where I was and what happened. This body hasn’t always served me well—my periods were debilitating, and the night-sweats of perimenopause made me question my will to live—but it’s mine. Isn’t it?

It turns out it’s not. By this point in my life, every cell I was born with has been replaced around eight times. This is not the same body that learned to swim in a tidal channel on the mudflats. It’s not the same body that lost its virginity on a picnic blanket under a grapefruit tree. It’s not even the same body that danced under a glacier in Antarctica. I don’t possess the same body I was born into, but the elements remain.

So, am I just a bunch of memories that can’t be trusted and a body that’s changed beyond recognition? Of course not. I’m so much more.

I’m also the product of an accident of birth. Born into a skin, culture, country and time that affords me advantages so many others don’t have. But I’m of a sex that came with hidden challenges. I’m driven by ever-changing goals, fuelled by unstable emotions, and a dynamic set of beliefs and values. I’m the forever-fluid shape of all of those things and more—a package consisting of constant change and potential.

Human beings, along with all living beings, are not static. Even rocks change over time!

How does this apply to writing?

The characters we write should change across the trajectory of even the shortest story. Their memories should be questionable and their bodies and minds messy with scars both literal and metaphorical.

Newton’s Third Law of Motion states that for every action, there must be an equal and opposite reaction. This principle is useful in developing characters. If a character experiences great pain, then they should become averse to painful situations. If a character finds unbridled joy, then they must also suffer the depths of despair. We need to write these reactions into the character to show how they evolve.

We must allow our characters to grow, or even diminish. Not everyone becomes a better person. Some people thrive in adversity, while others collapse. Our characters should question themselves. What they need from the world should change as the story progresses. The character in the first sentence, should not be the same as the character in the last sentence and we should understand why.

My character, the one who spawned this existential exploration of self, changed enormously over the arc of the story. She had to. Even though she struggles to manage the multitude of ‘other’ memories, she’s retained her sense of self. At the end of the story, she’s both physically and mentally altered and is still grappling with those changes. She's not a better person, nor is she worse but she's different. Despite the changes, she remains unique and distinct from the other characters, and most important, we still recognise her.

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Advice for New Writers

8/31/2024

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I know what it’s like. You have a book inside you. It’s burning to get out. So, you write it. Your family and your best friend love it. It’s the best story ever written. It’ll be a best-seller and made into a film. A famous actor will play the lead and become your new best friend. You’ll buy a mansion and travel first class. The world will be your oyster…

If only publishers and agents would stop ignoring your emails.
If only publishers and agents would stop rejecting your 185,000-word manuscript.
If only you could afford another $5,000, so the hybrid publisher, who approached you, can publicise it.
If only someone would buy your self-published book with the home-made cover.

Where did it all go wrong? You cry.

Probably at the very beginning!
Here’s some lessons I've learned during my writing practice - some the hard way, others through the generous advice of fellow authors.

Join an organisation dedicated to writers. It might be a regional or national group, like Writers Victoria in Australia or New Zealand’s Society of Authors (NZSA). Or maybe a specialised group like SpecFicNZ, for writers of speculative fiction, or HWA, for those who write horror. If that’s too much, see if you can find a local group of writers who meet in person. All of these will provide various levels of support, advice and training to assist you on your writing journey.
Take advantage of in-person and online workshops and seminars to learn about craft and the publishing world. These are also opportunities to make connections with like-minded authors.
Find a critique group. Friends and family don’t want to hurt your feelings or crush your dreams. Other writers will give you honest feedback on all aspects of your writing (grammar, plot, characters, voice etc). This should be a two-way exchange; you help them, they help you. Everyone learns and grows.
Pay for a professional editor. Unless you have mad editing skills, it’s almost impossible to pick up your own mistakes. If you can’t afford to pay, then at the very least, buy a great self-editing guide and work your way through it with rigour. My suggestions are: Mark My Words by Lee Murray and Angela Yuriko Smith, and; Self-Editing For Fiction Writers by Browne and King.
Do your research. This applies to every aspect of your writing life. Research your genre - understand the tropes, expected length, style of cover. Research your market - who’s your audience (age, sex), what makes your story stand out from the crowd. Research agents and publishers who might be interested in your work - read their requirements carefully and follow them to the letter.

If you can’t find answers or still have questions, then ask for help from the contacts you’ve made. But and this is important, be respectful of their time. If they say no, be gracious and move on. It’s hard when you don’t know what you don’t know, and we all make mistakes. The trick is to know when to take a pause, set your ego aside and learn.

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Writing the Subversive

8/1/2024

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I didn’t set out with the deliberate intention to write subversive speculative fiction. I just fell into it. After all, there’s much to subvert in the world today—misogyny, religious fundamentalism, racism, runaway capitalism, extreme nationalism, over-population, fascism, environmental disasters, global climate change, so-called artificial intelligence, and more—it’s terrifying. So much it can be overwhelming. Through my stories, I try to offer an escape, some hope, an alternative or a template for resistance and rebellion.

To understand what I consider is subversive speculative literature a simple dictionary definition falls short. For me, it’s fiction that challenges societal norms, questions methods of social control and defies the conventions of current mainstream culture. It's stories that encourage us to think critically and examine conflicting ideologies. Subversive literature is transformative, offers us new insights and expands our thinking. It provides us the opportunity to develop empathy, to question our beliefs and values, and to consider alternate viewpoints.

Using this wider view, what’s considered subversive not only changes with time but also with the socio-political and cultural climate. It's also personal. When, where and who you are will sway your view. Books banned for being subversive in parts of the USA, are freely available in Aotearoa / New Zealand. Being subversive is a very far cry from being harmful.

Through the vehicle of subversive literature, readers are given the opportunity to try on someone else’s skin and feel the world through their hands or tentacles or programming. It allows us to smell, taste and see the universe through the lens of another’s experiences—to be ‘other’. Subversive literature gives us permission to change and grow and be better. It has the capacity to burrow under our skin, penetrate the marrow of our bones and alter our DNA. But it doesn’t need to preach or beat us over the head to do so. The best subversive literature entertains us—it draws us in with majestically wrought worlds and complex characters—and takes us on a wondrous, thrilling or terrifying journey.

Asked to name titles of subversive speculative literature it’s easy to only consider the classics. Most people know Orwell’s 1984, Dick’s Blade Runner, Le Guin’s The Left Hand of Darkness and Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale. Going back further we think of Verne’s 10,000 Leagues Under the Sea and Wollstonecraft Shelley’s Frankenstein. In Aotearoa / New Zealand we have our very own Vogel’s Anno Domini 2000; or Woman’s Destiny. While these were all subversive in their day, very few of them meet the lowest bar of that definition in a modern context.

Instead, I offer you the following list. These are some of my favourite examples of subversive speculative fiction from the last few years (it’s far from exhaustive and in no particular order!).
Lee Murray – Fox Spirit on a Distant Cloud
Claire Coleman – Terra Nullius
Martha Wells – Murderbot Diaries
Ann Leckie – Imperial Radch Trilogy
Nnedi Okorafor – Binti Trilogy
Pip Adam – Audition
Nicky Drayden – The Prey of Gods
Sarah Gailey – Upright Women Wanted
Guy Morpuss – Five Minds
Kathryn Hore – The Stranger
N. K. Jemison – Broken Earth Trilogy
Nicky Lee – Once We Flew
Adrian Tchaikovsky – Children of Time
Tabitha Wood – Dark Winds Over Wellington
Laura Jean McKay – The Animals in that Country
Simon Stephenson – Set My Heart to Five

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Why Speculative Fiction?

6/1/2024

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Human beings, and I expect many our hominid ancestors and relatives, have indulged in sharing speculative fiction for as long as we’ve spoken stories. We created myths and legends to explain the world around us – to rationalise what we saw, felt, heard, tasted, and smelled. We’ve always speculated about things that lie beyond our understanding. It’s in our very nature to ask, ‘What if?’

We love reading speculative fiction. According to Wikipedia – if we ignore religious texts (I have thoughts), comics and textbooks, and add Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings (reportedly over 120 million copies sold in different formats) – 5 of the 8 best-selling books of all time are speculative fiction (and, yes, this is a western-centric assessment).

When we engage with speculative fiction, we’re not just entertained, we’re taken on a journey into the unknown. It allows us to indulge our desire for the extraordinary. It’s an invitation to dream and question.

Speculative fiction offers us an opportunity to interrogate the real world from a safe distance. We can investigate what it means to be human. Most of the stories in ‘Letters From Elsewhere’, my collection of speculative short stories, explore what it means to be monstrous. What better way to do that than from the perspective of a so-called monster. Who was more monstrous – Mary Shelley’s Dr Frankenstein or the monster the he created?

Another favourite character of mine, who offers a unique perspective on humanity, is the cyborg, Murderbot (The Murderbot Diaries by Martha Wells). Much of Murderbot’s understanding of humanity comes from streaming soap operas, but when they work alongside actual living humans the reality is quite different. Through internal, and often comedic, dialogue, Murderbot provides a running commentary on the dangers of human emotions and how they compromise our motives and behaviours.

Through speculative fiction, we can hold a mirror up to ourselves in a manner that isn’t dangerous or confronting but gets to the truth of who we are. It allows us to confront our deepest fears, desires, hopes and wildest dreams from within the safety of fictitious construct.

Think of how ground-breaking ‘The Left-Hand of Darkness’ (Ursula le Guin) was in challenging the concept of binary sexuality, and ‘The Handmaid’s Tale’ (Margaret Atwood) was in exploring the rise of fundamentalism. Both books brutally critiqued society. That’s what speculative fiction can do.

Sometimes, the answer to ‘What if?’ isn’t happy. I wrote ‘Rose Moon’ in response to the election of Trump as President of the USA. I imagined a human world darkened by repression, cruelty, environmental damage, and religious extremism – tragically, that didn’t turn out to be the speculative component of the novella!

In the upcoming ‘Ghost Assassins of Bijou’ collection of novellas, I’m delving into misogyny, repression and the patriarchy. To lighten the tone, I’m telling the stories in the form of a Space Opera with humour woven through the prose. The messages are no less confronting, they’re just delivered in a more palatable package.

In speculative fiction, we can imagine how different environments, technologies, or societies might alter the human experience. Speculative fiction can foster discussion about socio-political issues, encourage diverse thinking and offer concepts for technological innovation. Submarines, space travel, computers, cell phones and virtual reality all featured in speculative fiction before existing in reality.

Speculative fiction taps into our curiosity about the future, the supernatural, and the abstract possibilities that lie just beyond our reach. It’s also fun!

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Tea

4/4/2024

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I talk a lot about being fuelled by coffee but it’s a bit of a lie really. Coffee is my kickstart to the day. Before that morning shot of caffeine, I’m almost incapable of speech or pleasantness. If I don’t have my daily coffee, I get a stinking headache later in the day. But it doesn’t keep me going during the day, through the afternoon and into the evening. No. That job belongs to tea.

I still remember the best cup of tea of my life. It was in Sri Lanka. The late Mr Jacqui and I had scaled Sigiriya, an ancient fortress which sits atop a 180m high column of granite. Not only a famous historical and geological site, Sigiriya is also home to enormous hives of giant honeybees.

The day we visited something, or someone, disturbed the bees and they swarmed. A man screaming in total panic a ran towards us ‘Help. I’m allergic.’ We grabbed him and lay on top of him as thousands of angry bees buzzed all around us. None of us got stung, we were filthy though.

From Sigiriya we went straight to an immaculate white, and uncomfortably colonial, tea house. There, smelly, sweaty, and covered in dirt, I had my first ever taste of orange pekoe tea. This was not the dusty tea of a teabag. It was sweet and nutty and bloody delicious.

I’ve had thousands of cups of tea since that day. None have been as good.

My tea is not always tea. As I write this, I’m drinking a pomegranate tisane. It’s a deep russet with a tangy flavour that delights my taste buds. A couple of days ago, I mixed delicate pink rosebuds with a sprinkle of orange pekoe and enjoyed a lovely, perfumed light golden beverage. In summer, I like a gorgeous green tea with hints of strawberry, and in winter a heady, smoky Russian caravan or a lapsang souchong do the trick.

My writing critique group meets at my place at 3pm, once a fortnight. Our rule no cake--just tea. For these precious women, I have bought a bag of orange pekoe tea. Only the best for my writing champions!

So, while I can’t start the day without my morning coffee—it’s tea that fuels my writing.

Lovely [insert satisfied sigh here!].

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A Leap

3/1/2024

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It’s a leap year!
An entire extra day to do whatever I want with…except…I’m on a mission.

I’ve received an expression of interest from an Australian publisher of speculative and dark fiction for a five-book series of speculative feminist novellas/short novels. The five manuscripts are to be delivered late 2024, early 2025, for quarterly release. I’m so excited, but also a bit daunted.

One of the novella’s is complete, the second almost half written and the remaining three are planned out. So, I’m on a mission to write like the wind…not the turtle of habitude!

One of the joys of writing them all before delivery, is having the ability to tweak details. I’ll be able to adjust each of the individual stories as the over-arching plot is revealed. It also gives me laser focus on writing to a schedule – something I’m not very disciplined at.

For readers, this approach will guarantee the series is complete. There’s nothing worse than committing to a series only to discover it was never completed. It will also mean the books will be published on a schedule close enough together, so the story remains fresh.

So, my focus is on writing. I’ll still do my best to write a blog at the start of every month, and in between will send out a newsletter (Click on the Contact tab to subscribe).

Wish me luck!

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Getting Your Facts Right

1/31/2024

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I recently read H. P. Lovecraft’s 1936 novella, ‘At the Mountains of Madness’. If you haven’t read it, it’s a science fiction horror story set in Antarctica in the 1930’s. It describes a scientific expedition hit by disaster after the discovery of impossibly old fossils on the icy continent. Not being fond of Lovecraft (I find his writing overwrought and he was a raging racist) this was not a recreational read.

I struggled with much of Lovecraft’s ‘science’ and assumptions of what was possible in that environment, particularly in terms of aviation and human survival. I’m an ex-scientist, who has a professional understanding of the rigours, limitations, and requirements of carrying out research in Antarctica. I understand he wrote according to the knowledge of his time, but he had a deep interest in Antarctic Science of the day. As such, he would’ve had access to articles and reports from Scott’s ventures to the continent some 20 years prior. In addition, aspects of his novella were, in part, based on Byrd’s 1929 scientific endeavours. Byrd, the first person to fly in Antarctica reported his struggle to gain altitude on the Polar Plateau (over 10,000 feet lower than Lovecraft’s intrepid pilots flew!). To give credit where it’s due, Lovecraft embraced the emerging theory of continental drift, a concept considered fringe science in the 1930’s. So, he couldn’t claim to be ignorant of the science of the day, yet he ignored much of it.

My annoyance at Lovecraft’s fanciful exaggeration of what his characters could achieve in Antarctica got me wondering — does speculative fiction need to be factually accurate?

The answer is — not always. If it did, there would be no space for the imagination and the impossible: no monsters, elves, fairies, aliens, warp-drives, teleportation, or magic. Speculative fiction doesn’t need to be scientifically or historically accurate, but it does need to be believable, and any deviations from known truths should be explained. I most definitely do not prescribe to the Write What You Know school of thinking, but I believe writers should do appropriate research when necessary. With such easy access to information, there really is no excuse for making mistakes.

When I wrote the fantasy novel ‘Gods of Fire’ (Currently not available and may never return to the ebookshelves), I set it in the real world in the late 10th and early 11th century. A good chunk of the story took place in Scotland, and it seemed natural to me that the characters would drink whisky. I did some research on the origins of whisky distilling and to my great disappointment found that whisky wasn’t distilled until 1494. My poor characters had to put up with shitty beer and mead.

In my ‘Ghost Assassins of Bijou’ series, I need faster than light travel (FTL) to enable the assassins to travel the known universe. I don’t explain it in any detail, and I don’t have to, because the series sits somewhere between soft science fiction and a space opera. BUT, I did do enough research into the possible physics and mechanics of FTL to enable me to use the correct terminology and have confidence that it wouldn’t sound ridiculous to most readers. If I was writing hard-science fiction, I would expect to include a level of technical information, based on current theories, to keep a space engineer happy.

I think it’s important to know your own limitations. I’m not a great planner and the characters, plot and setting of my stories evolve as I write them. My stories are generally character, then plot driven. The setting, which includes technology, history, society etc, needs to be just enough to make the story believable. I’m just not going to spend a year or more working on the fine details of the technology of a planet or spacecraft. I will never write hard science fiction and I accept that.

If anything, I probably spend too much time on research to the detriment of my writing time. I once spent a day trying to find a word to describe the way a cat’s whisker move forward and spread out when they’re hunting — in the end I wrote “…outstretched whiskers”, it still annoys me I didn’t find something more evocative. Most of the research I do never appears on the page, but what does appear is informed and supported by what I’ve learned.

Sometimes we just don’t know what we don’t know. That’s when we need help. Find a friendly scientist or historian to read your questionable science and history. Don’t be afraid to put out a call on social media for help. I guarantee you, someone you know, or someone they know, knows of a rocket scientist!

So, in the spirit of supporting my fellow writers, get in touch if:

You need help with understanding marine science, general biology, Antarctica, or farming (sheep, beef, deer);
You want some advice on writing good sex scenes, world-building or writing emotion.

If I can help, I will.

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Measuring Success

Finding a Character's Voice

A Year of Writing with a Critique Group

Memory, Self and Character Arcs

Advice for New Writers

Writing the Subversive

Why Speculative Fiction?

Tea

A Leap

Getting Your Facts Right

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