Man it’s been hot! Regardless, the wheel of time churns ever onwards, bringing us on one more rotation around the sun and justifying adding +1 to our year stat. Happy 2026! Because none of us can sit still, we have already kicked off the year with two crit groups, a monthly meeting, three scribbles, and a movie night. It is but a taste of what is to come for the year ahead. Even in this baking heat, you can’t keep us down.
President’s Update
Greetings fellow WERDS™ (stands for, Writing Nerds. I don’t know why I’m clarifying this, anyone who’s anyone is already saying it, it’s so fetch), I hope you are having a great and hopefully cool Summer so far. For those who are about to return to school or have kids counting down the days, we salute you with our newly obtained for back-to-school protractors, which we will promptly pretend to cut pizza with or throw across the room like a throwing star.
In our last general meeting where we had the original founders of CSFG come talk to us, I learned something interesting. The CSFG used to have artists involved in CSFG, not just writers. I am making it a personal mission to foster the return of artists back to the guild. The one thing I hear a lot of writers talk about is how do they get in contact with artists for their books and covers, and how do you maintain those relationships. As someone who is fortunate enough to work with an artist every day, I can tell you that they are out there, and they are more than willing to collaborate. Just have to know where to look and the idea is to look no further than us!
- Americo Alvarenga (El Presidente)
Monthly Meeting
In January, we got the pleasure of welcoming some of the founding members of CSFG to come and talk to us about the history of the Guild! Donna Hanson, Matthew Farrer, and Maxine McArthur answered our questions about the deep unknown history of the Guild, and a whole bunch of previous CSFG presidents were there as well. It was a great way to kick off the year to come, and to remind ourselves that there will always be a bunch of writers willing to come together to talk about their weird and cool ideas.
For our February meeting, we have Jason Botta, Principal Designer at Crystal Dynamics, coming to speak to us about writing in video games. Jason has worked on every Tomb Raider game since Tomb Raider Legends, along with Marvel’s Avengers, and is currently working on their latest game, Tomb Raider Catalyst. Tune in to listen to Jason talk about how writing for games requires a lot of the same skills as any other creative medium—understanding how to plot and develop a story, how to develop good characters and write compelling dialogue, how to write clearly and concisely in language the audience understands, and being able to work as part of a team where you have to collaborate and work within constraints. We will also have a short prelude involving some super fun voting on words for the constitution and a new AI Policy, for all the people who love bureaucracy in their life, and crave more of it.
Links to the online presentation will be available closer to the date, otherwise we look forward to seeing you 7pm on Wednesday 18 February at the Burns Club in Kambah.
CanCon
Thank you to all of our amazing volunteers who helped out with our table over the long weekend for CanCon! We love to keep having a table and a presence at these local events, where we get to meet loads of new people and spread the good news about speculative fiction.
And welcome to all the new members! If you joined up as a member or to our mailing list because you saw us at the event, we are excited to have you! If you’re looking for where you can delve even deeper into what the Guild has to offer, you can check out our Discord where discussions and our critique groups happen.
El Presidente at the CSFG table, CanCon
Book Club
This month’s book voting is underway! You can vote on the book selection in the #book-club channel on Discord before 3 February.
The meeting is planned to be held as a hybrid event on 24 Mar 2025 and at the Civic Library next to Canberra Theatre, as well as on Zoom – further details to follow.
February Calendar
Wednesday 4th – Short Story Critique Group: 7pm (online) (stories due the Sunday before)
Wednesday 11th – Novel Critique Group: 7pm (online)
Saturday 14th – Scribbles and Nibbles: 10am, National Library of Australia, Parkes (in person)
Wednesday 18th – Monthly Meeting: 7pm, Burns Club, Kambah (hybrid)
Wednesday 25th – Short Story Critique Group: 7pm (online) (stories due the Sunday before)
Friday 27th – Movie Night: 8pm (online)
Saturday 28th – Scribbles and Nibbles: 10am, National Library of Australia, Parkes (in person)
For information about any of these events or activities, reach out to us at [email protected] or message a committee member on Discord.
Note: links to join hybrid meetings online are shared through csfg.groups.io and the CSFG Discord server.
This month’s feature image was lovingly hand crafted from the finest stock images by your humble Secretary, Fionn MacPherson. If you want to have your art featured in the newsletter (fully credited and with links to socials), you can reach out and let us know! The bad photo edits are only going to get worse, so we do encourage you to do so.