Cat Sparks: movie star
Nick Stathopoulos and Ryan Cauchi have posted the trailer for their short monster movie, IT GROWS, starring CSFG's very own Cat Sparks!
New interview series by Nicole Murphy
CSFG member Nicole Murphy has just embarked on a new series of author interviews: I've started a new interview series, about writers, for writers. It's called 'Journey to Publication' and the aim is to eventually have at least 30 authors (published at novel length) talking about how they achieved that [...]
Leife Shallcross interviewed about her story “The Blue Djinn’s Wish”
Editor and CSFG member Simon Petrie has been interviewing contributors to his latest Peggy Bright Books anthology, Use Only As Directed (co-edited with Edwina Harvey) and has just posted the interview with fellow CSFG-er Leife Shallcross about her story "The Blue Djinn's Wish". What should readers know about you before they [...]
Filing off the serial numbers
Guest post by Ian McHugh Some of the best advice I ever got as a writer was to “file off the serial numbers” from stories I admired and use what I’d got from them in my own work. This is, as it sounds, an exhortation to steal – shamelessly – but [...]
The Making of Good Writers
Guest post by Zena Shapter I’ve had this thought so many times… Wouldn’t it be nice to do nothing else in life but write? Usually it’s when I’m working on an uninspiring work project, on my hands and knees cleaning up milk spilt by the kids (yet again), or washing [...]
CSFG Member News (May / June 2014)
Congratulations! To Tim Napper, who won first prize in the first quarter of the Writers of the Future contest (CSFG's second WotF prize winner for 2014 and CSFG's fifth prize winner overall. Here's hoping he can become our second annual grand prize winner!) To Cat Sparks, who's collection The Bride [...]
Issue #2 of Dimension 6 is out now!
Issue #2 features stories by Dirk Strasser, Robert N Stephenson and our very own Alan Baxter. You can download it in epub format here and mobi format here.
Escaping from planning and world building
Guest post by Ian McHugh I didn’t start writing stories – at least, not with the serious intention of having them published – until the year I turned thirty. Prior to that I’d fiddled about with ideas and worlds, maps, creatures and characters, even plots and actual scenes without ever progressing [...]
The Fear of Not Being Original
by Leife Shallcross (writing at leifeshallcross.wordpress.com) On Wednesday night, at the monthly Canberra Speculative Fiction Guild general meeting, we had a fascinating presentation from author Russell Kirkpatrick. I’m gonna say it was about story shape, because that’s what he said it was about. But that’s kind of like saying Lord of the [...]
Social Media for Writers – Public or Private?
Guest post by Zena Shapter I was sick this week. I was run-down, had the flu, was tired and slept a lot. My hubbie took over where he could. My children patted me and said ‘poor Mummy’. One day I opened the front door to some door-to-door sellers of solar [...]