Laura E Goodin wins The Kris Hembury Award for Encouragement

Our heartiest congratulations to Laura for winning the Kris Hembury Award at last night's Australian Aurealis Awards held at the Independent Theatre in North Sydney.

You can read Laura's response to this award at her blog, The Motley Coat.

And the live reports of the Aurealis Awards at Twitter.

Short Story Competition Win

Over at carolryles.net, I blog about my win in the Conflux 9 short story competition.

I’m especially pleased about this as the story, "The Silence of Clockwork" works as a prequel to my novel, Heart Fire, by showing some of the history of its male protagonist, Ruk, a bold, daring shapeshifting spirit who plots to escape the human word, but his shifterness prevents him.

Conflux 9 was held in Canberra in late April. It’s theme was steampunk (angels, junk and steam), an added bonus.

Writerly Advice

I was clicking through the multitude of blogs on my blogroll when I came across this, for me very timely, post on productivity and time management on Australian Writer's Marketplace Online. In discussing the centre's regular Writing Race, Louise Cusack, team captain for the last of these, and Amy Chatwin from AWM have some very useful things to say. According to Louise Cusack even cats can help us in our quest for handling our time and getting published. It makes sense when she says it, I promise.

Gender and Book Covers

Over the past year there has been much discussion about the portrayal of women on book covers with Jim C.Hines and John Scalzi doing their bit to show just how ridiculous women's poses (on fantasy novel covers in particular) often is. What I hadn't realised though is how at least some publishers skew the covers of novels by women to what they perceive as the likings of the women's market - because, of course, all books by women are about things of interest only to women. Right?

Well no. It's akin to the fact that my daughter felt she had to apologise for giving me a pink card for Mothers' Day because all women like pink, don't they. Again no. I really dislike pink and I'm not fond of washed out baby blues and lavenders or purple either and I'm by no means the only one. If you look around certain women's wear sections of most stores, though, that's often all you can buy. The retailers' perception is that women like such colours so that's how they skew their buying. The clothing sells - because there are no alternatives - so they have their perception reinforced and so it continues.

It seems something similar might be happening among publishers except here the perception appears to be woman writer = won't get read by men because girl cooties = will only be read by women = girlie covers because women like girlie covers, don't they. Maureen Johnson tackles this in her post The Gender Coverup on The Huffington Post website. It's worth reading to the end before you go to the link where, in answer to a challenge by Johnson, a number of classics written by men have some of their better known covers redone as if they had female authors. They are clever and are a real eye-opener.

Guest blogging

On her website, Joanna Fay has been inviting various authors to write guest blog posts about favourite characters they have created in her weekly Character Column. So far four Egobooers have accepted her challenge and, if you are interested, I've linked to each of their posts - Carol Ryles and St Olivia, Keira McKenzie with Ned, Satima Flavell and Nustofer and most recently I've posted about one of my own favourites, Seri.

I have been fascinated to read all the posts, not just those by Egobooers, and to find out more about how different writers develop particular characters. In my case, it was love with my first glimpse of Seri but not everyone seems to have the same experience with their characters so it's proving an interesting series.

Interview at Indie Reviews

Writer and reviewer, Angella Graff, has posted a lovely interview over at Indie Reviews, in which she asks me about writing, and about my current release, Reunion: The Siaris Quartet Book Two. If you would like to catch it, here's the link: http://reviewerteamwinz.wordpress.com/2013/04/04/interview-with-joanna-fay/

Tin Duck Awards

Congratulations to Sarah Parker, winner of a Tin Duck Award for her short story Jack Gorman is Dead, and to Joanna Fay shortlisted for her novel Reunion and short story Pearl Red: The Hunt of the Unicorn  and Satima Flavell also shortlisted for her short story La Belle Dame.

Ditmar finalists

This seems to be the time of year for lists and writing prizes, doesn't it. The latest list is of the Ditmar finalists and what an impressive one it is. The Ditmars are Australian awards voted on by members of the current Natcon and the preceding one. The winners will be announced at Conflux 2013. Congratulations to those who are on the list.

Australian Shadows Awards finalists 2012

The finalists for the Australian Shadows Awards 2012 were announced over the weekend and you can find them listed here. Congratulations to all on the list.

Aurealis Awards 2012 Shortlist

The shortlist for the 2012 Aurealis Awards (for Australian speculative fiction published in 2012) has been released and can be viewed here. It's an impressive list and all finalists should be congratulated. The winners will be announced at the Aurealis Awards in Sydney on May 18.