To own her writing was to own herself. This is craft.
Behind the scenes of the Second Novel, my Aurealis Award win (:O), Byron Writers Festival, + reading recs!
Dear reader,
I spent June and part of July travelling with family, and while it was a hectic, tiring, food-filled adventure, it was also a chance for me to reset and shift forward creatively. Since coming home, I’ve been able to finish off a couple of half-baked short stories and send them off into the submissions void. One story is a strange little tale about a dental assistant with special powers of empathy; the other is the third instalment in my Orin and Calam space adventure saga (I think it’s the best one yet! It’s got mind-hacking and labyrinths and a sidekick trying to save the day!!). I have a further two short stories I’m hoping to work on: their working titles are “Digital Luv” and “Witch Mother Diaspora Story”. (Dreadful, I know. I like to think my final titles are decent though!)
I’m almost a little afraid to say it, but I’ve also started working on the Second Book. For the first few weeks, I was just pondering and scribbling ideas in my notebook, but now I’ve actually started a Scrivener project, and written a handful of terrible scenes, and maybe one or two kinda decent scenes. So! It is begun!
Here’s a sneaky glimpse of the notebook ponderings. I am thinking about narrative shapes!
I’ve only recently started keeping a writer’s notebook, but I do feel it’s helpful, simply as a place to store unformed flashes of inspiration and transform them into more substantial ideas.
The title of this newsletter is taken from this Lithub article, “25 Essential Notes on Craft from Matthew Salesses”. It’s a stunning article about rethinking craft and writing against the dominant paradigm.
I also found this quote incredibly freeing:
“There are no new ideas. There are only new ways of making them felt, of examining what our ideas really mean.” — Audre Lorde
Every Version of You was my debut novel. I agonised over it and rewrote it many times. I know I tried to make it do too much, to be too much. With the second novel, I’m hoping to narrow my focus, to hone in on the specific things that I wish to write. My belief is that whatever weird, out-of-this-world idea pleases me, it’s sure to please at least a couple of readers out there!
I won an Aurealis Award T_T
I can’t believe I get to say that I’m an Aurealis Award winner now! It has been incredibly encouraging (and astonishing) to be shortlisted every year since I started publishing stuff in 2018. I’m so, so humbled to win Best Science Fiction Short Story for As Though I Were a Little Sun, published in Fireside Fiction last year.
It’s interesting to reflect on this story, which came about in quite a different way from my typical stories. I’d long been harbouring an itch to write a piece about a person transforming into a tree, but it wasn’t until Fireside’s guest editor Hal Y Zhang put out a call that I had a burst of inspiration. I think I must have written A Little Sun in just a couple of sittings, which I think adds to its looser, more lyrical style.
Another of my stories, Death By Water, was shortlisted in the same category! It’s about a cyborg archaeologist who investigates an old exploratory disaster on the planet Orpheus. You can find it in the anthology From the Waste Land.
Byron Writers Festival
I'm super excited to share this one. I'll be at Byron Writers Festival on 11-13 August!!!
I'll be on the following panels:
🌏 Worldbuilding - An Act of Wild Imagining (Saturday 12th, 2:30pm)
👾 Ethics of AI (Saturday 12th, 12:15pm)
🦖 What if Everything We Imagine Comes True (Sunday 13th, 9am)
If you’re going to be there, swing by and say hi! I find festivals such a strange, exciting, inspiring, and nervewracking experience—but the best part is being able to cross paths with other writers and readers.
You can check out the full program and get tickets at byronwritersfestival.com
Reading recommendations
Octane Render by David Blumenstein, a thought-provoking and timely comic about AI and artists
The Spider and Her Demons by sydney khoo. This book drops on 15 August and I’m so excited. ORDER A COPY. You will not regret it. It’s amazing. It’s a queer, monstrous, SE Asian diaspora coming-of-age urban fantasy-horror tale. I mean, check out this blurb:
Between surviving high school and working at her aunt’s dumpling shop, all Zhi wants is to find time for her friends . . . and make sure no one finds out she’s half spider-demon.
But when she accidentally kills and eats a man in front of the most popular girl in school, she discovers she might not be the scariest thing in the shadows.
sydney has truly written something remarkable, and I can’t wait for it to be released into the wild!
That’s all for this newsletter. I really enjoyed sharing some behind the scenes stuff with you from my works-in-progress, so I think I’ll keep that going in future missives. I’d love for you to join me on this Second Novel journey.
Thanks for reading, and until next time,
Grace
Congratulations!