Category: Writing
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Hardboiled Holmes: Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s The Valley of Fear
In researching a new novel, I stumbled across a curious tidbit within The Scientific Sherlock Holmes by James O’Brien. It briefly mentioned The Valley of Fear, one of the four Sherlock Holmes novels, as an early precursor to the hardboiled novel. Intrigued as Holmes coming across a mystery, I immediately sought out the story. I’m a perpetual dabbler…
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The Terrifying Act of Making Resolutions
Since I was a teenager, I wanted to be the lead singer in a rock and roll band. It was something about watching Renee Zellweger rocking out on the top of Empire Records that did it for me. Everything in that moment was thrown to the wind in the name of music. The movie finished,…
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A Year of Good Reading: 2015 in Review
At the start of 2015 I wrote a blog post about my year of good reading – usually I try to read the complete works of an author in one year. This year was Edgar Allan Poe. How’d I go? Well, I failed.
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Notes from the World Fantasy Convention 2015
It’s been a month since I got back from New York and I’ve finally had a chance to read through all my notes from the World Fantasy Convention. I travelled there with a grant from the Melbourne UNESCO City of Literature, and part of my grant was to bring knowledge back to writers in Melbourne.…
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A First-Timer’s Guide to the World Fantasy Convention
In which Kat discusses the World Fantasy Convention, writerly adventures and the joys of bagels. It’s been an intense, insane weekend and I’ve finally had time to sit down and collect my thoughts. Last weekend I attended the World Fantasy Convention for the first time. It was a fantastic experience, one of those defining moments in…
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What I Learned from Genrecon 2015
A room full of genre fiction writers is my idea of heaven. It’s nice to be in a room full of people who won’t roll their eyes when you proudly announce “I write genre fiction!” So it was a no brainer to go to Genrecon in Brisbane this year, attended by writers of romance, sci-fi,…