Pride: The Journey to Publication
After I serialized Pride on my website, I submitted it to a few publishers without any luck. That I had no idea what I was doing didn’t help. Come 2009, I applied for the Olvar Wood Fellowship – a program run by Queensland writers Inga Simpson and Nike Bourke that involved mentoring and workshops. At the time, I was struggling with the beginning of chronic neck issues – the result of hunching over a laptop while editing all day. I went to bed after one lengthy editing session with a tightness in my right shoulder blade. The next day I woke with spasms to the right side of my neck.…
Just Another Week in Suburbia: The Sex Scenes
The first real sex scene I tackled was in my YA novel Pride (the first draft was written in 2002). Early drafts implied that the protagonist, Luke, and his girlfriend, Amanda, had sex. It was the typical consummation of intimacy that was kept off the page. Pride was selected for the 2009 Olvar Wood Fellowship. Queensland author, Inga Simpson, mentored me through a redraft, in which I added this vague sex scene. She highlighted its shapelessness – the scene acted as this general overview that embodied the relationship as a whole. In the redraft(s) that scene gained definition, showing a young couple’s first time. When Busybird Publishing were trying to place Pride…