What a couple of years! I realise now (not being the most consistent poster of content) that I haven’t updated this space for exactly three years! Adelaide Supa 2019 – Adelaide Supa 2022. Wow!
I have been doing book stuff off and on over that period. My last con was Melbourne Supanova 2020. That was in March – a week later this whole pandemic thing started getting super real – you may have heard of covid.
Aside from a couple of Adelaide Toy and Comic Fair appearances in 2021, that was it for eventing for a long, long time.
It was so good to be back. I can’t quite explain the energy I get from those events. It really does keep me driven to keep writing. It’s a combination of being inspired by other artists and what they are doing as well as that feeling I get from returning readers coming to say hi or to get the next book in a series. I really missed that over the last two and a half years.
It was fitting that Adelaide Supanova was my first event back. It was my first ever event (2016) and I always get good feels with the ‘home’ crowd!
I was also exhibiting next to Katie Fraser (same as my first event), as well as being surrounded by other authors (Kylie Leane and Karen Carlisle) and a number of other artist alley regulars I hadn’t seen for years. There were also some new authors and it was good to meet Melbourne’s Andre Jones and Pete Aldin on their first Adelaide tour! So good.
It all reminded me of how entwined doing the events is with consistent writing and publishing (for me at least). I get inspired by event feels to want (perhaps need) to experience it all again and you know I need new work to keep the buzz going in a successful way. Write to exhibit, exhibit to write, or something like that.
As it happens, I had two books completed in the void years and – with the awesome help from my editor Lisa Chant – we were able to publish them a fortnight apart so one launched at each event. More about Hart & Sol – cowritten with the legendary Russell Emmerson – and Zombie RiZing: Death’s Door in other posts. For the purposes of this post it’s enough to say the events gave the momentum to turn finished stories into completed books and also the energy to be planning works and events into 2023.
Yes – the next book IS The Parade – thanks for everyone who asked about it on the weekend at Supanova. It’s real, it’s well underway (halfway through the draft) and it will be out early next year. And it will be a series.
The inaugural Book Fair Australia in Sydney was the first event of its kind – a gathering of authors of all genres in one large event for book fans. I love the idea behind this – Australia totally needs an event like this to be a permanent fixture on the calendar (maybe one day an event that does multiple cities). It was fantastic. There was a real community feel between authors, readers and organisers. I met so many amazing authors doing all sorts of things across the spectrum of publishing as well as a bunch of interesting people in general. Very inspiring.
It was also great to get to do my thing outside of Adelaide once again.
Congrats to everyone involved – I’ll be back next year!
So there we are, we’re out the other side of whatever the clusterflick you’d describe the last couple of years and I’m super pleased to be back writing and exhibiting. Thanks to everyone who has been in touch over the interim, it was really appreciated. Bigger and better things ahead.
Let’s start with finishing the draft of The Parade, then making it good, then looking at the events calendar for 2023!