The last couple of months I’ve been flat out with 2 units of study in the Masters of Arts (Writing). This has left little time for writing. However, I will be using Mannok’s Betrayal for my major project in my current unit The Creative Artefact.
In the meantime, I’ve written a couple of guest posts.
Multiplying the Magic
(on writing and reading series)
A good series is a delight to the reader, author and publisher. How many of us remember those series we loved and avidly followed as children – Anne of Green Gables, Biggles, Enid Blyton’s Famous Five or the Faraway Tree, Narnia, Sherlock Holmes – the list goes on. And as we got older maybe we moved on to Agatha Christie, Georgette Heyer, Isaac Asimov, Janette Oke, Karen Kingsley or perhaps Stephen Lawhead. Well, you fill in the blanks with your favourite series author.
Series come in different guises depending on authorial choice, genre and reader expectations.
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Creating Worlds
(on building fictional worlds)
One Hundred Acre Woods, Never Land, Avonlea, Narnia, Hogwarts, Middlearth … these are all places that have delighted countless children – and let’s admit it – adults, filling them with wonder and whimsy.
For me one of the joys of reading is being transported to another place and time. It might be across the universe in a FTL spaceship or a Blue Police box. It might be back in time to encounter ancient or not so ancient societies and cultures (Victorian, Medieval, Roman, Chinese or Incan) or perhaps to a strange technological or dystopic future. Or it might be the streets of New York or Sydney, the vast Australian Outback or the green hills of England. Books have whisked me away to all these places – and more, many more.
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Jeanette O’Hagan