So it’s been two weeks since I last posted. Seems longer. I had intended to update at least weekly, but…

I’ve been trying to strike that balance between writing and platform and for the last fortnight that balance needed to tip heavily in favour of the writing.

As I earlier said one of my goals was to submit my writing to awards this month. The first of these is the Katherine Susannah Prichard Speculative Fiction Awards. I have completed a new short story to submit. It’s a bit different from my more traditional Fantasy writing, and that brought a different set of challenges with it.

It started as a draft of just under a thousand words, and in completing it I built it up to about 1600 before editing it back down again to about 1550. This makes it on the short side; most of my short stories are about 3,000 (though I’ve got one nearly complete at 7,500… which is a little long really – a ‘long story’ perhaps?).

The KSP awards aren’t announced until August, so now I’ve got a few months to sit tight and hope. In the meantime I’m trying to complete another story for the ABR Elizabeth Jolley Short Story Prize. The timeline’s getting tight but a little more midnight oil might see it complete in time. It’s more Rural Fiction than Fantasy, and the realism is a bit of a change of pace for me (although I consider my Fantasy to be ‘realistic fantasy’ – oxymoron perhaps). I find I’m working harder on the plotting, but the characters are flowing pretty well and I’m quite happy with the setting. I’ve put an early draft on the site already so feel free to give me some feedback on it.