History is a thing of the past.
The Historical Novel Society of Australasia’s inaugural convention in Sydney last month proved that.
The response to the event far outweighed expectations. History and books about it - whether fiction or non fiction - has a great future.
I was honored to be invited to give the inaugural address.
There were many fantastic authors, agents and publishers sharing their expertise and experiences. One of the organizers, Elizabeth Storrs talked about her self published first historical novel, THE WEDDING SHROUD, which was so successful it led to a three book contract with Lake Union.
click the link to see the comic!
I was also fascinated with Sophie Masson’s crowd funding the translation and publication of Jules Verne’s classic adventure novel Mikhail Strogoff, which hasn’t been published in English for over a century.
(Well Classics Illustrated did it as a comic. It was the story that made me want to be a writer - I was about 7 years old - long before I discovered that Jules Verne didn’t write comics!)
The convention ended with Kate Forsyth, Jess Blackadder and myself performing a sex scene from Kate’s bestselling novel BITTER GREENS
Well not performing it … we just read the words.
BITTER GREENS shows the health of Australian historical fiction writing - it won won the American Library Association (ALA) Award for Best Historical Novel.
In the process of reading the scene we think we answered the question - how do you write a sex scene?
And we had a lot of fun doing it, too.
I can’t wait till the next convention in 2017 in Melbourne - this one was such a success, two years seems much too far away.
Well done Chris Foley, Elisabeth Storrs, Wendy Jean Dunne, Diane Murray and Greg Johnston. We all look forward to the next one.
LAKE UNION are publishing my ISABELLA worldwide on 21st April and there are 2o copies to give away on GOODREADS.
Just follow the link here for a chance to win!
You will love it or you will hate it … I have never written a book that has divided opinion so much. Make up your own mind - go here to enter the competition!.
April 13, 2015 at 5:06 pm
Just finished Stigmata. Very hard to read. You are a great writer and must have studied a lot of history. Now I have the Silk Road to read.