The physical proofs for Black Soil White Bread are here!
But if you can’t wait, or you are an ebook only person, you can get hold of Black Soil White Bread on 10 June 2025.
I can’t wait to hear what you think.
Category: melbourne
Happy Sunday morning.
This week, my short story A Dwindled Dawn was published in Crab Apple Literary online magazine.
A Dwindled Dawn is set in 1880s Melbourne about a grieving father, a death photographer and his strange sister.
Read it here.
And in Radcliffe news, I’ve been over the moon with the reviews so far on goodreads and the Zon.
Don’t forget you can get the ebook here or order a paperback from Dymocks, Brunswick Bound, Waterstones or bookshop.org.
Great news, everyone!
My new gothic novella is out from Deadset Press on 26 August 2023.
A three-storey ramshackle house in North Melbourne is full of secrets. Tamsin is lead to the building by a voice inside her head – a voice that tells her ‘Death is Coming’. With no respite from the eternal summer heat, can Tamsin find out who death is coming for and solve the riddle of Radcliffe?
Pre-order the ebook version here. Paperback version coming soon.
Welcome to Write Through The Roof, the podcast for writers who want to improve their craft.
Episode 43 with Trevor Young – PR and marketing specialist
“If you’ve got a blog you’ve got a digital heartbeat. You’re not on rented land.”
Episode 43 – Trevor Young – Show Notes
- Books are more permanent but blogging helps develop a writer’s conversational personal style
- Writing in focussed short sharp bursts; doing less but doing more
- Fiction at night with beer and non-fiction in the morning with coffee
- Joining the dots, identifying a trend and developing a philosophy
- Tips on writing 1300 characters micro-stories – start with one tight idea
- Writing Melbourne Noir. Inspired by childhood reading of Ed McBain and Ian Fleming
- With non-fiction you need to know your market but with fiction you can write what you want to read
- Creating an alter-ego for fiction writing
- Seth Godin, Dorie Clark
- Micro Domination and the changing nature of blogs
- New book coming in October 2018 – Content Marketing for PR
“Getting more done by doing a little bit every day.”
“Edit your way to greatness.”
Podcast: Play in new window | Download
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Welcome to Write Through The Roof, the podcast for writers who want to improve their craft.
Episode 30 with Angela Savage – award winning writer & Director of Writers Victoria
“Good strong writing comes from using simple words in a compelling way”
Episode 30 – Angela Savage – Show Notes
- Writing on the train and “the work of the couch”
- Inspired by songwriters like Springsteen, Waits and Earl
- Wine for writing like drinking when playing pool
- South East Asia, reproductive health, kinship, culture and human nature
- “Just get the story down”
- Reading, study the craft, learning, playing with verbs, mentoring
- Critical reading – underlining and making notes in books
- Why crime fiction is so pleasurable for some readers
- Overdoing the research in historical fiction
- Inspired by Emma Viskic, Julie Koh, Barbara Kingsolver, Christos Tsiolkas
- Deadlier – 100 of the best crime stories written by women
- Daughter as sensitivity reader
“My writing was inspired by the fact no one wanted to hear my travel stories.”
“You need to know how it ends to know how it begins.”
Podcast: Play in new window | Download
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Sometimes all my writing efforts land at once and it’s been one of those weeks.
Not only did the new adventure Evangeline and the Mysterious Lights (and the new collection The Antics of Evangeline) go live, but I had articles published on Roads and Kingdoms, and FolkloreThursday.com.
For Roads and Kingdoms, I wrote about my own private Albanian breakfast and reliving holidays through food.
For FolkloreThursday.com, I continued my series on superstitions with ‘opening an umbrella inside’.
Sky Goddesses, Spring Mechanisms, or Sprites: Why Is it Bad Luck to Open an Umbrella Inside?
And coming later in October, I’m launching my writing craft podcast ‘Write Through the Roof’. The process of learning how to produce a podcast has been surprisingly fun and I’m reminded of how I used to play ‘radio stations’ with my cassette recorder in the 1980s. It’s reinforced the theory that your passions lie in the things you liked to do as a child.
And don’t forget if you like the Evangeline stories, please vote in the Christmas story poll. At the moment, it’s neck and neck between three side kicks!
Happy reading and writing!
Would you like a little taster of Evangeline and the Mysterious Lights? A wee amuse-bouche?
Well, here’s an extract from Chapter 1.
If you like what you read, Evangeline and the Mysterious Lights is available for pre-order now and is out 11th October 2017.
Or if you’d like all four novellas in one Collection, The Antics of Evangeline is also available for pre-order.
I’m back in the swing of this writing thing after a brilliant holiday and so what’s next for me?
Origins of Common Superstitions monthly series
I’m writing a monthly series for the fabulous Folklore Thursday exploring the origins of common superstitions.
So far, I’ve written about;
· Bad Luck comes in Threes: Matches, Murderers or Mathematics
· The Origins of ‘Touch Wood’: Tree Spirits, The True Cross, or Tag?
And there’s another eight more to come….
I’m thrilled to announce the launch of Evangeline and the Spiritualist – Episode 3 of The Antics of Evangeline. Available from today at Amazon.
A sarcophagus, séances and seed cake, Evangeline is back with another adventure.
Mrs Picklescott-Smythe’s mummy unwrapping soiree doesn’t quite go to plan, and for once it’s not Evangeline’s fault. 
Evangeline is a seventeen-year-old ex-urchin and aspiring world-famous inventress, recently resettled in Marvellous Melbourne with her long lost father, the Professor.
It’s the infamous spiritualist, Madame Zsoldas, who interrupts the party with a sinister warning and she is not the only who feels something strange.
When I started taking my writing seriously, I was pig-headed. Or maybe I was “clear about my goals.” I said I’d only write my own stuff. Fiction.
And to date, my stuff has been long form novels and novellas in the speculative fiction genre. I didn’t want to write other stuff for other people, I wanted to focus on my “Art”.
But a few weeks back, I read this article – The Secret to Doing What You Love. This gave me a kick in the bum. The author James Altucher argues that you don’t know what the future holds so you shouldn’t be anchored to one outcome.
Since then, I’ve been thinking of other opportunities to tell stories (aside from my current projects).
And here’s the first product.
Battle Lines Drawn in the Great Australian Smashed Avo Affair – a short piece featured on the fantastic Roads and Kingdoms about a recent furore in Australia about brunch, generational warfare and house prices.
Enjoy.
Evangeline and the Bunyip is due out any day now and I can’t wait to show you the cover.
But in the meantime, here’s a sneak peek at page 1.
Enjoy.
Evangeline and the Bunyip
Chapter 1
“And another thing, Evangeline. You mustn’t eat too much. There’ll be ample food and I know you have a… healthy… appetite,” Uncle Augie said.
Evangeline glanced at the buttery shortbread in her hand. What could Uncle Augie possibly mean? It was only her third.
I can be a bit single-minded. All work and no play makes Madeleine super freakin’ boring. I have to remember to stick my head out of the writing cave and do other stuff, like talk to people and put shoes on. Today I’m going to talk about stuff other than writing and Evangeline.
Writing is not my only creative outlet. I like to make tangible stuff. After spending all day in my mind, it’s fun to make stuff with my hands – cook or craft.
At the moment I seem to be obsessed with cross stitch patterns. My mum used to be an avid cross stitcher and has some beautiful framed work around her house. For some reason in the past week, I’ve been drawn to the world of cross-stitching and I’m stalking various patterns and kits on Etsy. Maybe I’ve also been inspired by the cover of the Steven Pressfield’s new book on writing (Nobody Wants to read your sh*t). I’m seeing some cross-stitch action in the near future.
I’ll be appearing at Continuum – Melbourne’s Speculative Fiction Convention on June 10 on a panel about “Magical Melbourne” at 10pm. We’ll be discussing Melbourne as a setting for speculative fiction and I’ll be talking about Evangeline and the Alchemist in steampunk Melbourne.
Check out the rest of the program here.
Now, what inspired the stories in The Antics of Evangeline?
Since I was a child, I’ve loved the weird, the wonderful and the supernatural. I am a big fan of Dr Who, Whedon-worlds, Hammer horror, the X-Files, folktales and all manner of forteana.
The Antics of Evangeline combine a steampunk setting with an exploration of folklore and the paranormal.
Today I’m talking more about the inspiration behind Evangeline and the Alchemist (coming in June 2016).
The book which sparked the whole Evangeline series was Blameless by Gail Carriger. (Yes, I read her series completely out of order.) Aside from being a cracking good read, I was struck by Carriger’s wit and the possibility of silliness within a Victorian world. As soon as I finished the last page, I was hit with an idea for a character, Evangeline.
I’ve tried writing urban fantasy before (vampire chef, anyone?) but it didn’t sit right with me. The humour felt forced and, to be frank, just plain dorky. Somehow in the artificial world of steampunk, I’ve felt the freedom to be silly and funny in an overblown and flowery way. Bring on the adjectives, chums! At first, this was a release from the more serious world of my Monolith series, but it has turned into something larger and Evangeline is now my first release as an independent author.
Aside from Carriger, I channelled some
- Wodehouse,
- with a little Hugh Lawrie as Prince George in Blackadder III,
- a bit of Kim Newman’s Anno Dracula,
- a dash of Sarah Water’s Tipping the Velvet,
- a heavy slog of Dr Who’s Talons of Weng Chiang, and
- Madame Vastra.
All these style influences mixed around in my brain to create Evangeline and her Marvellous Melbourne world.
Next time, I’ll continue with my Evangeline inspirations and move onto the story itself.
Evangeline and the Alchemist, the first novella in my Mystery and Mayhem in steampunk Melbourne series, is almost ready to be launched upon the world.
Stay tuned for updates, but get ready to meet Evangeline in June 2016.
Today I’m focusing on what inspired Evangeline and the Alchemist and in this post, I’m focusing on place. The place is Melbourne and Melbourne is where I live.
The Antics of Evangeline are all set in Melbourne in 1882-83. In that period, Melbourne was the second largest city in the British Empire outside London.
After the Gold Rush of the 1850s, there was a flood of cash in Melbourne. The Government invested heavily in construction and infrastructure, and there was an ill-fated property boom. During the Victorian era, many beautiful and decorative buildings were constructed. Many of these buildings still exist today and I’m lucky enough to walk past them daily. A constant reminder of our Victorian past.
