Follow this link

http://www.voyageronline.com.au/books/extracts/V15_UNDIVIDED.pdf

Sorry I can't make it live. I'm at Melborne Airport about to board a flight and my iPad doesn't like the blog app:(

Check these out... the awesome Dutch covers of the Wolfblade Trilogy (the first twoo books, anyway).

I likee bery much:)

At the risk of sounding like I'm looking for things to complain about after the Worldcon panel stuff up, it occurs to me that all the panels I was placed on (that I won't be there for) were with other Aussie/Kiwi authors. Now I love many of these people dearly, respect their work, think they are fabulous writers, count myself a friend of quite a few of them, and I'm sure we'd have had a rollicking good panel, but here's my question:

If you have writers attending from all over the world (and the list is spectacular), why put together panels made up of authors who all know each other, have probably all done this before, that you can hear at any con, any time, anywhere in the country? Are the riff-raff not permitted to mix with the hoi-polloi? Shouldn't this be a great opportunity to mix it up a bit and get perspectives from both local and international guests?

Just a thought...

PS: Worldcon organisers have offered to change my panels for ones happening when I'm, well, there, and I've had an offer to do a swap from another author (so generous, thank you Mary Victoria) but I haven't seen a program to decide what other panels I think I can make a contribution to. 

I think I'm going to pick panels where I don't know any of the authors. I'd like to learn something from the panels, too, not just catch up with my mates  for a weekend, regardless of how much fun that might be. :)

I was asked for some advice recently, about authors and blogging, which made me think (never a good thing), and from which I compiled the following list

1. Never say rude things about your publisher online, even if they are irritating, slow, inefficient, unprofessional and flat-out unbelievable in their dealings with you. Even if every word of your tale of woe is true, they don’t think they are any of those things and they will demonstrate their resentment of your poor opinion of them by dropping you like a hot brick.
2. Never diss editors. (See Rule 1). Editors may not have the power to kill your writing career yet, but they move on. They move up. They remember.
3. Never blog about your bowel movements (unless you’re writing a medical blog about IBS symptoms)
4. Never rant about how much you deserved an award (whether you won it or not). Humble is good. Even if — in your heart of hearts — you believe your work is the greatest literary masterpiece ever committed to paper, it is uncool to say so. Shock, delighted surprise and humility are the best reactions. Fake it, if you have to.
5. Never identify friends and family without their permission. You can be the biggest publicity-hungry media-whore on Earth if you want, but your friends and family are not you. They deserve their privacy.  Blog about them by all means, but do not identify them by name, where they work, link to their Facebook page, advertise where they hang out, or post their cell-phone number without their permission. It is the short road to losing friends and pissing off family.
6. Never blog endlessly about your chronic flatulence issues. Too much information, dude. The same goes for most ongoing non-life-threatening conditions. You will get sympathy at the outset for the poor quality of the pedicure that caused your problem, but after a while, blogging every other day about your ongoing (and mind-numbingly boring) battle with the yellow spotty fungus that is discolouring your toenails will turn people off.
7. Never provide specifics about how much you earn. There are some out there who think authors should talk about their income to get rid of the popular fallacy that all publishing deals are six-figure windfalls that will set you up for life. My approach is more pragmatic. There is a vast difference between an author's gross income and their net income due to things like currency exchange, tax-deductible expenses (of which I am an awesome collector), commissions, and a million other little things that go into calculating our earnings. So, do I brag that I grossed a million bucks last year, or explain how I finished up with a taxable income of $127? My solution – neither. We simply will not speak of it again.
8. Never blog about cleaning the kitty-litter tray. I mean... what’s to say?
9. Never attack reviewers who didn’t like your work. It’s OK to blog about the reviews, but it’s dangerous to start attacking reviewers. I will point out factual inconsistencies if they exist in reviews of my work, but I’ll do that for the good reviews as well as the bad. If the review is particularly silly, I might also question the credentials of the reviewer. I believe a reviewer's credentials are fair game, because when you set yourself up as a critic you are claiming some expertise in that area, so you should be prepared to stand by your opinions and back it up with something, like, you know... a basic command of the English language, for example. But the bottom line is, reviews are just reviews. They will be good and bad. Suck it up.
10. Never blog personal attacks on other authors. It’s OK not to like another author’s work; it’s not OK to diss the author. I am not a fan of Dan Brown’s books, but I’m sure he’s a very nice person and I am in awe of his storytelling ability, even if I’m not a fan of his writing style. I could (but I won’t) list a score of other writers whose work leaves me cold. That doesn’t make the authors bad people, it just means I’m not a fan. As some readers have trouble understanding the difference between a person and their work, it’s best not to give them any fodder for their paranoia.