Do I really have to name it? I know the author. She might kill me, and I lied and told her it was wonderful. But it was bad… really, really bad…

E. How did this book influence your writing?

I read it and thought…Hey, if that can get published, I’m laughing!!!

E. How do you manage your life and a budding writing career? What is the crappiest part?

I get impatient. I stress over money (something I would not have to deal with if I didn’t spend my entire advance cheque the day I get it). I am insanely jealous that my name is not JK Rowling.

E. Do you think you would ever deliberately write crap just for the money? 

Absolutely! Send me the money and tell me what you want!

E. I hear a new series can be expected, any teasers, please? Oh, and feel free to say crap!

Crap... OK, so I couldn’t resist that bit.

The next series is sort of anti-fantasy. It is set on a world where the hero’s challenge is to prove there is no magic and that it’s all a sham.

I am having a ball writing it. The good guys keep doing bad stuff and the bad guys are really quite nice and I took as many cliché fantasy things as I could and put them in there, just so I can do something completely different with them, or better yet, have the characters tell each other how lame they are. I have even managed to work a goatherder into book 2. I am so proud of that…

Even Hemingway said "the first draft of anything is crap". Crap is good. I do it all the time. I find it easier to fix up the crap than write the good stuff first time round.  The trick is realising that it’s crap and being brave enough to keep working on it until it isn’t crap anymore.

E. Would you say this is the worst interview you have ever had?

A. No. The worst interview I ever had was with a radio DJ whose first question was “So, what was it like writing the movie?

JF: What movie?

DJ: Final Fantasy.

JF: But I didn’t write Final Fantasy.

DJ: Are you sure? I thought I read somewhere that you wrote Final Fantasy.

JF: Sorry. But I didn’t write Final Fantasy.

DJ: Well… what was your involvement with the movie?

JF: (Getting a little peed off) I had nothing to do with the movie.

DJ: Oh…(long drawn out silence)… I’d better change the rest of these questions then.

Q Oh, in closing , if you could create a new character for FarScape what would it be? 

A.. A 40ish, dark-haired, rather voluptious writer who looks human and gets have Crighton whenever she wants him… Hmmm.. that would be me… what a coincidence!

I went to school today. A real school, to talk to a bunch of sixth graders about being a writer.

I had the best time. Once I’d established my credentials as a “cool” person—yes, I’ve met Spike from Buffy. Yes, I’ve met, Robin Hobb. And Terry Pratchett…. and I know people who write Stargate novels… that sort of thing—I was deemed acceptable.

They asked all sorts of questions. They wanted to know about who did the covers. Why I write fantasy. Who else do I know? For the record, Fiona McIntosh, Kate Forsyth and JK Rowling were the faves. Telling them I’d met Sean Williams didn’t mean much to them until I mentioned the magic words “Star Wars.”

They wanted to know how I got published. How come I live in Alice Springs and was I really Dace’s nana?

They didn’t know who Raymond Feist or Trudi Canavan were, so boasting of knowing both of them didn’t get me much kudos. Having met Sonny Whitelaw and Karen Miller was a big deal, (they write Stargate tie-ins, so that’s like, seriously cool) and they were quite impressed to learn that I know someone, who knows someone, who knew Elvis.

But the best part came when it was time to leave. Not only did the whole class want my autograph, some even came back for seconds (down maniacal ego… back in the box!).

Then they asked me if I’d come back and see them again, sometime.

Sure, I said. When do you want me to come back?

Tomorrow, they replied.:)

Last year, when I was a guest of the Singapore Writer’s Festival, Julliet Marillier, with whom I was sharing a panel on writing fantasy, announced that she—of the multiple Aurealis Awards for Best Australian Fantasy—doesn't actually write fantasy. She writes, so she claimed, “historical fiction with magic in it”.

Don’t worry, I didn’t get the distinction either. And didn’t really care, right them, because just after that, she announced to the room full of eager fans, “and  clearly, I take my writing much more seriously that Jennifer Fallon”. Ouch!

Now, besides the fact that I am apparently having too much fun as a writer to be taken seriously, I thought her attempts to distance herself from the genre that keeps a roof over her head, just a little bit, well, odd.

But then another author made a comment to me recently, which threw some light on the situation.  This second author told me the worst thing that ever happened to her was winning a genre award. (Obviously, she doesn't live here in the NT, was my first thought)

I was intrigued by this strange take on the idea of winning critical acclaim for something you've written, which seemed right up there with accepting an all-expenses-paid trip to Singapore to appear on a fantasy panel, just so you could tell everyone you didn’t write it.

The problem, my friend explained, was that it was an award for writing a brilliant romance, which she didn't think she'd written. She thought it was a crime thriller.

You see, proudly boasting of her achievement, the publishers shipped her books with stickers on the covers announcing the win... where they were promptly stuck on the shelves in the Romance section of the bookshops, where a good two-thirds of  her regular readers (i.e. like, you know...men) wouldn't have ventured, even had their life depended on it.

Even worse, they keep putting her subsequent novels in the Romance section, now, regardless of the subject.

So maybe that’s what Juliet was getting at. If you call yourself a fantasy writer, people will think you write fantasy. Give it another name, another genre, and you'll increase your audience tenfold.

And I can't say I blame her. Read Margaret Atwood’s, A Handmaid’s Tale. Nowhere will you find a word about it being science fiction, and I've heard she vehemently denies that’s what she writes, too. And she wins major literary awards.

I suspect it’s the publishers as much as the authors who are guilty of this disassociation. When I went looking for Neil Gaiman’s, American Gods at my local bookstore, I found it in the Crime section with nairy a hint of what the book contained, other than a hundred word blurb about unsolved murders on the cover.

In light of all this, it is with some trepidation, that I announce the Romantic Times loves me. Their review says things like "Fallon merges epic fantasy with political intrigue and delivers a thrilling, page-turning saga."

And ”...the complex characters and plot twists are perfect for those who like their sword-and-sorcery on a higher level."

How about "This is an ambitious, detailed epic whose end rips readers from a world they won't want to leave."

Okay. So I’m having too much fun. What the hell...

And yes, I do write fantasy:)

I think I've mentioned this before, but when I was in the third grade, our teacher asked us to write a story about what we thought the world would be like in the year 2000. Naturally, I produced an amazing epic that involved hotels on the moon, holidays in outer-space and robots that did the housework.

Clearly, the world has not gone to plan, although I believe I have also mentioned before, that I don’t have a prophetic bone in my body. But every now and then, something comes along and I look at it and say, yup, that’s what life is supposed to be like in the 21st century.

Had another moment like that today, when someone emailed me the world-shattering news that they’ve invented fabrics which can carry dynamic advertisements, graphics and constantly changing colour surfaces.

That’s right. The old t-shirt logo is a thing of the past. Soon we’ll be wearing neon signs.

According to the press release, “…Lumalive fabrics feature flexible arrays of coloured light-emitting diodes (LEDs) fully integrated into the fabric … These light emitting… can carry dynamic messages, graphics or multicoloured surfaces. Fabrics like drapes, cushions or sofa coverings become active when they illuminate in order to enhance the observer’s mood and positively influence his/her behaviour.”

Spent much of the morning checking through two weeks of accumulated snail mail, among which was the magazine Write Turn, which is the official publication of the NT Writers’ Centre.

As usual, I glanced through it, to see if there was anything interesting. Among the ads for grant applications and writers workshops were the NT Literary Award Winners.

Now, I can confidently say I will never win one of these awards. That's because they have the Red Earth Poetry Award (I don’t write poetry), the Dymocks Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Writers' Award (I am of neither Aboriginal nor Torres Strait Islander extraction). The Dymocks Arafura Short Story Award (I write novels). The Kath Manzie Youth Literary Award (too old). And the Chief Ministers NT History Book Award (I write fiction).

Tellingly, there is no section for published authors in the NT. This is because, I suspect, you could count the number of us who live in the NT on the fingers of one hand, even if you’d suffered through a nasty chainsaw accident.

But, despite this setback,  I am not giving up my question for local fame and recognition.

And I may have found something I can enter…

Ladies and gentlemen, I give you the NT SMS Poetry Competition.

Yes, that’s right, during National Poetry Week in September, some bright spark up here decided to run an SMS Poetry Competition.

Competitors had to—in 150 characters or less—write a poem about “steam”. And they won prizes for it.

I am now going to start practicing my SMS skills, starting with The Immortal Prince.

The new first paragraph will read like this:

As th last of th straglrz stumbld in2 th cave, Krynan lookd bck ovr hz shouldr at th end of th world, wondring vagly ? he felt nothng. He grabbd 4 th rocky ledge abov, ignoring th pain of hz burnd hands & pulld hmslf up, collapsng with relief as another bolt of lightning streakd th blood red sky, thck with volcanic ash.

Clearly this is an area in which I can excel…