January 2012
1 post
1 tag
Win $250 AUD by making a MONEY RUN trailer
If you’re a filmmaker in Australia, the United Kingdom, Canada, the USA or New Zealand (or you want to be one), here’s an opportunity to have some fun, grow your portfolio, and maybe win some cash.
STEP 1:
Read MONEY RUN if you haven’t already. (Don’t worry — it’s short and awesome.) If it’s not in your local library or bookshop, copies are $19.95...
December 2011
2 posts
Clarifications of my year in no man's land
A couple of readers took offense at my last article. People often do, but for once I’m willing to concede that it might be my own fault. In the interest of clarification, here is one of the comments:
Camille: So the only way men will read women authors is if they dare themselves to do it, as a *challenge*? Like, how many weights can I lift or how long can I hold my breath? Or is this...
Reflections on a year spent reading books by women
It was a little more than a year ago now that I was walking through Central Park in NYC with another young adult author (the gifted Justine Larbalestier), and she asked me if I liked any books by women. I was surprised by the question, but I shouldn’t have been. I’d just listed my favourite authors as Matthew Reilly, Chuck Palahniuk, Lee Child, Ben Elton and Robert Silverberg. There was a healthy...
November 2011
1 post
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My crime book's journey to publication
Before I talk about Irredeemable, I need to thank you. Yes, you. No, not that guy behind you. You. Because six books have been shortlisted to represent the Australian Capital Territory in the National Year of Reading 2012 collection, and one of these books was Hit List.
It’s rare for a YA novel to be nominated for an award alongside adult books. It’s especially unusual for a...
October 2011
2 posts
1 tag
Round One
A few people get to read my manuscripts before they’re published. The first round includes my fiancée, my brother, my parents, my agent, and occasionally a trusted friend or two. The novel will be re-edited based on the feedback I get from these people.
The second round includes my publisher and her team of editors. The book is emailed back and forth, and re-edited two or three more times....
Life as an unpublished author, take two
As far as I can tell, there’s no “typical reader” of this blog. Some of you are fans of the Ashley Arthur or Agent Six books. Others are just wandering folks who enjoy humour, philosophy, or pseudo-political rambling. Several of you are my friends and family. Hi Paul.
But one thing I do know is that many of you are aspiring writers. This is an audience I don’t cater to often, perhaps...
August 2011
5 posts
The apocalypse we forgot about (afterwards)
Two days ago, Labor Senator Darren Cheeseman was ridiculed in Parliament for a speech he wrote in 2009. This speech included the following warning about the impacts of carbon pollution:
“The Great Ocean Road, Mr. Speaker, an icon of Australia and the engine room of our local tourism economy, will be largely destroyed. It will be breached in place after place, if sea level rise is as expected. Huge...
1 tag
A riot is always everyone else's fault
A reader recently asked me if I felt responsible for the youth riots in the UK, since my book (in which the teenage heroine becomes a thief after a lifetime of poverty under a corrupt police force) was published there only a few weeks ago. I said no – firstly because I’d be astonished to learn that it had sold enough copies to have such an impact, secondly because I suspect people who smash...
1 tag
An interview with Jack Heath
by ThirstforFiction
Jack Heath is the author of the middle-grade novel Money Run, which is just being published here in the UK by Usborne, and as part of his Blog Tour he’s here to answer some questions I had for him which will hopefully be of interest to you too! I didn’t expect too much from Jack- but he’s almost written an essay for each question!
ThirstforFiction: How did you get into...
1 tag
Writing for the video game generation
Most of the authors I’ve met have no interest in video games. There are a number of reasons for this, ranging from the practical (those who devote their lives to literature usually don’t have room for much else) to the demographic (based on my observations, authors are usually women aged 35 and over, and while games are less and less exclusive to teenage boys, we haven’t...
2 tags
10 Tips For Aspiring Theives
by Ashley Arthur
1 - Let people underestimate you Forget balaclavas, body armour and utility belts. Thieves survive by looking harmless. If you’re a fifteen-year old girl like me, the best camouflage is a schoolbag and an iPod. The more boring – and bored – you look, the less anyone will suspect that you have a grappling hook launcher in your bag.
2 - Go for the big prizes The ...
July 2011
4 posts
1 tag
Top tips for young writers
I started writing my first book at the age of thirteen, mostly to impress a girl. I discovered two things – one: that doesn’t work. Two: writing is addictive. Four years later I was shoving a complete manuscript into an envelope, scrawling the address of a publisher on the front, and pushing the package through the slot of a mailbox. Eighteen months after that, I was wearing a borrowed...
Extreme book research
When you spend your life writing about safe-cracking, skydiving and bomb-defusing, the fastest way to lose your readers is to skimp on the research. They’re already suspending as much disbelief as they can. The more preposterous the story you’re building, the more solid the foundations have to be. This is a great excuse to do things that are outside your comfort zone. You may not...
2 tags
Amazon eats Book Depository, and by the way,...
You may have heard that Amazon, the world’s biggest online bookseller, has just purchased Book Depository, the world’s cheapest online bookseller. Some people are upset about this, because monopolies are bad, or because the prices on Book Depository might go up, or because the range might go down, or because they might stop selling books all together. Amazon certainly seems to be...
June 2011
2 posts
1 tag
Money Run is out in the UK!
Some of my favourite books are Ice Station, which was enthusiastically recommended to me by my Dad, Snakehead, which was left in my Christmas stocking by my Mum, Artemis Fowl, which was given to me as a birthday present by a brilliant clarinetist named Jono, and Misery, which was loaned to me by a woman named Venetia who is now my fiancée (that’s not the only reason I proposed, but I...
2 tags
How to save the bookshops
Last week, Minister for Small Business Nick Sherry predicted that brick-and-mortar bookshops would disappear within five years. His intention was to encourage booksellers to embrace online retail; however, all he did was make them angry. (Who didn’t see that coming? Just him, I suspect.)
“Whoa, hey, relax. What’s the big deal?”
For the record, I understand his point....
1 tag
Dead Man Running: Announcement
I have good news and bad news. Which would you like first?
The bad news? Okay. I don’t know why I bothered asking – no-one ever says they want the good news first. You can’t enjoy the good news if you know there’s bad news coming.
The bad news is that the release of Dead Man Running has been postponed, so you’ll have to wait until 2012 to find out what happens to Agent...
May 2011
2 posts
1 tag
How to beat a troll using your own ignorance
If you spend enough time on the internet, at some point you’re going to come across haters, flamers, trolls, and garden-variety idiots. They’re the unfortunate but inevitable consequence of anonymity, and the only tried and true method of dealing with them is to ignore them. No matter what they say, if you refuse to give them the attention they crave, they’ll eventually...
A cheerful funeral
I’d just turned 15 when the World Trade Center fell. The newspaper told me that 3,000 people were dead, and while I knew this was a terrible thing, it took me a while to understand the world had fundamentally changed. An earthquake in India had killed 12,000 people earlier that year, and this hadn’t noticably altered the way anyone spoke or behaved or thought.
Of course, earthquakes...
March 2011
2 posts
1 tag
Are game companies really as evil as we think?
In a recent video blog, I suggested that Apple products were overpriced. Amongst the usual flood of death threats, I found this interesting comment from a viewer:
btw this kind of stuff also happens in the gaming industry. it takes $10 for the game company to make one copy of the game. then they sell it to us for $100 or more. this also happens with the game consoles and computers. the truth...
1 tag
The Pillowman
I’ve been to a lot of great plays. Hamlet, A Doll’s House, Uncle Vanya, Doubt. But my very favourite play is one I’ve never seen performed, but only read: The Pillowman, by Martin McDonagh.
The plot: A writer has been arrested, and he doesn’t know why. Nor does he have much time to figure it out, since the police interrogating him are corrupt, and will stop at nothing to get to the answers...
January 2011
3 posts
1 tag
House Fire
My computer is full of deleted scenes from my novels. Most are too crap to publish. But I’ve just decided that this one isn’t.
If you enjoyed Hit List, hopefully you’ll like this alternative prologue. And if you haven’t read Hit List, hopefully this encourages you.
House Fire
by Jack Heath, 2010
I don’t deserve to die, Kathy Connors thought. I’m not...
4 tags
On the Tucson shootings
In Arizona on Saturday, a man got out of a taxi in a supermarket parking lot, drew a Glock 9mm pistol, and fired 31 shots into the surrounding crowd. Six people were killed, including a federal judge and a nine-year old girl. Fourteen more were injured, including US Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords, who is currently in hospital with a bullet in her brain.
The gunman was trying to reload when a...
1 tag
I'm pregnant!
Well, no. Not really. Men can get pregnant (and when it happens, it’s weirder than The X-Files) but in my case, it’s a figurative pregnancy. What I mean is that in nine months time, I will have a bundle of joy to show off.
I’m thrilled to report that I’ve finished writing my new book… and it’s a Six of Hearts book.
Wait, what? You said Third Transmission would...
December 2010
2 posts
3 tags
Five things even I know about filmmaking (that the...
I went to see Harry Potter 7: Part 1 the other day.
I’m not sure why. I didn’t like Harry Potter 1, 4 or 5. (That’s not to say I liked 2, 3 or 6. I skipped them.)
This is strange to me, because I enjoyed the books, and I’m not one of those people who automatically hates film adaptations of their favourite novels. I think the movie is almost never as good, but that...
4 tags
Prices are going up!
The golden age is over. This Tuesday, the 7th of December, the price of autographed books on this site is going to go up from $17.99 AUD to $19.99.
I thought long and hard about whether or not to write this article - the sensible thing would probably be to change my prices without calling any attention to it. But I figured I owed my loyal customers an explanation.
It’s partly because...
November 2010
1 post
2 tags
What's the big deal? THIS is the big deal.
Gay marriage has recently gone from being a hot topic to a sweltering topic in Australia. When surveyed, 22 of 39 government MPs expressed support for laws allowing same-sex couples to marry, and only seven were opposed. But despite this, they show no signs of changing the law. On the other side of parliament, Liberal Senator George Brandis has made the following unintentionally funny statement on...
October 2010
4 posts
2 tags
Vampires, serial killers and blood-lust - a chat...
For a writer, few things are more exciting than experimenting with a new style. It challenges us, teaches us, makes us feel young and inexperienced again. It allows us to imitate - and sometimes surpass - the novels we admire.
But there are always risks involved. What if the audience rejects the change? What if writing a Mills & Boon romance is harder than it looks? What if some authors just...
5 tags
5 reasons Paul W.S. Anderson is the greatest...
Hooray - it’s new video day!
I should also mention that Jeremy Bolt, (Anderson’s producer) is a hell of a filmmaker.
As always, if you like the video, show your friends. If you don’t, show your enemies. MITIFOTIT: Most Interesting Thing I Found On The Internet Today
Thinkgeek.com is currently selling lawn zombies. I want one.
4 tags
Mum! People are making fun of me on the internet!
There are two kinds of novelists - those who write for themselves, and those who write for others. The former often produce autobiographical or semi-autobiographical work (Bret Easton Ellis is a good example). The latter usually make stories that are more escapist. I am one of those - you’ll rarely see me exploring my own psychological issues through a novel.
I have photography for that.
...
7 tags
"Screw you, Einstein!" say nutbags.
For those of you who haven’t heard of Conservapedia, allow me to ruin your day. It’s basically Wikipedia, but re-written to appeal to conservatives who’d rather not be exposed to Wikipedia’s “liberal bias”.
To give you some idea of how un-biased Conservapedia is, here’s a random sample of text taken from today’s featured article.
Unlike...
September 2010
5 posts
8 tags
#informationagefail
Yesterday I considered changing my Twitter username from followjackheath to jackheathauthor. If I ever accidentally post something interesting enough to get retweeted by a million people, I want those million people to know that I have books for sale.
Clever girl.
But it sounded like a lot of effort to make a new account, refollow all the people I was following before, message all my...
3 tags
Neatness eating
When I eat breakfast, I pour cereal into the bowl, then milk, then I start eating. If I haven’t used enough milk, the cornflakes at the bottom are dry by the time I reach them, so I add more and continue eating. If I’ve used too much milk, I eat all the cornflakes and a puddle of milk remains, so I add more cornflakes to absorb it and continue eating. I basically keep pouring and...
2 tags
Blood, brains and testicles: an interview with KJ...
Having been to lots of writer’s festivals, I’ve befriended lots of authors. I’ve recently decided to abuse this privelige by interviewing some of them for my own (and your) amusement.
KJ Taylor is the author of four fantasy novels so far, published in several countries and languages. The Dark Griffin was described by acclaimed writer Anthony Eaton as “One to watch out for....
5 tags
Flies are gross and smart people are depressing
I had a conversation with my friend Adam the other day. Adam’s basically a genius in all the ways I’m not. Not only does he have an expert understanding of all the sciences, including physics, chemistry, and biology, but he’s also good with “tact”, “diligence” and “humility” and “maths”, three arenas in which I am miserably...
August 2010
6 posts
3 tags
Characters who transform themselves: Siren, by...
Few writers have the patience to keep developing a character over more than one book – too often they become static. Miss Marple was a weed-pulling tweed-wearing genius in each of her twelve novels. Jack Reacher will be a homeless, womanising vigilante for the rest of his days. The worst offender is James Bond, who is so averse to new concepts that he orders the same drink in every bar.
...
3 tags
How would you kill a million people? Explain your...
Students at a school in Western Australia were recently given the following assignment: plan out a terror attack on “an unsuspecting Australian community.” Assume that you have access to chemical or biological weaponry, and that “your goal is to kill the MOST innocent civilians in order to get your message across.”
My initial reaction was the same as the one you probably...
6 tags
I wish my taxes were higher. (No, really.)
Well, it’s election time again. Two people appear on the TV, and each denounces the other as a lying, backstabbing hypocrite who’ll destroy this country. The voters are presented with a ballot paper that has neither of their names on it, but that’s okay - we all arbitrarily picked a party when we were teenagers anyway, so we just vote for whoever has familiar letters next to his...
4 tags
Will the voices in my head start using real words,...
You know how some people get songs stuck in their head? Can’t stop thinking them, can’t stop humming them, can’t stop saying the lyrics under your breath? Actually, I think that happens to everyone. It certainly happens to me. At the moment, I have the theme to “Boston Legal” stuck in my head, which is particularly annoying, as the only lyrics are “Bow,...
4 tags
Am I sick?
How forgetful would I have to be before I officially have a disability? Anyone who knows me (and a few who don’t) knows that I have a terrible memory. Names, faces, places, dates, words … there is no fragment of information in the universe so interesting, important or oft-repeated that my superhuman powers of forgetfulness are incapable of dematerialising it into a fine mush of...
4 tags
The God Paradox
Disclaimer: This post isn’t going to be about whether God is real or imagined. But just the same, if you hate having your beliefs challenged, you might not want to read it. (Then again, if you hate having your beliefs challenged, then what’s the point of reading anything? You might as well just go to bed and hide under the blanket with your fingers in your eyes until you’re...
7 tags
Fiction makes the end of the world FUN!
I spent the weekend in the Blue Mountains for Literary Salon 6 - a quarterly gathering of writers wherein we discuss two books and try to impress one another by reading our work. Also, there’s usually cake.
But I’m totally in it for the literary discussion. I swear.
Our host was the eternally spooky Tara Moss, whose novel The Blood Countess will be released this Halloween.
...
July 2010
18 posts
7 tags
Everyone is slightly more monstrous than you...
I recently read a newspaper article by Alexandra Adornetto (young author of Halo) about how Edward Cullen is the most desirable man who never lived and how he’s raising the bar for smelly teenage boys everywhere. Then I read a follow-up article by William Kostakis (young author of Loathing Lola) about how Edward Cullen is a creepy, sexist, manipulative pedophile, adored by moronic teenage...
3 tags
I wish I was a fat guy.
Over the years, I’ve often wanted to be really muscular. I’ve sometimes said I wished to be skinny. I’ve wanted to be taller. I’ve even wished to have cool scars on my face. But it’s only when I said I wished I was a fat guy that anyone objected.
“You makin’ funna me?”
Yes, I know we have a problem with obesity in this country. I know that...
5 tags
Swearing is bad, but killing is AOK!
I have trouble predicting which things will be deemed acceptable in my books and which won’t. For instance, in The Lab, I was allowed to portray Agent Six, my teenage superhero protagonist, shooting someone in the head. (Although he felt really bad about it afterwards.) But when a character used the word “bitch”, I was asked to remove the line. My readers, apparently, are too...
7 tags
Nothing is more dangerous than an idiot with a...
It’s so easy to confuse poetry with wisdom. The other day I found this phrase on a website of quotes about love: “If you can’t understand my silence, you don’t deserve my words.”
That’s a catchy turn of phrase, with nice symmetry. I found myself nodding in agreement, until I thought about what it actually meant, which was this: “Never tell anyone what...
4 tags
Life is tough as a tall pansy
There are four types of men in the world. Tall pansies, short pansies, tall jerks, and short jerks. The difference between pansy and jerk is obvious; the difference between tall and short is less so. It’s not just a difference in height - short people are conditioned by society to feel like they have something to prove. Like they have to compensate. So, when you put these four types of...
4 tags
How to win Australian Idol
The latest season of Australian Idol (more commonly known as “the Big Brother kareoke championship”) has concluded. For the purposes of seeming informed I have attempted to discover the identity of the winner, but Google has failed me, and I don’t know where else to turn. Lord knows I’m not turning on the TV.
Say what you will about the tape that kills you when you...
6 tags
Ask a nerdy question, get a nerdy answer
People write to me for a number of reasons. Sometimes they hate my books so much that they decide to punish me by clogging up my inbox. Sometimes they love my books so much that they decide to reward me by clogging up my inbox. And sometimes they just want to complain about something called “income tax”. (I can tell those types because they use bizarre words like “arrears,”...
5 tags
Am I still a sexist pig if it was totally an...
It’s pretty easy to avoid blatant sexism in your writing, although some writers make it look hard.
“Shush, Bella. The men are talking.”
But subtle sexism is trickier. See if you can count how many times I was accidentally sexist in this extract from the book I’m currently writing:
“She doesn’t look familiar,” the gun shop owner said.
...