D L Richardson

I've just returned from grocery shopping. There were two little mishaps - I parked the car, got out, realized I'd left my cash at home. Then after I'd gone home and gotten the cash walked up to the supermarket I found there was not a single shopping trolley. Aside from these two little mishaps, the grocery shopping experience was uneventful. I found many items marked down on sale that I could freeze for another day. Stocked up on loads of goodies for the pantry. All in all, an uneventful, same old, everyday occurrence that millions of us take for granted.

I paid $150 for food that will be eaten in a week, perhaps scorned at, critiqued, not eaten, devoured hungrily, most importantly, taken for granted that all this will happen again next week. No wonder I see food shopping as pointless and boring. And if I find it boring and pointless, I'm sure there are other who do too.

We no longer have to fight or hunt for our food. All the tribal, primal, animalistic components h…

I should be an analyst because I love to see changes in the market place. One change I've noticed recently is the humble book cover. I'm talking about YA book covers at the moment. They are starting to become a little more contemporary.

Three years ago all the YA covers featured girls in gowns. Seriously, ever second book had a girl in a gown. I even wrote an article about it and the article appeared in the NSW Writers Centre member magazine.



This was around the same time I was submitted Little Red Gem to agents and publishers. It's a paranormal story because it features magic, astral projection, and ghosts, but it kept getting rejected because, and I quote, "editors are suffering from paranormal fatigue". So I self published the book because I believe it is a damned good story. And readers agreed.

The point is, publishers and agents at the time wanted contemporary books. And rightly so. A market  clogged with one genre is like only having one type of food to ea…