Songster and Wordsmith

  Today I'd like to welcome Australian author Mirren Hogan to my blog for a virtual coffee and chat. Mirren and I met through my sister and we started out sharing a market stall together, as you do. We were both writers and quickly became friends. It's always wonderful to be able to share success stories of friends and local writers. Mirren has written many novels, as you do, and has now finally had her hard work turn into success with not one, but two fantasy series accepted for publication, the second series just announced today. DL: Firstly, how do you take your coffee and when is your favourite time to partake? Mirren: I'm a coffee philistine, I only like the sachet latte crap, and not very often. I prefer tea: Earl Grey, hot. Morning, noon and afternoon. D L: You're a writer, a freelance editor, and an acquisitions editor for a small press publisher. Is it hard switching hats? And do you have any tips for others who juggle writing and editi

  Each year the writers group I belong to comes up with a project for NaNoWriMo, National Novel Writing Month. Our 2015 concept was created when another author and myself were at the annual speculative fiction conference held in Canberra, Conflux, now in its 12th year. We were sipping a glass of wine at the end of the day of listening to the most stimulating conversation ever!   Why is it that I can be in a room full of writers and readers and feel engaged enough to speak, take me some place else and I'd rather sit in the corner and talk with the plant.   Anyway, Cat had an ide about an alien zoo, and we brainstormed and our alien zoo was filled with shape-shifters and they had to plan an escape together with only limited places on the spaceship. Because Cat and I came up with the idea we decided we'd be the two zoo keepers (one good, one bad) and we'd let the other writer in our group be the in the enclosures.   Here's the thing about this project. It

Opening the email inbox this morning, I can see that my monthly free magazine of short stories have arrived. Volume 6 or something. Could be Volume 2 or 150 it makes no difference. I haven't even read the first 5 magazines. It's not because I don't want to read these stories. It's because they have nil value. You mean I can stop eating this stuff because I didn't pay for it? That's what free books are. Nil value. I can slip over the free books on the kindle, I can stop reading halfway through, or stop after the first chapter. Yet if I've paid money for a book, well I want to keep reading till the end to get my money's worth. Same as if I pay $5 for a bottle of shampoo, I'm gonna use it all up even if I have to slice open the top and scoop out the goo with my finger. Free books are a useful marketing tool to attract new readers. That's what everyone says. And I can see the point of the exercise.  But, does free even work when it comes to b