How do endings end? If you’ve followed me this far, I thank you sincerely. But October is almost over, and these weeks are drawing to a close. To borrow the immortal puzzlement of the undergraduate: what to put in a conclusion? I’m really bad with goodbyes. I never know how to end, to close, to […]

You worked with the writers from the Singapore side of this collaboration on the story each of them submitted, but working with us, and with Ethos, two independent publishers, has meant that you have been involved in small and large ways across the whole publication. Tell us a bit about your role as Editor for […]

I love ghosts, and their stories. Even (oh, especially) the badly written ones. The Russell Lee ones from my boyhood. The jump-scares. The ones that don’t make sense. The ones Grandma tells so matter-of-factly. The ones which are definitely true, because it happened to somebody’s mother’s friend’s cousin. Ghosts are slippery. They pass through walls. […]

What do stories mean? What lessons can we learn from them?  As a History major at the University, I’ve wrestled with these questions for a while. What could be a more legitimate account than History-capital-H? What could be truer than something buttressed by books, supported by sources, established by experts, proofread by professors, and printed on […]

In the Beginning, there was the Word.  Really?  Not for me. I couldn’t even speak or read English until I was seven or so. I have dim childhood memories of opening storybooks, and pretending to read them to my toys. At the kindergarten, Mummy was embarrassed because I happily spoke more Hokkien (grandfather’s Chinese dialect) […]

In my time as a writer, I’ve taken part in maybe five or six NaNoWriMos. NaNoWriMo, or National Novel Writing Month, is an event where participants around the world sprint towards writing 50,000 words in the month of November. The idea is, we all want to write a novel ‘someday’ and the best way to […]

It’s on again—the Australian Short Story Festival! As the name suggests, it is a festival dedicated to the short story in written and spoken forms. It brings together local, national and international short story authors and oral storytellers in a culturally diverse and vibrant celebration. We’ve published a lot of short story collections over the years, and have […]

I recently watched the very enjoyable Amazon/BBC adaptation of Good Omens, starring Michael Sheen and David Tennant. Good Omens has been one of my favourite books since I first read it as a teenager. At that time, there was no such thing as the internet. If I wanted to find out if Aziraphale had a computer and […]

One of my earliest memories is sitting next to my father in the study room of my childhood house, watching him play a game called Betrayal at Krondor. He led a party of three through the high fantasy world of Midkemia, fighting monsters, gossiping at taverns, and unlocking treasure chests. In the Krondor games, the […]

You’re the editor on the West Australian side of this collaborative editing project, but have had an important role in other aspects as well. Can you tell us about what your work has involved, including the challenges and joys of working closely with writers as an editor? While editing the West Australian stories formed the real bulk […]