So much happens in short succession.
 
To begin with, we have finally published Richard Mile’s historical work, Mounted: Personal Reflections on the Mounted Cadre of the South Australia Police 1951-1999. This project started back in 2020 as a series of interviews with former members of the Mounted Cadre and developed into an engaging and interesting record of member’s accounts of the South Australian Police and their grey horses in historical events. The blurb to the book reads:
 
“For more than 185 years, the streets of Adelaide have rung with the hoofbeat of police horses. The Mounted Cadre of the South Australia Police, with its iconic troop of grey horses stabled at the Thebarton Police Barracks, provided diligent service from 1951 until 1999.
 
Showcasing first-hand accounts of royal escorts, violent protests, drug seizures, hilarity, thrills and spills, and much more, MOUNTED celebrates personal stories of the service of Cadre members and their silent partners, the police greys.”
 
Hardback copies can already be purchased on the US Amazon site – MOUNTED – as can ebook versions – MOUNTED – but for Australians copies will also be available from the South Australian Police Historical Society in the new year or can be ordered through us by emailing [email protected] and we can organise and post hardback copies along with invoices. Price is being sorted at the moment. Richard is planning to officially launch the book at some point, so it’s worth keeping an eye on the Mounted Facebook page:
 
This month also sees the exciting release of the third book in The Last Wizard series – Jaysin. As the blurb explains:
 
“Always considered different because he has no interest in becoming a warrior like his older brother, Jaysin's fascination with learning and magic draws him into a quest to rescue his sister, her dragon, and his brother.
 
Shifting circumstances lead Jaysin to the capital of the mighty Kermakk Empire to find his brother, Chasse, but there the Karudarteta, a sorceress and advisor to the Empire's ruler, the Karudar Marfek, offers him access to ultimate arcane mastery, if he is willing to serve her.
 
Faced with the opportunity to show his siblings that he is as worthy of admiration as they are, Jaysin must decide whether to embrace the power of magic by serving the Kermakk Empire, whose leader is determined to kill his sister and her dragon, or to sacrifice his personal ambitions to save his family.”
 
Jaysin will be available on Amazon, but, as with Tamesan and Chasse, if you are in Australia and would like to buy a paperback or hardback version of the books pop me an email at [email protected] and I’ll organise for you. Kindle copies are currently free to download.
 
Christmas is bearing down and we have lots to do before the last blog of 2025.

​October was an interesting mixed bag of experiences, ranging from editing and preparing Chasse: The Last Wizard Saga Song 2 for its debut now, November 2025, through completing a tax assessment, possibly for the last time given my writing income has been well below any taxable threshold, to competing in 60+ indoor volleyball at the Australian Masters Games in Canberra (and bringing home a gold medal - yay!).
 
Chasse is the first sequel to the original The Last Wizard and it follows on immediately from where the first book ends but seeing the unfolding events through Chasse’s eyes. As the blurb outlines:
 
“Haunted by the horrors of his summer initiation and caught up in the changes precipitated by the presence of a baby dragon on the mountain above his home, Chasse must do what he can to protect the people he loves while he comes to terms with an emerging relationship and his new role in the village.
 
Under his father's tutelage, Chasse continues his dragonwarrior training, but the return of an old foe to Harbin and the emergence of a new threat mean that Chasse must choose between the future of the village or the safety of his siblings and the treasure they are protecting.
 
Forced to abandon his home to protect his sister, Tam, his brother, Jaysin, and the young dragon, Chasse encounters a stranger in the mountains who shows him a different path towards overcoming his self-doubt and fears to become the warrior he is destined to be.”
 
Like Tamesan, Chasse is a coming-of-age tale, this time for the boy warrior who has witnessed the brutal truth of what being a warrior entails. While his sister, Tamesan, has already found her path in life through bonding with the baby dragon and wielding magic, Chasse has to accept the destiny unfolding for him, one that involves battling personal demons while learning skills and new attitudes.
 
Chasse is available on Amazon US, but, as with Tamesan, if you are in Australia and would like to buy a paperback or hardback version of the books pop me an email at [email protected] and I’ll organise for you.
 
The third book, Jaysin: The Last Wizard Saga Song 3, is planned for release in December, and book four, Harmi: The Last Wizard Saga Song 4, a story from the dragon’s point of view, is likely to be available in February 2026 at this stage.

Finally, I've been working on a web site makeover shifting the focus from purely me to our tiny niche publishing company, Millswood Books. Take a look around if you get a chance: www.tonyshillitoe.com.au 
 
So, that was October. Christmas is barely two months away…

​So, Tamesan: The Last Wizard Saga Song 1 is released as a paperback, hardback and ebook on Amazon US. The new cover, featuring artwork by Kirsi Salonen, is displayed with this blog. This is the reboot of the original The Last Wizard (1995). As advertised last month, I will follow Tamesan with Chasse, Jaysin and Harmi, the three sequels to The Last Wizard, between November through to March 2026. Tamesan is available on the US Amazon site (link), so if you’re in Australia and want a paperback or hardback copy and can’t purchase through the US site pop me an email at [email protected] and I’ll sort out an order for you ($30 + postage).
 
Editing is a core process in the writing game and yesterday I was reflecting on a point I reached in my teaching career where I could no longer face the marking grind of senior student essays. In fact, I genuinely sometimes broke into a cold sweat when I collected and began marking a pile of essays because I knew I was going to be dredging through work I’d already seen in draft formats and I would be highlighting and identifying (not necessarily correcting) the same errors over and over and over, year after year, for more than thirty-five years.
 
As a writer, the editing process has a similar impact as marking, the only rewarding factor being that it is a creative and hopefully original piece and in most cases the work is mine. I’ve been asked many times how many edits go into a novel. The answer is not genuinely quantifiable because I automatically edit as I write. However, breaking down the process into its mechanical form means that I:

• Edit each line and paragraph as I write
• Edit each chapter as I complete it
• Edit the manuscript three times after first draft completion which involves – a read for fluency/sense edit, a read for typos/missed words, and a read for better expression
• Edit again after I receive feedback from beta readers
• Edit the full manuscript again when I believe it is close to completion ie the above edits have been done
• Often edit one final time after I’m convinced I’ve finished

 
As a teacher I used to have my Middle School students carry out a writing accuracy exercise twice each year – at the beginning of the year and at the end of the third term. The exercise is quite simplistic. The students were told about the exercise in advance so that they arrived ready. They were asked to maintain continuous writing for a 30 minute period. They could write on any topic of choice and they could change topic in the 30 minute period if they ran out of motivation on their starting topic. They were asked at the end of the 30 minute session to spend 5 minutes reading through and making corrections. I would then collect their responses, determine the word count for each student and circle each error I found in their responses. I would then determine an accuracy percentage based on the number of errors against the word count. For example, a student who wrote 300 words and made 8 errors (of any kind – spelling, grammar, punctuation) would receive an accuracy percentage of (300-8 = 292: 292/300 x 100) = 97.3%. Over time, I observed that students who were earning above 95% in the activity were usually competent students, say B grade or 6 in IB scores as a measure. However, students who were scoring 90% and lower were definitely struggling with language skills. Let that sink in. In most subjects, scoring 90% would be in the highest level achievements, but in using English it is a poor result and represents a student who needs significant intervention to support and boost their language skills. This, for example, is a student who produces a 300 word response with 30 errors.
 
I recently co-edited a friend’s manuscript of around 60,000 words and we went over it several times each until we thought it was done. We passed it to a colleague for a final read and she found 14 errors (including two missed words). We were both horrified and grateful and made the corrections. We think it is now error-free… If I’d run the manuscript through my English exercise, the manuscript with its errors in place would rate a 99.97% accuracy – but if we published it without fixing those 0.03% errors, it would be considered a poor piece of work because of the errors!
 
I’ve encountered readers on occasions who lament that they found a typo, or a couple of errors in a book and it coloured their experience. I get it – but, seriously, the act of writing and editing a novel is a mammoth task in so far as wrestling the English language and then human editing the work into 100% accuracy. We want perfection.
 
Why this discussion? Because I am editing multiple books this past month as I prepare to release The Last Wizard series and I want to make sure the general language conventions are 100% accurate in all four books. It’s a salient reminder for me that the writing process is both an act of artistic creativity and a crafting discipline – a ying and yang process. In fact, draft writing is by far the best part because it is an act of creative exploration, but it must be tempered by persistence, patience and critical self-appraisal and careful crafting to become palatable for readers. In basic language conventions, it must be perfect.
 
I feel a cold sweat coming on as I try to ensure there are no language errors or typos across a total of more than 380,000 words.

August was fun and busy so far as writing is concerned. I’m currently completing edits and reader feedback on three manuscripts, both targeted for release next year; one the speculative sci fi novel, Mika, that I mentioned in the last blog, the second a semi-literary, contemporary novella about a day in the life of a down-and-out older man living in share house which is titled A Day in His Life, and a re-edit and preparation of Tamesan: The Last Wizard Saga Book 1 for hopeful release at the end of September in readiness for the second book, Chasse: The Last Wizard Saga Book 2 to be released in November. The ongoing plan is to then release Jaysin: The Last Wizard Saga Book 3 in January 2026 and Harmi: The Last Wizard Saga Book 4 in February/March period 2026. The cover designs shown here are concepts for now and may not be the same when the works are finally released.
 
I also redesigned and re-edited my collection of Australian speculative and various stories, and added two more to the original collection, and republished the story anthology of The Red Heart in hardback copy. Some of the stories, like ‘Hope,’ ’Beach Cricket,’ and ’Jammin’ were originally published in other anthologies. The republishing is a vanity personal project, but if you are a short story reader or want to add this one to your collection of my writing you can order copies directly from me and I’ll organise them for you. An outline of the book’s contents is available on my web site at
 
I headed up the final Writers SA Think Tank session for 2025 where we focussed on making a scene or setting come alive as a character in a story or memoir. Works like Ellis’ American Psycho, Harper’s The Dry and Simmond’s The Terror make the setting come alive in sinister and harrowing and interesting ways and readers recognise that the human characters are themselves pitted against and within the confines of a larger ‘antagonist’ being the places the characters live within.
 
I worked with my five Spectrum Writing ‘acolytes’, developing their respective projects, holding a total of eight mentoring sessions across August. As a glimpse into what each project is covering, one is a pop culture satirical spoof with Asian philosophical overtones as an online webnovel, one is a superhero coming-of-age novel, one is a self-reflecting autobiography, one a speculative exploration of how right-wing turmoil gains traction and one is an historical fiction set in the times of Roman occupation of the British Isles. The thinking keeps me switched on. The Spectrum Writing business has been sold by its co-founder, Jason Fischer, to Kiran Vuppuluri who is keen to maintain and grow the business further as an NDIS initiative for its members, so hopefully the projects will reach positive conclusions for the participants.
 
Finally, we received the proofs of Richard Miles’book, Mounted, and we are going through them to ensure the final print versions are as accurate as we can make them. Hopefully, this book will be in print by the end of October.
 
On the personal side of life, like so many people I know, I’ve battled a significant cold/flu-type bug that’s left a lingering but slowly receding cough, and also I have had to stop exercise/sport for the past month because of a slipped disc in the lower back area, which is also on the mend. I’m still coming to terms with turning 70 this year – it’s weird to be officially ín my seventies ’already. But I’m here and I have projects to complete, so it’s all good.
 
Thanks for reading 😊

several attacks on Adelaide and also discovers that he is one of the very rare people with immunity to the rampaging virus. His bid for survival takes him on an extended journey from Adelaide to the Coorong and beyond, fighting the enemy and marauding gangs and virus-fuelled zombies, before he is captured and shipped to Brisbane to be studied. Escaping from Brisbane to North Stradbroke Island through the aid of an enigmatic ally, our protagonist finds himself on a Chinese destroyer that transports him because of changing situations via Brunei to the Spratley Islands where scientists are trying to create a vaccine to save humanity from the zombie horde.

I shopped the manuscript around to several agents and publishers unsuccessfully, so I chose to self-publish it through Amazon KDP. You can order a copy from Amazon, or better still directly from me for $30 plus postage. Just email me at [email protected] with your details and I’ll post a novel and invoice.
 
Planning to write is a key topic because it is more than the title might imply. The first step in planning to write is to PLAN to write.

1. Make a time for writing in your day/week
2. Create a space for writing.

As you would for any activity – work, sport, hobbies – you should establish times in a week that you are devoting to writing. Write those times in your diary and block them out. If you need to remind more than yourself, put a weekly chart on the fridge or somewhere easily visible that highlights your times to write. Make your writing a priority. Some writers who work and raise families have to fir writing in as an early morning activity, or a timeslot blocked out on certain days. Some writers – I was one – have to lock down writing time late in the evenings.
 
Set up a writing space – a desk, a room if you’re lucky, a garden shed – somewhere that you can say comfortably to anyone, ‘This is where I work on my writing.’ I know of at least one writer who has to write in her kitchen at the table, but she makes it clear that when she is in her writing times that space on the table is hers and hers alone. Another colleague has to go to the local library to write, but he does to ensure that he meets his writing commitment and has a space in which to write.
 
To write, you have to write. Obvious.
 
Once you establish a place and times, you must commit. I’m sure I read somewhere that Roald Dahl would adhere to his writing schedule by going to his writing space and sitting there for the full committed time, regardless of whether he actually successfully wrote anything he wanted to keep. Self-discipline. The truth is, once you start a writing habit, you will discover that writing will happen. Sometimes, you might stare at a blank screen/page. Sometimes, ideas will pour from your mind and flow through your hands or mouth and you will write copiously. But if you don’t make the time to write…
 
The second step in planning to write is more recommendation than requirement. Plan your writing project. Make notes. Build word or visual pictures of the characters, the places for your story. Determine how your story will (or might) end. List the order of key actions that have to occur to reach the story end point. Make more notes. Draw a plot (or plots) chart. Use Post-it notes or cards to outline each scene and order them. Research essential facts. Travel to places to be used or look at pictures or talk to people or go on Google Earth. Discuss your planning/ideas with friends or colleagues. Hold a think tank for ideas to enhance or grow your story. Create a chapter-by-chapter outline, a synopsis. Make more notes. Plan.
 
Some writers claim that they like to sit down and simply write and see where the writing leads. I’ve tried it. I’ve even done it with some degree of success. It can be fun. But if the ideas dry up it can also be frustrating. If you plan your writing project, at the very least you will have a journey mapped to a destination, details ready to hand, and a structure to follow.
 
Whatever you plan, once you begin writing it’s highly likely the planning will have to be reviewed, altered, even substantially changed to make the overall story even better. That’s perfectly normal. It is a creative activity.

Writers, me included, are frequently asked at conventions and workshops: ‘Where do you get your ideas?’ Although the question in itself is mere curiosity, it carries a kind of reverence or belief that writers experience and imagine a different world than mere mortals, but that’s not strictly true.
 
Most of us live seemingly ordinary lives and while we might hope to be involved in something grand or inspiring, something that makes us famous and rich, most of us never have that happen. And yet, every aspect of our seemingly ordinary lives is potentially extraordinary and the stuff of which stories are made. We think we are born, grow up in our families and go on with our lives in ordinary ways. But reflect on that. Even before you were born, there were people who shaped how and where you were born, even why you were born, and that makes you both familiar to readers and potentially unique. Your parents might be farmers struggling to eke a living out of a barren land, people who escaped a troubled land and tyranny to establish a new life elsewhere, creators of extraordinary things that brought wealth into being, humble people committed to a quiet and uneventful life, survivors of a great catastrophe. And all of the above might not be true of your parents, but of your grandparents or even earlier ancestors, and all that has a bearing on who you might be when you enter the world.
 
And then there is you. Maybe you were born with a challenge. Maybe you were exceptionally bright at school, or the kid who was bullied, or a sports star, or all of those. Maybe you had friends who did amazing things, who took risks, or disobeyed the rules. No one is singularly perfectly normal and uninteresting. But even if you find nothing in yourself you believe worthy of writing about, you will now and meet and observe many other people who might provide that spark of inspiration.
 
Like all creative people, writers live, listen, observe, read, view and think. When I’m asked, ‘Where do I get my ideas for writing?” I answer, “From everywhere, everything and everyone.” And that’s the truth.
 
I observe people – family, friends, colleagues, strangers, even myself. I listen to their voices and their expressions. I analyse their features, their dress style, their mannerisms, how they walk and laugh, what they eat and how they eat. I note what excites them, what makes them annoyed or angry, what saddens them, what they wish they had and what they are grateful for having, and how they express and react to emotions and events. I look for quirks, obsessions, behaviours that seem specific to individuals.
 
I soak in the colours and sounds and smells and sensations of places, the rich complexity and uncomplicated simplicity of textures and structures and light and atmosphere and composition and position. I look at the subtle integration of architecturally beautiful buildings and the stark vulgarity of aggressive designs. Whether I am walking along a gentle curved sandstone cobbled alley in Medina, shadows crouching against the cream and brown huddled buildings to avoid the sharp blue glare of summer, or pushing through the morass of shoppers beneath criss-crossing strings of multicoloured bulbs in a Mumbai market, my senses wrapped in the jarring fragrances of spices and human sweat and the plaintive cries of stall hawkers, or running on a ragged concrete path, bordered by green lawn beside the brown and silted waters of the River Torrens, my sneakers padding out a painful rhythm in sync with my frantic breath, while brown and black ducks quack annoyance at my passing, I am aware and taking note of what surrounds me and in what I am immersed, because at some point, for a story or poem or article, these things will become writing.
 
So, specific examples of where ideas germinate?

When I had my fifteen minutes of fame in the 1990s-2000s and had novels published by Pan Macmillan and HarperCollins, I was frequently interviewed and asked many questions associated with writing, but one question that was rarely broached is this one: Why do you write? It’s a key question to ask all writers – and if you want to be a writer it is an essential question to answer for yourself.
 
Anyway, why do I write?
 
Firstly, it is an obsession, an addiction, a passion that was ignited in Grade Three Primary School when our teacher introduced us to poetry. She coaxed and encouraged us to write our own poems and I was lucky to have my piece of Australian-themed doggerel published in the annual school magazine. I fell in love with creative written language and the idea that what I write could be read by many other people. I fell in love with seeing my ideas and words in print.

From that point on, I wrote hundreds of poems, short stories, articles, cartoons for school magazines and stories and jokes to share with my friends on the school bus trips to and from home. I guess I was writing then also to connect with people and to make friends.

Writing translated into essays and more poems in high school and university, and song lyrics at one point, and then it morphed into creative lesson plans and resources for students when I became a teacher. In fact, my second favourite part of teaching – the first being seeing students engage and grow in understanding – was creating resources. I didn’t show students examples of writing and ask them to write, I wrote the tasks with them to show how poetry and prose and scripts could be developed. I wrote them because it fulfilled the first of my needs: I write because I HAVE to write. In fact, if I don’t do a burst of creative writing on a regular basis, I become unsettled, grumpy even, as an addict does.
 
Another reason I write is to express my thoughts, ideas, understandings, interpretations and questions about life and people and politics and society and religion and all the things. My earliest poems, even as a child, embraced issues of survival and suffering and injustice and observations and love. I have poems from my teenage years that reference the El Salvador and Vietnam wars and cruelty, corporate and banking abuse of ordinary people, and quiet individual moments of suffering in an uncaring, disconnected world.

When I eventually found the courage and capacity to write novels, I explored a variety of themes, for example: the impact of marriage breakup and adult unreliability on early teens (Joy Ride); the crisis of identity and conflict between traditional role expectations and passion to learn for young women (The Last Wizard); racism, sexism and political domination and struggle for freedom (The Ashuak Chronicles); the struggles between wanting a simple life against shouldering the responsibilities of the ‘bigger picture’ (The Amber Legacy); protecting family versus embracing social law (The Need); personal identity and the courage to face challenges that can potentially change who you think yourself to be (In My Father’s Shadow). Those examples are only part of each novel and each one has more to it than a single theme, but that is why I write – to explore, question, challenge the small and big questions of life.
 
I write to give voice to the people represented by the characters in my work, to enable their experiences and views to be expressed. An example I’m extremely proud of is the novel Joy Ride in which a 16 year old juvenile is relating what happened to him and a friend when they were 13/14 and why. Caught in broken homes, and angry and frustrated by the failure of the adults they thought they should/could trust, the boys lash out and go on a drunken, drug-fuelled binge that ends up with them stealing a public transport bus and attempting to make a run for Melbourne. Based on an actual incident, the novel gives voice to disaffected youth. The reader reaction was almost priceless and the feedback and mail/email I received reflected the novel’s impact because the readers over 25 were angry and did not like the characters or their story and the readers under 25 were full of praise and engaged in the characters and story.

I could argue that Girlie came into being because I wanted my mother’s younger life and voice to be recorded and shared.

In a current project, yet to be published, I am endeavouring to give voice to people in our community who are meant to remain invisible. I feel a responsibility as a writer not to simply serve up fantasy or impossible characters, but to also challenge readers to know and understand why some members of our community are angry or isolated or hated or viewed with disgust, and why they are who they are, and how they feel as a consequence.
 
As I wrote earlier, I want to make connections and begin conversations with the people who read what I write. I like to think that I engage with readers in multiple and useful ways – to entertain, to challenge to think, to reassure and also to make uncomfortable over certain matters, to enlighten and maybe, with some issues, to embolden them to act. It is incredibly good to receive emails and messages from readers, obviously especially the complimentary ones and the ones that want to know more or pursue specific topics raised in the novel they read.
 
Do I write to make money? Well, I don’t make much money at all, although I do hope that a work I create will attract enough attention to generate a handsome profit. If it was for money, I would have stopped writing a long time ago, maybe not even write at all. Money is about luck: luck to be writing the right material at the right time in the right place to attract the right attention by the right people to your writing; luck that someone is willing to back your writing with money to kickstart it; luck that you make sales or it gets taken up as a movie or similar production. Some writers have ‘made’ their luck happen because of their connections in the industry. Some writers have been lucky that people in the industry like their writing and can market it successfully. I’d certainly like to strike it lucky, seriously I’d love that to happen, but that is not WHY I write.
 
Like all artists I know, I write because I love to create stories for others to enjoy. Everything beyond that is a bonus.

At the end of March, I levelled up in the game of life to 70. 70. Like, seriously, when did that happen? It’s not so long since I was standing outside my parents’ farmhouse, staring at the night patina of crystal stars and the distant glow of the Adelaide lights over the Lofty Ranges, the deep silence broken by an occasional bleating sheep and a solitary car whooshing along the Princes Highway, wondering where my life would lead and how it would unfold. And now, here I am, 70, looking back at the highs and lows, the wins and losses, the joys and sadness, the successes and failures, wondering how far into the immediate future this life will extend.
The end of March and the beginning of April melded into celebratory madness with dinners and small parties and too much food and maybe a little wine and whiskey, and writing evaporated in the mayhem, becoming what it was before I left the education sphere – brief grabs between events. Hence this blog entry is three weeks late and I almost decided to hold it off, but here it is.

I ran another editing eye across the four The Last Wizard manuscripts and submitted a query for the series to an agent. Now, it’s wait and see.

I completed a 3,500 word historical article for the Friends of the State Library Bibliophile journal on the groundbreaking entry and participation of policewomen in the Mounted division. Thank you to Hettie Tinsley for the invitation and to Richard Miles for support and information. I now only have to organise 4-5 photos to accompany the article. It won’t see publication until late in the year.

I coordinated the second SA Writers Think Tank session, focussing on the ideas of knowing ‘where your story will end before you commit too deeply to a writing project.’ I am a firm believer in knowing the intended destination of a journey, even if, eventually, the destination changes because of events in the journey. I apply this to writing. We also discussed the issues around copyright and plagiarism, but that will return in a later Think Tank for an even deeper dive.

I held conversations with three writers via Spectrum Writing around their projects and challenged them with relevant tasks associated with their projects. The mentoring is proving exhilarating, even if only for me. I love the conversations.

​And, so, 70. I’ve long considered that to be the turning point where I am officially old. The Government sent a letter asking my GP to confirm that I am still capable as a driver. I have issues with my knees and feet. I have had a swathe of blood tests concerning my health and the results will be confirmed next month (May). I have a Seniors card, but I still can’t get a pension while my wife works. Frustratingly, I’ve battled with myGov for three years to prove my identity to link various services, Centrelink being one. Several of my best friends have passed on. My parents, their siblings and their generation are almost all gone as well. People I admired as music and film and television celebrities are dead. And yet, I still sometimes feel like I am that young person standing outside in the night, staring at the stars, wondering at my future, curious to see what transpires next.

In a blink, we are at the close of February in a world that is changing faster than tech. I am astounded that the new world order is letting so much slime climb from beneath dark and dank rocks under which they mutter their conspiracies and spew their hatred at everyone who isn’t as hateful and bigoted as themselves. I am even more amazed at how individuals with openly unethical characters can rise to power with the blind if not self-interested support of so many idiots. History, of course, is littered with these people and the destruction and tragedy they wrought upon humanity and the earth, but in what ought to be an enlightened age they still thrive among us, buoyed by their insane wealth and the greedy self-serving sycophants who cling to their coattails.
 
Can you imagine anyone writing a novel or play, or creating a film with such unbelievable characters as we are currently witnessing on the daily news? Oh wait. Writers do. So many writers have created works portraying the horror we currently face on a world scale.
 
Anyway, I’ll do the only thing I can and write about the rise and prevalence of evil and the never-ending if often futile effort of people with good hearts to thwart evil’s plans. Yay for fantasy and scifi.
 
Wow! I must be really angry to forego blog space for a petty political rant. Believe me. I have barely started on what I dislike and I would change if, by some cataclysmic miracle, I could assert political power. But there is no cataclysmic miracle looming for me and I have absolutely no power at all. Can’t even win the lottery.
 
However, if you want some not-so-light reading on what we face around the world in current politics and potential and actual outcomes, here’s some books you could/should read:

because his interest lies in future investments and mine lies in SciFi writing and how AI will evolve. I’ve accepted a new writing mentee with Spectrum Writing. Writers SA have offered me the opportunity to lead once-a-month think tank sessions for writers to discuss concepts, progress and any other writing matters, and I’m excited by this. More details later.

I continued to develop the third book in a fantasy series which has grown to a healthy 50,000 words with a 120,000 word target to finish. Yesterday I fed a minor character I named Dutton to a dragon. Satisfying. I will make that writing project my key focus while I convalesce. In all honesty, watching the rise of right-wing politics with the billionaire oligarchs in the USA and the wanna-be oligarchs in Australia gives me awesome characters and motives to write into my stories. The two greatest sins in all religious and atheist worlds are greed and tribalism. Greed accounts for all the other sins combined because it is all about ‘what I want’ and hate is the root of all ‘us not them’ creeds and actions. If we can ever educate those two selfish ideologies out of humans we might just create a peaceful, harmonised and productive world, but so long as we encourage/allow individuals to acquire ludicrous amounts of money and applaud them for it, and demonise anyone who isn’t exactly like us, we are doomed to violence and endlessly repeating the history loop. Sermon over.
 
I completed a second edit of my friend Richard’s project based on stories from the South Australian Police Mounted Cadre Unit and it’s ready to be offered to publishers. Richard is organising approaches to prospective publishers. We also will go through the selection process for relevant pictures to add to each chapter. Richard’s book is a fascinating read and a worthy historical project.
 
I sketched the plot key points for a new teenage novel based on a girls’ volleyball team which I’ve been meaning to write for a very long time.
 
The other plans for 2025 listed in my previous blog remain in place, just shifted back in time while I wrestle with the skin matters. The mice are currently preoccupied.

And so the year plunges into its crazy conclusion. All dietary restrictions, sleep patterns and pledges to live a clean and healthy lifestyle evaporate momentarily in the haze of celebrations and family and friend gatherings, and all the joy and love that the season of Christmas/New Year brings. I hope your past weeks have been good to you.
 
For me, as a writer, the close of 2024 is also the close of a two-year project to ensure my past publications are out of the shadow of the ignominious label ‘out-of-print’. All sixteen books originally published between 1992-2016 can now be ordered in paper copy through me or via Amazon. I am preparing digital versions in the early part of 2025.
 
It was also enjoyable to bring into existence a new historical romance/semi biographical novel, Girlie, and a poetry anthology, Rearview Mirror.
 
And, so, to the writing resolutions for 2025.
 

1. The blog
   I am moving from a monthly to weekly commitment beginning mid-January 2025, each blog to be created as written and audio/visual content for sharing via social media platforms and each blog to focus on a specific creative writing topic. For example, the first topic will be the writing obsession, the second focussing on forming writing ideas, and so on.
   
   
2. Self-promotion
   I’ve never been much of a salesperson, but I am committing 2025 to a year of self-promotion wherever I can legitimately do so, although mainly via social media. The blog mentioned above is one step, but I’m exploring a variety of avenues. I’ve learned, bitterly, that I am currently a completely unknown writer, except by some family and friends, and I need to change that status.
   
   
3. An agent
   I need an agent to promote my new works to publishers. The industry has changed, and AI makes sorting through original writing by people versus artificial work generated by computers, increasingly difficult to compete against. I will make concerted approaches to potential agents throughout 2025 with the aim of securing publishing deals.
   
   
4. New novels
   While I used 2023-2024 to mainly consolidate my old work, I also drafted an additional twelve new novels now sitting in first draft manuscript format. Seven novels represent two new fantasy series, two novels are science fiction, two are contemporary literary novels, and one is another historical semi-biography. These are the works I need an agent to represent to publishers, and part of my energy in 2025 will be to polish these novels.
   
   
5. A publishing and writing services company
   There are plenty of writers seeking guidance and help through writing services, including various forms of feedback and editing, and I intend to build a small business designed to support these writers. In addition, I’d like to be involved in helping local writers reach publication. I do not believe I am in a position to act as a literary agent, but I can help writers self-publish and I am discussing the exciting notion with a colleague of starting a small publishing company designed to help niche writers and local writers with manuscripts that are good but being rejected in the current industry. Lots for me to learn here.
   
   
6. Self-publishing
   If I can’t attract the interest of an agent or publisher for my new works, I will continue to offer my work through self-publishing avenues.
   
   

It’s a long and demanding list of resolutions, but if I want to have some level of success in this chosen profession I have to commit.
 
Anyway, I hope you have a good new year and that 2025 is prosperous and healthy, and, at the very least, kind to you and your family and friends.
 
Tony Shillitoe

First, yes, I did NaNoWriMo again, aiming to crunch out a novel, or at least 50,000 words across the month of November. Outcome for me? Yeah. Never made it this time, for many reasons, but I did complete just over 40,000 words of a manuscript, or approximately half of what the novel might eventually be. For now, that project will be shelved. It was fun and important to make a significant start on the project as it is a concept I’ve wrestled with for more than a decade. I will nibble at it for a while.

October was a productive month in that I can honestly say that I have finally converted all my out-of-print fantasy series – Andrakis, Ashuak Chronicles, Dreaming in Amber – into digital print-on-demand on Amazon. Basically, if you want copies of any of the books – Guardians, Kingmaker, Dragonlords, Blood, Pasion, Freedom, The Amber Legacy, A Solitary Journey, Prisoner of Fate or The Demon Horsemen – I can provide them. Just so that you know 
 
This entry, I thought you might be interested in a hypothetical – How much does it cost to write a book? There is no real comparison with salaried or waged employment, but here’s a breakdown based on my experiences. Careful, it’s lengthy.
 
Conceptualising a novel is not easy to quantify. While I can tell you that a recent project was developed from an idea to a draft within two months, another novel that I am drafting for NaNoWriMo in November is a concept now more than twenty years old. However, as a good friend and I recently did, a concept could technically be the product of a day’s think-tank workshop, bouncing various ideas around and teasing out potential plots and characters and scenarios, so we will use this as the basis for costing the writing of a novel. Let’s say I am paid a casual rate at $80/hr, which is a current approximation for a mid-range copywriter (source), and we spend an eight hour day on conceptualising the novel, making the initial cost or investment $640.
 
Most of my novels are around the 100,000 word mark, some up to 140,000 words. A current unpublished manuscript of mine is 120,000 words, so I will use that manuscript for this hypothetical. While I can generally type at about 90 words per minute, I’ve timed and know that it generally takes me around 30 minutes to create a page of a fiction piece (300 words). This is because the creative writing process is a complex mixture of thinking, typing, reading, revising, editing and altering, and not a simple copy or fast typing exercise. On average, I complete maybe ten words a minute in draft format. A novel draft of 120,000 words, based on that rate of production, requires at least 200 hours of constant typing. On the copywriter’s wage, the draft has cost $16,000 to produce, representing almost five weeks of fulltime working. As a reference, a novel I did complete and have published, of similar length, took close to three months to complete in first full draft when I took long service leave, so pumping out a novel in five weeks, while doable, is not close to the time generally required.
 
Once the draft is created, it requires editing, and editing is not a simple or one-off process. Editors refer to at least four phases that I can attest to as a writer/editor:
 

1. Structural editing – checking that the story has an arc, appropriate scene and event transitions, pace and timing and so on.
2. Line editing – checking sentence lengths, tonality, consistencies and so on.
3. Copyediting – checking spelling, grammar, punctuation and so on.
4. Proofreading – checking the work is presented best for a reader, usually done when the work is ready for submission/publishing

 
While much of the above also occurs during the creative writing process, when the draft is completed all of the above have to be done at least once each before a manuscript is considered ready for submission to anyone. Good editors currently charge around $60-$120 per 1000 words, so I’ll suggest the rate for this hypothetical will be $60 per 1000 words. For the hypothetical project, the time involved will be around 120 hours so the cost of editing the draft into a suitable manuscript will be $7,200. Note: when I showed this to a few people they were shocked at what it can cost to have a book edited, and a couple of writers said they could never complete their project if that was a cost they were facing.
 
Creating the novel from concept to manuscript nominally costs $23,840 as a paid exercise, assuming there are no interruptions or major rewrites involved in the process.
 
We can factor in a variety of additional costs, like home office equipment (depreciation), utility services and so on. It is likely the full cost of writing a manuscript is around $25,000 of equivalent wages through time and equipment.
 
After that, the writer has to attract interest from an agent, and the agent has to interest a publisher. Those already connected in the industry can go directly to people and businesses that will, if they like the work, publish and market their novel. The costs involved in establishing contacts can range from $0 through email and voice contact through to attending conventions and fairs which involve registration, travel and accommodation costs. For this exercise, let’s say I attend a convention in Adelaide and one in Canberra where I endeavour to make myself known to prospective agents and publishers. The Adelaide event costs only time, say 3 days at 5 hours a day, which is 15 hours at my lower wage rate of $60 or $900. Canberra, however, involves similar time, plus air flights, taxi or public transport, meals and accommodation. I’ll fly in on the opening morning and leave the final evening, I won’t attend social events, even though I know they are great places to meet people in the industry, and I will eat sparingly. The last time I ever did such an event, it required an outlay of $300 flights, $300 accommodation and about $150 food and drinks. Altogether, the Canberra event, plus wage time, requires $1650 of time and money.
 
So, I’ve power-written my novel over a five-week period, power-edited it over another two weeks, and by some miracle coincided attendance at two conventions in the same month. I’ve needed, between time and actual costs, an income of around $30,000 in that month to sustain the entire project from start to publisher acceptance. Of course, let’s be realistic and use my personal example of the process for The Last Wizard taking three months from start to ready manuscript, so that comes back to a mere $10,000 a month income required to sustain the project.
 
And another miracle happens. A publisher buys the rights and pays an advance of maybe $10,000 with a deal of 10% on future sales of the book. The book hits the Australian market and over a two year period sells, say, 10,000 copies – a very minor success. The price is set at $25, so the book generates $250,000 revenue and the writer receives $25,000 less the $10,000 advance, that is, $15,000 over the two years. The publisher might invest in sending the writer to some public events and interviews to build profile, and the writer might also pick up workshop gigs to bolster income from the book. And they might not.
 
The other miracle is the instant blockbuster where the writer reaps a significant fortune from a series. Think Harry Potter and big crime series. This is the equivalent of a lottery win in the industry with probably less odds.
 
There are instances in the industry where people have achieved this otherwise almost impossible task of pumping out a novel in a month and being immediately traditionally published, but these individuals are generally professional writers with significantly successful track records who write entirely for their living, or, more recently, people who employ a combination of ghost writers, editors and even AI to write the book. For the vast majority of writers, however, the hypothetical could actually represent many years of time and effort, not a single month (or three months in my case).
 
As this is a hypothetical, let’s say I fail to attract publisher attention. I turn to self-publishing. More costs accrue. I’ll need to choose a self-publishing platform. Some charge for the process. I pick Amazon because it is initially free to publish. They provide templates for interior and cover design. I prepare a manuscript layout. It’s relatively easy, although I do have to carefully check page and chapter breaks and also adjust/edit text to avoid leaving a single or a few words on a whole page at the end of chapters. This process might take between 1-10 hours, depending on the state of my manuscript. This will also include checking the font size and type, and line spacing, for readability and ensuring the styles are consistent throughout. On average, this takes me 5 hours, so we add more editing cost, approximately $400.
 
Then there’s cover design. During COVID, I paid a $1000 for original artwork for a front cover piece. It is possible to have a cover design done via external providers for as cheap as $40. If you have the skills to create art, design and lettering, and use a template layout, you could design a book cover for free. You can implement AI programs. For the hypothetical, I’ll suggest a combination of purchasing cheap art and doing the full design by myself, which can take a day to work out layout. The cover in this hypothetical is valued at around $1000 of layout design and purchasing cheap art.
 
The hypothetical book is now valued in labour and purchases around $26,000-$27,000 from concept to uploading on Amazon (or an equivalent).
 
All the easy part of a book creation is completed. The hard part starts once the book is ready/ available. The writer who self-publishes also must budget for marketing, stock and mailing. I receive offers to market my existing books through social media and across reader forums for as low as $80 from certain companies. I had an individual offer to do a similar task for $30. I decide to market this way and invest the $80. I might also create a blog on my web site, record a podcast, and create a promotional video and upload it to a variety of social media sites. These tasks take me, say, an hour for the blog, an hour to record and edit a podcast, and similar time for my video. This assumes I already have the software and equipment available to do these things (which I have). That’s another $250-$300 time investment. To assist my buyers who want to buy direct, I stock, say, 20 copies of my book that I buy from the publisher at author price (for the hypothetical, it’s $10 a copy), so I invest another $200.
 
To break even on a single, simple novel project, I have to recoup a minimum of $25,000-$30,000. Through traditional publishing, I’d need the publisher to sell at least 10,000 copies to break even. Self-publishing, where the profit margin for me is significantly greater, I’d have to sell at least 3000 copies of the book. It’s lucky I don’t do this as a paid wage to myself. I could not afford to be a writer.
 
There are plenty of flaws in the hypothetical above, but its point is to demonstrate that the ‘art’ of writing is neither cheap, nor simple, and is rarely financially rewarding for the majority of us. Yes, we write because we love to write and we desperately want to share our ideas and stories with readers, but that doesn’t justify people demeaning our work in relation to paid salaries and wages. There are reasons why writers in the past needed wealthy benefactors, or wealthy partners, or were/are good friends with people in publishing, or own their publishing companies.

And if you think my observations are scary, read this article on Linkedin (if you have an account, sorry): https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/how-much-does-cost-write-book-what-do-you-have-lose-chandler-bolt-xmxdc/
 
Something to think about.

Wow! September already over.
 
I began this two-year journey with the aims of writing new work and also ensuring my old works were available online or on request through print-on-demand.

The former aim has currently led to one published novel, Girlie, an anthology of my early life poetry titled Rearview Mirror, and ten unpublished novel manuscripts awaiting further editing and publication. I’m very happy with that outcome over a twenty-two month period.
 
The second aim resulted in republication of the Andrakis trilogy (30th year edition), the Ashuak Chronicles trilogy (20th year edition), and finally, as of this coming week, all four books in the Dreaming in Amber series. Phew!
 
Republishing the Dreaming in Amber books was an interesting process, primarily because I no longer have possession of the last edited manuscript copies that HarperCollins used for publication. I spent significant time across September editing the manuscripts I do have, and they needed important adjustments that included:

• ensuring character names and personalities were consistent across all four books
• inserting final adjustments that were made originally via email conversations way back in 2006-8
• finding and replacing or deleting ‘noisy’ words, like quickly, suddenly, smiled etc
• correcting a major issue around the name Dylan being used for Andra, an issue that made it all the way through to the original HC copies (long story, not for this blog)
• ensuring consistency with ‘amber’ from the Genesis Stone being the source of magic across the stories
• paragraph breaks being relevant
• text layout consistency
• minor typos

I was surprised how much needed correction. To be honest, I’m sure more can be fixed, but my headset is also that these books are in the past of my writing life and represent where I was back then.
 
My readers do know that all of my fantasy books are set in the same physical world, in different regions of that world, and they share the same background history regarding the Genesis Stones, amber, dragons, Elvenaar/Aelendyell and Dragonlord cultures. However, they represent different times in the world’s history, across at least two thousand years from the falling meteors that are the Genesis Stones through to the release of the Demon Horsemen in the Dreaming in Amber books. Across that time, human culture developed from basic medieval in the Andrakis books to emerging industrial era technology in Dreaming in Amber.
 
Two fantasy series remain in unpublished format that are additions to the world above. The first, working series title Dragon Kin Chronicles, deals with the dragons who were portalled away from Ashua by Alwyn and the Alfyn, far to the west of Andrakis and Ranu Ka Shehaala. Their story is set around a similar time to the Dreaming in Amber series (ie three hundred years after the Ashuak events) and the Domovinan human culture affected by the dragons is an emerging industrial technology in line with similar developments in Ranu Ka Shehaala (there are trade and espionage exchanges between the nations influencing human technological growth). Ultimately, the story explores how and why humans and dragons eventually co-exist, which sets the scene for the second unpublished fantasy series, The Last Wizard Saga, originally heralded by my 1995 novel, The Last Wizard. Set a further five centuries ahead in time, humans having undergone a medieval Dark Ages period post-destruction of emerging human technologies by the Demon Horsemen and Dragon Kin, the novels look at a world in which dragons and wizards are outlawed (the outcome of the Dragon Kin Chronicles having proven problematic), but one of each survives, and a new world order commences.
 
Basically, I linked the tales across seventeen books, and core elements are echoed, with the amber/Genesis Stone magic source underpinning them all. It’s been and continues to be a fun journey for me, and hopefully readers.

In conversations with my daughters, we also redesigned the cover for Girlie, the historical biographical novel. The original cover was to publish the story mainly for family, using a photo of my Mum and a background of the tapestry she wove while recuperating from TB, but the new design incorporates her favourite peacock green colour, and art deco design and lettering more akin to the era in which the story is set. Consider the pictorial comparison in the changes. The third image is a hardback edition with the black background.

So, September has been busy. What I planned to spread across three months, I condensed into one. I’m about to edit two works by friends early October as a break from my own creativity, and then I’ll return to working on the existing unpublished work. As I flagged in the last post, November is booked out again for a NaNoWriMo project. 2024 is racing along. The AFL Grand Final is done, Bathurst is looming, bursts of Spring sunshine cause house renovation and repair jobs to blossom, and writing is never ending.

So many people recall variations on this piece of doggerel, and I think I first heard it recited by American comedian Jimmy Durante when I was a child watching old black and white movies on a 32 inch TV, but attributions claiming its origins arise from disparate sources. Since August ends winter here in Australia and heralds spring, this crazy piece is inevitably recited in our family.
 
August brought a range of exciting writing events and projects to the fore, culminating in a writing workshop for Writers SA titled The Story Arc, during which I guided fourteen keen and engaged participants through a six-hour intensive focussing on building the story arc in their current projects. Participant feedback was very positive, and I enjoyed the energy and connection with writers.

​ 
I always offer a ‘burning questions’ option where participants can pop specific questions on Post-it notes to be addressed during the workshop and the question that resonated was ‘Why do writers always suffer imposter syndrome?’ If the term is not familiar, it simply means that writers feel they cannot be considered themselves as writers and what they are really doing is being imposters. We discussed this as a group and an agreed definition, verified by similar online forums, is that a writer is an artist who creates through using words, and an author is a writer who publishes work for public consumption. Then there is the whole conversation as to what constitutes an author: novelists, poets, scriptwriters, journalists, copywriters, traditional publishing, self-publishing, ‘vanity’ publishing and so on. However, what sat at the base of the discussion is that so many writers feel like imposters because of a combination of self-perception and perceptions of observers. As participants expressed, the value of being a writer seems to be equated with questions like: ‘Oh, you’re a writer? How many books have you published?’ or ‘How much do you earn through writing, then?’ or ‘A writer? Literature or genre stuff?’ and a crowd favourite: ‘Really? Yeah, I’ve always wanted to write a book, too.’ The questions, in themselves, are not unreasonable, but for writers who are diligently developing a project, who cannot seem to attract an agent or a publisher’s interest, who fully intend to self-publish because their work is never intended to be a best-selling blockbuster, who are passionate about creating with words, the questions cause self-doubt and being unable to produce a published work or a manuscript to prove that writing is taking place then leads to guilt that what we are doing is simply wasting time. No economic value equals no value in what we are doing. Anyway, we rallied from the question and agreed that, like so many artists, we are all writers because we are passionate about our art, we commit ourselves to creating and crafting, we have intention to complete our projects irrespective of whether the ultimate goal is to be published or not, and we enjoy what we are doing. We all not only have stories to tell, but we are actively involved in writing them. We ARE writers.
 
For myself and my projects, progress continues, and some changes are in place.
 
The initial bad news – both Science Fiction novels were rejected by their first publisher offers (positive feedback, but not what the publisher would normally publish). No big deal and not unexpected. They will now go to the next possibilities.
 
The Dragon Kin fantasy book three is moving very slowly. The core aim of book three is to move towards resolution for the Dragon Queen, Shadrael, her Alfyn nemeses, and the humans caught in the conflict. I know how the story will end (roughly), but the plotting leading to it still challenges me regarding detail. I will chip away at this project.
 
Several readers contacted me in recent weeks asking how they can obtain the now out-of-print Dreaming in Amber novels and that has prompted me to begin editing the existing manuscripts, design covers and prepare them for release through Amazon (and other sources). This was to begin in 2025, but I have decided to start the process this month and work through one book at a time, releasing one a month, hopefully from October-December/January. Once they are done, my 1992-2008 backlist will be available from me and from Amazon.
 
Thank you to the readers who bought Girlie and have since given me very positive feedback. I have started drafting the companion novel, Bill, which will be a project in 2025, and in a similar vein it will tell the story of my father’s youth, leading up to marrying Eileen. With scant details, it will require as much research as Girlie did, and most likely a lot more speculative content. I’m looking forward to it.
 
The four The Last Wizard fantasy novels will begin to be offered to overseas agents this month.
 
For NanoWriMo, the project will be to totally focus on the men’s novel, now with the working title Comes the Moment. I’m hoping to punch out most of that novel in the four weeks of November.
 
Into September we dive, full of energy and creativity and joy. Spring has sprung indeed!

Posting a little late, because of a number of life events throughout July and into August – birthdays, trips, house movings, sport finals, illnesses – the stuff of life. I was going to appraise the current fantasy project, but that has slowed over July and the third book is only at 10,000 words so far. More agent and publisher approaches have been made, but no responses so far.
 
So, I’ll take a moment to reflect on my writing business since quitting education at the end of 2022.
 
In the early 1990s, I was lucky to break into publishing and had minor success with the Andrakis fantasy series, enough to consider taking on a writing career full time, but I was well aware of the risks because we had a young family and substantial mortgage, so the change was never financially viable. When I embarked on full time writing, I told family and friends it was likely to be a costly and no-to-low income proposition for at least three years and, being an artistic pursuit, even possibly never any real income. I’ve watched writing colleagues over many years take the same leap, some from full time work and some for whom writing was a large enough income stream to make it their core work. Some have been successful in maintaining a good annual income, either through consistent contracts with publishers, very capable marketing and grafting skills, or a hybrid writing and teaching writing business. A very tiny few are making more income than the average good job. Most, however, are not making much at all. The latest Australian Society of Authors through Macquarie University survey (2022) shows that, on average, Australian authors earn just over $18,000 per annum. Poets earn the lowest average: education authors the highest average.

​Like any small business, you need starting finance and a solid business plan, a potential market for your product and a marketing plan. I began with $10,000 in the kitty at the end of 2022, a total of twelve writing projects to complete, plans to approach agents and publishers, a small fan base, an existing global book market, and an intention to learn how to effectively market my work.
 
By the end of July 2024, the kitty is empty. The expenditure was spread across buying cover illustrations for five books, repairing the computer, buying author book copies to on-sell and use for promotion, website and domain costs, attending workshops in person and online, paying for promotional ads on social media, various stationary and printing goods and a new printer, and a bottle of good whiskey. Okay, maybe the whiskey can be considered unnecessary. Maybe.
 
Of the planned writing projects, one novel was completed and published, one poetry anthology completed and published, two manuscripts are currently on offer to publishers, seven manuscripts are completed and awaiting cleaning up and submissions, eight previously self-published books have been re-edited, rebadged and re-published, and three project manuscripts are partially written. I’ve also retrieved the rights to all my work and will most likely self-publish the Dreaming in Amber quatrology early in 2025, if I can sort out cover art issues. For the statisticians among you, the original twelve projects rapidly became twenty-six projects. I get restless.
 
Agent and publisher approaches so far have been unsuccessful, but that’s a mere drop in the ocean as far as how many I have yet to pursue – and I can always fall back to self-publishing. The industry has dramatically changed since I was last involved way back in 2009 – self-publishing has boomed astronomically, bookshop chains have collapsed, publishers seem less interested in small publishing runs for lesser-known authors, the number of people publishing world-wide is phenomenal, the artificial and bogus and plagiarism industry is rife, social media and entrepreneurial marketing is everywhere and is almost everything: it is a different environment. But it has many opportunities too.
 
A friend suggested it’s time to pause the writing and really get on with the marketing and I think they’re right, except that marketing means spending money. I’m happy to share that the writing business so far generated just over $2,000 in the same period as I spent $10,000. So that’s only a $8,000 loss so far. I know businesses that have lost considerably more – umm, maybe that’s not comforting. Nevertheless, now I have to learn to be an entrepreneur and a salesperson. New skills.
 
Moving forward, I have two more writing projects to complete before the close of 2024, and I will begin the marketing training to put the aggressive part of my new business into operation from the beginning of 2025. I’m sincerely glad that I jumped into this part of my life. I will not leave the questions unanswered. I won’t have regrets that I didn’t have a crack at doing what I love. That makes me very happy. I have a roof over my head, food on the table, family and friends, and I live in a peaceful place. And I’m writing. Nice. Very nice indeed.

​An amazing month – lots happening. here's a quick summary...
 
June began with me completing the first full draft of the manuscript with the working title A Day in His Life. At 38,000 words, it is a novella. I will return to it in a month or so to explore expansion, but where it sits at the moment is certainly enough for the story being told. I can add more back story and perhaps one or two more incidents during the character’s day, but I don’t want to artificially inflate what is meant to represent a single day. For now, that project must simmer.

​The second is titled First Drafts which is delivered in eight fortnightly sessions, each ninety minutes, consisting of, say, thirty minutes of me front-loading on specific topics like story and chapter openings, character and setting creation and so on, and then a workshop atmosphere for the remainder of each session during which the participants can discuss and share and begin exploring those specific elements in their own projects.
​​ 

​ Two new manuscripts have been offered to publishers, so I await responses on their first outings in the big world.
​
And, towards the close of June, I’ve embarked on creating the third manuscript in the Dragon Kin series. The Dragon Kin fantasy novels have been a slow work in progress since I drafted the first book, Storm, in 2021, and the second, War, last year. All titles are working titles only, and the new book is titled Revenge, for now. I’ll appraise you of the general content of that series next blog.
 
July will be busy with other matters, but let’s see where it takes us.

​May has been productive and busy.
 
The month opened with a decision to gather a host of poems I wrote many years ago, some as early as the 1970s and university years.
 
I wrote poems prolifically from around age eight, most of them Australian bush-themed and some naively political. A handful were published in school magazines. They were modelled heavily on the rhythmic and rhyming patterns of Australian bush ballads.
 
At university I was introduced to the Liverpool Poets and US Beat poetry, and I modified my style accordingly. And then later came Bruce Dawe and similar poets whose subject matter was contemporary politics and suburban life. There was a point in my life when I dreamt that I would be a poet and Keats-like I would live a brief but inspirational life, and die tragically, leaving wise words behind for the ages. I was nineteen.

​ 
I am also developing a new novel, currently 40,000 words, based on the concept of a day in a character’s life – think Solzhenitsyn’s One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich as the model. The character and his nature are requiring significant background research, but the project is taking solid shape. What will be difficult to market and may not be palatable to most readers are the type of character and some of the necessary language in the tale. So be it. I need to tell the story. The same need drove me to write Joy Ride back in the 1990s, a story of a teenager who rebels against norms and doesn’t apologise for doing so.
 
Still struggling to find an agent, so I’m going to try direct approaches to publishers.

On the writing front, Girlie has sold a handful of copies to family and friends – exactly what the book was intended to do, so I’m satisfied. On reflection, I forgot that the book was a twelve year project, started back in 2012 when I began formally interviewing Mum. People often ask, ‘How long does it take to write a book?’, and my answer used to be ‘About twelve to eighteen months’, but now it is always ‘As long as it takes’ as I learned is the case with several projects in the past twelve months.
 
While I keep querying agents in the hope of selling my fantasy and science fiction projects, I embarked on a different tale which feels like it has the potential to be a novella rather than a full length novel and I may adapt to a stage play. Working title A Day in His Life, it focuses on one day in the life of an older man whose world is confined to a boarding house, prison experiences and pension income, a situation created by many childhood and young adult traumas. I can’t divulge much more except that it is gritty, realistic writing and unlikely to attract a huge reading audience because the central character is not necessarily appealing, but it’s a story I want to tell that is in the vein of Solzhenitsyn’s One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich (only shorter, contemporary Australian and unforgiving). Anyway, I’m 25,000 words in and committed to finishing it.
 
The other project based around eight men on a houseboat is in idle phase at the moment, but I will renew attention to it soon.
 
So, a fragmented blog entry – more a catch-up than anything. Hope everyone is well.

February began with the joy of touching base with readers of the Andrakis series who have supported me by buying copies of the 30th anniversary edition available either by directly contacting me or via Amazon at Tony Shillitoe Guardians.
 
We are self-publishing Girlie and the book will be launched on Mum’s birthday on Amazon – March 24th. The book blurb is:

The cover design is a photograph of Mum when she was recuperating in the tuberculosis ward at Daw Park Repatriation Hospital. The background is the tapestry she wove while recuperating.
 
If you are in Australia and want a copy, you can pre-order directly with me. Send me an email at [email protected] with your name and post address and I will organise a copy and invoice with payment details. The book price, with postage included, will be $30. Of course, if you’re in Adelaide and want to pick up a copy directly from me, it’s $25 and a coffee or beer or whiskey at a place of your choosing. Email me to organise collection. It normally takes about two weeks for me to order and receive copies to on-sell.
 
In other news, I have been working directly with a very good friend on a book project that encompasses stories shared by retired members of an organisation (all hush-hush for now). Still legal hoops and writing necessities to go through and it is most likely a self-publish work when finished, but it is an interesting historical document.
 
I have edited the two science fiction novels and now I will start seeking an agent who can represent me to publishers with these projects. I’ve been approaching agents for the fantasy projects – so far, no success. Early days, though – I will always persist. Apparently, in the existing market, it’s not uncommon to have to make several hundred such approaches!
 
Finally, I’m working on the next project – a novel about eight men who spend a long weekend on a houseboat. I’ll let you ponder that one.

​Before we know it, 2024 is in full swing and the first month is done! I hope you had a break over the Christmas/New Year period, or at least an opportunity to refresh. For me, January has been a month of cover design and republication.
 
I’ve just published a new edition – the 30th anniversary edition – of the original Andrakis trilogy on Amazon, replete with the original titles – Guardians, Kingmaker, Dragonlords – and a unified series of covers! Thirty years ago – actually more, because the new edition was a little late - Guardians and Kingmaker hit the shelves in 1992 and Dragonlords in 1993, and I am always indebted to the Pan Macmillan Australia team for the chance to become a published writer.
 
The creation of this new edition is the last time I will revisit the Andrakis series. A cover design debacle with the original Dragonlords meant that, while Guardians and Kingmaker sold well, Dragonlords sales lagged, and for many years I had letters and, later, emails from readers asking me when I was releasing the third book or telling me that they could not get hold of book three. It was a very important lesson in publishing – that covers of series need to be identifiably linked.
 
Robert Stephenson at Altair did a reprint edition of the series in 2006 with the books renamed under their original draft titles – The Waking Dragon, Maker of Kings, Dragonlord War – and this series was replicated on Amazon in 2015 with cover art provided from Kirsi Salonen designed to unify the series more effectively. That sorta worked – but there were a range of issues with that set of publications, too.
 
So, this 30th anniversary edition finally has, I believe, a unified set of covers to identify the books as a single series. It’s been a strange, at times frustrating, journey.
 
I enjoy learning how to do cover designs. My early attempts were embarrassing, clumsy, and unprofessional. My latest efforts are improving (I think). The Andrakis trilogy covers represent a compromise and a conglomeration. I wanted to pay homage to the original Guardians cover art by Mike Worral that I’ve always loved for its blend of dragon fire and lightning, and so I created a stormy lightning background using Gencraft AI and this is designed to unify the book covers. I then encapsulated Kirsi’s original art in common border frames on the front covers to draw the originals into the Altair versions. The titles and author text were the most difficult, mainly because I did not want the art obscured by the lettering. I could have (maybe should have) made the titles much more prominent, but in the end I chose the smaller text to give the art the respect it deserves.
 
And so, into February. My focus this month is on editing and preparing two scifi novels for marketing. I’m chasing agents because I would like my new work to go through conventional publishing, so if you know someone who would be keen to take on my work definitely let me know. I am settling into this new life of full time writing and enjoying the freedom to be creative.

​So, the final blog for 2023, and it will be a summary/observation of a first year of full time writing. Fair warning so you can choose to read on or bail.
 
The Numbers
 
Let’s get the dry info out of the way – the year’s statistics.

• Number of completed manuscripts: 9
• Fantasy novels: 5
• Sci Fi novels: 2
• Historical Romance: 1
• Education Guide: 1
• Projects started for development in 2024: 4
• Total word count across projects: 621,276
• Number of submissions: 3
• Number of rejections: 3
• Expenditure: $12,350
• Income: $0

 
The Projects
 
The Last Wizard series – Tamesan, Chasse, Jaysin, Harmi – Fantasy novels
The original The Last Wizard was published by Pan Macmillan way back in 1995. It was successful and made its way into schools, and was a finalist in the inaugural Aurealis Awards, losing out to Garth Nix’s Sabriel. While it was written as a stand-alone at the time, I had pencilled ideas for a series. That never saw light of day for many personal reasons at the time. This year, however, I completed three novels – Chasse, Jaysin, Harmi - each one focussed on a sibling in the family, the last one told from the dragon’s point of view, each draft of around 90,000 words taking just over a month each to complete. The series is now ready for 2024 submissions.
 
The Dragonkin series – Storm, War, Revenge – Fantasy novels
Dragonkin was started way back in 2007 as a follow on from the Dreaming in Amber and Ashuak Chronicles published by HarperCollins, but was never developed beyond half a first book draft. Conceived as a development on the fate of the dragons that were tricked into following the Alfyn through a portal in the Amber books, this year I finished drafts of book one – Storm – and book two – War. Book three – Revenge – is yet to be drafted and so this series is a 2024 project.
 
Girlie – Historical Romance novel
Girlie has gone through four years of development, and one submission and rejection, but the manuscript is ready for 2024 submissions.
 
Bill – Historical novel
A second historical novel focussed on a young male in the 1930s and 1940s is underway. It’s in fledgling form. It follows the experiences of a boy growing up on a remote farm whose mother dies when he is 11 through to his joining the RAAF in 1944. Lots to do.
 
All We Have – Science Fiction novel
Pre-Covid and post-ISIS, in 2017-18 I drafted a novel in diary entry form titles All We Have of a young man who finds himself in world torn apart by a pandemic and the rising up of ‘terrorist’ organisations during the pandemic. Apart from the apocalyptic elements described, the twist is the pandemic virus adapts rapidly to control its hosts – zombie apocalypse. While the first draft is finished, I think it needs significant editing in light of the world’s recent/current experiences and maybe with regard to characters. To be edited in 2024.
 
Rebound – Science Fiction novel
I undertook NaNoWriMo last month and completed a 56,000 word draft based on corporate control of the world and the attempt to introduce cyborg players into international basketball. The organisation, Independent Freedom, uses assassins to disrupt corporate efforts to monopolise business and push the citizens deeper into poverty. The corporates use assassins to take out IF operatives. Caught in the mix is a basketball club targeted as an experimental ground for the cyborg athletes. I’m hoping to finish final edit of Rebound and get it ready for 2024 submissions.
 
We Need to Talk about Teaching – Education guide
I’ve wanted to publish a guide to the daily aspects of teaching no one talks about until you’re on the job – yard duties, reliefs, parent relationships, PD etc – and I wanted to tell it interspersed with hundreds of teacher comments I’ve collected over a long time. This work is now in first rough draft, but it needs a significant edit., even though I thought I could get it done this year. Now it’s in the 2024 list of ‘To be continued…’
 
Self-discipline
 
Those closest to me know that until this year, writing was slotted in around everything else – education work, family, sport. A fantasy novel commonly took a year to draft into reasonable shape. Between 1990 and 2008, I managed to have 11 fantasy novels and 2 teenage novels published with Pan MacMillan and HarperCollins, and several short stories, articles and scripts. Contracts from publishers certainly helped with self-discipline over that eighteen-year publishing period.
 
This year, unencumbered by full time work, it has been incredibly liberating to re-evaluate life and writing, and the victor and victim simultaneously has been self-discipline. I have had to establish a writing and reading and editing routine during what would normally be the working week. Simultaneously, I have also been challenged to ‘relax’, slow down’, enjoy retirement’. Balancing those two forces is a challenge. It’s nice to have the challenge. Some days I manage to do one or the other, some days both. Occasionally, neither.

Nibbles – okay, let’s leave that topic. Loneliness does inspire nibbling. I have to be very conscious of getting up and moving about because there are days when I am so focussed on what I’m writing that several hours can pass before I realise I better move.
 
Another thing I’ve done is set myself a daily word count of around 3000 words – basically, if I hit it, I can make choices to do other things that day (or keep writing), It’s not strict – I cheat. But it gives the writing ‘job’ parameters against which I can measure productivity. Did I just write that?
 
The last comment on self-discipline concerns money. I’ve made none from writing this year. At times, I’ve defaulted to looking on Seek for possible jobs that will bring in money. I’ve contemplated at least doing relief teaching, anything to justify my existence. And that’s when my responsible brain kicks in and says, ‘You have chosen to be a writer. You didn’t choose to make money. You chose to create. Creativity is never a guarantee of income. Lots of famous writers died penniless (and lots more unknowns). Why should you expect anything different from your art? Be an artist. Stop being tied to monetisation.’ So, yes, the hardest discipline is to accept that I am no longer a part of capitalist productivity. At best, I’m a creative, relying on someone else to house, clothe and feed me. I have nightmares…
 
Goals
 
Has this year been productively successful in writing? Mostly, yes. I’m pleased with the output. It’s good to have completed drafts of seven projects that have been languishing on the computer in notes for up to twenty years. It’s also good to have two fresh projects drafted. The focus this year was always going to be purely on writing, not on seeking agents or publishers. To that end, it has been successful.
 
But now, the truly difficult and scary part of my choice to leave safe employment and be a fulltime writer begins for 2024 – securing a literary agent and publishing the books. Those are part of the 2024 goals, along with developing and completing several more projects that have languished for lack of time in the past.
 
If you’ve followed my ramblings this year, thank you. Have a safe holiday period (if you have one) and see you in 2024!