I talked in an earlier post of the advantages of setting a story in your home town or a place you’re very familiar with. It’s often easy to weave some of this local color into your narrative. However when I travel interstate or overseas I always try to get to places that are off the [...]

Posted on August 29th, 2009 by Pat Turner
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One of the advantages of setting a story in your home town or city is that you can bring in a lot of local color. Perhaps you love your landscape, or perhaps you thinks it’s drab and uninteresting, but whatever it is skillful depiction of it will engage the reader. And writers often see what [...]

Posted on May 20th, 2009 by Pat Turner
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Recently, I’ve been re-reading some short story classics by women writers including Grace Paley’s Somewhere else; Shirley Jackson’s The Lottery and Eudora Welty’s Why I live at the PO and Where is the voice coming from? I was taken from small town America to Mao’s China. Once again I was amazed at the power and [...]

Posted on March 27th, 2009 by Pat Turner
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Over the past week bushfires have devastated the Australian state of Victoria. Almost 200 people have lost their lives and thousands have been left homeless. The nation is grief stricken and is still trying to come to terms with this worst natural disaster in our history. Along with the human tragedy, it is feared that [...]

Posted on February 13th, 2009 by Pat Turner
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There are some great devices available for reading ebooks on and most ebook publishers offer downloads in multiple formats. I have just begun experimenting with reading ebooks on my Ipod Touch. There is an excellent free application called Stanza which allows users to download a range of books directly to the Ipod Touch and Ipod [...]

Posted on January 24th, 2009 by Pat Turner
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