Tag Archives: Crime and Justice Festival

July 26, 2010

Four days of writers’ festivals

Filed under: Events/appearances — Tags: , , — PD Martin @ 11:46 pm

Katherine Battersby and PD Martin at the literary dinner

Katherine Battersby and PD Martin at the literary dinner

Last week was a busy one…

Wednesday I flew up to Mackay as one of the authors taking part in the Whitsunday Voices Youth Literature Festival. The event, hosted at Whitsunday Anglican College, is in its seventh year and brings together primary and secondary school students from around the region. I was the official ‘entertainment’ for years 11-12 so I made sure I threw in a few stories about my weird and wonderful research.

The festival kicked off with the Wednesday night launch and a panel with Jackie French, John Danalis, Deborah Abela and Tristan Bancks

Thursday and Friday were the core festival days, with most of the authors/artists giving 3-4 workshops or sessions each day. And then Friday night was party time, with a literary dinner.

Whitsunday Voices was a blast – a great festival and the other authors rocked! In addition to the four authors/artists mentioned above, I’m also talking about Michael Wagner, James Roy, Ruben Meerman, Gus Gordon, Katherine Battersby and last but not least, David “Ghostboy” Stavanger.

I flew back into Melbourne on the Saturday, and it was time to gear up for Melbourne’s Crime and Justice Festival. I was at a dinner on the Saturday night and then on Sunday was interviewed by Sarah Byrne. The session covered everything from how the Sophie Anderson series started to my recent ebook project, Coming Home.

It was a great few days…but on Sunday night I fell asleep on the couch at 8.30!

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July 17, 2009

Editing, editing, editing

Filed under: Kiss of Death,Writing — Tags: , , , — PD Martin @ 4:59 am

For the most part, I love the editing process. You submit your book with the initial panic that it’s crap and your publisher will hate it, but then you get the thumbs up. Phew! And then comes the detailed editorial report, which not only points out all the good things in the book, but also how to improve it. And like every writer, I’m all for making each book the best it can be.

But one of the things I HATE about editing is the scenes and lines that end up on the cutting room floor, so to speak. I’m talking about chunks that no longer fit because of other, bigger changes. In the case of KISS OF DEATH, I’ve got some major changes in chronology, which means some serious cutting and pasting and some ruthless cuts.

For the moment I’m storing all these paragraphs and scenes in a Word document titled Deletions. Perhaps once I finish my first major pass of the book and get a handle on the plot and chronology changes these scenes will fit elsewhere. Who knows?

To give you an example, this week I’ve deleted a five-page scene on a suspect interview. Problem is, that scene divulges heaps and heaps of my research – stuff that I worked hard on and I need to get it across somewhere! But where?

I’ve also deleted a half-page phone call, but that call included some key character insights – can I fit these elsewhere?

Sigh…I do love editing, but it can be hard to cut, cut, cut!

Upcoming events
I’ve got quite a few upcoming events – more about that next week. But in the meantime if you’re based in Melbourne you might be interested in the Crime and Justice Festival. I’m not appearing this year, but I will be attending!

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