Angela Meyer's Blog

Hey folks! I hope you’re all doing really well. I’ve published two pieces of short fiction this year (amid raising a baby and working; I’m quite proud of this achievement!).

‘The Station’ is about a pregnant scientist who arrives in a dusty desert town to take up her position at the mysterious ‘Station’, only to be thwarted by locals and a scheduled lockdown and blackout. It’s inspired by The Castle by Franz Kafka, and is quite possibly an extract of a longer work… It’s out now in Meanji...

I have a new, darkly humorous short story about a man who helps power his city through nervous electricity in Edition 7 of Science Write Now. Check it out here. I’m so excited to be published in this edition of the magazine, which is exploring humour (often through the strange and absurd). Science Write Now is ‘a network of people and resources that support creative writing about science’. I’ve always admired its aims, which are to:

(1) help writers and s...

I’ve just completed a series of snapshots on sustainability in Australian publishing and bookselling, for Books+Publishing (subscription required):

Part 1 provided an overall intro and looked at what publishers are doing.

Part 2 looked at where most of the emissions come from, greener book production and printing practices, whether there are alternatives to the paper we currently use, and whether ebooks and audiobooks are greener.

Part 3 looked at what booksellers are doing, delved into...

I’ve never written a vampire story before, and I’m not sure I ever thought I would… But in the depths of my grief for my dad, as I spent a lot of time in a small, isolated regional town, watching and reading horror and fantasy as ‘comfort’ (ideas of mortality and loss present, present, present), this character, Nicole, an arrogant and flawed queer vampire making some rookie mistakes, came almost fully formed. ‘Parameters of Oblivion’ is the first short story I’ve had out in a few years. I’m so p...

Laura Jean McKay (author of the brilliant The Animals in That Country) and I recently appeared on the Second Life Book Club, with Draxtor. The set was an incredible floating cloud. Laura was an orca and I was a Bowie-hawk. We talked animals, minds being invaded, taking years to write a novel, ‘method’ writing, genre fiction, and much more! It streamed on YouTube, so here it is if you’re interested.

I have a new essay in Reading Like an Australian Writer, an anthology of writers examining the techniques, storytelling ways, and sometimes strange magic of other writers via a range of styles: personal, responsive, academic, analytical. It’s aimed at emerging writers, writing students, but also fans of Australian literature and reading in general. It’s an anthology of deep reading, admiration and celebration. In the essays I’ve read so far there’s a sense of wonder and gratefulness for the ...

I read fewer books than ever this year. I finished thirty-three books and will probably get through three or so more by the year’s end, now that I’ve given myself a little time off. (This, of course, does not include all the books I worked on as an editor!) It wasn’t just the broad-sweeping anxiety of the pandemic that made me read slower this year, it was the busyness of juggling work and care for family members: a combination of physical, in-person nursing and high-level problem solving an...

I’ve started a free monthly newsletter aimed at emerging fiction writers. You can subscribe here, or check out the posts so far:

Your writing goals for 2020

Why even write?

Research your novel without leaving home

Reading to write

Open the door to your ‘magician’s toyshop’

How to create memorable characters

I’m also creating a short course on this last topic, which you can pre-order here

It’s been a golden, packed few weeks: panels and workshops (and whisky) at the Terror Australis Readers and Writers Festival in Cygnet, Tasmania; teaching a gorgeous group of writers in my Faber Academy class on ‘how to edit your own writing’; finishing my full time job in publishing (bittersweet!); and being shortlisted in Scotland’s prestigious national book awards, the Saltire Society Literary Awards.

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