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Matt Rubinstein

Goodreads Author

Born

Sydney, Australia

Website

http://ma.ttrubinste.in

Twitter

mattrubinstein

Genre

Fiction, Ebooks, Poetry

Influences

Vikram Seth, Italo Calvino, Raymond Chandler, Jerry Siegel, George A. ...more

Member Since

November 2012

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I started writing when I was six years old. "Writing" for me meant typing out Enid Blyton books on an old typewriter, word-for-word. Later I learned that writing was more than typing, it was invention; but I also heard that great writers like Hunter S Thompson had also copied out books like The Great Gatsby, in order to feel their construction from the inside.

When I was eleven my mother became a writer, and later she became another writer: first the children's author Gillian Rubinstein, and then the historical fantasy writer Lian Hearn. She taught me the true occupation of writing: I read early drafts of her books and saw the way she revisited and refined them, turning them from ideas into great stories.

At university I wrote a novel in sonn I started writing when I was six years old. "Writing" for me meant typing out Enid Blyton books on an old typewriter, word-for-word. Later I learned that writing was more than typing, it was invention; but I also heard that great writers like Hunter S Thompson had also copied out books like The Great Gatsby, in order to feel their construction from the inside.

When I was eleven my mother became a writer, and later she became another writer: first the children's author Gillian Rubinstein, and then the historical fantasy writer Lian Hearn. She taught me the true occupation of writing: I read early drafts of her books and saw the way she revisited and refined them, turning them from ideas into great stories.

At university I wrote a novel in sonnet form inspired by Vikram Seth's The Golden Gate. That book was Solstice, which was shortlisted for the Australian/Vogel literary award for unpublished manuscripts and later published by Allen & Unwin. I was asked to turn it into a play for the Adelaide Festival; I was lucky enough to work with some of Australia's best actors and musicians. After that I wrote Nomad, a novel based loosely on my travels in Europe, and it was published by Hyland House.

I then wrote Death of the Author, a post-modern serial killer thriller about a sinister character called The Reader who hunts down writers gathered for a festival of "multiple homicide fiction" in Adelaide. It was accepted by a publisher who then restructured and stopped publishing fiction; and it got me an agent who retired shortly afterwards. The book had kind of fallen between the cracks but I published it as an e-book this year.

I wrote a sequel to Solstice called Equinox, which was serialised on the website of the Sydney Morning Herald and which I am now tweeting over the course of a year. At the same time I wrote a literary mystery novel featuring an untranslatable manuscript that has a dangerous effect on anyone who tries to translate it, a little like the real-life Voynich manuscript. That book was runner-up for the Vogel award and was published as A Little Rain on Thursday in Australia by Text, as Vellum in the UK by Quercus, and by various European publishers.

While working on my most recent novel I became interested in the opportunities technology presents for writers and readers: I built my website, started to use Twitter, and wrote and spoke a lot about the future of the book. In 2012 I won the Calibre Award for my extended essay "Body and Soul: Copyright Copyright Law and Enforcement in the Age of the Electronic Book", which argues that traditional publishers are in real danger from alternative publishing models. I'm now putting my money where my mouth is and experimenting with electronic publishing. ...more

16 posts
Matt Rubinstein's Blog

Fair use is especially not theft

A by Linda Jaivin in today’s Sydney Morning Herald is undermined, I think, by its conflation of copying and theft:

To allow others to steal and/or profit from intellectual property that we have created is no different than saying it would be OK to smash your way into a designer’s atelier and grab whatever outfits you fancy. Copyright law protects against theft no less than any other property

Combine Editions
Matt Rubinstein’s books

Average rating: 2.67 · 75 ratings · 12 reviews · 8 distinct works

	Vellum 2.50 avg rating — 60 ratings — published 2007 — 5 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	Solstice 3.75 avg rating — 8 ratings — published 1994 — 2 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	Death of the Author 2.67 avg rating — 3 ratings — published 2012	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	Nomad 3.50 avg rating — 2 ratings — published 1997	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	Ein leichter Regen am Donnerstag 2.50 avg rating — 2 ratings — published 2008	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	Equinox 0.00 avg rating — 0 ratings	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	Solstice: the Play 0.00 avg rating — 0 ratings	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	Ein leichter Regen am Donnerstag 0.00 avg rating — 0 ratings	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars