Tag: author

Mini Q&A with Danielle Binks

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It’s hard to believe YA Day is just three weeks away! How exciting! We can’t wait to hear from 15 incredible Aussie authors who’ll be appearing on five epic panels. It’s a full day of bookish goodness, created in partnership with Writers Victoria! Click here to grab your tickets if you haven’t purchased them already.

Today we’re sharing a mini Q&A with literary agent, editor of Begin, End, Begin: a #LoveOzYA Anthology, and all-round amazing human being, Danielle Binks. Danielle will be appearing on the “It’s Alive!: How to Get Published” panel with Ellie Marney and Nina Kenwood on the day, and we can’t wait to hear all of them chat about their own writing and offer up tips and tricks on how to get published.

If you’re a writer and you’re looking to get published one day, this panel is sure to give you the insider knowledge you need to better equip yourself for this journey – so make sure you bring a pen and paper!

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May Day Mine | Verity Croker

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Today we have a piece by Verity about her #LoveOzYA novel, May Day Mine! Although we haven’t read this one yet, we’re eager to pick it up soon – maybe even for one of the squares on our Bingo Challenge!

Thank you, Verity!

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Even though May Day Mine is published by Harmony Ink Press in the US, it is a #LoveOzYA title as the author, me, is Australian, and the book is set in Australia, based on the Beaconsfield mine disaster. I was inspired by the event to create a fictional account, with a fictional family, as I was trying to imagine what it would have been like to live in that small town at that time. I started writing it ages ago, and spent a lot of time on it during my Master of Arts in Creative Writing course at the University of Tasmania. The other students in the class and the tutor gave me lots of helpful input to try to bring my fictional family to life. I didn’t want it to be a realistic version of exactly what happened, as I felt a responsibility to the real families who were involved and I didn’t want to upset them. So I changed the number of men who died in the rock fall, and changed the number of men trapped, so no one character would represent a real person.Read More »

Q&A with Nova Weetman

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As a part of our #LoveOzYA Month, we’re super excited to bring you this exclusive Q&A with Nova Weetman! We absolutely love her work, and she’s such a major part of the #LoveOzYA community. We hope you enjoy!

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As an author of both Children’s and Young Adult novels, what differences have you noticed that separate the two readerships?

My books are contemporary real world stories, so even though I’m writing for two distinct readerships, the themes are often similar. They’re about friendships, family, identity and working out where you fit. I think the main difference is that young adult readers want a more complex story than middle grade readers do, purely because of where they’re at. Middle grade readers will often read up, so they may also read YA, but the YA readers don’t tend to read down. My daughter stopped reading middle grade once she started high school. It was like an invisible line that she refused to cross.Read More »

Q&A with Cait Drews (AKA Paper Fury)

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Hello again, everyone! Today we have a very special Q&A with Cait AKA Paper Fury AKA C.G. Drews! ALL THREE OF THEM. They might all be the same person, but that’s highly unlikely considering Cait is the queen of Twitter and Instagram and blogging and she’s an author so… I reckon she’s actually multiple beings ruling over different dominions.

Ever since we heard that Cait’s debut novel is being published, we haven’t stopped squealing about it! We’re so happy for her, and as a #LoveOzYA author, we just had to ask her a few questions for our #LoveOzYA Month! We hope you enjoy!

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If you had to describe yourself by naming three bookish characters, which characters would you choose?

Ooh I love this question! So I’d love to say Cath from Fangirl who is a writer and huge booknerd, and Sean Kendrick from The Scorpio Races who is quiet and probably likes magical creatures better than anything else, and also Lazlo Strange from Strange The Dreamer who fell into a book and can’t get up.

Ooh such great choices! As bloggers and readers, all of us must have a piece of Cath within us. And yes, we can definitely relate to falling into a book and not being able to get up.

As a blogger and a writer, what does #LoveOzYA mean to you? Why is it important?  

It’s important to me because it’s my country and people! As a bookworm, my life is pretty flooded with American and British books, so it’s always super amazing to read a book that has Aussie slang and culture and humour woven into it, and I hope to do that with my writing too.Read More »

#LoveOzYA Anthology | Danielle Binks

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Hi friends! Today we have a very exciting interview to share with you, which will actually be the first in a series of interviews! As you know, the #LoveOzYA Anthology was voted as our June Book of the Month, and we couldn’t have been more thrilled. This month is a celebration of all things #LoveOzYA, and between recommending our favourite Aussie YA novels on our various social media channels all month and being joined by real live authors at our upcoming Book Meet, we thought it would be great to get to know some of the amazingly talented authors who contributed to the #LoveOzYA Anthology! First up, we have the lovely Danielle Binks – who wrote a short story and edited the anthology. How cool is that?!

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