About

We’re two gadabout authors from Perth, Western Australia: Kandace Mavrick and Paul McLaughlan.

Originally, we just met up and fought crime. Sometimes we talked about writing.

Now we both have polished novels, and want to talk about them.

Other than many diverse interests, we’re both geeks, librarians, and a bit silly. For any more, you’d have to ask us.

Paul?

Absolutely. I’m Paul, and it turns out that I’m surprisingly driven of late, with a number of projects on the go:

Bibliotek, a librarypunk book, The Miracle, lovingly told story of an elderly superhero, and Playing the Dragonking, a teen coming of ager.

You’ll be seeing a lot of these.

In addition, I’m a tutor at Curtin University (where I also study), and like dogs and dry martinis.

Big fan of Neil Gaiman, Cory Doctorow and Haruki Murakami (amongst others, ask me).

Hoping to write here, maybe have some fun. Get lots of comments *blush.*

Err… thank you, Paul.

… and now, how about we hear some inspiring word play from you Kandace?

I write young adult fiction, although at the upper range of that genre — say age 15 and up. My style is very character driven, easy to read, and kinda funny. Sarcastic funny rather than roll on the floor laughing funny. Although you’re welcome to do that if you like.

My main project at the moment is The Path of the Monster. A fantasy, Renaissance era series that uses and abuses reader’s expectations. The first book* is complete and I’m trying to encourage someone to love it (read: publish it) while working on the final draft of the second book and the first draft of the third. And the fourth just a little bit, and the grounding concepts of the fifth… Okay, yes, it’s a pentalogy*. Honestly, you start off just convincing yourself to finish the book by thinking quietly, ‘Well, that could always go in a sequel’ and then all of a sudden… I know trilogies are traditional, but the shape of the story just turned out this way.

I’m also working on another project which has the utterly ridiculous working title Wizards in Space. It just appeared in my head one day and won’t go away. It’s… well, science fiction and fantasy, I guess. It’s set in the future and a lot of it’s in space. But there’s also magic. Although it’s the sort of magic that if you take a tiny step sideways and squint could just be a new form of science.

It’s a bit more light-hearted than Path. At least so far. Actually so far all that’s happened is I’ve managed to get several people drunk (which seems to be a feature of my first drafting process) and blown up a number of things. At this point I’m not entirely sure what’s going on, let alone what’s going to happen next. I think it might involve a concussion, terrible flirting and setting several things on fire. So that’ll be fun.

* Which totally has a name. And it’s a good name too. Okay, that’s a lie. I mean, it does have a name. In fact, during its varied existence it’s had four names. I just don’t like any of them. So at the moment all three books are going by their acronyms: SETHD, TRTH and RON. Honestly, I think they might be better this way than when I spell them out. If you have a better idea, any better idea for a title, by all means let me know.

** Or quintet, quintology, or pentateuch, depending on who you ask.