If you know me, you know I’m a little of the anxious side when it comes to anything approaching public speaking. My roles as NZ Writer Liaison for CoNZealand and on the NZSA Wellington branch committee have been pushing me out of my comfort zone recently. Something that is much easier when the purpose is to rave about our amazing kiwi speculative fiction talent and the opportunity a local World Science Fiction convention presents for us.
First up was organising and chairing a panel discussion on speculative fiction, publishing and CoNZealand with writers Darusha Wehm, H.G. Parry, and Mandy Hager. This was so successful that Radio New Zealand got in touch as soon as the event was listed on Facebook to ask if they could run a preview session the day before on Lynn Freeman’s Standing Room Only! We had a much longer conversation the next day at the event itself that the wonderful Andi C Buchanan live-tweeted. I picked the perfect panel for my first chairing experience. They all had varied, intelligent, and relevant insights across all of my questions and it reminded me once again how lucky I am to be writing in Wellington.
Next up was an appearance on SpecFicNZ’s podcast. I spoke to writers Mathew Danaher, Kura Carpenter, and Nix Whittaker about CoNZealand, the anthology I’m sub-editing Black Dogs, Black Tales (raising funds for the Mental Health Foundation of New Zealand, make sure you grab a copy when it’s out!), and my ‘secrets’ to writing short fiction and getting it published. Spoiler: there’s no secret. Read lots, write lots, submit lots. But I can point you in some directions of places to read and submit.
A lot of what we covered is in my previous blog posts on submission strategies, microfiction markets, and convention networking for introverts.
What next? I’m not sure. I’m in the process of making decisions about how much of my energy to put into speaking this year. I am so grateful for the opportunities I’ve been offered. It’s all that juggling act of spoons and priorities.