Patricia Leslie

I’ve just read an article about the short and long term marketing advantages/disadvantages of social media: Playing The Long Game In Self Publishing. Being very much a short term strategy, social media can take up a lot of good writing time. I knew that, but if you’re not active then you’re not seen. This is still true, but the level of activity is what needs to be assessed. Is it worth constant updates when those updates have a shelf life of only a few hours (or minutes in t

Well, it's a start anyway. Here's some video of my first ever speaking engagement. Tracy Joyce, Sue Parritt and I were attending the Sydney Book Expo in August so when the lovely Michelle (our publisher), asked if we'd like to form a panel, we all thought, why not? I can't remember what we were meant to talk about and our Expo supplied panel moderator didn't show up, so we spent 40-odd minutes talking about our writing and research processes, and how we each experienced the p

Over the last couple of weeks I’ve felt the need to procrastinate as much as possible and so have spent the time reading. I’ve finished Camilla Lackberg’s the ice princess and Colin Taber’s The Landing, and have started Tristes Tropiques by Claude Levi-Strauss, Van Gogh The life by Steven Naifeh & Gregory White Smith. Tristes Tropique is a memoir in which the late Levi-Strauss, a structural anthropologist, shares with us his disdain for travel writers of the time (mid- 20th c

Judging by how quiet I've been on social media lately, you'd be forgiven for thinking I've disappeared in a giant sink hole off the East Coast of Australia! Much better than that, I've been touring Vietnam with Wendy Wu Tours (and my husband). We had a wonderful time with 23 other Australian and 5 British travellers walking around and exploring the main touristy sites starting in Ho Chi Minh City and finishing in Hanoi. Loved every hot, sweaty minute of it! But I'm home now,