It was hard work writing Worldshaker! The first ideas for the world arrived 15 years before the book came out, and the basics of the story soon after. I couldn't sit down to writing it for a very long time, though--partly because I knew it had to be turned into the best thing I'd ever done, but mostly because I knew I couldn't sell it to an Australian publisher at that time.

Thankfully the world changed, and by the time the novel was finished--another five years later--steampunk was a huge gathering wave. And it turned out that steampunk was exactly what I'd written!

Writing Liberator was an entirely different experience: the first draft written in 6 months. What a rush! But there were complications there too …

I've put the story of writing Worldshaker on 3 separate web pages:

- getting the ideas that went into the novel

- writing the first draft

- working through all the re-writes that came after .

Then there's another separate page on writing Liberator.

Or if you want the whole story from start to finish, here's a button to follow it through chronologically.