The price has been reduced to only $45!

So head to the Booking Information page and fill out the booking form to ensure your place at this years’ WriteFest.

Have you ever manipulated the truth?

If yes, then your answer begs a more interesting, and slightly frightening question: Did your lie fool anyone?

Enter Dr David Craig, an expert in the field of covert operations (the art of concealment) and author of multiple academic articles. His passion for the craft makes him a real-life double-zero agent. Lies are used every day. Craig shows us how often we deceive ourselves, and others, in his book, Lie Catcher.

Lie Catcher is a labour of love that can teach you invaluable detection skills you can easily hone, even at home.

There are passages in the book that summarise critical points, and allow you to skip straight to the ‘good stuff’, but reading it sentence-by-sentence will leave one with no regrets. Every page was enlightening, and for a good while I thought I was a double-zero agent. Perhaps that’s why the book never left my hands.

Reading Lie Catcher is an incredibly fulfilling experience, allowing readers to restock their mental toolkits.

If you’re interested in taking charge of important decision-making, you’ll find the confidence to detect deceit an invaluable resource.

Apologies for any inconvenience.

2013 has been a trying year for the people of Queensland in many ways. But we’re Queenslanders and giving a helping hand is part of who we are. So this year a WriteFest sponsor, Sunbrix, is offering to sponsor three writers to this year’s WriteFest, to be held on May 18.

For your chance to claim a sponsored place, write 100 words showing us why WriteFest is important to developing your writing career. Email your story in the body of the email, subject line Sunbrix Opportunity, to info@bundywriters.com together with your name and address and contact details.

Your passionate words may be used in promotional material for the Bundaberg WriteFest in 2013 and 2014.

All writers from across Queensland and Australia can take advantage of this great opportunity, but at least one of the writers selected will be from within the Bundaberg Regional Council area.

The sponsorship only includes the WriteFest admission fee ($75) and covers no other expenses such as travel, accommodation or the Masterclass fee. However, successful writers can, if they wish, put their sponsorship towards the Masterclass fee and pay the difference themselves.

Sponsorship cannot be exchanged for goods or cash.

Entries must be submitted by 26 April.

Lucky winners will be notified by 3 May, and the sponsor’s decision is final and no correspondence will be entered into.

You can open it here or find it on our Booking Information page.

Remember, WriteFest is on Saturday 18 May 2013 so don’t delay in checking out our Program so you can think about which fantastic workshops you’d like to attend.

Meals are available for purchase from the menu. If you are intending to come, please email WriteFest Organiser Sandy Curtis on novels@sandycurtis.com with numbers.

Nikki Logan

Nikki Logan writes from the heart as all Harlequin Romance writers do, but Nikki is successful at it.

Set in Western Australia on an isolated beach with a stranded whale, FRIENDS FOREVER examines emotional conflict between a man and a woman who haven’t seen each other for ten years and have now come together to save the whale and a love they thought was long dead. Add in the complication of alcohol addiction and it makes an exciting story of love, anger, prejudice and emotional overdrive.

Sharon Rushton

Sulari Gentill

It has been my privilege to read the first four of Sulari Gentill‘s Rowland Sinclair series.

And why not. Apart for her taking out the 2012 Davitt Award for best adult fiction (crime), she’s coming up to WriteFest this year. What would we chat about while nibbling afternoon tea if I hadn’t done my homework?

Two aspects of Sulari’s novels really tickled me.

The first was the accidental correlation between her characters and my arty communist grandfather. He hung about with painters and writers – oh, the tales he told – and was a bit of a boxer, if his trophies mean anything.

I guess in character my grandfa would be closest to Sulari’s Milton – about the same age, not as flamboyant but much more committed to the cause and with some raw pugilistic skills. Mind you, as a ‘red under the bed’ my granddad grew into a superlatively cranky old man who just didn’t understand why the promise of the thirties had fizzled out. I rather think Milton would have been more pleasant in his old age.

The second was how easily Sulari captured the spirit of the times – or at least the times as I’d imagined them as a child. I’d be interested to know how she’s managed to do that.

Depression or not, after the First World War there was a sort of mad optimism (perhaps naiveté) which bred an unparalleled  freedom of thought, and speech, for anybody actively engaged in running the country. At the same time, the class which thought it was in control seemed to hold rather a patronising view of alternate political positions. As if they thought they’d proven might was right. I recognised the stiff necked pomposity (or idiocy) of the monied classes, the desperation of the poor, and the total self-absorption of those who remained untouched by the need to provide their own living, all in a time when Australia was much less the classless society than it is today.

I was also intrigued to find myself once again among the cosies I used to read as a child. I’m thinking here of Agatha Christie, the Queen of Crime, who remains the all time best selling author – sales of about two billion. There’s bravery, I thought.

Fittingly, given the ever present but generally quiet clash of class in these books (this is Australia, after all), Sulari also seems to have added a Wodehouse twist.

Sulari’s eponymous hero is very much a chinless wonder after the style of Bertie Wooster. I was hoping to find more of that sort of humour – you know, the gormless type sometimes mistaken for wisdom by the upper crust – but perhaps Sulari wasn’t ready to press quite so far.

If we were to think of Christie, then our main character would be close to  Poirot’s upper crust Captain Hastings – brave, dashing, unobservant, given to rushing in. A key difference is that he is a painter of some small reputation. And has scads of dosh.

The little grey cells Christie’s Poirot is always referencing seem in Sulari’s books to belong to the working class characters (artists to boot), Milton, Edna and Clyde; particularly Edna, though each has an area of expertise. Rowland’s area of expertise is providing the money to support them all. And managing to attract trouble. Again, like Christie, the stories largely take place in a state of relative isolation, either physical or ideological.

Perhaps because Sulari Gentill does such a good job to recreating the thirties on the page, I couldn’t stop seeing Christie or Wodehouse in a situation or a turn of phase. Both these authors were known for the intricacy of their plots, and while I tried to avoid expecting such plotting genius from the Rowland Sinclair novels I couldn’t help but feel the red herrings to be a little obvious.

Encouragingly, each of the four novels built on the previous, which is precisely what a reader wants if they’re going to make a place for an author on their list of must reads.

I’m looking forward to the newest title, which I understand is out this year.

You can find it on the Booking Information page and also on the Masterclass with Deonie Fiford page or you can access it right now here.

A Masterclass with Deonie will provide you with expert advice to tidy, tighten and polish your manuscript before submitting to a publisher.