spaces in between time

A moody excerpt from ‘Mood Violet’

Posted on June 4, 2025 by admin

Here is a little moody video I created (original video and audio) in After Effects for my novel Mood Violet… posted to Insta under the Odibha_ handle. Just for fun (hence the portrait dimensions). So, for any potential publishers or literary agents out there – yes I can make good content for socials!! Even for my character, not just me… The tiny text excerpt is from Chapter 2.

Of course the manuscript title is a working title at this stage too … Nothing set in stone.

Moody video vibes for MOOD VIOLET manuscript – excerpt from Chapter 2. All original video, audio and text by Megan Heyward.

Posted in Mood Violet, novel, psychological thriller | Leave a comment

Mood Violet: a gripping, twisty psychological thriller

Posted on June 4, 2025 by admin

I’ve recently completed a really thorough edit of MOOD VIOLET, my 90,000 word psychological thriller set in a university. It’s a gripping, twisty psychological thriller blended with dark academia with a strong, complex female protagonist.

University is a sanctuary for film lecturer TISH NEWMAN, until a student with a dark obsession submits creative work targeting her with hidden messages, threatening the world she’s built for herself and her young daughter and seeking to betray her own secrets. Now Tish must play a dangerous game to confront the truth of her student’s violent obsession.

I’ve just sent the full manuscript off to the Harper Collins Australian Fiction Prize. Yes, I was super inspired after the Writers NSW Open Day with Harper Collins, where I had to submit the opening 6500 words. I was incredibly fortunate to get feedback from the legendary Head of Fiction at HC, Catherine Milne. She was incredibly positive!! Urged me to send it in to the competition! So I did.

I’ve also entered opening chapters in a couple of other publishing opportunities. Will start looking for an agent very soon. Meanwhile I have had some fun playing around in Photoshop, After Effects etc, to create an Instagram for my protagonist, Tish. You can find it at Odibha_ on Insta. How to remember that? It’s ‘one day I’ll be happy again’.

Posted in Mood Violet, novel, psychological thriller | Leave a comment

I Am A Singer interactive narrative redux

Posted on February 6, 2025 by admin

I mentioned a while back that my early CD-ROM interactive narrative I Am A Singer (1997) had been selected as a part of an ARC research project to bring back early Australian interactive works and make them available to new audiences using an emulation system – EaaSI – developed by Yale university researchers. This project, run out of Swinburne University and headed by Professor Melanie Swalwell, will be officially launched later in 2025. It’s CD-ROM redux time!! I Am A Singer is an interactive narrative about a fictional young Australian musician- Isobel Jones- who is suffering amnesia, and trying to piece together the conflicting threads of information about herself into a meaningful sense of self. The work was widely exhibited and nationally and internationally ‘back in the day’, in a time well before social media and influencers, and includes image, text, audio, video and original music written by well known Australian songwriter Phil Kakulas of The Black Eyed Susans. Will post the link once it is live.

Below is a snippet of the work recorded on mobile phone, running on a vintage Macintosh in the ELL media archaeology lab, Washington State University, 2019. Until now, this is the only way it could be seen – running on beautifully preserved old machines.

Handheld video snippet of ‘I Am A Singer’ (1997) running on vintage Mac in ELL lab, Nov 2019.

Posted in I Am A Singer, interactive narrative | Comments Off

Complete draft of novel

Posted on January 22, 2025 by admin

A little update to say that I’ve been beavering away throughout 2024 working on my manuscript, and I finished the first draft of 88000 words in late November 2024. It’s a psychological thriller / suspense/ mystery set in a university, current working title/s Violet Blonde or Mood Violet. Completed some revisions in late December, now doing some further edits before approaching literary agents and publishers. I’ve also kept in contact with some of the writers on the Curtis Brown Zoom course I did in late 2023, we catch up monthly to provide feedback on each other’s writing, despite them being based in England and Scotland. Who knows what the new year will bring …

Below is a little test image that I created in photoshop for a bit of fun. Now back to the revisions!

Posted in Mood Violet, novel, psychological thriller | Comments Off

EAASI emulation & my interactive works

Posted on November 12, 2023 by admin

Very pleased that my interactive narrative works from the 1990s and early 2000s – I Am A Singer (1996) and of day, of night (2003) were selected to be part of a trial project with The Australia Emulation Network using the EAASI emulation system to recover and access interactive digital works and games from the 1990s. More on the project here:-

https://www.swinburne.edu.au/news/2023/06/swinburne-professor-saving-decades-of-digital-artefacts/

As part of this important preservation project, the Australian Centre for the Moving Image will be making my works available both onsite at ACMI in Federation Square in Melbourne; and also via an online link so that they can be accessed remotely. Incredible to have these projects accessible again. Not just mine but others too!! Here are some snippets of I Am A Singer (1996) being run on a vintage Mac in Prof Dene Grigar’s Electronic Literature Lab at WSUV, USA. Soon it will be available to play pretty much anywhere. Yay!!

Handheld video snippet of ‘I Am A Singer’ (1997) running on vintage Mac in ELL lab, Nov 2019.

Posted in digital / electronic literature, elit, I Am A Singer | Comments Off

Writing a psychological thriller

Posted on November 12, 2023 by admin

Well, in the last few weeks I have been undertaking a writing course with Curtis Brown Creative in London ( doing it online) – Writing a Psychological Thriller. I’m in early stages of a first draft of a mystery/ thriller set in a university. I have to say this has been a great course, I’ve really learned a lot, and it has been excellent fun to boot. I’ve met some really good writers too. Planning to work through a large chunk of this over the summer. Hopefully more news on this to come…

Posted in novel | Comments Off

The True Tale of Catherine Wheel update

Posted on April 28, 2023 by admin

A further update. Had a lot of pesky health problems last year and am currently recovering from a broken wrist, all of which have been hampering my work. BUT Catherine Wheel is closer to being finished ( haha) and now sitting at around 58,000 words. Not much more to go. And then what to do with her? Perhaps release on Googleplay, perhaps with little video snippets too… Two other book projects are waiting to begin.

Posted in Catherine Wheel, novella | Comments Off

HERD article published on building Indigenous cultural competencies using digital media

Posted on May 3, 2022 by admin

Well it has been a long time coming, but finally the article I wrote with Natalie Krikowa discussing the work we did to build digital media students understanding of Indigenous cultural competencies has been published by HERD. The term ‘Indigenous cultural competencies’ is a Universities Australia terms term concerning the need for universities to ensure that all students understand how to engage and communicate respectfully with Indigenous people, communities and organisations. The article outlines the process we undertook, in which we leveraged student engagement with mobile phone apps and content through case studies of Indigenous mobile apps, embedding the application of Indigenous cultural principles and protocols such as Respect, Agency, Attribution, Consultation and Consent, within the digital environment.

This was a really rewarding project developed in liaison with Indigenous colleagues which was also recognised by UTS with a University Learning and Teaching Award in 2019. The need to continue to build Indigenous cultural competencies in all students and across all disciplines remains. Link to the article below, and a quick summary via the pics.

https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/07294360.2022.2063815?journalCode=cher20

Posted in Teaching and Learning | Comments Off

Writing / developing new work

Posted on February 17, 2022 by admin

Well its been a while since I’ve posted here… yeah a few things have been happening, pandemics and such. When we went into our second NSW lockdown in July 2021 I started working on a new project. It’s a post-pandemic/ post-apocalyptic (naturally) work that is likely a novella, although it’s currently at around 25,000 words so far with more to come, so perhaps is more of a novel. It may include some media elements – limited video, image etc – but I don’t want to be bound to creating lots of media for it, as that can also become an albatross. Been writing for just an hour or so a day, this being the new plan to avoid being tied to the machine for large chunks of my life and instead make time and space for real life and real humans, albeit in pandemic mode by the sea. I’m over halfway through the writing and thought I’d share the working title and a quick graphic I cooked up. Stay safe everyone.

Posted in Catherine Wheel, novella | Comments Off

Live traversal of “of day, of night” Nov 8, 2019 at WSUV, USA

Posted on December 23, 2019 by admin

Here is the link to the video recordings of the live traversal of “of day, of night” undertaken with Professor Dene Grigar at Washington State University Vancouver, USA. This was the culmination of a visiting scholarship I undertook in October/ November 2019 to the Electronic Literature Lab at WSUV. “of day, of night” is an electronic literature/ interactive narrative project developed in Australia, first exhibited in 2002 and published by US- based hypertext publishing house Eastgate Systems in 2005. This work is no longer viewable on current Mac’s or PC’s due to changes in hardware, software & operating systems. It has been widely exhibited internationally. The livestream traversal organised by Pof Grigar and the ELL team represent an aspect of the important preservation and archiving of digital cultural content and early electronic literature work that Prof Grigar and her team have been working tirelessly to enable. I am honoured to have been included in this and in the Pathfinders project spearheaded by Dene Grigar and Stuart Moulthrop. As the importance and relevance of early experiments in digital cultural production are now being increasingly recognised at local, national and international levels, I am thrilled to have been included in this process.

There are 5 videos in the full live stream traversal, accessible here:- https://vimeo.com/channels/rebooting. Three of the videos are included below. Thank you Deene, John & the ELL team!