Timeline of All Works and Awards:
December 2023:
Nights Under the Sun published in both ebook and print.
See the amazing map illustrated by Arthur Bowling.
November 2023:
Turtlespear and it’s accompanying essay published in the anthology ‘Inner Workings’.
October 2021:
C Winspear is awarded the Grand Prize of the Writers of the Future contest 2020 through a ceremony in Los Angeles.
March 2021:
Selfless (5000 words) is published in online science-fiction magazine Teleport
January 2021:
Work begins on new near-future science fiction novel, America and America.
September 2020:
The End is published as the closing story of ‘Empty Sky: UTS Writers’ Anthology 2020′.
July 2020:
Second draft of 1001 nights under the sun completed.
December 2019:
Chris first contact story The Trade wins 1st place in his quarter of Writer’s of the Future. He will attend the week-long workshop and ceremony in LA the next March (delayed due to COVID-19).
Late 2019:
Chris begins a thorough edit of All for Birth, removing 30,000 words.
Oct 2019:
Poem Today on the Floor published in local anthology ZineWest. During the ceremony, Chris’ performance of his poem The Machinist earns a highly-commended prize.
Jan 2019:
Discovers the magazine Locus, which give such much needed perspective of the state of Fantasy and Science-Fiction, including recommendations for the most intriguing reading coming out right now.
December 2018:
Concluded the Masters Of Creative Writing at UTS.
September 2018:
After many years of literary short stories and sci-fi novels, Chris decided to combine these skills and begin writing Sci-fi short stories. He also became enraptured by sci-fi magazines such as Interzone, Clarkesworld, Azimovs, Analog and The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction.
June 2018:
A suite of poems completed while on cross-institutional study to USYD.
February 2018:
Varuna Fellowship attended for one week courtesy of the NSW Writer’s Centre. Fellow authors at the house included: Lisa Fuller, Emily O’Grady, Hoa Pham, Wendy Searle and Carol Major.
First draft completed of 1001 Nights under the Sun. Shortly after the fellowship, the Lightreaders third draft is completed. Submission material to follow.
November 2017:
The Lightreaders is awarded the NSW Writer’s Centre Varuna Fellowship (Under 30s category).
March 2017:
The Lightreaders second draft complete. A new project begins, a sexy fantasy based on the 1001 Arabian Nights, titled 1001 Nights under the Sun.
September 2016:
The Market is published in the Short and Twisted Anthology.
April 2016:
No More Piano Lessons receives a prize from the Rhonda Jankovic Literary Awards
June 2016:
Chris begins working on his third novel, The Lightreaders, about crime, fortune telling, fate and choice. He writes this first draft as he submits The Hanging Gardens.
March 2016:
The Hanging Gardens 3rd draft complete, ready for submission.
October 2015:
The Market receives a Highly Commended Prize from the Peter Cowan Writer’s Centre, in their Anniversary Competition.
The same month, No More Piano Lessons is shortlisted for the QUT Postgraduate Prize.
March 2015:
Chris begins a Masters of Creative Writing at UTS,
2014:
Hanging Gardens first draft is completed.
2013:
Work widens from Poetry: Is, The Rich and the Homeless; and short stories: Officer Campbell; to also include articles. The dangers of Globalisation, C.D.McDonald reviews Alladin.
Work begins in earnest on a new novel under the working title Tirus Hanging Gardens, later changed to All for Birth. The novel’s title is the name of a spacecraft which researches bio-engineered crops for space colonisation. Jason Marquez is part of an emergency maintenance crew sent to replace the Hanging Gardens’ environmental controls, when they learn that the damage was sabotage. Soon Jason finds himself not only struggling to repair the vessel, but investigating a conspiracy. He’s a rescue officer, but even he’s not trained to deal with augmented commandos, unrestrained AIs, hungry biological experiments, mind-controlling psychics or deception from within his own team.
All for Birth plays with these tropes, creating an anthology of Sci Fi’s themes condensed into one action-packed story.
2012:
Design degree concludes. Outlining of a new novel-length work begins.
Winter in Japan, and Sailor to the Blizzard are examples of poems also being written this year.
2011:
Chris travels to Korea on exchange to Yonsei University and undergoes a poetry and fiction class taught by American Poet Loren Goodman.
Some of the work written for that class includes:
Two Planes out of Sydney, a story about breakup and saying goodbye.
Retreat, a Hemingway imitation, subtly depicts a couple’s stay in the bush and their thoughts about their future.
El Toro Blanco, and The Way it Works are some of the poems written for this class and are the beginning of a poetry streak that would continue into the future.
2010:
Advocate is rewritten and reworked, amassing to over 200,000 words. As is natural for first novels, it is submitted but does not find a place with a publisher. Chris begins to study a Bachelor of Design at UTS, majoring in Architecture.
2009:
Chris travels throughout South America, spending most of his time in Peru but also Colombia, Brazil, Bolivia, Cuba and Argentina.
2008:
Stormtossed short-story completed. A contemporary Da Vinci figure is brought back to life in the future in order to complete one of his most ambitions inventions. However, the melancholy of the future state and his many-times-great-granddaughter convince him to sabotage the machine.
2005:
Started work on Advocate, an epic action novel about an Australian conscripted into war in 2035. Tom Jacka deceives the invaders, intentionally shutting down the SAM station he commands in order to draw in the enemy’s jets. He then reactivates the defenses and destroys a significant portion of the enemy’s paratroopers. The events make him a poster boy for the Australian defense, a hero. Yet as he engages the invaders in brutal infantry on infantry combat, Jacka finds that the ideal of a hero is very different from his experience as a soldier.