CJ Cronin

CJ Cronin - call me CJ, I trained as an actor at Australia's National Institute of Dramatic Art. While there I had three plays that I wrote chosen in succession for the National Playwrights Conference. After NIDA and a few years working as an actor I taught myself to write screenplays and became writer-in-residence with Warner Bros, Australia. From there I slowly evolved as a novelist.

I'm not a good reader of fiction, but reading science for me has been useful - you become traveled and world-wise without leaving the library. I think 'my journey' although unplanned, is tailor-made for creating competent writing: Learn to act - teaches you how to embody another character's perspective. Learn to write dialogue (best done as a playwright) - teaches you how to embody multiple characters and their different thought processes under varying circumstances. Learn to write for the movies - teaches you brevity, efficiency and story structure. If your background is as I describe then the paradigm of three acts, plus last minute denouement, evolves naturally in your mind.

Several years ago I moved to China and began teaching English at night as I wrote during the day. This is an excerpt from an interview with me by the Shanghai Daily: "If I write just one work of significance in my life it will be enough, and I believe that work is 'Hurry Huchimp Be Bonobo Like'. If, like me, you are sick of the world the way it is and want change for the better, then here is a story about someone who felt the same way and did something about it."