Anita had a huge book deadline this week but she has had a chance to read the comments now and she says:
Couldn’t decide. All so good, but I happen to have 5 copies, so happy to announce 5 winners:
Tsana, Sean, Melanie, Lexie and Shadowwrytr.
So email me with your addresses and let me know what name you would like Anita to address the book to.
rowena(at)corydaniells(dot)com
Filed under Australian Writers, Book Giveaway, Covers, creativity, Dark Urban Fantasy, Readers
Today I’m interviewing Simon Higgins because he’s a fellow Iaido practitioner as well as a great writer, also I thought I’d ask him about fantasy writing and gender, to get his perspective as a male writer.
Look out for the give-away at the end of the post.
Q: You have a series of Young Adult novels set in Japan called the Moonshadow series. I like the covers, very manga. Are you a big fan of Manga? Do you get much say in what appears on your covers?
I do like Manga very much, and find it fascinating that most people don’t realize how old it actually is. Apparently, Manga first evolved from experimental perspective sketches that woodblock artists in Japan tinkered with during the Edo period, which in turn slowly evolved into a unique ‘pop-culture’ form of stylized drawing. Now of course, Manga has several main schools (multiple ‘dojos’ have evolved, which seems to happen with all things Japanese) and numerous sub and fusion styles. Working in conjunction with Random House Australia, I chose Ari Gibson of The People’s Republic of Animation as the cover artist for the Moonshadow books…Ari’s Manga is unique: strong, with classic lines, but still quite individual – I love it, and it’s pretty much the way I picture the characters in the series when I’m writing. The various foreign editions including the US version published by Little, Brown (the Twilight people) conjure up very different visions of the heroes. I should probably mention also that the Moonshadow series is actually pitched at the ‘middle school’ market, just a shade younger than the traditional ‘young adult’ category (not that everybody agrees on the age range those pigeon-holes actually encompass, of course)…
Q: The American Library Association described your Moonshadow books as ‘good old-fashioned adventure set in medieval Japan…exhilarating opening sequence…nonstop action…the pacing is so intense…the language is modern, but the setting, clothing, tactics and tools are well placed in their time period’. In Tomodachi, you had an English boy stranded in sixteenth century Japan. With the Moonshadow series do you use a European character to ground the audience in medieval Japan or do you plunge straight in?
The Moonshadow books feature pretty much an all Asian cast, as in this series I am dealing with a unique historical phenomenon, rather than an outsider’s eye on a specialized, complex warrior culture, as in Tomodachi. The Moonshadow series actually arose from an inspiring historical fact that I stumbled on while researching in Japan: that at one stage, Tokugawa Ieyasu, in order to keep his grip on the Shogunate, employed the spies of Clan Iga, many of whom (and this is the cool part) started their dangerous careers while they were still children.
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z8nFiWmQDh4&feature=player_embedded]
Q: I see you competed in the Iaido World Titles in Kyoto Japan and came in fifth in 2008. Not bad for a ‘gaijin’. (For more info on the samurai sword see Simon’s page on his Kyoto Adventures). I remember the pair of us sitting in the bar at a national SF convention talking martial arts all evening. I think it takes a particular type of mind to appreciate Bushido. I know you do a lot of school talks. Do you find the kids respond well? Do you think they go away with some insight into the philosophy behind the martial arts?
It certainly seems that way to me; I often see evidence of students really getting where I am coming from in terms of my own martial arts paradigm: that we train to perfect technique and therefore ultimately ourselves, not to grow skilled at actually killing; that the more one trains, the gentler one tends to become; that violence does not equal strength any more than mercy equals weakness; and that as the Japanese have always maintained, the sharpest swords rarely leave their scabbards (for they rarely need to). If there is any one message I am constantly hoping to transmit to young readers it’s this: adopting a challenging code and choosing to follow an exacting path doesn’t make you old-fashioned, quaint or weak. It does the opposite; it’s empowering. It’s a secret for enjoying and making strong progress through the landscape of life.
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zKaLRklCzxA&feature=player_embedded]
Q: You worked as police officer, prosecutor and a licensed private investigator on murder cases. You have written thrillers such as The Stalking Zone as well as near future thrillers like Under no Flag, Thunderfish, Beyond the Shaking Time. Was this a bit like bringing your work home with you?
Not really, because the three crime thrillers I wrote, Doctor Id, Cybercage and The Stalking Zone, sat more at the fantastic end of the law enforcement story genre, though much of the gritty psychology of those tales was true to the environment that inspired them. My (young vigilante) heroes were allowed to have wins, to get results, though they had to really suffer along the way, so I suppose that in the end, the stories were in fact very positive though harrowing. Thunderfish, Under No Flag, and In the Jaws of the Sea, explored the idea that people labelled criminals under one perspective might actually be not only good guys from another viewpoint, but in fact the most useful humans in that particular equation. I found it ironic that numerous imaginary elements of the Thunderfish trilogy kept coming true in one form or another, such as the battles in Antarctic waters between whalers and the Sea Shepherd activists, or the discovery of a fissure in the earth’s crust, deep in the Atlantic.
Q: I see way back in 1975 you were part of a heavy metal band. It’s amazing how many writers have a musical background. Do you still practice music?
I still play guitar and sing, and have consistently written songs for most of my life. Music is very much a part of my family’s culture, as my wife and daughter are both songwriters and my son is a professional musician. If you love soul, funk or acid jazz, you can check out his sounds here.
Q: I was prompted to start this series of interviews because there seems to be a perception in the US and the UK that fantasy is a bit of a boy’s club. Do you think there’s a difference in the way males and females write fantasy?
Perhaps (as a generalization) but I also think that most of us could cite ripping action-rich fantasy novels penned by women and satisfyingly emotional and cerebral fantasy tales written by men; and I do find it a little funny that there is a perception of fantasy in some quarters as being male-oriented, after personally having heard publishers joke about pink, hazy covers (replete with flying horses) stretched around a solid high-quest fantasy book ‘that we can count on girls to buy’.
I reckon that one of the peculiarities of writing culture has always been that while most story tellers obsess over how to tell a timeless, boundary-breaking, universal tale, publishers are meanwhile apparently obliged to obsess over how to categorize, brand and anchor the field of interest in that story, in other words, to narrow and define its scope, so as to better sell it. The clash of these two unrelenting focuses can produce some interesting cross-perceptions about who writes or reads what exactly (and for who) while I guess the truth is that out here in the real world, we simply end up with a great deal of diversity.
Q: Following on from that, does the gender of the writer change your expectations when you pick up their book?
Not in my case, as a lifetime of reading has convinced me that a skilful, gifted storyteller can channel a thousand people whose skin they will never occupy; I’ve read the work of female writers whose male voice, drives and perceptions felt utterly real, and vice versa. So a good writer can always pleasantly surprise us, not only with their imaginings, but with all kinds of truths they can own and convey which transcend their culture, gender or generation. Of course I realize that many people are swayed, unduly perhaps, by unspoken notions of ‘gender suitability’. That old ‘men can’t write good romance, women don’t do bloodshed well’ viewpoint. I think it’s so often wrong, it’s worth dismissing entirely.
Q: And here’s the fun question. If you could book a trip on a time machine, where and when would you go, and why?
Like the traveler in HG Wells’ groundbreaking novel, though the past fascinates me, if only one trip was possible, I would opt to see the distant future (or yes, that current, possible future the machine could take me to, based on things as they now stand). So I’d visit my own locale, here in Australia, say, two hundred years from now. Why? Part of me just has to know: do we finally grow up as a species? Or does it turn out that our damned gadgets wound up destroying us because they kept evolving while their creators remained inherently paranoid and primitive? Hey! That’s a question that spec fic seems to keep asking!
Giveaway Question:
When you are forced to suffer through some ‘oh no, not this again!’ cliché in a book or movie, what sassy, mocking or witty twist-outcome might you assign to it? Example: Vader wheezes ‘I-am-your-father!’ and Luke (at least in your rewrite) retorts, ‘The hell you are. I had DNA done. So I know it was a wookie.’ So yeah…pick your most nauseating cliché and…strike back!
As the next of my series featuring fantastic female fantasy authors (see disclaimer) I’ve invited the prolific and cross-genre author, the talented Kate Elliott to drop by.
Watch out for the give-away question at the end of the interview.
Q: We met at World Con in Melbourne in 2010. This was only the fourth time a World Con has been to Australia since 1975. As you are based in Hawaii do you miss out on a lot of conventions, or do you make the effort to get to them?
Since moving to Hawaii in 2002, I do not have the opportunity to attend many conventions. The closest is a 5 + hour flight, and flights to and from Hawaii are not cheap. So these days I am likely to attend only one convention a year, if that. Conventionally speaking, my isolation in the middle of the Pacific Ocean has worked in my favor in one way, however: Going to Australia was relatively “close” so I jumped at the chance to attend AussieCon in Melbourne and am glad I did.
Q: I have to ask this question. You had four books published under Alis A Rasmussen – The Labyrinth Gate, a ‘through the tarot cards to another world’ fantasy and the Highroad Trilogy, which looks like a fun space opera. Why did you change to the Kate Elliot name?
I was asked to take a pen name to launch a new series (Jaran 1992) with a new publisher. Three years later, Robin Hobb was born when Megan Lindholm was asked to do the same thing. Launching a new series and what publishers often call a “new brand” is now relatively commonplace, although readers aren’t necessarily aware of it. It’s a way to create a new identity in a different genre, or to get out from under a series that did not sell well and try to make a bigger splash with a new series. This worked well 15 years ago before the explosion of social media. Now I think it is much more difficult to pull off a new public writing identity.
Q: I see you have a page dedicated to The Writing Life on your web site, with lots of useful information for aspiring writers. Do you run workshops and get involved with developing writers?
I recall clearly the long lonely road I took in my early years of writing. I think many aspiring writers don’t have access to writing groups or workshops because there aren’t any writing groups near by, they may not be able to afford the time or money to attend a workshop, or they simply don’t know how to connect up with such groups. I write my articles on writing for those people, who may be working in what feels to them like isolation. I want them to know there are many writers out here, and we all face many of the same problems.
I’ve never run a workshop myself. I don’t really have the personality to be a teacher, as I find it very exhausting. While I have personally helped a few developing writers, these days I don’t do so except in rare cases because I simply do not have time.
Q: Your first series was Novels of Jaran, and it was SF, but somehow the book made it onto Locus’s Recommended List for SF, Fantasy and Horror. How did this come about?
I’m not sure! The first book is set almost exclusively on an interdicted planet with low technology cultures, and the heroine and the people she is traveling with ride horses, so perhaps there was a sense that it “felt like” a fantasy novel even though it is clearly science fiction.
Q: There are four books in the series. I like your description of the series: ‘It’s about people, mostly, and about the historical process: what happens when two cultures come into contact — and conflict. It’s about consequences.’ I see the protagonist in the fourth book, The Law of Becoming, was 16. Is the series YA?
Jaran is not a YA series, although teenagers can certainly read it and many have. In fact, my current editor at Orbit Books, Devi Pillai, read Jaran when she was 13.
The protagonist of Jaran (the first novel) is 22 and has just graduated from university. The subsequent books add additional protagonists, some of whom are younger and some older, but certainly the character of Ilyana in book 4 is the youngest of all the point of view characters in the series as a whole.
Q: In 1996 you co-wrote The Golden Key with Melanie Rawn and Jennifer Roberson. The book was a World Fantasy Finalist. Can you tell us a little about the collaboration process? I always find this fascinating.
After we agreed to collaborate, the two most important issues were how we would handle 1) the world-building and 2) the actual blending of writing.
We met for a long weekend for an initial world-building sessions in which we hammered out the main elements of the world, culture, main characters, and plot. It was a really fabulous three days. What I remember most is that we came up with things out of the synergy of the three of us bouncing ideas off each other in a way we couldn’t have done if we had each been working separately and alone. It was a great experience.
For the other, we decided not to try to write a braided novel with three points of view moving in and out of the tale. Instead we deliberately went for a generational saga, so that we would each write one generation’s story. That way we used all the same world building and the overarching plot we had come up with together, but we each wrote a separate “novella” (actually, a short novel in length each) that was complete in itself. That way we avoided trampling on each other’s toes during the writing process.
I’m very proud of The Golden Key. It was truly a collaboration: It is the book it is because the three of us, working together, came up with something bigger than any one of us would have managed alone.
Q: With The Crown of Stars, book one: King’s Dragon was a Nebula Finalist. This series is set in an alternate Europe. Did you let your inner history buff out to play?
I did a lot of research. I’m not sure I’m a history buff as much as I was very aware of how much scholars know about the medieval period and how little I do. I didn’t want to screw up too much so I worked hard at making sure as much of the bigger picture as well as the details had a degree of authenticity even though the books are not set in our medieval Europe. Certainly, however, almost everything in the books is directly borrowed from history and from scholarship I read that illuminated that history for me. Translations into English of works from that time were invaluable as I tried to get a handle on ways people would look at the world differently than we do. I think that is at the heart of writing good fantasy: That the people in your books live the way they live in their world, not the way you live in your world.
Q: This is a seven book series. While you were writing it, did you have a flow chart that showed who was related to who and where they were over the years that the books cover? How do you keep it all straight?
There is a lot I simply kept in my head. However, I did create a calendar on which I wrote events on the day and month and year they happened. It spans the same timeline as the story, which takes place over seven years. I also made an index of character names and their associations, because there were so many characters that if I needed to know the name of the attendant of one of the nobles, say, it was far less time consuming if I had a place I could look it up than if I had to flip through the books looking for a reference to that character.
Other than that, I mostly have multiple file folders of scrawled notes in no particular order except by categories, things like astronomy, architecture, and so on, and many many academic articles on various subjects in folders by topic.
I actually did a better job creating a reference notebook for the Crossroads Trilogy, with tabbed dividers with subjects like Calendar, Language, Guardians and Eagles, Geography. What I learned from my less organized work in Crown of Stars was that the better organized my reference notebook was, the easier it was to look up details when I needed them rather than relying on my memory.
Q: The Crossroads Series is described as High Fantasy. I love the covers on these in both editions. Do you get much say in the look of your covers?
No.
With the USA cover for Spirit Gate, I did specifically mention two things, however, although technically these were merely requests because in fact I don’t have any say over covers. I wrote up a description of how the reeves are harnessed to the eagles, and the artist clearly used my description rather than having the reeve riding atop the eagle as a person rides a horse. The other request was that the woman depicted as a reeve on Spirit Gate be a woman of color, not blonde or white, as there is only a single white-skinned, blonde character in the land known as the Hundred, where most of the action takes place.
Q: The Spiritwalker Trilogy. With a description like this: ‘An Afro-Celtic post-Roman icepunk Regency fantasy adventure with airships, Phoenician spies, the intelligent descendents of troodons, and a dash of steampunk whose gas lamps can be easily doused by the touch of a powerful cold mage.’ Who could resist this series? Do you find that publishers are more open to cross genre now than they used to be when you were first writing?
I think publishers reflect the times in that sense. The entire artistic genre of mash-ups is a product of the new media and very much a part of the new century. I think that books that have a mashed-up quality therefore fit right into the new artistic sensibilities. Publishers, writers, and readers all seem more interested in cross genre and mash-ups. I don’t think they’re at all unusual any more.
Q: I was prompted to start this series of interviews because there seems to be a perception in the US and the UK that fantasy is a bit of a boy’s club. Do you think there’s a difference in the way males and females write fantasy?
In essentials? No.
I think there are differences in the way individuals write fantasy, and then in our culture those differences tend to get mapped onto a gender axis because our culture is comfortable defining and patterning things along the gender axis as if differences between genders are more important than differences between individuals.
But it might be possible to quantify some weighted differences.
As far as I know, no one has done a study of the last 30 or 40 years of the science fiction and fantasy fields in which they analyze something as simple as character presence in fantasy fiction. Do male writers mostly write about male protagonists? How about female writers? And what about the percentages of secondary characters? Do male writers disproportionately populate their worlds with male characters (including protagonists and minor characters) overall, in a way not consistent with the actual presence of people in the world? That is, rather than showing a world in which there is an approximate 50/50 split of male to female characters, do these worlds foreground and give speaking roles to far more male characters than female? And if female characters are represented, are they represented in only a few limited types of roles, and how do they function both within the society and within the story? What about female writers? Do they tend to have more female characters throughout their books? In a wider variety of roles, with more agency and importance? Or not?
I think a lot of the idea that males and females “write fantasy differently” has more to do with emphasis. And I personally don’t believe the emphasis has much to do with an biologically quantifiable essentialist differences; even if there were some, it would be practically impossible to tease out what those were from the morass of cultural expectations and assumptions that tend to bury everything else.
Because in addition to the quantifiable issue of character presence, there is also the issue of what actions, events, details, and experiences are emphasised. Emphasis and “worthiness” can be culturally influenced by unexamined assumptions about what matters enough to be written about or noticed. So in that sense, it’s a little difficult to say that men write differently than women BECAUSE of their gender rather than because of what culture tells us about gender. It’s a subtle difference, but if we’re talking about “real” potential differences in writing, I think it is the crucial one.
I think we carry exceedingly strong cultural expectations about gender and about the past, and especially about ideas about “how” the past “was” that often ignore or deem unimportant entire swathes of human existence. I think we still assume that a male point of view combined with the male gaze (seeing things from a particular set of assumptions about what is important and worthy) is the norm. So it is perfectly possible to pick up an epic fantasy novel in which almost all the characters are male, and women practically invisible, and somehow think there is nothing exceptional or even wrong about a depiction of a world in which women barely figure. To me these are flawed depictions and bad world building. They’re not “male” or “female.”
And anyway, what is “male” and “female?“ If I want to write about clothes or sewing, then am I “writing female” even though tailoring was and is a male occupation in many societies? Or are our ideas that this must be gendered-writing cultural? If I want to write two women talking to each other about something other than a man (see also The Bechdel Test for films), does that make my writing “girly?” Are male writers more likely to have only one or a handful of female characters, few of whom ever talk to each other or relate in a meaningful way? Are female writers more likely to emphasise female relationships within a story? Again, I would call this cultural, not biological.
Until we have actual data on such questions rather than anecdotal information or suppositions based on “what everyone knows” or our assumptions about how things must be or the last two books we read, I think we can’t draw any firm conclusions.
Q: Following on from that, does the gender of the writer change your expectations when you pick up their book?
Probably to the extent that I’m more cautious, when reading a male writer, because I’m less certain there will be as wide a variety of characters in the story, and I’m more likely to fear that people like me won’t be included and more surprised and pleased when they are. Because personally, as a reader, I get tired of feeling excluded in stories.
Two of the best examples of men writing women I’ve read recently have come from outside the field and were written decades ago in the 20th century: Minty Alley by C.L.R. James and God’s Bits of Wood by Ousmane Sembene. Frankly, many a fantasy writer could take a lesson in how to truly incorporate women in what could have been a solely male-centered story from Sembene’s masterpiece about a railroad strike in West Africa in the late 1940s.
Q: And here’s the fun question. If you could book a trip on a time machine, where and when would you go, and why?
Into a future with medical advances and space travel.
Give-away Question:
What is a favorite “guilty pleasure” character type, the one you know you probably shouldn’t enjoy reading about so much but really love anyway?
One of mine (I have more than one!) is the arrogant jerk who falls in love despite himself (Darcy in Pride and Prejudice is a classic example of this type).
Follow Kate on Twitter: @KateElliottSFF
Catch up with Kate’s blog.
Catch up with Kate Elliot on GoodReads.
If you are trying to keep Kate’s vast list of books straight in your mind, here’s her bibliography.
I’ve been playing around with the covers of my books creating bookplates. The ones I did for King Rolen’s Kin have been really popular and I’ve gone through almost 2000 bookplates. Some I signed and sent to my publisher in the UK, others I signed on the spot at Supanovas around Australia. Here’s the King Rolen’s Kin bookplate.
And since The Outcast Chronicles will be coming out next year, I’ve created bookplates for them as well. Honestly, the covers Clint did were so gorgeous that I couldn’t resist, I had to do 3 bookplates!
I couldn’t forget my paranormal-crime book that’s coming out from ClanDestine Press in March next year. Here’s the bookplate for Price of Fame.
They should all the be printed in for Supanova in Brisbane Nov 4-6th. I’ll have my new bookmarks as well.
No excuse, just wanted to show off my pretties!
Filed under Covers, creativity, Fantasy books, Fun Stuff, Genre, Inspiring Art, Paranormal_Crime, Resonance
As the next of my series featuring fantastic female fantasy authors (see disclaimer) I’ve invited the talented Anne Bishop to drop by.
Q: When I met you at the National SF Convention in Tasmania, it was the first time you had been outside of the States. Have you done much travelling since then?
Going to Tasmania is still my big adventure, but I have done a couple of vacation cruises since then–one to Alaska and one to the Caribbean. I’ve also attended a couple of the World Fantasy conventions that were held in the U.S. For me, this is a significant amount of traveling.
Q: I read your first book, Daughter of the Blood (part of the Black Jewels series) long before I met you and was swept away by your vivid imagery. I see there are nine books in this series now. Do you have more planned?
Nothing more planned at this time. Will there be more? I’m sure there will be. With Black Jewels stories, I seem to need a resting cycle where I write other things before I can go back to them–or before the Blood come back to me.
Q: I love the new covers, particularly Daughter of the Blood. How much say do you get in your covers?
For the U.S. covers, I send in descriptions of the main characters so the artist doesn’t have to hunt for the information. For the Australian covers, I’m sometimes asked to send a few ideas of images that could be used as a starting point. After that, the artist’s vision comes into play, and the end result is fabulous.
Q: What was it about the fae that convinced you to write The Tir Alainn Trilogy? Have you always been fascinated by the Fair Folk?
I’ve read stories about the realms of Faery since I was young, but the Fae weren’t the start of Tir Alainn. I was thinking about what I wanted to write after the Black Jewels Trilogy (I already had a draft of The Invisible Ring), and I had decided that I wanted to play with a world that had a more traditional earth-based magic than the Craft in the Black Jewels world. Then one afternoon I was coming home from a convention and saw a cloud formation that looked like the dark cliff of another world sitting on the horizon–a place you could see but could never reach. I said to the friend who was driving, “That’s the otherland where the Fae live.” After that I began to put the pieces together–the nature of the Fae and how they traveled from Tir Alainn to the human world, the nature of the witches, who else inhabited this world, and what was going to enter their lives and threaten their world. So it was actually the witches who provided the first seeds for that world, and then it was characters like the Hunter and the Gatherer of Souls who changed the texture of the story and Tir Alainn itself into something far richer than I had first envisioned.
Q: With The Landscapes of Ephemera Series it looks like you veered more into the love story side of the plot. Was this intentional or did the characters draw you in this direction?
The stories in Ephemera are about heart, about making a life journey, and about making choices, so I guess it’s the world itself that demands the stories spotlight the connection between two people. On the other hand, I would have said Cassidy and Gray’s relationship in THE SHADOW QUEEN and SHALADOR’S LADY was just as much a love story as Sebastian and Lynnea’s relationship.
Q: You also write short stories. Do you write across other genres as well or are these all fantasy stories? I see Twilight’s Dawn is set in the Black Jewel’s World. For a sneak peek see here.
Almost all of my stories fall into the fantasy/science fiction/horror genres. The one exception is a story chapter I did for SUMMER IN MOSSY CREEK, the third book in the Mossy Creek series. Not only was that mainstream, it was the first time I had written a story in a world that was created by someone else. That was a lot of fun, but the imagery of fantasy feels like home so that’s what I tend to write.
Q: I see you are working on an urban fantasy series. This is a change for you. Can you enlighten us?
I wanted to write a story in a world where the characters could have telephones and television and cars–that is, a contemporary setting even if it wasn’t Earth. And I wanted to try my hand at playing with vampires and werewolves (or shifters in this case since they aren’t really werewolves). And you want some humans in the mix because squeaky toys are fun. I had the framework of the world before the characters grabbed the story and ran off with it, so now the rest of the world building is taking its shape from the story.
It’s dark and it’s fun, and I’m never quite sure what the Others are going to do until I type the words.
Q: I was prompted to start this series of interviews because there seems to be a perception in the US and the UK that fantasy is a bit of a boy’s club. Do you think there’s a difference in the way males and females write fantasy?
I hope there is a difference. Where would the fun be if we all saw things the same way and wrote the same kinds of stories?
Q: Following on from that, does the gender of the writer change your expectations when you pick up their book?
Judging by my bookshelves, if I’m looking for a story that is primarily adventure and action and explosions and battles, I lean toward male writers. If I’m looking for a people story that includes adventure and action and explosions and battles, I lean toward female writers. And then there are all the writers on my shelves who don’t fit those choices because the gender of the writer wasn’t part of the decision to pick up the book.
Q: And here’s the fun question. If you could book a trip on a time machine, where and when would you go, and why?
Since I’ve been pondering lately if the TARDIS has a shower and other kinds of plumbing, I’m not sure I’m mentally equipped for time travel.
Anne Bishop quotes on GoodReads
I have been running a series of interview with female fantasy writers to redress a perception I came across – that fantasy was a bit of a boy’s club. It really isn’t like that here in Australia. We have many wonderful fantasy writers who just happen to be female.
Today I’m interviewing Richard Harland, author of the hugely popular Worldshaker books. I have been doing a series of interviews of female fantasy authors and thought it would be interesting to get a male fantasy writer’s perspective on the question of writing, gender and fantasy.
See Richard’s cool Worldshaker book trailer.
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3ATZ8Z1Nmxo&feature=player_embedded]
Q: In an interview on Readings you describe Steampunk as: ‘a kind of retro imagining of machinery and gadgets that might have happened. … Jules Verne in his own day imagined future technology, but nowadays it looks to us like an alternative technology of the past that never actually happened. Steampunk worlds usually have a 19th century or pre-WW I feel about them.’ To me it seems a genre you are ideally suited to write because of your English background and your penchant for waistcoats. (Richard has a page on Tips for Writing Steampunk). Reading Worldshaker and the sequel, Liberator, it feels like it comes very naturally to you. Is this right?
It comes naturally to me, for sure. I look back on my earlier novels and I can see steampunky bits creeping in – the early industrial scenery in parts of the ‘Ferren’ books, the Victorian elements in The Vicar of Morbing Vyle and The Black Crusade. Deep down, I always wanted to write steampunk, and the Worldshaker world was ten years in the planning before I began writing it, fifteen years before publication. I had no hope of getting it taken up by an Australian publisher until the steampunk trend started to build momentum internationally.
My interest in early industrial technology and Victoriana goes back to my childhood, which happened to be in England. But did it have to be in England? I look at some great steampunk writers in Australia – like Michael Pryor and Scott Westerfeld (as ‘honorary Australian’) and they don’t have that kind of background.
The one area where I’m sure my English background does count is in my depiction of class. The class system is strong and flourishing on the juggernaut ‘Worldshaker’ – and that’s something that doesn’t come in much with most other steampunk writers. I think you need to suffer under a class system to have a strong emotional feel about it!
See Richard talking about Steampunk at Bialik College, Melbourne.
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=elLXY8629b0&feature=player_embedded]
Q: I see there was a point where you dropped out of Sydney UNI and ‘bummed around’ writing songs and performing them at venues around the city. I bet there’s a book in there somewhere. Are you ever tempted to write about this period (disguised of course)?
Yes, and I will. Promise!
Q: You are not a novice to winning awards with many final-listings in the Aurealis Awards, several wins and the Golden Aurealis Award in 2004. Recently Worldshaker won the prestigious Tam-Tam Je Bouquine award for best novel ages 10 -15. I bet you wished you were in France at the time to pick up the award. Did it come out of the blue?
I’d never even heard of the Tam-Tam Je Bouquine award until I won it! In fact, it never occurred to me that there were YA awards in France. (Makes me wonder whether it means much to anyone overseas when I can boast of winning those six Aurealis Awards.) My publisher and editor dressed up specially to accept the award on the night – and I’m sure they expressed our shared reactions to the honour of the award far better then I could have done. At least they could express them in understandable French!
See Richard reading from Worldshaker at Bialik College, Melbourne.
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hPqQV_IDpqg&feature=player_embedded]
Q: You have written 145 pages of writing tips for aspiring authors. (Find them here). This must have taken ages, Richard. As a University Lecturer you have a background in teaching. Have you had a good response from aspiring writers to your Writing Tips pages? Do you get emails from people? (I know I would have devoured your writing tips when I was first starting out. I still find useful things in there whenever I dip into it).
Yes, I keep getting emails and positive responses – which makes me feel good about setting up the website. Because you’re right, it ate up an enormous amount of time – four months when I could have been writing my own novels. But the feedback makes it all worthwhile.
Q: And now Liberator is coming out. Having read an earlier draft at one of our ROR weekends, I know it delivers more Steampunkery goodness. Do you envisage a another book in this series?
Not immediately. it’s a duology that resolves in an almighty battle – and although there’s obviously more story to come, the Col-Riff romance has worked itself out by the end of LIBERATOR. Not much you can do with male lead and female lead after that!
So I’m taking a breather from that particular strand of history in the juggernaut world. The novel I’ve now started writing belongs in a different time and place, with different characters. I hope to continue the Worldshaker/Liberator narrative some time further down the track.
See the Allen & Unwin Worldshaker Book trailer.
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dLugL-GhcOA&feature=player_embedded]
Q: Wow, Richard I think I have book trailer envy. It looks like your Worldshaker has inspired quite a few people. Did you ever think you’d have book trailers?
I never thought much about book trailers. I see what people have done (in the UK, Germany and Australia), and think how clever and creative it is. But it’s an art-form I don’t have any personal connection to. I imagine my books almost like a movies unrolling in my head before I ever start writing them – that’s my form of visual imagination.
What I’d really like to see is a movie trailer!
See another book Worldshaker book trailer.
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m5Gg0U5QGdU&feature=player_embedded]
Q:You’ve been a busy man in the last ten years or so with the Wolf Kingdom books. (This won the Aurealis Best Children’s Illustrate Work/Picture Book). Have you been approached to write more in this series?
No, and at the moment I wouldn’t want to. I’m zooming in on steampunk and YA fiction. I don’t want any distractions!
Q: And there are many other books, some aimed at children, like Sassy cat one of my son’s favourites, right through Ferren and the Angel for teens, to the SF/Mystery series Eddon and Vail. Plus there’s the duology, The Vicar of Morning Vyle and, The Black Crusade which won Best Horror and the Golden Aurealis. You say you suffered writer’s block for 25 years. When you got over this, it must have felt like a dam breaking. How did you get over your writer’s block?
Many factors, including setting up a regular writing routine. And sheer bloody-minded stubbornness, because I bogged down time after time on my first novel – and went back to begin again over and over. I guess in the end I managed to live up to my own standards. Very stupid – I couldn’t bear to show my work to anyone until it was perfect … When I should have been learning how to improve by finishing imperfect stuff and getting feedback on it from other people.
I’m a very bad role model for other writers. My writing tips website is like a way of telling other intending writers how to steer clear of the traps I fell into!
Q: I was prompted to start this series of interviews because there seems to be a perception in the US and the UK that fantasy is a bit of a boy’s club. Do you think there’s a difference in the way males and females write fantasy?
Do they really think that in the US and UK? Sounds like a hangover from the far past. No one could ever think of fantasy in Australia as a boy’s club. Here, the most successful fantasy writers are mostly women, as are the vast majority of readers.
Q: Following on from that, does the gender of the writer change your expectations when you pick up their book?
I hope I can change my expectations according to what I read when I open the book, but maybe I do expect some things things more from male or female authors. From male authors, wild supposition and fantastical imaginings; from female authors, a fullness of fleshed-out reality, a sense of detail, and being there right in the scene.
Having said that, of course, good fantasy writing has to have both. I can think of heaps of examples of male authors who can flesh out their creations until you’re right there in the scene; and heaps of examples of female authors with powers of the very wildest imagination.
Q: And here’s the fun question. If you could book a trip on a time machine, where and when would you go, and why?
The time of the French Revolution, end of the eighteenth century. The most exciting period ever, for me. (Anyone who reads LIBERATOR could guess that!)
I’m assuming that I’m guaranteed survival, though – or that I can hop back into my time machine and escape if the guillotine gets too close to my neck!
Once a year, the good folk down at the Logan North Library run a Speculative Fiction month. On Saturday 27th of August some friends and I will be on a panel talking about writing.
So if you are in the neighbourhood, drop by and say Hi!
(Logan North Library, Brisbane, Queensland, Australia)
Filed under Australian Writers, Book trailers, Covers, creativity, Dark Urban Fantasy, Fantasy books, Fun Stuff, Genre, Inspiring Art, Music and Writers, Paranormal_Crime, Promoting Friend's Books, Promoting your Book, Publishing Industry, Readers, Resonance, The Writing Fraternity, Writing craft, Young Adult Books
As the next of my series featuring fantastic female fantasy authors (see disclaimer) I’ve invited the talented Gail Z Martin to drop by.
Watch out for the give-away question at the end of the interview.
Q: When someone has a middle name starting with Z I have to ask. What does it stand for? (Blame my obsession with words). Is it Zillah? Oh no, I just found your full name on wikipedia. It’s Zehner. OK, where does Zehner come from? Is it Dutch and an old family name?
Zehner is actually my maiden name. It’s German. I found that there are a million Gail Martins, so the Z makes it a little more identifiable.
Q: I see you are an SF fan from way back. I discovered fandom when I was 18. (Yay, people who don’t think I’m crazy). When did you discover Fandom and was it a great relief?
I discovered SF/Fantasywhen I was about 12, and got involved with fandom when I was about 17. Yes, it was a great relief. I enjoyed getting together with other people who liked the same kinds of movies and books, and it was so great to be able to talk about the things I liked without being “weird.”
Q: I see you are an Adjunct Professor at the University of North Carolina. (I’m an Associate Lecturer in Narrative, Storyboards and Animatics). What is an Adjunct Professor?
Actually, the Adjunct Professor gig went away with budget cuts in 2008, but I guess the Internet hasn’t caught up! It’s probably very similar to your “associate lecturer” role in that as an adjunct, I wasn’t tenured faculty. I was tapped for my expertise in a particular subject, but I only taught a couple of classes and didn’t have any advisory responsibilities.
Q: With a background in marketing (25 years in fact) you run Dreamspinner Communications. You’ve written two books on the topic 30 Days to Social Media Success and Launching your Book Without Losing your Mind. I guess with your passion for fantasy, reaching out to readers was the next natural step. Do you have any 
tips for writers who are just starting out?
Being present on the Internet and on social media is really crucial for connecting with readers. It’s a great way for new writers to spread the word about their books and to begin to build a loyal readership.
Q: In amongst all the other things you do, you’ve had a book out every year (2 in 2009 and none in 2010 so it averages to a book a year) since 2007. You must have a strong work ethic. How do you juggle all your other commitments and your writing?
Actually, the second book in 2009 came out on Dec. 31, so it might as well have been 2010! I’ll have three new books out this year—one fantasy and two non-fiction. I just love writing, so it doesn’t feel like work. I own my own business, so making time for the writing is a lot easier than when I worked in corporate. And I make a lot of “to-do” lists!
Q: Your Chronicles of the Necromancer had some gorgeous covers. How much input do you get with our covers?
I’ve been very fortunate to have had some amazing cover artists. A good cover really goes a long way toward selling a book! From The Blood King onward, I had the opportunity to supply a paragraph or two of description for the character on the cover. I love all my covers, but I think Dark Haven is especially spot on!
Q: In Chronicles of Necromancer your main character has the power over the dead (not surprising since he’s necromancer). You don’t often see the exploration of ghosts and vampires in the traditional fantasy books. Was this something that you’d been wanting to write for a long time and it just bubbled up out of you?
I love ghosts and vampires, so if I was going to write a series, those had to be in there somewhere! Historically, ghosts and vampires were very much a part of medieval folklore, so to me it doesn’t seem strange. And I just wasn’t in to writing about elves and dwarves!
Q: You set four books in the Necromancer Chronicles, The Summoner, The Blood King, Dark Haven and The Dark Lady’s Chosen. By Book four Tris has become king. Does The Fallen Kings Cycle pick up right after the end of book four with The Sworn The Sworn and then The Dread which is due out next year?
Yes. There’s about six months of elapsed time in the book universe between the end of Dark Lady’s Chosen and the beginning of The Sworn. Then The Dread picks up immediately after the end of The Sworn. All six books cover just a little less than three years in the characters’ lives.
Q: You interviewed me for a podcast. (See here). When did you first start doing podcasts and what attracted you to this form of communication?
I’ve been doing podcasts now for almost four years. I stumbled upon other people doing podcasts through the conventions I attended and thought it would be a lot of fun, plus a great way to introduce my readers to the interesting people I meet. I really do have a wonderful time doing the interviews, and it’s been a terrific way to continue the conversation with many of the fabulous folks I’ve met at conventions.
Q: I was prompted to start this series of interviews because there seems to be a perception in the US and the UK that fantasy is a bit of a boy’s club. Do you think there’s a difference in the way males and females write fantasy?
I see less of a difference in fantasy than with other genres. In general (and it is a very broad generalization with no doubt many exceptions), male writers often focus more on the action, weapons and military tactics and give short shrift to the relationships and character growth. I’m as interested in what’s going on inside of the characters and to their interactions with the people around them as I am in the action. That’s what I like to read, so that’s what I write.
Q: Following on from that, does the gender of the writer change your expectations when you pick up their book?
It’s usually the story synopsis on the back of a book that makes me pick it up, especially if it’s from a writer I’m not familiar with. For male writers, I probably gravitate toward books by those writers who are the exceptions to the generalization I stated and who do include character growth and invest some time exploring their friendships, romances and other interpersonal relationships.
Q: And here’s the fun question. If you could book a trip on a time machine, where and when would you go, and why?
While there are a lot of time periods I think might be fun to visit as a tourist, I’m too fond of air conditioning and modern sanitation to want to live in any other time except our own!
Give-away Question: If you could go out to dinner with two fictional characters, who would they be?
Follow Gail on Twitter: @GailZMartin
See Gail’s Blog.
Follow Gail on Myspace.
Follow Gail on Facebook at The Winter Kingdoms
Follow Gail on GoodReads and Shelfari.
As the next of my series featuring fantastic female fantasy authors (see disclaimer) I’ve invited the talented Erica Hayes to drop by.
Watch out for the give-away question at the end of the interview.
Q: Book one of The Shadowfae Chronicles came out in 2009. This series is set in Melbourne. Did you ever consider it might be too risky? Were you tempted to set it in a generic US or British city? (Read the first chapter here).
No, not for this one. I really wanted to set the series in a city I knew. And the idea for the warring demon factions in the Shadowfae underworld came from the real-life gang shenanigans in Melbourne, so it seemed only right to leave it there. Neither my agent nor my editor ever asked me to change it, and to my knowledge no one who passed on it did so because of the non-American setting (plenty of other reasons, but setting wasn’t it!)
I wouldn’t say it’s a complete myth that American contemporary fantasy publishers don’t want exotic settings – it’s clear from the evidence of what’s on the shelves that they’re more comfortable with places they believe their readership will find familiar. And hey, most of their writers are American, and they’re writing what they know, same as I am, so American settings are to be expected. But I think if you can make the setting fresh and exciting, and so integral to the story that changing it would lose the flavour, it really doesn’t matter where the action takes place.
In my books, the scene-setting is extra important, because there’s so much sensory detail. I want readers to feel like they’re there, immersed in the sounds and smells and tastes. And I think that’s what you’ve got to do, no matter if it’s America or Australia or darkest Africa.
Q: The second book of the series, Shadowglass came out in March 2010. (Read the first chapter here). You describe your main character, Ice, as ‘a geeky little fairy girl who wants to be someone else. Anyone else. She doesn’t really care who, so long as it isn’t her own clumsy, tongue-tied self. Sure, she’s got a career, sort of, if you count ‘diamond thief’ as a job. She’s got a pair of crazy fairy friends who’d do anything for her. Life’s not so bad, even if it’s a nasty fairy-hating world out there.’ Do you find your characters spring into your mind fully formed or do you consciously build them?
Usually they spring to mind in cartoon form, if you like – kind of a line-drawing caricature of themselves, with a few defining characteristics. But I do a lot of work after that, to build their backstory and make sure they’re believable.
Ice, for instance, I immediately knew was a geeky fairy girl who steals for a living. But the wanting to be someone else came later. Thing was, I’d never anticipated writing about a main character who was a fairy, and I’d spent the first book in the series showing fairies as these wild party creatures who live fast, die young and never have a plan beyond whatever feels good at the time. Not a good motivation for a main character!
But I couldn’t contradict myself by making her a driven career girl or something. So petty thief Ice is wild and fun-loving and careless, yes, but she has this secret longing for something more, and she’s desperately in love-at-a-distance with her idol, Indigo, who’s a big-time thief and everything she both wants and wants to be. Of course, it’s that yearning that gets her into trouble. With demons, and possessed magic mirrors, and lovesick serial killers. Oyy.
Q: And six months later book three, Poison Kissed, came out. (Read the first chapter here). Were you madly scrambling to write these books to deadlines or had you written several before the first one was accepted?
I’d written two when I sold SHADOWFAE in a two-book contract. But that second manuscript still hasn’t been published – I wrote them a whole new book 2, SHADOWGLASS. That was an interesting experience. I’d never written to a deadline before, and when I told them, ‘sure, six months is no problem!’ I had no idea who or what SHADOWGLASS would be about. I had to ignore my already-written book 2 and reconsider how the series would proceed. But the editor said ‘fairies, please!’ so I said, ‘sure’, and thrashed it about until I came up with something.
Luckily, I discovered that six months is a comfortable timeline for me. The books are around 100K (except book 1, which is very short, though no one seems to have noticed!) so I spend around six weeks outlining and getting the story right, three months or so writing, and the rest of the time doing a few quick revisions before I submit.
My agent isn’t the kind who asks for revisions from the get-go, so we typically send the MS straight to the editor when I’m done. My own revisions are mostly tweaking the character arcs so the romantic development is just right. And trimming: the manuscripts are invariably too long, and because I’ve outlined them until my eyes bleed, I can’t usually cut anything substantial. So I have to lose words by trimming the writing. That gets harder as I get more experienced and my first drafts get tighter, and because these books are intended to be written in a lush and textured style. But I find I can still lose 5% to 10% pretty comfortably. It’s just a matter of ruthlessness!
Oh, and that not-published ex-book 2? Genie meets zombie cat-burglar. That’s all I’m saying…
Q: And book four, Blood Cursed, is being released in August 2011. (Read first chapter here). Have you found that releasing the books 6 months apart has created momentum for the series?
I don’t know. I hope so! But six months is pretty standard for paranormal romance. These days some series are doing back-to-back releases, with books released every month – now that’s momentum!
Still, if books aren’t working for readers, I don’t think a quick release schedule can save them – and if readers love a series, history shows they’re willing to wait. The danger used to be that if you waited too long to publish again, readers would have forgotten about the earlier books, with no chance of a recap because the paperbacks had already disappeared from bookstore shelves. But now, with e-books, the earlier books are ‘in print’ – and visible to readers – for a lot longer, maybe forever. So I’m not sure that release schedules are going to be such a factor in the future.
Q: Each of these books revolves around a mystery. Are you a closet mystery fan?
I never really looked at it that way 🙂 I suppose they are mysteries of a sort! Jade in SHADOWFAE has to hunt down four damned souls, and Mina in POISON KISSED is searching for her mother’s murderer. But it’s basically just to give the characters something to panic about while the romance happens! And the solution to the mystery is always a kick in the face for the heroine as far as the romance is concerned. The plot serves the romance, not the other way around.
I do like mysteries on TV – the gritty British police procedural kind, usually, like Wire in the Blood or Cracker or the new reboot of Sherlock. I love Doctor Who, and he solves mysteries. But I’m not sure I could ever write a procedural – they’re too clever!
Q: Is your next book going to be number five of The Shadowfae Chronicles or are you branching out? Tell us what’s in store.
I’ve got a Shadowfae short story, CHERRY KISSES, coming out in an anthology called HEX SYMBOLS from St Martin’s Press at some stage soon. It’s about a new character, a witchy con artist called Lena. But at the moment, I’m working on other things. I’ve written a space opera, and a dark paranormal romance set in a world that’s not the Shadowfae world, so I’m looking at publishing options for those. And I’m toying with some urban fantasy ideas. A surfeit of new ideas, in fact!
Q: I was prompted to start this series of interviews because there seems to be a perception in the US and the UK that fantasy is a bit of a boy’s club. Do you think there’s a difference in the way males and females write fantasy?
Yeah. That’s the short answer.
What, you want the long answer? So glad you asked 🙂 The ‘big thing’ in fantasy books in America at the moment is obviously urban fantasy and paranormal romance. Not too hard to guess which side of that fence most male authors fall. Female authors – at least the published ones – seem to be willing to include a lot more romance in their books, and to focus on relationships over action. Is it because they have to in order to get published and gain a large readership, seeing as the romance genre is so dominant and it’s what publishers want – or because female writers naturally lean that way and male writers don’t?
I don’t know for sure, but it sure is interesting to note that the biggest thing in fantasy television right now is the old-fashioned antithesis of lone-wolf, kick-ass-chick urban fantasy: Game of Thrones, based on books written by a man, with male screenwriters and a heavily male-dominated cast – except for the most powerful villain, who’s a woman.
I don’t mean these are bad things – I adore Game of Thrones, both the show and the books! And the show does have other strong and important female characters, which is impressive, considering it’s set in a fantasy society that’s dominated by men. But it’s interesting to see what’s required – or what the networks think is required, and in the case of Game of Thrones at least, it worked big-time – for a fantasy show to gain large mainstream popularity. Part of which, apparently, is that the male cast I mentioned is populated with some of the sexiest actors on the planet 🙂
I mean, it’s TV Land, so everyone’s hot, right? And sex always sells, no matter the genre. But part of me suspects that someone at HBO thinks female viewers only watch fantasy for the hot guys – and that’s kind of borne out by the popularity of paranormal romance, right?
Exhibit B: True Blood, another HBO show that I also love, in a surreptitious, guilty-pleasure fashion… A female-written fantasy (Charlaine Harris) seen through the thoroughly male lenses of the show’s creator, Alan Ball. The result: soft porn, or as I saw it described on a comic book website, ‘a show that’s almost entirely about Rogue’s tits’ 🙂 HBO thought they’d get more viewers if the show was more about sex and violence than about fantasy. Which supports the theory that writers put romance in their fantasy books because it’s what the publishers want. What it doesn’t explain is why more male authors don’t do it. So perhaps some innate difference in the way the genders write fantasy is a real factor – it makes sense that we’d all write what we want to read, after all.
Another example is Supernatural, which began as a monster-of-the-week action series (remember season 1?) until, IMO, the network figured out pretty quickly who the majority of their viewers were (women and teenage girls) and turned it into a bromance, because “hell, women want stories about relationships, right? Look at all those romances they read!” As a result, Sam and Dean Winchester are maybe the hottest on-again, off-again couple on TV. Whether this is ‘what women really want’ or not, would Supernatural would be the hit it is today if Sam and Dean weren’t such handsome young things, and if they weren’t so desperately ‘in love’?
Anyway. I’m speculating. I don’t have any facts here. And anything that gets fantasy and/or romance onto the screen is golden with me! But I’d love to know the gender breakdown of viewers for Game of Thrones and True Blood, compared to that of the books’ readership. And how many straight boys watch Supernatural 🙂
Q: Following on from that, does the gender of the writer change your expectations when you pick up their book?
Umm. Maybe. I know I’m always interested when I see a new urban fantasy book written by a man, just because they’re so rare. I suppose I’d be surprised if I discovered that such a book had a strong romance plot, as opposed to little love-interest subplots. And I think for some reason, I expect more humour and less angst from a male UF writer. This is probably Harry Dresden’s fault.
So is that a yes? I guess it is! Remembering that I’m coming at it from the paranormal romance/urban fantasy corner. If you’re talking about the more epic-style fantasy, probably not so much.
Q: And here’s the fun question. If you could book a trip on a time machine, where and when would you go, and why?
Ooh, that’s a toughie. Backwards or forwards? If backwards, I’ll cling to my desperately romantic view of history and ignore the fact that my feeble 21st century immune system would probably swiftly succumb to smallpox or some horrible rotting fever and I’d die screaming… maybe Imperial Rome? I’d love to see if it’s the way we imagine it.
Or forwards? Yeah, that’d be cool. I want to ride on an interstellar spaceship at faster than the speed of light 🙂 And see the future Galactic Empire, complete with fake gravity and Death Stars.
Give-away Question: Erica likes the idea of a time machine, so where-when would you go and why?
Follow Erica on Twitter: @ericahayes
Catch up with Erica on GoodReads.
As the next of my series featuring fantastic female fantasy authors (see disclaimer) I’ve invited the talented and prolific Juliet Marillier to drop by.
Watch out for the give-away question at the end of the interview.
Q: You started out writing for adults, but I see your recent books, Wildwood Dancing and Cybele’s Secret are Young Adult. (Cybele’s Secret won the 2008 Sir Julius Vogel Award for Best YA Novel). What led you to veer into Young Adult books?
I was persuaded in that direction by a publisher. I already had a good cross-over audience for some of my adult novels, the Sevenwaters series in particular. I’m sure that is partly because they have youngish protagonists, though I didn’t make it so in order to attract YA readers – in the early medieval period, people led shorter lives and were mothers, craftspeople, farmers or fighters during their teenage years. Those who didn’t die in childbirth or get killed in a fight or a nasty accident might then live into their forties, fifties or even older. That makes it realistic for the protagonists to be in the 15-25 age group. My readership for those adult books starts at about age 13 and goes up to folk in their nineties, including one visually impaired friend to whom I’ve read most of my novels aloud! I currently have both a YA series (Shadowfell) and an adult series on the go.
Q: I see you were a music teacher. What was your instrument? I know some writers who make up a ‘play list’ specific to each book they write. Do you write, while listening to music?
Violin, oboe, voice, in that order, with singing being my main area of performance. Generally I don’t listen to music when I write, especially not anything with lyrics, as I find that too distracting. For certain books I did listen to particular styles of music. I’m very keen on folk music these days, especially Celtic and Galician music. My favourite group is the Scottish band Runrig. When I was in the Highlands doing my research for the Bridei Chronicles I would play their music very loudly in the car as I drove along those wee one-way roads. For Wildwood Dancing, set in Transylvania, I listened to Australian gypsy band Doch.
Q: You were born in New Zealand and grew up there, but your family are from Scotland and Ireland and you grew up hearing Celtic music and stories. Have you travelled back to Europe to research your roots?
I have travelled back there for general research, but I haven’t done specific research into my family history – I have more of a passion for the physical landscape and the stories of my ancestral culture (mostly Scots, a bit of Irish) than the urge to seek out the specific details of my own family. I do know a fair amount about the last few generations. And thanks to a comprehensive book about the Pringle family, on my mother’s side, I know I have a wrong-side-of-the-blanket connection with Bonnie Prince Charlie.
Q: The Sevenwaters Trilogy (which seems to contain five books LOL) has a big gap of eight years between books three and four. When you came back to writing in this world was it like visiting old friends?
Yes, and that surprised me. There was an eight year writing gap between Child of the Prophecy, final book of the original trilogy, and Heir to Sevenwaters, the first of the follow-ups. It’s not really a trilogy of five books (with a sixth to come) but a trilogy plus three later stand-alone novels with the same settings and some of the same characters. Again, this was something I was encouraged to do by a publisher, because the first three books were so well-loved. I had some misgivings because I had not intended to write any more in that series or in that style. I would never write a book solely because it was likely to be commercially successful. So I had to make the new project into something I could feel passionately about. That turned out not to be difficult, as I realised there was a heap more I could do with the Sevenwaters characters.
Q: I’m a big fan of the Pre-Raphaelites. I notice that some of your covers feature artwork which has a strong pre-Raphaelite look. (Heart’s Blood and the Australian editions of the Sevenwaters books.) Did you have any say in the covers?
For the Australian editions, yes. I asked if Pan Macmillan would commission a cover for Heir to Sevenwaters from Australian painter Kim Nelson, whose work I really love. At the same time as producing that cover art, Kim designed the covers for the new editions of the Sevenwaters trilogy, using paintings by Pre-Raphaelite artist J W Waterhouse. A painting by Waterhouse was also used for Heart’s Blood. I was consulted extensively right through the design process, which was wonderful. It’s not so with many of the overseas publishers. Often something extremely weird and inappropriate will go on the cover and I won’t get to see it until it’s finalised. But I have been very lucky, with wonderful artists like Kinuko Y Craft, Jon Sullivan and John Jude Palencar commissioned to do covers for US and UK editions.
Q: The Saga of the Light Isles is about a Viking farm boy, Eyvind who dreams of becoming one of the Jarl’s elite warriors. Were you always interested in Norse mythology?
I’ve always been interested in all kinds of mythology, legends, fairy tales and folklore. It comes of being brought up on Andrew Lang’s Fairy Books and by parents who loved storytelling. My particular interest in Norse history and mythology came about when I read a book on Viking warfare and started thinking about what kind of men berserk warriors would have to be – on one hand, crazy killing machines dedicated to a god of war; on the other hand, dutiful sons who went home to help Mum on the farm in between raiding voyages. The Icelandic sagas actually describe this dichotomy. That fascinated me, hence Wolfskin, my book about the making (and unmaking) of a berserker.
Q: The Bridei Chronicles is based loosely on real history. We were on a panel together at World Con in Melbourne 2010, where you said (I’m paraphrasing) that when not a lot is known about a time, the writer is able to extrapolate and invent. Do you find your general knowledge has helped you fill in the gaps about what is known of the Picts?
Definitely. It’s certainly not a case of, if you don’t know it, make it up! The writer needs to research pretty thoroughly and be familiar with what is known, even if that isn’t much. And when you do venture into informed guesswork, what you create should at least be possible within what is known of that culture. It helps to look at other, similar cultures of the time that may have more contemporary documents.
I used my general education all the time – for instance, I invented place names for many locations in the Highlands whose current names couldn’t be used because they belong to a later (Scots) period and language. To do so, I had to put together names derived from the bits and pieces of other languages that were thought to belong to the same family as the lost Pictish language of Bridei’s time. I’m sure most people who read the novels didn’t give a hoot if the names were historically probable or not, but it mattered to me! I have in the past made historical errors in my books, before I realised such things were important in fantasy, and these days I try to get things right. Being a nit-picker of this kind does sometimes spoil my enjoyment of other people’s fantasy – I can’t bear it when writers mix up ‘real world’ cultures holus bolus to create their secondary world. But I love it when writers get it right. Jacqueline Carey is a great example, with her intricately detailed alternative Renaissance Europe.
Q: I was prompted to start this series of interviews because there seems to be a perception in the US and the UK that fantasy is a bit of a boy’s club. Do you think there’s a difference in the way males and females write fantasy?
I think that would be too much of a generalisation. I do see a trend in the UK towards a style of fantasy that reflects a somewhat pessimistic or jaded world view and is often extremely violent and gruesome. The names that spring to mind are all male: Jesse Bullington, Joe Abercrombie, and literary writer Glen Duncan’s recent venture into fantasy, The Last Werewolf. I found Bullington’s first novel too sickening to read, but Joe Abercombie is one of my favourite writers, and the Glen Duncan novel is a striking piece of storytelling, though the subject matter is often challenging. But I don’t think this is the answer to the question. Really, fantasy writing is about individual writers, not men vs women or Americans vs Brits or redheads vs blondes. All sorts of factors influence the way a person writes; gender is only one of them. Perhaps the recent tendency to undervalue women fantasy writers is based on the massive rise in the number of paranormal romances we see in the bookshops, most of them by women – some people may be assuming that’s what we all write!
Q: Following on from that, does the gender of the writer change your expectations when you pick up their book?
Difficult to answer, as the interview is based on fantasy writing, and I’m not a great fantasy reader. Within that genre I tend to stick to a few favourite writers, both male and female, and my expectations are based on their previous work. With an unknown fantasy author, I don’t think gender would change my expectations much, because there’s such a huge variety of approach within the genre. I would be influenced by the cover, the blurb, and the first few pages – perhaps also by the author bio and who published the book. The qualities I want in any novel, regardless of genre, are skilled craftsmanship and great storytelling. And originality.
Q: And here’s the fun question. If you could book a trip on a time machine, where and when would you go, and why?
I’ll go to sixth century Britain, eastern end of the Great Glen (where Inverness is now) so I can find out the answers to all those questions about the Picts and perhaps drop in at King Bridei’s court. Can I take my thermal underwear?
Give-away Question: (win a signed copy of a JM novel of your choice)
Juliet says:
I’ve confessed that I don’t read a lot of fantasy. Recommend a fantasy novel for my reading list, and tell us why you chose it.
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