You know you’ve made it when your books get sold in a boxed set, so you can imagine my excitement when I opened an email from my publisher that said King Rolen’s Kin Bundle, with this beautiful graphic!
So if you are into E-Books and you think $14.67 for the trilogy is a good price. Here’s the link.
And maybe one day, they’ll do a boxed set of my books. <grin>
Filed under Australian Writers, E-books, Fantasy books, Female Fantasy Authors, Fun Stuff, Genre
As the next of my series featuring fantastic female fantasy authors (see disclaimer) I’ve invited the talented M K Hume to drop by.
Watch out for the give-away question at the end of the interview.
Q: As someone who was born in Ipswich, a country town outside of Brisbane in Australia, how did you become so obsessed with the Arthurian Legends? (As your Phd is based on Arthurian Literature, I would call that obsessed in the nicest possible way).
Yes! I’m obsessed with Arthur, but I think the legends have also pursued me for the larger part of my life. I lived for many years in a suburb of Brisbane called Bracken Ridge where all the streets seemed to have been named after Arthurian characters. In addition, I married an Arthur, and everywhere I went I seemed to be tripping over the names of characters from the legends.
But I actually started my love affair with all things Arthurian far earlier. I recall that the poem, ‘The Lady of Shallott’, captured me when I was about eight years old. I remember thinking at the time that Lancelot was thoroughly unpleasant in his attitudes, even though I was still very young. At that time, I was devouring heroic themes such as ‘The Young Lochinvar’, ‘Robert the Bruce’, ‘Horatius at the Bridge’ and ‘The Relief of Lucknow’. If the tale had heroic overtones, I fell in love with it.
But the Arthurian legends had it all for me, even when I didn’t believe they were quite real. I came to understand that nowhere in the English language is the ethos and beliefs of Northern Peoples so encapsulated and defined for our people have become what Arthur/Artor/Arturius has made of us.
Q: I see you taught English, History and Art as a teacher. You’ve managed to combine your love of English and History in your books based on the Arthurian legends. Have you also managed to rekindle your love of art in some way?
Art lives in literature and I love to describe the beauty of jewellery, architecture, Welsh Interlace, sculpture, etcetera, in my work. The complexity of Welsh Interlace, like its poetry, is very highly evolved and often underestimated, like the poetry. Such patterning reminds me vaguely of Asian design in its highly symbolized use of linear values. I love to study the artistic outpouring of different cultures and the Arthurian legends gave me the richness of the Dark Ages – of neolithic standing stones, the chalk giants, Roman architecture and the city of Constantinople which I use in Merlin II, (Death of an Empire) and the use of body adornment and tattoos. To me, writing is painting in words and the Arthurian Period is so rich that I could spend a lifetime trying to capture its flavor.
On a prosaic note, I make dolls in my spare time although I find it impossible to follow the rules for constructing them. I sew, I draw, I paint and I garden, all of which allow me to interpolate any artistic experiences I have. I love to hang strings of beads from trees, or stained glass lighting fixtures like surprises that catch the light. While I am enthusiastic, I’m a rule breaker which causes some of my projects to fail outright if I push the boundaries too far.
Q: You have a multiple-book deal with Headline Review to write eight (8) novels. These include a trilogy based on King Arthur, another trilogy based on Merlin, and two further novels based on Taliessin and what happened to the Celtic Tribes after the death of King Arthur. The books will be released at, roughly, six-monthly intervals. Did you have the books written before your agent makes the deal, or are you just an amazingly fast writer?
I accept that I work at a very fast speed. I write in freehand into a notebook which is then typed and returned to me as printed copy. I keep editing and correcting until such time as I am satisfied with the finished section. Using this technique, I find that I can easily write two books a year, and sometimes three. I write when I’m alert, and correct the copy at times when I’m feeling a bit tired. I really love what I do and the words just seem to flow off my pen onto the pages. I put in about six hours a day and just love all aspects of stories, plot-lines, songs, maps and research. Now that I’ve discovered the love of my life, I have no intentions of sitting on my hands.
While the existing contracts cover the eight novels, my publisher and agents have told me that we will be extending our agreements into the future. Their advice to me is writing epics on historical fiction is my forte, so they are always considering the next two or three years of output. Many of the novels we are considering cover areas that have never been considered before so there are always challenges in my writing life.
The two novels about the Twilight of the Celts that are currently being produced are strange waters indeed. Before the time of the Venerable Bede, the Saxons, in conjunction with the Angles and Jutes and other far-northern peoples, ate away at the world of the Celts. I wondered how a bastard son of Arthur could survive in such a world where culture-clash had to be very terrible for all concerned.
Q: I see you are currently writing a new work based on the character of Taliessin. In your version he is the son of Merlin and Nimue. What was it about the Taliessin character that fascinated you?
The Taliessin character has a very rich background. Alfred Lord Tennyson was the first pet to place Taliessin in the Arthurian court, but I considered that any son of Myrddion Emrys (or Merlin) would have to be extraordinary. The 5th century Taliessin was a poet of remarkable skill and so many legends are tied to him, including being the son of Ceridwen, possessing shape-shifting skills and having the diplomatic skills of a master statesman.
The name of Taliessin was also associated with the patriotism of the Welsh people in records that date back to the 8th century, so it suits me well to combine these two traditions into one character that embellishes him as the son of Merlin. Charles Williams, a rather strange Arthurian poet of the first half of the 20th century, describes Taliessin as being more important to the legends than Arthur himself, which is a step too far for me. In my works, I endeavor to present the strands my way in order to amplify the nature of Artor, his bastard son and the entire world of the Dark Ages. Taliessin is the poetic voice of the onlooker to reflect on the tragedy of invasion. Among my books, The Bloody Cup depends on his viewpoints and the last two books of the Celtic series of will be seen through the eyes of Taliessin.
Q: In an interview on BookGeeks you say you are actively working on a new series about the Kings of Britain. In which time period will these books be set?
The first book in this series will be set in the early16th Century during the reign of King Henry VIII.
When I was in the UK last year, I was introduced to a family whose family ancestry goes back to William the Conqueror. Their family members have been influential with British royalty over the centuries and have played a large part in the history of Great Britain over the past 1000 years.
There is a mountain of previously un-accessed research material available to me from this family so I am very excited about the project, the details of which still have to be finalized.
Q: As a lover of literature and as an historian who has had the opportunity to travel to carry out research, which were some of your favourite places in the UK and Europe?
I absolutely loved the following places in the UK:
York is amazing.
I adored Chester too, especially when I managed to make an educated guess that it was the location of King Arthur’s Round Table. I couldn’t believe it when I read the newspaper article about it being found and that it was a long disused Roman gladiatorial arena.
Bath is also a place that makes the heart skip a beat.
The ruined Abbey at Glastonbury is so clean and pure that my heart almost stops when I see it. I’m certain in my own mind that Arthur’s bones really are interred in the grounds of the abbey.
I also loved Cadbury Tor.
Of course, I like London but we Australians have such difficulties with the scale of the place. When I am there, it never seems as big as I expect it to be.
Finally, I love all of Wales. I love the people, the customs, the places and the villages. It will always hold a special place in my heart.
In foreign climes, who could leave out the ruins of Troy or Istanbul or Copenhagen. Asia has its wonders as well in the ruined city with the unpronounceable name just outside of Bangkok. Hong Kong and China are great too.
The pick of all the places I’ve seen is Glastonbury. To stand at the bottom of the tor and look upwards at the ruins of the Church of Saint Michael is to die for.
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 you’ve got me on this question as I really don’t know how to answer it. I’ve been told by some of our readers that I write like a young man which is odd I suppose. Frankly, I don’t think gender should dictate what we think of a book in advance of reading it, and I don’t really trouble myself to think of the gender of any writer before, during or after I’ve read any book.
I love planning battles, am not afraid of death scenes or violence and I don’t flinch away from the uglier side of human nature. I was raised with brothers and I have two sons and many male friends, so it’s possible this gives me a male perspective, but I also believe that being female permits me to empathize and be decorative even in bloody battle scenes
I really hate typecasting and my publisher told me that men and women who read my historical epics aren’t all that keen on the romanticism of women writers. It’s strange because I find it very difficult to write a romance, whereas I have one male friend who’s a whiz at it and even uses a female nom-de-plume.
Q: Following on from that, does the gender of the writer change your expectations when you pick up their book?
I don’t really expect anything from the gender of the writer but I have discovered a couple of characteristics that sometime fit my needs. For example, women write more elaborately at times, although there’s no hard and fast rule with this. Also, a number of women are highly successful in the crime genre, but I still wouldn’t like to even suggest that women are more violent than men.
What I go on when I pick up a book is the blurb and the opening paragraph. I love Martin Cruz Smith, John Connolly and Carol O’Connell. They always get me because of the novelty of their plots, an uncompromising grittiness in their writing and the vivid metaphors and symbolism of their technique. I love them all.
I want to be part of the story. And I want to be far away in time, place or space so that the real world is the shadow and the world of the novel is real. Tolkien did the same thing for me and, in my teens, Heinlein. You can always recognize the writer who does these things at the beginning of the book, and you won’t particularly care about their gender.
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’d have to be guaranteed a return trip because being a woman wasn’t a good idea in the times in the literary past that have fascinated me.
There are so many fascinating times and places. Oddly, I have no desire to go forward in time unless I leave the earth behind and travel to one of the far stars. But I guess I would like to have my questions about the past answered first.
The past, to me, is real and it is poignant. I distrust the patterns of history because the victors always call the tune, so I’ve learned to distrust what everybody accepts as true. Yet I love the truth in the ways that people act, even if we can’t be sure of exact dates or places. For example, the Round Table is a great example of quasi-truth. I never believed that it would be a real table, but it had to be symbol of something else. My guess was that it would be a round building used to hold meetings between the kings and their retinues as such men never would consider sitting down without their guards to protect them. I reasoned that the site of the Round Table had to be central to a place of Roman Celtic importance such as Chester/Deva.
How wonderful then that archeologists and historians announced last year that a small Roman amphitheatre in Chester had been roofed and walled in the 5th and 6th century by some anonymous Celtic chief. Ergo, the Round Table of King Arthur.
I love that kind of truth where legend and fact have come together to make something fresh. I guess that’s why we write, because we’re all looking for something new.
MK Has a copy of her new book Prphecy: Clash of Kings to give-away. It’s the first book in the Merlin series. The give-away question is:
Why do you think King Arthur and the Arthurian legends are still so popular after 1500 years?
Filed under Australian Writers, Book Giveaway, creativity, Fantasy books, Female Fantasy Authors, Genre
Juliet writes:
What a great set of recommendations! In fact I’ve already read and enjoyed many of these: Neil Gaiman’s Stardust, Marion Zimmer Bradley’s The Mists of Avalon, Margo Lanagan’s Tender Morsels, Lian Hearn’s Otori series, and most of Terry Pratchett. There are also a few authors among the recommendations whose work I already know I don’t like, though others do.
So what’s going on my ‘to read’ list? Anne Bishop for a start, since so many people tell me I would like her work. Lynn Flewelling’s The Bone Doll’s Twin. Naomi Novik, whose books I feel I should have tried. Lois McMaster Bujold, ditto. Maybe Brandon Sanderson or Brent Weeks, so nobody can accuse me of choosing 100% female authors! If I get through all those, I’ll start on the rest.
But there can only be one winner. The signed book goes to Lexie for recommending the Secret Country trilogy by Pamela Dean. Lexie can’t have known that Dean’s Tam Lin is one of my favourite books of all time. I was thrilled to be reminded that this author wrote other titles and will hunt them down – seems only one book of her trilogy is still in print.
Lexie, contact me on juliet(at)julietmarillier(dot)com and we can discuss getting the book to you.
(Note: This is just one of Juliet’s book covers as I don’t know which one Lexie will choose).
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.
Catch up with Juliet on GoodReads
Catch up with Juliet on Facebook.
Catch up with Juliet on Writer Unboxed.
Have you ever had a day where you left home on a 7am train, worked flat out all day, got home by 7pm exhausted and drained, and then opened your email and found this:
No wonder I’m doing the happy dance. For those of you who might be wondering here are the KRK covers and for more info on the trilogy see King Rolen’s Kin.
Available in paperback and kindle from Amazon and all good bookstores.
(If you live in Australia you need to go to a specialist bookstore or order it in. But then we all want to support specialist bookstores, don’t we? Makes us feel virtuous).
I’d like to send a really big thank you to the readers who’ve enjoyed KRK and told their friends. I get emails every week from people asking where KRK book 4 is or where the next KRK trilogy is. I’m in the throes of writing the new trilogy right now. Just wish I could give up the day job to concentrate on it, but then all writers feel that way.
And if that wasn’t enough there’ve been some very nice comments on the covers for The Outcast Chronicles (here, many thanks to Magemanda!). Kudos must go to Solaris for choosing Clint Langley as the artist for both these trilogies and to Clint for the amazing work he’s done.
And here they are:
All in all, this was a very nice surprise to come home to!
Filed under Covers, Fantasy books, Fun Stuff, Inspiring Art
As the next of my series featuring fantastic female fantasy authors (see disclaimer) I’ve invited the talented Kim Westwood to drop by.
Watch out for the give-away question at the end of the interview.
Q: I notice that you were ‘a weedy, asthmatic kid who devoured books like dinner.’ Kate Forsyth had a speech impediment and lost herself in books. I was a fat kid who no one would play with, so I lost myself in books. Do you think this ability to be totally immersed in an invented world, then go on to create invented worlds of our own arises from loneliness in childhood?
I’d lay bets on it.
Q: You’ve lived rough, close to the land: ‘For a while I lived on a farm by a river where I learnt to crutch sheep with hand shears, raise poddy calves and hypnotize chooks.’ Does this inspire your writing?
Yes. It’s the things that live at the bottom of the garden of my psyche that I inevitably plunder in my fiction.
Q: I see you did a Bachelor of Music. My daughter did a BA at the Con in Jazz voice. By the time she finished she’d lost her love of music (fortunately, it came back). Have you gone back to music? Are you one of these writers who create a play-list for your current work-in-progress and use it to get into the right frame of mind?
I won’t ever go back to playing classical music. It’s not that I don’t love it; it’s that I’ve loved it too much. The pressure of performance and desire for perfection nearly killed me. I don’t tend to write with music, but I am one of those people who play music REALLY loud in their car. Bach, Gesualdo, Pärt, Snow Patrol, Lamb, Adele: all loud.
Q: You wrote a theatre pieces for ‘dancer, light and shadow’. My uncle danced with QLD Ballet Theatre. Did you have a background in dance? Was that what drew you to write this piece? Do you have a recording of it or has it been lost in time?
My background was in gymnastics and physical theatre, so you could say I was used to choreographing movement. The aesthetic of dance fitted the vision I had for The City of Midnight: a numinous space where sound and solo performer folded in and out of light and dark. And yes, it’s recorded for posterity…just not on YouTube.
Q: Your short stories have been well received, with an Aurealis win and several final listings, as well as Stella’s Transformation appearing in Year’s Best Fantasy 2005 and several stories appearing in Australia’s Year’s Best SF and Fantasy. Just as some stories have a natural length do you think some writers have a length that suits them best?
Before The Daughters of Moab, I didn’t know whether I could write to novel length—I thought I was more suited to haiku. But the story led the way. Now, whenever I return to writing short fiction, I’m reminded of how much I enjoy the challenge of a compact story arc. I like creating a world that fits perfectly in a teacup.
Q: Your first book The Daughters of Moab was forged in the fires of Varuna Writers Retreat. But seriously, you did work on it at the writers retreat. Can you tell us a little about this experience? I’ve always thought it was be heaven.
The Varuna Retreat Fellowship struck the perfect balance for me: the solitude and calm of writing all day (and yes, I did!) followed by the companionship and sociability of other writers in the evening. This suited me better than the routine of ClarionSouth, which I went to in 2004. The Clarionettes, as I like to call them, would be the first to tell you that I was uncomfortable group critiquing early-stage and unfinished stories. For me, letting a story out into the world before it’s ready tends to oxidise and spoil it like a piece of fruit.
Q: There seems to be a playing with gender in The Daughters of Moab, is this something you like to explore?
Yes, there is. And yes, I do.
Q: Your next book The Courier’s New Bicycle is due out in 2011. Is it also a ‘poetic apocalyptic’ book?
Upfront, I should say that The Courier’s New Bicycle is neither fantasy nor apocalyptic—even the poetic has been swapped for pacy. This is a very fast ride compared to The Daughters of Moab. Salisbury Forth is a courier of contraband in an atmospheric but ailing Melbourne at a time of major socio-political change. The first review (Australian Bookseller & Publisher, July) described it as “a disturbingly credible and darkly noir post-cyberpunk tale.” That makes me happy!
Q: I read your description of how the short story Nightship came to be, and found it riveting. When will we see the book?
It’s in gestation. Think an elephant’s gestation.
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?
The UK/US perception is news to me, but being in a club is not what makes a writer special. An individual’s prose style is moulded by such a complex array of things, one of which may or may not be their experience of maleness and/or femaleness. In other words, I don’t want to help reify that rather spurious divide.
Q: Following on from that, does the gender of the writer change your expectations when you pick up their book?
No. The gender of the writer is an irrelevancy to me. Their imagination—and what they do with it—is all that matters.
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’d go back to Britain at the time of the Picts, who painted themselves with woad. Love that blue.
Give-away Question:
Imagine a parcel that you are posting today to receive in ten years’ time. What would you put in it?
For a podcast of Nightship see here (skim down).
As the next of my series featuring fantastic female fantasy authors (see disclaimer) I’ve invited the talented Pamela Freeman to drop by.
Watch out for the give-away question at the end of the interview.
Q: You say you became a children’s writer while working as a scriptwriter for ABC TV. What were you working on at the ABC? Was it a children’s show? Do you miss scriptwriting?
I was working as a researcher and scriptwriter for the Children’s and Education Department. I worked on a lot of shows – Powerhouse, Living in the Law, Watch! Your Language, For the Juniors, Swap Shop. I was a reporter on Behind the News (now BTN). I even did some research for Playschool!
The thing I miss about scriptwriting is the collegial nature of television making. Writing is great but you do it alone. Television is a collaboration, where everyone’s contribution makes the piece better. On the other hand, now I don’t have directors telling me to cut crucial scenes because ‘We can’t get the outside broadcast van because it’s going to the cricket’!
Q: Your children’s books have been shortlisted for the Children Book Council Book of the Year Awards, the NSW Premier’s Awards and the Koala Awards. Plus Scum of the Earth won the Environment Prize in 2004 and your fictional biography of Australian pioneer Mary McKillop won the NSW History Prize for Young People in 2006. (For a full list of Pamela’s Children’s books see here). You seem to have a mix of nonfiction, contemporary and fantasy books. Do you think the fantasy element is more readily accepted in children’s books?
Fantasy is mainstream in kids’ writing. This is merely a return to the status quo – it’s only in the last 200 years that realistic storytelling has been privileged in Western society. Prior to that fantasy/hero myths and comedic stories were the mainstream.
And yes, I do think it’s easier for a fantasy book to get on a literature awards list if it’s for kids. Unless the publisher can reclassify it as ‘magical realism’ (snort). There is a lot of snobbery about fantasy writing in particular. Even science fiction has more credibility with the critics.
Q: Leading on from there you have three adult/grownup fantasy books published with Orbit books, The Castings Trilogy, and a new stand-alone novel, Ember and Ash. Was this a big break away from your children’s writing, or did it feel inevitable, like something you were always going to do?
It was a bit of both, really. I write for a lot of age groups in my kids’ books – from 3-year-olds to young adult. My approach has always been to write the story and then figure out how old the reader is likely to be.
I found I was thinking about stories where the reader was clearly not a kid, and that set me thinking about writing for adults. My agent encouraged me and so did my husband.
Q: I see you wrote book one of The Castings Trilogy as part of your Doctorate. In what way is this different from writing on your own?
It was fantastically helpful in all sorts of ways. I was supervised by Debra Adelaide, one of our best authors and editors. She helped me make the transition from children’s writing to writing for adults. This was far more difficult than I had thought it would be, and I was grateful for her support and guidance – and for her pushing me when I needed it. I’m a much better writer for having worked with her.
As well, they paid me a scholarship to write a book I would have written anyway! I was at home with a toddler and it meant I didn’t have to go back to the consulting work I’d been doing prior to that, so it allowed me to be a full time writer for the first time. A doctorate is a great deal for a writer!
Q: In an interview with John Marsh on Grasping for the Wind, you mention that one of the themes you explore in this trilogy is racism. This strikes a chord for me because it was the core of my Masters thesis and book. You say anger drove you and kept you interested through the 450,000 words of the trilogy. Are you still angry?
Of course I am. Look at the difference in life expectancy between Anglo Australians and Indigenous Australians – up to 17 years less if you’re an Aboriginal man! That’s enough to make anyone angry, and it’s merely the most obvious sign of the racism inherent in this society. I’ll stop being angry when we have equality.
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 there used to be a big difference, but the differences are getting smaller. It used to be that only women had women protagonists – but I’ve just read Dave Freer’s Dragon Rising which is beautifully balanced between a human woman and a dragon perspective. I don’t think that’s unusual. Charles Stross’s The Family Business series has a great woman protagonist and engages with sexism on almost every page. As women’s and men’s lives have become more alike, I think it has freed both to write more confidently from the other’s perspective.
There are still male writers out there whose women are busty, simpering blondes, and who concentrate mostly on killing things – but there are also women writers out there whose male characters are thinly disguised wish fulfilments, and who concentrate mostly on romantic relationships! The middle ground is where the interesting and sometimes challenging stuff is happening.
Q: Following on from that, does the gender of the writer change your expectations when you pick up their book?
I’d like to say no, but I have to admit I’m probably more ready to criticise the female characters in a book which has been written by a man. On the other hand, I’m also ready to be very critical of women writers who portray men as always cruel, stupid or insensitive. So maybe the difference is in what I’m alert for. Hmm. We exercise our prejudices all the time, don’t we? I haven’t learnt much from James Tiptree, after all.
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?
1599, the Globe, the first night of Hamlet! Because I am a total Shakespeare nut, and have seen every Hamlet production I possibly could (up to around 25 now). To see Richard Burbage, for whom the part was written, play the melancholy Dane would be fantastic! It’s also considered likely that Shakespeare played Claudius. (And if I could slip around to the stage door to meet Will himself….oh, be still, my beating heart!)
Give-away Question:
Ember and Ash features shapechangers. What animal would you like to be able to turn into and why?
Catch up with Pamela on Facebook.
Listen to a Podcast with Pamela Freeman here.
Visit Pamels’a websites: www.castingstrilogy.com (adults)
Deborah says:
Oh dear, somehow I managed to ignore the fact that hosting a giveaway meant picking a winner. Last time I hosted a giveaway, I gave books to everyone who left a comment, because I couldn’t choose between them. Thanks to everyone who left a comment, with a special thanks to Pete and Belinda, whose comments have given me new books for my TBR pile.
Since I sadly don’t have books enough to give a copy to everyone, I had to resort to pulling a name out of a hat, which means the winner is …
Richard! Congratulations!
Please email Deborah on
damselfly(at)deborahkalin(dot)com
Filed under Australian Writers, Book Giveaway, Fantasy books, Female Fantasy Authors, Fun Stuff
As the next of my series featuring fantastic female fantasy authors (see disclaimer) I’ve invited the talented Deborah Kalin to drop by.
Watch out for the give-away question at the end of the interview.
Q: Your manuscript sold from the slush pile to Louise Thurtell during one of her Friday Pitch sessions. This must have been thrilling. Can you tell us a little about the path to publication for your fantasy trilogy The Binding? Did you belong to a writing group?
I can’t remember if I was still a member at the time of the sale, but before attending Clarion South I was a member of the Online Writing Workshop, a fabulous internet writing community that I’d highly recommend.
I first heard of the Friday Pitch shortly after finishing Shadow Queen. What appealed to me was the chance to submit a chapter of my manuscript (as opposed to simply a query letter), and the fast response time of a week (as opposed to anywhere from 3-24 months).
The first response landed exactly a week after I’d submitted — a request for more time, since Louise had been on holidays and hadn’t started on last week’s submissions yet. I remember thinking that was just a whole week longer that I didn’t have to research which market to submit to next.
The second response came a week later — and I didn’t open it until the next day, I was so sure it would be a rejection. Instead it was a request for the full manuscript. Suddenly all my powers of blasé disappeared!
I didn’t have to wait long, however. Louise called me when she was a quarter of the way through the manuscript, wanting to make sure I hadn’t sold it to anyone else. Two days later she called again. She was ten pages from the end, and she was going to take the book to the acquisitions meeting so she could make an offer, and did I have an agent she should be talking to?
I don’t think I made a single coherent noise for at least a month afterwards.
Q: You used to work as a chemical engineer. Are you tempted to write hard SF?
Science fiction, definitely; hard SF … yes and no.
I have a handful of SF novels jostling in my head, just waiting for their turn to be written. But I’ve noticed my stories are always very character-driven, so any SF I do end up writing will probably be more correctly described as soft or social SF. The only way technology would get a starring, centre-stage role is if the world I was writing about featured a type of technology that was a character in its own right.
Q: In a review on Specusphere the reviewer said: ‘Told in the first person by Matilde, who but for her grandmother’s tenacity would, by the time the book starts, already be Duenin of the landlocked country of Sueben, Shadow Queen is a fantasy that keeps the reader on edge and looking over one shoulder for an attack or a betrayal.’ It is unusual to tell a trilogy from first person. Did you find this a challenge?
Absolutely. My default choice for point of view is third person, so that comes a bit more naturally to me than first. But Matilde is the character who loses the most, time and again, and she’s the character with the most at stake from the outset. The story was so thoroughly hers that first person felt like the best — maybe even only — option.
It leads to difficulties in keeping the reader up-to-date on what’s happening when Matilde isn’t on-scene, of course. To be included those scenes have to be related to Matilde, which brings up so much potential for telling rather than showing, and also for the readers to mistake Matilde’s sometimes-unreliable perceptions as the literal truth of what happened.
Q: The Binding books elicited quite a strong reader reaction on the issue of Matilde’s decisions. Infuriating is a word that crops up often. Can you tell us a little more about that?
One of the things I wanted to do, with Matilde’s story, was to create a believably flawed character. I also wanted to explore the issue of powerlessness, and making mistakes, and what that does to a person.
The fantasy genre is full of the boy king (or girl queen) trope: the youngster catapulted into leadership, for one reason or another. And time and again what I saw with this trope was that said youngster performed admirably. If they did put a foot awry, it often didn’t have a serious bearing on the plot.
Apart from being clichéd, and smacking of society’s obsession with youth and celebrity, it’s also painfully unrealistic. An untried young person thrust into a position of power or influence or even just high visibility is going to make mistakes, and those mistakes are going to cost them dear. To anyone watching from the outside, from an experienced perspective, that young person may even seem bleedingly stupid.
Matilde is 19 at the start of Shadow Queen. She’s untested and, though she’s educated in the ways of politics, she’s also been sheltered from it. She’s impatient, in the way of youth. Her main strength is simultaneously a weakness: she thinks on her feet, and she decides fast. She doesn’t second-guess, she just commits.
So when she’s tested, and sorely tested at that, she doesn’t always get it right.
But Matilde isn’t just young, impatient and decisive — she’s also powerless. She’s a prisoner of war, fighting for her life, and she’s doing it almost entirely alone. So her decisions are sometimes not to win so much as to survive — and maybe change the playing field to her advantage in the process.
I think that combination is inevitably going to lead to some infuriating decisions! Hopefully, though, they’ll also be understandable in the wider context of the story.
My favourite characters are the deeply flawed. Too often strength, particularly in relation to female characters, can be interpreted or portrayed quite narrowly. There’s a fabulous post about “why strong female characters are bad for women” with which I wholeheartedly agree.
Q: You attended Clarion South, a six week intensive bootcamp for writers. Can you share this experience with us?
Clarion South was simultaneously exhilarating and exhausting. I remember getting to bed around 1-2am, and rising around 6am, every single day for 6 weeks. In the afternoon I’d take a nap — which was strictly 10 minutes, no longer. (When the alarm woke me out of that nap, it was inevitably to a strong urge to throw up). The sleep debt was so severe that when I got home, I spent the next fortnight sleeping 12-13 hours a night, and taking a 5 hour nap during the day.
It was worth it. The chance to spend 6 weeks in a world where writing wasn’t a luxury but instead a priority was amazing. I found a community while I was there, and that in itself was invaluable — but I also found validation of what I wanted most to do with my time, which was write. At Clarion, no one expects you to put your writing second, or squeeze it in at the end of the day, or put it off or skip it “just this once”. Instead, writing dictates and informs every waking second: talking about the craft, pulling apart your classmate’s stories, having them pull yours apart.
I learnt so much at Clarion I think I spent the next year unpacking it all. Sometimes I still feel like I’m writing with the voices of my classmates in my head, banning me from using “just”, telling me the story starts on page 3, that sort of thing. There’s no way Shadow Queen would have emerged from my head in publishable format so swiftly if it wasn’t for what I learnt from my time at Clarion.
Q: Book one: Shadow Queen and Book two: Shadow Bound are published by Allen and Unwin. I love this line:
‘The story of an unbreakable young woman, The Binding is a study of what defines us, what binds us, and what sets us free.’ Did the first book come out before the second and third were written? Has this proved a challenge because you can’t go back and tweak events in book one to match up with the way the plot has gone? Or do you plan your whole trilogy before you start writing?
I’m definitely a pantser, rather than an outliner. When I sold Shadow Queen and Shadow Bound to Allen & Unwin, SQ was finished but I’d barely started SB.
I wasn’t too worried, because even when I started writing The Binding books, I knew the ending, down to the closing line. So I’d written SQ with an eye towards that ending, and all I had to do in SB was … get there.
This was not quite so straightforward as I’d hoped, of course. (The inevitable lament of the pantser!) Most notably because the plot of SB hinges on Matilde’s vow at the end of SQ, and when I reached the critical moment where Matilde has to face the consequences of that vow and attempt to untangle it, I found myself utterly stuck. The simplest, easiest and most elegant solution was to go back to SQ and change one word of the vow, swap it out for a more apt synonym. But that simply wasn’t an option.
Luckily as a pantser, I’m very practiced at writing without headlights, and I trust my process. Even when it looks like I’m veering away from the ending and I can’t see a way back, or through, the story always ends up where I thought it would — only now it makes more sense. It took a lot of cursing myself, and false starts, but in the end I came up with an alternative solution to that tricksome tangle which I think worked better — so much better that now I can’t remember what it was I originally wanted to change.
These days, perhaps because of that experience, I find I’m tending a little more towards some level of outlining. I’ll probably never be one of those writers with a beat-by-beat outline, but the current work in progress at least has a synopsis to guide me. Although I’ve already departed from it. Oops.
Q: What will you be writing next?
I’m currently working on an urban fantasy about time-travelling faeries and loneliness, which has taken a lot longer than I expected or hoped but I think I have the plot worked out at last. I also have a synopsis-type outline for a third Binding book, which is currently with A&U. I also want to work on something that deals with mental illness in the near future, but I haven’t quite got the idea fleshed out yet.
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 find rules breed exceptions!
I also think that what informs an author’s writing — at least in terms of tone, voice and style, if not content — are deeper issues such as education levels, socio-economic influences, the cultures to which that author has been exposed, and the range (or narrowness) of their experiences and opportunities in the world to date. To name but a few.
It’s impossible to separate some of those from a society’s gender roles, so superficially it seems inevitable that there will be some kind of noticeable difference in the writing of men and women that can be traced to gender. But I think that risks ignoring the larger picture.
Certainly I can’t pick an author’s gender simply from a sample of their writing.
Q: Following on from that, does the gender of the writer change your expectations when you pick up their book?
I think it used to – when I was a teen, I learnt to expect male protagonists from male authors, and vice versa. But I’m happy to say I don’t think that’s been true for a long time (if it ever was — my expectations could well have had more to do with the books I was exposed to during those years). These days I don’t even notice an author’s name except to note whether I’ve heard of their work before.
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?
DINOSAURS! To bring one home with me, of course.
Although, to be entirely honest – I think I’d hijack the machine so I could take as many trips as I could possibly ever imagine.
Give-away Question:
Who is your favourite fictional character, and why?
Follow Deb on Twitter: debkalin@twitter
See Deb’s Blog.
Glenda has very genrously offered the wnner of her give-away a choice of one of her three tilogies! She says:
Thank you everyone, for your comments! And thanks to Rowena for having me over.
To Lexie, the book I am working on at the moment is set in an imaginary world, but it is very much based on historical fact (with added magic!), lots of adventure, and yes – with pirates. Only back in those days, it was called “privateering”. It’s all about the name…
Kaaron – it’s certainly world scale. It covers “Europe” to “South-east Asia”. And oh, I wish I could fix the world. I’ve spent a life-time trying, but I don’t see much improvement! (Now, if I only had a few magical powers…)
Cecilia – not sure I could write a romance and pull it off. I really admire how writers like Nora Roberts can write so many books and still produce love scenes that sound fresh…but it’s just not me. Hunky fae, now…hmmm.
Thoraiya and Brendan – I’m hoping a Malaysian author will write the urban Malaysian fantasy. There are a couple of very talented woman writers up here who are on track to do just that. I’ll keep you posted. Problem with fantasy standalones is getting publishers for them. In Australia, that is especially difficult, unless it’s paranormal. The trilogy I am working on has the second book placed in a 17th century spice trade Asian setting…lots of skullduggery and Asian fantasy stuff going on, with a mix of European and Asian protagonists. Villains and heroes from both sides. Can’t wait!
And the winner of the free book is Tsana, because she had a number of thoughtful comments on what I should write next!
Tsana, please email Glenda on
info(at)glendalarke(dot)com
Filed under Australian Writers, Book Giveaway, Fantasy books, Female Fantasy Authors, Fun Stuff
