After last week, when I posted the cover of book one of The Outcast Chronicles with a typo in the title, I thought I’d better check the lettering on book two. Here it is.
Can’t spot any typos myself, but then I have a background in graphic art so I tend to see design, not words. I think the cover fairies have been kind to me again. What do you think?
Thanks to Clint Langley for his great work and thanks to Solaris for using him to do the covers!
Filed under Covers, creativity, Fantasy books, Fun Stuff, Genre, Inspiring Art, Nourish the Writer
As the next of my series featuring fantastic female fantasy authors (see disclaimer) I’ve invited the amazingly prolific and talented Juliet McKenna to drop by.
Watch out for the give-away question at the end of the interview.
Q: Wow, Juliet, looking at your list of published books takes my breath away. Tell me, do you sleep 3 hours a night?
Well, I have been doing this for a while now. My first novel, The Thief’s Gamble came out in January 1999, so I’ve written a book a year since then. I’m also lucky enough to write full time, as far as any wife and mother can do that. So I work from around 8.30 in the morning when my husband and teenage sons have left for work, college and school, until about 5 in the afternoon.
That’s writing the current book in progress along with doing fun things like this, blogging, reviewing, getting involved in conventions and other events and the much less exciting but equally necessary stuff like the accounts and other administrivia.
Q: You have five series out now with a 3 – 5 books in each series. There’s The Tales of Einarinn, The Aldabreshin Compass, The Lescari Revolution, and your news series, The Hadrumal Crisis. You have an invented world and where you have set stories in different places (and at different times?), with some characters crossing over into different series. Tell me, do you have a huge map on the wall with a flow chart of events and timelines for different families and kingdoms? How do you keep it all straight in your head?
I have a lovely big map. One of the smartest moves I ever made, in hindsight, was marrying a design engineer who trained as a draughtsman. He drew that map for me and it’s fantastic. I used to keep a card index with details of every character noted down but that got harder and harder to keep up to date at the same time as computers made searching for individual characters in the text of a book so much easier. So that’s how I keep track of the details now.
That said, preparing for this new series, I did have to go back and re-read my first nine books, making notes as I went, since I’m picking up a lot of threads from those earlier tales. I have always drawn up timelines for each book, with notes on what each character’s doing and where they are. I’m one of those writers who does a lot of planning ahead before I ever type ‘Chapter One’. Every book has its own working note book and so I can also refer back to those when whatever I’m currently writing draws on what’s happened before.
On the other hand, I work very hard to make sure that each series is a fresh start, so that readers don’t have to go all the way through my backlist for the new story to make sense. That does lighten the burden of what’s gone before for me as a writer. I only have to include essential back story, in the same way as any author creating rounded, realistic characters does with any book.
Q: Reading the information on your web site, your books come across as very down to earth stories about real people, set in a world where magic happens to be normal. Where … ‘there are developments in science and technology, philosophy and literature, quite independently of whatever it is that has wizards and princes running round in circles?’ Would describe yourself as a very grounded person, who just happens to have an imagination that won’t let her sleep?
Words that often come up when people are describing me are ‘practical’ and ‘organised’ and yes, I imagine ‘grounded’ is in there too. That said, I think what I’ve always read and enjoyed has more influence on what I write than my personal character. I’ve always loved books that feel ‘real’ and I’ve always read right across the speculative genre and on into folklore and myth and then onwards into history.
They’re all colours in the same spectrum as far as I am concerned, and how can anyone read this wonderful stuff without their own imagination catching light? I’ve made up stories for as long as I can remember. I was one of those kids who could spend a whole afternoon spinning some fantastic yarn with a couple of toy animals, some building bricks and a cardboard box.
As to the depth and breadth of the worlds I create now, knowing so much history, I really cannot be doing with fantasy worlds where nothing changes in a thousand years (unless that’s part of the point the writer is making). I think how much change my grandmother saw in her 95 years!
Q: In an interview on SFFWorld, you mention that you do aikido. (This is one of the martial arts I studied for 5 years. I found it helped me when writing fight scenes). Do you do other martial arts and did you find that they help you give verisimilitude to your fight scenes?
I have nearly thirty years of aikido under my (black) belt now, including sword and staff fighting techniques, and yes, that’s a fantastic help when I’m writing fight scenes. I don’t do any other martial arts but I do swap notes with those studying other disciplines. Shotokan Karate blackbelt and author John Meaney and I did a hands-on panel on fight scenes at a recent convention and that was a fascinating exercise in compare and contrast.
I also did some Live Action Role Playing as a student and that’s also very useful. Table top gaming just isn’t the same. Get out in some woods at night for real and you really won’t have a clue what cunning plan the wizard ten feet behind you is hatching when all you’re looking at is the orc who’s trying to cut your head off!
That said, as an author, I have to be aware of readers’ expectations, particularly the way those have been shaped by what they see on film and TV, where fights are long, drawn-out, full of ups and downs, will our hero win or won’t he? Whereas real fights, when at least one person knows what they’re doing, tend to be very short and to the point. Also, when you’re watching a fight, it’s clear who’s doing what. Describing a fight so the reader can visualize it can be tricky. So, as with any other aspect of writing, crafting a fight scene that’s both realistic and rewarding for the reader is a challenge. But hey, if it was easy, it wouldn’t be nearly so much fun.
Q: You are one of the founding members of The Write Fantastic , (TWF), an organisation established in 2004 to promote the fantasy genre. On your TWF site, you say: ‘Nowadays … Bestsellers thrive, while writers seen as ‘mid-list’, and those in genre fiction, suffer. Browsing used to be the route by which such authors picked up new readers. But now people popping into a bookshop ‘for something to read’ get no further than the 3 for 2 deals. So authors face a choice between grousing into their beer or looking for alternate ways to contact potential readers and bring them in past the discount tables and the bestseller charts.’ Do you think TWF has helped fantasy writers connect with new readers?
Definitely. The feedback we get tells us that time and again. The publishing world, from that first idea in your head to the finished book on the shelf in the shop, has changed enormously in the past ten years. What hasn’t changed, and what never seems to change though, is what really sells books is word of mouth recommendation.
Readers are always eager to hear about new books and these days, there are so many books that it can be a challenge to keep up to date with the new voices, never mind hearing about other people’s established favourites which you might not have tried. Hearing writers talk, about what they’re writing and what they’re reading is always a good way to find out if something’s likely to be on your particular wavelength.
Q: I see that TWF has successfully applied for grants. I’m thinking that is what my ROR group should do. One of the things that holds us back here in Australia is that the literary festivals expect to be contacted by the publishers who want to promote their authors. If an author contacts a literary festival, more often than not, they ignore the author. I’m guessing you haven’t had this problem in the UK?
Well, we have had success in the past… That kind of grant money dried up a few years ago. Then last year, as soon as the current government was elected here in the UK, the library funding for author visits was drastically cut back, so we lost a lot of those events. This year, so far, I’m hearing of literary festivals being cancelled or put on hiatus, so we’re looking at alternatives for TWF gigs, not least running a day event or two ourselves.
Literary festivals vary enormously. The really big ones, sponsored by our national newspapers, certainly aren’t much interested in dealing with anyone outside the best-seller lists, whose publisher will be paying to promote them, and where the author is expected to turn up and do their thing and be grateful for ‘the prestige’. It’s actually the smaller, more local events that are open to approaches from groups like TWF and will often work harder to pay writers for their time.
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?
This idea that fantasy is for men, written by men, does persist and it baffles me for several reasons. I mean, don’t people look at the shelves? There are so many women writing superb fantasy these days, in the UK, the US and elsewhere. Perhaps it’s another knock-on effect of those front-of-store promotions. The mega-sellers of late have been written by men and so they have much greater visibility, certainly for people who don’t know much about our genre. I’m not sure what we women can do beyond write the best books we can and hope they reach that readership tipping point to get us to the front of the bookstore. But of course, we are already writing the best books we can…
Do we write differently to the men? That’s hard to say. I’m sure for any generalisation that I might make, someone will be able to point to a book where that simply doesn’t apply. For instance if I said, women writers focus more on the emotional responses of female characters with a higher profile overall within the story. Or if I said, male writers get far more down and dirty with the vicious and brutal.
I really do think it’s a problem of perception rather than reality and we all need to challenge it if it’s ever going to change.
Q: Following on from that, does the gender of the writer change your expectations when you pick up their book?
No, it really doesn’t. What grabs me is the back cover copy and then the first page. It’s all about the story and the characters for me.
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?
Ancient Rome, in the last days of the Republic. I studied this period at university and actually being there, seeing what really happened would be fantastic. Of course, I would need some kind of access all areas pass or Doctor Who’s psychic paper so I didn’t just end up wandering round the Forum. Though that would be pretty cool as well.
Or… a hundred years into the future, where I would want to spend a week just soaking up the atmosphere, the news media, the day to day life, to see how far we had come as humanity, and what hadn’t really changed, for better or for worse.
Find Juliet’s blog here.
For a video interview of Juliet McKenna see here.
Hear the Ghost in the Machine Podcast with Juliet McKenna.
Juliet on Facebook
Juliet is happy to give away a copy of one of her books, depending on which one you need to fill the gap in your collection. Here’s the give-away question:
Every fantasy fan I know is waiting breathlessly for HBO’s adaptation of George RR Martin’s A Game of Thrones – even those who haven’t read the books. Which fantasy book/world would you like to see turned into a television series and why?
As the next of my series featuring fantastic female fantasy authors (see disclaimer) I’ve invited the prolific and talented Trudi Canavan to drop by.
Watch out for the give-away question at the end of the interview. (NOTE this competition is now closed. Thanks for all the entries!)
Q: Like me, you have a background as an illustrator. Do you miss illustrating?
I have to admit, I don’t miss being a freelance illustrator much at all! While it was a fun job to have and I like being self-employed, it didn’t pay very well. Painting and other forms of art are now a hobby again, and it’s much more creatively satisfying to be portraying what I want to portray, in whatever medium inspires me and with no deadlines.
Q: In 1999 your short story Whispers of the Mist Children won the Aurealis Award for Best fantasy Short Story. Are you still writing short stories, or do you find your stories keep growing until they become novels?
Yes, I do still write shorts, though not often. My second published short, “Room For Improvement”, won a Ditmar in 2004 and I’ve had stories published in Dreaming Again and Legends of Australian Fantasy, but that’s four stories over ten years so you can see I’m not all that prolific!
My story ideas come with a length already obvious to me right from the start. I know if there’s ‘enough’ story to fill a short, novella, novel or series. Sometimes there’s a piece of history or character background within a longer work that can be separated out and written in a shorter form, like a short story or novella – like ‘The Mad Apprentice’ novella in the Legends anthology, which is a piece of history from the Black Magician Trilogy world.
Recently I joined a local short story critique group with the aim of both ‘giving back’ to the sff community, polishing my writing and critiquing skills, and motivating myself to write more short stories. I’m hoping to write a few set in the universe of my next series and then, in a couple of years, include them with my old short stories to form an anthology.
Q: In 2001 the first book of your The Black Magician Trilogy series came out. The Magicians’ Guild, The Novice, and The High Lord went on to be best sellers. Was this a bit of a surprise? (A welcome surprise, LOL).
Well, of course! I don’t think any sane writer expects success. They hope for it, and delude themselves that it will happen in order to keep going when times are tough, but they never take it for granted that it’s going to happen.
My dream, which formed when I was about fourteen, was to write a fantasy novel. Having it find a publisher was not necessarily part of the dream, but by the time I’d written it I certainly wanted it to be to justify all the hard work. If I’d not found a publisher I’d have been disappointed, but at least I’d done what I’d set out to do. Everything else has been a bonus. A confidence-boosting bonus and one that’s financially sustainable, thankfully!
Q: Your second trilogy, Age of the Five has also been a best seller.
Yes, though it’s success is overshadowed by the Black Magician Trilogy and its prequel and sequel. Part of that is due to it being aimed at an older market. I decided to do so because I was a little worried I’d be typecast as a YA writer, which isn’t a bad thing for sales but I could see it might be for me as a writer in the long term. I don’t want to be restricted to only being able to publish to one kind of audience.
To make it a non-YA book, I simply had to make the main character older (she’s about 25) and add a few sex scenes. I considered whether upping the violence would make a difference, and realised it probably wouldn’t. You’d have to add very gratuitous violence to a book to make it unsuitable to young people these days!
Q: Then, in 2007, you signed a ‘seven-figure deal’ with Orbit to write the prequel and sequel to The Black Magician Trilogy. Does this mean that you are one of the mythical writers who doesn’t have to hold down another job to make ends meet while you write? Has this given you freedom and confidence to concentrate on your writing?
The answer to that is yes, but naturally it’s more complicated than that. I started writing as my only source of income before it paid well enough, because I had no choice.
You see, I started my illustration business so I could afford to write part time. A few years after my first publishing contracts I developed chronic fatigue. It wasn’t as debilitating as most cases, but I had to save all my energy for writing, and let the illustration business go. Those early advances didn’t come close to a full time wage and I survived, financially, by been very, very, very frugal.
Thankfully, in the years since then I have regained most of my old energy and the writing brings in a much better income. I’d glad I don’t have to take on a second job, because I worry that doing so would bring back the chronic fatigue. There are other things I’d like to do, like finally get a university qualification, but again, I worry about what affect that would have.
Q: With such a large range of trilogies many of which interrelate do you have a huge whiteboard in your office with timelines, family trees and maps? How do you keep it all straight?
I have a pinboard above my writing desk, but it’s mainly covered in maps and plans. All my lists of made-up words and character names are on my computer. There’s less of this than you’d expect, actually. I try to keep my cast of main characters small enough to be easily manageable. I figure that if I can remember who is who, the chances are better that the average reader will keep track as well.
Q: I know you do a lot of craft, as well as cooking. Do you find that you need these creative outlets to counter balance the intensity of writing really long fantasy trilogies?
Yes, I’ve always found that the compulsion to write dries up if I’m not doing other creative activities. Part of the reason is that I do a lot of thinking about stories when painting or I’m involved in something repetitive and soothing like weaving. Another part is that finishing a craft projects provides a feeling of completion and achievement on a regular basis, which I only get once a year or so from writing. The crafts I do also qualify as research – they provide an understanding of how thing were made in the past and can be a source of inspiration for stories and building fantasy worlds.
I’ve read articles about chemicals in the brain that relate to creativity, that suggest that the more you produce them the easier it is to produce them. Creativity stimulates creativity.
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.
When I saw the discussion about this on the internet my first reaction was ‘is there really?’. It’s certainly not the case here in Australia, where most fantasy authors are female.
When I considered the ratio of male to female overseas authors I knew of, there didn’t seem to be a big imbalance. Then I learned that I would be attending a Mega Signing in the UK as part of the publicity tour for The Rogue in May, and that I was the lone woman in a pack of eight male writers. That certainly made me sit up and take notice!
While the boy’s club label didn’t seem immediately true of authors, it did agree with my impressions of the commentators of sff overseas and this article confirmed it. I’ve always been a bit bemused by the UK/US awards shortlists and the books reviewed in magazines. The sort of fantasy they seem to like is what I’d call ‘blokey’.
Q: So you think there’s a difference in the way males and females write fantasy?
Yes, but not all writers all the time. Most male and female writers come pretty close to a style and flavour of fantasy that sits easily in the middle. But there are definitely writers who write in a blokey or feminine style, even if they’re of the opposite gender.
I suspect there are cultural differences, too. The sort of fantasy popular in the US may seem blokey to our Australian tastes because we have more female fantasy writers here and the subtle differences in the way women write fantasy may feel ‘normal’ to us. Is the opposite true? I don’t know. But if it is, it doesn’t seem to be putting off overseas readers. Every time I talk to people in the oversees publishing, bookselling and commentary industries they ask “why are there so many fantastic women fantasy writers in Australia?”. Maybe the question should be “why aren’t we paying more attention to all the fantastic women fantasy writers in your own country?”.
Q: Following on from that, does the gender of the writer change your expectations when you pick up their book?
I would be lying if I said it didn’t, but the important thing is it doesn’t stop me wanting to read a book. Ultimately I want to read a good book, and I never consider if that’s more likely because the writer is male or female. I certainly never decide that a book is bad or not my taste because of the gender of the writer.
I know some readers do, and I slot that in the same category of “extremely fussy and a bit strange” readers along with those who won’t read a book written in first person, or that have prologues or epilogues, or with a point of view character in a gender or sexual orientation different to their own.
I don’t feel I should be judgemental toward a reader because of their reading comfort zones, but I do feel sad that they may be missing out on great books.
Q: What do you plan to write next?
I’m really excited about the next series, Millennium’s Rule, which we’ve just finished negotiating the contract for. It is set in a multiple world scenario, where characters with the ability can hop from one world to another. In one world, where there has been a kind of industrial revolution powered by magic, a young archaeology student finds an ancient treasure – a sentient book. In another world, trapped in its own dark ages, the daughter of a cloth merchant must hide her powers from magic-hating, priests.
Q: Sounds like fun to read and to write! 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 would go into the future, maybe by a hundred years. Maybe that’s surprising from a writer of fantasy, which is mainly set in worlds based on past eras, but I’m not under any delusions that any time in the past was a better one than now. Not that I expect the future is guaranteed to be either, but I always want to know to know what happens next.
To win a copy of Trudi’s latest book ‘The Rogue’ answer this question: Why do you think there are so many fantastic female fantasy writers in Australia?
Alison says:
Thanks to everyone who dropped by the interview and answered the giveaway question.
I really enjoyed the variety of mythical creatures chosen and the reasons that ranged from toasting one’s enemies to eternal resurrection. In the end, though, it is the image of the many-headed Hydra talking amongst itself that won the day. Congratulations to arun!
arun can email me a postage address at info(at)alisongoodman(dot)com(dot)au
Here I am, back from Supanova and I want to say a big thank you to the team of volunteers. First of all sending hugs to the Superwomen of Supanova. Missy, Felicity, Nicole and Skye!
Marianne and I at the Dymocks Table
A big thank you to Sandra, Ineke and Claire who ‘womaned’ the Dymocks store. And while I’m at it, I must say how great it was to catch up with fellow authors, Trent Jamieson, Jennifer Fallon, Trudi Canavan, Isobelle Carmody, Marianne de Pierres and Robin Hobb. Always a pleasure to spend time with!
The costumes are absolutely amazing. So much effort and the tone of the event is so friendly. At one point a huge conga line passed by with everyone dancing and laughing.
A big hello to Caroline and the team who put together the costumes from NINE. Thank you for the cute little No: 5 I was given.
Had so much fun catching up with readers, watching costumes and chatting to friends!
As the next of my series featuring fantastic female fantasy authors (see disclaimer) I’ve invited the award winning, multi-talented Alison Goodman to drop by.
Watch out for the give-away question at the end of the interview.
photo by naced.com.au
Q: Your first book published was Singing the Dogstar Blues (Great title). It won an Aurealis Award for Best YA novel, was listed as notable book in two other awards and was shortlisted for the Victorian Premier’s Literary Award. This is a time travel, science fiction story, which must have been a lot of fun to write. Are you tempted to go back into the Dogstar world and write more books with this premise?
I’ve already been back! I wrote a follow up short story called “The Real Thing” for Firebirds Rising, an anthology of original Science Fiction and Fantasy. I’ve always had the idea of returning to the Dogstar world at some point, so I wrote the short story as a kind of bridge between the first book, and what may, one day, become the second book in a series.
Q: Your latest book Eona will be released in April 2011. (A sample chapter is provided on this page). Looking at the covers on your website, they are all brilliant. You must be over the moon! (I think I have serious cover envy, here). This new series is written for the adult market. Did you find writing for adults gave you more freedom?
Yes, I’ve been incredibly lucky with my covers and had some great artists working on them.
EON has been published around the world as both adult fiction and young adult fiction (YA) without a word of the novel being changed, so it is dead square in what is called the “crossover” market. I specifically wrote EON to be a crossover novel, and with that came decisions about how I explored some of the hot-points like sexuality and violence. I suppose my rule of thumb is to always write what is necessary for the story and then see if anyone yells foul! Then make decisions from there. I have pushed the sexuality and violence envelopes more in EONA, the sequel, because the storyline is about power and its abuse, and about awakening sexuality. However, as I wrote both novels, I was always aware that I have some younger readers and so strived to layer the novels so that if a reader does not have the world experience to understand some of the more adult themes, then they can read the books as rollicking good adventure stories.
Q: EONA is the sequel to The Two Pearls of Wisdom/EON, (depending on where you live). How do publishers come up with such disparate names?
My original titles for the books were EON and EONA. However, my UK and Australian publishers decided to market the book for a mainstream adult market and felt that these two titles were too fantasy genre specific, so they asked me to re-title. I came up with The Two Pearls of Wisdom and The Necklace of the Gods, which I think work well as titles for the novels, but confused some readers as they thought these were other books in the EON/EONA series. Now only my UK adult fiction publisher is going to release the sequel as The Necklace of the Gods. My Australian publishers have decided to return to the EON and EONA pairing, and recently re-released The Two Pearls of Wisdom as EON. Phew! No wonder some of my fans are a bit confused.
Q: About book one you say: ‘It has won awards, sold into 16 countries, but the clincher is the scene that brings together a young girl masquerading as a boy, a woman dressed as a man, and a eunuch taking a testosterone tea supplement’ Wow, with a scene like that I think I’ll have to rush out and buy a copy. Have you ever been tempted to write satire (as opposed to say, fantasy with a touch of humour)?
Believe it or not, that scene is actually a straight dramatic scene, albeit with a cast of very singular characters!
I’ve never been tempted to write a full-on satirical novel, although there are elements of comedy in my first two books. Singing the Dogstar Blues is a comedy thriller, and I think of Killing the Rabbit as a black comedy. Mind you, it is my own brand of very black comedy that, alas, is a hereditary weirdness passed through my mother’s side. Also, I did once write a spec episode of the TV comedy The Games with the wonderful Bryan Dawe (one half of the John Clarke and Bryan Dawe political satire team). We had a ball writing together and, although the episode was never made, I learned so much about the grammar of television and the rhythms of satire comedy.
Q: You have a page dedicated to research on your web site. You say: ‘Alongside my reading, I also do empirical research to help me fully create my world using vivid sensory detail. That can mean anything from going to a local Tai Chi class, cooking a new Chinese dish, or travelling all the way to Japan to walk through the temples and gardens.’ You really went to Japan and walked through temple gardens. Was this the first time you’d been to Asia? Did it change the way you viewed Japanese culture and/or the way you approached the book?
My first contact with Japanese culture came through my Japanese aunt. She married into our family and brought tantalising glimpses of the Japanese culture into my very anglo existence, particularly through her wonderful food and conventions of hospitality. My research trip was the first time I had been in Japan for any length of time and it certainly impacted on my novels in terms of sensory description and the way space is used for living and working.
Q: Your adult crime/thriller Killing the Rabbit was shortlisted for the Davitt Award. (I note there was a slight SF element in this story). Are your publishers happy with you writing across age groups and genres, or do you they try and shoe-horn you into one genre? Following on from that, will you be writing more crime/thrillers?
So far my publishers haven’t mentioned any problem with me changing genre, probably because three of my four books have been published under a YA banner, which is considered a genre in itself. Also, my crime novel was picked-up by a different publishing house, so there was a separation of my adult crime fiction from my other genre work. My YA publishers would probably prefer that I settle into a genre and stay there, but I’m too restless for that. I go where the story goes, whether it be fantasy, crime, SF or whatever. When I’m developing a story, I like to mash genres together and play with the conventions; see if I can sneak in some surprises that mess around with the structures as well as story and character expectations. I particularly like the thriller form, so yes, I will be returning to it. In fact, my next project is going to be a thriller/urban fantasy duology (you heard it first here!).
Q: You said you returned to the Dogstar world in Firebirds Rising. Are you keen on the short story medium or do you find it difficult to keep within the word limit?
I studied Professional Writing at university and most of my training was in crafting the literary short story, so short is where I started. Writing short fiction is a great discipline – it teaches essential skills such as economy, layering of meaning and careful word choice – and I am always grateful for the excellent foundation I received from my teachers including the great Gerald Murnane. However, now that I have written four novels, I find the short story a bit unsatisfying to write. I enjoy building worlds and complex characters and that is not really the domain of the short story. Having said that, I do still write short stories, they are just quite a bit longer than they used to be.
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?
My gut says that there are just as many female authors writing fantasy as there are male, and that the perception of it being a boy’s club is bit out of date – perhaps a remnant of when publishing was a boy’s club and it was hard for women to get published in any genre.
As to whether there are differences in the way males and females write fantasy – that’s a toughie. I don’t think I’ve read a big enough cross-section of fantasy novels to make any kind of useful judgment about gender. In the end, though, if a writer is doing their job, the core of a novel should be touching on the universal questions that we all face, regardless of gender.
Q: Following on from that, does the gender of the writer change your expectations when you pick up their book?
I think my expectations of a book are more centered on the genre rather than the gender of the author. Also, I prefer to read a first person point of view, so when I pick up a book, I am looking for a genre that I like – fantasy, thriller, crime, SF – and the intimacy of that first person point of view.
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?
A round trip – first I’d like to go back to Shakespeare’s England (with a plague vaccination, if possible) to find out who wrote the plays, and hang out with poet, playwright and spy, Christopher Marlowe. After that, I’d go on to the Regency period in London, with a gender change on the way because the Regency men had all the fun. After a bit of phaeton racing and louche behaviour, I’d journey on to the mid- 1920’s, as a woman again, with a bob and my Charleston dancing shoes. I’d finish up in the early 1960’s in the USA, first to check out the grassy knoll and book depository, and then a quick jump to Woodstock, in flared jeans, a halter-top and a flower in my hair.
Giveaway question for a signed copy the Australian edition of EONA: If you were a mythical creature, what would you be and why?
Alison’s website: www.alisongoodman.com.au
See Alison on a video interview.
Follow Alison on Twitter: alisongoodman
As the next of my series featuring fantastic female fantasy authors (see disclaimer) I’ve invited the talented CE Murphy to drop by.
Watch out for the give-away question at the end of the interview.
Q: Looking at your publication list you are incredibly prolific. There’s the Walker Papers, the Negotiator Trilogy, the Inheritors’ Cycle. Then there is the comic and the books you write under your pseudonym Cate Dermody. You say you generally write a book in 6 to 8 weeks. It sounds like you become completely immersed in your books. Do your invented worlds and characters become more real to you than the real world?
Ah, I used to write books that fast. It usually takes 3-4 months now, though I still prefer it if I can get the rough draft done that quickly.
The writing and characters and worlds, though, never have superseded reality. I only realized recently that people actually literally mean it when they say they become so immersed in their worlds that the real world disappears. Truth be told, I think that’s really bizarre. 🙂
Q: Are you one of those writers who create a music play list for each series that they work on and only play that music while you are writing that series?
I’m not. I really dislike having music playing when I’m working, in fact. It distracts me. I *can* work with music on if I really have to drown other things out, but it has to be music I’m very very familiar with or it just becomes part of the problem.
Q: You write as both CE Murphy and Cate Dermody. The CE Murphy books are fantasy (with a strong female protagonist). The Cate Dermody books are action-adventure romance. Did you plan to write under two names to give yourself flexibility as a writer?
That’s exactly why. Turns out I should’ve been even more flexible, since the Inheritors’ Cycle, which is very different from my urban fantasy, didn’t sell all that well and might have done better under a different name. Ah well!
Q: Your Cate Dermody books seem to be espionage in a contemporary setting. Do you love writing and reading mystery/thrillers?
Does it show? 🙂 Yeah, I do. I like stories that just rip along and take me for a great ride, and I think the Dermody books offer that for readers. They’re huge fun. Or at least they were huge fun to write!
Q: Do you think having a gender neutral name for your fantasy books makes them more accessible to male readers?
*laughs* Honestly, that never occurred to me. I write under CE because I don’t care for being called by my full name, and people tend to call you what’s on the cover of a book. I go by Catie in real life, and I never thought that looked grown-up enough for adult books, so when a friend suggested the initials I thought “Good idea!” It only came up after I’d been published a couple years and people started asking me variations on this question. 🙂
Q: You also write for comics. Are you one of those people who come from an illustrator/comic background but also write? Following on from that are you a fan of graphic novels from way back? If so which artists inspired you?
Ah, I wish. I’m a decent artist, but I’m both good enough to know how good I’m not and also not an illustrator. Every once in a while I think “Y’know, I could be really good at this if I tried,” but pretty much my creative efforts have been long focused on writing, so art is just a rarely-visited hobby for me.
I got into comics through ElfQuest when I was about twelve, so yeah, pretty much the first thing beyond Archie and Richie Rich that I read were the graphic novel versions of ElfQuest, which basically makes me a fan of the format since childhood. I still default to Pini-style elves in my doodling. 🙂
Q: Was it difficult to make the writing craft adjustments to write for comics/graphic novels?
Yes and no. It’s completely different, but being the sort of person I am, I went out and researched how to write comics before I gave it a shot. (Nat Gertler’s PANEL ONE, for those who are interested, is a great resource.) I was under no time pressure when I did that, which helped, but once I got the idea in place, it wasn’t so bad. Writing comics is fun. Totally different ballgame, and lemme tell you, there’s pretty much *nothing* as awesome as seeing pages come back to you: your words transformed into art. Just wow.
Q: I love your description of your mother: ‘My mom’s a choreographer and a costumer, is wonderfully sensible and extremely silly, and when you have someone like that in your life as your role model for what it is to be an adult female, you just kind of naturally assume that’s what it is to be a woman: strong, talented, inventive, intelligent.’ You write strong, intelligent female characters. Was there ever a conscious decision, or did they just flow?
Well, y’know, they say write what you know. I have a few series ideas with male leads, but mostly I’ve always written girls and women because that’s what I am.
Tell ya something that drives me bugnuts, though, is the idea (often found in romance and paranormal romance) that an “alpha male” is a complete jackass. I like to think there are plenty of alpha males in my books–Morrison, Gary, Alban, Tony–but man, to me, a strong male character is not one who is also automatically an asshole.
Panel discussion strong female characters San Diego Comic-Con 2008.
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_g_cnTplSkc&feature=player_embedded]
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?
Eh. Not really. I think there’s a difference in how *people* write books. I’ll never write exactly the same story as anyone else, even if we’re given the exact same premise. That’s because we bring different things to the table, different talents, different voices, different viewpoints. Some of those will be female viewpoints, some of them won’t. Some of them I’ll connect with, some of them I won’t. It’s all about storytelling, not who’s telling it, to me.
Q: Following on from that, does the gender of the writer change your expectations when you pick up their book?
Nah. I read a lot of women authors, but I stopped reading them *because* they were women when I was about, I don’t know, fifteen, and I ran into a slew of books I thought I Should Like, because they were by well-respected female names in the fantasy field. I bounced off them like a bouncing thing, so it was around then that it became clear to me that the author’s gender did not necessarily give me anything in common with the story they were telling or the way they told it…although I seriously doubt I thought of it that way at the time. 🙂
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?
Only *one*, she wailed? Is it cheating to say “Anywhere, any time, as long as it’s with the Tenth Doctor”? 🙂
All right, all right. One trip, eh? Okay. I’d go back to the Library at Alexandria just before the fire and clean the place out so all those amazing ancient texts could be rediscovered now. 🙂
Give-away question:
I’ll do a give-away of one copy of SPIRIT DANCES to the commenter who comes up with the time-travel destination I wish I’d thought of… 🙂
Follow CE Murphy on Twitter: @ce_murphy
As the next of my series featuring fantastic female fantasy authors (see disclaimer) I’ve invited the talented Mary Victoria to drop by. Mary’s first book in the Chronicles of the Tree trilogy, ‘Tymon’s Flight’, was nominated for three different sections of the Gemmel Awards, Morningstar (new talent), Legend (best fantasy) and Ravenheart (best cover). Mary’s latest book, ‘Samiha’s Song’ has just been released. Watch out for the give-away question at the end of the interview.
Q: Samiha’s Song is book two of The Chronicles of the Tree (Book One – Tymon’s Flight). From the blurb there seems to be a ‘World Tree’ did you kick yourself when Avatar came out, or did you figure lots of stories feature trees, going right back to Norse mythology, and Avatar could only help sales of your book? (If you’d like to browse inside Samiha’s Song see here).
No, I did not kick myself. <grin> I’d written the story long before ‘Avatar’ came out, and really the World Tree in ‘Tymon’s Flight’ is quite different to the hometree in Cameron’s film. It’s far larger, for one thing, the size of the Himalayan mountain range. Don’t think ‘big oak or elm’, but rather a huge and tangled agglomeration of branches, trunk and foliage, a messy continent of vegetation extending over hundreds of miles. In fact, my World Tree concept is probably closer to the one in Kaaron Warren’s wonderful ‘Walking the Tree’, also published in 2010 with Angry Robot. (I have since had the joy corresponding with Kaaron regarding our mutual Tree obsession and parallel stories of publication – one of those odd coincidences where people come up with similar ideas independently. I highly recommend ‘Walking the Tree’, by the way!)
Comparisons with Norse myth are apt, and Yggdrasil was one of the main inspirations for the Tree in ‘Tymon’s Flight’. I wanted an environment that could conceivably contain a world – or at least, what human beings might think of as ‘the world’ at a certain point in their development (remember, for a medieval peasant in Europe, ‘the world’ wasn’t much bigger than the lands adjoining the Mediterranean sea.) Again, you could compare the World Tree to a small, isolated continent with a self-contained culture just on the cusp of technological growth. For most people in that culture, the Tree contains everything, from human civilization in the middle canopies to heaven in the highest branches, and hell at its roots.
It’s a very belief-bound universe. Science is mistrusted and free thinkers are labelled heretics.
Q: When I read the cover blurb I had the feeling you were writing Young Adult, but it didn’t say this anywhere. Then I read in an interview that, while book one was written for YA, your editor asked you to write the second book for adults. Did you enjoy the freedom this gave you to go darker and deal with more confronting themes?
I did start out writing the Chronicles of the Tree for a YA-crossover audience – that is, aimed at ages 12+. The books were always meant to appeal to an adult audience as well, however, and I based my idea of ‘12+’ on the books I was reading at that age – works of Tolkien, Ursula Le Guin, David Eddings, Anne Mc Caffrey. Those books are all now classified as adult fantasy, so I am not too surprised Voyager decided to market COT as they did!
Creatively, the decision to market to adults freed me up in many ways. I was able to darken up the mood and depart from the ‘coming of age’ format in the second book, tackling themes I might have avoided had the book been geared to a younger audience (I tend to give 15 as a minimum age guide now, though every reader develops at a different rate so that’s not a hard and fast rule.) There is no explicit content, per se, but in terms of plot ‘Samiha’s Song’ has definitely moved beyond the teenage narrative to step firmly into adulthood. Injustice, slavery, torture – these things are unfortunately a part of Tymon’s world, and the story doesn’t shy away from them.
Q: You say that Samiha’s Song is about the main character’s idealism and how it gets her into trouble. Would you like to expand on this?
‘Samiha’s Song’, despite the title, is still Tymon’s story – but he does share a fair amount of the limelight with Samiha, whose emotional journey, whether seen from her own point of view or those of the people surrounding her, remains the driving force of this book. She is the central mystery around which Tymon and others revolve. She is also a mystery to herself, to begin with, which makes this story essentially one of self-discovery.
As we meet her in ‘Tymon’s Flight’, Samiha is a defiant idealist, very much concerned with the plight of her people, the Nurians. In ‘Samiha’s Song’, however, her outlook on issues of freedom and responsibility both broadens and deepens. She advocates a non-violent approach to change – an attitude that gets her into trouble with both the colonial authorities and the Nurian rebels, for different reasons. Mostly, her contemporaries are annoyed with her because they can’t control her. No one quite grasps what makes Samiha tick – except perhaps Tymon, who stands by her to the very end.
Q: I see you’ve lived all over the world and finally settled in New Zealand with your husband and daughter, after working on The Lord of the Rings movies. First of all, let me say how jealous I am. Working on LOTR must have been a wonderful experience. You worked as an animator. Is this 2D or 3D? Plus can you tell us a little about your experiences while working on LOTR? (I confess I’ve watched all the special features on the extended version of the DVDs. Yes, I am a nerd).
Nerds rule! Working on LOTR was indeed a dream job for me, as I was a huge fan of the books. I was a 3D animator – in other words, I worked with a model in a computer, rather than drawing cells by hand. It’s quite similar in many ways to animating stop motion. I pursued that line of work for almost ten years, from 1994 to the end of ROTK in 2003. At that point I abruptly changed gears.
It’s odd, transferring careers. Most people who knew me as an animator aren’t aware I now write books. And most people who read my books aren’t aware I once was an animator. But I can confidently say both lines of work are painstaking, all-engrossing affairs. Neither career permits half-measures. You know the adage – creativity is 5% inspiration, 95% perspiration. I threw myself heart and soul into being an animator; that same energy now goes into my writing.
By far my favourite aspect of working on LOTR were the occasional glimpses I had of the live-action shoot. There’s something very special about that, particularly to someone used to toiling away in the background, behind a computer screen. I loved visiting the different sets, meeting actors, smelling the burnt dust smell on the lighting. That sort of thing sends my geekmeter soaring.
Q: I see that you had your latest book was launched in Wellington. (See launch here). Did a lot of talented creative people end up living in New Zealand because Peter Jackson filmed LOTR there? (Mary knows some talented artists and is lucky enough to have had them do illustrations for her stories. See here).
Certainly the Jackson films have drawn a pool of international creatives to Wellington. But there was already a core group of determined Kiwi artists in this town, without whom the LOTR projects would never have taken off. I’m thinking of the local designers, sculptors and craftsmen at Weta Workshop, as well as the largely Kiwi shooting crew on the films. The project really was the home-grown affair it is made out to be. Where there was a much larger pool of international participants was in post-production, at Weta Digital. Many people like myself came to work there on a temporary visa ten years ago, and went on to gain residency and stay in New Zealand.
Tymon's Flight
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?
No! If you were to read me a passage from a good fantasy book without telling me the name of the author, I would be hard-pressed to guess the sex of the person who wrote it. But there seems, from what you have told me, to be a difference in the way genre fiction written by men and women is perceived by some members of the reading public.
Fantasy is certainly not a boy’s club – there are scores of successful women in the field. Long-established US and UK names that spring to mind are Robin Hobb, C.J. Cherryh, Lois McMaster Bujold, Ursula K. Le Guin, Nalo Hopkinson, Ellen Kushner, Elisabeth Moon, Glenda Larke, Jennifer Fallon, Anne McCaffrey, Diana Wynne-Jones and Karen Miller. I’ve mentioned traditional or ‘epic fantasy’ authors, but there are countless others; Urban fantasy and YA fantasy sub-genres are practically overrun by women. The US/UK adult fantasy scene has additionally seen an influx of excellent new women writers in recent years: Catherynne Valente, N.K. Jemesin, Nnedi Okorafor, Helen Lowe, Susanna Clarke and yourself, to name only a few. (My examples include some Australian and New Zealand writers who publish in the US or UK, but there are of course many more wonderful voices from the antipodes: Fiona McIntosh, Kim Falconer, Philippa Ballantine, Kylie Chan, Trudi Canavan, Pamela Freeman, Traci Harding… the list goes on and on.)
So why are these talented women not registering on peoples’ radars? Are women writers of genre more ‘invisible’ than their male counterparts in the UK and US? Do people ‘forget’ female names when thinking of their favourite fantasy authors? …I don’t know the answers, I’m just asking the questions.
Part of the problem might be the same one that affects midlist writers of any variety, genre or mainstream. Most bookstores run on the chain store model only actively promote a few bestselling titles. These are the ones that are placed in eye-catching displays, the ones bookstore reps often read and hand-sell, the ones reviewed, promoted and discussed. Many slightly less well known but good quality titles tend to be overlooked. Could midlist female fantasy writers in the UK and US be falling into the ‘overlooked’ category, perhaps?
Q: Following on from that, does the gender of the writer change your expectations when you pick up their book?
Again, not in the least. I do have some unavoidable expectations to do with the genre of a book: I expect romance from the romance writers, invented worlds from the fantasy writers and brain-teasing ‘what if’ speculations from the science fiction writers. But that’s just the tip of the iceberg. Personally I love it when people mix things up, turn my expectations on their heads, mash genres together and, quite simply, write well. How they do that is in no way related to 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?
Is your time machine equipped with a singularity survival kit? I’ve always wanted to check out the interior of a collapsing star. That, and visiting a Big Bang moment (I like the theory that there are many Big Bangs, multiple moments of creation.) But I guess I’d skew the whole ‘singularity’ thing just by being there, and being me – ie., not infinitely small, hot, and dense. (Alright, maybe I could do the dense bit.)
Why would I visit such a time and place? It’s the lure of the absolute, I guess – creation and annihilation, those two Janus faces of existence. Also, there’s a ridiculous attractiveness to infinity. It’s an impossible quest: my brain wouldn’t be able to process such an event, even if there was a way to survive it. Give me a god-brain, or at the very least one of Iain M. Banks’ machine Minds – a brain capable of processing infinity – and we’ll talk.
When I was a kid I’d lie on the ground staring up at the night sky, imagining what life might be up there, circling the stars. It always pleased me that I was looking up at a picture of the very distant past, gazing at something that might no longer exist. In that way, we are all time travellers, every single night, staring at a light that once was, long ago, in a galaxy far, far away…
Give-away Question:
If you could have played any character in the Lord of the Rings Movie, who would it have been, and why?
(We’ll keep the give-away open for a week, then let you know who Mary chooses as the winner).
Yay for Shaun Tan. He won an Oscar for his work on The Lost Thing in the Short Film category!
Bet his mum and dad are proud of him!
According to this article the Science Channel has acquired the rights to Firefly and will be screening it in its entirety. Plus there’s an interview with Nathan Fillion about Firefly, where he says that if he won the lottery, he’d buy the rights to Firefly, make more episodes and distribute them on the internet!
Who’s seen Doctor Horrible’s Sing-Along Blog?
Now we can all dream what would happen if Nathan Fillion and Joss Whedon won enough money to pick up the Firefly series …
Filed under Fun Stuff, Genre, Movies & TV Shows, The World in all its Absurdity
