Category Archives: Nourish the Writer

October 22, 2011 · 8:44 pm

Meet Anita Bell …

As the next of my series featuring fantastic female fantasy authors (see disclaimer) I’ve invited the talented powerhouse Anita Bell  to drop by.

Watch out for the give-away question at the end of the interview.

Q: First of all, major congratulations on Diamond Eyes winning the 2011 Hemming Award for Excellence in Science Fiction and Fantasy Themes. Since this is award is not necessarily awarded every year, winning must have come as a wonderful and welcome surprise. Did you consciously set out to explore the themes of race, gender, sexuality, class and disability in the book?

Actually, Diamond Eyes is a story about freedom and independence. But since my main character is a young woman who is blind, sexually inexperienced, and misdiagnosed by nursing staff who all treat her as crazy as well as handicapped, all those other themes grew organically in a way that also resonated strongly and unanimously with the judging panel.

Sad but true; while working for ten years in a mental health facility, I saw young men and women routinely castrated or medicated to suppress their sexual development, often without their knowledge or consent (due to the fact they’d been declared unfit to make such decisions on their own). So this part of Mira’s story is inspired by a young handicapped couple I met, who’d both been disabled through a contagious disease, but eventually regained their independence through modern medications and therapies – and when it came time that they’d recovered enough to have healthy children, it was too late. They’d both been “cared for” in their best interests.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LkbKh4hGmSU]

Q: Following on from that, we were part of the QUT Cohort doing a Masters while writing a book. You produced Diamond Eyes. What was the research question you were exploring with this book?

Funny story: It started out as;

How can I crack the big markets overseas and for movies?

But since that was too big a question for a masters and required too many non-existent definitions about degrees of cracking, and how big is big etc, my lecturer dis-engorged the “choke” from my throat and encouraged me to narrow my focus to the more definitive;

How can a novel manuscript be ‘re-visioned’ to create a more satisfying draft.

(Where satisfying is defined by a self-assessed improvement that results in a commercial reward that had previously been unattainable.)

So the dissertation I wrote is called: Revisioning a “Novel Concept”: Beyond vision and revision to advanced editing strategies.

But since a lot of the research is drawn from the film industry, and from mega-best-selling works from overseas, and since a lot of the advanced editing strategies are topics that are never normally discussed in most writing workshops, it might as well be called;

Tips on how to crack the big markets overseas and for movies.

Sound familiar? Hehe.

David Meshow the theme for Diamond Eyes.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qERvjhq7tCg&feature=player_embedded]

Q: You have a wonderful book trailer (LOL, my husband did it). The music is by David Meshow. Recently, we were on a panel together where you walked us through the process of finding the musician, approaching him and what has happened since. I’m sure people would find this fascinating, as it’s an example of cross-pollination between creative people.

Wow, yes! We’ve chalked up more views than a lot of big budget Hollywood movies and over 300 Youtube Awards in 17 countries, including;

#1 Most Discussed, worldwide in Feb & March

#2 Top Favourited, worldwide in Feb & March

#2 Top Rated, worldwide in Feb and March

Normally, I thrive in silence while I’m writing and editing, but at all moments in between I refill my creative energies by filling my home, my car – even my saddlebags with music.

Three of my characters love music, and play instruments, so I spent a lot of time on youtube looking for talented amateurs with the same kind of interests. People who could not only play, but play so well, they make it look easy by playing with a relaxed sense of humour. I also looked for people who could play with their eyes closed and invent their own tunes on a wide range of instruments, and that’s how I came across David Meshow – who can do all of that, and resembles Mira’s bodyguard in looks and personality. Best of all, he taught me out how to play electrical instruments outside, around a campfire – so I could make a scene work properly in the sequel Hindsight.

Then after being inspired for so long by David’s music, and his advice during my research stages, I wrote to ask permission to use one of his original instrumental pieces for the book trailer during the launch, because that piece has brilliant moments of violin and xylophone along with all the other instruments that gave it a unique offbeat quality which also dramatically suits the chase scenes at the end of Diamond Eyes, the novel.

But when I mentioned the novel and what it was about, he was so inspired by the unique concept behind Mira’s eyes that he offered to write a piece to suit her specifically.

And that’s what the Original Theme to Diamond Eyes is. Close your eyes, and you can image yourself blind. Open them again and imagine the world around you isn’t today. It looks how things did a century ago, even though you can still feel all the invisible *real* things around you – so if the three story building you’re in wasn’t there back then, well, now you’re standing in mid-air, looking down on the world. Living in two worlds at once. That’s the core idea, and David’s really nailed it with the official theme song. He’s got millions of fans now, but they all seem to agree. Diamond Eyes is the best yet, and I have to agree. But then, I’m biased! Hehe.

Q: I understand there are two more books in the Diamond Eyes series, Leopard Dreaming and Hindsight.  When is the last book of the trilogy due out? And what will you do after this?

Interesting question, because it’s not a traditional trilogy. Diamond Eyes is a stand-alone story set in an asylum, Serenity, which is on a sub-tropical island in Queensland.

Then the duet of sequels; Hindsight (just launched) and Leopard Dreaming (June 2012), are both set on the mainland, during a brand new stage of her life. They’re also much faster paced than Diamond Eyes.

If you liken them to movies in the film industry, then Diamond Eyes would be the pilot, and the next two would be the mini series. So you don’t necessarily need to read Diamond Eyes to enjoy Hindsight, but you’ll definitely need to read Hindsight before taking on Leopard Dreaming in the new year.

 

Q: In a post on the ROR site you say … ‘SF is not dead – from my perspective it’s morphing/maturing beyond the “pure” genre of science fiction into speculative fiction (the new meaning for SF[1][1]), in a way which offers room for a natural blend of genres which must also complement each other uniquely for each story. Effectively, this permits a wider scope for wider technologies and invites more possibilities and opportunities to cross-dress our genres.’ You go on to say …’ In our own fast-changing world, which is already rife with “fantastic” opportunities and “tomorrow technologies” is it any wonder that such elements are so readily accepted in the environment of a wider story – often even expected – by a market that can still shy away from health food if we label it health food? To many people, it seems that science fiction sounds more like “homework” while fantasy sounds like a “holiday”, and yet how many wouldn’t go anywhere on holiday without their mobile phone, ipod or laptop?’  I love this quote. How near future is the Diamond Eyes series? Would people feel at home in this world?

It’s tomorrow fiction, akin to James Bond, but nowadays, most genres need to be tomorrow fiction to some degree during the writing stages anyway, or else the technology can date the story too quickly and make it seem old fashioned too soon.

e.g.

So I’m constantly inventing new technologies based on my best guesses from existing products and research, and very often those “fantastic” new gizmos are hitting the market by the time the book is.

Off the top of my head, technologies that I invented for my stories in the last ten years, only to have them invented for real by the time the books launched, include;

  • Electronic pens, which convert any sketches into a text file or digital image.
  • Night Owls, a form of high tech night vision goggles which can also see through buildings using sound waves akin to mobile phone transmissions. Now also used in airports for full body scans.
  • NOR:STAN, the National Orbital Reconnaissance: See Through Anything Network. Same principle as nights owls, but also incorporating technology from the mining industry as a larger scale satellite system to help find lost bushwalkers, people trapped in burning buildings, and even terrorists in underground bunkers.

Even Mira’s Hue-dunnits – her electronic sunglasses which can change colour – are now in development as a fashion accessory to suit any wardrobe.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eAXBTXnVHns]

Q: You write in many genres under a number of pen-names, including a set of best-selling non-fiction titles, award winning adventures for children and even wickedly funny romance for women. You’ve always been a writer of exciting stories. What was the first thing you wrote seriously to submit?

A cosy crime story, called Budgie Soup, which was published in 5 countries, including the USA’s prestigious Murderous Intent Mystery Magazine, and won the Penguin Award, as part of the Scarlet Stiletto Awards, way back last millennium, in 1999.

Q: You say if you hadn’t been a writer you’d be …’ A cartoonist, vet or research scientist. And as it turns out, writing allows me to do bits of each!’ I can relate to research scientist. I think writers have to have enquiring minds. But cartoonist and vet? Why these two? Are you good at drawing and can you ‘talk to animals’?

Hehe… something like that.

To be a vet, we need to be astute at understanding body language – which works for characters as much as for animals. Pets can’t tell us where they’re hurting, and often characters can’t either. How we treat animals also helps to define us, not only as individuals, but also as a society.

Same goes with cartooning. It’s a social science that’s heavily dependent on observation of the human condition, as individuals, and in society, and how we perceive ourselves through the lens of humour also helps to define us.

To be a vet, we need great compassion, but humour is more often a dark art that can throw masks over fury, injustice and tragedy.

Q: You seem very comfortable writing a fast paced action thriller and moving across genres. A good book is a good book, no matter what the genre. Do you have any advice for writers to help them improve the pacing of their books?

Short sentences. Listen to men speaking, and compare to women on the same subject. Guys rarely use more than 8 words in a sentence at a time unless they’re explaining something, while women rarely use more than 12.

In action scenes, guys tend to get serious with only 2 to 6 words at a time, while women often clip down to 8 or less.

If you think that’s an exaggeration, watch all your favourite movies with the sound muted and subtitles on – and take notice how clipped conversations can get as the images speed up. Or take a ride on a train or bus with your ipod switched off so you’re listening to other people around you.

Q: You had a friend who attempted suicide when you were younger. You said …  ‘From the time we were both 10, we both had to ‘be mum,’ looking after our other brothers and sisters before and after school, and I had to manage my parents’ farm as well when they went away on business. On top of this we went to a high school where extreme pressure existed to be the best we could be. Students came from all over the world because of their high standards and we had to compete against them, too. My friend passed the breaking point.’ Are you tempted to write something that would reach out to teens who feel overwhelmed?

Yes, but not for a while. I can’t write really dark material unless I’m detached from tragedy myself and that’s definitely not this year. Otherwise, writing dark material only tends to take me down further, and once those chemicals in the brain start triggering the downward spiral, it’s a hard cycle to break free from again. And I’d never write that sort of thing without an uplifting ending, because it was soul-destroying misery-lit with downers for endings that drove my friend over the edge all those years ago. Don’t get me wrong, I love a good book that leaves me weepy, but if they’re not tears of hope, love or joy – if they leave me feeling empty and emotionally wretched – I’d never go anywhere near it. If I want to be depressed, I’ll read a newspaper.

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?

Historically yes. Absolutely. But I’d like to think the last 10 years has become a bit more like this:

 

There’s been plenty of times when I’ve been told by readers that I must have had some of my stories written by my husband. Apparently, I’m not supposed to know how to field strip a Styr or Glock and put it back together again without it blowing up in my face. Or how to turn a gum tree into a signal tower, use scorpions and black light to navigate an underground tunnel, or the horns of the moon to tell north from south in either hemisphere.

At the other end of the scale, I know a subset of male writers who can really get inside a woman’s head well enough to write convincing female characters – but a lot more who can’t.

Q: Following on from that, does the gender of the writer change your expectations when you pick up their book?

Depends on the name they choose to put on the front cover, especially if it’s very feminine or hyper-masculine.

e.g.  Stephan King was always going to rule the page once he nailed his genre, and Karen Slaughter was never going to write little kiddies faerie tales.

Then there’s androgynous names, like AA Bell, Sonny Whitelaw, JR Ward etc, where the writing style is far more likely to appeal to both genres. Or at least try to, more often than not.

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?

Ah, but if I told you, I’d create a paradox and a full set of alternative futures in another dimension. Just thinking about it is enough to split the future in two; one in which I do, and one in which I don’t.

Cool timing; there’s a new scientific theory (evolved from string theory, which in turn evolved from studies of nuclear explosions) that our present and past have already been shaped by our future in all its permutations in all dimensions. And that many things about Fate seem inevitable, because they’ve already been tampered with by those who’ve already travelled.

So assuming I’m one of them, and have already made the trip – or “will have going to have made it” at some time in the future (or alternate time line) – you can rest assured that all my friends will have nice things happen to them, while all those who’ve been nasty should be grateful I don’t hold grudges… much.

<insert evil laughter>

Give-away Question:

It’s said that everyone has something they’re naturally or uncannily good at – so good, you might call it a super power. Mira’s gift is seeing the past, her stalker can hear the future, while my own superpowers are merely green lights in heavy traffic and finding the perfect parking space when I most need it. (touch wood!)

So what’s your super power?

 

Catch up with Anita on Facebook

on GoodReads: www.goodreads.com/aabell

44 Comments

Filed under Australian Writers, Awards, Book Giveaway, Book trailers, Children's Books, Collaboration, creativity, Dark Urban Fantasy, Fantasy books, Female Fantasy Authors, Gender Issues, Genre, Inspiring Art, Music and Writers, Nourish the Writer, Paranormal_Crime, Promoting Friend's Books, Script Writing, Thrillers and Crime, Thrillers and Mysteries, Tips for Developing Writers, Writers Working Across Mediums, Writing craft, Young Adult Books

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October 15, 2011 · 1:00 pm

Meet Kim Falconer …

As the next of my series featuring fantastic female fantasy authors (see disclaimer) I’ve invited the talented Kim Falconer to drop by.

Watch out for the give-away question at the end of the interview.

Thank you, Rowena, for inviting me here to chat. What a wonderful idea, fantastic female fantasy authors!

Q: In a post on Nicole Murphy’s blog, you talk about having a dream and realising your potential. Your dream was to be published. You list a series of questions starting with – Why do I want to be published? That culminated in the realisation that you wanted to ‘be of value’. This was a dream exercise from Jeanette Maw, the @goodvibecoach. Do you use exercises like this in your everyday life to understand what is motivating you?

Absolutely! I live by the old Delphi motto, (recently cited by the Oracle in The Matrix) Know Thyself. These are the two magic words for living an authentic life.

We always have a choice to either live by our ‘default’ – the cultural conditioning, expectations and assumptions – or to take time to really know our genuine core values (which may be wildly different than our cultures). Like writing a character in a book, when we know the motivation, we know what’s driving the action and when we know what’s driving the action, we know the destiny. At that point we can ask, is this what I want? If not, we can change course. We all have the power to be who we are and it begins always with know thyself.

Q: Your first trilogy, Quantum Enchantment, you splice DNA and travel between parallel worlds. It seems to be a mix of SF and fantasy. And your second trilogy, Quantum Encryption, picks up the threads again. With such complex story lines and time lines do you have a huge flow chart to keep track of everyone?

Much of my creation process takes place in my head but I do keep a little booklet for each series with pertinent data like my character’s sun signs and other relevant astrology, their histories (which may not appear in the book itself) and places, familiars, memories, dreams, appearance, and, most importantly, time lines. When you write time unfolding in both directions, it pays to keep a close watch on it or things can get away!

I ran into a bit of trouble in Arrows of Time, book #2 in the Quantum Enchantment series. For starters I found the English language lacked the words to express the meaning of symmetrical time (time flowing in both directions simultaneously). In a way Arrows was my answer to the hard problem of time at the ‘quantum’ level. It does go both ways and this books shows us what that might be like to live out.

You could say there was a flow chart for Arrows. For twelve months a whole sliding glass door next to my study was covered in it. Wild!

Q: In an interview on The Fringe you say: ‘People don’t realise writing is as challenging and complex as brain surgery. You have to work on the cadavers first, learn all the anatomy and physiology and bio-chem of prose and storytelling before you cut a live one! It takes practice. I mean, nonfiction is objective, intellectual but fiction asks for more. It asks for your whole heart.’ Writing from the heart, do you find yourself exploring similar themes in your books?

The themes in my books are multilayered. There is an adventure component which simply invites the reader to immerse and come along for the ride. There is also an intention to expand my readers’ consciousness through the experiences and conflicts they encounter. Some of the philosophies are heady, I am told. But the true essence of the books is the heart. Everything from the heart. I came from a nonfiction and academic publishing background and the whole enchantment for me in writing novels is to get out of my head and into my heart!

Q: You have your own astrology page, Falcon Astrology. You say astrology has always been a part of your life as your father used to ‘use horoscopes in conjunction with financial adventure and business management’. Your interest in astrology has taken a different path. You say you are interested in ‘ancient wisdom, mythology with mystical traditions, art and poetry’ and are ‘ever seeking the hidden worlds of the inner self’. I read somewhere that the constant connection to the internet (people in offices dipping into social networks on and off all day, people constantly using their phones to keep up with social networks), has led people away from connecting with their inner-selves. They live on the surface, never delving deep. This person recommended turning off all electrical devices for a weekend, every now and then, just to take the time to be in the present. Do you do this?

This is a good question. I don’t think superficiality and the internet are synonymous. I’m actually doing the Deepak Chopra Centre’s 21 day meditation challenge, and that of course, is online. It’s amazing. The meditations are wonderful and just knowing you are participating with hundreds of thousands of other mediators makes is quite a powerful collective exercise.

People will be connected or disconnected regardless of whether they have the internet or not. It’s a tool. It only matters how we use it.

For me, I’ve researched and written 7 books in four years and that’s pretty much an everyday dedication – me, a quiet room, my word processor, the internet. I do take time out daily to meditate, run on the beach, walk in nature, work on my rooftop garden  and be with friends, familiars and family. It’s all about creating balance, at least in my case (I can be a real workaholic!)

Q: In an interview on Beauty and Lace, while talking about growing up in the 60s and 70s you said: ‘I had to outgrow my cultural conditioning and adopt less biased beliefs to feel fully empowered. Having my son at age 29 was a huge turning point. When you have the creative force of Mother Earth flowing through you, it’s hard to feel like an underdog. Seriously enlightening transformation!

Currently being female brings to mind the Strength card in the deck of Tarot. Do you know the one? A woman is depicted with a lion, Ishtar’s beast. It’s an image of power and seduction, wisdom and instinct. I think that sums things up nicely.

Being a woman has also given me quite an edge writing these last six books. There are issues of gender that ring all the more true because they are written from direct experience.’ I notice you have strong female characters in ‘Journey by Night’. Was this something you set out to explore or did it just evolve as you wrote the book?

Journey by Night is the sixth and final book in the series and tells the story of Kreshkali and Nell, characters introduced in the very first book. Because of the incredible fortitude and strength of these two women already established, telling their story involved showing how they go that way, how they became the people readers know them to be. Already I have reports of a lot of tears and ah ha moments as some of those reasons behind their quirks, strengths, fears and magical inclinations are revealed. Very satisfying to read and write.

Did I plan them to be strong from the beginning? You bet!

I don’t know many women who really enjoy reading about victims that never find the wherewithal to beat their odds, at least, I don’t! My women are heroic, both vulnerable and hardened, smart and streetwise, loving and imaginative. . . you know. Women!

Q: The list of all the things you’ve studied is fascinating. ‘Alternative health, Jungian Psychology, art history, quantum physics theory, metaphysical philosophy, self-sufficiency farming, marine biology, veterinary nursing, dressage, animal husbandry, SCUBA diving, and nursing mothers counseling. I hold diplomas in herbal medicine, nutrition, vet nursing, farrier science, literature and am a board certified lactation consultant. I’ve also studied yoga, music (banjo, mandolin, guitar), mythology, tarot and of course, astrology’. You’ve been studying Iaido for seven years. I did five years Iaido. I loved it for the beauty of the movements and the philosophy behind it. Have you done other martial arts? (I also love yoga!).

I love that you found Iaido relaxing. I can see how, once the incredible awkwardness of the samurai sword is a little under control, it can be that way. But I had true warrior woman sensei and she was anything but relaxing! Having said that, my worlds, she was good and what I learned went well beyond the mechanics of the practice. Like you said, the philosophy and the heart of the sword –  so empowering and beautiful. I’ve done Aikido, Hop Kido, yoga, chi kung and archery. All very beautiful and centring disciplines. It’s the sword work that has supported my writing the most. I took it up so I could write authentic fight scenes!

Q: That’s a cool ‘time portal’ on the front page of your web page. Do you have a background in graphic design? (Reading on I discovered your son is an artist).

KimFalconer.com is a collaboration with my son. He’s the animator and graphic artist. I am the coder. I learned all the html/CSS in a  socio-technology degree through Open University Australia (another point for the internet – the course was offered at Curtin University on the other side of the continent!) I love web design. Having such a fabulous artist is a wonderful bonus!

John Waterhouse - The Siren

Q: John Waterhouse Painting, The Siren inspired your new trilogy Amassia.  It’s co-written with your cover artist/animator son, Aaron Briggs. (I love the Pre-Raphaelite artists and Waterhouse’s The Lady of Shalott is one of my all time favourites). I’ve discovered there are visual writers and aural writers. Aural writers like to play specific music while they write to get into the right frame of mind for each book. I’m guessing you are a visual writer?

Visual yes, but it’s more than that.

I’m really transcribing. The story plays out in front of my eyes. It’s like watching a film only I am fully immersed in all five senses. My only hope is that I can type fast enough to keep up with the action and the dialog!

I like silence and quietude. The more isolated I am, the more the inner world comes alive!

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 would probably have to read a few thousand more books to answer that with any authority but with my experience, I can give you a firm, yes and no. Yes when we think of stories with first person protagonists like Charlaine Harris’ Sookie Stakchouse. A guy could write her (think of the men writing romance under pen names) but Charlaine’s perspective is very much a product of her society and very biased female. Just the way sookie stops to put on makeup (between vampire and were attacks), shave her legs and think about her sex life rings ‘female’. I don’t see Jim Butcher writing a woman that way. His Dresden, on the other hand, is American male. We see inside a man’s head, and it’s brilliant. (Same with China Mieville) In the case of these authors, you can feel the female vs. male style in the writing.

Then there are authors like David Eddings and Fiona McIntosh. They have both written fabulous fantasy tales and though there is a strong feeling of gender in the characters, you could swap author names and not know the difference in terms of being written by male or female.

As in any genre, the author brings themselves to the work and that means every book will be different, a unique expression which adds to the whole of the field.

Q: Following on from that, does the gender of the writer change your expectations when you pick up their book?

Ah, not until I begin to read. As I said above, sometimes the gender of the author seems relevant and sometimes not so much so. It depend a lot on the tense it’s written (first person and male by a male author gives us some hints right ways – we are in a guy’s head!). Stories that are more epic where the politics of the worlds drive the plot, the focus is off the characters, to some degree, and more on the stakes. With new authors, and familiar, I like to leave my expectations behind and let them surprise 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?

That’s easy. I would go back to 575 BCE to ancient Mesopotamia and stand in front of the Ishtar Gate of Babylon. To walk into that city under the Ishtar Lions and visit the hanging gardens would be a trip of a thousand life times!

 Give-away Question:

If you were a young witch (male or female) training at Treeon Temple and about to meet your familiar – a creature you would be bonded with for life, in constant communion with and able at times to ‘trade places’ with, what would that creature be?

 

Follow Kim on Twitter:  @KimFalconer

Catch up with Kim on Facebook.

See Kim’s Daily Astro Flash here.

Subscribe to Kim’s New Moon News Letter.

56 Comments

Filed under Australian Writers, Book Giveaway, Characterisation, creativity, Fantasy books, Female Fantasy Authors, Gender Issues, Inspiring Art, Nourish the Writer, SF Books, Writing craft

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September 28, 2011 · 10:01 am

Meet Simon Higgins …

Today I’m interviewing Simon Higgins because he’s a fellow Iaido practitioner as well as a great writer, also I thought I’d ask him about fantasy writing and gender, to get his perspective as a male writer.

Look out for the give-away at the end of the post.

 

Q: You have a series of Young Adult novels set in Japan called the Moonshadow series. I like the covers, very manga.  Are you a big fan of Manga? Do you get much say in what appears on your covers?

I do like Manga very much, and find it fascinating that most people don’t realize how old it actually is. Apparently, Manga first evolved from experimental perspective sketches that woodblock artists in Japan tinkered with during the Edo period, which in turn slowly evolved into a unique ‘pop-culture’ form of stylized drawing. Now of course, Manga has several main schools (multiple ‘dojos’ have evolved, which seems to happen with all things Japanese) and numerous sub and fusion styles. Working in conjunction with Random House Australia, I chose Ari Gibson of The People’s Republic of Animation as the cover artist for the Moonshadow books…Ari’s Manga is unique: strong, with classic lines, but still quite individual – I love it, and it’s pretty much the way I picture the characters in the series when I’m writing. The various foreign editions including the US version published by Little, Brown (the Twilight people) conjure up very different visions of the heroes. I should probably mention also that the Moonshadow series is actually pitched at the ‘middle school’ market, just a shade younger than the traditional ‘young adult’  category (not that everybody agrees on the age range those pigeon-holes actually encompass, of course)…

 

Q: The American Library Association described your Moonshadow books as  ‘good old-fashioned adventure set in medieval Japan…exhilarating opening sequence…nonstop action…the pacing is so intense…the language is modern, but the setting, clothing, tactics and tools are well placed in their time period’. In Tomodachi, you had an English boy stranded in sixteenth century Japan.  With the Moonshadow series do you use a European character to ground the audience in medieval Japan or do you plunge straight in?

The Moonshadow books feature pretty much an all Asian cast, as in this series I am dealing with a unique historical phenomenon, rather than an outsider’s eye on a specialized, complex warrior culture, as in Tomodachi. The Moonshadow series actually arose from an inspiring historical fact that I stumbled on while researching in Japan: that at one stage, Tokugawa Ieyasu, in order to keep his grip on the Shogunate, employed the spies of Clan Iga, many of whom (and this is the cool part) started their dangerous careers while they were still children.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z8nFiWmQDh4&feature=player_embedded]

Q: I see you competed in the Iaido World Titles in Kyoto Japan and came in fifth in 2008. Not bad for a ‘gaijin’. (For more info on the samurai sword see Simon’s page on his Kyoto Adventures). I remember the pair of us sitting in the bar at a national SF convention talking martial arts all evening. I think it takes a particular type of mind to appreciate Bushido. I know you do a lot of school talks. Do you find the kids respond well? Do you think they go away with some insight into the philosophy behind the martial arts?

It certainly seems that way to me; I often see evidence of students really getting where I am coming from in terms of my own martial arts paradigm: that we train to perfect technique and therefore ultimately ourselves, not to grow skilled at actually killing; that the more one trains, the gentler one tends to become; that violence does not equal strength any more than mercy equals weakness; and that as the Japanese have always maintained, the sharpest swords rarely leave their scabbards (for they rarely need to). If there is any one message I am constantly hoping to transmit to young readers it’s this: adopting a challenging code and choosing to follow an exacting path doesn’t make you old-fashioned, quaint or weak. It does the opposite; it’s empowering. It’s a secret for enjoying and making strong progress through the landscape of life.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zKaLRklCzxA&feature=player_embedded]

Q: You worked as police officer, prosecutor and a licensed private investigator  on murder cases. You have written thrillers such as The Stalking Zone as well as near future thrillers like Under no Flag, Thunderfish, Beyond the Shaking Time.  Was this a bit like bringing your work home with you?

Not really, because the three crime thrillers I wrote, Doctor Id, Cybercage and The Stalking Zone, sat more at the fantastic end of the law enforcement story genre, though much of the gritty psychology of those tales was true to the environment that inspired them. My (young vigilante) heroes were allowed to have wins, to get results, though they had to really suffer along the way, so I suppose that in the end, the stories were in fact very positive though harrowing. Thunderfish, Under No Flag, and In the Jaws of the Sea, explored the idea that people labelled criminals under one perspective might actually be not only good guys from another viewpoint, but in fact the most useful humans in that particular equation. I found it ironic that numerous imaginary elements of the Thunderfish trilogy kept coming true in one form or another, such as the battles in Antarctic waters between whalers and the Sea Shepherd activists, or the discovery of a fissure in the earth’s crust, deep in the Atlantic.

 

Q: I see way back in 1975 you were part of a heavy metal band. It’s amazing how many writers have a musical background. Do you still practice music?

I still play guitar and sing, and have consistently written songs for most of my life. Music is very much a part of my family’s culture, as my wife and daughter are both songwriters and my son is a professional musician. If you love soul, funk or acid jazz, you can check out his sounds here. 

Q: I was prompted to start this series of interviews because there seems to be a perception in the US and the UK that fantasy is a bit of a boy’s club. Do you think there’s a difference in the way males and females write fantasy?

Perhaps (as a generalization) but I also think that most of us could cite ripping action-rich fantasy novels penned by women and satisfyingly emotional and cerebral fantasy tales written by men; and I do find it a little funny that there is a perception of fantasy in some quarters as being male-oriented, after personally having heard publishers joke about pink, hazy covers (replete with flying horses) stretched around a solid high-quest fantasy book ‘that we can count on girls to buy’.

I reckon that one of the peculiarities of writing culture has always been that while most story tellers obsess over how to tell a timeless, boundary-breaking, universal tale, publishers are meanwhile apparently obliged to obsess over how to categorize, brand and anchor the field of interest in that story, in other words, to narrow and define its scope, so as to better sell it. The clash of these two unrelenting focuses can produce some interesting cross-perceptions about who writes or reads what exactly (and for who) while I guess the truth is that out here in the real world, we simply end up with a great deal of diversity.

 

Q: Following on from that, does the gender of the writer change your expectations when you pick up their book?

Not in my case, as a lifetime of reading has convinced me that a skilful, gifted storyteller can channel a thousand people whose skin they will never occupy; I’ve read the work of female writers whose male voice, drives and perceptions felt utterly real, and vice versa. So a good writer can always pleasantly surprise us, not only with their imaginings, but with all kinds of truths they can own and convey which transcend their culture, gender or generation. Of course I realize that many people are swayed, unduly perhaps, by unspoken notions of ‘gender suitability’. That old ‘men can’t write good romance, women don’t do bloodshed well’ viewpoint. I think it’s so often wrong, it’s worth dismissing entirely.

Q: And here’s the fun question. If you could book a trip on a time machine, where and when would you go, and why?

Like the traveler in HG Wells’ groundbreaking novel, though the past fascinates me, if only one trip was possible, I would opt to see the distant future (or yes, that current, possible future the machine could take me to, based on things as they now stand).  So I’d visit my own locale, here in Australia, say, two hundred years from now. Why? Part of me just has to know: do we finally grow up as a species? Or does it turn out that our damned gadgets wound up destroying us because they kept evolving while their creators remained inherently paranoid and primitive? Hey! That’s a question that spec fic seems to keep asking!

Giveaway Question: 

When you are forced to suffer through some ‘oh no, not this again!’ cliché in a book or movie, what sassy, mocking or witty twist-outcome might you assign to it? Example: Vader wheezes ‘I-am-your-father!’ and Luke (at least in your rewrite) retorts, ‘The hell you are. I had DNA done. So I know it was a wookie.’ So yeah…pick your most nauseating cliché and…strike back!

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Filed under Australian Writers, Book Giveaway, Book trailers, Children's Books, Comics/Graphic Novels, Covers, creativity, Fantasy books, Gender Issues, Inspiring Art, Music and Writers, Nourish the Writer, Thrillers and Crime, Young Adult Books

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September 24, 2011 · 10:03 pm

Meet Kylie Griffin …

As the next of my series featuring fantastic female fantasy authors (see disclaimer) I’ve invited the talented Kylie Griffin to drop by.

Kylie has her first book due out in 2012. I thought it might be interesting for readers to hear from a writer who is at this point in their career.

Q: First let me say congratulations. You must have been over the moon when you go the Call with the offer of a contract! Your first book Vengeance Born is due out from Berkley in February 2012, with two more in The Light Blade series already contracted. Have you been working on this series for a long time?

Hi, Rowena, thanks for inviting me and for the congratulations. I was over the moon getting the Call (and the three-book deal just thrilled me). You work so hard that when it happens there’s a real sense of disbelief that you’ve finally achieved that goal, then you run the gamut of emotions, from elation to relief and happy-crying, LOL.

To answer your question, I wouldn’t say I’ve been working on the Light Blade series all that long but I do think the foundation for writing a fantasy romance series has been building over many years.

I’m an avid fantasy reader from way back – Anne McCaffrey, Andre Norton, Mercedes Lackey, David Eddings, Isobelle Carmody and their books (and your T’En series), just to name a few. All of their books had a huge impact on me growing up – and I wanted to write fantasy but with a romance interwoven through the story. I love putting a hero and heroine together and watching their story unfold, usually helped along by an epic-style external plot.

VENGEANCE BORN started out as a stand-alone book in 2007 with all the elements I love about fantasy – world-building, empires and wars, other races – demons, human warriors, hybrids, a goddess – but there’s also the story of the main character’s romance. Then, as I wrote, some of the secondary characters began demanding that I write their stories.

While I’ve a three-book contract there’s another four characters clamoring for attention. Whether they’ll be written remains to be seen. 🙂 I hope readers will get the chance to meet them.

Q: In your day job you are a teacher, but your passion is writing, specifically fantasy-romance. There are a lot of paranormal-romance on the shelves now days, but not so many fantasy-romance. For readers who don’t know the genre, how would you describe it?

I like to think of fantasy romance as being a combination of traditional fantasy and traditional romance.

You get all the fantasy elements, as in a cast of characters, plot archetypes, world-building, magic, etc. yet with the additional element of a romance thrown into the mix, and you end up exploring the gamut of relationships – political, social and romantic.

I love the appeal of having the best of all worlds in my stories (no pun intended *grin*).

Q: That leads to – what drew you to write in this genre and its associated sub genres?

My heart belongs to the genre – specifically fantasy romance, science fiction romance and post-apocalyptic romance – I love, live and breathe it. I can’t remember a time I wasn’t fascinated by it.

My earliest exposure to this genre was as an impressionable 6y.o. watching a rather scary episode of Dr.Who (a British SF TV series), being terrified but at the same time fascinated by the whole concept of time-lords and travelling to different worlds with varying technologies etc.

I also grew up devouring every book, TV show and movie in this genre – Star Wars, Star Trek, The Hobbit, the Dragons of Pern series, the Witch World series etc. Writing my own stories seemed just a natural extension.

The pure escapism of writing about characters who exist in an imaginary world, the vast scope of story lines, the human to non-human range of characters, the development of a romance and the challenge of making everything so real as to suspend a reader’s disbelief. I just love it!

Q: You are known as the Contest Queen because you have placed and won so many Romance Writers competitions. (Kylie is a member of RWAustralia, RWNZ and RWAmerica). You won the RWAmerica Golden Heart (Paranormal section), the Emma Darcy, the Valerie Parv, the Clendon, the Emily and have placed man times in the RWAust Emerald Award. I know how advantageous it is to an aspiring writer to join these organisations and to enter these awards, but the readers might not. Would you like to explain how placing and winning awards helps a writer’s career?

This is a great question, Rowena. You’d think the purpose of entering a contest would be to win, and for some writers this might be valid. When I first started entering contests, I didn’t have a writing group or a critique partner service to draw on for feedback, so this was a way of meeting that need and improving on my skills as a writer.

These days many writing organisations have other services like critique partner schemes, isolated writer programs or writing groups. So it’s one of many ways, not just the only way, to receive feedback.

A lot of the larger publishing houses these days don’t take unsolicited manuscripts ie. you need an agent to represent you to get editors to look at your work. The houses I were aiming for – Berkley, St.Martins, EOS, Harlequin LUNA, Grand Central Publishing – no longer accepted unagented submissions.

So, another strategy I employed was to look at the final judge of the contest. It’s usually either an editor or agent who acquires/represents the genre you’re writing in. Reaching the final round or placing in contests gets your work in front of these specific editors and agents. You can bypass what’s affectionately known as the “slushpile” or the “no unsolicited submissions” rule.

Another reason for entering and aiming to place in contests is that it builds your contest resume and gets your name “out there”. Including this this contest success list in your query letters to agents and editors or when pitching in person to them can make your work stand out. It can also show that your work has consistency and that it also had a potential readership.

Q: By day you are a mild mannered school teacher but your alter-ego is a Rural Fire Fighter, State Emergency volunteer and Community First Responder (responds to 000 calls). You must be drawn towards helping people in dangerous situations. Could you tell us about some of the experiences you’ve had?

I find a lot of satisfaction in helping people, that’s true.

I’ve spent most of my teaching career in small, isolated rural areas and getting to know the people and families in these villages and surrounding farmlands is something that evolves. There’s a huge sense of mateship or looking out for one another because you have to and you know one day you may need their help too.

Also, from a more pragmatic point of view, there tends to be a lack of emergency services (or swift access to them), so that need to help one another tends to be a way of life in these communities but in this day and age that means volunteering and gaining qualifications and along the way you make some great friends, not to mention learn skills you may never have experienced had your life taken a different path.

Some emergencies do hold an element of danger but that’s something our training helps us to prepare for and deal with. In the Rural Fire Service I’ve been to everything from bushfires (some deliberately lit, others started by lightning strikes) to house fires. On the scare factor scale, being a fire-fighter is probably the most immediately dangerous occupation of all the services I’m involved in.

I’ve been a member of the State Emergency Service for 15 years and in that time have participated in several searches for missing people and gone away on out of area calls as a part of a flood and storm damage crew (tarping houses, removing trees, evacuating people from their houses during floods), eg.most recently Cyclone Yasi and the devastating floods in Queensland. Because of our geographic isolation, our unit also responds to road crashes and I’ve helped extricate people trapped in vehicles and, unfortunately, I’ve also assisted with body retrieval when the casualty has died.

I’m also one of five SES members who’ve trained with the New South Wales Ambulance Service as a Community First Responder – an advanced first aider (similar training a junior ambulance office receives). We have a vehicle outfitted with almost everything you see in an ambulance. Over the last few years I’ve attended numerous emergency call outs, everything from broken limbs, heart problems, asthma attacks, amputations, severe burns, to performing CPR on casualties.

Not every emergency situation has ended well but I get a huge amount of satisfaction knowing my team mates and I are able to provide help when it’s needed. Our community appreciates it too. A couple of examples, one of the local oldies bakes us cakes and other goodies when we’re on 24hr flood duty, a passing motorist we helped free from floodwater sent us a large box of chocolates and a wonderful thank you card, and a family whose house we saved from burning down made a lovely donation to the fire unit.

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 'Front door Dragon' that Kylie commissioned a local stained glass artist to make for her.

Personally, I’m saddened to think that there is this sort of perception out there. We have such a rich diversity of authors, male and female, who love writing in this genre and each bring their own unique styles and stories to our bookshelves.

Even if there is a difference in the way male and female fantasy authors write, isn’t the sole purpose of writing to entertain the reader (and ourselves)? We all do it in different ways and it’s the diversity that feeds and entertains the reader.

As a fantasy author, this is the way I prefer to think of myself.

Q: Following on from that, does the gender of the writer change your expectations when you pick up their book?

I’m a huge believer that the story is paramount. I read the back cover blurb with the expectation of being sucked in – if it hooks me then I’ll read it regardless of the gender of the author.

As a reader I want to be engaged, I want to identify with the characters, I want adventure in whatever form it comes. I want to be entertained for a few hours. If the author’s writing does all this, then mission accomplished.

It’s as simple as that.

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?

Oh, the possibilities are endless. This is so not a fair question!!! LOL

I have a passion for ancient civilisations – the Romans, the Vikings, the Greeks, the Mayans, the Egyptians, the Celts – so anywhere/anywhen with them would be amazing.

I also like alternate histories. Exploring alternate turning points in the present would be fascinating, a bit like the Choose-Your Own-Adventure stories where you decide which pathways determine your present story line.

But I also love the unknown future – what will humanity be like in a hundred or a thousand years? What technology will we be using? Do we share this universe with any other race? So, going forward in time would be fun too!

Thanks for this opportunity to be interviewed, Rowena. It’s been a hoot and I’ve really enjoyed answering your questions.

Give-away Question:

Kylie says: While I haven’t received my author copies of VENGEANCE BORN, I do have a eco-friendly tote bag with the cover of my book on it to give-away.

I’ve shared a little bit about some of the fantasy authors who’ve have impacted me as a reader and writer. So, which books and fantasy world/s have made an impression on you and why?

 

Follow Kylie on Twitter: @KylieGriffin1

See Kylie Griffin’s Blog.

Follow Kylie on GoodReads.

Follow Kylie on Facebook.


 

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Filed under Australian Writers, creativity, Female Fantasy Authors, Fun Stuff, Gender Issues, Movies & TV Shows, Nourish the Writer, Publishing Industry, The Writing Fraternity, Tips for Developing Writers, Writing craft

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· 9:26 pm

Meet Robin Hobb …

As the next of my series featuring fantastic female fantasy authors (see disclaimer) I’ve invited the talented and prolific Robin Hobb  to drop by.

Robin at Supanova with Cinderella

Q: It was great to meet you at Supanova. As a best-selling fantasy author you must get invited to a lot of conventions. How do you juggle writing to meet deadlines with the pressure to attend these events?

Truthfully?  Usually, I just say, “No, thank you, I’ve a deadline.”

This year, I didn’t.  I went to Supanova and absolutely loved it.  I havenever seen a pop culture festival that treats its professional guests so well and with such thoughtfulness. And then I went on, to Trolls&Legendes in Belgium, and Imaginales in Epinal, France and to Etonnants Voyageurs in France.  And I had a wonderful time and met many people, but now I’m behind on a deadline.  So.  I think I need to go back to saying “No, thank you” to most of the invitations, and staying home and getting the books written.

Q: You started out writing as Megan Lindholm and even though your Robin Hobb books are really popular, you’ve continued to write under your original name. Have you come across readers who only read Robin or Megan’s books?

Most definitely.  The two pseudonyms have vastly different writing styles and also differ in choice of subject matter.  So I’m now getting notes from people who enjoyed one and not the other, or seeing posts about it on-line. And such letters and posts very much validate my decision to write under two different names. Readers do want to know what they are riding into when they open a book. On the other hand, I also hear from readers who enjoy the contrast and have enjoyed both sets of stories.  My best experience was with my French translator, Arnaud Mousnier-Lompre.  He was delighted with the Lindholm stories and told me that it was like translating a completely different writer.

Q: With two names and numerous trilogies/series under each name, (Robin Hobb: The Farseer Trilogy, The Liveship Trilogy, The Tawny Man Trilogy, Soldier Son trilogy, The Rain Wild Chronicles. Megan Lindholm: The Ki and Vandien Quartest, Tillu and Kerlew, as well as stand alone books), how do you keep all the worlds, characters and narrative threads straight in your mind? Do you have a giant cork board with flow charts? Do you only work on one series at a time?

OH, do I have to admit this?  When I re-read some of my earlier work, it’s like someone else wrote it.  Often I encounter minor characters I’ve forgotten completely, or plot twists that I don’t recognize as my own. I think that one book just crowds out what has gone before.  When I’m writing on a long book, or series of books, as I am now, I do have glossaries of characters and place names and even timelines for books that run for years and years.

My greatest fear is that I will contradict myself on some key point.

Q: In an interview at Shades of Sentience when asked how you create such believable minor characters you said: I try to remember that no one is a minor character in his or her own life. I love this sentiment. It made me laugh when I read it. Do you find your characters take on a life of their own?

Inevitably. And sometime a minor character, such as the Fool, refuses to take a back seat but jumps up into a major position. Then there are lesser characters, such as Hands, who really had his life twisted by events so far outside his control that I still feel bad about his very last encounter with Fitz.  Not that I could have done anything to change it.  He reacted as he did because he is Hands, and that was how Hands would have reacted. And that is the best part of characters taking on a life of their own. In some ways they make the writing easier.  In others, when they insist on doing something that is contrary to the outline . . . well, that is when the writing gets very interesting.

Q: In an interview  on Pat’s Hot List you talk about how you start out with one intention for the book and by the time you’ve written it, the book has veered in a different direction. Can I take it from this you are more of a Pantser than a Plotter? (For non-writers Pantsers just sit down and write, while Plotters plan).

Definitely flying through Story by the seat of my pants, with only a glance or two at the instruments and charts from time to time.  I get to land in some very interesting places that way, and sometimes I’m in completely uncharted territory, and wondering just as much as the reader might about exactly where I am bound.

Q: We’re around the same age. In an interview you speak of reading Fritz Lieber and learning from the terrible things he did to his characters. (He was one of my great inspirations when I first discovered fantasy). How do you feel the genre has changed since the 70s?

Oh, my Fritz Leiber.  How I loved that man’s characters and writing, and still do.

Since the 70’s, I think Fantasy has changed by finally being allowed the page space we need to fully enjoy plot, setting and characters.  I am still amazed at the talent of those writers who conveyed such strange settings and unique characters within such a tight word restriction.

Nowadays, too, there are far fewer restrictions on what we can write in terms of sex scenes, gender identity, race, violence and, well any other former taboo you can think of. And that isn’t always good, at least in my opinion.  Just because you can shock or brutalize the reader and get it published doesn’t mean that you should.  But in the stories that require it, where it’s there for a reason, we suddenly get fantasy and SF with great emotional depth to it.

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’s a difference between any two writers who write fantasy or sf or romance or poetry, and that that difference is far greater than can ever be explained by gender. In my opinion, yes, there are differences between

male and female writers.  But the spectrum of sexuality is so broad that it’s impossible to make any generalized statement about it.  “Men write about sex and women write about romance.”  That’s the sort of thing I hear, and I think it’s just silly. Which men, what woman?

And I really don’t understand the idea that fantasy is dominated by writers of one sex or the other. If you look at the book racks, I’d almost say there are more women writers of fantasy right now than men.  I don’t think I’ve ever made the sex of the writer part of the criteria for choosing a book in any genre.  When I was a younger reader, I could seldom tell you the name of the author of a book I’d just read.  I didn’t care about the author, only the story.

Q: Following on from that, does the gender of the writer change your expectations when you pick up their book?

Oh, I think I accidentally already answered that!

If you look back through the history of our genre, you will see that yes, there were women who used men’s names or only initials as a way to conceal their gender. And at one time, doubtless it was harder for a woman to be published in SF.  But I think that barrier fell so long ago that it’s scarcely worth worrying about any more.

Now with that said, I’ll add that when I chose my pseudonym, Robin Hobb, I deliberately chose an androgynous name.  I knew I’d be writing at least the first three books from the first person view point of a young male, and so I chose to lower the threshold for ‘suspension of disbelief’ by using a name that left the gender of the writer in doubt.  But if I’d been writing a story told from the POV of an ultra-feminine woman, I’d probably have been tempted to choose a name that reflected that, as well.

I’d never want anyone to choose one of my books on the sole basis that I was female.  I’d feel really insulted if that was the only reason a reader picked up my book.

Q: And here’s the fun question. If you could book a trip on a time machine, where and when would you go, and why?

I’d go home.  I’d want to be dropped off in the late 60’s by the mailbox on Davis Road, in December about 8 at night, when the darkness in Fairbanks, Alaska is absolute.  I’d want to walk down the lane with the snow crunching and squeaking under my boots and the birches arched down over it with the weight of snow on their bare branches. I’d want to see the lights through the trees and then finally see that log house again.  And all my dogs would start barking and they come racing through the snow to challenge me. And then they’d recognize me, and I’d get hit in the chest with 120 pounds of malemute and I’d be with my best friends ever again.

Follow Robin on Twitter: @robinhobb

Follow Robin on GoodReads.

See an interview with Robin Hobb on You Tube.

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Filed under Characterisation, Fantasy books, Female Fantasy Authors, Nourish the Writer, The Writing Fraternity, Writing craft

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September 7, 2011 · 12:24 pm

Meet Alisa Krasnostien …

This was cross-posted to the ROR blog. Instead of a writer, this time I’m interviewing Indy Press Powerhouse, Alisa Krasnostein.

Alisa Krasnostein is an environmental engineer by day, and runs indie publishing house Twelfth Planet Press by night. She is also Executive Editor at the review website Aussie Specfic in Focus! and part of the Galactic Suburbia Podcast Team. In her spare time she is a critic, reader, reviewer, runner, environmentalist, knitter, quilter and puppy lover.

 

Q: First let me say mega congratulations on being a finalist in the World Fantasy Awards (courtesy LOCUS) in the Special Award Non-Professional section for your work with Twelfth Planet Press.  I imagine you’ve been popping champagne ever since you found out. Did you have any inkling this was coming?

Thank you! My nomination was totally unexpected and took me completely by surprise.  I’m very excited because I was already planning on attending World Fantasy Con in San Diego.

Q: I was involved in Indy Press in the late 70s early 80s so I know how much work and money goes into this. If you’d had any idea that you’d be ‘working longer hours on the press than my day job and I still don’t have enough time in the week to get to everything that needs to be done.’  – (See full interview on Bibliophile Stalker) – would you have jumped in with as much enthusiasm?

Interesting question. I’m not afraid of hard work. I definitely lean towards the workaholic. I think also, being an engineer has trained me to get absorbed and focused on the task at hand. And the amount of time I work and the amount of work I create for myself is definitely self-inflicted. And I hear I can dial it back at any point in time if I want! I love indie press more now that when I first jumped in and I respect and appreciate the people who contribute to the scene even more so now that I know how much work and dedication and talent goes into everything that gets published. And I also believe that we are limited only by the passion, time, commitment and hard work that we put in. So. No pressure. And no regrets.

Q: And following on from that, if you could go back and give yourself advice about starting Twelfth Planet Press, what would that advice be?

The number one thing I regret is not taking my business more seriously from the start. My advice would be to set up my small press as a small business from the beginning and not rely on a box of receipts or a papertrail for forensic auditing later. I set the financial and business side up several years in and that was most definitely one of the most painful things to sort out. There’s so much more to writing and editing and publishing than the creative side and I would advise myself, and anyone jumping in (both at the publishing and the writing ends), to get a basic handle on accounting, legalese to read and understand contracts and basic business advice (like if you need an ABN and how to structure your business – will you be a sole trader or a company and what does that mean anyway?) .

Q: You did a post for Hoyden About Town on The Invisibility of Women in Science Fiction. It’s obviously a subject you feel strongly about.  Is Twelfth Planet Press seeking to address this issue with affirmative action?

Not in any formal or mandated way. Overall, I don’t have a gender imbalance issue at Twelfth Planet Press – I buy what I like and the best stories that are submitted to me. And funnily enough, that gender breakdown is different to the general norm (though that’s not true of my novella series).

The Twelve Planets – twelve four-story original collections by twelve different Australian female writers – is a project that came from a place of realising, at the time of idea conception, how few female Australian writers had been collected. That’s changed during the time of project development. But the Twelve Planets remains a project that will release over two years close to 50 new short stories written by women. And that’s something that I’m really proud to be doing.

Q: Twelfth Planet Press has had some remarkable wins for a new, small Indy Press. There were six finalistings in the Aurealis Awards this year. Two finalistings on the Australian Shadows Award. And Tansy Rayner Roberts’ novella Siren Beat won the WSFA Small Press Award for 2010. This novella was part of a series of back-to-back novellas that Twelfth Planet Press released.  It’s notoriously hard, from a writer’s point of view, to sell a novella to a publisher. Why did TPP start producing BtB novellas?

Thanks, I was particularly pleased with our Aurealis Awards shortlistings this year coming after seven shortlistings last year. It feels like validation for some of the choices that I’ve made particularly in terms of the direction I’ve taken. And the win from the WSFA was just unbelievably exciting. I’m so proud of the work that Tansy Rayner Roberts is producing at the moment.

I really wanted to have a product to sell at a particular price point, around the $10 to $15 mark. That was really the place that I started at for the novella doubles. I personally love the novella length, especially for science fiction and I loved the idea of paying homage to the Ace Doubles. I especially loved the idea of pairing two totally unrelated works and throwing them into a package like many of the Ace Doubles did. From a gambling sense, if you love one and not so much the other, that’s not a bad deal for $12. And from a publisher’s point of view I like the idea of perhaps enticing readers to find new or unknown to them writers or be exposed to a new genre by buying a double for one of the stories and getting the other one as a bonus. If I make the pairs right!

Q: An editor once said to me, I can’t tell you want I want, but I’ll know when I see it. This is incredibly frustrating to a writer. Can you tell us what you want?

Only that I’ll know when I see it. Sorry! But yeah, we look for what we aren’t expecting, what is outside of what everyone else is writing, that breaks new ground and feels fresh, that stands out from the pack. What I want is the project that stands out cause it’s not like all the other books on the shelf. I specifically look firstly for really solid writing – writing that is unpretentious and doesn’t get in the way of the story. And then I want to be emotionally or intellectually moved or changed by the work. I look for stories that demand my attention and then hold it. I look for stories that tell me something I didn’t know before – about myself, or about society or humanity. I look for a rewarding reading experience. So. Not much.

I’m very busy and I deliberately choose to read submissions when I’m in a bad mood and whilst doing something else. I want what I’m reading to demand attention, to demand I put everything down and just read it to the end.

Q:  A finalist placing in the World Fantasy Awards has to raise the profile of Twelfth Planet Press. Where would you like to see TPP in five years time?

I’d like to see us with wider distribution in brick and mortar bookshops all over the place (long live the bookshop!) and being in a position to pay pro rates for writing, art, design and layout. I’d like to see us pushing genre boundaries and continuing to publish top quality fiction by writers at the top of our field that inspires, engages and entertains.

Q: On a personal note, where would you like to see yourself being career-wise in five years time?

I’d like to be working full time for Twelfth Planet Press.

 

Follow Alisa on Twitter  @Krasnostein

Hear the podcasts on Galactic Suburbia

Hear the TPP Podcasts.

Catch up with Alisa on Linked in

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Filed under Australian Writers, Awards, Dark Urban Fantasy, Fantasy books, Female Fantasy Authors, Genre, Indy Press, Nourish the Writer, Publishing Industry

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September 3, 2011 · 12:34 pm

Meet Paul Collins …

I have been running a series of interviews with female fantasy writers to redress a perception I came across – that fantasy was a bit of a boy’s club. It really isn’t like that here in Australia. We have many wonderful fantasy writers who just happen to be female.

Today I’m interviewing Paul Collins because, for one thing he’s been a power-house of indie publishing for over thirty-five years, and also I thought I’d ask him the same questions I’ve asked the female writers about fantasy writing and gender, to get his perspective as a male fantasy writer.

Look out for the give-away at the end of the interview.

Q: You have over 140 books, including 30 non-fiction hard covers for the education market, 11 anthologies and two collections of your own stories. You edited The MUP Encyclopaedia of Australian Science Fiction and Fantasy and have also had over 140 short stories published. You write and edit all across genres and ages. You’ve been presented with both the Inaugural Peter McNamara and A Bertram Chandler awards for Lifetime Achievement in SF, won the Aurealis and William Atheling awards, and been short-listed for just about every other genre award. I guess that all this makes you a Renaissance man. Yet you left school at 15. What drove you to achieve so much?

I have a vivid memory of walking home one day when I was about twelve. I looked at all the ramshackle houses of our suburb and thought, “This is where I’m going to wind up. Living in one of these and working in a factory”. I knew I’d be leaving school at 15. It’s not that I hated school, but I just somehow knew that whatever I was going to do in life, having a university degree wasn’t going to in any way take a part – it was just going to stop me from earning money for four or five years. I also knew that to break from the future to which I was destined I’d need to pull something out of thin air. When I turned fifteen I had a variety of jobs: electroplater’s assistant, spot-welder, worked on a farm, apprentice clicker (making leather goods) sheet metal worker, to name just a few. At seventeen I was the despatch manager for Metro Goldwyn Meyer. At this point I knew I’d taken a wrong turn. Where to from the heady heights of a despatch manager? I was stuck. There was nowhere for me to go at MGM. Maybe a booker (of films), but that was hardly something to aspire to. I then opted for working three jobs at a time to build up sufficient funds to work for myself. I doubt I knew exactly what I could do at that point – but I think I was planning on opening a cinema. I certainly knew enough about the industry at that time.

Regardless, while I was at MGM I started working as an apprentice projectionist at two suburban cinemas (Delta in New Lynn and The Star in Glen Eden, NZ). I also worked weekends with my uncle in a metal polishing factory. When I had sufficient funds I quit MGM and came to Australia. It’s this background that drove me forward. I wanted to be something other than the guy living in the suburban neighbourhood working the 40-hour week.

Q: Your first book Hot Lead Cold Sweat came out in 1975, almost 40 years ago. In the late 70s and early 80s you ran an indie press, Cory and Collins, during which you published Australia’s first heroic fantasy novels, long before the majors got into the act. Later, with your current partner, Meredith Costain, you edited the Spinout and Thrillogy series in the 90s, which is also when ypu wrote the Jelindel Chronicles. And in 2007 you established Ford Street Publishing and released the new Quentaris Chronicles. You must have seen a lot of changes in the publishing industry. What do you think of the trend for authors like best seller Barry Eisler to turn down half million advance to self publish?

I read that article. And some of it doesn’t ring true to me. I doubt, for a start, that a writer would knock back a half million-dollar advance so they could self-publish. It’s all very well Amazon claiming they’re selling 110 digital books compared with 100 print books, but we need to remember that e-books are a relatively new technology. People are experimenting. When Beta came out people flocked to it, as they did VHS. Where is either of these technologies now? Beta, despite being better quality than VHS, fell by the wayside. Some say Mac is better than the PC, but there are far more PC users than Mac users. Why? Promotion. Whoever has the biggest slush fund to promote their wares wins. So right now, despite there being Kindle and e-pub, both are on the same wagon, especially now that Mac users can download Kindle software and read Kindle books (and vice versa). So all the promotion money, articles, etc, are looking at digital. As a publisher who has dabbled in e-books, I can tell you I am not getting anywhere near the sales that Barry Eisler discussed in his blog interview. Nor is any other Australian publisher that I know of. The problem I see is that there are millions of titles on sites such as Amazon. How will you find the title you’re looking for? All very well if you know the author’s name, but even then you’re battling to find the book. Try typing in Paul Collins for example. There are four writers in Australia alone with this name. And booksellers have yet to find a way to differentiate between us (some use our birthdates, but readers would have no idea how old “their” Paul Collins is).

I don’t see this as a digital versus paperback issue. I think digital complements the paperback. Others feel the same way. Don Grover (CEO of the Dymocks chain) sees the physical book as the dog and digital as the tail.

And I’d also question Barry’s $30,000 income this year for a self-published short story. Before calling me a cynic, let’s remember publishers made such outlandish claims of their book sales right up till BookScan was released. Then suddenly all their highly inflated sales figures dropped like rocks. I doubt there’s a BookScan for short stories, so the $30,000 claim isn’t verifiable. Why would he make such a claim? Obviously so people would download it on the assumption it must be terrific. Cory Doctorow claims to have had 700,000 downloads of his novel Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom – 30,000 of these came on the first day of release. But they were absolutely free. Even still, that’s a heck of a lot of downloads.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3S-eKDYqpEs&feature=player_embedded]

Q: Your new Young Adult book, Mole Hunt, was written for boys, specifically those who read Matthew Reilly, but apparently adults are reading it as well. Did this surprise you?

Not really. It’s sort of YA crossover, although patently marketed as YA. What does surprise though is that it’s had about fifteen great reviews, all of which by women. It’s not the sort of book that I’d expect women to enjoy reading. I mean, Maximus has no redeeming features; the body count is high (two people get killed in the first chapter); it’s young adult SF. I mention the latter because three adult reviewers told me they don’t like SF, but thoroughly enjoyed the book. I’m not complaining of course! Some comparisons have also surprised me. Bookseller and Publisher said it’s a cross between The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo, Total Recall and Dexter.

Some might think I wrote dystopian fiction because of the popularity this genre’s enjoying. But frankly, I wrote The Maximus Black Files years ago. Incidentally, The Hunger Games kicked off the recent dystopian wave – anyone who’s read my novel Cyberskin (published in 2000) will see striking similarity in the plot – deaths filmed in reality TV, a la snuff movies. I suspect I was ahead of my time!

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n4tTn_WXCiw]

Q: You say your favourite fictional character is Modesty Blaise. (First appeared as a comic strip in 1963. The author, Peter O’Donnell, went onto write 12 books. The first appeared in 1965. In a time when the James Bond was the ultimate spy and females were his reward, Modesty Blaise was a woman ahead of her time). Does this mean you’ve always admired strong women?

Very funny, Rowena LOL. But to answer your question, I do prefer athletic women. Modesty Blaise would be my dreamboat. Xena Warrior Woman, too, if we’re entering the realm of fantasy. I mentioned earlier the marketing failures and successes between products – I think had a smart producer taken on Modesty Blaise franchise, we’d have easily seen an equal James Bond dynasty. But I suspect all the heads of film companies were macho men afraid to lose their “image” of manhood, whatever, and didn’t think for a moment anyone would suspend disbelief that a woman could be a successful criminal. There was one movie made, and it was a shocker. I was so angry that the film was a spoof. Equal to the time I watched the much-anticipated Bonfire of the Vanities. Fantastic book by Tom Wolfe completely demolished by some idiot filmmaker. It makes you wonder how people get these things so wrong.

Q: Your new publishing endeavour Ford Street Publishing is doing well with Dianne Bates’s Crossing the Line, short-listed for the NSW Premier’s Award, Pool, by Justin D’Ath, short-listed for the Victorian Premier’s Award and a Notable Book in the CBCA awards, plus My Private Pectus by Shane Thamm was short-listed for the NT Read Award. There have been others, such as George Ivanoff winning the Chronos Award for Gamers’ Quest, Notable CBCA novels, etc. In an interview on SPUNC (Small Press Publishers’ site) you say: ‘Surprisingly, I grew up in a house without books. No one in my family was a reader. Marvel Comics were my sole literary diet. Perversely, I think this upbringing has helped me to choose good books. I’m still a somewhat reluctant reader – to grab my attention a manuscript really has to have that special X factor.’ That is an amazing leap from the boy who read comics to editor of award nominated books. Can you tell us what the X Factor is and do you still have your comic collection?

As close as I can come to explaining the X Factor is that books can just “feel” right. The writing has to be good; the subject matter spot on for the time; the plot has to “move” you; the book has to have the prospect of commercial success. There are many ingredients to this recipe. In a few words I’d sum it up as something intangible, like gut instinct. You won’t find it in the Macquarie. Alas, I sold the comic collections in the eighties. I should also mention that freelance editors also work on these titles – I can’t claim all the credit for editing. I usually do the first round of edits, authors respond, and then the books go to freelancers who work with the authors.

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?

Many would disagree and no doubt point to many examples to prove me wrong, but I think women write more character-driven novels while men write plot and action-driven novels. It seems to me that more women then men read fantasy, and this possibly explains why female writers head up the best-seller lists. Women write more emotively than men, and dare I say linger in scenes with description while men will move at a quicker pace. Compare, say, Isobelle Carmody’s writing with Garth Nix’s. Completely different styles. Both are best-sellers, so there’s no question as to who is the better writer. That’s very subjective.

Q: Following on from that, does the gender of the writer change your expectations when you pick up their book?

I should have a diplomatic answer to this question, but you know me . . . I prefer plot-driven, fast forward fiction. If I were to give you a list of ten authors I’d read again, they would all be men. The top three would be Ioin Colfer, Philip Reeve and Peter O’Donnell. If we’re talking about fantasy novels, I’d possibly (and sometimes erroneously) expect a fair bit of romance within the pages of a book written by a female. I’m not remotely interested in romance whether it’s dressed up as fantasy or not. Give me George RR Martin’s Game of Thrones any time. There might be romance there, but it’s well hidden and certainly not an integral part of the plot. As an aside, this isn’t to say I don’t think women can’t write fantasy without romance, or that men can’t write with emotive depth. It just transpires that I seem to prefer male over female writers.

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?

It would certainly be in the past – I don’t think we’re heading anywhere nice. I’m assuming I’d be um, protected, right? Like, “Okay, Scotty, I’ve had enough. Beam me outta here. NOW.” Under these conditions, Roman times circa Julius Caesar’s reign sound good to me, although only if I were a citizen of good standing and in favour with Julius. I’m obviously wiping from the equation poison, deceit, political ambitions and murderous intent. The wine, women and song aspect has obvious merits.

 

Give-away Question: Maximus Black is a true anti-hero. Do characters really need redeeming features? Yes or No? Give your reasons for your decision.

See here for a complete list of Paul’s books and short stories.

See here for a full list of the books from Ford Street Publishing.

Follow Paul on facebook.com/fordstreet

Catch up with Paul on twitter@fordstreet

www.paulcollins.com.au

www.fordstreetpublishing.com

www.quentaris.com

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Filed under Australian Writers, Book Giveaway, Book trailers, Children's Books, creativity, Dark Urban Fantasy, Fantasy books, Genre, Indy Press, Nourish the Writer, Promoting Friend's Books, Publishing Industry, The Writing Fraternity, Young Adult Books

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August 27, 2011 · 11:19 pm

Meet Sean Williams …

I have been running a series of  interview with female fantasy writers to redress a perception I came across – that fantasy was a bit of a boy’s club. It really isn’t like that here in Australia. We have many wonderful fantasy writers who just happen to be female.

Today I’m interviewing Sean Williams. He’s a wonderful writer, supportive of the community and a real professional so I thought I’d ask him the same questions I’ve asked the female writers about fantasy writing and gender, to get his perspective as a male fantasy writer.

Watch out for the give-away at the end.

Q: Sean Williams, I see your second name is Llewellyn. Are you of Welsh extraction? Is there a wonderful story about your people coming out to Australia?

My father David was very proud of his distant Welsh background. He came from a long line of Owens and Selwyns and Bronwyns, but apart from his great and sometimes very intrusive love of male voice choirs it didn’t impact on my life terribly much. I’ve only been to Wales once, and that was this year, for one day. I felt more connected to my mother’s father’s German heritage (he was descended from the writer Johann Christoph Friedrich von Schiller) and my father’s mother’s Scottish heritage (I have a tartan tie somewhere). I’m  absolutely positive I don’t pronounce “Llewellyn” properly, but at least I know how to spell it.

Q: You have a page on Wookieepedia (the Star Wars Wikipedia). That is so cool. With 6 Star Wars books out now, you must be really comfortable writing in this world, or do you still have to do a lot of homework before starting a new book?

Every Star Wars novel is different–which sounds a bit pat, but it’s true. In my case, the obvious difference is that I’ve written in three quite different periods of Galactic history: the Old Republic era, three and a half thousand years before the Clone Wars; the dark days when Emperor Palpatine and Darth Vader were in charge, just before Episode IV; and the New Jedi Order era, when Han and Leia have kids who are themselves becoming Jedi Knights. Each period has its own flavour, its own crises and characters, its own rich set of assumptions. Research is essential when it comes to embedding oneself creatively in these worlds. Luckily, it’s research I greatly enjoy. I can get lost in Wookieepedia for days if I’m not careful.

(Aside: one of the greatest thrills for me, as both a creator and a Star Wars fan from way back, is to see pages in Wookieepedia relating to elements of canon that I’ve created, be they characters, scenarios, weird aliens or whatever. There are no words for the sense of validation that brings.)

Q: You write for kids and you write for adults. (See TroubleTwisters with Garth Nix).Is there anything you do to get yourself in the right frame of mind when writing for kids? (hang out at the park, think back to your childhood, visit your friends’ kids?)

Having kids in my life really helps. And being childish at heart helps, too. I’ve written eight books for kids and four for young adults, and I’d have to say that I find the YA mindset much more difficult. I like to write characters who see the world through a fairly rational lens, and of course being a teenager isn’t really about being rational. That’s one of the reasons why it’s such a wonderful, terrifying time, and why it’s such a rich vein to mine, creatively speaking. I’m drawn to doing difficult things–each book is a new challenge–hence my focus on YA in my solo work at the moment.

Speaking more generally, I read to get in the right frame of mind. With every project, I’m hunting for a genre or author that will be the right fuel for my own writing. Sometimes it’s the Gothic or 19th Century romances. Sometimes it’s the books I loved as a kid–Weirdstone of Brisingamen or The Dark is Rising, as it was for Troubletwisters. For the next book it could be Tim Powers or Octavia Butler or someone completely know. I never know until I start. But I know when it’s working.

Q: You have a Masters in Arts in Creative Writing.  I see you are currently working on your PHD. What’s your research question? Is it something really interesting to do with the craft of writing?

I’m examining the use of the matter transporter in literature. Sounds pretty dry, doesn’t it? I chose it because my own work has often returned to this trope, from my first complete (and unpublished) short story to my latest novel, Twinmaker, which is so fresh it hasn’t even hit the market yet. It’s a trope that can be used to examine identity and humanity in so many interesting ways–and that, I think, is what science fiction is all about. Crime, too. The Resurrected Man, my second novel, just wallows in these issues, and so does a short story I have coming out in an anthology called Armored next year, “The N-Body Solution”, but in a very different way. I’ll probably keep exploring the trope until I die, or until someone builds a working version so we can explore it in real life.

Q: I see you’ll be at the World Fantasy Convention in San Diego in October. Lucky you! I’ve never been. Can you give us a glimpse of what it’s like?

You should come one day! It’s my favourite con. There are so many great people there, so many friends and writers and new people to get to know–the massed creativity is electric. Whether you go for the panels, the parties or the bar, there’s always someone fascinating to learn from. I go with the intention of hanging out, basically, but always return more energized and better connected than when I left. It’s well worth the effort and expense.

Q: There’s an Australian called Sean Williams on Smashwords. Is that you? Are you planning on releasing some of your backlist as e-books?

I have no recollection of being on Smashwords, so it’s probably not me. I have two other writer friends also called Sean Williams. One’s a musicologist who writes such wonderful books as The Sound of the Ancestral Ship and The Ethnomusicologist’s Cookbook. The other works in LA. We often talk about collaborating, but can’t agree on which name goes first. Boom-boom.

I think ebooks are the best thing to happen for readers since, I don’t know, the invention of the mass-market paperback? Public libraries? Whatever, it’s very cool. Some of my back-catalogue is already available through E-Reads and more is coming. I’m still pondering what to do with the rest. The immediate temptation is to start monetizing everything–short stories, novellas, all that–but I’m not sure I admire that impulse very much, so I’m being patient, waiting to see where it all goes. One day I’ll do something with my first novel, Metal Fatigue, which has been hard to get for a long time. What I decide to do with that, and how well it goes, will probably set the precedent for the rest.

Q: On an interview with Angela Slater, when asked what would you be if you weren’t a writer you said: ‘Dead bored”, because that’s what I am when I’m not writing.’ And then you followed it up with, if someone held a gun to your head and said you couldn’t write, you’d go back to your other love, music. (You won a Young Composer Award in High School). I know you make up play-lists for certain books. Are you doing anything with your music at the moment?

Nothing at all, I’m afraid. It’s a bit depressing. I keep saying that one day I’ll get back to it, but that day just never comes. If I really wanted to, I suppose I would make time, but given the RSI issues I have, the last thing I need is another hobby involving computers . . . .

Still, I’m always on the look-out for new music (current favourite is Erik Wøllo’s live set Silent Currents), and I’m still DJing occasionally, when people let me. I have the illusion of a relationship with my other lover, and that’s better than nothing.

Q: With over 70 short stories published and 35 novels you must be some kind of writing power-house. I once heard you say that you had to write 9 novels in 2.5 years, so you calculated out how many words a day you had to write and no matter what, you wrote them. At the time I asked you, What if you went wrong? And you said, I couldn’t go wrong. Are you still working yourself to such a hard self-imposed deadline?

It’s easy to be a powerhouse if you do something all the time and never stop. I don’t think I’m especially creative or anything. Just stubborn, and a bit OCD, and easily bored. Still, RSI has forced me to be more easy-going lately, wordcount-wise. I’m down to about 150k of new fiction a year, which is not a huge amount compared to what I managed in the past, but still pretty reasonable. Of course, not going for quite so much quantity means I can now engage with the quality side of things in a different way. I’m enjoying the time to rewrite more than I normally would. Although that’s still hard on the wrists, harder in some ways, it does demand more time spent pondering what the hell I’ve done and how I can make it better. Normally I’d have to squeeze this process into very short periods, and while I’d never suggest that I approached this kind of thing in a cavalier kind of way in the past–each book received the identical degree of commitment and passion, whether it was Star Wars or a collaboration or something entirely my own–I do sometimes think I could have done more if I’d had more time to do it in. Now I do have the time, I’m making the most of it, and finding new ways to be obsessive.

 

Q: As someone who has been shortlisted for and won genre awards, and someone who has taught at Clarion, you really know your writing craft. (Here’s the link to Sean’s list of useful advice for aspiring writers). The industry is changing so rapidly now that things professional writers would never have done (self publish) are now real options. Barry Eisler turned down half a million advance to self publish. Are you scrambling to keep up with the changes?

The industry has always been a bit of a scramble. I started publishing SF in the dying days of cyberpunk, and then space opera was hot, and then it was YA and zombies or whatever. Who knows what it’ll be next year? Meanwhile, publishers and magazines constantly fold or merge, the internet’s always changing the game, writing software and computers are constantly evolving. And that’s all good. Change keeps us awake. It keeps our eyes open. That’s the trouble with dreaming for a living: if you get too comfortable, you might nod off and miss something interesting

Q: You’re a member of the RIAUS. (An organisation to bring Science to People).  You must feel very strongly about the role of science in the modern world.  What do you hope to see this organisation achieve?  (Feel free to fiddle with this question, Sean).  

I’m enormously proud that we have the Royal Institution of Australia right here in Adelaide. As the only offshoot of the Royal Institution in the world, its aims are at the same time enormously simple and enormously broad. Scientific thinking has changed everything about human society and is in the process of shaping our entire world, for better or for worse, yet so many people still regard as something outside of them, something to be frightened of, to stay away from, to reject. As part of its brief to bring science to people and people to science, RiAUS performs a role very similar to science fiction–that of familiarising the mainstream with what might once have seemed very strange, and to have fun doing it. Hence things like art exhibitions at the Science Exchange, sci-ku contests (haikus based on science), talks on science in pubs, and so on. As someone who has never formally studied science but is immensely interested in it, being involved is a natural fit for me, and I’m proud to have been on their program several times now. If we can expand people’s understanding of the world we live in, in even a small way, I think that’s a win.

Q: Last time we spoke you were the ‘CurryKing’. Are you still into curries? (If you are, the next time you’re in Brisbane, I’ll take you to our fave Indian restaurant).

Which one is that? I’ve been to a few up there, now, and they’ve all been delicious!

I still love curries, although I’ve been a vegetarian for two years now, which has sadly meant no more lamb kormas. My favourite recipe at the moment is for a pumpkin, chick pea and Brussels sprout curry that most people regard with horror. Their loss, I say, and all the more for me.

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 feeling is that there’s more variation within the sexes than there is between them–that is, the way I write fantasy versus the way Garth Nix writes fantasy, say, might be greater than the differences between me and Sara Douglass–and if that’s the case then bemoaning boy’s vs girl’s clubs is a bit, I don’t know, off-mission for me, much like the talk about genre itself and its impact on what readers want. Some readers and editors undoubtedly have biases towards particular types of writers, but on the whole, I think, we are all genres of one. (I’m avoiding the word “brand” because that might lead us to a whole different conversation.) Every book I pick up is its own experience, and if I like that experience then I’ll pursue the author further. If I don’t, I won’t. So there are fantasy authors I’ve read lots of and others I’ve read almost nothing. Some of both categories are male, some are female. Some I have no idea (for years I thought Julian May was male) and it doesn’t matter. Each writer is different to my eyes not because they’re male or female, Australian or Alaskan, write fantasy or literary fiction, but because they’re different people.

I’m talking about my own perceptions and experiences, of course. I haven’t studied the field in enough depth to have a solid opinion on the subject. If there is a bias, I hope I haven’t contributed to it. All I can do is take hope from reviews like this one, in which Garth and I are praised for achieving “a level of gender-neutrality that is pleasantly surprising coming from two male authors”, and avoid despairing that such a thing should be surprising.

Q: Following on from that, does the gender of the writer change your expectations when you pick up their book?

I prefer to have no expectations. I’ll avoid reading the blurb and would love it if books had no covers at all (another reason why I love ebooks and the old Gollancz yellowjackets so much). I want to mainline the story in the purest possible form, and while I know that 100% purity is never possible, that I’ll always be lurking in the mix somewhere, I do figure it’s worth aiming for.

I feel this way because I know I know that expectations are unavoidable. Much as I hate it, I do judge a book by its cover. Bad clichéd cover art (from tramp stamps and leather pants to metal phalluses shooting fiery ejaculate) are an utter turn-off, and it can take ages to get past that, even for writers I love, books I’m really enjoying. And I can be kinder, too, to books that don’t deserve it, because I love the way it’s packaged. Mind you, I think that’s not quite so bad a thing, because every book is a sacrifice offered up by someone. Every book is a gift. That should always be celebrated, even if it involves a little delusion at times.

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?

Much as I’d dearly love to see what really happened on Golgotha, I think I’d have to go forward. No specific date, no specific place. As long as there are ftl spaceships, I’ll be happy.

Sean will give-away one each of MAGIC DIRT,

TROUBLETWISTERS and CENOTAXIS.

Give-away question:

As a long-time Dr Who fan, Sean says, if the Tardis appeared in your

living room and Dr Who stepped out and invited you on an adventure,

which of the Doctors would you like it to be and why?



Catch up with Sean on Facebook.


Catch up with Sean on GoodReads.


For a list of Sean’s numerous publications see here.


For a list of Sean’s opinion pieces see here.


Sean’s Blog.


 

			

	
	

		
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Filed under Australian Writers, Book Giveaway, Children's Books, creativity, Fantasy books, Fun Stuff, Nourish the Writer, Publishing Industry, SF Books, The World in all its Absurdity, The Writing Fraternity, Writing craft, Young Adult Books

			
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		August 24, 2011 · 10:28 pm	


	
Meet Lara Morgan …
	

		
As the next of my series featuring fantastic female fantasy authors (see disclaimer) I’ve invited the talented Lara Morgan to drop by. 




Q: Your mother is from Bermuda and your father from Croatia and you grew up in Western Australia. I’m assuming that you had access to the cultural heritage of both your parents. Does this help you when you are creating fantasy worlds?


I was definitely brought up with stories about countries overseas  but I think what influenced me more was both my parents are avid readers. We always had so many books in the house and I don’t recall ever being told I wasn’t allowed to read anything. I was brought up on a diet of fairy tales, Enid Blyton and CS Lewis and was read Tolkien before I was in double digits so I think naturally veering toward fantasy worlds was unavoidable. Being encouraged to use our imaginations to create our own worlds when we were playing and not being allowed to watch much tv also helped – although I might not have thought that at the time!


Q: On your web site it says you’ve also written under the Lara Martin and Lara Brncic (pronunciation?) names. Did you use these when you were writing as a journalist? And leading on from that why did you choose to write your novels as Lara Morgan?


Martin is my mum’s maiden name which I used once when I was trying to figure out a pen name. Brncic is my maiden name and the name I used when working for the newspaper. I chose to use Morgan because, firstly, having a last name with only one vowel makes it difficult to spell and pronounce, and secondly because my middle name is Marie the M sound worked. I also love having a pen name because it’s like a secret identity to my normal self. Lara Morgan is my writer name separate from the everyday reality of bills and housework.


Q: You write the Rosie Black Chronicles which is set 500 years in the future and is aimed at Young Adults. Genesis has been released with Equinox coming out soon from Walker Books. Set in a post apocalyptic world where Rosie is on the run with a mystery to solve, the story takes Rosie from Earth to Mars. There’s an environmental thread running through the narrative. Is this something you feel strongly about?


Yes very strongly and I know I’m not alone. I live in a state that has a huge amount of money and people invested in mining of all kinds and it’s impossible to live here and not think about how long we can keep all this up. It’s so problematic and complicated, because we need the energy, people need the jobs, but I worry that planet wide we are going to be doing too little too late to find other alternatives to feed this consumerist monster of a society we’re growing – and that a future similar to Rosie’s world might be the result, only possibly worse. I think that’s a fear most people relate to.


[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dyw4oaWyyxo&feature=player_embedded]


Q: You also write adult fantasy books. The Twins of Saranthium series was published by Pan Macmillan. From the cover of The Awakening there looks to be dragons. Were you a Dragon Riders of Pern fan growing up?


I have never read any of them, which surprises the hell out of most people because, Pern being the classic dragon text, most assume I have. Also the dragon – which I call serpents in my books – on the cover was a decision by the publisher because it made sense at the time. The story line itself really focuses much more on the people, the twins, of the series than the serpents. But they are in there so…


Q: In an interview on the ASIM site you say: ‘I … think good fantasy and science fiction can go just as far in exploring the nature of humanity as any literary novel and I get as much satisfaction from reading someone like LeGuin as from reading Hemmingway, if not more.’ What are the themes you keep coming back to when you write SF and F?


I don’t know if it’s really a theme, but I always find myself writing about identity – how no one is ever who they seem to be – and how power and corruption so often go together. It probably relates to my cynical view of authority and corporations – we as humans can’t seem to get our acts together and behave in a moral way when too much responsibility is allowed to too few, or there is too much money involved.


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 hate, hate that boy’s club assumption. It’s so insulting not only to women who write fantasy but also to the vast number of women who read it. And it only encourages the appalling level of ignorance of the amount of women writing fantasy today. (*jumps off soap box*).


I think in early genre writing there tended to be a stronger focus on the technical side, the world building and the wars from male writers as opposed to a greater concentration on the relationships between the characters in those worlds from the (very few) women writers. But now I think those lines are increasingly blurred. Whether it’s because it’s more acceptable now for men to talk about their feelings, and so write more emotionally accessible characters, or for women to go beyond the domestic and explore technology or because we are just learning more from each other, I don’t know but I think it’s of benefit to both. However I do think that women still tend to write more, and in greater detail, about the emotional undercurrents of characters than men, especially in YA fiction.


Q: Following on from that, does the gender of the writer change your expectations when you pick up their book?


I rarely pay attention to the sex of the author, but I think it depends what kind of book I’ve picked up. In epic fantasy I think what men are writing and what women are writing are pretty similar. I mean I would expect the same kind of fabulous detail of character and complex world from a Kate Elliot book the same as I would from a George RR Martin. It’s the same when I’m looking at adult dystopian like The Windup Girl or Zoo City. When it comes to YA though I do have different expectations simply because the division is fairly clear. Women are writing a lot of paranormal romance whereas men are writing more action orientated/spy thrillers. But there again, the rule is not absolute. It’s not what I write and Suzanne Collins with her Hunger Games series shows that as well.


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’ve always loved history, and would love to see ancient Greece, but the reality would undoubtedly be a lot less romantic. Plus I’m a woman so they’d probably immediately make me some kind of slave, so I’ll have to choose the future.  I’d love to go forward about one thousand years to see, firstly, if humans survive that long without killing ourselves, and if we do, how far our technology goes. Are we going to become a Class 3 civilization? Do we colonise other planets and live like Star Trek and will cake still exist? Fundamental questions of course.


Podcast with Lara Morgan at the Sydney Writers Festival.


Follow Lara on Twitter: @Lara_Morgan


See Lara’s Blog.

			

	
	

		
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		August 17, 2011 · 9:33 am	


	
Meet Rhonda Roberts …
	

		
Q: First congratulations on the success of Gladiatrix. I feel like a proud big sister because I organised the pitching opportunity at the 2006 National SF Con, which led (eventually) to your sale. (Rhonda talks about this experience on the ROR blog). Since your sale what have you learnt about the publishing industry that you wish you could have told yourself back then?


Thanks Rowena, that pitching opportunity changed everything!


One key lesson is that you need to acquire publicity skills asap. In the standard contract you are legally required to help publicise the book. My experience has been that publishers try to work with you on this – so make choices now rather than later. Different publicity methods suit different books and, more importantly, different authors. The key thing is to go with your strong points.


If public speaking is your strength – then find ways to use that. Your publisher can help you make contacts and set up interviews etc. If, like many authors, you’d rather concentrate on the web – then work out which of the available options suit you and how you want to invest your non-writing time.


Whatever venues you choose, make sure you can sum up your book in 7, 30, and 100 words. That will save you a few uncomfortable silences while you try to compress your magnum opus into a bite size chunk and still do it an iota of justice.


Q: I like the look of your web site, Rhonda, very noir, very suitable for a time travelling detective. Do you have a background in graphic design?


That’s great to hear, thanks!


I do have a distant background in art but my husband, Richard Caladine, did all the artwork on the website, as well as the maps that go with the books. We work closely together on these projects, but he does the final images. He’s in the communication technology industry as well as being a talented artist with his own website.


I love all things noir and have spent a lot of time developing that kind of look and feel in the series. The second book, Hoodwink, is set in Hollywood in 1939 specifically because this is my hero’s first real case as a private investigator. So, of course, she had to go back to the era of The Maltese Falcon and the hard-boiled private eye.


If  you like the website now, check again towards the end of this year, Hoodwink comes out in January 2012 and there’ll be some changes and additions to celebrate the launch. J


Q: I see Gladiatrix was nominated for the Norma K Hemming Award. This award celebrates excellence in the exploration of race, gender, class and sexuality. This must have been a thrill. Did you set out to explore this themes, or did it just arise naturally?


Oh yeah, I certainly was thrilled to be nominated! Gladiatrix was my first book and I had no idea whether anyone would even read it. 🙂


Gladiatrix isn’t, by any stretch of the imagination, a sermon – it’s high adventure – but my politics tend to be inclusive rather than exclusive, so I guess they seep into everything.


Q: Gladiatrix was also nominated for the Davitt Award. This award is sponsored by the Sisters in Crime Australia for the best crime novel by an Australian woman. It looks like you are spanning at least two genres. Have you always been a fan of crime and mystery?


Sisters in Crime is such a wonderful organisation – I was absolutely thrilled they liked it.


Why did I venture across genres? Human history is full of deep dark mysteries and many of them involve unsolved crimes, so following a time travelling detective opens up adventures in any conceivable time or place. When you throw a slightly alternate past and present into the mix, then the adventure gets really exciting because anything can happen – and frequently does. J


Have I always been a fan of crime and mystery? On and off. Then one hot, sweaty summer – when I was bored and desperate for something new – I ended up in the crime section, where I discovered the V.I. Warshawski series by Sara Paretsky. V.I. is not only a smart, tough detective in the old school, noir tradition, but is also a compassionate modern woman. What a combination! I was hooked.


Since then I’ve discovered that noir female characters are very exciting people. You never quite know what they’re going to do next – but you can be damned sure you want to stick around and watch.


Q: Your main character, Kannon Dupree is described as feisty and bit impetuous but smart enough to get herself out of dangerous situations. Did you find that your background in martial arts helped you write realistic fight scenes?


Oh definitely. Especially the injuries incurred side of it. J (I’m rubbing my knee with one hand as I type with the other.)


Q: You PHD and work as an academic specialising in knowledge systems in different cultures and historical periods must help you create realistic settings when your main character travels through time. What advice could you give aspiring writers on research?


It depends on what kind of book you’re researching but if you’re writing about ‘a stranger in a strange land’, I’d suggest you start with what’s the same and what’s different? Then ask yourself why is it so?


Find out what your characters need to operate on a daily basis. Then go on to what belief system is dominant. Is it religious, scientific etc…? How does the power structure operate? Gender/class/ethnic relations? What does their technology look like and how does it fit into the socio-economy? Then the more psychological components come in. What is the family unit like? What are their greatest fears? How do they relax? And so forth…


Q: You grew up in Western Australia and spent your holidays rambling around the old gold rush ghost towns. Will there be a Kannon Dupree time travel mystery set against this background?




The series will regularly return to an Australian setting – that will definitely happen.


Choosing what era to visit next takes a bit of planning. There’s a particular arc going on with the main character that is suited to certain eras, so that has to be catered for. Plus some stories come roaring out of my filing cabinet and gleefully hijack the process…


Both of which happened with my second and third books. Hoodwink, (due out in January 2012) is set in Hollywood in 1939. So Kannon can put on her black trench coat and sunglasses, and slink around noir paradise.


The third book, which I’m now in the process of finishing, comes out later in 2012. I can’t tell you what it’s about yet, as my editor has a sniper ready to fire a warning shot if I mention it too soon. J


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?


Really? But what about J.K. Rowling, Ursula Le Guin, Anne Rice and the million other stunningly wonderful female writers over there? What’s going on?


Sure gender can influence writing choices, just as ethnicity, religion, class, age, breadth of life experience, political beliefs etc, etc, can too. But what’s wrong with that? Does anyone still seriously believe diversity isn’t a good thing? The point is on what basis worth is judged…what is valued, which voices are listened to and which ones are denigrated or dismissed.


Q: Following on from that, does the gender of the writer change your expectations when you pick up their book?


Like many fantasy authors, there’s always been a special place in my heart for books – whatever the genre, whoever the author – that show off the might of the human spirit and it’s awesome potential. We need more of those books not less…


At the moment I’m besotted by John Carlin’s book on Nelson Mandela. How Mandela overcame the shackles placed on him because of his colour and basically saved South Africa from genocide. Talk about a true-life fantasy story!


So, I will happily pick-up books with any gender combination of author and subject. But…I won’t buy misogynistic books or ones that treat their female characters like convenient wallpaper – whatever the author’s 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?


My two dogs are wondering why I’m laughing… There are so many possibilities! What was Joan of Arc really like? What secrets are encoded in the Voynich manuscript? What were Buddha’s last words? What was written on the Mayan codices destroyed by the Conquistadors?


But this month the answer is: to the VIP seats at the Rugby World Cup Final, Johannesburg, 1995, and in the limo that took President Mandela back home from the game.


This is the day (a fraction of which is portrayed in the film Invictus) that it became clear that Nelson Mandela had managed to divert the South African nation away from a bloody civil war – when blacks and whites alike celebrated the Springboks’ World Cup victory. I’d dearly love to watch Nelson Mandela’s face as he saw HIS people, the South African nation, share the same emotion at the same time – joy.


Give-away Question:  In the last Census there were 58,053 Jedi Knights listed in Australia. What new religion would you propose for the next one? Why? What would they do and wear? How would you spread it? (Get on to merchandising if you feel that is appropriate.)


 

			

	
	

		
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Filed under Australian Writers, Awards, Book Giveaway, Characterisation, creativity, Dark Urban Fantasy, Fantasy books, Female Fantasy Authors, Fun Stuff, Genre, Inspiring Art, Nourish the Writer, Paranormal_Crime, Pitching your book, Promoting Friend's Books, Promoting your Book, Publishing Industry

			
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