Dave is a such a good sport. He says:
I loved all of the ideas. My dragons – I have dragons in Pyramid Scheme, Pyramid Power, and Save the Dragons, and Dragons Ring and in Dog and Dragon and Wyverns in Much Fall of Blood. They’re all ‘taboo’in different ways. So I decided I’d give Thoraiya, Mary, Cecilia and Melissa May each a book.
If you e-mail at daveza(at)bigpond(dot)com with addresses and any personalisation you want put in them, I’ll send them off.
Filed under Australian Writers, Book Giveaway, Fantasy books, Fun Stuff, Readers
Today I’m interviewing Duncan Lay because he’s an Australian fantasy writer who’s just signed with Voyager to produce his second trilogy, and 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 writer.
Look out for the give-away at the end of the post.
Q: On Voyager, you say you were seduced to the dark side of reading fantasy by a friend who gave you a copy of David Gemmell’s Legend. Do you still have that book? Did you end up reading all of David Gemmell’s books? (I can see why he’d appeal to a fifteen year-old).
I do indeed have that copy of Legend, dog-eared and yellowing though it may be! I have read all of Gemmell’s books, which take up an entire bookshelf!
Q: Lucky you! I see you interviewed Raymond Feist in 2002 when he was here on his Talon of Silver Hawk tour. You say: ‘we began talking about writing, and he described how his characters sometimes take his story threads off in different directions to the one he planned. That they almost tell the story for him. The way he described it they begin at A and have to get to Z but they don’t go there via B, C, D etc – they might jump to H, then back again and so on.’ You say you walked away with your head buzzing and mind afire. Seven years later, your first book, Wounded Guardian came out. But you’d spent many years before that, writing and getting rejected. (Which we all do). If you could go back twenty years, what would you tell that younger aspiring writer that was you?
To be honest, there is very little I could tell myself that would enable me to “jump the gap’’ and write the way I do now. My growth as a writer is definitely an organic, ongoing process. I had to suffer pain and anguish, take myself to my own borders, to see death, to watch my children being born and hold them in my arms before being published.
I’m not saying everyone has to do these things to be published – obviously they don’t. But I had to. Seeing more of life, experiencing highs and lows is what I needed to do, to unlock the characters in my head and merge them with the stories that I have carried around with me since I was a small child.
I could tell the younger me about those things but some things must be experienced to be understood.
On a practical note, I would tip the younger me off about some winning Lotto numbers …!
Q: Your fantasy trilogy, The Dragon Sword Histories, has been described as gritty with characters that are neither good nor evil. Do you think that fantasy as a genre is maturing?
Firstly, I would say there ARE characters who are good, and others who are evil. But they are not distinguishable by white and black hats. The point about Dragon Sword Histories is the “good’ characters have made mistakes, continue to make mistakes and definitely don’t always act in the way a “typical’’ good character might.
Secondly, I don’t think I’d say fantasy is maturing. It is certainly growing, splitting off into all sorts of sub-categories and gaining more and more acceptance and popularity. Maturing, to me, implies a slowing down and a certain level of comfort. I don’t see that – rather it is, by turns, exciting, innovative, annoying, thrilling, funny, wise and thought-provoking. I hear mature and I think beige cardigans and tartan slippers – fantasy is more a pair of purple Doc Martens and a loud T-shirt!
Q: In an interview on Voyager you say that you wrote while travelling on the train to work (as a layout designed and headline writer at the Sunday Telegraph). Did you find that you could dip into the world of your story for half an hour each day, or was it hard to get back into the right mind-set to write?
Sadly, my train trip is far more than half an hour! It’s between 75 and 90 minutes on the train each way! I find writing on the train a really useful exercise – about 2.5 to 3 hours a day of quality writing time that enables me to compartmentalise my writing, work and family lives!
Q: I see you have a new trilogy coming out:
Book 1 (currently called The Cursed Tears but may well become Bridge Of Swords or indeed something else entirely!) will be out in August 2012.
Book 2 (now The Grieving Son but hopefully Pass Of Arrows) will be out February 2013
Book 3 (now The Raging Night but perhaps Hill Of Shields) will be out August 2013.
I guess we can take from this that writers don’t have much say over what their books are called. Did you get much input into the covers and titles of your first trilogy?
Writers do have plenty of say over what their stories are called – mine has been evolving rapidly over the last few months and so what seemed the right and proper emphasis has shifted. I can’t comment on other publishers but HarperCollins has been fantastic about letting me work out the right titles for my books.
As for the covers, they had the original ideas but I had plenty of input into how they came out and was able to get them altered until I was happy with them – there are earlier posts on my Facebook page that show the development of those book covers, if anyone wants to see!
Q: I was prompted to start this series of interviews because there seems to be a perception in the US and the UK that fantasy is a bit of a boy’s club. Do you think there’s a difference in the way males and females write fantasy?
I find that perception quite amusing, as in Australia 70% of fantasy readers are women. I’ve made more than 60 bookstores appearances in the last three years and I find I get many more sales from women than men.
Of course there is a difference in the way males and females write fantasy – but those differences are often relatively small and it would be natural for fantasy readers to have a stock of favoured male and female readers. You can read and enjoy both, for different reasons.
Australian Bookseller + Publisher said I write the “best battle scenes since the late (David) Gemmell’’. I took that as a huge compliment – but I know I also appeal to a female readership with two of the three main characters being strong females.
I haven’t read enough female fantasy writers to offer more than a limited, and generalized opinion, but if there is one area where they perhaps fall down is in the last 5% of a male character – the x-factor if you will. Testosterone, as well as an instinct to win and be dominant often make men do strange and foolish things for what seems to be no good reason. It’s something I have found often lacking in my –admittedly limited – reading of fantasy male characters written by women.
I’m sure the reverse is true as well. I have three sisters, a wife and a daughter but as much as I like to think I understand women – perhaps my female characters are also missing that top 5%!
Q: Following on from that, does the gender of the writer change your expectations when you pick up their book?
The gender of a writer does not change my expectations – it’s what the blurb suggests they are writing about and what they are hoping to achieve that sets my expectations. Two of the worst fantasy books I ever read (to the point where I gave up on them before I even finished the middle of the first book in the series) were written by men. There’s another male writer who annoys me intensely and I regret ever buying his books.
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 would go back to about 500AD, when the Saxons were slowly conquering Celtic Britain but were turned back for a generation by a British (as in Welsh) warleader or King. Some have called him Arthur, others claim no such man existed. Given history is written by the victors, we’ll never know for sure. But I’d like to go back and find out for sure!
Giveaway Question:
The hero of The Dragon Sword Histories is Martil, a warrior whose life is changed and forever defined by one mistake that he hopes, yet fails to atone for. He longs for the chance to go back and make a choice again. What one thing would you change in your life – if you had the chance to go back in time and make a different choice in your life, what would it be?
Catch up with Duncan on Goodreads
Follow Duncan on Twitter. @DuncanLay
Paul says:
Some great cases put forward. Elspeth’s case warrants consideration in that people do seem to be attracted to danger; although I’m not sure Maximus will be developing any sort of redeeming features on his march toward power – or oblivion.
So I reckon a very close finish but the win by a nose will be 210 Darryl’’s response re Palpatine being totally evil with no redeeming features but a great character. Thanks to everyone that responded.
Congratulations Darryl you can contact Paul to arrange for the posting of your book. forstr(at)internode(dot)on(dot)net
Filed under Australian Writers, Book Giveaway, Children's Books, Young Adult Books
As the next of my series featuring fantastic female fantasy authors (see disclaimer) I’ve invited the prolific and cross-genre author, the talented Kate Elliott to drop by.
Watch out for the give-away question at the end of the interview.
Q: We met at World Con in Melbourne in 2010. This was only the fourth time a World Con has been to Australia since 1975. As you are based in Hawaii do you miss out on a lot of conventions, or do you make the effort to get to them?
Since moving to Hawaii in 2002, I do not have the opportunity to attend many conventions. The closest is a 5 + hour flight, and flights to and from Hawaii are not cheap. So these days I am likely to attend only one convention a year, if that. Conventionally speaking, my isolation in the middle of the Pacific Ocean has worked in my favor in one way, however: Going to Australia was relatively “close” so I jumped at the chance to attend AussieCon in Melbourne and am glad I did.
Q: I have to ask this question. You had four books published under Alis A Rasmussen – The Labyrinth Gate, a ‘through the tarot cards to another world’ fantasy and the Highroad Trilogy, which looks like a fun space opera. Why did you change to the Kate Elliot name?
I was asked to take a pen name to launch a new series (Jaran 1992) with a new publisher. Three years later, Robin Hobb was born when Megan Lindholm was asked to do the same thing. Launching a new series and what publishers often call a “new brand” is now relatively commonplace, although readers aren’t necessarily aware of it. It’s a way to create a new identity in a different genre, or to get out from under a series that did not sell well and try to make a bigger splash with a new series. This worked well 15 years ago before the explosion of social media. Now I think it is much more difficult to pull off a new public writing identity.
Q: I see you have a page dedicated to The Writing Life on your web site, with lots of useful information for aspiring writers. Do you run workshops and get involved with developing writers?
I recall clearly the long lonely road I took in my early years of writing. I think many aspiring writers don’t have access to writing groups or workshops because there aren’t any writing groups near by, they may not be able to afford the time or money to attend a workshop, or they simply don’t know how to connect up with such groups. I write my articles on writing for those people, who may be working in what feels to them like isolation. I want them to know there are many writers out here, and we all face many of the same problems.
I’ve never run a workshop myself. I don’t really have the personality to be a teacher, as I find it very exhausting. While I have personally helped a few developing writers, these days I don’t do so except in rare cases because I simply do not have time.
Q: Your first series was Novels of Jaran, and it was SF, but somehow the book made it onto Locus’s Recommended List for SF, Fantasy and Horror. How did this come about?
I’m not sure! The first book is set almost exclusively on an interdicted planet with low technology cultures, and the heroine and the people she is traveling with ride horses, so perhaps there was a sense that it “felt like” a fantasy novel even though it is clearly science fiction.
Q: There are four books in the series. I like your description of the series: ‘It’s about people, mostly, and about the historical process: what happens when two cultures come into contact — and conflict. It’s about consequences.’ I see the protagonist in the fourth book, The Law of Becoming, was 16. Is the series YA?
Jaran is not a YA series, although teenagers can certainly read it and many have. In fact, my current editor at Orbit Books, Devi Pillai, read Jaran when she was 13.
The protagonist of Jaran (the first novel) is 22 and has just graduated from university. The subsequent books add additional protagonists, some of whom are younger and some older, but certainly the character of Ilyana in book 4 is the youngest of all the point of view characters in the series as a whole.
Q: In 1996 you co-wrote The Golden Key with Melanie Rawn and Jennifer Roberson. The book was a World Fantasy Finalist. Can you tell us a little about the collaboration process? I always find this fascinating.
After we agreed to collaborate, the two most important issues were how we would handle 1) the world-building and 2) the actual blending of writing.
We met for a long weekend for an initial world-building sessions in which we hammered out the main elements of the world, culture, main characters, and plot. It was a really fabulous three days. What I remember most is that we came up with things out of the synergy of the three of us bouncing ideas off each other in a way we couldn’t have done if we had each been working separately and alone. It was a great experience.
For the other, we decided not to try to write a braided novel with three points of view moving in and out of the tale. Instead we deliberately went for a generational saga, so that we would each write one generation’s story. That way we used all the same world building and the overarching plot we had come up with together, but we each wrote a separate “novella” (actually, a short novel in length each) that was complete in itself. That way we avoided trampling on each other’s toes during the writing process.
I’m very proud of The Golden Key. It was truly a collaboration: It is the book it is because the three of us, working together, came up with something bigger than any one of us would have managed alone.
Q: With The Crown of Stars, book one: King’s Dragon was a Nebula Finalist. This series is set in an alternate Europe. Did you let your inner history buff out to play?
I did a lot of research. I’m not sure I’m a history buff as much as I was very aware of how much scholars know about the medieval period and how little I do. I didn’t want to screw up too much so I worked hard at making sure as much of the bigger picture as well as the details had a degree of authenticity even though the books are not set in our medieval Europe. Certainly, however, almost everything in the books is directly borrowed from history and from scholarship I read that illuminated that history for me. Translations into English of works from that time were invaluable as I tried to get a handle on ways people would look at the world differently than we do. I think that is at the heart of writing good fantasy: That the people in your books live the way they live in their world, not the way you live in your world.
Q: This is a seven book series. While you were writing it, did you have a flow chart that showed who was related to who and where they were over the years that the books cover? How do you keep it all straight?
There is a lot I simply kept in my head. However, I did create a calendar on which I wrote events on the day and month and year they happened. It spans the same timeline as the story, which takes place over seven years. I also made an index of character names and their associations, because there were so many characters that if I needed to know the name of the attendant of one of the nobles, say, it was far less time consuming if I had a place I could look it up than if I had to flip through the books looking for a reference to that character.
Other than that, I mostly have multiple file folders of scrawled notes in no particular order except by categories, things like astronomy, architecture, and so on, and many many academic articles on various subjects in folders by topic.
I actually did a better job creating a reference notebook for the Crossroads Trilogy, with tabbed dividers with subjects like Calendar, Language, Guardians and Eagles, Geography. What I learned from my less organized work in Crown of Stars was that the better organized my reference notebook was, the easier it was to look up details when I needed them rather than relying on my memory.
Q: The Crossroads Series is described as High Fantasy. I love the covers on these in both editions. Do you get much say in the look of your covers?
No.
With the USA cover for Spirit Gate, I did specifically mention two things, however, although technically these were merely requests because in fact I don’t have any say over covers. I wrote up a description of how the reeves are harnessed to the eagles, and the artist clearly used my description rather than having the reeve riding atop the eagle as a person rides a horse. The other request was that the woman depicted as a reeve on Spirit Gate be a woman of color, not blonde or white, as there is only a single white-skinned, blonde character in the land known as the Hundred, where most of the action takes place.
Q: The Spiritwalker Trilogy. With a description like this: ‘An Afro-Celtic post-Roman icepunk Regency fantasy adventure with airships, Phoenician spies, the intelligent descendents of troodons, and a dash of steampunk whose gas lamps can be easily doused by the touch of a powerful cold mage.’ Who could resist this series? Do you find that publishers are more open to cross genre now than they used to be when you were first writing?
I think publishers reflect the times in that sense. The entire artistic genre of mash-ups is a product of the new media and very much a part of the new century. I think that books that have a mashed-up quality therefore fit right into the new artistic sensibilities. Publishers, writers, and readers all seem more interested in cross genre and mash-ups. I don’t think they’re at all unusual any more.
Q: I was prompted to start this series of interviews because there seems to be a perception in the US and the UK that fantasy is a bit of a boy’s club. Do you think there’s a difference in the way males and females write fantasy?
In essentials? No.
I think there are differences in the way individuals write fantasy, and then in our culture those differences tend to get mapped onto a gender axis because our culture is comfortable defining and patterning things along the gender axis as if differences between genders are more important than differences between individuals.
But it might be possible to quantify some weighted differences.
As far as I know, no one has done a study of the last 30 or 40 years of the science fiction and fantasy fields in which they analyze something as simple as character presence in fantasy fiction. Do male writers mostly write about male protagonists? How about female writers? And what about the percentages of secondary characters? Do male writers disproportionately populate their worlds with male characters (including protagonists and minor characters) overall, in a way not consistent with the actual presence of people in the world? That is, rather than showing a world in which there is an approximate 50/50 split of male to female characters, do these worlds foreground and give speaking roles to far more male characters than female? And if female characters are represented, are they represented in only a few limited types of roles, and how do they function both within the society and within the story? What about female writers? Do they tend to have more female characters throughout their books? In a wider variety of roles, with more agency and importance? Or not?
I think a lot of the idea that males and females “write fantasy differently” has more to do with emphasis. And I personally don’t believe the emphasis has much to do with an biologically quantifiable essentialist differences; even if there were some, it would be practically impossible to tease out what those were from the morass of cultural expectations and assumptions that tend to bury everything else.
Because in addition to the quantifiable issue of character presence, there is also the issue of what actions, events, details, and experiences are emphasised. Emphasis and “worthiness” can be culturally influenced by unexamined assumptions about what matters enough to be written about or noticed. So in that sense, it’s a little difficult to say that men write differently than women BECAUSE of their gender rather than because of what culture tells us about gender. It’s a subtle difference, but if we’re talking about “real” potential differences in writing, I think it is the crucial one.
I think we carry exceedingly strong cultural expectations about gender and about the past, and especially about ideas about “how” the past “was” that often ignore or deem unimportant entire swathes of human existence. I think we still assume that a male point of view combined with the male gaze (seeing things from a particular set of assumptions about what is important and worthy) is the norm. So it is perfectly possible to pick up an epic fantasy novel in which almost all the characters are male, and women practically invisible, and somehow think there is nothing exceptional or even wrong about a depiction of a world in which women barely figure. To me these are flawed depictions and bad world building. They’re not “male” or “female.”
And anyway, what is “male” and “female?“ If I want to write about clothes or sewing, then am I “writing female” even though tailoring was and is a male occupation in many societies? Or are our ideas that this must be gendered-writing cultural? If I want to write two women talking to each other about something other than a man (see also The Bechdel Test for films), does that make my writing “girly?” Are male writers more likely to have only one or a handful of female characters, few of whom ever talk to each other or relate in a meaningful way? Are female writers more likely to emphasise female relationships within a story? Again, I would call this cultural, not biological.
Until we have actual data on such questions rather than anecdotal information or suppositions based on “what everyone knows” or our assumptions about how things must be or the last two books we read, I think we can’t draw any firm conclusions.
Q: Following on from that, does the gender of the writer change your expectations when you pick up their book?
Probably to the extent that I’m more cautious, when reading a male writer, because I’m less certain there will be as wide a variety of characters in the story, and I’m more likely to fear that people like me won’t be included and more surprised and pleased when they are. Because personally, as a reader, I get tired of feeling excluded in stories.
Two of the best examples of men writing women I’ve read recently have come from outside the field and were written decades ago in the 20th century: Minty Alley by C.L.R. James and God’s Bits of Wood by Ousmane Sembene. Frankly, many a fantasy writer could take a lesson in how to truly incorporate women in what could have been a solely male-centered story from Sembene’s masterpiece about a railroad strike in West Africa in the late 1940s.
Q: And here’s the fun question. If you could book a trip on a time machine, where and when would you go, and why?
Into a future with medical advances and space travel.
Give-away Question:
What is a favorite “guilty pleasure” character type, the one you know you probably shouldn’t enjoy reading about so much but really love anyway?
One of mine (I have more than one!) is the arrogant jerk who falls in love despite himself (Darcy in Pride and Prejudice is a classic example of this type).
Follow Kate on Twitter: @KateElliottSFF
Catch up with Kate’s blog.
Catch up with Kate Elliot on GoodReads.
If you are trying to keep Kate’s vast list of books straight in your mind, here’s her bibliography.
Saw you reading Robin Hobb and we both looked quizzical at something the train driver said. So I said, Hi.
So glad I did.Turns out you’re doing Creative Writing at UQ.
I mentioned the Vision Writers Group. Here’s the link. And there’s a list of useful writing craft posts here.
Best of luck with your writing!
Filed under creativity, Writing craft, Writing Groups
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 Gareth Powell because he has a wonderful new book out, 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 writer.
Q: (Disclosure here) We’re both published with Solaris Press. Your latest book, The Recollection, was launched in August. It’s been compared to Iain M Banks and Alastair Reynolds. From the blurb it seems to contain a mystery, parallel worlds/time travel and political intrigue. What themes are you exploring?
A: There’s a lot going on in The Recollection. The main characters are all—in one way or another—torn from the comfort of their everyday lives and thrust into dangerously unfamiliar territory. They have to fight to survive; they have to adapt and make decisions they didn’t know they were capable of making. At its heart, though, I think it’s the relationships between these characters—and the significance those relationships hold when measured against vast swathes of time and distance—that drive the book.
Q: I see you are an interviewer and reviewer of CDs for Acoustic Magazine. Did you study an instrument? Did you belong to a band when you were in your teens? Are you one of those writers who makes up a different play-list for each book and uses it to get into ‘the zone’?
A: Although I appreciate music, I can’t lay claim to any inherent musical talent. As the old saying goes, I couldn’t carry a tune in a bucket. Nonetheless, I do find that music plays an important role in the writing process, and I often listen to orchestral or instrumental music while working. The music screens out external distractions, and it helps with the rhythm of the sentences. While writing The Recollection, I listened to a lot of film soundtracks, especially the iconic Blade Runner soundtrack by Vangelis, and Clint Mansell’s haunting score for Moon.
Q: You are also a prolific writer of short stories. (For a review of Gareth’s short stories see here). You have a collection, The Last Reef. Writing short stories is an art, especially with SF and F, when the writer has to set up the world as well as tell the story in less than five thousand words. Your short story Ack-Ack Macaque (try saying that fast five times!) won the Interzone Readers’ Poll for best short story in 2007. Do you find the urge to write short stories interrupts the flow of your novel writing?
A: Short stories don’t so much interrupt the flow of my novel writing as plug the gaps between novels. They make a good playground within which to test new ideas and concepts; and their length makes them a refreshing change of pace after the long haul of a novel.
Q: Your previous title, Silver Sands, appears to be an SF mystery. The world sounds quite noir – ‘a world of political intrigue, espionage and subterfuge; a world of retired cops, digital ghosts and corporate assassins’. Are you a film noir fan?
A: I have long been a fan of films such as The Maltese Falcon and LA Confidential, and have dipped into the world of the hardboiled detective through short stories and novels by Raymond Chandler and the like. However, I think I owe my real love of “noir” to the “tech-noir” look and feel of films such as Blade Runner, The Terminator, and Aliens; and the literary worlds explored by the Cyberpunks in the late 1980s—especially William Gibson’s “Sprawl” series of novels and short stories, including Burning Chrome and Neuromancer.
Q: I see you work as a PR manager for a disabled children’s charity. What a wonderful job, to be able to do something really worthwhile! My aunt has lost three children to Cystic Fibrosis so we’ve lived with the routine of constantly treating and medicating a child. Did personal experience lead you to apply for this job?
A: The charity I work for offers specialist play sessions to babies and pre-school children with disabilities and additional complex needs. I came onboard because I had experience in marketing and PR, and they desperately needed someone to boost their visibility, in order to attract donations. I work for them two days per week, and my job is to get them in the local paper as often as possible.
After a decade spent in corporate software marketing, it feels good to be doing something that has a clear and immediate benefit. I know that the money I raise through my efforts goes to support local children and families who really need 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?
A: A few years ago, Aliette de Bodard and I collaborated on a ten thousand word novelette for Shine, an anthology of optimistic science fiction from Solaris Books. We had a lot of fun writing it, but I can’t say I noticed any difference in our approaches. We were just two writers doing what we enjoyed doing.
Based on that experience—and on conversations with many other female authors—I don’t believe that there is a difference in the way that men and women approach the craft of writing genre fiction. If there is a difference between the sexes, it’s in the reception their writing receives. The latest figures I’ve seen seem to indicate that men and women are fairly evenly represented when it comes to the number of authors currently writing genre fiction; however, the male writers seem to get more reviews and more exposure than the females, which is obviously grossly unfair—especially in genre that prides itself on its open-mindedness—and the probable root of the false perception mentioned in your question: that fantasy is a boy’s club.
Q: Following on from that, does the gender of the writer change your expectations when you pick up their book?
A: There may be many reasons for me to pick up a book, but none of them involve the sex or gender of the author.
Q: And here’s the fun question. If you could book a trip on a time machine, where and when would you go, and why?
A: Firstly, I’d go back to the late 1980s and spend the day with my father. He died when I was eighteen, and I never really got the chance to know him as an adult. Now I’m a father myself, I think we’d have a lot to talk about.
After that, I’d probably go further back. I quite fancy seeing Ancient Egypt and Ancient Greece in all their splendour. En route, I might stop for cocktails in New York in the 1920s, before the Wall Street Crash.
After that, I’d skip ahead a few centuries, then jump right to the end of the universe, to find out what happens—like flicking to the back page of a book, just to see how the story turns out.
Catch up with Gareth on Facebook.
Catch up with Gareth on GoodReads.
Catch up with Gareth on Google+.
Follow Gareth on Twitter. @garethlpowell
Filed under SF Books, Writing craft
Cross posted to the Mad Genius Club blog.
There’s been quite a bit of commentary recently on the blogs about gender – talk of how there are too few books for boys in the YA market, talk of the number of books by female authors that get reviewed as compared to books by male authors and talk of the roles that females are typically given in fantasy books. Over on the Bad Reputation blog, Juliet McKenna did a post on the topic. She made this point:
‘When the importance of great men is taken for granted, that’s where the historian’s focus will be. If women are not deemed important, why bother writing about them except where they impinge on the main subject’s life or deeds? They will inevitably end up absent from the narrative that emerges.
Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence. That was then, and this is now. Since the first emergence of women’s studies as a discipline in the 1960s, a wealth of historical research has explored the role of women in all levels of society. Women’s influence and significance is now apparent, even when they were effectively denied financial and political power by the cultures of their day.’
But only if you do your research and look for it. has anybody seen the movie Priest? It looks like exactly what it is – a movie made by someone who grew up on computer games. (Not that it isn’t fun). Where I teach the students are asked to write a film treatment and many of these treatments are set in fantasy worlds. I can tell when the students are regurgitating what they have come across in computer games or seen on TV, without reading a fantasy book. But even if they do read fantasy, how many of them read books like History of Private Life Vol 11: Revelations of the Medieval World? If the closest they have ever come to research is watching Peter Jackson’s Lord of the Rings (don’t get me wrong I really enjoyed these movies), they could be forgiven for thinking that women played a very small role in the medieval world, whereas in some instances a woman could take over running the family business if her husband died. (Note – obviously, the role of women changed from place to place and from era to era).
So if a writer wanted to create well rounded characters, male or female, they need to research the era they are basing their fantasy world society on. I find it is the interesting quirky things that stick in my mind. This is a bit off track for medieval settings but I came across the description of a New Guinea tribe where, when a member of the family died, the female relatives cut off the joint of a finger. If they lived to become old women they ended up with only nubs on their hands.
Juliet goes on to say:
‘… somewhat paradoxically, the representation of women in fantasy must still include women leading circumscribed, subordinated lives, to remind all of us reading, male and female, why our grandmothers, mothers and aunts campaigned for the vote and marched for equal rights. To remind us what women’s lives are like today in so much of the world where their human rights are curtailed by culture and poverty. And of course, so many similar arguments apply when we consider the equally problematic question of characters of colour in fantasy fiction.’
In the comments there were many suggestions of authors, both male and female who do create interesting female characters. Amongst those comments was this one from Elizabeth Moon:
‘Judging by both audience and speaker comments at a convention this spring, and email received from readers or would-be readers, there’s still quite a bit of resistance to accepting women writers or women protagonists (in either traditional or nontraditional roles.) One man told me at a convention that a story with a woman protagonist “just wouldn’t interest me.” (others in the audience were nodding.) A fellow panelist made the pronouncement that women don’t write epic fantasy. (Um…yes, we do. Though I’ve found pronouncements by women who don’t approve of epic fantasy, as a “patriarchal” form, that women either don’t, or shouldn’t, write it.) Another told me in email that he can stand to read only three women writers (I think I was supposed to be flattered to be one of them) and won’t even try books by other women anymore. A woman at a booksigning told me proudly that her sons would not read books by women or with girl characters–as she was providing their reading material, it was clear that she approved and probably created their attitude.’
I wonder if a male reader like the one mentioned above would find it hard to identify with a female character because of her limited life choices. Why would he be interested in reading about someone who is not in control of their own destiny? If it’s not a problem he has ever had to face, then perhaps he can’t empathise with a character who has.
And sometimes even the writer can slip into the gender-divide mindset. Over on the ROR blog, Lara Morgan, YA writer was talking about gender and YA when she said:
‘I write YA with a female protagonist and it is marketed for girls, though when I was writing it I didn’t think about who the reader would be, just what the story was. Now I have been delightfully surprised when people have told me their son read it and loved it, because I didn’t think boys would. That fact I am surprised a boy read it shows I am also guilty of putting that boy in a ‘he won’t read that’ box. You see how this mindset is everywhere?’
Meanwhile, Andrea K Host has been talking about the differences magic can make when world-building, specifically when working out the role of women in the fantasy world society. She says, for one thing, magic of some kind can be used as birth control. Immediately women have the freedom to limit the size of their families. I used this in my first trilogy, which explored a clash between a rigid patriarchal society and a society that leant towards equality. The birth control herb was just one small thing, but when the priests from the patriarchal society discovered that the women of the other society controlled their fertility with a herb, they set out to destroy all these herbs because it was unnatural. To them a woman’s place was to bear children.
Andrea K Host also talks about the power imbalance which exists because, on average, women are physically weaker than men.If these imbalances were removed what how would a society evolve? Andrea asks:
‘The society which forms around women who can overcome inferiority of strength with an equalizer such as guardian spirits will not necessarily be any less inclined to call them chattel. But the odds are better, and when you’re putting your world together, and you decide how your magic works, you have to ask: if women can do THIS, why do they allow THAT?’
I ask this very question in my new trilogy The Outcast Chronicles which will be published next year. The T’En are mystics and, while the males are physically stronger, the females are more gifted. This changes the male-female dynamic. It isn’t the core question of the trilogy, but it influences the characters’ interactions, just as the imbalance of power influences our interactions every day.
Exploring gender and our perception of how gender defines us is a rich field for writers. The fantasy and science fiction genres give us the freedom to create our own worlds to explore this question. But because this is the real world and not ‘the best of all possible worlds’, it appears there will be some readers who refuse to read a book because of the gender of the author and/or the main protagonist.
I can’t say that the gender of the author influences me. I look for story. And the gender of the main protagonist never worries me either. They have to be an interesting person with an interesting problem.
Sean is such a softie! He says:
To the question,
“if the Tardis appeared in your living room and Dr Who stepped out, which of the Doctors would you like it to be and why?”
There’s no correct answer, just answers I like better than the others, for wildly irrational and impulsive reasons, and I’m back to tell you which ones they are.
My favourite Doctor will always be Jon Pertwee. (There’s always a special place for your first Doctor, even if it was Colin Baker.) The Third Doctor would be a bit crap to hang out with because the TARDIS was mostly just furniture during his tenure, but you can’t beat frills and a frock coat, so Richard Stein and Brendan Podger are automatic winners.
Another automatic prize goes to James Decker for picking Matt Smith, my new tip for the best Doctor ever (shame about those mad years, Tom), and Lynne Lunsden Green also gets a gong for picking Troughton (yay Jamie). I’m glad people are noticing the deep fannishness of Matt Smith’s performance (many have tried to channel earlier Doctors but few have succeeded) and I hope it’ll lead some of the show’s fresh new audience to look back and marvel at what came before.
So there you have it. Thanks for all your suggestions. If I could, I’d give you all a prize for sharing my love for the best show in the whole world! But I can only pick four, and if you drop me a line at mail (at) seanwilliams (dot) com I’ll give you a list of books to choose from.
Filed under Australian Writers, Book Giveaway, Characterisation, Fun Stuff, Genre, Movies & TV Shows, Readers
Today I’m interviewing Dave Freer because, for one thing he is a wonderful writer, 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 quote Lewis Carroll, the Hunting of the Snark, on your blog. This is entirely suitable as you are something of a Beamish Boy. Was the work of Lewis Carroll your first introduction to satire, whimsy and the fantastical?
Good grief, no. I was the most obnoxious little boy (I haven’t changed much) who started reading before school, and didn’t like fiction. My only tolerance for it was Kipling’s Just So Stories, which, as I was the third child, my dad had read so often he could recite. Those, to a brat who ‘knew’ the real answers, were delightful and whimsical. My first brush with sf/fantasy was satire was L. Sprague de Camp’s “Lest Darkness Fall” when I was nine. I remember it well, because I tried to ‘make’ all the inventions our inadvertent time traveller did. It did not end well. Like my attempts at parachuting with a beach umbrella off a 3 story building, it stands as proof that evolution-in-action fails quite spectacularly at eliminating idiots from the gene-pool. Perhaps we’re selecting for blind luck. The curious thing about that book was that at that age, I didn’t realise it was satire. It was just adventure, the triumph of ingenuity over brute force. I still have that very battered 1949 copy. It’s curious, in the gender debates that dominance of male sf/fantasy authors (particularly from my 1970’s childhood and before) that I came to sf via my mother, who started reading it from pulps left behind American servicemen working on the Naval guns on Robben Island, where she was a gunner. If there was a major gender stereotype of the time that shaped my perception, it was that only girls had ‘weird’ names. Boys were Matthew, Mark, Luke and John etc. Girls had started getting Marzipan, Autumn and Galadriel, but patriarchal society had boys still being spared Moon-unit and Wobbegong. So Rudyard… was female. Sprague… was female. Andre (Norton) was male. I got Zenna Henderson and Ursula LeGuin right.
Q: You currently live in an island off the coast of Tasmania, but you are originally from South Africa. Do you think growing up in South Africa gave you a particular mind-set that has influenced the way you write?
Put it this way there is no reason why growing up in say Seapoint or Rondebosch (wealthy formerly all-white suburbs) in South Africa (as a ‘white’ woman, anyway – men went to the army as conscripts) should be materially different to growing up in a wealthy suburb of Brisbane or Boston, except you probably had more chance of someone cleaning your home without having to be quite as wealthy. Having been ‘a South African’ is no guarantee of a better understanding of the poisonous effects of privilege and division than being say a white-bread American. Being born into my family made South Africa formative, though. So did conscription.
My mother was a De la Rey, one of the Lion of the West’s nieces, part of the hard core of Boer ‘Bittereinde’ (bitter end) Guerrilla fighters. She married the grandson of a British Army Boer War Surgeon General, in a time when the wounds of that war were still very raw (it took years before either family came around to it. Some of them never did.) My father–given his rather bizarre childhood, spoke and thought in Sotho more naturally than English—and was I think more at home with black South Africans than white ones. His work and I suppose my parents political and religious beliefs saw us mixing with people most white South Africans didn’t know much about. So I grew up tossed between cultures and learning people were human and rather alike even if they were lifelong traditional foes. Yes, it is one of the reasons I take mickey out of tradition a lot, although I believe in its tested strengths.
I was seventeen, very idealistic, and very wild, when I was conscripted. I was sent to the Medical Corps. I wasn’t eighteen before I saw my first man die. I grew up very fast and learned to be responsible, and saw things that haunt and shape me to this day. What shapes you, shapes your writing.
Q: You’ve been in Australia a couple of years now. Just recently your son got married here (congratulations!). In a post on ROR you said: ‘it becomes very important to me know not just what ‘a squatter’ or ‘a bogan’ is but what implications there are in calling a character one. Knowing the baggage carried by a word and using that baggage can subtly make you a much more powerful and effective writer.’ Do you feel that you have a handle on the Ozzie mind-set now? Or do you still feel like a Stranger in a Strange Land?
Oh my word. It’s complex. You don’t learn a culture in a week or even two years. I’m very much in love with Australia, especially our Island, and, oddly especially the nearest it has to an indigenous people (the island had its pre-European settlement population die off in the last ice age. The sealers who settled on Island took (or traded) wives from the Tasmanian North East Aboriginal population. Like the Bounty mutineers, the Straitsmen had a culture and traditions of their own. It must have been a tough, stark life, and yet it produced a very close-knit solid people. There’s a strong affinity (particularly with the older people) to the land and sea and to living off it, with which I identify and find I can fit into. But know it and understand properly? No. Love it, want to learn about it, try to fit into it, yes.
Q: In 2008 your book, Slow Train to Arcturus, won the Best SF &F novel in the Preditors & Editors Poll. I heard you read from this book at Worldcon in 2010. It struck me as a traditional premise told in an irreverent way. Were you surprised when the book won this award?
(Chuckle) According to my agent that book either had to win every award or be buried in soft peat by the industry. They chose the latter, but the book has a cult following so it got nominated in a reader-voted poll. To be honest I am at best ambivalent about most awards. They’re too much of a ‘cool kids club’ where if you’re ‘in’, you will at least be nominated. Some of those are very books of course, BUT If you’re ‘out’, it doesn’t matter how popular or good you are, it’s not going to happen until the book/s are so wildly successful that the ‘Cool kids gang’ are starting to look bloody stupid. Look no further than Sir Terry Pratchett for an example, where his DARK SIDE OF THE SUN should have won every award (and his CARPET PEOPLE – originally written IIRC when he was 17, every juvenile award)… and it took another 20 years and about a 100 million sales for Cool Kids to admit he was alive. I’m too much of a loose cannon, too socially maladroit, and far too politically incorrect for most awards.
Yes, Slow Train took an old trope – a slower than light generation ship taking colonists to the stars (which has been out of fashion for many years) and another old trope ‘humans meet aliens’ and turned both on their heads and made them spin and whistle waltzing Matilda out of every orifice. It also was one of the very rarest combinations in our genre – Hard SF and social satire.
Look, the reason that generation ships fell out of fashion (besides that hard sf is hard to write, and our genre is fashion-driven) is three-fold.
1) They really are slow. Interstellar war and trade – the life-stuff of our genre are hard across hundreds of years. And ‘colonisation’ is a nasty un-PC word (despite the fact that every human on earth is a colonist or descended from one. As Douglas Adams said, we’re not proud of our ancestors, and never invite them around to dinner.) .
2) When you get there (after hundreds of years), the place sucks. It’s either not habitable or worse, the locals don’t really want colonists. Or from a modern ecologist’s point of view, you’ll destroy a unique alien ecosystem.
3) We’ve never kept a closed ecosystem going for any worthwhile period of time. Generations is so far off plausible as to be silly.
So I set about finding solutions to all three… and limiting our scenario to present or already theoretically possible and plausible science. And then, just because I have a theory of ordinariness (or orneryness, at times) I set about making a set of novel hard science ideas just parts of the background, that neither the characters (because they live with them and it’s an everyday situation) nor the reader are overwhelmed by flashing-light bling ‘science’. And yes, I am a manipulative son-of-bitch with an ulterior motive. Bling and flashing lights we accept as, well, fun-but-a-fantasy. Ordinary – Which both Heinlein and Asimov did well—becomes, quite rapidly ‘normal and expected’. And then the world moves to catch up. I don’t think social engineering via PC-speak works very well. I think it probably loses more readers than it changes minds. But if you’re subtle and clever about it (whether I am either is another matter, but I understand the need) you can shift perspectives. Of course it takes more effort and ability than PC-rote, but who said idealism should be easy? And yes, I believe we need interstellar travel, and that we should colonise space. I’ll explain why, as an ecologist, I believe this a little further on.
The solutions to problem 1) and 2) are relatively simple when you think about it (but like Columbus sailing West, no one seemed to). More than 2/3 of travel times at speeds we can presently attain… are used in acceleration or deceleration. What’s worse, is that those two phases take a vast amount of energy. Once the ship accelerates to its cruising speed (a process which would take about 20 years) that momentum must be conserved. Let’s put it this way – at 1/3 of light-speed cruise speed (theoretically possible now) accelerating and decelerating at ever star, a ship could perhaps cover 30 light years in 320 years. If it never decelerated, but dropped modules at each passing star, which did slow down, then a 100 light years becomes plausible. There are a lot of stars within 100 light years of Earth. Think of the ship as a train, dropping off the last carriage to slow down at each passing star. And that of course is the second feature: the humans no longer colonise planets. They don’t even care if there are planets. They colonise space. There is a habitable zone – and all the materials you would need – around nearly every star. It’s an idea that has been suggested for our solar system, just not for interstellar colonisation. To the best of my knowledge neither solution has been suggested anywhere else in sf. It does mean, that as an ecologist I can heartily support space colonisation. It will increase the variation of life in an area that supports none. The third issue of course is that bio-viability. Dyson spheres – the space habitat I suggest, are old hat. They’re big hollow bubbles with spin to provide pseudo-gravity on the inner wall by centripetal force. Which makes sense to an engineer, or a physicist… but not to biologist or a chemist. A biologist will tell you that the viability of a habitat is determined by size… multiplied by complexity—or in other words, by surface area. A chemist will tell you that almost all reactions are affected by… surface area. Your lungs only work, because, although they fit in your chest, their surface area is about that of a tennis court. So the insides of our space habitats are very complex spiral layers, making the surface area vast. Big and complex is far more stable, and these have another advantage. Like islands (but in space) they are largely isolated, but can draw from a resource pool, and act as reservoirs for each other. It’s good science, and it’s different, and, oddly, could work.
So then I introduced some more elements to it. Who colonises? Yes, it’s usually your refugees, your outcasts, your ne’er-do-wells, your convicts, your poor, your adventurers, your odd sects. The scaff and the raff? Maybe. Or are they something human society needs? Each of the habitats has a different set of migrants in it, off on a one-way, isolated multi-generational trip, which, especially viewed through alien eyes, is an interesting environment for social satire. Into this I added the reverse of Rendesvoux with Rama. I had an alien species, like but unlike us, meet the ship 300 years out from Earth. The aliens –who are principal point of view characters–provide an unusual outsider’s view of humans, and the weirdness that is our heterosexual species and the mores derived from this. They are de facto unisexual, starting as smaller mobile, risk-taking males, and, when they reach a certain size becoming near sessile, very conservative and territorial females (an arrangement that makes good biological sense, but is wholly unlike ours). Basically the hero is a bisexual male who comes from a matriarchal society.
And then, to finish putting my money where my big mouth is, I went along with one of my objections to the PC tokenism in science fiction. I took as his co-hero and companion, and later friend, the character who is NEVER allowed to be hero. Howard is one of the Bretheren – a fundamentalist Christian sect somewhere between the Quakers and the Amish, who practice traditional agriculture and, yes, are ‘white’.
So, yes, just a slight twist on the usual.
Q: You indulge in what others might call Danger Sports, like rock climbing and scuba diving. You once told me that we writers have very little control over our books. We can write a wonderful book and then we send it off. Even if a publisher publishes it, we have no control over the cover, distribution or how long the book stays on the shop shelves and that taking part in dangerous sports was your way of achieving something you did have control over. With the changes happening in publishing (See Dave’s post on the Mad Genius Club blog), do you feel now that you have more options? And would you go down the self publishing route?
Yes, and am doing so. As all of us who have been through the proposal route of selling books know, it’s a very damaging process—you build hard and then have drop a book you are now deeply involved in. And then pick it up again, often midway through an unrelated book. You also shape proposals around your agent and the target – which is a publishing house, not the important target, the reader. It’s not good for writers, and it’s not good for readers. It’s convenient for publishers. I keep saying to O’Mike (my agent, Mike Kabongo) that I’ve written my last proposal. And he talks another out of me. But I am determined to stop. A few publishers have various rights of first refusal, but I am rapidly approaching take it now or I will continue writing it.
Q: You’ve collaborated with Eric Flint and Mercedes Lackey. Writing is a very individual experiences and you are a very individual individual. How did the collaborations work specifically?
I write a first draft – sometimes only sketching scenes I want Eric or Misty to write. Eric does a structural edit, positing add-in chapters and scenes (there are few cuts) We divide the new scenes up, do a round robin edit, and submit. Collaborations take a degree of tolerance and egalitarianism from all parties. If that exists, they can work. If one person is inflexible, they don’t.
Q: I discovered the Witches of Karres books by James H Schmitz over thirty years ago and loved them. Now you’ve continued the series with Sorceress of Karres. Was it daunting knowing that you were writing in a much loved world using much loved characters?
I absolutely hated the idea. I knew I wasn’t good enough or able to write like Schmitz. I got talked into it by Eric.
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?
Sigh. As individuals there are female writers whose natural voice is rather like Robert A. Heinlein. There are male writers whose work shows derivation from Ursula Le Guin. I think you really, really, really need to judge a writer’s without the spectacles of a pre-conceived bias. My childhood assumption that Sprague was female and Andre was male, didn’t stop me loving both, and suggests that at base level readers don’t actually care, if the story is good for them. There may be gender differences in what is typically good for an average reader, but once again we wander onto generalizations to which there are many exceptions. It’s important to emphasize that. Prejudgment is for fools.
What I do think (sadly) that we see is peer group conformity pressure, both in male and female authors. It’s peer pressure, remember, that allows female genital mutilation to continue, often at the hands of older women. And it’s not confined to some uneducated Somalis. It exists still everywhere, and needs to be fought at all levels of society. I admit to feeling strongly about this, because of my mum. Look, there was never any woman less in need of ‘liberating’ – she was terrifyingly capable, and never let gender (or size–she was tiny) stop her doing anything she wanted to try–from driving 10 ton trucks (pre-synchromesh and pre-power steering) to carpentry. But she did. Once. She went off to university, the first woman of the family to ever do so, supposedly to train at a profession respectable for women: teaching junior school. As her mother (widowed) had no idea what courses she had to do, mum managed to take subjects that were ‘inappropriate’–Chemistry and Geology–in her first year, as the only female student. Unfortunately her second year required a narrowing of subjects. She broached the idea to her mother of… not teaching. Her mother simply said “no”. The head of the Geology Department actually came to call, to beg my grandmother to let his best student continue. She would have been the first female geologist in South Africa, which would have suited her as a profession down to the ground, and below it. And my grandmother, silly old bat, (I’ve never forgiven her for this) said ‘no, it was not a suitable profession for a woman.’
So: No. There is a difference in how individuals write. We do not write to group orders. Or at least we don’t have to.
Q: Following on from that, does the gender of the writer change your expectations when you pick up their book?
Good grief no. I’ve wised up enough to know that you do not write by sitting on the keyboard, so genitalia probably don’t matter. (Although the cover might change my expectations. Bare-chested males do for me what clinging big-boobed bimbos in bikinis do for the average feminist. When am I going to hear: “who put the Bimb-he on the cover of my book?”)? Don’t ever judge a book by its author’s gender. Yes, there are those written by people trying for female roles in Emily Bronte novels, but there are a few wet-lettuce males in that category too. Yes, there are female fantasy authors with far too much in the way of soft furnishings, fashions and angst for my taste. A few seconds of dispassionate assessment should tell you if you want to read it or not. While one is advised not to judge a book by its cover, publishers do use ‘types’ of cover to point readers in the right direction. If you want equal consideration, don’t show me a bare male torso!
There is gender bias, of course. And it’s as dumb as rocks. But I think we need to take great care not to assume it is ALL gender bias. I’m going to be politically incorrect as usual but I suspect at least some of ‘I’m a victim of gender bias’ is rather reminiscent of Lenny Henry’s satirical ‘It’s ‘cause I’m black, Innit?’
I, for example, battle to read an award winning vastly popular male writer. He reads like exactly what his background is: a cubicle dwelling desk-jockey in the computer arena. Which means to many readers, his books have appeal, because this is their experience too. Unfortunately for me, as something of an outdoors nutter, I kept hitting parts of his books (the quasi-fantasy ones) where I wanted to mutter ‘write about something you know about.’ I assume no one is saying I ought to love his books, and I am discriminating because they’re not really my thing, any more than mine would be his? There are quite a few other male authors I feel the same way about. Now, this is NOT something I feel when reading Lois Bujold, or Elizabeth Moon, or Courtney Schafer, or Stina Leicht . When you tell me men are not reading their books because they’re written by women, I’ll tell any male who makes such a statement what an idiot he is. However, I can think of two female ‘high’ fantasy (quasi-medieval set) authors whose work I also avoid with great care, because their experience of the rufty-tufty amenity-less world which makes for realistic medieval type settings… stems from a life experience of working in HR or the like, in a big city. And it shows (some people manage to make it not show). Just as in the case of the computer geek, this is the sum of life experience of a lot of their readers and I am sure they’re loved, but not by me.
Let’s be realistic about our society: the statistical probabilities are that more men than women are going hit their description of walking through the forest and TBAR the book saying ‘what a load of fetid dingo’s kidneys.’ And yes, I have heard both of these women complain about gender bias in their reviews and readership. I’ve never known quite how to tactfully say: ‘actually, it’s NOT because you’re a woman. It’s because a horse is not a car, and you’ve never walked a hundred yards through bush, and it shows.’ What do you think they’d choose to believe if I said that?
We need to make sure that when we’re talking about gender bias, that we’re talking about irrational stupidity, not just “I don’t like your writing”. Because yes, men do not have the monopoly on fantasy that I think sucks. That’s equality: you too can show extreme suckitude.
Q: And here’s the fun question. If you could book a trip on a time machine, where and when would you go, and why?
The future—which is a vast exciting and exciting country–in which we may yet deal with the ills of the human condition. Sorry, the past was worse for nearly everyone. If I could go on holiday in the past I would come to my beautiful island before any humans did. I’m still a zoologist at heart, sometimes. If I had to move into the past, please, not before antibiotics and snake-bite serum. I’d have lost my wife, my children and my own life, without them.
David has a copy of Dagon’s Ring, a Much Fall of Blood, and a copy of The Sorceress of Karres to give-away. Here’s the question:
What sort of Dragon is Taboo?
Catch up with Dave on Facebook.
Catch up with Dave on Twitter. @davefreersf
Or at Dave Freer.com
I’ve been playing around with the covers of my books creating bookplates. The ones I did for King Rolen’s Kin have been really popular and I’ve gone through almost 2000 bookplates. Some I signed and sent to my publisher in the UK, others I signed on the spot at Supanovas around Australia. Here’s the King Rolen’s Kin bookplate.
And since The Outcast Chronicles will be coming out next year, I’ve created bookplates for them as well. Honestly, the covers Clint did were so gorgeous that I couldn’t resist, I had to do 3 bookplates!
I couldn’t forget my paranormal-crime book that’s coming out from ClanDestine Press in March next year. Here’s the bookplate for Price of Fame.
They should all the be printed in for Supanova in Brisbane Nov 4-6th. I’ll have my new bookmarks as well.
No excuse, just wanted to show off my pretties!
Filed under Covers, creativity, Fantasy books, Fun Stuff, Genre, Inspiring Art, Paranormal_Crime, Resonance
