Tag Archives: creativity

September 17, 2011 · 9:15 am

Meet Kate Elliot …

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.

24 Comments

Filed under Book Giveaway, Characterisation, Collaboration, Covers, creativity, Fantasy books, Female Fantasy Authors, Gender Issues, Publishing Industry, Readers, SF Books, Steampunk

Tagged as , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

September 13, 2011 · 9:37 am

Gender, that Elephant in the Room

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.

9 Comments

Filed under Characterisation, creativity, Fantasy books, Female Fantasy Authors, Gender Issues, Genre, Readers, Writing craft

Tagged as , , , , , , , , ,

July 13, 2011 · 8:55 am

Meet Kim Westwood …

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

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

 

Q: I notice that you were ‘a weedy, asthmatic kid who devoured books like dinner.’ Kate Forsyth had a speech impediment and lost herself in books. I was a fat kid who no one would play with, so I lost myself in books. Do you think this ability to be totally immersed in an invented world, then go on to create invented worlds of our own arises from loneliness in childhood?

I’d lay bets on it.

Q: You’ve lived rough, close to the land: ‘For a while I lived on a farm by a river where I learnt to crutch sheep with hand shears, raise poddy calves and hypnotize chooks.’ Does this inspire your writing?

Yes. It’s the things that live at the bottom of the garden of my psyche that I inevitably plunder in my fiction.

Q: I see you did a Bachelor of Music. My daughter did a BA at the Con in Jazz voice. By the time she finished she’d lost her love of music (fortunately, it came back). Have you gone back to music? Are you one of these writers who create a play-list for your current work-in-progress and use it to get into the right frame of mind?

I won’t ever go back to playing classical music. It’s not that I don’t love it; it’s that I’ve loved it too much. The pressure of performance and desire for perfection nearly killed me. I don’t tend to write with music, but I am one of those people who play music REALLY loud in their car. Bach, Gesualdo, Pärt, Snow Patrol, Lamb, Adele: all loud.

Q: You wrote a theatre pieces for ‘dancer, light and shadow’. My uncle danced with QLD Ballet Theatre. Did you have a background in dance? Was that what drew you to write this piece? Do you have a recording of it or has it been lost in time?

My background was in gymnastics and physical theatre, so you could say I was used to choreographing movement. The aesthetic of dance fitted the vision I had for The City of Midnight: a numinous space where sound and solo performer folded in and out of light and dark. And yes, it’s recorded for posterity…just not on YouTube.

Q: Your short stories have been well received, with an Aurealis win and several final listings, as well as Stella’s Transformation appearing in Year’s Best Fantasy 2005 and several stories appearing in Australia’s Year’s Best SF and Fantasy. Just as some stories have a natural length do you think some writers have a length that suits them best?

Before The Daughters of Moab, I didn’t know whether I could write to novel length—I thought I was more suited to haiku. But the story led the way. Now, whenever I return to writing short fiction, I’m reminded of how much I enjoy the challenge of a compact story arc. I like creating a world that fits perfectly in a teacup.

Q: Your first book The Daughters of Moab was forged in the fires of Varuna Writers Retreat. But seriously, you did work on it at the writers retreat. Can you tell us a little about this experience? I’ve always thought it was be heaven.

The Varuna Retreat Fellowship struck the perfect balance for me: the solitude and calm of writing all day (and yes, I did!) followed by the companionship and sociability of other writers in the evening. This suited me better than the routine of ClarionSouth, which I went to in 2004. The Clarionettes, as I like to call them, would be the first to tell you that I was uncomfortable group critiquing early-stage and unfinished stories. For me, letting a story out into the world before it’s ready tends to oxidise and spoil it like a piece of fruit.

Q: There seems to be a playing with gender in The Daughters of Moab, is this something you like to explore?

Yes, there is. And yes, I do.

Q: Your next book The Courier’s New Bicycle is due out in 2011. Is it also a ‘poetic apocalyptic’ book?

Upfront, I should say that The Courier’s New Bicycle is neither fantasy nor apocalyptic—even the poetic has been swapped for pacy. This is a very fast ride compared to The Daughters of Moab. Salisbury Forth is a courier of contraband in an atmospheric but ailing Melbourne at a time of major socio-political change. The first review (Australian Bookseller & Publisher, July) described it as “a disturbingly credible and darkly noir post-cyberpunk tale.” That makes me happy!

Q: I read your description of how the short story Nightship came to be, and found it riveting. When will we see the book?

It’s in gestation. Think an elephant’s gestation.

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

The UK/US perception is news to me, but being in a club is not what makes a writer special. An individual’s prose style is moulded by such a complex array of things, one of which may or may not be their experience of maleness and/or femaleness. In other words, I don’t want to help reify that rather spurious divide.

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

No. The gender of the writer is an irrelevancy to me. Their imagination—and what they do with it—is all that matters.

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

I’d go back to Britain at the time of the Picts, who painted themselves with woad. Love that blue.

Give-away Question:

Imagine a parcel that you are posting today to receive in ten years’ time. What would you put in it?

 

For a podcast of Nightship see here (skim down).

 

 

10 Comments

Filed under Australian Writers, Book Giveaway, creativity, Dark Urban Fantasy, Fantasy books, Female Fantasy Authors, Writers Working Across Mediums, Writing craft

Tagged as , , , , , , ,

July 6, 2011 · 11:02 am

Meet Pamela Freeman …

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

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

 

Q: You say you became a children’s writer while working as a scriptwriter for ABC TV. What were you working on at the ABC? Was it a children’s show? Do you miss scriptwriting?

I was working as a researcher and scriptwriter for the Children’s and Education Department.  I worked on a lot of shows – Powerhouse, Living in the Law, Watch! Your Language, For the Juniors, Swap Shop.  I was a reporter on Behind the News (now BTN).  I even did some research for Playschool!

The thing I miss about scriptwriting is the collegial nature of television making.  Writing is great but you do it alone.  Television is a collaboration, where everyone’s contribution makes the piece better. On the other hand, now I don’t have directors telling me to cut crucial scenes because ‘We can’t get the outside broadcast van because it’s going to the cricket’!

Q: Your children’s books have been shortlisted for the Children Book Council Book of the Year Awards, the NSW Premier’s Awards and the Koala Awards. Plus Scum of the Earth won the Environment Prize in 2004 and your fictional biography of Australian pioneer Mary McKillop won the NSW History Prize for Young People in 2006. (For a full list of Pamela’s Children’s books see here). You seem to have a mix of nonfiction, contemporary and fantasy books. Do you think the fantasy element is more readily accepted in children’s books?

Fantasy is mainstream in kids’ writing.  This is merely a return to the status quo – it’s only in the last 200 years that realistic storytelling has been privileged in Western society.  Prior to that fantasy/hero myths and comedic stories were the mainstream.

And yes, I do think it’s easier for a fantasy book to get on a literature awards list if it’s for kids.  Unless the publisher can reclassify it as ‘magical realism’ (snort).  There is a lot of snobbery about fantasy writing in particular.  Even science fiction has more credibility with the critics.

Q: Leading on from there you have three adult/grownup fantasy books published with Orbit books, The Castings Trilogy, and a new stand-alone novel, Ember and Ash. Was this a big break away from your children’s writing, or did it feel inevitable, like something you were always going to do?

It was a bit of both, really.  I write for a lot of age groups in my kids’ books – from 3-year-olds to young adult.  My approach has always been to write the story and then figure out how old the reader is likely to be.

I found I was thinking about stories where the reader was clearly not a kid, and that set me thinking about writing for adults.  My agent encouraged me and so did my husband.

Q: I see you wrote book one of The Castings Trilogy as part of your Doctorate. In what way is this different from writing on your own?

It was fantastically helpful in all sorts of ways. I was supervised by Debra Adelaide, one of our best authors and editors.  She helped me make the transition from children’s writing to writing for adults.  This was far more difficult than I had thought it would be, and I was grateful for her support and guidance – and for her pushing me when I needed it.  I’m a much better writer for having worked with her.

As well, they paid me a scholarship to write a book I would have written anyway!  I was at home with a toddler and it meant I didn’t have to go back to the consulting work I’d been doing prior to that, so it allowed me to be a full time writer for the first time.  A doctorate is a great deal for a writer!

Q: In an interview with John Marsh on Grasping for the Wind, you mention that one of the themes you explore in this trilogy is racism. This strikes a chord for me because it was the core of my Masters thesis and book. You say anger drove you and kept you interested through the 450,000 words of the trilogy. Are you still angry?

Of course I am.  Look at the difference in life expectancy between Anglo Australians and Indigenous Australians – up to 17 years less if you’re an Aboriginal man!  That’s enough to make anyone angry, and it’s merely the most obvious sign of the racism inherent in this society.  I’ll stop being angry when we have equality.

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

I think there used to be a big difference, but the differences are getting smaller.  It used to be that only women had women protagonists – but I’ve just read Dave Freer’s Dragon Rising which is beautifully balanced between a human woman and a dragon perspective.  I don’t think that’s unusual.  Charles Stross’s The Family Business series has a great woman protagonist and engages with sexism on almost every page.  As women’s and men’s lives have become more alike, I think it has freed both to write more confidently from the other’s perspective.

There are still male writers out there whose women are busty, simpering blondes, and who concentrate mostly on killing things – but there are also women writers out there whose male characters are thinly disguised wish fulfilments, and who concentrate mostly on romantic relationships!  The middle ground is where the interesting and sometimes challenging stuff is happening.

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

I’d like to say no, but I have to admit I’m probably more ready to criticise the female characters in a book which has been written by a man.  On the other hand, I’m also ready to be very critical of women writers who portray men as always cruel, stupid or insensitive.  So maybe the difference is in what I’m alert for.  Hmm.  We exercise our prejudices all the time, don’t we?  I haven’t learnt much from James Tiptree, after all.

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

1599, the Globe, the first night of Hamlet!  Because I am a total Shakespeare nut, and have seen every Hamlet production I possibly could (up to around 25 now). To see Richard Burbage, for whom the part was written, play the melancholy Dane would be fantastic!  It’s also considered likely that Shakespeare played Claudius.  (And if I could slip around to the stage door to meet Will himself….oh, be still, my beating heart!)

Give-away Question:

Ember and Ash features shapechangers.  What animal would you like to be able to turn into and why?

 

Catch up with Pamela on Facebook.

Listen to a Podcast with Pamela Freeman here.

Visit Pamels’a websites:  www.castingstrilogy.com (adults)

www.pamelafreemanbooks.com

8 Comments

Filed under Australian Writers, Book Giveaway, Children's Books, creativity, Fantasy books, Female Fantasy Authors, Genre, Writing craft

Tagged as , , , , , , , ,

June 25, 2011 · 6:37 am

Back from Sydney Supanova

This time last week I was sitting at the Dymock’s store at Supanova surrounded by wonderful costumes and fellow writers trying desperately to talk. I have my voice back, but I’m still suffering with the ‘flu. Can’t hear properly and it’s been almost a week since I flew home. Here I am with my amazing pull-up behind me. Clint Langley‘s artwork came up really well. Made people stop and take a second look

Was wonderful to catch up with Marianne de Pierres, Alison Goodman, Kate Forsyth and Jennifer Fallon. Also met up with Kevin J Anderson and Rebecca Moesta, who I’d met at the Brisbane Writers Festival a couple of years ago. It is nice to get away with fellow writers and talk shop, everything from career moves and publishing industry to writing craft. Although I didn’t do much talking. Very frustrating. Here we are all lined up for the obligatory photo with the storm troopers!

You couldn’t be bored. There were comic artists, manga artists and lots of amazing costumes. People who’d bought the KRK trilogy at other Supanovas came by to chat.

One girl told me, I bought your books in Melbourne. You said they’d keep me up all night and I thought you were just saying that, but they did. I finished all three in three days!

I wonder if she got any sleep.

The nice thing about Supanova is that when I was growing up there were hardly any TV shows with a spec fic theme, Lost in Space, I Dream of Jeanie and Bewitched spring to mind. It wasn’t until Star Wars in 1977 that the genre I loved started to become mainstream. Back in those days there was definitely a sense of them and us. We were the fans and everyone else thought we were crazy. Now, every second TV show has elements of paranormal/SF and no one thinks anything of it. So a pop culture event like Supanova can attract crowds of between 10 to 25 thousand. People turn up in costume and they feel like they fit right in.

Thinking of wearing a costume to Supanova? Here’s some inspiration.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W_VxCLbHiJM&feature=related]

Had to miss the Perth Supanova, my work load, the ‘flu and the cost made it impossible, but I’m looking forward to the more Supanovas in future. Maybe I’ll see you there.

2 Comments

Filed under Australian Writers, Comics/Graphic Novels, Conventions, Female Fantasy Authors, Fun Stuff, Genre, Inspiring Art, Nourish the Writer, Readers, The World in all its Absurdity, The Writing Fraternity

Tagged as , , , , , , , , , ,

June 11, 2011 · 1:11 am

Writing Update …

Over on the RWA blog Dark Side Downunder, I’ve been interviewed by Eleni. If you hope to write paranormal romance, this group are a great bunch, very supportive and lots of fun!

What am I doing right now? Sitting over my keyboard, writing the new KRK trilogy, while nursing a cold, wearing hobo gloves to keep warm. I have cups of hot tea and a box of tissues to help me get through the day. This is the not so glamorous side of a writer’s life.

You’ve heard the saying The Show must go on. Well, with we writers, The Book must go on!

2 Comments

Filed under creativity, Fantasy books

Tagged as , , , , , ,

May 21, 2011 · 12:05 am

Friends doing well!

Over on the ROR blog I’ve done a post about the Aurealis Awards. These are the Australian equivalent to the Nebulas or the Hugos (I forget which one is judged by a panel of peers).  Several members of my writing group are on the short list in different sections.

This is us at the Maleny ROR. Dirk, Richard, Maxine, Me, Tansy, Trent (Marianne was sick and Margo had deadlines).

Why join a writing group? Here’s why Marianne and I started ROR. I can honestly say, the RORees have been like an extended family. Publishing is a tough business. We authors write because we love it, but there are times when you just need to talk to someone else who knows where you’re coming from.

We meet every year or so to critique our works-in-progress (WIPs). Having a group of people all look over your manuscript is great. If four out of five people say X needs changing, then you can be sure it does. Our crits are never destructive, always constructive because we want our friends’ books to be the best they can possibly be. And the ROR team have had some success. (See here).

If you’ve like to start your own critique group like ROR I’ve done a couple of posts on the topic. ROR 101 and Critiquing 101.

So there we are. Kuds to to my fellow RORees for making it into the final lists of the Aurealis Awards and I’ll be keeping my fingers crossed for them on Saturday night!

Leave a Comment

Filed under Australian Writers, Awards, creativity, Fun Stuff, Genre, Mentoring, Promoting Friend's Books, Publishing Industry, The Writing Fraternity, Writing Groups

Tagged as , , , , , , , , , ,

May 14, 2011 · 1:13 pm

Book Three Cover pretties!

This is the cover of book three of my new trilogy The Outcast Chronicles. With thanks for Clint Langley the artist and Solaris, the publisher.

I think Clint has outdone himself with the covers for this trilogy. He’s captured the feel of the series – richly beautiful, with loads of  intrigue and danger!

Now I really hope the books live up to these wonderful covers.

8 Comments

Filed under Covers, creativity, Fantasy books, Fun Stuff, Genre, Inspiring Art, Resonance

Tagged as , , , , ,

May 7, 2011 · 6:45 am

More cover pretties!

After last week, when I posted the cover of book one of The Outcast Chronicles with a typo in the title, I thought I’d better check the lettering on book two. Here it is.

Can’t spot any typos myself, but then I have a background in graphic art so I tend to see design, not words. I think the cover fairies have been kind to me again. What do you think?

Thanks to Clint Langley for his great work and thanks to Solaris for using him to do the covers!

6 Comments

Filed under Covers, creativity, Fantasy books, Fun Stuff, Genre, Inspiring Art, Nourish the Writer

Tagged as , , , ,

April 19, 2011 · 10:00 pm

Meet Juliet McKenna …

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

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

Q: Wow, Juliet, looking at your list of published books takes my breath away. Tell me, do you sleep 3 hours a night?

Well, I have been doing this for a while now. My first novel, The Thief’s Gamble came out in January 1999, so I’ve written a book a year since then. I’m also lucky enough to write full time, as far as any wife and mother can do that. So I work from around 8.30 in the morning when my husband and teenage sons have left for work, college and school, until about 5 in the afternoon.

That’s writing the current book in progress along with doing fun things like this, blogging, reviewing, getting involved in conventions and other events and the much less exciting but equally necessary stuff like the accounts and other administrivia.

Q: You have five series out now with a 3 – 5 books in each series. There’s The Tales of Einarinn, The Aldabreshin Compass, The Lescari Revolution, and your news series, The Hadrumal Crisis. You have an invented world and where you have set stories in different places (and at different times?), with some characters crossing over into different series. Tell me, do you have a huge map on the wall with a flow chart of events and timelines for different families and kingdoms? How do you keep it all straight in your head?

I have a lovely big map. One of the smartest moves I ever made, in hindsight, was marrying a design engineer who trained as a draughtsman. He drew that map for me and it’s fantastic. I used to keep a card index with details of every character noted down but that got harder and harder to keep up to date at the same time as computers made searching for individual characters in the text of a book so much easier. So that’s how I keep track of the details now.

That said, preparing for this new series, I did have to go back and re-read my first nine books, making notes as I went, since I’m picking up a lot of threads from those earlier tales. I have always drawn up timelines for each book, with notes on what each character’s doing and where they are. I’m one of those writers who does a lot of planning ahead before I ever type ‘Chapter One’. Every book has its own working note book and so I can also refer back to those when whatever I’m currently writing draws on what’s happened before.

On the other hand, I work very hard to make sure that each series is a fresh start, so that readers don’t have to go all the way through my backlist for the new story to make sense. That does lighten the burden of what’s gone before for me as a writer. I only have to include essential back story, in the same way as any author creating rounded, realistic characters does with any book.

Q: Reading the information on your web site, your books come across as very down to earth stories about real people, set in a world where magic happens to be normal. Where … ‘there are developments in science and technology, philosophy and literature, quite independently of whatever it is that has wizards and princes running round in circles?’ Would describe yourself as a very grounded person, who just happens to have an imagination that won’t let her sleep?

Words that often come up when people are describing me are ‘practical’ and ‘organised’ and yes, I imagine ‘grounded’ is in there too. That said, I think what I’ve always read and enjoyed has more influence on what I write than my personal character. I’ve always loved books that feel ‘real’ and I’ve always read right across the speculative genre and on into folklore and myth and then onwards into history.

They’re all colours in the same spectrum as far as I am concerned, and how can anyone read this wonderful stuff without their own imagination catching light? I’ve made up stories for as long as I can remember. I was one of those kids who could spend a whole afternoon spinning some fantastic yarn with a couple of toy animals, some building bricks and a cardboard box.

As to the depth and breadth of the worlds I create now, knowing so much history, I really cannot be doing with fantasy worlds where nothing changes in a thousand years (unless that’s part of the point the writer is making). I think how much change my grandmother saw in her 95 years!

Q: In an interview on SFFWorld, you mention that you do aikido. (This is one of the martial arts I studied for 5 years. I found it helped me when writing fight scenes). Do you do other martial arts and did you find that they help you give verisimilitude to your fight scenes?

I have nearly thirty years of aikido under my (black) belt now, including sword and staff fighting techniques, and yes, that’s a fantastic help when I’m writing fight scenes. I don’t do any other martial arts but I do swap notes with those studying other disciplines. Shotokan Karate blackbelt and author John Meaney and I did a hands-on panel on fight scenes at a recent convention and that was a fascinating exercise in compare and contrast.

I also did some Live Action Role Playing as a student and that’s also very useful. Table top gaming just isn’t the same. Get out in some woods at night for real and you really won’t have a clue what cunning plan the wizard ten feet behind you is hatching when all you’re looking at is the orc who’s trying to cut your head off!

That said, as an author, I have to be aware of readers’ expectations, particularly the way those have been shaped by what they see on film and TV, where fights are long, drawn-out, full of ups and downs, will our hero win or won’t he? Whereas real fights, when at least one person knows what they’re doing, tend to be very short and to the point. Also, when you’re watching a fight, it’s clear who’s doing what. Describing a fight so the reader can visualize it can be tricky. So, as with any other aspect of writing, crafting a fight scene that’s both realistic and rewarding for the reader is a challenge. But hey, if it was easy, it wouldn’t be nearly so much fun.

Q: You are one of the founding members of The Write Fantastic , (TWF), an organisation established in 2004 to promote the fantasy genre. On your TWF site, you say: ‘Nowadays  … Bestsellers thrive, while writers seen as ‘mid-list’, and those in genre fiction, suffer. Browsing used to be the route by which such authors picked up new readers. But now people popping into a bookshop ‘for something to read’ get no further than the 3 for 2 deals. So authors face a choice between grousing into their beer or looking for alternate ways to contact potential readers and bring them in past the discount tables and the bestseller charts.’ Do you think TWF has helped fantasy writers connect with new readers?

Definitely. The feedback we get tells us that time and again. The publishing world, from that first idea in your head to the finished book on the shelf in the shop, has changed enormously in the past ten years. What hasn’t changed, and what never seems to change though, is what really sells books is word of mouth recommendation.

Readers are always eager to hear about new books and these days, there are so many books that it can be a challenge to keep up to date with the new voices, never mind hearing about other people’s established favourites which you might not have tried. Hearing writers talk, about what they’re writing and what they’re reading is always a good way to find out if something’s likely to be on your particular wavelength.

Q: I see that TWF has successfully applied for grants. I’m thinking that is what my ROR group should do. One of the things that holds us back here in Australia is that the literary festivals expect to be contacted by the publishers who want to promote their authors. If an author contacts a literary festival, more often than not, they ignore the author. I’m guessing you haven’t had this problem in the UK?

Well, we have had success in the past… That kind of grant money dried up a few years ago. Then last year, as soon as the current government was elected here in the UK, the library funding for author visits was drastically cut back, so we lost a lot of those events. This year, so far, I’m hearing of literary festivals being cancelled or put on hiatus, so we’re looking at alternatives for TWF gigs, not least running a day event or two ourselves.

Literary festivals vary enormously. The really big ones, sponsored by our national newspapers, certainly aren’t much interested in dealing with anyone outside the best-seller lists, whose publisher will be paying to promote them, and where the author is expected to turn up and do their thing and be grateful for ‘the prestige’. It’s actually the smaller, more local events that are open to approaches from groups like TWF and will often work harder to pay writers for their time.

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

This idea that fantasy is for men, written by men, does persist and it baffles me for several reasons. I mean, don’t people look at the shelves? There are so many women writing superb fantasy these days, in the UK, the US and elsewhere. Perhaps it’s another knock-on effect of those front-of-store promotions. The mega-sellers of late have been written by men and so they have much greater visibility, certainly for people who don’t know much about our genre. I’m not sure what we women can do beyond write the best books we can and hope they reach that readership tipping point to get us to the front of the bookstore. But of course, we are already writing the best books we can…

Do we write differently to the men? That’s hard to say. I’m sure for any generalisation that I might make, someone will be able to point to a book where that simply doesn’t apply. For instance if I said, women writers focus more on the emotional responses of female characters with a higher profile overall within the story. Or if I said, male writers get far more down and dirty with the vicious and brutal.

I really do think it’s a problem of perception rather than reality and we all need to challenge it if it’s ever going to change.

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

No, it really doesn’t. What grabs me is the back cover copy and then the first page. It’s all about the story and the characters for me.

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

Ancient Rome, in the last days of the Republic. I studied this period at university and actually being there, seeing what really happened would be fantastic. Of course, I would need some kind of access all areas pass or Doctor Who’s psychic paper so I didn’t just end up wandering round the Forum. Though that would be pretty cool as well.

Or… a hundred years into the future, where I would want to spend a week just soaking up the atmosphere, the news media, the day to day life, to see how far we had come as humanity, and what hadn’t really changed, for better or for worse.

Find Juliet’s blog here.

For a video interview of Juliet McKenna see here.

Hear the Ghost in the Machine Podcast with Juliet McKenna.

Juliet on Facebook 

Juliet is happy to give away a copy of one of her books, depending on which one you need to fill the gap in your collection. Here’s the give-away question:

Every fantasy fan I know is waiting breathlessly for HBO’s adaptation of George RR Martin’s A Game of Thrones – even those who haven’t read the books. Which fantasy book/world would you like to see turned into a television series and why?

 

19 Comments

Filed under Book Giveaway, creativity, Fantasy books, Female Fantasy Authors, Genre, Promoting Friend's Books, Story Arc, Writing craft

Tagged as , , , , , , , , , , , ,