Tag Archives: Writing craft

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!

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May 11, 2011 · 7:06 am

Meet Jennifer Fallon …

As the next of my series featuring fantastic female fantasy authors (see disclaimer) I’ve invited the best selling, multi-talented and amazingly prolific Jennifer Fallon to drop by.

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

Q: The Undivided is the first book of your new series, Rift Runners. Can you tell us a little about this series?

It’s set across alternate realities and involves psychically linked twins separated went there were toddlers. One world is similar to ours, the other is a world where magic permeates everything and the druids rule the world.

I am having an illegal amount of fun writing it.

Q: I see Voyager, Harper Collins are releasing your Second Sons series with new covers. This must be exciting. Did you have any say in the covers?

I had quite a bit of say, actually. I’m very pleased with the result.

Q: When I look at the volume of work you’ve produced in the fantasy genre, (as well as the Rift Runners and the Second Sons series, there is the Demon Child, the Tide Lords and the Hythrun Chronicles), I’m impressed by your productivity. Do you find yourself exploring similar themes in the different series, or do you explore completely new concepts?

I like to explore new themes with every series. Some lend themselves better than others to particular themes, so that sometimes influences the type of world I build.

Q: I remember when we were doing our Masters together you were saying that if someone is immortal, then they are immortal and they can’t die, otherwise they aren’t immortal. You had one character who was an Immortal Virgin, (her hymen kept growing back). LOL. Are you ever tempted to write satire?

To be fair, it was Valerie Parv who suggested that, and I thought it was an awesome complication so I ran with it. I’d love to write satire, but I fear I wouldn’t do it well enough to warrant it. There are much better satirists out there than me. I believe I am descended from an Irish satirist, however, who was executed in the 18th century for saying rude things about the English.

Q: I see your best selling fantasy books have been shortlisted for the Aurealis Awards, the David Gemmell Legends of Fantasy Award and the Romantic Times Best Fantasy award. That must have been a real buzz. Do you think these awards help bring your books to the attention of new readers?

Here’s my thing about awards – who won the World Fantasy Award last year? The Aurealis in 2005? I bet you can’t say.

Do I think they’re useful? Maybe. They are certainly a boost to the ego, but in my experience, getting your books in the shops in large displays by the door is more useful than an award, when it comes to expanding your reading base, unless winning the award makes the booksellers buy more of them, and put the large display bin out the front.

Q: You also write for Stargate. Does this mean you are a dedicated Stargate Fan? I’m sure people would be interested to hear how you started writing for Stargate and a little about the process.

To be fair, I co-wrote one tie-in novel. I’m not sure if I can claim the moniker “writes for Stargate”. I am a fan, which was why I was asked, and the process involved my co-author sending me the manuscript, me changing all the things I didn’t like, adding the snappy dialogue, and it going back and her changing the changes I made. I believe most of the snappy dialogue survived.

I was an interesting project, though and I have now written a Zorro story for Moonstone, too, which was fun. I do find tie-ins to be quite limiting, because you are playing in someone else’s sand pit and you can’t always build the sandcastles you’d like.

Q: In the last couple of years you’ve moved to New Zealand’s South Island and renovated the historic Reynox House, which you’ve established as a residential writers’ retreat. (Honestly, running away to write sounds heavenly to me).  Is this a dream you’ve always had, to run a writers’ retreat?

I’m not sure I’ve always had it, but certainly for the past few years I’ve wanted to do it. It has all come to a grinding halt at present because of the Christchurch earthquakes. The house sustained some damage in the first quake and the repair bills have been quoted as ranging from $375K to $3m. We are currently at the mercy of insurance assessors and quantity surveyors. Last I heard we were 65th on the insurance company’s priority list and it’s taking them months to settle each claim. Do the math…

 Q: I see you have also started a mentorship program. How do you get the time to do all this?

I limit the number of mentorees so that I don’t have more than I can handle at any one time. Right now, because I am working to a very tight deadline, I don’t have any. I should be picking up the program again in a couple of months.

Q: I was prompted to start this series of interviews because there is 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?

More swear words?

To be honest, I’m not sure. I think female writers tend to be a little more character driven, but there are great male character-driven fantasies out there too. I think it’s up to the individual writers. Remember, there’s a large number of people out there who don’t realise Robin Hobb is a woman, so I guess, in many cases, if the reader doesn’t know the gender of the writer, they can’t necessarily pick it, so I’d have to so no.

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

Not at 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?


I’d go to the past, just before I was first published and change my name from Jennifer Fallon to John Fallon. Then all the boys out there who assume that all female fantasy writers write soppy romance fantasies would pick up my books and read them and I’d be much, much richer.

Jennifer will give-away a copy of her new book Undivided. Here’s the question: One of Jen’s series revovles around a number of immortals. How would you kill an immortal?

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May 3, 2011 · 9:32 pm

Meet Karen Miller …

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

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

Q: I see you also write as KE Mills and are writing the Rogue Agent series under this name. Why would you write fantasy under two different names?

As Karen Miller,  I write epic/historical fantasy, in self-contained story arcs covering a finite number of ‘acts’ – so I’m telling the story across 2, 3 or soon 5 volumes. The historical influences I draw upon for these books range from ancient Mesopotamia right through to Rennaisance Europe. On the other hand, the Rogue Agent books are part of an open ended series, in which continuing characters have stand alone adventures – even though there are some story elements that carry through more than one book. Also, the historical influence is late Victorian/early Edwardian England. That means there is a distinctly different flavour/atmosphere between the kinds of fantasy I’m writing, so Voyager thought it would be a good idea to differentiate them.

Q: You write for Stargate. Are you a big fan? Was it a real buzz to get the chance to write these books? How did it come about?

I have indeed written media tie in books for the Stargate SG1 universe. I’m a fan of the show, and always will be – especially of the first 6 seasons. I had the best fun writing Alliances and Do No Harm! It’s such a privilege, being given the chance to play in a storytelling sandbox built by someone else, that’s given me enormous pleasure over the years. I got the chance because the people at Fandemonium, who have the Stargate tie in rights, read my Stargate SG1 fanfic (the Medical Considerations series) and thought I’d be a good fit. MGM were fine with it, and so I was paid the enormous compliment of being given the nod to write the books.

Q: Another fan-girl moment. You have also written a Star Wars book, The Clone Wars: Wild Space. How did you get the chance to write for Star Wars?

I’ve actually done 3 Star Wars novels – Wild Space, and then the two-part Clone Wars Gambit story, Stealth and Siege. Again, what an enormous privilege. I fell in love with Star Wars back in 1977, sitting in Hoyts cinema on George Street, watching the star destroyer roar over our heads. It sounds crazy, but the experience really did change my life. So many things have happened to me because of that film, and I will forever be in George Lucas’s debt. Probably I wouldn’t have the writing career I have now without him. Anyhow, I knew there were professionally published Star Wars novels, and I knew you had to be a professional writer to be considered. Once The Innocent Mage was published, I contacted the Star Wars editor at Del Rey and expressed an interest in writing for them, if ever they needed a new author. We had a lovely conversation but nothing came of it, so I just shrugged and got on my with my own original fiction. Then a couple of years later they  asked if I’d be interested in tag team writing some novels set in the Clone Wars. I’d been recommended by hugely popular Star Wars writer Karen Traviss, to whom I owe so very much. It took me about 2 seconds to say yes. *g* And that’s how I got one of the best gigs in the world of speculative fiction.

Q: You wrote the Kingmaker, Kingbreaker series, the Godspeaker series, as well as the Stargate books, the Star Wars book and the K E Mills books. When do you sleep? No, seriously, what’s your writing day schedule and how do you finish so many books?

In short, I put the rest of my life on hold to focus on pretty much nothing but the work. Looking back on the past 5 years, I consider that I’ve been serving my apprenticeship. In writing so much, in so many different worlds, I feel like I’ve been taking a crash course in storytelling. As a result, I think I’ve widened my skill set and honed my craft. Now, as I face the biggest challenge so far in my career, a huge 5 books historical/epic fantasy series, I feel slightly better equipped to get stuck in. There’s so much competition in the world of speculative fiction literature, I think it’s easy to get lost in the crowd when you’re starting out. So I made the conscious decision to write as much as I could, as well as I could, and establish myself as a presence on the book shelf. As I say, it meant putting most of the rest of my life on hold but for me, the choice was absolutely worth it. Now I can ease off the pressure a bit, and really focus on telling this new story as well as I possibly can.

Q: Your books have been finalists in the Aurealis Awards fantasy section three times, plus two of your books have been honoured in the James Tiptree Jr Award. That must have been a real buzz. Did attention from the James Tiptree Jr Award come as a surprise, since you write epic fantasy?

The Tiptree honour was a huge shock, because I had no idea the books had been entered! Sneaky Voyager.  It was an enormous compliment. All my short listings have been. With the Tiptree, with its focus on female characters in the genre, it was particularly pleasing. I love epic fantasy, but a lot of it is written from the male pov, with a male audience in mind, so it’s been fun to shake that up a bit and show that there can be epic fantasy showcasing the strengths of great women, too.

Q: I see you’ve signed a new deal with Orbit for a 5 book deal to write an epic fantasy saga called The Tarnished Crown Quintet. (Congratulations!)Will this be under Karen Miller of KE Mills?

Thanks! This is a Miller adventure. Hugely exciting, and even more terrifying. Biggest challenge of my life so far. Fingers crossed I’m up for it!

Q: I see you like to listen to music while you write. Do you make up a play-list for each series to get you in the right mood? If so, what’s you current play-list?

I don’t do play lists, as such, I just whack the cds into the player. I go by composers … Bear McCreary, Hans Zimmer, John Williams, James Horner, Alan Silvestri … anyone who writes powerfully emotional music that helps me access my own creative emotionality.

Q: You worked with horses when you lived in England and you used to breed, train and judge horses here in Australia, but have stopped now. Do you find your practical knowledge of horses really useful for writing fantasy?

I think so. Given that epic/historical fantasy is generally set in a time frame where horses are ubiquitous, it helps to have a feel for them, I think, as well as some basic understanding of the facts. Plus you can get some good plot points out of the whole horse business.

Q: You are involved in the Castle Hill Players, a local community theatre group. (I belonged to a children’s theatre group and loved it. I really do know what greasepaint smells like!). Do you find that performing on stage gives you a unique perspective for writing fantasy minstrels?

There’s certainly that aspect. Also, I find that writing is like being an actor in a one-woman show. I have to become all these different people as I’m writing them, so the experience of acting and directing really helps me get into their skins and bring them to life.

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

I think there’s a difference between the way men and write, full stop. Men and women experience the same world very differently, for many many reasons, and I think those differences are inevitably reflected in our writing. In terms of the ‘boy’s club’ question, well, I think that’s more a case of the readership and the gatekeepers of the readership. When you’re talking urban fantasy, that’s a sub genre that’s dominated by the female voice. In many ways, UF is women’s answer to noir fiction. To me, at heart it’s about female empowerment – or at least, it seems to me that’s how it’s evolved. And then you’ve got the paranormal romance sub genre, which again is dominated by women’s voices. That has to be inevitable, I think, given that romance is pretty much a female genre, though there are men who read and enjoy romance fiction.

Then you’ve got the question of epic/historical fantasy. Until recently it’s been the default standard for fantasy fiction, and it arises directly out of the Tolkien school of literature, and the Dungeons and Dragons culture – both of which are traditionally male-centric. As a result, this (now sub) genre is traditionally male oriented. The biggest names writing it are male, and the loudest voices discussing it are male, and the writers getting the lion’s share of the spotlight are male. So yes, as a female writer, sometimes it does feel as though women epic fantasy novelists aren’t accorded the same amount of oxygen in the conversation. I look at the achievements of a writer like Kate Elliott, whose Crown of Stars series is easily as complicated and challenging and epic as Martin’s work, and she is not anywhere near as visible. I find that difficult to sit with. However, I’ll note that my publisher, Orbit, is a brilliant champion of women writing epic fantasy. From what I can see, the resistance tends to come from the gatekeepers of the epic fantasy sub genre. They’re predominantly male, and they consistently focus on male writers, and that means the women writing epic/historical fantasy often get short-changed. And when you get male reviewers openly disparaging female writers in high profile genre magazines, well, that doesn’t make the situation any easier.

Having said all that, though, I think it must also be said that many of the traditional elements associated with epic/historical fantasy are elements that don’t traditionally appeal to women, either as writers or readers. But that doesn’t mean that no women are interested in them, or that women aren’t capable of writing them with the same flair and authenticity as men. What’s happening, I think, is that some people are falling victim to gender biases and assumptions, which is unfortunate.

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

I wish I could say no, but I think it does, to an extent. Epic fantasy written by men tends – and I say tends, it’s not a universal truth – to be heavier on action than emotion. Often there’s no romantic element to the storytelling and certainly a de-emphasis on female characters.  For whatever reasons, those are elements that I really want to see in the books I read. Patrick Rothfuss said on a panel recently that he’s encountered a lot of resistance to the notion of romance in fantasy. I think that’s sad, because I don’t believe for a moment that men don’t want and need love in their lives as much as any woman. And if there is a percentage of men who find romance in epic fantasy confronting, well, that’s no reason to eliminate it  – and by extension, women – from this sub genre of speculative fiction. Absolutely there is an important place for the male-centric story, the male bonding story, all that stuff. It’s as vital as the female empowerment of urban fantasy. But it shouldn’t exist at the expense of epic fantasy that presents are more gender-equal view of the world, where men and women fight the good fight side by side, sometimes falling in love along the way.

By the same token, if I pick up a fantasy novel written by a woman, I generally expect a softer, more emotion/character driven story. Often the focus isn’t on the miltary aspect of epic fantasy. But that doesn’t mean it’s all women can write, and it doesn’t mean that men can’t incorporate these more ‘feminine’ traits into their fiction with huge success. At the end of the day, we are all human beings who live and love and grieve and celebrate – and I think our stories should reflect that.

Ronald D Moore, the showrunner of the rejigged Battlestar Galactica, talks a lot about this on his dvd commentaries. He makes the point over and over that given the choice between losing a scene that’s all SFX and shoot’em up, and a scene that explores/reveals character, with emotion, he’ll lose the action sequence every time. To him, character is at the heart of storytelling. I’m rowing in his boat. That’s what I aim for in my writing, what I look for when enjoying someone else’s story, and what I think makes for the best story experience.

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 Elizabethan England, to the court of Elizabeth, so I could see her in person.

Karen has a copy of her latest book A Blight of Mages to give-away. Here’s Give-away Question: Would you rather live in the Stargate Universe or the StarWars Universe?

 

See Karen’s LJBlog.

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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?

 

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April 15, 2011 · 11:59 am

For all those Aspiring Writers I met at Supanova

One of the things I was asked most often by aspiring writers at the last two Supanovas was how to find out about writing groups. Here is a link through to a ROR post I did on Writing Groups.

And while I’m at it, I promised the Gorgeous Goth Girl to do a post on the Writing Process. Here it is.

And remember, as they say in Galaxy Quest, Never Give Up, Never Surrender!

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March 16, 2011 · 7:13 am

Meet Tansy Rayner Roberts

As the next of my series featuring fantastic female fantasy authors (see disclaimer) I’ve invited the sweet but sharp Tansy Rayner Roberts to drop by.

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

Q: Your story  Siren Beat published by Twelfth Planet Press won the Washington Association Small Press Short Fiction Award. This must have come as a delightful surprise. Can you tell us a little about Siren Beat, and Twelfth Planet Press which has taken the unusual step of publishing back-to-back novellas?

The win was absolutely wonderful and completely out of the blue.  I’m only sorry I wasn’t able to collect the prize in person.  Siren Beat came from me wanting to create an urban fantasy which wasn’t just Australian in tone but uniquely Tasmanian.  We have a very different landscape in Hobart to anywhere else in the country, and I wanted to steer away from more common monsters from the genre such as vampires and werewolves.  Which is how I ended up with my guardian, Nancy Napoleon, whose job it is to guard her city against creatures from water mythology.  It occurred to me that, in a world where each culture’s unique myths and legends were real, the ocean itself would be one hell of a chaotic melting pot.  Siren Beat was the first Nancy adventure, and I’m going to be continuing her story in novel form.

As for Twelfth Planet Press, they picked up my story (which was orphaned from an anthology that didn’t come to pass) and paired it with a fantastic piece by World Fantasy Award winner (and Doctor Who writer) Rob Shearman, which completely delighted me.  I really like slender volumes, there’s something quite enticing about them, and Twelfth Planet have turned the old ‘Ace Doubles’ format into a shiny 21st Century product.

Q: You’re not a newcomer to winning awards, having started your career by winning the George Turner award with a book that you wrote when you were 19, Splashdance Silver. I believe the rights have reverted to you. Are you going to release this book and its sequel Liquid Gold as an e-book? (I read an article saying you’d be crazy not to make your back-list work for you by selling books from your web site).

Whoever wrote that article must have a lot more spare time than I do!

I think about this from time to time, as I still get emails from readers who have come across the Mocklore books (not sure how, libraries maybe?) and while the market for humorous fantasy is no better than it was ten years ago, Splashdance Silver and its sequels have a girlie YA sensibility that I think could probably find an audience.  Most of the fanmail I receive from those books is from teenage girls, then and now!  But my heart sinks a little at the thought of it, too.  I have so much in my life to juggle, between writing, running a small business, raising two small girls, and publicising the current books I have out.  Do I really want to set myself up as a self-publisher?  Even without printing overheads I’d have to think about editing, proofing, figuring out how to produce an e-book that doesn’t look like hell (harder than you think!) and it just makes me tired to think about it.

There’s also the thing where this is old work – and while I still have strong affection for Mocklore, it’s not anything like what I’m writing now.  I’m not saying never ever, but right now I’d far rather look to the future than delve back into my past.

Q: Galactic Suburbia is a series of podcasts to quote: ‘Alisa, Alex and Tansy bring you speculative fiction news, reading notes and chat from the galactic suburbs of Australia.’ You seem to be having a lot of fun with this. How did you get started doing podcasts?

I started listening to podcasts about two years ago and it honestly changed my life.  It happened around the time that I was becoming completely disillusioned with radio, and I was delighted to find that I could download a whole bunch of cool people (from all over the world) talking about subjects that I actually care about (mostly spec fic publishing, Doctor Who and Arsenal football, if you’re interested!).  I was also fascinated by the communities that emerged from groups of similarly themed podcasts – the Doctor Who podcasting community is brilliant for this, they are all so supportive of and interested in each other, and it reminded me of what I love about the SF community and the blogoverse.

Then Sofanauts ended, which made me so sad!  This was a side project by Tony C Smith of Starship Sofa in which he and several interesting people would sit around and chat about publishing, science fiction, and the spec fic “scene.”  I loved it, and got several other people addicted to it.  Tony did say that if anyone else wanted to take up the Sofanauts brand, he’d be happy to see that happen, and I talked about it with Alisa and Alex.  We seriously considered becoming the New Sofanauts (like the old Sofanauts but in mod 70’s funky gear) but decided that anything we did would be so different that it might as well be a different show.  So we made it our own!

Galactic Suburbia has just celebrated its first birthday, and we love it.  It’s so cool having a chance to talk to Alisa and Alex about books, publishing, science fiction and feminism every fortnight.  I don’t feel nearly as far away from everyone, and it’s been utterly squeeful to have so many people listening, commenting and becoming invested in what we have to say.  The really exciting thing is that the last year has seen a bunch of other Australian SF podcasts starting up, many of them crediting us with inspiring them, and so we have a community of back-and-forth, all covering different (but often overlapping) areas of interest.

Q: Your Creature Court Trilogy is being published by Harper Collins, Voyager.   I’ve read Power and Majesty and loved it. Now Shattered City (book Two) will be released. The premise for this series is really interesting. It combines ancient Rome with the 1920s in a dark urban fantasy with shapeshifters. What led you to combine these two elements?

It wasn’t quite that organised, actually!  I just started writing, and poured in lots of things that I love.  The Ancient Roman calendar of festivals has been deeply buried in my subconscious since I did my Honours degree on women in Roman religion, and I’ve wanted to write a story about dressmaking in the 1920’s since… well, since The House of Elliot did it first, and the shapechangers pretty much just leapt off the page and started talking to me.  When I was teaching creative writing I would often advise students to create a ‘list of awesome’ – basically a list of things they love and are interested in or obsessed by, to fuel their stories.  I never did that for Creature Court, and yet somehow it’s packed with many of my favourite things.

Q: Central to the trilogy is the friendship of three women. This is unusual in the urban fantasy genre, which tends to have strong female ‘kick-butt’ characters. Your characters aren’t the stereotypical urban fantasy types, one is a dressmaker, another makes garlands and the third is a florister. (Their city has a lot of festivals, LOL). Did you set out to write a story about the friendships that are central to women’s lives, or did it just evolve?

The friendship of those three was an integral part of the story –  Velody, Delphine and Rhian are craftswomen because I love to sew and make things, but also because having a craft was historically a way for women to acquire independence.  It was really important to me that my protagonist have a job, and one she cared about, to balance out the crazy I was about to hurl into her life.  So much fantasy puts the heroes in the position where saving the world is their job, and I wanted to address the idea that this wasn’t an overly healthy situation to be in.  Velody’s friends are what she has instead of a family, and I love the complex relationship that these three women have woven around themselves.  They are very supportive of each other, but there are fractures there if you poke at it (which of course I do, repeatedly) – they are quite enabling of bad habits in each other as well as being supportive when the chips are down.

I love myself a kick butt heroine in the mould of Ripley or Starbuck or Parrish Plessis but for this particular book I was interested in the juxtaposition of giving superpowers to someone who wasn’t at all cut out for violence or leadership.  I also wanted a mature female protagonist – and it’s kind of sad that Velody would count as mature, being 26, but I’ve written teen girl and early twenties girl protagonists, and I was interested in exploring someone who was a bit more adult and settled and experienced before she starts having to deal with power and naked cat people falling out of the sky.  Buffy is a great hero of our age, but I can’t help thinking she had it easy in many ways because she discovered her destiny when she was young enough to adapt.  Having to explain to your friends that you’re busy saving the world is a bit more embarrassing when you’re an adult!

Q: Following on from that last question, your book contains descriptions of gorgeous clothes which, I should add, are pertinent to the story. Have you thought of teaming up with a fashion designer to release a line of romantic-sexy clothes for males and females? Do you design and make clothes?

Ohhh Rowena this is not the first time you have put this to me, and I would adore to do such a project.  Sadly I don’t know anyone who is into fashion design who might take it on!

I love fabrics, and I love to sew, though dressmaking is not my superpower.  I work in quilting and textile arts mostly.  I even have a Creature Court crazy quilt I have been working on and really need to get back to…  I love and admire beautiful clothing, but my inability to sew a straight seam is somewhat embarrassing.  I am also allergic to sewing machines (though not, strange to say, quilting machines which are big and shiny and go vROOOOM)

Q:  Of course The Shattered City isn’t the only book release you have coming out this year.  Tell me about Love and Romanpunk.

This is a book that I am immensely proud of, published by Twelfth Planet Press as one of their ‘Twelve Planets’ short story quartets by twelve Australian women writers.  It’s a very exciting and challenging project to be part of.  My book will be released in May.

Love and Romanpunk is a set of stories set in what I like to call the ‘Agrippinaverse,’ an alternate version of our world in which the Caesars were a family cursed by all manner of strange mythological beasts, Mary Wollstonecraft the younger ran off with a far more dangerous poet than Percy Shelley, Australia built their own replica Roman city in the middle of the bush, and Caligula’s daughter turned out to be a two hundred year old monster-hunting bloke in a funny hat.

I’m well aware that adding -punk to anything as a label for a literary movement is well past its sell by date, but did we have to get bored of the concept before we got to Romanpunk?  It started out as a fun challenge to people – if you’re going to add -punk to everything, why not something that *I’m* interested in?  I asked the universe for Romanpunk and no one wrote it for me, so of course I had to write it myself.  The term also happens to sum up the squirmy discomfort I feel as a classicist from taking real history, smashing it to bits, and adding manticores.  I have always loved the idea of future societies which are obsessed with different parts of history than we are – and in my perfect future, everyone is as obsessed with Ancient Rome as I am!
Q: You live in Tasmania with your partner and ‘two alarming’ little girls. <grin> You have a PHD in the classics. You’ve edited for ASIM, New Ceres, and Shiny. Plus you sell the Deeping Dolls. How do you fit everything in?

See my seams? They are bursting!  The small press work had to go, and did round about the time that I sold Power and Majesty.  I enjoy editing but it’s not my grand passion – and it takes too many of the same brain cells that I need for the novel writing.  It would have to be a hugely enticing project to lure me back in that direction.  The PhD is over now, and you’ll notice the extreme lack of fiction publications during the 7 years it took me to complete?  These days, I am just juggling three or so jobs, which suits me just fine!

I work from home, I get some daycare hours, and I juggle madly.  I learned not to be precious about when and where and how to write.  I learned to write faster.  My daughters have learned that Mummy’s laptop is with her at all times!  I also get great support from my parents, who free up a few precious half days each week for me.  It’s frustrating that I used to write slow like a snail back when I had no other real commitments, and now I KNOW I could write three books in a year I actually have to settle for far less than that because of the cute little baby doing things like learning to roar like a lion, which is utterly distracting, and should be.

I’m terribly lucky to have what I do, and the opportunities I have, but I’m no superwoman.  I’ve learned not to be too hard on myself and to let things go that are too much – recognising how much is too much is a vital skill!  I’ve had to suck it up and sacrifice my pride to ask for deadline extensions, and to be realistic about what I can manage.

I have a secret horror that once my second child is in school, I will have forgotten how to deal with having days to myself, and will just mooch around playing games and watching DVDs instead of WRITE WRITE WRITE.

Q: You review a lot of YA fiction. Are you planning to write a YA series?

Always planning!  I have a YA fairy book that I am still in love with that I have been planning to write for the last 4 years or so, and never quite getting to.  I have co-written a mainstream soccer novel with a friend in Sweden which has been stuck in rewrite hell for about a year and a half because of lack of time on my part – I’ve had deadline after deadline basically since I had my baby, who just turned 18 months.  Lots of other ideas – so yes, I’d love to, at some point.  I also long to sit down and write a middle grade series about girl superheroes which has been steaming away at the back of my head for a while.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-h18RVylmXw]

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 always blink madly at that because as you know, in Australia fantasy has so many successful female authors, and there is a perception here that women rule the fantasy roost, though I get cranky when people suggest it’s unreasonably dominated by women.  There are plenty of successful male authors here too!  Likewise, I’m always a bit bewildered when people start listing fantasy writers and mostly come up with men.  It does seem like the Big Name authors from the US and UK are just that bit big nameyer than the women – and I have certainly heard that men get better advances, etc.  How much does that suck?

I think a big part of it is about which end of the audience you respect.  It’s a shame that publishers do tend to get tunnel vision at times and point their books firmly at one gender or another (which may or may not be the same as the gender of the author – more often than not, I’d say) but it’s incredibly hard to market books universally – to find covers that appeal to women without alienating men, or vice versa.  Some areas of the genre are certainly more attuned to one gender or another – or more precisely to what a couple of guys in suits THINK one gender or another wants to read – and sometimes that’s going to be good for sales and sometimes bad.  There are plenty of women who turn about face if they perceive anything remotely “girly” on a book cover, just as there are plenty of male readers who are going to roll their eyes at a gritty militaristic cover.

Hmm and I just totally answered the question as if it was about marketing and not writing, didn’t I!

I remember being floored once when a man told me to my face that he wouldn’t read by book because he wouldn’t read books by women.  It was about twelve years ago and when I hear it, my head explodes all over again.  Having said that, I have mostly assumed that my recent books would appeal more to a female audience than a male – because, you know, clothes, and girl cooties, and slashy smut in between all the adventures and world-saving.  I’ve never been more pleased to be wrong in my life – I have lots of male readers, and not just people I know.   Hooray!

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

I tend to read more fantasy by women because I perceive it as being more likely to have elements I enjoy – and if pressed I would say things like multiple female characters, and the female gaze, and a more complex attitude towards romance and sexuality, and a greater focus on social rather than military concerns.  I am not saying that women can’t write action packed gore fests or that men can’t write sensitive court politics – some of my best writers are men, you know! – but I have been reading and analysing my own reading for a really long time and statistically I know I’m more likely to enjoy a book by a female author.

Partly because of this, I am far more likely to pick up a book by a new author if she is a woman, and it takes a lot more to make me pick up books by men, especially in the fantasy field.  But I am well aware of my biases and I do like to challenge them from time to time.  I do work quite hard to make female-authored fantasy visible, through reading and blogging and podcasting, because it seems to me that when it comes to criticism, awards and other recognition, it’s often women’s books that get forgotten about.  But mostly I do it because I love to share books that I enjoy.

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?

Need you ask?  Ancient Rome!  The actual year is a tricky one, though, as I might have to choose between finding Agrippina’s lost autobiography and attending the wedding of Augustus and Livia.  No, wait.  I know the exact night that I want!  It would have to be the party at Caesar’s house, when Publius Clodius dressed up as a flute girl to gate-crash the rites of the Bona Dea.  If he could make it past their slack security in a frock and a bad wig, I can certainly make it over the threshold, and not only could I meet Aurelia (whom I named my daughter after), I could find out what they used the snakes and honey for!
Catch up with Tansy on Twitter @tansyrr

Tansy’s Writing Blog – http://tansyrr.com
Crunchy SF Feminist Podcast – http://www.galacticsuburbia.com
Pendlerook Designs, Tasmanian Hand-painted Dolls – www.pendlerook.com

Steampunk costumes are very popular. In the Creature Court series tansy combines fashions of the 1920s with Ancient Rome, here’s the give-away question:

What’s your favourite time period for fashion and why?

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Filed under Australian Writers, Book Giveaway, Book trailers, Characterisation, creativity, Dark Urban Fantasy, Fantasy books, Female Fantasy Authors, Fun Stuff, Indy Press, Promoting Friend's Books, The Writing Fraternity, Writing craft

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March 1, 2011 · 9:14 pm

Meet Mary Victoria …

As the next of my series featuring fantastic female fantasy authors (see disclaimer) I’ve invited the talented Mary Victoria to drop by. Mary’s first book in the Chronicles of the Tree trilogy, ‘Tymon’s Flight’, was nominated for three different sections of the Gemmel Awards, Morningstar (new talent), Legend (best fantasy) and Ravenheart (best cover). Mary’s latest book, ‘Samiha’s Song’ has just been released. Watch out for the give-away question at the end of the interview.

Q: Samiha’s Song is book two of The Chronicles of the Tree (Book One – Tymon’s Flight). From the blurb there seems to be a ‘World Tree’ did you kick yourself when Avatar came out, or did you figure lots of stories feature trees, going right back to Norse mythology, and Avatar could only help sales of your book? (If you’d like to browse inside Samiha’s Song see here).

No, I did not kick myself. <grin> I’d written the story long before ‘Avatar’ came out, and really the World Tree in ‘Tymon’s Flight’ is quite different to the hometree in Cameron’s film. It’s far larger, for one thing, the size of the Himalayan mountain range. Don’t think ‘big oak or elm’, but rather a huge and tangled agglomeration of branches, trunk and foliage, a messy continent of vegetation extending over hundreds of miles. In fact, my World Tree concept is probably closer to the one in Kaaron Warren’s wonderful ‘Walking the Tree’, also published in 2010 with Angry Robot. (I have since had the joy corresponding with Kaaron regarding our mutual Tree obsession and parallel stories of publication – one of those odd coincidences where people come up with similar ideas independently. I highly recommend ‘Walking the Tree’, by the way!)

Comparisons with Norse myth are apt, and Yggdrasil was one of the main inspirations for the Tree in ‘Tymon’s Flight’. I wanted an environment that could conceivably contain a world – or at least, what human beings might think of as ‘the world’ at a certain point in their development (remember, for a medieval peasant in Europe, ‘the world’ wasn’t much bigger than the lands adjoining the Mediterranean sea.) Again, you could compare the World Tree to a small, isolated continent with a self-contained culture just on the cusp of technological growth. For most people in that culture, the Tree contains everything, from human civilization in the middle canopies to heaven in the highest branches, and hell at its roots.

It’s a very belief-bound universe. Science is mistrusted and free thinkers are labelled heretics.

Q: When I read the cover blurb I had the feeling you were writing Young Adult, but it didn’t say this anywhere. Then I read in an interview that, while book one was written for YA, your editor asked you to write the second book for adults. Did you enjoy the freedom this gave you to go darker and deal with more confronting themes?

I did start out writing the Chronicles of the Tree for a YA-crossover audience – that is, aimed at ages 12+. The books were always meant to appeal to an adult audience as well, however, and I based my idea of ‘12+’ on the books I was reading at that age – works of Tolkien, Ursula Le Guin, David Eddings, Anne Mc Caffrey. Those books are all now classified as adult fantasy, so I am not too surprised Voyager decided to market COT as they did!

Creatively, the decision to market to adults freed me up in many ways. I was able to darken up the mood and depart from the ‘coming of age’ format in the second book, tackling themes I might have avoided had the book been geared to a younger audience (I tend to give 15 as a minimum age guide now, though every reader develops at a different rate so that’s not a hard and fast rule.) There is no explicit content, per se, but in terms of plot ‘Samiha’s Song’ has definitely moved beyond the teenage narrative to step firmly into adulthood. Injustice, slavery, torture – these things are unfortunately a part of Tymon’s world, and the story doesn’t shy away from them.

Q: You say that Samiha’s Song is about the main character’s idealism and how it gets her into trouble. Would you like to expand on this?

‘Samiha’s Song’, despite the title, is still Tymon’s story – but he does share a fair amount of the limelight with Samiha, whose emotional journey, whether seen from her own point of view or those of the people surrounding her, remains the driving force of this book. She is the central mystery around which Tymon and others revolve. She is also a mystery to herself, to begin with, which makes this story essentially one of self-discovery.

As we meet her in ‘Tymon’s Flight’, Samiha is a defiant idealist, very much concerned with the plight of her people, the Nurians. In ‘Samiha’s Song’, however, her outlook on issues of freedom and responsibility both broadens and deepens. She advocates a non-violent approach to change – an attitude that gets her into trouble with both the colonial authorities and the Nurian rebels, for different reasons. Mostly, her contemporaries are annoyed with her because they can’t control her. No one quite grasps what makes Samiha tick – except perhaps Tymon, who stands by her to the very end.

Q: I see you’ve lived all over the world and finally settled in New Zealand with your husband and daughter, after working on The Lord of the Rings movies. First of all, let me say how jealous I am. Working on LOTR must have been a wonderful experience. You worked as an animator. Is this 2D or 3D? Plus can you tell us a little about your experiences while working on LOTR? (I confess I’ve watched all the special features on the extended version of the DVDs. Yes, I am a nerd).

Nerds rule! Working on LOTR was indeed a dream job for me, as I was a huge fan of the books. I was a 3D animator – in other words, I worked with a model in a computer, rather than drawing cells by hand. It’s quite similar in many ways to animating stop motion. I pursued that line of work for almost ten years, from 1994 to the end of ROTK in 2003. At that point I abruptly changed gears.

It’s odd, transferring careers. Most people who knew me as an animator aren’t aware I now write books. And most people who read my books aren’t aware I once was an animator. But I can confidently say both lines of work are painstaking, all-engrossing affairs. Neither career permits half-measures. You know the adage – creativity is 5% inspiration, 95% perspiration. I threw myself heart and soul into being an animator; that same energy now goes into my writing.

By far my favourite aspect of working on LOTR were the occasional glimpses I had of the live-action shoot. There’s something very special about that, particularly to someone used to toiling away in the background, behind a computer screen. I loved visiting the different sets, meeting actors, smelling the burnt dust smell on the lighting. That sort of thing sends my geekmeter soaring.

Q: I see that you had your latest book was launched in Wellington. (See launch here). Did a lot of talented creative people end up living in New Zealand because Peter Jackson filmed LOTR there? (Mary knows some talented artists and is lucky enough to have had them do illustrations for her stories. See here).

Certainly the Jackson films have drawn a pool of international creatives to Wellington. But there was already a core group of determined Kiwi artists in this town, without whom the LOTR projects would never have taken off. I’m thinking of the local designers, sculptors and craftsmen at Weta Workshop, as well as the largely Kiwi shooting crew on the films. The project really was the home-grown affair it is made out to be. Where there was a much larger pool of international participants was in post-production, at Weta Digital. Many people like myself came to work there on a temporary visa ten years ago, and went on to gain residency and stay in New Zealand.

Tymon's Flight

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

No! If you were to read me a passage from a good fantasy book without telling me the name of the author, I would be hard-pressed to guess the sex of the person who wrote it. But there seems, from what you have told me, to be a difference in the way genre fiction written by men and women is perceived by some members of the reading public.

Fantasy is certainly not a boy’s club – there are scores of successful women in the field. Long-established US and UK names that spring to mind are Robin Hobb, C.J. Cherryh, Lois McMaster Bujold, Ursula K. Le Guin, Nalo Hopkinson, Ellen Kushner, Elisabeth Moon, Glenda Larke, Jennifer Fallon, Anne McCaffrey, Diana Wynne-Jones and Karen Miller. I’ve mentioned traditional or ‘epic fantasy’ authors, but there are countless others; Urban fantasy and YA fantasy sub-genres are practically overrun by women. The US/UK adult fantasy scene has additionally seen an influx of excellent new women writers in recent years: Catherynne Valente, N.K. Jemesin, Nnedi Okorafor, Helen Lowe, Susanna Clarke and yourself, to name only a few. (My examples include some Australian and New Zealand writers who publish in the US or UK, but there are of course many more wonderful voices from the antipodes: Fiona McIntosh, Kim Falconer, Philippa Ballantine, Kylie Chan, Trudi Canavan, Pamela Freeman, Traci Harding… the list goes on and on.)

So why are these talented women not registering on peoples’ radars? Are women writers of genre more ‘invisible’ than their male counterparts in the UK and US? Do people ‘forget’ female names when thinking of their favourite fantasy authors? …I don’t know the answers, I’m just asking the questions.

Part of the problem might be the same one that affects midlist writers of any variety, genre or mainstream. Most bookstores run on the chain store model only actively promote a few bestselling titles. These are the ones that are placed in eye-catching displays, the ones bookstore reps often read and hand-sell, the ones reviewed, promoted and discussed. Many slightly less well known but good quality titles tend to be overlooked. Could midlist female fantasy writers in the UK and US be falling into the ‘overlooked’ category, perhaps?

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

Again, not in the least. I do have some unavoidable expectations to do with the genre of a book: I expect romance from the romance writers, invented worlds from the fantasy writers and brain-teasing ‘what if’ speculations from the science fiction writers. But that’s just the tip of the iceberg. Personally I love it when people mix things up, turn my expectations on their heads, mash genres together and, quite simply, write well. How they do that is in no way related to their gender.

More lovely art from Mary's friends

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

Is your time machine equipped with a singularity survival kit? I’ve always wanted to check out the interior of a collapsing star. That, and visiting a Big Bang moment (I like the theory that there are many Big Bangs, multiple moments of creation.) But I guess I’d skew the whole ‘singularity’ thing just by being there, and being me – ie., not infinitely small, hot, and dense. (Alright, maybe I could do the dense bit.)

Why would I visit such a time and place? It’s the lure of the absolute, I guess – creation and annihilation, those two Janus faces of existence. Also, there’s a ridiculous attractiveness to infinity. It’s an impossible quest: my brain wouldn’t be able to process such an event, even if there was a way to survive it. Give me a god-brain, or at the very least one of Iain M. Banks’ machine Minds – a brain capable of processing infinity – and we’ll talk.

When I was a kid I’d lie on the ground staring up at the night sky, imagining what life might be up there, circling the stars. It always pleased me that I was looking up at a picture of the very distant past, gazing at something that might no longer exist. In that way, we are all time travellers, every single night, staring at a light that once was, long ago, in a galaxy far, far away…

Give-away Question:

If you could have played any character in the Lord of the Rings Movie, who would it have been, and why?

(We’ll keep the give-away open for a week, then let you know who Mary chooses as the winner).

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Filed under Book Giveaway, Characterisation, creativity, Fantasy books, Female Fantasy Authors, Fun Stuff, Genre, Inspiring Art, Nourish the Writer, Promoting Friend's Books, The Writing Fraternity, Writing craft

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December 28, 2010 · 10:02 pm

Words have power


Many cultures believe words have power. The bards sang stories. They made sure things were remembered and took these stories from one place to another. They could also lampoon someone and make them suffer.

Sticks and stones will break my bones, but words will never hurt me …

Not true if everyone is laughing at you because of an easy to remember catchy rhyme that is passing through the village like wild fire!

When I set out to write King Rolen’s Kin I wanted a traditional fantasy story, but some of the words we use have been used so many times they lose their power. So I avoided prince or princess and used kingson and kingsdaughter. Both of these are based on the way people were described (and what is a name but a description?) in the Norse sagas. Unlike our society, in the Norse sagas a man might also be described by his mother’s ancestors as well, and I use this in KRK.

The other word I wanted to avoid was magic. It has been used so much it has lost its original awe inspiring power. It used to be out there, all around us, tied to the earth and to specific places where someone with the right ability could tap into it. So I came up with affinity. In KRK power seeps up from the earth’s heart. It affects animals and people. Some people are born with the ability to manipulate this power, they have an ‘affinity’ for it. So the term becomes, they have affinity. This way magic becomes something ‘other’ and powerful again.

What I look for in fantasy and science fiction is that the thrill of wonder. It can be associated with the future and the possibilities of where we will go as human beings, or it can be associated with the past and the powerful things our ancestors held to be important. There was a time when your word was your bond. You could not break an oath, or you would be known as an oath-breaker and no one would trust you.

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November 14, 2010 · 7:38 pm

King Rolen’s Kin Book 4

I’d like to thank all the people who’ve contacted me about the fourth book in the Chronicles of King Rolen’s Kin. A writer spends years developing the world of a series. They dedicate themselves to the characters. They devote themselves to the plot. And then they send their books out into the world, hoping someone will get as much of a buzz from the stories as they do.

It makes my day, when readers come looking for KRK 4.

The good news is that I have heaps of ideas for another three books. The bad news for KRK readers is that I have to hand in a new fantasy series – The Outcast Chronicles –  before I can tackle the new KRK books.

But once I have handed the new series in to my publisher, I’ll be free to take a journey to Rolencia and find out what happens to Byren, Piro and Fyn.

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October 23, 2010 · 9:31 pm

Obssessive moi?

Something Trudi Canavan tweeted about trying to keep track of multiple narrative threads made me look at what I was doing. I’m in the middle of cleaning up The Outcast Chronicles trilogy. They are big FAT fantasy books with multiple narrative threads that weave in and out.

Because I work and have 6 kids, I’m constantly interrupted and the only way I can keep track of the story is to keep a document open on my second screen that covers the book chapter by chapter, scene by scene with a note of whose VP the scene is in and a sentence about each scene. To make sure I’m not neglecting a narrative thread I colour code the narratives.

This way I can see at a glance if a character is getting too much time on centre stage.

The thing is, when I devised this method I caught myself trying to colour code the narratives based on the personality of the characters, because colours have personalities don’t you know. (Synaesthesia, anyone?)

There, proof that writers are weird.

 

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