Tag Archives: Writing for children and Young Adults

June 9, 2012 · 1:20 am

Aussie Female Fantasy Authors featured in Mainstream Media

Great article on Australian female fantasy authors in the Melbourne Age today. (Great photo of Kim Westwood).

If I was American I’d say, ‘You go Girls!’ But since I’m an Aussie I’ll say, ‘Good on yer, mate!’

I think I’ve interviewed all of these writers on my blog. Check out the interview page if you want to know more about them.

In the article Tansy Rayner Roberts says that she thinks science fiction is due for a comeback. Her feeling is that a lot of the trends in reading are being led by Young Adult.  You just have to look at the popularity of Harry Potter, Twlight and now the Hunger Games. What do you think?

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Filed under Australian Writers, Fantasy books, Female Fantasy Authors, Gender Issues, Promoting Friend's Books, Publishing Industry

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February 28, 2012 · 11:59 am

Meet Lian Tanner…

I have been featuring fantastic female fantasy authors (see disclaimer) but this has morphed into interesting people in the speculative fiction world. Today I’ve invited the talented Lian Tanner to drop by.

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

Q: Museum of Thieves won the Aurealis Children’s Fiction Award in 2010. (Among many other notables and awards). This must have been a real buzz for your first book.  It was going to be a stand-alone but it is now a trilogy. Did this mean a radical rethink, or did it all just flow?

A: Yes, I was so enormously pleased about the Aurealis Award. Museum had been shortlisted for a couple of things before that, and hadn’t won, and I was beginning to get that ‘always a bridesmaid’ feeling. <ahem> Not that I care about awards, you understand … <laughs>

As for the trilogy thing, I had originally intended Museum of Thieves to be a stand-alone novel, and so in my early drafts I killed off the villains at the end. When I realised that I wanted to make it the first book in a trilogy, the main thing I had to do was add a postscript, making it clear that the villains hadn’t died after all, but were still out there somewhere and would presumably be back at some stage.

Apart from that, I really didn’t change it a lot – I wanted the book to still be able to stand alone as much as possible. When I’m reading, I really hate major cliff-hangers at the end of a book. I don’t mind teasers that make me want to read the next book in a series, but I get very irritated if there’s not at least a temporary resolution of the action.

Q: There are two types of covers that I’ve been able to find the illustrated covers which are very nice and these deliberately aged books that look like they were printed in the 1960s. Have readers told you which they prefer?

A: You often hear about authors hating their covers, but I’ve been very lucky with mine so far – I’ve loved them all. The deliberately aged covers are the Australian ones (Allen & Unwin) and the illustrated ones are American (Random House). There are also some rather nice German covers (Arena Verlag) that are completely different again.

When I’m talking to groups of kids I always ask them which ones they prefer. And it seems the marketing and design departments in both Australia and the US have pretty much got it right – the Australian kids overwhelmingly prefer the Australian covers and the American overwhelmingly prefer the American covers.

Q: On your Inspiration Page you have a number of photos, quotes and a very convoluted plot map. (I keep an inspiration file for my books). Many of the writers I interview make up play lists for specific music while they write a certain book. Are you a visual person as opposed to an aural person?

A: Definitely visual rather than aural. In the past I’ve tried to write to music – mainly because I’ve seen some of those playlists and I was curious to see if it would work for me. But I found it almost impossible. Bird calls are fine, when my office window is open, and I tend to have classical music on very quietly in the background, but anything else is much too distracting.

Visually though I always spend a lot of time collecting photos and drawings of people, places and miscellaneous objects before I start writing. That’s pretty much a necessity for me. I like to have character pictures dotted around my office and on my desk. I also really like to find some wallpaper for my desktop and some screensaver images that relate strongly to whatever I’m working on, so I’m immersed in it while I work. Currently I’m surrounded by icebergs.

Q: In a Q& A on Readings you talk about your love of words, specifically old words like  Slubberdegullion (a dirty nasty person) and Forswunk (worn out by hard labour). Did you read a lot of Dickens when you were a kid? And do you collect words?

A: I was actually put off Dickens as a child by having to read Great Expectations at school. My teacher loved it, but I thought Pip was an irritating and ungrateful wimp, and I loathed his relationship with Estella. (I loathed Estella too.) As an adult I’ve read quite a few of Dickens’ books and discovered the value in them, but have never gotten over my dislike of Pip.

And yes, I do collect words and phrases, particularly ones that have fallen from favour. My current favourite is ‘idle-worms’, which supposedly once bred in the fingertips of lazy girls. If they existed, my fingertips would be riddled with them.

Q: You were born in Tassie and have lived there most of your life, but you did live in Papua New Guinea for three years. I see you were a teacher there. It must have been a very different world.  Have you been able to incorporate any of the things you experienced in Papua New Guinea in your books?

A: Papua New Guinea was a bit of an eye-opener for me. I was twenty-three when I went there, and had never lived outside Tasmania, so it was hugely different and very challenging. My first year I taught in a school just outside Port Moresby, run by Catholic nuns. My second and third years I was at a little bush school thirty km from Rabaul on the Gazelle Peninsula. That school had about 150 kids and three teachers when I arrived – one of those teachers had a full-time job in Rabaul and used to come down in his morning break. The principal trained the kids for interschool sports by chasing them around the oval with a whip, and quite a few of them carried serious scars from not running fast enough.

 In a lot of ways I think PNG woke my imagination from its slumbering state. I’ve incorporated some of the people I knew there in my writing – in fictional form – but have never yet used any of the events to a great degree. I will one day – there are a number of things (apart from the sports training) that have stayed in the back of my mind and are just waiting for the right vehicle to emerge.

Q: You studied drama when you were 38 and travelled around Tasmania schools playing all sorts of characters. You say you were shy as a child. What made you turn to drama?

: It was partly accidental, I think, though I always liked drama at school – it was a way of stepping past my shyness. But when I was in my late twenties and early thirties I hung around with a bunch of people who were very involved in music and political street theatre. Eventually we went from street theatre to amateur stage dramatics, and one of my friends decided to enrol in drama school to consolidate her various skills.

At that time in my life I had never really settled to anything as far as work/career was concerned, but the theatre work struck a real chord for me, and I joined my friend at drama school. It’s one of the best things I ever did. I used to write a lot as a child, but pretty much stopped in my teenage years. Drama school was the thing that got me started again, that showed me how to be creative under pressure, as well as teaching me about dialogue and character motivation and all those other useful things that translate so wonderfully from the theatre to prose.

Q: A lot of women who write for children feel that they have to have a boy as the main protagonist, otherwise boys won’t read their books. They’ll then bring a girl in as a secondary protagonist. But the main character in Museum of Thieves and City of Lies is clearly Goldie Roth, and the boy Toadspit is secondary. Was this deliberate? Were you concerned about whether boys would read your books?

A: It has always seemed to me a total cheat that, because authors assume girls will read books with boy protagonists but boys won’t read books with girl protagonists, they nearly always make their main character a boy to capture the broadest market. Where does this leave girls? Always in second place, and with no exciting role models!

Basically I write for myself when I was 11, and at that age I adored books with bold girls in them, so I was very clear right from the start that I wanted my main character to be a girl. Knowing the sort of story I was intending to write, I thought that boys would probably also enjoy the book, and I did want to have an important boy character. But my main intention was to tell Goldie’s story.

Interestingly, the boy/girl thing hasn’t really been an issue since the books came out. Girls love them and so do boys – mainly I suspect because they’re a good strong adventure series, and that appeals to both genders. Or maybe this is one of those borders that has blurred a little over the last few years – I notice that Suzanne Collins’ Hunger Games trilogy seems to have almost as many male fans as it does female, and I’m sure it’s not the only example.

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

A: For a long time I have really wanted to go back to early Hobart and walk down those dusty, smelly, noisy streets. It’s a city I love, and I would dearly love to see its beginnings. I think a lot of my writing – even though it’s fantasy – has been influenced by early Hobart, and it’s a major source of inspiration for me, so to be able to wander around and poke into the shops and talk to people in that little colonial outpost would be my idea of heaven. I’d probably stalk two of my great grandmothers while I was there too – especially the one who was a diarist and a poet.

 

Lian has a paperback copy of the US edition of Book 1, a hard back of the US edition of Book 2 or an audio book of Book 1, as read by Claudia Black. The winner can choose.

Give-away Question:.

What sort of museum would you like to invent?

 

Catch up with Lian on GoodRreads

Lian’s advice for young writers

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Filed under Australian Writers, Book Giveaway, Children's Books, creativity, Fantasy books, Female Fantasy Authors, Gender Issues, Genre, Young Adult Books

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January 26, 2012 · 7:20 am

Meet Lucy Sussex…

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

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

Q: You have a PHD and are a Senior Research Fellow at the University of Melbourne. And also lecturing at La Trobe University.

 Your PhD thesis focused on early women crime writers and you describe yourself as a ‘literary archaeologist’. What a wonderful term! Does this mean you sift through original sources in university and state libraries, looking for references to and original manuscripts by long dead authors?

That is precisely what I do…

Q: What amazing things have you discovered?

So many good writers, so undeservedly neglected! Some examples: there was a novel with three female detectives, and centred on a murder mystery, four months before Poe’s ‘The Mysteries of the Rue Morgue’, widely and wrongly regarded as the birth of the detective genre. The novel was SUSAN HOPLEY: OR, CIRCUMSTANTIAL EVIDENCE, by Catherine Crowe. Or that Mary Fortune wrote 500 crime stories in the AUSTRALIAN JOURNAL, the longest known early crime series, worldwide.

I have an article in the next issue of SOUTHERLY on Agnes Murphy, best known as the first biographer of Melba, but who wrote an 1895 novel that can be best described as a lesbian MY BRILLIANT CAREER…

Q: Your speculative fiction stories have won Ditmar Awards, Aurealis Awards and the Sir Julius Vogel Award. You have judged for the James Jr. Award. Having sat on both sides of the fence what insights can you give us into award judging?

It’s a lottery. So much depends on what the judge brings to the judging table, and the method used in cutting to the chase, the really worthwhile texts. I am no respecter of literary reputation, and that a book is hyped makes me regard it with suspicion. But so many people are afraid to take a book on its own merits, without the PR framing!

The Tiptree award judging (my first major act of judging) produced a kind of group mind, in that the judges were reading the books and commenting on them over a long period of time. We had to, as we had to decide on the definition of what the award honours: fiction that explores and expands notions of gender (for this reason I regard the Norma Hemming as superfluous. Her name should have given to something else, like a drama award).  Other judging involved such things as a table full of books, and the repeated question: ‘Can we toss this book aside, or does it have any merits?’

I would also add that any judge worth their salt should consider the text, and not the writer, however obnoxious they may be.

So, in retrospect, I can say that any award that involves me is liable to come out unexpected, simply because I don’t have mainstream taste. And as for any award honouring me…well, I hope it proves that the judges showed taste and discernment!

Q: You’ve edited several anthologies, including She’s Fantastical, which was shortlisted for the World fantasy Award. Your edited works are a glimpse of the range of your interests. They include: A selection of autobiographical writing by Mary Fortune (a nineteenth century woman who wrote about the gold fields), two anthologies of Fortune’s crime short stories, a mystery book by Ellen Davitt which was first published in 1865 and would have been lost if you hadn’t recovered it, two anthologies of YA spec fic and a YA crime anthology. Plus I’ve just finished reading ‘Saltwater in the Ink’ letters and journals of people travelling between Australia and the UK in the nineteenth century. There’s a broad spectrum here. What attracts you to a certain project?

With the historical anthologies, a voice or voices that demanded to be heard anew. With the YA anthologies, because a publisher asked me to do it. I prefer anthologies of dead writers–you don’t have to write polite rejection letters.

With SALTWATER I literally sold the anthology because I was drunk and loud at a publisher’s party. I was talking to film critic Jim Schembri (a man of taste and discernment, unlike usual the ignorant yahoos infesting the film review pages) about MASTER AND COMMANDER, and mentioned I’d been reading C19th travel diaries, and how wonderful they were. An illustrator who was part of the conversation ducked off and returned with the publisher, who stood and listened, then said: ‘Can we have a proposal?’  I then had to reconstruct what the hell I had been talking about, the conversation having moved on somewhat.

As it happened, the GFC put paid to that project, but on the third attempt it found a home.Which only proves that it pays to persist.

Q: Your novels range from children’s books like The Revongnase, through YA books like Black Ice to your novel which won the Ditmar, The Scarlet Rider. Do you have another book length fiction project under development?

 I have a project to co-write, on Australian writers and journalists in London at the turn of last century (which includes Agnes Murphy). And a novel that is in limbo until I can get some uninterrupted time. There is also another anthology (of the dead) planned.

Q: You’re an award winning short story writer. (See here, here and here for anthologies of Lucy’s stories. Read a review of A Tour Guide in Utopia). I remember reading one of your stories, The Sentenielle, the year I was judging on the horror Aurealis Awards panel and was delighted when it won a Ditmar. The visuals still return to me now and then, along with a little shiver. I’m a big fan of Saki. Was there a short story writer who first inspired you?

Aha! You spotted Saki. Also James Tiptree Jr, Le Guin’s short stories,and Chekhov. It is a very hard medium to work in successfully, but when it goes right it is the happiest of literary homes.

Q: You review for the Melbourne paper, the Sunday Age. (See some of Lucy’s book reviews). Do you think reviewing is good discipline for a writer?

It gives you an understanding of the market. It gives you great joy with marvellous writers whom you have never heard of before, and despair at the crap that is so easily published, it seems.

Q: Due to your research Mary Fortune and Ellen Davitt’s original crime stories and books from the mid nineteenth century have been recovered for posterity. (See here for Lucy’s work on crime writing). You are a member of Sisters in Crime and you released a book in 2010: Women Writers and Detectives in Nineteenth Century Crime Fiction:  Mothers of the Mystery Genre. You say ‘Contrary to popular belief, Conan Doyle, Wilkie Collins and Edgar Allen Poe did not invent the crime genre.’ In a review Kate Watson said  ‘perhaps had nineteenth-century women writers been accorded the same status as male authors such as Poe – or even been acknowledged – then similar texts detailing women’s international influence might have materialised. It was not until 2010 that Sussex filled the previously unmarked space with her book.’

The point I was trying to make was that they were acclaimed and best-selling IN THEIR TIME. It was only retrospectively that they were relegated to the margins by the self-styled canon makers. Who are active in every litery genre, and should be exterminated for the vermin they are. In the 1980s there was a huge amount of research and publication done on mothers of various literary genres, from Mary Shelley to female dramatists. Crime was a gap in this genre research, due to its sheer size. It is estimated that there were 5000 crime novels in English between 1800-1900, to say nothing of works in French and the multitudinous crime short stories. I only read a fraction of the texts concerned, and there are many more mothers of crime to be rediscovered.

Q:You are also known as a feminist writer.

And proud of it!

Q: I believe you are involved in organising a new literary award for female writers. Can you tell us a little about it, or is it still hush hush?

If you mean the Stellas (to redress the appalling gender imbalance of the Miles Franklins), then that’s not me, though I support the notion.

Q: As well as being a writer of speculative fiction, you also write crime and your short story The Fountain of Justice was shortlisted for the Ned Kelly Award in 2010. I’ve come across quite a few spec fic authors who also write crime. Why do you think there is this cross over? Is it something about building a world and building a mystery that attracts a certain type of mind?

It has to do with narrative: both sf and crime are narrative-driven and similar in their intellectual rigour and concern with plot. They also both derive from the Gothic, that Pangaea of modern literatures.

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?

We have fewer rape scenes, and more convincing female characters.

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

I would hope it didn’t. I nearly cheered aloud when a student told me she had got halfway through W. G. Sebald’s THE RINGS OF SATURN before realising the author was a man.

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?

Babylon in the Akkadian era, to meet Tapputi, the first woman chemist (and perfumier), who figures in my story ‘Alchemy’. Or to a party given by C19th crime writer Mary Braddon, who was not only a great writer and great company, but pals with the likes of Conan Doyle, Wilkie Collins, Bram Stoker and Oscar Wilde.

Lucy has a copy of either ‘She’s Fantastical’ or ‘Saltwater in the Ink’  to give-away.

Give-away Question:

If you could have a dinner party to meet your favourite writers from the past, who would you invite? And what would you serve them?

Lucy’s Blog.  On my webpage, which needs updating

Catch up with Lucy GoodReads

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Filed under Australian Writers, Book Giveaway, Children's Books, Dark Urban Fantasy, Fantasy books, Female Fantasy Authors, Gender Issues, Historical Books, Obscure and Interesting, Publishing Industry, Thrillers and Crime, Thrillers and Mysteries, Writers and Redearch

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January 7, 2012 · 7:13 am

Meet Isobelle Carmody…

As the next of my series featuring fantastic female fantasy authors (see disclaimer) I’ve invited the talented and incredibly popular (non-stop queues at Supanova)  Isobelle Carmody to drop by.

Q: Where to begin, Isobelle? You have four fantasy series, numerous stand alone novels, collections, short stories and picture books. You’ve been writing since you were fourteen, published since you were (19?). Your whole life seems to have revolved around writing. Not to disparage your writing achievements, but do you ever look back and think I wish I’d done veterinary science, or become an archaeologist?

No, but I wish I had worked harder at school and learned to be something else as well. A doctor or something really practical so I could sometimes do something decisively about the things that trouble me in the world. I envy Ian Irvine his marine science back and Nick Earls his ability to heal. But in truth, I am pretty happy with what I have done with my life, because I do think writing matters. It certainly mattered to me – It built me – my mind and my imagination.  It saved me…

Q: You live part of your time in Prague and part in a small township near Apollo Bay on the Great Ocean Road. I’ve never been to Prague, but I do know the Great Ocean Road. My husband’s family come from Warrnambool. This stretch of coast, known as the shipwreck coast, is stark and beautiful. Do you find the isolation and beauty help you to focus and write?

Absolutely. Both are essential, and for me beauty is often found in starkness. I have always found really desolate places visually appealing – sandy deserts, arctic , industrial wastelands. I suspect I am attracted them because there is less or no sign of humanity- no people or shops or signs. I remember looking at a film if  beautiful. Somehow I am very attracted to wastelands- dumpsites, nuclear drop zones like Chernobyl, end of the world scenarios with a touch of dystopia. The coast along the Great Ocean Road is beauty in its wild and savage and dangerous mode. And Prague is like a fairy tale with its cobbled twisty streets and buildings.

Q: You are married to a Jazz musician from Czechoslovakia and spend half the year in Prague. (I really enjoyed the photos you posted on twitter of the snow and ice at Christmas time. We were enduring humidity and floods in Brisbane and those pictures helped me get through summer). I guess your daughter is bi-lingual. Do you find that the insight gained from living in Europe, in a society very different from Australia, has helped you create different worlds?

It is lovely here in Winter. There is a very black and white and grey poetry about the city, cloaked in snow. Not that we are having much snow this year- it is very, very mild so far. I prove what an Australian I am by wishing for it to snow when every local hopes it won’t! In some ways I think I have always felt myself to be a stranger in a strange land. I was one of those kids who was a total outsider. At least, I thought myself so, but the reality was more that I felt so out of place that I probably ensured it. I mean, to some extent we are how we see ourselves. So I felt I did not fit in and I guess a lot of my writing comes from that feeling of not fitting in. Because when you don’t fit in, the world feels alien and so it is not such a big step to create another world for characters, who, like me, often feel they don’t fit in. But they are searching pretty much always for a place they can feel ok. For me, Prague is one of those places. Because here I am truly an alien, a stranger and after all these years, I guess in a weird way THAT is what feels comfortable to me. I think it is always good for writers not to be totally comfortable with their surroundings- at least some of the time.

Q: I wasn’t aware that you were also an artist. Does this mean that you are a visual person? I’ve interviewed a lot of writers and most seem to be aural. They will make up ‘play lists’ of music for certain books to help them get in the mood. I have a background as an illustrator, so I tend to collect images to create a resonance file. Do you collect music or images when you write?

I don’t collect music but I collect images. I always have in mind the next illustrated thing I am going to do- right now it is The Cloud Road and I know there will be clouds and mountains and maybe some kind of monkey or monkey-ish thing and cats and desert so those are the images that I am collecting. I cut pictures out of National Geographics and I take photos of things that would fit- I am also always looking for new patterns or techniques of drawing- I don’t use colour except for the front cover- I really love black and white pen and ink drawings so that is what I collect as a form, too. I listen to book tapes as much as to music when I draw, and sometimes to nothing when I am so absorbed that I just don’t notice the music stops. But it can’t be something I adore, like Nina Simone. It is too intense for me to be able to draw. It has to be something I like a lot but maybe have listened to a lot as well so it does not demand too much attention…

Q: In an interview on TLC Books you talked about fantasy as a genre. You describe fantasy as ‘conscious dreaming’. You say write fantasy:

‘…not  in order to escape vacuously, as is often the perception, but in order to think about things that matter to me. Like what it means to have free will and yet to co exist with others who also have free will that might infringe upon mine; about why some people are cruel and why some are courageous; about how it is that someone grows up to be Mother Teresa while someone else become Hitler; it is about what makes a person able to sacrifice themselves for others; about what is required of me if I want to be a friend to someone; about what the difference is between a human who is cruel and the cruelty of a cat to a mouse it has caught; about how important powerful people can make decision that a child can see will cause great harm, as if they and their children were going to be exempt from the consequences.’

To me the fantasy genre, like the science fiction genre, gives authors a chance to hold a distorted mirror up to society (sometimes distortion can help us see things more clearly).  The writer can use these genres prompt the reader to think about things that seem normal in everyday life. Terry Pratchett does this with his books by pointing out how ridiculous certain things are. From the sounds of your comment you are interested in ‘good and evil’ and the choices that we make as human beings. Is this a recurring theme in your books?

I want to say yes, but somehow talking about themes always feels as if I am planning them, like using them as the bones on which to hang my story. For me the themes usually rise out of a question I am wanting to think about- something that bothers me or has come to my attention and stuck like a burr, and finally I take it into the arena of writing, to see what I can work out. It is absolutely not ever for me, about wanting readers to think or think about anything. It is always an inward journey for me. I am not criticizing writers who set out to say something to their audience. I think a lot of good and great literature comes about by people wanting to flesh out a theme, wanting to make a point, wanting to make a statement to the world. But that is just not how it is for me. I am more self-centred as a writer. It is all about what I am thinking about and trying to figure it out. I dislike unfairness and injustice, but all too often, when I start looking into an issue, I can see mostly, how the person in the wrong has got into that position. I guess it is trying to navigate the greys.  And the reason I write fantasy is because the tools that work best for me, produce work that fits into that category.  Externally, I can see how what I write can be seen as making a statement, but the reality is that I am only trying to figure things out for myself. Then it gets published and it has this whole other life as whatever it becomes when people take it into their minds and imaginations.

Q: In the same interview you were asked ‘what is the most difficult thing about being a writer?’ and I had to smile because it is the same thing that gives me trouble. You said:

‘Odd as it sounds, sometimes the sitting and typing for hours. I get really sore elbows and back. I get physically bored. You are supposed to get up and move around every twenty minutes or something but I am so engrossed that I never do. Then I pay for it.’

Sometimes I wish I could do my ‘conscious dreaming’ straight into the computer. Do you do yoga or something to counteract the problems caused by spending so long at the computer?

Yeah my back and neck are killing me right now and my editor just emailed me this exercise to ease a back problem she said is so common to editors it is actually called editor’s back!

Q: In an interview on Kids Book Review you say you were ‘a bossy older sister’. This made me laugh as I was an older sister, who bossed all the local children organising concerts and long involved games. We’re the same age, when we grew up kids roamed the neighbourhood and were a lot more independent. My children have had a very different childhood and I’m guessing your daughter is in the same position. Do you think being the eldest of your family shaped the person you are today? And do you think growing up in the 60s and 70s, when children were more autonomous, gives you an advantage?

Well we, my brothers and sisters and I, were anything but autonomous. We lived this hermetically sealed life inside our house. We didn’t go to neighbors houses or mess in the street. The people I bossed were exclusively my own brothers and sisters. My daughter, on the other hand, has been catching trams, crossing busy city streets and heading off to the city with her friends since she was 11. So in a funny way she is freer than I was. She actually dreads coming back there to the ‘car culture’ where she will be forced by distances to rely on us driving her places. She hates when we visit that she is not able to be independent.

Q: You write for children, young adults and adults. In the same interview you talk about child characters in books and how a book may contain a child character but not necessarily be a children’s book.

‘One rule of thumb I once heard which seemed true to me was that children’s books have children in them who grow, but they do not grow up. If a child grows up that is an adult book.’

You mention To Kill a Mockingbird as an example. Another book I read which explored adult concepts through a child’s viewpoint was A High Wind in Jamaica, (book and movie). I found this book excellent for re-creating the world-view of a child and the same for the movie. Why do you think it is that child point of view characters in adult books can be so powerful?

I think we all tend to have vivid memories of childhood and adolescence when we forget what we did in all of last year. I think child characters that are well written waking that slumbering child that once was, and allows the reader to become that vulnerable, open, thin-skinned person again for a little, and it is a very strange and wonderful business to be taken back to that younger more pristine self.

Q: When we were at Supanova recently  you launched the last book in the Obernewtyn series, The Sending. Coming back to this world and these characters must be like visiting old friends. At the same time you have matured as a person and a writer. George Lucas is notorious for going back and tweaking his Star Wars movies. With the movie, Blade Runner, Ridley Scott has said Deckard isn’t a replicant, then that he is – which completely changes the dynamic between him and Rachel (a replicant). Are you ever tempted to revisit the original books of the Obernewtyn series and tweak them?

I did reedit them with the American publisher Random House. In a way it is a nightmarish thing to contemplate, but in the case of the first book, I was quite happy to be able to tidy a couple of the mistakes made by my younger self. But as a rule, I am not in favor of it. I think it takes a saint to do it well- Nadia Wheatley went back and rewrote The House that as Eureka because some new information had come to light, historically speaking, and she wanted to correct her work. But of course she is an historian as well as a writer and a real perfectionist as well as a true idealist. But my stories are all about internal worlds, really. The inside turned so that it is outside. The invisible made visible. The intangible made tangible.

Q: I notice in the Penguin Presents interview (see below) there are original artworks on the walls of your home on the Great Ocean Road. They look like you commissioned them. Who painted them? Is one of your brothers or sisters an artist? Did you paint them? They are really lovely!

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FsKZow5ZBSE]

The paintings are mostly by Anne Spudvilas, who is a fine artist as well as a children’s book Illustrator. In fact I knew her as a fine artist first and brought work from her in that incarnation. She did her first ever work as an illustrator for Penguin for the cover of The Gathering. She also did the wonderful picture of my daughter and I. I love her work. I love how she uses green in flesh. I also have some wonderful aquatints by Rachel Litherland who is the daughter of the British poet Jacquie Litherland – in fact I first saw her work in one of her mothers’ poetry collections. I also have a few by Jiri Novak, who is also a fine artist as well as an illustrator.

Q: You mention that your husband is a jazz saxophonist. My daughter is a jazz vocalist and has studied at the QLD conservatorium. I’ve heard that jazz musicians require a different type of mind from classical musicians because jazz is more free form. It’s a bit like writing a book, you have to trust your instincts. Do you find even though your husband is a musician and you are a writer, that the creative source in both of you is similar?

He is a writer, too. By that I mean he writes poetry – he is known as a cubist poet – and he is a very well known poetry critic here. He actually won the FX Chalda prize for criticism last year. His medal looks a lot like my Book of the year Medal. But he makes a living as a Jazz pianist. He loves modern jazz but spent a lot of years doing traditional jazz as well. I always think of his as a musician with the mind of a writer, if that makes any sense. His writing is High Art and mine is story telling. But it is lovely to have someone enjoy words as much as I do.

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?

Hmm I am not sure. I was tempted to say yes but I don’t really know. I like Charles de Lint and Guy Gavriel Kay and I love the late David Gemmell’s writing- they are all very different, and I love Sheri Tepper and Robin Hobb … and they are different too. No. Maybe what I think is that there is a difference between male and female writers of bad fantasy which tends to rely too heavily on stereotypes, and therefore is itself more likely to fall into being stereotypical.

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

No. Either I like the character and get into the book, or I don’t. A great writer can make even the most peculiar character a door you want to enter- look at China Mieville in Perdido St station! A female character with a female bottom half and the head of an ant, who makes art with spit, and you really like her.

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 and talk to my dad and my brother, who died ten years apart on the same road in car accidents. I’d like to tell them what happened to us all, and talk over things. I’d like to say sorry to my brother, whom I was quarrelling with when he died… I’d also like to talk to Martin Luthor King and Sapho.

 

Follow Isobelle on Twitter ISOBELLE CARMODY @FIRECATz

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Listen to an interview with Isobelle by Louise Maher.

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Filed under Australian Writers, Children's Books, Conferences and Conventions, Conventions, Covers, creativity, Dark Urban Fantasy, Fantasy books, Female Fantasy Authors, Gender Issues, Genre, Music and Writers, Nourish the Writer, Readers, Resonance, The Writing Fraternity, Young Adult Books

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November 26, 2011 · 10:42 am

Meet Felicity Pulman …

I have been featuring fantastic female fantasy authors (see disclaimer) but this has morphed into interesting people in the speculative fiction world. Today I’ve invited the talented Felicity Pulman to drop by.

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

Something’s gone wrong with my blog’s ability to embed videos. Here’s the link to Felciity’s great new promo for the Janna Mystery Series.

 

Q: We ran into each other at SheKilda, the women’s crime writers conference, but you write across a number of genres and ages. Your first novel (to appear under your own name) Ghost Boy was set in two timelines, the present and the past set, in part, around the small pox outbreak in 1881 when travellers were quarantined on arriving in Australia. There is a special Ghost Boy tour for school children at the Quarantine Station. It must be a real thrill to make a connection with children and bring the past to life like this. Have you been on the Ghost Boy tour and do you get a lot of emails from school children?

A: Yes and yes to both questions.  I found it very moving to watch my novel come to life up at the Quarantine Station. It’s a wonderful place to visit, very atmospheric.  It gives students a real feel for what life was like back in those times and of course they’re always sure they’re going to see a ghost!  (The guides themselves are quite sure the place is haunted!)

Q: In your Shalott Trilogy, which was inspired by Tennyson’s The Lady of Shallot a group of five Australian teenagers try to rewrite the legend and save the Lady of Shalott. Have you always been fascinated by the King Arthur legends? Have you been to the UK to see Tintagel Castle?

A: I wrote the Shalott trilogy because I was being bugged by the questions: why was the lady trapped in the tower, why was there a curse on her, plus the questions that followed on from that: what if it’s possible to go back in time and change history (or a legend);  what if you’re also rewriting your destiny at the same time? I didn’t know much about anything at first so it was a HUGE learning curve. I began to acquire a library of Arthuriana old and new, plus books on magic, on life in medieval time, and so on. And I went on my first research trip, following the ‘Arthurian trail’ through England, Wales, Brittany and France.  Tintagel was only one of the marvellous places I visited; other sites included Merlin’s ‘cave’ and Merlin’s ‘tomb’, Glastonbury and the Isle of Avalon, the ‘home’ of the Lady of the Lake, plus South Cadbury Castle, Caerleon and Winchester, all of which have been variously named as Arthur’s seat of power, sometimes called Camelot.

Q: Your current series The Janna Mysteries are set in England in the 1140s during the King Stephen/Queen Matilda civil war. This series contains a number of mysteries which the main character, Janna, has to solve. I think I’m seeing a theme here. You have a BA in Communication and an MA in Children’s Literature. Were you ever tempted to do further study in the area of history? (See Felicity’s Tips on Writing Historical Fiction).

A: Actually I’m a late convert to history; I found it so boring when I was at school, probably because my teacher didn’t teach it as the continuing soap opera it really is!  Those who marry – or murder for a crown, those who drive themselves to acts of great courage or bastardry for the sake of love, rivalry, power or wealth. Those idealists who dream of a brave new world, sometimes at a price too terrible to bear … the history I study is the history that informs my books. If I wasn’t so busy writing I’d love to go back to uni and immerse myself in the middle ages – or ancient Greece – or Egypt – or …? So difficult to know where to start!

Q: You wrote two of the Guinevere Jones books, based on the hit TV series. Was it hard to immerse yourself in the series and the back-story, then write creatively about characters you didn’t invent?

A:  Sophie Masson and I wrote the four books based on the series, working from notes, scripts and recorded episodes that were sent to us.  Writing the GJ books was a very different experience from anything else I’ve written.  The books also had to be written very fast so there really wasn’t a great deal of time for angst over characters and back story, we pretty much had to work with what we were given. So there wasn’t a lot of scope for imaginative input; it was more a recording of other people’s lives.  One of the things I need to do is walk the place I’m writing about, but this wasn’t possible as GJ was filmed on set in Melbourne (I live in Sydney) so I found that a real challenge – where do the characters go and what do they do once they go ‘off screen’?

Q: In an interview on Need to Read This, when talking about your new  book you say: ‘Most recently, I went to Norfolk Island. Hearts in Chains is a time-slip romance going back to the mid-19th century and the time of the brutal second penal settlement. I visited the museums, the ruins of the gaol, the houses along Military Road (now called Quality Row) and also Government House (and I am deeply grateful to the administrator and his wife for allowing me free access and even finding for me a hidey-hole for Alice to hide her diary!)  I think it’s essential for me, as an author, to walk in my characters’ footsteps, to experience the landscape and identify what he/she might have seen – wildlife, trees, flowers, buildings (or their ruins), weather and the light, etc.’ (Felicity has a whole page dedicated to research on her web site. See here). I envy you the chance to do this. Where will you be going to next to research?

A:  I loved writing the Shalott trilogy so much, and became so immersed in Arthurian legend that I’m thinking of revisiting that time and place, with hopefully the chance to explore the Arthurian trail once more.

Q: You write books with a strong historical base. In the past females had many restrictions on what they could do from the inability to own property to the choice of who they married. Do you ever worry that young readers could have trouble identifying with a female character whose life choices are limited?

A: Society might change but human nature doesn’t, so my belief is that readers identify with and feel sympathy for Janna’s predicament, left alone in a hostile world with only her skills and her courage to save her; her life constantly under threat from everything from wolves and wild boar in the forest to an assassin on a mission to silence her – quite apart from having to find such basic necessities as food and shelter to keep herself alive. And then there are the three young men in her life – who will she choose?  Readers are certainly VERY interested in that question!

Q: I’ve been interviewing quite a few authors and discovered many of them combine similar genres, mystery, fantasy and history. Why do you think these genres blend so well?

A: Good question! It’s not something I’ve considered before, but I think in my case I enjoy reading and writing all these different genres, and if you can combine them, so much the better! I particularly enjoy time-slip stories, combining history with fantasy although of course they can also encompass the future (like my favourite author Connie Willis, for example.)  Plus a mystery to solve or some sort of quest to fulfil is usually at the heart of every story, especially a fantasy.

Q: You go by the nick-name Flick. Did you have an annoying older brother who teased you and the name stuck? How did this come about?

A: I actually had an annoying older sister who called me ‘Fwiz’, which became the family nickname, while I was Fuzz (pronounced Fooz) to everyone else.  My family still call me that but anyone else does so at their peril!  I became Flick when I went to uni (in my late teens) and was christened thus by a girl in my res who subsequently became my best friend and who had known a Felicity/Flick at school.  Infinitely better than Fwiz, so I don’t mind that the name has stuck. ‘Felicity’ is far too formal.

Q: I understand you are cooking up a new project to write about. Can you share it with us?

A: It’s still in the cooking stage but, as I said earlier, it will be centred on King Arthur and Camelot, exploring in more detail some of the issues I found so fascinating while writing the Shalott trilogy – but this novel will be for adults.

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

A: I don’t read ‘high fantasy’ at all, so this is not a question I can answer, except to say there do seem to be any number of wonderful women fantasy writers around so I’m surprised by your observation. Perhaps female fantasy writers need to establish a Sisters in Fantasy, the equivalent of the international Sisters in Crime movement?

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

A:  Perhaps subliminally, not consciously.  If I find an author I like I’ll keep going, in which case I know what to expect.  With a new writer, I’ll go with the blurb and whether it sounds like an interesting story rather than defining it by gender.

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

 A: Fun??  That’s a very difficult question with so many people and places to choose from!  Backwards?  Forwards?  Decisions, decisions…and the temptation to try to change the course of history while you’re at it!  I might opt for Jerusalem at the time of Christ. I always wondered how I’d have reacted to the Messiah if I’d been around then. I’m sure it would be a very interesting time and place to visit.

Give-away Question:  Following on from the question above:  if you could meet anyone past or present, who would it be … and why?

Felicity’s Blog

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November 19, 2011 · 11:46 am

Meet Yvonne Navarro …

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

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

Q: You originally wanted to be an artist. I’ve done some surveys of writers and found four out of five are aural – they listen to music when writing, but the other one out of five are visually – they collect images and ideas spring from visual sources. Do you collect images that haunt you and trigger ideas? When you write a book do you collect a file of images that you associate with that book?

I did, although I currently consider myself as a “sort-of” artist now.  I’m lucky enough to be at a point in my life where I can go back and actively chase a dream that might have otherwise slipped away.  I’ve finally taken some painting classes and collected some output, and we’re perhaps a month away from me having a formal art studio in which to work.  I guess that answers your question in a roundabout way—I’m a very visual person.  As that applies to writing, you hit it on the proverbial head: I collect all kinds of images.  Sometimes the images inspire me, sometimes I seek them out to go with a work already in progress.  When I wrote Mirror Me, I had a notebook with photographs of the characters, neighbourhoods, even the kind of furniture in some of the characters’ homes.  Now that I think of it, going all the way back to my first novel, AfterAge , I did the same thing but for the city itself– I got up on Sunday mornings and went downtown in the dark so I could take photographs of a completely empty downtown and get the “feel” of what Chicago might be like if it was empty of people.

Q: You’ve written four books in the ‘Buffyverse’ and contributed to three anthologies. I know a couple of authors who write for Starwars, or Stargate, or the Buffyverse. It always strikes me as taking a lot of discipline. You must need to immerse yourself so thoroughly in the Buffyverse that writing those characters becomes instinctive. Do you do a lot of research before you start?

Actually, I’ve written seven when you include the Wicked Willow Trilogy.  It’s been awhile since I’ve written a Buffyverse book, but I can say that I did research as necessary when I was involved in the projects, specifically to make sure I kept all the details and interactions correct.  However, I was definitely immersed in the Buffy universe, in that completely geeky way that someone lives and breathes a series or movie that they absolutely adore.  (I was the same way with Babylon 5.)  I can still quote lines from Buffy shows (“Those are my chicken feet!”), just as I can from certain Aliens movies.  :o)

Q: You have an impressive list of awards and nominations to your credit. Several final-listings in the Bram Stoker Award, a win for the Women In Publishing Award and a win in the National Federation Press Women’s  Award in the Juvenile book category, to name a few. I guess the champagne corks have been popping in your house. Does it help to raise an author’s profile when they place or win in these awards?

Perhaps, although I haven’t really been aware of it.  Willow Files, Vol. 2 won the Bram Stoker Award in the category of Young Adult Fiction, and yet it was the last YA book I wrote until co‑writing a YA adventure with my husband, Weston Ochse.  I will say that it’s awfully nice to have all your hard work recognized publicly.  Hopefully there’s a certain ex out there somewhere who sees it and gets a silent moment of “She told me so.”  Oh, wait—was that my out loud voice?!

Q: You’ve also written for Species and Ultraviolet. Does this mean that you see the movie before it is released, or do you work from the script? What happens if scenes get left out on the cutting room floor?

How interesting that you chose Species and Ultraviolet, which were polar opposite experiences for me!  First off, all of the movie tie‑ins are written from the script, before the movie is released.  The object is generally to get the book out preferably before the movie is released, or at the very least, at the same time.  With Species, I worked very closely with Dennis Feldman, the scriptwriter, and we had the best time.  He actually read the manuscript and would call me directly and make comments; by the same token, I could call him anytime and ask questions.  One particularly telling question he asked me after reading the manuscript was, “What about the bus stop scene?”  To which I replied, “What bus stop scene?”  This, apparently, was something that had been added into an updated version of the script after I’d already written the first draft of the book.  That he and I were able to talk back and forth like that is a real rarity in the world of movie tie‑ins, and it really helped to make the book the best it could be.  Folks who read tie‑ins know that the best thing to do is to see the movie first, then read the book.  Invariably things are cut from the movie script because of time and money; if you read about them first and then see the movie, you’ll be disappointed that they aren’t included. If you see the movie, then read about them in the book, you’ll be delighted at the extra stuff in the book.  Which, by the way, isn’t just deleted scenes—authors often include past history, universe‑building, and detailed characterization.

Ultraviolet was interesting because I never received a single comment or change request on the manuscript.  I know I’m not a perfect writer, and that’s happened to me a couple of times (it also happened with Hellboy), but feedback is always a good thing, you know?

Q: In a review of your book Highborn, the reviewer said: ‘The term ‘Urban Fantasy’ can strike fear into the heart of many people, and not in a good way. Thankfully, this first novel in Yvonne Navarro’s Dark Redemption series (which is now followed by CONCRETE SAVIOR) is an example of the genre not only done well, but done damn near to perfection.’ They go on to say that the book is refreshing. Was it hard to come up with a fresh take on this genre?

I remember that review, and to say I feel flattered by those nice words would definitely be an understatement.  But I also have to admit that I wasn’t aiming to write an urban fantasy.  When I thought of the basis for HIGHBORN and then planned it out, it was just the book I wanted to write.  It wasn’t specifically geared to any genre, and it wasn’t until my agent sold it and the purchasing editor called it an urban fantasy that I even thought about where it might fit in terms of sales.

Q: You’ve written over a hundred short stories. It looks like you are most comfortable writing what is called Dark Fantasy now, but used to be known as horror. What’s led you down this path? Did you discover Poe when you were thirteen and have never been the same since?

My Mom and sister always liked scary stories.  I grew up watching Creature Features, reading Creepy and Eerie magazines, and looking for the spookiest fiction I could find in the library.  The first movie I remember watching was Alfred Hitchcock’s “The Birds” at the drive-in.  I like a good, scary story because it gets your blood running and your mind working, and you don’t always know there’s going to be a happy ending.

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 people write the way they want to, and if there’s any difference, it’s because the writer does it intentionally.  There are men writing romances under pseudonyms and women writing crime thrillers using their first and middle initials whose own readers don’t realize are female.   If a woman believes she shouldn’t write about certain things because she’s a woman, she’s imposed restrictions on herself… and she’s the only person who can break those chains.  I don’t write like a woman.  I don’t write like a man.  I write like a writer.

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

No, but I know that it does for some people.

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?

Well, it’s tempting to say I’d go backward and fix a few of my bigger mistakes in life, but then I’d probably just make different ones, right?  I tend to look at that on more of a personal basis than you’re probably intending.  If I stick to the fun side of things, I think I’d like to go into the future a hundred years or so, just to see where technology has taken us.  Of course, a thousand years from now we might actually have space travel.  Hmmmm…

Give-away Question:

Who’s your favorite female movie star heroine, and from what movie?

Yvonne says: If I was to answer this, it would be a tie between Sigourney Weaver from Aliens and Kate Beckinsale from the Underworld movies.

Follow Yvonne on Twitter:  http://twitter.com/#!/YvonneNavarro

See Yvonne’s Blog and Website.

Catch up with Yvonne on Facebook.

Catch up with Yvonne on GoodReads.

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Filed under Awards, Book Giveaway, creativity, Dark Urban Fantasy, Fantasy books, Female Fantasy Authors, Fun Stuff, Gender Issues, Genre, Movies & TV Shows, Publishing Industry, Young Adult Books

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November 12, 2011 · 9:09 pm

Meet Tara Moss …

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

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Q: It’s funny that you should be at the women crime writers conference, then write a post about gender bias in publishing(with a follow up post), because I’ve been running a series of interviews on this topic. Were you surprised by the intensity of the reaction to your post?

I was particularly surprised by the swift reaction of Mr. Woodhead – particularly as he identified himself as a reviewer for the Age and was very quick to dismiss the blog as ‘privileged whining’. Ironically, though I do write opinion pieces, that particular post contained very little opinion. It was a casual blog, reporting statistics relevant to gender bias, the creation of the Stella Prize and info about the SheKilda crime festival I had just returned from. Honestly, I did not imagine it would cause such controversy, though I do think the responses reveal something important about the current climate surrounding gender issues.

Q: The SheKilda conference was run by Sisters in Crime. Even though the Australian chapter has been established 20 years and the original US chapter was established 25 years ago, there still seems to be a need for an organisation specifically to celebrate crime written by women. I have seen comments by male readers to the effect that they simply wouldn’t read a book written by a woman. When you started out writing did you consider using a gender-neutral name like T Moss?

I have never considered presenting my work as gender neutral, either in name or in style, though I don’t begrudge those who have made that choice, or who have had that choice made for them by publishers. Many of the greats, PD James, JK Rowling have made that choice. In Brazil, my novels are published under T.Moss, though that happened without my involvement and I only found out later.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ij60AS2DHVQ]

Q: So many of the authors I interview write across several genres and across age groups. You have your Makedde Vanderwall crime thrillers (five so far) and the first book of your Young Adult Pandora English series has been released. I believe you have a young daughter. Are you tempted to try your hand at children’s books?

I’m writing a sixth novel in my crime series at the moment, and my second paranormal book with Pandora English will be out in a matter of weeks, so my writing schedule has been pretty packed this year, but I have had a children’s book series on the back burner for years now. Now that I am reading to my daughter each night, I may be closer to making that series a reality. Let’s just say that if I do make it happen, it won’t be about kittens with mittens.

Q: You’ve certainly immersed yourself in your research: spent time in squad cars, morgues, prisons, taken a polygraph test, shot weapons, conducted surveillance, acquired your CMAS race driver licences, been set on fire by a Hollywood stunt company and been choked unconscious by a professional fighter, all in the name of authenticity. Is there anything left that you’d still like to gain first-hand experience with? A trip to the moon perhaps?

If you have a spare ticket to the moon, I’d love to go for the ride. Truthfully, I am always looking for new opportunities to experience the world as others do, and to face my fears and push my own personal boundaries.

Q: You are a UNICEF Goodwill Ambassador and an ambassador for the Royal Institute for the Deaf and Blind Children. What exactly does this entail and how did it come about?

I’ve been an ambassador for the Royal Institute for Deaf and Blind Children for over a decade now, and I am really impressed by what they do for children who are visual or hearing impaired, and their families. They help to close the learning gap and ensure a life enriched by literacy. I host their annual charity flight, which is their biggest fundraiser each year, and I lend my hand to other activities for them where I am able, whether it is visiting the schools at the institute or promoting their work.

My involvement with UNICEF began in 2007 when they appointed me a Goodwill Ambassador, and they recently gave me a larger role, appointing me UNICEF Patron for Breastfeeding for the Baby Friendly Health Initiative (BFHI) in Australia, which involves advocating for breastfeeding women in hospitals, the workforce and general community, promoting breastfeeding as the normal and healthy practice that it is, and hopefully combating some of the misinformation on the topic. BFHI is a program spearheaded by the World Health Organization and UNICEF to support mothers and babies, with the aim to hopefully raise the rate of breastfeeding in Australia to the world standard. (The exclusive breastfeeding rate here is about half the world average at the moment) I encourage expectant mothers to choose a BFHI accredited hospital if they can, or to ask for BFHI protocols in their birth plan.

(For more information see here)

Q: You lost your mother while in your teens (I can’t imagine the gap this would leave), and you now have a baby daughter. It wasn’t until I had children of my own that I began to appreciate the dedication it takes to rear a child. Do you feel closer to your mother, even though she is no longer with us, now that you have a child?

My mother, Janni, passed away 21 years ago, and I still think of her every day. The evening my daughter was born was emotional for me on a number of levels. It was a beautiful time, but also bitter sweet, as I felt the loss of my mother particularly keenly that day. But I felt her presence as well. Our mothers never really leave us.

Q: You host the true crime documentary series Tough Nuts – Australia’s Hardest Criminals for the Crime and Investigation Network, and you do a series of author interviews for 13th Street Universal Channel called: Tara Moss in Conversation. This must take up a lot of your time, what with the research and the actual filming. How do you get time to write? Do you have a routine that you stick to?

I’ve always been quite self-motivated as a person but in the past couple of years I’ve had to become good at time management, particularly since giving birth to my daughter. I abhor routine, however. I love what I do and I just dive in and do it as best I can. I have a personal motto of sorts, which is that life is too short to live the same day twice. Thankfully, life holds a lot of adventure for me – if not very much sleep. I love the contrast of television work, journalism and fiction writing. Each provides a different challenge.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hR1hGkwKWqE&feature=related]

Q: I believe there is a new Pandora English book due out soon, The Spider Goddess. Why spiders? Are you phobic about spiders?

I am intrigued by ancient mythology and folklore, and the fable of The Spider Goddess caught my eye. As with The Blood Countess, I took truth and legend and wove it into a modern tale, set in an alternate New York. I wasn’t arachnophobic to begin with, but…

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?

Men and women don’t necessarily write fantasy differently because of gender, although more women tend to write female leads, and more men tend to write male leads. I love stories with great female characters, but I read everyone from HP Lovecraft and Neil Gaiman to Charlaine Harris and Marianne de Pierres.

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

If it does, I think that change in perception is largely unconscious.

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

My time machine would take me to Mary Wollstonecraft’s bedside in 1797, as she gave birth to Frankenstein creator Mary Shelley. I would keep the doctor away, or teach him about disinfecting his hands, so she would not die of puerperal fever, the ‘doctor’s plague’ that killed women and children for two centuries before germ theory was better understood. I often wonder what more Wollstonecraft, the author of Vindication of the Rights of Woman, would have achieved if she hadn’t been taken from us so young.

Follow Tara on Twitter:  @Tara_Moss

See Tara’s Blog

Catch up with Tara on Facebook

Catch up with Tara on GoodReads

Catch up with Tara on Facebook

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Filed under Australian Writers, Conferences and Conventions, Covers, Dark Urban Fantasy, Female Fantasy Authors, Gender Issues, Paranormal_Crime, The World in all its Absurdity, The Writing Fraternity, Thrillers and Crime, Thrillers and Mysteries, Young Adult Books

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October 22, 2011 · 8:44 pm

Meet Anita Bell …

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Funny story: It started out as;

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Sound familiar? Hehe.

David Meshow the theme for Diamond Eyes.

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

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

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

#1 Most Discussed, worldwide in Feb & March

#2 Top Favourited, worldwide in Feb & March

#2 Top Rated, worldwide in Feb and March

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

 

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

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

e.g.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Hehe… something like that.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

<insert evil laughter>

Give-away Question:

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

So what’s your super power?

 

Catch up with Anita on Facebook

on GoodReads: www.goodreads.com/aabell

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

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· 3:19 am

Winner Rebecca Moesta Give-away!

Rebecca has generously offered a Give-away book bundle of:

  • Crystal Doors trilogy in trade paperback
  • Jedi Shadow paperback (an omnibus of Young Jedi Knights books 1–3)
  •  BtVS: Little Things

Which she is willing to send anywhere in the world!

Rebecca says:

I read all the “entries” several times. I loved the enthusiasm and thought that everyone put into their answers. (Sean, in particular, won my admiration for staking out a specific area of the Star Wars universe.) I was most impressed by Cecilia, for her speed, engagement, positive replies, and wide-ranging love of the genre. (She was right, by the way: you did a great job on the interview!) Cecilia is the winner. Thank you so much for the chance to participate. Please let me know where to send the prize.

So Cecilia email Rebecca to organise the posting or yourbook bundle!

reb(at)wordfire(dot)com

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Filed under Book Giveaway, Dark Urban Fantasy, Fantasy books, Female Fantasy Authors, Fun Stuff, Readers

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September 3, 2011 · 12:34 pm

Meet Paul Collins …

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

 

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

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

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

Follow Paul on facebook.com/fordstreet

Catch up with Paul on twitter@fordstreet

www.paulcollins.com.au

www.fordstreetpublishing.com

www.quentaris.com

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