Category Archives: The Writing Fraternity

May 21, 2011 · 12:05 am

Friends doing well!

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

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

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

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

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

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

Leave a Comment

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

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

May 11, 2011 · 7:06 am

Meet Jennifer Fallon …

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

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

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

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

I am having an illegal amount of fun writing it.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

More swear words?

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

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

Not at all.

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


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

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

22 Comments

Filed under Australian Writers, Book Giveaway, Covers, creativity, Fantasy books, Female Fantasy Authors, Genre, Movies & TV Shows, Publishing Industry, The Writing Fraternity

Tagged as , , , , , , , , ,

May 3, 2011 · 9:32 pm

Meet Karen Miller …

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

 

See Karen’s LJBlog.

18 Comments

Filed under Australian Writers, Book Giveaway, Characterisation, creativity, Fantasy books, Female Fantasy Authors, Fun Stuff, Movies & TV Shows, Music and Writers, Promoting Friend's Books, Publishing Industry, The Writing Fraternity, Writing craft

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

April 29, 2011 · 9:50 pm

Joanna Russ leaves us …

Back in June last year I wrote a ‘Salute to Female Writers of the Seventies’ and the first one I mentioned was Joanna Russ. She inspired me. I loved her strong female characters. They were so refreshing.

I wish …

I wish I’d had a chance to meet her and tell her what a relief it was to find female characters who I could relate to.

See here for Science Fiction Writers of America’s tribute to Joanna Russ. (1937 -2011).

1 Comment

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

Tagged as , ,

April 27, 2011 · 7:42 am

Meet Tracey O’Hara …

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

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

Q: Congratulations on your R*BY win, Tracey. (Mainstream book with strong romantic theme, 2010). I see you were also a finalist in the Aurealis Awards (Best Horror 2009). That must have been a buzz. Do you think winning awards improves sales? 

It was a very big buzz. It was great having my debut wo well received. The RuBY was just – wow. I never anticipated it would win, so much so I didn’t even prepare a speech. I’m never doing that again. And when I was nominated for the Aurealis – I was so over the moon, and for the horror category as well. One day I would like to write some pure horror.

Q: I see you live in far north Queensland. Were you affected by the category 5 cyclone that swept through there earlier this year?

Actually I live in the ACT, but grew up in Canberra. It was quite an ordeal first worrying about family and close friends in the Queensland floods. Then a few weeks later worrying about extended family up in the north of the state. Followed closely by the Christchurch earthquake. It has been a really horrible time for all the people that live in those areas and my heart goes out to the ones who lost homes, or worse, loved ones in those terrible disasters.

Q: The covers for your Dark Brethren series Night’s Cold Kiss and Death’s Sweet Embrace are brilliant. Did you have any say in them?

I got asked for my ideas, and give them an impression of what I would like to see. With the first book, when they asked what I thought – and I said the opening scene, where Antoinette (the heroine) is perched on the windowsill with the sword strapped to her back would be really cool. But I could never have anticipated the wonderful cover that eventuated. I actually cried tears of joy when I saw it. The second cover is just as amazing.

Q: I see there is a third book in the Dark Brethren series Sin’s Dark Caress. Can you tell us a little about it?

With the first book, I mainly concentrated on the vampiric Aeternus race, the second was shapeshifting Animalians, and in the third I am going to delve into the world of the magic wielders. I am finding this story is quite a bit darker again from the first two. And that is all I am giving away at the moment.

Q: It sounds like your books have a strong thriller/mystery in them. Are you a fan of thriller/mystery books?

I loved the Arthur Upfield, Napoleon Bonaparte (Boney) books when I was a teenager and I’m a big Agatha Christy fan, however mainly the TV series and movies rather than the books which I sometimes find a bit tedious.

I would say I am more of a fantasy and horror fan than thriller/mysteries. Having said that, I love something that will take me to unexpected places and have twists I don’t see coming.

Q: In the Dark Faerie Tales guest post you say: ‘I like to describe the Dark Brethren books as a series concentrating on a central group of characters similar to what you would see in a TV series. Each book has a self contained story with a different heroine and hero but some of the themes are carried throughout the series.’ This reminds me of Buffy or Angel. Are you a fan of Joss Whedon?

OMG yes – very big Joss fan. My favourite series of his though, is Firefly. I actually didn’t like Buffy or Angel as characters much, but loved the characters that supported them. I think Joss’ characterisation is fantastic. The richness and complexity he gives to each individual is one of the most amazing things about his work.

Q: I see in your bio you say your first book just ‘flowed out of you like molasses on a hot day’ LOL. Do you still write that fast? How does it take you to write a Dark Brethren book?

Unfortunately no. That was back in the days before I knew what I was writing was rubbish. Now I agonise over the words more than I want too and I am so grammatically challenged it’s almost a crime. Now I when I see what I’m writing is rubbish, I have to work it out before I can move on. This is a bad habit that I will have to get out of.

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?

That is a very interesting question. I can’t say for sure and I definitely don’t want to pigeonhole writers. Of course every writer writes differently, it’s called the author voice. And there is not one better than the other.

But if I think about my some of my favourite writers, George RR Martin and Raymond E Feist, they have great books, and there are relationships, but I tend to think they concentrate on action, the sweeping epicness and the political intrigue of it all. Whereas my two favourite female authors, Jean M Auel and Anne McCaffery, their stories are just as sweeping and filled with almost as much action and intrigue, but I think the relationships (and I am not just talking romantic ones here) tend to have a bit more focus and feel a bit more personal. As I said – I don’t want to generalise. This is just purely my impression of the top of my head.

And sometimes I get the impression that if it’s a woman writer and the story has anything about relationships, some will say it’s romance, which for some reason is seen as lesser and something to be denigrated. Whereas if it’s a male, it can be seen as a well rounded story with depth and emotional pull.

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

No. I read stories. I like to find out more about the author, especially if I enjoy their books. But what I’m really looking for is a story to get totally drawn into and lost.

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?

OMG – that is so hard. The romantic in me would say in the times of the Vikings or Ancient Egypt, but it would depend of who or what I was there. I mean it wouldn’t be much fun going back to Viking days and being murdered in a Viking raid of my village. Nor would it be that much fun ending up as one of the slaves sealed alive in the tomb of a dead pharaoh. I think I am too much of a realist to want to go back in time. And I definitely don’t want to see what’s ahead for similar reasons.

Tracey will give-away a copy of latest book. Here’s the give-away question:

Tracey says – I’ve just started reading Game of Thrones, by George RR Martin, and I love this book because the writing is superb, the characters complex and three dimensional, the setting is vivid and beautifully described. It is what I would like to write when I grow up. What is your favourite book and what about it attracts your attention?

Follow Tracey on Twitter:  @traceyohara

7 Comments

Filed under Book Giveaway, Dark Urban Fantasy, Fantasy books, Female Fantasy Authors, Inspiring Art, Pitching your book, The Writing Fraternity

Tagged as , , , , , ,

April 13, 2011 · 10:15 am

Meet Trudi Canavan …

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

Watch out for the give-away question at the end of the interview. (NOTE this competition is now closed. Thanks for all the entries!)


Q: Like me, you have a background as an illustrator. Do you miss illustrating?

I have to admit, I don’t miss being a freelance illustrator much at all! While it was a fun job to have and I like being self-employed, it didn’t pay very well. Painting and other forms of art are now a hobby again, and it’s much more creatively satisfying to be portraying what I want to portray, in whatever medium inspires me and with no deadlines.

Q: In 1999 your short story Whispers of the Mist Children won the Aurealis Award for Best fantasy Short Story. Are you still writing short stories, or do you find your stories keep growing until they become novels?

Yes, I do still write shorts, though not often. My second published short, “Room For Improvement”, won a Ditmar in 2004 and I’ve had stories published in Dreaming Again and Legends of Australian Fantasy, but that’s four stories over ten years so you can see I’m not all that prolific!

My story ideas come with a length already obvious to me right from the start. I know if there’s ‘enough’ story to fill a short, novella, novel or series. Sometimes there’s a piece of history or character background within a longer work that can be separated out and written in a shorter form, like a short story or novella – like ‘The Mad Apprentice’ novella in the Legends anthology, which is a piece of history from the Black Magician Trilogy world.

Recently I joined a local short story critique group with the aim of both ‘giving back’ to the sff community, polishing my writing and critiquing skills, and motivating myself to write more short stories. I’m hoping to write a few set in the universe of my next series and then, in a couple of years, include them with my old short stories to form an anthology.

Q: In 2001 the first book of your The Black Magician Trilogy series came out. The Magicians’ Guild, The Novice, and The High Lord went on to be best sellers. Was this a bit of a surprise? (A welcome surprise, LOL).

Well, of course! I don’t think any sane writer expects success. They hope for it, and delude themselves that it will happen in order to keep going when times are tough, but they never take it for granted that it’s going to happen.

My dream, which formed when I was about fourteen, was to write a fantasy novel. Having it find a publisher was not necessarily part of the dream, but by the time I’d written it I certainly wanted it to be to justify all the hard work. If I’d not found a publisher I’d have been disappointed, but at least I’d done what I’d set out to do. Everything else has been a bonus. A confidence-boosting bonus and one that’s financially sustainable, thankfully!

Q: Your second trilogy, Age of the Five has also been a best seller.

Yes, though it’s success is overshadowed by the Black Magician Trilogy and its prequel and sequel. Part of that is due to it being aimed at an older market. I decided to do so because I was a little worried I’d be typecast as a YA writer, which isn’t a bad thing for sales but I could see it might be for me as a writer in the long term. I don’t want to be restricted to only being able to publish to one kind of audience.

To make it a non-YA book, I simply had to make the main character older (she’s about 25) and add a few sex scenes. I considered whether upping the violence would make a difference, and realised it probably wouldn’t. You’d have to add very gratuitous violence to a book to make it unsuitable to young people these days!

Q: Then, in 2007, you signed a ‘seven-figure deal’ with Orbit to write the prequel and sequel to The Black Magician Trilogy. Does this mean that you are one of the mythical writers who doesn’t have to hold down another job to make ends meet while you write? Has this given you freedom and confidence to concentrate on your writing?

The answer to that is yes, but naturally it’s more complicated than that. I started writing as my only source of income before it paid well enough, because I had no choice.

You see, I started my illustration business so I could afford to write part time. A few years after my first publishing contracts I developed chronic fatigue. It wasn’t as debilitating as most cases, but I had to save all my energy for writing, and let the illustration business go. Those early advances didn’t come close to a full time wage and I survived, financially, by been very, very, very frugal.

Thankfully, in the years since then I have regained most of my old energy and the writing brings in a much better income. I’d glad I don’t have to take on a second job, because I worry that doing so would bring back the chronic fatigue. There are other things I’d like to do, like finally get a university qualification, but again, I worry about what affect that would have.

Q: With such a large range of trilogies many of which interrelate do you have a huge whiteboard in your office with timelines, family trees and maps? How do you keep it all straight?

I have a pinboard above my writing desk, but it’s mainly covered in maps and plans. All my lists of made-up words and character names are on my computer. There’s less of this than you’d expect, actually. I try to keep my cast of main characters small enough to be easily manageable. I figure that if I can remember who is who,  the chances are better that the average reader will keep track as well.

Q: I know you do a lot of craft, as well as cooking. Do you find that you need these creative outlets to counter balance the intensity of writing really long fantasy trilogies?

Yes, I’ve always found that the compulsion to write dries up if I’m not doing other creative activities. Part of the reason is that I do a lot of thinking about stories when painting or I’m involved in something repetitive and soothing like weaving. Another part is that finishing a craft projects provides a feeling of completion and achievement on a regular basis, which I only get once a year or so from writing. The crafts I do also qualify as research – they provide an understanding of how thing were made in the past and can be a source of inspiration for stories and building fantasy worlds.

I’ve read articles about chemicals in the brain that relate to creativity, that suggest that the more you produce them the easier it is to produce them. Creativity stimulates creativity.

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.

When I saw the discussion about this on the internet my first reaction was ‘is there really?’. It’s certainly not the case here in Australia, where most fantasy authors are female.

When I considered the ratio of male to female overseas authors I knew of, there didn’t seem to be a big imbalance. Then I learned that I would be attending a Mega Signing in the UK as part of the publicity tour for The Rogue in May, and that I was the lone woman in a pack of eight male writers. That certainly made me sit up and take notice!

While the boy’s club label didn’t seem immediately true of authors, it did agree with my impressions of the commentators of sff overseas and this article confirmed it. I’ve always been a bit bemused by the UK/US awards shortlists and the books reviewed in magazines. The sort of fantasy they seem to like is what I’d call ‘blokey’.

Q: So you think there’s a difference in the way males and females write fantasy?

Yes, but not all writers all the time. Most male and female writers come pretty close to a style and flavour of fantasy that sits easily in the middle. But there are definitely writers who write in a blokey or feminine style, even if they’re of the opposite gender.

I suspect there are cultural differences, too. The sort of fantasy popular in the US may seem blokey to our Australian tastes because we have more female fantasy writers here and the subtle differences in the way women write fantasy may feel ‘normal’ to us. Is the opposite true? I don’t know. But if it is, it doesn’t seem to be putting off overseas readers. Every time I talk to people in the oversees publishing, bookselling and commentary industries they ask “why are there so many fantastic women fantasy writers in Australia?”. Maybe the question should be “why aren’t we paying more attention to all the fantastic women fantasy writers in your own country?”.

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

I would be lying if I said it didn’t, but the important thing is it doesn’t stop me wanting to read a book. Ultimately I want to read a good book, and I never consider if that’s more likely because the writer is male or female. I certainly never decide that a book is bad or not my taste because of the gender of the writer.

I know some readers do, and I slot that in the same category of “extremely fussy and a bit strange” readers along with those who won’t read a book written in first person, or that have prologues or epilogues, or with a point of view character in a gender or sexual orientation different to their own.

I don’t feel I should be judgemental toward a reader because of their reading comfort zones, but I do feel sad that they may be missing out on great books.

Q: What do you plan to write next?

I’m really excited about the next series, Millennium’s Rule, which we’ve just finished negotiating the contract for. It is set in a multiple world scenario, where characters with the ability can hop from one world to another. In one world, where there has been a kind of industrial revolution powered by magic, a young archaeology student finds an ancient treasure – a sentient book. In another world, trapped in its own dark ages, the daughter of a cloth merchant must hide her powers from magic-hating, priests.

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

I would go into the future, maybe by a hundred years. Maybe that’s surprising from a writer of fantasy, which is mainly set in worlds based on past eras, but I’m not under any delusions that any time in the past was a better one than now. Not that I expect the future is guaranteed to be either, but I always want to know to know what happens next.

To win a copy of Trudi’s latest book  ‘The Rogue’ answer this question: Why do you think there are so many fantastic female fantasy writers in Australia?

103 Comments

Filed under Australian Writers, Book Giveaway, creativity, Fantasy books, Female Fantasy Authors, Genre, Inspiring Art, Promoting Friend's Books, The Writing Fraternity

Tagged as , , , , , , , ,

April 4, 2011 · 11:16 am

Meet Alison Goodman …

As the next of my series featuring fantastic female fantasy authors (see disclaimer) I’ve invited the award winning, multi-talented Alison Goodman to drop by.

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

photo by naced.com.au

Q: Your first book published was Singing the Dogstar Blues (Great title). It won an Aurealis Award for Best YA novel, was listed as notable book in two other awards and was shortlisted for the Victorian Premier’s Literary Award. This is a time travel, science fiction story, which must have been a lot of fun to write. Are you tempted to go back into the Dogstar world and write more books with this premise?

I’ve already been back! I wrote a follow up short story called “The Real Thing” for Firebirds Rising, an anthology of original Science Fiction and Fantasy. I’ve always had the idea of returning to the Dogstar world at some point, so I wrote the short story as a kind of bridge between the first book, and what may, one day, become the second book in a series.

Q: Your latest book Eona will be released in April 2011. (A sample chapter is provided on this page). Looking at the covers on your website, they are all brilliant. You must be over the moon! (I think I have serious cover envy, here).  This new series is written for the adult market. Did you find writing for adults gave you more freedom?

Yes, I’ve been incredibly lucky with my covers and had some great artists working on them.

EON has been published around the world as both adult fiction and young adult fiction (YA) without a word of the novel being changed, so it is dead square in what is called the “crossover” market. I specifically wrote EON to be a crossover novel, and with that came decisions about how I explored some of the hot-points like sexuality and violence. I suppose my rule of thumb is to always write what is necessary for the story and then see if anyone yells foul! Then make decisions from there. I have pushed the sexuality and violence envelopes more in EONA, the sequel, because the storyline is about power and its abuse, and about awakening sexuality. However, as I wrote both novels, I was always aware that I have some younger readers and so strived to layer the novels so that if a reader does not have the world experience to understand some of the more adult themes, then they can read the books as rollicking good adventure stories.

Q: EONA is the sequel to The Two Pearls of Wisdom/EON, (depending on where you live). How do publishers come up with such disparate names?

My original titles for the books were EON and EONA. However, my UK and Australian publishers decided to market the book for a mainstream adult market and felt that these two titles were too fantasy genre specific, so they asked me to re-title. I came up with The Two Pearls of Wisdom and The Necklace of the Gods, which I think work well as titles for the novels, but confused some readers as they thought these were other books in the EON/EONA series. Now only my UK adult fiction publisher is going to release the sequel as The Necklace of the Gods. My Australian publishers have decided to return to the EON and EONA pairing, and recently re-released The Two Pearls of Wisdom as EON. Phew! No wonder some of my fans are a bit confused.

Q: About book one you say: ‘It has won awards, sold into 16 countries, but the clincher is the scene that brings together a young girl masquerading as a boy, a woman dressed as a man, and a eunuch taking a testosterone tea supplement’ Wow, with a scene like that I think I’ll have to rush out and buy a copy. Have you ever been tempted to write satire (as opposed to say, fantasy with a touch of humour)?

Believe it or not, that scene is actually a straight dramatic scene, albeit with a cast of very singular characters!

I’ve never been tempted to write a full-on satirical novel, although there are elements of comedy in my first two books. Singing the Dogstar Blues is a comedy thriller, and I think of Killing the Rabbit as a black comedy. Mind you, it is my own brand of very black comedy that, alas, is a hereditary weirdness passed through my mother’s side. Also, I did once write a spec episode of the TV comedy The Games with the wonderful Bryan Dawe (one half of the John Clarke and Bryan Dawe political satire team). We had a ball writing together and, although the episode was never made, I learned so much about the grammar of television and the rhythms of satire comedy.

Q: You have a page dedicated to research on your web site.  You say: ‘Alongside my reading, I also do empirical research to help me fully create my world using vivid sensory detail. That can mean anything from going to a local Tai Chi class, cooking a new Chinese dish, or travelling all the way to Japan to walk through the temples and gardens.’ You really went to Japan and walked through temple gardens. Was this the first time you’d been to Asia? Did it change the way you viewed Japanese culture and/or the way you approached the book?

My first contact with Japanese culture came through my Japanese aunt. She married into our family and brought tantalising glimpses of the Japanese culture into my very anglo existence, particularly through her wonderful food and conventions of hospitality. My research trip was the first time I had been in Japan for any length of time and it certainly impacted on my novels in terms of sensory description and the way space is used for living and working.

Q: Your adult crime/thriller Killing the Rabbit was shortlisted for the Davitt Award. (I note there was a slight SF element in this story). Are your publishers happy with you writing across age groups and genres, or do you they try and shoe-horn you into one genre? Following on from that, will you be writing more crime/thrillers?

So far my publishers haven’t mentioned any problem with me changing genre, probably because three of my four books have been published under a YA banner, which is considered a genre in itself. Also, my crime novel was picked-up by a different publishing house, so there was a separation of my adult crime fiction from my other genre work. My YA publishers would probably prefer that I settle into a genre and stay there, but I’m too restless for that. I go where the story goes, whether it be fantasy, crime, SF or whatever. When I’m developing a story, I like to mash genres together and play with the conventions; see if I can sneak in some surprises that mess around with the structures as well as story and character expectations. I particularly like the thriller form, so yes, I will be returning to it. In fact, my next project is going to be a thriller/urban fantasy duology (you heard it first here!).

Q: You said you returned to the Dogstar world in Firebirds Rising. Are you keen on the short story medium or do you find it difficult to keep within the word limit?

I studied Professional Writing at university and most of my training was in crafting the literary short story, so short is where I started. Writing short fiction is a great discipline – it teaches essential skills such as economy, layering of meaning and careful word choice – and I am always grateful for the excellent foundation I received from my teachers including the great Gerald Murnane. However, now that I have written four novels, I find the short story a bit unsatisfying to write. I enjoy building worlds and complex characters and that is not really the domain of the short story. Having said that, I do still write short stories, they are just quite a bit longer than they used to be.

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

My gut says that there are just as many female authors writing fantasy as there are male, and that the perception of it being a boy’s club is bit out of date – perhaps a remnant of when publishing was a boy’s club and it was hard for women to get published in any genre.

As to whether there are differences in the way males and females write fantasy – that’s a toughie. I don’t think I’ve read a big enough cross-section of fantasy novels to make any kind of useful judgment about gender. In the end, though, if a writer is doing their job, the core of a novel should be touching on the universal questions that we all face, regardless of gender.

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

I think my expectations of a book are more centered on the genre rather than the gender of the author. Also, I prefer to read a first person point of view, so when I pick up a book, I am looking for a genre that I like – fantasy, thriller, crime, SF – and the intimacy of that first person point of view.

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 round trip – first I’d like to go back to Shakespeare’s England (with a plague vaccination, if possible) to find out who wrote the plays, and hang out with poet, playwright and spy, Christopher Marlowe. After that, I’d go on to the Regency period in London, with a gender change on the way because the Regency men had all the fun. After a bit of phaeton racing and louche behaviour, I’d journey on to the mid- 1920’s, as a woman again, with a bob and my Charleston dancing shoes. I’d finish up in the early 1960’s in the USA, first to check out the grassy knoll and book depository, and then a quick jump to Woodstock, in flared jeans, a halter-top and a flower in my hair.

Giveaway question for a signed copy the Australian edition of EONA: If you were a mythical creature, what would you be and why?

Alison’s website: www.alisongoodman.com.au

See Alison on a video interview.

Follow Alison on Twitter:  alisongoodman

17 Comments

Filed under Australian Writers, Book Giveaway, Characterisation, creativity, Dark Urban Fantasy, Fantasy books, Female Fantasy Authors, Genre, Inspiring Art, Nourish the Writer, The Writing Fraternity

Tagged as , , , , , , , , ,

March 30, 2011 · 7:44 am

Meet CE Murphy …

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

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

Q: Looking at your publication list you are incredibly prolific. There’s the Walker Papers, the Negotiator Trilogy, the Inheritors’ Cycle. Then there is the comic and the books you write under your pseudonym Cate Dermody. You say you generally write a book in 6 to 8 weeks. It sounds like you become completely immersed in your books. Do your invented worlds and characters become more real to you than the real world?

Ah, I used to write books that fast. It usually takes 3-4 months now, though I still prefer it if I can get the rough draft done that quickly.

The writing and characters and worlds, though, never have superseded reality. I only realized recently that people actually literally mean it when they say they become so immersed in their worlds that the real world disappears. Truth be told, I think that’s really bizarre. 🙂

Q: Are you one of those writers who create a music play list for each series that they work on and only play that music while you are writing that series?

I’m not. I really dislike having music playing when I’m working, in fact. It distracts me. I *can* work with music on if I really have to drown other things out, but it has to be music I’m very very familiar with or it just becomes part of the problem.

Q: You write as both CE Murphy and Cate Dermody. The CE Murphy books are fantasy (with a strong female protagonist). The Cate Dermody books are action-adventure romance. Did you plan to write under two names to give yourself flexibility as a writer?

That’s exactly why. Turns out I should’ve been even more flexible, since the Inheritors’ Cycle, which is very different from my urban fantasy, didn’t sell all that well and might have done better under a different name. Ah well!

Q: Your Cate Dermody books seem to be espionage in a contemporary setting. Do you love writing and reading mystery/thrillers?

Does it show? 🙂 Yeah, I do. I like stories that just rip along and take me for a great ride, and I think the Dermody books offer that for readers. They’re huge fun. Or at least they were huge fun to write!

Q: Do you think having a gender neutral name for your fantasy books makes them more accessible to male readers?

*laughs* Honestly, that never occurred to me. I write under CE because I don’t care for being called by my full name, and people tend to call you what’s on the cover of a book. I go by Catie in real life, and I never thought that looked grown-up enough for adult books, so when a friend suggested the initials I thought “Good idea!” It only came up after I’d been published a couple years and people started asking me variations on this question. 🙂

Q: You also write for comics. Are you one of those people who come from an illustrator/comic background but also write? Following on from that are you a fan of graphic novels from way back? If so which artists inspired you?

Ah, I wish. I’m a decent artist, but I’m both good enough to know how good I’m not and also not an illustrator. Every once in a while I think “Y’know, I could be really good at this if I tried,” but pretty much my creative efforts have been long focused on writing, so art is just a rarely-visited hobby for me.

I got into comics through ElfQuest when I was about twelve, so yeah, pretty much the first thing beyond Archie and Richie Rich that I read were the graphic novel versions of ElfQuest, which basically makes me a fan of the format since childhood. I still default to Pini-style elves in my doodling. 🙂

Q: Was it difficult to make the writing craft adjustments to write for comics/graphic novels?

Yes and no. It’s completely different, but being the sort of person I am, I went out and researched how to write comics before I gave it a shot. (Nat Gertler’s PANEL ONE, for those who are interested, is a great resource.) I was under no time pressure when I did that, which helped, but once I got the idea in place, it wasn’t so bad. Writing comics is fun. Totally different ballgame, and lemme tell you, there’s pretty much *nothing* as awesome as seeing pages come back to you: your words transformed into art. Just wow.

Q: I love your description of your mother: ‘My mom’s a choreographer and a costumer, is wonderfully sensible and extremely silly, and when you have someone like that in your life as your role model for what it is to be an adult female, you just kind of naturally assume that’s what it is to be a woman: strong, talented, inventive, intelligent.’ You write strong, intelligent female characters. Was there ever a conscious decision, or did they just flow?

Well, y’know, they say write what you know. I have a few series ideas with male leads, but mostly I’ve always written girls and women because that’s what I am.
Tell ya something that drives me bugnuts, though, is the idea (often found in romance and paranormal romance) that an “alpha male” is a complete jackass. I like to think there are plenty of alpha males in my books–Morrison, Gary, Alban, Tony–but man, to me, a strong male character is not one who is also automatically an asshole.

Panel discussion strong female characters San Diego Comic-Con 2008.

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

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?

Eh. Not really. I think there’s a difference in how *people* write books. I’ll never write exactly the same story as anyone else, even if we’re given the exact same premise. That’s because we bring different things to the table, different talents, different voices, different viewpoints. Some of those will be female viewpoints, some of them won’t. Some of them I’ll connect with, some of them I won’t. It’s all about storytelling, not who’s telling it, to me.

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

Nah. I read a lot of women authors, but I stopped reading them *because* they were women when I was about, I don’t know, fifteen, and I ran into a slew of books I thought I Should Like, because they were by well-respected female names in the fantasy field. I bounced off them like a bouncing thing, so it was around then that it became clear to me that the author’s gender did not necessarily give me anything in common with the story they were telling or the way they told it…although I seriously doubt I thought of it that way at the time. 🙂

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?

Only *one*, she wailed? Is it cheating to say “Anywhere, any time, as long as it’s with the Tenth Doctor”? 🙂

All right, all right. One trip, eh? Okay. I’d go back to the Library at Alexandria just before the fire and clean the place out so all those amazing ancient texts could be rediscovered now. 🙂

Give-away question:

I’ll do a give-away of one copy of SPIRIT DANCES to the commenter who comes up with the time-travel destination I wish I’d thought of… 🙂

Follow CE Murphy on Twitter: @ce_murphy

CE Murphy Blog

8 Comments

Filed under Book Giveaway, Characterisation, Comics/Graphic Novels, Covers, creativity, Dark Urban Fantasy, Fantasy books, Female Fantasy Authors, Genre, The Writing Fraternity

Tagged as , , , , , , , , ,

March 23, 2011 · 9:49 am

Meet Margo Lanagan …

As the next of my series featuring fantastic female fantasy authors (see disclaimer) I’ve invited the talented (and slightly weird in the best possible way!) Margo Lanagan to drop by.

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

 

 

 

Q: As a writer who has a foot firmly in two camps, the literary world and the fantasy world, do you find readers react differently to your books depending on whether they are genre readers, or literary readers?

Literary readers can sometimes make a bit of preliminary apologetic noise about how they don’t read much in the way of fantasy. (I’m talking about face to face reactions here.) And they can be more unnerved by the weird content that genre readers take in their stride. That’s probably about the extent of the difference—and that’s also a gross generalisation, too, on my part! There are as many degrees of enthusiasm/indifference/puzzlement in one camp as in the other.

Q: Your short story collections or individual stories/novellas have won three World fantasy Awards. (Black Juice – Anthology, Singing my Sister Down – Fantasy Short Story, Sea-Hearts – Novella).Do you think of yourself as primarily a short story writer, or are you novel writer who wandered into short stories by chance?

At first I was a poetry writer, who wandered into novel writing in a bid to get some readers, any readers—also to enjoy the capaciousness of the form. Then I got myself into a whole bunch of trouble biting off HUGE novels that I could not chew, so I ran screaming to the short story to save my sanity. Yes, that’s pretty much how it went.

Q: There is a surreal quality to your short stories. Many of them feel as if they happen in our world, with a slight twist. In an interview on SF Site you said: ‘the balance of the real and unreal in my stories is pretty much how I see the world. Some weird small thing in the real world strikes me (like misreading a magazine title Modern Bride as Wooden Bride, out of the corner of my eye) and my mind just builds and builds on it until there’s a whole other world there, full of wooden brides! (This is a Black Juice story.)’  Have you always viewed the world through this surreal lens? And conversely, when did you realise that other people didn’t see the world as you see it?

Oh yes. I’m the third of four daughters, and I discovered early that the way to get attention was to be the clown. Making people laugh, by noticing that sort of thing, was my role in the family. I didn’t realise it could be put to wider use for quite some time, until my realistic-story ideas started getting weirder and weirder. Then I twigged that there was a whole fantasy genre over here, ready to welcome me in with open arms!

Q: Your latest novel Tender Morsels, which was a joint winner of the Best Novel World Fantasy Award in 2009, was published many years after your previous novel Touching Earth Lightly (1996). Was Tender Morsels novel a long time in gestation? Or did you work on others novels in the mean time.


Oh yes yes yes I worked on other novels, and you know it, Rowena! 😀 There was the Big Fantasy Brick with which I broke my own back; then there was the junior fantasy quartet, which also grew and put out tentacles and complicated itself until it was insupportable. Then came the aforementioned running screaming to short stories, and then Tender Morsels was the pick-on-something-your-own-size project that I finally managed to complete. It really was quite efficient once I got going, taking about 18 months to complete.

Q: I see your Selkie novel, called Watered Silk, is due out in 2011. Can you tell us a little about it?

Ah, the selkie novel. *weeps a little* The selkies so far have accumulated three titles, one for each market (Aus, US and UK). And their publication in Australia has been put back until probably February 2012, because they need a second round of structural editing, probably because the first round was done in a tearing hurry just before Christmas last year.

All I can say about the novel (because it’s changing under my hands even as I speak), is that it’s very watery, very silky and very, very sad. It has a madly atmospheric fictional-version-of-the-Hebrides setting; there’s a witch at the centre of the story of whom I’m very fond; and pretty much everyone in it has a thoroughly heartbreaking time. I think my next novel will have to be some kind of ‘romp’ to compensate.

Q: Much of your work (stories and books) is described as YA. In an interview on Tabularasa you said: ‘I think the attraction of writing fiction for younger people is the escape into characters’ lives who haven’t yet made decisions that will set them up for a predictable path through life. But I also like the fact that characters are encountering things for the first time, or just starting to make sense of the world, or just starting to question the world that they’ve found themselves in.’ Do you still set out to write for the YA market or is it just that the stories that come to you have YA aged protagonists?


I try not to think too carefully about markets when I write (yes, that is the sound of my publishers’ eyes rolling, in the background). Probably my attitude can best be summed up as avoiding putting explicitly unsuitable-for-YA-readers material in the novels. I still find the young-adult stage of life the most interesting to explore, for the same reasons as you’ve quoted; it’s partly escapism from the kinds of middle-aged issues I find I’m having to face now—a kind of making-over of my own life, perhaps, in my head.

Q: In an interview on Meanjin you said that you write longhand. Do you still do this, and if so what is it about writing longhand that appeals to you?

Yes, I still do it. My day-job work involves keyboarding, so sitting at a keyboard doesn’t set up the right vibe for me, for creative writing; it feels as if longhand writing taps into my writing-brain more readily. Also, it just provides variety of hand movements, so forestalls RSI a bit longer—I know, it all has to be typed up eventually, but transcribing is a much more relaxed form of typing than composing, so it’s less likely to result in injury. And I like the concrete evidence of pages piling up on the left as I do my day’s quota—that little message at the bottom of the screen, ‘Page 4 of 4’ just doesn’t do it for me the way crinkly pages of messy handwriting do.

Q: In a guest post on Justine Larblestier’s site you said: ‘Sometimes you have to lie fallow for a while, remove yourself far enough from your own words, your own style, that you can come at them afresh later. Sometimes there’s a good story waiting, but your subconscious hasn’t worked out how you’ll approach it yet. Leave it alone; let it grow …’  What do you do, when you need to let your subconscious do the work?


It depends on time constraints. Sometimes the deadline is so pressing that a task like washing the dishes is all the time you can spare from the story—something manual and mindless like that is good. A walk, a movie that wrenches you completely out of the story’s mindset, some music, a trip away or perhaps just the passing of a normal working week/month—all these activities are useful for putting distance between yourself and the story and letting it cook without you getting in the way. Sometimes you need to hold the story in your head while you do these things, sometimes you just need to come back and prod it every now and then; sometimes it’s healthier just to put it out of your mind completely and come back fresh at a later time, when your imagination’s feeling all elastic and full of possibilities again.

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?

Not substantially; I just think that as soon as a field is shown to offer solid rewards (in this case, by Rowling and Meyer), blokes will be all over it like a rash, making big, possessive noises that attract media attention. For years, fantasy was consistently sneered at and sidelined because it was seen as a kind of squashy, undisciplined, overly romantic little sister of science fiction. It amuses me, in a sour sort of way, this boys’-club issue.

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

Not at that early stage (presuming I haven’t read that author’s work before); I’m always hopeful that a writer will be able to inhabit male and female characters equally convincingly, and create a world whose appeal isn’t only to one gender. Once I’ve started, cliches of gender-blinkered-ness are only one kind of slip-up that can kill my interest in a book; throw in a bit of sloppy writing and a dull plot and I’m gone.

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?

For my next novel, I need to go back to 1830s New South Wales, and walk for a while in the virgin bush, also hang about on the fringes of the European settlements and listen to how people speak. How I would do that without arousing suspicion and being clapped in irons as a madwoman, I don’t know.

The best answer in the comments below wins a copy of Margo’s new story collection Yellowcake, and of The Wilful Eye, the bewitching first volume of Tales from the Tower, stories (including one by Margo) gathered by Isobelle Carmody and Nan McNab.

Tell us about the BEST cake you’ve ever eaten. The most mouth-watering comment will win a copy of Margo’s YELLOWCAKE collection, and a copy of THE WILFUL EYE anthology, which also contains a slice of Lanagan.

Margo’s Blog.

Follow Margo on Twitter @margolanagan

13 Comments

Filed under Australian Writers, Book Giveaway, Dark Urban Fantasy, Fantasy books, Female Fantasy Authors, Nourish the Writer, Promoting Friend's Books, The World in all its Absurdity, The Writing Fraternity, Writing craft

Tagged as , , , , , , ,

March 16, 2011 · 7:13 am

Meet Tansy Rayner Roberts

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

17 Comments

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

Tagged as , , , , , , , , ,