Aurealis Awards 2012: A Link For You

Let's face it, Sean Wright does it better than I would in his post this morning, using Twitter posts, including one of mine, to describe Australian SF's answer to the Oscars, so I am going to link you to his web site, where he has done a very nice job of putting together some of the relevant tweets, with his own comments on them.

Amazing how quickly word gets around using Twitter. There was, a few years ago, that journalist who lost her job by saying the wrong thing on Twitter during another awards night, but the thing is, you don't have to be there or even wait for the newspaper or next day's blog posts to find out, if you're willing to wade through all those tweets which talk about what the tweep is wearing, who they're going to meet for drinks afterwards, complain that they can't get said drinks quickly enough and then report on how nice the stage looks and who has just got up to make a speech and what they're wearing. ;-) And you can see how nice the stage looks or who is there, because people snap photos.

As I am one of those who doesn't have the patience to wade through it all or wait, I went to bed and happily read through Sean's post, which you can find here. No surprises in the list of winners, though it doesn't mention which Graeme Base book won the children's picture book section ... A google shows it was Little Elephants, which I haven't read, having lost track of Graeme Base's books some time ago, must check it out. Ah, well, I can't say I'm surprised the veteran won this time, but I am disappointed that In The Beech Forest, illustrated by up and coming young artist Den Scheer, didn't make it - the review on this site, one of my more popular posts, tells you what I think of it. I can only say to the young lady, stick with it - Graeme Base's early book, Animalia, was on the CBCA shortlist,  and that didn't win either, but you know what? It's still in print, while the book that won is long forgotten. Not that I think anything by Graeme Base will ever be forgotten, but the thing is, he has also been where young Den is, and done just fine. And so will she. I firmly believe she is going to be the next Shaun Tan.

Congrats to the winners, but also anyone who made it to the list. Just getting there is special! And remember, I am a writer and, I think, a very good one, and I have never made it to the AA or the CBCA shortlist myself, so I am not just trying to be comforting. Heck, I am jealous of you for making it that far!(But I did make it to the Chronos shortlist, yay!)

 I don't envy the judges their job and I do urge everyone to read everything that was shortlisted, not just the winners. I am going to, not having had time to read them all as yet.

What do you think, anyone who has seen the list of winners? Would you have made the same decisions?

Star Trek Into Darkness

Pic by Eva Rinaldi

Wednesday night I went with friends to my local cinema, the Classic, to see Star Trek:Into Darkness. The photo is not from the Classic. It's from the Australian premiere of the film, with, left to right, Karl Urban( who would have thought "Eomer" from LOTR would make such a fabulous Dr McCoy?), Zachary Quinto, director J.J Abrams and Chris Pine. We got the director AND Kirk, Spock and McCoy! I placed this photo, which I think appropriate, instead of a movie poster because the pic, by a lady called Eva Rinaldi, is on Wikimedia Commons, with permission granted to use as long as you attribute, while the film company would make all sorts of fuss. And it's a nice photo - my, they are tall boys! Or J.J Abrams is very short, though he makes up for height in talent.

I can't say much about the movie without spoilers and I won't assume everybody has seen it already, so I will say only that I thoroughly enjoyed it, both for the action and for the cheeky references to other things. The cheekiness started at the beginning, with a sequence on "Nibiru", the supposed Doomsday planet that was going to wipe out Earth last year. There was a scene which made reference to another Trek movie, in reverse, and a villain we have seen before, though in the interim he has developed a British accent, as has another character whom we saw as distinctly American last time. And a lot of action. The main actors have grown into their roles and settled in comfortably and if we can no longer have Shatner, Nimoy and Kelley, their younger versions are doing a very good job of convincing us. There were times when I could close my eyes and almost see the original Spock and McCoy and if Chris Pine's voice isn't quite Shatner's his mannerisms are.

Just go and see it.

So, why am I talking about a movie and a TV show not remotely connected with books, on my book blog? 

When I was growing up, I was developing a love of science fiction, as was my older sister. It was her shelves I raided for my spec fic, although I had already come to it through Verne and Wells. I was looking for visual spec fic as well, because I love my SF/F any way I can get it. The only thing on at the time I was watching was Lost In Space. Since growing up, I have discovered that to be classic sixties pop culture and a hoot. And it featured some of the people I would later see/hear in Star Trek, such as Stanley Adams(Cyrano Jones in Trek) and composer Alexander Courage, not to mention a certain Johnny Williams( yes, THAT John Williams!). And irritating little "Will Robinson" would eventually appear as a lovely alien in the wonderful, intelligent series Babylon 5. 

But at the time, I could only see the silliness of the story lines and longed for real SF. And one night, I got it. I saw a TV show with characters I could care about and stories that made sense to me(and when they didn't I could have fun arguing with friends about them). And best of all, it had real SF writers - classic ones such as Jerome Bixby, Theodore Sturgeon, Norman Spinrad, a story pinched from Fredric Brown, Harlan Ellison(whose script was, admittedly, rewritten completely and didn't he complain about it for years, but didn't refuse his Hugo award for it ;-D). Heck, Larry Niven wrote an animated episode! And there were new writers such as David Gerrold, who has since gone on to fame, fortune and Hugo short listings. With the spinoffs, they stopped hiring SF writers, for reasons David Gerrold told a couple of us in an interview some years ago, for a publication that never happened for reasons beyond our control. If I ever find my transcription of it I will ask him again and perhaps finally publish it here. 

Anyway, I became a fan. I love lots of things about the spinoffs but it was the original that won my heart and still is. 

It was Trek that helped me learn to write short stories - back then, my only writing was a bunch of woeful novels that I will never, ever try to sell. I wrote about 150 fan stories, some of it other universes, but mostly Trek. One of the sub universes I created for my fan fiction, with a friend, appears briefly in Wolfborn, my first novel. It was a planet called New Wales, populated with descendants of Arthur's people, plus some terrestrial animals now extinct on Earth, such as the Shetland unicorn, which tended to turn up and embarrass young men with its affectionate greetings. If you've read the novel, you will remember a scene in which the hero, Etienne, meets his friend Armand in the Otherworld, along with his hill pony Dapple, who is actually a unicorn, but her horn only shows up in this world. This is terribly embarrassing to Armand, who has been bragging about his skills with girls.  Dapple the unicorn was a tribute to a unicorn called Maggie, who embarrassed Pavel Chekov in one of my fan stories.

One of these days I will do a novel set on New Wales - I had planned one years ago, when Patricia Kennealy Morrison beat me to it with her series set on a New Wales-like world with similar origins. But it has been years. And her novels weren't funny. Mine will be.

The thing is, Star Trek has helped me as a writer and a reader, so I don't apologise for mentioning it here. If you haven't seen the original series, it's easily available on DVD. Watch it! 

The Heiresses By Alison Rushby. Sydney:Pan Macmillan, 2013

The year is 1926. Seventeen year old Thalia, Erato and Clio are summoned to London by a woman called Hestia, who tells them that she is their aunt and they're triplets. They were separated at birth, after their mother's death. Now, their unpleasant father has also died and the money he held in trust for his wife should be theirs, but there's a problem: a half-brother, Charles, has the money and isn't about to let go of it. And in 1926, the law allows this. Hestia is determined that her beloved sister's children shall have the money she wanted them to have. They will live with her meanwhile.

Each of the girls has a different background and personality. Thalia, who has been kept on her guardians' estate all her life, not allowed to learn much beyond French and the piano and repressed, is grabbing the excuse to rebel and do all the things her "uncle" thinks women shouldn't do. Erato aka Ro was brought up by a loveable but irresponsible university academic and his wife, who was the one who looked after the money and has died, leaving him to make disastrous financial decisions. Ro wants to study medicine and is generally the most sensible of the three - until she meets a young man. Clio has been brought up by a vicar and his wife, the only parents she has ever known, and had a more or less normal life, but her father has died and her mother is very ill, needing treatment. This could be her chance to get the money she needs.

The 1920s was a lively era. The world had just been through "the war to end wars" with millions dying, first from the war itself, then from the Spanish Flu that came almost immediately after. People reacted against this. The outrageous flavour  of  the  times comes through well in this novel. 

 Among the books many positive features was the occasional touch of humour, such as when Thalia is caught with a boy in her room and has to put up with a tutorial on various types of birth control. We weren't given an info dump, just hints, as the novel went, of what made the characters act the way they did. There were some interesting and sobering touches about the eugenics studies happening at the time, with a young eugenicist suggesting the sterilisation of those who don't measure up, which made me, at least, shudder, knowing what happened in Germany only a few years later.

A number of things didn't quite make sense for me. For example, having summoned her nieces to London and vowed to get them their mother's money, Hestia then disappeared for large chunks of the novel, leaving them to do their own investigation into mysteries around around their birth and make their own arrangements about wresting the money from their half-brother; her only contribution, after a useless meeting, is to phone him up and yell at him now and then. And while I could understand Thalia's rebellion, I wondered just how she learned to drive and smoke a few days after arriving in London from a country estate in which her guardian wouldn't let her wear make-up let alone smoke or learn to drive! Yet one day she goes out and returns a little later in the day driving a car and smoking, with not a single cough or splutter.

This novel has been slotted into the "new adult" category rather than YA, but really, I will be happy to offer it to the better readers among our students in Year 9 and 10. There's very little in it that I haven't seen in YA before and the characters are in their late teens.

A light, entertaining read that would be just right for the beach or over a coffee.

Free Ebook - Legally!

...And speaking of free -legal! - downloads, two ASIM stories have been shortlisted for the Sir Julius Vogel Awards, the New Zealand answer to the Ditmars, which will be presented at the New Zealand Natcon in July. They are "Paint By Numbers" by Dan Rabarts, from ASIM#55 and "Better Phones" by Grant Stone from ASIM#56.

With the authors' permission, ASIM is making them available free in ebook format until July 14, from the website here. Why not wander over and grab it while available? And if you're going to the con, you might consider voting for them. Even if not, enjoy! I have to admit, I didn't choose either of them, but one of my choices in the multi-editor issue was in Greece and the other was here in Australia. They were wonderful stories - but so are these. You can get them in PDF, ePub or mobi.

I hear there's going to be another Peggy Bright Books sampler soon. I'll let you know when that happens.

Conflux 9: the 2013 Natcon

This time last week I was on my way home from Canberra on a Virgin Australia flight. I had to get a taxi to the airport because, unlike other places, Canberra doesn't seem to have a bus route that goes directly there - you can, if you're familiar with the area, take a bus NEAR the airport, but not actually there. And if you come from interstate, chances are you just want to get to the airport or from there to the hotel (no courtesy buses either, it seems, or not to the hotel I stayed in) without having to lug your bag around and ask people where to go. Still, because it is the way things are done there, at least the process ran smoothly, with the hotel getting me a taxi immediately. The last time I was interstate, at Swancon, the hotel connection bus I had booked failed to appear and the hotel gave me a cab voucher, because it was getting uncomfortably close to my departure time. It wasn't all that much dearer than a Skybus and got me from door to door.

Now, the con itself: I had a ball!

I rarely go interstate for a convention and the last two I have attended have been Natcons, where I was persuaded by friends who wanted to share a room. Swancon is always great - I've been to three - and this was my second Conflux and also excellent, as it was last time. It is, after all, a professional development for me as a YA writer and teacher-librarian, because the place was crawling with YA writers such as Kate Forsyth, Garth Nix, Margo Lanagan,  the delightful Richard Harland, Felicity Pulman (from whom I bought the last two of the Janna Mysteries for my library - she had to self-publish them because her publisher scrapped the series after four, but I had a young man waiting to read the rest of the series) and even new children's writer Tom Dullemond, who is a member of the ASIM Co-op, whose book was launched at the convention. Sean Williams was there; he's better known for adult fiction, but has done some work for children and teens recently, and some of my book clubbers are currently reading his manuscript from Allen and Unwin.  Not there, alas,  was Michael Pryor, but perhaps he will be at my next convention, Continuum, which is on the Queen's Birthday Weekend and I know my publisher Paul Collins will be a GoH there. There's something great about

I set off on the Wednesday evening after work, catching a flight from Tullamarine airport. I was expecting to have some sort of meal, but there really wasn't time - the plane was no sooner up in the air than it was coming down again - a short trip and even shorter for a probably good tail wind - so they offered us crackers, cheese and fruit juice. No tea or coffee. I was hungry and yearning for a cuppa by the time I arrived.

My taxi driver was a nice young man who had been doing this for two weeks. He was a systems analyst between jobs, as taxi drivers tend to be when they're not uni students. The trouble was, he didn't yet know his way around and had to ask another driver where Rydges was - there are two in Canberra and I had specified Capital Hill. He tried to drop me off at Lakeside - just as well I saw the name on the door mat! So he apologised profusely and took me to the right place for no extra charge.

I checked in and met Edwina Harvey, one of two friends with whom I was sharing a room, but Edwina and Anne had been out for dinner already, so I went to the hotel dining room, where I took one look at the menu, went "Eek!" at the prices and ordered a bowl of beer-battered chips, about the only thing on the menu I could afford, apart from a salmon entree which I didn't want because you couldn't have it without batter and I hate battered fish - the last time I had some, the batter was nicely browned and the fish was almost raw.

Those beer batter chips were to be my lunch at least twice more, when I couldn't get out.v Fortunately, I had prepaid for the Steampunk Afternoon Tea and the Regency Banquet and a buffet breakfast was part of the hotel's deal.

Thursday afternoon I attended the Steampunk Afternoon Tea, wearing a long dark skirt and a long-sleeved blouse, with a bit of Victorian-style jewellery and a shawl. There were, of course, a lot of folk who could sew better than me and came in proper costumes.

Here's a picture of the winners. To the left is Lewis Morley, artist extraordinaire, and that samurai robot is Thoraiya Dyer, who seems to have an unfair amount of talent. 

The winners

And here's a pic of Lewis Morley and his partner Marilyn Pride, who illoed my first two books for Allen and Unwin. I once wrote her into a children's chapter book, as an artist who was coming to visit her old school, where she had donated a painting, but nobody knew where it had disappeared. I think the illustrator of THAT book must have recognised the cheeky reference, because the picture of the artists in the book looked uncannily like Marilyn.

The afternoon tea was delightful, and we had eaten our cake stand of cakes and sandwiches when, to our surprise, they brought us another one. 

That night I was on a late-night panel on the subject of fairy tales, moderated by Jenny Blackford. I think I may have been the only member of the panel who hadn't done folklore academically! Everyone else was either a PhD or Masters candidate. I really just wanted to talk about the use of fairy tales in fiction, especially YA fiction, which I know best, but we got diverted by other things. Oh, well. It was a good panel anyway, and afterwards I stuck around for one on the subject of self-publishing, although it's not something I would do myself, becuase it was on the subject of whether or not self-published work needed an editor. Patty Jansen, a member of the ASIM group who has self-published a lot, argued that it was a waste of money because you could always rely on beta readers. A freelance editor on the panel suggested that some of her potential clients might have been better off spending their money on learning to write! She would not accept first drafts.

Someone else commented that not everyone was as honest as this editor and not all writers had access to such excellent beta readers as Patty.

Patty said that if some people wrote and published dreadful stuff, it was no skin off her nose. At this point, I piped up with, "It is if you're a reviewer!" and everyone laughed.

This attitude of, "Oh, I can get my family and friends to read it!" is one reason why I rarely review self-published work, and then only if the author has a track record in the paid publishing industry, such as Felicity Pulman. There may be some wonderful self-published work out there, but how do you know till you have agreed to read it? And the ones who approach me mostly want to offer me an ebook, which I can't put on my library shelves and this is one of the main reasons why I review.

We all went to bed, with no time or energy for the ASIM  room party we always promise ourselves.

Friday afternoon, after some panels and some I went with Edwina for a swim in the hotel pool before going to a memorial to Jan Howard Finder, aka the Wombat, whom I have mentioned elsewhere on this blog. It was a small group, but nice to remember him together. Everyone had a funny story to tell about him and it was especially pleasing to have an attendee who had only met him once but wanted to pay tribute. David MacDonald said he had met Jan when they were both on a Tolkien panel in the US. Jan had made him feel welcome and had been delightful.

David actually took this picture with my iPad. That's Marilyn Pride, Susan Batho, me behind Susan,, Graeme Batho and behind him Edwina, Jean Weber and Bill Wright, a Melbourne fan who asked for copies of my photos of Jan so he could use some for his fanzine.

The evening brought the Regency Banquet, which was very special. I had made an effort to prepare a costume, buying a Simplicity pattern which turned out to be very complicated for the likes of me, and got as far as cutting out the pieces. I simply wore a long dress and shawl with a ribbon under the bust.

And here I am with my friend Anne Devrell, who did make the costume from that pattern. She can sew. I can't - well, not with a machine. 

I had read about this banquet, which had been done before. It was carefully researched by Dr Gillian Polack, Canberra fan and historian extraordinaire, along with a team of volunteers who had cooked and tried out a huge number of recipes before settling on a menu, which was handed to the hotel. They had the menu, so they were able to reuse it at this banquet, and towards the end, the chefs were invited in to be applauded by the diners.

We were also entertained by a historical dance group, who played historical instruments, performed complex Regency dances and invited us to come up and learn the simpler ones with their help. That was a lot of fun and I had a go at most of them.

I enjoyed the food - you could eat as much as you liked without every touching meat, Gillian had made sure of that, none of this giving veggies the side dishes everyone else was having or a salad. Even the rolls were Brentford rolls, and part of the menu. Gillian went around anxiously apologising that the flavours weren't quite right, but they tasted fine to me. Typical picky historian! I had no room for dessert, which was a pity, because they looked wonderful, but Gillian persuaded me to try the homemade apricot ice cream and I had a bit of the "burnt almonds" which were really just almonds stuck into the kind of glassy toffee even I can make. Delicious!

More panels on Saturday - I was doing one called "Appropriating the sacred" which I thought might be about the use of religion in spec fic and was all ready to talk about some of the books I had read with religions in them, but it was really more about the ethics of using existing religion in fiction, especially Indigenous religion. Still, it worked well and I waffled along.

The Ditmars were on at five pm, so again I ended up having a chips lunch. I attended two kaffeeklatsches, one with Garth Nix, one with Kate Forsyth. Kate's was especially interesting, I thought. though I think Garth Nix is a fine writer. He was startled to hear that at my school, it's the boys who are borrowing his Old Kingdom Trilogy, which is about three strong young women.

Here, in case you don't know, is the list of who took home the Ditmars:

Best Novel

• Sea Hearts, Margo Lanagan (Allen & Unwin)

Best Novella or Novelette

• “Sky”, Kaaron Warren (Through Splintered Walls)

Best Short Story

• “The Wisdom of Ants”, Thoraiya Dyer (Clarkesworld 12/12)

Best Collected Work

• Through Splintered Walls, Kaaron Warren (Twelfth Planet)

Best Artwork

• Cover art, Kathleen Jennings, for Midnight and Moonshine (Ticonderoga)

Best Fan Writer

• Tansy Rayner Roberts, for body of work including reviews in Not If You Were The Last Short Story On Earth

Best Fan Artist
————————————————————————
* Kathleen Jennings, for body of work including “The Dalek Game” and
“The Tamsyn Webb Sketchbook”

Best Fan Publication in Any Medium

• The Writer and the Critic, Kirstyn McDermott and Ian Mond

Best New Talent

• David McDonald

William Atheling Jr. Award for Criticism or Review

• Tansy Rayner Roberts, for “Historically Authentic Sexism in Fantasy. Let’s Unpack That.” (Tor.com)

I pinched this from the Locus web site, which included the other entries. I have only read the Margo Lanagan book and the Tansy Rayner Roberts stuff and I have seen the cover of Midnight And Moonshine, which I bought, and I have to say I think those ones deserve their prizes.

A bunch of us went out for dinner afterwards, hoping to drown our sorrows - Simon Petrie of the ASIM bunch had been on the novella shortlist and Peggy Bright Books had had its wonderful collection Light Touch Paper on the list too - but we ended up  just eating Mexican at a fast food place.

The next morning I had to leave directly after breakfast, but it was great to catch up with friends, meet those I hadn't seen before and I learned a lot from those panels.

A delightful con!

Book Piracy Is Alive And Well And Living On Line - An Author Rant!

Earlier this evening, I was googling myself, as you do, in hopes of a new review, perhaps, or some such, when I found a web site called Bookos.org, which was offering PDFs for free - including my children's book, Your Cat Could Be A Spy, which was published by Allen And Unwin in 2006. It was part of a wonderful non fiction series called It's True! The problem with being part of a series is that when the publishers decide it's time to end it, your book goes out of print along with all the others. They printed six thousand copies of my book and sold them all, though most went through Scholastic Book Club, which meant that I got very little in the way of royalties and not a lot went into libraries where I might at least have had lending rights paid on them. But hey, there were thousands of kids who ordered a copy of my book because they wanted it, through schools or school libraries, and there are many writers of adult books who don't sell that well, some literary writers far more famous than me who have never sold more than 2000 copies of anything in their lives. The book is still available from the publishers as POD and possibly under its North American title, This Book Is Bugged! 

As a school librarian working at a school which has distributed iPads to the kids, I have been looking up sites which offer free downloads legally, even if it means classics from Gutenberg which only a few will be interested in or self-published books which might or might not be good. To download someone's hard work for which permission has neither been asked nor given would be unthinkable.

I have no idea who is behind this web site - there's no "About Us", no contact details, nothing. No doubt deliberate. And interestingly, it has a link to Amazon, in case you want to check it out further - why is this? Weird!

 I downloaded the PDF to see what would open up - I know, not safe! But I had to know. It's the whole book, art and all, except the cover. Which means my wonderful illustrator, Mitch Vane, the lady who illoes her husband Danny Katz's articles in the Age, has also been ripped off. She was supposed to get a percentage of any royalties.

I am really not interested in hearing about "freedom of information" so often ranted about by my librarian colleagues. If you've put months or years of your life into a piece of writing or art, nobody has the right to help themselves to it. When someone chooses to offer their work for free, that's fine. I have done so with some of my fiction on this web site, all stuff that has been published already. But if someone grabbed a copy of my ASIM stories or the Chronos eligibles and used it for their own benefit without asking me, that would make me see red. Heaven knows, there are plenty enough of online giveaway offers from authors and publishers.

Interview With Samantha-Ellen Bound

Introducing Samantha-Ellen Bound, debut novelist, whose children's book What The Raven Saw has come out this year from the Woolshed Press, Random House Australia!

GR: Tell us a little about yourself - your background, your interests, what you do for fun when you're not writing.

SEB: I grew up in Tasmania and moved to Melbourne straight after I finished school. Reading, writing, and creating stories have been a huge part of my life ever since Kindy. My other big love is performing arts – you can often find me on stage pretending to be someone I’m not, or teaching dance. To chill out I love travelling, the beach and any kind of water sport. 

GR: I see you've done a Diploma in Publishing and Editing - was there any writing involved? What, actually, DID it involve?

SEB: There was lots of writing involved, but none of it was fiction! The Diploma was all about the ‘other’ side of publishing – the editing, proofing, design, marketing, financial side etc. Basically everything that goes into the creation of a book. I did it because I had an interest in the process of book publishing, and also because I wanted to refine my writing skills with the editing component. The Diploma helped me to wise up about getting my own book published – I knew exactly what to do and where to go and what to expect, and I loved all the guest speakers that would come in every week to talk about all the aspects of book publishing.

GR: Do you feel that either this course or your work as a children's bookseller has helped in your writing? If so, in what way?

SEB:  Absolutely; I didn’t want to be a writer who had written a book and then had no idea what to do next – studying publishing meant I had all the tools to make it easy for myself to get my book out there. And by studying editing I now have a far greater knowledge of how to put a book together, and how to improve my writing. My work as a children’s bookseller has been an inspiration and a great source of knowledge. It really ignited the spark that made me want to get my own book on the shelves.

GR: Where did your idea for What The Raven Saw come from?

SEB:  It was actually rather random – I saw a raven sitting next to a weathervane at my local church and around him this story began to emerge. Some parts of What the Raven Saw were short stories before I tweaked them a bit and put them into the novel.

GR: At which age group is this novel aimed - and did you have any beta readers of that age reading it before publication?

SEB: My intent with What the Raven Saw is that readers of all ages can enjoy it – that it has themes, humour and ideas that are universal. All my favourite children’s books have a maturity to them that deepens your appreciation as you get older. But my target audience would be late primary school – the 9-12 age bracket. Yes, my publisher did get primary and teen readers to read it and some schools even did activities based around the story (designing a cover etc), all before Raven came out.

GR: The landscape is very English, with its churchyard and the fields and even a scarecrow (one with an unusual accent!). Where were you imagining when you wrote it?

SEB: I didn’t intend the story to be connected to a particular country or place – it could be anywhere, or any place. You may notice that the characters all have different accents and ways of speaking, and I like this crazy kind of mish-mash. That being said I have spent a lot of time in country Australia, around a lot of lovely old churches, and this probably inspired me a bit. I suppose the setting is rather English but I like that it’s never outright stated where the story is set.

GR: I notice that the chapter names are taken from hymns or other religious songs. What is the thinking behind this? 

SEB: The title of each hymn (and if you listen to the songs, also the content) reflects what happens in that chapter, or the mindset of the raven in that chapter. At the start of the book the Raven can only really express emotion though the gospel songs and how they make him feel, so the chapter names reflect that. I love gospel songs myself, and so I really loved that I could incorporate them into the book.

GR: Actually, there are a lot of references to music in the course of the novel. Were you listening to anything in particular as you wrote?

SEB: I love music and have been singing since I was little (sometimes badly), and I think music is an important, fantastic and creative way to express emotion. I hope that comes across in What the Raven Saw. I would listen to the gospel songs or hymns as I wrote the novel (only very quietly though, otherwise I find it too distracting, because I start paying attention to the song rather than what I’m writing!).

GR: There seems to be a solid background to the relationship between the raven and the priest, as if there has been something written about them before, in your short stories, perhaps. Have you ever written about these characters before? If not, would you consider doing it?

SEB: The scenes between the raven and the scarecrow, and the scene with the man in the tree, were both short stories before they were in Raven. The raven and the pigeon also made an appearance in dialogue-writing classes at uni. Obviously I loved the raven character and kept using him! I had never written anything about the priest and the raven before – but I did want them to feel like they were old friends (actually the priest is the raven’s only friend for a very long time!).

GR: Do you have a favourite character? If so, who and why? A favourite scene?

SEB: I really love the raven. When I see a raven in the street now I always watch him to see if he might be my raven. I love that the raven is a mammoth grump but ultimately lovable. But all the characters in What the Raven Saw are very special to me, and they all have qualities that made writing about them a joy. My favourite scene is probably when the raven and the pigeon meet the scarecrow – I think the scarecrow is the character that has the most impact on the raven.

GR: How did you celebrate the sale of your first novel?

SEB:   It’s quite funny; you work so long and hard on one novel, and every few weeks or so there is a new development and it becomes an ongoing process, this sale of your book. And when the publication date finally comes around it kind of feels like just another logical step – although I do keep an eye on my book at work – always face-out!! I think the celebration was more internal – getting a children’s book published has been one of my biggest dreams since Kindergarten, and I was very happy and proud when it was both accepted for publication and then released. It is a great confidence booster that hard work and belief in yourself pays off.

GR: What are you working on now?

SEB: My second standalone novel is written and being given an edit at the moment. I have just written a short play, How Can We Help, which will be performed at the Essendon Theatre Company in June. But my next project, which I am so excited about, is a children’s series called Silver Shoes – it is set in a dance school called Silver Shoes, and told through the eyes of four of the dancers there – Eleanor, Ashley, Riley and Paige. It is for a mid-primary audience, and all about dancing – not just ballet. I love it because I get to combine two of my biggest loves – writing and dancing.

Thanks for dropping by The Great Raven, Sam-Ellen! 

If you would like to follow Samantha-Ellen's blog, she can be found at the Book Grotto

Alien Onion- Another Fabulous Web Site!

I don't know why it has taken so long, but I have just added to my list of links to interesting sites the delightful Allen and Unwin children's section blog, Alien Onion. It's not the standard dry information site designed merely to let you know what the company is doing, but a lovely bit of waffle and chatter that reflects the relaxed and laid-back style of the Allen and Unwin offices. The current post is by publisher Erica Wagner, who remembers how she almost started working for them earlier than she did, and speaks of sharing a trestle table with then-publisher Rosalind Price.

I have a soft spot for these guys; they published three of my books, including the very first, Monsters And Creatures Of The Night. Well, the first two are out of print(although you might still be able to buy them through ABEBooks and one blogger told me he had lost his precious copy of Monsters and bought a new one through an online bid!) and the third is POD, so you can buy it but have to order a copy. BUT - I still feel a part of the family. They treat me as a family member. And they are a family, with staff who have been there for years.

I remember reading a post on someone's web site speaking of a visit to a huge publisher office in New York, getting lost in the vast HQ. You couldn't get lost in the A&U office in East Melbourne. It's a terrace house.

My main relationship with them these days is reviewing and the Silverfish Reading Group, where my book club students get to read manuscripts, but I feel very comfortable with them still and who knows? I might yet sell them another book!

Meanwhile, I do recommend the Alien Onion blog. Go check it out!

Interview With The Wild Girl, Kate Forsyth

Kate Forsyth is the author of a large number of wonderful novels, mostly for children and young adults and, more recently, for adults as well. Bitter Greens, her Rapunzel novel has been shortlisted for both the Aurealis and the Ditmar Awards. The Wild Girl (reviewed on this site) is too new to be up for any awards as yet, but I will be very surprised if it isn't on someone's list next year, perhaps a Premier's Award?

Kate very kindly agreed to be interviewed and a fabulous interview it is. Welcome to The Great Raven, Kate!

SB: You're best known as a children's/YA writer, but your last two books have been for adults(although The Wild Girl might *just* wriggle under the YA/NA fence). First question:  do you intend to keep writing for adults or, like Catherine Jinks, do some stuff for adults, but mostly continue with books for young readers?

KF: I love writing for both adults and for children, and so in an ideal world I’d like to alternate between them. I am working on a 5-book fantasy adventure series for children right now, which will be published next year, then I am contracted to write another historical novel for adults. I try as much as possible to build my writing schedule around my family’s needs, and so I’m always thinking ahead, deciding what year would be best to do which project. For example, my eldest son will be doing his final school exams in 2015 and so I will choose a smaller, easier project to focus on that year. I have so many ideas for novels its always simply a matter of deciding between them.

SB: As well as being for adults, your most recent books - Bitter Greens and The Wild Girl - have had fairy tale/fairy tale teller themes. What has particularly interested you in this area recently? 

KF:  I have always been fascinated by fairy tales and fairy tale retellings since reading them as a child. Many of my books draw upon the structures and symbols of the genre, and I first studied them academically in my first degree. I knew I wanted to retell the Rapunzel fairy tale from the age of 11 or 12, and thought about the idea off and on for years. Eventually all that thinking led me to the writing of ‘Bitter Greens’.  The idea for writing ‘The Wild Girl’ sprang out of my research for that ... Ii often happens that way – researching & writing one novel throws up ideas for the next.

SB:  How did you get the idea for The Wild Girl? 

KF: When I was first thinking about Bitter Greens, I imagined a frame tale in which someone – perhaps an old woman – would tell the Rapunzel tale to someone else – perhaps one of the Grimm brothers. I wanted to tell Rapunzel as a historical novel, not a fantasy … I wanted it to feel as if it might really have happened, as if it was – perhaps – true. I thought Rapunzel had been told to the Grimm Brothers, you see – that it was an oral story recorded by them. However, once I began researching the sources of the tales, I discovered that the Grimm story had a literary source and had, in fact, been written by the 17th century noblewoman Charlotte-Rose de la Force. It was during that research that I stumbled upon the beautiful, heart-breaking love story of Wilhelm Grimm and Dortchen Wild, the young woman who had grown up next door to the Grimms and who told them many of their most famous fairy tales. I knew at once I had to tell their story. I had to put it aside, however, and focus on the novel I was then working on, which was Bitter Greens.

SB: Bitter Greens was a very complex read, with three streams - the stories of Charlotte-Rose, Margherita and Selena, intertwined. You could have stuck to either the story of Charlotte-Rose, as straight historical fiction, or the adaptation of the fairy-tale itself. Yet you did both. Why?

KF:  I always felt the greatest challenge to rewriting such a well-known tale was creating suspense and surprise, the two ingredients I think are most vital to a compelling narrative. Everyone knows the basic storyline of Rapunzel and everyone knows how it ends (happily ever after). I needed to find some way to make the story fresh and new and surprising. Even shocking. I also wanted to have three narrative threads, three points of view, so that I could braid them together in such a way that the structure of the book would symbolically reflect the braid of hair, the key motif of the story. I knew from the very beginning that I wanted to tell the story from both the maiden and the witch’s point of view, but who could be the third important character? I played with writing a section from the POV of the prince – in fact, I wrote about 20,000 words from his POV – but then I felt instinctively that this was a women’s story, and I wanted to know who had told it. I began to research the sources of the tale, and that was when I first stumbled upon the extraordinary tale of Charlotte-Rose de la Force … and of course she became my heroine, my primary protagonist, simply because her true life story was so dramatic and so fascinating.

     

SB:  What's your favourite way of doing historical research? On-line, for example? Books? Both? Do you use a lot of primary sources? 

KF: I begin by reading everything I can find on the subject. I create a library, usually by buying masses of books, both new and second-hand, I need to own the books, as I’ll go back to them again and again and again. I will research on the internet too, basically to create a solid base of knowledge, and to identify what else I need to know. I take copious notes, keeping track of what I read where and when, so I can find it again. I also read as many novels as I can set in the same time and place as my own novel – I’ll read everything from classic novels to historical romance and historical murder mysteries to memoirs, biographies and scholarly non-fiction. I want to know everything! My research will throw up ideas for my story, and will also help me create the milieu – the setting and the inner life of the characters. I’ll also read as much primary material as I can – with ‘Bitter Greens’ I read many letters and memoirs of the Sun-King’s court to help me find my ‘voice’. I also paid to have many of Charlotte-Rose de la Force’s own writings translated into English for the first time. The internet is also great for visual stimulation – I look at photos and portraits and maps and I print them out and stick them in my notebook. 

When my first draft is almost done, I’ll travel to the places I have featured in the book. I like to see the setting, and hear it, and taste it, and smell it. I like to imagine the emotional reaction of my characters, and test for myself how long it might take to walk from one place to another, and so on.  For me, this is an important part of the process.

SB: Tell us about the research you did for The Wild Girl.

KF: I began by building a time line of the key years, and assembling my cast of characters, and finding out everything I could about them. The Grimm brothers are extremely well-documented but the life of Dortchen Wild, who became Frau Wilhelm Grimm, is nothing but a footnote in history. I found out what stories she told Wilhelm, and when, and I looked at what clues the stories gave to her inner life. I read everything I could find on the Grimm brothers and their lives – dozens of books – and then I studied society in Germany in the early 19th century, and life under Napoleon. That took ages! I hired a German translator and researcher to help me, as many of the key academic studies have not been translated into English.  All the time I was building the story, planning my plot-line, assembling my key thematic symbols and structures. As I wrote, I’d need to do more research …and my plans would change and evolve. I travelled to Germany for a few weeks close to the end of the first draft, and visited all the key places in the book (the ones that hadn’t been bombed to smithereens in the Second World war). I also read a lot. Jane Austen was a contemporary of the Grimms, and so I read all her books again for the umpteenth time, trying to get a sense of the times. I read Goethe, and the works of the German romantic poet Novalis, and some of the letters of Beethoven, and of course I read the fairy tales, studying the earliest transcriptions and all the later variants, and I corresponded with many top Grimm scholars. I was lucky enough to read Wilhelm’s own diary, never before translated into English, and Dortchen’s memoir, dictated to her daughter on her deathbed. I could go on and on and on – this was a very research-intensive book – but  I don’t want to bore you!

SB: You have written a lot of fiction set in your own universes - how much connection did they have with our own world? The universe of The Starthorn Tree series, for example?

KF: I think fantasy must always be strongly rooted in the real, and so when I am writing a fantasy novel, like The Starthorn Tree, I always have a strong sense of where it might stand in our own history. I think of the world of Estelliana, the world of The Starthorn Tree, as being very like central Europe in the early 15th Century. The world of the Witches of Eileanan is like an alternative 16th century Scotland.  This means I know whether they have invented spinning wheels yet, or cannons, or lead-paned glass, or corked bottles of wine, and I know what they would wear, and what musical instrument they might play. I always try and create as vivid and real a world as I can, regardless of whether I am writing historical novels or fantasy, and knowing these things can really help.

SB: What do you do for pleasure when you're not writing?

KF:  I don’t think you’ll be surprised to hear I’m an avid reader. I read a lot! I also love to cook and garden and dance and swim in the ocean, and spend time with my loved ones. And I love to travel and have adventures.

SB: So, what are you working on now?

KF:  I’m working on a fast-paced fantasy adventure series filled with dragons and unicorns and all things fantastical, and I’m busy studying for my doctorate  on Rapunzel. As soon as I’ve finished that, I’ll start researching a new historical novel for adults, which retells the Beauty and the Beast, and is set in Nazi Germany.

Wow! That sounds worth looking forward to! Thanks for visiting The Great Raven.

If you'd like to find out more about Kate and her books, her web site is at:

 http://www.kateforsyth.com.au/