Fantasy writer

Adam Browne – Interview

TAOS_cover_600

 

If you want to go somewhere you’ve never gone before – try Adam Browne’s writing.  I’ve plunged through the solar system in glorious adventure with Cyrano De Bergerac in Pyrotechnicon, watched a wonderful animation by Adam Duncan based on one of Adam’s short stories called The Adjustable Cosmos (Hapsburg Emperors in the stars) and now I’m all prepared for the launch of his next book The Tame Animals of Saturn on June the 9th.

Adam, tell us about the Tame Animals of Saturn https://www.facebook.com/events/214355685622863/

It was inspired by the writings by and about Jakob Lorber, a 19th Century Austrian mystic who was given to know the animals and plants of the Solar System. It’s richly illustrated.

I hope to revive interest in him, not as a Christian or a theosophist – he was both – but as a beautiful and tireless fabulist.

What was your initial inspiration for the book?

Thirty years ago, in The Book of Imaginary Beings, I read of Lorber’s ‘Leveler’. Borges writes with great dry wit of the immeasurable service the Leveller does man. Its pyramidal legs are made by God to stomp out roadways in preparation for the tarmac-layers and so on. It’s only with difficulty that I acknowledge there might be some people who aren’t immediately captivated by things like this. Lorber has stayed with me ever since. The book was a side-project, but it was one I had to do.

The Leveler by Adam Browne
The Leveler by Adam Browne

You love to explore the odd laneways of speculative fiction. How do you find your way into these laneways?

When I was young, science fiction seemed to be about freedom. There seemed to be few rules – just a playground for ideas. I remember being disappointed when a writer or filmmaker borrowed from elsewhere.2001: a space odyssey was a model of originality, but rather than copy its example, filmmakers copied the film itself. It’s still happening now, likely under the guise of homage – but it’s antithetical to the whole sf ethos. Anyway – I dunno – I don’t see my writing as weird anyway, to be honest. I haven’t admitted this before, but I was surprised when people called my stories New Weird or whatever. For me, they were just the stories I wanted to write.

Thomas Edison, en route to Saturn by Adam Browne
Thomas Edison, en route to Saturn by Adam Browne

What’s your writing process? Do you throw a lot away? Do you write every day? Are you a planner or do you fly by the seat of the pants?

My stories start at the start. There’s some initial idea – with an old one, for instance, called Neverland Blues, it started with the idea that Michael Jackson had fled his problems by turning himself into a spaceship. The story accreted from that. I write from the seat of my pants. And yes, I throw a lot away. Each story has a discards file which is inevitably much bigger than the story itself.

How do you go with social media? What do you do to increase interest in your work and how much time do you spend on it? Any tips?

Yeah social media. It’s such an easy way to advertise your work but maybe not so effective. Still, although there must be better ways to do it, the urge to become skilled in marketing remains a velleity.

Facebook is my guilty obsession. At its best it’s a wunderkammer, and a way for me to vent excess imagination and gags – also an excellent way to resume or maintain friendships … but I suspect the reason I find it so seductive is because it’s all about me. Almost everything I read on it is in some way related to something I’ve already said. That’s the way it’s designed. It’s the equivalent of those kids’ books where your child’s name is inserted into the text. It enables my narcissism.

The bhura flower, native to Saturn by Adam Browne
The bhura flower, native to Saturn by Adam Browne

 

What artworks (books, music, visual arts, films) have most inspired you?

I’ve been thinking recently about how 80s art-pop was a sort of gateway drug into the arts. Devo, Talking Heads etc etc. I remember being delighted by a performance art piece that made its way onto Countdown – a pingpong game with people’s heads sticking out of the table, players in whimsical dress, a bit of a ceremonial vibe. It wasn’t the piece so much as that such stuff was possible… My father took me to all the great art films of the 70s too. 2001, Satyricon, Tarkovski etc etc. There was 2000AD, the British comic antho – then Heavy Metal magazine – and Raw. There was the French comic book artist Moebius. And Fantastic Planet – then the art of Roland Topor, who designed that film – I’m afraid I’m just listing the usual suspects here – in which case I might as well mention PK Dick, whom I discovered when I was 15, on a trip to the Northern Territory: the first story of his I read was ‘Nanny’. Such a gem. It’s hard to find writers these days who delight me as much as he did. Martin Amis is one, but I have to be careful not to copy his style. Another usual suspect: WS Burroughs – a ‘writer of good bits’, as Amis called him – for me, the good bit, the inspiring bit amid the dross, was the vignette with the Sailor, in the bar, an astronaut, it felt like, purchasing a drug stored in dull grey tubes of lead, cracking it open, his face melting to absorb it…

And now for the tabloid question.  What is your relationship with Bessie Bottomley, Librarian extraordinaire?  https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100009898788233

I find Bessie Bottomley to be very adept at satisfying my holds.

 

The Tame Animals of Saturn is a available from http://www.peggybrightbooks.com/new/

Website http://adambrowne.blogspot.com.au/

Facebook https://www.facebook.com/ontogeny.recapitulates.phylogeny

Wikipedia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adam_Browne

photo by Linda Jullyan
photo by Linda Jullyan

 

 

 

 

Clench!

One of my regulars, a lady in her early 60’s, is always telling me about her exercise regime.  Apparently these exercises, relayed to her father by a Chinese doctor, have cured her of leukemia.  Her skin has the yellowish tone of someone who’s very ill.

Her exercise regime is to do two thousand arm swings every day.  They’re exactly like the hundred arms exercise in Pilates only standing up.  I don’t blame her for being obsessed, but sometimes when I see her outside the station swinging her arms, I suddenly think of something I have to do in the office. I‘ve known her to miss trains because she hasn’t reached two thousand yet.

Being so ill must be a lonely business.  So today I’m listening and so are a couple of social workers up from the hospital waiting to catch the train who want to hear all about this life saving exercise.

“Clench your bottom,” cries the lady. “And tuck in your belly.  Clench your bottom and swing your arms.”

Such is the authority in her voice that I see the social workers begin to swing their arms and, I suspect, clench their bottoms.  Oh no!  I’m doing it too.  As the train rolls in, there are the four of us swinging our arms in the autumn sun while the lady yells “clench your bottom.”

I see less of M and C now but this is a good thing. An NGO has found them a place to live.  http://www.hanover.org.au/

C is pregnant and I had terrible visions of them being homeless with a newborn. I suspect they did too – though they made tough noises about it. M is delighted with his new backpack and wears it everywhere.  A profound thank you to the people who offered them.

 

Interview with Glenda Larke – winner of the Inaugural Sara Douglass Series Award.

This fortnight’s interviewee, Aurealis Award winner Glenda Larke brings her lifetime experiences of living in exotic places to the creation of wonderful fantasy worlds.

WG_The_Last_Stormlord_cover_US_UK

 

Congratulations on winning the inaugural Sara Douglass Series Award for the best Australian speculative fiction series completed between 2011 and 2014 with your Stormlord trilogy – The Last Stormlord, Stormlord Rising and The Stormlords Exile. https://aurealisawards.org/2016/03/25/the-winners-of-the-2015-aurealis-awards

Could you tell us something about the Stormlord Trilogy?

The first book, The Last Stormlord, introduces a world where it never rains, at least not naturally. Stormlords — men or women with power over water — use their magical control to bring water to the desert land. Unfortunately, the Stormlords have been dying off and water allowances are being reduced, prompting unrest and rebellion. As the land is torn apart by war, the unscrupulous attempt to control the only two young people who might one day just have enough power to provide solutions. The story continues in Stormlord Rising and concludes in The Stormlord’s Exile. Along the way, there’s love, battles, bravery, betrayal, tragedy, compromise, and ingenious use of water magic…

Can you pin-point an initial inspiration for the books? Reviewer Jason Nahrung suggested your experience of living in arid climates like WA and Tunisia may have influenced your use of the theme of water in these books.

 As a kid, I remember a West Australian summer on our farm when a rat fell into the rainwater tank. That was our only drinking water. We had to drain the tank and rely on the generosity of neighbours while we waited for rain — so I’ve always known how precious water is.

We lived in Tunis in North Africa for two years. When the wind blew from the south, there would be sand heaped against the outer walls of our house — sand from the Sahara. I visited a town in Algeria where, when it rains, they distribute rainwater from the wadi when it flows according to how many people in each household. We were there on the first wet day they had that year; it was in December. Now we live near Perth W.A., where the waterflow into the dams that serve the city has decreased from an average of about 400 gigalitres a year prior to 1975, to last year’s 12 gigalitres.

We take two minute showers now, and don’t plant a lawn.

All that is what inspired me to write the Watergivers trilogy. It wasn’t difficult to think of a scenario. Control of water has already been a weapon of war; the dictator Sadam Hussein quashed criticism and destroyed the culture and livelihoods of the Marsh Arabs in Iraq by draining their marshes. Control of water is already an economic weapon. Who has the right to water in California: the cities or the farmers? Who can use the water of the Rio Grande: USA or Mexico? Israel controls much of Palestine’s access to the water of the Jordan River basin — imagine how well that works out!

I hope readers immerse themselves in the story and care about the characters. I hope they find the can’t put the books down because of the tale of adventure it tells. But I also hope that some readers think about the issues, issues which are already shaping the world we live in. Unfortunately we don’t have magic to fix things. We only have ourselves.

What are you working on now?

 I’ve just finished another trilogy, The Forsaken Lands, based on the idea that if the Spice Islands of Asia had possessed magic when Europe tried to colonise them to control the spice trade, there may have been a different outcome. The first book is called The Lascar’s Dagger. (“Lascar” is a word given to Asian sailors who worked on European ships…) The trilogy has everything from pirates and sea battles to conniving queens, sorcerers — and a very sneaky dagger.

I’m working on a standalone fantasy now, as yet untitled, which might be the first in a series, if it’s successful. (My only other standalone was my very first published book, Havenstar.)

What’s your writing process for books? Do you throw a lot away?  Do you write every day?  Are you a planner or do you fly by the seat of the pants?

 I am a very messy writer. I did try meticulous planning once, but by the time I arrived at Chapter 3, I was way off the plan. I kept on thinking of better directions for the plot to go in!

Before I begin a book, there are three things I must have: an understanding of what makes the main characters tick; the ending (although it may change); and a vague theme — i.e. something that keeps the plot from running away in too many directions. I usually have a strong visual impression of some of the early scenes. But apart from that, I’m an explorer without a map, and yes, sometimes I get lost, I have to backtrack, or throw away the useless diversions. I rewrite a lot. (I always smile when neophyte writers ask, “How many times do you re-write? Two? Three?” The real answer to that is: “However many it takes.” Some parts will be perfect as soon as I write them; other parts might have 30 rewrites.)

As for how often I write: that too depends. Most of my books were written in between a day job and family commitments. I worked on a project basis, so when my day job was tough, writing was laid aside, sometimes for weeks. When job and publishing commitments clashed, things could get interesting. I remember reading the proofs of a novel at night in a pup tent in the rainforest during a tropical rainstorm — by candlelight. I wrote part of one of the Stormlord books chugging along on the deck of a slow fishing boat on the Kinabatangan River.

glenda
Glenda Larke with friend

How do you go with social media? What do you do to increase interest in your work and how much time do you spend on it? Any tips?

Social media devours much more of my time than it should! I have no idea whether it’s terribly helpful with regards to selling books, although I try to keep people informed of what I’m up to. It’s so hard to assess what generates sales, and anyway, nowadays there is so much noise out there on social media that the occasional peep from an individual author just gets lost in the roar.

For me, I think social media is more important as a means of information and help (e.g. from fellow authors) to me. I value my online friendships because I find people can be so supportive and inspiring, even if we’ve never met. This is especially true of the Australian spec fic scene — readers, writers, industry professionals, convention organisers, etc — fabulous folk. Without them, I might have given up years ago.

You worked as a field ornithologist in Malaysia. Did this career have any influence on your writing?

Absolutely. Birds had a big part to play in The Isles of Glory books, and also in The Dagger’s Path. I think those avifaunal story lines succeeded only because I know my wild birds…

As well as that, when I worked in the field on bird conservation, I saw wonderful places — islands, cliffs, swamps, rainforests, mountains, lakes, rivers — scenes that inspired parts of different books.

 What 3 artworks (books, music, visual arts, films) have most inspired you?

It’s always been books, books, books with me (although I love classical music, especially 18th and 19th century symphonies, which I play while writing. I once lived just beside a path called Beethovengang…)

It’s hard to pinpoint special books out of the thousands. Susan Cooper’s The Dark is Rising was probably one of the first to set on a path to writing fantasy, although I actually decided I was going to be a writer when I was about eight and still into Enid Blyton’s Famous Five!  Oh, and Lord Juster’s present to the King in “The Fall of the Dagger” was  inspired by the Burghley Nef saltcellar of 1527, which you can see in the Victoria & Albert Museum in London.

If you want to know more about Glenda try:
http://glendalarke.com

http://glendalarke.blogspot.com

Twitter: @glendalarke

Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/groups/105625628881/

 The Burghley Nef saltcellar, 1527 from The Victoria & Albert Museum, London
The Burghley Nef saltcellar, 1527 from The Victoria & Albert Museum, London

A Moment of Stardom

This picture by chopalop comes from the Reddit, Melbourne subreddit https://i.reddituploads.com/a39cba295bdf4df8ab124f5a7d7842f4?fit=max&h=1536&w=1536&s=c20cdacd14f8545e07ec75ad081314b8
This picture by chopalop comes from the Reddit, Melbourne subreddit
https://i.reddituploads.com/a39cba295bdf4df8ab124f5a7d7842f4?fit=max&h=1536&w=1536&s=c20cdacd14f8545e07ec75ad081314b8

On Tuesday a huge TV crew were at the junction filming scenes for a new Channel 10 series called The Wrong Girl starring Jessica Marais.  They needed someone qualified to wrangle the escalators so I spent an hour and a half pushing the stop button every time the location man tapped me on the shoulder.

The patience of film people!  They did the same 20 seconds of scene half a dozen times with the stunt double, a couple of times with the actress, and then they did it all again from a different vantage point.  They had to stop, and I had to restart the escalators, every time a train came in.  I never realized how many trains come in on Platform 1 before.

The customers were startled to reach the top of the escalators and find a middle-aged Metro employee hiding cross legged behind the railing, but my knees are shot and it was much easier to risk being trampled than get up and down.  The film crew were lovely. They kept offering me cushions to sit on and bringing me tea.

Of course I forgot to take a picture but luckily someone going past in a train did and you can see Jessica Marais and her stunt double behind the extra in the purple top.

The location man assured me that my big moment was a pivotal scene and wouldn’t wind up on the cutting room floor.  When you see the escalator stop, you won’t see me, but you’ll know I’m there pressing that button!  Watch out Jessica Marais!  I’m on my way and I’ve got stars in my eyes.!!! 🙂

 

Interview with Aurealis Award winner Trent Jamieson

 

Jamieson_DayBoy2-669x1024

Congratulations on winning the 2015 Aurealis Award for both Best Fantasy and Best Horror novel! https://aurealisawards.org/

That’s amazing.

Thanks! I was completely surprised, and delighted.

It’s about Mark – a Day Boy who works for a Vampire, running chores, protecting his master during the day. It’s his last year as a Day Boy and he must decide how he is going to enter adulthood as man or monster or something not quite either. And, things don’t go smoothly at all. I kind of pitched it as To Kill a Mockingbird meets Dracula – which is a bit cheeky, but kind of the mood that the book went along. My mum didn’t like it because it was too violent – and she’s read all my stuff. I’ve promised her the next book is very different – but you never know with books.

Can you pin-point an initial inspiration for the book?

A very strong image I had of two boys smoking in a crypt flicking cigarettes at a coffin. I knew at once that they worked for vampires, but I wanted to know what they were like, how they had gotten so comfortable, even brazen, in their job. Everything sprang from that.

What are you working on at the moment?

A novel called the Stone Road. I’m just picking through a messy first draft and trying to work out what it’s about – which I think I know, now, but we’ll see. There are many drafts ahead.

You’re clearly a fan of Lovecraft and also devoted to Brisbane where you now live. Brisbane is nothing like the gloomy windy shores of New England. Is Brisbane a gothic place in your mind? What makes it so?Trent-Photo

Funnily enough I’m not that into Lovecraft other than the cosmic horror, though I tend to play around with it a lot less seriously in my work. But I adore Brisbane. It is not a gothic place in my mind at all, in some ways, like most cities, I guess, it’s a blank slate. But that’s just an invitation to artists. Brisbane is a place that drives some great fantasy writing. You’ll be seeing new fantasy and horror novels set in Brisbane by Angela Slatter and Gary Kemble in the next twelve months or so, and that excites me. I think it’s a city worth writing about, and you know, what makes a city great comes down to the community that lives in it, and the stories they tell. The more stories and art we have the richer the place we live in. Brisbane sings with stories, and I’m proud to be a part of that.

What’s your writing process for books? Do you throw a lot away? Do you write every day? Are you a planner or do you fly by the seat of the pants?

I am slow and non-linear. And I slap scenes together and see how they work. I write thin – my early drafts are whisps – and then too thick, and then have to thin again. I don’t plan, but I do a lot of rewriting, structural and line-by-line – I don’t know if you’ve noticed here, but my punctuation is awful! I try and write every day, even if it’s only a few words. I don’t tend to do marathon sessions until I am editing and deadlines come into play. Otherwise it’s just chip, chip, chip and see what you end up with.

How do you go with social media? What do you do to increase interest in your work and how much time do you spend on it? Any tips?

I have gotten worse at this over the years. I’m a bit weary of social media as a platform, or maybe just weary of the sound of my voice. As a place to have fun it’s great, but as a selling tool for me, I’m not so sure. I don’t spend nearly enough time on increasing interest in my work. But I am always open to anything interesting when it comes along, promotion wise. What I do do, I try and have fun with. If you’re going to promote you need to be creative, honest, and have fun. Writing books is the thing that interests me, and reading. Everything else is just waving flags (unless, you’re great at it, and there are some really wonderful self promoters out there) and hoping someone notices.

What 3 artworks (books, music, visual arts, films) have most inspired you?

I am terrible at narrowing things down to favourites. They always change, because I keep reading and listening, and you forget your favourites (well, I do, anyway), and then you encounter the work again and you remember that, yes, you listened to that album non-stop for a year. But there is a constant churn of inspiration. Currently it’s Ursula K. Le Guin’s Tombs of Atuan, N.K. Jemisin’s book The Fifth Season (which I am reading at the moment), and Cormac McCarthy’s Blood Meridian.

All of which are feeding into the new book whether I want them to or not.

List of Hookup Websites & Dating

Trent can be contacted at teacupthrenody at hotmail dot com

Trent Jamison 2

 

Sophie Masson – Interview

Prolific French-Australian author Sophie Masson has charmed both children and adults with her richly beautiful fantasy stories.  Her most recent book is Trinty Book 2 – The False Prince.

513CySrzp4L._SX373_BO1,204,203,200_

 

Tell us about your Trinity series.

The Trinity series is a duology which is set in modern Russia, against a background of hard-nosed corporate skulduggery, dark historical echoes and supernatural and magical elements that thread themselves in and out of the story. It’s a fairly unique series, I think, in that what I’m attempting to do is paint a kind of metaphorical portrait of the extraordinary nature of Russia and its culture while telling a gripping, genre-bending story with vivid characters and unexpected elements. Trinity–Book 1, The Koldun Code; and Book 2, The False Prince, are centred around the viewpoints of main characters Helen Clement, a young Londoner who by background is part French-part-American; Maxim Serebrov, an experienced, disillusioned Moscow homicide detective, and in the second book, another couple of characters who are very ambiguous but very interesting too(don’t want to say exactly who they are for fear of spoilers!).

What initially inspired you to write the Trinity books?

Russia–and a fascination I’ve had with that country and its culture since I was a child–and the two visits I’ve made there, in recent times, really increased that and also gave me the rich texture for Trinity as well as opening me up to some unexpected discoveries–such as the fact that magic and the supernatural are very present not only in traditional pre-Revolutionary culture, but very much today as well. You can read more about that aspect of it here: http://firebirdfeathers.com/2014/10/31/trinity-inspirations-old-magic-and-new-psychics/

What are you working on now?

I;m working on a novel called The Ghost Squad, a speculative fiction YA novel. It’s part of my PHD work–I’m currently enrolled as a PHD student in Creative Practice at the University of New England, and part of the project is writing that novel, plus an associated exegesis which is looking at YA speculative fiction with the theme of the afterlife! It’s really fantastic and I’m much enjoying both the reading and the writing. As well, I have several picture-book texts I’m working on(two have already been accepted) as well as a book of light fantasy short stories for younger readers.

You’re also very involved in Eagle Books translation of Jules Verne’s Mikhail Strogoff which is due out in April 2016.  How did that happen? Will Eagle bring out more Jules Verne translations? 

Mikhail-Strogoff-Cover-Front-Medium-800x1133

I’m one of the co-directors and founding partners of Eagle Books, which is a new imprint of small publisher Christmas Press, which we founded in 2013. Eagle Books will specialise in wonderful adventure novels for readers 11 and up, that can also be pleasurably read by adults. Our launch title is the wonderful limited edition of Jules Verne’s Mikhail Strogoff, in a fantastic new translation by Stephanie Smee, and illustrated by David Allan. That book is very important to me–in its original French(titled Michel Strogoff), I read it at age 11, and it was the book that made me fall in love with Russia and that has really marked me both as a writer and reader. But the English translations of it(from 19th century) were stodgy and dated and did not fairly represent the original book. Stephanie is a friend–I had first met her when she translated some fantastic classic French children’s fiction by the Countess de Segur, bestselling translations published by Simon and Schuster–and it was just so wonderful that she agreed that Eagle Books should publish her wonderful translation of my favourite childhood book! It really is a dream come true. I edited the book as well as writing the foreword–a real privilege to be helping to bring back to English speaking readers a book that in France is considered to be Verne’s masterpiece and very influential there.

We might bring out more Verne translations–we’ll see! There are many that he wrote that are not well known in English speaking countries–but Mikhail Strogoff, which some critics have called the ‘best adventure novel ever written’, is clearly the most exciting!

Many of your books are have background in folk and fairy tale.  What do you like about using fairy tales as a source material?

Fairy tales are wonderful because they are both so deep and so wide–so capacious of meaning but also light on detail so that you really have a wonderful framework to work on from the start. They have a great richness  about them and yet a great simolicity which I find very appealing.

You write for both adults and children.  Which group do your prefer writing for?

I like writing for both–depends on the story! That said, I feel freer in a sense when I write for children and young adults–there are not so many categories and restrictions in terms of genre–nobody minds if you blend them, whereas in adult fiction, it seems sometimes that people don’t like it if you do that!

What’s your writing process for books? Do you throw a lot away?  Do you write every day?  Are you a planner or do you fly by the seat of the pants?

I write at least a chapter or two a day–go over the previous day’s work before I start the next–so that the book is built up in such a way that I’ve already revised by the time I get to the end of the first draft. I do write most days, and I always write more than I need and am happy to cut, then. I’m not a planner as such but I do know where I want my story to end up, and I do know the first few chapters pretty well before I start. And because of the way I work, I do a kind of reverse planning process which means that things slot in very nicely as I’m going.

How do you go with social media?  What do you do to increase interest in your work and how much time do you spend on it? Any tips?

My main social media activity is with my blog, www.firebirdfeathers.com where I don’t just post about my own work but in fact mostly do lots of interviews and feature guest posts. It’s got quite a few readers, which is great! I also use Facebook a lot and Twitter is linked to that and that seems to work well. Tips? Well, I think, with a blog, it’s a good idea to have a variety of things you post about, don’t make it wholly focussed on your own work(for your own sake as well as readers!) And with FB/Twitter etc, my experience suggests it’s best to link FB to Twitter rather than the other way around.

What 3 artworks (books, music, visual arts, films) have most inspired you?

Jules Verne’s Mikhail Strogoff; the Tintin books–as works of art as well as stories–I adore Herge’s work and other French ‘bandes dessinees’ which I was brought up on, that ligne claire style especially; and The Godfather (film) as well as Shakespeare in Love. If I can squeeze in another artwork, I love an unusual little Renaissance portrait of a little boy(attached), son of the artist Francesco Caroto(1480–1555) –the little boy is showing off his own stick-figure artwork in a most endearing and delighted way. Really makes the centuries fall away…caroto painting

In terms of music, I am very eclectic and like all kinds of genres, from folk to jazz to rock to medieval and baroque; but I guess, sticking to the Russian theme, that The Song of the Volga Boatmen(as sung by the Red Army Choir!) has resonated for me down the years since I first heard it as a kid–my dad being very fond of the music of the Red Army Choir. When I heard it sung in Russia itself, in a lovely little room in a small kremlin(citadel) by the side of the Volga in the ancient town of Uglich(where much of the first Trinity book is set) I just burst into tears, it was so magnificent and so resonant with my own past as well as that of the place I was in…

 

 

Sophie Masson

Narrelle M. Harris – Interview

 

ColonialBoyFrontCover sml

Prolific fantasy and erotica writer Narrelle Harris is my interviewee today.

Her new book from Improbable Press The Adventure of the Colonial Boy  (A Holmes/Watson romance set in Australia in 1893. Murder! Dangerous sea voyages! Deductions! Snakes! Honour, angst, and chases! Unrequited love, requited!)

is due to be launched next Wednesday (March 30) 6.30 for 7.00 at the Penny Blue Bar Drivers Lane (off Little Bourke Street, near Elizabeth St) Melbourne VIC 3000

 

Tell us about The Adventure of the Colonial Boy. What inspired you to write the actual adventure element of the story?

When I’m writing romance, I’ve always got an action/adventure element of the plot around which the characters are interacting – I love for my people-in-love to be having adventures together. This being a take on a Sherlock Holmes story, I’ve always loved the mysteries as much as the friendship, so it was natural from the start that there should be a mystery/adventure part of the story.

I wanted to set it in Australia for a couple of reasons – easier for me to research, for a start – but primarily it was because I thought that if they’d been repressing their feelings for each other for a decade in the framework of London, then something had to change dramatically to allow those feelings to surface. There had to be emotional triggers, but also for them to be in an environment which was new to them, to shake things up.

As for the plot itself – Conan Doyle’s stories suggest that John Watson lived for a time in Australia (he refers in The Sign of Four when he sees the Sholto’s yard dug up in search of treasure, that he’d seen diggings like it in Ballarat).  So I worked out a history for Watson that informs the choices he’s made and the person he’s become. The title refers potentially to a couple of characters, actually, but primarily, the Colonial Boy is John Watson.
I knew I wanted to include elements of non-white history in Australia, hence the Chinese connection. I also looked to Arthur Conan Doyle’s stories (which I’d read in full before writing The Adventure of the Colonial Boy) for some of those mysteries that were only ever hinted at. The red leech and the horrific death of Crosby the Banker were mentioned in the same sentence and sparked some ideas, so they became the prompts to inform the plot.

Then it was a matter of folding in themes of identity and repression, a splash of Moriarty’s old gang and the idea that John Watson is an unreliable narrator. Conan Doyle notoriously had no damns to give about continuity, and I worked that in as a deliberate choice on Watson’s part.

I wonder if writing same sex male erotica is about women secretly wanting to be as sexually free as men but not being able to express it with a female character. What do you think?

It’s certainly one possible element, but not the only one. There are ideas about sexual freedom there; ideas about two characters having equal agency that sometimes we feel can’t be quite achieved between a hetero couple, though that depends a lot on the writer and on the couple! I think there are ideas in it about women liking to see men in touch with their emotions together. I think there’s just an enjoyment of two hot men being in love and sexual together. I mean – it’s just sexy! ImprobablePressfull

There’s certainly a long history of queer readings of Holmes and Watson. That has really come to the fore since the BBC Sherlock series, which plays with that idea so much, though they’re not the first to tease with queer subtext.

Basically, though, I think it’s valid to read the relationship as Epic Best Friends OR as Epic Lovers. Their friendship and relationship has fascinated people for over 120 years, and this is just another iteration of that – that people like to read about an epic love story of different-but-equal characters, and their gender doesn’t really matter in that respect. We just love to see two people in love. And having adventures together.  Well, I do. And of course queer history means that people had to look for hidden representations of queerness, since those relationships were generally not openly represented (and not necessarily positively) until the last few decades.

(Seriously, people who say ‘Watson wasn’t gay – he got married!’ are deliberately ignoring the realities of hundreds of years of queer history.)

What else are you working on at the moment?

I submitted an urban fantasy to one publisher, I hae a queer paranormal romance submitted with another, I’m working on a couple of short stories submissions (one for a queer romance collection, the other for a Sherlock Holmes anthology with the Best-Friends interpretation) and I’ve started work on co-writing a new book for Improbable Press!

What’s your writing process for books? Do you throw a lot away? Do you write every day? Are you a planner or do you fly by the seat of the pants?

I used to just write by the seat of my pants – get an idea and start writing to see what happened. It worked for a while, but then it stopped working and it threw me for a six. Now I tend to get an idea, sketch it out, fill in the sketch a bit and then start. I’m not a rigid planner – plenty changes or gets dropped as I go – but I have a basic framework and then fill in the gaps. I think I once equated it to throwing up a frame for a house, but then how the house is fashioned and decorated, and whether you build on an extra room, is fluid and responsive to the ideas going on at the time.

I’d love to write every day, but I have to earn a living too (fiction doesn’t pay that well!) and I want to spend time with my family and friends. But I expect that even on days I’m not sitting down to write in a solid chunk, I’m emailing ideas for dialogue and prose to myself. My brain never stops writing, even when I’m not at the computer. I get antsy if it’s been too many days, actually. I was discussing this with fellow writers on Twitter recently – that itchy feeling in your skin of words building up that can’t get out.

How do you go with social media?

It can be a challenge to find the time. You can’t just plaster links and say Buy My Book. I mean, you do send out those links as well, in due course, but the main thing is to build communities and connections, to participate and engage with people.

It’s great, because you find work and people and ideas you love, and hopefully they’ll also love you and your work and ideas, but you can’t enter into it thinking it’s just an advertising wall. It’s more like a party where you get to mingle, make friends, and you all talk about the cool stuff that’s going on – not necessarily your own, in fact.

I spend a lot of my social media time ALL CAP SHOUTING about other people’s work that I love. So while we’re here, please everyone, read Thrive by Mary Borsellino. Read The Night They Met by Atlin Merrick. Read The Creature Court trilogy by Tansy Rayner Roberts. 😀

 What do you do to increase interest in your work and how much time do you spend on it? Any tips?

I write about things that interest me that pop up in my work, and then the hope is that people who also like those things will follow me to see what else I’m doing. I blog about things that spark my imagination or intellect, and I review things as well. I’m always happy to talk to people about things.

With Colonial Boy, I’ve actually been active in Sherlock fandom for a number of years now, which has included writing fanfiction for fun, to deal with writers blocks and to experiment with ideas and styles. A lot of my lovely readers in that sphere have supported me because they like my work already, and have gone and bought the ebook which is already available, and a number have pre-ordered the paperback. They’ve been just wonderful. That’s an environment where people habitualy give encouragement and engage with you by reading the comments. I’ve met some lovely people through those sites, and made some wonderful friends.

But as I said, it can’t just be talking about yourself or your own work all the time. You have to engage with others, share ideas and resources, engage with others about the things they do that interest and excite you. It’s a community and a network of ideas and enthusiasms, not just a Shopping Channel.

What 3 artworks (books, music, visual arts, films) have most inspired you?

I pick up inspiration from so many places – including people I meet, landscapes and cities, that it’s hard to narrow it down.

I listen to music a lot when I write, and the type of music Iisten to changes with the type of book. I do listen to Fall Out Boy a lot. I love their combination of happy melodies and angry lyrics, and musically they change and grow with each album, and I love that capacity in them.

An artist I found inspirational was Lin Onus, an indigenous artist who did work that was likewise angry/funny. His X and Ray series is fantastic. He did beautiful work, and funny work, and work full of rage, as well as whimsy. He died much too young and is a huge loss.

Of course there are a lot of books I find inspirational. The original Sherlock Holmes stories and the great Holmes-Watson friendship, which can be interpreted as a great love story is an obvious case in point. I’ve also been very inspired and influenced by Lois McMaster Bujold’s Vorkosigan series, and the humanist philosophy behind it.945576_10151655974443035_1062582870_n

 

Find Narrelle at the following sites:

Or you can email.

The Adventure of the Colonial Boy

Paperback Available for Pre-order now!

Ebook released on 29 February!

Already got your copy? A review of one or two sentences onAmazon and/or Goodreads can really help!

 

 

 

 

 

 

Touched by celebrity

hqdefault

Station Story
I always chat with any Scandinavians who come through the station after visiting the zoo. I have such happy memories of my 7 years living in Copenhagen. They are lovely countries and Social Democracies are my government of choice. Got talking to a couple of young Swedes the other day and they told me they were from Malmo – Home of Scandie Noir.
“Does it annoy you to have all those crime thrillers set in your city?” I asked.
“No in fact, my father’s apartment was used for a setting in The Bridge!”  said one.
Turns out it was the home of the first victim in the latest (3rd) series.
OMG! I have been touched by celebrity! 🙂

M and C – the story continues

I’ve written before about my homeless friends M and C, How they got themselves into a house and how then they broke up and C went off somewhere. I saw M a lot going past in the train after that and then for a while I didn’t.
Suddenly he started getting on at my station. He told me he’d found C – she was at her mother’s in the country – but that he’d lost the house. He told me he’d been in jail for a few months. “I punched a guy who was fiddling with little kids,” he told me. “But I was good in jail and worked on a trade certificate. I’m a qualified plasterer.”
He’s quite a nice person -he always helps tourists with the ticket machines and timetables very kindly – but it’s also clear he’s got a short fuse and he does love his Wild Turkey and coke. He has a big scar across his head which implies maybe Acquired Brain Injury or is simply due to his epilepsy. For a couple of days he had work on a building site. Then he was back to begging. So one step forward two back.
Then a few days later I saw a familiar figure on the opposite platform. It was C. She waved at me. She looked good.
The next day M waved at me out of the train. “Great news. She’s back,” he shouted.
They stopped by the station a couple of days later. They seemed pretty happy. Though C seems a bit reserved. They had a wizened little old man in tow. C introduced him as her father. “He’s staying with us for a bit,” she said. Staying was a strange word to use. They were all off into the city to do some begging. If they didn’t make enough money for a room, well they had sleeping bags.
M and C make me aware of my own middle-classness – my assumptions about work, houses and stability. You can’t have a relative to stay with you unless you at least have a floor for them to sleep on, can you? They also make me realize you don’t have to travel to experience other ways of life. They are here in Melbourne, right under your nose.

Jason Franks, Writer and Comic Book Author

 

Sixsmiths2_cover_880Melbourne writer Jason Franks likes to walk on the dark side . His first novel Bloody Waters, about Clarice Marnier, a young guitar virtuoso who sells her soul to the devil, was short listed for the 2012 Aurealis award.  His McBlack comic series stars a private detective gone bad. But today we’ll be focusing on the Sixsmiths as Franks is about to launch his second comic in the series.  

Tell us about The Sixsmiths

The Sixsmiths are a family of suburban Satanists fallen prey to the global financial crisis. Sort of.

Well, they’re not like modern, Anton Laveyan Satanists (who are often really atheists and/or religious freedom japesters). In this world Satanism is a longstanding religion with a history that’s entwined with the other monotheistic faiths (Judaism, Christianity, Islam) with a long history of persecution. The conceit is that they’re just ordinary folks, and their religion could stand in for any one of those religions at different times. Satanism gives us the ability to invert everything and that is a great source of jokes.

The Sixsmiths do practice magic as part of their religion, but there’s no supernatural aspect to the book–it’s a straight-up religious satire.

One thing we really wanted to avoid was becoming a ripoff of the Addams Family, which is to my mind a wholly perfect creation. So instead we decided to rip off the Simpsons and South Park.

What initially inspired you to write about them?
Marc asked me to write a graphic novel for him to draw with the intention of selling it to Slave Labor Graphics, who had published Marc’s two prior books. He came down to Melbourne for a book launch and afterwards we sat down in a cafe to brainstorm over coffee. One of the sketches he did in that session was a depressed-looking teenage boy wearing a pentagram t-shirt–that’s where the original idea came from. That became Cain. Next was the vicar, Melmoth. Ralf was based on a punter sitting at the other end of the cafe and for Lilith, I said “black hair with a white streak.” Annie was more difficult and Marc came up with her on his own. Once we had characters and the setup (“suburban Satanists”) we were most of the way there, we just needed a plot. The subprime crisis in the USA was just rumbling then so I said ‘money problems’. Neither of us guessed that we’d be in GFC by the time the book was ready.

The Sixsmith’s church picnic reminded me of church picnics I went to as a child.  Made me wonder if you’d gone to picnics with religious organizations too.

cover_vol01 sixsmithThere are two picnics, sort of, so I’ll tell you about both of them. The blessing after the mass in Unhallowed is inspired by the Jewish custom of having a ‘kiddush’ (blessing) after the Saturday morning service. It’s often sponsored by a family, especially if their son has had his Bar Mitzvah during the service on that particular day. These usually take place indoors but I put it outside because a) I wanted a Churchier feel, and b) because that made it easier for Dennis to gatecrash.

The other picnic–the Festival of Mammon–is based on the annual Chanukah in the Park. I provided Marc with photos of the St Kilda Festival for reference, though, which is why it doesn’t look like Caufield park. We made up the ceremony for maximum silliness.

What else are you working on at the moment?

A bunch of stuff. One of them is a comic called Gourmand Go, which is basically Cannibal Star Trek. I’m finishing off a novel called XDA Zai, which is about an assassin who takes missions in impossible places (fairy land, Atlantis, a dirigible city, etc etc)–but who’s really in it for the travel opportunities. Also a new urban fantasy novel, a sequel, and some other continuing work. My new novel, Shadowmancy, is all done and should be available real soon now.

How do you start out with your stories? In the middle, beginning or end?
Depends. Usually I know the end before I start, and then I figure out the start and just strike out towards it. But sometimes I write everything out of order and then stitch it back together. Sometimes I find there’s more when I get to the end I planned. Sometimes I get to the end and then figure out exactly what happened, which can be a bit of a weird feeling.

What’s your writing process for comics and for books?
I’m usually a bit more structured in the way that I write comics, because you’re so limited by the format and the available pagecount. Usually I’ll have a good outline of what happens where and I’ll do page-by-page breakdowns before I start writing scripts. There’s a lot more planning with comics.

With prose I prefer to freewheel it more. I usually have a structure in my head but I like to leave myself room to discover more about the characters and the world. That’s the big difference, I guess: there’s a lot more room in prose.

Do you throw a lot away?
Not as much as I used to, but yeah, I do, especially in prose. I usually write more than is necessary in the first draft and then come back through and move stuff around, cut everything back. Usually this amounts to 10% of the wordcount on each draft. Satanist or no, being boring is the biggest sin for a writer.

Do you write every day?
I would if I could, but alas not. I do try to do some writing-related activity every day, but often this is non-creative stuff like updating websites or chasing up editors or artists.

Are you a planner or do you fly by the seat of the pants?
I guess I’m a pantser by nature, but I usually have an informal plan in my head, even if I don’t have one on paper. Every project is different, though.

How do you go with social media? What do you do to increase interest in your work and how much time do you spend on it? Any tips?
I’m pretty rubbish at it. I spend probably too much time on facebook and not enough time on twitter–hard to quantify how much time I spend because I check it throughout the day when I get some idle time. I don’t sit down and say “now I’m going to do social media,” which perhaps I should, so that I can meter my time… but I also think it’s a mistake to look at it as a marketing exercise to the exclusion of all else. Nobody wants to engage with you if you spend all day begging you to look at their work. Be a person who talks to other people and occasionally talks about their own work.

What 3 artworks (books, music, visual arts, films) have most inspired you?
Only three? Twenty wouldn’t be enough!

Ok, today my three are:
Roger Zelazny’s Amber cycle. I’ve just reread it for… well, I don’t know how many times I’ve read it, and it’s still fresh and smart. It’s so much a part of my DNA as a writer that I don’t even realize it any more.
Tom Waits’ album Bone Machine is something I keep coming back to. Aside from the brilliant songwriting I just love the sounds of it. It’s like a Disney villain gets drunk on the way to the circus and goes stumbling around a foundry. As dark as the album is, it’s also comical and hugely entertaining.
Being John Malkovich is one of my favourite movies. Charlie Kaufman and Spike Jonze take a surreal premise and build something that’s completely logical and meaningful out of it. Also, it’s goddamn hilarious.

jf_cThe launch of Sixsmiths Volume 2 will be on March 19 at 6.00 at Eydie’s: 86 Lygon St, Brunswick East VIC 3056

 www.jasonfranks.com

Email: jf@jasonfranks.com

Twitter: @jasefranks