Jane Routley

Narrelle M. Harris – Interview

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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

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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

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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.

Too much information

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My regular customer J, told me early on he was autistic. If so, he’s pretty high functioning as he holds down a good blue collar job. He feels this entitles/requires him to call all women “shelias” and to say “good day mate” at every opportunity. Evidence of an ironic sense of humor? (Not a common autistic trait, I would have thought.) He’s a nice young man apart for that and we often talk. His main autistic trait seems to be that he has no filters. Sometimes I catch the other customers sniggering at things he says. Fortunately there was no one else in the waiting room recently when he startled me by replying to an ordinary “how are you?” with the information that he’d caught a venereal disease. (And no I didn’t ask for details – he probably would have told me and I really didn’t want to hear.)Still he has informed his partner/s very assiduously so it is no business of the station staff to judge.

Not what you think

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Even though school holidays are over, the Zoo is still teaming with international visitors, lots of whom must walk from the city since they keep turning up at the station without myki cards. Lots of people from mainland China at the moment – (Chinese New Year) – which is lovely to see, but trying to deal with the fact that our ticket machines don’t give change or deal with foreign credit cards and that even single trip users have to buy a myki smart card, can be very complicated when there is little or no shared language. Luckily I’ve been able to enlist the help of mandarin speakers on the platform. Once they know the score, people often go off and call a cab.
With North Americans I don’t have communication problems, but my heart sinks when I discover they have no change. North American credit cards don’t have pin numbers and our machine takes nothing else.
Last week one tall and very handsome American, gave up and went outside to call UBER.
He was joined by two sleazy looking characters (you know the sort, skinny blokes with tatts and bad teeth) with a large Rhodesian Ridge back dog. The guys started admiring his Blue tooth headset in a way that made me a bit nervous so I went out and hovered around protectively. But instead of mugging the man, when they found out he didn’t have a ticket, they offered to give him one of their spare myki cards. (Most Melbournians have several by now) Then we all stood around and patted the very good-natured dog until the train came.

Wheelchairs

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One of my wheelchair travelers is a young man of middle-eastern origin and poor English.  I don’t know if he didn’t understand that the driver would get a ramp out for him or if, as seems more likely, he is building up his strength to get in to the train without help. Some very fit individuals do. But he’s not there yet and last week he didn’t hoik the chair up high enough and it got caught on the lip of the train.  Over went the chair, tipping him face first onto the train floor.

He didn’t fuss, though the rest of us were flapping about in a tizz – train driver, station staff, fellow passengers. But the young man simply crawled around on his hands until he was in a good position for someone to lift him back into his chair.  He’s got the determination to get there eventually.  But I was relieved he waited for the ramp this week.

Not the best work day, yesterday

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Despite being on time, the 4.44 didn’t come. It stopped at the previous station due to reports of a trespasser on the line between that station and us. A trespasser on the line can mean something as silly as someone looking for stray golf balls or kids out for a dare (as one young woman quipped to me, “You gotta love the idiots.”) Or it can be as serious as someone threatening self-harm in which case the police have to be called. Since the control room didn’t know which it was, I didn’t know either. With train delays as with many things in this life, it’s just wait and see.
I went around the station making sure everyone knew that they could make the slow journey into the city on the nearby tram if things got bad. When the announcement came that the delays might be up to 40 minutes there was a mass exodus to the tram stop.
From where you are cut off from the station by boom gates but where everyone could see the train when it came round the corner two minutes later and pulled up at the almost empty platform.
As I watched people streaming back from the tram stop, I confess I hid in the office, but I did answer the knock on the door.
Two angry ladies shouted at me. “This is outrageous,” yelled one. “What are you people playing at? You make us miss the train and now,” she waved as the tram trundled past, “You’ve made us miss the tram as well.”
It was like the bad old days when I used to do the rush hour shift. “We didn’t do it on purpose,” I said. “I’m afraid I’m only as good as the information I get,” I said. “That’s not good enough,” she said and “What’s the point of your job then?” The hardest thing about this situation is that she was in the right. “I can only apologize,” I said. Maybe I should have keep quiet about the tram.
Not the best work day.

Thai Curry Chicken balls – a word of warning.

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During school holidays children get in to the Zoo for free so you can imagine how busy my station is. I’ve been flat out helping people buy tickets, giving directions and reassuring people that yes they are on the right platform to return to the city. You’d think I would get bored but I’ve spent lots of time chatting – mostly to tourists about how happy/unhappy they are to be here frying in our over 30 degree heat instead of freezing/frying elsewhere. Until today this week’s peak experience was having a selfie with Japanese honeymooners. (I warned them I was too ugly but their English wasn’t that good and they persisted.)
New Year’s Eve was much quieter mostly because it was H.O.T. !!! Around 39 to be precise. But I met this week’s favorite customer – a gentleman around 50/60 in a sombrero and a pony tail, sporting a large wooden cross. Without any preamble, he showed me the wildlife calendar he had purchased for his local vicar and I remarked that looking at the furry coat of the grizzly bear on the cover make me feel very hot. (So glad he took that as an innocent remark. But then he did not strike me as a man for innuendo.) From that topic we proceeded abruptly to Thai Curry Balls.
“I ate some once,” he said, “and I had the most terrible dream afterwards. I dreamt of a tethered goat being attacked by a wolf. I’ve never eaten them since.” (seems wise.)
I asked him if he was the goat but he changed the subject and began telling me about various cats he’d had and their various passions for sausage rolls or tinned Spaghetti Bol. I love conversations like this and a railway station is the perfect place for them because you have the comfort of knowing that a train will come and take the talker away before it all gets too much.
Wishing you all a Happy New year filled with as many Cat-loving eccentrics as you wish for. Thanks for supporting Station Stories.

Guns, lemurs and paint sniffing

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The end of the year and a lot of school groups are coming through.

“I remember you,” says one 13 year old boy to me.  “We were here last year and that guy was sniffing paint on the opposite platform and he fell over.  That was scary.”

I remembered that day though not the boy.  My old friend J had sniffed so much paint out of his plastic bag  that he actually passed out on platform 2. He’d got up again by the time I got round to check on him. Removing the plastic bag from his face probably helped.

Platform 1 was full of a school kids who were most concerned about him so I took the opportunity to warn them about the dangers of paint sniffing.

I was sorry the boy was scared and hastened to reassure him. J hadn’t been in any particular danger that day.  In the 12 years I’ve been doing this job, I’ve become much more relaxed around people under the influence of substances and I hardly blink at it now.  (Probably not such a good thing)

“I saw that guy recently and he told me he’d given up,” I told the boy now.

The boy expressed doubt.  He regarded himself as a worldly youth and said he had relatives who took drugs and they never gave up.  Ah,the wisdom of youth! Statistics mean nothing to them.

My favorite customer this week was a woman from Georgia, U.S.A  with long cherry red hair and loads of silver jewelry.  When I asked her why she’d come to live in Australia, she won my heart by cheerily making a joke about gun control. (“I was getting tired of having to shoot people all the time”).  Apparently she was also sick of being legally obliged to have a sign on her door saying no guns in this house to stop people bringing their weapons into her home.

Also she’d fallen in love with an Australian and was about to become a citizen here.

She’d been in to the Zoo to feed the Lemurs and showed me a great picture of herself with a perky looking lemur on her lap.

“Does it get any better than that?” I asked and she agreed that her life had probably peaked and she might as well give up from now on.  She was fun.  Hope she comes back.

Station Stories – Making Japanese tourists happy

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Japanese tourists have been a feature of my week. The Zoo seems to be crowded with beautiful and beautifully dressed young Japanese couples. The women especially wear lovely little dresses or little skirts and matching blouses and high heels to visit the Zoo. Honestly, I don’t even get that dressed up for drinks. I think they may be honeymooners or on wedding tours. Some days Melbourne’s beautiful gardens are full of young Japanese brides and grooms all dressed in white and tuxedos taking their wedding shots.
In an act of super tourist guiding this week, I appear to have made one young couple’s day. They asked me what else there was to do in Royal Park and I pointed out there was a golf course.
“But we’re not well enough dressed to play golf,” they said.
“This is Australia,” I said. “I’ve seen men playing golf here with no shirt on.” (And I have. May God protect me from such sights)
“I can play golf but you can’t,” said the man to the woman.
But he seemed a little reluctant to play. Still I looked up the prices which were very reasonable. It’s a public golf course.
“Let’s play. Let’s play,” said the woman.
They wandered off and sure enough 20 minutes later they were happily waving at me as they went past with their hired buggies. I wonder if the game got their marriage off to a flying start or blighted it at its beginning. Golf can be a pretty fraught game. Alas I shall never know.