Snapshot 2007: Juliet Marillier
Juliet Marillier has been a full time writer since about 2002. She has written nine novels so far, with a tenth due out later this year. She can be found on the web here.
Q1: Wildwood Dancing has been included in the Books Alive promotion this year. Was there a process you had to go through for that to happen? And you’ve also been doing talks at libraries and bookshops in conjunction with that: have they been a good experience for you?
I earn my living as a writer, and it’s a standard part of my work to deliver talks at libraries, bookshops, writers’ festivals and so on. Libraries and librarians played a big part in fostering my childhood love of books, so I especially like being involved in library events. The Q&A sessions this time around produced some interesting discussion about the craft of writing.
With Books Alive, I had no involvement in the process for inclusion. I do know the book choices for each category were made by different panels of experts. This year about 80% of the titles chosen are by Australian authors – a vigorous campaign by ASA helped that come about.
Q2: You’ve written about quite different countries and cultural groups in your books – the Bridei Chronicles set with the Picts, Wolfskin and Foxmask with the Vikings, Wildwood Dancing in Romania. How much research have you done for each area, and has it been difficult to maintain their distinct cultural voices over extended periods of writing?
I do extensive research for every novel. Generally by the time I begin writing I am pretty much immersed in the appropriate culture. For Wolfskin and Foxmask, for instance, I read a lot of the Icelandic sagas and also visited both Orkney and the Faroe Islands so that my portrayal of place would be as accurate as possible. And I studied the history. Researching Wildwood Dancing took me to Transylvania, and although I didn’t meet any vampires, I learned far more about the Romanian people’s attitudes to their own culture than I could ever have found out by reading background material.
Cultural voices – I do my best to capture them, but it can be hard to get the balance right between cultural authenticity and a mode of storytelling that will work for a present day audience. The core of the story should be in some way relevant to the reader’s own life, and the challenge is to achieve that while pulling the reader right into the time and place of the book. My stories contain human dilemmas that are common in any age and culture (for instance, tangled relationships, divided loyalties, tests of faith and courage, political imperatives warring with personal beliefs and so on). Dialogue can be tricky. None of the cultures of my books was English-speaking. The question is how to phrase the characters’ everyday, casual language so it is neither too archaic nor too modern. I veer towards modern idiom for informal dialogue and some readers don’t like that. But a lot of our colloquial expressions would have had their medieval Pictish equivalents, after all.
Q3: The sequel to Wildwood Dancing, Cybele’s Secret, is due out fairly soon, and you’re also working on a couple of adult novels. Would you see yourself working on more adult, or more young adult, novels in the next five years or so, and why?
Because writing is the way I make my living, I have to consider three questions: What do I want to write? What do my readers want me to write? What are my publishers prepared to publish? I have two stand-alone adult novels under contract and after those are done I hope to write a fourth instalment of the Bridei Chronicles. So if there is another YA book to come, it won’t be for a while. I generally work at the rate of one novel per year.
I’ve enjoyed writing Wildwood Dancing and Cybele’s Secret and I feel there should definitely be a third in this series, featuring the youngest sister in the Piscul Dracului family, Stela. But overall I prefer to write for adults, partly because I struggle to tell a story within the shorter length of a YA novel and partly because I found editorial requirements for my YA books a little restrictive. Having said that, I’ve learned some economy of style through writing these two YA novels and that is a good thing.
Q4: Apart from writing, hopefully you’ve had time to do some reading this year as well. What would you say has been the best thing you’ve read so far in 2007?
I just finished Kushiel’s Justice by Jacqueline Carey, which I really loved. This is Carey back in top form, an intricate, absorbing, utterly stylish novel.
Q5: Finally, as a completely inappropriate way to conclude this interview: if you could get it on with any fictional character, who would it be?!
One-night stands are not my thing, so I’d be looking for long-term partner material. Good character would matter more than physical attributes. When I wrote my first novel, Daughter of the Forest, I deliberately gave the hero, nicknamed Red, all the qualities I’d like in a real-life partner: kindness, consistency, honour and integrity. Also, he’s physically rather well endowed. Alienated, difficult men make interesting lovers on the printed page, but they’re a lot less appealing in real life.
Snapshot 2007: Tansy Rayner Roberts
Dr Tansy Rayner Roberts’ novel for children, Seacastle – book 1 of The Lost Shimmaron series – was published this year. She is also involved in the Young Adult-focussed ezine Shiny, and can be found online here.
Q1. So. Shiny and Shimmaron. What’s the go with the Young Adult focus? And the alliteration?
The alliteration is coincidental! I’ve been moving towards doing children’s and young adult fiction for some time, because I really believe that’s where the exciting stuff is happening in our genre right now (plus, the books? shorter!) but it’s something of a coincidence that it’s all happening for me this year. The Shimmaron has been a project in motion for four years that just happened to appear Right Now, and as for Shiny… well, I take total credit for the idea, if not the project!
Internationally, as the profile of YA SF has increased, there have been a number of anthologies released to appeal to that audience (that audience including teenagers who don’t want to be talked down to, and adults who like to read about smart teens) but no magazine markets that follow up on that. So we made one! We’re really excited with some of the authors and stories we’ve picked up so far, and will be making a splash with our first issues later this year. Stay tuned!
PS: The Lost Shimmaron series is actually aimed at children – it occasionally gets listed as YA, but it’s definitely the lower end, as in 8-12 yr olds. I keep getting fan comments from people who read it to their 4 year olds! I don’t want people to expect there are going to be, like, faery drugs and troll sex and all those other good YA things in it. It’s a mermaidy adventure story.
Q2. You’ve had a few short stories published in places like Andromeda Spaceways, and more recently Fantastical Journeys to Brisbane, as well as novels. Do you have a preferred length to write towards? – do you always know whether an idea is a short or a novel?
Actually, the perfect length for a story for me is about 13,000 words. Which is tragic, really. It’s a cross I have to bear.
I’m a novel girl at heart, it’s how I think. I’m always surprised and delighted when I get a short story idea that will actually work in 6,000 words or less, but it doesn’t come naturally to me. Having said that, I *loved* writing Seacastle, Book 1 of the Lost Shimmaron, because 20,000 words is such a beautiful novel length. Should be more of it!
My trouble is that I think in worlds, so even when I write shorts, I usually want to jam them into a series. It has to be all about the novels right now, though, because last year I swore I’d have three new novel-length manuscripts completed by the time I was thirty, and I have just under a year to go. Score is currently at one with just minor edits to go, one which needs about 30,000 words added to the front of it, plus edits, and one that needs to be written from scratch. I can totally do it.
Q3. You’ve just completed your PhD looking at the use of the term ‘Augusta’ and how it was applied to various Roman women. Can we look forward to a historical fantasy story from you sometime in the future – perhaps with Agrippina or Julia meeting a mermaid? And if not, why not, choose your favourite colour… or explain what else might be coming up.
Heh – I have just completed it, as of about 6pm yesterday [Friday]! Hooray! You may address me as Dr Tansy.
I’ve been wanting to write about my period of Ancient Rome for years, but never quite got up the nerve. I had an alternate history all planned for a while, kind of Roman steampunk (because there’s this legend that steam engines were invented but the Emperor dismissed them because “what would we do with the slaves”) and I was researching Egyptian technology for ages, but I’ve never followed through.
I’ve written half a short story about Caesar being haunted by Pompey’s severed head when he meets Cleopatra. I want to finish that, but as usual, I have no idea how to finish the damn thing. Maybe I need to add smut…
I *really* want to write about the romance of Octavian and Livia, because that story fascinates me (she was pregnant with her second child to first husband when he married her), and none of the historical novelists seem willing/interested to cover it. I adore young Octavian, he was such a little psychopath and yet he reinvented himself so effectively later on.
And I had this whole idea about writing a story about the afterlife of the deified members of the Julio-Claudian family. Drusilla and Livia, in particular. Such a catfight waiting to happen. Livia died first, but her great-granddaughter got to be a goddess first! Imagine the tensions.
I actually have a huge epic book/series planned which incorporates magic and Roman women’s history, but it’s way down the list of manageable projects, because it’s going to be so damn big! And of course there’s the ‘history fear’ thing to get over, where the more you know about a historical era, the more paranoid you become about getting it Wrong.
In the mean time, the novel I’m working on (the one that needs the beginning added to it) revolves around a festival calendar directly inspired by the Ancient Romans, and the city itself is grounded in my memories of Rome. So that will have to be enough for now!
PS: My favourite colour is green.
Q4. You’re part of the Last Short Story crew, and well known as having a Harry Potter fanfic obsession: what’s the best thing you’ve read this year?
Ooh, that is a really difficult question. I’ve read over 90 books, over 1000 short stories and um, mumble, over 1500 fanfics (including at least 50 novel & 100 novella length ones).
Having said all that, the one piece of reading I’ve picked up this year and adored uncritically is the Fruits Basket manga series – I resent it when I really like something that’s hugely popular and have to join the crowd, but I couldn’t resist this one.
I also loved Castle Waiting by Linda Medley, The Ladies of Grace Adieu by Susanna Clarke, The Short Life and Long Times of Mrs Beeton by Kathryn Hughes, everything that fanfic writers mistful and sam_storyteller have ever written, and two stories from Aurealis #37: “John Wayne,” by Ben Peek and “Domine” by Rjurik Davidson. And I’m ordering Steve Berman’s novel Vintage on the strength of his gingerbread boys story “Bittersweet” in the new Endicott Studio zine.
Q5. Last, but most salacious: choose one fictional character to get it on with. Who would it be?
Colleen McCullough’s version of Julius Caesar. Mmmm.
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This interview was conducted as part of the 2007 Snapshot of Australian Speculative Fiction. We’ll be blogging interviews from Monday 13 August to Sunday 19 August and archiving them at ASif!: Australian SpecFic in Focus. You can read other interviews at:
http://kathrynlinge.livejournal.com
http://girliejones.livejournal.com/
http://benpayne.livejournal.com/
http://kaaronwarren.livejournal.com/
http://cassiphone.livejournal.com/
If you’re involved in the Scene and have something to plug, then send us an email and we’ll see what we can do!
Snapshot 2007: Justine Larbalestier
Justine Larbalestier is the author of the Magic or Madness trilogy, editor of the anthology Daughters of Earth, and her website can be found here.
Q1. The Magic or Madness trilogy has, deservingly in my opinion, been nominated for a number of awards – and won one, congratulations! Do you get actual trophies for these awards, and if so do you use them as bookends? As well, what do you see as the value of being nominated for, and winning, such awards?
Yes, it [the award] was an actual thing: A big lump of lucite with a galaxy inside. But as there’s only one it’s failing me as a bookend.
Awards exist for readers not for writers. The purpose of most awards is to draw attention to a particular genre or country or whatever. Like the Miles Franklin Award was to encourage more people to take Australian literature seriously. Same for the National Book Award in the United States. In the US the big YA award is the Printz Award which was created with the purpose of helping librarians build their collections.
I think it’s a big mistake for writers to think that awards have anything to do with them. Being shortlisted or winning is a big old fluke. Be happy, but don’t be thinking it actually certifies you a genius or anything. Many many brilliant books get overlooked and crappy books have been known to win awards. Also I’ve been part of the award process and seen the best book be hated by other jurors, while I hated their fave books. And when an award is popularly voted it’s still a crap shoot.
Certain awards have a huge effect on a writer’s career. In Australia winning a Children’s Book of the Year Award means lots of guaranteed sales and the Premier’s awards mean a nice big cheque. In the USA winning a Newbery means HUGE guaranteed sales and your book never going out of print. However, there are very few awards with anything like that impact.
If I had to choose between winning lots of awards and having huge sales I’d take the sales any day of the week. I’d also take sales over critical acclaim.
Q2. You collected together eleven short stories written by women for Daughters of Earth. Did you choose stories you already liked, or have to go out hunting? And – as a bonus – what was the inspiration for the collection?
I did not choose any of the stories. I chose the scholars who wrote essays about the stories. I figured it would be a lot more fun for them to write about a story they were passionate about so I let them pick out which story to write about. I had the fun job of clearing copyright. The inspiration was Wesleyan University Press asking me if I would put together an anthology for them. Ah, the romance!
Q3. Magic or Madness is aimed at the young adult audience. Do you see yourself continuing to aim at this audience in the future, or changing focus? And why?
I’ll be writing YA for as long as they’ll publish me. I love reading the genre even more than I enjoy writing it. Because it’s a genre defined by audience more than subject matter I feel unconstrained writing it. I know that my editors will not freak if my next book is crime fiction or literary realism or a comic novel or an historical. They also have no problem with graphic novels. That’s a lot harder to get away with as an adult writer.
Q4. Looking further afield now: presuming that you’ve had time to read, in between award nominations and writing, what’s the best thing you’ve read this year?
I can never recommend just one. So far this year I’ve loved Dramarama by E. Lockhart, Helsing by Kohta Hirano (manga), Emma by Kaoru Mori (also manga), and The Scandal of the Season by Sophie Gee. Though I feel like pretty much every book I’ve read this year has been fabulous.
Q5. And finally, the all-important question: you’ve got the chance to get it on with any fictional character. Who would it be?
I must be a total weirdo but I have never thought about having sex with fictional characters. Sorry!
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This interview was conducted as part of the 2007 Snapshot of Australian Speculative Fiction. We’ll be blogging interviews from Monday 13 August to Sunday 19 August and archiving them at ASif!: Australian SpecFic in Focus. You can read other interviews at:
http://kathrynlinge.livejournal.com
http://girliejones.livejournal.com/
http://benpayne.livejournal.com/
http://kaaronwarren.livejournal.com/
http://cassiphone.livejournal.com/
If you’re involved in the Scene and have something to plug, then send us an email and we’ll see what we can do!
Snapshot 2007
So there was this thing in 2005 where Ben Peek decided to interview some folks in the Aussie speculative fiction scene, and post the results. Five questions each, 43 people, one week.
Peek opens up his big mouth to talk about something he was reminded of about it, or whatever, Girlie Jones says “hey, good idea!”, and what happens then? It’s happening again. And I’m a volunteering junkie.
So over the next week, look out here and a few other blogs for interviews with cool Aussie authors, editors, etc to be posted; they’ll also all be gathered at your Place for All Things Aussie Spec Fic.
Highly exciting.
Concrete in Rome
So I went to a public lecture at Melbourne Uni on Tuesday, called “From the Colosseum to the Baths of Diocletian: What Concrete can tell us about Social Change in Imperial Rome.” It was given by Lynne Lancaster of Ohio University. This was the first cool thing about the night: it was a woman, talking about concrete and stress points and vaulting ribs… very cool. The first funny thing was that it took two heads of departments (Classics, a bloke; Engineering, a woman [I think she was the head; I could have been wrong]) to turn some lights down so everyone in the audience – and there was a lot of people – could see the slides properly.
So, a number of things I found out are listed here. Lancaster has a book out at the moment, talking about some of these things; she made some joke about wantin a ‘sexier’ name, which I didn’t think was that sexier, but her publishers insisted that her title be searchable. So it’s really not sexy.
She started the lecture talking about factors affecting innovation, which I think she said she stole from someone else. Most of the rest of the lecture revolved around these issues, and how it affected concrete in Rome.
1. Accumulated knowledge
2. Evident need
3. Economic ability
4. Cultural/social/political acceptability
1. The accumulated knowledge required for buildings such as the Pantheon and other buildings of the early empire (her focus) was that of the arch (there’s evidence that there were arches from the 6th century BC – cool!), and use of pozzolana – volcanic ash used to reinforce the mortar.
2. Vaults got larger, which allowed for larger groups of people gathering together – which was convenient, since amphitheatres, theatres (numerous small vaults people sat on), and baths (fewer large vaults covering people) were becoming ever more popular.
3. Becoming an empire, rather than a good ol’ republic, brought different ways of collecting money for Rome – it also led to the wealth of one individual, or family, rivalling that of the state. And that wealth was often used on construction. The top builders, in her opinion, were Nero; Vaspasian; Trajan; Hadrian; Caracalla; Diocletian; and Constantine.
*Tangent-ish: the debasement of the coinage, which started under Nero. The denarius was about 97% silver under Augustis, but was only about 50% by the mid-third century. By this time, the coinage was so bad that the government wanted its taxes in kind, rather than money! This ended up having interesting repercussions for the building industry… see below…*
*Interesting tangent #2: When Trajan built his own little forum, he also modified Caesar’s – including a latrine. The cool thing about this is that the latrine was built on the second floor, meaning they had to use lots of arches to channel the weight. It also had nice windows….*
*And, just because: the Pantheon (I think Lancaster has a thing for the Pantheon…) has a 43m dome – the largest unsupported vault (I think I got that right), and two times larger than any previous dome: so interestingly, no incremental changes. It also has hollow, 6m wide walls, with extruded brick ribs…*
4. Brick industry development paralleled the increase in the use of vaults.
Under Trajan, politicians had to own land (I think I got that right – I might have missed something there). One way to profit from this was to sell clay, to make bricks. Brick use explodes from this time – it’s probably consequential. There’s evidence of bricks allowing for social advancement (slaves becoming freemen, etc). As well, there’s evidence that women owned and even produced bricks…. So in all of these ways there were incentives to Make Bricks.
**Break for a human demonstration of the necessity of ribs and vaults!**
Four women called up, to act as ribs – then Lancaster hung from their hands! and asked them where the tension was. And then, four men came up and put their hands on their shoulders – queue hanging again – and the women reported that there was less tension. Very, very cool.
Then there was scoria. It’s basically solidified volcanic foam, and was the only non-decorative stone imported into Rome, and it was used on imperial buildings. Most of the stuff that was used was from Pompey, but was brought after 79 – when the explosion from Vesuvius had covered the stuff – so it was hard to get to, but still they did it. Hello, lucre…
The Basilica Ulpia: why use columns, rather than a vaulted roof? Columns make the roof flat, and there was increasing interest in showing off colourful stone from captured territory. It also probably provided a very nice viewing platform for Trajan’s Column – so convenient!
Also at this time came the introduction of the use of window glass (from late in the first century). This led to huge changes in Roman perceptions of light and space, and raised expectations through the roof (tee hee). Buttresses become important for this development, and allows for baths to get bigger – good from a social and imperial point of view – and the light showed off the captured marble very, very nicely.
There were other bits and interesting pieces in the lecture – which I really enjoyed, if I haven’t mentioned that – but the last thing I wanted to mention related to that comment about taxes and debased coinage. Diocletian made a huge change by imposing a property tax on people living in Rome. The urban prefect, who was in charge of the area within a 100 mile radius of the city, used a form of barter to get building materials – and, on the other side, to reduce the taxpayer’s tax burden. Very, very clever.
Yay for public lectures! I love the Classics department at Melbourne!
Marvellous Merlin: Knowledge and Power
I went to a seminar given by Stephen Knight on Merlin a few weeks ago, and it was great. I’ve liked Knight ever since I did an essay on Robin Hood, in about third year, and I read bits of his book on said bandit. I didn’t realise that he was Australian! – I should have, since my lecturer Stephanie knew him, but it just didn’t occur to me that someone so prestigious could be an Aussie. Dreadful, no?
The focus – my take-home message, if you like, which might not have been the intended theme, but was talked about a lot – was Merlin’s relationship to power. He doesn’t often hold it, but he relates to it and talks to or at it; sometimes it’s a positive, sometimes negative, relationship.
The seminar started by talking about the Myrddin (‘Welsh’, or original at least, name for Merlin). From 493, in Cumbria, comes a poem that talks of a man who was traumatised by a battle, who consequently lives in a forest and mocks his own culture, and particularly the court. He becomes, a few centuries later, something of a prophet: in the poems of 1000 or so, he is speaking for Welsh power – where before he had been challenging that power. Interesting…
He went on to mention Merlin in Geoffrey of Monmouth (only helps with Arthur’s conception, no other involvement – he also collapses Merlin with Ambrosius. He’s also the one to coin Merlin, since merdinus in Latin means shitty!); various French poems, Robert de Boron and Layamon… Merlin, as knowledge, speaks to power, in the person of Arthur or similar. He might be an archbishop or grand vizier-type figure. But knowledge doesn’t always speak of truth, or share its knowledge; often, he’s just telling power to shut the hell up and get on with it already.
There’s a great picture from the Renaissance, in which the cave is more like a grand hall, and it shows Merlin as an artificer and an artist. Playing, of course, on contemporary desires and wishes and preferences.
Knight continued by talking about Dryden – King Arthur: The British Worthy – and other C18 plays and poems. Merlin is used in various ways in these places, but generally to do with power. In fact, the name ‘merlin’ comes to mean little almanacs – full of knowledge, of course. Merlin hasn’t always been portrayed as old, as those of us who are fans of The Sword in the Stone will always regard him; this is a relatively late development. The wrinkles, the beard – they’re all code for knowledge. This, by the way, led to an interesting discussion about whether figures such as Gandalf – also with white beard etc – are incarnations of Merlin, or if they’re just using the same codes.
It was a really fascinating talk, and I’m really glad I went. It was after this that I decided I would start reading more academic stuff, because really, it was so much fun stretching my brain! Apparently Knight went on to talk at a medieval conference, and talked about similar things; my friend AB went to the conference, but I haven’t caught up with her to talk about it.
I know how they make Flakes
… and it’s one of my more momentous discoveries of recent times.
So it seems that chocolate that reaches its expiry date gets sent back to the manufacturer. Fine. It gets melted down. OK….
And then it gets re-used.
The highest cocoa-percentage dark chocolate has not had this treatment. But milk chocolate is, at least partly, dark chocolate that has been melted down, the other bits sieved out, and then… turned into different chocolate.
This process gets repeated a few times. Eventually, the chocolate gets to the point where it loses elasticity, it won’t stick together very well, and it’s not even good enough for Easter eggs because it won’t work that thin.
You got it. That’s what gets turned into Flakes. Pretty clever propaganda, and use of resources, eh?
Dead angel
My Monster Angel has died.
He’s been on the way out for a year or so, I think: he got sick about a year ago, and I thought he would die then, but he kicked on. Today, though… on his side, all of a sudden; then, 30 minutes or so later, gone. Fallen off the perch.
The tank looks much emptier without him. He was three times as big as any of the others…
Historical hoarding
I wonder if my adoration of history is related to my incorrigible hoarding. Oh yes, it is incorrigible: those of you at school in Australia in 1988 may remember receiving a dinky commemorative coin for the Bicentennary. I’ve still got mine (primary school, thanks very much). I used it, for some reason, to collect the signatures from some has-been cricketers at an exhibition match in Darwin the same year. I kept my cinema tickets for ages. As if anyone would ever be interested in my ephemera! But then, there are are historians who examine the minutae of everyday life, so – you know …. I, though, am not one of them.
At the same time, I am also a tragic nostalgic: I wish my college friends were all still talking, because I’d love to have a ten-year reunion next year – but it ain’t gonna happen. I love my family history, partly for bragging rights and partly for interest.
I think this might be a bit of a chicken/egg issue. But it is an interesting thing to consider.
One step closer
Not to the end of LastShortStory, but towards another – perhaps as yet unstated – goal: to watch all of the original Star Trek movies, in order. I’m currently watching number 3: “The Search for Spock.” It’s pretty good… you know, for an ancient Star Trek movie… Christopher Lambert (I think? – the mad scientist from Back to the Future) is dreadful. Kirk is really very entertaining – I love that he knows everyone’s jobs better than they do; Bones is probably my favourite, I’ve decided.
It has also suddenly occurred to me that maybe the Vulcans have the upturned eyebrows because they’re meant to be elven? Amoral, long-lived… not sure too many people have written about the elves as being driven by logic, but there’s always a possibility.
Randomly Yours, Alex 