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.

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:

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http://girliejones.livejournal.com/
http://benpayne.livejournal.com/
http://kaaronwarren.livejournal.com/
http://cassiphone.livejournal.com/

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