Margo Lanagan lives in Sydney. She writes short stories and novels—mostly fantasy, but some science fiction and horror, and some occasionally, accidentally, literary mainstream. Her short stories have done about as well as short stories can do without being by Nam Le; she’s been given a bunch of prizes and shortlisted for a bigger bunch. She’s won three World Fantasy Awards, been twice shortlisted for the Tiptree Award and twice for the Shirley Jackson, written two Printz Honor books and had her stories translated into Finnish, Korean and Catalan, among other languages. Her short story collections are White Time, Black Juice, Red Spikes and the upcoming Yellowcake. Her novels include Tender Morsels, and The Brides of Rollrock Island, due out in 2011.

1. Your work often inspires intense responses, mostly positive…but occasionally negative. Does the fact that you sometimes shock critics entertain or annoy you?

I think readers’/critics’ taking offence surprises me in a what-rock-are-they-living-under kind of way. Shocked reactions say more about the reactors than the reacted-to, and there are a lot of very well-protected and fearful people in the world. I’m not saying that their fears aren’t perfectly legitimate, but venting them at books—rather than at movies, or really dangerous situations, or in the form of teaching young people to think for themselves and protect themselves—seems to me a bit pointless.

Looking at my blog (especially the entry I posted today, 18 May!), you’d have to say I find it entertaining to poke at people’s sensitive areas and watch them squirm. But this is not what I’m doing when I’m actually in the process of writing the story. It’s all perfectly serious then. Then I’m poking at my own deepest uncomfortable places, and seeing what crawls out. And trying to see it from all sides, not with my intellect, but with the instinctive story-making part of my brain. Trying to make something that represents stuff I can hardly see, but that I know matters, right down deep.

To be annoyed by people’s reactions, I’d have to accord their judgments of my work a higher place than my own. But I don’t; I put them and me on the same footing. They’re entitled to whatever they think and feel, even if it means ew-yucking and telling people to recommend my novel to NO ONE. Clearly I don’t happen to share their particular ew-triggers—and clearly a lot of other readers don’t either. (It’s of course easy to be entertained-rather-than-annoyed when there’s a second stream of reviews flowing in that’s all ‘This book killed me—in a good way; this is in my all-time top ten; I carried this book around with me for three weeks after I finished it because I didn’t want to put it down.’ Many of the people who do like my stories seem to like them a lot. Which puts me in the happy position of lounging back in the arms of my supporters while I decide whether and how to respond to the more squeamish critics.)

2. You’ve written a number of novels and short story compilations. Do you find it more challenging to compress a narrative for a short story or to extend and maintain it over the duration of a novel?

*falls off chair laughing hysterically*

*composes self* I think a novel is a bit harder.

You’re talking to someone who had ten years between novels, during which she was constantly trying to pull off a big fantasy brick, or a junior quartet, or just, please, gods, could it be given to me to manage one slim YA standalone? Actually, my problem wasn’t so much trying to stretch out a narrative over the length of a novel (although there were elements of that; there were elements of all the ways-you-can-go-wrong-with-novels in those ten years) as always trying to fit the whole world into a novel and then finding that I couldn’t control the novel in exactly the same way as I couldn’t control the whole world. Surprising. Well, it surprised me every time.

The reason I started writing short stories was because I was mired in that big fantasy novel. I wasn’t looking for a solution in them; I was looking for distraction, and a new novel-avoidance strategy. And they taught me (or re-taught me, because I must have known this at an earlier stage, if I got all those novels written in the 90s) how to break off a little bit of the world, and use that and only that, and let a story grow up around it that I could see all the parts of at once and keep track of them, and know how this part would have to change if I nudged that part in a particular way.

And then I worked out a way to write lots and lots of short stories around the same uber-story, and paste them together, and I called that a novel, and *whispers* people seem to have been taken in!

Also, I’m not sure that I do compress narrative when I write a short story. I just cut all the extraneous bits off the climax of what might well be a novel if I let it have its head, and call the poor stumpy, bizarre bit that’s left a short story. J

3. You inspire so many readers. Who are some of your own literary heroes?

Oh, other stump-carvers and weirdwrights. The lushest, harshest, wonderfullest, most difficult reading experience for me in recent years has been Greer Gilman’s Cloud and Ashes. A writer who inspires Greer and me is Alan Garner, and the late William Mayne touches off the same sensations for me, at his best, of having the true, dense meaning of the story just at my fingertips, but being so busy enjoying the telling that I’m not quite getting everything as I go.

Ursula K. Le Guin—her steady wisdom and the kindness and beauty of her writing are always lovely to encounter. Michael Cunningham cannot put a foot wrong, in novel or interview; he’s wise too. George Saunders’ short stories, and Kelly Link’s, and Ellen Klages’—they’re all wonderlands. W. G. Sebald—how could he make his miserable wanderings around the countryside so fascinating to read? Kate Grenville’s The Secret River; Tove Jansson’s Moomin books, for their combination of matter-of-factness about their world, neat characterisation, and strong atmospheres; and I’m just finishing John Crowley’s Little, Big, which is full of pretties and weirdness-half-glimpsed.

I’m not a very systematic reader; I just crawl all over the place and occasionally find treasure. And I don’t waste time reading to the end of books that aren’t giving me anything, so for me to voluntarily finish a book is usually a recommendation in itself. (That indicates the kind of brutality that comes from being extremely reading-time-poor, not an inability to stay on task.)

4. Which of your many characters Burns Brightest in your mind and why?

My old-hag characters are the ones I’m enjoying the most as I progress into old-hagdom myself. I started off with a really unpleasant mudwife, in a short story called ‘The Goosle’, who originated from the witch in ‘Hansel and Gretel’. She was a nasty, sexy old cannibal, with no redeeming features.

But then in Tender Morsels she metamorphosed into Hotty/Muddy/Lady Annie Bywell, née Hornblow, and grew a sense of humour and a conscience, and she and Collaby Dought, her friend from orphanage days, were my favourite characters to write about, they had such energy, and they were so bluntly-spoken; neither cared what people thought. Every time I put them in a scene they’d say something unexpected, and usually rude and funny and true.

And in the next novel, The Brides of Rollrock Island, there’s another of these mudwitches—although she’s more of a sand-witch, ha-ha, because her magic is all about the sea and selkies and fishing. Messkeletha is her name. She gets the first third of the book entirely to herself and her youth, and she turns up fully the horrible hag in the other two-thirds of the story too, smelling bad, saying what she thinks and doing as she pleases.

Apart from the mudwives, I think the characters I most like writing about are babies and small children. I think that’s a reflection of the fact that I’ve now got two nearly-grown-up sons, and while I do admire how tall they’ve grown, I can’t help remembering how sweet it was to carry them around when they were only an armful, and conversing with them as they learned to talk.

Discover More About Margo here:

Kate Forsyth is the internationally bestselling author of more than twenty books for children and adults, including The Puzzle Ring, The Gypsy Crown, The Starthorn Tree, and The Wildkin’s Curse, her latest fantasy adventure for readers aged 12+. She has won or been nominated for numerous awards, including Best First Novel and a CYBIL Award in the US, five Aurealis Awards and a CBCA Notable Book. Her books are published in 13 countries around the world.

1. You’ve written more than 20 novels. Would you describe writing as more of an unstoppable compulsion or a discipline that requires great focus and energy?

Both, actually. It’s true I’m a compulsive writer. As well as writing novels, I do numerous articles every year, I blog a lot, I keep in email contact with writers all around the world, and I write in my diary most days. I’ve kept a diary since I was twelve – that’s twenty-two years of consecutive diary writing and a whole lot of shelves lined with tattered notebooks. I also have boxes full of old manuscripts. I wrote my first novel when I was seven and have never stopped since. It’d be a rare day when I don’t spend some time at least writing. And if I’m kept from my writing, I get fidgety and unhappy. Sometimes I feel as if I have a constant undercurrent of words running through my mind and the only way to stop them from damming up is to write them out.

William Gifford once described writing as “the insatiate itch of scribbling.”

Enid Bagnold said: “Writing is a condition of grinding anxiety. It is an operation in which the footwork, the balance, the knowledge of sun and shade, the alteration of slush and crust, the selection of surface at high speed is a matter of exquisite finesse. When you are without judgement and hallucinations look like the truth! When experience (which trails behind) and imagination (which trails in front) will only combine by a miracle! When the whole thing is an ambidexterity of memory and creation – of the front and the back of the brain – a lethargy of inward dipping and a tiptoe of poise, while the lasso is whirling up for words! It is a gamble, a toss-up, an unsure benevolence of God!’

(Isn’t that marvellous?)

Jean Cocteau simply asks, in despair, “This sickness, to express oneself. What is it?”

So we’ve had the writing impulse described variously as an itch, a sickness, a condition of grinding anxiety, an unsure benevolence of God … I have felt all of that and more. Yet I still love it and cannot live without it. It’s an utterly fascinating conundrum.

Dostoevsky was a compulsive writer too. He had a condition called hypergraphia caused by temporal lobe epilepsy. This is because the temporal lobe is the site of language and sound processing, memory, and emotional drive. People who have hypergraphia get an intense pleasure from the act of writing. They are driven to write regardless of whether or not they earn income from it, and whether or not anyone appreciates what they do (even though we may weep about it!)

The difference between Dostoevsky and most hypergraphics, though, is the quality of the writing. Most hypergraphics simply write long streams of meaningless gibberish that can be quite painful to read. Dostoevsky, however, brings the craftsman’s skill to the task of writing. He has discipline and design and virtuosity.

So even though I suspect my own compulsion to write borders on hypergraphia (even perhaps graphamania!), I try and bring to my writing the discipline I need to make the book the very best that I can make it. I work hard at my craft, always striving to be a better writer. I try and combine my natural flair and facility with words with technical brilliance (and fall short, as we always must).

2.      You’ve played a diverse number of roles, Kate: academic, journalist, author, poet, creative writing teacher…Your schedule is mind-boggling! What’s a day in the life of the busy Kate Forsyth like?

It is busy! However, the pattern of my days depends on what stage of the book I am in. The early stages are much easier – I read a lot, daydream a lot, I have time to go to the movies, see a play or go to the ballet, and I cook delicious feasts for my family.  As the action in my novels rises in pace and intensity towards the crisis, so does my life. I think about the book all the time. I dream about it at night. Often I cannot sleep because of the fever my brain is in and so I get up and work for hours in the dark and lonely quiet of the night. I begin to burn dinner. Or I cook the quickest, easiest meals I can think of so I can have more time at my computer. I began to be absent-minded. Sometimes the world of my imagination is so much more vivid than the real world that I have trouble wrenching my mind back to everyday things like making sure my poor children have clean undies. By the time I’m in the final stages of the book, I am working at it twelve hours or more a day, at white-hot intensity.

Then I finish it! I am filled with amazement at what I have wrought. I bask in the afterglow a few weeks, catching up on all the things I’ve ignored – the piles of washing and unpaid bills, my neglected husband. Then comes the editing and rewriting. I always work at fever-pitch at this stage too, wanting to stay as connected to the story as I can. Then it is delivered and goes off to the publisher, and I have to prepare to emerge, blinking at the brightness, into the glare of the publicity process. This is when I teach a lot – I turn down most teaching engagements when I’m writing – and this is when I write a lot of shorter pieces, like articles, reviews, blogs and speeches. This is actually the hardest part of the whole process because I’ll have to be out the door at 7am, facing a day of delivering 2-3 book talks a day, doing photo shoots and media interviews (I’ve done about 10 just in the past week!).

I also travel a lot while promoting, which is hard on my little family. Just in the next few months I am doing the Sydney Writers Festival, then two weeks in the UK and Greece (running a writer’s retreat);  then I’m writer-in-residence at a Sydney school; then I’m appearing at the CYA Literary Festival at the NSW Writers Centre, running a workshop at the Romance Writers of Australia Conference, appearing at the  Abbotsleigh Literary Festival, then I have Book Week (which is more like a month!), then the Melbourne Writers Festival, the Brisbane Writers Festival, the CYA Later, Alligator conference in Brisbane and straight back to Melbourne for WorldCon. Phew!

I’ll be looking forward to getting back to my dim and peaceful study after all of that (and my family will be looking forward to the delicious feasts!)

3.      Your latest book, The Wildkin’s Curse, follows 2002’s The Starthorn Tree in the Chronicles of Estelliana. What was it like to dive back into that world after having been away so long?

I was afraid at first that the idea for the book would be stone-cold ashes and that no matter how hard I blew on them, no flicker of fire would remain. But, much to my relief and joy, I found a handful of hot coals still glowing deep in the ashes and some concentrated effort soon had the flame of inspiration leaping high again. After that, it was a joy! It was liberating to be writing fantasy again and have no shackles on my imagination, and the characters quickened for me very quickly which means the writing process was able to gallop along. I loved it!

4.     Which of your many characters Burns Brightest in your mind and why?

Such a difficult question! You have to be intrigued by your characters – if not utterly enthralled – if you are to spend a year writing them to life and then another year talking about them!

My very first heroine Isabeau occupies a special place in my heart – I first dreamt about her when I was sixteen and the Witches of Eileanan series changed my life, catapulting me from desperate longing and poverty into being an internationally bestselling author living the life I had always dreamed of. And she still earns me nice fat royalty cheques thirteen years later! Also, I wrote six books about her which took six years of my life. And with her red hair and laughing spirit and her blazing magical powers she certainly does burn bright!

But then what of Sara of Full Fathom Five? I spent so much of my young adulthood trying to do her story justice. And of course I love Rhiannon, the wild girl that no man can ever tame. And my four heroes in the Starthorn Tree! And Luka and Emilia in The Gypsy Crown! They came laughing and dancing and fighting into my imagination and gave me no peace till I wrote their story. Those six books in the Chain of Charms series just seemed to leap off the tips of my fingers and write themselves. And I have a very tender spot for Hannah and Donovan from ‘The Puzzle Ring’ – I love a feisty heroine and a dark and brooding hero. While my heroes from The Wildkin’s Curse’ – brave and clever Merry and Liliana, tall and strong, determined not to show her vulnerability, well, they’re just darlings.

I love all these characters and loved writing their stories. However, I have to admit the ones that burn brightest in your own mind are the ones who are jostling at your elbow while you write, talking and arguing and telling jokes you can’t help laughing at … and of course those are the characters you are writing into life right now! I’m near the end of my next book, called ‘The Starkin Crown’. It’s the sequel to ‘The Wildkin’s Curse and my hero is a teenage boy called Peregrine. Whenever I think of him I imagine a peregrine falcon soaring high in the air. He’s bright and brave and quick and generous-hearted, and if I was fifteen years old and living in the world of the book, I’d be falling in love with him, just like plain, shy, practical Molly.

You can read more about Kate here.

Check out the trailer to Kate’s latest book, The Wildkin’s Curse here.

Alison Goodman is the author of EON (aka The Two Pearls of Wisdom, EON: Dragoneye Reborn, and EON: Rise of the Dragoneye), which has sold into fourteen countries and won the 2008 Aurealis Award for Best Fantasy Novel. It has recently been listed as an American Library Association Best Young Adult Book (2010), and is a James Tiptree Jr. Honour book, and a CBCA Notable Book. Alison’s other novels are the award winning Singing the Dogstar Blues, and her adult crime novel Killing the Rabbit. She lives in Melbourne with her husband and their machiavellian Jack Russell Terrier.

The Big Four for Alison Goodman

1. Your novel The Two Pearls of Wisdom draws inspiration from Chinese Astrology and Feng Shui. How did you first become interested in those subjects?

The idea for The Two Pearls of Wisdom—which has now been re-titled and re-released as EON—was inspired by a short paragraph about a murderous Emperor in a Feng Shui book that I was reading as research for my crime novel. So, Feng Shui began as a research interest and then built into a fascination. The same goes for the Chinese horoscope. Both lores deal with the flow of energy in the universe, and cosmic balance—a great base for a fantasy magic system.

I think the initial interest in Asian cultures came from my late Aunt Nachie who was Japanese and introduced me to a life-long interest in the Japanese culture. One of my earliest memories is sitting in her kitchen eating strips of dried seaweed that were packaged like gum. It also probably explains my well-developed umami tastebuds. I’d much rather chomp down on a nori roll than a chocolate bar.

2.  In addition to being an author, you’re a creative writing teacher. What is the most valuable piece of advice you would give a budding author?

The real work of an author is in the rewrite. Getting down the first ideas in a rush of inspiration is great fun, but the real work is crafting those raw words into a cohesive story with compelling characters and fully realised themes. Learn to love the rewrite because that is where a serious author lives.

3. Given your past work, you seem comfortable working in a variety of genres. Will you continue to mix it up or can you see yourself staying in the fantasy genre after the huge success of The Two Pearls of Wisdom?

I basically go where the story goes. When I was creating The Two Pearls of Wisdom (EON) it soon became apparent that the vivid world-creation and quest storyline fitted within the fantasy genre. My first novel, Singing the Dogstar Blues, is set in a future world and explores time travel, which is classic Science Fiction. My second novel, Killing the Rabbit, is a noir crime novel for adults and plays with the conventions of hero and anti-hero, and the conspiracy plot. If the story I want to tell fits in a particular genre then I will use the conventions of that genre, but not slavishly. Part of the fun is to twist the conventions and play with the form.

It also takes a lot of energy and passion behind a story idea to sustain it over the long haul of writing a novel, so I follow the passion and energy too.  I do have a new project in mind—a paranormal story with my usual twist—that I started developing about five years ago. It has a lot of fire behind it, so that is where I am heading after I finish EONA, the concluding sequel to EON.

4. You’ve written a lot of novels and short stories in your career. Which of your many characters Burns Brightest in your mind and why?

I would have to say my two main villains: Trojan Carmichael in Killing the Rabbit and Lord Ido, the villainous Dragoneye in EON and EONA. Trojan is a burnt-out hitman with his own warped code of honour, and Lord Ido is a sexy, manipulative, dangerous, sly, charming power-monger, who has the best set of abs I’ve ever imagined! They are both killers with their own self-justified motivations:  fascinating and challenging to create. Hmm, I’m not sure what that says about me…

Visit Alison’s website at www.alisongoodman.com.au

About Isobelle

Isobelle Carmody began the first of her highly acclaimed Obernewtyn Chronicles while she was still at high school, and worked on the series while completing university. The series, and her many award-winning short stories and books for young people, have established her at the forefront of fantasy writing in Australia.

Obernewtyn was shortlisted for the 1988 Children’s Book Council of Australia (CBCA) Book of the Year Award, and its sequel, The Farseekers, was an Honour Book in the 1991 CBCA Awards. The Gathering was joint winner of the 1993 Children’s Literature Peace Prize and the 1994 CBCA Book of the Year Award. Her novels Greylands and Alyzon Whitestarr were were both winners of the Aurealis Award for Speculative Fiction, and the first book in The Legend of Little Fur series—Little Fur—won the 2006 ABPA Design Awards. Her latest book, The Red Wind, is the first in the Kingdom of the Lost trilogy for younger readers. She is currently completing the last of the Obernewtyn Chronicles, The Sending.

Isobelle divides her time between her home on the Great Ocean Road in Australia and her travels abroad.

1. You’ve been writing since you were a teenager. Has your approach to writing changed over that period?

In some ways, no. I started out writing like I was flinging myself down a steep slope on skis, half terrified and half thrilled to be negotiating unknown terrain, and knowing the run might be too tough for me. That made sense when I was 14 and writing in the midst of a tempestuous relationship with my mother and seven wild siblings…and when no one felt that writing for school had much to do with anything. The important things were getting everyone fed and bathed and so on, and keeping the house clean. We played a lot of games where I was basically making up stories, but that felt like a whole other thing. The writing was always this private, slightly manic activity where I would work like hell because at any minute I was going to be interrupted. It was like reading a terrifically exciting book when you were being interrupted every other minute. A bit of me was always stitched into the book, so that I could go back to it in a second. The story was like this river that flowed through my mind, to which I always returned, and its glitter and its soft rushing sounds were always audible, visible, there—just under real life.

I was always just a little bit distracted from reality.

When I left home and was on my own, there was university and work, and they were a lot more interesting than housework and family chores, but I missed the wild games, and in the end, writing was still this glittering, mesmerising thread running under everything…keeping me distracted when I was not ferociously writing. For a while, I really got into journalism, but in the end it seemed to me that I was getting closer to some sort of cellular truth when I wrote my stories, than when I interviewed a politician or even the victims of a bushfire. So I quit.

Then there was this incredible period, which was actually quite short, where I really just wrote. Well, I wrote and went to the beach a lot. What I loved most about the beach was that I was going there when everyone else was suiting up to go to work or to all those things real people did, which I had somehow miraculously evaded. I was too young to feel worried about the future. I lived on what I had got together and I lived very, very simply. I was incredibly happy all the time. I wrote, and I was working on the same story I had been working on at 14—the first Obernewtyn book. Then I finished it and I sent it off to the first publisher on a long list I had made, because I had been told that you had to get rejected hundreds of times before being accepted. But it was accepted by the first publisher I sent it to. I felt so lucky. In fact, I felt so lucky it made me nervous. I thought I would probably have to be in a terrible accident and get something amputated as a way of balancing all that luck! Then the book came out and was short-listed in the young adult section of the Children’s Book Council awards and I went in one step from being no one to someone. Suddenly my book was in libraries, and the publishers wanted the next one, which I was working on…

So I worked and worked, and everything I wrote was published in due course, and I won or was short-listed for awards. Basically I didn’t do much else in that period. I went to and from journalism for a while, editing and writing—I liked it but my stories were what held me. The river had grown a lot wider and I could just focus on it now. That went on for some years—so many that I thought, ‘ok— this must be life’. It depressed me a little, I am ashamed to say, to think that was it.  I was reasonably successful and from all the indicators, it seemed like I would go on being moderately successful. I started to travel, always because of writing, and all that I saw and did was woven into my work. I was content, but somehow I had lost that sharp, beautiful, painful delight in life that I had earlier on.

Then I went to Estonia, to a UNESCO conference to read, and fell in love, and suddenly everything—I mean EVERYTHING—changed. I started living big chunks of time overseas, I had a live-in partner and then a daughter. And all of a sudden, I was back to fitting writing in around everything else.

In a funny way, though I really do miss those wonderful years when I only wrote, and I miss the deep immersion they allow pretty badly sometimes, I find this life of having to fight for time to write more invigorating and ultimately satisfying. It’s like it was almost too easy for a while. Looking back, I was living this idyllic, not real sort of life when I was detached from reality, not just distracted from it. It was maybe a bit bloodless. But now I am in the midst of life, red in tooth and claw, and when I write, I still hurl myself down the mountain face, hoping not to fly off a cliff or smack into a tree. And life seems painfully, sharply beautiful and precious again…

2.  The last instalment of the Obernewtyn series, The Sending, isn’t far from being released. How difficult is it to close a series that’s been with you for so long?

Further away than my fans or publisher like. It was supposed to come out this year, but I found I just could not work when the book was scheduled and everyone was hanging on me to finish. It was like trying to work in a room where people were shouting at you that you were going to miss the bus. Luckily, Penguin have been able to bear with me and have eased the pressure, so the book will be coming out next year. They will make an announcement about it, but I think the word might already be out, and my name’s probably mud. I know some writers can deliver a book exactly when they say they will, but I honestly don’t know how that is possible. For me, a book is a journey and I don’t know how long it will take. I have a map, but it is sparse and there are so many things to see and learn and explore before I find what I set out to find. I write in order to think and that means I don’t know how long it will take me to figure it out. I think of it as a very organic process, but that might be a nice way to say utterly disorganized. The thing it that whatever word you apply, that is how I work and if people like the stories I write, then they have to allow me the means to get them.

I do think there is a bit of a perception that I am spinning it out or that I am unable to close. Neither is true. Despite the size of the books, I really have to work to get everything in each one and I cut and cut and cut to do it. They are absolutely not padded. I imagine padding would be such a boring thing to have to do. Cutting is hard work but incredibly satisfying, and it is balanced with elaborating and clarifying, because the stories are all very complex. For me, the process of editing does not happen after the book is finished but is part of the whole creative process. Sometimes this has meant publishers have felt I am close to done when I know I am not. But I do know where this series is going and the last book is completely written in first draft. But, as I said, that does not mean it is finished. There is a lot of stuff to be sorted out, honed back, a lot of threads to be joined and that happens in a to and fro process that is hard to control. But I am on it. I am getting there and I will get there. And I am not afraid to finish or trying for perfection.  I need the books to be ended properly. I need to feel a true sense of completion or how will readers feel it? I actually think I am closer than I think, now that I am no longer under such pressure.

Having said all that, finishing will be a wrench in the same way that finishing the Dark Matters books was a wrench as a reader, or the Narnia books when I was a kid, or Robin Hobbs books…or Stieg Larsson’s Millenium Trilogy. But they must be finished and that is that. And I want to finish them. I want to come to the end of it because I want to know exactly how it will all come out as well. But, unlike readers, when I have finished, I will never ever be able to go back through the wardrobe door again. At least, not that door…

3.      You divide your time between living in Australia and overseas. How does this ongoing change of environment influence your writing?

It strips you down. It takes you out of your comfort zone and forces you to be vulnerable. It makes you see and feel and hear more vividly. And you see and hear and experience things you would not experience any other way.

4.      You’ve created so many memorable characters throughout your writing career. Which of your many characters Burns Brightest in your mind and why?

Wow, now that is the toughest question because you always feel like you are betraying one character when you name another. I actually can’t do it. I can say why I loved a few of the characters, though the truth is I could tell you why I loved at least one and usually more characters in every book I have written. But let’s choose a few. I like Elspeth because she is like another me. She is the inside me or, better said, she is the skin I slipped into when I wanted to think about things when I was 14, and she has grown with me, though not as fast. She is powerful and prickly and assertive and tall and lean—all the things I am in my imagination. She is brave and truthful and all the things I would be if I were better. She is me as a hero. Nissa is her in urban guise, but the main character in The Gathering, and the one I like most, is Nathanial because, unlike Nissa, he can be soft. I love Billy Thunder because he is the kindest, sweetest, sunniest, most sheerly good character I have ever created. I love Maruman because of his madness and his sheer bloody mindedness. I love Mr. Walker because he is a pernickety little scold. I love Fork because in the most true and metaphysical sense, it is shaped by the lives of the people and creatures who inhabit it. I love little Fur for her gentleness and Crow for his rudeness and oh I love Sorrow for his great, terrible mythic sadness. I guess I am never going to write an antihero, but what I like doing is taking a character and making it seem comical or cowardly or silly, and then producing a paradigm shift so that we can see that all of these things can hide incredible courage, depth, and blinding beauty of spirit. I always suspect it of my characters and, when it comes, I am always shocked and touched by it. I guess that is the thing I love most about writing: the moment when characters I have created reveal the bit of themselves that I did not invent or expect. The bit where they take on their own life…

"Isobelle and Adelaide" - Anne Spudvilas Archibald Prize entry 2007

Visit Isobelle’s fan site at Obernewtyn.net

The Big 4 for Richard Harland

1. We love your latest brilliant offering, the steampunk novel Worldshaker! How did you first get into steampunk and what drew you to that genre?

I didn’t plan to write a steampunk novel, that’s for sure! When I had the ideas for Worldshaker, over 15 years ago, steampunk was only a small and little-noticed sub-genre of SF. My first idea was for a great gothic castle, but – since I couldn’t just imitate Mervyn Peake – I built my ‘castle’ out of metal and put it on rollers. From then on, the mechanical side got more and more important as I kept on developing the world and narrative. I couldn’t see any chance of getting the story published for a very long while, since no Australian publisher was looking at that kind of fantasy at the time. So I bided my time and kept on developing – and in the end, steampunk/Victorian fiction started to catch on. I started the actual writing of the novel 5 years ago, and now it’s come out right in the middle of a huge steampunk wave in the US, and an ever-spreading wave in Australia.  I think it was the novel I always had in me to write. When I look back, steampunky elements keep creeping into many of my previous novels. The Vicar of Morbing Vyle and The Black Crusade are both set in Victorian-type worlds. There’s a metal world in The Dark Edge, industrial scenery in the Humen Camp episodes of the Ferren trilogy, and quirky bits of machinery in (again) the Ferren books and The Black Crusade.I’m just lucky that the world finally wanted to read what I most wanted to write.

By the by, I’m just one day off finishing Liberator, and I’m sure it’s even bigger and better than Worldshaker!

2. I’ve read that you have a fascination with maps. Can you tell us about your interest and how central maps are to your writing?

I draw up elaborate maps for my novels, but they often don’t make it into the printed book. They’re more for my own satisfaction. I like my worlds to be geographically correct and rich with detail, but the details often run off the page and outside the story.

3. If you could live in one of the imaginary realms you’ve created, for a day, which would you choose and why?

A lot of my worlds are great to inhabit in imagination, but I wouldn’t want to inhabit them in real life. There’s a fair bit of darkness in my novels, and the settings are often gloomy, oppressive, and claustrophobic.  As in the case ofWorldshaker – I find the Below area fascinating because it is such an incredible hellhole, infinitely threatening and dangerous.  I think the most attractive scenery I ever created was for Heaven in Ferren and the Angel. The imagery came from medieval paintings, where Heaven is shown as a walled city, kind of dreamy in the sunlight. Warm creamy-gold stones and pavings – I think the marble ballroom-floor look of Dubrovnik in Croatia came into it too. Not grandly magnificent, quite simple and homely, yet very very calm and peaceful.

4. You’ve written a lot of novels and short stories in your career. Which of your many characters Burns Brightest in your mind and why?

Whoo! That’s a hard one! If I have to pick just one, I’ll say Mr Gibber, the mad schoolteacher in Worldshaker. Based on a real schoolteacher I used to know, he’s so extreme and bizarre, but not a caricature. Cringing yet bumptious, always performing, buttonholing people, grovelling and big-noting himself at the same time … I’ve said in my writing tips (atwww.writingtips.com.au) that a character needs to burn with an inner fire, and Mr Gibber lives up to that. He’s continued to grow and evolve in the sequel to Worldshaker, titled Liberator, and I suspect he’s inexhaustible. He’s certainly irrepressible!

Check these out:

www.richardharland.net

www.worldshaker.info

www.worldshaker.com.uk