---

Zenobia Frost writes poetry in cemeteries, articles at a desk in a backyard rainforest, and to-do lists on receipts, bits of paper, the back of her hand, and flatmates’ spare bits of skin. She writes, edits, and types for a living, and occasionally orchestrates cabaret events that are really an excuse to drink tea. Her work has appeared in Stylus, Mascara, Small Packages, Burdock (USA), Rave Magazine, Famous Reporter, and Voiceworks, and she has performed at Queensland’s and Tasmania’s poetry festivals, as well as around Australia with the Queensland Touring Poets Program. Her debut collection, The Voyage, was published by SweetWater Press in 2009.

1. When were you first bitten by the poetry bug?

Mum is very proud of her copy of my first poem, written at age 5 or 6. It went like this:

Love Your Pets

Hot-cross bun.

Half-past one.

Silly billy,

I will sit on you.

Hm. Well. No, I couldn’t explain that one even if you asked. The poetry bug really bit me in my early teen years. An inspiring teacher liked my writing and urged me to learn more about poetry and enter competitions. I have bulging folders full of the fantastic teenage tripe I wrote in high school; I wrote a lot and, hopefully, honed the craft a little bit—at least honed it away from Love Your Pets.

2. Which is your favourite poetic form?
I enjoy writing blank verse, and applying it loosely to sonnet-ish forms and terzanelles. I like the way form can direct, rather than constrain a poem—it can be like a puzzle. I also write free verse. Both are challenging; both are rewarding.

3. Which famous poet would you most like to be stranded on a desert island with?

Oh, gosh. I’m not good at these questions. I’d give you a different answer every two minutes. Is David Bowie poet enough? I want to take him. We’d have a great time. I could choose the love child descended from numerous ‘page poets’ I love, but I imagine that would be cheating even than just taking Mr Bowie.

4. I was fortunate enough to have been at the launch of your fantastic chapbook, The Voyage, last year. Have you got another collection in the works?

I was glad you could be there; it was such a lovely night. I’m presently working on a collection of poems in conversation with the inhabitants of Toowong Cemetery. This has led to me writing a number of poems about history, mortality, death, decomposition, roadkill, ghosts, and a variety of other cheery topics. It won’t be a completely morbid collection, though, I promise. There are, I hope, moments of warmth and humour, and lots of life.

5. What’s your favourite punctuation mark and why?

Semicolons are downright sexy. Let’s be honest. What a delicious little mark; I love the way they seduce clauses together. Ahem. Also, I have flings with those versatile, playful em-dashes. I imagine you are remembering the punctuation cupcakes from the launch of The Voyage—all 99 of them.

6. What do you write your poetry in/on? Do you carry a notebook everywhere you go?

I have a huge pile of notebooks, and which one I carry depends on where I’m going and how big my bag is. Lots of notes and observations go in the ol’ Moleskin diary. Graveyard poems go in one specific notebook, when I’m drafting. When the good typewriter has ink, I’ll use that—I like being rewarded with the ‘ding’ at the end of the line. Very often, though, the story’s boring; I usually edit and finish pieces on the computer. I’ve learnt to back things up on multiple USBs, believe me.

7. You regularly participate in poetry readings. How important is performance to you?

I enjoy performing immensely, but I’m definitely a page poet at heart. Performing (and listening) is a great way to experiment with poetry, connect with other poets, and get out of the office/house/cemetery. Writing is very solitary, so I most enjoy readings for the socialising and networking. It must be said, though, that I get a real buzz from reading, and find that sometimes performance can make me look at a poem in a completely different light.

8. What do you most like to write about?

Finding the magical in the mundane. Also, strange animals (the ones that usually don’t get a lot of air time, like bugs).

9. Who is your greatest literary influence?

Eep! Another tricky one. I’d have to say the mentors and friends right here in Brisbane who supported me through my formative years as a poet (and who continue to support me).

10. Do you have a personal motto?

Buffy the Vampire Slayer’s motto was “Seize the day…because tomorrow you might be dead.” Perhaps that is suitable considering my current project. Really, though, I’d never be able to stick to one motto. I just keep my eyes peeled for moments of magic or madness in everyday life.

11. Can you tell us a bit about The Ruby Fizz Society for Superior People? How superior must one be to join?

As superior as you believe you are or want to be; The RFS embraces the fun and silliness of putting on airs and eating fancy cakes. I started the society with the goal of bringing different art forms together in a relaxed environment. I really wanted to hold events that felt like parties, rather than readings or performances where the audience would sit, unmoving, for the duration. The events I’ve held so far have been tremendous fun, and have featured some amazing local and interstate talents. I only wish I had the time to hold more!

12. What’s the best thing about being Zenobia Frost?

Being named after a warrior queen, being blessed with ridiculously good luck, living in the loveliest Queenslander, and being surrounded by gorgeous, creative people.

Rat – Zenobia Frost

I am the cloaked detective.

I am the silent choir. I am the top

of the slush pile.

I am sleeping inside your pocket.

I am the gatherer of secrets

in my nest of old headlines.

I am Icarus, scaling the maze

before flight and I am Houdini,

with supple spine. I am a mathematician;

I can multiply. I am looking to master

mischief’s map, whatever it is

that X might mark.

Read Zenobia’s blog here!

Music: David Bowie – Fashion

[Bec Stafford]

---

---

Kim Wilkins was born in London, and grew up at the seaside north of Brisbane, Australia. She has degrees in literature and creative writing, and teaches at the University of Queensland and in the community. Her first novel, The Infernal, a supernatural thriller was published in 1997. Since then, she has published across many genres and for many different age groups. Her latest books, contemporary epic romances, are published under the pseudonym Kimberley Freeman. Kim has won many awards and is published all over the world. She lives in Brisbane with her husband and two small children.

1.       What is your ideal writing environment, or what are the things you like to have around you when you write? Are you superstitious in that sense?

Ideally, it is early morning, cold and rainy, my children are asleep and I have a scalding hot cup of sweet tea (Irish breakfast for preference). My desk is tidy, a scented candle is burning, my cats are in their baskets nearby, I have my next scene planned, and I know I won’t be interrupted for an hour or two. There’s probably a maid folding my washing somewhere in the house too. No, I’m not superstitious. Writers need to be able to write anywhere, under any conditions. Once you start putting conditions in place, you are procrastinating: something I try not to do.

2        Your novels are set in a variety of historical periods. If you could go back and live in one, which would it be? Which character from history would you most like to hang  out with?

It would depend very much on what my current obsession is. At the moment, I would go back to early medieval times. I’m obsessed with Anglo-Saxons. I know life would be short and smelly, though. For frocks, I would go to Edwardian times. For somebody cool from history to hang out with, I’d head off to early 19^th century England and hang with Percy Shelley. I heart Shelley.

3.       I’ve read that you’re a big music fan. How great an influence is music on your writing and which artists/bands most inspire you creatively?

I don’t write without music on. I make a playlist for every book that captures the feel of the story so that when I put the music on it gets me in the mood. At the moment I am writing a big moody fantasy based on Anglo-Saxon stuff. So I’m listening to folky Led Zeppelin, achey love songs from Regina Spektor, dreamy ambient from Hammock, and Icelandic post-rock from Sigur Ros.

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?

That’s like asking me to choose between my children! It’s always the characters that I’m with at the moment who burn brightest, and I am totally in love with my female lead in the current book. But when I look back, I still have residual fondness for Prudence in Grimoire because of her wild girly energy, Rosa in Rosa and the Veil of Gold because she was so screwed up, but most of all Victoria in Giants of the Frost because she was the most like me. Not in a weird way.

Led Zeppelin: Kashmir

Visit Kim’s blog for the musings of a best-selling author & fab writing teacher here!

---

---

1. Ok, Yunyu — ‘Morbid Pop’. For newcomers to your music, would you like to elaborate a little on that category?

Well, this genre was probably made up to confuse the music industry a little less. I got this off a review by a nice broadcaster from the ABC. I kept it because there just seemed to be some logic to having the music named under Morbid Pop. Firstly,I try, with all my musical creations, to capture the attention of the listener within 5 seconds. I also assume that the listener, like me, has an attention span shorter than a bee’s needle butt. This means that my music had better get interesting fast and stay that way or face my destruction. These sentiments are, to me, the definitions of pop.

The morbid just comes from the factoid that most of my lyrics deal in the stories of life, and with it, death. I’m also told I obsess way too much over zombies.

2. Your Mum chose the name Yunyu because it means ‘beautiful rhythms’. Does musical talent run in the family?

The short answer is no. The name-giving council in the family didn’t pick my name because it meant beautiful rhythms. They picked it because my core name “Yu” promised the wearer some version of supposed awesomeness in a bureaucratic career. All very practical decisions.

Still here for the long version? Here goes:

The story is that my maternal grandmother/ uncle/ mum named me. See, traditionally, the Chinese are usually given 2 characters that make up your full name. One character is your common name, which acts like the y-axis to the x-axis of your surname on the geneology grid. Together with your surname, that allows geneologists to track not only which family you are from, but what specific generation/ branch of the family tree. The other character given is your true name, the core character which belongs to you and you alone.

This system only strictly applies to boys but my grandmother decided that it was cool that the girls in the family start this system too. It was decided that the girls have a common name of the character “Rhythm” aka “Yun”. “Yu” got picked because, according to the Chinese name dictionary, individuals who got the “Yu” character as a name would turn out to be high flying magistrates/ bureaucrats with an express ticket ride to awesomeness. Hence, in the spirit of all that was practical, it was picked.

Of course, in the course of un-translatable complicatedness between languages, the 2 characters of “Yun” and “Yu” coming together just happened to spell beautiful rhythms…which, according to the tale, was mostly an afterthought.

Do musical talents run in the blood? Not that I know of. There are a few talented visual artists in the family and my late maternal grandmother was an amazing storyteller who used to scare the crap out of me with her horror tales.

3. For those who don’t know, ‘You Are Expendable’ won Triple J’s Unearthed Competition in 2002, leading to national (and international) exposure. What was that experience like?

Great, surreal and, as an afterthought, it also felt like some sort of a massive automobile pileup… except I’m wearing this stupid smile on my face while the carnage is happening.

Don’t get me wrong. It was a good thing that happened, but it was also a very strange time for me. To put it in context, it was a year and a half after I moved from Singapore to do a commerce degree in Australia. I had no idea what Triple J was. (I think there probably is a recording in the ABC vault where I asked Caroline Tran — twice — who she was). I had only just started writing songs that year I was Unearthed and You’re Expendable was the 4th song I ever wrote in my life. And, at that time, my performing experience was limited to mostly tutorial presentations — which lead to massive bouts of fear-induced gastro regurgitation backstage from pure fear.

Unearthed brought many things into my life. Most of it wasn’t comfortable, but it wasn’t a bad occurrence.

4. Your video clips are incredibly creative. How much input do you have into these? How long did it take to make that amazing video for ‘Lenore’s Song’? Was the process fun?

Thanks. Very glad you like.

Lenore’s Song took us a year. I worked with Matt Carter, who produced it, and hijacked the crew talents from LOTR and Superman Returns, and the bulk of them got it all happening. Tahnee McGuire, who directed it, was the one who wrote the concept of the video clip, and Callan Green was the cinematographer who took the pretty pictures…I mostly played the human Gumby.

5. You’ve described yourself as ‘a psycho musician whose songs range from love to violent murders’ and have said that your hobbies ‘include visiting psychosis self help forums and studying murder case files’. I have 2 questions: 1. Should we be scared? 2. Do you have crazy fans? (If so, what’s the nuttiest thing that’s happened at a gig?).

1 — No don’t be. Long as you bring offerings on approach you have nothing to fear.

2 — I have lovely fans. One gave my performing stage goat a bell necklace and another gave me a teddy bear with teeth. It warmed my muses greatly and they did not bite.

6. Despite describing your classical training as a grim thing that you were glad to escape from, it’s obviously stood you in great stead technically. If we swiped your iPod, would we find that you still secretly listen to classical stuff or are you modern in your taste all the way now?

I listen to everything from Kanno Yoko to Edith Piaf to catchy Middle Eastern pop and Tibetan Chants. My iPod is my time/genre-crossing TARDIS.

7. Neil Gaiman and Warren Ellis are both fans of yours. What is THAT like? (Also: We don’t envy you at *allllll*!!!).

When they were kind enough to mention my tunes on their blogs…a Major Yay just about covers it. They make me feel like a special human bean.

8. Anime: What are your faves?

Fwoah…hard to pick. I have shelves and shelves of Anime and they are all good. Mushishi, Cowboy Bebop, and Neon Genesis are the first thoughts if I had to really pick

9. ‘Writing dead people love letters is Yunyu’s idea of romance.’ What do you write for your *living* romantic interests?!

I bring them lovely offerings of dead animal carcass grilled to perfection…with a healthy serve of decapitated vegetation… I’m really not so big on the waxing lyrical. See…being into the “morbid pop” and all, making it into my songs as a subject matter is generally not perceived in most cultures to be a good thing.

10. What comes first: the words or music? How long does it typically take you to write a song once the muses have visited?

Depends. I took 3 minutes to write a song called Souls Alive and 2 years to write one of the songs in my new album. Most times these days, I write by deciding what I want the story in the song to be, and create and kill a lot of potential music in rapid succession until they suit the story, then whack the words in. That’s…sort of the gist of it I think.

11. Tell us a secret!

O.K…No secrets…But what about a revelation? I’m just discovering that all my musical compilations and work I get involved in come with repeating alphabets. (Spiked Soul, T_____T___ (new album that shall not be named), Burn Bright, Angel Arias…). See a pattern?

12. What’s the best thing about being Yunyu?

I get to have awesome minions.

[Bec Stafford]

 

You can visit Yunyu’s site here.

Amazing track Souls Alive is available as a free download when you join Yunyu’s mailing list!

Click here for Yunyu’s music and videos.

We think you’ll love her!

---

---

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.

---