Category: writers

Hi folks,

Tonight, rather than talk about myself and writing, I’d rather talk about other folks, who are in turn talking to other, different folks about writing.

Lemme back it up.

Back in 2005, Australian SF author Ben Peek decided to interview 40-odd Aussie spec-fic writers . It was a pretty interesting glimpse – one might even say a snapshot – of the local scene, its opportunities and how people were working towards them.

There have been several more snapshots since then, and this week is seeing the newest – nine years later, spread across a dozen-or-so blogs and talking to nearly 200 writers, published and emerging, novel and short fiction, print and ebook. Some questions are consistent across the board, some are unique to each writer; some folks are replying succinctly, some at length.

If you’re at all interested in local spec-fic – SF, fantasy, horror, whatever – then you should really click around the following blogs and check out some (or all) of the interviews as they progress over the next week:

• Tsana Dolichva
• Nick Evans
• Stephanie Gunn
• Kathryn Linge
• Elanor Matton-Johnson
• David McDonald
• Helen Merrick
• Jason Nahrung
• Ben Payne
• Alex Pierce
• Tansy Rayner Roberts
• Helen Stubbs
• Katharine Stubbs
• Tehani Wessely
• Sean Wright

(Full disclosure – I’m one of the interviewees, and you can find my bit on Jason Nahrung’s blog. But it’s pretty much the same stuff I always talk about here, so you can also skip it without guilt if so inclined.)

And that’s enough out of me this week.

It’s been aaaaaaaages since I’ve had another writer on here to discuss their work and their process – blame me and a year of just wanting to talk about myself. But I’m shrugging that off, I hope, and so it’s a good time to start getting a few other perspectives on things.

And who better to start with than Jason Nahrung, whose profile has become bigger and brighter in the couple of years since I was introduced to him by one of several mutual friends. Jason and I both followed a similar arc of movement down the country, starting in rural Queensland, living in Brisbane (and hitting its goth clubs) and then drifting down to Melbourne to follow our writerly dreams – but then he kept going, moving recently to Ballarat along with his partner, award-winning author Kirstyn McDermott. There are other key differences between Jason and I, too – he works a lot harder than I do, his work focuses more on traditional Gothic themes, he’s really strongly engaged with the Australian genre writing and publishing scene, and he has much longer hair.

So I thought it would cool to talk to him about these things. Well, other than the hair.

I always like to start with the big one. Why writing? Why do this rather than some other creative outlet, or indeed some kind of regular job that pays better?

Well, I DO have a regular job that pays better. That’s why I can afford to spend inordinate amounts of time transferring those stories reeling through my mind on to the page. The idea of making any kind of living from writing fiction seems unlikely; I don’t buy lottery tickets, either.

So, indeed, why writing?

Simply, I can’t help myself. The stories are there, they demand to be written. I think some of them are worth sharing. What’s more, I enjoy the art of seeing intangibles made real on the page, and the thought of them becoming intangible again – and something new – in the mind of a reader. It’s am amazing process!

I can’t play music, I can’t draw, I’m no good at woodwork or anything like that. But since I was a young tyke, the words and I have got along passingly well. I give thanks to having had parents and teachers who’ve encouraged my reading, and by extension, writing – the two have gone hand-in-hand for me as long as I can remember.

It took me a long time to consider my stories were worth the attempted selling, if not just the telling. It still feels a little precocious, to be honest. Every – any – sale comes as something of a surprise to me. A pleasant one. There’s a definite thrill in finding that someone likes your stories enough to pay to read them, or indeed, to publish them in the first place. That’s a kind of benchmark for me: is this yarn good enough that someone will pay me for it?

But yeah, we’re not talking sheep stations here. A bottle of wine will do.

When I think of your work, two recurring things leap out at me, and the first is the emphasis on the Gothic – both in the literary and the cultural sense. What draws you to that theme, and what keeps you coming back?

That’s a question I keep coming back to as well!

I love the Gothic mode – it’s probably a function of a love affair with Hammer Horror movies, the impact that Bram Stoker’s Dracula had on me as an adolescent, a social awkwardness that found its comfort zone in the smoke machines and atmospheric beats of Brisbane goth clubs.

Dracula had a profound influence: its sexuality, its mystery, its isolation. I grew up on a farm, so isolation was something I was used to, and my grandfather told me of the wrongs done to Aborigines and Kanakas, so that Gothic trope of the sins of the past coming back to haunt the present might also have struck a chord. The sexuality and sensuality, well, what teenage boy wouldn’t react to that? Plus I’ve always had a thing for myths and legends – they were amongst my earliest readings – and the supernatural has always had appeal; perhaps it was the appeal of the exotic in the midst of ultra conservatism …

Discovering the gothic subculture and its music – especially the music, which is what I found first – as a country kid was eye opening. I think it was the romanticism, the otherworldliness … they appeal to me still. I feel I belong there, that it makes sense: outsiders, cynics, a certain fatalism. I love the variations within the subculture, the evolution of style as well as the more traditional fashions.

I keep tapping that vein in my writing because it fits, I guess: my themes, my atmosphere.

The other recurring element is this very strong sense of place, and local place at that. Salvage is a ghost story set on a Queensland island; Blood and Dust is a vampire story set in the Queensland outback. What is it about the Australian landscape (or even the Queensland landscape) that makes it so suitable for horror stories?

It’s interesting you’ve pegged Salvage as a ghost story – to my mind, it’s more of an homage to Carmilla, although the heroine is definitely haunted by an event, rather than a spirit. It’s set on an island off the Queensland coast, an amalgamation of Bribie and Fraser islands customised to the needs of the story – primarily isolation.

Isolation is the one thing Australia has plenty of – the tyranny of distance was coined for this country, not just in its distance from other countries and particularly the European motherlands of many of its early colonisers, but also within it: those tracts of land sparsely inhabited and in places barely habitable.

For those not used to the bush, it’s a pretty alien place, and even for those who are used to it, it contains perils. It’s an unforgiving landscape made up of extremes: fire, flood, drought.

The other thing Australia has going for it is a massive range of landscapes –  beach, red heart, rainforest and alps; small towns, big cities –  that can not only make for interesting backdrops but work as a sympathetic mirror for the characters’ emotional state, or contrast it. It’s nice at times to have some utterly bizarre event occur in the brightest, hottest sunshine, rather than in the middle of darkest night or at the height of a storm. I particularly enjoyed doing that in Salvage, where my vampire is trapped on a subtropical island, and my heroine is fighting off depression in what for most people is an idyllic seaside location – where people go to get away from their troubles.

As well as your novels and novellas, you’ve written an awful lot of short stories. Last year you were part of the judging panel for the Aurealis Awards, specifically for the Best SF Short Fiction Award. What’s the SF/F/H short fiction landscape like in Australia at the moment, from both a reader’s and a writer’s perspective?

I don’t think 20-odd is an awful lot compared to some, but thanks!

I’ve been fortunate to have had exposure in recent years to a lot of quality writing due to judging the awards, in both collections and anthologies and the science fiction short stories category, and the one thing that really comes through is the way our writers are fearless genre blenders. It’s not unusual to see stories entered in more than one category, for instance: SF, fantasy, horror.

And we’ve got some beautiful stylists, too, telling affecting stories: a starting point, but no means all, could be Joanne Anderton, Thoraiya Dyer, Angie Rega, Cat Sparks, Angela Slatter, Lisa L Hannett, Kaaron Warren, Kirstyn McDermott …

In writing terms, we appear to have a flourishing local market for spec fic, with the likes of FableCroft and Ticonderoga putting out regular anthologies; mags such as Midnight Echo, SQ, Dimension6 and veteran Aurealis exploring the digital realm; plus some hungry new small presses such as IFWG and Cohesion making their mark. Then you’ve got Twelfth Planet Press’s Twelve Planets (now 13!) collection series, one of the most exciting projects around, actively encouraging some of our best women writers to produce work that, certainly in some instances, otherwise might have struggled to find a market, due to awkward subject matter or sheer length.

At least digital, and to a lesser extent POD, publishing makes it easier to get longer shorts and novella-length work out there, at a time when 5,000 words, or fewer, seems to be becoming the most sought-after length.

And thanks to the interwebs, overseas markets are more accessible now, too.

You’ve worked with a number of independent Australian publishers, such as Twelfth Planet Press, Xoum and Clan Destine Press. What’s that experience been like for you? What are the positives, and are there any negatives?

My relationship with Clan Destine is just starting – they’re bringing out my vampire duology Blood and Dust and The Big Smoke – but so far, it has felt very similar to my experience with the other two: flexibility, dialogue, professionalism, passion. When a small press picks you up, you know they’ve made a decision to expend reasonably sparse resources on you, so they’re not just throwing your work at the wall to see if it sticks – they’re convinced, they’re committed.

The downside is, those limited resources, both financial and labour, usually present through difficulties in distribution to bricks-and-mortar shops, and in pursuing publicity, particularly in mainstream media where boutique, especially genre, publishers might have less traction.

You grew up in country Queensland, lived in Brisbane and then in Melbourne, and now you’re living in Ballarat. Is it just wanderlust that keeps you moving? How has it been to go from a big city to a much smaller one? Surely it gets cold out there. I’d be frightened.

Everyone who heard Kirstyn and I were moving to Ballarat told us how cold it was, but no one mentioned the wind! Luckily, Ballarat is a well-established town with suitable warm places for artists to gather –we’ve just got to get around to meeting some to gather with!

But to answer the question, I’ve moved originally as job opportunities presented themselves, moving to increasingly large population centres until I hit Brisbane. Then I met Kirstyn, who was in Melbourne, and so I moved to the chilly south. We headed west last year because house prices were way out of our reach in Melbourne, and Ballarat is close enough that I can still pop in for work, or an event, without it being too onerous a commute.

What are you currently working on?

I’ve got Blood and Dust and The Big Smoke with Clan Destine now heading toward publication, and an old outback occult yarn still waiting to be knocked into shape. I’ve also got a few short stories on the go, primarily what promises to be a suite of yarns set in Brisbane around the year 2100, when the risen sea has surged past the dykes and wreaked some watery havoc  –  the first, ‘Watermarks’, was recently published in Cosmos, and I’m exceedingly chuffed about that.

—

You can find out more about Jason’s work, stories and books at his website; you can also follow him on Twitter at @JNahrung.

I don’t remember my past all that well, so I can’t put my finger on exactly when I read The Wasp Factory. It was written in 1984, when I was 13, but there’s no chance that anything so transgressive and disrespectful would have been in any libraries in my old home town. So it must have been after I moved to Brisbane, when I was 18 or 19. That sounds right, that feels right; that’s the right age for having Iain Banks blast out the back of your head for the first time.

At age 19 I also lived and breathed science fiction, so I imagine I would have immediately read Consider Phlebas, although that memory is still vague. I do recall reading The Player of Games and The Bridge at around age 20, and not liking either of them as much as the other two but still thinking they were pretty damn cool.

Then I read The Crow Road and Use of Weapons as they were published, and that was it – I was an Iain Banks fan, whether he was writing mainstream or science fiction, whether he had an M in his name or not.

And now Iain Banks is dead, cut down by gall bladder cancer this last weekend, two too-short months after publicly announcing his illness.

—

Others have done fine duty eulogising Banks, such as Kieron Gillen and the UK Telegraph; io9 has a good essay on the lessons writers (especially SF writers) can take from his work. But I don’t want to eulogise and I don’t want to think like a writer; I want to think like a reader. My memories can be like fog, but when I think about Banks’ work the fog clears; I may not recall when/where I read them, but I remember all that I got from his books as a young man.

I remember marvelling at the forward-backwards progression of Use of Weapons that spiralled into the horrific darkness at its heart.

I remember the final goodbye of The Crow Road and how I kept coming back to that book as my relationships came together and fell apart.

I remember reading the Eliot quotes in Consider Phlebas and thinking that I had to read more of this guy’s poetry at some point.

I remember cruising through three out of every four chapters in Feersum Endjinn and then grinding to a halt on the fourth, slowly working my way through the phonetic, accented prose – but being drawn in by that effort rather than thrown from the story.

I remember hitting that scene in The Wasp Factory and putting the book to one side, needing to walk it off for a while – and then coming back to see if he could top it. And he did.

I remember pressing his books on friends saying you’ve got to read this, and then them coming back saying holy crap, do you have any more of his stuff? And I did. I always did.

I remember my 20s in music, in beats, in dance floors – and in Banks novels, the prose soundtrack for my life.

And memories like that are all readers can ever hope to be granted by an author.

—

I didn’t like Banks’ later work as much as his earlier books; I started to drift away around the time of Look to Windward and Dead Air. But that was my fault, not his; I stopped resonating with the themes and ideas he wanted to talk about, and he was determined to write what he wanted rather than what I (or anyone else) wanted to read. To write honestly, and snarkily, and passionately about what he thought was important; about visions of the best and worst we could be.

He wrote as he would. He lived as he would. And we were fortunate for it.

But not any more.

He’s away the crow road now.

Earlier this year I was on a panel at the Continuum convention talking about small press and independent publishing. Another panelist was author Tor Roxburgh, who’d self-published her epic fantasy novel The Light Heart of Stone as a hardcopy book. And this news floored me, because I’d seen the book on display at other events and writing festivals and assumed it was from a well-established, well-funded independent press. But no, Curious Crow Books is one woman’s determined effort to publish her own work in the most polished, professional way possible and to manage the entire production process herself.

I was also impressed by how smart, likeable and canny Tor was, and by her willingness to not only discuss her own process but to ask questions and learn from others who are doing things differently, such as small presses and indie e-publishers. And on top of all that, I’ve read some of The Light Heart of Stone (although I haven’t had the time to do more than start it) and it’s a fine, thoughtful and (here’s this word again) polished work.

So with all that in mind, I decided to ask Tor a few questions about her writing, her aims and how she came to take on board all the weight of not just writing but publishing and managing her work.

I always like to start with the big one. Why writing? Why do this rather than some other creative outlet, or indeed some kind of regular job that pays better?

I love this question. There are so many different answers I could give. I’ll try two: one about my mother and one about me.

My mother wanted to be a writer but was largely unpublished. Watching her as a child, I had the impression that being a writer was the ultimate achievement. Interestingly, my brother Rod Usher (Poor Man’s Wealth, Harper Collins, 2012) is also a writer, so he might have experienced the same vicarious longing.

On the other hand, I might have become a writer because I was – and am – a rather childish fantasist. As a teenager, my fantasies included becoming the first female Prime Minister, a genius medical researcher, a great sculptor, a renowned film director, the richest woman in the world, an Olympic gold medallist (show jumping) and discovering that I was the bastard daughter of the queen of England. At 52, my heroic fantasies include becoming a political activist, a brilliant scientist, a member of the first off-Earth colony, a successful publisher, a famous artist and, certainly, a best-selling writer.

What drove you to self-publish The Light Heart of Stone, rather than going through a publisher?

The Light Heart of Stone was rejected by Harper Collins (Voyager), Hachette (Orbit) and Penguin. It also drew a blank in Allan and Unwin’s ‘Friday Pitch’ process. I could have continued submitting, but the thought of months of waiting on publishing houses and never knowing whether my manuscript had been read was repellent. My partner suggested self-publishing. I was about to reject the notion, but found myself agreeing with him. I guess I had an instinct that the novel was worth publishing.

That was one thing. There were other factors that tipped me over the line: I’d already had 14 books published and I knew that traditional publishing is a hit and miss process; I’d been working in the visual arts where artist-run-initiatives are more likely to be seen as innovative than self-indulgent; and I liked the idea of doing something that didn’t require anyone’s approval.

Independent self-publishing is big right now, but it’s almost entirely ebook-focused, while you published your novel as a hardcopy, hardcover book. What kind of tasks and processes were involved in that? Was there any element that surprised you?

Making a book isn’t any different from manufacturing anything else. For those of us for whom books are special, almost sacred objects, comparing them to yogurt or T-shirts or houses or any other fabricated object seems preposterous. But the comparison is valid. A story might be an alchemical thing, but a book isn’t. It’s less complicated to produce than a house. Much like a T-shirt, it probably has to be manufactured overseas. Sadly, its shelf life is comparable to yogurt.

Publishing The Light Heart of Stone (a 640-page paperback) was a project management task that I really enjoyed. When I worked on publishing the book I wasn’t being a writer: I was being a publisher. I had to keep those roles separate in my mind. And as a publisher, I commissioned and briefed an editor; I visited bookstores doing cover research; I wrote a design brief and a marketing plan; I researched book titles, domain names and search terms; I created a budget and a schedule; I worked collaboratively with a graphic designer on the cover, commissioned a book designer to design the layout and found a typesetter; I pitched to distributors and got quotes from printers; I wrote media releases and organised three launch events; I checked proofs, shipped books and dealt with customs.

There were surprises and delights and scary moments. Seeing Michele Winsor’s cover emerge from my brief was astounding. I was shocked by the amount of physical space that one thousand, fat epic fantasy novels take up. I was scared by the amount of money I was investing in my career (happy to say, I’m getting close to breaking even). I was surprised by how nervous I was before the launches (I couldn’t sleep in the weeks before the local regional events and I couldn’t sit still in the car when my partner drove me to the Melbourne launch).

The best surprise of all was the unexpected contact with readers. Until I self-published, I’d only ever met a handful of my readers. I now know hundreds and their feedback has made me a much more confident – and less neurotic – writer.

Is there an aim for you in your writing – something you want to achieve through your work, over and above creating good stories that people want to read?

I guess I want to share my thoughts. I feel I’m always saying, ‘What about this? Should we look at the world like this?’ I don’t think I’m a message-driven writer: it’s much more a matter of exploring questions. If I’m driven by anything, it’s a desire to try and illuminate complexity.

The Light Heart of Stone has been noted for its Australian themes. What exactly do you see as ‘Australian’ themes, and why did you decide to reflect those in your fantasy novel?

The Light Heart of Stone was written with Australia in mind. I focused on themes that I’m interested in. They include colonialism; Indigenous and non-Indigenous relations; the plight of refugees; ownership and control of land and other natural resource; cultural divisions between the city and the country; social duty; adoption; gender barriers; and truth in history. Clearly, these aren’t exclusively Australian themes, but in combination – for me – they do evoke contemporary and historic Australia.

Looking at your blog, you’ve done a number of speaking engagements – bookstores, libraries, local radio – and we met when we were both speaking on a panel at Continuum. Do you enjoy that speaking/teaching aspect to writing? Do you have any advice for readers who’d like to become more involved with that kind of activity?

Speaking, reading, talking and teaching are essential activities for contemporary writers who want to have readers. For self-publishers, these sorts of public activities are even more important. Not easy, though. Quite anxiety-inducing, really. But essential.

A few years ago, I thought that I couldn’t ‘perform’ as a writer. I’d taught non-fiction writing at the University of Melbourne and Victoria University and while I loved giving the classes, I experienced lots of anxiety in the lead up to each class. When I decided to self-publish, I knew I’d have to get over that anxiety. I figured a combination of preparation and practice might do the trick so I contacted lots of festivals and approached libraries and bookstores and organisations… and off I went.

My advice for anyone wanting to get involved in these kinds of activities is: be bold and give everything a try. Specifically:

a)      Share your opportunities by collaborating with writers and other professionals. This year, I’ve worked with writers, librarians, a kitchen garden specialist, teachers, an agricultural scientist, an Indigenous elder and a linguist.

b)      Ask and offer. Contact festivals. Offer to do author talks. Approach organisations. Invent events. This year, I’ve presented in bookstores, invented events at libraries, spoken to members of a book club, presented at Rotary and participated in panels at writers’ festivals.

c)       Always say thank you when someone gives you an opportunity.

Who would you say are your three biggest influences as a writer?

It’s hardly original, but two of my English teachers had a huge influence. And other writers? Thomas Hardy (The Mayor of Casterbridge), Ursula Le Guin (The Dispossessed) and Orson Scott-Card (Enchantment) are just a few.

What are you currently working on?

I’m writing a young adult novel. It’s a science-fiction story that’s set in Ballarat, eight generations in the future. It’s about a boy who is planning to amputate his augmented hands. Events intercede and he ends up investigating a death, solving a murder, finding a profession, making a friend and accepting his genetic inheritance.

In relation to my self-published epic fantasy series, The Promise of Stone, I plan to start writing volume II in March of 2013.

—

You can find more about Tor at her blog and at the Central Highlands Arts Atlas. You can also follow her on Twitter as @TorRoxburgh.

As for The Light Heart of Stone, it has its own website (again, very organised approach) and you can find more details and reviews over at Goodreads.

—

Oh, and have a good Christmas, okay?

…yeah, I know that’s not very festive, but it’s 30 degrees at 10pm. Gimme a break.

Guys, I was working on a blog post today, but there is only room for one FUCKING AMAZING blog post on the internet today, and it is this one:

Foz Meadows utterly demolishing the argument that history was all about men doing awesome stuff, and in turn the pernicious concept that SF/F must be all about white dudes doing stuff and other people being invisible.

This is a must-read post, people. It’s smart, it’s passionate and it has incredible research links out the goddamn ying-yang.

Anything I could write just pales in comparison.

Go. Read. NOW.