A (not so) quick interview with Jack Dann: When History Meets the Speculative
Maureen talks to Jack Dann to discuss mixing historical and speculative fiction and his new novel, Shadows in the Stone
Tag: historical fiction
The Lamplighter: A flash fic
Maureen’s Halloween inspired free October fiction. A lamplighter gets more than he bargains for when he comes face to face with a ghost …
Q&A with author Deborah O’Brien
Deborah O’Brien is an Australian writer and visual artist. She is the author of the bestselling Mr Chen’s Emporium, its sequel The Jade Widow, plus A Place of Her Own and The Trivia Man, as well as a dozen non-fiction books. Her latest novel is The Rarest Thing.
1. You’re a visual artist as well as a teacher and writer. How does your visual work creep into your writing?
That’s a very interesting question. As a visual artist, I’m always experimenting with light and shade and I suspect I’ve carried that approach into my novels, creating dark moments to tone down a tendency to be ‘heart-warming’. Another aspect of being an artist/writer is that I picture the scenes in my head as I write them, as though it’s a film, which means the writing process becomes both a visual and a text-based experience.
2. You write historical fiction. What is it that draws you to the historical?
It’s the time travel, the notion of journeying into the past and becoming immersed in another world. I always think of that famous quote from the novelist L.P. Hartley, who wrote The Go-Between: ‘The past is a foreign country. They do things differently there.’ I enjoy exploring those ‘foreign countries’, whether it’s the 1870s in Mr Chen’s Emporium, or 1966 in The Rarest Thing, or the 1930s and ’40s, which is the setting of the manuscript I’m writing at the moment. In many ways, writing historical fiction is pure escapism.
3. Do you have any tips for the aspiring historical fiction writer?
Do your research. Familiarise yourself with the period. Live there in your imagination until you know it intimately, and then just start writing. You can fact-check the details as you go along. Oh, and resist the temptation to dump chunks of historical information into the story, no matter how fascinating you might find them – too much historical detail can overwhelm a manuscript and slow down the narrative. The historical infrastructure of a novel should act like the electricals in a house – everything should work properly, but you really don’t need to see the wiring.
4. The Rarest Thing features a paleontologist main character. Are you yourself interested in fossils or where did the idea come from?
I find fossils fascinating but I have to confess my only experience of paleontology has been watching Sam Neill and Laura Dern in Jurassic Park! Actually, it took me a while to come up with an occupation for Katharine. What kind of job would enable her to accompany Scott King on his High Country trek to locate and photograph the mountain pygmy possum in its habitat? A photographer’s assistant? A journalist? Then my lovely niece Natalie, who’s a zoologist at the Melbourne University, came up to Sydney to measure koala skulls at the Australian Museum as part of her ongoing research into koalas and climate change. I was so intrigued by Natalie’s work that I decided to make Katharine a scientist. A zoologist like Natalie would have been the obvious choice, but I’d already formed a mental picture of someone more comfortable with ancient bones than living, breathing creatures.
5. The Rarest Thing is the first time you’ve self-published a novel. Have you learnt any lessons along the way?
Yes, I certainly have! For a start, I’ve learnt how difficult it is to wear multiple hats: writer, editor, designer, publicist and so on. I’m more comfortable with some of those roles than others. I did outsource a few aspects of this project – the proofreading, for example, and the printing, of course.
I’ve also learnt to typeset a manuscript. I know that sounds odd but it turned out to be a deeply satisfying experience. The way the words fall on the page has always been important to me, and in this case, I could actually tweak the text myself. I worked through the book, word by word, line by line, adjusting the spaces and playing with the layout. It was like knitting a jumper, stitch by stitch – a surprisingly creative process.
6. What was your favourite part of writing The Rarest Thing?
I really enjoyed writing the early chapters where Katharine and Scott meet for the first time and begin to develop a friendship. I wrote those scenes like a ‘meet cute’ romance novel but with hints that the book would deal with some very dark issues. I also loved writing about the Burramys (mountain pygmy possum), both as a character in its own right and as a metaphor for Katharine’s situation.
Thanks so much for answering these question, Deborah, and good luck with your new release The Rarest Thing. For those keen to follow Deborah, you can find her on Facebook here and at her website here. You can purchase her new release novel at Lomandra Press. Finally, you can read my review of The Rarest Thing here.
Book Review: The Rarest Thing
Title: The Rarest Thing Author: Deborah O’Brien Publication Date: November 2016 Publisher: Lomandra Press RRP – Limited Gift Edition Paperback: $29.99 RRP – Ebook: $14.99 Purchasing Info: ‘The Rarest Thing’ (signed gift edition paperback or ebook) is available direct from Lomandra Press: www.lomandrapress.com.au (It will…
(Dis)Ability in Genre Fiction: A Small List
A few weeks back I asked my Facebook if they could recommend books to me which depicted protagonists with disability in genre fiction where the story wasn’t an ‘issues’ story (like Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night Time) or where the person with…
The Allure of Steampunk: An Interview with Richard Harland
A short while after the NSW Writers Centre Speculative Fiction Festival I thought about interviewing a steampunk author to go with my posts on steampunk. Of course, I soon thought of steampunk author Richard Harland. I really enjoy his novels and had met him once or twice before. Plus, he used to lecture at my university. Luckily for me, Richard has kindly answered every single one of my terrible questions. Thanks so much Richard for all of your thoughtful answers!
1. How did you first discover the genre of steampunk?
More like, it discovered me. I wasn’t paying attention when the term was coined, when the first steampunk novels came out thirty-odd years ago. I just had a novel I wanted to write, without ever thinking of it as a kind of novel. My ideas for Worldshaker were developing more than fifteen years before the book finally appeared, and in my mind it was a sort of gothic alternative-19th-century, like Mervyn Peake, but with gadgets and machinery. It was only much later that I noticed a new sub-genre being born – or re-born – and I realised my planned novel could fit right into it. And its name was steampunk! I saw how I could pitch my novel to Australian publishers with a good chance they’d be interested – and from then on I started talking about steampunk non-stop.
2. What is your favourite steampunk read?
Hmm, tricky, because a lot of what I like is steampunkish, on the edges of the genre. For steampunk proper, The Difference Engine, by Gibson and Sterling, Mortal Engines and Predator’s Gold by Phillip Reeve, and the Wolves of Willoughby Chase series of novels by Joan Aiken. For steampunkish, Northern Lights by Philip Pullman, Perdido Street Station and The Scar by China Miéville.
3. What is the allure of writing steampunk for you?
It’s where my imagination is most at home. Looking back now, I can see my steampunk tendencies clearly showing through in my earlier books like the Ferren trilogy, The Vicar of Morbing Vyle and The Black Crusade. I love claustrophobic urban settings, invented old-fashioned machinery, and dark, foggy atmospheres. The fog – or factory-produced smog – has engulfed the whole world in my latest, Song of the Slums.
4. How much research was required for Worldshaker and Liberator?
Not much. The world of those novels diverges from the real world in 1804, when Napoleon digs a tunnel under the English Channel and invades England. So, from that point on, there was a huge amount of invention needed, rather than a huge amount of research into historical facts. The research I did – with the help of a uni lecturer – was mostly into the plan for the tunnel and the real engineer who devised it.
I think what matters in steampunk is to get the authentic atmosphere, which no quantity of mere facts can ever give you. Perhaps I could say my research has been a whole lifetime of reading 19th century novels, absorbing the feel and taste of the period.
5. Your next novel, Song of the Slums, is a gaslight romance. What in the world is that? Does it relate to your other work?
‘Gaslight romance’ is really just a variant of steampunk. I call Song of the Slums sometimes steampunk and sometimes gaslight romance. The new term is useful for pointing to a slightly different kind of appeal – less invented old-fashioned machinery, more 19th century society and yes, more romance. Song of the Slums does have some fabulous machinery, but it’s in the background compared to Worldshaker and Liberator. I haven’t stopped writing steampunk, I’m just writing steampunk with a special flavour.
6. Music features largely in Song of the Slums and you used to be in a band. How much did your past experiences of the music world influence your novel?
A little real experience and a lot of imagination! But the real experience was very, very important. I needed to create the sense of what it’s like making music in a band, being up on stage, bouncing off an audience – the sheer elation of it, the euphoria of success (not that we were ever very successful – still, we had our moments!) The book stands or falls by whether I can make the reader share that experience, and – big sigh of relief! – all my feedback so far says I got it right.
It was much, much more than just influence. I’d never have started writing the book if I hadn’t had that experience to work from. I mined it, I delved back into it, I dug out every tiny atom of potential inspiration!
7. What was your favourite part of writing Song of the Slums?
My favourite part was the downhill glide, when the story had been set up right, the characters took over and the whole climax unfolded by itself. It wasn’t like me doing it, it was like me hanging on for the ride! And that started to happen from before half way through. I love that gathering momentum, when nothing can go (seriously) wrong and the different parts of the story converge and illuminate one another. I walk around with a vague, dreamy smile on my face – I just can’t stop living the novel when it gets to that stage!
8. What’s your next project and will it feature more steampunk fun?
I hope my steampunk novels are exciting and un-put-down-able, but I don’t know about the word ‘fun’! I’d like to think there are some fairly serious emotions in there – certainly I included some dark and occasionally scary stuff.
(You noticed I’m not answering the question? It’s not that I’m trying to be secretive, it’s just that it’s actually very difficult to answer!)
9. What’s a question you’ve never been asked before about your writing/novels that you’ve always wanted to be asked?
I may have been asked this before, but I don’t think I’ve ever given a proper answer. It’s about the hardest question I can think of: “Richard, how do you create your characters?”
10. Now answer it.
Ah, that’s a very tricky question you’ve asked there, Richard! Creating characters must be the most subconscious, subliminal thing in the whole creative process.
I’ve always tried to create very strong stories in my novels – more and more, I want to create equally strong characters. Of course, people say character IS story, but I don’t think it’s as easy as that. If you just create characters who interest you and then put them together in a novel, yes, they’ll all do their own things, develop and change. But will they converge to produce a satisfyingly powerful climax? I doubt it. In realistic novels, it’s hardly important, since the characters’ lives can just wimble-wamble around and fade away as things tend to fade away in ordinary life. But I don’t read – or write – fantasy for that sort of realism.
(Detour: I was talking with friends about soccer yesterday – a particular game, Malaga versus Dortmund, where the tension built to a crescendo as the team that had been one-nil down came steaming back and scored twice in the last few minutes to win the game. Whereas most soccer games tend to get duller towards the end, as the side in the lead simply protects its lead and usually wins by default. That’s the benefit of fiction – you can make the first kind of game happen rather than the second! It’s not a falsification, such games do happen – they’re just far less common in reality than the second kind of game.)
I got a bit carried away there – my pommy soccer-loving background! My point is that it’s not individually interesting characters who make a great story, but just those special combinations of characters whose interaction produces something bigger than any of them separately. The great trick is to match character to story and story to character. It’s a kind of juggling act to get the best of both worlds – but that probably holds for all aspects of fictional creation. My ideal a story that builds up to something really exciting and moving, but with characters who matter for themselves, not just ciphers in the service of the story.
I draw my characters mostly from real people – or parts of real people, the parts that get my imagination going. What would it be like to be that person in that situation? – is the question I’m always asking myself. Not everything engages my involvement and empathy – but then it doesn’t take much to get an author going! Astor, the central character in Song of the Slums, is drawn from a couple of real people, but she gained a life of her own when I didn’t have to think about those people any more. No need to wonder how her two sources would have spoken or acted – she’d taken on her own inner energy and momentum! I think I said somewhere in my www.writingtips.com.au that the best characters are always created from the inside out – and yes, that seems even truer to me now than when I first said it.
I also believe the best characters have a time dimension, that is, they come out of a particular past. Verrol in Song of the Slums was a fairly standard romantic lead until I started delving into his upbringing in a crime gang. Now he’s probably a more romantic figure than ever, but he’s also a very particular person, not standard at all!
Astor’s mother and stepfather are very much a character combination, and my favourite strand of story outside the main narrative of Astor, Verrol and the band. The two of them together are so much more than either of them apart – as if caught in a fatal dance. I admit, I let their big character revelation have its head near the end of the book. It’s not that it doesn’t work in with the story, because the impact of mother and stepfather on Astor is crucial – but it’s a bit off to the side from the main excitement and audience appeal. But it appealed to me so much that I couldn’t resist holding off the main climax and letting their situation play out!
Thanks so much again for your wonderful answers, Richard. Now everyone go buy Song of The Slums. I know I will be…
Richard Harland has been an academic, performance artist and writer, publishing 15 full length works of fiction, three academic books, short stories and poems. He is the author of the Eddon and Vail science fiction thriller series, the Heaven and Earth young adult fantasy trilogy and the illustrated Wolf Kingdom series for children. His latest forays in steampunk are Worldshaker, Liberator and now, Song of the Slums. He has been awarded the Australian Aurealis Award on five occasions for his fiction.
Song of the Slums is published 1st May by Allen and Unwin
You can find Richard’s website: Here
He has written a number of aspiring writer tips: Here
Easter Treat: An Interview with Kate Forsyth
Can you believe it? An interview with the great Kate just in time for Easter (and no I’m not talking about Australia’s favourite LOTR elven Queen). Kate has written a number of books for a wide range of genres and audiences. This is my first…
Romance in the spotlight: The Wild Girl by Kate Forsyth
The Wild Girl, Kate Forsyth, Random House Publishers, 2013. RRP $32.95 Australian. The Wild Girl is Kate’s second foray into the adult historical fiction and romance genre and, much like Bitter Greens, her experimentation does not disappoint. A romance story which should appeal to readers…
Genre Spotlight: Historical fiction, Nation Building Australia and Belinda Murrell’s The Forgotten Pearl
Belinda Murrell, The Forgotten Pearl, Random House Publishers, June 2012.
RRP: $15.95 Australian.
Western culture makes much of World War Two and with good reason- its scale was horrific, drawing civilians into war on an unprecedented scale and killing millions. It saw two oppressive dictatorships engage in mass genocide. It changed the entire fabric of society and was perhaps the true beginning of the world as we know it today.
Books and films on World War Two are a dime a dozen. Most, however, deal with Nazi Germany and The Holocaust, or Russian Gulag’s and the paranoid oppression of Stalinist Russia. From The Diary of Anne Frank to The Reader, The Boy in the Striped Pygamas to Sophie’s Choice and The English Patient, from The Bronze Horseman to The Book Thief, from the award winning Ian McEwan novel, Atonement to the fabulous ITV Foyle’s War penned by Anthony Horowitz, which manages to discuss both Germany and Russia all in one go- all share similar things in common; they are either written from a soldier or atrocity victim’s perspective or they are all about the European front (Foyle’s War does an amazing job of discussing the homefront for Britain).
Only recently have historians and other interested parties in the western world turned to look at the silences in World War Two’s history; the silences about the Asia Pacific front, about Japanese atrocities in countries such as China and Korea, silences about the homefront and the role of mourning, silences about gender and war, silences about women, silences about the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
This history ‘revitalised’ has come to be discussed more and more, particlarly as Asian culture has become so important to Australian heritage. Films such as the atrocious Pearl Harbour and the documentary style Tora! Tora! Tora! have been superseded in favour of Japanese anime tellings of war such as Grave of the Fireflies and Barefoot Gen, and non fiction books such as Sadako and the Thousand Paper Cranes; which all deal with Japanese civilian death thanks to allied bombing.
Australia’s role is often forgotten in all of these histories. It starts to feel like we did little in the war at all. That’s where Belinda Murrell’s The Forgotten Pearl is a welcome change from the usual war accounts; seeking as it does to teach about Australia’s role both at war and on the homefront. The Forgotten Pearl tells the story of Poppy, a young girl caught in the Japanese bombings of Darwin. Her life is soon torn apart by war, as friends, brothers and sisters all must go away to do their bit or to face the dreaded Japanese internment camp. Evacuated to Sydney, Poppy must find the courage to grow up in a world turned upside down by terror, pain and death.
To review Murrell’s latest children’s historical fiction, I thought I’d do something a bit different, by asking Mother InkAshling to double review with me in a Margaret and David style dialogue.
InkAshling: What did you think of the story overall?
Mother InkAshling: I enjoyed it- once I realised the book I’d asked you to order me was aimed at primary school kids! I admit I spent the first few chapters wondering if the author thought I was an idiot till you pointed that out to me!
InkAshling: I’d say the target audience is those in Years 3-7,especially as many children would probably relate to the 2012 storyline of Chloe and her friendship woes as contrasted with her grandmother, Poppy’s, war experiences.
Mother InkAshling: Yes. I love that it is aimed for this age group. It didn’t involve drugs and sex and gratuitous violence, but it was still more challenging than most children’s books. It drove me mad when you were a kid, trying to find age appropriate books for a voracious reader like you. I would have been happy to discuss this book with you as a kid.
InkAshling: I really liked that the story (much like Lucy M Montgomery’s under acknowledged historical fiction, Rilla of Ingleside) dealt with women in war, and the experiances of the women who stayed behind. The protagonist of the story is a girl growing up, much like Rilla, and with Poppy, Murrell really helps to give voice to that silence about women’s role in grief and mourning and loss during wartime, which Australian historians like Pat Jalland, Bruce Scates and Joy Damousi are really starting to investigate.
Mother InkAshling: I would have liked to have learnt more about the experiences of Poppy and her sisters in war time actually. The book did delve deeply into the start of the war on the homefront for Australians but seemed very rushed at the end, just when you’d really invested yourself in the characters. For example, Poppy mentioned that she’d worked in a munitions factory but we never got to experience that with her.
InkAshling: I’d have to agree with you there. I felt like Pearl Harbour and Darwin was dealt with beautifully but Sydney flew by in a breeze and then the war was suddenly over.
Mother InkAshling: I guess it was a bit too neat wasn’t it? I don’t think Belinda explored how the family would have felt about their involvement in the war all that well either. They were a bit too Bohemian for that era without any of the fall out for that- both the Aboriginal servant’s story and the Japanese story, felt a bit politically correct. Surely Poppy’s family would have been seen as unusual for the time and faced some resentment for their beliefs. They would have tried to downplay them and anglacise as much as possible. Surely even Poppy would have felt confused about the Japanese in Australia after her brother was taken as a POW by the Japanese army.
InkAshling: And I guess Poppy didn’t react much to losing everything at once like she did. I found that a bit unusual- and the voices in the letters felt a bit strange too sometimes, didn’t they?
Mother InkAshlings: At times the letters, especially the ones written by Poppy, felt a bit too much like a history lesson, too statistically factual. They didn’t flow like a kid’s thoughts would flow to me. It threw me out of the narrative just when I was getting interested.
InkAshlings: Yes and as a history major, I found some of the ahistorical colloquialisms a bit annoying. Did anyone really say “hanging out” back then? Though remember, this is aimed at young kids, and that sort of language would be more identifiable for them. As a novel aimed at young Australians, and as a novel that fills in a massive historical gap in our nationhood story (it is only recently that the Asia Pacific front has even been examined seriously) it certainly succeeds in its goal.
Mother InkAshling: Yes- I learnt heaps about Australia’s part in the Asia Pacific front- my parents weren’t born in Australia and they experienced the European side of the war. I never learnt any of this in school either. I think as a piece of kid’s historical fiction, it is, nitpicking aside, a really good story. I think it would interest a kid enough that they would go out and read more of Belinda’s books.
InkAshling: Yes I agree. How many inky stars are you giving The Forgotten Pearl?
Mother InkAshling: 3.5/5 inky stars.
InkAshling: I’m giving it 3/5 inky stars- I feel that the history is interesting but maybe the main story could have been a bit more involving- as a kid who struggled to read anything that wasn’t fantasy, I don’t know that I would have loved this book. I would definitely have read the whole thing however!
Mother InkAshling: I’m sticking to 3.5! I think you would have loved it- you liked Anne of Green Gables didn’t you? I think this book is great. Come on, you weren’t as into fantasy back then. I remember!
InkAshling: Now we really are squabbling like we’re hosting At The Movies!
The Forgotten Pearl:
3/5 inky stars from InkAshling
3.5/5 inky stars from Mother InkAshling
If you liked this double review, and its different format, please let me know in a comment or at inkashlings@gmail.com I am sure Mother InkAshling could be persuaded back!