Kate Forsyth's Blog, page 46
February 13, 2014
BOOK LIST: Books Read in January 2014
I read 15 books in January, with my number bolstered by the back-to-back reading of six old books by the 1930s Irish novelist, Maurice Walsh, while I was sick in bed with bronchitis. Do you like reading old beloved books when you are sick too? Usually I go for Georgette Heyer, Agatha Christie or Mary Stewart - it was interesting reading six books by the same author, one after the other. You do begin to see a plot pattern emerge ...
But I read lots of other great books this month as well. I hope you find some new ones to discover here:
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1. Touchstone – Laurie R. King
Laurie R. King is best known for her Mary Russell/Sherlock Holmes historical mystery series in which a brilliant young woman becomes first a student – and then the lover – of the brilliant and enigmatic detective. I’ve read quite a few of this series and really enjoyed them. Laurie R. King is as interested in the internal lives of her characters as much as in the actual solving of a crime, and so her books are rich, complex, psychologically acute, and slow. Touchstone is the first in a new series set in the 1920s in England, featuring the unlikely friendship between an American agent and a war-damaged British gentleman. The first is Harris Stuyvesant and he is on the hunt for a terrorist whose bombs have left a raw scar on his own life. The trail leads him to England, where he meets Bennett Grey, whose acute sensitivity to the world following a shell attack makes him a kind of human lie detector. The two men find themselves tracking down the terrorist together … with tragic results.
This book took a while to cast its spell on me, but slowly and gradually the dramatic tension escalates until the book was unputdownable. And by that time I knew the characters so intimately I really feared for them. This is not the kind of thriller that will get your blood pumping and your heart racing; it will, however, make you think about it for a long time after you close the final, brilliant page.
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2. Mrs Mahoney’s Secret War – Gretel Mahoney & Claudia Strahan
Claudia Strahan was at a friend’s house in London, listening to music one day, when a cross neighbour knocked on the door to complain about the noise. She was 78 years old, and spoke with a German accent. Claudia had been born in Germany and so asked her a little of where she came from. The cross old lady proved to be so interesting, Claudia went to have coffee with her. The more she discovered about Mrs Mahoney’s life, the more fascinated she became. Nine years later, the two published this extraordinary memoir of Mrs Mahoney’s life in Hamburg during the Second World War.
Gretel Wachtel, as she was then, helped to protect fugitives hunted by the Gestapo, hid her Jewish doctor in her cellar, and passed secrets she learned from her work on the Enigma encryption machine to the German Resistance, and was finally arrested by the Gestapo.
She was just an ordinary German girl who did extraordinary things to try and fight the cruel Nazi regime under which she lived. Her verve, courage, and humour shine through in every word … one can just imagine her as a feisty old lady, telling her stories to Claudia over kaffeeklatsch, remembering one story after another through her young visitor’s eager questioning. A great memoir of one woman’s extraordinary life.
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3. Red Orchestra: The Story of the Berlin Underground and the Circle of Friends Who Resisted Hitler - by Anne Nelson
When we think of Germany under Hitler, we often think of Germans as being either enthusiastic supporters of Nazism, or passive bystanders who did nothing to stop him. This fascinating non-fiction account of the Berlin Underground shows that there were, in fact, many Germans who risked everything to fight against the Nazi regime.
The Rote Kapelle (Red Orchestra) was the Gestapo’s name for a group of German artists, actors, filmmakers, writers, journalists and intellectuals who worked indefatigably to undermine the Nazis in Berlin, the heart of Hitler’s war machine. Almost half of them were women.
Based on years of research, including exclusive interviews with the few that survived the war, Red Orchestra brings to life the different characters of the key people involved in the resistance ring.
These include Adam Kuckhoff, a playwright who found employment in Goebbels’s propaganda unit in order to undermine the regime, and his wife, Greta, who risked her own family to help smuggle Jews and homosexuals out from Berlin; Arvid Harnack, who collected anti-Nazi intelligence while working for the Economic Ministry, and his wife, Mildred, the only American woman executed by Hitler; Harro Schulze-Boysen, the glamorous Luftwaffe intelligence officer who leaked anti-Nazi information to allies abroad, and his wife, Libertas, a social butterfly who coaxed favours from an unsuspecting Göring; and many more.
The Berlin Underground was betrayed in 1942, and many of its members were tortured and executed, including young women in their teens. I ended the book with tears in my eyes – it is impossible not to imagine yourself living under such terrifying circumstances and wondering what choices you would make.
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4. Storming the Eagle’s Nest: Hitler’s War in the Alps - Jim Ring
Another World War II book! I’m researching a novel to be set during that period and so you’ll need to expect a lot of books set during that time in my reading lists. This one is another non-fiction book, focusing on the role of the Alps in the Second World War.
Hitler declared: ‘Yes, I have a close link to this mountain. Much was done there, came about and ended there; those were the best times of my life . . . My great plans were forged there.’
The book examines the war in the Alps from all angles, including battles from resistance fighters in Italy, France and Yugoslavia, concentration camps in Bavaria, Hitler’s enormous caches of art and wine hidden in caves, and Switzerland’s role as a centre for Allied spies – Storming the Eagle’s Nest is an interesting, unusual and very readable addition to WWII non-fiction.
Note: I received an ARC of the book from the publisher via NetGalley.
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5. The Marsh King’s Daughter – Elizabeth Chadwick
I’ve wanted to read a book by Elizabeth Chadwick for a while – a lot of my Goodreads friends rave about her work – and so I finally bought one to read. I chose this book because of the title – it’s the name of a Hans Christian Anderson fairy tale that I am actually thinking of rewriting one day. The title has little to do with the book, however, except that the heroine, Miriel, is the granddaughter of a rich weaver who lives near the marshes.
The book is set in 1216, one of my favourite periods of history (nasty King John ruled the land back then). Miriel is intelligent, high-spirited, and rebellious, and so is locked up in a convent by her violent and lustful step-father. She plans to escape but then helps rescue a half-drowned young man and stays so she can help nurse him back to health. The young man is Nicholas de Caen and he has a secret. He was present when King John’s treasure sank beneath the marshes (a true historical event), and he has hidden some of the treasure …
The two help each other escape, but their road of romance is rocky indeed. They have to deal with all sorts of misfortunes – including their own pigheadedness – before at last finding refuge in each other’s arms.
A big, brightly coloured romance, with lots of twists and turns, The Marsh King’s Daughter was a most enjoyable read and I’ll be picking up more books by Elizabeth Chadwick.
[image error]
6. The Tulip Eaters – Antoinette van Huegten
The premise of this book sounded so engaging that I was really keen to read it – a contemporary woman comes home to find her mother murdered and her baby stolen, and comes to realise these shocking crimes are somehow related to her mother’s past in Nazi-occupied Holland. She sets off for Amsterdam, determined to find her baby and uncover the truth of her family’s history. The title refers to the Dutch having to go out into the fields to dig up tulip bulbs to stave off starvation during the Occupation. It sounded just the kind of book I love to read. I have to admit, though, that I found the book disappointing. The most interesting parts were the ones that referred to the past, and they were all told, not shown. There were also a few inconsistencies which marred the reading for me. However, if you’re looking for a light and easy suspenseful read, then this may appeal to you.
Note: I received an ARC of the book from the publisher via NetGalley.
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7. The Small Dark Man – Maurice Walsh
8. Castle Gillian - Maurice Walsh
9. The Man in Brown - Maurice Walsh
10. Danger Under the Moon - Maurice Walsh
11. Trouble in the Glen - Maurice Walsh
12. The Hill is Mine - Maurice Walsh
I first read Castle Gillian by Maurice Walsh as a teenager, and was enchanted. It’s a romance set in Ireland in the 1930s, and tells the story of a young man, broken by the war, and his family’s struggle to keep the ancestral home. Whenever I go into an old, cobwebby second-hand bookstore, I look to see if they have any of his books and over the years I’ve amassed half-a-dozen of them. Fighting off a nasty bout of bronchitis over the summer holidays, I stayed in bed and read my way through the whole lot of them again. Nearly all follow the same plot sequence as Castle Gillian (which is still my favourite) – a small quiet man comes to the glen, usually to visit a friend; there’s a beautiful girl (sometimes there are two, giving the friend a romance too); he has to outface a big tough cocksure man; at the end of the book, they fight; the small, quiet man wins against all odds and gets the girl. Sometimes there’s a murder involved as well. Most of them are set in Scotland and celebrate the wild and beautiful landscape (Castle Gillian is the exception, being set in Ireland); all of them are whimsical and a little wry.
Maurice Walsh was Irish himself (born in County Kerry in 1879), but spent a lot of time in Scotland and married his wife there in 1908. He is best known for the short story ‘The Quiet Man’ which was made into an Oscar-winning film directed by John Ford and starring John Wayne and Maureen O’Hara. He was one of Ireland’s best-selling authors in the 1930s, but no-one I know has heard of him. It’s a shame, I think. The best of his books (Castle Gillian, Trouble in the Glen, Danger Under the Moon & The Small, Dark Man are all well worth reading.
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13. Fairest of Them All - Carolyn Turgeon
I’m in the final stages of a doctorate on Rapunzel, which means I simply must read every book ever inspired by the old fairy tale.
Fairest of Them All is an interesting take on the well-known story, imagining: What if Rapunzel was Snow White’s evil stepmother?
The story begins with a young Rapunzel living in a forest with her foster mother, Mathena, a witch who had been banished from court because of her magical powers. They live an idyllic life, tending the herb garden and helping the women of the village.
One day Rapunzel’s singing attracts a young prince who was out hunting in the forest. He climbs up her hair into her tower bedroom and they have a brief afternoon of passion before the prince must return to his kingdom and his betrothed.
Rapunzel loses the baby she carries, and is grieved to discover the king and his wife have a living daughter soon after hers has died. The girl is so beautiful she is named Snow White.
The tale then follows the familiar sequence of events known to us from the original Grimm tale – the mother dies, the king remarries, his queen has a magical mirror that tells her she is the fairest of all …
Written simply yet lyrically, this is a dark and powerful reimagining of two well-known fairy-tales and should appeal to the millions of fans of writers such as Donna Jo Napoli, Shannon Hale, Jessica Day George and Gail Carson Levine.
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14. Rose Under Fire - Elizabeth Wein
Elizabeth Wein’s novel Code Name Verity was one of the best books I read last year, and I was very eager to read her latest book, Rose Under Fire.
Both books are set during World War II, and both pack a hefty emotional wallop. In Rose Under Fire, the heroine is a young American woman who is caught by the Germans while flying an Allied fighter plane back from Paris. She is sent to Ravensbrück, the notorious women's concentration camp. Trapped there in horrific circumstances, she has to try and survive, even while the German war machine grinds ever closer to genocide. Rose makes friends among the Rabbits (young Polish women who were experimented upon by doctors) and recites poetry to keep herself to stay sane. This book is so intense and powerful that I had trouble breathing by the end – like Code Name Verity, is one of the best WWII books for teenagers that I’ve ever read. Expect to be emotionally wrung out whilst reading it.
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15. Poison – Sara Poole
‘The Spaniard died in agony. That much was evident from the contortions of his once handsome face and limbs and the black foam caking his lips. A horrible death to be sure, one only possible from that most feared of weapons.
Poison.’
What a great opening to what proved to be a real page-turner of a novel. The book’s heroine, a young woman named Francesca Giordano, kills a man to prove that she is the better poisoner. Her reward is to become the official poisoner of Rodrigo Borgia, during his dangerous quest to become the next Pope. Francesca wants the job so she can find out who murdered her father, who had been poisoner before her. She finds herself caught up in an action-packed roller-coaster ride of an adventure, with intrigue, treachery, romance and murder a-plenty. A fabulous read!
PLEASE LEAVE A COMMENT - I LOVE TO KNOW WHAT YOU THINK!
But I read lots of other great books this month as well. I hope you find some new ones to discover here:
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1. Touchstone – Laurie R. King
Laurie R. King is best known for her Mary Russell/Sherlock Holmes historical mystery series in which a brilliant young woman becomes first a student – and then the lover – of the brilliant and enigmatic detective. I’ve read quite a few of this series and really enjoyed them. Laurie R. King is as interested in the internal lives of her characters as much as in the actual solving of a crime, and so her books are rich, complex, psychologically acute, and slow. Touchstone is the first in a new series set in the 1920s in England, featuring the unlikely friendship between an American agent and a war-damaged British gentleman. The first is Harris Stuyvesant and he is on the hunt for a terrorist whose bombs have left a raw scar on his own life. The trail leads him to England, where he meets Bennett Grey, whose acute sensitivity to the world following a shell attack makes him a kind of human lie detector. The two men find themselves tracking down the terrorist together … with tragic results.
This book took a while to cast its spell on me, but slowly and gradually the dramatic tension escalates until the book was unputdownable. And by that time I knew the characters so intimately I really feared for them. This is not the kind of thriller that will get your blood pumping and your heart racing; it will, however, make you think about it for a long time after you close the final, brilliant page.
[image error]
2. Mrs Mahoney’s Secret War – Gretel Mahoney & Claudia Strahan
Claudia Strahan was at a friend’s house in London, listening to music one day, when a cross neighbour knocked on the door to complain about the noise. She was 78 years old, and spoke with a German accent. Claudia had been born in Germany and so asked her a little of where she came from. The cross old lady proved to be so interesting, Claudia went to have coffee with her. The more she discovered about Mrs Mahoney’s life, the more fascinated she became. Nine years later, the two published this extraordinary memoir of Mrs Mahoney’s life in Hamburg during the Second World War.
Gretel Wachtel, as she was then, helped to protect fugitives hunted by the Gestapo, hid her Jewish doctor in her cellar, and passed secrets she learned from her work on the Enigma encryption machine to the German Resistance, and was finally arrested by the Gestapo.
She was just an ordinary German girl who did extraordinary things to try and fight the cruel Nazi regime under which she lived. Her verve, courage, and humour shine through in every word … one can just imagine her as a feisty old lady, telling her stories to Claudia over kaffeeklatsch, remembering one story after another through her young visitor’s eager questioning. A great memoir of one woman’s extraordinary life.
[image error]
3. Red Orchestra: The Story of the Berlin Underground and the Circle of Friends Who Resisted Hitler - by Anne Nelson
When we think of Germany under Hitler, we often think of Germans as being either enthusiastic supporters of Nazism, or passive bystanders who did nothing to stop him. This fascinating non-fiction account of the Berlin Underground shows that there were, in fact, many Germans who risked everything to fight against the Nazi regime.
The Rote Kapelle (Red Orchestra) was the Gestapo’s name for a group of German artists, actors, filmmakers, writers, journalists and intellectuals who worked indefatigably to undermine the Nazis in Berlin, the heart of Hitler’s war machine. Almost half of them were women.
Based on years of research, including exclusive interviews with the few that survived the war, Red Orchestra brings to life the different characters of the key people involved in the resistance ring.
These include Adam Kuckhoff, a playwright who found employment in Goebbels’s propaganda unit in order to undermine the regime, and his wife, Greta, who risked her own family to help smuggle Jews and homosexuals out from Berlin; Arvid Harnack, who collected anti-Nazi intelligence while working for the Economic Ministry, and his wife, Mildred, the only American woman executed by Hitler; Harro Schulze-Boysen, the glamorous Luftwaffe intelligence officer who leaked anti-Nazi information to allies abroad, and his wife, Libertas, a social butterfly who coaxed favours from an unsuspecting Göring; and many more.
The Berlin Underground was betrayed in 1942, and many of its members were tortured and executed, including young women in their teens. I ended the book with tears in my eyes – it is impossible not to imagine yourself living under such terrifying circumstances and wondering what choices you would make.
[image error]
4. Storming the Eagle’s Nest: Hitler’s War in the Alps - Jim Ring
Another World War II book! I’m researching a novel to be set during that period and so you’ll need to expect a lot of books set during that time in my reading lists. This one is another non-fiction book, focusing on the role of the Alps in the Second World War.
Hitler declared: ‘Yes, I have a close link to this mountain. Much was done there, came about and ended there; those were the best times of my life . . . My great plans were forged there.’
The book examines the war in the Alps from all angles, including battles from resistance fighters in Italy, France and Yugoslavia, concentration camps in Bavaria, Hitler’s enormous caches of art and wine hidden in caves, and Switzerland’s role as a centre for Allied spies – Storming the Eagle’s Nest is an interesting, unusual and very readable addition to WWII non-fiction.
Note: I received an ARC of the book from the publisher via NetGalley.
[image error]
5. The Marsh King’s Daughter – Elizabeth Chadwick
I’ve wanted to read a book by Elizabeth Chadwick for a while – a lot of my Goodreads friends rave about her work – and so I finally bought one to read. I chose this book because of the title – it’s the name of a Hans Christian Anderson fairy tale that I am actually thinking of rewriting one day. The title has little to do with the book, however, except that the heroine, Miriel, is the granddaughter of a rich weaver who lives near the marshes.
The book is set in 1216, one of my favourite periods of history (nasty King John ruled the land back then). Miriel is intelligent, high-spirited, and rebellious, and so is locked up in a convent by her violent and lustful step-father. She plans to escape but then helps rescue a half-drowned young man and stays so she can help nurse him back to health. The young man is Nicholas de Caen and he has a secret. He was present when King John’s treasure sank beneath the marshes (a true historical event), and he has hidden some of the treasure …
The two help each other escape, but their road of romance is rocky indeed. They have to deal with all sorts of misfortunes – including their own pigheadedness – before at last finding refuge in each other’s arms.
A big, brightly coloured romance, with lots of twists and turns, The Marsh King’s Daughter was a most enjoyable read and I’ll be picking up more books by Elizabeth Chadwick.
[image error]
6. The Tulip Eaters – Antoinette van Huegten
The premise of this book sounded so engaging that I was really keen to read it – a contemporary woman comes home to find her mother murdered and her baby stolen, and comes to realise these shocking crimes are somehow related to her mother’s past in Nazi-occupied Holland. She sets off for Amsterdam, determined to find her baby and uncover the truth of her family’s history. The title refers to the Dutch having to go out into the fields to dig up tulip bulbs to stave off starvation during the Occupation. It sounded just the kind of book I love to read. I have to admit, though, that I found the book disappointing. The most interesting parts were the ones that referred to the past, and they were all told, not shown. There were also a few inconsistencies which marred the reading for me. However, if you’re looking for a light and easy suspenseful read, then this may appeal to you.
Note: I received an ARC of the book from the publisher via NetGalley.
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7. The Small Dark Man – Maurice Walsh
8. Castle Gillian - Maurice Walsh
9. The Man in Brown - Maurice Walsh
10. Danger Under the Moon - Maurice Walsh
11. Trouble in the Glen - Maurice Walsh
12. The Hill is Mine - Maurice Walsh
I first read Castle Gillian by Maurice Walsh as a teenager, and was enchanted. It’s a romance set in Ireland in the 1930s, and tells the story of a young man, broken by the war, and his family’s struggle to keep the ancestral home. Whenever I go into an old, cobwebby second-hand bookstore, I look to see if they have any of his books and over the years I’ve amassed half-a-dozen of them. Fighting off a nasty bout of bronchitis over the summer holidays, I stayed in bed and read my way through the whole lot of them again. Nearly all follow the same plot sequence as Castle Gillian (which is still my favourite) – a small quiet man comes to the glen, usually to visit a friend; there’s a beautiful girl (sometimes there are two, giving the friend a romance too); he has to outface a big tough cocksure man; at the end of the book, they fight; the small, quiet man wins against all odds and gets the girl. Sometimes there’s a murder involved as well. Most of them are set in Scotland and celebrate the wild and beautiful landscape (Castle Gillian is the exception, being set in Ireland); all of them are whimsical and a little wry.
Maurice Walsh was Irish himself (born in County Kerry in 1879), but spent a lot of time in Scotland and married his wife there in 1908. He is best known for the short story ‘The Quiet Man’ which was made into an Oscar-winning film directed by John Ford and starring John Wayne and Maureen O’Hara. He was one of Ireland’s best-selling authors in the 1930s, but no-one I know has heard of him. It’s a shame, I think. The best of his books (Castle Gillian, Trouble in the Glen, Danger Under the Moon & The Small, Dark Man are all well worth reading.
[image error]
13. Fairest of Them All - Carolyn Turgeon
I’m in the final stages of a doctorate on Rapunzel, which means I simply must read every book ever inspired by the old fairy tale.
Fairest of Them All is an interesting take on the well-known story, imagining: What if Rapunzel was Snow White’s evil stepmother?
The story begins with a young Rapunzel living in a forest with her foster mother, Mathena, a witch who had been banished from court because of her magical powers. They live an idyllic life, tending the herb garden and helping the women of the village.
One day Rapunzel’s singing attracts a young prince who was out hunting in the forest. He climbs up her hair into her tower bedroom and they have a brief afternoon of passion before the prince must return to his kingdom and his betrothed.
Rapunzel loses the baby she carries, and is grieved to discover the king and his wife have a living daughter soon after hers has died. The girl is so beautiful she is named Snow White.
The tale then follows the familiar sequence of events known to us from the original Grimm tale – the mother dies, the king remarries, his queen has a magical mirror that tells her she is the fairest of all …
Written simply yet lyrically, this is a dark and powerful reimagining of two well-known fairy-tales and should appeal to the millions of fans of writers such as Donna Jo Napoli, Shannon Hale, Jessica Day George and Gail Carson Levine.
[image error]
14. Rose Under Fire - Elizabeth Wein
Elizabeth Wein’s novel Code Name Verity was one of the best books I read last year, and I was very eager to read her latest book, Rose Under Fire.
Both books are set during World War II, and both pack a hefty emotional wallop. In Rose Under Fire, the heroine is a young American woman who is caught by the Germans while flying an Allied fighter plane back from Paris. She is sent to Ravensbrück, the notorious women's concentration camp. Trapped there in horrific circumstances, she has to try and survive, even while the German war machine grinds ever closer to genocide. Rose makes friends among the Rabbits (young Polish women who were experimented upon by doctors) and recites poetry to keep herself to stay sane. This book is so intense and powerful that I had trouble breathing by the end – like Code Name Verity, is one of the best WWII books for teenagers that I’ve ever read. Expect to be emotionally wrung out whilst reading it.
[image error]
15. Poison – Sara Poole
‘The Spaniard died in agony. That much was evident from the contortions of his once handsome face and limbs and the black foam caking his lips. A horrible death to be sure, one only possible from that most feared of weapons.
Poison.’
What a great opening to what proved to be a real page-turner of a novel. The book’s heroine, a young woman named Francesca Giordano, kills a man to prove that she is the better poisoner. Her reward is to become the official poisoner of Rodrigo Borgia, during his dangerous quest to become the next Pope. Francesca wants the job so she can find out who murdered her father, who had been poisoner before her. She finds herself caught up in an action-packed roller-coaster ride of an adventure, with intrigue, treachery, romance and murder a-plenty. A fabulous read!
PLEASE LEAVE A COMMENT - I LOVE TO KNOW WHAT YOU THINK!
February 3, 2014
NEW BOOKS COMING THIS YEAR!
I have a big, busy year coming up in 2014!
Just to fill you all in on my news:
I have a beautiful children’s book being published with Christmas Press, in which I retell two old Scottish fairy tales. It’s illustrated by the amazingly talented Fiona McDonald and its called ....
Here is a sneak look at just one of the gorgeous illustrations:
I am also hard at work on rewriting and editing another book for adults.
Called DANCING ON KNIVES, it will be published in June by Random House
I actually began writing this novel when I was only sixteen. I rewrote it for my Masters of Arts in Creative Writing when I was 26, and it ended up being published when I was 36 under my maiden name Kate Humphrey, with the title FULL FATHOM FIVE. Now I am 46, it is being republished again. I have rewritten it extensively, cutting out more than 12,000 words along the way. It’s very exciting to see the first novel I wrote as an adult being relaunched with a gorgeous new cover!
Here is the blurb:
A haunting story of a damaged family, dangerous secrets and the sea
At twenty, Sara is tormented by an inexplicable terror so profound she has been unable to leave her home in five years. Like the mermaid in the fairy tale her grandmother once told her, Sara feels that she is Dancing on Knives, unable to speak.
Then one stormy night, her father - the famous artist Augusto Sanchez - does not come home. His body is found dangling from a cliff face. Astonishingly, he is still alive.
The mystery of his fall can only be solved by the revelation of long-held family secrets and by Sara's realisation that strength can be found in the most unlikely places.
At once a suspenseful murder mystery and a lyrical love story, Dancing on Knives resonates with the entrancing - and dangerous - music and stories of the sea.
Finally, I am still hard on work on a 5-book children’s fantasy adventure series called THE IMPOSSIBLE QUEST for Scholastic. Book 1 is being released in Australia in September and Book 2 in November.
So I have a lot on, as you can see!
I do hope you'll forgive me if I'm a little quiet on other fronts as a result. I promise to be back soon with lots more news, views and reviews.
January 23, 2014
INTERVIEW: Kate Constable, author of Crow Country
Please welcome Kate Constable, author of Crow Country, to the blog today:
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Are you a daydreamer too?
Not so much these days, but I drifted through the first thirty years of my life wrapped in an imaginary world that seemed much more vivid to me than reality. I still love to go for a long walk and let the daydreams rip!
Have you always wanted to be a writer?
Ever since I knew it was something you could be. I created my first masterpiece at age four, Jingle and the Robbers, complete with violence, nudity, and crayon illustrations. I like to think my writing has improved since then; sadly, my drawing skills have not. I've been writing stories ever since.
Tell me a little about yourself – where were you born, where do you live, what do you like to do?
I was born in Melbourne, but I grew up in PNG. Now I live in a house in Preston a few streets away from where my parents lived when I was born, just behind the primary school my mother went to, and which my daughters now attend. I love that my family has come full circle like that! When I'm not writing, reading, doing author-stuff, and looking after the family (husband, two daughters, bearded dragon, dog and rabbit), I follow the football.
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How did you get the first flash of inspiration for Crow Country?
I wish I could say it came to me in a flash, but it was a more calculated and difficult process than that! Having written a fantasy series that was set in an imagined world (The Chanters of Tremaris), I decided I wanted to write a fantasy that was set firmly in the Australian landscape. It only occurred to me afterwards that if I wanted to write about Australian magic, that would mean Aboriginal magic. That started a long journey of research and thinking and discussion and reading, and a few false starts before the story of Crow Country arrived in my head. A few different elements wove themselves together: the legend of Waa, the ancestral Crow spirit; an internet article about a dried up dam exposing its hidden secrets; a visit to a country town for a family reunion; curiosity about Aboriginal Anzacs; the idea of mistakes repeating themselves, generation after generation. Once the story came, it just poured itself out quite quickly.
How extensively do you plan your novels?
I love planning, and I love revising and rewriting; but first drafts are torture! I do like to write an outline before I start, it's like having a rope to guide you through a dark maze. But you have to feel free to drop that rope at any time and pick up another one. I'm always prepared to throw the plan away and rewrite it, depending on where the story seems to want to go.
Did you make any astonishing serendipitious discoveries when writing this book?
Oh, so many. The biggest one was this: my first draft of Crow Country was set in a town I'd invented, which I called Cross Creek. I knew I wanted to set the story somewhere in mid-north-western Victoria, in Dja Dja Wurrung country, but I was wary of writing about an actual town, since I wasn't familiar enough with any specific towns in that region.
So I set myself free to invent all the things I needed for my story: a war memorial, an abandoned rail line, a footy club, cemetery, pubs and shops and most importantly, a dried lake. But when Gary Murray, a Dja Dja Wurrung elder, read the manuscript to check it for me, the first thing he said was, 'This town you've written about - this town is Boort.'
I'd never even heard of Boort, but it's a real town, way up in northern Victoria, and when I went to visit there, I found every single thing I'd written into my 'imaginary' town including the dried lakes. The pubs, the cemetery, the memorial: it was all there, just as I'd written it. And Boort used to be an important Indigenous meeting place, the lakes there are surrounded by scarred trees and ceremony places. So Cross Creek became Boort.
I've even had someone tell me, 'I come from Boort, and I know who all the characters in your book are.' I was too scared to tell him that I'd invented them all… or at least, I thought I did!
Another strange and spooky thing that happened during the year I wrote Crow Country was that a family of crows came and took up residence just outside our house. Every time I walked out of the front door, there they'd be, strutting up and down the street, making remarks to each other: waa-waaa! They hung around all that year, but after I finished working on the book, they went away. I do think that they come to keep an eye on me, and just make sure I was doing the right thing.
Where do you write and when?
While my kids are at school. It's hard to get much done in the holidays. I have a laptop and I carry it around the house as the mood strikes me. Sometimes I sit on the window seat in the family room and stare out at the garden, sometimes I huddle on the couch in the library, or sit on my bed. I have a study/spare room, which is a bungalow in the backyard, but our nephew is staying in it at the moment, so I'm a nomad.
What is your favourite part of writing?
Revising and rewriting. It's so much easier and more fun to work with words that already exist, than to struggle to fill a blank page (or screen).
Who are ten of your favourite writers?
It changes all the time, but off the top of my head, and at this precise moment, I'd say: Rumer Godden, Helen Garner, Nancy Mitford, Antonia Forest (she wrote school stories, no one's ever heard of her), Penelope Lively, Edith Nesbit, Gerald Durrell, CS Lewis, Susan Cooper, Noel Streatfeild.
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(I just have to say that these are many of my favourite writers too, and I have heard of Antonia Forest, though its been a long while since I've read any of her books ...)
What do you consider to be good writing?
I find myself drawn to what I think of as 'transparent' writing, where you're hardly conscious of the words, but just being drawn along by the author's voice and the story. Rumer Godden and Noel Streatfield have been big influences on me in that way. I very much admire Helen Garner's writing, she is so sharp and she chooses her words with such perfect precision, but it's never flowery or over-written.
Advice for someone dreaming of being a writer?
Read a lot. Practice a lot. Don't be afraid to imitate writers you love when you're starting out, your own voice will find you. And be patient! I called myself a writer for ten years before I had my first book published.
What are you working on now?
I'm in the middle of revising a piece for an anthology of collaborations between Indian and Australian writers, illustrators and graphic artists, called Eat the Sky, Drink the Ocean. I've never worked on anything like this before, so it's very exciting. I've been paired with an Indian artist called Priya Kuriyan, it's been so thrilling to see the wonderful illustrations she's produced to go with my text it's completely altered the way I saw the words and I'm making changes accordingly, so it's been a fascinating process.
I'm also working on a final volume for my Chanters of Tremaris fantasy series, which focuses on Calwyn's daughter. It's lovely going back to this magical world which I haven't visited for so long.
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PLEASE LEAVE A COMMENT - I LOVE TO KNOW WHAT YOU THINK!
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Are you a daydreamer too?
Not so much these days, but I drifted through the first thirty years of my life wrapped in an imaginary world that seemed much more vivid to me than reality. I still love to go for a long walk and let the daydreams rip!
Have you always wanted to be a writer?
Ever since I knew it was something you could be. I created my first masterpiece at age four, Jingle and the Robbers, complete with violence, nudity, and crayon illustrations. I like to think my writing has improved since then; sadly, my drawing skills have not. I've been writing stories ever since.
Tell me a little about yourself – where were you born, where do you live, what do you like to do?
I was born in Melbourne, but I grew up in PNG. Now I live in a house in Preston a few streets away from where my parents lived when I was born, just behind the primary school my mother went to, and which my daughters now attend. I love that my family has come full circle like that! When I'm not writing, reading, doing author-stuff, and looking after the family (husband, two daughters, bearded dragon, dog and rabbit), I follow the football.
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How did you get the first flash of inspiration for Crow Country?
I wish I could say it came to me in a flash, but it was a more calculated and difficult process than that! Having written a fantasy series that was set in an imagined world (The Chanters of Tremaris), I decided I wanted to write a fantasy that was set firmly in the Australian landscape. It only occurred to me afterwards that if I wanted to write about Australian magic, that would mean Aboriginal magic. That started a long journey of research and thinking and discussion and reading, and a few false starts before the story of Crow Country arrived in my head. A few different elements wove themselves together: the legend of Waa, the ancestral Crow spirit; an internet article about a dried up dam exposing its hidden secrets; a visit to a country town for a family reunion; curiosity about Aboriginal Anzacs; the idea of mistakes repeating themselves, generation after generation. Once the story came, it just poured itself out quite quickly.
How extensively do you plan your novels?
I love planning, and I love revising and rewriting; but first drafts are torture! I do like to write an outline before I start, it's like having a rope to guide you through a dark maze. But you have to feel free to drop that rope at any time and pick up another one. I'm always prepared to throw the plan away and rewrite it, depending on where the story seems to want to go.
Did you make any astonishing serendipitious discoveries when writing this book?
Oh, so many. The biggest one was this: my first draft of Crow Country was set in a town I'd invented, which I called Cross Creek. I knew I wanted to set the story somewhere in mid-north-western Victoria, in Dja Dja Wurrung country, but I was wary of writing about an actual town, since I wasn't familiar enough with any specific towns in that region.
So I set myself free to invent all the things I needed for my story: a war memorial, an abandoned rail line, a footy club, cemetery, pubs and shops and most importantly, a dried lake. But when Gary Murray, a Dja Dja Wurrung elder, read the manuscript to check it for me, the first thing he said was, 'This town you've written about - this town is Boort.'
I'd never even heard of Boort, but it's a real town, way up in northern Victoria, and when I went to visit there, I found every single thing I'd written into my 'imaginary' town including the dried lakes. The pubs, the cemetery, the memorial: it was all there, just as I'd written it. And Boort used to be an important Indigenous meeting place, the lakes there are surrounded by scarred trees and ceremony places. So Cross Creek became Boort.
I've even had someone tell me, 'I come from Boort, and I know who all the characters in your book are.' I was too scared to tell him that I'd invented them all… or at least, I thought I did!
Another strange and spooky thing that happened during the year I wrote Crow Country was that a family of crows came and took up residence just outside our house. Every time I walked out of the front door, there they'd be, strutting up and down the street, making remarks to each other: waa-waaa! They hung around all that year, but after I finished working on the book, they went away. I do think that they come to keep an eye on me, and just make sure I was doing the right thing.
Where do you write and when?
While my kids are at school. It's hard to get much done in the holidays. I have a laptop and I carry it around the house as the mood strikes me. Sometimes I sit on the window seat in the family room and stare out at the garden, sometimes I huddle on the couch in the library, or sit on my bed. I have a study/spare room, which is a bungalow in the backyard, but our nephew is staying in it at the moment, so I'm a nomad.
What is your favourite part of writing?
Revising and rewriting. It's so much easier and more fun to work with words that already exist, than to struggle to fill a blank page (or screen).
Who are ten of your favourite writers?
It changes all the time, but off the top of my head, and at this precise moment, I'd say: Rumer Godden, Helen Garner, Nancy Mitford, Antonia Forest (she wrote school stories, no one's ever heard of her), Penelope Lively, Edith Nesbit, Gerald Durrell, CS Lewis, Susan Cooper, Noel Streatfeild.
[image error]
(I just have to say that these are many of my favourite writers too, and I have heard of Antonia Forest, though its been a long while since I've read any of her books ...)
What do you consider to be good writing?
I find myself drawn to what I think of as 'transparent' writing, where you're hardly conscious of the words, but just being drawn along by the author's voice and the story. Rumer Godden and Noel Streatfield have been big influences on me in that way. I very much admire Helen Garner's writing, she is so sharp and she chooses her words with such perfect precision, but it's never flowery or over-written.
Advice for someone dreaming of being a writer?
Read a lot. Practice a lot. Don't be afraid to imitate writers you love when you're starting out, your own voice will find you. And be patient! I called myself a writer for ten years before I had my first book published.
What are you working on now?
I'm in the middle of revising a piece for an anthology of collaborations between Indian and Australian writers, illustrators and graphic artists, called Eat the Sky, Drink the Ocean. I've never worked on anything like this before, so it's very exciting. I've been paired with an Indian artist called Priya Kuriyan, it's been so thrilling to see the wonderful illustrations she's produced to go with my text it's completely altered the way I saw the words and I'm making changes accordingly, so it's been a fascinating process.
I'm also working on a final volume for my Chanters of Tremaris fantasy series, which focuses on Calwyn's daughter. It's lovely going back to this magical world which I haven't visited for so long.
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PLEASE LEAVE A COMMENT - I LOVE TO KNOW WHAT YOU THINK!
January 21, 2014
BOOK LIST: Best Australian children's books chosen by Kate Constable
When I asked Kate Constable, the author of the award-winning CROW COUNTRY, to be a guest on my blog this week, I asked her if she'd write me a post about her favourite Australian children's books. She had a confession to make, however ...
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Even though I was born in Australia, and I have been an avid reader all my life, it is a strange but true fact that when I was growing up, I didn't read Australian books.
Though I was born in Melbourne, I spent most of my childhood in the Highlands of Papua New Guinea, in a tiny town called Mt Hagen. My father worked there as a charter pilot, flying light planes in and out of isolated mountain villages, carrying all kinds of passengers and cargo - everything from cattle to coffins, sacks of coffee beans to cans of fish.
Mt Hagen was a very small town in those days - now it's the third largest city in PNG - but for some reason it had an excellent public library, in a dark little building near the market. It seems so unlikely that such a well-stocked library could possibly exist that I've tried to research how this could have come about, but I haven't been able to find out, and the library doesn't seem to exist any more. My best guess is that it was the result of some philanthropic impulse or charitable exercise - send a library to the Highlands!
Whatever the case, I was the beneficiary. I read my way through shelves of wonderful children's authors: Joan Aiken, Louisa May Alcott, Arthur Ransome, Laura Ingalls Wilder, E. Nesbit, Leon Garfield, PL Travers, CS Lewis, Elizabeth Goudge and so many more. I've spent many rewarding years since, trying to recreate that library via second hand bookshops, with some success! (These are many of my favourite children's authors too!)
With no television, few shops or recreational facilities, there wasn't much to do in Mt Hagen except to read, and I read everywhere: at the table, under the blankets, sitting in trees. Like may children, I read my favourite books over and over again. Sometimes I borrowed the books just to put them under my pillow at night; I loved them so much and knew them so well that there was no need to open the covers.
I was especially drawn to books about magic, ghosts and time travel, memories and dreams. Some of my particular favourites were Tom's Midnight Garden, by Philippa Pearce, The Little White Horse by Elizabeth Goudge, CS Lewis's Narnia books, and A Traveller in Time by Alison Uttley. Many of the books I loved best were by English authors, and when my family travelled to the UK (so my father could visit his family for the first time since he was twenty), I felt an immediate and intense bond with the English countryside.
I instantly felt that I knew this landscape, deep in my bones: the damp green fields, the spreading trees and sheltering hedgerows, the stone cottages and bluebell-filled woods. This was home, this was where I belonged, and when we left a few weeks later, I cried for days.
Weirdly, I felt no such connection to the Australian landscape when we returned to Melbourne on leave, even though I'd been born and spent the first six years of my short life there. I wonder now whether, after reading all those English books, the landscape of England had seeped into my imagination as a place brimming with magical possibilities.
In contrast, the few books I read by Australian authors all seemed to be sternly realistic, about girls with ponies in sun-scorched paddocks, or, terrifyingly, about children surviving bushfires or plane crashes alone. There didn't seem to be a space in the Australian landscape of those books for magic, or fantasy, or time travel; no ghosts, no history; nothing for me to hold onto.
How wrong I was!
Of course there were books, Australian books, that knew about magic; but for some reason, I never managed to find them. It was only as an adult that I discovered wonderful books by Australian authors that might have given me the same sense of wonderful, mysterious power that I'd gleaned from those English fantasy stories. One of the reasons I wrote Crow Country was to try to add to that list, and help a new generation of readers to realise how much magic and power lies in our own landscape.
Here are three of my favourite Australian books for children and young adults from the era of my youth, books I wish I'd found:
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1. Playing Beatie Bow, by Ruth Park
How did I manage to miss this book? It was published in 1980, when I was 13, but for some reason it took me another thirty years to read it! The time travel element, so hard to get right, is handled expertly, and the scenes of early Sydney are wonderfully evocative. The love story is poignant and perfectly pitched.
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2. Pastures of the Blue Crane, by Hesba Brinsmead
Not a magical story as such, but the descriptions of northern New South Wales are so gorgeous that the writing thrums. The story of aloof Ryl's discovery of her inheritance and her gradual connection with her estranged grandfather is very moving. The book's handling of racial issues was radically progressive at the time, though it seems awkwardly dated now; but this is still a beautiful book. (I have not read this one, so its gone straight on to my ever-growing TBR shelf - thanks, Kate!)
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3. The Rocks of Honey, by Patricia Wrightson
Wrightson's books were the books I needed to read, but somehow never found at the right time. Her sensitive handling of Aboriginal mythology was revolutionary at the time; although she was criticised more recently for appropriating cultural content, many Indigenous leaders applauded her work, and she introduced generations of children to Aboriginal magic. I could have chosen half a dozen Wrightson titles, but The Rocks of Honey was one of the first I read and it remains special to me, a simple but subtle tale of magic and misunderstanding.
Kate Constable's blog
If you enjoyed this blog, you may also enjoy Belinda Murrell's list of Favourite Australian Children's Books
PLEASE LEAVE A COMMENT - I LOVE TO KNOW WHAT YOU THINK!
[image error]
Even though I was born in Australia, and I have been an avid reader all my life, it is a strange but true fact that when I was growing up, I didn't read Australian books.
Though I was born in Melbourne, I spent most of my childhood in the Highlands of Papua New Guinea, in a tiny town called Mt Hagen. My father worked there as a charter pilot, flying light planes in and out of isolated mountain villages, carrying all kinds of passengers and cargo - everything from cattle to coffins, sacks of coffee beans to cans of fish.
Mt Hagen was a very small town in those days - now it's the third largest city in PNG - but for some reason it had an excellent public library, in a dark little building near the market. It seems so unlikely that such a well-stocked library could possibly exist that I've tried to research how this could have come about, but I haven't been able to find out, and the library doesn't seem to exist any more. My best guess is that it was the result of some philanthropic impulse or charitable exercise - send a library to the Highlands!
Whatever the case, I was the beneficiary. I read my way through shelves of wonderful children's authors: Joan Aiken, Louisa May Alcott, Arthur Ransome, Laura Ingalls Wilder, E. Nesbit, Leon Garfield, PL Travers, CS Lewis, Elizabeth Goudge and so many more. I've spent many rewarding years since, trying to recreate that library via second hand bookshops, with some success! (These are many of my favourite children's authors too!)
With no television, few shops or recreational facilities, there wasn't much to do in Mt Hagen except to read, and I read everywhere: at the table, under the blankets, sitting in trees. Like may children, I read my favourite books over and over again. Sometimes I borrowed the books just to put them under my pillow at night; I loved them so much and knew them so well that there was no need to open the covers.
I was especially drawn to books about magic, ghosts and time travel, memories and dreams. Some of my particular favourites were Tom's Midnight Garden, by Philippa Pearce, The Little White Horse by Elizabeth Goudge, CS Lewis's Narnia books, and A Traveller in Time by Alison Uttley. Many of the books I loved best were by English authors, and when my family travelled to the UK (so my father could visit his family for the first time since he was twenty), I felt an immediate and intense bond with the English countryside.
I instantly felt that I knew this landscape, deep in my bones: the damp green fields, the spreading trees and sheltering hedgerows, the stone cottages and bluebell-filled woods. This was home, this was where I belonged, and when we left a few weeks later, I cried for days.
Weirdly, I felt no such connection to the Australian landscape when we returned to Melbourne on leave, even though I'd been born and spent the first six years of my short life there. I wonder now whether, after reading all those English books, the landscape of England had seeped into my imagination as a place brimming with magical possibilities.
In contrast, the few books I read by Australian authors all seemed to be sternly realistic, about girls with ponies in sun-scorched paddocks, or, terrifyingly, about children surviving bushfires or plane crashes alone. There didn't seem to be a space in the Australian landscape of those books for magic, or fantasy, or time travel; no ghosts, no history; nothing for me to hold onto.
How wrong I was!
Of course there were books, Australian books, that knew about magic; but for some reason, I never managed to find them. It was only as an adult that I discovered wonderful books by Australian authors that might have given me the same sense of wonderful, mysterious power that I'd gleaned from those English fantasy stories. One of the reasons I wrote Crow Country was to try to add to that list, and help a new generation of readers to realise how much magic and power lies in our own landscape.
Here are three of my favourite Australian books for children and young adults from the era of my youth, books I wish I'd found:
[image error]
1. Playing Beatie Bow, by Ruth Park
How did I manage to miss this book? It was published in 1980, when I was 13, but for some reason it took me another thirty years to read it! The time travel element, so hard to get right, is handled expertly, and the scenes of early Sydney are wonderfully evocative. The love story is poignant and perfectly pitched.
[image error]
2. Pastures of the Blue Crane, by Hesba Brinsmead
Not a magical story as such, but the descriptions of northern New South Wales are so gorgeous that the writing thrums. The story of aloof Ryl's discovery of her inheritance and her gradual connection with her estranged grandfather is very moving. The book's handling of racial issues was radically progressive at the time, though it seems awkwardly dated now; but this is still a beautiful book. (I have not read this one, so its gone straight on to my ever-growing TBR shelf - thanks, Kate!)
[image error]
3. The Rocks of Honey, by Patricia Wrightson
Wrightson's books were the books I needed to read, but somehow never found at the right time. Her sensitive handling of Aboriginal mythology was revolutionary at the time; although she was criticised more recently for appropriating cultural content, many Indigenous leaders applauded her work, and she introduced generations of children to Aboriginal magic. I could have chosen half a dozen Wrightson titles, but The Rocks of Honey was one of the first I read and it remains special to me, a simple but subtle tale of magic and misunderstanding.
Kate Constable's blog
If you enjoyed this blog, you may also enjoy Belinda Murrell's list of Favourite Australian Children's Books
PLEASE LEAVE A COMMENT - I LOVE TO KNOW WHAT YOU THINK!
January 19, 2014
BOOK REVIEW: Crow Country by Kate Constable
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Title: Crow Country
Author: Kate Constable
Publisher: Allen & Unwin
Age Group & Genre: YA Timeslip
Reviewer: Kate Forsyth
Source: The book was given to me by Allen & Unwin quite some time ago – thank you!
The Blurb:
From the author of the Chanters of Tremaris series comes a contemporary time travel fantasy, grounded in the landscape of Australia.
Beginning and ending, always the same, always now. The game, the story, the riddle, hiding and seeking. Crow comes from this place; this place comes from Crow. And Crow has work for you.
Sadie isn't thrilled when her mother drags her from the city to live in the country town of Boort. But soon she starts making connections—with the country, with the past, with two boys, Lachie and Walter, and, most surprisingly, with the ever-present crows.
When Sadie is tumbled back in time to view a terrible crime, she is pulled into a strange mystery. Can Sadie, Walter, and Lachie figure out a way to right old wrongs, or will they be condemned to repeat them?
A fantasy grounded in mythology, this novel has the backing of a full consultative process on the use of indigenous lore.
What I Thought:
I am in such admiration of Kate Constable’s bravery and delicacy in writing this beautiful book, which draws upon Aboriginal mythology and Australian history to deal with themes of injustice, racism, truthfulness and atonement.
As a child, one of my favourite Australian authors was Patricia Wrightson. Many of her children’s books draw upon Aboriginal mythology and Australian landscapes, creating stories filled with beauty, mystery and strangeness.
However, when I studied children’s literature in my undergraduate degree in the late 1980s, Patricia Wrightson was lambasted for her so-called ‘cultural appropriation’; indeed, for a kind of imperialist exploitation. I have struggled with this for a long time. I loved Patricia Wrightson’s work and, as a result of reading The Nargun and the Stars and The Ice is Coming, I have been fascinated by Aboriginal mythology and art ever since.
I have long wanted to write a book set in Australia which drew upon Aboriginal history and stories, but I have been held back by my desire to be sensitive and respectful to those of Aboriginal descent. Crow Country has shown me that perhaps it is possible for a non-indigenous Australian to write a novel filled with the magic and mystery of this ancient land while still being sensitive to the sacredness of those beautiful old stories and songs, and to their vital importance to the voices of Australian indigenous cultures.
Crow Country is a simple book, simply told, but that is part of its great strength. It tells the story of Sadie, an unhappy teenager who moves to the country with her flighty but loving mother. One day she stumbles across an Aboriginal sacred site, and a crow speaks to her – she is needed to right a wrong that occurred many years earlier. So Sadie slips back in time, into the body of one of her ancestors, and observes a crime that is covered up.
The novel encompasses three generations of families living in the small country town of Boort in Victoria, and their different responses to racism. In the contemporary tale, the three families are embodied in Sadie, Lachie (son of the white farmer who owns the property on which the sacred site is found), and an Aboriginal boy, Walter. Their relationships are complicated by the past history of Sadie’s mother, Ellie, who – as a teenager – dated both Lachie and Walter’s fathers, and stirred up dormant racism in the town.
Somehow, Sadie must find a way to make amends for the past and help the town and its inhabitants heal and grow closer together.
A quote from Crow Country: “The Dreaming is always; forever... it's always happening, and us mob, we're part of it, all the time, everywhere, and every-when too.”
I loved it.
Kate Constable’s blog
PLEASE LEAVE A COMMENT – I LOVE TO KNOW WHAT YOU THINK
January 16, 2014
INTERVIEW: Karen Foxlee, author of The Midnight Dress
I was utterly enchanted by Karen Foxlee's novel The Midnight Dress, and so I am delighted to welcoem her to the blog today.
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Are you a daydreamer too?
Have you always wanted to be a writer?
Yes, I can recall being in grade two and everyone being asked to write down what they wanted to be when they grew up. I wrote, “I want to be an Arthur.” I meant author of course but the teacher was very confused. I told everyone that was what I was going to be. I’d written my first story about a girl and horse and flooding river. I’d used the word FLED. They fled from the river. I was so impressed with myself. I never gave up that dream.
Tell me a little about yourself – where were you born, where do you live, what do you like to do?
I was born in Mount Isa, the big mining town in far North West Queensland. My dad was a miner. I had an amazing childhood there with a brother and two sisters. We climbed the red spinifex covered hills and explored the dry Leichhardt River. It was a wild frontier town in many ways, very different to growing up in a city. And very isolated. We were a day’s drive from the coast. I left home at seventeen and went to university but dropped out and did my nursing training instead. I’ve nursed ever since. I live in Gympie, Queensland, with my five year old daughter, two cats, five chooks and some fish. I love it. It’s a little town but still close enough to a major city and the coast so I can enjoy that world as well.
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How did you get the first flash of inspiration for The Midnight Dress?
I really had nothing but the idea for the character Rose which is the way most of my stories start. I just kept thinking of a girl with wild red hair, terribly hurt, very lonely, arriving in a place that somehow changes her. I started to write about her; why did she come to the place, who did she meet there? Suddenly a hand-stitched dress kept appearing. The story changed many times before it took its final form.
How extensively do you plan your novels?
I don’t plan them at all. I am in awe of writers who can plot everything out. As soon as I start to plot everything seems to disappear. I only seem able to find answers through writing. I used to waste a lot of energy worrying about this – thinking it was a defect – but I think I write really beautiful stories this way, kind of growing them up out of nothing.
Do you ever use dreams as a source of inspiration?
Not really. Occasionally I will get ideas all of the sudden in the middle of the night. My eyes open and everything seems very clear. I think I use memories a lot more than dreams as a source of inspiration. I’m constantly plundering my own memories. For the town of Leonora and the landscape around it, the tropical rainforest, I went back again and again to my memories. To the places we visited as children in North Queensland on our annual pilgrimage to the coast. I can remember climbing rocks at the beach, daydreaming about running away into the rainforest.
Did you make any astonishing serendipitous discoveries while writing this book?
I discovered all the same things that I discovered with the first, again! Why had I forgotten them? I discovered that if it felt right, I shouldn’t give up. That I should follow my heart. That I should write the book that I wanted to write. Not sure they are serendipitous discoveries. They feel monumental each time though.
Where do you write, and when?
I write in bed in the early morning or on the sofa. Sometimes I get serious and write in the kitchen. I have a little study in the sleep-out of my old house but the desk is constantly covered in books and filing and scrap books and various other projects. I write best in the early hours of the morning. 430 am or 5ish until about 730 am. The house is very quiet and my mind is very calm. I write again after school drop off if I don’t have to go to my nursing job. My mind starts to wander by midday. I’m useless after that! I write like that for blocks of a few months. I love seeing a story coming together over that time, or the shape of a story anyway. I’m exhausted at the end and need a couple of weeks off.
What is your favourite part of writing?
My favourite part of writing is the smoothing down, polishing and making perfect part. All the getting to there I find stressful and uncomfortable and I worry constantly. Not knowing what the story is does my head in. Having said that, I do love seeing characters grow and change and become so real over several drafts.
What do you do when you get blocked?
I think there are two types of blocked. There is blocked with a specific story problem and also good old fashioned writer’s block. With the former, I had a chair that I called the “thinking chair” for years. If I couldn’t get anywhere because of a story problem, I’d go and sit in it and write longhand, freely, trying to work the problem out. I sold the chair in a garage sale recently so I don’t know what I’ll do now! A new chair is needed.
If it’s plain old fashioned writers block, I just sit down and write anything. It is the only thing I know how to do. I just write what seems like really bad writing, and then I keep doing that until after a while (hours, days, weeks) good stuff starts to happen again. I try to stay calm. If you panic it’s all over.
How do you keep your well of inspiration full?
I’m not sure. It just seems constantly full. I think as a writer I am distilling my life, my surroundings, my dreams, my memories, the whole world around me, constantly through my words. There are always new story ideas. They are lined up in a queue. They call to me, sometimes urgently, other times just gentle nudging reminders. “Write me!”
Do you have any rituals that help you to write?
After I finish a story (although they never really feel finished) to a stage that I know I can show it to someone… I clean the house. Really clean it! For a month. Nothing has been done while I’ve been writing! It’s a ceremonial cleaning, getting ready for the next project. That’s about the only big ritual I can think of. I can’t start a new story without a clean house.
Who are ten of your favourite writers?
Margaret Atwood, Marilynne Robinson, Arundhati Roy, Ian McEwan, Ruth Rendell, Truman Capote, Douglas Adams, Murray Bail, Kate Grenville, Phillip Pullman.
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Kate Grenville - I love her books too!
What do you consider to be good writing?
Clear clean writing. Well-constructed stories. Words that make you think and feel and your heart beat faster.
What is your advice for someone dreaming of being a writer too?
Love your stories. Spend so much time with them. Tend to them, worry over them, and make them as beautiful as you can. Don’t give up on them.
What are you working on now?
I remain lost in a big story set in Victorian England about a girl who sees the future in rain puddles and who is entrusted to save the world from a terrible darkness. My children’s novel “Ophelia and the Marvellous Boy” is to be published on January 28th in the US (Knopf) and soon after in the UK (Hot Key Books). I am really very excited about that.
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PLEASE LEAVE A COMMENT - I LOVE TO KNOW WHAT YOU THINK!
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Are you a daydreamer too?
Yes, I’m a daydreamer. I actually schedule daydream breaks into my writing day. I say to myself, “if you can get through this scene you can have a fifteen minute daydream”. I daydream about my characters, about my stories, about me. Daydreaming is about letting go, isn’t it? I love those little “letting go” parts of my day.
Have you always wanted to be a writer?
Yes, I can recall being in grade two and everyone being asked to write down what they wanted to be when they grew up. I wrote, “I want to be an Arthur.” I meant author of course but the teacher was very confused. I told everyone that was what I was going to be. I’d written my first story about a girl and horse and flooding river. I’d used the word FLED. They fled from the river. I was so impressed with myself. I never gave up that dream.
Tell me a little about yourself – where were you born, where do you live, what do you like to do?
I was born in Mount Isa, the big mining town in far North West Queensland. My dad was a miner. I had an amazing childhood there with a brother and two sisters. We climbed the red spinifex covered hills and explored the dry Leichhardt River. It was a wild frontier town in many ways, very different to growing up in a city. And very isolated. We were a day’s drive from the coast. I left home at seventeen and went to university but dropped out and did my nursing training instead. I’ve nursed ever since. I live in Gympie, Queensland, with my five year old daughter, two cats, five chooks and some fish. I love it. It’s a little town but still close enough to a major city and the coast so I can enjoy that world as well.
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How did you get the first flash of inspiration for The Midnight Dress?
I really had nothing but the idea for the character Rose which is the way most of my stories start. I just kept thinking of a girl with wild red hair, terribly hurt, very lonely, arriving in a place that somehow changes her. I started to write about her; why did she come to the place, who did she meet there? Suddenly a hand-stitched dress kept appearing. The story changed many times before it took its final form.
How extensively do you plan your novels?
I don’t plan them at all. I am in awe of writers who can plot everything out. As soon as I start to plot everything seems to disappear. I only seem able to find answers through writing. I used to waste a lot of energy worrying about this – thinking it was a defect – but I think I write really beautiful stories this way, kind of growing them up out of nothing.
Do you ever use dreams as a source of inspiration?
Not really. Occasionally I will get ideas all of the sudden in the middle of the night. My eyes open and everything seems very clear. I think I use memories a lot more than dreams as a source of inspiration. I’m constantly plundering my own memories. For the town of Leonora and the landscape around it, the tropical rainforest, I went back again and again to my memories. To the places we visited as children in North Queensland on our annual pilgrimage to the coast. I can remember climbing rocks at the beach, daydreaming about running away into the rainforest.
Did you make any astonishing serendipitous discoveries while writing this book?
I discovered all the same things that I discovered with the first, again! Why had I forgotten them? I discovered that if it felt right, I shouldn’t give up. That I should follow my heart. That I should write the book that I wanted to write. Not sure they are serendipitous discoveries. They feel monumental each time though.
Where do you write, and when?
I write in bed in the early morning or on the sofa. Sometimes I get serious and write in the kitchen. I have a little study in the sleep-out of my old house but the desk is constantly covered in books and filing and scrap books and various other projects. I write best in the early hours of the morning. 430 am or 5ish until about 730 am. The house is very quiet and my mind is very calm. I write again after school drop off if I don’t have to go to my nursing job. My mind starts to wander by midday. I’m useless after that! I write like that for blocks of a few months. I love seeing a story coming together over that time, or the shape of a story anyway. I’m exhausted at the end and need a couple of weeks off.
What is your favourite part of writing?
My favourite part of writing is the smoothing down, polishing and making perfect part. All the getting to there I find stressful and uncomfortable and I worry constantly. Not knowing what the story is does my head in. Having said that, I do love seeing characters grow and change and become so real over several drafts.
What do you do when you get blocked?
I think there are two types of blocked. There is blocked with a specific story problem and also good old fashioned writer’s block. With the former, I had a chair that I called the “thinking chair” for years. If I couldn’t get anywhere because of a story problem, I’d go and sit in it and write longhand, freely, trying to work the problem out. I sold the chair in a garage sale recently so I don’t know what I’ll do now! A new chair is needed.
If it’s plain old fashioned writers block, I just sit down and write anything. It is the only thing I know how to do. I just write what seems like really bad writing, and then I keep doing that until after a while (hours, days, weeks) good stuff starts to happen again. I try to stay calm. If you panic it’s all over.
How do you keep your well of inspiration full?
I’m not sure. It just seems constantly full. I think as a writer I am distilling my life, my surroundings, my dreams, my memories, the whole world around me, constantly through my words. There are always new story ideas. They are lined up in a queue. They call to me, sometimes urgently, other times just gentle nudging reminders. “Write me!”
Do you have any rituals that help you to write?
After I finish a story (although they never really feel finished) to a stage that I know I can show it to someone… I clean the house. Really clean it! For a month. Nothing has been done while I’ve been writing! It’s a ceremonial cleaning, getting ready for the next project. That’s about the only big ritual I can think of. I can’t start a new story without a clean house.
Who are ten of your favourite writers?
Margaret Atwood, Marilynne Robinson, Arundhati Roy, Ian McEwan, Ruth Rendell, Truman Capote, Douglas Adams, Murray Bail, Kate Grenville, Phillip Pullman.
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Kate Grenville - I love her books too!
What do you consider to be good writing?
Clear clean writing. Well-constructed stories. Words that make you think and feel and your heart beat faster.
What is your advice for someone dreaming of being a writer too?
Love your stories. Spend so much time with them. Tend to them, worry over them, and make them as beautiful as you can. Don’t give up on them.
What are you working on now?
I remain lost in a big story set in Victorian England about a girl who sees the future in rain puddles and who is entrusted to save the world from a terrible darkness. My children’s novel “Ophelia and the Marvellous Boy” is to be published on January 28th in the US (Knopf) and soon after in the UK (Hot Key Books). I am really very excited about that.
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PLEASE LEAVE A COMMENT - I LOVE TO KNOW WHAT YOU THINK!
January 14, 2014
BOOK LIST: Best Australian Young Adult novels chosen by Karen Foxlee
Today please welcome Karen Foxlee, author of the haunting and utterly beautiful THE MIDNIGHT DRESS. I asked her to compile a list of her five favourite Australian Young Adult novels and you know what? I have some reading to do! I've only read two on this list, but they are two of my all-time favourite authors (Margo Lanagan & Marcus Zusak) so this proves Karen has excellent taste.
I hope you find some new reading here too.
After compiling a little list of my five favourite Australian young adult novels I was very surprised to find what a mixed bag it was! Some of the novels I read as a teenager, while others I came to later in life. All of them can be read by adults. They are novels that I enjoyed immensely, that moved me, that made me laugh and cry and that remain in my mind years after I read them. In fact, thinking about some of them has made me want to dig them out again and reread! My list of five is in no particular order.
1. “The Year Nick McGowan Came to Stay” by Rebecca Sparrow
I can’t think of a more perfect premise for a contemporary YA novel. What would happen if the cutest/coolest boy in school had to come and live at your house! Rebecca Sparrow is such a clever writer and this novel is by turns sweet, sad, and hilariously funny. I was a teenager in the eighties so it all feels so wonderfully familiar. And I love a main character who makes you feel. Rachel made me laugh, cringe, worry and cheer.
2. “The Harp in the South” by Ruth Park
I was in grade nine when I read this novel and thinking about it, straight away, an image of Plymouth Street, Surrey Hills, appears before me. It’s amazing how the mind works and the power of words a good thirty years on!! Ruth Park bought the slums of Sydney to life, riotously, colourfully, teaming with tenements and razor gangs and brothels. She tells the story of the Darcy family in Surrey Hills, with two daughters Rosie and Dolour. I can recall being completely mesmerised by their tale. There is a thread that runs through the story about Mumma’s sorrow for a missing brother, Thady, who was taken from the streets when he was three which moved me so much. And I can still remember my horror at the treatment of Johnny, an intellectually impaired neighbour. I’m heading out to the library to find this one again!
3. “Tender Morsels” by Margo Lanagan
I have more than one Margo Lanagan novel that could make this list but I thought I better just go with my favourite, “Tender Morsels.” Even the name excites me. I think it is a wonderful thing to be so moved, upset, confused and compelled by a book. The story of Liga and her two daughters Branza and Urdda is a powerful one, about past hurts and healing and re-entering the world, and packed solid with Lanagan’s amazingly earthy, raw magic, and wild bears! Oh don’t get me started on the bears. After this novel was chosen as a Printz Honor book I remember reading lots of comments questioning how YA appropriate it was. Gosh I hope my daughter reads books like this when she is a teenager! These kind of books make you feel like you’re alive.
4. “The Book Thief” by Marcus Zusak
How can you not love a book that starts: “Here is a small fact. You are going to die”. I read Zusak’s book when it first came out and was hooked from that line. I love his writing. It is completely audacious, when you think about it, a book narrated by death, but never once does it feel wrong. His writing is so natural, so fresh, and so completely unique. It’s the tale of girl called Leisel and her acts of book thievery in Nazi Germany. It stares the brutality of war and death down the barrel, unflinchingly, while somehow, so wonderfully, celebrating words and all the beauty in our brief lives.
5. "Thursday's Child" by Sonya Hartnett
This was my introduction to Sonya Hartnett and I came to her writing late. She is a wonderful writer and her books always stay with me long after I put them down. I love her dark complex stories and this coming of age story is particularly dark and strange. Thursday’s Child is the story of a family, struggling to survive in 1930s Great Depression Australia, facing poverty and heartbreak. It is the tale of Harper Flute but also her little brother, Tin, who is different to the rest and slowly turning wild. He enters the earth beneath their ramshackle house, and begins to dig and burrow, leaving them behind. Hartnett’s descriptions of Tin’s subterranean wanderings, the Australian landscape and the harshness of life in that era, made me feel uneasy and anxious but this is also a story, thankfully, of hope. So different, I remember thinking. So wonderfully different!
Thank you, Karen!
You can LIKE Karen on Facebook
PLEASE LEAVE A COMMENT - I LOVE TO KNOW WHAT YOU THINK!
I hope you find some new reading here too.
After compiling a little list of my five favourite Australian young adult novels I was very surprised to find what a mixed bag it was! Some of the novels I read as a teenager, while others I came to later in life. All of them can be read by adults. They are novels that I enjoyed immensely, that moved me, that made me laugh and cry and that remain in my mind years after I read them. In fact, thinking about some of them has made me want to dig them out again and reread! My list of five is in no particular order.
1. “The Year Nick McGowan Came to Stay” by Rebecca Sparrow
I can’t think of a more perfect premise for a contemporary YA novel. What would happen if the cutest/coolest boy in school had to come and live at your house! Rebecca Sparrow is such a clever writer and this novel is by turns sweet, sad, and hilariously funny. I was a teenager in the eighties so it all feels so wonderfully familiar. And I love a main character who makes you feel. Rachel made me laugh, cringe, worry and cheer.
2. “The Harp in the South” by Ruth Park
I was in grade nine when I read this novel and thinking about it, straight away, an image of Plymouth Street, Surrey Hills, appears before me. It’s amazing how the mind works and the power of words a good thirty years on!! Ruth Park bought the slums of Sydney to life, riotously, colourfully, teaming with tenements and razor gangs and brothels. She tells the story of the Darcy family in Surrey Hills, with two daughters Rosie and Dolour. I can recall being completely mesmerised by their tale. There is a thread that runs through the story about Mumma’s sorrow for a missing brother, Thady, who was taken from the streets when he was three which moved me so much. And I can still remember my horror at the treatment of Johnny, an intellectually impaired neighbour. I’m heading out to the library to find this one again!
3. “Tender Morsels” by Margo Lanagan
I have more than one Margo Lanagan novel that could make this list but I thought I better just go with my favourite, “Tender Morsels.” Even the name excites me. I think it is a wonderful thing to be so moved, upset, confused and compelled by a book. The story of Liga and her two daughters Branza and Urdda is a powerful one, about past hurts and healing and re-entering the world, and packed solid with Lanagan’s amazingly earthy, raw magic, and wild bears! Oh don’t get me started on the bears. After this novel was chosen as a Printz Honor book I remember reading lots of comments questioning how YA appropriate it was. Gosh I hope my daughter reads books like this when she is a teenager! These kind of books make you feel like you’re alive.
4. “The Book Thief” by Marcus Zusak
How can you not love a book that starts: “Here is a small fact. You are going to die”. I read Zusak’s book when it first came out and was hooked from that line. I love his writing. It is completely audacious, when you think about it, a book narrated by death, but never once does it feel wrong. His writing is so natural, so fresh, and so completely unique. It’s the tale of girl called Leisel and her acts of book thievery in Nazi Germany. It stares the brutality of war and death down the barrel, unflinchingly, while somehow, so wonderfully, celebrating words and all the beauty in our brief lives.
5. "Thursday's Child" by Sonya Hartnett
This was my introduction to Sonya Hartnett and I came to her writing late. She is a wonderful writer and her books always stay with me long after I put them down. I love her dark complex stories and this coming of age story is particularly dark and strange. Thursday’s Child is the story of a family, struggling to survive in 1930s Great Depression Australia, facing poverty and heartbreak. It is the tale of Harper Flute but also her little brother, Tin, who is different to the rest and slowly turning wild. He enters the earth beneath their ramshackle house, and begins to dig and burrow, leaving them behind. Hartnett’s descriptions of Tin’s subterranean wanderings, the Australian landscape and the harshness of life in that era, made me feel uneasy and anxious but this is also a story, thankfully, of hope. So different, I remember thinking. So wonderfully different!
Thank you, Karen!
You can LIKE Karen on Facebook
PLEASE LEAVE A COMMENT - I LOVE TO KNOW WHAT YOU THINK!
January 12, 2014
BOOK REVIEW: The Midnight Dress by Karen Foxlee
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Title: The Midnight Dress
Author: Karen Foxlee
Publisher: Knopf Books for Younger Readers
Age Group & Genre: Contemporary Fiction for Young Adults
Reviewer: Kate Forsyth
The Blurb:
Quiet misfit Rose doesn't expect to fall in love with the sleepy beach town of Leonora. Nor does she expect to become fast friends with beautiful, vivacious Pearl Kelly, organizer of the high school float at the annual Harvest Festival parade. It's better not to get too attached when Rose and her father live on the road, driving their caravan from one place to the next whenever her dad gets itchy feet. But Rose can't resist the mysterious charms of the town or the popular girl, try as she might.
Pearl convinces Rose to visit Edie Baker, once a renowned dressmaker, now a rumored witch. Together Rose and Edie hand-stitch an unforgettable dress of midnight blue for Rose to wear at the Harvest Festival—a dress that will have long-lasting consequences on life in Leonora, a dress that will seal the fate of one of the girls. Karen Foxlee's breathtaking novel weaves friendship, magic, and a murder mystery into something moving, real, and distinctly original.
What I Thought:
The Midnight Dress is a beautiful, haunting, tragic tale of love and loss and yearning. Told in a series of stories within stories, it circles around the mysterious disappearance of a girl one night in a far north Queensland town.
Yet The Midnight Dress is as much a coming-of-age story as a mystery, and it has all the haunting beauty of a fairy tale. I loved the way it was structured, moving backwards and forwards in time, and telling stories within stories. The pace never flags, and the suspense is sustained beautifully.
The setting of a far north Queensland country town is superbly created, the characters are vivid and achingly alive, and the writing is exquisite. I particularly loved the character of the old seamstress Edie who, by teaching the young, sullen heroine Rose to sew and telling her stories of her own past, teaches Rose how to live.
This was one of the best books I read in 2013, and I’m keen to read more by Karen Foxlee now.
PLEASE LEAVE A COMMENT – I LOVE TO KNOW WHAT YOU THINK
January 9, 2014
INTERVIEW: Lynn Cullen, author of Mrs Poe
Lynn Cullen joins me today to chat about her new book MRS POE, which tells the story of the tragic love affair between Edgar Allen Poe and the poet Frances Osgood.
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Lynn Cullen
1. You’ve written nearly twenty books throughout your career. How does the publication of Mrs. Poe compare?
Each book comes from where I was in my life when I wrote them. When my children were young, I wrote children’s novels drawn from my own memories of being an angst-ridden adolescent.
When my daughters were in middle school, I became interested in Renaissance history and art, and so I taught myself about it by writing picture books, a young adult and an adult novel on the subject (I AM REMBRANDT’S DAUGHTER and THE CREATION OF EVE, among them.) Traveling to educate myself for these novels, I fell across the story of the mad Renaissance queen Juana. The resulting novel, REIGN OF MADNESS, might look like an historical novel but was really an exploration of the relationships between grown daughters and their mothers. Again, it came straight from what I was experiencing in my life.
Then, in September 2011, my husband became ill with a life-threatening case of encephalitis. Already he was a casualty of the Great Recession and not working—I was on my own when it came to supporting our family and terrified. The day my husband came home from the hospital, and I was pacing in my office, wondering how to survive, I stumbled upon the story of Francis Osgood, the abandoned young mother who fell in love with Edgar Allan Poe. Here was the perfect character into which I could pour my own fear and determination. Frances Osgood survived and so would I. We’re a couple of tough birds.
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2. Frances Osgood is an intriguing figure, not least because, in her time, she was just as well known for her own writings as she was for her friendship with Edgar Allen Poe. What drew you to her?
Frances Osgood was the perfect person for me to write about. Not only did she allow me to work out my own fears of survival, but she gave me a chance to talk about what it’s really like to be a writer since she was a poet. She let me pour into the pages the joys and terrors of the writing life. I also thought it would be fun to fantasize what it would be like to fall in love with the mysterious, wounded, sensuous Poe. I let my imagination go to work on Poe as a cross between Ralph Fiennes as Heathcliff in the film Wuthering Heights, Colin Firth in Diary of Bridget Jones, and Johnny Depp as a pirate (but sober) and voila, I understood Frances’s obsession.
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Frances Osgood Edgar Allan Poe
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His wife and cousin, Virginia Poe
3. After Frances finishes writing “So Let It Be,” she says, “I sat back, wrung out, as I always am after I have brought forth a true and honest work, regardless of its subject or length. It is as if producing a creative work tears a piece from your soul.” (p. 100) Is your writing process anything like hers? Can you tell us about it?
Frances’s writing life is my writing life. I tried to describe the pain and the joy of having work ripped from a part of your soul that’s mystery even to you. I wanted to get across how when the writing works, it’s a high that makes a junkie out of you. You have to have more—it feels almost chemical! When the writing doesn’t come, you feel as bleakly desperate and hopeless as if all your friends have abandoned you. To be a writer, you have to be tough as rawhide and as sensitive as an exposed nerve, all at once. As I tell my friends, writing is my therapy and it also causes me to require therapy.
4 How do you research your books?
Research is pure pleasure. First I read everything I can get my hands on, not only about the main characters, but about the setting, daily life, and other people from that time. Then, before I set out to write the book and several times during the actual writing, I visit my settings. I go to the places my characters were known to have lived, worked, and played in real life. I make a point of visiting the site of each scene in my book, even though the place may have completely changed. In the case of Mrs. Poe, I tramped the streets of lower Manhattan and Greenwich Village so thoroughly one week that I tore the meniscus in my knee. I also climbed into the clock tower of Trinity Church and stuck out my head through the rosette window, as Frances did in her book. I walked up the steps of Miss Lynch’s home on Waverly Place. I stood over the bed where Virginia Poe died in the Poe Cottage in what is now the Bronx.
5 Like Frances Osgood, you have written works for both children and adults. Does the process differ? If so, how?
There’s not much difference between writing a book for young adults than for adults—the same research, attention to detail, and time needed to complete the work is required. The only difference is that the main character in a YA is younger and therefore the writer has to think like a teenager. I’ve written picture books and middle-grade novels as well, and though I took the same care with each word, there are less sentences, which equals less time required to finish a draft. In the early days of raising three girls born within a four year span, it was important to be able to write books that didn’t require the eight hours of daily writing that I put in now.
6 When Frances tells Reverend Griswold that she has not read Margaret Fuller’s column about John Humphrey Noyes, he chastises her, saying that she must keep up with the news because “As an important woman poet, it is your duty to speak out against false prophets.” (p. 205). As a writer yourself, do you think that it is the responsibility of the artist to speak out against “false prophets” as Griswold suggests?
I think all serious writers are articulating their personal philosophies in their story, even if the book isn’t overtly about a political agenda. I don’t know if it’s so much that artists feel a responsibility to speak out—it’s more like we just can’t help ourselves from sharing our views!
7 Since its publication in 1845, “The Raven” has become a canonical text. It has inspired other writings ranging from Vladimir Nabokov to Ray Bradbury, and has even been parodied. Why do you think the poem has had such an enduring appeal?
“The Raven” is catchy and vivid. It’s a movie in words. Also, Poe’s legend as a frightening, half-mad genius (thank you, Rufus Griswold!) brings a darkness to the poem that has thrilled people for more than 150 years. In addition, its immense popularity in Poe’s day helped cement it into the American canon. We picture Poe’s raven almost as automatically and as mindlessly of its origins as we say “OK.” Personally, I don’t think it’s his most honest work. For authentically expressed anguish, I love “Eulalume.”
8 What would you like your readers who are interested in Edgar Allen Poe’s writings to take away from Mrs. Poe?
Mainly, I hope readers will think about how his difficult life shaped his writing. He was a wounded beast and his own worst enemy, but that he put everything he had into his work. What I think Poe strove for hardest was simply to be loved.
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PLEASE LEAVE A COMMENT - I LOVE TO KNOW WHAT YOU THINK
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Lynn Cullen
1. You’ve written nearly twenty books throughout your career. How does the publication of Mrs. Poe compare?
Each book comes from where I was in my life when I wrote them. When my children were young, I wrote children’s novels drawn from my own memories of being an angst-ridden adolescent.
When my daughters were in middle school, I became interested in Renaissance history and art, and so I taught myself about it by writing picture books, a young adult and an adult novel on the subject (I AM REMBRANDT’S DAUGHTER and THE CREATION OF EVE, among them.) Traveling to educate myself for these novels, I fell across the story of the mad Renaissance queen Juana. The resulting novel, REIGN OF MADNESS, might look like an historical novel but was really an exploration of the relationships between grown daughters and their mothers. Again, it came straight from what I was experiencing in my life.
Then, in September 2011, my husband became ill with a life-threatening case of encephalitis. Already he was a casualty of the Great Recession and not working—I was on my own when it came to supporting our family and terrified. The day my husband came home from the hospital, and I was pacing in my office, wondering how to survive, I stumbled upon the story of Francis Osgood, the abandoned young mother who fell in love with Edgar Allan Poe. Here was the perfect character into which I could pour my own fear and determination. Frances Osgood survived and so would I. We’re a couple of tough birds.
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2. Frances Osgood is an intriguing figure, not least because, in her time, she was just as well known for her own writings as she was for her friendship with Edgar Allen Poe. What drew you to her?
Frances Osgood was the perfect person for me to write about. Not only did she allow me to work out my own fears of survival, but she gave me a chance to talk about what it’s really like to be a writer since she was a poet. She let me pour into the pages the joys and terrors of the writing life. I also thought it would be fun to fantasize what it would be like to fall in love with the mysterious, wounded, sensuous Poe. I let my imagination go to work on Poe as a cross between Ralph Fiennes as Heathcliff in the film Wuthering Heights, Colin Firth in Diary of Bridget Jones, and Johnny Depp as a pirate (but sober) and voila, I understood Frances’s obsession.
[image error] [image error]
Frances Osgood Edgar Allan Poe
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His wife and cousin, Virginia Poe
3. After Frances finishes writing “So Let It Be,” she says, “I sat back, wrung out, as I always am after I have brought forth a true and honest work, regardless of its subject or length. It is as if producing a creative work tears a piece from your soul.” (p. 100) Is your writing process anything like hers? Can you tell us about it?
Frances’s writing life is my writing life. I tried to describe the pain and the joy of having work ripped from a part of your soul that’s mystery even to you. I wanted to get across how when the writing works, it’s a high that makes a junkie out of you. You have to have more—it feels almost chemical! When the writing doesn’t come, you feel as bleakly desperate and hopeless as if all your friends have abandoned you. To be a writer, you have to be tough as rawhide and as sensitive as an exposed nerve, all at once. As I tell my friends, writing is my therapy and it also causes me to require therapy.
4 How do you research your books?
Research is pure pleasure. First I read everything I can get my hands on, not only about the main characters, but about the setting, daily life, and other people from that time. Then, before I set out to write the book and several times during the actual writing, I visit my settings. I go to the places my characters were known to have lived, worked, and played in real life. I make a point of visiting the site of each scene in my book, even though the place may have completely changed. In the case of Mrs. Poe, I tramped the streets of lower Manhattan and Greenwich Village so thoroughly one week that I tore the meniscus in my knee. I also climbed into the clock tower of Trinity Church and stuck out my head through the rosette window, as Frances did in her book. I walked up the steps of Miss Lynch’s home on Waverly Place. I stood over the bed where Virginia Poe died in the Poe Cottage in what is now the Bronx.
5 Like Frances Osgood, you have written works for both children and adults. Does the process differ? If so, how?
There’s not much difference between writing a book for young adults than for adults—the same research, attention to detail, and time needed to complete the work is required. The only difference is that the main character in a YA is younger and therefore the writer has to think like a teenager. I’ve written picture books and middle-grade novels as well, and though I took the same care with each word, there are less sentences, which equals less time required to finish a draft. In the early days of raising three girls born within a four year span, it was important to be able to write books that didn’t require the eight hours of daily writing that I put in now.
6 When Frances tells Reverend Griswold that she has not read Margaret Fuller’s column about John Humphrey Noyes, he chastises her, saying that she must keep up with the news because “As an important woman poet, it is your duty to speak out against false prophets.” (p. 205). As a writer yourself, do you think that it is the responsibility of the artist to speak out against “false prophets” as Griswold suggests?
I think all serious writers are articulating their personal philosophies in their story, even if the book isn’t overtly about a political agenda. I don’t know if it’s so much that artists feel a responsibility to speak out—it’s more like we just can’t help ourselves from sharing our views!
7 Since its publication in 1845, “The Raven” has become a canonical text. It has inspired other writings ranging from Vladimir Nabokov to Ray Bradbury, and has even been parodied. Why do you think the poem has had such an enduring appeal?
“The Raven” is catchy and vivid. It’s a movie in words. Also, Poe’s legend as a frightening, half-mad genius (thank you, Rufus Griswold!) brings a darkness to the poem that has thrilled people for more than 150 years. In addition, its immense popularity in Poe’s day helped cement it into the American canon. We picture Poe’s raven almost as automatically and as mindlessly of its origins as we say “OK.” Personally, I don’t think it’s his most honest work. For authentically expressed anguish, I love “Eulalume.”
8 What would you like your readers who are interested in Edgar Allen Poe’s writings to take away from Mrs. Poe?
Mainly, I hope readers will think about how his difficult life shaped his writing. He was a wounded beast and his own worst enemy, but that he put everything he had into his work. What I think Poe strove for hardest was simply to be loved.
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PLEASE LEAVE A COMMENT - I LOVE TO KNOW WHAT YOU THINK
January 7, 2014
SPOTLIGHT: Lynn Cullen on what makes a reader
Today on the blog, I'm very pleased to host Lynn Cullen, the author of the brilliant novel MRS POE which I enjoyed immensely. Here she talks about what makes a reader:
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You are What You Read
Most authors will tell you that they grew up with a lot of books in their house, but I can’t.
We had two bookcases in our house, one mostly devoted to a set of encyclopedias, the other full of novels my sisters had read decades earlier, books which had been popular in the 40’s, but had fallen out of favor—but not out of our bookshelves—by the 60’s.
Other hoary tomes sat next to the Booth Tarkington and Ayn Rand novels. In particular I was fond of a venerable medical dictionary from the turn of the century, illustrated in full color for at-home instruction. I spent many a fascinated hour looking at the picture of the full-term baby shown in a cross section of a pregnant woman’s body. I fervently loved that pink baby, huddling there in her magenta womb, sucking her thumb and holding the viscous purple rope of her umbilical cord like a plaything.
There, too, was an ancient cookbook from which, at thirteen years of age, I taught myself how to prepare a turkey for Thanksgiving, once my mother, worn out from cooking for nine, threatened to heat up a pre-made frozen turkey roll for our feast. I became a whiz at creamed peas-- I could whip up a white sauce faster than Betty Crocker. Everything I learned about the basis of cooking came from that volume used by homemakers in the Great Depression.
Another shelf favorite was the row of Reader’s Digests, back issues which had at last found their final resting place after serving time in the bathroom and the glove box of the family car. (It was from my dad that I developed the habit of keeping reading material on hand at all times.) While each of these various reading sources played a critical part in my development, it was the gift set of books given one Christmas that put me on the road to who I am today.
They were meant for the whole family: eight volumes collecting literature from around the world for young people. There was a volume on Folktales, one on Children’s Stories, another on Legends and Myths, one on Adventures, and so on. I read them all, as I read the whole set of encyclopedias—this is what you do when the selection at home is limited and you’ve already read every fictionalized biography and novel in the children’s section in your local library. I don’t recall my siblings ever touching the set. They felt like a personal gift.
It was the myths and legends that spoke most clearly, introducing me to the way people thought back in time and in faraway places. I developed a taste for history not seen in textbooks, history that had little to do with wars and dates, but about how people have thought through the centuries. I loved how the Greek gods were just like us—jealous, petty, desirous, yet noble, wise, and sometimes kind. Same for the myths and legends of Native Americans, the ancient Romans, the Egyptians: the actions of their gods and heroes ran the gamut of the best and worst in human compulsions. They were character studies writ large.
The Illustrated Guide to Mythical Creatures
I didn’t realize it then, but through these books, I was learning everything that I needed to know as a novelist. These “children’s tales” contained explorations of every native weakness and glory inherent to our kind. They fed my unconscious with sympathy, horror, and love, mostly love, for our perplexing species. They gave me the empathy for our complicated tribe that is crucial for any novelist who cares about examining how we tick.
It can be said that books have made me what I am. Perhaps, in our individual ways, this is true of us all.
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