Trent Jamieson's Blog, page 3

2022 A Writing Year

What an exhausting year for us all. I swear I caught every virus going, missed more work than I've ever missed, and spent more time lying on the couch exhausted than I have in the previous three years combined, Parenting and viruses are an awful combination, but we've had a few good weeks now and I am very grateful for those.

This was the year that the Stone Road was finally released into the wild (twice), Day Boy was published in the US, The Giant and the Sea had a small US release, and I sold a few short stories (one of which was published in the Saturday Paper).

I also worked on the edits of my next picture book Mr Impoppable, and had the pleasure of seeing Brent Wilson take my work and run with it. Writing picture books is kind of like writing poetry, only it’s half a poem until the artist works on it. You get an unexpected reflection of the work, and it is such a delight.

I go into a picture book with no expectations, other than to be surprised. The writing is a surprise, but seeing work develop is a gift and a delight. Brent Wilson’s art perfectly matched and elevated the book, and I can’t wait for people to read it next year. I also got a cover quote from one of my picture book heroes so I am beyond delighted. I love picture books so much, and I still have to pinch myself when one is accepted. Hopefully there will be many more.

2023 will hopefully see me finishing the novel I just printed out. I’ve been working on this for nearly three years, and it’s the biggest, most complicated book I’ve ever attempted, almost half again as long as Stone Road. But I’ve enjoyed the challenge it’s presented and I’m looking forward to seeing where it takes me next year.

Mr Impoppable will be out next year with Larrikin House in May, and a couple of other projects should see print. So, there should be a bit of continuity with this year.

Looking back, what first felt like me hardly doing anything this year has turned into something more upbeat and positive. I can’t complain about that. I hit a lot of professional milestones this year (some I can’t announce yet), and hitting them reminded me how absolutely out of your control so many elements of the publishing industry are, and that’s even before you find out if people actually respond to the work you produce. I’m so lucky to have an excellent agent at my back, and a career that keeps ticking along in its humble way. I’m also lucky to have a wonderful partner, and a great workplace to keep me on an even keel.

The things I can control (well sorta) I keep on doing. The most important being that you keep showing up for your writing. Even if it’s only to nudge a story forward by a few words. You keep showing up, because when the time and energy present themselves, you’re ready to run. And when you’re too tired, or too busy, well you have to be satisfied with that slow nudging (and you have to be kind to yourself) life’s too short and troubled to turn your joy to drudgery.

Bring on 2023.

Books are in the Wild

So, the Erewhon Day Boy and Stone Road editions are now available everywhere that sells books - or you should at least be able to order them. You can certainly get them from Avid Reader. They're absolutely beautiful.

We've had such an assortment of illnesses this last month and a bit that I've had little time to reflect on that.

I love both of those books so much, so I am hoping that they find some new readers, and I'm already back into the depths of my next novel. I've no idea when this one will be finished, but I feel like I am slowly making progress.

Writing a novel is such a peculiar thing. Most of the time you kind of feel like you're just tooling around, gathering words and images, trying to make sense of everything, trying to make it make sense (you want it to be readable, well, MORE than readable) and it never really quite feels like it's work, or serious work at any rate. Every time, I have to remind myself that this is actually how I write everything. Not knowing much, feeling towards that knowing, knitting characters out of words. It's always a bit confronting.

On a lighter note, I've seen the almost final art work for my next picture book Mr Impoppable - to say I love it is an understatement. Artist Brent Wilson has elevated the material, made it sillier and more cinematic than I could have hoped for. This one will be out mid 2023 through Larrikin House, and I am truly looking forward to taking this to schools - something I never really got the chance to do with Giant and the Sea.

Brent and I both reckon we've given parents who need a quick Book Week outfit a gift with this one. Pre-orders should be happening soon. And as soon as there is a bit of Brent's art that I can use, I'll put it up here.

THE END OF THE ROAD

The Stone Road is releasing in the US next Tuesday. I've been waiting for this moment for over two years, never quite believing that this weird book was ever going to come out. It was nearly two years ago when I saw the cover art for the book by Qistina Khalidah, and fell in love with it. I'm so excited that it's finally out there (I know it exists, I've seen photos of the book IRL).

Once it and it's companion Day Boy are released, I'm looking forward to getting back to the big, unwieldy draft I've been working on for the past two years. It's been a very fractured process, the state of the world was and continues to be incredibly unfocussing. I've been living with the Stone Road in the rear-view mirror and up ahead for maybe a bit too long.

I don't think anyone expected it take this long, certainly not the wonderful crew at Erewhon Books (the nicest bunch of publishing people you could ever hope to be involved with), certainly not my fantastic agent Alex Adsett, nor my family, it was just the way it turned out.

Since this book was drafted I have had two children - one is asleep next to me at the moment, we both have colds. My life has changed with all the joys and turbulence that kids bring, and it's changed for the better.

Books are an act of faith, and hope. You write them with everything you have, and then you've just gotta see how it plays out, and move onto the next thing. Still plenty of words in me, and things clamouring to be finished.

So here's a tiny sliver of that book. Nan talking to Jean about the March family's challenges, and Nan's in particular.

“At the time, it didn’t feel that easy, but it was a simple challenge. I think, at the heart of me, I’m a simple person. You, my love, are not. Neither is your mother, and that’s what terrifies me the most. Your challenge won’t be crude and wild, nor rushing like the tide. It will be a web spun around you, and it’s been that way since the moment you were born.”“How do I survive that?”Nan held my hand. “We do the best we can, then do better, and hope that is enough.”

Two Covers

Here are the covers for Day Boy and The Stone Road, art by Qistina Khalidah, and design by Dana Li. I could look at these for hours.

The books talk to each other in so many ways; structurally; the ways the characters are focused on their individual communities; and the different wildernesses inside their hearts. These covers do the same.

I've had some wonderful cover art over the years, but I think these might be my favourites.

The detail in the leaves of the Stone Road, the kind of unformed nature of the background of the Day Boy cover (Mark is unformed, the book is the shaping of him). Mark looking towards the reader (defying them to pick holes in what he is saying), Jean looking away (as though she is going to lead you through the story and down the Stone Road), they communicate things that I hope the books do as well.

There are all sorts of ambiguities.

Fantasy is my great literary love. I guess, quieter, inward looking fantasy with a thread of shadow. And these two books of small towns, monsters, and the battles of the heart, and the quiet, gentle (but often inwardly epic, or epically silly, or heartbreakingly sad) moments of a life are so well served by this art. Everything I know and feel about growing up is in these books, the confusions and clarities (mostly confusions, but the clarities when they come are so sweet).

Jean and Mark have been such a large part of my life, I'm so glad they have been given covers as lovely as these in which to talk to each other.

BWF, Which Leads to A World Which is Worlds

I'll be at the Brisbane Writers Festival this weekend, talking about The Stone Road and writing Fantasy. The book goes to the printers in the US this week, and it has been a delight working over it again, visiting the characters (who I love), and making a few tweaks here and there.

I've also worked on some edits of the US edition of Day Boy which comes out in August. (Yes, I have a book coming out in July and August*). It's been great to look at both of the books and see which bits cross over. I like the various ways you can read them.

The Stone Road is sort of a sequel to Day Boy, they're set in the same world, and reading both of the books enriches the other. But they work perfectly well read independently. And a close reading will show that there are differences in the world. Everyone experiences this world differently, and I see this as a kind of fantastical example of that.

I've worked on a series of short stories set in this world too (more on that down the track, hopefully) but you can see that sort of world building expanded there. I've always seen this story world as a voice world (with one exception) and containing a pretty close point of view character in each tale, and because I'm mostly interested in writing characters who don't completely understand their world, and because everyone understands their world in a different way, you get the same setting, but different. Ask a family about their experiences of certain events and you will get different stories, that's something that really interests me in writing first person fantasy.

I've been writing lists of images and themes that are mirrored in both books, and also the way they reinforce and contradict each other. If I get time I'll pop them up here. (Doors have a lot of significance in these books, and edges, and knives)

My world building is very much about evocation rather than systems of magic. I tend to stick to fairytale logic, but the rawer sort. There are rules, but they are tenuous, and easily broken, and the most useful sort of rule is to avoid the dangerous places and things, or at least be respectful of them, and to serve and nurture community.

One thing that both books focus on in different ways are circles, literal and metaphorical.

There are the ways the narratives look at seasons and time**, but also the ways both stories are ripples from, or towards acts of violence. I feel we are fed violence in so much of our media, and are too often given violence as the only appropriate response. One of these books is about that response, the other is a recoiling from that response.

Every act of violence (against our loved ones, against our enemies) diminishes us and our communities. I still don't know if I have served that argument well enough in these stories, but I keep trying.

* Actually, The Giant and The Sea is having a small release in the US in June, so that's June, July, August. (I feel tired already)

**The Stone Road in particular, plays loose with time. Though both books deal, in a way, with deadlines.