Cat Hellisen's Blog, page 18

Bed-ridden reading

Confession: I hate reading aloud.

Don’t get me wrong, I love reading, but reading aloud feels like such a chore, and I taught the Spawn to read as quickly as I could so I could stop reading to them (terrible parent confession hahaha). But this week we are all sick as can be, so with my croaky voice and my many interruptions for nose-blowing, I hauled out Robin Hood and the Men of the Greenwood and began to read to my attentive little audience (one Elder Spawn, one Younger Spawn, one fluffy cat).

And you know what? It was kinda awesome. The words read differently aloud, they take on a new flow and pattern, and from now on I’m going to make a concerted effort to do more Reading for Spawn (and interested felines). They love it, and I can only see it benefiting me as a writer.

Okay back to bed with me.

Nerine Dorman talks Fantasy and the Boy Hero, Tropes and Twists

I’m taking a back seat today and letting author Nerine Dorman drive this hearse of mine and talk about Boy Heroes. Nerine writes dark fantasy, and The Guardian’s Wyrd is her first foray into children’s literature.

Hands up if you watched The Neverending Story when you were a wee sprog. Extra Nerine points awarded if you cried when Artax died in the Swamp of Sadness. This classic film is based on a novel by Michael Ende, and it plays with a common fantasy trope that is as old as the dust of the planet Tatooine.

We’ve all encountered that well-worn trope of the farm boy who discovers that he is secretly a prince, haven’t we?

The boy on a quest is certainly not a new concept – in fact many fantasy or SF classics begin with the boy who has been the catalyst for world-changing events. He is Luke Skywalker, Ged, Rand al’Thor, Atreyu, Bastian Balthazar Bux, Frodo Baggins, Eragon, Harry Potter, Garion, Jaxom… I’m pretty sure you’ll have a few of your own favourites to that list.

They all have something in common. No matter whether they were of common or noble birth, they all went from the ordinary to the extraordinary, and embarked on a great quest, that often involves slaying monsters and retrieving some sort of McGuffin, be it a golden fleece or a magical sword.

Why is it that this trope keeps recurring? Isn’t it tired already? Why is this sort of story so satisfying?

To answer that question, I suggest looking at the words of mythologist Joseph Campbell, who had a fascination with history, myths and legends, that he examined in his many written works and lectures.

According to Campbell, a common thread runs through the majority of our cultural heritage, be it among the Hopi of North America, Europe’s ancient Celts, the Scandinavian Northmen or the adherents of India’s Hindu religion. He names this common thread the Monomyth or the Hero’s Journey. Campbell’s book, The Hero with a Thousand Faces makes for fascinating reading if this piques your interest.

To sum it up, the trope of the boy-hero setting out appeals to many of us precisely because it strikes a deeply rooted chord within our collective subconscious that spans our storytelling tradition from the earliest days when people first gathered around a crackling fire.

Though in fantasy and, to an extent science fiction, this trope does play itself out with greater frequency than other forms of genre fiction, it’s not so much the underlying framework that counts, but what author do to make it their own. As much as we get told to write what we know, real life often won’t fulfil readers’ expectations. After all, we ask ourselves, why is it that we read particular books?

I’m sure many of us can answer that it is because we wish to escape to a world other than the one in which we live. Real life is often frustrating, ugly and filled with limitations. What better than to step into another’s life where the hero overcomes many obstacles.

And I suspect, this is why our boy-hero (or girl-hero, depending on what your prefer) will never get old.

People have asked me why I’ve chosen to write a teenage character for my latest release, The Guardian’s Wyrd, when the majority of my fiction is aimed at adult readers. The answer is simple – there’s nothing more exciting than setting out on an adventure with someone who stands at the cusp of great change. I want to read about what the hero does before he or she learns to swing that sword. I want to share in their excitement when they unlock their powers. I want to grow with them when they have their firsts.

So I invite you to step into the shoes of Jay and Rowan as they embark upon a quest. You will never be sixteen again, but you can always heed the call to adventure.

  Follow Nerine on Twitter  and sign up for her newsletter.

Add The Guardian’s Wyrd to your Goodreads list and purchase at Amazon or Kobo

Brrr

It is a truth universally acknowledged that Cat is a Cat of Very Little Brain.

Or at least, a cat with a rather poor memory. It’s winter again. I forgot how cold it gets, also how damp and grey. *stares at towering piles of mouldering laundry* I’ve always told myself that I will never own a tumble dryer because electricity costs but the time has come for me to face the truth. Having no tumble dryer is fine in Joburg where the winters are dry and the summer rain comes like clockwork at precisely 3:12 pm, but in Cape Town…not so much.

Yesterday I was trapped in the outdoor office by hail. Then wind, then deluge, then more hail. During most of this the sun was shining through one blue and spotless section of sky. So, yeah.

Anyway, back to my dryer. Since I have no knowledge of home appliances, I did the logical thing and asked facebook, and I ended up not buying a dryer at all, but some weird little spin dryer called a spindel. We shall see.

Somehow I shall make it through winter, and in the meantime I will have tea parties with the Spawn, finish these godforsaken edits, feed the winged pigs all the birdseed, and get used to wearing the same clothes endlessly.

WIN STUFF. BASICALLY, WIN MY BOOK

To celebrate the paperback début of House of Sand and Secrets, Folded Wherry are running a give away on Goodreads (alas, US, Canada and UK only. I will be running another one on the SA side when I have copies. :D)

 

Because May 31 is the most awesome day in the world (I was born then, so naturally it should be a day of universal celebration) it seems as good a day as any to announce the winner.. Until then, go clickenzee the link.

People have said nice stuff about my book, and you should trust them, because they didn’t write it.

“It is deeply thought-provoking, movingly romantic, and heart-wrenchingly satisfying. A definite favorite of the year, this is one story I don’t want to forget.”  – Ivy Book Bindings

“House of Sand and Secrets leaves When the Sea Is Rising Red behind in quality, feels, and originality, an incredibly rare quality in a sequel indeed.” – A Reader of Fictions

“What I like about Cat Hellisen’s stories is that she has created a complex and rich fantasy world with a detailed society and political climate, and stuck a very human, personal story about one girl within it.” – Love is Not a Triangle

“I think above all else it is clear that Cat Hellisen is a master storyteller. She has this boundless imagination and she writes books that don’t really fit into certain categories…” – The Flyleaf Review.

 

Good luck!

Short Story One – Heirloom Dreams

Folded Wherry is gearing up for the paperback release of House of Sand and Secrets, and as part of the countdown, they’re releasing a short story from the world of Oreyn every week.

The first one is Heirloom Dreams and it’s up now on Amazon if you want a short story Hobverse-fix to read with your morning coffee.

Ok, now I can do my little dance of squee.

 

A Sale! A Sale!

The Boy and I have been ridiculously busy pulling up carpets and scraping away glue and sanding and varnishing and painting. We’ve never done any DIY in our lives before so this is a whole new experience. Considering what a bunch of noobs we are, I’d say the place is looking pretty good.

 

All that, along with turning in my Beastkeeper edits, all our weird hobbies and things like walking the hounds for miles along the coast, has left me little time to think or talk about writing. I still write, but mostly in some kind of daze.

(I love the eerie melancholy of the beach in autumn. Also, we saw the beach sledding dog team again. So weird.)

 

I do have some rather wonderful news: I can finally announce that I sold my story The Girls Who Go Below to F&SF, so I am pretty damn excited about that. You could probably hear me squee all the way in the northern hemisphere when I got the email. :D. I’ve slacked on my monthly short fiction though. This weekend I finally started what was probably March’s short, hahaha. It’s odd, and it connects to another (unsold) short story, and peripherally to another unfinished novel.

It’s while I was opening up that novel (which I’d given up on about 2 years ago because I couldn’t imagine my agent being able to do anything with it), that I realised I really really liked what I had written, and when I am done with these rewrites for N&V, I am going to tackle it again.

 

 He’d had to go back for the rest of his stuff, but of the human Jacques there’d been no sign. The Caterpillar was up on the ceiling though, slowly working at a cocoon in the far right corner. It had said nothing to him while he’d packed his bag, and nothing to him when he left.

Amanda had been out. Daniel had left her a note, and snapped it under a penguin refrigerator magnet. The fridge door was full of them. He didn’t remember her collecting penguin-themed anything before. The note said simply. I have my stuff. O. There hadn’t been much else to say.

There’d been a new painting in the living room, the easel positioned off to one corner, opposite to the Caterpillar. Another one of Amanda’s fish things, the bones splayed out around the canvas, rusted hooks embedded in paint and material. It stank. The fish hooks had spelled out fuck you. As with all things Amanda, the message could have been for anyone.

But now, here in this cluttered, but ultimately barren room, Daniel could put away Amanda and her repulsive new lover and the fish hooks that she’d pulled out of his heart.

Instead he listened to the silence, the rustle under the bed. A silent rustle, too small to be real. After a while, Daniel bent over to peer underneath. His hair fell down, kissing the industrial beige carpet, like a dry brush loaded with watercolour. There was nothing under the bed. When he drew up again, Daniel saw his hair had inked feathery brown letters on the wool. This is Judith’s tenuous grip on reality.

Shit, he thought.

I solemnly swear that I am going to finish this book and find out what happens. SWEAR IT. PROMISES.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Waking – Apex 58

Holy Cheese, I am bad at marketing. I did mention this story on twitter, but forgot to actually, yanno, blog about it. *side-eyes self*

Pretty cover, yes?  So, my story about dead mechanical angels and how to fit into the mess that is family is live in issue 58 of Apex Magazine. It’s called Waking, and um, yeah.

The Museum of Angelic Artefacts was a road–side attraction; a blip on the map where families stopped to stretch their legs and maybe take in an old film of the visitations.

See?

Knuckling Down

I need for 2014 to be a more productive year writing-wise, and now that we’ve moved house and that stress is out of the way, I’ve decided to concentrate a bit more on all those books I’d abandoned because I’d lost my faith in my vision for them.

Partly it’s because I’ve realised that while some books just aren’t right for large (or even mid-sized) publishers, that doesn’t take away their worth. I mean, I *know* this, I can see it in the books I like, but for some reason it didn’t translate to my own work. If a large publisher couldn’t see any value in a book I wrote beyond “nice prose”, then it was essentially valueless.

Yes. I am well aware that I am an idiot.

So I am working again on those projects I abandoned for lack of commercial appeal. (Ha! Dear Cat, when did you ever successfully write a commercial novel – get your head on right.) So I am working on my epic multi-viewpoint saga about gods and magic and destroyed angels and using sacrifices to turn all humanity into gods and how that might be, like, a totally bad idea. It’s also way more romantic than it sounds, though *my* version of romantic, which is often fractured and twisted and maybe more than a little brittle, but no less true.

After that it’s back to the book about going mad and the power of gift economies and how to kill god.

And then there’s my little booklet about finding love with memories after the world has been destroyed and all that’s left of it is fragments of the human imagination, and the aliens which live off said imagination and pieces of human skin. I have plans for that much-maligned baby.

Also, some short stories! Because that’s what I do now – write one a month, just to make myself be productive on some level.

So, in order to get all this stuff done, I’ve taken to being all proper about working, like, even keeping time sheets of the work I’m doing. It’s weird, and feels slightly wrong, but also kinda cool to have a record that shows I am not just wallowing in my own filth while clutching a half-finished bottle of wine.

So that’s cool.

What’s up with House of Sand and Secrets?

Some of you may already know that I wrote a sort-of sequel to When the Sea is Rising Red. (And if you didn’t, you do now.) I say sort-of sequel because the two books are intended to be stand-alone novels within a greater universe of stories. Some reviewers disagree, and feel the two books go hand in hand, calling them “a solid duet”.

I wrote House of Sand and Secrets because although I was happy to see Felicita’s growth from the spoiled, naive girl who believes in her family’s superiority, I wasn’t happy enough. I wanted to see what happened to her when she had no family or friends to support her, in a strange, hostile city, caught up in a marriage of convenience. I wanted her to show me how she was going to rise above all of that, find her own power, and perhaps most importantly, how she was going  to deal with her guilt.

This was not going to be a YA book, which made things a bit awkward (apparently publishers don’t like it when you jump marketing categories .) In the end, it became the flagship book for Folded Wherry (where you can get various DRM-free ebook versions. It’s also available at Weightless Books, for those who hate buying through Amazon), because working with someone who totally understands your vision for your world is YAY!

I found that working without the constraints of YA expectations also gave me a certain amount of freedom to play with things I could only hint at in When the Sea is Rising Red, and I feel it’s a stronger book for that. (So do others.) At the end of House of Sand and Secrets, we’ve included the opening chapters of the next book, Bones like Bridges. For those of you who remember Hob an Lam, they are one and the same, and I can’t wait for people to read Jek and Sel’s story, and to see Felicita’s world in the future. I’ve also got some short stories planned out, so there should be plenty of Hobverse coming out in the next few years.

 

 

I RETURN!

Some of you may have noticed I have been a little bit missing. We just moved house and I had to wait to get internet reconnected. In the interim I rang up a hefty phonebill going on twitter so I guess I’m an addict?

 

I did manage some creative stuff while away, about which I will do proper posts.

 

Until then, I shall bask in the gloriousness that is my wifi.