Maureen Flynn's Blog, page 7

Crime writing tips: Some lessons I learnt from Jane Harper at the Sydney Writers Festival

Ah, the Sydney Writers Festival. That place of baby boomers and a strange distrust of genre fiction in the program. That place where I actually got told off in a session for live-tweeting by the person sitting next to me. Yes. Live-tweeting at a writers festival? Who knew that was a thing? Not this lady #stillbitter. What a strange relationship I have with it.

Still, I was grateful to my friend, Lisa Fleetwood, for taking me along to a session with crime novelist, Jane Harper. Myself, Lisa and Robin got to listen for an hour to Jane’s writing process and experiences and I really did learn quite a bit. Enough so, that I went and bought her debut, The Dry, immediately afterwards. We even got a sneaky pic too.

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Photo curtesy of Robin Elizabeth

Things I learnt from Jane Harper: A summary for aspiring writers

1. How to write great suspense? Focus on your plot, a great opening hook and how you start and end your chapters.

2. It’s OK for the first draft to be a skeleton effort. The Dry was 40 000 words and in published form it’s 90 000. Just get your idea down on paper.

3. Writing courses are helpful for meeting like people and getting motivated to finish something. Consider trying one out. (Inkashlings note: I have on more than one occasion and they have definitely moved my work ahead of the game faster and I wouldn’t have finished my first manuscript without one).

4. When writing crime, it isn’t the crime itself that’s what keeps readers interested. It’s the ripple effect that crime has on people and their relationships with each other. Remember this.

5. People in the modern world have short attention spans. Imagine your story is an online newspaper article and your reader is someone who reads a lot online. Make sure your story is pacy enough, with strong, suspenseful ends to chapters, to keep the reader keeping on reading.

Jane is not the first person to give this advice, but it was a great session well worth sharing. Hope this helps someone out there!

Doctor Who Re-watch: The End Of The World

The second episode of New Who’s first season sees Rose and The Doctor race forwards in time to the end of the world itself. Borrowing (as Who does often) from Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, the earth’s end is a spectacle for rich aliens as they watch the sun burn up the planet from a save distance, complete with gift giving and waiters.

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Pre-Title Sequence

Maureen: I really loved the opening sequence to this episode. We learn just enough about how The Doctor rolls (manically and with little care to his companions possible reactions, thoughts or feelings about what they are about to see) to get an idea of where the season is headed. You can really tell the show was written by fans for fans, with the mention of the New Roman Empire instantly making me want to run off and check for the fan fic of that particular adventure. I also noticed Murray Gold’s brilliant soundtrack with a vengeance in this opening. ‘Welcome to the end of the world,’ may be one of the best Who hooks ever to an episode.

Ben: Ahh… these ye olde special effects really take me back to watching Doctor Who back in high school… Anyways, this pre-title sequence sequence had some real snap crackle and pop to it, with Rose and the Doctor flirting up a storm! The Doctor was talking a big game about how far forward in time the TARDIS had travelled and Rose was acting suitably impressed, it was all very high school. But more importantly, their chemistry is excellent, especially in comparison to the chemistry between Rose and Mickey. Which brings us to The Doctor having the excellent idea to bring Rose to the literal death of the Earth! Great second date material there, Doctor.

The Companion

Maureen: I liked Rose a lot more this episode (probably because she was sans Mickey). The banter between her and The Doctor felt more natural and their chemistry is strong. I love how out of place and confused Rose feels when The Doctor tells her she’s surrounded by different species of aliens because it felt realistic.

Rose: The aliens are just… so alien.

The Doctor: Good thing I didn’t take you to the deep South.

For the first time, the romance angle is overt. We see it in the exchange between Jabe and The Doctor about Rose’s function/relationship to The Doctor (Wife? Partner? Concubine? Prostitute?), The Doctor calling Rose his plus one and Rose telling The Doctor to go pollinate with Jabe and that she wanted him home by midnight.

I loved how Rose acted around the blue mechanic. She is interested and compassionate in what was a lovely little scene. I was less of a fan of how Rose interacted with Cassandra. She was fairly harsh in her assessment of Cassandra as ‘a bitchy trampoline… just lipstick and skin.’ To be fair, she is overwhelmed and confused by her surroundings so some frustration and snappiness is to be expected. She also didn’t do much other than be a damsel in distress while The Doctor and poor Jabe solved the mystery of the episode, but hey, it’s early days for Rose yet.

Ben: Poor Rose understandably had a bit of a tough time this episode. Being brought 5 billion years into the future to witness the destruction of the Earth is something of a mood killer. And then to be introduced to the ever so naughty Cassandra, who claims to be the last pure human whilst having had every last bit of humanity surgically removed? It’s enough to put even the happiest person in a mood, and from early on she clearly feels very awkward and out of place.

It is a bit disappointing how she gets sidelined for most of this episode, though. She has some good moments being snarky at Cassandra and Jade, and the touching moment when the Doctor does some technobabble to her phone, enabling her to call home and talk to her mum. But mostly she’s either having a crisis of identity and freaking out that she’s travelling space and time with an alien she knows basically nothing about. Which, as I’ve said already, is pretty understandable considering the circumstances.

The Doctor

Maureen: This episode developed Nine nicely, letting us know he is broken and damaged and very, very angry. This Doctor is brutal, unafraid of punishing people and aliens when they seriously mess up. He also is filled with unbearable guilt; about the universe, about his people and about Jabe too.

Jabe: Stop wasting time… Time Lord.

I still remember how thrilling that line sounded as a teen!

‘Everything has an end and everything dies,’ Nine says to Rose, trying to justify why he let Cassandra die, but you know he’s talking about brave Jabe too.

We also hear the first about the dreaded last of the Time Lords trope, but it’s fresh at this early point and I loved Eccleston’s delivery.

The Doctor: My planet’s gone. It’s dead. It burned like the earth. It’s just rock and dust… there was a war and we lost… I’m the last of the Time Lords.

Ben: The Doctor had some pretty great moments this week: the introduction of the ever so useful psychic paper, “I gift you air from my lungs”, and letting Cassandra dry out and subsequently die a fairly horrific death at the end of the episode. Before that though, we have The Doctor being prickly and mysterious and refusing to answer Rose’s questions, and then doing the same with Jabe and her questions before caving and telling both of them the truth. It’s an important step, and while we don’t get the specifics, it’s still enough to explain some of why the Doctor is how he is.

The scenes he had with Jabe were all so good, as well. I know all the Doctor’s are serial flirts, but Eccleston can really put it on when he wants to. It’s that kind of charisma and connection that inspires his companions to do amazing things, such as Jabe sacrificing her life to save the station. And as a grand crescendo we had him walk between two blades of a fan set to maximum! It was a bit dumb, and you never really see Time Lords having that kind of ability again, but it sure looked cool.

The Alien of the Week

Maureen: Cassandra was a great villain; a capitalist nightmare highlighting everything wrong with our modern world, a world where we value objects and things over people. Cassandra is cruel and callous and vapid and I love that she calls a duke box an iPod and Tainted Love and Toxic classic earth songs.

The Face of Boe turns up for the first time, as do a number of other alien species. The blue people were nicely humanized and Jabe was a beautifully realized character. I would have dug her as a companion!

Cassandra’s little metal spider aliens reminded me of Michael Crichton’s Prey and were genuinely frightening. I can’t say that of every Who alien!

Ben: Boy did they pull out all the stops with the aliens this episode! The world building is simply phenomenal, with a veritable smorgasbord of aliens in attendance. We get some soon to be familiar faces, such as the Face of Boe, and the mysterious Adherents of the Repeated Meme (I hope it’s a dog-related meme). The one critique I have of this episode is, surely these advanced alien civilisations would have figured out a way to make sun shields a bit less fallible. But as far as complaints go, that’s pretty minor. The little robot baddies were animated surprisingly well, all things considered! And the twist with them actually being controlled by Cassandra was a really great moment.

Our verdict?

Maureen: I’ve always loved this episode. Partly it’s nostalgia, but I just think it’s a strong episode in general; there’s a great central mystery, interesting world-building and aliens, moments of tragedy alongside humour and a deepening of The Doctor’s backstory and the mysterious Time War. It’s early in the peace, but I’m giving this one 10/10.

Ben: This episode was just peak Who, it’s sci-fi perfection, and we had the first Bad Wolf reference I’ve spotted so far! As much as I’m hesitant to give an episode 10/10 because there’s always the chance there will be a better episode, I really can’t justify a score other than 10/10. Onwards and upwards!

Next week, one of the few Gatiss penned Who episodes Inkashlings actually likes…

Book Review: The Word is Murder by Anthony Horowitz

The Word is Murder

Anthony Horowitz

Publisher: Harper Collins

First Published: August 2017

RRP: $27.99 paperback

Anthony Horowitz is one of those authors who has been on my radar for a long, long time. I’ve never read his popular Alex Rider series, but they’ve been on my to-read pile for years. Midsummer Murders was a family staple when I was in high school, and Foyle’s War is one of the best crime and historical dramas ever written for the television in my opinion (why oh why ITV did you cancel it? Please tell me there will be more, Horowitz. Please). I’m also interested in Horowitz’s sanctioned Holmes stories, House of Silk and Moriarty. Even if I’m not a fan of Holmes stories, I do enjoy some good Moriarty fan fic. As part of his transition to adult fiction, Horowitz’ most recent two stories are meta crime. I haven’t read Magpie Murders (yes, it’s on my list too), but when I read the super interesting interview I re-blogged from Sophie Masson about The Word is Murder with Mr Horowitz and saw that there was an e-book sale happening, I jumped right in with Horowitz’ most recent. And what an odd beast it is too…

Where Magpie Murders sees Horowitz experiment with the book within a book trope (an author is killed and his editor reads his manuscript to source clues), The Word is Murder goes much further. In a Holmes/Watson dynamic, the fictional detective Hawthorne teams up with author, Anthony Horowitz, to uncover who killed Diana Cowper just after she arranged her own funeral. Diana’s son is famous and much of the story follows various people involved in acting and the fame game.

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I enjoyed this unusual crime read, though I suspect writers and avid crime trope and genre fans (such as myself) are more likely to enjoy the novel’s central gimmick. Horowitz posits that he writes the novel at fictional private (sometimes police) consultant, Hawthorne’s request and the novel is written in the first person from Horowitz’ perspective. There is a lot of time dedicated to Horowitz’ own experiences writing crime drama for TV and plotting books, which I found fascinating as a crime writer. Judging by Goodreads reviews, other readers mileage may vary. I did find that sometimes Horowitz became too obtrusive in the story, too self-aware and this detracted from the very well-written, very clever mystery around Diana Cowper. Inventing fictional characters who had CVs rooted in the real world was also a bit distracting for me as I’d seen most of the dramas mentioned and knew no such actor had been in them!

As I mentioned earlier, I’ve never read a Horowitz novel before so had no idea what to expect in terms of writing quality (I knew he could plot a crime story from various dramas). There is no denying that Horowitz is a brilliant writer. I found myself reading passages of dialogue and trying not to weep in despair at how trite my own conversation passages in my manuscript read compared to his. He has a way of sketching strong characters quickly through conversation which brings his story to life.

The overall crime plot was clever, even if I guessed a portion of it. Towards the end there were a number of twists I didn’t see coming and I had no clue who the murderer was till the big reveal. Aside from the more obtrusive Horowitz biography moments, this is a taut, suspenseful work.

The Word is Murder: 3/5 inky stars

You can purchase this book from Book Depository.

Reblog: Alan Baxter interview for Australasian Horror

Alan makes some super interesting points in his interview about when he knew it was time to try for a short story collection!

via Alan Baxter, Best Collected Work 2016

Netflix A Series of Unfortunate Events Season 2 Review

If anyone knows me at all, they know I like A Series of Unfortunate Events. Obsessively so. I’ve blogged reviews of Snicket’s other series All The Wrong Questions twice on this blog. I once kept my partner up all night telling him all the reasons why A Series of Unfortunate Events is one of the greatest series of childrens literature ever written. I like the absurdism. I like the way Snicket is a character in the series and an unreliable narrator to boot. I like the way Handler depicted grief and hardship. I liked the themes of well-read people turning out OK, of people being a mixture of good and bad like a chef’s salad, of villainy fluid depending on how you look at it. One of my favorite moments, in any book ever, is in The End when The Baudelaire’s stare at a certain grave contemplatively and place wildflowers on another, unsure of what to think and who to forgive. I grew up in a situation that often felt unfair. I liked that Handler acknowledged that life isn’t fair, but that being polite and good and well-read can find you others like yourself. As a young person, I loved the mystery elements woven throughout too; the sugar bowl and VFD and the identity of the mysterious Beatrice.

When Netflix announced a series I was cautiously optimistic. The book series is notoriously difficult to adapt and though I thought the film wasn’t terrible, it didn’t blow me away either. Netflix Season One was everything I could of asked for. A perfect 10/10 season. The art direction was perfect, the humor on point, the actors well cast and the musical numbers both entertaining and tonally fitting.

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So what was my verdict on Season 2? Should you…

Look away, look away

Look away, look away

This show will wreck your evening​, your whole life, and your day

Every single episode is nothing but dismay

So, look away

Look away, look away

Absolutely not.

Season 2 is even better than series 1 with stronger books to work with. The addition of both Carmelita Spats and Esme Squalor to the plots breathed new life into a sometimes tired formula of orphans being shunted from guardian to guardian. Choosing to weave additional material from The Unauthorized Autobiography and other supplementary texts also made for interesting viewing for readers familiar with the trajectory of the books. I especially liked Olivia Caliban and Jacques Snicket.

I went into Season 2 with even higher expectations and a very important question indeed: who would play Esme Gigi Geniveive Squalor, the city’s sixth most important financial advisor? I adored this villain in the books. In many ways worse than Olaf, she often had some of the most entertaining moments alongside Carmelita Spats. Played by Lucy Punch in the Netflix show, the show sparkled whenever she turned up (or maybe I’m just very biased). My brother and I grinned like loons at many of her scenes. We’d both forgotten about her tagliatelle grande in The Carniverous Carnival which made for a very entertaining moment. They kept the literal stiletto shoes for stabby-stab times. And they didn’t baulk at Esme faking being on the children’s side before throwing them down an elevator shaft cackling like a deranged Creuella De Ville. I can’t recall seeing Punch in anything but Into The Woods previously (please let her have a singing number with Neil Patrick Harris. Please), but she stole every scene she careened through with her odd mix of insane costumes and hairdos, over the top posturing and bad accents and jealous coveting of both the sugar bowl and Olaf. Casting a bad Esme could have broken the show for me, but Punch was perfect in every possible way.

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The show has the opportunity to showcase humor differently to the books and I think this works strongly in its favour. There are a lot of slapstick moments, tongue in cheek, modern jokes and musical numbers. I know some dislike Patrick Harris as Olaf, but for me he is perfect. He is frighteningly villainous (as is Esme), but very funny at the same time, and towards the end of the season, gives us a glimpse of something deeper and sadder too. The hook-handed man also made a stronger impression this season, with funnier moments and more to do. I can’t wait to see how Netflix moves his character in the next season.

My favourite book adaptations of the season are probably The Ersatz Elevator, The Hostile Hospital and The Carnivorous Carnival because these stories, like the books they’re based on, are darker with more mystery attached. The last two especially, are the point in the series where morality becomes blurred. The Baudelaire’s start to become the people they had started off running from. Story lines become very dark indeed.

Only a couple of things niggled, both in the final two book adaptations of the season. First, I’m not sure narratively why the show chose not to kill off some of Count Olaf’s villains at the end of both The Hostile Hospital and The Carnivorous Carnival given everything else they’d been cool beans depicting. Second, Olivia Caliban as the librarian worked, but I did love that Madame Lulu was so ambiguous in the book. Her motto is give people what they want and when she and The Baudelaire’s face off hungry lions she gives in to Olaf at the last second. She falls to the lions because so many people fight to push her in. In the show, Olaf pushes her in and she remains, to the end, a faithful volunteer. As I said earlier, I like the librarian character turning up as Madame Lulu, but I would have liked her end more if some of the book’s ambiguity had been maintained.

Still, a show to look forward to indeed. Netflix has done what I thought impossible… made a relatively accurate, well-casted, visualised, directed and acted adaptation of the books. It feels a little like torture waiting for Season Three…

Just look away,

Look away—

There’s nothing but horror and inconvenience on the way

Ask any stable person, “Should I watch?” and they will say:

Look away.

Look away, look away.

Look away, look away.

Look away, look away.

Look away, look away.

Re-watch: Doctor Who Rose Review

I shouted out to my Facebook to find out whether or not people wanted me to go back to the start of New Who and reveal my thoughts on RTD era Who. Enough people said yes that here I am. Joining me in my re-watch-a-long is friend and fellow Whovian, Ben.

Rose jump started the show back into gear and back onto screens after a long hiatus. Both Ben and I were in high school when the episode came out and share a lot of nostalgic love for Rose. But how did the episode hold up?

We start the episode meeting Rose and her partner, Mickey. Rose is a London chav down on her luck, and Mickey isn’t the most attentive boyfriend. Her mother is also a genuine nightmare (what was with RTD and nasty Mum’s?) Her regular working day is put into jeopardy as she meets The Doctor and walking plastic mannequins. When The Doctor tries to disappear from her life, events keep casting them together, and the two find themselves working together to stop an alien invasion.

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The Title Sequence

Maureen: I was struck by the difference in TV graphics quality between 2005, when the season came out, and now. I don’t know about Ben, but I also started bopping along to the theme tune. It too, fills me with nostalgia. I also felt irrationally happy at Billie Piper’s name coming up on the screen. I didn’t particularly love the way the Rose character was written, but I’ve always rated Billie as a much better actress than pop-star. Ben?

Ben: I was definitely feeling the nostalgia with the theme song, travelling with TARDIS through space and time only to be immediately brought down to earth by way of 2005 graphics and picture quality. It really has not aged gracefully! Now, full disclosure: I was introduced to Dr Who by some friends who were up to David Tennant’s first season, so I’m pretty sure I rushed through Eccleston’s season over a weekend in order to catch up. It’s going to be interesting to see how much I remember of this season!

Which brings us to…

The Companion

Maureen: I quite liked Rose and Mickey in their first scenes together and I bought them as a couple. The montage of Rose’s regular day paints her as a regular working class poorer gal and I think at the time that made her pretty relatable, especially for the teens and young people in the viewing audience who were working casual jobs and dreaming of a Doctor to take them on an adventure. It might not be the world’s most original companion story arc, but it seems to work every time the showrunners use it.

I’m not so sure about the strange special effects! Billie had a weird back light behind her the whole time that made her look like she was in some kind of advert. I’m not sure what they were showing off… the bleached blonde hair and the baggy clothes?

From the first time Rose meets Nine, there is great chemistry between the two and it makes me wonder about the need for Mickey at all. There isn’t much chemistry between Billie and the actor playing Mickey and it doesn’t help that both characters are written in this episode to appear inconsistent and rather self-absorbed! It was especially noticeable in the contrast between self-absorbed Rose failing to notice Mickey as Nestine in the car and then restaurant vs. Rose appearing genuinely upset about Mickey dying and The Doctor failing to care towards the end of the episode.

I think the idea is meant to be that Rose has nothing to stay for at the end of the episode; that Mickey is selfish (highlighted in the scene where he chooses the pub and a match over taking care of his in shock girlfriend and his over protective manner when Rose goes to see Clive) and Rose’s Mum is no better… nattering on about compensation, that Rose has aged from the department store explosion and taking every opportunity to remind her that she needs to get back into the rat race with another job. I’m not sure RTD quite pulls this off given how selfish and self-absorbed Rose can come across in this episode.

Ben: You’ve summed things up pretty nicely here, I don’t know what more I can add! The montage was effective in showing us a day in the life of Rose, and in making her easy to identify with. And the clothes! The hair! The mid 2000’s were a dark time…

What I found confusing was how different Mickey was in each scene he was in, it’s like they were still writing the script as they were shooting and hadn’t settled on his characterisation. There’s not much in the way of a spark in their relationship, which to me really emphasised how much of a rut Rose was stuck in. And then there’s her mum, who’s basically just an amalgamation of tropes and stereotypes. It’s no wonder she leapt at the chance to go adventuring with The Doctor!

Also odd was the incredulity Clive’s partner expressed at Rose being interested in The Doctor because she was a girl! It’s 2005 here, come on people. And Mickey being concerned about her meeting Clive? Not a cute look. The final thing I would point out is how quickly Rose went from crying with worry over Mickey to quite happily running away with The Doctor after they survived their brush with death. It would make more sense for Mickey to have been a good friend than a boyfriend, I think.

The Doctor

Maureen: By far the best aspect of Rose is The Doctor. From the second big eared, wide grinning Chris Eccleston shows up in The Department Store we know we’re in for a rollicking good time. He simultaneously gives off the appearance of being utterly mad and more than a little damaged too. (random aside: I never knew the Matt Smith AKA Eleven ‘I am talking’ moment was originally a Nine moment!)

This speech personifies Nine in a nutshell:

Nine: Rose: Really though, Doctor. Tell me. Who are you?

The Doctor: Do you know like we were saying? About the Earth revolving? It’s like when you’re a kid. The first time they tell you that the world’s turning and you just can’t quite believe it because everything looks like it’s standing still. I can feel it. {he grabs her hand} The turn of the Earth. The ground beneath our feet is spinning at a thousand miles an hour. And the entire planet is hurtling around the sun at sixty-seven thousand miles an hour and I can feel it. We’re falling through space, you and me. Clinging to the skin of this tiny little world and if we let go… {he drops her hand}. That’s who I am. Now forget me, Rose Tyler. Go home.

Back in high school, when I first saw the episode, I loved the little nuggets RTD dropped about The Time War and I still think now it is one of the most intriguing parts of the episode. The mystery about the nature of The Doctor explored via Clive was also interesting. One of my favorite exchanges in the whole episode was between Clive and Rose:

Clive: The Doctor is a legend woven throughout history. When disaster comes, he’s there. He brings a storm in his wake. And his one constant companion.

Rose: Who’s that?

Clive: Death.

And certainly there is an element of danger throughout the episode. Mickey almost dies without The Doctor noticing or caring. This Doctor is no Eight. He is rude and callous and alien. He tells Rose he isn’t bringing Mickey along in the TARDIS and is smug in his knowledge Rose will follow him into the TARDIS. I do love the way Rose looks back as the TARDIS re-materilises and runs for the TARDIS,the huge smile on her face surely reflecting what the audience felt.

Ben: First of all, I’m 99% sure The Doctor would be a member of the forum Clive runs, much like how the Patrician of Ankh-Morpork is a member of all the groups organised to depose him. He’s great from the get go; a disarming mix of humour, ears, and darkness, with more than a little damage. My favourite quotes include:

The Doctor: Nice to meet you Rose, run for your life!

The Doctor: It’ll never work, he’s gay and she’s an alien.

The scene in Rose’s apartment with the hand was pretty ridiculous (in particular, the exchange between The Doctor and Rose’s mum), but it did do a good job of fleshing out The Doctor. Things like him reading a book in an instant and seemingly assessing his appearance for the first time give us definite clues to his non-human qualities, which the speech Maureen details in the next scene builds upon dramatically.

I similarly loved the hints of the Time War and the things haunting The Doctor, but what I was shocked by was how callous The Doctor was about saving everyone! Considering how much later Doctors wax lyrical about the wonders that are humans, this came as a surprise. His line to Rose telling her to go home and enjoy her beans on toast was condescending, and I get the feeling he didn’t exactly check to see if the building was empty of humans before blowing it up. And yet the confrontation with the Nestine Consciousness would have ended in a very different way was it not for the assistance of Rose.

The alien of the week

Maureen: Old fashioned special effects aside, I quite liked The Nestine and the first mention of the good old Shadow Proclamation. The plastic mannequin’s first appearance in the deserted store is still scary and even the plastic garbage bin sticking to Mickey is quite freaky. I’m not so sold on the Nestine Consciousness, but hey, it was 2005.

Ben: I do love when Doctor Who leans into horror with its alien plots of the week, so despite the special poor special effects I quite enjoyed the Nestine. Mannequins coming to life is something of a trope, but they found a new angle here with the central consciousness and the mimicry of Mickey. The Nestine Consciousness definitely reminded me of the Cave of Wonders from Aladdin, which was amusing. Additionally, the talk of starvation and wars makes it clear there’s more to this invasion than a simple land grab; this isn’t black and white. Overall, a solid effort. Who knew late night shopping could be so dangerous?

All in all Ben and I agree Rose was a rough pilot which showed a lot of potential. Our scores?

Maureen (AKA Inkashlings): 6 out of 10 inky stars. I’d have gone higher if the story hadn’t contained the Rose/Mickey sub-plot. I don’t think it works now or at any other point in the show.

Ben: I find myself agreeing with Maureen also with 6 out of 10 stars.

Next Sunday we re-watch The End of the World which has a lot of memorable characters, spear-headed by skin-lady Cassandra. Gosh we’re both excited!

Childhood Favorites: The Teenage Years

Last week I blogged about my childhood favorite stories and series. This week I bring you part 2 where I describe the novels that got to me in my teens. Again, in no order.

1. The Merlin trilogy by Mary Stewart

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Mary Stewart was famous for her thriller romances in exotic locales (man, Madame will you talk? is a brilliant debut and brilliant title). In the 70s she surprised everyone with her Merlin trilogy, an imagining of the King Arthur legend from Merlin’s first person perspective. In this series, there is a focus on historical realism, over fantasy and magic and I have the entirety of the series to thank for my obsession with the historical basis for the legend. As a young teen, I liked The Crystal Cave best with some of The Last Enchantment (with the sexually promiscuous Morgause) also an eye-opener at that age. I thought the ending to the series in The Last Enchantment was particularly beautiful.

2. The Dragon Prince and Dragon Star trilogies by Melanie Rawn

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Sometimes I wonder at my mother. There was A LOT of sex and violence in these books and I lapped up every moment. My favorite characters by a long shot were Sioned and Rohan and I liked the original trilogy more than the second because of this. One of the first times magic and dragons felt well done for me. People accuse these books of being soapie, and I guess to some extent they are, but there were (and still are) moments of genuine emotion for me, particularly around Pol mucking everything up and Andry too. I liked the combination of Machiavellian politics and magic and in the first book, Roelstra and his children sure were terrifying villains.

3. The Deverry Saga by Katharine Kerr

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I don’t much care for this series past The Fire Dragon (which in my opinion was the perfect place to end the saga), but I did love this series to death as a child. My favorite sections were the ones where Rhodry and Jill had adventures and bested the dark dweomer as silver dagger outcasts and I think the series lost its lustre when Kerr pulled back from this. I understand she wanted to get away from the swords and sorcery generic trope, but she was onto a good thing with those two.

This series pulled at my heart strings like no other. I cried a lot. I wanted to throw books across the room a lot. There are still lines I can remember off my heart because in my opinion they were just that damn good. I’ve written poetry about Jill. I’ve participated in livejournal comms and started livejournal blogging as a result. I even won a signed copy of The Silver Mage. I still re-read this series up to The Fire Dragon every couple of years. Also Arzozah is the best dragon personification I’ve read in fiction ever. Period.

Again, Mum, not sure how I got away with these. There were rape, incest, sex, blood sacrifice, graphic battle and death scenes galore. But they all served a purpose and were necessary to the story.

4. Agatha Christie crime novels

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I was bored at my grandma’s once and found a copy of The Murder of Roger Ackroyd to read. The shock ending caught me well out and I was sold on the genius Christie ever since. Endless Night made quite an impression, scarring me a little for life and it is probably still my favorite Christie. And Then There Were None, Halloween Party and The Clocks also made strong impressions.

My love for Christie never died. I still re-read her on and off and I am currently in the process of re-reading all of her novels in publication order. I’m up to the 1940s and will blog my least favorite to most favorite Christie’s once I finally finish (see you in another three years, interested reader). In 2016 when I met with a friend in London, it was a dream finally fulfilled when we saw The Mousetrap together.

5. A Series of Unfortunate Events by Lemony Snicket



Anyone who has ever met me knows I like this series A LOT. The Netflix show will be reviewed on this blog shortly. I have reviewed Snicket’s newer series All The Wrong Questions before. I was going through a tough time as a carer and my Mum and Dad divorced and my Granddad died when I was 15. I found it oddly comforting to know that those three children had it worse than me. I loved trying to solve Snicket’s tantalizing asides, the word play and the absurdism too.

6. The Sevenwaters trilogy by Juliet Marillier

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I’m sure my best friend, Tegan, would agree with me; this series by an Australian author is seriously good! Beautifully written, full of good research, beautiful romances and held together within an Irish first person oral story telling framework, this is some of the best modern fantasy you’ll ever read. Daughter of the Forest must be one of the strongest fantasy debuts ever penned and is my favorite of the series. There’s one scene that is brutal and is guaranteed to make you cry or throw the book across the room. Anyone who’s read this will know the scene I mean. Keep going. It’s a scene with purpose. Trust me. The trilogy’s end in Child of the Prophecy is one of the best fantasy endings to a series I’ve ever read too.

7. Harry Potter

What can I say about this series that hasn’t already been said? I didn’t much like the series post Book 5, but there’s no denying the power of the original Potterverse. How I longed to visit Honeydukes and drink butter beer, or journey through Diagon Alley. How I wished I’d get a letter from Hogwarts (I did once. From the President of UOW Harry Potter Society anonymously I believe). I lined up at crazy hours to get the next book in the series and stayed up all night to avoid spoilers (how dare people spoil Dumbledore’s death in book 6!). I got to see the first two films with school as a library monitor and the last two on exchange in the UK(!). I’ll never forget the surreal experience of sitting in a packed theatre at Oxford to watch the final film and the sound of tissues rustling and everyone sobbing their hearts out at the Snape mini film section.

After all this time?

Always.

You have a heart of stone if that doesn’t get you. I made a lot of friends through this fandom and did a lot of crazy things (like dress as Boggart Snape for a Yule Ball Party once).

Honorable mentions: Everything by Isobelle Carmody but especially the Obernewtyn series and Alyzon Whitestarr. I only omitted her because I included her in my tender years too. Phillip Pullman’s His Dark Materials trilogy. The tried and true staples: The Chronicles of Narnia and Lord of the Rings.

The Word is Murder: interview with Anthony Horowitz

I’ve long loved Anthony Horowitz and meta-fiction. A match made in heaven! Stay tuned for my review of this novel.

Feathers of the Firebird

Today, I am delighted to bring you my interview with the fantastic author Anthony Horowitz, about his latest novel, The Word is Murder. Anthony’s books, whether for adults or kids, are always gripping and elegantly written, but this one is particularly accomplished, a bold and brilliant tour de force that takes big risks with literary conventions and reader expectations, and pulls it all off triumphantly. It’s one of the most interesting and memorable novels I’ve read all year.

First of all, Anthony, congratulations on The Word is Murder, a daring and playful blend of metafiction and crime fiction.  In Magpie Murders, your novel published last year, you use metafiction elements–such as a book within a book–but The Word is Murder goes a lot further. How did the idea first come to you?

Thank you for your kind words! TWIM (as we all know it) began when I met my…

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Childhood favourites: The tender years

My brother and I used to attend swimming lessons every Saturday morning. After class, we’d excitedly demand a trip to Sutherland Library (a place which still feels a bit like coming home even with recent changes to library lay-out). Once ensconced in the library, we’d spend anywhere from an hour till library closing time rifling through the children’s section, reading books on the ground and trying to get away with borrowing more than our cards allowed. To my mum’s mortification, she was told off on many an occasion for allowing us to borrow what was deemed age inappropriate material (The novelisation of Conan the Barbarian was such soft core porn for this little sucker). We continued this Saturday library tradition right up until the mid years of high school.

I have such fond memories of these long Saturdays with books, that I thought I’d write two posts capturing my favourite discoveries. This first post covers primary years. The second post will track early high school.

And now in no particular order…

1. The Asterix comic series

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I read them all, but a few stick out as being particularly memorable. I still can’t read about Cleopatra without imagining Caesar and everyone else she came into contact with commenting on the quality of her nose. I enjoyed Asterix in Britain with the constant tea drinking and the football match. I can’t think about the country Switzerland without seeing the comic strips from Asterix in Switzerland of Roman legions engaging in orgies and gorging on too much cheese fondue. Asterix and Obelix all at Sea highlighted the bond between the two friends and I also liked the stories set in The Middle East.

2. The TinTin comic series

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There’s a strong theme happening here. Once my brother and I had devoured all of Asterix, we started on TinTin. Excluding the first two (let’s pretend they never happened), most are great mysteries. TinTin in Tibet is the most emotional, but I also loved the Incan two parter, The Calculus Affair and The Red Sea Sharks with an unhealthy obsessive love. Most loved of all was the first appearance of Captain Haddock in The Crab With The Golden Claws. Best. Comic. Ever. The relatively good animation is now available on Netflix.

3. Enid Blyton. All of them.

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They aren’t politically correct. They aren’t high brow literature. They were often racist. Blyton novels were (and are) all these things, but by jove how I wished I was one of the featured children off on my next adventure. I never warmed to The Secret Seven as much as The Famous Five, and I liked The Faraway Tree series better than The Wishing Chair series. Strangely, none of the popular ones were my most beloved. The Adventurous Four and The Adventurous Four Again as well as The Adventure series became firm favourites. I’m ready for a re-read…

4. Nancy Drew series

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I even owned the computer game of Secrets Can Kill (Number 1 in the Nancy Drew files) as a child. That game was scary, hard shit. My best friends and I spent hours and hours trying to crack that mystery and I don’t think we ever managed it. Anyway, Nancy Drew. I loved everything about her stories. There’s so many and I’ve mixed them up so often in my head, I couldn’t pick a favourite, but I seem to remember loving one about a Chinese girl getting kidnapped and another involving candles containing chloroform or some such. I did get into The Hardy Boys, but they were no Nancy Drew.

5. The Obernewtyn Chronicles

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Back when I was a kid, some bright spark in government decided to get children to read more books with The Premiere’s Reading Challenge. I’m all for reading challenges, but my ten year old heart broke when there was a set reading list, 90% of which wasn’t genre fiction. Getting through the reading list was torture, but there was one small ray of sunshine.* The librarian handed me a copy of Obernewtyn by Isobelle Carmody. The story scared the shit out of me, but I loved it, and thus a stubborn persistence to wait for the series to end was born. I finally read the final book in the series last year. It felt like coming home.

*Alright, I exaggerate a little. I also discovered Emily Rodda through this challenge and Deltora Quest was some seriously cool shit (the book cover artist came to my primary school once and it was the best). And around this time I discovered Geoffrey McSkimming and Cairo Jim which was tongue in cheek fun of the best kind.

What about you readers? Any favourites from your youth you want to share?

Reblog: 13 Habits of Ridiculously Prolific Authors by Meg Dowell

This is a great article on prolific writers. I need to print this list out and stick it to my writing office wall!!!

via 13 Habits of Ridiculously Prolific Writers