Donna Maree Hanson Reflects On Medusa

Donna Maree Hanson is an Australian writer, editor and publisher of speculative fiction, who has been active since 2000. She has sold mainly short fiction, but has also written a book-length overview of Australian speculative fiction (2005).Most recently, her story "Through These Eyes I See" has appeared in Mythic Resonance. It offered a twist on the Medusa myth, in which the heroine heals with a look rather than turning to stone. I thought the mirrors were a particularly nice touch to the story, when you remember the role played by a mirror-polished shield in the original myth – and again it was a twist, as the mirrors protect the heroine rather than the monster-slayer. And personally I have always felt sorry for Medusa anyway.

Welcome to The Great Raven, Donna!

Many thanks to Sue for inviting me along with the rest of the Mythic Resonance crew to guest post on her blog.

When the call came out for Mythic Resonance, an anthology of modern-day takes on ancient legends, I was pretty stumped for an idea. It was a bit of a challenge to think up something new and fresh from something that is so old and so much a part of the modern myth as to be easily recognisable. People have done it but it was a new thing for me.

Then one day I was taking a long walk to visit my mother at the nursing home and , as often happens to me while walking, ideas floated up to the surface. There came to me a vision of the girl in a room full of mirrors, a prisoner of her own gift for healing. To me that legend of a healer or the myth of the healer is something that repeats itself so often as it is so much our own desires to find the obtainable cure. To me that was the core centre of this revisiting of a rather generic myth of a healer.

Initially, the story was rejected because the link between what I was writing and what the anthology desired was tenuous. However I was told that all the readers loved the story. I did not argue with this proposition and accepted it even though to me there was clearly a link but I understood that link was not specific enough. Later the editor wrote to me and asked me for the story back because the editor and his team had established a link. (Obviously they had not forgotten the story).  I then did a little bit of research on the angle of the Medusa myth and how "Through These Eyes I See" used and abused the resonances of that ancient story. Mandy does not kill with a look, she cures. The mirrors help her survive, help her to see as others do. When the modern day Perseus comes, he’s not a hero with altruism pulsing in his breast, but something that Mandy cannot abide to touch or to heal. He’s the representation of exploitation, of corruption, of power...

"Through These Eyes I See" is also about exploitation. Mandy has a gift and others exploit it. There is no joy in her gift for her. Its appearance robbed her of a normal life.  There is no benefit for her.  She is a prisoner of those who are meant to love and protect her.

I'm proud of the story and am really happy that Specusphere published it in this anthology.

If you want to know more about me and my writing I keep a writing blog at:

http://donnamareehanson.wordpress.com

Mary Victoria Interviews The World Tree

In 2010, I was looking forward to the publication of my debut novel, Wolfborn. It was going to be out on time to be launched at the World SF Convention, Aussiecon 4 – and then it wasn’t.  I asked my publishers at  Random House if they would please, please send me something I could take to promote the book and they came through beautifully – posters, bookmarks, sample chapters. I got myself into a signing session and had to flirt with the people in the long queue at the next table. “Free sample? Bookmark?” to get them to wander over while they were waiting for the graphic artist next to me to sign their books. There was a lady at a nearby table, signing like anything – Mary Victoria, who writes this wonderful series set in a giant tree. That’s how we met. When Mythic Resonance came out, although Mary didn’t have a story in it, I thought the theme of a World Tree fitted in perfectly. I’ll let Mary tell you all about it. I’ve just discovered she did some of the animation for Lord of The Rings - wow! A lady of many talents and I’m proud to welcome her to my web site.

The World Tree

  

            I feel like a fraud. When Sue asked me if I’d like to contribute a guest post about the origins of my World Tree in the context of the ‘Mythic Resonance’ release, I knew what I ought to write. What I ought to write, I thought to myself as I sat down at my computer, is a passably intelligent piece about where this idea of a world set in a tree may have come from. I should cite my debt to Norse myth (Yggdrasil, the original world tree, cradling Midguard in its branches,) to Kabbalistic metaphysics (the universe-containing Tree of Life,) and not least to the Japanese film director Hayao Miyazaki, who once put a city in a tree and made it fly, to my great delight. All these sources and many more played their part in forming the idea for the Chronicles of the Tree. If I were a proper thinker and not a total fraud, I would have written that article, made it highly informative and entertaining and included footnotes.

            Alas, I’m not a proper thinker. Or at least, my thinking refuses to come when called, or else comes in silly disguises, doing cartwheels. I was indeed influenced, consciously and subconsciously, by myth, metaphysics and beautiful Japanese animation while writing the Chronicles of the Tree. But I didn’t remember Yggdrasil and say to myself, “hey, that would make a great fantasy setting.” That would be far too logical. I don’t think story ideas come about that way – stories are fickle, promiscuous things. They like to borrow, beg and steal from multiple sources. When you try and make them explain themselves and their antecedents, they refuse to meet your eye. They sidle off, mumbling something about poetic license. They don’t like to be pinned down.

            The truth is, stories, and worlds, often come in the telling. No matter how much meticulous world-building you do in advance, some tales grow organically. Setting influences story, which in turn influences setting. The two are inseparable. Sometimes, the two are one.

            If I had been able to ask my World Tree, back at the start of the writing process, why this story had to happen in a giant tree the size of a mountain range rather than, say, a Medieval-style city state, the conversation would have gone something like this.

AUTHOR: Dear fantasy world, why are you the way you are? Why aren’t you something else?

             TREE: I think I’m quite old enough to be what I am without the likes of you questioning my motives.

            AUTHOR: I’m not questioning your motives. No one is. We just want to know, ‘Why a Tree.’ Couldn’t you be a mountain? You behave a little like a mountain.

            TREE: Well, I’m old…

AUTHOR: (Interrupting) What does that have to do with it? You sound like that poem about Father William. ‘You are old, Father William – ’

            TREE: (offended) All right, I won’t tell you. I won’t say anything at all; I don’t see why I should, if you’re going to be so rude.

            AUTHOR: I’m sorry. I’m sorry: I was being an idiot, the author getting in the way of her idea. Please go on.

TREE: (after a long pause to show how deeply offended she is) As I was saying, I’m old. Centuries – no, millennia old. I’m so old that I’ve grown into a sprawling, continent-sized mass. My trunk is a cliff-face hundreds of miles in circumference. My boughs are gigantic, like mountain ridges. Some of them can support human cities. Except that sometimes, they can’t. I’m so old that I’m growing infirm. My branches are hollow in places. There’s rot, and other problems besides. I’m not immortal: one whole side of me has dried up and died. There’s no more sap flowing there. Do you begin to see how that influences a story?

AUTHOR: Go on.

TREE: My physical condition affects my inhabitants, of course. Everything is made of wood or animal products. Everything depends on me. If I die, those living off my sap and skin will slowly die off too. Add climate change to the mix and you have an ecological disaster in the making. Those living on the dried up east side already have it tough, and it’s getting tougher every day. Perhaps it’s partly their own fault – perhaps it isn’t. But there are haves and have-nots in this world. There are the colonizers and the colonized.

AUTHOR: (retrieving a pen and paper for notes) Now I begin to see. Go on.

TREE: My nature also influences the human cultures that have flourished, and in some cases died out in my branches. People become conditioned by living over a void, high up in the clouds. They develop things like flying hot air balloons pretty quickly. They don’t trust empty space. Some go so far as to outlaw exploration: they become hidebound, or rather bark-bound. They live in rigid theocracies. They’ll destroy anyone who thinks differently. For them, it feels like a matter of survival.

(No answer from the author, who is now scribbling notes furiously.)

TREE:  (softly) But there’s one more thing. You already noticed it, perhaps half-consciously. I’m a woman. I’m worshipped as a feminine deity by these priests. But they’ve forgotten the truth behind all that glib nonsense they keep repeating. God is a tree, and also a woman. God grows, flourishes and eventually dies. Find out the truth behind those symbols. Does your story begin to make sense to you now? Do you see why it had to be a Tree?

AUTHOR: (abject now) I do see. Yes, that makes sense. Perfect sense. Thank you.

TREE: Any time. Now go be a good little author and write.

Mary Victoria was born in 1973 in Turners Falls, Massachusetts. Despite this she managed to live most of her life in other places, including Cyprus, Canada, Sierra Leone, France and the UK. She studied art and film and worked as an animator before turning to full time writing. She now lives in Wellington, New Zealand with her husband and daughter.

If you’d like to read more about the Chronicles of The Tree and what Mary is doing right now, her web site is here.

What's Culture Anyway?

I'm lying in bed unable to sleep or even be soothed by a book, so what better to do than post? Yesterday morning, the ESL teacher asked us to get our students to fill in a sheet about themselves, their heritage and how they felt about it, for Harmony Day, which is an annual event we celebrate in our mini-UN of a school. My Year 8 features young men and women from various African and Asian countries, Turkey, Chile, Europe...But for some reason, some of those with an Anglo-Celtic background felt left out. Two boys insisted they had no culture! If we'd been able to start a little earlier I might have been able to convince them otherwise. I would do the research and the flags and finding the information to show them there's a rich culture there. As it was, all I could do was point out to them that Tolkien, at least, had felt differently and had written a whole BOOK to prove it. And if even so very English a thing as fish and chips(as made by Sam Gamgee)began with Russian-Jewish immigrants, all it says is that England is a melting-pot like anywhere else and richer for it. The very language is a melting-pot! But that doesn't say there's no culture. I must do something afterwards while we learn research skills. With books in it somewhere. Pity my oven is still broken or I'd bake some very English things out of The Hobbit for my class. Thanks to a friend in the US I have a wonderful article he found in a magazine years before the Internet, with recipes from "An Unexpected Party". The seed cake is especially nice. You can't get much more English than The Hobbit! Must get that stupid oven fixed these holidays!

First Guest Post: Gillian Polack

Introducing Gillian Polack, writer, mediaeval scholar and all-round fascinating lady. Gillian lives in Canberra and writes, among other things, for book-based web site BiblioBuffet. She blogs on Livejournal and creates menus for historical banquets at the annual Conflux SF conventions. 

And I didn't know you'd turned that Andromeda Spaceways story into a novel, Gillian! Sell it quick so we can all read it!

Meanwhile, enjoy her post, my friends. I admire someone who can use Jewish folklore, which can be very dark, to create a gently humorous story. There are writers who do it beautifully, such as Jane Yolen and Lisa Goldstein, but their stories are not humorous, at least not the ones I've read. Apart from a dybbuk story, sitting unfinished in one of my notebooks, I have never got around to writing anything connected with my own heritage. I may just be inspired to go back and try again.

A few years ago, ASIM published a short story of mine* about a Jewish feminist invoking the king of demons. This was part of a larger project, which is now out in the big world waiting publisher rejections. In this project, I wanted to explore possible Australian Jewish mythologies.

There is an aspect of Australian Jewish culture that is so far removed from Fiddler on the Roof Judaism that they almost belong in different universes. This is the culture of the Jews who migrated (mainly from England, but also from some part of Western Europe) very early in Australia's modern history. The Jews on the First Fleet were of this kind, and the guy Dickens based Fagin on was also of this kind** and so was an eighth of my family. That eighth is a very strong eighth. My family didn't get the Yiddishkeit my father's father could have given, because it was so much easier to adopt the English Jewish tradition that my father's mother's family brought, nearly a century earlier. In fact, one of the reasons I wrote the story (and eventually the novel) was because I wanted an excuse to explore this exuberantly resilient family tradition. I did an academic paper on the family foodways, but that just wasn't enough. I wanted to know what would happen if someone from that side of the family (left wing, social change agents, educated, passionate about committees) somehow ended up with magic.

I also wanted to learn about Jewish magic. Jewish magic is considered special, historically. In the Renaissance, Jewish magicians were thought to be somehow stronger, more connected with the esoteric. I know something about Medieval*** and even Renaissance magic and I thought "What if I extrapolate? What if I bring the Jewish magic systems forward from the fifteenth century and maybe earlier and turn them into an almost-lost family tradition?" The moment I articulated this, I was tempted beyond restraint. I asked difficult questions of a scholarly friend who knows a lot more than me about Jewish cultural history, and I put together a family and the members of that family and I started writing fiction.

And so, in a short story, a Sydney feminist calls forth Ashmodai.

Ashmodai isn't like the Christian Asmodeus. I like telling my Christian friends "Our demons aren't your demons."  Even when they have the same names, they can be very different.

Our demons aren't all bad. Some are very nasty (my learned friend told me that we don't say "Go to hell," we say "Go to so-and-so"****) but they follow much more closely the Medieval notion of angels and demons as all one kind. We didn't have the Fall, so there's no simple dividing line between different beings. We find it harder to define them as good or bad, light or dark. They resemble humans a lot more. I fell in love with my own traditions when I discovered them. It made writing fiction worthwhile for entirely new reasons. There are so many stories to tell about demons and angels who are not like Christian demons and angels.

I regard Ashmodai as the closest thing Judaism has to a trickster god. He's a trickster almost-god who studies Torah and was a friend of Solomon.  He commanded armies and had his own demon realm.  And he had a sense of humour.

Judith meeting Ashmodai was a lot of fun.  I still get occasional emails about that story, asking why she wasn't more scared, or admiring her patience. I now want to sell the novel so that I can write a sequel to find out what happens between the two of them.

*I don't write many short stories, so the fact that Sue read and remembered it impressed the heck out of me.

**Which is why I wince whenever I hear him performed with a Yiddish or Eastern European accent. Ikey Solomon was a Londoner. East End. Probably Sephardi.

***This may possibly be because I am a Medievalist.

****I won't give you the actual demonic name. I don't want you to use it on me! I don't know if I believe in Jewish demons, but they're Jewish and I'm Jewish, so I play safe. It's so much easier to flaunt curses from someone else's tradition.

Celebrating Mythic Resonance

The other day I got my contributor's copy of Mythic Resonance, in which I had a story inspired by Snow White. I've always liked stories with a mythical, legendary or folk tale theme. Years ago, I read a whole lot of books in a fairy tale series, from The Nightingale by Kara Dalkey to one by Charles De Lint in which Jack the Giant Killer is a modern lass called Jackie, who slays her giants in a city of present-day Canada. There was also Tam-Lin by Pamela Dean, based on a Scottish border ballad. I also loved Nicholas Stuart Gray's beautiful The Seventh Swan, a sequel to the fairy tale, which explores what it might be like to be that poor Prince stuck with a wing instead of an arm; it was set in Scotland, a Scotland in which there is magic and creatures from Celtic folklore.

More recently, Margo Lanagan's Sea Hearts has played with Selkie folklore and Tender Morsels, which I'm reading now,  is inspired by the fairy tale Snow White and Rose Red.

This anthology is full of stories inspired by, but not always actively based on, folk tales and myths.

I thought, in celebration of its release, I'd do something Mary Victoria did with an anthology in which she was published: invite as many of the authors as I could contact and some who were not in it, but who have written folklore/legend-themed fiction, to do a guest post on this web site. So far, I have had acceptances from: Mary Victoria, who will tell us about her universe in which everyone lives in a great World Tree inspired by the one in Norse mythology, Alan Baxter, who wrote a fairy tale about being kidnapped into Faerie and his fairies are not at all nice, something you find out when you read enough folklore, Paul Freeman, who is a major fan of Geoffrey Chaucer and wrote a cheeky narrative poem for Mythic Resonance in Chaucerian-style verse, but fortunately modern English, Donna Maree Hanson, whose contribution to the anthology was a thoughtful, rather sad tale which was a twist on the Medusa myth, set in the present day. Satima Flavell has promised a piece. Her story in MR was an adaptation of John Keats' poem La Belle Dame Sans Merci, not to mention a cheeky reference to a song by Lee Hazlewood, sung by Nancy Sinatra and the composer at one stage. Drat you, Satima, the song is running over and over in my head since I read your story!

 The wonderful Margo Lanagan will be joining us around the end of March, when she comes home from China and gets over her jet lag. ;-)

I'm still asking people and may end up asking the publishers to pass on my invitation to anyone I couldn't find on-line so this will be messier than Mary Victoria's series of posts.

Meanwhile, my very first guest post has come in from Gillian Polack, feminist, mediaeval scholar and fabulous fantasy writer.

Review Policy Update 2

Due to yet another flood of requests and some confusion, I've updated my review policy yet again, to make it clearer what I can and can't take. Basically, if I can't put it on my library shelves immediately I've finished with it, I really don't have time to review it.

Sorry! :-)

An interview with Mark Walden, author of the H.I.V.E series

Hi, Mark! Welcome to The Great Raven and thank you for agreeing to do this interview. I’ve read and reviewed all your books, so this is a great treat! The posts reviewing your books are among the most popular on this web site.

 1. Tell us about yourself – how did a person with your background in games design come to be writing young adult fiction?

Part of the reason that I started writing was down to the fact that I was becoming extremely frustrated with how uncreative the games industry was becoming.  The teams that develop video games are so massive now that it's rare that one person can have very much creative input or control and so I turned to writing as a way to produce something that I had complete creative control over.  It might make me sound a bit ego-maniacal (which, of course, I am), but there's something really liberating about being able to create something by yourself and also not having to answer to accountants or project managers.  Video games are “big business” these days and I'm afraid that's taken some of the fun out of making them.

2. What inspired the H.I.V.E series?

My best friend's cat.  No really, I haven't forgotten my medication.  My friend has a big, fluffy white cat that looks just like the cat that sits on Blofeld's lap in the old James Bond movies.  So, I was playing with this cat one day and it got me thinking that those old-school Bond villains always just seemed to appear out of thin air with very little back story and that got me thinking about how they became world- conquering megalomaniacs in the first place.  It was only a short mental walk from there to HIVE.  My best friend's cat is also called Otto, so he helped in more ways than one....

3.     Sometimes, I feel as if I’m playing a computer game in my head when I read your books - do your games-designing skills actually give you ideas for your fiction?

I think that they give you a good sense of what makes an exciting action sequence.  I think that the reader should be just as immersed in an exciting action-packed scene in a book as they would be in an equivalent section of a game.  So I suppose that some of my past experience has helped in that respect.

4. Tell us about your main characters, without too many spoilers for those who haven’t read the series and may want to. What did you have in mind when you created each of them?

I think that the main characteristic that I wanted Otto and the gang to share was that they were all clever and resourceful.  Otto especially is the sort of person who uses his brain to  get out of trouble rather than his physical strength and that's something that I personally find much more fun to write than the more traditional action hero.  It also means that I can have more fun with the dialogue between the main characters as they've always got a smart-ass answer for everything!

5. The first H.I.V.E. novel was very funny, with a sort of Hogwarts for villains, as well as teasing references to the Bond movies and the often-hilarious reasons why our heroes came to H.I.V.E. After that, the stories become darker, although there’s still humour. Was this planned out from the beginning?

Yes, it's all leading to a point where the main characters, Otto especially, are going to have to ask themselves where life at HIVE is leading them.  A school for villians may be a neat high-concept idea, but when you actually stop and think about it, it will inevitably lead in to some pretty dark places.  Having said that, I don't ever want to produce a completely straight-faced HIVE book, as the tongue should always be in the vague proximity of the cheek where Otto and the gang are concerned.

6. Is it difficult to create sympathy for characters who are, after all, training to be villains, without making them too nice?

Yes, but part of the point of the series, right from the start was to make the readers ask themselves what exactly defines a villain.  Without getting too philosophical about it, I don't think that the bad guy ever really sits there and thinks of themselves as the villain. More practically speaking, if the central characters of the books were truly evil it would be very hard to make the reader root for them.  For my money, the mark of a really great villain is that the reader likes them just as much as the hero any way.

7. Your action scenes and your technology are oddly convincing (with the possible exception of the giant marauding plant in the first book!). I’ve just read about the development of a “cloaking device” for war planes that reminded me of the Shroud planes in your books. How much research do you do for your books and what, if any, are your favourite sources of information?

I'm a massive techno-geek and I put a lot of effort into basing the technology in the books on bleeding edge research in the real world.  Most of the technology in the books is just over the horizon from a real world point of view and while there are a lot of science fiction elements it is usually based in reality in some way.  I do a lot of research on-line, although I do sometimes have to be careful.  For example, while I was doing some research for Dreadnought I realised afterwards that I'd just Googled the effects of a nuclear detonation, the details of the President's secret service security team and the internal layout of Airforce One.  To be honest, I'm surprised I didn't end up in Guantanamo Bay!

Thanks, Mark, for the fascinating insight into your work!

Additional:

The following question and answer appeared on the Good Reading Magazine web site. I’m reproducing it with permission, because I'm sure Mark would have given me the same answer and I thought readers might like to know. If you’d like to read the whole Good Reading interview, here’s the link: http://www.goodreadingmagazine.com.au/meettheauthor.cfm

Paramount has acquired the film rights to your ‘H.I.V.E’ series. Do you have any hints as to when the movie will be coming out?

No, not really.  I’m told that quite often the author is the last person to hear anything anyway, unless you're J.K.Rowling,  so I'm not holding my breath.  I do think that movie versions of books can be a double-edged sword though, the idea of a movie of HIVE is certainly exciting, but you can't help but worry how it might turn out.  For every good book adaptation it seems like there are ten bad ones.


Mythic Resonance Is Here

I'm pleased to announce that the Specusphere anthology, Mythic Resonance, in which I have a story,"Brothers"(Snow White and the seven Tolkienesque Dwarves), is now available from the Specusphere web site. Follow the above link and you'll find the purchase page, but if you want to check it out first, there's not only a book trailer but free samples from each of the stories. If you're coming to Continuum on the Queen's Birthday weekend, you can probably get quite a few of the contributors to sign your copy, including me(I will be doing some panels, I hope, but you will find me on the ASIM table about half the time.) Do check it out if you enjoy your myths and legends and fairy tales! I'm very excited, can't wait to get my tribber's copy!

On My Review Policy

Recently I've had three or four inquiries from folk anxious to get a review of their ebooks, so I thought I'd post here rather than answering individually. Guys, I'm a teacher-librarian. That's a dying species in Australia. Schools save money any way they can. One of the ways they save money is by taking it away from library budgets like mine. In the year 2012, I have a budget that would be someone else's petty cash. So I review YA books and put them in my library, as my way of giving our students something new, maybe even something not yet in the shops. I can't put an ebook in the library. I love my ereader, as you might have noticed if you're following this blog, but every book in my library is available, somewhere, in paperback. Or if it's out of print, at least I can still read it. But that's for me only. My policy states that I don't review anything that's only available as ebook. Please respect that. If it changes I'll announce it here, I promise.

Rejoicing - Daughter Of Time

I got the ebook! Josephine Tey's wonderful Daughter of Time is now mine to read on my iPad. I first discovered this when I was in Year 11,courtesy of a very good English teacher, who told us about it while we were studying Shakespeare's Richard III. The novel was published in 1951 and its hero, Inspector Grant, who was also the hero of a number of more standard crime novels, is stuck in hospital. He's bored ... until he's given a mystery to solve: was Richard really the monster he was portrayed? Could the man in that portrait have killed the Princes in the Tower? And if he didn't,who did? Did anyone? With the help of a lot of books and a keen young researcher, Inspector Grant investigates a truly cold case and comes up with an answer. This is the book that inspired me to join the Richard III Society, and I bet it inspired plenty of others too. At Aussiecon III, we had what was meant to be a wake for Richard(it wasn't, as the hotel wouldn't let us bring drinks and charged too much to supply them). People came in costume and white roses were hard to come by in Melbourne that day. I ended up buying a plastic one with branches on it, allowing me to share. I still have a photo of me in costume with my white rose. Later, when I went to England, I wore my Richard badge at a Blake's 7 convention in England on October 2nd and was delighted when someone saw it and said,"oh, yes, it's his birthday,isn't it?" SF fans do also love their history. And it was all because of a slim whodunnit, in my case...

Miss Fisher - Book To Small Screen

I had considered going to the beach today, but when I got home I was just too hot and tired, so I decided to catch up with the first episode of Miss Fisher's Murder Mysteries, which was an adaptation of Cocaine Blues.

First, I'd like to say it was visually stunning and Essie Davis was perfect for the role of Phryne Fisher. I did recognise a couple of parts of Melbourne. The Windsor Hotel, of course, where Phryne stays, and I think the Andrews mansion was Ripponlea, which is right near the ABC studios and has been used for a LOT of fancy venues, from the Aussie Embassy in Embassy,  a series about an embassy in an Asian country to a millionaire's home in Mission Impossible. In the scene where Phryne disembarks in Melbourne, she is wearing a dress very much as described in the book.

Phryne and Dr Macmillan - see what I mean about the costume?

I did understand why a lot had to be cut to fit it all into one hour. I'm not sure why it was necessary to add characters and a back story with a murdered sister to bring Phryne back to Melbourne. The TV Lydia Andrews is an old friend of Phryne's, Dr Macmillan is a lot younger than the book Macmillan and Australian instead of Scottish. She does, however, wear the kind of mannish clothes the doctor in the book was wearing. Policeman Hugh Collins has been brought in early, which is okay, as long as his romance with Dot starts at the right time. Phryne's maid Dot starts off as Lydia Andrews's maid, instead of meeting Phryne in the Block Arcade while trying to avenge herself against the horrible son of her former employer. She does hate telephones,as in the books. Sasha the Russian dancer is a lot older than the one in the novel, but I guess Phryne would have looked like a cradle-snatcher if he'd been as young as he was in the book. It works in the novel, but on screen it might not have.

 I won't go into any more detail here, lest you have missed this and are a fan of the books. Just go to iView and watch. Then let me know what you think. Looks like they must be skipping Flying Too High, because next week's episode is Murder On The Ballarat Train. I think the series is going to be fun.

 Meanwhile, if you haven't read the books, for heaven's sake, buy them! They're a good investment because you'll want to re-read them, long after you know whodunnit.

Popular Posts And Other Stuff

It's weird, you know. Browsing through the posts on my blog, I wonder at the ones that are the most popular. Take the H.I.V.E reviews, for example. A couple of them are near the top of the list and I can totally understand that. The books have a well-deserved fandom. But other H.I.V.E reviews have had very few hits and I ask - why? It's the same series, right? You'd think something with "Tolkien" in the tags would get stacks of hits, but no - my birthday toast post has very few. You know what's top of the hits list? A very short post in which I direct readers to my final post on Insideadog, without even remembering to put in a link. I just said I was tired, after a day supervising student fundraising activities, and was going to bed. That post has had more hits than anything else on my blog, including the also-popular post called " Who Washes The Dishes in Rivendell?", a bit of whimsy about the lack of domestication among Tolkien's Elves, who somehow manage to create fabulous feasts. It has had more hits than the great interview my student Thando did with Juliet Marillier back in December 2010. And THAT was read by hundreds! So was the review of the Andy Griffiths book, but poor Andy couldn't compete with the Dog's final post. Maybe I'd better go back and put in a link, though there have been some great Writers In Residence since then. It was a great experience, by the way, and I have been told that the site gets thousands of hits a day. Despite that, writers blogging there wonder if anyone is reading, because the comments section is too hard to reach, you have to know how, and then you have to wait till a moderator reads your comment and - maybe! - publishes it. And it only shows once you click the heading. No wonder I only got three comments that month, two from friends and one from a determined young reader who never did get her gift of bookmarks because I didn't find the comment till my stint was over. I did try, got Michael Pryor, the December WIR, to advertise. I'm told that's on their to-do list, by Heath, a friendly CYL staff member(who is in my good books after his lovely review of Wolfborn.)maybe I should do the same as Stephanie of RIASS, who tweets "vintage" posts well worth a read.

Mark Walden Interview Real Soon now

Today I got the reply to my questions sent to Mark Walden and they were worth the wait. As soon as they have been prettied up a bit(format, not editing) the interview will be up. Sonia Palmisano of Bloomsbury tells me the reason it took a liile while to come through is that the author of H.I.V.E is starting a brand new series, something to look forward to. No, I don't know what it is, but as soon as the first is available, I will read and review it for you. Be patient!

CYL anniversary celebration

Tonight I attended the first event of the Booktalkers year, the 21st anniversary of the Centre for Youth Literature. Of course, the founder of the Centre, Agnes Nieuwenhuizen, was there.

Here she is, speaking to us, holding up a book she picked up at Reading's.

Sorry I have so many heads in front, but those are distinguished heads. That gentleman is Mike Shuttleworth, who ran the CYL for several years and is now a TL at Princes Hill SC and doing the Melbourne Writers' Festival. Next to him is Maureen McCarthy, whose wonderful YA novels were first recommended to me by students when I was doing a stint at the very library when Mike is now lucky enough to work. The lady in red next to her is Libby Gleeson, author of a lot of very popular YA books. They had all been involved with the Centre at one time or another - Maureen spoke of how she had encountered Agnes while teaching children's writing at RMIT and unsure of how to go about it.

Other panellists included Jenny Lovell, who arranges all those great little acts that go with the Teenage Booktalker sessions. She first met Agnes when the CYL was located at St Martin's, which had a youth theatre at the time (Agnes once told me that she gave them a copy of my book Potions To Pulsars to use for research for a show they were doing on women scientists). These guys were reminiscing about their experiences with Agnes, who sat on the side, moderating.

Boori Monty Pryor, who is one of the new Children's Laureates, was there because Agnes had a connection with his very first book (and I remember how he spoke of his father handing out copies, which made me think of my own father).

Erica Wagner was on the panel too. I have known her for years, since I first tried to sell her Wolfborn while she was about to leave Penguin. She said no, but read it again when she got to A&U. She said no again, but at least she gave it a go.

Agnes herself ,instead of a talk about the history of the CYL, did a quiz, offering chocolates to those who answered her questions.

The big guest speakers for the evening were David Levithan, some of whose books I've read and enjoyed, and Melina Marchetta. I enjoyed hearing both of them and bought two of his books - I'd read just about everything else on the bookseller table.

The place was overflowing with big names in writing - I encountered a number of my Twitter buddies and several writers and publishers I've known over the years.

I wore my Wolfborn t-shirt by way of promo. It would have been nice to have someone ask about it, but no such luck. Maybe my sister is right to say that these things aren't as useful as you might think. :-(

However, I don't regret wearing it, because it meant I was recognised and pounced on by, would you believe, Melina Marchetta, who was delighted with my review of Froi of the Exiles and had, while she was about it, read my post about Dad. She said she could relate, because of her own relationship with her Dad.

I met Cassandra Golds, who is best-known as a novelist these days, but I remember from the NSW School Magazine, where she used to work, and we ad a chat about Geoffrey McSkimming, author of those deliciously funny Cairo Jim novels, who also used to work for the NSWSM (maybe still does?) She once rejected an article of mine, but eventually bought it on a re-write.

I had a chat with Miffy, whom I interviewed about a month ago, and Paul Collins, whom I gave some Crime Time bookmarks.

We all had some cake which Agnes cut, and I left for home about 9.15 pm.

However, it's getting on for midnight now, as I missed my tram, so I'm off to bed.

Good night, all!

Welcome, Abby, Melpomene and Terry!

Welcome to my newest followers!

Terry Morris is a Melbourne SF fan, librarian and baby photographer whom I've known for years through fandom. I'm following her son Raph's blog. Actually, Terry has been following this blog under another name for some time, but I'll keep that private. ;-) She does have a blog, but it's under her pseudonym, so when she gives me permission I will add a link.

Melpomene is a Melbourne poet, who in her day job is a teacher studying teacher-librarianship. We met on Twitter and, as we both love YA books and work in disadvantaged state schools, have plenty in common, including running literary clubs in the library at lunchtime.

Abby, AKA The Director, is a young blogger in the US who runs a wonderful blog called Castles, Quills and Cameras. We met on her web site when I commented on her post about the movie of Eagle of the Ninth. I think it's great when teenagers are running their own blogs, especially when they are as mature and articulate as Abby - so much so that I didn't know how young she was till she mentioned it in an email.

Link added to medical facts blog!

Okay, I've added the promised link to Jordyn Redwood's fabulous medical facts blog. Scroll down the right hand side of this page. Go check out the site and see what she will do to help you with your writing. or, even if you're not a writer, have fun with the posts. The most recent is how she found a jarring scene in a book by a well-known writer who should have known better or at least checked up before writing about a character being on a valium drip!

Another Fabulous - And Useful - blog

Many years ago, when I was writing fan fiction, a fannish doctor, Mary G.T.Webber, read one too many stories in which characters suffered such agonising - and improbable - injuries as a broken spleen. It wasn't limited to fan fiction either. In the BBC SF series Blake's 7, anti-hero Avon was knocked over the head so many times with no apparent ill-effects that she speculated it might be a cause of his craziness in the final season. She wrote an article called "How to hurt your hero" and oh, my, how we all hunted for a copy! This, you understand, was pre-Internet, when you just had to look it up in books. Not everyone had that patience and people continued to give their heroes broken spleens.

 Well, my fellow writers, I have discovered an entire BLOG dedicated to "how to hurt your hero"!

 The blogger is an American writer whose day job is paediatric emergency nursing, so she knows what she is talking about. Jordyn Redwood is running this blog for the benefit of those of us who want to get it right in our fiction and she deserves a round of applause for it. She is planning, as a part of the blog, a timeline of medical discoveries so that you don't, for example,have your hero treated with penicillin in 1915. I've offered my assistance as a librarian, as Jordyn is, after all, a writer who wants to get on with that as well as blog. I'm now following and will put up a link on the side of this page as son asI get back to my laptop (too fiddly on iPad) Meanwhile, why not check it out?

 Here's the link. http://www.jordynredwood.com/

National Year of Reading Launch

Tuesday was not only Valentine's Day, it was the launch of the National Year of Reading. All over the country, libraries and other such institutions celebrated reading.

There was one at Sunshine Library, where the GoH was John Marsden, author of the Tomorrow When The War Began series. I went there with four students from 8B, my homeroom. Three of them, Vincent, Natasha and Braydon, are members of my book club. The fourth, Corey, is Dylan's brother. He isn't a keen reader himself, but asked if he might come and of course, I was delighted to have him with me.

We set off right after school. Natasha and I walked together, while the boys charged ahead, but fortunately, by the time we got as far as our senior campus we found them again - oddly, behind us!

It was a warm day, quite a hot walk. By the time we got to the library, we were all very thirsty. I'd brought a bottle of water, but it wasn't very cool, so we were all pleased to get inside the library, where cold cordial was on offer. I took photos of the students with books in hand, outside the library; it will be submitted for the college newsletter and hopefully for the magazine, but without parental permission, I can't show them here, so instead, here's a photo of the cake, which was cut after the launch.

Pretty, isn't it?

After a speech by one of the library staff, we heard John Marsden. He only spoke for a few minutes, about how he loves libraries, and shared memories of his childhood experiences in the school library, which was divided by grade level, only he finished all the Grade 3 books before the end of the year, so had run out of books.

After John's talk, he very generously handed out copies of a couple of his books to the children and teens. Corey thoughtfully took a copy of a novel for Robert, a great Marsden fan who couldn't make it that day. He and Vincent left for the Sunshine Plaza, with parents' permission, but Braydon and Natasha were waiting for their parents to pick them up, so got their books signed (more photos for the school magazine!) A photographer wandering around asked permission to take their photos for the library's web site, but permission had to wait till Braydon's mother arrived (Natasha declined the offer).

The photographer photographed him lounging on the library's "Reading Chair"; we will be looking out for him on the web site as soon as the disc is delivered to the library. He certainly enjoyed having his picture taken!

We all had cake and received a library bag with a few goodies in it (balloon, USB bracelet, a heart-shaped chocolate). I waited with Natasha for her father to pick her up and we had a chat about the Sunshine Harvester on display outside the library.

She said she'd had a good time and thanked me for taking her.

I headed for the station, exhausted after the long day, and met Carmel Shute, head of Sisters In Crime, who works in Sunshine and lives out my way, so  I had someone to discuss books with most of the way home.

An enjoyable, if tiring, afternoon.

Spam Comments

This morning I deleted a spam "comment" that had appeared in my comment box overnight. I haven't seen one in a while, so I read carefully before deciding it was spam, even though the so-called comment was followed by an advertising link. The spammer had actually given a name. Probably a fake one, though I guess even spammers have to have names. Out of curiosity I checked the spammer's profile and sure enough it was very recent, followed by a long list of advertising sites. They're quite good, these spammers. I was actually sucked in once and published the comment,before taking a good look at it. They write something like, "I really love your site, I'm using this for research,keep up the good work!" The thing is, they never explain how your actual post helps them in their research or say what they're researching, apart, perhaps, from how many suckers - whoops,customers- they can get through spamming. They never comment on the post itself. This one was attached to one of my interviews and totally irrelevant to it. I did once get a comment from someone who had been trying to contact me and couldn't find an email address, but since then I've put in a contact link. So, to future spammers, don't bother visiting this site. I'll catch you out every time.

You Thought YA Cover Art Is Bad?

So, considering all the discussion we've had on those YA covers with girls in long formal gowns lurking in gloomy Gothic backgrounds, you'd thin k it couldn't get any sillier, wouldn't you?

Recently, I've come across this fabulous blog on Livejournal and started following.

I'm putting through links to two very funny posts on the theme of gender roles on, respectively, spec fic and romance novel covers. This blogger doesn't just talk about the absurdity of some cover art, she actually has herself photographed in the silly poses from the covers. You have to wonder how anyone would manage to twist herself into those poses, but the romance covers are even sillier and for these she got the co-operation of her husband, to stand in for famous romance novel model Fabio. Then she swapped the male and female stances, so that she was posing in the male role. It was hilarious.


The first one was entitled Men's Versus Women's Poses. That's the speculative fiction one.

The second one was called Gender and Book Covers: the romance novel edition.

Do check these out and try not to be eating or drinking while you do it, unless you want to choke with laughter.

GLOW By Amy Kathleen Ryan/. Volume 1 Skychasers. Sydney: Pan Macmillan, 2011

 I received this in a bag of goodies at last year’s “Publisher’s Showcase” event at the State Library of Victoria. I read the other two, Divergent and Shatter Me,  very quickly and, to be honest, forgot about this one until recently. Once I started reading, I was sorry it had taken so long.

In the distant future, two generation ships, Empyrian and New Horizon, have left a dying Earth to start a colony on a distant planet, New Earth. Empyrian has a second generation, after both ships experienced fertility problems for reasons not explained in this volume – perhaps the next will tell us. New Horizon not only didn’t overcome its problems but the crew have been convinced that the women’s ovaries have been ruined by incorrect advice from Empyrian. This is important, because it forms the basis of most of the plot, as New Horizon, a light year ahead, slows down till Empyrian can catch up and then attacks in a raid which nets all the girls while leaving dead and dying adults on Empyrian and a group of boys from sixteen down to baby to cope as best they can.

Young lovers Kieran and Waverly are torn apart. Both of them have to become leaders, Waverly to try to escape and Kieran to keep the damaged Empyrian going.

The novel is a good, fast-paced action adventure which rarely slows down and then only so that Waverly or Kieran can work out what’s going on. It’s well-written in the old show-don’t-tell style – for example, we learn about the layout and food-producing gardens of Empyrian as Kieran rushes off to make it in time for an appointment with the captain; as he runs, we find out what he passes on the way. The author never stops the action to describe a character; they do get described, but not as a frozen picture or even the irritating, “She ran her hand through her long, golden hair”.

The characters are strong and intelligent. At one point, Waverly uses her knowledge of the physics she studied at school to work out that she and the other girls have been lied to.  There’s a nice twist at the end which girls reading it may not like, but I did. In any case, it’s a cliff-hanger, so twists are bound to occur.

There were just a few jarring notes. Given how carefully the author researched her physics, I wondered why there was no delay in conversations between ships – even when they were a light year apart. There’s a scene in which Waverly is shown a video of a discussion between the two ships’ leaders, with no delay whatever between them. Now, I know this happens all the time in Star Trek and Babylon 5, but that’s TV. At the very least, it might have been a good idea for the author to say something in an afterword.

It might also have been better to say that something dramatic happened to the frozen embryos being carried than to assume they weren’t carrying any. These are ships going to found a new world – even if something happened to the crew’s fertility along the way, one would think that no chances would be taken that the crew would die out along the way or get there and have no children to colonise. There would most likely be frozen embryos both of humans and animals. Maybe there were and these will be mentioned in the next book.

Still, it’s a good, exciting story that’s well worth a read and I’m looking forward to the next volume. I think this is the best of the three books I got in my goody bag late last year.

SECOND TIME AROUND -WHAT I RE-READ

So, with all those new books around, coming out every day, week, month, why would you want to read one again?

Let’s face it, if you only wanted to read all your books once, you might as well just go to the library. And the library is absolutely fine – hey, I run one myself. But it’s not enough to keep the industry going, is it?

So, what do I re-read –and why?

When something is wonderful, why would you only read it once, rather than find that joy again?

I’ve had my iPad for a month now. Not all of my e-book collection is made up of books I’ve read before; with all those lovely freebies in Project Gutenberg and others, I’ve picked up classics I’ve always been curious about. Arthur Conan Doyle’s The White Company, which I’ve heard was one of the books that inspired Gordon R. Dickson’s Childe Cycle. Both of Kipling’s Jungle Books, which I confess I’ve never got around to reading, but will now.

But quite a few are books I loved when I first read them and wanted to enjoy again. Among these is Mark Twain’s A Connecticut Yankee In King Arthur’s Court, which I recently re-read, after many years. There’s the delightful Arthur Conan Doyle book The Lost World, which I thought great fun the first time around and didn’t see why I couldn’t enjoy it again (and I am, oh, I am!). While about it, I discovered another Professor Challenger story, The Disintegration Machine, just a short story, but set in the same universe as Lost World and featuring something that Dr “Bones” McCoy would recognise as what he hated about the transporter.

I’ve also picked up the first two “Katy” books by Susan Coolidge, which were among my childhood pleasures. I’m ioving them all over again. I’ve got the two Alice novels by Lewis Carroll. I remember the last time I re-read Alice, thinking how very Victorian all the jokes were and wondering how I ever understood it as a child, but I must have got it because my very first doll was called Alice, after the heroine of the book I was reading at the time. I’ve got A Princess of Mars, which I haven’t read in years and look forward to re-reading, likewise Robert E. Howard’s Hour Of The Dragon, which I have somewhere on my shelves as Conan The Conqueror. That’s the one where the middle-aged Conan, now king of Aquilonia, has an adventure and finally chooses himself a woman to settle down with and make his Queen.

But these are only the e-books I’ve picked up for my iPad. By my bed are those books which I read again and again, books which are shabby from re-reading. Just a few: Harry Turtledove’s Ruled Britannia, his alternative universe book in which the Spanish Armada conquered England. It’s seen from the viewpoints of William Shakespeare and his Spanish counterpart, Lope Da Vega, who, in this world, has come to England with te conquerors and, in between doing his officer duties, is writing plays. I have lost track of the number of times I’ve read this. Each time I read it I pick up something I missed last time. In this world, Christopher Marlowe has not been murdered in that pub, and has written many more plays. However, the characters who murdered him in our world are around in this one, playing their own parts. Queen Elizabeth is in the Tower and Shakespeare has been commissioned both by the Spanish and the British underground to write a propaganda play. As I love Shakespeare anyway, it’s wonderful to be able to read and re-read a book seen from his viewpoint.

I re-read Lord Of The Rings as comfort reading. The beauty and power of it makes it terrific bedtime re-reading for me. I’ll read a chapter and say to myself, “Oh, good, it’s the scene where they first meet Aragorn!/Tom Bombadil/arrive in Rivendell…”

There are all those books by Terry Pratchett (the current one at my bedside is Hogfather) which make me laugh as much the tenth time as they did the first.

I re-read the Phryne Fisher books by Kerry Greenwood, even though I know whodunit, because I love to soak myself in the ambience of 1928 Melbourne. It makes me look at the city around me with different eyes. Walking the Esplanade in St Kilda, I wonder what view Phryne Fisher would have had from her “bijou” home at 221B.

The Corinna Chapman stories by the same author are set in the present, but they’re part of a more familiar Melbourne, as I know it now, and I do love the building in which Corinna lives – I’d move in tomorrow if it existed! I relish the re-read of these books.

I re-read Harry Potter. The first lot of re-reads I did were because I wanted to refresh my memory before reading the next, but now I just want to go back to the days when Harry was young and innocent and just discovering the wizarding world and then, of course, I have to finish the saga. And then I start again, for the same reason - back to Harry's childhood...

Howard Fast’s books I re-read for the beauty of the stories and language. And I find things that I hadn’t noticed before. Re-reading Spartacus one time, I suddenly realised that a story told solemnly by the politician Gracchus to young Marcus Tullius Cicero is actually a well-known joke about Jewish mothers. Cheeky! Cicero doesn’t like it and he certainly doesn’t get the punchline. Neither did I till I read the actual joke somewhere. And if I’d read the book only once, that’s only one thing I would never have picked up at all.

So, o lurkers out there, what’s your favourite re-read and why?

SEA HEARTS By Margo Lanagan, Sydney: Allen and Unwin, 2012

If, like me, you’ve grown up on Celtic folk-tales, you’ll be familiar with the story of the human male who gets himself an otherworldly bride. With a few exceptions, it’s really only in modern YA paranormals, that it’s the other way around.

Basically, there are two kinds: there’s the one where she’s the daughter of a king of the otherworld, whether it’s the sea or Faerie, and the one where she’s a selkie (seal-maiden) whose skin is stolen while she’s dancing around in human form. There is always a condition – the groom has to promise not to ask her certain questions, not to hit her without cause (Welsh - The Physicians of Myddfai), not to see what she gets up to on Saturdays (Melusine, who is, in theory, the ancestress of the British royal family) or he has to keep her sealskin hidden because once she finds it, she’ll grab it and go home, even leaving her children by her land husband. Invariably, the husband breaks the contract, mostly by accident, and loses his wife and any wealth she brought with her.

This novel asks, yes, but what happens generations later when there are descendants of those seal maidens in a small community where presumably the gene pool is pretty small?

In the nineteenth century, Miskaella Prout is a girl none of the limited supply of men on the island of Rollrock wants to marry. After being treated as a minor goddess by the old folk and like dirt by everyone else, she discovers that she can actually draw girls out of the seals, without having to wait for them to drop their skins and dance in the moonlight. And those girls are absolutely gorgeous and better still, they’ll pretty much do as they’re told and go with the man who’s there when they emerge. This is a way not only to make a living but also to get revenge on all those other girls who managed to catch husbands.

It succeeds beyond her wildest dreams and Miskaella is rich, while the men all owe her money for their Stepford wives.

But the island’s culture changes, once the only girls left in town are seals – and unlike the Ira Levin robots, these women have emotions and can be unhappy…

The book is a series of connected novellas, told from the viewpoints of a number of characters including Miskaella herself. Despite this, there is still a twist at the end, when you realise that Miskaella didn’t tell you quite everything.

The writing is beautiful, your heart aches for those selkie girls and you can even understand why Miskaella is so bitter. It’s a fascinating take on the old folk tales, a wonderful, “What if...?”

Margo Lanagan is one of the best writers of literary spec fic around. Her writing is always beautiful and she creates characters you can care for, even if, like Miskaella, they’re ruining everyone else’s lives.

Damn, I wish I’d written this one.

February Festivals!

Yesterday was much more than my first day back at work. It was the start of February, which is just packed with festivals. February 1st or 2nd is Candlemas or St Brigid's Day. She was not only one of the patron saints of Ireland, but may have been a Christianised version of a Celtic goddess. It's also Imbolc, one of the four great Celtic festivals of the year. According to Wikipedia, the word comes from one which means "in the belly" and refers to pregnancy of ewes. So it seems to have been a rural festival, celebrating the start of spring and all the good stuff that happens on the farm at that time. Here, of course, it's the middle of summer and HOT!

They used to celebrate it in the Middle Ages. Being a spring festival, they'd look for when the first badgers came out and it's suggested in Wikipedia it may have been a forerunner to the American Groundhog Day. How cool is that!

Then there are the Christian festivals such as Shrove Tuesday, or Pancake Day. This year it's the 21st of February. I'm not a Christian, but I do enjoy celebrating Pancake Day, just for the heck of it and not for the real reason, which was to finish off all the stuff you couldn't have during Lent. Shrove Tuesday, Mardi Gras (literally fat Tuesday, because you'd be using up all the fat you couldn't eat), Carnival (Farewell to Meat - and I first came across that in a poem by Byron, believe it or not)

Another Shrove Tuesday tradition is a game of footy; if you've read Terry Pratchett's Unseen Academicals you'd have come across the kind of street football they used to play. There are also - still - pancake races in England.

I love reading all this stuff. Research for a specific piece of writing is all very well, but I get my ideas from just reading and reading anything and everything that looks like fun.

This year I'm not going to have time do do a pancake supper, because I'm likely to be off at the Centre for Youth Literature, celebrating their 21st anniversary.Books first, then pancakes. I just have to hope I can resist buying anything at the stall!

However, if anyone wants to do their own pancake supper or breakfast, they can try this recipe for buttermilk pancakes:

300 ml buttermilk
1 cup of self-raising flour
1 egg
a couple of tablespoons of caster sugar

Mix them all up and pour some into a frying pan with some oil or melted butter/margarine (I use olive oil, but up to you). This made me two largeish pancakes which I then rolled around fresh summer fruit and yoghurt, while sitting with my nose in a book.

AND, if you want to spoil yourself, you can throw in some blueberries. I got this recipe on the side of a carton of buttermilk. I usually make mine with milk, but buttermilk ones are fluffier.

So, if you have some time off, luxuriate in your pancakes and your pot of tea and read something while you eat.