Legends of Literature - Melvin Burgess & David Almond

Team MFB could not attend this fantastic event hosted by Puffin at their offices in November, so I kindly asked SCBWI chum and aspiring writer and reviewer, Caroline Hooton, if she'd be interested in attending it on our behalf.  I love Caroline's reviews and think highly of her as a writer and she is one of the funniest people I know.  She agreed to attend on our behalf and wrote us this interesting and comprehensive report:

As part of the 70th anniversary celebrations for Puffin Books, Puffin Towers hosted legends of literature, David Almond and Melvin Burgess in conversation with Claire Armistead (literary editor of The Guardian) on Wednesday 16th November.

The event started with each author reading from their latest work – THE TRUE TALE OF THE MONSTER BILLY DEAN and KILL ALL ENEMIES, moved onto questions from Claire Armistead and concluded with questions from the crowd.

Melvin Burgess said that KILL ALL ENEMIES was based on the people he spoke to in pupil referral units around the country. The kids he talked to were the kind of kids usually regarded as ne’er-do-wells and thugs by society, but he found them to be real heroes in other parts of their life.

The extract that Melvin read out from KILL ALL ENEMIES involved the character Chris who he said was based on a kid who decided that while he was happy to work in school, his free time was his own and he was not going to fill it with homework. Kids loved Chris but adults wanted to slap him.

One of the other characters in the extract, Rob, is another POV character in the book who was based on a kid who hung around the Leeds Corn Exchange and was in a death metal band called Kill All Enemies with his brother. They had a violent step-father and used death metal to deal with their emotions and the fall out after they were abandoned by their mother.

The third POV character in the book, Billie, was based on a psychopath in the Wirral who was always getting into fights. Her mum had suffered with depression and alcoholism, leaving Billie to bring up her four siblings on her own, doing whatever she could to keep her family together. Her mum went into detox and when she came out she wanted to take back all of her children except Billie.

Melvin said that simply talking to people was a way of obtaining truth, voice, character and circumstances that you can then fictionalise and turn into a novel. He told Claire that the kids he spoke to all knew that they’d be in the novel and Melvin showed them the manuscript at every stage and they all seemed to be proud that their stories were being used.

Speaking about THE TRUE TALE OF THE MONSTER BILLY DEAN, David Almond described his novel as being about a boy whose father only visits him at night and who lives with his hairdressing mum in a house within a destroyed city. Billy is a person who feels driven to tell and record his own story but he can’t write so the story is told phonetically. David described Billy’s approach as being that of taking words and turning them back into objects. Billy learns how to write at the same time as he learns how to grow up and it’s through the act of writing that Billy ultimately learns to be himself.

When pushed into giving more details of the book, David revealed that Billy’s mysterious dad is actually a priest who essentially abused Billy’s mother. Billy himself was born in the middle of a war or similarly cataclysmic event. Billy is alone in seeing beauty in the ruined world, mainly because he’s spent so much of his life hidden by his mother.

Claire Armistead suggested to each author that their books both looked at what “goodness” might be.

Melvin said that the kids he based his characters on in KILL ALL ENEMIES faced tremendous pressure in terms of what society expects from them and although they fail to live up to that their core values remain recognisable and they behave as they do for good reasons. Melvin said that he wanted to give a voice to that because a lot of kids like this don’t have one – for example he pointed out that when it came to the London riots in August 2011, no-one really spoke to the actual rioters. He said that his characters all have good qualities about them and they’re acting on instinct to the problems around them rather than making continuous moral judgments.

David said that in THE TRUE TALE OF THE MONSTER BILLY DEAN, Billy has to show courage in order to become himself. His guiding point is his mum and his desire to live, but that doesn’t prevent him from being used by other characters for their own ends.

Melvin believed that what THE TRUE TALE OF THE MONSTER BILLY DEAN and KILL ALL ENEMIES have in common is the fact that they feature characters who become nice folk by the end of the story – i.e. they transform into kind and generous people.

Claire asked David about the influence of Catholicism on THE TRUE TALE OF THE MONSTER BILLY DEAN. Having grown up Catholic he said that the religion does have an influence on his work, mainly because Catholicism isn’t something you believe in so much as something that you do and because he can’t get rid of it he allows it to enter his fiction and finds it a relief. In THE TRUE TALE OF THE MONSTER BILLY DEAN, Billy reconstructs the religious statues blown up in the war because he finds Catholic statues to be filled with tenderness. To chuckles from the audience, David admitted that he had a thing for angels but doesn’t really know why. Growing up Catholic in the 1960s he heard stories from people who said they’d seen angels and he believes that they’re a potent force throughout history and across cultures.

Claire pointed out that in KILL ALL ENEMIES there are similar symbols that take on mythical status. Melvin said that the significance of a Metallica tee-shirt in the book came about because he’d been speaking to a quiet lad who’d been given a Metallica tee-shirt by his mum and couldn’t bear to take it off because it was filled with his sense that his mum loved him.

Claire described how the Metallica tee-shirt becomes both a symbol of vulnerability and of aggression because the character insists on wearing it, which results in him getting into fights. Melvin agreed that the character does get beaten up because of the shirt and that there’s a certain irony to the fact that as the tee-shirt gets torn and muddy and battered, he thinks that it’s more metal. The shirt becomes the character’s way of coping with being deserted by his mum and beaten up by his mates.

Finally, Claire noted how neither David nor Melvin is kind to parents in their books. Melvin said that this is because there’s a perpetual problem in fiction of getting right of the parents so that the kids can show their mettle. David pointed out that in THE TRUE TALE OF THE MONSTER BILLY DEAN Billy does in fact find substitute parents – particularly in the form of the local butcher – because he’s searching for a father figure and trying to construct a family who will love him.

Many thanks to Puffin for the invitation to this event.

THE TRUE TALE OF THE MONSTER BILLY DEAN by David Almond and KILL ALL ENEMIES by Melvin Burgess were each released on 1st September 2011 and are available from all good bookshops.

Guest Review - Author Julie Bertagna talks Divergent with MFB

MFB jumped at the chance to host this thoughtful review/guest blog by Julie Bertagna, author of the dystopic trilogy: Exodus, Zenith, Aurora.

***

DIVERGENT review by Julie Bertagna

By 2012, the tide of apocalyptic and dystopian fiction that is taking the YA publishing world by storm will be a veritable tsunami. Pick your apocalypse, disaster or dystopia. Asteroid hit? Moon crash? A world short of water? Flooded by rising seas? Running out of oil? Scarce on oxygen? Or scarce on basic freedoms, ruled by sinister powers who decide your fate?

Divergent by Veronica Roth is the latest, much-hyped debut on the dystopian scene, marketed as a natural successor to Suzanne Collins’ massively successful Hunger Games trilogy. I was interested to discover that Divergent was optioned for a film adaptation by the makers of the Twilight movies even before the book was published, because I often felt I was reading the script of an action mov-ie, rather than a novel - and that, for me, was both the book’s weakness and its strength.

In this dystopia world, devastating war has been followed by a ‘great peace’. I had to guess that this war had been global as Beatrice Prior’s world and references are limited to a future Chicago, where society has been divided into five factions, each cultivating the various virtues which, it is believed, will save humans from further war.

The strangeness of this idea gripped me right away. It’s a scenario worthy of Margaret Atwood. YA readers, stressed out by exams and life choices, will identify with the tests sixteen-year-old Bea-trice is put through and her pressurised decision over which faction she will belong to for the rest of her life: Candor, Dauntless, Amity, Erudite or staying with her family in Abnegation? Beatrice becomes Tris and makes a choice which wrenches her from a safe but dull existence and all she has ever known. And for the next few hundred pages, Tris is immersed in a brutal initiation trial: a gang world of extreme violence, where every day is a fight to survive the murderous tests deemed essential in order to become a true member of her chosen faction. In The Hunger Games it’s clear from the outset that Katniss is fighting for her life and for her loved ones, but it’s only in the final hundred pages of Divergent that the real plot kicks in and Tris’ torture begins to make sense.

Yet amid the over-long violence some characters of real depth emerge and Tris has to grapple with difficult moral choices - and an overwhelming attraction to a boy who becomes central to the real battle ahead.

It’s a thrillingly fast-paced and action-packed story, but ultimately the relentless violence wea-kened the book for me because it had a cartoon quality that strained my credibility too far, too often. One one occasion Tris is beaten unconscious, in another she is shot and has a bullet lodged in her shoulder - episodes which would floor ordinary mortals - but Tris’ discomfort is fleeting and soon she is back on her feet, battling on regardless. The unending brutality became repetitive and numbing, and Tris’ one-dimensional reaction to most events is to want to kick, punch or strangle someone. So when the really tragic episodes occur, what should be heart-wrenching is diminished, losing its power to shock amid so much page-by-page violence.

Divergent is an intriguing addition to the welter of futuristic visions of the current dystopian craze and Tris is a gutsy, unpredictable girl character. Often perplexing, hard to like or understand, it was these very flaws that kept me interested in her when the violence became tedious. Tris may take bravado and girlpower to unrealistic extremes, but this plain, long-nosed, selfish, gung-ho girl is a welcome divergence from some of the more bland, beautiful and needy heroines of YA fiction.

***

This is another very interesting artice Julie had done for The Scotsman on Dystopic Fiction, which is definitely worth a look at.

Thank you so much to Julie and to MacMillan for thinking of MFB to host Julie's rounds around the internet. Aurora, the third book in the trilogy is out now.

Guest Blog: Andrea Cremer

We're very excited here on MFB about the release of Nightshade by Andrea Cremer and to be part of the blog tour. Andrea has been kind enough to write us a brilliant piece about pack etiquette and the mythology behind the book. We hope you enjoy it!

-

In the weeks leading up to Nightshade’s release I’ve been thrilled by the number of reviews and the amount of excitement my book has generated – it’s more than any debut author could ever hope for. A common response to Nightshade from readers is the comment that it’s one of his or her favorite werewolf books. As much as I understand where that idea comes from, I think it’s time for me to take and stand and say Nightshade is not a werewolf book. Here’s what I mean:
I’ve lived long in the realm of paranormal/fantasy proudly bearing my badge of vampire girl. That’s right; I came on board as a fan of vamps, not werewolves. I was Team Edward for all four books of Twilight. I prefer Bill and Eric to Sam in True Blood. But before you start throwing tomatoes, let me tell you why.

Friends who knew I was a vampire girl presumed that meant I love ALL forms of paranormal, so they’d push werewolves at me enthusiastically. I wasn’t interested, and I couldn’t figure out why. After all they were fierce, strong, magical – all things I liked. So what was the problem? And then it hit me – I didn’t like werewolves because I love wolves.

That’s right – I’m a wolf girl, but a real wolf girl. I grew up so far north in Wisconsin that it’s practically Canada. Wolves roamed the forests of my homeland. I also loved National Geographic television specials even more than cartoons. So by age 9 I could rattle off biological and ecological info like a pro. Wolves to me were beautiful, intelligent, social, and graceful.
Werewolves seemed to be none of these things. The werewolves I’d encountered on page and screen were hideous – half man/half beast, usually ugly, often unintelligent, driven only by rage or bloodlust. And worst of all: they didn’t want to be wolves. Lycanthropy occurs as a curse, or a disease. The endgoal of most werewolf tales was to kill the wolf or free the affected person of the wolf curse. I couldn’t come to grips with that idea. If someone asked me – hey wanna turn into a wolf? I’d say “heck, yeah!” Wouldn’t you rather be a wolf? From what I know of wolves, the answer is indisputably YES.

Nightshade’s Guardians are my way of coming to terms with my love of wolves and my trouble with classic werewolf tales. Calla – the alpha female who narrates Nightshade – is powerful and revels in her life as a wolf. Her troubles arise not from her ability to shift, but from the ways in which her masters try to limit her power, to restrain her freedoms. Calla started it all because I wanted to write a story about a female character who wasn’t being pulled into a magical world – she was already in the middle of it, a leader and a warrior. The world of Nightshade came as I tried to figure out how someone like Calla, a girl who I knew was incredibly powerful, could be afraid and angry. What was controlling her? Why would she be fighting against her own destiny? I realized that she was facing off with something even more powerful than herself.

That’s where my background as a historian came in. I teach early modern history (1500-1800) – a period of immense, violent change in human societies. This is the time of witchhunts, religious warfare, colonization, the Inquistion; all types of cataclysmic social transformation that turned the lives across the globe upside down. The more I thought about Calla I thought about the ways in which wolf warriors and witches could have intertwined lives. The mythology in Nightshade is a blend of history and lore, new twists I invented along the way…and wolves in the wilderness the way I always imagined they would be.

Wolves also inspire me because of their sociability.
Pack relationships offered a wonderful way to explore a world of friendship, servitude, loyalty, and betrayal. While Nightshade is about Calla’s journey, it’s also the story of her pack. The other wolves in the book play key roles throughout the trilogy. Wolves offered a wonderful framework around which to explore relationships, love, fear, and rivalry.
I still love vampires, but I have to say I think I’m switching teams. Wolves carry a magic and mystery to me that captured my heart and hasn’t let go. It was just a matter of finding my own way to tell their story.

Michael Ridpath talks Iceland, sagas and shows us some photos

I was so excited reading Where The Shadows Lie last week, I impetiously emailed poor Michael Ridpath and gushed at him. He was clearly so taken aback by it and so stunned by my mad word skills, he agreed to a guest blog before he had time to register how devious I was! I was keen to find out more about him writing WTSL, how it came to and the locations he uses and he's kindly complied with the following guest blog:

***

Where The Shadows Lie is an important book for me. It is four years since I decided to change genres, and this is the result.

After writing eight financial thrillers, I decided to try my hand at something else. The motivation was partly commercial: although I thought my books were improving in quality, sales were declining steadily, a trend which I put down to a lack of interest on the part of the general reader in financial fiction. But also, after spending years dealing with subjects I knew well, I wanted to move on to subjects which were both new and interesting.

After examining the shelves of a local Smith’s to look for popular areas that appealed to me, I decided to embark on a detective series. For that I needed a distinctive detective. My sub-conscious settled on Iceland. I had been on a book tour to the country ten years before and found it a fascinating, quirky place. For years I had tried to figure out how I could set a financial thriller there, but couldn’t see how (of course now it would be dead easy!).

So I needed an Icelandic detective. The name was easy – Magnus. The late Magnus Magnusson is every Englishman’s favourite Icelander, and his name was far too good to waste. But then a problem arose: I needed a detective who spoke Icelandic but was also a bit of an outsider. This was partly because I am obviously an outsider and would find it hard to pull off book after book written from the point of view of someone whose language I don’t speak. But also I wanted to point out the many extraordinary aspects of Icelandic society, which would be difficult if Magnus was a native – to him they wouldn’t seem worth mentioning.

So I devised a complicated background for Magnus, which not only addressed this difficulty, but also gave him a set of personal insecurities of the kind that any good fictional detective should carry around with him.

Magnus’s story goes as follows. He was born in Iceland, but his parents split up when he was a child, and Magnus followed his father to Boston where his father took a job as a professor of Mathematics. Magnus grew up a lone Icelandic kid in an American High School, reading the sagas for comfort. He went to university and was planning to go to Law School, when his father was murdered. The local police couldn’t find the killer, and despite his obsession with the task, neither could Magnus. But it caused him to change his career plans and become a cop.

Twelve years later, he is a homicide detective in Boston when he gets caught up in a police corruption scandal and he needs to disappear for his own safety. The Reykjavík police are looking for an adviser to help them with increasing levels of big-city crime. So Magnus moves to Reykjavík.

He still doesn’t know who killed his father. I do, but I’m not telling you, or him. Not for a few books anyway.

So, I was happy with my detective, but I needed a plot. I did some background research. I read some sagas, the medieval tales of Icelandic settlers in the tenth century, and found them fascinating. So, a lost saga then. How about a professor of Icelandic Literature found dead at his summer house?

OK, so what’s so great about this saga? I wanted something really big, something that would resonate beyond Iceland. An answer came quickly: Lord of The Rings.

Not bad. I didn’t know much about Tolkien, but I thought it plausible that he had an interest in the sagas. I remembered at university reading an academic article by him published in 1936 about Beowulf. So I did some more reading.

Amazingly something happened which almost never does: the more I found out about Tolkien and the sagas, the more it all fit together.

Tolkien was obsessed by Icelandic sagas, from the time when, as a child, he first read the translation by William Morris of the Saga of the Volsungs. He started an Old Norse drinking club at Leeds University in the 1920s, where they sang Icelandic drinking songs and read Icelandic tales. It turns out there is a bloody great volcano in Iceland called Mount Hekla which erupts all the time. It was known as the Mouth of Hell in medieval times, and is the perfect place to drop a ring.

The most famous lost saga in Iceland is Gaukur’s Saga. Not much is known about Gaukur except that he lived at a farm called Stöng in the shadow of Mount Hekla. So much in the shadow it was covered in ash in an eruption in 1104 and rediscovered in 1939. This is a replica.

So everything slotted into place. Brilliant!

The problem was I didn’t quite believe the story myself. I don’t go in for the supernatural very much, and I didn’t want my man Magnus to either. You can’t write a story you don’t believe in.

What to do? Go to the pub with my friend Toby, that’s what. By the third pint Toby had the problem sorted. Magnus could remain cynical, so could I, and so could the readers, if they so wished. Some of the other characters in the book would be credulous. And I should inject just the tiniest hint of something otherworldly in the book, the barest clue, to set the reader wondering.

That worked. I started typing.

I won’t tell you the ending. But I will show you. (Liz: This photo is Gulfoss where the climax takes place - it's pretty evocative and scary and beautiful!)

With those ingredients, how could I fail to make a good story?

Michael Ridpath

June 2010

**Just a small note: all photos featured in this guest blog was taken by Michael during his visits to Iceland. Except for the Tolkien photo, of course. That was nabbed from here.

Guest Blog - James Lovegrove - Writing For Barrington Stoke: The Complexity Of Simplicity

Many thanks to James who has taken out time from his schedule to talk to us about writing for Barrington Stoke and to tell us more about his Five Lords fo Pain sequence with them.

***

Barrington Stoke has been publishing books for reluctant readers and young people with reading difficulties since 1997. Based in Edinburgh, the company has scooped up countless awards in its 13 years of existence and has managed to attract work from some of the top children's authors in the country, as well as some of the top writers of adult fiction. And me.

My first book for Barrington Stoke was Wings. They approached me in 2000 asking if I would adapt my short story of the same name into a book for them. I, being a freelancer, and therefore one who never knowingly turns down an offer of work, said yes. Little did I realise this would be the start of an ongoing and deeply satisfying publishing relationship.

They provided me with a style sheet listing difficult grammatical constructions, tricky names and the like. Basically, the aim is to make the prose as straightforward and readable as possible, avoiding convoluted sentence structure and confusing phrasing. Certain words are very hard to read for those with dyslexia or other reading problems, so should be steered clear of if at all possible.

Following these "rules" was tricky at first but I got the hang of it soon enough. It challenged me to step back from my usual logorrhea and fanciness and strip my prose down to its bare essence. And my writing, I found, improved because of it.

After Wings I adapted another short story, "The House Of Lazarus", and then, for my third Barrington Stoke title, I created something out of whole cloth. This was Ant God, a tale of two boys, one normal, one strange, and of a Lovecraftian horror lurking at the periphery of perception. Another three books followed, all written to order -- Cold Keep, Kill Swap and Free Runner -- all of them fast-paced adventures, short-story length but structured as mini-novels, with chapter breaks and cliffhangers. In addition, I contributed to Barrington Stoke's adult line, with a tale of zombie soldiers called Dead Brigade. All of the books have sold well, and I continue to get royalties from them, as well as a decent return from library borrowings, which is the icing on the cake.

Barrington Stoke books are printed on off-white paper, to reduce the glare between text and background that can jar with certain readers and interfere with their reading. They're typeset in a special font whose serifs prevent the accidental "flipping" of letters such as "b" and "d".

The company's unique and inimitable attribute, however, is that the process doesn't end with the initial drafting of the story. That's only the beginning. The manuscript is then sent to a group of "consulting editors", schoolkids of the right reading age, who critique both the style and content of the text, underline bits they can't easily follow, and flag up references they don't understand. It's peer review of the highest quality, and it can be frank bordering sometimes on brutal. One author has described it as "being done over by Barrington Stoke". Teachers are also involved here, offering their own experienced insights and commentary.

The final step sees the manuscript coming back to the author, who then goes through it with a fine tooth comb with one of the company's language editors. In my case, I've worked on every one of my books with Barrington Stoke's very charming and wry founder Patience Thomson. She lives up to her given name, in that she's prepared to sit on the phone with me for anything up to three hours, helping me recast sentences and tease out new ways of saying what I'm trying to say in my prose without compromising style and rhythm or over-simplification. It's exhausting, often aggravating, but, although I'd never admit this to anyone, I love it.

Back in 2008 Barrington Stoke came to me wanting to know if I'd do a five-book series for them. I didn't even hesitate. Would I? Try and stop me! The editor, Kate Paice, said she wanted something either with zombies in it or ninjas. Without thinking, I said, "How about zombie ninjas?" She said, "Great," and I then had to dream up an idea into which I could fit undead martial-arts assassins. I managed to, and the result is The 5 Lords Of Pain.

I can't describe how much fun it was to write this five-book sequence featuring kung fu, mysticism, demons, possible apocalypse, and a smart-mouthed 15-year-old protagonist. It took me barely six weeks to complete and was a blast from beginning to end. I cribbed a bit off Frank Miller's Daredevil comics of the 1980s, and also off just about every martial arts movie I've ever seen, but for all that the series is, I believe, unlike anything else out there on the market. Barrington Stoke are promoting it with a website [http://www.fivelordsofpain.com/], postcards, posters, point-of-sale displays, and lots of other good wholesome stuff not necessarily beginning with the letter P. Plus, the books have awesome covers by Daniel Atanasov.

They're coming out at two-monthly intervals all this year. If you know anyone, particularly a young boy, who isn't into books and finds reading a chore, give them Book 1 in the series, The Lord Of The Mountain. Get them hooked. They'll thank you for it.

**Guest Blog** - House of War by Hamilton Wende

As regular readers of MFB should know by now I'm a sucker for any type of quest/adventure novel with the guts to be unique and well written. I have a troop of authors whom I love and am always on the look out for new people to add to the list.

Naturally I was incredibly excited to spot this "new guy" via a Facebook group that I belong to. I checked out his website: http://www.hamiltonwende.com/ - and in a fit of budding fangirly-ness, contacted him via his agent Ron Irwin who in turn kindly put me in touch with Mr. Wende.

Bearing in mind I've not read House of War and that they don't know me from Adam, I think they reacted with great dignity about being contacted out of the blue with a request to write MFB a guest blog. The reason I approached them is simple: the write-up about House of War spoke to me and I wanted to find out more about Hamilton, his writing and the book. So, before I bore you all to death with my waffling, I'll hand the blog over to Hamilton Wende, freelance journalist, producer, action adventurer and all round gracious guy, to tell us about his upcoming novel and how it came to be written:

About my latest book:

House of War is a unique novel – an ‘English Patient’ for the War On Terror. It draws its inspiration not only from Michael Ondaatje, but also from Graham Greene, John Le Carre and Dan Brown. It is a thriller set in contemporary Central Asia, complete with warlords, Al Qaeda renegades and NATO troops, but with flashbacks to the character’s pasts in the United States, the former Soviet Union and the former southern African country of Rhodesia, today Zimbabwe.

The novel works on many layers. It has a clear, driving narrative that is cinematic in style in its fast-paced cutting from scene to scene. The reader follows the journey to the ruins of an ancient Greek city founded by Alexander the Great in today’s war-torn northern Afghanistan in bite-sized chunks. Each scene is a little like a potato chip, drawing the reader to want just one more, and then another, and another.

At the same time, it is a blend of psychological thriller, spy story, romance, and a quest novel - a search for a long lost copy of Alexander the Great’s Royal Diaries hidden in the ancient city of Ay Khanoum, located deep in the hostile territory of today’s northern Afghanistan. What makes the book unique as a thriller is that woven as a parallel thread into the action of the contemporary adventure is a deeply-researched story of Alexander the Great and, Roxane, his first wife and the love of his life.

How it all started:

In 2001, only weeks after 9/11, I found myself on a steep hillside alongside a T-54 tank dug in on the front lines with the Northern Alliance troops. Below us was a wide gravel plain that stretched to the horizon where the Taliban had their front lines. A clear, cold river ran through the no-man’s-land between us. The sound of gunfire echoed sporadically through the autumn air.

One of the Northern Alliance soldiers, completely unconcerned about the gunfire, banged his fist on what on what seemed to be an ordinary chunk of rock between us. ‘Iskander,’ he said loudly while banging on the rock. ‘Iskander.’

At first I couldn’t understand what he was getting at. Then, suddenly, it dawned on me. That chunk of brown rock was part of the remains of an ancient Greek ruin from the days of Alexander the Great.

He was reaching out to me, trying to share something of his pride in his homeland and its ancient history. It was an extraordinary moment of human solidarity. I wanted to pause and try to speak to him through our interpreter, but there was a real war going on around us and we had journalistic deadlines to meet, so I couldn’t spend any time with him. I snapped a few photographs of him and the front lines and then we had to rush off to film something else.

Some months later I returned to Johannesburg. I couldn’t forget that Afghan soldier and his proud, insistent ‘Iskander, Iskander.’ Because of him I began to research the history of Alexander in Afghanistan. One morning I found an old copy of Scientific American from 1982 in the Wits University library. It was perhaps the last scholarly article on Afghan archaeology written since the Soviet invasion, about the discovery of a lost city founded by Alexander the Great in Northern Afghanistan called Ay Khanoum.

I flipped through the pages, and – it hit me like a bolt from the blue: The cliff face in an old black and white photograph in Scientific American was the same cliff face in one of my photographs from the front lines.

I had been to Ay Khanoum without even knowing it. Call it fate, synchronicity, chance, but the threads of the Moirai are spun deep and wide indeed. I had my story - thanks to that Afghan soldier and his insistence that morning on the front lines in dragging me out of my fear and showing me something that I would never have discovered without him. Now all I needed to do was to find Claire and Sebastian, Abdulov, Mahmood and the others to go on the fictional journey with me.

I hope you enjoy going on it too!

Random thoughts on writing and the creative journey:

I was born in the States but have spent most of my life in South Africa, with some side trips to live in Japan, Paris and lots of time in London. I have also traveled extensively in Europe, Africa and the Middle East. This sense of being on the move through our world and a career working as a foreign correspondent for many of the big networks such as CNN and BBC means that I am fascinated by boundaries and identities and how we never have a fixed ‘being’, but one that changes constantly as we grow and travel and learn. In my writing - both fiction and non-fiction – I like to explore the paradox between where we find ourselves and where we want to be.
I am fascinated by characters who have parallel lives and a sense of adventure about living those lives. Pain in life is a given – as the Buddha said ‘All life is suffering’, but it is the courage to move beyond it, to ‘travel’ through it, if you like, is the core of all our human stories from the time of Homer and his ‘Odyssey’.

I like wide landscapes, hard choices and people finding ways to live their lives with love and generosity of spirit in the midst of so many things that bring fear and rage into their lives. In the end, I am an optimist and my books reflect that. I believe in karma – not something that is a kind of airy-fairy ‘energy’, but in the karma of difficult, usually frightening choices, with all their consequences. Perhaps we cannot escape the Moirai and the strings of our fate, but we can choose within their web to keep fighting for love and hope. That belief is the core of my fiction.
I write about those who have, as Tennyson said, ‘become a name for roaming with a hungry heart’. In the end, we are all doing that, and those are our myriad stories, even if we never find a way to – or never want to - leave our hometown.

A little career biog here….

I am a freelance writer and television producer based in Johannesburg. I work all over Africa for a number of international networks including CNN, the BBC, ARD, ZDF, and a number of others.

I am the author of six books.

The House of War A love story and thriller about searching for the lost diaries of Alexander the Great in the badlands of northern Afghanistan while being hunted by Al Qaeda. will be published by Penguin in 2009

The King’s Shilling. A novel about WWI in East Africa published by Jacana in April 2005. It has been on the bestseller lists in Johannesburg, Cape Town and Durban and was long-listed for the Sunday Times Fiction Award in 2006

Deadlines From the Edge: Images of War from Congo to Afghanistan. Stories about working as television news producer in different parts of Africa, the Middle East and Afghanistan. It was published in 2003 by Penguin SA. Now republished by Mousehand on POD and available at Amazon, Kalahari etc.

True North; African Roads Less Travelled is a non-fiction account of my work as a journalist in Africa. It was published in 1995 by William Waterman in Johannesburg. It was nominated for the 1995 Sunday Times Alan Paton Award. Now also republished by Mousehand on POD and available at Amazon, Kalahari etc

A children’s picture book I wrote, The Quagga’s Secret, published by Gecko Books in Durban was selected as one of the ‘1995 South African Books of the Year’ by Jay Heale of Bookchat. In 1999 it was selected by Cambridge University Press in South Africa for inclusion in an English anthology of South African writing that is distributed nationally.

I also am the co-author of a young adult novel, Msimangu’s Words, which was published by Maskew Miller Longman and was a finalist in the Young Africa Award 1992.

I have also written a number of radio features for the BBC, including regular contributions to From Our Own Correspondent on Radio 4. I am also a regular columnist in The Star.

My articles have appeared in many international and South African newspapers and magazines. Including National Geographic Traveler, GQ, The Chicago Tribune, Maclean’s Magazine in Canada, The New Zealand Herald, The Star, The Sunday Times, The Sunday Independent, Business Day in Johannesburg and many others.

***

Thank you very much Hamilton for indulging me and chatting to us about House of War. I look forward to indulging in a copy! I've also popped by Amazon and they have several of Hamilton's books in stock.

Guest Blog - Adele from Persnickety Snark

Thanks to Karen Mahoney (blog pimp extraordinaire) I've had the opportunity to meet Adele, the driving force behind an upcoming and very green blog called Persnickety Snark who lives in Australia. Adele and I got chatting via email and I sensed that she had something to offer MFB so I asked her to do us a guest blog. She readily agreed and wrote this very thought provoking piece which I am very happy to post.

My Square Heart, by Adele of Persnickety Snark

I am going to make a confession. I was always the square at school, the kind of girl that other kids mocked and laughed evilly at as they drew squares in the air with their pointer fingers. I always did the right thing, finished my work, used my manners and was rightfully stroppy when the boys would try to snap my bra strap. But there was one time I got in trouble in grade seven, serious trouble, straight to the deputy principal’s office kind of trouble.

Why?

A book.

Have I captured your attention yet? I sure grabbed his as I sobbed uncontrollably, shocked that my mere presence had passed through the threshold of that dreaded office. Having sat in that chair, in that office and in that position, I now know that he would have been just as uncomfortable as me ... but for completely different reasons.

The book was written by Judy Blume, the fabulously delightful and uber-iconic Judy Blume. I wasn’t trying to increase my bust or relate to the sibling issues of Peter Hatcher – though I had done both in the years before this incident. No, I was expanding my knowledge of sex by reading about Katherine, Michael and Ralph in Forever. Of course, being the very sheltered, inexperienced kid that I was, I couldn’t help but pass on this novel to my friends for them to read too.

I didn’t get into any real trouble as I frightened easily. I can’t even remember the probably stilted and embarrassed discussion with the Deputy about the “inappropriateness “of this book. I just know that I felt bigger because I had read that book. Bigger, older, more mature.

It didn’t make me want to rush out and have sex. It made me want to wait for someone to come along that I loved. Someone who wouldn’t eventually be a tool like Michael was. I got more information on birth control and responsible decision making in the pages of that book then I did in all the brief sexual education lessons that I ever sat through in primary and high school combined. I felt that I was worthy of sharing this knowledge with.

Looking back on it, as an education professional I would have had the same reaction to a twelve year old passing that book around. I would have been immediately concerned about parental reaction to their child being “exposed” to this material. There is nothing scarier than an angry parent; it’s ten times worse than being in the principal’s office. Ultimately reading that book made me more realistic and less idealistic about love and the physical manifestation of it. Maybe that’s a loss but I think it stood me in good stead through high school.

Here I am, fifteen years later, and I am still the same square I was in seventh grade. I haven’t read Forever since then but I remember it fondly while also recalling dissolving into tears in that office. I had to look up the main character’s names but I remembered Ralph – who could forget him? I can also recreate word for word the sister’s apartment where the deed was done that first time. It’s weird how a person’s memory works.

Forever was seminal in my adolescence. It was the cause of twenty minutes of uncontrollable sobbing and a week of wrenching embarrassment. It was also the foundation for many of the fantastic decisions I made in high school. Judy Blume wrote many great books, many that I can remember with startling clarity and recommend to my own students but Forever will always have a special place in my square heart.

I have to admit that I have not read Forever. I did however read a book so controversial in South Africa that it was passed around at schools and amongst friends in secret - it was called Griet Skryf 'n Sprokie - which roughly translates to Griet writes a fable. The book was controversial because it portrayed a very confused and unhappy young woman in a marriage where she felt like an outsider. The novel opens with Griet trying to commit suicide, by putting her head in the oven...and it's whilst she's got her head in the oven, and she notices how dirty it is inside, that she realises the futility of what she's doing, especially as the oven is an electric oven and not a gas stove. Written with humour and a keen eye, the novel caused a rumpus - the church was against it, the schools were against it, yet it's been reprinted time and again since it was first published in 1992. The reason why it was so controversial: it portrayed marriage as something other than perfect. It also had one of the first actual sex scenes in an Afrikaans book, and ye gods, the ruckus that caused! *chuckles*

Reading books like Forever and Griet creates a very personal relationship between reader and book. Sometimes others just don't get it, you buy a book on a recommendation, you read it and think, okay, so what was the fuss about? You put it down and pick up something else that strikes that unidentifiable chord in you.

I can name several books like this, which I have in turn forced Mark to read - some he completely "got" and others he just looked at me and you could see him going "what is she on?"

I'd like to do more guest blogs like this with readers of this blog - if any of you would like to reminisce about a book or an author who has changed the way you read or what you read, drop us a line. We're happy to hear from you!

Confessions of a Manga Head by Sarah Ash

I was thrilled to discover that Sarah Ash, fantasy author, mom and school librarian, lives locally and quite near to me in Beckenham. I immediately and cheekily contacted her to find out if she would be prepared to do MFB a guest blog.

She readily agreed, but took the wind out of my sails when she mentioned that she was a huge manga-fan! I knew about her fantasy writing, obviously (!) so her confession took me completely by surprise. I personally have read very little manga (3 books) and have watched little anime (4 movies), somehow always equating them to a much younger audience (says the girl who review YA and teen books!) . And because manga and anime is something I know very little about, and I know many others know as little, I thought it would be amazing if she did the guest blog on her addiction.

And, in Paul Bettany's words: without further ado, here she is, one of our own, Sarah Ash!

Confessions of a Manga Addict

I fell in love with comics when I was a child and devoured as many volumes of ‘Tintin’ and ‘Asterix’ as I could lay my hands on. But there was no manga available in translation then and it wasn’t till many years later – thanks to my eldest son Tom (also a keen devourer of comics) – that I discovered first anime, and then manga. I’d been hooked on classic Japanese films since seeing ‘Seven Samurai’ and ‘Kwaidan’ at uni, and, as a fantasy writer, had been toying with an idea for a novel set in the Heian era, so my first serious encounter, with CLAMP’s ‘Tokyo Babylon’, was a revelation. Only then did I realize that many mangaka (manga artists) were exploring the same fantasy themes that appealed to me; I felt an immediate kinship with their work!

The recent extraordinary growth of manga in translation in the US has undoubtedly been fuelled by the successful broadcasting of popular shounen anime TV series such as ‘Dragon Ball Z,’ ‘Naruto,’ and ‘Yu-Gi-Oh!’ So I thought I’d share a few favourite titles that may not be so widely known. All of them could best be described as fantasy shoujo, but just because their main target audience is teenage girls doesn’t mean that they won’t appeal to older readers (Stephanie Meyer, anyone?).

Black Sun, Silver Moon by Tomo Maeda, published by Go! Comi Volumes 1-6 16+

In the mountains of Eastern Europe stands a church on the edge of a village…but no worshippers attend the services. The priest, Shikimi Farkash, seems a mild-mannered, pleasant individual... although, unusually for one aged only twenty-eight, his hair is silver. When eighteen-year-old Taki arrives to act as Shiki’s housekeeper, he discovers the reason Shiki’s services are shunned by the villagers: he must help the priest destroy the ‘resurrected’, the newly-buried dead who, possessed by demons, rise from the graveyard to stalk the living. But that’s not quite all. “Taki,” Shiki tells him with his strange smile, “someday you will have to kill me.”

Something demonic has taken possession of Shiki and turned his hair and eyes silver, the colour associated with demons; soon the last vestiges of his humanity will disappear. He is resigned to his fate – but Taki stubbornly refuses to accept it. “If humans can be turned into demons,” he protests, “the opposite should be possible too. We’ll find a way together!”

Into this strange household comes an adorable silver-furred puppy, Agi, who attaches herself devotedly to Taki. Is she the lost puppy he once cherished as a boy? Not long after, a fiery young demon slayer, called Laszlo turns up, determined to destroy Shikimi. Laz insists that he’s a boy, but the protests ring a little hollowly in Taki’s ears, especially as Laz seems to take a liking to Shikimi, the very man she’s been sent to slay. Later still arrives a strange and sinister individual who calls himself Grey; he claims to have known Shikimi before his hair turned silver. Only now do the tragic and horrific facts of Shikimi’s past begin to be revealed. Shiki’s behaviour becomes more bizarre and unpredictable, yet Taki is all the more determined to save his master and reverse his slow, inexorable descent into demonhood.

Tomo Maeda has a delicate, ethereal style of drawing which suits her dark tale only too well. This is no violent gore-fest like ‘Hellsing’ – nor is it a passionate blood-sucking high-school romance, like ‘Vampire Knight’. Instead it builds its atmosphere of claustrophobia and horror slowly and quietly, so that when something genuinely appalling happens, it’s all the more distressing because reader has come to care about the people involved. It’s not all quiet gloom and despair, either; Maeda enlivens her narrative with touches of gentle humour, reminiscent of her charming Boys Love ghost story ‘Beyond my Touch’ (published by June OT 16+). Laz’s bickering with Taki and undead Agi’s cute yet mischievous background antics add a lightness that contrasts well with the darker shadows drawing closer around Shikimi’s unconventional little household. The seventh and final volume is due out in October.

‘After School Nightmare’ by Setona Mizushiro Go! Comi OT 16+

‘This dream draws blood…’

Going to high school can be a difficult experience for many young people, but for Mashiro Ichijo it’s a nightmare: although all his peers think he’s a boy, he’s just had his first period. This isn’t just a case of cross-dressing, he’s a boy who just happens to be a girl from the waist down. Now he’s been forced to take part in an unorthodox after school class; every week he must go to a secret infirmary in the school basement and enter an alternate dream world where he has to complete a given task whilst battling against the other students. When his task is completed, he will be able to graduate and leave the high school.

In the dream world, everyone appears on the outside how they are on the inside, which can make it almost impossible to guess who they are back in the real world. All Mashiro’s fears and insecurities are soon laid bare; his dilemma as to who he really is: a boy – or a girl – is revealed to the other students taking part in the dream class. So who is the knight in the suit of black armour who mercilessly attacks Mashiro? Or the cruel-hearted child in the gothloli dress? What about the paper giraffe? Or the girl without a face? The only one Mashiro recognizes is Kureha, his classmate, a pretty girl who hates men after surviving an appalling sexual assault when she was little.

Torn in his affections between the vulnerable Kureha (who loves him because he is not like the other boys) and Sou, an aloof, arrogant boy who has slept his way through most of the girls in the class, Mashiro must try to decide what gender he/she truly wants to be. “How can I love someone when I don’t even know my own gender?”

The high school setting has become a manga cliché, yet subtle little touches (what does the black moon mean?) make ‘After School Nightmare’ fresh, painful, and involving. The colour artwork on the jacket and at the beginning of some volumes is especially beautiful, reinforcing the dreamlike atmosphere of the narrative.

Setona Mizushiro has spun an addictive, disturbing tale which constantly challenges the reader’s expectations. It is genuinely moving at times – and brutally harsh at others, a true metaphor for the pains and joys of adolescence and the slow discovery of self. She provides no easy answers – and the superb final volumes (9 and 10 are still to be published in English translation later this year) bring extraordinary and unexpected revelations.

‘Voice or Noise’ by Yamimaru Enjin Blu OT 16+ Vols 1-2 ongoing

If the idea of same-sex relationships makes you queasy, then avoid this next title – although its depiction of the painful acknowledgment of first love is poignantly and realistically portrayed. ‘Voice or Noise’ is all about communication and miscommunication.

Shinichiro’s dog Flappy has begun to misbehave; but a routine trip to the vet’s results in an unexpected referral. For respected young college professor Narusawa has a rare gift; he can communicate with animals. Yet Narusawa-san is no jolly Doctor Dolittle figure; he may be gifted in his chosen profession, but he is not good with people, as his ability to hear what the creatures around him are saying has made him feel alienated and ‘different’. So when Shinichiro tracks him down at his college and blurts out in front of his students, “Professor, you can talk to animals!” of course he denies that he can help. It’s his black cat, Acht, who provides an unexpected bridge between young Shinichiro and the aloof and prickly Narusawa. For Shinichiro can understand every word that Acht says to him. Does he possess the same gift as Narusawa? Will Narusawa understand him and help him develop his skills?

For a cat-owner like myself, Acht is a delight: fickle, preening, constantly interfering in the relationships of the humans around him, yet hiding a sadness beneath his confident exterior. And Yamimaru Enjin’s drawings of Acht are just adorable! But just as adorable is the depiction of the growing understanding between young Shinichiro and the remote Narusawa, an understanding that begins to develop into something deeper. Yet when Shinichiro realizes that Narusawa has been using crows to keep watch over him, he can’t handle the situation any more.

“What am I?” he cries out, confronting the professor. “What exactly am I to you? I’m not a lab rat!”

Yamimaru Enjin’s first extended manga (she also illustrates novels) displays few of the usual clichés of the Boys Love genre; the nascent relationship she portrays is all too realistic in its misunderstandings and heartache. And it’s not until Acht is involved in an accident that the two protagonists really begin to try to communicate with each other.

A WORD OF WARNING…

Yet beware. If you venture into the addictive world of manga and find yourself irretrievably hooked, there are untold perils that await you (apart from the hole in your wallet). A genre that uses the cliffhanger ending to keep its readers desperate for more is dependent on the mangakas reaching their deadlines in time. For almost all manga is published first in weekly or monthly magazines, before the successful series are collected and republished in tankoubon (volumes). And sometimes…no, alas, far too often…those deadlines are missed. The artists are only human, after all! Or, worse still, manga magazines fold and series go on hiatus with tantalizing plotlines left unresolved, characters frozen in limbo, and frustrated readers wondering what might have happened next if only… But those words ‘ongoing’ may mean that there will be a long wait for the next volume to appear.

HOT TIPS

It would be a shame to conclude without some recommendations for some new series due to be published over the next few months, so here are a few hot tips for fantasy-themed manga that I’ll be looking out for:

‘Silver Diamond’ by Shiho Sugiura published by Tokyopop (Volume 1 already available). Don’t be deceived by Sugiura’s delicate – yet delicious – drawings; her story of a lost prince coming to earth from a dying world has touches of wicked humour, as well as a cast of seriously handsome bishounen (beautiful young men).

’07 – GHOST’ by Yuki Amemiya and Yukino Ichihara, to be published by Go!Comi
A boy with a magical artefact that give him unimaginable powers may not be the most original of fantasy subjects – but the author and artist of ’07 – GHOST’ have put an intriguing spin on the tale of young Teito Kline and the terrifying Seven Ghosts. Convincing characterization, breathtaking action sequences, and dazzlingly different artwork make this a very impressive debut; one to watch!

‘Gestalt’ by Yun Kouga to be published by Viz in 2009. This should be a treat for all Yun Kouga fangirls like me; this fantasy series dates from 1995-2001 but has never been published in an English translation as far as I’m aware before. It acts as an interesting bridge between ‘Earthian’, Kouga-sensei’s breakthrough series about angels which began in the late 80’s and her ongoing dark fantasy ‘Loveless’. One thing is certain: the artwork will be gorgeous.

A quick glossary for readers not familiar with the main categories within manga:

Shounen – manga aimed (mostly) at boys, with a strong action content e.g. ‘Dragon Ball Z,’ ‘Naruto,’ ‘Bleach’
Shoujo – manga aimed (mostly) at girls, with greater development of characters and relationships, often through dialogue e.g. ‘Fruits Basket,’ ‘Fushigi Yugi,’ ‘Cardcaptor Sakura.’
Seinen – manga aimed at an older male readership, with more complicated plot lines and adult material e.g. ‘Monster,’ ‘Berserk,’
Josei – manga aimed at an older female readership, dealing with more mature issues e.g. ‘Nana,’ ‘Walkin’ Butterfly,’ ‘Nodame Cantabile’

Within these four broad categories can be found many different genres ranging from sports and cooking manga through science fiction, thrillers, Boys Love, samurai, mecha, etc. etc. A recent hit in Japan is the wine-themed series ‘Kami No Shizuku’ (‘The Drops of God’) which has actually increased demand for the wines featured in the manga.

Go read – and enjoy! There’s something to suit every taste in the wide world of manga. (As long as you don’t mind reading from right to left…a skill soon acquired by the ardent manga-fan.)

Sarah Ash

What Sarah has to say about herself (culled from her website):

"Unlike many other authors, I didn't gain my life experience in exotic jobs such as trapeze artist, night-club chanteuse or mortician - instead I ventured into the jungle known as teaching! I became a class music specialist and kept up my writing when I could. Having gained one (very supportive) husband and two (very lively) sons, I still wonder how J.K. Rowling managed to write Harry Potter with a small child to look after.

"The major breakthrough came when I bought my first word processor, an Amstrad 9512. For years I'd struggled with my faithful old typewriter; the wpc freed me from having to correct all my typos and the endless frustrating trips to the photocopying shop.

"Now I run a primary school library and school orchestra, an enjoyable combination of roles which combines literature and music with working with children.

"My sister is Jessica Rydill, author of the fantasy novels Children of the Shaman and The Glass Mountain and our cousin, Vicki Howie, writes for children. We're beginning to wonder what the next generation will produce.

"I admit to a passion for anime and manga - my latest ambition would be to see my stories re-worked as anime (I've never really grown out of my early love for comics)."

Natasha Mostert Guest Blog and Interview

Here is the lovely interview Natasha Mostert agreed to do for me. Her newest paperback: Season of the Witch has just been released through Bantam. Natasha's website is here and this is her Myspace page.

How do you cope with having two publishers – one in the UK and one in the States – without losing the plot?

Sometimes I don’t just lose the plot, I lose my marbles! Seriously, it can be a challenge if you are published on both sides of the ocean by different publishing houses. Both my editors are excellent at what they do, but they edit the manuscript independently from each other and according to their own vision. I end up receiving two sets of notes and I have to find common ground. The last thing I want is for two widely differing novels to appear under the same title! But even when I try my hardest, I know the two manuscripts will end up showing small, but quite significant differences.

This is the case with Season of the Witch as well. If you buy the book in the States, you will have a slightly different reading experience than if you buy it in England. British editors tend to be more gloomy and American editors more chirpy. American editors like the hero to be victorious; British editors like them to suffer stoically. The author, who is stuck in the middle, has to tread carefully.

What do you get up to before you start any of your novels? For example, do you research before or during your writing?

I tend to do the biggest chunk of my research before I type the words Chapter One. This is when I go into wikipedia mode – moving indiscriminately from link to link on the internet and seeing where the research leads me. During this period I also read more non-fiction books than I care to remember. But there is never a time when I draw a line under the research and say: enough. It continues right up to the end and even beyond. I’m working on the edits of my new book at the moment and I still find myself researching!

Are your characters fully formed once you sit down to write and do you allow them a bit of freedom to do their own thing or do you plan each novel rigorously and force them to behave?

I’m a disciplined writer. My novels are planned to the last chapter otherwise I know I’ll write myself into a corner. But my characters are usually larger-than-life and they are feisty and difficult and temperamental. I know them inside out once I start writing, but they still manage to surprise me. Very often they’ll insist on taking off in a direction I had not planned for them. But that’s what keeps the buzz going and stops the writing from becoming stale and predictable.

You mention either carrot or stick as motivation for writing but do you ever go through an afternoon or a day that you would rather be kickbox against Jet Li than write?

This is a trick question, right? If I have a choice between sparring with Jet Li or sweating at my keyboard, believe me I’ll go for the flying kicks!

Writing is hard work! And not as much fun as people may think. Once the manuscript is finished it is the most wonderful feeling imaginable but sitting in front of your computer six to seven hours every day with only your own thoughts as company can be tremendously draining.

On the other hand, I am like most writers and would be desperately unhappy if I didn’t get to write every day. As one anonymous writer said: “I have to write, even if it is only a suicide note!”

Do you listen to a lot of music when you write and similarly are any of your scenes influenced by any music scores?

I won’t be able to write without music. In fact, I won’t be able to live without it: music is oxygen. Hans Zimmer’s soundtracks are fantastic background music for writing, as is the music of Shahin and Sepher. My mother is a voice coach for opera singers and opera is one of my passions. And then there is Loreena McKennit: she sings the way I wish I could write.

Who is the most famous person you have met in your writing career?

Stephen King. He kissed me! I met him at The Edgars Convention in New York and we started talking about Season of the Witch. Not that he had read my book, but he could hardly have failed to notice the T-shirt I was wearing. Emblazoned across my chest were the words “Prepared to be seduced”. I’m all for subtlety in my stories but when it comes to publicity…Anyway, the darling man not only signed a copy of Lisey’s Story for me, but also kissed my cheek. I didn’t wash my face for a week.

What was the very first thing you did when you found out you are to be a published author?

Called my husband. Called my mother. Called my aunt. Called all my friends. Called people I hardly knew. I think I may have stopped perfect strangers in the street.

Do you have a ritual that you do once you’ve completed each book?

I open a bottle of wine and force my long-suffering husband to listen to choice tidbits from my new manuscript.

The timeframe of 18 months that you mention on your various blogs, to complete your books, are these times you set for yourself or are they only “mental” timeframes and do you allow yourself leeway?

They are very much linked to contract deadlines. If a publisher gives you a contract, there will be a very strict time limit and you miss that deadline at your peril. A publisher will usually grant an author either a year in which to come up with a finished product, or two years. I’m a two year writer – I usually finish in eighteen months, but I like to give myself six months of elbow room.

Can you give us a hint of what to expect in your next book Dragonfly?

I am sad to say the book will no longer be called Dragonfly. I am not happy about this but my publishers have the final say and both editors – UK and US – thought the story should be retitled. The book is now tentatively titled The Book of Light and Dust and is a suspense novel about martial arts, quantum physics, tattoos, sweaty men and chi (the vital energy, which the Chinese believe to flow through our bodies.) Now, does that not pique your curiosity?

Authors are sometimes recorded as saying that writing is a very lonely job. Do you make sure you go out to meet up with friends and family once you’ve started a new piece of work or do you hide from the world?

I pretty much go into a cave when I write but I like to keep my evenings free for my husband. And some weekends I do meet up with friends. But during the week I follow a boring routine. I write six to seven hours a day and try to turn off the light at ten so I can be fresh when I get up at 5.30. And then I have my kickboxing: I’ll be lost without it. Apart from the cathartic aspect of it, it is amazing what good friends you become with people who trade blows with you on a regular basis!

Do you get to have a say on any of your book covers?

As with the title, my contract states that I need to be consulted on this decision. In practice, though, it means my publisher has the final vote. I’m allowed to moan – and believe me, I do -- but in the end, I’m not the one who gets to say yeah or nay. This is a big bone of contention between author and publisher and can make for a lot of friction.

Any favourite TV shows or DVD’s that you make time to watch?

Even though I don’t get much time to watch, I like TV – although I know that’s a terrible thing for an author to admit. I love James Woods – great timing – and will watch Shark if it’s on. I like Numbers – I think the math geek is a hottie -- and I love Firefly and Inspector Morse. (The soundtrack of the Inspector Morse series is another favourite when I write.) When I can’t sleep, I watch cage fights on Bravo or on Men and Motors. I am a big Randy Couture fan and am very sad he has retired.

I laughed out loud when I read about your book signing that took place in Borders at Oxford Street. Have things improved since?

No, publicity events are always dicey. You never know if you are going to have two people in the audience or twenty. And sometimes people will get belligerent. My big problem is my terrible memory. By the time the publicity events roll around, I’m already knee-deep into the next manuscript and can hardly remember the name of the hero in the previous book. This can make for an adventurous evening.

It is very clear that you read widely and enjoy doing your own research. Do you ever find yourself getting lost in your research and struggle to get back into your writing?

Research is both potion and poison: I love the research part and because the topics I write about are esoteric and complex, I need to spend time familiarising myself with the material. But I have to take care not to allow myself to be carried away or I'll never get going. It is a struggle.

Do you have any favourite genres that you read in? Horror, fantasy, urban fantasy, literary fiction, etc?

I do not discriminate. I read everything from Cormac McCarthy to manga.

Do you think you are superstitious?

I don’t throw salt over my shoulder and I’ll happily live on the thirteenth floor of an apartment building. But I grew up in South Africa and my nanny was a Zulu woman who introduced me to African mysticism and the world of the isangoma (witch doctors). She definitely sharpened my awareness of things that are not easily explained: synchronicities, coincidences, those small ripples that hint at something hiding behind the dusty curtain of everyday living. It influenced my way of thinking.

What is the strangest thing you do when you write – discounting melting cheese in the microwave, that is!

Does talking to myself in the mirror count? Or does everyone do that?

Do you have any favourite authors / literary heroes?

I am totally captivated by Jorge Luis Borge. He is a literary magician who plays with his reader's mind, taking you down labyrinthine paths, bringing you in confrontation with doppelgangers and teasing you with artefacts from strange exotic places: strange one-sided discs from which a king derives his power, a frightening book that infinitely multiplies its own pages, incomplete manuscripts that tell of stories in the land of immortals. A brilliant, melancholy and elusive voice.

Any books / websites that you find invaluable whilst writing?

I suppose I always start off with Wikipedia, although I do take care to check the facts independently as well. And then there is my trusty Roget’s Thesaurus – my favourite book in the world.

How would you sell Season of the Witch to a customer should you be a bookseller in a bookshop?

If the customer looks hip and funky:

“ You have to read this book! The characters are two beautiful sisters who live in Chelsea, London, do bungee jumping, practise witchcraft and pose in the nude. You’ll love it!”

If the customer looks serious and intellectual:

“You have to read this book! It takes on big themes: love, death, alchemy and the power of the human mind to transform and transcend reality. You’ll love it!”

Do you have any advice for aspiring authors?

When you write, switch your internal editor to mute and just write. If you second guess yourself constantly, you’ll block your creative energy. Don’t give up. And don’t take yourself too seriously. Remember what G.K. Chesterton said: “Angels fly because they take themselves lightly…”

Season of the Witch has just been released through Bantam and you can buy directly from their website or from Amazon or Waterstones.com.

I received an extra copy of Season of the Witch from Bantam - thanks chaps! - and would like to offer it as a giveaway. I'll let the competition run for the week. Respond to this post with a favourite book or author, of any genre, and I will do a random lucky draw at the end of the week, week ending 18th July. Remember to check back for the notification of the winner!

We have a winner!

No, it is not me in the photo.

We have a winner in the competition the newly agented, talented and all-round good girl Karen Mahoney ran on my site as part of her interesting and fun guest blog (here).

The Winner:

Brian Ohio

Congratulations Brian! Remember to stop jumping up and down and to make sure you let Karen have your snailmail address.

Writing My Way to Sanity - Guest Blog by Karen Mahoney

Karen erm..Who, you may ask!? Well, Karen is a young Urban Fantasy writer who I managed to convince that it might be a good idea to give us a "behind the scenes" tour of well, a bit about her. She's not yet published, but she has managed to land a fantastic agent so more good news and general squeeing will be happening - watch this space.

Here she is, in her own words:

When Liz invited me to write a guest blog over here I was excited, despite wondering, “Why me? I haven’t even sold a book yet – let alone published one!” But then I thought: Well, I just took a pretty big step on this writing journey, and maybe people would be interested to know how I got here. My agent (yeah, I still get chills saying those two words *g*) is Miriam Kriss of the Irene Goodman Literary Agency in New York. So how did a London-based girl like me hook up with a major player like her?

Let’s back-up to October 2007. I wasn’t in a good place in my life. At all. My 3-year relationship had come to an end, the day job wasn’t going so well and I’d moved house 3 times in 6 months. I was tired and ill and I hadn’t written in a couple of months. And then two of my online friends and I decided to do our own mini-version of the NaNo writing challenge, where we’d aim for writing 30,000 words in a month: 1,000 words a day, I thought, would surely be manageable.

It gave me focus and a goal – something to aim for and to feel positive about. I picked up the notes I’d made back in June for a Young Adult urban fantasy called THE IRON WITCH, inspired by an essay by Midori Snyder in the Endicott Studio’s Journal of Mythic Arts: ‘The Armless Maiden and The Hero’s Journey.’

"Table Suréalisme" by Alberto Giacometti

And I just got sucked into the story and carried away by my own characters, something that had never truly happened to me before. As I wrote, one of my cats slept beside me every day, recovering from having a back leg amputated after an accident – we honestly didn’t know if he would make it through. Each day I laid down more and more words, and each day my cat looked brighter and his strange post-op behaviour became less disturbing. During that first month, I know it sounds stupid but I honestly believe we were healing together.

I ended up writing far more – and far more quickly – than I ever imagined I could, and THE IRON WITCH was complete in early December. I let it rest before revising and getting critiques and revising again. And then in January I began querying agents in the US – I knew that YA urban fantasy had more of a market over there and I was determined to find an audience for my work, and for this book in particular. I didn’t know if I was good enough to get an agent yet, but something told me I might be onto something with this project so I persevered through the rejections and close calls.

There were a lot of rejections, but there were also a lot of requests for my full manuscript. As my hopes grew, I revised again – and then again – and I waited and hoped some more. Then I began writing another book, something new to take my mind off the continual rollercoaster.
I’d first queried Miriam back in January – she was one of the very first agents I wanted thanks to her reputation as an advocate for urban fantasy. The fact that she represents some of the best authors in the genre (Lilith Saintcrow, Vicki Pettersson, and Rachel Vincent to name just few) certainly didn’t hurt. By March I still hadn’t heard anything, but another agent sent a very kind rejection with the magic words: “I think you should query Miriam Kriss. You can use my name as a referral.” Here was my opportunity to ‘status query’ whether or not my original email had been received, and just hours after I wrote to Miriam she replied requesting the full manuscript of THE IRON WITCH.

Three more months later – where there were yet more close calls with some wonderful agents – Miriam offered representation. I screamed the house down when I read the email requesting a phone conversation. I couldn’t believe it – honestly couldn’t believe that this thing I had wanted to do since I was 12 years old was coming just a little bit closer. I have so much to look forward to in terms of improving the manuscript before submissions to publishers, while getting on with my next projects. I am dedicated to becoming a better writer, supporting other writers, talking about urban fantasy and one day seeing my words in print.

Oh, and my cat – the one who is currently running around the garden on three legs – is doing absolutely fine.

Contest: Anyone who comments over here on My Favourite Books telling me what their favourite urban fantasy book is (either adult or YA), will have their name entered into a ‘hat’ and a winner selected at random will receive a copy of Lilith Saintcrow’s latest offering – the just-released NIGHT SHIFT, first in the Jill Kismet series. I’m reading it right now and it ROCKS! You have until the end of the day Wednesday 9th July to comment. I’ll ship to any country.

Cheers, Karen.

You've met her here first folks!

To keep up to date with Karen and her writing, feel free to visit her over at her LJ site.