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Lurking Musings

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Tag Archives: Australia

Interview: Gillian Polack

19 Tuesday Jan 2021

Posted by D.A Lascelles in Guest posts, Interview

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Australia, Chandler Award, Disability in fiction, Gillian Polack, Medieval history, Speculative fiction, Wizardry of Jewish Women


We are very fortunate today to have the chance to interview Dr. Gillian Polack who is a Medieval scholar from Australia who also writes speculative fiction. Is, in fact, an award winning author of such with the 2020 Bertram Chandler Award for Oustanding Achievement in Australian fiction. Her latest release, Borderlanders, is currently out on sale from various sources – https://www.odysseybooks.com.au/titles/9781922311184/.   

We asked her a few questions about herself and her work.

What drives you as a writer – what makes you sit down and work through your day enough to get something finished?

I have so many stories to tell. I have so much learning to do. They make tapestries together and those tapestries make me feel as if my life is worthwhile.

You are known as an editor, historian and teacher as well as a writer. What skills from those professions, aside from the obvious ones, do you think have helped you as a writer?

The most important thing I take from all the different parts of myself is learning: I’m always learning how to tell better stories. I’m not convinced I write good novels yet, but all my different skills definitely help me move in the right direction.

Tell me about the place where you live. Have you ever used any aspect of this place in your writing?

I live in Canberra. I call it the centre of the known universe, because many Australians dislike it and most of the rest of the world forgets it’s our capital city.  I also call it a palimpsest city. It’s tucked into the mountains and, if you look around without knowledge, it’s bland.  I love this. A city that deceives others by pretending to be dull…Canberra has so many layers and so many stories

I’ve used Canberra in my fiction for years.  The novels still in print are Ms Cellophane (the public service and how it devastates some souls), The Time of the Ghosts (how ghosts travel with us and how, if we don’t handle our cultural baggage, it will change the world around us), and part of The Wizardry of Jewish Women (bushfires and feminism).

Some palimpsests have just one hidden layer and some have many. Canberra has many, and I suspect I shall write about it again.

What is your favourite historical period? How would (or have?) you used this in your writing?

Despite the fact that I’m a fully functioning Medieval historian, I don’t have a favourite period. I love learning about people, and history is a rich well of stories that help me understand people and their lives. I always use  history in my fiction, even the fiction that looks as if it contains nothing historical at all. Most recently, Poison and Light is set in the future, where the eighteenth century is re-created so that a whole planet can hide from the present.

I had several triggers that set off this jaunt into a future past. One of them was MacHeath (the John Gay version of The Beggar’s Opera, not the one by Brecht). I realised that a reinvented past would have all the aspects of history we regard as sexy, even if, in reality, they’re not sexy at all. Highwaymen, a Code Duello, hot air balloons and so much else are part of a society that discovers this. I love  fiction from the late eighteenth century, and I used it as a springboard. If you look hard, you’ll see them reflected.

Have you ever based any characters on real life people? If so, who and what did they think of it?

I nearly did, once.

In my first novel, I had a character based on a real person. My publisher warned me that this was not a wise thing to do. Illuminations was published in the US and litigation was a major problem at that time. I rewrote the section and changed the character.

There are also sequences in The Wizardry of Jewish Women that are based on actual events, but I modified the characters themselves. In real life, Carmen Lawrence and Anthony Albanese made appearances, but in this version of the same events (in fact, in all the events that are derived from real incidents and enter into my fiction) the characters are different. This turned out to be very wise of me and I will always be grateful to the US editor who taught me to do this, for Albanese is currently one of the most senior figures in Australian government.

Borderlanders involves a character who can produce magic through artwork. Can you tell us more about this? How does magic work in your world?

This is the same weird Australia I used in the short story that Mindy Klasky published in Nevertheless, She Persisted https://bookshop.org/books/nevertheless-she-persisted-a-book-view-cafe-anthology/9781611386875There is a connection between magic and emotions, but there’s often a twist in it. You can never quite be certain that the world you are looking at is the one you thought you were in.

How do you think fantasy writing will evolve over the next few decades? Any trends you are seeing now that you think will become more relevant?

We’ve had a wave of growing cultural awareness recently, where many writers explore their own background in their work, or suddenly realise that when they write about other cultures and lives they have been guilty of ‘othering  characters in the writing. It hasn’t dug deep yet, but if it does, it might change everything.

We have some of the tools for that change already: own voices, asking for help with writing people from different backgrounds to ourselves, understanding that some people can be hurt if we choose our subjects lightly. We still have a wider cultural framework, however, that pushes easier, more comfortable and less diverse views.

If we’re very lucky, we might have a brilliant blossoming of new paths in novels as authors discover how much narrative potential there is in getting rid of the most egregious bias.

What big current affairs issue would the main character of Borderlanders, Melissa, have an interest in? What would her opinion be on this issue?

Her main focus would be on current government. Given the Federal government in Australia is not at all supportive of people with disabilities, her life is affected by Federal policies and she would keep an eye on it. That would be very personal, and she might not say anything in public. What she would talk about at a dinner party is how government policies hurt people. I suspect she would simply say that and then be quiet again. She’s not someone who makes the ears of others ring with her opinions.

In Borderlanders, you are writing about disabled characters. How do you feel disabled characters are handled in fantasy media in general and how do you feel this could be improved?

I have a big gripe about many characters in fantasy media in general. The vast majority of those depicting someone ‘other’ (whatever the reason for the othering) are often depicted as shadow figures. Not full characters. I don’t feel as if I want to meet them or avoid them. If I don’t have even an inkling of who they are off the page, then the author has done them a disservice and has put a stick figure in their work in place of a real person.

Since each and every person with disabilities (to use that as an example) is an individual, with a whole life and really interesting things to say, to give them short shrift is to add to the bias about them.

Othering can be done to so many different people – it loses us our humanity. All writers need to do is say “Yes, this person is Black American, or Indigenous Australian, or queer, or Jewish, or Hindu or disabled… but what are they like as a person and how do these aspects of their lives integrate with who they are as a person?”

If I were to ask Melissa what was happening in the story of Borderlanders, how do you think she would answer?

“I don’t know. Really. I’m trying to understand, but, honestly, I need to sort out some issues before I can answer your questions. Can I ask you, though, why you need to ask me this? Books are made to be read, not explained by characters.”

 

 

[Vampire Month] Erica Hayes interview

22 Friday Mar 2013

Posted by D.A Lascelles in Vampire Month

≈ 1 Comment

Tags

30 Days of night, Ann Rice, Australia, books, Dracula, Eric Northman, Erica Hayes, Forever Knight, Gary Oldman, Lacroix, Lestat, paranormal romance, Shadowfae, The Famous Five, True Blood, Vampires


Our final Vampire Month victim is Australian writer, Erica Hayes, author of merica_smany books including the Shadowfae series which has some of the sexiest covers I have ever seen. Shadowfae is all about fairies and succubi but there are vampires in there too. Despite being decidedly antipodean, she has somehow found herself in Northumberland in the UK…

1) What is the earliest memory you have of writing? What did you write about?
I recall writing a kiddies’ adventure tale when I was in primary school. Scribbling, more like. I was awful at handwriting. The last kid in my class to be allowed to write with a pen… but yeah. The story was a bit like The Famous Five,  except my characters went around digging holes and discovering underground cities. Or something. Sadly, the manuscript is lost…

2) When did you decide to become a professional writer? Why did you take this step?
Not so much a decision as a thing that happened. I just kept submitting stuff until something stuck. It never occurred to me to stop. My first novel was terrible… the owner of this blog may recall that one 🙂 My second was a little better. My third got ‘good’ rejections. The fourth – the one that got me an agent and my first publisher – was the one that broke the mould. It was different and sparkly and a bit demented. It stood out. That’s the key.

3) What would you consider to be your greatest strength as a writer? What about your greatest weakness? How do you overcome this weakness?
Weakness? Time management. I write kind of slowly, and I am too easily discouraged or put off when my day doesn’t go well. If I have a crappy start, it often screws the rest of my day. I lose a lot of writing time that way. To solve this problem, I try to do my word count first, other stuff (like promo, emails, research, crits etc.) later in the day. That way, my best creative energy gets spent on my own work. And If I get discouraged and mooch off to watch TV and feel sorry for myself, well, at least I’ve done a few words for the day.

PK_cover4) Tell us about the place where you live. Have you ever derived any inspiration from your home or from anywhere you have visited?
My first urban fantasy series (Shadowfae Chronicles) is set in Melbourne, which is the nearest big city to where I grew up in Australia. It’s a charismatic, moody, vibrant place. Perfect for vampire gangsters.
Right now, I’m living in Northumberland, England for a few years – long story – and hey, it’s certainly added authenticity to my ‘cold, miserable weather’ scenes 🙂 No, seriously, it’s a lovely place, steeped in history. Maybe I’ll be moved to write an historical…

5) Which book, if any, would you consider to be your greatest influence and inspiration?
Eh. I’m not sure. Maybe all the bad ones that sell a zillion copies, and I go, ‘hey, I can do better than that!’ There’s an awesome speech by Stephen King somewhere on YouTube where he talks about being inspired by mediocre books. Priceless.

6) What drove you to write about Vampires?
I’m not sure I’m ‘driven’ to write about them. But I do find them interesting, and fun to write about. It’s good fun being inside their heads.

7) What do you think is the attraction for Vampire fiction? Why is it such a popular topic?
In my genre – romance – it’s because of sex appeal, first and foremost. Vampires are hot because they’re dangerous and magical and immortal and could kill you in an eyeblink… but they don’t, because YOU ARE THE ONE. It’s a powerful fantasy.
Also, we find the society they live in endlessly fascinating, in all its possible iterations. There’s so much you can do with a monster subculture. Vampires as hidden, vampires as slaves, vampires as overlords, vampires are the only people left. They’re our enemies, our allies, our protectors, our predators. Or hell, they just mooch around drinking beer and picking up girls. The choices are endless.
But you know what? I think we like monster literature, and vampire literature in particular, because we’re desperate to believe that this – the mundane world in which we live – isn’t all there is. We want secrets, bigger pictures, higher purpose. We want there to be something out there.

8) In a fight between all the greatest Vampires of fiction, who do you think would come out on top?
Well, it’d have to be someone who can move about by day. Otherwise you just wait until they’re asleep in their coffin and BLAM! hit them with a shovel or something. Dracula was kind of disappointingly easy to kill, once they got the hang of it.
Still, you’d have a hard time defeating Anne Rice’s vampires. Lestat is basically a god, by the time a few books go by… author wish-fulfilment, much?

9) What about in some other contest such as sexiness or dress sense? Who would win that one?
Hmm. Eric from the TV series True Blood is pretty hot. At least, he was before he got wussy. I like to pretend that season 4 of that show never happened…
Dress sense? Gary Oldman wears some pretty sharp suits (and blue eyeglasses!) as Dracula.
Honorable mention to Lacroix from Forever Knight, who always managed to look dead cool despite the fact that everyone else in the show looked like a bad-hair eighties refugee.
Scariness? Salem’s Lot scared the piss out of me when I was younger. Also, the boss vampire from the movie 30 Days of Night is one scary mofo.

10) How well do you think one of your characters would fare against the winner(s) of the above?Redemption_Cover Image
Ha! In my later Shadowfae Chronicles books, Poison Kissed and Blood Cursed, I have this metrosexual vampire called Vincent. He’s a second-rate gangster and no one take him seriously, so he was feeling sorry for himself one night and had a little accident with a vampire threesome, and got himself infected with the vampire disease. It made him a little crazy. He eats everything that moves.
He’s good-looking and has pretty cool dress sense, if you like clubby and sexually ambivalent. But he has more enthusiasm and malice than real power. Lestat would probably kick his ass.

11) Tell us the basic premise behind your latest novel.
Oh, okay 🙂 My latest book is called Redemption, and it’s a fallen angel/vampire apocalyptic romance. In near-future New York City, demons are hijacking the seven signs of the apocalypse to bring on the End and create hell on earth. Warrior angels must stop them.
In Redemption, my frosty angel hero, Japheth, is tracking down Rose, an angel-slaying vampire minion of hell. They meet. They kiss. They try to kill each other. Violence, action, angst and hot romance ensue.
You check it out at my website: http://www.ericahayes.net/redemption.html

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