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[Vampire Month] Jeannette Ng Interview

27 Tuesday Mar 2018

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20170124-DSC_0945.jpgOur next Vampire month victim is Jeannette Ng who has recently published the novel ‘Under the Pendulum Sun’ through Angry Robot. Being very clever and sneaky, Jeanette is not technically a vampire author but has managed to sneak into the line up through a technicality. She is an author of Gothic Fantasy and, I am sure, will have vampires in a future novel….

For now, she will answer the insidiously seductive vampire month questions….

1)      What is the earliest memory you have of writing? What did you write about?

The first thing I remember writing was just straight up rehash of Cinderella. I was probably around six or so because it was the first year of primary school. I have this very distinct memory of arguing over the spelling of certain words like magic with my teacher. Which means I’ve been basically doing fairy tale retellings my entire writing life.

2)      When did you decide to become a professional writer? Why did you take this step?

I don’t really think I can remember a time it wasn’t something I was working towards. I remember being about fourteen and putting out serial novels with my friends. I would typeset them like I did the school newspaper (which I was, of course, also involved in) and we sold them for about a quid per instalment.

After that it was just a matter of finishing something and selling it.

3)      What would you consider to be your greatest strength as a writer? What about your greatest weakness? How do you overcome this weakness?

My prose is dense but I’m told also lyrical. I’ve a penchant for weird details and am an obsessive researcher.

That research is also a weakness, of course, since it means I don’t get any writing done. On top of that, I am really bad at endings. For all that I have all these big concepts, I struggle seeing them through to a point of actual closure. I create worlds without plot and then some plots without people. The pieces rarely fit together the way I want them to. Which I’m still not sure how to overcome, really. I suppose it’s just a matter of keeping notes on everything and not rushing an underdeveloped idea.

4)      Tell us about the place where you live. Have you ever derived any inspiration from your home or from anywhere you have visited?

I live in Durham, which is in the North East. It’s mostly bridges and a marketplace knotted around a cathedral and a castle. There’s also a university nested inside the aforementioned mostly medieval castle. It’s one of those places with stones that just *remember*.

My debut novel, UNDER THE PENDULUM SUN, is about a Yorkshire missionary and his sister, so I’d say I draw a fair bit of inspiration from home or thereabouts. I was travelling through Birdforth when I had noticed its Norman church and a lot of that went into the novel, as well as the moody skies and windswept heaths.

5)      Which book, if any, would you consider to be your greatest influence and inspiration?

If we’re talking about my debut, UNDER THE PENDULUM SUN, then I’m probably obligated to say JANE EYRE since the plot mirrors the latter third or so of Charlotte Bronte’s novel.

6)      What drove you to write about Vampires?

I don’t think I’ve actually written about vampires, though a lot of my published work does fit neatly into gothic fantasy.

7)      What do you think is the attraction for Vampire fiction? Why is it such a popular topic?

Under-The-Pendulum-Sun-cover-largeSex and death make for an intoxicating combination that is as old as myth, so I suspect that’s a huge part of it’s draw. Vampires function as dark mirrors of humanity, both as monsters to revile and more commonly these days as dark heroes. They can be power fantasies of immortality and dominance over others as well as metaphors for the marginalised. The pieces are varied and various, so that legacy of myth makes for some very powerful metaphor.

8)      In a fight between all the greatest Vampires of fiction, who do you think would come out on top?

Lada. From the haunting AND I DARKEN by Kiersten White.

Which is sort of a cheat-y answer since she’s not technically vampire. She’s just Vlad Dracul, historical inspiration of one of the ur-vampires, but also a teenage girl.

Still, I’m pretty sure she can stab and stake her way through any canon of vampires. Because she is just that awesome.

9)      What about in some other contest such as sexiness or dress sense? Who would win that one?

Carmilla from the CARMILLA web series is awesome. I’ve soft spot for that sort of casual badassery and it very much helps that her attraction and romance with Laura is portrayed very much in ways that consciously reject the male gaze. Part of it is to do with the limitations of the web format but instead of the soft camera angles and fleshy bodyparts, it’s about their faces and that intimacy between them.

In general I would really recommend watching CARMILLA if you have time. It’s all free on YouTube and though it takes a little while to get going with its eldritch horror on campus setting, it’s a lot of fun.

10)   How well do you think one of your characters would fare against the winner(s) of the above?

I don’t really know, to be honest. I imagine that Mab, the Pale Queen of the fairies would be intrigued and ask them to tea, all the while smiling daggers and glaring poison. Carmilla does have some experience stabbing up eldritch horrors, so she’d probably hold her own even if Mab dissolves into a slither of snakes. Lada is also in camp stabby, though she does have plenty of inner turmoil for Mab to exploit, so not sure who’d win there.

11)   Tell us the basic premise behind your latest novel.

UNDER THE PENDULUM SUN is a gothic novel about missionaries in fairyland. It’s about pitting Victorian theology against the alien otherness of the fairies. And like any other gothic novel, we a seemingly innocent but curious young woman exploring a puzzle box of an old house. She finds things that are probably best left lost, but that’s how all these stories go.

 

Jeannette Ng is originally from Hong Kong but now lives in Durham, UK. Her MA in Medieval and Renaissance Studies fed into an interest in medieval and missionary theology, which in turn spawned her love for writing gothic fantasy with a theological twist. She runs live roleplay games and is active within the costuming community, running a popular blog.

Blog Link: https://medium.com/@nettlefish

I’m also on twitter as @jeannette_ng

Book Purchase Link (amazon): Under the Pendulum Sun

Book Purchase Link (ebook): Under the Pendulum Sun

 

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Alex Campbell interview redux

29 Saturday Aug 2015

Posted by in Musings

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In March, we interviewed Alex for Vampire month and she provided the exceptional ‘Vampires of my life’ post. At the time we hinted that that she may be back soon. Now, here she is literally one day after the release of her debut novel (an event I was privileged to be sitting next to her while it happened at the MancsterCon, the sight of her face when she opened the box was classic) telling us all about it.redhair

  1. How did you come up with the concept of your story?

I think all authors have a touch of magpie in them somewhere – I know I do. I see something shiny and I want to steal it and put it in a book. Sigil of the Wyrm is a nest of glittery things I’ve collected – it’s full of real places from the North East where I grew up, and a few real people have cameo parts, or have lent me bits of dialogue and turns of phrase. And the main concept, the Lampton Wyrm itself, is from a local legend and, for me, bedtime story I heard as a kid.

  1. How did you come up with the title?

With great difficulty! And a lot of discussions with my editors. Even then it changed several times in the process. Titles are very polarising for me – either there’s one title that jumps out at me immediately and it’s perfect, or nothing is ever quite right and it takes an awful lot of work to come up with something.

  1. Please provide some insight into or a secret or two about your story.

I’m very wary of spoiler-ing the ending, or of giving away secrets that are going to become plot points in book two, so this is going to be a little cryptic. There’s a very famous essay by Roland Barthes that I read at university when I first conceived of the novel. I took the title a bit too literally, and it inspired something that happens in Chapter 22. With that in mind, you should be able to work out who a certain character is based around.

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  1. 4. What was the most surprising part of writing this book?

The Sneak-Peak Pre-Release we did at London Film and Comic Con in July. I’m a total geek, so being told I was taking my book to Comic Con… I spent several weeks trying not to get my hopes up because there must have been a mistake somewhere, and my publishers couldn’t really have meant Comic Con… Except they did, and it was amazing. All the authors there were really friendly, and I met so many fantastic people, and I actually sold out of the copies I’d brought with me. It was a whole weekend of “I can’t quite believe this!”

  1. What was the hardest part of writing your book, and how did you overcome it?

The denouement. Chapters 20-22 took so long and so many revisions to get right, and I think that was because I was holding on to a plot element that I’d had since the beginning, but which no longer fitted. The novel had grown up and outgrown it, and it took me far too long to realise that. In the end, I just had to tear up those three chapters and re-write them from scratch, taking it in a slightly different direction, adding new scenes and even some new characters. In the end, it turned out to be the best decision I could have made, because it was a big injection of new writing into what had become a somewhat stale ending.

6. So, it’s been 5 months since you were interviewed for Vampire Month on this blog. Have the last few months been busy ones for you?

Very much so. A lot of scrambles to deadlines, plus a bit of publicity work in the run up to the launch, and the Sneak Preview at LFCC in July… and that’s even without factoring in a day-job and a social life!

7. As a newly published author, are there any differences between your expectations and what it is actually like to be published?

Not really. I mean, I haven’t made my millions yet, but then I never really expected I would (just hoped!). On the whole I went into the business with my eyes open, and with a fairly realistic view of what it would be like – both the good sides and the bad.

8. Your novel, Sigil of the Wyrm, has its roots in the Lambton worm legend. What are your earliest memories of that legend?

My Mum singing me this song to get me to go to sleep: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zUVWdGwVBw8 It’s a bit incomprehensible if you don’t speak Geordie, I’m afraid, but I can provide a translation if required…

9. Are there any other popular legends you think might be ripe for interpretation into a novel? Do you plan to do one of these in the future?

Lots! I’ve already got several plans for book 2, which is going to draw quite heavily on a few Arthurian Excalibur myths, and also a lesser known story about a character called Tam Lin. That happens to be one of my favourites, because it’s one of the few times the girl gets to save her prince, not the other way round!

10. You are known as a feminist and a geek. What is your reaction to the claims that women cannot be geeks?

Raucous laughter? Beating them around the head with my Masters degree in Science Fiction? Point them at the vast number of women I know who have even better geek credentials than me? A massive wall chart pointing out all the fantastic Speculative fiction written by women, all the way back to the fact that a woman *invented* sci-fi as we know it (Mary Shelley, Frankenstein, 1818)? Depends what kind of a mood I’m in, but I disagree with that sentiment in the strongest terms. Luckily, I’ve almost always found Geekdom to be an open and welcoming subculture, and it saddens me that others of my gender have not always found it to be so.

AJ-Campbell-author

 

[Vampire Month] Alex Campbell Interview

24 Tuesday Mar 2015

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redhairOur final entry into the Vampire Month interrogation suite (four interrogators, no waiting) is Alex Campbell. I’ve known Alex for a few years now but was not aware until I did this interview one thing we had in common – the region we were both born in.

Alex is currently working on her debut novel, Wyrm’s Reckoning which is due out in the summer. We’ll be seeing more of her when that happens.

Oh and if you are wondering where you may have seen Alex before… well, look back at our past fantasy photoshoots with Quattrofoto where she modelled as a psychotic elven Empress and an undead sorcerer. In real life she is not anywhere near as evil.

  •  What is the earliest memory you have of writing? What did you write about?

I actually still have my first “book”. I wrote it when I was about 3 – probably a little older, but the writing is about one sentence to a page, so not much older. It was a very twee little story about woodland animals going on a picnic. It was genuinely awful.

  • When did you decide to become a professional writer? Why did you take this step?

I’ve always wanted to be a writer – I can’t remember a time when I didn’t write, and it’s always made me happy being able to share that writing with other people. Even from the days of GCSE physics class, which I mostly spent writing Pratchett pastiches and passing them round the bench. I made several attempts down the years to go pro, but it wasn’t until last August that I finally managed to find a publisher. I think, in my heart I’ve always been a professional writer, but it’s probably still going to be some time before I’m making enough money from writing for it to be my only career.

  • What would you consider to be your greatest strength as a writer? What about your greatest weakness? How do you overcome this weakness?
Photo courtesy of Quattrofoto

Photo courtesy of Quattrofoto

Greatest strength… probably the fact that I’m an avid reader and always have been. It’s left me with an extensive vocabulary, and also a good sense of the flow of prose, so I can instinctively tell if something feels natural, which helps a lot. As to my weaknesses – an inability to judge subtlety. I either tend to make things glaringly obvious or completely overlooked, and finding a happy medium is a challenge. Overcoming it is basically all about practice.

  • Tell us about the place where you live. Have you ever derived any inspiration from your home or from anywhere you have visited?

My current novel is actually set where I grew up, in Northumbria and Tyne and Wear. It’s inspired by a folk-tale from those parts – the tale of the Lampton Worm – and I’ve tried very hard to root the story in the area. Sense of place is very important to me, and almost every scene in the book features, or is inspired by locations from Up North – Penshaw Monument, Belsay Castle, the beach by Tynemouth Priory… it’s a beautiful part of the world, and it’s one that doesn’t get a lot of press. People think of Newcastle as a very grey city, full of football supporters and flat-caps and an unintelligible accent, but like anywhere, there’s far more to it than the stereotype suggests.

  • Which book, if any, would you consider to be your greatest influence and inspiration?

Neverwhere by Neil Gaiman. For this particular book at least.

  • What drove you to write about Vampires?

They’re such a staple really. I wanted to include a lot of fantasy elements to the novel, and I couldn’t leave them out. I’ve always found them interesting, and you can do just about anything with them. In my case, that translated to East-European gun-runners, but I’m looking forward to playing even further with the tropes in later books.

  • What do you think is the attraction for Vampire fiction? Why is it such a popular topic?

Lots of reasons. Vampires allow us to talk about the big questions of what it means to be human, what it is to be evil, and how the two collide. But I think a lot of it comes down to sex. Vampires (well, the good ones at least) are suave and charismatic and dangerous, and there’s something very primal about them. They look just like us, but they’re not, they’re other. They’re predators, and yet so very seductive and compelling… in a lot of ways they’re a metaphor for the allure of the opposite or sometimes the same sex. They’re forbidden fruit, and so they’re always going to be popular.

The Lampton Worm, a popular North East legend

  • In a fight between all the greatest Vampires of fiction, who do you think would come out on top?

The Old Count Magpyr from Pratchett’s Carpe Jugulum. He might not actually win in a physical fight, but he’d make sure he’d win the war, through patience and knowing how to play the game.

  • What about in some other contest such as sexiness or dress sense? Who would win that one?

Sexiness is all about personal preference, but for dress sense I’d go for Lord Akeldama from Gail Carriger’s books.

  • How well do you think one of your characters would fare against the winner(s) of the above?

Probably quite badly. They’re currently taking time out from a war, so they’re not in any condition to take anyone on in a fight, and dress sense… well unless refugee chic is a thing…

  • Tell us the basic premise behind your latest novel.

It’s a modern-day urban fantasy set in the North East. At his uncle’s funeral, Richard Lampton suddenly finds himself heir to a deadly curse; he is being hunted by the Lampton Wyrm, a monster from the Dark Ages set on annihilating his bloodline. He has a week to shape up and become a hero, with a little help from a packed cast of weird and wonderful characters he meets from myth and legend, and a fledgling Jackdaw called Bobble.

 Bio

Alex Campbell was born in the wilds of Northumbria, and from an early age cut her teeth on legends like that of the Lampton Worm, which formed the inspiration for her first book, Wyrm’s Reckoning, out later this year..

She obtained a degree in English and Creative Writing at the University of Warwick, then in a shameless attempt to avoid Real Life, followed this up with two Masters Degrees in Science Fiction and in Writing from the University of Liverpool and Liverpool John Moores respectively.

Now, she lives in Portsmouth, at what she insists on referring to as the “wrong” end of the country, with her fiance and a number of dead house-plants. She is a keen gamer and LARPer, for which she makes many of her own costumes. She is not ashamed of being a geek

You can find her on her blog:  https://galacticavoice.wordpress.com/ and also on her facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/pages/AJ-Campbell/1525096601059912