Another blog swap, this time with Gillian Polack. Gill is a Satalyte author like me, as well as being a blog-buddy of long standing. 
  
Thank you, Satima, for inviting me and letting me share my new book with your readers.

The novel is a time travel one. I’d love to say "not as you know it”, but that would be a Star Trek joke and it’s not a Star Trek kind of story. Langue[dot]doc 1305 http://satalyte.com.au/product/langue-dot-doc-1305-gillian-polack/ was originally called Probabilities, because it needed a name and one hadn’t found it yet. Before that, it was called Timestream. Langue[dot]doc 1305 was merely the title that stuck. It was interesting that the novel didn’t find a title easily, because it was telling me how it wanted to be written the whole way through. It had a mind of its own. It wasn’t the only one.

I’m a historian. A Medieval historian, to be precise. This means that I know the Middle Ages from the historian’s approach, which is dynamic and amazing and wonderful… and really hard to fictionalise. A character (Artemisia) presented herself to me and said “I am the solution to your problems.” And she was. She’s the link between the historian side of me and the fiction side of me. Also, she’s a fictionalised historian. A literary historian, which is quite a different kind of historian to the one the time team needs, but nevertheless a historian.

Literary historians are wonderfully sophisticated. They can get their heads around cultural differences and personal contexts for texts and weird dynamics, like having to explain to a bunch of scientists that the world outside their cave is real and that the history they refused to study at school is happening. They can’t guarantee the scientists will listen to them, but they have the intellectual capacity to negotiate a particularly dangerous space. Artemisia was perfect for my story, even if she did things a bit differently to the way I had planned.

Technically, she was a fix for a technical problem. I wasn’t going to wimp-down my history and I wasn’t going to write a bad novel. Artemisia was never that technical, though. She stole my Zombie Ancestry History theory from me, for one thing. My Zombie Ancestry History Theory is the way I used to deal with the really bizarre assumptions about the Middle Ages that some students carry into class. I’ve developed a new method of describing it because now all the zombies in Medieval Europe belong to Artemisia.

Because Artemisia is also a historian and from Melbourne, people have started asking me if I’m she. I’m not. I’m only partly a literary historian and am not an expert in Clemence of Barking and am not Italian-Australian and… I’m getting defensive, aren’t I? The trouble with characters that overtake in that way is that they can change peoples’ view of you. I got a letter from a reader asking “Is Artemisia you?” in fact, which is what turned me defensive. I knew Artemisia had taken over the explaining most of the history in the novel. I knew she’d stolen my zombies. Maybe she was me and I was missing it because I was too invested in my own writing?

I asked my mother. She laughed at me. Apparently Artemisia is not me. Not even close. So even when a novel has a mind of its own, the characters in it can be themselves, not just shadows of the writer. That’s comforting.

You can read my post on Gill's blog at  http://gillpolack.livejournal.com/1343734.html 

Half a King by Joe Abercrombie

My rating: 5 of 5 stars


Prince Yarvi has vowed to regain a throne he never wanted. But first he must survive cruelty, chains and the bitter waters of the Shattered Sea itself. And he must do it all with only one good hand.

Fascinating characters, well-depicted, and an intriguing plot. Abercrombie shines, as always, but this time his story-telling approach appears at first to be rather more conventional than usual. We have come to think of Joe Abercrombie as a cynical joker whose characters have even more than the average number of human flaws, but in Half a King, the 'hero', Prince Yarvi, has flaws more physical than emotional. Even so, this is very much a coming of age story, of a young man who must learn about life the hard way. Fortunately he's a fast learner, because there are obstacles to trip him at every step along the trail.

The surprise ending comes as a jolt, and we are left wondering - did Yarvi really just do what I think he's done ...? But we can see that yes, indeed, he did, and he did it out of necessity. Pragmatism is essential if one is to claim power and hold it. So Yarvi is no noble-minded knight in shining armour, and we have to have a quick rethink about this personality we've been barracking for. I wonder what he will get up to in the rest of the series?

The second book, Half the World, is due for release on Feb 17, 2015.

View all my Goodreads reviews

Dreamer's Pool by Juliet Marillier

My rating: 5 of 5 stars

A new book by Juliet Marillier is always cause for rejoicing, and as usual, this opus does not disappoint. Marillier is a craftswoman of the first water: her words flow like runny honey, with the odd dash of lemon to cleanse the palate now and then.

Dreamer's Pool, like the bulk of this author's ouevre, has as its protagonist a young woman with a problem. If there has been one criticism of Marillier's characters it is that they have a certain sameness. A typical Marillier heroine is a girl in her late teens who has a huge problem to solve, and the fate of the family/tribe/kingdom rests on her ability to 'get it right'. Blackthorn (an assumed name that represents her profession as a healer - we never do learn her real one) and her partner in crime-solving, the taciturn but loyal Grim, are older characters. I'd place them in their early to mid twenties, since Blackthorn is fully qualified in her work and has been active enough in society to come to the notice of the powers-that-be, notably the tyrannical Mathuin, who has thrown her into prison for speaking against him. Sentenced to die, Blackthorn wakes on what she thinks will be the last day of her life to be confronted by the fey lord Conmael, who promises to help her as long as she gives up her desire for vengeance and always uses her gifts to help and never to harm. She and Grim travel north, aiming for Dalriada where Blackthorn plans to set up her healing practice.

But it's a long journey with many mishaps and delays. The resulting adventures of Blackthorn and Grim intertwine with the love story of Prince Oran and his betrothed, the gentle poet Flidais. There is also a dog (a must in a Marillier novel!) together with confused identities and a magical pool. The resulting tale is somewhat more adult and rather darker than much of this author's previous work, and it makes good reading.

As usual, Marillier has drawn skilfully on folklore and traditional tales, rounding out stock characters and developing the magical elements so they become credible plot elements. The cover tells us this is 'a Blackthorn and Grim novel', so it seems we can expect more adventures involving this likeable pair. The contrast between them makes their friendship all the more interesting, and I shall look forward to further books in the series.

View all my Goodreads reviews

Well, it's been three weeks since I said I would write about the Conflux convention in Canberra, and since then I've been to another one, the Crimescene con in Perth. Both were great little cons.

At Conflux my friend Helen Venn and I shared a room in the hotel (Rydges, Capital Hill) so we were able to be there for the evening program as well as the daytime one. All the panels we were on went well, and the performances of Laura E. Goodin's radio play Useless Questions were very well received.  Here's a pic of the cast & director, courtesy of Cat Sparks and Rob Hood.

L.to R. are Cat Sparks,Nicole Murphy, Laura E. Goodin, David McDonald, Stephen Ormsby and yours truly. We were, of course, utterly brilliant  There were nice comments about the panels we were involved with, especially the one on reviewing - in fact, all the panels were good and there were excellent writing workshops as well.

A nice bonus: my son Kurt, who lives in Canberra, took Helen and me on a day tour when the con was over. The best part was the amazing view from Mount Ainslie (right, photo courtesy http://www.tripadvisor.com.au ).

Then on 10 October I had a lovely day at the Crimescene Convention at Rydges hotel in Perth. Great talks and panels with Lyn and Lee Battersby, Stephen Dedman, Alisa Krasnostein, Tehani Croft Wessely, Tansy Rayner Roberts and Glenda Larke Noramly. Caught up with Davina Marjory Watson and others that I rarely see. I bought the first book of Tansy's crime series, written under her new Livia Day brand. How good is my karma? Cons two weekends running!

No more cons now until next Easter, when it's Swancon time again. Can't wait!

And in the prose department, The Cloak of Challiver is out with an editor colleague for final checking before submission. See the guy in the pinkred T-shirt in the photo above? He's Stephen Ormsby of Satalyte Publishing, and he's the one who has to like The Cloak of Challiver or it will never see light of day. Fingers crossed!

Greenmount's  view over the suburbs of Perth

Yesterday was the annual assessment day at the Katharine Susannah Prichard Writers Centre in Greenmount, beautifully situated in the hills outside Perth. I was invited to spend the day chatting with writers. And they paid me to do it.

The day started badly. The weather was utterly terrible! I'd dressed myself up to the nines, put pink streaks in my hair and even donned a bit of lippy - but when (after an hour and half on buses and trains) I arrived and saw myself in the mirror I realised that I resembled nothing so much as a bedraggled pink bear.  A bedraggled pink bear with glasses.

Eventually, having dried myself off, combed my straggly wet tresses (which by this time sported odd pink blotches) and fortified myself with coffee, I girded my loins to start work.

'Work' should always be like this. I had the privilege of sitting with five gifted writers, one at a time, to discuss their manuscripts in some detail. Each of these very nice people was working on something that showed considerable promise. I was most impressed by their talent and enthusiasm! Their works were very different from each other, ranging from family history to high fantasy, with a bit of ‘chick-lit’ — and one rather 'literary' short story with which I was particularly impressed.

If you should get a chance to participate in such an event, do take it, for it is a really worthwhile experience to be able to chat about your work and your plans, and maybe go away with some new ideas. The KSP Centre gave me many such opportunities when I was starting out, and I am delighted now to be on the other side of the conversation. It would have been nice to get all those lovely people together so they could share their work with each other, but the program of one hour individual time slots did not allow it. Perhaps we might be able to do that another time.

Next weekend is the Conflux Convention in Canberra. I am going with Egoboo buddy Helen Venn. We shall sit on panels, drink a lot of coffee and maybe guzzle something stronger now and then, and we'll talk about writing and publishing with like-minded people for four whole days! I should also be able to catch up with my Canberra-based son and daughter-in-law and my lovely publishers, Stephen and Marieke Ormsby of Satalyte Publishing. Watch for my full report in about ten days time!