The author answers [4]

Posted on by March 13, 2021
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Nicole Murphy asks: I’d like to know what part of the process of creating/writing/editing /publishing/promoting a book you find the most satisfying?

That’s a different question to “What do you enjoy the most“.

If you had asked me that, I would probably have replied: the first draft. Scribbling things down as they come tumbling out of my mind. Getting that first rush of words down on paper and beginning to feel the shape of characters come alive as they hit that brand new world I’ve just created. Thinking, Hey, that’s neat! as I think of a plot twist or I express something particularly well.

Satisfaction? That’s a bit different. I loathe marketing anything, so no satisfaction in promoting a book [although I do like meeting readers, not necessarily the same thing].

[Hey everyone, you ARE aware that Song of the Shiver Barrens hits the bookshops in Australia this week, aren’t you? And you ARE all rushing down to the nearest book store to buy, right??]

Ok, promotion out of the way, let me get on with the really interesting stuff.

The first sense of satisfaction is when the first draft is completed. [Whew, I actually have created something that has a beginning, middle and an end. May not be very good as yet, but it does exist…]

The next satisfying feeling is when I feel I have got it “right”. And that varies from book to book. It usually occurs sometime during one of the drafts, when I feel that I have everything in the right place, in the right order. The plot is behaving, the characters are all nicely well-rounded, I have a book, rather than just a story. Then I know I can get on to the polish. Sometimes that moment is elusive and I seem to have to chase it all over the place as the deadline gets closer and closer. Sometimes I need beta readers to help me get there, sometimes not.

The next moment of satisfaction is when I send it off to my editor and she gets back to me and says, ‘That’s great. I am sending it to copy edit.” That has even occurred several times without going through an intermediate stage when she makes suggestions for a rewrite. There’s an enormous feeling of satisfaction at that moment.

By the time I hold the published book in my hand, as special as that moment is, I probably feel more relief than satisfaction. The process of copy edit and proof reading has left me feeling more exhausted than anything else.

The final moment of satisfaction is when the first person gets back to me, after having bought the book, to say something complimentary – i.e. that they thought it was money well spent. That is the supreme moment, especially if it is someone I don’t know or have little connection with and therefore – I assume – it must be an honest comment! …That, quite frankly, is the moment that makes all the effort worthwhile.

And it still knocks me endwise: the idea that I can write something that brings pleasure or satisfaction to a stranger.

So, please, someone out there, tell me (honestly, now) what you thought of the Song of the Shiver Barrens….

Weird stuff [again]

Posted on by March 13, 2021
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Weekend break from answering questions. Not to worry, if you asked one, it will be answered…

Instead, today I just have to tell you about this news item that appeared in today’s paper here.

A bomoh [translation: witchdoctoring con-artist] in the northern state of Kelantan was treating a Penang family for something or other. His diagnosis was that the family’s problems were caused by some bad spirits or demons. He – being a skilled bomoh – caught these spirits and imprisoned them inside the trunks of banana plants, a process which included driving huge nails into the stems and then burying them in the local cemetery.

The photo below comes from the New Straits Times online page. See here
for a bigger shot and more details about the story.

Hocus pocus, you say? Of course it was. And did the the sensible people of the local village believe this tale? Of course not! They had far more sense. They rang up the local police to tell them that someone had buried space aliens in the graveyard. Which in the end resulted in the police exhuming the bodies (with hands clad in rubber gloves…just in case?)

And the bomoh? Well, he says he’s not responsible for whatever happens to the Penang people now that the spirits are free. He’s just got himself an out – if the patients don’t improve, it’s not his fault. He can blame it on the police. Who says witchdoctors aren’t clever?

Fantasy is not half as weird as the stuff real people will believe…

An author answers [3]

Posted on by March 13, 2021
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KAREN MILLER , a talented and successful sff writer, asked the following:

What’s the most powerful thing about the fantasy genre?

I haven’t a clue what it is for most people. But as a reader, the most powerful thing about the genre for me is its ability to offer me so much in one package, so much between the covers of the one book.

Fascinating characters, good writing, great plot, action, intriguing background, thought-provoking issues – all those things you can find in many novels about today’s world, but fantasy offers more. It can be a war story, a crime novel, a romance, an epic, a history, all at one and the same time. It’s the sheer challenge of reading a fantasy that blows me away if it is done well.

I don’t mean challenge as in something that is hard to understand, but challenge as in something that expands your view of this world even as it describes another world, that makes you think, that surprises you with every turn, that challenges your imagination, even as it tells a great tale about great characters. A good fantasy is a total immersion. Powerful stuff.

There aren’t too many mainstream novels that can do all those things in one book. But then again, fantasy & sci fi readers are the most intelligent of readers. They can take it!

As a writer, the most powerful thing is the possibility of saying so much without being boring. I am a great believer in writing good entertainment, but I do like to say important stuff at the same time. In a mainstream novel this can come across as preachy or just plain dull because the setting is so close to home. In a fantasy, it’s easier to make the story make the point, if you have one.

Ooo, I love writing fantasy.

The author answers 2…

Posted on by March 13, 2021
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Argus Lou asks:
Which character in each of your books do you see as an extension or a fantasy version of yourself?

Hmm. Certainly there are none that resemble me physically.

When one of my book group remarked that she thought Blaze was a lot like me, I replied, “Well, maybe a lot like I would like to be. You know, tall…with a great head of hair…”, whereupon they all laughed. Which should tell you something!

But to be more serious, none of my characters are me, plus height and a great hairdo. A few, however, possess some of the traits I like to think I have. Keris Kaylen in Havenstar and Samia in Song of the Shiver Barrens both have a practical no-nonsense attitude and a rather forthright way of expressing themselves which I like.

Blaze in The Isles of Glory and Ligea in The Mirage Makers are both too bloodthirsty for me – if I were to meet them, I’d run a mile. And if I were to find myself in one of the hairy predicaments that they take in their stride, I would be scrambling under the nearest bed, not reaching for a kitchen knife or sword.

I think I would have to say that I have more in common with Gilfeather‘s pacifist tendencies, and his (often thwarted) desire to work things out in non-violent ways. I’m a writer after all, and that’s what we tend to do – try to change the world with our brand of magic, without a stick, sans bazooka.

Y0u know what? You’d probably do better to ask my friends this question, and see what they say!

One of these days I shall write a fantasy heroine that is me: a sixty-plus environmentalist, a bit overweight, thinning hair, myopic and arthritic, acerbic and logical, often forgetful, with a great sense for the ironic…I wonder if it would sell?

Asking an author…

Posted on by March 13, 2021
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Over at Bibliobibuli (and what a great site this is for book related comments and links!) I was led to a link that discussed the Oprah interview of Cormac McCarthy, where she asked inane questions like the Where did you get the idea for this book from? and Do you have a writing routine? and How do you feel about millions of people reading your books?

She had a chance for an in depth interview, and she asks about his writing routine? I can’t believe it.

Every writer gets asked about the origin of their ideas. They get sick of being asked. There is only one true answer: from life. And anyway a book has not one idea but thousands, and to insinuate that a single idea inspired a writer is a bit insulting. A single idea is just a tiny beginning in a huge thought process that builds up the book in an author’s mind before he ever puts pen to paper or fingers to keyboard.

So what should a journalist ask a writer? Questions that delve deep into the book, its characters, its purpose, how it reflects the writer and his life experience, what he hopes to achieve or change (if anything), why he wrote this particular book when he did, how he views the public’s reaction to it…

So does anyone have a question they want to ask me?

Bird Race continued…

Posted on by March 13, 2021
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When I woke up yesterday and looked out of my hotel window at Jelai Resort in Fraser’s Hill, this was the scene below in the mist – people, and birds .


There must have about 60 people and almost as many cameras and tripods and telescopes and binoculars…

There is something very odd about Jelai in the morning. In that first hour or two in the morning, the birds come out and feed on the carpark edge, fly past your nose, hop around your feet. Why this particular place and not everywhere else is a mystery.

And of course, during the birdrace, the bird race participants are there to see them.

The best part of the race as far as I was concerned was to see so many of my old friends (and make new ones – hi, guys!). Birders I hadn’t seen for ages seem to come out of their retirement to attend, although not usually to take part, from as far away as Singapore and Langkawi. It was great to see them. And odd to find just how many people read my blog…

The winners saw just short of 100 species in 24 hours.

Birds at Jelai yesterday morning: Verditer Flycatcher, White-throated Fantail, Lesser Raquet-tailed Drongo; Chestnut-capped and Chestnut-Crowned Laughingthrush; Orange-bellied Leafbird; Black-throated Sunbird; Long-tailed Sibia; Mountain Fulvetta; Silver-eared Mesia; Yellow-naped woodpecker; Malaysian(Javan) Cuckoo-shrike; Streaked Spiderhunter; Long-billed Partridge heard calling; Little Cuckoo-dove; Large Niltava; Oriental Magpie-Robin. All seen and identified without a pair of binoculars, because I left mine back in Kota Kinabalu by mistake! I’m sure there were others as well.

Bird Race

Posted on by March 13, 2021
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I’m off tomorrow to the bird race in Fraser’s Hill.

Well, actually it’s not a bird race, it’s a people-racing- after-birds race. Which is about as stupid as human beings get – and therefore is lots of fun. The birds are wild, and the winning team sees more bird species than other teams.

And how do you know the winning team doesn’t cheat? You don’t. Which is also pretty stupid. But who cares? If people want to cheat they will, and generally everyone knows it because they don’t do it very intelligently, so they are the ones who end up looking silly.

Actually I am not racing, I am going with my colleagues to snaffle a lot of birders and get them to fill in questionnaires for the project I am working on. Which will also be fun because I like talking to birders.

And the pix here are from my husband who wants to show off his gingers, photographed during the recent Titiwangsa Range Expedition. I didn’t go because I was at the SFF convention in Oz, having fun while he was getting wet. I believe it rained. A lot.

Nice news today

Posted on by March 13, 2021
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I received copies of each volume of the Isles of Glory (The Aware – published 2003, Gilfeather and The Tainted – both published 2004) in a new Australian edition. Which means folk are still buying.

And I also heard from my agent that the Russians are buying The Tainted. I was hopeful about that, having noted that my name was bigger than the title on the cover for Gilfeather (aka Smell Evil) – which is supposed to mean that the author is becoming a brand name. [And if that doesn’t convince you that I am a typically anal pathetic author looking for clues to how well she is selling, nothing will…]

And if you are wondering why the Russians are buying one book at a time, well it’s what happens sometimes with books that are going to be translated. The publisher has to pay the translator up front, so they like to keep the advance costs down. If they buy the whole trilogy, then they have to pay an advance on all three books. Besides, if they buy one at a time and the first book doesn’t sell, they can always forget about buying the rest!

Weird world

Posted on by March 13, 2021
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Ok, so I write fantasy. But, quite frankly, I think the really, really weird stuff is found in the real world.

One of my husband’s family told me this story yesterday. She has misplaced a box of gold and diamond jewellery, collected over a lifetime of saving. (This is a common way women have of investing their savings, particularly among Muslim women.) She couldn’t be sure if she had just hidden it so well that she can’t find it, or if some workmen she had in her house not so very long ago had helped themselves…

So she went to a bomoh* to find out.

She went to his house, waited her turn, paid him twenty ringgit and asked him if he could find her jewellery in her house. He turned out all the lights, cut a lime in two and rubbed the cut fruit with kapor (natural chalk). Then told her that the jewellery was no longer in the house. Alas, he couldn’t tell her where it was.

Afterwards, her sceptical sister snorted, remarking that it was no wonder he couldn’t see the jewellery – it was dark. And I added that he was obviously looking in the wrong house; she ought to have taken him to her house, not gone to his…

Joking aside, I think he did quite well. At the cost of a couple of minutes of his time, one lime and a smidgen of chalk, he just made himself twenty ringgit. I should be so lucky.

Call yourself Tillian Loo and an expert on Feng Shui, write a number of nonsensical books on the subject that purport to be scientific, give a number of lectures about how to stop luck from running out of your house or office – and bingo, you’re a millionaire in no time.

Isn’t that a lovely irony? I write fantasy, tell everyone it is fantasy, and stay poverty stricken. But if I wrote fantasy and called it the truth, I’d be rich….

*translates rather inaccurately as “witchdoctor”, but it shouldn’t really be translated at all. A bomoh is usually a Malay, a Muslim, and he mixes local traditional medicine, spells, magic, and religion in a glorious hotchpotch of nonsense.

Re-reading one of my own books.

Posted on by March 13, 2021
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I hate doing that.

Once the final proofs are done, I usually turn away from that book and focus on the next. And I hate revisiting something that has been an intense part of my life for a year or so and finding out that it is not perfect….! And of course, it is not, never can be.

Song of the Shiver Barrens was a bit rushed towards the end, so I am re-reading, hoping to spot the typos or rough passages that escaped the numerous eagle eyes of author and editor and copy editor and type-setter and proof editor. Why? So that I can fix them before I send off the MS to the UK publisher, Orbit.

I have been reasonably happy with my other books in this respect, but not this one. There are errors – all small, but which grate on my perfectionist eye now that they are there staring up at me from the printed page, yelling, “Look at me! Look at me!”

Can anyone tell me how it is that I came to write the following: He handed her her cloak without throwing up? I suspect that in the original typescript, the first “her” was at the end of a line and the second at the beginning of the next line. It’s the only excuse I can make (ignoring the fact that I did also read the proofs…). And I have no idea how everyone else didn’t wince when they read it. Aargh.

[A mild digression here – most mainstream “literary” novelists spend several years – or more – on a book, polishing and perfecting. Fantasy writers usually don’t have that luxury – our books can be two to three times the length of a literary novel, and in order to keep our audience happy, plus earn enough to keep ourselves happy, we have to be much more productive. I have had seven books published in the past nine years, varying in length from 126,000 words to 165,000 words. And for about 9 months of every year, I have a full-time job as well.

So you are more inclined to find typos and such in a BFF (big fat fantasy) than in a slim “literary” novel. If you do find typos, you can always tell the author about them. They can then make sure they are corrected in the second edition.

Not much point, however, in telling the writer that there is a plot hole the size of the Mariana Trench in Chapter Twenty. Quite frankly, we don’t want to know – because it’s far too late to do anything about it. And no, I haven’t found a plot hole in Song of the Shiver Barrens….yet.]