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FAQs - Other Books & Writing
- How does writing Epic Fantasy compare with penning your ‘eco-thrillers’? Is it difficult to leave the Three Worlds, or do you find the change refreshing?
- How does a marine scientist end up writing fantasy novels?
- What question do readers most often ask you?
- Has your writing style changed much since you started writing?
- What are the hardest things about writing? When writing a book, what do you really struggle with?
- Do you ever do book tours?
- Where do you get your ideas from?
- You write vast stories with lots of characters. How do you keep track of everything?
- You’ve often said that you wanted to write different fantasy to the norm? What do you mean by that?
- What are you writing now?
- Where do you get your characters’ names from?
- Through your scientific work, you have been to amazing locations such as Mauritius, Sumatra, Bali, Fiji and Tonga. You also mention visiting ‘the bottom of every scummy, festering harbour in between’ …! Have these experiences helped you shape your Fantasy landscapes?
- How much research do you do for your books?
- How long have you been writing, what have you written and how successful have they been?
How does writing Epic Fantasy compare with penning your ‘eco-thrillers’? Is it difficult to leave the Three Worlds, or do you find the change refreshing?
Refreshing. When The View from the Mirror quartet was finished, after twelve years, I was creatively exhausted and couldn’t wait to write something completely different. Writing these huge series takes an enormous toll and, without a thorough break in between, it’s difficult to maintain quality. It’s even more difficult to avoid the trap of writing the same tales over and over.
The first of my eco-thrillers, The Last Albatross, was a story I’d long wanted to tell, about eco-terrorism in a world being transformed by disastrous climate change. Equally importantly, I didn’t want to become ‘typecast’ as an author who could only write in a certain world and a certain style. And of course, it was nice to write shorter books which were complete in one volume.
The Last Albatross was written in a totally different style, set in our own world ten years in the future, and told first person from a woman’s viewpoint. That was hard to do, but fortunately I have five sisters and I’ve spent a good part of my life listening to women talk about things that matter to them.
Between each of my Three Worlds series I now write something different, and over the years this has changed my writing style. For example, The View from the Mirror quartet is written in an elevated, High Fantasy style compared to my later works.
How does a marine scientist end up writing fantasy novels?
Even though I was doing interesting work and travelling all over the world, my life was missing something. I’d been wanting to write for ages, and one day the creative urge became so strong that I had to start right away, just to see if I could do it. Writing fiction was really hard, and often frustrating, but by the time I was halfway through my first fantasy novel, A Shadow on the Glass, I knew that was how I wanted to spend the rest of my life. And it’s a great life and the best job in the world.
What question do readers most often ask you?
When is the next book in the series coming out? People start asking this question within 24 hours of my next book appearing, which is a little frustrating for huge books such as Chimaera and The Destiny of the Dead which have taken many months of hard labour. On the other hand, it’s wonderful that people have loved my books enough to care that much.
Has your writing style changed much since you started writing?
It’s changed dramatically. I first begun my initial fantasy quartet, The View from the Mirror quartet, back in 1987 (though the roots of its world-building go back years before that) and it’s clearly influenced by a lot of the classic fantasy novels I’d read in the preceding decade or so. In particular, it has a more elevated and remote fantasy tone than my later work, and is also more of a romance (in both the modern and classical senses).
At the end of each new fantasy series I always write something completely different, and each time I do this, it changes the way I write the next series. For example, after I wrote The View from the Mirror quartet I did the Human Rites eco-thrillers, the first book of which (The Last Albatross) is written in the first person from a woman’s point of view, and is a more hard-edged and realistic thriller. This certainly influenced the harder and grimmer fantasy series I wrote next, The Well of Echoes.
Since then I’ve been writing a lot of children’s books such as my Runcible Jones series, and also the Sorcerer’s Tower quartet for mid-primary children. The latter books were only 10,000 words each, far smaller than my fantasy novels which are in the range of 200,000 to 260,000 words each, and the full quartets 800,000 to 900,000 words. Verbal diarrhoea, some might say! Writing these small books taught me a lot about writing economically and getting to the point quickly, and this is definitely reflected in the books I have written in the years since then.
I’ve recently finished writing a quartet of humorous fantasy novels for kids (45,000 words each) in a series called Grim and Grimmer. Writing this series is the most fun I’ve ever had writing, and I learned heaps about creating interesting and unusual characters.
What are the hardest things about writing? When writing a book, what do you really struggle with?
Writing is never easy, no matter how much of it one has done, and I’m never happy with my work until the very end (and probably not even then, realistically, though I don’t read my books after they’re published). I’m most happy with the simple storytelling aspects. I think I’ve got a way to go on characterisation.
I think I had some of my writing skills when I began, from my vast reading before beginning to write seriously in my mid-thirties, or perhaps it was innate. But I think most of my abilities simply came from writing an awful lot. By the time my first book was accepted I’d done nearly 10,000 hours of writing, which is the equivalent of five plus years full time, and I did 22 rigorous drafts of my first book, which was my writing apprenticeship.
Because I’ve written so many books, and many of them big ones, I’ve used up an awful lot of characters, settings and conflicts. What I find hardest now is remaining original, and to this end I now plan my stories in great detail. I then analyse the plan and change all the characters, settings and scenes that seem like ones I’ve written about previously.
Do you ever do book tours?
Sadly, my publishers haven’t sent me on any so far. I do signings from time to time, though mainly at conventions. Sometimes I just drop into a big bookstore and sign a whole lot of books, so it’s always worth checking there.
Where do you get your ideas from?
Life, work, experience, travel, reading. Every time I read the paper, or a magazine, or something on the net, I get ideas, and in fact my problem as a writer is having too many of them. It helps to have had a lot of life experiences. I’ve travelled to many countries and worked in twelve, so I’ve seen lots of interesting things and met all kinds of people, and all that goes into the mind’s mixing bowl and comes out as a good idea years later.
You write vast stories with lots of characters. How do you keep track of everything?
I make lots of notes (though not as many as I should), plus timelines, lists, charts, maps and locality sketches. And then I reread constantly, and do heaps of drafts. I did 22 drafts for A Shadow on the Glass, and these days, no less than 7 or 8 drafts of every book, until I can’t bear to ever see them again. And still I make mistakes!
You’ve often said that you wanted to write different fantasy to the norm? What do you mean by that?
I’ve always thought of my earlier fantasies as ‘Darwinian’, in that they’re not about the struggle of good vs evil, or greed, revenge, lust for power or similar overworked fantasy themes, but about the struggle for existence of several different intelligent species each of which has their own nobility (and baseness), and has the perfect right to fight for the survival of their kind.
Other differences are that I don’t use the traditional fantasy settings, eg analogues of Western Europe in the Middle Ages, or other settings borrowed from Earth’s history or myth; I create my own worlds and my own societies and cultures, and adventures are more likely to take place in the tar pits of Snizort than in some vast oak forest. Nor do I rely on stereotypical historical roles, eg in general, women are as free as men, and go off and have just as many adventures as men, but they’re always feminine rather than women acting like men.
What are you writing now?
Book 2 of The Gates of Good and Evil, The Fatal Gate. It’ll be published in May 2017.
Where do you get your characters’ names from?
Sometimes they just appear on the page out of nowhere, like Xervish Flydd in the Three Worlds, or Fluffia Tra-la-lee or the demon Spleen in Grim and Grimmer. At other times I have to change them many times before I get a name that sounds right for the character, and also fits the race or species or nationality the character comes from.
Through your scientific work, you have been to amazing locations such as Mauritius, Sumatra, Bali, Fiji and Tonga. You also mention visiting ‘the bottom of every scummy, festering harbour in between’ …! Have these experiences helped you shape your Fantasy landscapes?
Some of the grimmer ones, definitely. E.g., in the early eighties I led an environmental survey team on two disastrous expeditions to northern Sumatra. The first went wrong because we hired a survey ship, in good faith, which turned out to be on an Interpol black list on account of criminal activities by a previous owner. Then we ran aground, were nearly killed by our mad Burmese cook, were ripped off by an unscrupulous local agent, and so the catastrophe rolled on.
The second expedition was even worse – our captain so offended the local authorities that our new ship was impounded for months, along with all the crew, and we had to complete the survey in a rude native fishing boat, living on coconuts and mud lobsters. On my bio page there’s a photo of me wading through the mangroves. Fortunately we were in no danger from the Sumatran tigers – the crocodiles had eaten them all!
How much research do you do for your books?
I do a lot for my eco-thrillers, as they’re set in our world and there’s a lot of science to be understood, details to be checked etc. I do a lot of planning and analysis work for my fantasy novels, including world-building, design of ‘magical systems’, alternative technologies etc etc though I wouldn’t really call it research.
How long have you been writing, what have you written and how successful have they been?
I’ve been writing for 28 years. I’ve written 15 very long fantasy novels (each 200,000 words plus) in The View from the Mirror Quartet, The Well of Echoes Quartet, The Song of the Tears Trilogy and the Tainted Realm trilogy, plus book 1 of The Gates of Good and Evil.
I’ve also written four long (105,000 words each) fantasy novels for younger readers (9+) in the Runcible Jones series, plus four mid-sized (45,000 words each) books in the Grim and Grimmer series, a single kid’s novel of ~40,000 words and four short (10,000 words), illustrated kids’ novels in the Sorcerer’s Tower series.
And I’ve written three futuristic eco-thrillers set in a world of catastrophic global climate change – the Human Rites Trilogy – The Last Albatross, Terminator Gene and The Life Lottery, which have recently been republished in revised and updated 3rd Editions.
And I’ve got another two books contracted. My books have sold well over a million copies and have been published in 12 countries.