The Slightly Skewed Life of Toby Chrysler was one of those long-term projects that authors sometimes embark upon. They’re not meant to be long term – they just become that way. Authors get asked what they do when they encounter writers’ block. I don’t suffer blocks too often, but when I do I start another book. Toby was started for this reason. I was working on the 'Maximus Black' trilogy (think Artemis Fowl’s evil twin) and became stuck. So was born Toby Chrysler. But then I became unstuck with Maximus, so I put Toby to one side.
In the interim, I decided I wanted to start publishing again. I was a publisher during the 70s and 80s. I actually published Australia’s first heroic/epic fantasy novels, long before the major publishers started their fantasy lists. Several other things happened, too. For instance, I was commissioned to write a stack of chapter books (authors have to eat, too!).
So Toby waited patiently in line while I sidetracked myself. The trouble is that Ford Street Publishing swamped even 'Maximus Black'. My first list of two books for 2007 became seven in 2008, and eight in 2009. This year will see roughly ten Ford Street titles.
'Maximus', being a trilogy, was taking way too long to write and I was eager to get back to Toby. Although publishing seven to eight books a year doesn’t sound too hectic, it’s easy to forget that the major publishers have staff to edit, do accounts, market/publicity, proofread, design, liaise with authors and illustrators, write contracts, apply for grants and initiatives etc, etc. With a small press, it’s usually just one person that does all that.
So I wrote Toby in dribs and drabs whenever I had a chance. I knew I wanted a character, Fluke, to have a certain character trait. He would speak in malapropisms. So in The Slightly Skewed Life of Toby Chrysler, a decaffeinated coffee becomes a decapitated coffee; for all intent and purposes becomes for all intensive purposes; charity begins at home becomes clarity begins at home. The trick is to make sure the verbal gaffes all relate to the actual story. Some of my favourite malapropisms are ‘the town was flooded and everyone had to be evaporated’; ‘dysentery in the ranks’; and of course, Kath and Kim’s friends who ‘are very effluent’.
Authors put more thought into characters’ names than most readers would realise. Think of some of your favourite characters and reflect, for a moment, on their sound. Some of my favourites are Modesty Blaise, Artemis Fowl and Tom Natsworthy. Many of the names in the Harry Potter books have Latin meanings that tie in nicely with the characters’ personalities.
My own characters’ names come from anecdotal stories. Toby is nicknamed Milo, because he’s not Quik (a teacher once related how a student was referred to as Milo for this reason!). Fluke was named after his mother tried conceiving on the IVF program, gave up, then conceived. Hence, Fluke. (I read about that one in a newspaper.)
Three years in the making (or is that the writing?!), I wondered where I could send The Slightly Skewed Life of Toby Chrysler. The publisher I’d intended it for had been subsumed by a multinational and had put a stop to local publishing for a while. Actors get typecast, and it’s not unusual for authors to suffer the same straightjacket. Most know me as a science fiction writer – I don’t know why this is because I’ve written many more fantasy novels than science fiction novels, but there you are!
So taking a leaf from Doris Lessing’s book (she sent two manuscripts to publishers under a pseudonym), I sent the manuscript to all the major publishers under another name. Like Doris Lessing’s effort, it was rejected. One publisher did say I could send more of my work because I ‘showed promise’.
But one leading editor loved it and recommended another publisher because – you’ll see a repeating theme here! – the company he worked for was also being subsumed by another publisher. So I took up his suggestion and waited ... and waited. And despite having a great recommendation from this eminent editor, my manuscript waited in a slush pile for four months. I enquired about it, but received no reply.
I waited another month before withdrawing the manuscript. The publisher then said it was nearing the top of the pile to be read. Now this is a very subjective statement. The slush pile could be a mile high, and three quarters way near the top is months away from being read, but is still ‘nearing the top’, right?
I was then faced with a dire predicament. Where could I submit my new book? I was tempted to send it around again but with my name on it, but being the stubborn person that I am (some would call me perverse), I discarded that thought.
So with all the major publishers out of contention, I decided it’d have to be a small press. I could have published it myself under the Ford Street imprint, but I’m reluctant to publish my own work, even though it has to pass through an editorial meeting with Hybrid Publisher, Louis de Vries and Managing Editor Anna Blay (Ford Street is an imprint of Hybrid).
However, I was judging a writing competition called the Charlotte Duncan Award at the time. Celapene Press was the publisher. So, still under the pseudonym, I sent Toby to Kathryn Duncan, the publisher at Celapene.
And the startling news is that it was accepted within four days and four months later it was published. Accepted and published in less time than it had been in some publishers’ slush piles. And this, in my humble opinion, is one of the strengths of the small press.
So there you have the story-behind-the-story – it possibly reads more like the slightly skewed life of the author, hey?!
A friend offered to create a trailer for me and you can view it at: http://tinyurl.com/y8ugxd2
www.celapenepress.com.au

Juliet Marillier was born in Dunedin, New Zealand, a town with strong Scottish roots. She graduated from Otago University with degrees in arts and music, and has had a varied career which includes teaching and performing music as well as working in government agencies. Juliet now lives in a hundred-year-old cottage near the river in Perth, Western Australia, where she writes full-time. She is a number of the druid order OBOD. Juliet shares her home with two dogs and a cat. She is the author of many fantasy novels, including the recently published Heart's Blood.

GR: You grew up in Dunedin, NZ – a long way from Ireland and Scotland. Where did the interest in Celtic-Gaelic history stem from?
 
Despite its location, Dunedin is extremely Scottish! It was settled by Scots immigrants, who brought their culture with them – Dunedin is the old name for Edinburgh, and the city is full of Edinburgh street names, pipe bands, Scottish dancing and so on, or was when I was growing up. I have Scots and Irish ancestry, and I’ve felt an affinity for the mythology and folklore of the Celts and Gaels since I was a small child reading books of fairy tales. I acquired my love of history through reading and study, and I’ve retained those interests all my life. I feel as if I’m carrying on an ancestral line of storytelling.
 
How has your academic background (having studied music and languages at university) helped in your writing career?
 
Studying music gave me a feeling for rhythm and flow in writing. I often read passages aloud to find out whether I’ve got those elements right. Music also provides a guide to structure, what is satisfying, what is balanced. Studying foreign languages gives one a better understanding of the principles of English grammar, enriches the vocabulary and opens windows into other cultures – all extremely useful for a novelist. On a more general note, the self-discipline required for tertiary study is good practice for the self-discipline required by all serious writers!
 
When did you write your first story? Was your first story historical fantasy, or did this interest develop later?
 
If you mean very first, I wrote it when I was about seven, and it was science fiction: a tale of robots running amok, full of blood, death and chaos. And my second story was about scientists discovering a live plesiosaur in Fiordland, NZ. At Arthur Street Primary School in Dunedin there were lots of promising writers. We used to write our stories in exercise books cut in half, and circulate them to our classmates to read and comment on – an early introduction to peer critiquing.
 
I studied music and languages at university, not writing. After graduating I worked in various music-related jobs, brought up my children, and spent a lot of years gradually becoming older and wiser. I didn’t come back to serious fiction writing until I was in my forties. There was never a conscious decision to write in a particular genre. I simply wrote the story I wanted to write (Daughter of the Forest) and when it was published I discovered that people called it a historical fantasy. At that point I didn’t even know there was a science fiction and fantasy section in the bookshop. However, my lifelong love of mythology and history, plus my fondness for a good love story, did steer my writing career in a certain direction!
 
Though Heart’s Blood is set in a very foreign historical environment, the themes of romance and family drama are very contemporary and easy to identify with. Do you think it’s important to include relatable ideas in historical fiction?
 
Any story that deals with human journeys and human relationships has relevance to today’s reader. I don’t believe a story needs to be set in a familiar environment to resonate with what we feel most deeply. The main themes of Heart’s Blood are learning to love and accept yourself, despite your failings and weaknesses; and learning to see beyond surface appearances to the true worth of another person. It’s also about the nature of courage. The historical settings of my books definitely don’t stop their messages from getting across. I receive many emails and letters from readers who say my novels have helped them through a crisis, or that they take a copy of one or other of the books with them when they have to do something confronting such as go to hospital. Readers identify very closely with the characters.
 
I do think it’s important to keep the language accessible, so instead of ‘Unhand the wench, varlet, or feel the touch of my blade!’ a character of mine might say (probably with icy calm) ‘Let the girl go or I’ll run you through.’ I’ve sometimes been criticised for using turns of phrase in dialogue that are a little too modern for their period. People need to remember that these characters wouldn’t even be speaking English. I try to convey both meaning and style in a way that’s fairly immediate to today’s reader. Having said that, I can’t bear gross anachronisms, so my characters are not going to come out with ‘You go, girl!’ or ‘Stone the crows!’
 
Heart’s Blood is loosely based on the fairytale Beauty and the Beast. Do you often draw on traditional tales from the past?
 
Of my twelve novels, three are overtly based on fairy tales. Apart from Heart’s Blood, there is Daughter of the Forest (The Six Swans) and Wildwood Dancing (The Twelve Dancing Princesses, with a touch of Frog Prince.) None of these is a straight fairytale retelling; each uses the framework of a traditional tale to build a new and more complex story. In my other novels I do quite often make use of tropes or themes from folklore or mythology. My novels are not traditional fantasy. They are all set in the real world and based to a greater or lesser extent on real history. The supernatural elements come from what the people of that time and culture might have believed in. For instance, the central character of my Norse novel, Wolfskin, is a berserk warrior, and I look at his loyalty to the god of war, and the conflict between a sworn oath of blood brotherhood and personal conscience. That novel is much closer to a straight historical. I reckon my books span the genres of fantasy, historical novel and romance.
 
‘Ireland, post-Norman invasion’ seems a very specific era. What made this period the best setting for the story?
 
The story was planned around the idea of peeling away layers of history to reach the truth, so it was always going to involve sorting and reading documents from several generations of a family. I needed a scribe to do the work, and I wanted her to be female. This period was the earliest I could reasonably stretch things to allow a young woman to be a trained secular scribe, and even then Caitrin has been acting as her father’s unofficial assistant rather than working in her own right. The unusual setting in which she finds herself at the start of the novel means she gets the chance to work independently – very unusual for the period, but then, nothing about Whistling Tor is ordinary!
 
The novel is set in the west of Ireland in that period when the Anglo-Normans were on the march across the country, but still hadn’t established a hold in Connaught. That was ideal historically for Anluan’s situation. He’s been isolated from his people and his responsibilities up till now, with good reason. But a crisis is looming, and unless he acts he will lose everything.
 
The main character, Caitrin, is a very strong-willed young woman. Is her character drawn from you or any women you know?
 
I’m not sure I would describe Caitrin as strong-willed – she certainly isn’t headstrong or inflexible.  She does have the courage of her own convictions, at least where helping other people is concerned. But she’s struggling to find her old self-belief; she is a damaged woman who does better at healing others than at healing herself. Is she drawn from me? In part, yes. I suppose there’s a bit of me in all my female protagonists, and in this one rather more than most. I  come from a family of strong women, and I draw inspiration from all of them.
 
Writers often use their writing to release their personal troubles. Are Caitrin’s demons purely fictional or did you bring personal experience to the story?
 
Readers would be wrong to draw any literal parallels between Caitrin’s story and mine. However, personal experience gave me quite a bit of insight into her emotional journey.
 
Caitrin is a woman ahead of her time; trained, educated, paying her own way. Can you think of a modern archetype of Caitrin?
 
Any woman from a repressive culture who has surmounted the restrictions of her situation through courage, talent and goodness of heart.
 
To what extent do you immerse yourself in historical research? Have you visited any of the places featured in your novels?
 
I’ve become more thorough in my research as I gained experience as a writer. The historical background for my first series was sketchy and, in some respects, inaccurate; in hindsight I wish I had paid more attention to it.
 
I read a lot of material in preparation for a new novel, not only history books, but books on all kinds of topics from warcraft to ships to geography. And I do travel to the locations of the novels. My research has taken me as far as the Faroe Islands (halfway between Norway and Iceland), Transylvania and Turkey. I’m quite excited by recent news that Cybele’s Secret is to be published in Turkish translation.
 
You are a member of the druid order OBOD. Can you explain a little about this?
 
OBOD stands for the Order of Bards, Ovates and Druids. The order is based in the UK but has branches all around the world, including Australia and New Zealand. I became interested in Druidry when I heard Philip Carr-Gomm, chief of the order, speak at a workshop in Perth some years ago. I discovered to my delight that I’d found a wise and true spiritual path that encouraged a wide range of personal choice – no gurus in sight. That was a turning point in my life. As a druid, I see myself as part of the interdependent web of nature, and I feel a personal responsibility towards the health of that web. I believe spirit/god/goddess is not an external power, but exists within all things, ourselves included. A person can’t follow that philosophy without practising self-respect and respect for others, which are of course central themes in Heart’s Blood. Readers who want to know more about modern Druidry can find the OBOD website at www.druidry.org.
 
Were you always a spiritual person or has your research and involvement with history and lore led to your sense of spirituality?
 
I was brought up in the Christian faith, but that was always driven by others, rather than arising from any inner conviction. It took me many years to find a spiritual path that I believed in. Yes, I do believe my research was an important element in getting me there. I had been reading about earth-based faiths, Wicca and Druidry in particular, for quite some time, and I created druid characters for the books, not all of them entirely admirable! Along the way I rediscovered some powerful personal convictions that had been tucked away inside me for a very long time.  Both serious writing and spiritual growth had to wait until I had emotional space for them.
 
Heart’s Blood includes an element of the supernatural. Would you say, then, that this book veers more toward ‘fantasy’ than ‘historical fiction’? How would you describe it?
 
Genre tags are so difficult! Heart’s Blood is a blend of historical romance and ghost story. I’m certain it will appeal to readers who would not normally dip their toes into the fantasy pool. I hesitate to use the word fantasy because some readers have a set idea of what it means, not realising the genre has blossomed and grown to include a very broad spectrum of writing. There are no elves, dwarves, traditional quests, dragons or invented worlds in my book. There are ghosts and a touch of the occult. At heart it’s a story about flawed individuals finding their inner courage and learning self-acceptance.
 
Heart’s Blood is a very gothic tale. Were you influenced by other gothic literature?
 
I did set out with the intention of writing a gothic romance. I’ve read and enjoyed several wonderful gothic novels in the last couple of years: The Gargoyle by Andrew Davidson, The Shadow of the Wind by Carlos Ruiz Zafon and Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, a classic of its kind. But the novel that influenced Heart’s Blood most was my all-time favourite, Charlotte Bronte’s Jane Eyre. I have always loved stories with creepy old houses, mysterious, brooding heroes, and heroines who will insist on wandering around in their nighties. Which Caitrin does at least once in Heart’s Blood.
 
Is Heart’s Blood definitely a stand-alone book? No chance of a follow-up?
 
Heart’s Blood was always intended to be a stand-alone book. Readers have already asked me if I would consider writing a sequel, because they love the characters and setting. I have one answer for this type of question: wait and see. I don’t seem to be able to write any faster than one novel per year, and I have a couple of books already under contract.
 
My next novel, to be published in December 2010, is part of the 'Sevenwaters' series. For readers who haven’t yet visited 'Sevenwaters', there are five earlier books and you have nearly a year to read them! There’s more information on my website at www.julietmarillier.com

Michelle Lovric is the Australian-born author of several books for adults, but her latest novel, The Undrowned Child, is for younger readers. It's a wonderful tale of Venice, monsters and mermaids with unladylike tongues. Michelle's website is www.michellelovric.com and the new book's website is www.undrownedchild.com. Michelle spends her time between London and Venice.

gr: Why did you decide to write a book for children after so many books for adults?

ML: Quite simply, I was asked. A friend of mine, a brilliant German editor, asked me to try. Within two hours, I’d written three chapters and it had become obvious to me that this was exactly what I had always wanted to do. My adult novels do include an element of magical realism in some cases, but I’d missed out on the freedom to write fantasy about Venice, which had been straining for years to release my imagination into uncharted waters. I loved every minute of writing the book, and its sequel.

gr: You say on your website that you were very good at history at school. Can readers learn anything about history by reading The Undrowned Child?

ML: People can learn that history repeats itself if we forget it. Bajamonte Tiepolo, my villain, was a real historical figure, as was the old lady with the mortar-and-pestle, who brought down his revolution by throwing it on the head of his standard-bearer. If Tiepolo had succeeded, the whole history of Venice would have been different. Democracy would have died. And, interestingly, the 700th anniversary of that conspiracy is coming up in June. Along with some Venetian writers, I have been trying to awaken interest in marking the occasion. Even Venice doesn’t have that many 700th anniversaries! When Tiepolo failed, his palazzo was razed to the ground and a Column of Infamy was erected to mark his crimes ‘for ever’. But it now languishes unseen in a dungeon of the Doges’ Palace. I think it should be brought back on display … to help Venice remember what she must not forget.

Venice is living history, of course. Nearly all the places in The Undrowned Child are real and mostly still visitable. That’s why the publishers kindly included a map with a key at the front of the book. You can walk the walk. I took my editor on that very walk earlier this year, as if the book was a monopoly board.

At the end of the book, there’s a section on what is true and what is made up. I don’t mind slightly changing history to suit an exciting plot. However, I do think it is the historical writer’s responsibility to point out any discrepancies and wilful acts of artistic licence. But only after the read has enjoyed the story and finished suspending disbelief. Not before.

gr: Why did you set this story in Venice? Why did you set it in 1899? 

ML: In general I find Venice offers all the springboards for fantasy that any writer could ever want. Headless butcher who eats children? – yes, of course. Mysterious statue known to express political views? – certainly. A constant brooding danger? – how about a city that could be drowned at any moment? Of course, I have added ‘baddened magic’ to the real historical setting, to intensify the frightening encounter between good and evil in The Undrowned Child.

I find it difficult to conceive sustained mystery, suspense and danger in the era of Google and mobile phones. Even the invention of the telephone made many delicious plot developments seem forced. There are other picturesque advantages to setting a story a hundred or more years ago. No cars. No airports. No McDonalds. No supermarkets with their ghastly corpse-light. There is no prescriptive packaging around the food. What your characters eat is visibly good, bad or maggoty.

Contemporary novelists often feel they have to write conversations to reflect life. This means nearly everyone talks in grunts and monosyllables. If you set a book in the past, your characters can speak in sentences. They know the subtle joy of the semi-colon. They can say, ‘And I said …’ instead of ‘I’m, like …’

gr: You say on your website that you have a photographic memory for words. What are some of your favourite English words and why?

ML: I tend to like words that look and sound beautiful. I’m addicted to picturesque slang, so there’s always some archaic slang dictionary open on my desk. I like words and phrases that work hard. Slang does that, stretching language. Like ‘gormy-ruddles’ for intestines or ‘a splatherer’ – someone who talks too much. At the moment I am looking at Parisian slang from the nineteenth century for some French villains in a new book. A fellow-writer accuses me of using ‘milky’ too much.

gr: Do you think that learning to write stories is a good skill to have? Why?

ML: The combination of imagination and discipline must help in every walk of life, even with day-to-day conversation. Writing helps you to become aware of the duty to communicate clearly, and also alerts you to what I think of as a duty of entertainment. If you write well, you tend to speak well, and you learn to self-edit, sticking to what other people will be interested to hear, rather than rambling self-indulgently off into the raspberry bushes while everyone glazes over.

Moreover, writing stories is also about inhabiting other people’s points of view. Being able to do that is a prerequisite of civilised relationships.

gr: Can you give us some good advice for someone starting out writing?

ML: Draft and draft and redraft. And put it away, and then read it again, redrafting once more. A first draft is really just a rehearsal for a novel. Would you put on a pantomime after just one run-through? You owe it to your readers to work really hard, to refine, to knock out all the repetition, to make every word count. After all, readers grab their precious reading time from between work, eating, housework, family life, socialising, surfing the net: you have to make it worthwhile for them. It is an honour to have people’s undivided attention. That’s what they give you when they read you.

There’s also a commercial angle to redrafting. Few manuscripts are published, compared to the millions that are written. You want to give your manuscript a chance; to make it the best it can be. Agents and publishers are spoilt for choice. If they see a manuscript that needs tons of work, and have another one on their desk that is nearly perfect … which are they going to go for? They’ll make the same amount of money either way, so they will go for the book that costs them less of their own valuable time.

Because of the length of time it takes to produce a good piece of work, you also need to make sure you choose a subject that has staying power. You need to still be vitally interested in it two years along the line. You need to feel that you have something to learn in the writing of it.

gr: Why do you like cats? Do you have any good cat stories you can tell us? Your London Cat is a bit grumpy. Any reason why?

ML: I like cats because they are beautiful, mysterious, clean and eccentric. I enjoy their pomposity. Anyone who has a cat has an unwitting comedian in the house. For The Undrowned Child website, I’ve been interviewing real Venetian cats and their owners. Some interesting stories have come up … like Teo the flying cat, Martin the cat with the curly tail, Romeo the Latin lover, and so on.

Why is Rose la Touche of Harristown grumpy? Could it be that her name gets her down? Also, I keep leaving her to go to Venice where I have another life, and have relationships with a number of other cats. (Rose, of course, is never left alone, even for one night – she has her beloved catsitter Thomas.)

gr: What kind of books do you like to read?

ML: I like to read books written before 1820, as I find the language so delicious. I read a lot of non-fiction from that time as I set my books then. At the moment I am busy reading children’s and young adult fiction, to see what my peers do, to see what is allowed. I am constantly impressed with the craft that goes into a children’s book.

gr: How many books do you read each month?

ML: I’m a really fast reader. For research, I can sometimes read up to fifty books a month, but I suppose I read between four and ten novels, just for pleasure.

gr: Can you tell us about your next book about Teo?

ML: The Mourning Emporium is set at the time of the death of Queen Victoria. Venice too seems to be dying, under a crippling invasion of ice and the onset of a terrible sickness, the Half-dead disease. When one of her old enemies, a Vampire Eel, winks at Teo from under the ice, she begins to realise that the end of Venice’s enemy, Bajamonte Tiepolo, has not proved as final as she had hoped.

Teo and Renzo end up on a floating orphanage called the Scilla (which really existed in Venice). The salty-tongued Venetian mermaids, the wise Professor Marìn, Signor Alicamoussa and other characters from The Undrowned Child play their part in the second book too.

But there are also new friends – a supercilious ship’s cat called Sofonisba, a tribe of London mermaids, a gang of London street children who also work as professional mourners – and sleep in coffins – and a very sentimental English bulldog named Turtledove.

And Teo and Renzo need all the friends they can get, because in this adventure their enemies include a colossal squid, spying cormorants, Ghost-pirates and, worst of all, a beautiful woman called Miss Uish, whose character is not beautiful at all.

The Mourning Emporium also casts a satirical eye on the trade in quack medicines peddled to women in Victorian times, and looks into Victorian Britain’s morbid fascination with death and dying.