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Tuesday, September 30, 2014

Beyond ableism and ignorance: disability and fiction



My new column for Kill Your Darlings is up:


I interview Kayla Whaley from the wonderful Disability in KidLit blog - and if you haven't already, please do visit.

They do amazing work, and are such an important part of the youth literature community! 


Monday, September 29, 2014

'The Infinite Sea' The Fifth Wave #2 by Rick Yancey


From the BLURB:

How do you rid the earth of seven billion humans? Rid the humans of their humanity.

Cassie Sullivan and her companions lived through the Others' four waves of destruction. Now, with the human race nearly exterminated and the 5th Wave rolling across the landscape, they face a choice: brace for winter and hope for Evan Walker's return, or set out in search of other survivors before the enemy closes in. Because the next attack is more than possible – it's inevitable.

No one can anticipate the depths to which the Others will sink – nor the heights to which humanity will rise . . .

*** This review contains spoilers for first book ‘The Fifth Wave’ ***

When we last left Cassie Sullivan, she’d been reunited with her little brother after storming Vosch’s command centre and discovering her high-school crush, Ben Parish, among a band of human mercenaries who had been brain-washed into believing they were fighting the alien invasion … without realising it was the aliens who had been training them.

But in finding her brother and breaking into the alien command centre, Cassie also lost the one person who had become so important to her since the First Wave hit …Evan Walker. Alien in a human body – Evan was the Silencer sent to kill Cassie, but instead he fell in love with her. Now, for all Cassie knows, he’s dead. Just like her mother, her father – and so many others.

Now Cassie is hanging out with a band of brother soldiers – a severely wounded Ben Parish, her little brother Sam (sometimes called Nugget), Dumbo, Poundcake, Teacup and Ringer (‘Marika’) – a particularly hardened soldier who is sent out to locate a new safe house for her crew. But Cassie wants to stay and wait for Evan – convinced that he’ll keep his promise to her, and return.

‘The Infinite Sea’ is the second book in Rick Yancey’s sci-fi young adult series, ‘The Fifth Wave’.

Between ‘TheFifth Wave’ and ‘The Infinite Sea’, it was announced that Rick Yancey’s first book in this new series would be adapted into a movie. And is it really any wonder? ‘The Fifth Wave’ was always destined for the big screen, when Yancey wrote such an addictive, alien-hordes thriller that was a fairly universally praised crowd-pleaser.

So going into ‘The Infinite Sea’ it’s all but impossible to not start thinking of how this story will likewise translate to the big screen - Chloë Grace Moretz (Kick-Ass, If I Stay) will play Cassie Sullivan amongst a cast of relative unknowns (though Nick Robinson playing Ben Parish was great in The Kings of Summer, and will be an action-hero star by the end of 2015, as he’s also appearing in Jurassic World). Yancey and Susannah Grant will be writing the screenplay (Grant wrote Erin Brockovich) and Columbia Pictures are producing. And as if fans don’t have enough to get excited about with a ‘Fifth Wave’ adaptation, they’ll also be thrilled with this follow-up, which creeps us closer to the trilogy’s finale.

‘The Infinite Sea’ begins on the flipside of ‘The Fifth Wave’ high-octane opener, which saw protagonist Cassie trapped beneath a car on a deserted highway by a Silencer – an alien marksman. In this sequel’s opener readers find themselves in the calm before the storm. Our band of merry humans are holed up in a rat-infested motel, trapped by Ben Parish’s mortal wounds and Cassie’s determined belief that Evan Walker survived the attack and will be coming for her, to meet in this agreed-upon location. Everyone is on-edge, feeling not unlike sitting ducks. And, sure enough, the calm doesn’t last long – as is becoming Yancey’s MO in this series, a moment of peace and quiet for these characters will eventually equal adrenalin-fuelled terror in the coming pages and chapters.

Interestingly though, Yancey keeps swerving and cutting into the drama to make for a few cliff-hanger chapters. And unlike the first book, which saw Ben and Cassie sharing the alternate narrative, ‘The Infinite Sea’ expands to include perspective from Evan, Ringer and even Poundcake.  This alternation heightened tension again and again, but also gave readers a chance to get inside the heads of these tricky characters in a way we wouldn’t be able to if only seeing them through Cassie and Ben’s eyes.

Evan’s chapters are particularly fascinating, as he’s an alien with the memories of his human-half. In this book he reflects on the moment when, as a teenager, he became aware of an ‘other’ occupying his mind;

His body had been augmented in preparation for his awakening. That was the truth the dream of the owl disguised. The secret that the screen memory kept him from seeing and therefore from remembering: While he and Grace and tens of thousands of children like them had slept, gifts had been delivered in the night. Gifts they would need in the years to come. Gifts that would turn their bodies into finely tuned weapons, for the designers of the invasion had understood a simple, though counterintuitive, truth: Where the body went, the mind followed.

A recurring symbol in this novel is ‘rats’ – the young army crew, youngest girl Teacup in particular, are haunted by the rats who scurry in the walls of the motel they’re holed up in. And a few alien characters allude to thinking of humans on this earth as rats – vermin, to be exterminated. It’s a disturbing, and bleak symbol to keep touching on, but an apt one for our humans to be preoccupied with. Even more interesting is that Yancey often parallels the rat discussions against more theological talk around what these humans are surviving for – hope, dissent, love? What hope do these humans have surviving against a far superior race, especially if they are the last humans on Earth? Ben Parish has a particularly poignant soliloquy on his longing for the tardy bell:

“Most ordinary sound in the world. And when all of this is done, there’ll be tardy bells again.” He presses the point. Maybe he’s worried I don’t get it. “Think about it! When a tardy bell rings again, normal is back. Kids rushing to class, sitting around bored, waiting for the final bell, and thinking about what they’ll do that night, that weekend, that next fifty years. They’ll be learning like we did about natural disasters and disease and world wars. You know: ‘When the aliens came, seven billion people died,’ and then the bell will ring and everybody will go to lunch and complain about the soggy Tater Tots. Like, ‘Whoa, seven billion people, that’s a lot. That’s sad. Are you going to eat all those Tots?’ That’s normal. That’s what matters.”

I love that: a teenage boy’s reason for combating an alien-horde is the hope that soggy Tater Tots will again be served. On the one hand it’s flippant and funny – but on the other, Ben Parish totally nails it.

A big drawcard of the first book was Cassie and Evan’s completely wonderful and complicated romance – alien boy falls in love with the human he was sent to eliminate. I think some readers will be somewhat less thrilled with the romance in this book, but as this is the second outing it’s not surprising that Yancey went for deeper explorations into Evan and Cassie’s complexity, rather than skimming over with kisses and puppy-dog eyes (something Cassie makes fun of).

I loved ‘The Infinite Sea’ – and I’m excited that 2015 will gift readers both a ‘Fifth Wave’ movie adaptation and the finale book in Rick Yancey’s addictive, adrenaline-fuelled trilogy. Bring on the alien-hordes, but pray for the tardy bell!


5/5

Thursday, September 25, 2014

'Afterworlds' by Scott Westerfeld

Received from the Publisher


From the BLURB:

Scott Westerfeld is renowned in the YA fiction market, this is a perfect blend of contemporary love story and fantastical thriller.

Darcy has secured a publishing deal for her three paranormal books. Now she must find the wherewithall to write the second one whilst she has a reprieve from going to college, thanks to her savvy sister. She has enough funds for 3 years in NY... if she eats only noodles every day.

In the story Darcy has written, the character Lizzie survives a traumatic shooting event only to discover that she has become a phsychopomp; a spirit guide to the dead. But she's not dead.. or is she? With one foot in each world, Lizzie's challenges are somewhat unique. Then there's her hot spirit guide... and all those ghosts that keep appearing... and the 'living' friend she usually tells everything to...

More than all I'd seen and heard. It was coming back to life that made me believe in the afterworld.

‘Afterworlds’ is the new contemporary/paranormal stand-alone novel from YA-genius Scott Westerfeld.

The tagline for ‘Afterworlds’ reads: Darcy writes the words. Lizzie lives them. Sounds pretty straightforward, right? Wrong. Westerfeld has essentially written a two-in-one novel. First we meet eighteen-year-old Darcy Patel, who has just signed a six-figure, three-book deal with Paradox Publishers for her debut YA trilogy ‘Afterworlds’ … then in alternating chapters we read ‘Afterworlds’, which is about perfectly normal teenager Lizzie who survives a terrorist attack that leaves her with the ability to see a hidden world beneath our own – the world of the dead.

Sound tricky? It’s surprisingly not – the ‘Afterworlds’ chapters are differentiated from Darcy’s with sold black lines at the top and bottom of the page, not to mention Darcy’s chapters are decidedly contemporary, while Lizzie’s story is very much paranormal romance. Both are told in third-person, but are so different in tone and what they’re exploring that you never, ever get confused as to which world you’re in with each new chapter …




In Darcy’s world, we are bearing witness to a rising new talent in the YA literary world. Darcy is being touted as the new “it” girl of publishing (think Samantha Shannon, Veronica Roth or Sarah J. Maas – all very young first-time novelists who nabbed huge multi-book deals for their debut works) Darcy is so invested in becoming a full-time novelist, that she even defers College for a year to move to New York, home of her publishing house and a city with enough life that she feels sure her creative juices will flow more easily there. Darcy’s first novel ‘Afterworlds’ is to be released in 428-days (her younger sister keeps a countdown) and she has to get through rewrites and edits, and start thinking about plotting the second instalment in the series … but she is the hot new novelist in town, and soon finds herself suckered into the YA writer’s club of NYC. She gets invited to drinks and parties to mingle with the authors she’s grown up admiring – sharing canapés and discussing each other’s new books like it’s no big thing (when she’s squealing inside!). Then she meets fellow debut author, Imogen Gray and soon finds herself swept up in her first ever romance that’s fuelled by creativity and lust in a heady combination that could see Darcy lose sight of why she came to New York in the first place….

Much is being made of the fact that art is imitating life in Westerfeld’s ‘Afterworlds’. He is, of course, at the centre of the infamous YA writers club that Darcy is so awed by. First published in 1997, Westerfeld is the author of successful YA series including ‘Uglies’, ‘Peeps’ and ‘Leviathan’. He’s also married to fellow bestselling YA author Justine Larbalestier … and if you need further proof of his impressive standing in the YA-community, just look at the shout-outs in his acknowledgements: Maureen Johnson, E. Lockhart, Robin Wasserman … not to mention the likes of Holly Black, John Green and Gayle Forman have appeared in spoof ‘attack ads’ promoting ‘Afterworlds’ (and yes, the novel does include a John Green-esque character who’s likewise a YA juggernaut). Westerfeld and Larbalestier have many, many friends in the YA community and are part of many authors’ origin stories – like Melina Marchetta, who has said that the couple offered her their New York apartment as a writing retreat, and it was while staying there that she had the idea for ‘The Lumatere Chronicles’ series (interestingly, there’s an Australian character called Kiralee in ‘Afterworlds’, who I don’t think is Marchetta, but more represents the recent Aussie YA stronghold of the YA writing scene). All of this is very, very fascinating … particularly when Westerfeld gets tongue-in-cheek and somewhat snarky. For instance: Darcy is a little intimidated and annoyed by the ‘debutante’ authors (debut author for that publishing year) who are full of painfully terrible doomsday-advice (like, if your surname isn’t at the beginning of the alphabet for best shelf-placement you may as well be dead!). There are plenty of laugh-out-loud moments that those of us on the fringe of the YA community will get excited over:
 “The Printz Award’s that big a deal?” 
“Of course! It’s basically a YA knighthood.”

But, fun as all the inner-workings of the YA community are in this book (and real YA- aficionados will totally gobble up this behind-the-curtains peek Westerfeld is offering into our favourite author’s lives) he’s actually doing many great things in ‘Afterworlds’ that deserve praise – both in Darcy’s as well as Lizzie’s worlds.

For one thing, Westerfeld opens up discussion about appropriation in writing through Darcy’s chapters. Darcy is Hindu – or, her parents are – and in ‘Afterworlds’ she’s turned a Hindu death-god into a love interest for Lizzie.

“It’s just, I wanted to have an Indian guy as the love interest, a guy who looks like Muzammil Ibrahim.” They both gave her another questioning look, and Darcy felt embarrassed and young. “He’s a Bollywood actor, a model, really. He’s the hot guy who was never in the paranormals I read when I was little, you know? But I didn’t want it to be about me wanting him.” 
“You wanted every girl to want him.” Kiralee was smiling again. “So you chose a white girl from California.”

She didn’t do this with any sort of malice in mind, far from it, but she’s still reluctant to let her parents read the manuscript for fear of their response … and when fellow author Kiralee speaks about her own struggles with appropriating Indigenous culture in her bestselling book, Darcy becomes somewhat panicked by her sudden self-awareness. This is so fascinating on a number of levels – for one thing, I think Westerfeld is questioning if he is appropriating Hindu culture by writing an Indian protagonist in Darcy. He’s also, maybe, asking if he’s appropriating LGBTQI culture … because in Darcy’s chapters we read an unfolding romance between her and Imogen – Darcy’s first ever relationship. It’s really tricky, and I commend Westerfeld for putting the question out there, let alone writing both racially and sexually diverse characters in both his stories. I don’t know what the answer is to the question of appropriation that Darcy is grappling with – but I do enjoy her tussling with the question throughout the book.

I will say that Darcy’s chapters, overall, were stronger for me. That comes down to me really, really enjoying the tongue-in-cheek YA writers scenes, and thinking that Darcy and Imogen’s romance was really strong – I was probably more eager to get back to the contemporary chapters than Lizzie’s paranormal ones, and especially towards the end I got a little frustrated having to return to the fictional world of Darcy’s ‘Afterworlds’. But that’s not to say that Westerfeld leaves all of the theorising in the contemporary world – his paranormal story also throws out some interesting questions, particularly around action-hero/damsel-in-distress conventions: 
 I stared at her, my breakfast twisting in my stomach. “He’s not like that.” 
“I’m sure it doesn’t seem that way, Lizzie. Because in every action movie the girl hooks up with the guy who saves her, like that’s supposed to be normal. But in real life it’d be a pretty messed-up way to fall in love, because your emotions go all haywire when you’re getting shot at. Isn’t it called Stockholm syndrome or something?” 
“Um, I think that’s when you fall in love with the terrorist, not the good guy.”

I really can’t get over the phenomenal pacing of this novel. It really is like Westerfeld is conducting a symphony on the page – keeping track of so many players and plots, themes and deeper meanings – and he plays them all beautifully. This is a stand-alone novel (though Darcy has more to write…) and I think it works really well as a one-off. Mostly because I can see how hard Westerfeld must have worked with ‘Afterworlds’, and I can imagine it would have been a gruelling experience he wouldn’t be too quick to rush back into.

I really, really loved this book – a sure sign was that while reading I was getting excited by the prospect of *talking* about this book with other people. Yep, it’s that kinda book.

4.5/5

Wednesday, September 24, 2014

How Outlander is flipping typical TV dramas on their head


Soooooooooo I wrote about the latest episode of Outlander for DailyLife


... most importantly, I got to write a sentence on Sam Heughan's bottom. 
So. 
Check it out.
Ye ken? 

Friday, September 19, 2014

By teens, for teens: the Inky Awards


My new Kill Your Darlings column is all about the fabulous Inky Awards from Inside A Dog! 


Jacob (15) from Queensland, is also an Inkys judge this year. ‘Teens are clearly the right choice to judge young adult book awards because these books were written for them,’ he says. ‘Adults judge adult book awards, so it only seems fair and logical for young adults to judge young adult book awards.' 

Voting is now open for the 2014 Inky Awards until 5 October. 
Vote here: http://insideadog.com.au/vote  
The winners of the 2014 Inky Awards will be announced on 21 October.

Wednesday, September 17, 2014

‘In Your Dreams’ Blue Heron #4 by Kristan Higgins

 Received from the Publisher 
From the BLURB:

Emmaline Neal needs a date. Just a date—someone to help her get through her ex-fiancé's wedding without losing her mind. But pickings are slim in Manningsport, New York, population 715. In fact, there's really only one option: local heartthrob Jack Holland. Everyone loves Jack, and he won't get the wrong idea…. After all, Jack Holland would never actually be interested in a woman like Em. Especially not with his beautiful ex-wife creeping around, angling to reunite ever since he rescued a group of teens and became a local hero. 

But when the wedding festivities take an unexpectedly passionate turn, Em figures it was just one crazy night. Jack is too gorgeous, too popular, to ever end up with her. So why is she the one he can talk to about his deep, dark feelings? If Em is going to get her dream man, she'll have to start by believing in him…

What do you do when you’re invited to the wedding of your previously overweight (now ab-tastic) ex-fiancée and the fitness fanatic trainer he left you for? Well, according to the majority of townsfolk from Manningsport, New York you invite Jack Holland along as your perfect date. Especially if you’re Emmaline Neal – police officer, and German shepherd owner who has been on two dates in three years since Kevin broke her heart and is not above referring to the station’s criminal database searching for a potential petty criminal to act as her wedding date. Because even though Jack Holland is delicious, and divorced (after a very, very messy breakup that included his Southern Belle wife cheating on him) even if he is the local hero after rescuing a car of teenage boys that ploughed into a lake … the fact is, Emmaline doesn’t want Jack Holland’s pity date. 

Jack, meanwhile, would love nothing more than to get out of town for a destination wedding in Malibu as a stand-in, maybe pretend boyfriend. It’s just the escape Jack is looking for, since rescuing that car of drunken teenage boys landed him hero status – something he’s especially uncomfortable with, since one of those boys is slowly dying and still in a coma. Jack’s been having nightmares and panic attacks since the rescue, and taking Emmaline Neal to the wedding of her ex sounds like a great distraction – especially when Jack’s ex-wife, Hadley, gets wind of his hero status (thanks to an interview with Anderson Cooper) and returns to Manningsport in the hopes of rekindling their trainwreck of a marriage. 

What neither Jack nor Emmaline counts on is a surprising but electrifying attraction – especially when it comes at the worst of times. Jack is fighting PTSD, an ex-wife who could double as Blanche DuBois and Em does not want to get her heart broken by another man who is tempted by a skinny, beautiful woman who claims to know what’s best for him.

‘In Your Dreams’ is the fourth book in Kristan Higgins’ addictive contemporary 'Blue Heron' romance series set in Manningsport, and mostly centred around the Holland family who run the Blue Heron winery. 

I really loved this instalment in Higgins’ series. I was a wee bit worried about Jack as our romantic lead, only because much had been made of his good looks and charm in previous books and the last thing I wanted was to read a Mary Sue dude. But it’s quickly established that Jack in this book is suffering emotionally after an impromptu rescue gone wrong, and he’s been wounded in the past by a sour marriage that ended after infidelity. I was surprised but relieved to discover Jack is a good guy who usually finishes last, looks and charm aside, he knows what it’s like when life screws you over. And, actually, Emmaline has the same reaction to Jack that many readers will – thinking he has the perfect life from the outside, but discovering his difficulties and insecurities as they get to know each other… 

And speaking of Emmaline – I loved her. She’s closely aligned to a previous Higgins heroine (and one of my favourites!) Chastity O'Neill from ‘Just One of the Guys’ – a tomboy who didn’t want to change who she was, to attract the guy of her dreams. Emmaline is similar in the tomboy aspect – preferring beer to wine, her police uniform to dresses, she plays hockey and hates doing anything to her hair. I really liked when Hadley came on the scene and Emmaline found both of them fighting for Jack’s affections. Hadley is petite and blonde, a Southern Belle and thoroughly annoying – but next to her Emmaline feels like a gorilla, and wonders how Jack can be interested in her when Hadley is his ex-wife; 

“What if Hadley wasn’t in town?” he asked when she failed to answer. “And what if those kids didn’t … crash? Would you go out with me then?” 
“Well, you were never interested before, so I’d have to say no.” 
“Maybe I could say you were the one who was never interested, whereas I always thought of you as the hot hockey chick.” 
Another snort. Must stop doing that. “You never asked me out.” 
“You never gave me the time of day.” 
“If you were pining for me, you hid it well.” 
He gave her a tolerant look. “I wasn’t pining for you, Emmaline. I did think you were the hot hockey chick. We all do.” 
“Which explains why I’ve had two dates in three years.” 
“Maybe your sweet and gentle personality has something to do with that.” 

Much is made in the beginning of Emmaline’s past relationship with Kevin, her childhood sweetheart turned fiancée who was morbidly obese but left her for his trainer once he started losing weight. I really liked this storyline, if only because it allowed plenty of leeway for Higgins humour, especially around fitness fanatics. And a fitness fanatic wedding is especially hilarious; 


The special memories sharing was more of the same. The marathon when Kevin had to crawl across the finish line just after he lost control of his bowels. The difficult time when Naomi had ruptured her Achilles tendon and could only run seven miles a day. The hilarious time when they were doing an Ironman race and Naomi’s bike had crashed, her shoulder dislocated, and God bless her! She’d just rammed it back into place on a convenient tree, got back on the bike and caught up to Kevin, who of course hadn’t stopped because it was “emotionally important” for him to give this race his all, and of course Naomi understood and supported this.  
“I don’t know,” Em murmured. “I think I’d want someone to stop and call an ambulance for me.” 
“I would do that,” Jack said. “And I’d tell the paramedics to give you extra painkillers.” 

But the Kevin storyline dropped right off once Jack and Emmaline kindled their romance, and if anything I’d have liked slightly more closure to this aspect of Emmaline’s past.

Overall I loved this instalment in Kristan Higgins’ ‘Blue Heron’ series. A non-girly heroine who needs a confidence boost, a seemingly perfect hero whose flaws and insecurities are refreshing and the usual laughs and puppy-awwws fans have come to love from Higgins’ books. This one’s a winner!



4/5





Friday, September 12, 2014

Interview with Christie Nieman, author of 'As Stars Fall'



It was my great pleasure recently, to read Christie Nieman’s contemporary YA debut ‘As Stars Fall’. I was really excited for this book for a few reasons – new voices in Aussie YA are always, always a wonderful thing, Christie is exploring a very emotional and recent event in Australian history and I knew of Christie as one of the editors behind a favourite anthology book of 2013 ‘Just Between Us: Australianwriters tell the truth about female friendship. I loved ‘As Stars Fall’ so much, that I jumped at the opportunity to ask some questions of this fresh new voice in Australian youth literature.

Q: How were you first published – agent or slush pile?
A strange third option actually. I had no agent but, through a project I was already working on with Pan Macmillan as one of five editors of an anthology (Just Between Us, 2013), I was able to have the Children’s Publisher there look at my whole manuscript without waiting to go through the slush pile. But I don’t know how much difference that connection made in the long run – earlier drafts of the manuscript had already managed to get through a couple of slush piles with the first 50 pages and a synopses, so I was fairly confident it would be able to do that again, and nothing will make a publisher go with a book except if they like it and think they want to sell it – so essentially I just cut out a step. I honestly believe that if your slush pile submission is professional and clean and engaging, it will get to the next stage, it might just take a bit longer. I think there is a horror of the slush pile, but personally I haven’t found it to be the dead end that myth and legend would have had me believe.

Q: Are you a ‘plotter’ or a ‘pantser’ - that is, do you meticulously plot your novel before writing, or do you ‘fly by the seat of your pants’ and let the story evolve naturally?
Both! I alternate between the states. I will usually start from a fragment that came out of nowhere but seems to hold something interesting of character and theme. Then I will go away and think and plan around that, usually with ‘concept’ high on the agenda and the characters supporting it. Then I will write according to my plan until I hit a brick wall that you can’t see in a plan, only in the writing. Then I will switch back to some free writing to see what solutions come out of it, and then go back to planning from the new bits.

Q: How long did it take you to write ‘As Stars Fall’, from first idea to final manuscript?
This is a bit embarrassing. The first fragment for this story happened twenty years ago. It contained the characters that went on to become Robin and Delia, and a bird being in a strange place – a place it shouldn’t really be – and there being some undescribed connection between the two girls and the bird. Then I went off and had fun in my twenties, and wrote other things, and earned a living, every now and then checked in to try and write bits of the story; but all the while the story resisted being worked on. And then about six years ago I met an endangered Bush Stone-curlew. And the bird in the fragment got its character and its meaning and it drew the whole thing together. I pretty much threw out everything I already had, and started collecting thoughts about ecology and life and death. I am a bit of a binge writer – I have to set aside a bank of time rather than little bits every day – so I had to work in casual jobs for months to save up enough money to stop work and spend a month writing, and then go back to work to save up for another month etc. So there are a few different answers to the question: 1) twenty years, 2) six years, or 3) probably about a year and a half of serious full time work.

Q: Where do story ideas generally start for you? Do you first think of the character, theme, ending? Or is it just a free-fall?
Rarely the ending, but often anything other than that. There always has to be a concept/theme in there somewhere for me – something I’m writing about – but often that will be suggested to me by a particular situation, or a character, or even a setting.

Q: I’ve called ‘As Stars Fall’; “a tender morsel of a novel, a ‘Silent Spring’ for young adults that also explores dramas of the heart in the wake of nature’s tragedy.” I’m wondering what sort of research you did, both for the environmental and psychological aspects of the book? From impact of bushfires on wildlife, to the human trauma associated with bushfires?
Getting this right was really important to me. I’m so glad you made the association with ‘Silent Spring’. The way that Carson’s work builds a kind of accessible bridge from the real work of scientists to the community – communicating in an engaging and insistent way those things that are the responsibility and concern of all of us, but which are so often left in the hands of people with vested interests, or those who are too busy working on it to talk about it – this was one of my main aims also (albeit through a different form and with a different audience). At one point I went back to university to study environmental science and management for a semester, and I learned so much in that six months – about the world around us, and about how we know the things we know, and about observational science – and it was there that I first came across the ecological concept of ‘disturbance’, which got me thinking about the processes of trauma, and how those complicated processes are the same across the whole spectrum of life, including human life. It is something that binds us to the rest of the natural world, rather than separates us. But I absolutely wanted to get the science right. My husband has a science degree and is a science communicator too, so his brains got heartily picked. And much of my research-thanks goes to Cassia Read, an ecologist who really understood the book and its intentions, and was more than just a safety net with fact-checking, but brought together her intimate knowledge of the science with an artistic sensibility to make connections I wouldn’t have been able to make on my own. She also found me the most appropriate reading material for the subject: I got good at reading science papers! I also did a lot of reading about trauma psychology and complicated grief, both related to, and unrelated to, bushfire. And I have known people who have suffered traumatic stress, again both related to, and unrelated to, bushfire. And I think as a human of a certain age I have had experiences which have cultivated an understanding of the strange landscape of complicated grief – its pit-traps and ladders and psychological tricks and magical thinking. And from my own personal experience I have found that a sense of kinship with the rest of the natural world can be incredibly helpful in those moments.

Q: You are an award-nominated playwright, and I was just wondering the differences and similarities between writing a play to be performed, and a novel to be consumed in solitary?
The main difference I think is the fact that a novel is a whole and complete thing – everything that will form the art of it is there on the page: in the words, the punctuation, the chapter- and section- divisions – the writer has a great deal of control; whereas a script is only part of the final art. Scripts are exciting because they rely on communicating with other artists who will contribute to the final piece – directors, actors, designers. Much of a script is you talking foremost to the director, and then to the other artists, those people who will mediate your vision to an audience; it is only in the dialogue or very specific plot-required action that you are speaking directly to the audience yourself as you would in a book. So you really have two levels of audience. And you have to respect the other artists who will be involved, even without knowing who they will be. You have to give them room to be artists, to let them interpret and present a moment in a way that works on the stage, rather than being too specific and didactic on the page – the page doesn’t matter. Having worked in theatre myself, I’ve seen the way that directors and actors draw great big red lines through paragraphs of overly-controlling stage-directions that are ‘telling them what to do’. This is a thing that I think transitioning writers often find challenging, that relinquishing of control, that handing over of decisions. It is quite an art to write something that is a skeleton, but that is also complete enough to communicate everything it needs to communicate. Whereas, in a novel, you are the director, the actors, the set-designer, the sound-person and the composer all at once. It’s a heady sense of power. It’s also more work. They are both incredibly satisfying in very different ways.

Q: There are three protagonists in ‘As Stars Fall’ – we get Robin’s first person narration, and then siblings’ Delia and Seth are told in third person. Who was the hardest to write, and which character’s voice or story came most vividly to you?
I think Robin’s was the easiest to write because her voice just natters along quite easily: essentially she’s having a conversation with you, the reader, so really, I just had to listen in. Whereas with Seth and Delia, it was like I was writing them – their internal worlds – almost without their permission: I had to get inside their experience more in order to convey it to the reader, whereas with Robin, she was quite happy to tell you about it herself. I suppose Seth’s internal world came most vividly to me, but I suspect that’s because such vivid things are happening to him.
But now, when I read the story back over, I find it is Delia’s voice that really sings to me – and that is strange as a writer, because it was with her voice that I took the most strictly technical approach: I came to writing up many of Delia’s sections later in the process and so I was trying to quite artificially differentiate her voice: I tried a particular grammatical modification in the prose, and I was never quite sure if it was entirely successful until I stepped right back. Perhaps that’s why I respond so well to those sections – because I’m able to come at them more with the experience of a reader. Ach, who knows!

Q: What’s the appeal in writing for younger readers?
I actually don’t really think about that too much when I’m writing – I know in writing classes in school you’re taught to think of your audience, and in fact when I did Year 12 we actually had to state specifically on the front of our writing pieces who our target audience was, but I have essentially found that a fairly useless exercise. Perhaps thinking of writing for an audience full stop can be useful to get that performative aspect that writing needs to have, but actually defining beyond that, I think that’s for publishers and marketing people. I think writers just write for other people, and people, no matter their age or interests, and really complicated and different. I think that sometimes the definition of ‘a particular group’ makes all the two-dimensional assumptions that anything targeted at ‘a particular group’ makes – the assumption that everyone is the same. I think assuming everyone reads something the same way is death for good writing – good writing relies on complicated reactions. I do however, seem to want to write teenaged characters. And I think the appeal there is that non-adult characters haven’t yet constructed and applied their comfortable adult personas. There is a lot of human truthfulness at the heart of a teenager, and when you couple that with the trying-on of various ideas of adult behaviour and personality, you can get something very dynamic, and more than that – something that can actually critique the way we run our adult societies. That’s why I think YA is for everybody, teenaged and adult alike. We are all just our teenaged selves adapted, in the best way we can manage, to adult society.

Q: What are you working on right now, and when can we expect it to his bookshelves? 
Gah! Okay, there’s an easy answer and a difficult answer to that. Easy answer: I’m working on another anthology, following on from the one mentioned earlier. I’m again editing with my co-editors, and also contributing a piece myself. And it will hit the shelves next April, all things being even. The difficult answer is that I’m working on another young adult novel which wades into the murky depths of belief systems, and the sometimes detrimental effects certain belief systems can have on young minds. The crystal ball on that one is coming up a bit murky itself on the question of bookshelves and hitting. So stay tuned.

Q: Favourite author(s) of all time?
Margaret Atwood, Colm Toibin, Sonya Hartnett, Helen Garner, Henry James, A.S. Byatt, David Malouf, Daphne du Maurier, Philip Pullman, Margaret Mahy, Margaret Drabble, Ian McEwan, Kate Grenville, Lynne Reid Banks, Catherine Jinks, and did I mention Margaret Atwood? Oh, and Margaret Atwood.

Q: Favourite book(s)?
Cat’s Eye, Margaret Atwood. The Heather Blazing, Colm Toibin. Butterfly, Sonya Hartnett. The Millstone, Margaret Drabble, The Changeover, Margaret Mahy. The Cement Garden, Ian McEwan. Dark Places, Kate Grenville. Eye to Eye, Catherine Jinks. The Amber Spyglass, Philip Pullman. The Children’s Book, A.S.Byatt. My Cousin Rachel, Daphne du Maurier.

Q: Do you have any advice for budding young writers?
My only advice would be real world advice, and it is this. Money is important. Having a way to earn a living needs to be thought about. I didn’t think about it, I just thought about writing in this dogged dreamy way, and I think because of that I have spent much of my time working in low paid jobs which you need to work at A LOT just to pay bills, and which don’t buy a lot of other time to spend writing. I also think that if you can have a good and interesting part-time job that pays the bills but which also feeds the writing with experience – yours or other people’s – even better. That said, writing gets good when one apprentices oneself to the craft – and perhaps that can’t be done when one is chasing another career at the same time. There are examples of great writers who have managed it both ways, I suppose. Oh dear, talked myself out of giving solid advice. So I guess the answer to your question is: no, unfortunately, I don’t. Oh wait, actually, I do. Write. And also important: take feedback – but not all of it.

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