Interview with Cecelia Ahern, author of 'Lyrebird'

Hello Darling Readers,

I’m thrilled to bring you a very special Q&A on the blog today – with Irish author Cecelia Ahern! 

She’s the author of bestselling book (turned into tearjerker movie) P.S. I Love You, and another favourite book and film adaptation of mine – Love, Rosie.
She’s also responsible for one of my favourite (much-missed!) comedy shows, Samantha Who?
Cecelia Ahern’s latest book is Lyrebird, which I’m reading now and absolutely loving! 

So without further ado, here’s a special December treat for you …

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Q:    Earlier this year you totally switched things up and released your first young adult debut in Flawed. What made you want to write for teens? And how was it harder/easier than writing for adults? 

The story decided it for me. While I’d been asked for years if I would write for Young adults, my response was, ‘I will if I get the idea’. I’m not the kind of writer who decides a genre first, I really follow the ideas. When Flawed came into my mind the first and only character that arrived with the story was 17 year old Celestine North. I think because it’s from the perspective of a teen, then that changed the audience.

However, while I’m so happy to find a new audience, I do think that it is a story for everybody, and people who enjoy my regular adult novels would also identify with this story. I didn’t have to change anything about the way that I write, that all happened naturally when I was writing the story from Celestine’s perspective.

This story came faster than any other novel I’ve ever written. I wrote the first draft in 6 weeks, I couldn’t stop writing until I was finished. I wrote it with my heart pounding, it was a thrilling experience and I think it comes across in the read, it’s pacier than my other novels.

Q:    Your books wriggle their way into reader's hearts, and we find it really hard to let go of characters after the last page - which characters do you most get asked about by fans wanting to know What Happened Next? ... And of all your backlist books, which one would you most likely return to for a sequel?

Flawed is part one of a sequel so that natural and obvious answer to that question is that Perfect will be published in April 2017.  However, I do have a sequel idea for PS I Love You, I’m just in two minds about whether writing it is the best decision.

Q:    Your latest book Lyrebird has lovely Australian connections - what inspired this book, and what sort of research did you do for it? 

I was inspired by a David Attenborough documentary which featured the superb Lyrebird. I watched this little creature with fascination as it built a mound for itself on the forest floor and proceeded to mimic every sound around it, not just the sound of other birds, but of mobile phones, car alarms, a camera shutter, and forest construction vehicles. I thought it was extraordinary and it stayed with me, I filed it away in my memory bank.

It was when I was telling my daughter about the bird, and I showed her the clip, that we both started trying to mimic the sounds the Lyrebird was making. I had a light bulb moment where I wanted to tell the story about a woman who had the abilities of a lyrebird. How would society treat her? How and why could she have this ability?

In terms of the writing, it was a challenge for me because it’s a book about sound, and it’s interesting to write about sound – but the thing that attracted me to the story the most was building a character on the traits of a bird. Laura is the physical manifestation of a bird.

Q:    What is your favourite bit of writing advice you’ve ever received?

My mother’s advice to me was to show my first few chapters of PS I Love You to an agent. I did because of her encouragement and thanks to her my career was born.

Q:  What is the worst piece of writing advice you ever received?

Another author preached to me on the importance of always trying to be better than anyone else, the importance of being number 1 in the charts, and I thought that was the biggest load of crap I’d ever heard.

Q:    What is the number one piece of life advice you would give your teen-self?

It’s all going to be okay. It will work out in the end.

Q:    Is there anything that you’d like to write about, but you haven’t been able to tackle yet?

I love murder mysteries, old fashioned ones like Murder She Wrote and Colombo. I would love to write something like that but give it my own modern, emotional twist.

Q:     The cover of Lyrebird is absolutely stunning - why do you think readers still so attached to books as objects? (even in the digital age?)

I think that when people have an emotional connection to something, to anything, then they form an attachment. Books, stories, can draw people in and invite them into another world. Reading is escapism, therapy, entertainment, it can be a very personal experience.

Q:     Two of your books have been turned into films - P.S. I Love You and Love, Rosie - and you created a critically-acclaimed television series called Samantha Who? ... I'm curious: how has working in film and TV changed the way you write? How has the way you approach writing a book changed over the years?

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When I write a novel, I’m always writing it as a novel, not as a future film, but I do have a visual mind so I watch the story in my head and then I write it. I think that’s why film studios have found them attractive to adapt – however writing for film is a very different craft and medium so if you write a novel, as you would a film, then it doesn’t work. Novels dig deeper, can be more introspective, and you can stay in a character’s mind for far longer. Novels are not just about plot – films need plot to constantly move them along.

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Cecelia Ahern’s Lyrebird is published by HarperCollins Australia and available now.

'Poison or Protect' Delightfully Deadly novella #1 by Gail Carriger

Received from the author in exchange for an honest review

From the BLURB:

Can one gentle Highland soldier woo Victorian London’s most scandalous lady assassin, or will they both be destroyed in the attempt? 

New York Times bestselling author Gail Carriger presents a stand-alone romance novella set in her popular steampunk universe full of manners, spies, and dainty sandwiches. 

Lady Preshea Villentia, the Mourning Star, has four dead husbands and a nasty reputation. Fortunately, she looks fabulous in black. What society doesn’t know is that all her husbands were marked for death by Preshea’s employer. And Preshea has one final assignment. 

It was supposed to be easy, a house party with minimal bloodshed. Preshea hadn’t anticipated Captain Gavin Ruthven – massive, Scottish, quietly irresistible, and… working for the enemy. In a battle of wits, Preshea may risk her own heart – a terrifying prospect, as she never knew she had one. 

Buy Poison or Protect today to find out whether it’s heartbreak or haggis at this high tea. 

Warning: Contains men pleasing women, and ladies who know what they want and ask for it, sometimes in detail. May also contain plaid, appearances from favorite characters, and the strategic application of leather gloves. 

‘Poison or Protect’ is the first in a series of ‘Delightfully Deadly’ novellas, set in the same universe as Gail Carriger’s Parasol Protectorate and Custard Protocol series’.

Before I delve into the deliciousness of this first novella, I’ve got to quote from Ms Carriger’s website and get just a little bit excited over what readers have in store from the pre-eminent steampunk romance author.

The Delightfully Deadly novella series is set in the same world as the Parasol Protectorate series and features characters who appeared in the Finishing School series but are now grown up. As well as the DD novella series, fans will be treated to Supernatural Society Novellas – stand alone LBGT romances – as well as Claw & Courtship Novellas – which are coming in 2017, and are stand alone werewolf romances. This shall be nothing short of a fantasy feast for fans – and this fan in particular who is always happy to visit and revisit Carriger’s endlessly fascinating and fabulous steampunk/urban fantasy universe.

The first in ‘Delightfully Deadly’ is ‘Poison or Protect’, which tells the story of ex-drone to Lord Akeldama, turned deadly assassin, Lady Preshea Villentia (I always want to applaud Carriger’s character names). Preshea is tasked with attending a house party where she’ll be expected to protect her Tory host from assassination, and dissuade his young and impressionable (not to mention, moneyed) daughter from marrying a gauche gentleman and fortune-seeker called Jackson.

Except there’s one problem – young man Jackson is attending the house party with his best friend and fellow werewolf, Captain Gavin Ruthven – a much more sensible (and sensuous) retired Scottish officer who Preshea becomes complicatedly attracted to.

I adored this novella. There are lots of old favorites and familiar faces peppered throughout, but Preshea and Gavin’s romance is entirety fresh and fabulous. Both characters have interesting enough back-stories and proclivities that were simply delicious to unpack. Preshea, for instance, is nicknamed The Mourning Star because she’s been through four husbands already (and she’s too beautiful for a moniker like Black Widow Spider, thankfully).

“My skill set is in quite the opposite direction. It is unladylike to brag, but I could steer this dirigible, if needed.” 

Both men looked more admiring than shocked. Good, I have judged them correctly. These were that unusual breed of male that admired a capable female. 

Preshea found herself in an unexpected predicament. Enjoying the float, fighting an inclination for the wrong man, and a genuine affection for both.

Gavin may be big and burly, but he’s a gentleman who likes to be led by a stronger female in the bedroom … And when these two meet there’s a slow spark of chemistry that ends up igniting on the page.

“Lass, I want this clear – I’d apply for the position of fifth husband, if you’d permit.” 

“Oh, yes? Here I thought you desired a long and happy life.” 

“Aye, lass, but I’d as soon a shorter one with you than a longer one without.”

Gail Carriger is just one of the funniest, most charming and original writers I’ve ever come across – and I’m downright delighted that she’s gifting readers these novellas, so as to consume more of her words and live a little longer in her worlds. I’m particularly excited for the Supernatural Society LGBT+ novella series, and even more so since there’s a couple in ‘Poison or Protect’ who really intrigued me. I have a feeling that as more of these novellas come out, I’ll be moved to re-read all of her series in chronological order just for my own pure delight!

5/5

'The Outback Bachelor Ball' series review

Received from the author 

SERIES BLURB:

A cow, a cowgirl and a divorcee walk into a bar...

Three unlucky-in-love girlfriends make a road trip to the Outback Bachelor & Spinster Ball, a highlight of rural Australian life. One's looking to move on, one’s thumbing her nose at romance, and one's looking to slip away and hide. None of them are looking for love...

Three women are about to meet their match in a cowboy, a soldier and a country rock star. One magical night. One less than magical morning after.

Forty-eight hours can change your life.

‘The Outback Bachelor Ball’ is a contemporary rural romance novella series from Canadian Joan Kilby, New Zealander Karina Bliss and one of my favourite Aussie romance authors, Sarah Mayberry. The novellas can be read out of order as stand-alones, but they are probably best read as a trilogy – with first novella ‘Win Me’, followed by ‘Woo Me’ and concluding with ‘Wait For Me’.

Confession: I don’t particularly like rural romances. I know, I know – stone the flamin’ crows, and after I wrote a whole spiel about why people should read New Adult romance and not reject the entire subgenre out of hand too! I know. I can’t help it – but when I think “rural” I’m more likely to go to a ‘Wolf Creek’ place than a men of ‘McLeod’s Daughters’ headspace. Luckily, the ‘The Outback Bachelor Ball’ wooed me with Joan Kilby’s first instalment, ‘Win Me’ – in which we’re introduced to the series’ three heroines, who are as dubious about rural Australian courtship as I am;

Amused, Ellie and Beth exchanged glances. Jen was always efficient and super organized. Ellie clicked on the link and the first photo that came up was of a naked, drunken cowboy gyrating with an empty beer can on his dick. They all howled with laughter. 

“Now there’s your Prince Charming,” Jen said. 

“Oh, yuck. It’s all drunken yobs, wet T-shirt competitions and if you’re lucky, a quick fuck in the back of a truck.” Beth said, checking out the site. “Even the title sucks – Bachelor and Spinster Ball. I’m not a dried-up old spinster, I’m a highly desirable…” She hunted for the right term. 

“Spachelor?” Jen suggested and they dissolved into fits again.

—   Win Me by Joan Kilby

Ellie McFarlane is our first heroine – she’s coming home from America where she’s been learning all about cattle ranch management, and though she’s excited to take charge of the family business, she can’t deny that returning home to her long-time crush and station manager Rick Drummond is another plus. But Ellie has to contend with Rick’s sense of proprietary when it comes to his feelings for his boss’ daughter (the man who is also his mentor, and more of a father to him).

Second novella ‘Woo Me’ is about Jen Tremaine; prickly and disillusioned with love – until she turns up to the Outback Bachelor and Spinster Ball with her two best friends, and keeps running into sexy security guard Logan Turner … he’s an ex-Special Forces soldier and their chemistry is electric.

Third and final is Sarah Mayberry’s ‘Wait For Me’, about Beth Walker who is coming off heartbreak and scandal after it was revealed that her country music star husband had been cheating on her, and for a long time. She’s leaving America and coming home to Australia, and her two besties – Jen and Ellie – who are keen to help Beth mend her broken heart. But the person who really ends up helping is an old friend called Jonah Masters, rising country music star and someone Beth shared a connection with many years ago …

Tying all three novellas together is the women’s friendship, and the B&S ball that acts as the setting to their ‘Stella Got Her Groove Back’ moments;

He didn’t trust himself to speak, so he simply pulled her close, tightening his arms around her and resting his cheek on the top of her head. No woman had ever felt so right, so at home in his arms and he figured he would be chasing this feeling for the rest of his life, always trying to find the same sense of peace and belonging.

—   Wait For Me by Sarah Mayberry

I rather enjoyed these rural romance reads – some a little more than others – but I do think that each one had a hand in chipping away at my rural romance hang-ups. I liked that the women’s friendship was the foundation for the series, and that the authors went into the more ludicrous aspects of the famed B&S ball – arguably, that dose of reality didn’t endear me to rural romance settings, but I appreciated the honesty.

Sarah Mayberry’s ‘Wait For Me’ was my favourite of the novellas – arguably because it has that cheating spouse storyline I weirdly like (I’m in the romance-reading minority on this one, trust me – I know) and probably because it had that hint of a ‘Nashville’ storyline with the country music scene (I admit: I went to a Keith Urban place … not a bad place to be, at all). I loved that Mayberry drew out Beth and Jonah’s complicated history, and I always love a good ‘Sliding Doors’ second chances romance.

‘The Outback Bachelor Ball’ is a pretty great little bundle of rural romance – and I’m saying that as someone for whom this is not her go-to subgenre! My overall rating probably more reflects that I thought the first two books were okay, but Mayberry's was more of a 4/5 for me ... so I'm splitting the difference. 

3.5/5

'just_a_girl' by Kirsten Krauth

Received from the author

From the BLURB:

just_a_girl tears into the fabric of contemporary culture. A Puberty Blues for the digital age, a Lolita with a webcam, it’s what happens when young girls are forced to grow up too fast. Or never get the chance to grow up at all.

Layla is only 14. She cruises online. She catches trains to meet strangers. Her mother, Margot, never suspects. Even when Layla brings a man into their home. Margot’s caught in her own web: an evangelical church and a charismatic pastor. Meanwhile, downtown, a man opens a suitcase and tenderly places his young lover inside.

 just_a_girl is a novel about being isolated and searching for a sense of connection, faith, friendship and healing, and explores what it’s like to grow up negotiating the digital world of facebook, webcams, internet porn, mobile phones and cyberbullying – a world where the line between public and private is increasingly being eroded. 

Layla is just_a_girl. 

She goes to school, goes to work. Gets groped by her boss, pawed in the train toilets by her boyfriend. She uploads videos of herself writhing in bed for Mr. C. She cuts out articles about her gay celebrity-chef dad who buggered off to Queensland. And she meets older online men in hotel rooms.

Margot is Layla’s mother, coming off meds and discovering God. She has a crush on the local pastor and reluctantly wears tiaras with his perfect wife. It all went wrong somewhere; maybe when her husband told her he never loved her. Maybe after watching ‘Brokeback Mountain’. Layla scares her sometimes, with her wisdom.

Tadashi is lonely. He rides the train and looks at Layla, and her apple mouth, out the corner of his eye. He carries a briefcase and reads ‘The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle’. He and his mother both felt a connection to nature, but he’s lonely since her death and wants love – so he’ll manufacture and buy synthetic human hair for it.

‘just_a_girl’ is the debut novel from Australian author, Kirsten Krauth.

The author sent me this book after I read Simmone Howell’s glowingly disturbing review. Krauth pitched the book to me as “adult, with young adult themes” and I loved that (it could be me! An adult with young adult themes). I was prepared, after reading Howell’s review, to be mad and a little scared when reading this book. What I wasn’t prepared for was the climbing dread that pervades the page, and to be so sucked into Krauth’s masterfully warped coming-of-age tale. This is a book of our times. It’s about sexualisation, pornification and the justification of both. It’s a coming-of-age for all the characters involved; from fourteen-year-old Layla to her God-fearing mother and the lonely stranger she looks for on the train. The disconnect-connection of these three characters is itself a commentary on the way modernity has found us more ways to stay in touch, by being farther away than ever before. 

Layla is the just_a_girl screen-name of the book’s title, and we are first introduced to her as she’s meeting up with an (older) man she speaks to on the Internet. Right out the gate, Krauth welcomes us with a worst-fear of parents and women, and then she pulls back and rewinds, leads us up to this point and beyond. She introduces us to Layla, who must be the “Lolita with a webcam” of the blurb. Layla is so young (fourteen) but disturbingly sexually ‘mature’. She gets a kick out of sitting opposite businessmen on the train, and sucking Chupa Chups in front of them. Men have been looking at her since before she was a teen, and she’s currently kicking around with eighteen-year-old Davo, from school. But what Layla considers romantic is an absence of the digital, where she lays her body and soul; 

What I've always wanted from a guy is a love letter. Not an email but actual words on paper. A romantic sentence that’s just about him and me. 

Layla is a product of our times. She is a girl who has grown up being told that sexy is beautiful, less is more and boys rule. But she’s a conundrum; at once aware of the violence and degradation women are told to suck up (epitomized in her sleazy, groping boss) and questioning of the status-quo; 

But if a guy comes up behind you in the dark. And he’s got a loaded gun. Or a taxi driver tries to grope you. In the front seat when you’re still a bit drunk. It’s hard to know what I'd do. In porn films the women always say no. Then moan and writhe and say yes. And end up loving it. Or I've heard it’s best to go along with it. So you don’t get killed in the end. 

You get the impression, from Layla's raw and biting narration, that she's on the cusp of anger and knowledge. She knows how men think and tick, she's smarter than Davo and puts on a performance for Mr. C. I think that once the gloss wears off and she starts acting on her instincts about the wrongness of it all; she'll get angry and be bloody glorious. 

But, for now, she watches porn videos with Davo (for whom the watching is as mechanical as eating). And this in itself is an interesting everyday aspect of modern life that Krauth dissects; especially from a young, female persepctive. When you think that boys as young as 11 start watching porn, it’s no wonder this leaks over and forms the way they think of women forevermore. They think women like to be slapped, ejaculated on and “no” means “yes”. Layla watches porn to please Davo, and she also starts thinking about what her sexual instinct and impulses are, in contrast to what’s on screen. 

Krauth also explores everyday misogyny amongst teens. What’s really frightening is how common and accepted it is, how inherently violent. And it’s also frightening how right Krauth gets it (I can attest to hearing similar conversations amongst schoolkids on the train); 

Davo says you can never trust anything that bleeds once a month but doesn’t die. He tells this to his mates and they honk like donkeys. All the girls in the outer circle shift position slightly as if to combat a stiff breeze. 

Layla is surrounded by sex and violence, and she wades into it of her own accord. She posts YouTube videos of herself masturbating and meets up with men from online Internet forums. Throughout the book I wanted to wrap Layla up in a blanket and tuck her away somewhere safe; I literally wanted to reach into the book and equip her with armour and shield, because it feels like everything is leading to something ghastly and inevitable … Layla’s actions are destining her to be headline news one day, a Facebook photo in a sad newspaper article.

But Krauth also offers us two other perspectives; that of Layla’s mother Margot, and a stranger on her train called Tadashi. 

Margot’s narrative is not here to cast blame as Layla’s disinterested or powerless mother, far from it. She’s another example of a woman at the bottom of the heap; single mother who doesn’t get child support from her now famous ex-husband. She’s coming off a medication dependency and searching for a place where she doesn’t feel like a pariah for being divorced and single, where she isn’t looked down on because she doesn’t wear a full face of make-up and can’t find the energy to exercise regularly. She turns to God, but even the church has a hierarchy and women are expected to look/act/be a certain way – most of it leading to pleasing the men in their lives. 

Tadashi is the outsider. The man on a train, forever reading Haruki Murakami. He’s been so beaten down by schoolyard racism and the death of his beloved mother that when he wants love and a connection, he looks for it online – purchasing a Life Sized Doll named Mika who looks faintly like Layla. This, by the way, is not a new phenomenon; watch the incredible and incredibly disturbing doco ‘Guys and Dolls’ for more. I’ve read some reviews that say Tadashi’s story was a real disconnect for them (maybe that hits the point of him home), but I was questioning his purchasing of a woman online (that’s what Mika is to him) – that he can manufacture a woman (working parts and all) and call it ‘love’. Maybe it could have hit home more if Tadashi regularly purchased prostitutes – but, honestly, what’s the difference? It’s men buying women for sexual gratification. In an article about the recent and brutal murder of St. Kilda prostitute Tracy Connelly, a fellow sex worker interviewed from the area said this about how the men think of, and treat these prostituted women; ''They think they buy you like an apple. Like they can do whatever they want … And they can't.” 

This is a tough book. It’s a necessary book, and one I want to pass on to quite a few people. It’s a book that will make you question our digitized everyday, and yearn for more human connections. It’s a gut-wrenching book, taking readers to dark places and introducing characters on the precipice. It’s about porn/love, isolation/connection, sexualisation/justification, misogyny/mentality, Facebook and the face-to-face. It’s about our world, right now, and it’s a little bit brilliant. Krauth wraps big questions up in an intriguing story about three dis-connected people riding trains and living under the same roof, who are so far from one another they can’t even see what’s right in front of them. Definitely adult with young adult themes. 

5/5