Fiction Scribe

Fridays have definitely become interview days, but I’m enjoying it greatly, and I hope you are as well.

This Friday, I am pleased to bring you an interview with Australian author Tansy Rayner Roberts, George Turner prize winner and editor/reviewer on several other publications of the past and present.

Tell us a little about yourself.

I’m a 28 year old fantasy writer living in Tasmania, Australia with my partner & our two year old daughter. I run a small business selling historical costume dolls, over at Deepings Dolls. I’m also about two weeks away from putting the final nail in the coffin that is my PhD thesis. And my children’s novel, Seacastle: #1 of The Lost Shimmaron will be released in Australia on May 1st.

How did you get into writing?

I’ve always been writing - I think I penned my first “chapter one” back when I was eight or so. My first novel, Splashdance Silver, was published when I was twenty which is pretty unusually early. The sequel was also published shortly thereafter, but since then I’ve mainly been dabbling in short stories as my postgrad research has taken up far too much of my writing energies.

How did you get into writing children’s fantasy in particular?

That was actually an accident - my writing group, RoR, meet every 18 months or so to critique each other’s manuscripts, and we started chatting and before you know where we were, we had planned a seven book collaborative series!

It’s quite common to get a children’s series with different authors writing the books, but incredibly rare (if not totally unique) to have that series invented by such a large group of authors (seven) without some kind of commissioning editor running the show. It has been a grand experiment, and we’re so glad we pulled it off.

I’ve always loved mermaids, so I took the opportunity to set my book in an underwater world. The way the series works, children from our world travel to a different fantasy world each time, so we all got to use our favourite themes & interests.

We’ve already heard of fantasy, but “children’s fantasy” isn’t exactly common. Is children’s fantasy a largely untapped market, do you think?**

I’d have to disagree with you that children’s fantasy isn’t common! Maybe it’s different where you are, but Australian children’s bookshelves are stocked pretty high with magical adventures, especially since the success of Harry Potter. But most of the favourite books of my childhood were fantasies - The Faraway Tree and Wishing Chair by Enid Blyton, classic works like The Wizard of Oz and Alice in Wonderland, Narnia, E. Nesbit, Edward Eager, Diana Wynne Jones…

Part of the problem is that there’s so much children’s fantasy that it’s hard to find areas that haven’t already been richly explored.

For instance, it’s hard to get away with a magical school story now JK Rowling has done it, but school stories are pretty hard to escape in children’s fiction - unless you’re always setting the adventures in school holidays, but that gets suspicious after a while as you realise that those children have way too many holidays…

You have a book coming out soon - tell us a little about it.

Seacastle is about two brothers, Nick and Thomas, who nearly drown in the lake in their home town, and find themselves in an underwater world where they meet Catya, a girl who lives among mermaids. They have a quest to save the beautiful Seacastle from the seaquakes that are tearing the world apart - and of course, only they have the ability to save the day!

You mentioned it is part of a collaborative series. How much time do you spend working with the other authors?

We chat on email a lot! Basically our plan was that each book would stand alone, so we had a certain amount of autonomy, but we talk all the time, to make sure there is continuity between the books. And as it happened we all met up in person a week ago, for one of our lovely workshopping weekends, but the books were all finished by then (hooray) so we were mainly talking about our next project…

Is it harder being the author of the first versus, say, the third?

It’s actually pretty fantastic being first, because you are less restricted! Though the books happen in a slightly different chronology than they are read (some are set back in time), so I had to read the books set earlier very closely to make sure I wasn’t stuffing up.

It’s lovely being first because I don’t have to wait to see my pretty book! There’s pressure on as well - if mine sells really well, it means the others will be released faster. Which is good for my friends. And if it doesn’t sell well… gulp. But our publishers are being really supportive, so it is very exciting.

What is it about writing children’s fantasy that you love?

The books are shorter! It means you can tell a more direct story - it’s easier to keep the whole plot in your head. And you can relax and have more fun with children’s fantasy - like mermaids are something that, if you do as an adult book, you have to work hard to make them not seem silly. But somehow that was less of a problem with this. I loved just going for it with a flat-out, colourful adventure, and challenging myself by writing characters much younger than myself.

Anything about it you hate?

Not really. Sometimes you strain against the word length, and there are certain issues you really can’t raise in the 10-12 age group, but that wasn’t a problem with me because I can always write other things to get those themes out of my system.

Are there any authors who inspired/inspire you in your writing?

Diana Wynne Jones is one of my favourite children’s authors of all time. She conveys such huge stories and worlds in slender books, and her characters are just wonderful. I also love Tamora Pierce, though she’s really for the slightly older set. Garth Nix is great, though my favourite of his is a little book most people have never heard of, called Serena and the Sea Serpent. Also, Eva Ibbotson with her Which Witch and other books is probably the writer who has been most influential on me.

Having said that, this book was largely inspired by an underwater sequence I played on Spyro the Dragon. You can find inspiration in all kinds of places…

Are there any children you’ve spent time with who have inspired your writing?

All the children I know right now are three and under, so that doesn’t really work for me. I have known some great kids over the years, but I don’t think any of my characters in this book were based on anyone in particular.

Do you have a muse? If so, who or what is it?

My muses vary. As I said above, I get inspired from the darnedest things! I am a bit believer of cultural stash - that’s the influence of all the pop culture & life interest things that you love, and how it feeds into your writing.

Right now, my cultural stash consists mostly of the half dozen or so picture books that my daughter loves. As it turns out, she is crazy about mermaids. Not sure if I influenced that at all.

Do you have any guilty pleasures when it comes to writing?

The guilty pleasure is always writing the thing other than what I am supposed to be writing! I love working on six different things at once.

I have to say - my biggest writing indulgences are clothing description and fabric. I’m always so proud of myself when I write something that doesn’t have the word ‘velvet’ in it!

What are your dreams for your writing?

I’d like to write books (for children and adults) that people love, and that I am proud of. I want to get better with every book and to never be bored with my writing career.

Any advice for children’s fantasy writers?

Get a great idea, have fun while writing it, finish it, repeat process until you get really good.

Any advice for writers in general?

As above. Read, write, read, write. Find people who will give you honest feedback about your work, so you can get better. Never stop learning. If you’re committed enough, and you practice enough, you will get good. If you can earn a living any other way, or if you can survive without getting into the writing game, do that instead.

Writing is a hard lifestyle if you don’t love it completely.

Thank you for your time.

It was a pleasure.

If you have any more questions for Tansy, let me know or post a comment.

**I just wanted to let the site’s readers know I’m not oblivious to the Harry Potter phenomena; I think the semantics involved in “children’s” and “young adult” tend to be a bit different depending on where you go, but that’s a post for the future…