[Interview] Chris Hardy

Poet, musician and song-writer, Chris Hardy has written and published two poetry collections, Swimming In The Deep Diamond Mine (Hub Editions 2002) and A Moment Of Attention (Original Plus Press, August 2008).

His poems have also been featured in magazines that include Acumen; Tears In The Fence; and Poetry Review.

In this interview, Chris Hardy talks about his writing:

When did you start writing?

I started writing poetry at school in the 1960’s, influenced and inspired by reading English poetry, especially John Keats, Wilfred Owen, William Shakespeare and William Blake.

As for publishing, this started in the 1970’s when I came across poetry magazines in London, where I was living. I submitted poems to them and began to get published: Stand, Poetry Review and Slow Dancer were amongst the first to take my poems. It was easy to find out how to do this, but to get a collection published, while easier then than now, was still difficult. In fact, I did not think of doing so until later.

Throughout this period, and up to now, I was also playing guitar in bands and as a solo musician, and writing tunes and songs ... I have always felt that, if there were no poems being written, as I could not find anything to write about or did not feel like writing, then at least there was still the music -- and visa versa.

How would you describe the writing you are doing?

I write lyric poetry, by which I mean pieces of writing in a verse form that do not extend much beyond four or five pages.

Most of my poems are less than 40 lines long. I write like this because that is what my imagination creates. I sometimes intend to put together something longer but this rarely happens, mainly because it is ‘put together’ -- is artificial.

Over many years, I have come to rely on my imagination finding the material it needs in my experiences and making something new from that. What is produced is then shaped by me into a verse form -- stanzas, lines, punctuation etc -- that seems to emerge from the poem.

Often the first few lines set the form.

I do not sit down thinking I must write a poem and this is the topic, nor do I attend writing classes where topics are set. Again to me all this produces is artificial, manufactured, poetry.

I trust my imagination to make something, using words, from my knowledge and life: the poem, if it is a poem, will reveal what I was aware of but did not ‘see’ or ‘know’ before. Of course this leads to periods of anxiety when nothing appears, sometimes for months ... but I have to remind myself then that this does not matter ... what does matter is that whatever is written is necessary (to me) and ‘authentic’.

Who is your target audience?

I do not have a target audience. Once the poem is finished -- has been amended, added to, shaped and left lying around for a while -- I will try to get it published in a magazine or anthology, but why I do this is a good question: I think it is simply to get some sort of response or reaction.

I often try new poems out on other writers I meet at ‘Stanza’ meetings, but only rarely do I hear anything that I am willing or able to make use of to improve a poem -- though it does happen at times.

There is definitely also a desire to get some sort of recognition and approval, especially through getting poems into famous magazines like the The Rialto or The North, or winning prizes in competitions, and the odd prize covers the cost of all the postage!

I think it probably took 10 years of trying, once a year, sending six poems, to get one poem recently into The Rialto ... And I, and I am sure other writers, read these magazines asking ourselves, ‘You print that and not mine?!’

There is also a competitive element: many writers are competitive, with each other and with the publishing establishment: it becomes a small victory to finally get a poem published ... guitarists, by the way, are the same.

In the writing you are doing, which authors influenced you most?

Samuel Taylor Coleridge (Frost At Midnight), John Keats (Bright Star), Wilfred Owen (Spring Offensive, Futility), Isaac Rosenberg (Dead Man’s Dump), Siegfried Sassoon, Edward Thomas (Lights Out), Shakespeare (Hamlet, Othello), Gary Snyder (Turtle Island, Rip Rap), Allen Ginsberg (Howl etc) and other ‘beats’ -- Lawrence Ferlinghetti, Gregory Corso, and also Robert Duncan, e e cummings, William Carlos Williams, Robert Lowell, T S Eliot (Wasteland, Prufrock), Ezra Pound (Cathay), Philip Larkin (Whitsun Weddings, Aubade), Sylvia Plath, early Ted Hughes, the very Larkinesque Carol Anne Duffy more recently.

I also find inspiration sometimes in the excellent poems that frequently appear in the small magazines I subscribe to: Magma, Tears In The Fence, Rialto etc.

I have been influenced, at least in approach and subject matter, by novelists such as Leo Tolstoy, William Faulkner, Hemingway, Joseph Conrad: these and many other authors, of course, write from their own experience, which connects their work directly to reality. They all firstly create a physical world from imagery and through this and from this arises any underlying meaning: fact is far stranger than fiction and, once fiction is made from fact, fiction cannot lie.

How have your personal experiences influenced your writing?

I will start a poem with a word or a line that I have heard, thought of or remembered and these are often connected to memories, or from something just seen or read or heard. Memory is especially important ...

Once the poem gets going, I know it is something worth continuing with if I arrive, at some point, at something I had not clearly seen or known before I began. But whatever this is, it comes from and relates to some sort of inner or sensory experience.

I rarely, if ever, write about things I have never felt or known. In this connection I am not interested in any sort of Science Fiction, Television serials and do not usually watch films, or if I do, I cannot take them seriously as Art. Exceptions are 40’s and 50’s Westerns (High Noon), Some Like It Hot, Paths Of Glory, Doctor Strangelove, The Godfather ...

The Wire is the sort of TV I like and other than that, a few documentaries, and sport.

What are the biggest challenges that you face?

The biggest challenges are twofold: writing something; getting it published. I have written above about both these things.

I do not ‘practise’ writing poems as I practise guitar: every day for at least one or two hours.

I have to be patient and calm and wait for the moment, which is also a mood -- when I become aware that anything and everything in the ordinary world is of interest and has a mystery: it is inexplicably strange that we are here, like this.

Then it takes a prompt: a word, an image, a memory, a line of verse, a phrase.

Getting published takes patience and thick skin.

You have to learn to take rejection and keep going. You also have to read plenty of poetry and research the scene -- there are, for example, many online magazines now. You also have to put up with interminable delay by most magazine editors. Very few of them will respond within three months, most take longer and some never reply even if you send, as you must, an s.a.e. The worst offenders in this regard are the editors of Arete, Poetry London, The London Magazine ... and as other excellent and very busy magazine editors do manage to reply promptly, I cannot excuse those who do not. The best are Acumen, Tears In The Fence, Smiths Knoll, Poetry Review, The North ...

Do you write everyday?

No. I do not write everyday, but I am ready to write -- I try to remember to have a notebook on me at all times. I have written poems on beaches, in lecture theatres, in bed, on buses ... all I need is some paper and a pencil or pen.

I do not type until I have re-written by hand several times.

I use a manuscript nook for drafting, sometimes I compose straight into it. I have kept quite a few of these as they are a sort of mine or quarry -- there is stuff in there that I might be able to use -- fragments, abandoned poems and also many notes, quotes, pictures.

I stop writing when I have nothing else to write down.

But one important rule, that I have to remind myself of is that, once I start I must not stop to correct, re-consider, censor ... that is fatal, as, if there is anything there, it might find its way out buried in a load of verbiage and imagery that can be pared away later.

Another helpful way of finding what a poem is about is getting someone else to read it -- they will sometimes see what the poem is really trying to reveal, or is really concerned about, and suggest ways of bringing this out, making the poem, in fact.

On the whole, I do not agree with the often expressed notion that a poem is ‘never finished’: I read poems written years ago and, while noticing that I might not have phrased or structured it like that now, I do not wish to re-write it ... it is better to start afresh. I have written many poems that took hours to get right, then found that what I have left is not really worth doing anything with. I will leave it, and possibly make use of any images, phrases, lines in a future poem.

How many collections have you written so far?

I have published two collections: Swimming In The Deep Diamond Mine (Hub Editions 2002) and A Moment Of Attention (Original Plus Press, August 2008).

I began publishing poems in magazines in about 1980 with a poem called Knife, in Orbis -- a magazine that I still send work to. Poems in Other Poetry, Stand, Poetry Review and Pennine Platform followed, as well as poems in magazines that are now extinct -- Slow Dancer, Urbane Gorilla, Oasis etc.

Since then poems have appeared regularly, in numerous magazines (over 60) including The North, The Rialto, Smiths Knoll, Tears in the Fence, Acumen, Brittle Star and many others.

Some of my poems have won prizes, for example in the National Poetry Society’s and London Writers’ poetry competitions, and a poem, highly commended by the judges, is in the 2009 Forward Prize Anthology.

More poems and information can be found at the following websites and ‘zines’ (online magazines) myspace.com/mrchrishardy, greatworks.org.uk, poetrypf.co.uk, nthposition.com and poetrylibrary.org.uk

How would you describe A Moment Of Attention?

My latest book, A Moment Of Attention, contains a large number of poems and is somewhat erratically ordered on a thematic line from birth/beginnings to death/endings but with a questing, searching poem at the end that celebrates (I hope) the wonder of the easily accessible world. The title poem also emphasis this: it is about an old barn but the underlying idea is that life is just this brief moment of consciousness -- what is happening now is all there is, and the poem tries to show and say how easy it is to forget this and live disconnected from what is really happening, unaware -- like a person walking on a mountain and making a phone call.

Sam Smith, with his Original Plus Press, picked up the manuscript immediately he received it, and proved to be a most efficient and careful editor -- this is why I went along with him and did not try anywhere else. If you find a friend stick with him ...

What sets A Moment Of Attention apart from the other things you've written?

Poets usually simply collect together what poems they have that have not appeared in a book but that might or might not have been published elsewhere and then try to make a ‘Collection’: this means a book containing poems that are not going to be on one theme or in one style, but it is important to try and make the ‘running order’ work: each poem should complement, or contrast with, its neighbour.

Getting this order right takes several attempts and is never completely satisfactory. I compare it to constructing a musical ‘set’ for a band’s performance ... the songs chosen need to enhance each other and the performance.

My poems have always been on a number of limited themes: life, nature, death, truth, mystery, other people and myself, time, fate, history, religion ... in this, both my collections are similar and the next one will be too.

What has changed is my style: I now take much more notice of rhyme and rhythm and am focusing more on both, especially the iambic beat and the 10/11 syllable line. However, I have to guard against this interfering with the actual moment of writing ... and it is also apparent to me that my imagination is producing poems that contain a lot of half and full rhymes, that they condition the writing and unfortunately can also limit it ...

What will your next book be about?

My next collection is not in any sort of order yet. I have a Word file with about 50 poems in it, and an associated file with about 20 poems that I now do not intend to use ... there are many other poems that are in neither file.

The main file has the title, Write Me A Few Of Your Lines. This is the title of a poem about the great American blues musician Fred McDowell, the poem was published on a USA poetry website lucidrhythms.com. If the collection turns out to be about discovery (the poem is about how Fred was ‘discovered’) and revelation, then it will not be that different to the previous collections and poems!

What would you say has been your most significant achievement as a writer?

Keeping going when inspiration is absent, there is nothing to say and no one wants to publish what poems I have that I think are interesting and well-constructed enough to find an audience.

Even if you win a prize in the National Poetry Competition, or get a poem in the Forward Anthology or into a ‘prestigious’ magazine, nothing will probably change in your life -- it takes luck, contacts and, of course, the right poem to make money and a name ... most poets, in any case, do not want to earn a living as poets. This would mean writing to order like a journalist or forcing the pace as novelists do -- poetry should be written in the corners of your life and you need to live, not write, to write it.

Far too many poets work in Universities and especially on ‘creative writing’ courses: this means that their only experiences, from which the poems must come, are of writing and talking about writing. But the poetry that is about poetry is the most pointless, self-regarding and unenlightening of all ...

To me, the ideal poet’s life would be that lived by Gary Snyder, who worked in the forests of North America, or even Owen and Sassoon’s wars, T S Eliot’s bank and Larkin’s library administration. Wallace Stevens, Yeats and Arnold all worked in the world and wrote in a separate but connected existence -- as if life, work and poetry were connected rooms.

Some of the best poets are mainly thought of as novelists -- Thomas Hardy, D H Lawrence: their poems are, to some readers, superior to their books because they were written to express essential emotions and experiences; not to support a fiction but to re-create a powerful perception of a fundamental experience.

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[Interview] Siobhan Logan, Conversations with Writers, February 20, 2010

[Featured Author] Hunter Taylor

Medieval Life & the Supernatural
By Alexander James

Publishers, with their obsessive desire to pigeon-hole novels, see a clear distinction between historical fiction and fantasy … but author Hunter Taylor thinks they’re missing a vital point.

In her book, ancient history is where fact and fancy meet on equal terms.

Hunter’s firm belief is that the supernatural must be accepted as an integral part of early medieval life to accurately recreate the times of which she writes and the mindset of those who populated the forests, villages and towns of a bygone era.

Before the line between reality and myth had been drawn, war raged between the new religion and the old -- and she calls on her own rich heritage as well as painstaking historical research to bring to life times of bloodstained reality and magical legend in her remarkable debut novel, Insatiate Archer.

Hunter’s family heritage is rich in ages old Celtic and Native American tradition and a store of folklore and intimacy with nature helped create the book’s unforgettable heroine, Susanna.

In her extensive and unfettered research, she found that the deeds of the mighty were carefully written down on parchment and calfskin, but the lives of everyday folk were recorded in poem, song and fireside stories that rang with their own truth.

Reality lay somewhere between documented history and magical legend in the misty past when witches and their public burnings were both equal facts of life.

This realisation led to the development of her complex and unforgettable lead character Susanna, whose startling, differently coloured eyes mark her as a sorceress, and who is a high priestess of the secret and sacred druidic groves, struggling to embrace the best of Christianity. And the deep-rooted superstitions and unholy terrors of those dark times also created the monstrous Yellow Curate who will stop at no evil to rid the world of Susanna and her kind.

Hunter’s seamless blend of 14th Century fact and myth produces a breathtaking odyssey through a land in the birth pangs of change, where Susanna is never more than a footstep ahead of the sadistic cleric obsessed with her destruction.

But the book’s mirror-true reflection of life in a cruel age where illiteracy and misunderstanding ruled is not the result of insightful and open-minded research alone; much is instinctive and drawn from the author’s inherited feeling for the times and people recreated in Insatiate Archer.

As a former military journalist, Hunter -- who is now a full-time author and lives with her husband in Texas -- also weaves into her work personal family folklore and a closeness to nature inherited from ancestors rich in the wisdom of ages.

She said:

I am on every page in my own right, but I am there in the presence of everyone who nourished or influenced me. My grandmothers are there with their store of homegrown remedies and old family tales. My Celtic father, with his never-ending humor and great creativity, is there. The people with whom I trained in the Army are there. My travels around the country and the globe are there. All the experiences of a lifetime -- and the lifetimes of those close to me -- come together.

My childhood was filled with the kind of history in which the story is set, with a strong oral tradition in tales of adventure and mystery. My father was Celtic Scots, and family lineage also includes direct ancestors who were Native American as well as old Germanic and Irish blood lines

This heritage of folklore and harmony with nature was a tremendous source of
inspiration as I wrote of times shrouded in myth and of people close to the earth, independent in their ancient beliefs and facing a changing world. Although my story is set six hundred years in the past, the circumstances and characters felt very close to home. I could feel part of them.

I could understand that, in their world, there was little if any distinction between the real and the supernatural. For the book to recreate this (what is to us) strange balance, it must honour fantasy as well as cold fact and include elements of both forms of the prevailing reality.

The result is that Insatiate Archer’s mystic heroine, Susanna, is a flesh-and-blood woman of her time, but one who readers can understand and identify with in the materialistic 21st Century.

Hunter said:

Susanna first came to me in the early 1980s while I was serving with the Army in Germany. Through the years, she evolved from a slightly fairy-tale being into a real presence, strong-willed and adventurous.

In the early 1990s, while living in New York City, I saw a revival of the musical, Camelot. It occurred to me then that of all the people in the Arthurian legends, the character of Nimue was largely unexplored. She is usually portrayed as conniving, a thief of Merlin’s magic who seals him in a cave and leaves him there. She did not seem so to me. I saw her as a highly intelligent young woman, assertive and independent. She became the ancestor of Susanna.

So the character of Susanna is original, although it has been said that all writing, no matter how the author may deny it, is to some degree autobiographical. I confess I did not see this as I was writing the novel. When it was completed and had sat the shelf for a time, I took it down and read it again. And it was there -- me and my family ghosts.

Hunter’s title is taken from poet Edward Young’s 18th Century Night Thoughts: “Insatiate Archer! could not one suffice? Thy shaft flew thrice, and thrice my peace was slain.”

Hunter explained:

When I saw the quote on an old gravestone in Norfolk, Virginia, marking the resting place of a mother and her two children, it seemed to sum up the losses suffered by Susanna in the book. The harsh impersonal randomness of life itself.

The intertwining of historical fiction and setting with elements of fantasy came about as a result of my reading King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table, the King James Bible, and Playboy magazine. These may appear to be wildly divergent sources, but they all played a role in the conceptualization. Our modern lives tend to become bogged down in mundane detail. I believe that real life today -- as well as in days of old -- is something of a combination of fact and fancy, of the ordinary and the extraordinary. So even in the 21st Century, we can understand the touches of fantasy that make my book a more accurate mirror of life in the medieval times of which I write.

I have been interested for some time in the idea and the history of the manner in which women were persecuted as witches. This goes hand-in-glove with the struggle between the old religions and Christianity.

The unicorn has a part to play in the book; a creature that’s been associated with Christ and the early Christian church, the older nature-based religions, and belief in gods and goddesses. The image of the unicorn has been found in such widely divergent localities as ancient China and on the royal seal of England. You may have noticed that even in cyberspace, it’s one of the most popular avatars in chatrooms and forums. It’s almost like a genetic memory.

But to ensure historical correctness I researched histories of religions, witchcraft, ancient myths and legends. For instance, one seemingly fantastic episode in my book is based on an event actually documented in Geoffrey of Monmouth’s The History of the Kings of Britain.

As between forms of religion, I have no doubt about this blurred line between fact and fantasy in history. I feel that recognizing this in a novel accurately reflects the mindset of those who populated our world in olden days. I’m sure my ancestors would agree.

Hunter’s passion for writing goes back to early childhood and, ever since, she has always translated her thoughts into words on a page. She said:

I cannot remember a time when I was not serious about writing. I believe it would be truly traumatic for me if some circumstance should keep me from it.

My earliest memories are of a love of words; reading, and the enchanting experience of writing. As a child, I haunted the public libraries and read incessantly.

I remember reading the same lyrical passages again and again, savoring the way the words were constructed to evoke an emotion, a scene, or a thought. I loved John Steinbeck, and Jack London; Ernest Hemingway and Thomas Hardy; and later, Tony Hilllerman. And I cannot read enough of Erica Jong.

So I have always known I wanted to be a writer. It was a question of arranging my life to allow me to write; family responsibilities had to come first for many years. I don’t believe I had early successes or failures in writing, just in getting to a point in my life where I could devote myself to writing.

Even in uniform, Hunter was armed with a pen. She said:

I trained as a military journalist and wrote for military newspapers, magazines, radio and television for more than 20 years. I also read as much literature as possible, and took every writing, poetry, literature and English class I could find at nights and on weekends, sometimes traveling hundreds of miles.

I even took leave to attend longer courses. I once camped at Stratford-upon-Avon, England, and lived in a tent to study [William] Shakespeare. I also commuted weekly from Germany to England over a period of several weeks to attend another Shakespeare course, and from Germany to Spain to complete a creative writing workshop.

I think the way to hone writing skills is simply to write as much as possible, trying different styles, subjects and venues. And it helps to have really good editors interested in your work, such as my editor at Fort Carson, Colorado, Sam Sears, and the people at BeWrite Books who helped me to fine tune Insatiate Archer.

My training as a soldier gave me the background and discipline necessary to focus on my mission and to develop an attitude of ‘failure is not an option’. These are things that serve me well in all areas of my life. All writers need a sense of discipline and mission to complete the long and arduous task of completing a novel.

One thing I have learned that Iwill share: you cannot write after all your work is done; your work is never done. If you try to write in your so-called ‘free time’ you will never write. You have to learn that the dishes will wait, the laundry is patient, dust is non-toxic and sandwiches are nutritious. All else can wait, but your Muse cannot. If you ignore her, she will become bored and desert you.

Life revolves around writing for Hunter, but it doesn’t fill every waking hour. She said:

I stay very busy, which I like; I have a low boredom threshold. I am an instructor at Central Texas College, I am pursuing doctoral studies at Union Institute & University, I write every day, I design and conduct writing workshops for disadvantaged populations, I am involved in animal rescue efforts and I am active in my church.

In my free time I say hello to my husband … seriously, I’m blessed with a life-mate who understands my drive, and helps me to find time for all I feel I must do. Soldiers don’t have a lot of opportunity to make lasting friends in the Army, because of the frequent moves. But the friends I have made have always known that I write; for me, writing is a normal state -- and my husband and my family have always been there as an inspiration.

I have traveled a long and often bumpy path, and each hardship has made me stronger. Many years ago my Celtic grandmother said that when people find happiness in their lives they feel a need to give something back, and that each of us has been endowed with our own special gift, one that we can share. It may not seem to us a very special blessing; we are accustomed to it, and we may take it for granted.

Writing is my gift and my passion, and is what I want to share. Writing is my way of honoring the many blessings in my life.

Insatiate Archer is the first in a trilogy of linked novels. Hunter is currently at work on the second, set two centuries later with a descendent of Susanna’s as protagonist. Again deeply researched hard fact and documented myth and magic will be interwoven to recreate a lost age in which reality had a less rigidly defined definition.

This interview was first published by Twisted Tongue Magazine

Related resources

Author's website

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Ghosts, a Haunting and an Exorcism, Conversations with Writers, March 3, 2010

[Interview] Shells Walter

Author, editor and publisher, Shells Walter has been published in places that include Micro Horror, Static Movement, The Shine Journal and Demon Minds.

She is also actively involved with Sonar4 Publications, a science fiction and horror publishing house she started in 2008.

In this interview, Shells Walter talks about her writing:

When did you start writing?

I started writing when I was 11 years old reading my first horror story by Edgar Allan Poe.

Poetry is where I started first, then short stories and eventually longer works. I chose to start wanting to get published in 2006. Up until then I wrote for the pleasure of it.

How would you describe the writing you are doing now?

Different and twisty.

I end up writing a lot of what I'm feeling at the time into my writing, of course what I find interesting or researched I put into it as well.

I don't have a target audience per se. Several people who like different genres have enjoyed some of my work. I think I tend to just write and hope people will enjoy my work.

Which authors would you say influenced you most?

Edgar Allan Poe, Stephen King and Philip K Dick have influenced me the most.

I think they had this influence because they went past the barriers that so-called genres allowed them to go. They allowed the readers to be able to feel their work instead of just reading it.

I want readers to be able to have their own sense of emotions when reading my stories.

What are your main concerns as a writer?

My main concerns as a writer is having something I thought was good turn out that it wasn't as good as I originally had hoped. My ways of dealing with this is having a good editor check over my work and possibly see the things I may have missed.

The biggest challenges at times is putting my stories into a specific category. Since my writing tends to fall in several different areas, people sometimes gets confused on where my stories may fit. I try explaining to them what the story is about and in hopes they understand it.

How have your personal experiences influenced your writing?

I was shy when I was younger and picked on in grade school. Writing had allowed me to focus my emotions and get them out.

Personal experiences to this day pull the direction of my writing, allow my emotions to run full force into the stories.

Do you write everyday?

I write when I can. I really don't have a set schedule as it depends on time that I have.

However, I often take writing breaks and that allows me to write on a daily basis and that can vary from an hour to three hours.

How many books have you written so far?

I have a horror novella called Bite This published in 2009 by Sonar4 Publications which deals with a Priest that gets bit by a vampire. He then questions his faith on why this happened to him.

Demon Alley, 10 short stories based on your favorite urban legends; a short story collection published by Sonar4 Publications in 2009.

And currently Justice Served, a horror novel published by Sonar4 Publications released in Nov 2009, which deals with a lawyer and the devil. He defends a case for the Devil and he loses it. He then becomes the Devil's personal attorney. His first case is defending the most notorious serial killer known. It is available in ebook and print from sonar4publications.com

Which were the most difficult aspects of the work you put into Justice Served

At times, it was making sure details were accurate and changing some. Since parts of the novel is based on actual events, I twisted some because it was a fictional piece.

I allowed myself not to worry too much and to just write the story. Any real issues were fixed later if I felt they caused a problem.

Also, having a great editor does wonders.

Which aspects of the work did you enjoy most?

Without giving too much away, writing on certain parts of the history in the novel on one of the characters. I have always been interested in learning about this specific person and it was fun including them in the story.

What sets Justice Served apart from other things you've written?

It has more twists and I believe it deals with more history, where others dealt more with just aspect of good vs evil.

In what way is it similar?

It has twists, something I enjoy putting into stories if they fit.

What will your next book be about?

There are a few projects coming out that I'm working on. One is called Dead Practices based on a Zombie Lawyer coming from Sonar4 Publications; a group collaboration of a zombie story published by Pill Hill Press; a group collaboration called The Gentlemen's Club, based on "The Secret Life of Hank Wilson", a short story of mine coming out in 2010 from Sonar4 Publications; and, Devil's Own, the sequel to Justice Served coming out from Sonar4 Publications in the future.

What would you say has been your most significant achievement as a writer?

To have someone say that my work has influenced in some way. Whether it be good or bad.

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• [Interview: Part 1 of 5] John Miller, Conversations with Writers, August 31, 2009
• Shells Walter Interview, House of Horror, Accessed on March 18, 2010

[Update] Danfo Driver

My short story, "Danfo Driver" has been accepted for publication in Writing Free, an anthology of contemporary Zimbabwean writing. The anthology is published by Weaver Press and will be out soon. - Ambrose Musiyiwa, 7 April 2011.

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The Bracelet [Short Story], by Ambrose Musiyiwa, Conversations with Writers, February 17, 2010

[Featured Author] Joe Bright

Ghosts, a haunting and an exorcism
By Alexander James

Author Joe Bright’s newly published novel is about murder. But the fiction has lain to rest the ghost of a brutal, real life killing that had haunted him all his adult life.

Joe was still a high school teenager when the quiet town where he lived was rocked after the body of a missing schoolgirl was discovered in a pond near the railway tracks. She had been raped and strangled to death.

The killer later turned out to be an intimate friend of Joe’s family.

The whole town was in shock. But I was more deeply affected than most. The young killer was my brother’s best friend. I’d often laughed and joked with him around the Sunday dinner table and had gone out shooting rifles with him.

One day soon after the murder, while police were still hunting for clues, this good pal passed me in his truck when I was on the way back from a run along the same road where the body had been found. He gave me an odd look, as though he was worried about where I’d been.

Something about that look made me think for a moment that he might be the killer of that little girl. But … c’mon … he was a friend. I dismissed the thought and didn’t tell anyone about the encounter. Later, of course, I realized it had been a look of guilt. Our instincts are often more in tune with the world than we give them credit for, but when the instinct suggests something frightening, we often allow ourselves to push it aside.

I’d have been glad to see the killer hanged … until he turned out to be my friend. Then, I just felt sick. If he hadn’t confessed, I would have sworn they had the wrong guy. Why? Simply because I knew him, and we often choose sides based on association rather than on the facts of the situation.

The horrible knowledge that someone we trust completely can be so secretly dark inside scarred me. I could never shake the dreadful feeling that people -- even those I knew well -- might conceal something awful and dark in their hearts.

But writing The Black Garden served as a catharsis for me -- a kind of exorcism of a haunting. Using what I learned about murder, murderers and the difference their crime makes to those around them as a backdrop to the main story was therapeutic. I projected all my fears -- how little we actually know even our closest friends -- onto characters in my book. It helped me work through the inner conflicts that had dogged me since youth.

The Black Garden -- released this month by Europe-based publishers BeWrite Books -- is set in a small town in Vermont, far from where the real life murder took place in Evanston, Wyoming. And it is also set in the fifties, long before the actual murder took place in 1979.

A few years after the murder, Joe -- one of a family of eight brothers and sisters -- left Wyoming and received his BA in English from Utah State University.

He began his career as a technical writer for Thiokol, the manufacturer of space shuttle rocket boosters. He later taught English in Honolulu, Hawaii and Berkeley, California.

He currently lives in Studio City, California, and works as a graphic designer.

Joe always had an interest in the arts and attended college on a fine arts scholarship, yet spent much of his time playing the guitar, writing songs and performing with a band. He did a lot of short story writing in high school, but didn’t get serious about it until 1994, while teaching English in Hawaii.

This was when I wrote my first novel, and I’ve been writing consistently ever since. Five novels in 15 years; three are out on audio cassette, two have been self-published, but The Black Garden is the first so far to have hit the spot with a traditional publisher and been released internationally.

The Black Garden is set in a small town in Vermont.

For years, the residents of Winter Haven have speculated about George O’Brien’s misdeeds; however, during the summer of 1958, when Mitchell Sanders arrives to help the O’Briens renovate their home, he discovers that not all of their skeletons are in the closet where they belong.

Joe said:

Since the story is set in 1958, I had to do a lot of research about the era to make the setting authentic. I wanted to make sure the dialog didn’t contain slang or technical terms that didn’t exist at the time. I also needed to know how the police investigated a crime prior to the advent of DNA testing. Fortunately, one of my older brothers works in law enforcement, and I was able to pick his brain on procedures and protocol.

Most of my stories fall within the gothic suspense category. The Black Garden, though, is more of a drama/mystery. With its rural setting and dark theme, it still fits in the American Gothic slot, but without the supernatural elements often associated with the genre.

Murder is a small part of The Black Garden; but the theme of judgment runs through the story. Who’s right, the Hatfields or McCoys? Depends if you’re a Hatfield or a McCoy. I hope the novel gives readers a different perspective on events, and entertains them at the same time.

My protagonist is Mitchell Sanders, the outsider who moves to the small town of Winter Haven for a summer job. He doesn’t care about his employers or the community. He’s a coward who has run away from his problems in Boston and then finds himself entrenched in even bigger problems. He’s not comfortable speaking his mind while in the company of people he knows will disagree with him. Yet as the conflict mounts, he’s forced to take a stand and to grow as a person.

The black garden from which Joe’s new book takes its title rests behind the house of George and Candice O’Brien, a grandfather and granddaughter with dark secrets. The residents of Winter Haven have speculated for years about the deeds of the O’Briens, but in 1958, Mitchell Sanders discovers the horrifying truth.

Mitch has come to Winter Haven for the summer, hired by the O’Briens to renovate their home. Unaware of the controversy surrounding the family, he moves into the studio at the back of the eclectic garden, where he has a rare view of the lives of George and his granddaughter. He notes how George spies on his neighbors through his binoculars, how they refuse to speak of Candice’s parents, and how they never leave the house. Especially troubling is the way the townspeople turn cold whenever he mentions that he’s working for the O’Briens.

Their bad reputation stems back 20 years to when George’s daughter Carolyn was raped and subsequently gave birth to Candice. The accused rapist, Grant Baxter, is from one of Winter Haven’s more prominent families and, true to the unbiased nature of American justice, the verdict favors the wealthy. Rubbing salt into the wound, Baxter’s lawyer casts suspicion on George by inferring that he was the one who impregnated his own daughter.

Infuriated by the verdict, George managed to alienate himself and his family from the townspeople, who have grown more convinced that George is the guilty one. As the slander intensified, Carolyn broke down and took her own life. A few weeks later, Grant Baxter vanished, never to be seen again. Howard Baxter, Grant’s father, is convinced that George O’Brien had everything to do with his son’s disappearance, yet is unable to present a shred of evidence.

Joe said:

I chose Vermont for the setting mainly because when I visited there I was taken by its beauty and felt it would make a great backdrop for the story. The town of Winter Haven is fictitious; however, I drew a lot on my own hometown of Evanston, Wyoming, when describing the layout.

With a first traditional release under his belt, Joe can now take time to reflect on the years that went into its accomplishment.

He said:

It’s such a great feeling to finish a novel. I also write songs, and I remember how proud I was when I wrote my first, which took a few days.

A novel, on the other hand, takes much, much longer. Thus, the feeling of pride is that much greater. I wrote the first draft of The Black Garden, for instance, 10 years ago. Then it was a work-in-progress while I revised, adjusted, wrote a screenplay version, launched on the long and difficult search for a publisher, and eventually went into months of fine-tuning with my editor at BeWrite Books, Hugh McCracken.

The most rewarding part of it is having other people read and enjoy it. It’s a nice boost of confidence and encourages me to continue developing my writing skills and to work on the next novel.

The hardest part about writing is the blank page. It’s a lot like creating a sculpture out of clay. In the first draft, you are creating the clay. That’s the hard part. Molding it is the fun part. To help me through this process, I first write an outline, plotting out the story. Through this, I come up with my characters, establishing their backgrounds, their likes and dislikes, as well as their strengths and weaknesses. Once I know my characters, it’s much easier to know how they will react in a given situation.

Often I’ll write anything that comes to mind, just to get the writing going and to fill up that daunting blank page. I also tend to keep other novels around so I can pick one up and read a little to get me in the right frame of mind.

The first novel I ever wrote, I took the fly-by-the-seat-of-your-pants approach. That is, I just delved in without really knowing where the story would take me. Many writers work that way and do a splendid job. Not me. I ended up doing a lot of editing that I could have avoided if I’d have thought things out better.

Now I always outline. First, I write a brief synopsis of the story. Second, I figure out who my characters are. This often takes a month or more, because I really need to know who these people are so I can work with them. Third, I write an outline. My outlines include most of the dialogue and brief sketches of the action. So they tend to be around a hundred pages long. Fourth, I start writing the novel. It never follows the outline completely, since I discover new things while writing and often encounter flaws that I’d overlooked before.

I’m a graphic designer during the day and a writer in the evenings, so I’m at the computer all day long. The tragic part of that is that I have very little social life. I can be quite obsessive and have to force myself to take a break and go do something fun. I’m still trying to find the balance.

My parents and brothers and sisters have always encouraged me. It’s vital to have someone believe in you … especially when you’re having trouble getting agents and publishers to read your work. I’m very fortunate to have such a supportive family.

The Black Garden is published by BeWrite Books and is available from all major online book stores or can be ordered at any local high street book shop.

Possibly related books:

,,

Related article:

[Interview] Bernadette Steele, Conversations with Writers, March 29, 2008

[Interview_3] Sue Moorcroft

Romance author and creative writing tutor, Sue Moorcroft's novels include Starting Over (Choc Lit, 2009), Family Matters (Robert Hale, 2008) and Uphill All the Way (Transita, 2005).

She is also the author of a non-fiction book, Love Writing: How to Make Money Writing Romantic or Erotic Fiction (Accent Press Ltd, 2010).

Her short stories have been featured in anthologies that include Sexy Shorts for Christmas (Accent Press Ltd, 2003) and Scary Shorts for Hallowe'en (Accent Press Ltd, 2004).

In this interview, Sue Moorcroft talks about her latest novel, Starting Over:

What would you say the novel is all about?

Starting Over is about Tess Riddell who, whenever she has a problem in her life, just moves on and starts over somewhere new. It’s a strategy that family and friends have problems with and, eventually, Tess finds a strong enough reason to tough things out.

How did the idea behind the novel come about?

The central male in the book, Ratty (Miles Rattenbury), came to me first. I was watching Kevin Kline as the Pirate King in a film of The Pirates of Penzance, my favourite Gilbert & Sullivan operetta. He was so swashbuckling, joyful and energetic … and that’s how Ratty entered my imagination. I like Ratty because he likes cars and so do I.

In Tess, I wanted quite a flawed heroine. One who had to really learn a lesson by the time the story concludes. She struggles with facing up to things for the whole book and it brings about a stormy finale when Tess forces herself to face up to something but goes about it all the wrong way.

These characters really captured my imagination and the combination of their two quite different personalities was bound to produce sparks. What interested me was whether they could work things out. Or whether they’d bother.

How long did it take you to write the novel?

I began this book a long time ago -- about eight or nine years. It wasn’t right, then, although it got me an agent.

Later, I heard about the publisher, Choc Lit, and when I saw that they wanted a strong hero with part of the book written from his point of view, I felt the time had come to revisit the book and see if I could see what was wrong.

Time gave me objectivity and I re-wrote sections, particularly at the beginning. A book’s content can age quite rapidly -- mobile phones had gone from a luxury item to a commonplace one, for example. It’s surprising what a difference that can make to the logic of the plot.

How would you describe the process that went into creating and producing the book?

Initially, I just began to write and let the plot take care of itself. (This isn’t an effective way of plotting, for me!) Then I went back and took out everything I realised wasn’t impacting directly on the thrust of the book. Then I explored the function of Olly, Tess’s ex-fiancé, a little more thoroughly. This brought the book into shape. I saw that having him only off-stage, as he once was, was illogical.

Stopping a relationship book is reasonably straightforward -- you have to decide whether the characters will get together or be ripped apart and then you do that, in a decisive manner. The temptation is to try and stay with them too long but I was quite stern about leaving Tess and Ratty at the conclusion to the story. Well … except for a short epilogue just to check up on them!

And giving Ratty a little cameo role in the next book …

When you’ve spent a long time with lovely characters it can be hard to let them go.

Which were the most difficult aspects of the work that went into the book?

I have to say that I enjoyed writing this book and also the re-writing that went into it. I understood comparatively late that something was wrong with the first chapter and, when I had that in shape, I had a really good feeling about the whole.

There is a scene in the book where Olly tries to bring Tess into line by insisting that her friend’s child, Jenna, is Tess’s (and, therefore, Olly’s) born in the interval between Olly backing out of their engagement and returning to seek Tess out some time later.

For a long time, I felt that Olly might actually have whisked Jenna away to use as a weapon against Tess. Finally, I saw that it wasn’t appropriate. Kidnapping -- which is what it amounted to, although you’d have a hard time convincing Olly of that -- belongs in a book that explores different issues to Starting Over. Kidnapping needs to be the focus of a story, not a sub-plot. So, I modified the situation and now I think it’s an impactful scene rather than a segment that’s out of keeping with the rest.

What did you enjoy most?

What I always enjoy -- polishing and editing.

Getting the first draft down is always the most difficult part.

How similar and/or different is it to the other books you have written?

It’s different to Uphill All the Way and Family Matters in that the central characters are a little younger and there is a focus on two characters, Tess and Ratty rather than four.

Starting Over is also a touch more humorous then the first two -- in fact, it’s categorised as a romantic comedy. The book that I hope will be published in 2010, All That Mullarkey, will be, too.

When I sold Uphill All the Way and Family Matters, there were openings for middle-aged heroines with ‘issues’ to address. That’s what some publishers were looking for, so that’s what I gave them. But Starting Over and All That Mullarkey are what I write from my heart -- the same kind of stuff as I like to read, with an involving central relationship and a few smiles along the way.

Resources:

• Author's website
• Author's blog

Possibly related books:

,,

Related article:

• Sue Moorcroft [Interview: 1 of 3], Conversations with Writers, March 10, 2009
• Sue Moorcroft [Interview: 2 of 3], Conversations with Writers, January 4, 2010

[Featured Author] Magdalena Ball

A Voice in the Wilderness
By Alexander James

Author and poet Magdalena Ball left behind the concrete canyons of New York and the sleepy spires of Oxford to find her voice in the rural mountains of Australia.

And with wombats and kangaroos for neighbours, she’s producing the best work of her life.

In the past five years alone, she’s seen wide publication of short fiction and poetry, non-fiction book, The Art of Assessment, her Quark Soup poetry anthology and, her debut novel, Sleep Before Evening.

With work underway on two other books, 42-year old Magdalena even finds time to run her bustling review site, The Compulsive Reader -- and look after her children, Dominic (10), Oliver (7) and Genevieve (4).

She said:

It’s hard to believe that we’re only an hour’s drive from Sydney. It’s very rural here and, as I type, the lyrebirds are singing, kookaburras laughing, bellbirds tinkling. Chickens are tearing up the lawn looking for grubs, and I really do need to follow-up on those fox baits

It couldn’t be more different from the New York I grew up in. There’s anonymity in the country that is actually similar to that in a big city. You’re surrounded by sound and bustling activity, but completely unnoticed. I like that. It makes me feel both ‘in the midst of’ and yet absolutely alone.

In some ways Sleep Before Evening is an extended love letter to a city I can never go back to except as a tourist. What I looked for when I came here, with my British husband, Martin, and we grew into a family, was Ithaca (in the Homeric sense of the word). And I’m not entirely sure why I had to be so far away from my roots to find it. To a certain extent a door just opened and, young an unencumbered, I walked through it.

The home I have here is exactly what I always wanted as a child: stable, rooted, safe: two parents, strong ideals, three regular meals on the table -- stability.

Magdalena Ball’s critically acclaimed new novel -- released by BeWrite Books -- tells the story of a middle class teenager cast adrift by the sudden death of her brilliant grandfather-mentor and her struggle against a self-centred artist mother, a succession of drive-by stepfathers and her desperate escape into a nightmare of drugs and sexual degradation.

Set in and about New York, the gritty, relentless tale unfolds with the same cool detachment that motivates the central character to peel back the layers of her life and expose the painful scalding within. There are lonely vigils in city parks and subway journeys to oblivion. In the city she meets Miles, a hip musician busking the streets and playing seedy venues with a rock band.

Her new, exciting, dissolute world challenges Marianne’s preconceptions about art and life. Here, in contrast to her prescribed upbringing, she finds anarchic squalor, home-grown music and poetry, substance abuse, sex and crushing disappointment and fear; but above all, exhilarating personal freedom.

Addictions -- of all kinds -- and the redemptive power of art and music, love, loss and beauty are all explored in a young girl’s difficult journey from sleep to awakening. The book draws on Magdalena’s own rich life-experience, as a daughter and a mother, to bring Marianne startlingly to life.

Magdalena said:

But Sleep isn’t autobiographical at all -- I’m happy to say! It’s pure fiction. It’s set in a real time and place where I lived when I was Marianne’s age, and there are flashes of characterisation, dialogue and situations that came from memory rather than pure imagination. There are many reasons for that -- the key one being my lack of inventiveness. I need something clear and visual to work with as a writer, and it helped to ground the characterisation in a specific place and time where it seemed to fit.

The other reasons are that, like Marianne, my mother and stepfather were going through an ugly break-up during that period of my life and there was tamped tension and unresolved pain that I was able to use for verisimilitude by setting the book in that particular time and place.

And, of course, like most writers, I do tend to be a magpie and have taken all sorts of observations, memories and experiences to put into the fictional situation. For example, I did like to go into NYC from Long Island when I was a teen, and like Marianne, could never find someone brave enough to come along, so tended to go alone.

I also attended a few of those poetry sessions Marianne goes to, including a gorgeous all-nighter on New Year’s Eve with [Allen] Ginsburg, Jim Carroll, Lou Reed, Anne Waldman, Richard Hell, etc, at the St Marks Church.

I even remember listening to a harmonica player under the arch at Washington Square Park and talking to him afterwards, but I never ended up in Marianne’s situation, falling in love with him. There was a little bit of my brother’s mother, an artist and writer, in Marianne’s mother, Lily, and a little bit of my stepfather in Marianne’s stepfather, Russell. And there are plenty of places in the book I remember being in myself and things I remember seeing, but the overall story is completely made up.

Having said that, I was worried that my mother would see herself in Lily but instead she identified with Marianne, and reminding me that she lived through something very similar indeed, as she did have a brief dalliance with heroin addiction. So perhaps instinctively, because I never really knew my mother’s full story -- it all happened when I was a baby and I was mostly out of the situation, safe with my grandmother -- I knew and understood something of my mother’s pain and put it in there. She tells me it’s uncanny, but it was entirely unintentional.

I think there are aspects of me in every character, from Grandfather Eric to stepfather Russell, to mother Lily and to Miles, to the boy in the park. They all have something of me in them and something of other people I knew in them, but ultimately the resemblance to both people and places was only a starting point. Once the story became strong, it took on its own life, and the characters developed their own imperative which was completely unique to this particular story and these particular characters.

The road from New York to the outback and writing success was a winding one.

She said:

When I was an English major at CCNY, a counsellor suggested I apply for a Rhodes Scholarship. I didn’t get it, but in the process, I became enamoured of the idea of going to Oxford, especially since I’d just finished studying Jude the Obscure and those spires were as appealing and seemingly distant to me as they were to Jude, so I applied anyway and got in. I went, but the college I got into (St Cross) didn’t have any permanent accommodation for me so I had to find a place to live.

I did find something at Crowley; a cute house which was being sublet by an even cuter guy with round glasses like John Lennon, and who, despite his gentle demeanour, was wearing black leather trousers and had some amazing looking motorbikes parked outside the door. It didn’t take us too long to fall in love. When I moved in, Martin had just quit his DPhil in Philosophy to do a PGCE teaching certificate and then did some teaching of French and History. His BA was in French and Philosophy.

I was totally awed by Oxford and had the silly idea that I could write something new about James Joyce, Virginia Woolf and W. B. Yeats. The bulging bookshelves already full of theses on these authors, as well as my own lack of linguistic capability made it quickly clear to me that I was off-track. But I knew I wanted strongly to write about the limits of language and how these three authors were able to move beyond those limits. Although I passed my qualifying exams and a VIVA -- the little thesis I wrote for that was pretty much all I was able to do on the topic using academic prose. I tried a few different supervisors but it was clear that I had nothing more to add to an already bulging canon so I left.

I was also working at a language school, waitressing (research for Sleep perhaps, though I didn’t know it at the time) at a restaurant called The Crypt, and eventually got a secretarial position at a biotechnology company. And there was my advancing relationship with Martin, who was an active member of Oxford University Motorcycle Club. We had a reasonably strong social life, so leaving the university wasn’t that difficult. It just began to assume less and less of a role in my day-to-day life until I decided there was no point continuing to pay fees.

Though I hate not finishing something I’ve started -- my thesis topic is, in a way, covered by the themes in Sleep, so I feel like I’ve now finished it. I even sent a note to my old supervisor telling him. Being a Yank, I’ve never had much notion of protocol.

So we were bumbling around in Oxford. Martin was teaching and I was doing secretarial work, both no longer tied to the university, and we decided to get married. After the wedding and a wonderful honeymoon in Brittany, we knew we wanted to buy a house, but house prices in the UK were high.

As Martin’s folks had migrated to Australia some eight years prior, and Martin had just returned from a long visit when I met him, and loved the place, we decided to apply for migration. I had never been to Australia, but what the heck -- I was young and adventurous. It sounded remote and exciting.

It took over a year, though, for the application to be processed, points tallied, qualifications assessed, so we decided to try our luck in the US for a bit first, ending up in North Carolina, which completely cured me of any desire to return to the US permanently. It’s hard to go back. When the Australian migration came through, we went, staying initially with Martin’s parents who are still within walking distance from where we currently live.

And now this is home and our three children were born here. They’re all gifted; charming, gorgeous, challenging, and outrageously and sometimes terrifyingly intelligent (I’m not exactly objective). My daughter, for example, yesterday asked me to explain to her how liquid nitrogen could be ‘boiling cold’ -- and she was only satisfied when I looked it up on the Internet and gave her the appropriately specific scientific answer. My eldest son has been reading her passages from Sophie’s World and he asked her if she understood it. She said, ‘I understand all the words you’re saying and can picture the scene and the girl, but I don’t quite get all the rubbish about existence.’

My children are certainly my biggest inspiration as a writer. Dom is a pianist and he was practising Dvorak’s Largo while I was writing Sleep -- which is exactly why I used the music in the book.

One of the things I love about Martin is how engaged in the family he is because my parents were divorced so early in my life; before I was one year old. The whole missing father thing in the novel is a key element in my life, although my own dad has always been around -- seeing me on weekends, taking me to the zoo, planetarium, etc -- all that paternal stuff Marianne’s grandfather took her to.

But Martin has, on occasion, criticised me for being a wee bit secretive about my writing -- doing it on the sly and not talking about it much. I guess I’m conscious of it being something of an indulgence (maybe having a novel out will change that -- giving me a mandate), and also conscious of the juggling act in my life. I try to focus on whatever I’m doing at the time and not let anything suffer too much from the diversity of my roles. And I’m still turning a buck at a steady day job. I kind of like to hedge my bets on the Hopeville thing -- doing it while earning at something that has no element of hope in it.

I do have to combine writing heart wrenching life or death scenes with ironing. I do sometimes burn dinner because I’ve had to write something down. My typical afternoon could easily involve the following simultaneous activities: breaking up fights between my children, making dinner, writing a scene from novel number two, working on a poem for a competition, fixing up a spreadsheet error for my day job, assessing someone’s manuscript, and talking on the phone to the rural lands department about the fox that keeps eating the chickens.

I court busyness and I do suffer from guilt when anything goes wrong or if I feel I’ve been neglecting the children by working too much. There are a lot of balls in the air. I chose to be a juggler so I’m not complaining. But sometimes someone throws one extra in there and they all fall.

I could build my Ithaca anywhere now -- having my family with me makes anywhere a home. Australia feels safe -- clean air, space, peace -- I can let my children go out and play and not fear for them (except for the snakes and spiders -- another story!).

Even out in the wilds, Maggie feels part of a sophisticated literary community.

She said:

I’ve been surprised at the support, both emotionally and financially that I’ve received from The Hunter Writers Centre -- a local committee of writers which has a reasonable amount of government funding. People still complain about the low level of arts funding here, but the truth is that it is higher than in the US, and there are many opportunities for writers and artists to do some fairly avant garde things with their work that aren’t at all about commercialism.

Of course writing isn’t the only thing I do, and it may be true that most of the other mothers who I meet while taking my kids to soccer or attending the parents’ meetings at school are not literary. But the mother in me has plenty in common with those people too, and I find all character interesting -- god knows where the next victim (I mean protagonist or antagonist) might come from. Most of the people I know are intelligent, generally well-educated, interesting, and insightful. So I’m not a fish out of water.

My oldest boy, Dom, reads very well indeed. Once, being the little poseur that he is, he took my copy of Finnegans Wake to school with him. He had no trouble reading it at all, at least until he became bored. And he very much wants to read Sleep. It’s a bit of an issue for me as I don’t think it’s suitable for anyone under about 17. I just don’t want him to have to go where Marianne goes -- even virtually -- so I’ve discussed it quite candidly with him and told him I’d give him a copy but wouldn’t let him read it until he was much older. He seemed to understand.

My other son, Oliver, likes Harry Potter but isn’t nearly so obsessive about reading as my older son is, so I don’t have to keep as close an eye on his reading matter. He likes Jackie French books, funny stuff like Terry Denton and anything about chickens.

My daughter has a steady stream of picture book review copies, but lately she’s been into longer books like Enid Blyton and Emily Rodda’s The Fairy Realm. We’re both partial to anything by Dr Seuss, Tohby Riddle and Pamela Allen.

My husband, being English, tends to be more private than I am. I don’t have much input into his work as a lawyer, other than to keep him as sane as possible. I often have no idea what he does at the office and although I find it reasonably interesting, I can understand that, at the end of the day, it isn’t something he likes to talk about much. I’m fairly calm, mostly, and I think I help him keep perspective.

He has plenty of input into my work. but I’m not sure he always wants to. I’m the kind of awful wife that, in the midst of an argument, will say something like, ‘Oh, that’s good -- I can use that. Can you say that again?’ Actually though, he’s unbelievably clear thinking and his editorial input is something that I both fear (I don’t like to show him work too early) and admire greatly (he never misses an error and his aesthetic sense is pretty close to perfect). He keeps my feet on the ground. And he’s an absolutely wonderful, committed father, who will do things like take the kids out for the day to let me get on with the mountain of stuff waiting my attention.

Magdalena’s aunt, Susan Gordon Lydon, was the well-known author of Take the Long Way Home. Her story of heroin addiction helped Magdalena get under an addict's skin for Sleep Before Evening. Uncle Ricky Ian Gordon, who read her angst ridden but powerful poetry before she could put together a sentence, is a famous composer; his recent opera of The Grapes of Wrath is receiving serious critical attention. Also Audible founder, Don Katz' Home Fires was written about Maggie’s family.

She said:

I'm in it -- real names used -- my maiden name is Magdalena Shapiro and Katz was taken with the unusual combination, so cites the name in full every time he mentions me.

Her mother plays both piano and guitar, and her father plays mandolin, guitar and a mean game of chess.

Magdalena opened her popular Compulsive Reader website five years ago to provide the kind of in-depth serious reviews found in top review sources like The Observer or SMH, but online and for a mixture of books including small presses and new authors, primarily literary fiction.

She said:

I've been writing for as long as I've been reading, which is roughly from age four. In many ways, reading and writing are flip sides of a coin to me, especially with things like reviews, where the process of writing is almost like a second, more in-depth and more analytical reading.

When I need a break from the big, bloodletting that writing a novel is, I turn to nonfiction like reviews, articles, and even parenting pieces fairly regularly.

Prolific Magdalena’s advice to developing authors is:

First and foremost, to turn up. That may sound trite, but like any other art/craft/skill, writers need to work at their craft. Inspiration hardly comes into it. If you aren't putting words on the paper, you aren't growing as a writer, no matter how bright you may be and no matter how much potential you have. You just have to get to work -- give yourself a real goal like pulling together a chapbook, writing a story for a particular deadline or competition, or even writing a novel, and then get on with it.

Secondly, a good writer is a good reader. It’s instantly apparently to me as a manuscript assessor when a writer hasn't read much in the area they are writing in. Being a good reader doesn’t necessarily make you a good writer, but if you don't read, you won’t have that all critical writer’s ear, where you know what works and what doesn’t, and you know what quality work sounds like. Good writers have to read a lot in whatever genre they want to work in. It not only expands your vocabulary, it expands your sense of what you can and might be able to do with language. It's key.

Although my website isn’t specifically related to my creative writing work as such, what it has done for me is to build a following of like-minded readers. In other words, I have a ready market of ideal readers who know me like a friend. In a way, this is ideal because people visit me because they share my enthusiasm, and therefore will very likely want to read the kind of book I write. I have 7,000 subscribers to my monthly newsletter and these are all heavy readers who will hopefully have similar tastes to me.

I also write and publish on other sites on the Internet quite a lot so I have a strong Google presence and think a reasonably good name recognition. Living in such a rural area of Australia, my market without the Internet would be small. Now it’s huge, so I see the Internet as critical. I think in future that multimedia, ebooks, audio books and network sites like myspace and Book Place will be increasingly important and interesting for writers and their careers.

Right now, I’m working on my second novel, Black Cow, about a seachange; The Good Life set in Double Bay Sydney and Tasmania, and I also want to pull together another full length poetry book. Then there’s that literary cookbook I want to finish up, a million more reviews, articles, and stories, a novel about my grandmother set in the Catskills during the 1940s, and hopefully a few interesting collaborations on the way. I'm not great at saying no, so anything can happen!

I’m also just starting a new radio show of my own at Blog Talk Radio. The Compulsive Reader radio show will feature reviews, author interviews, readings and book talk (kind of like an audio blog), and is going to be an extension of what we do at The Compulsive Reader. I’m looking forward to playing with multimedia a little.

I also do a lot of online and in-person networking (I’m a member of the Hunter Writers Group) and it helps to hear what others are doing and what does, and doesn’t work. I get to interview a lot of writers, which also helps but probably the biggest source of learning for me is in reading the best of what others are doing in my genres. I’m always reading poetry and fiction, and great writers tend to keep the synopses firing. They expand the limits of what’s possible. The more I read the more I realise just what words can do.

Related resources:

• Author's website
• Author's blog

Possibly related books:

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• Interview with Magdalena Ball, by Lucille P. Robinson, Alternative-Read.com
• Interview with Magdalena Ball, by Sarah Cook, aussieauthors.com, July 2007
• [Interview] Magdalena Ball, Conversations with Writers, September 3, 2007

Interview _ Siobhan Logan

Siobhan Logan is a teacher, a trade unionist, a poet and a storyteller.

Her first published book, Firebridge to Skyshore: A Northern Lights Journey, (Original Plus, 2009) weaves together the science, myths, legends and folk stories behind the aurora borealis.

The book gives a unique and near magical perspective of life under the Northern Lights.

In this interview, Siobhan Logan talks about her writing:

When did you start writing?

Well, I wrote as a child, of course. I remember making up plays for my siblings and friends in the school playground. My sister tells me I was always making things up for them. And bedtime stories. So oral storytelling probably came first. Then later, poems, stories, songs.

But I had fallen out of the habit of writing when I came back to it more seriously in my mid-thirties, realising I needed an alternative life to my busy teaching job and all the union/political activism. I needed that interior space of writing, the imagined landscape and voices other than my own muttering away in my head. And, for a few years, that's what it gave me.

I set about writing first a collection of short stories, to see if I could write and what about. Then I worked through two novels, and got to the point of sending the second one, Northlands, out to publishers. This featured the fairytale, The Snow Queen, in a modern narrative about a daughter whose Irish mother has gone missing.

I knew absolutely nothing about the industry but somehow I got an Irish independent publisher interested in reading more. It didn't come to anything. But at that point, I did a short course at the Writing School Leicester, and joined Leicester Writers' Club. This was a huge leap forward because I began to learn about both the craft of writing and how to engage with the industry of agents, publishers etc. Being part of this community of writers not only helped my sense of purpose but for the first time, gave me an audience for my writing. Which really does transform your writing, I think.

How would you describe the work you are doing?

These days I think of myself as a writer, rather than a poet or aspiring novelist. I often describe myself as a storyteller because performance has become very important in my work and I think storytelling underpins everything I do. Just like that child in the playground. And I'd like to try other forms too -- I definitely want to have a go at Radio plays when I can. And then a major part of my first book, Firebridge to Skyshore: A Northern Lights Journey, was the prose. I enjoyed researching and writing articles about the mythology and science of the Northern Lights and travelogue feature there too, along with the poems that I am most known for.

Audiences have been very diverse. This subject, the aurora borealis, has such a pull and brings in people who would never come to a traditional 'poetry event'. So far they've included astronomers, Women's Institute members, local radio listeners, museum visitors and primary school children, and I love that mix. But I've also published poetry and stories in the small press literary magazines. You could say I hop between page and stage.

Do you write everyday?

I do write everyday. I'm usually into my study by 6.30 am and that's my best time for writing. Before my head is filled with the clutter of the day, when I'm still close to that underworld of dream that writers tap into. I have a couple of hours of just being wrapped in the writing, 'rapt' even, when it's good.

The one day a week I don't teach mostly gets filled up with the 'business' of being a writer; e-mails, blogging, meeting people to plan new projects, rehearsals, networking, all of that. But I'm a great organiser so I like that multi-faceted aspect of the job. One minute I'm designing a flyer or webpage, the next I'm editing a poem or researching a topic. It's all creative.

Which concerns inform the writing you are doing at present?

In my book, Firebridge to Skyshore, I was exploring the myths and science behind the Northern Lights. This started as a commission where I was asked to write about the legends of the lights for the visual artist/ writer, Jackie Stanley.

Ancient stories have always fascinated me. They have a different shape, even a different morality, to our modern narratives, being often highly symbolic, probably because they've arisen out of an oral storytelling culture.

I was very drawn to studying the indigenous peoples of the Arctic. Despite all the pressures to modernise, there is a remarkable continuity of culture in pockets of these northern countries. The Saamis, for instance, have lived in Northern Scandinavia since the end of the last Ice Age. The family of the reindeer herder I met still lived an existence very bound up with the annual migrations of mass reindeer herds. Traditionally, all of these Arctic peoples lived quite nomadic lives and I was interested to learn how they coped with colonisation, often quite repressive, by the nation-states which moved into their territories.

What would you say connects the various aspects of the work you are doing?

I find a big overlap emerging in my latest writing project. In this, I am looking at themes around migration, hoping to draw together memories of my own family coming over from Northern Ireland when I was six, with accounts from archaeology of the ancient migration of our species out of Africa across the continents, and also stories of modern migrants and refugees. People on the move, displaced, resilient, incredibly adaptive.

It's early days in this writing but already I'm finding myself reflecting on how essentially human all these activities are: walking, travelling, cooking, sewing, singing, storytelling, making marks in the landscape, rooting down in new places.

Place is often a starting-point for me, especially the North, so I was thrilled to visit the Arctic as part of my research for the Northern Lights book. But when I arrived in Tromso, North Norway, I found the snow and ice I'd imagined as a child, had been swept away by unseasonal heavy rains. In December 2007, they were experiencing more like summer temperatures. So the story of my journey included the immediate impact of global warming on this landscape. I think that's a subject I will certainly return to, especially as I am now teaming up with another writer/performer, Susan Richardson, to form the Polar Poets.

We plan to offer events, talks and workshops to audiences across the country, focusing on themes around the Arctic, including exploration, wildlife and climate change. I am really looking forward to this collaboration.

We are starting with science festivals and science is also a strong feature of my Northern Lights work. I find the scientific narrative of the aurora borealis every bit as wondrous as the legends of the northern tribes: the journey of sun-dust through the far reaches of space into our atmosphere to end in this collision of light and colour, the aurora.

Which were the most challenging aspects of the project?

One of the great challenges of the work was to find a language that could realise the physics involved whilst fusing that with the mythological response. My interest in the science of the skies was deepened when I met with physicists from the Radio & Space Plasma Physics Group, at the University of Leicester. This relationship began as one of sponsorship as they helped me to visit the Arctic, including an auroral research base in the mountains near Tromso. But it has led to some exciting collaborations.

Dr Darren Wright joined me for an evening about the aurora at London Science Museum's Dana Centre, where we moved between poetry, physics and the wonderful 3-D films of Brian McClave. This proved such a popular event that it was reprised in September 2008 and we are now bringing this Northern Lights Spectacular to the National Space Centre in Leicester February 2010.

I'm thrilled to appearing in this museum with its rockets and space exhibits. Space travel crept into the imagery of my auroral poems and is a theme I'd like to write more about.

Darren and I have also been booked to appear at the Ledbury Poetry Festival 2010, so the pairing of poetry and physics continues to appeal.

Appearing to a packed audience at the Science Museum has definitely been a highlight of my career as a performer. As has staging my own full-length show, Stories Drummed to Polar Skies, at the Richard Attenborough Centre in Leicester. This allowed me to realise my dream of giving the stories and poems a theatrical treatment where I could use music, lights, images and even costume, to bring these Arctic voices to life.

But, as a writer, the biggest achievement has been to find a publisher who has faith in the work and is prepared to invest hard-earned resources in it. Poetry, especially from a new writer, tends to rely on the small press.

How did you find a publisher for the book?

I was very lucky to stumble across Sam Smith of Original Plus. He published a number of my Northern Lights poems first in his magazine, The Journal, and then in the summer of 2009, brought out my collection of prose and poetry, Firebridge to Skyshore: A Northern Lights Journey.

From what I understand, it's unusual for me to have been able to have so much say in the book, from cover design to the inclusion of footnotes and illustrations. I was able to commission my sister, Dolores Logan, to produce these wonderful woodcuts and the distinctive monoprint on the cover.

And I know this combination of prose, poetry, travelogue and illustrations has made the book much more appealing to a readership that don't usually pick up poetry.

Original Plus is a very small press -- just Sam and his computer -- and it was always clear that the book would be sold largely through face-to-face contact with audiences at my events. That approach seems to be working well though I also need to promote it more online, too. The traditional bookshop route is a non-starter as they don't stock small-press poetry generally.

How have these experiences affected you as a writer?

All of that means that my understanding of what it is to be a writer has changed radically.

I need to cover the roles that an agent, a designer, a marketing person might usually perform. I'm learning the skills of a producer and stage manager and performer. And now I'm a blogger, regularly writing in this new genre too, and networking on-line. So the challenge is to wear all these hats and still keep the creative writing, in whatever form, at the heart of it.

Did I mention I also spend four and a half days a week on the 'day job' -- teaching English A-Levels at Leicester College? That's how I pay the bills and fund all the writing activities. But however hectic it gets sometimes, I consider myself very lucky indeed to have writing in my life. To have the space to be creative. And when I meet people at events who are excited by the Northern Lights or the poetry and the science, or I hear some feedback from a reader, then the circle is joined. That's what it's all about.

Related resources:

• Author's website
• Author's blog

Related article:

Interview _ Siobhan Logan, Conversations with Writers, June 4, 2007