Leave a comment Posted on September 26, 2016September 19, 2016 Authors, Book talk, Creative life, Creative work, Interviews

Across the Tasman 2: Sherryl Clark

Sherryl Clark’s literary career is what might be called a trans-Tasman one; born and brought up in New Zealand, but living in Australia for many years, she is well-known in both Australia and New Zealand for the versatility and quality of her books, which range over many genres and age ranges. Today I talk to her about what it means to straddle those national cultures, and those different types of literature–as well as teaching literature, undertaking literary degrees, and lots more!

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Sherryl, you grew up in New Zealand but now live in Australia. Do you consider yourself an Australian or New Zealand writer, or both? And what similarities and differences do you think there are in terms of the literary world of each country?

I’ve now lived in Australia for 37 years, but I think in my heart I am still a New Zealander, especially because I grew up on a farm and I think your first 18 years ‘imprint’ you. However I do think my stories are Australian, funnily enough, with some New Zealand elements. If I write about a farm (as in Farm Kid), it’s an Australian farm with drought and brown paddocks which you just don’t see in NZ like that. Not where I come from anyway. Dying to Tell Me is definitely Australian bush, and even my city stories, whether historical or contemporary, are very much set in Melbourne. I feel for NZ writers today – the publishing opportunities have narrowed so much. But at the same time I think many NZ writers are writing with real passion about their country, in very particular ways, and I don’t see that nearly so much in Australia.

You have written many children’s books in different genres, and for different age groups. Is there an age group/genre you most enjoy writing for, and why? Is there a book of yours that you think of particularly fondly? And how has what you write about changed over the years? (if indeed it has!)

I love picture books because of the process – the challenge of so few words – and the amazing work that illustrators do. I love verse novels because I love how poetry expresses things that prose struggles with. I think my favourite age group to write for is 11-14. To me it’s a time when you become aware of the outside world, of what people are like, the value of friends, the idea of adventure and exploration – the whole world opens up, but at the same time it’s when the whole world can make your life very hard. Anything can happen and bad things do. To me, writing about those things is a way to tell kids they’re not alone, and I think that’s important. I agree with Neil Gaiman – kids need to believe they can be brave and win against the dragons. I think that’s why I like Dying to Tell Me, my murder mystery for upper middle grade readers. Sasha has made some stupid choices without understanding why, but now she learns to be brave and to use her wits. I think my writing has become braver, too! I turned a corner about four years ago, during the MFA, when I realised that I just had to start writing what really stirred me and obsessed me, and stop worrying about what might come after.

What’s your latest book, and what are you working on now?

My latest book/s are a series based on Ellyse Perry (sportswoman). It was a commission, and I wanted to do it because I hated compulsory sport at high school, and so did lots of other girls. And I see someone like Ellyse being a huge influence on kids and getting them away from screens and participating in sports – and having fun. I wish that had been me! Plus adolescence and body changes have a lot to do with why girls stop playing sport and I wanted to explore that, too. I also have a picture book coming out next year with Allen & Unwin – The Night Tiger – which is being illustrated by Michael Camilleri. I’m very excited about that.
I’m always working on several things, so I can give manuscripts a ‘rest’ when they need some time out, so I’m able to able to look at them with a fresh eye. I’ve just finished a major revision of a SF novel (the ending still needs more work), and I’m doing another edit of a historical novel. I changed a large part of it into present tense and it’s still a bit clunky.

You’ve written poetry for both children and adults, and have edited a poetry magazine, Poetrix. Can you tell me something about both your poetry, and the magazine?

Poetry was the first thing I wrote when I realised what writing was. That probably sounds weird, but I’d been writing these dull short stories and an awful adult novel, and then I did a poetry workshop and thought – yes! I wrote this thing and the workshop leader said it was a nice metaphor and then I thought – what’s a metaphor? And since then (30 years ago, mind you!) I’ve been learning more and writing more, and it’s such an exploration of language and image. So much fun and so satisfying, and I just wish more schools would ask for poetry workshops. Truly. Most teachers have NO idea what poetry can open up for kids. And most importantly for those kids who don’t feel confident with language and prose. Poetry just excites them so much. They are the BEST poets!

We created Poetrix (Australia’s only magazine for women poets) back in 1993. I used to teach classes in self-publishing because it was a passion of mine, and I’d worked in community arts and for a printer. My writing group, Western Women Writers, were totally on board with creating a magazine, and we self-funded it with small catering jobs. We produced 40 issues of Poetrix, and we published a huge number of women who have gone on to have books published and won awards. But mostly we did it so women had a poetry voice. It was in reaction to some critic who’d said women only wrote poetry that was ‘domestic suburban vignettes’ and we thought – yes? So what’s wrong with that? It’s life as we know it and experience it, and of course you can write fabulous poems about it! So here are 40 issues of Poetrix and about 1400 poems about things that are important to us. To everyone, actually.

As well as writing books, over the years you’ve also run a lot of classes on writing and publishing. What kinds of things do you most enjoy helping people to learn? Do you teach mainly children, or adults, or a combination? And do you think that things have changed in terms of areas of interest–I mean, are people interested in learning about different things now than they were say 10 or 15 years ago?

I’ve been teaching in the Diploma and Cert IV of Professional Writing and Editing for nearly 20 years. But I did get to a point finally where I realised how much energy and focus teaching was sucking out of my writing. I went off to Hamline University in Minneapolis to do an MFA in writing for children and YA, and a very wise teacher there said, ‘It all comes from the same well. The more you teach, the less you have for your own writing.’ So in the past three years I have stopped teaching at TAFE, apart from substituting and helping out, and I think my own writing has received a huge boost because of that. It’s sad to say this, but it’s true. Teaching did detract from the energy I had for writing, and now with the whole onslaught of government paperwork requirements, more and more writing teachers are leaving TAFE because it’s overwhelming. Less time to teach and more time to fill out pointless forms. It makes me angry, to be honest.
Because I do love teaching and workshops. The people who come are so keen to write, and to learn. You can feel them soaking stuff up. I often see people start with an introductory class and five or ten years later, they’re getting published and doing so well. The one thing I love teaching is story structure. People get so mired in character and dialogue and just getting the words out, but structure (if you learn it and understand it) can fix just about everything. Mind you, it can’t fix voice, and in writing for children and YA, voice is so important. I think you only ‘get’ voice if you read a lot, read widely and read from a writer’s viewpoint. It astounds me when aspiring writers say they don’t read. There is so much to learn from astute reading.

I teach mainly adults still – I do writing workshops in schools, yes, but a lot of schools want to spread their resources as widely as possible, of course, so I will do talks to 300+ students rather than workshops with 20. My dream is to create a portable poetry workshop I can take to school teachers and show them how to use poetry in the classroom, both reading and writing it. I have a website I started back in 2006 when I realised how little there was for schools – www.poetry4kids.net. I need to update it now and put a lot more material on it.

At the moment, you are undertaking a PHD themed around fairy tales, through an Australian university, after doing a Master of Fine Arts degree through an American university. What was your main focus in the MFA? What aspect of fairytales are you focussing on in the PHD? And how do the two university cultures compare?

When I chose to do the MFA in the US, it was because I knew it was the only way to do a Masters in the way I wanted. I didn’t want to be stuck doing one topic and one novel with one or two supervisors. Hamline meant I could do the things I really wanted: work with a different advisor every semester and learn from them (all published, experienced writers and teachers); work on a different project every semester to learn as much as possible (so I did a historical novel, picture books, a verse novel and a SF novel, plus a critical thesis on verse novels); go to intensive residencies in Minneapolis/St Paul where there were lectures, readings, workshops and a committed community of children’s writers; work at home via email in between and get detailed feedback on my writing; learn to write critical essays and a thesis that taught me more about the field from a critical viewpoint.

The PhD at Victoria University in Melbourne came from an essay I wrote during my picture book semester at Hamline. It was about picture books that are original, new fairy tales (Fox by Margaret Wild was my key text). Now my PhD asks that question – if I want to write new, original fairy tales myself, how do I achieve this? How do I write something that has the same resonance and unconscious signals that traditional tales like the Grimms’ do? So the creative writing (picture books and a novel) is informed by the research. Why have fairy tales endured? What is it that we respond to? How can I use this without being prescriptive or didactic or just plain boring?

Of course other aspects have come into it, especially the issue of publishers avoiding scary stories, and over-protective parenting that leads to a lack of resilience and coping skills in kids. I didn’t intend to venture into psychology, but then given that Bettelheim’s book, The uses of enchantment, was my starting point, I guess it was inevitable!

The two universities are poles apart, but that’s to be expected. Any Australian university would be entirely different to a US university that both specializes in children’s/YA writing and offers a low residency option. I think perhaps we’re not big enough here to be able to either specialize in that way or offer low residency on a wide scale. I’ve approached VU about running an MA similar to Hamline (indeed Hamline are keen to form a partnership), but with the government continually cutting tertiary funding and clearly having such an anti-arts agenda, I can’t see it happening anytime soon.

I think it’s so interesting that so many writers now are doing PhDs, because you can apply for a scholarship and it gives you an incredible amount of time to focus and create and innovate. Funded time that you don’t get hardly any other way. My bet is that in the next 10-15 years, Australian writing will see a huge growth in quality and innovation because of it. But if the government gets its scaly, arts-hating hands on the PhD program funding, they will kill it. Maybe I shouldn’t be telling them? Ssshhh.

Sherryl Clark’s first children’s book, The Too-Tight Tutu, was published in 1997, and she now has more than 65 published books. Her other titles include a number of Aussie Bites, Nibbles and Chomps, and novels. Her YA novels are Bone Song, published in the UK in 2009, and Dying to Tell Me (KaneMiller US 2011, Australia 2014).

Sherryl’s verse novel Farm Kid won the 2005 NSW Premier’s Literary Award for children’s books, and her second verse novel, Sixth Grade Style Queen (Not!) was an Honour Book in the 2008 CBCA Awards. Other recent titles include a picture book of poems, Now I Am Bigger, the middle grade novel Pirate X and the Rose series (Our Australian Girl). Her fourth verse novel, Runaways, was released March 2013.

Her latest books are the series featuring sportswoman Ellyse Perry. Pocket Rocket and Magic Feet are released in early October, with two more in January 2017.

Her books have been published in Australia and overseas, including the USA, UK, Spain, Mexico and China.

Her website is at www.sherrylclark.com

Facebook – https://www.facebook.com/Sherryl.Clark3

Twitter – @sherrylwriter

Instagram – sherrylwriter

1 Comment Posted on September 22, 2016September 19, 2016 Authors, Book talk, Celebrations, Interviews, New books

Across the Tasman 1: Maria Gill

One of the great pleasures of international travel, for me, is the discovery of another country’s books, writers and illustrators. My latest trip, to New Zealand, was no exception. Through visits to schools, bookshops, libraries and attending the IBBY (International Board of Books for Young People) Conference in Auckland, I was introduced to the work of the country’s fabulous authors and illustrators for children, and also met several of them in person. To my shame I also discovered how little I knew about New Zealand books–I had read and loved the work of world-famous creators of children’s books like Margaret Mahy, Lynley Dodd, Pamela Allen and Maurice Gee, but otherwise I knew very little. I’m not alone in that, in Australia: our cousins across the Tasman might be so close but we know more about British or American children’s literature than we know about that of New Zealand. Anyway, I decided I’d do my small bit to remedy that, not only by buying and reading lots of books but also by presenting interviews with some of those fabulous creators!

The first interview is with distinguished writer of non-fiction for children, Maria Gill. Her most recent book, Anzac Heroes, which is about the stories of great men and women from both New Zealand and Australia, from both World War One and World War Two, has recently won not only the top non-fiction award in the 2016 New Zealand Book Awards for Children and Young Adults but also the Margaret Mahy Book of the Year Award. The judges praised the book as ‘simply stunning’ with ‘carefully chosen material’, and it’s been flying off the shelves both in New Zealand and Australia. I caught up with Maria to talk to her about it.

How did you first get the idea for Anzac Heroes? How long did it take to go from concept to publication?

I had written two other books about the lives of famous people (New Zealand Hall of Fame, New Zealand Sports Hall of Fame) and when I saw the commemorations for WWI I decided to do another about Anzac Heroes. It was a year of solid writing (from 8am – 6pm, seven days a week), and I also spent two months applying for a grant, organising photographs, editing and getting experts to check the book.

Anzac Heroes is a major work of research but also selection. How did you go about that? What were your criteria in deciding who to include in the book? Did you have an initial list in mind, and did that change as you went along? What were the challenges and discoveries involved in the research?

First, I included army, navy and air force men who had won Victoria Cross medals that fought in a range of battles. However, as time went by my conscience was nagging me; I wanted to include indigenous soldiers and women. I looked closely at what being a hero means; it’s about being exceptionally brave, resilience in the face of extreme hardship, and putting your life at risk to save others. Even though Maori and Aboriginal soldiers were mostly given the jobs of digging trenches and tunnels they volunteered to fight or go out on scouting missions that were incredibly dangerous. Same with women; they weren’t allowed to fight in both wars, but they were near the front line, avoiding bomb and bullet fire to save other people’s lives. Indigenous soldiers and women didn’t receive the highest medals but they absolutely deserved to be included and the book is all the more richer for it.

I had difficulty finding information about some of the lesser known men and women in the book. It required detective work; but for me, the more difficult it is, the more determined I am to find their story. I investigated primary sources such as battalion log books, military records, diaries, and letters; as well as secondary sources such as historical books about certain battles. For Aboriginal soldier Albert Knight I rang people in his home town until I found a family member. They told me to ring other family members and between them we pieced together Albert’s story. They were really thrilled his story was finally being told.

The book is lavishly illustrated with pictures that are well-integrated with the text. Did you work with the illustrator, Marco Ivancic, on that, or were you both creating your part of the book separately?

I was visiting a lot of museums to find information so every time I went I took my camera and shot lots of images for Marco to use as photo reference. I also spent a day with a military re-enactment group taking close-ups, mid-range and long-range shots of them at all different angles. I also sent him any photographs I had discovered online of the men and women.

The Anzac stories are still very inspiring and important to Australian and New Zealand readers. Why do you think that is?

I think it shows how human kind can survive in the harshest of conditions and be strong, brave, and kind despite what is going on around them. I’d like to think young people will read how difficult it was for the men and women during those two wars, and grow up thinking that war should not be an option to solve problems. The stories also tell of significant historical events that shaped our identity.

Your book has been very well-received, both in New Zealand and Australia, and has major awards. What’s been the reaction from young readers?

Lots of boys have said how much they want to read the book or bring their own copy in for me to sign it. In a school in Brisbane a young girl came up to me and said she wanted to thank me for including indigenous soldiers because she was Aboriginal and it meant a lot to her that they were included.

Maria Gill talking about Anzac Heroes at The Children’s Bookshop, Sydney

You specialise in non-fiction. Tell us about your other books. And what are you working on now?

I’ve written a picture book (The Last of Maui’s Dolphins), several creative non-fiction picture books (Operation Nest Egg Chick, Rangitoto, The Call of the Kokako) and over 40 educational books for children and teachers. At the moment I’m working on a follow-up to Anzac Heroes due to be published in 2018 with Marco Ivancic as the illustrator.

Maria Gill has written 60 books over the last 14 years. Seven of her books have been finalists in national children’s book awards including ‘Anzac Heroes’ in the 2016 New Zealand Children’s Book Awards. ‘Anzac Heroes’ won the non-fiction category and the Margaret Mahy Book of the Year Award. Maria trained as a Primary school teacher and journalist, but now writes children’s books and educational resources full-time in a small seaside village in New Zealand. www.mariagill.co.nz.

2 Comments Posted on September 20, 2016September 20, 2016 Authors, Book talk, Celebrations, Cover reveals, fairy tales, Illustrators, New books

Cover reveal of Once Upon An ABC!

I am thrilled today to be able to reveal the spectacular front cover of Once Upon An ABC, the first of my two picture book titles to come out next year with Little Hare. It’s illustrated by the fantastic Chris Nielsen, whose gorgeous style, bursting with verve and vivid colour, is simply irresistible!

Here’s what the blurb will say: A romp through both the alphabet and the world of folklore..Sophie Masson’s lively verse gathers together a dazzling range of folklore, made vividly contemporary with Chris Nielsen’s striking artwork.

The book will be out in April 2017.

Leave a comment Posted on September 19, 2016September 18, 2016 Authors, Book talk, Craft, Creative life, Fiction, Interviews, prizes and awards, Translation

An interview with Lisa Hayden, translator of Laurus

The greatest discovery of my reading life this year has been the extraordinary novel, Laurus, by Russian author Eugene Vodolazkin, beautifully translated by Lisa Hayden. Set in the Middle Ages, around the life of a Russian healer and mystic, it is bold, brilliant, spiritually profound and utterly absorbing. I’ve been raving about it to anyone who would listen ever since I read it–and thank you to my friend and fellow author, Natalie Jane Prior, for first drawing it to my attention!

And now I’m absolutely delighted to be bringing you an interview with Lisa Hayden, whose pitch-perfect English translation has so skilfully brought Laurus to readers all over the anglophone world( the book has of course collected many fantastic reviews). Fresh from a trip to Moscow where she won the prestigious Read Russia prize for translation, in the contemporary literature category, Lisa generously answered my questions with great insights and interesting observations. Enjoy!

Lisa(second from left) at ceremony for the Read Russia Prize, with winners of other categories. Photo by Anatoli Stepanenko, used with his kind permission.

Lisa(second from left) at ceremony for the Read Russia Prize, with winners of other categories, Joaquin Fernandez-Valdez, Claudia Scandura, and Selma Ancira. Photo by Anatoly Stepanenko, used with his kind permission.

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First of all, Lisa, congratulations on your wonderful translation of Laurus! It must have been an extraordinary undertaking. How did you prepare for it, before you even started the writing work? And how long did the whole process take?

Thank you! I’m glad you and so many other readers have been enjoying the translation. Laurus was tremendous fun to translate and it seems like that comes through for readers.

I don’t generally do much before starting a translation other than reading the entire book before signing a contract. I don’t do a lot of advance research since I prefer to take each difficulty as it comes, though I often find that author interviews give helpful insights into an author’s intentions. All that said, when I was starting Laurus, I gathered lots of books about the Middle Ages. Though I can’t say I sat down and read any of them cover to cover, I enjoyed paging through lots of them, reading passages, and getting a feel for medieval prose, herbals, and life. An anthology of medieval literature that I read in college was helpful, too, for background information, ideas on vocabulary, and a look at translations of a text or two that Eugene borrowed for Laurus. As for timing, if I remember correctly, I had about eight months from start to finish to work on the translation, with editing taking more time later on.

Were you in touch with the author, Eugene Vodolazkin, during the translation process?

Eugene and I first met in Moscow, in September 2014, and have kept in touch ever since—he and his wife have become friends and I love spending time with them. Eugene answered questions for me and even read through my entire manuscript, which was extraordinarily helpful. He’s just wonderful to work with because his English is very good and he understands the role of the translator. We think of each other as the co-authors of Laurus.

Laurus is an absolutely superb, moving novel with a richly evocative style, truffled with piquant language and a complex narrative chronology. Yet though it’s so artistically accomplished, and the best evocation of the mystical experience I’ve ever come across, it is also very readable and accessible. I imagine that it must have been very difficult to recreate that balance between art and accessibility. How did you do it?

To be honest, I don’t really know! Of course I knew what awaited me because I’d read the book before I began translating. Really, though, for me translating any book is, most of all, a matter of sitting down each day, hearing the text in my head (this sometimes includes reading it out loud), and finding English words that can combine into phrases and sentences that feel like they capture the meaning, energy, style, and spirit of the Russian text. I’m pretty intuitive, so I follow my instincts. I usually go through about five or six full drafts before turning in a final draft. I read the entire book aloud to myself at least once, edit it on paper several times, and read it once on an electronic reader.

Before Eugene saw my draft, I showed it to two Russian colleagues: Liza Prudovskaya checks a draft of all my translations and Olga Bukhina specifically looked at the old language in Laurus. They answered questions, corrected mistakes, and gave me further ideas. They’re both just wonderful to work with. So are my editors at Oneworld: publisher and editor Juliet Mabey is very no-nonsense, a quality I value highly in an editor and she has a fantastic feel for books that’s won Oneworld numerous awards. And copyeditor Will Atkins is just phenomenal. Beyond straightening out twisted syntax and correcting grammar and stylistic slips, he asks tough questions about usage and vocabulary that help me sharpen my texts. I enjoy working collaboratively, so all the feedback, queries, and ideas from Liza, Olga, Juliet, Will, and Eugene freed me up to take appropriate risks with the language in Laurus. In the end, I think what happened is that I had my intuitive feel for the text, translated the book, and then, thanks to all the drafts and comments, felt confident that my translation fit with the original in terms of meaning and style. Each book is different but that’s my general approach to all of them.

Lisa signing copies of Laurus with the author, Eugene Vodolazkin, at a book event in New York

You are currently working on the translation of another book by the same author, The Aviator, which will be published in 2018. Can you tell us a bit about it?

I love The Aviator! The novel begins when a man wakes up in a hospital suffering from amnesia. He gradually begins remembering his past and his identity, and those memories are especially interesting because of how they fit with Russian history. I don’t want to say much more because what’s happened to him is so, hmm, unusual. It’s a book with a Petersburg setting that fits beautifully with Laurus and Solovyov and Larionov, which will also be published by Oneworld: all three books look at time, history, and identity, forming a beautiful triptych. I’m working on a first draft of The Aviator now and enjoying how it translates.

Russian-French writer Andrei Makine, in one of his novels, Le Testament français, has his narrator say, ‘The translator of poetry is the poet’s rival; the translator of prose is the novelist’s slave.’ What is your opinion? Do you have a philosophy of translation?

I can’t say that I have a philosophy of translation other than very basic things like “be flexible” and “get the work done,” something that applies to all levels of the process itself. Each book is different so I feel like I work under unique unwritten guidelines for each. Most of those guidelines are subconscious and sometimes I don’t realize what I’ve been doing until rather late in the process.

The line you mentioned from Makine’s book comes from Vasily Zhukovsky, a nineteenth-century poet and translator. I’ve heard and read this before and I suppose it always irritates me a bit because I’m a prose translator and, despite knowing what he’s saying, I don’t feel like I’m any novelist’s slave on even a metaphorical level! Of course I’m very fortunate that my authors tend to see their translators as co-authors: they encourage me to approach their texts creatively and we often make changes together. Translating fiction is very creative work: even though I’m not restructuring a plot or rewiring character development, I’m a writer who’s supporting the author’s plot structure and character development by choosing words and putting them in an order that feels appropriate for capturing the language and literary devices in the Russian text by establishing a poetics for the translation. It’s very complex work and it’s a tremendously interesting and gratifying form of writing that requires a lot of thought about and feeling for the text.

What other literary works have you translated?

I haven’t been translating for a long time so this will be fairly quick to answer, particularly if I stick to recent and upcoming novels. I’ve translated another book for Oneworld, Vadim Levental’s Masha Regina, a novel about a young woman from a small city who goes to St. Petersburg and eventually becomes a filmmaker. Since I’m from a very small town, I particularly identify with Masha’s provincial roots. I translated Marina Stepnova’s The Woman of Lazarus, a rather edgy family saga, for World Editions and am finishing up her Italian Lessons now. I love Marina’s feel for history and pain, not to mention her humor. Then there are three other books for Oneworld that are in various stages: Eugene’s Solovyov and Larionov, about a historian and a general who live in different times; Eugene’s The Aviator, which feels so close to me right now; and Guzel Yakhina’s Zuleikha Opens Her Eyes, about a kulak Tatar woman who’s exiled in the 1930s. Guzel’s book is a historical novel that looks at Soviet-era difficulties but it’s also very lyrical in places, with imagery and descriptions of nature that are very moving. I like to translate books that have the power to make me cry. That’s why I like all these books: they’re very different but they all move me.

You are a Russian language specialist, and as well as translating literary works such as Laurus, you have taught the language. What drew you to Russian in the first place?

Literarily speaking, stories about Baba Yaga were the first thing to draw me in, when I was very small, then I read my first Chekhov story, “The Bet,” in the sixth grade. I went to college hoping to be a biochemist but nearly failed calculus: I signed up for first-year Russian after loving a Russian history course and went to Russia, which was then the Soviet Union, for the first time in 1983. After that came grad school in Russian literature, though I dropped out with just an MA because I couldn’t picture myself teaching and researching for the rest of my life. I love Russian and I love writing but don’t have it in me to construct plots and develop characters, so translation feels like ideal work for me.

Thank you, Sophie, for inviting me to answer these questions for you. I appreciate your interest in Laurus, Eugene’s writing, and my work. Happy reading to everyone!

5 Comments Posted on September 12, 2016September 11, 2016 Authors, Book talk, Creative life, Essays, Literary world

Harry Ashton-Wolfe, true-crime writer of ‘the Golden Age’

For a bit of fun today I’m republishing a piece of mine that was first published some years ago, about Harry Ashton-Wolfe, an absolutely wonderful–and unintentionally hilarious!–true-crime writer of the so-called ‘Golden Age’ of the detective craze, in the 1920’s and 30’s. He inspired one of my own characters in The Case of the Diamond Shadow-and to all crime writers out there, he’s really worth rediscovering!

So here’s the article, below. Enjoy!

Harry Ashton-Wolfe

Some of my favourite book finds have come into my hands not by word of mouth or reviews or prior knowledge but by sheer chance: the eccentric jewel suddenly spotted amongst the lucky-dip gimcrack of junk shop and school fete, car boot sale and charity shop shelf. And these days, very often in that virtual combination of all those venues, the Internet.

It was thus I made the serendiptous discovery of the priceless but sadly forgotten works of celebrity criminologist and true-crime writer of the 1920’s and early ’30’s, Harry Ashton-Wolfe. Browsing on the Net one day, looking up Conan Doyle sites with the vague notion of Sherlock Holmes appearing in a detective novel for young readers I was planning, I stumbled across a casual reference to a H.Ashton-Wolfe, writer of true-crime adventure bestsellers, who claimed to know not only Holmes’ creator, as well as the leading lights of the French Surete and Scotland Yard, but also just about every famous criminal and outlaw of the day!

Several hurried orders from second-hand bookshops later, I had built up a mini-library of Ashton-Wolfe’s books, with their gorgeously pulpy titles, such as Crimes of Love and Hate, The Thrill of Evil, Outlaws of Modern Days, and The Forgotten Clue. And I plunged into the addictive joys not only of the melodramatic and exotic cases recounted in racy prose, but the vain and boastful character of Ashton-Wolfe himself, which infused the stories with unintentional hilarity. So immediately engaging was this combination that I immediately dropped Sherlock in favour of a certain Philip Woodley-Foxe, whose adventures are legendary, not least to himself. No prizes for guessing who he was based on!

A marvellous combination of Action Man, cheerleader for ‘modern’ scientific detection, adventurous master of disguise and shameless name-dropper, Harry Ashton-Wolfe doesn’t just recount the cases, he inhabits them. He’s an important part of investigating teams in Paris tracking down fiendishly cunning criminals, such as the Eurasian Hanoi Shan; he gets locked up and threatened with death by vicious gangsters; he is at the elbow of the greatest forensic scientists of the day, such as Edmond Locard of the Surete, and earlier, the legendary Alphonse Bertillon; he is allowed to peruse the ”secret archives” of the Paris Prefecture; by chance, he recognises a famous anarchist bandit, Jules Bonnot, as having once been his chauffeur; he dons disguises such as that of a Parisian apache or a Corsican bandit to infiltrate criminal rings(delightfully, his books sometimes include photographs of him in disguise, complete with picturesque hats and moustaches!)

Airily, he recognises that ‘It is rather strange, when I look back, to think how often I have found myself involved in events that later passed into history,’ (The Underworld—a Series of Reminiscences and Adventures in Many Lands), but he doesn’t let that slight improbability deter him in the least. Time after time, he’s in at the kill—helping to nail a vicious poisoner or uncovering a sensational tranvestite murder or catching a crook who’s passing off fake diamonds. He describes the most sensational murder methods—such as kittens whose claws have been tipped with deadly tetanus baccili; centipedes used as murder weapons; and in an echo of Edgar Allan Poe, an ape trained to kill! Rather scathing about most detective fiction—aside from Conan Doyle’s, to whom he dedicated Outlaws of Modern Days—he nevertheless uses every trick of sensational fiction, including catchy titles, breathless first-person narration, cheesy dialogue and moralising asides. He offers titillating portraits of famous murderers, gangsters and outlaws, and lovingly sketched examples of criminal wickedness. But there’s always a moral: not only are these bad people bad, but they will inevitably be brought to book by the superior methods of modern scientific crime-fighting. His touching faith in these methods—which he describes in detail in The Forgotten Clue– is such that he is convinced they will shortly put an end to all crime.

Mostly, he writes about modern cases(at least, from the 1890’s onwards) but in Tales of Terror—True Stories of Immortal Crimes, he looks at older real-life mysteries fictionalised by writers such as Alexandre Dumas: the Man in the Iron Mask, the Count of Monte-Cristo, the Affair of the Diamond Necklace…You get the distinct impression that he thinks modern scientific methods would surely have made short work of elucidating them!

So who was H.Ashton-Wolfe, this tireless go-getter chronicler of crime? In The Underworld he offers something of an autobiography, and colourful it is too (sample chapter titles: The Episode of the Clairvoyant Countess’, ‘La Glu—Apache and Gentleman’; ‘The Motor Bandits’; The Blue Anchor Mystery’). He was born in 1881, of a Scottish father who had emigrated to New Mexico and who as a US soldier had participated in the historic final stand of the Sioux under Sitting Bull. His mother was an American, of half-Scottish, half-Spanish blood(Ashton-Wolfe makes much of this ”gipsy strain” which made him a ”wanderer, restless and ever seeking after excitement and novelty.”) Young Harry was born in London whilst his parents were on a visit there but he spent his childhood on the ‘prairies of Arizona and Colorado’—in The Forgotten Clue he also writes about how he was taught to ride and shoot there by “the red-skinned Sioux warriors, who, strangely enough, enjoyed showing a white boy their tricks”–then sent to school in Denver till the age of 14. He was then packed off to a boarding-school in Cannes, and thence to university in Heidelberg—giving him, as he points out, an unrivalled facility in three languages, and the love of travel, not to speak of European glamour to add to American derring-do.

But it’s a youthful holiday in Monte-Carlo that introduces him to his future career when, on nightly visits to the Casino, he befriends a ”dapper little Frenchman” , Monsieur Blanchard, who enlists his help in watching another gambler—an American named Big Jim Cowley. Of course, M. Blanchard turns out to be from the Surete, Big Jim is soon unmasked as a crook of the first order, and the adventure not only whets Ashton-Wolfe’s appetite for more excitement, but sees him eventually accepted as assistant to Dr Alphonse Bertillon, in Paris, working with him on many extraordinary cases. In this capacity, he also collaborates on occasion with detectives from Scotland Yard and the US. Later, due to his familiarity with foreign languages, he acts as ”interpreter to the civil and criminal courts” in Britain–in which capacity he appears to have written many of his books.

Perhaps he might have been able to retire though, for his books were best-sellers in the genre, going through many editions worldwide, and garnering glowing reviews: ‘Out-thrilling the thrillers’–‘Exciting studies in international crime’–‘Unsurpassed as a narrator of authentic crime stories’. The public’s appetite for true as well as fictional crime in the Golden Age of the detective novel was huge, and as well as his books, Ashton-Wolfe wrote articles for magazines such as The Strand as well as the true-crime magazines which flourished in the Golden Age of the detective novel. And his stories influenced other contemporary writers. For instance, ‘Sapper’, the creator of the Bulldog Drummond adventure series, was inspired by two of Ashton-Wolfe’s cases: the diabolical Hanoi Shan, and the anarchist bandits Jules Bonnot and Octave Garnier, for his 1929 novel, The Temple Tower(as well as basing a character, Victor Matthews, on Ashton-Wolfe himself). And in a nice touch, Conan Doyle himself used a story recounted in Crimes of Love and Hate, about an Italian swindler who claimed to have created a death ray, as the basis for one of his Professor Challenger stories, The Disintegration Machine.

Ashton-Wolfe’s work was also the basis for a popular pot-boiler film, Secrets of the French Police(1932), where he is credited as writer. Other films may have been planned; but questions as to the authenticity of his recitals began to surface, and no others were produced. As well, with his style beginning to seem old-fashioned, his books started to fall out of favour, and eventually were forgotten so completely that not a single one remains in print.

Just how much—or how little–of his biography, let alone his claimed exploits, is authentic, I have no idea. Much of it, I suspect, needs to be taken with a fairly large grain of salt. Trying to find information that isn’t part of the persona Ashton-Wolfe built for himself is like trying to write on water. But it doesn’t really matter. For the books are truly wonderful period pieces, some of which deserve to be reprinted in their full glory, cheesy photographs and all.

Leave a comment Posted on September 7, 2016August 31, 2016 Authors, Blog tours, Book talk, competitions, Fiction, Guest posts

Jessica Whitman writes about Wild One

Today, I’m delighted to be part of a blog tour by popular fiction author Jessica Whitman, featuring her new novel, Wild One. In this guest post, she shares an experience many writers can relate to!

My writing ritual is not as glamorous as my heroine

by Jessica Whitman

Before I had kids, I wrote a bit like Kat does in the book. I had a very specific ritual for my writing, and heaven forbid everything was not just exactly so. I had to have a clean house, the right pot of tea (and I always drank out of the same cup), a room solely devoted to my work, a view from my window, loose, comfortable clothes, and glorious, uninterrupted, hours of night time silence. But now, I write catch as I can. The one thing I still do is work at night – which used to be a choice, but now is a necessity. Because I do need uninterrupted hours to really go deep, and it’s just about the only time I can get it.

As for losing my mojo, ironically, having children and having other work, has shown me that writer’s block was really just an indulgence on my part. When your time is severely limited, when you have deadlines to meet, when you are fighting for the hours you need to get your work done, the idea of wasting time sitting in front of a blank screen in pretty much unfathomable. And so I am far more productive since I had kids and jobs to juggle than I was before, when I had all the idle time in the world. The pressure has actually made me a better a writer.

Wild One by Jessica Whitman is published by Allen & Unwin, RRP $29.99, available now.

Thanks to Allen and Unwin, two lucky readers (Australian residents only) could win a copy of the book! Enter by filling in the contact form on my blog, putting in your name and street address(no PO Boxes please).

Off to SCBWI Conference!

Tomorrow, I’m off to the SCBWI Conference in Sydney, which I’m much looking forward to. In a bit of a turn up for the books, as it were, I’ve been invited to present not as an author, but as a publisher–representing Christmas Press, of course!

On Monday I’ll be viewing the Illustrator Showcase, looking at the work of new ad more established illustrators; conducting a manuscript critique; and appearing on a panel on building a brand while maintaining your passion, with some fabulous other panellists: author and former publisher Margaret Hamilton; managing editor of Australian Standing Orders, Belinda Bolliger; author and festival director Sandy Fussell; Harper Collins publicity manager, Holly Frendo, and brand creator, journalist and author Valerie Khoo. Should be a great session!

In other literary events this coming week, and still with my publishing hat on, I’m going to be supporting Christmas Press author John Heffernan at a talk he’s giving on Tuesday 6 about his book with us, Two Tales of Brothers from Ancient Mesopotamia, at Leichhardt Town Library; and also at a SCBWI event on Wednesday 7th, at the Children’s Bookshop in Beecroft when John will be part of a stellar list of authors presenting their books to readers.

And finally, on the Thursday, it’s back to popping my author hat on, as I’ll be having lunch with two lovely Scholastic publishers: Clare Hallifax and Ana Vivas!

Leave a comment Posted on August 12, 2016August 4, 2016 Book talk, Digital matters, Interviews, Literary world, Publishing business

Interview with Joel Naoum of Critical Mass

Today, I’m very pleased to be bringing readers an interview with Joel Naoum. Joel is a Sydney-based book publisher, editor and consultant. He currently runs Critical Mass, a consultancy for authors and publishers, and previously ran Pan Macmillan Australia’s digital-first imprint Momentum. In 2011 he completed the Unwin Fellowship researching digital publishing experimentation in the United Kingdom.

I met Joel when he was at Momentum and published two adult novels of mine, the Trinity duology. It was a really fantastic experience to work with Joel and the rest of the Momentum team, and it was with great regret that I heard last year about the closure of Momentum as a stand-alone imprint, and the subsequent departure of Joel and his team. So it’s been excellent to catch up with him and chat about his very interesting new business, Critical Mass.

First of all, Joel, congratulations on launching Critical Mass! Can you tell readers about how you came up with the idea for the business, and what you see as its main objective?

Well, the name is a bit of a joke from my previous job at Momentum. We used to bend over backwards to avoid using the word “momentum” in conversation (which used to come up quite a bit in a fast-moving digital publishing imprint). One of the phrases we used to use was “building critical mass”.

In a lot of ways Critical Mass is a logical follow-up to Momentum. When we conceived of Momentum six years ago we were trying to compete as a traditional publisher with the growing self-publishing trend. When digital sales began to plateau for traditional publishers, however, and I knew I was going to be leaving Momentum, I thought “If you can’t beat ’em, join ’em.” Self-publishing is still growing at a healthy rate, and authors have access to a massive range of services to help them. One thing I felt was missing, though, was the personal touch of a publisher or agent. Someone who can advise an author strategically, for their own benefit, about what steps to take next – whether you’re just starting out or you’re an established author. So I thought I could use the skills I’ve built up over the years to become a publisher-for-hire.

What have been the challenges and discoveries in setting up such a unique enterprise?

It’s been difficult to find a way of framing the services I offer and pointing out the value in them. If an author has never been published before (or represented by a good agent) then they likely don’t know the advantages. For a lot of indie authors, publishers are the enemy – someone who has stopped them from publishing; not someone who helps them make better decisions or finds them better services to improve the quality of their publishing. It’s also been challenging to wear two hats – Critical Mass is a consultancy both for authors and for publishers, so finding a way to do both without compromising either service is a juggling act.

How do you think your experience as founding director of Pan Macmillan’s digital imprint, Momentum, as well as the rest of your experience in the publishing has influenced and informed the direction and focus of Critical Mass?

I think Momentum in particular helped me make a transition from the slow-moving but high-quality world of traditional publishing to the lightning fast world of indie publishing. I understand what compromises need to take place to self-publish, but I also understand where not to cut corners in order to not compromise the book.

Critical Mass is aimed at three groups: authors, publishers, and content producers. With authors, you are offering a range of services to improve and streamline a self-publishing experience, which can be quite an undertaking for people attempting it alone. Can you explain the kinds of things you can do for authors going down the indie publishing route? In your opinion, when is self-publication a viable option for authors?

My first port of call is always to have a chat to authors who aren’t sure what they want to do to see if the type of project they’re working on suits self-publishing, or if they should attempt to pitch to a traditional publisher. If they’re better off attempting traditional publishing, I can help them polish their work and their pitch. If the project they’re working on suits self-publishing then I can help them decide on a publishing strategy, and then connect them to the various freelance editors, proofreaders, designers, marketers and other services to help them publish their book.

The biggest indicators for me that an author should self-publish is that they’re writing something that suits the market (books in series, genre fiction), they’re prolific (writing a book or two a year at least), they’re self-motivated and that they’re willing to experiment.

You are offering publishers a focus on technology solutions and possibilities for their business. Can you describe what’s involved?

There are a lot of advantages to introducing digital technologies to all aspects of a publishing workflow that a lot of publishers, particularly the smaller ones, haven’t yet considered. End-to-end digital workflows save money and time, and automate work as much as possible so that the human beings inside an organisation can make intelligent decisions where needed instead of wasting their time on repetitive tasks that don’t sell more books or make them any better.

Moving to content producers, such as bloggers, you are looking at an earlier stage of writing than is implied in the services you offer to authors, with advice, for instance, on whether their content might be suitable to produce as a book. What kinds of things would you be looking at, in such content?

“Content producer” was a difficult category to come up with, and I’m still not 100% happy with the phrase. Basically I’m talking about businesses or individuals who have content, but they’re not sure if it’s a book and if so what they could do with it. This includes anyone from advertising agencies looking into book publishing for their brands, or an individual blogger who has built a platform but isn’t sure whether their content would suit book publishing. Given the breadth of what “content” is, it’s hard to make general observations, but the idea is that I’ve spent most of my career making commercial decisions about whether digital content is a book or not, and I figure other businesses and individuals might find that experience useful.

What are your views on the publishing industry, both nationally and globally? What do you see as the trends?

Publishing of all stripes is in a pretty good place right now. Traditional publishers are making money from both print books and digital, all the while authors have more access than ever before to top notch services and platforms to get their books out there – whether they go with a traditional publisher or do their own thing.

I think things seem fairly stable right now, but the next five to ten years will likely see some more big shifts in the way audiences consume books, especially as the core audience for print books begins to age, and the people who grew up with iPads start to have kids of their own. I suspect the biggest areas for disruption are the health and wellness / lifestyle books and children’s books. I think this likely something to look for in the medium to long term, though, not in the next couple of years.

As always it’s also worth considering Amazon. They’re looking into launching more bricks and mortar bookstores in the US, and their in-house publishing imprints are becoming ever more powerful. If this end-to-end strategy pays big dividends you could see an even bigger juggernaut in the industry, which will likely cause more of the big traditional publishers to merge together in order to stay competitive.

Visit Critical Mass here.

Leave a comment Posted on August 10, 2016 Uncategorized

Lovely Book-by-book interview with me at Jon Appleton’s blog

My friend and fellow author Jon Appleton has a great interview series going at the moment on his blog. Called Book by Book, the series focuses on particular books–such as the first one you ever wrote, the one you wish you’d written, the one you know you’ll never write…and more! So far, Jon has interviewed Laurie Graham, Linda Newbery, Joanne Harris and Adele Geras. And now, it’s my turn to be interviewed!

Here’s an extract:

What was the first book you wrote?

It depends which way you look at it! The very first ‘book’ I created was at the age of seven when I wrote and illustrated The Adventures of Princess Alicia, which I stapled up so you could turn the pages – sadly, no copies survive! Then, the next big milestone was the first book I actually completed as an adult (after several false starts with novels I started and then abandoned). This was a big historical novel called The Canadian, based on some of the history of my father’s side of the family, in 19th century Quebec, against a background of rebellion. I was around 23 or so. I sent it around everywhere but it got nowhere though I got some nice comments about it from publishers who nevertheless rejected it! That was the case also with The Witch from Crow River, another historical novel set in Quebec, this time in the 17th century (when my ancestors had arrived there from western France). I had not even been to Canada at the time and I think that might perhaps have shown.

Anyway, just a few years later, when I was 27 and had just had my second child (in fact just a week later), I picked up a short story I’d written back when I was 16, which was set on the far north coast of NSW (which I thought terribly exotic but had in fact visited!) and thought, I could turn this into a novel. I did – and the result was my first published novel, The House in the Rainforest, an adult novel set partly in the ‘90s (when it was published) and partly in the ‘70s (when I’d first gone to the north coast). It was not autobiographical, it was just the setting I knew well. While I was waiting to hear back from the University of Queensland Press (to whom I’d sent the novel – they took more than a year to get back to me!) I wrote a children’s novel, a timeslip story set partly in country NSW, partly in medieval France. That was Fire in the Sky, my first published children’s novel. It was published the same year as The House in the Rainforest.

You can read the whole interview here.

Leave a comment Posted on August 9, 2016July 26, 2016 Authors, Blog tours, Book talk, Fiction, Food, Guest posts, Inspirations

How working in restaurants inspired Maggie’s Kitchen

Today I’m very pleased to be part of a blog tour by writer and producer Caroline Beecham, whose debut novel, Maggie’s Kitchen (Allen and Unwin), a most engaging historical novel about a most unusual restaurant, set against the background of World War Two, has just been published. In this interesting post, Caroline writes about one of the inspirations for her novel: and as a bonus to readers, provides a delicious recipe from the book!

How working in restaurants inspired Maggie’s Kitchen

by Caroline Beecham

Maggie’s Kitchen’ follows the fortunes of Maggie Johnson as she sets up and runs a British Restaurant in London during the Second World War. The story focuses on the relationships that develop with the community and in particular with Robbie, a twelve-year-old runaway, and Janek, a Polish refuge. Together they struggle through government red-tape to open the restaurant and then battle food shortages and community crisis to keep open their doors.

Real events inspired me to write ‘Maggie’s Kitchen’; I was intrigued by these British Restaurants that the Ministry of Food set up during the Second World War to help with the food shortages. I felt that there was a story there, but my first thoughts were that it would be too difficult; how would you approach writing about people living on rations and not getting enough to eat and make it appealing? It was my experience working in restaurants while I was growing up that gave me the answer; you become like a family, working as a team, building relationships with regulars, dealing with difficult personalities and daily dramas—even when its not wartime! You become part of a community and I realised that it was through this microcosm that Maggie’s story could take hold.

I still had to keep a check on the food descriptions though; it didn’t seem appropriate to give mouthwatering accounts of the food so I had to restrain myself there, and I hope that I got the balance right. The research for the book took a long time as I read other fiction and non-fiction books, trawled the National Archives in London and visited Islington where the novel is set. Working through the original Ministry of Food recipes was also time-consuming as they all had to be checked and I wanted to make them so that if anyone asked me I could say that I had tasted and tested them all. With the help of friends and family, they were all tried and some adjustments made; there is no powdered egg these days!

One of my favourites is the Crisp Coated Scotch Eggs recipe below. There was a requirement for fast food that could be eaten in a hurry, hot or cold, and the humble Scotch egg fitted the bill. The recipe is also appealing because it evokes the nostalgia of childhood. That’s one of the reasons that food can be so comforting; if it’s a dish we ate often as children then it can take us back. This theme of memory and food, and courage and food, is central to the book. The comforting nature of food is emphasized through Maggie directly nurturing Robbie with food, in the same way that she is able to offer comfort and food to the community through the restaurant.

For Maggie, the simple act of cooking is nurturing for her senses; even when she is trapped underground in the air raid shelter she is: ‘rubbing the sodden dirt between her fingertips, feeling the same cold coarse texture as if she were simply making breadcrumbs for shortbread or the topping for a fresh fruit crumble.’ And again, later on: ‘By the time she was at home in her kitchen and had taken the potatoes from her pockets and washed them, she was beginning to feel more settled, soothed by the restorative act of cooking.’ In a moment of self-doubt, when she is questioning her abilities, it takes Janek to remind her that: ‘In crisis we focus on what is real. What can be more real than providing people with their most basic need?’

Crisp Coated Scotch Eggs

Ingredients:

4 eggs

450 g sausage meat

Flour

Breadcrumbs

Preheat oven to 200°C/390°F. Hard-boil eggs and coat with sausage meat, moulding them into neat shapes. Dust with flour and roll in bread crumbs. Line a baking tray with baking paper and bake eggs until crispy. Serves 4.

· Maggie’s Kitchen by Caroline Beecham is published by Allen & Unwin, RRP $29.99, available now.

Booktopia

· Kindle

· Apple iBooks

More about the book:

Amid the heartbreak and danger of London in the Blitz of WWII, Maggie Johnson finds her courage in friendship and food.

They might all travel the same scarred and shattered streets on their way to work, but once they entered Maggie’s Kitchen, it was somehow as if the rest of the world didn’t exist.

When the Ministry of Food urgently calls for the opening of British Restaurants to feed tired and hungry Londoners during World War II, Maggie Johnson is close to realising a long-held dream.

But after struggling through government red-tape and triumphantly opening its doors, Maggie’s Kitchen soon encounters a most unexpected problem. Her restaurant has become so popular with London’s exhausted workers, that Maggie simply can’t get enough supplies to keep up with demand for food, without breaking some of the rules.

With the support of locals, and the help of twelve-year-old Robbie, a street urchin, and Janek, a Polish refugee dreaming of returning to his native land, the resourceful Maggie evades the first threats of closure from the Ministry. As she fights to keep her beloved Kitchen open, Maggie also tries desperately to reunite Robbie with his missing father as well as manage her own family’s expectations. Until she can no longer ignore the unacknowledged hopes of her own heart, and the discovery that some secrets have the power to change everything.

More about Caroline Beecham:

Caroline Beecham grew up at the English seaside and relocated to Australia to continue her career as a writer and producer in film and television. She has worked on numerous productions including a documentary about Princess Diana lookalikes, a series about journeys to the ends of the earth, as well as a feature film about finding the end of the rainbow. Caroline decided on a new way of storytelling and studied the craft of novel writing at the Faber Academy in 2012. She has an MA in Film & Television and a MA in Creative Writing and lives with her husband and two sons by Sydney harbour. Maggie’s Kitchen is her first published adult novel.

Feathers of the Firebird