The best advice Game Of Thrones author George RR Martin gave Joe Abercrombie

I was lucky enough to interview Joe Abercrombie for The Sunday Telegraph while he was touring Australia. The truncated interview appeared on March 15. Here's the full version:


Never become famous. It's one piece of advice British fantasy author Joe Abercrombie hopes to live by.

It's one thing that Game Of Thrones author George RR Martin told him although Abercrombie, whose works combine plenty of violence, sex and moral ambiguity, may have to put that to the test if, as rumoured, his books are turned into the "next" Game Of Thrones TV series.

"I think (fame) would be lovely when you haven't experienced it," Abercrombie, who was out in Australia to promote his latest book Half The World, said.

"But it can't go back in the box. George Martin told me, never become famous, never become recognisable. It's done great things for him and his series but he does regret it. He has reporters camping out the front of his house."

So how is Abercrombie going on the fame scale?

"The paparazzi run me over in their rush to get to the real celebrities," he said.

"Being recognised is extremely rare. It has happened but it is very rare and is often quite random, which is one of the nice things about being a writer. You can still go about your routine." 

He is realistic about the jump to television, which has catapulted Game Of Thrones into the consciousness.

"There is some nibbling going on but if I had signed up, I'd have to say 'no comment'," he said.

"So maybe I should say no comment!

"It all moves with incredibly wintry slowness and anything could fall apart at any moment."

Strangely for an author who made his name with ultra-violent, non-heroic fantasy books with lashings of sex, his latest series is aimed at teenagers.

"I think I did it to avoid boredom," he said.

"It seemed like a good opportunity to expand to a slightly different audience. It was quite liberating to write something without the encumbrance of my previous books."

How did his existing fans react to the change of pace.

"Generally very good, although there have been a few malcontents. Some people were surprised, most pleasantly surprised but it's not so much different in terms of its edge and moral ambiguity."

And for those younger readers who decide to pick up his MA-rated earlier works? At age 13, Abercrombie said he was reading "everything" and although he admits hearing that children aged as young as 10 have read his adult books is a "little surprising", he hopes young adults  will appreciate reading something that isn't "morally simple".

"I've never talked down to readers. Young adults are young but adult and the last thing they want is to be spoon-fed shiny, optimistic stuff."

Abercrombie was touring around Australia and is heartened by how well some bookstores are doing, in contrast to the UK.

"It makes you feel sad," he said.

"But a business model that doesn't work can't be sustained.

"I fear that people of my kids' generation will not get the experience of wandering into an Aladdin's Cave of books and enjoying that sense of community with a bookseller.

"But I'm not sure what to do to reverse it. The pricing genie is out of the bottle."

 

Guest blog with Momentum author Amanda Bridgeman

Amanda Bridgeman was kind enough to let me waffle away and guest blog for her in February, so now I am delighted to return the favour as this fellow Momentum author guest blogs her way on a grand tour!
So who is Amanda Bridgeman...?

Born and raised in the seaside/country town of Geraldton, Western Australia, Amanda hails from fishing and farming stock. The youngest of four children, her three brothers raised her on a diet of Rocky, Rambo, Muhammad Ali and AC/DC. Naturally, she grew up somewhat of a tomboy, preferring to watch action/sci-fi films over the standard rom-com, and liking her music rock hard. But that said, she can swoon with the best of them.

 She lived in ‘Gero’ for 17 years, before moving to Perth (WA) to pursue her dreams and study film & television/creative writing at Murdoch University (BA Communication Studies). Perth has been her home ever since, aside from a nineteen month stint in London (England).

She is a writer and a film buff. She loves most genres, but is particularly fond of the Spec-Fic realm. She likes action, epic adventures, and strong characters that draw you in, making you want to follow them on their wild, rollercoaster rides. She has so far released three books in the Aurora series -Aurora: Darwin, Aurora: Pegasus, and Aurora: Meridian. The fourth book will be released this month.
 

Want to know more?
Follow Amanda here:

Web: www.amandabridgeman.com.au

Facebook: Amanda Bridgeman

Twitter: @Bridgeman_Books

Pinterest: http://www.pinterest.com/BridgemanBooks/

And of course her books can be found here:

 

 

 

Today Duncan has invited me to chat about being a female writer and writing from a male perspective. I guess when I started writing the Aurora series I never stopped to think about it like that – specifically me being a woman writing a male character and being inside his thoughts. Nor that I was also writing an African-American PoV – as a white woman. When I started writing, first and foremost I saw Harris as a lead character in a particular story, and a very human character at that. After all, that is essentially what we all are: human. Whether male or female. And I think that’s the first step in nailing a character – understanding the fundamental basis of them.

Of course it’s important to get the gender mindset right... If your readers don’t believe the character, their actions, their thought processes, then a writer is in a spot of trouble. So Duncan’s question got me thinking.

I’m not the most girly of girls. I tend to think of myself as 50/50 mix: 50% tomboy, 50% girl. I grew up with three older brothers – the oldest being 8 years old than me – so it’s fair to say they had a heavy influence on my upbringing. My brothers liked the ‘usual’ blokey things like footy, boxing, and rock ‘n’ roll. As a kid I watched the same TV and films they did. From The A-Team and the Alien series, to Rocky, Rambo, Jaws, and The Thing – they were all (what was considered then) male-dominated genres and I’m not sure whether I was ‘conditioned’ to like them because they did or whether I just inherently did.

So, as the youngest, it was only natural that I would look up to my brothers a lot. Whether it was just a kid sister thing or whether it was actually the observant writer in me taking note, I like to think that I just kinda became familiar with how guys act and think. At least in a non-romantic sense. And that is what Saul Harris is to Carrie Welles. He’s her captain, he’s a colleague. It’s a platonic (yet incredibly important) relationship. And I guess my upbringing made me an expert in that (and probably assisted with writing the Carrie Welles PoV too) – growing up in a male dominated house, with blokey brothers and an ex-farm boy for a father. Even my mother isn’t overly girly. She’s the practical kind, and probably stronger than all of us put together. But that’s another blog post…

Plutonic relationships aside, my brothers are all very heterosexual men (all three married and two of them with kids). They were also never shy about pointing out actresses and models they loved growing up (Elle Macpherson, Elizabeth Shue, Demi Moore, etc), so again, perhaps I was ‘conditioned’ to understand/see things from a male perspective in that regard, listening to their comments and conversations, and these observations could only help with writing the actions and dialogue of the rest of the male characters in the series.

I didn’t realise it until recently, but I have always been a people watcher. Everyone I speak to, have any kind of dealings with, I tend to subconsciously observe them. I notice facial/physical features, speech, and mannerisms, etc. More importantly, I always find myself analysing why they are the way they are. Especially people I know well. Sometimes I’ll question why someone is stubborn or afraid or catty or a tight-ass, etc, etc, and I look at their upbringing, or the stress on their life at the moment, and through this analysis I seem to understand why they are acting the way they are acting – how all the little pieces of their life come together and make them up in that very moment. And I realise now just how useful this observation is as a writer – whether writing male or female characters. Humans are complex, period. We are made up of a thousand different experiences, each one different, and it’s important to capture that in your writing to make your characters feel real to the reader.

So when I started writing Aurora: Darwin, the first book in the series, I didn’t really consciously think about having a main character that was male (or African-American for that matter). I just suddenly had this image of a tough but fair leader, and (male, African-American) Captain Saul Harris was born. So the image of him came to me first. When it came to writing him and fleshing him out, I guess the ‘conditioning’ to understand the male mind (to a certain point) was thanks to having three older brothers, but I also drew from my general ‘observation’ tanks to bring him to life - derived in part from every other male I have met, or seen on film/tv, or in interviews, on the news, etc.

Of course I didn’t get everything right the first go. One of my brothers was actually a beta reader and I distinctly recall him saying to me once: “There is no way Harris would use the word ‘buff’” (in reference to another soldier’s physique). So I scrapped that and used another word instead. Anything that bordered on ‘a little too soft for a military man’ was quickly pointed out and altered. After all, if my ‘average man’ brother thought it was too soft, it was definitely going to be way too soft for a tough captain, right?

That said, I think it provides a great disservice to military personnel everywhere to portray them as cardboard cut-out, action-packed, emotionless, indestructible heroes. Because they’re not. They’re humans doing an incredibly tough job (rightly or wrongly), but they are human none-the-less. Humans, who have families and friends, who will feel the same gamut of emotions that everyone else does, regardless of whether they are male or female. Humans, who bruise, bleed and die. Humans that hurt, just like the rest of us.

So, did I get Captain Saul Harris and the other male characters right? I certainly gave it my best shot based on my experiences and observations in life.

But ultimately, I guess that’s for the reader to decide.

 

 

 

 

Guest post with author Justin Woolley: Can men write strong female characters?

By the end of The Last Quarrel, I hope that readers will be debating who is the real hero of the series: is it Fallon, who desperately wanted to be a hero or Bridgit, who wanted nothing of the sort?

Now, while I have always endeavoured to have strong female characters in all of my books, there is an ongoing debate as to whether men can write powerful women, and vice versa. With three sisters, a wife of almost 22 years and a teenage daughter I think I have some  understanding f the female psyche.

My wife may disagree!

But it is still a valid question. One of the UK's greatest fantasy writers, the late David Gemmell, only wrote one book with a woman as his main character, Ironhand's Daughter. It was his least successful and, he admits, his least favourite.

I have invited fellow Momentum Books author Sophie Masson to consider this question from the point of view of women writing strong men and now fellow Momentum Books author Justin Woolley writes from the point of view of men writing strong women.

Can it be done? You be the judge ...

 

Justin Woolley has been writing stories since he could first scrawl with a crayon. When he was six years old he wrote his first book, a 300-word pirate epic in unreadable handwriting called 'The Ghost Ship'. He promptly declared that he was now an author and didn't need to go to school. Despite being informed that this was, in fact, not the case, he continued to make things up and write them down. 

A Town Called Dust, Justin’s debut novel was published in November, 2014 by Momentum Books.

In his other life Justin has been an engineer, a teacher and at one stage even a magician. His handwriting has not improved. 

You can find Justin’s website at www.justinwoolley.net or on Twitter: @Woollz.

GENDER BENDING AS AN AUTHOR

After Duncan joined the author top 5 series I have running on my blog with his wonderful post about Hollywood’s top 5 epic fails in movie battles he asked me to write a guest post for his blog in return. We had a brief discussion about what I could write about. I’ve never been that great at thinking up interesting topics for blog posts, thinking about the intricacies of a post-apocalyptic Australian society, sure, creating an alternate timeline in which Nazi forces occupy England, no problem, writing a story about the fallout of an alien race crash-landing on Earth, yup, but coming up with blog topics, not so much. Duncan helped me out with some ideas and the suggestion that really resonated with me was a question that fellow Momentum author Sophie Masson had just tackled as well, can authors effectively write characters of the opposite gender?

 

We thought it would be interesting if Sophie came at the question as a woman writing male characters that I could be the other side of the coin, can men effectively write female characters? I think this topic is particularly interesting to me as my debut novel ‘A Town Called Dust’ has dual protagonists, Squid, a young orphan boy, and Lynn, a girl who is the daughter of a military Colonel.

 

 

Many of my readers – the majority of which have been female thus far – have commented that Lynn was their favourite character, that she had depth, was strong in her convictions and yet had heart. So from that perspective can men write successful female characters?

 

Yes.

 

End of blog post.

 

Wait though. Perhaps it’s not that simple because what those readers are actually commenting on are traits of people, not specifically female traits. That reminds me of everybody’s favourite genocidal author George R.R. Martin when he was asked in an interview how he writes such great female characters and he said, “You know, I’ve always considered women to be people.” That’s what I would say too. I wrote Lynn as a person. She has feelings and desires and worries that are universal and resonate with people.

 

To be honest while I was writing Lynn I was thinking about her more as a sixteen year old than as a female. I created her to reflect issues and concerns that many teenagers face. Being a female is often at the heart of her struggles – not being allowed to join the army because of her gender – but this is meant to reflect the way teens often clash with authority.

 

An interesting thought I had was that I wrote Lynn in the third person. It seems to me that many books I’ve read written by a male but containing strong, well-rounded female characters are often written in the third person. Perhaps there is something in that. Perhaps it is easier to write a character of the opposite gender in third person as you do not necessarily have to narrate their internal voice. The next series I’m working on once The Territory series is wrapped up has a female protagonist told from the first person – this may be the jump that makes writing a convincing female character more difficult.

 

I am a man and although I have a wife, mother, sisters, female friends, am a feminist in the true sense of the word and ultimately feel that I understand women reasonably well I will never be a woman. I will never truly know how a woman’s thoughts and feelings are experienced in a different way to my own. Trying to hear and inhabit that voice will always be more difficult.

 

We should still try it though because creating varied female characters through empathy and understanding is what male authors should be striving to do. Hopefully we can reach a time when we don’t hear talk about ‘strong female characters’ not because they don’t exist but because we’ve reached a point that they are commonplace. Then maybe we’ll come to realise that deep down character has nothing to do with reproductive organs.

 

Guest blog with author Sophie Masson: Can women write male characters and vice versa?

By the end of The Last Quarrel, I hope that readers will be debating who is the real hero of the series: is it Fallon, who desperately wanted to be a hero or Bridgit, who wanted nothing of the sort?

Now, while I have always endeavoured to have strong female characters in all of my books, there is an ongoing debate as to whether men can write powerful women, and vice versa. With three sisters, a wife of almost 22 years and a teenage daughter I think I have some  understanding f the female psyche.

My wife may disagree!

But it is still a valid question. One of the UK's greatest fantasy writers, the late David Gemmell, only wrote one book with a woman as his main character, Ironhand's Daughter. It was his least successful and, he admits, his least favourite.

I have invited fellow Momentum Books author Sophie Masson to consider this question ...

If you don't know Sophie Masson then obviously you have been missing out:

Born in Indonesia of French parents, and brought up in Australia and France, Sophie Masson is the award-winning author of more than 60 novels for readers of all ages, published in Australia and many other countries. Her adult novels include the recent Trinity: The Koldun Code (Momentum, 2014) and the popular historical fantasy trilogy, Forest of Dreams (Random House Australia, 2001), while her most recent YA novel is the fairytale thriller, The Crystal Heart (Random House Australia, 2014).

You can check out all about Sophie online:

Website: www.sophiemasson.org

Blog: www.firebirdfeathers.com

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/SophieMassonAuthor

Twitter: https://twitter.com/sophiemasson1

 

Sophie kindly also let me write a guest post for her, about the way books and TV shows have exchanged the way they are being shown - books now episodically and TV shows as an entire series package. Read it here:

 

And now, here's Sophie's thoughts on the men writing women writing men question ...

SHAPE SHIFTING

The idea that you could only write from the viewpoint of your own age group, background, sex, species, or even experiences, seemed absurd and restrictive to me even as a kid. What room was there for imagination in that? Ignoring this whole notion, I shape-shifted with gusto, writing stories from a multitude of viewpoints, from twin detectives to enchanted frogs, princesses to ghosts, mighty warriors to globe-trotting postage stamps(really!) There was no limit, as far as I was concerned.

Now, though I might have grown up and learned a good deal more about writing, my hackles still rise at the idea that because of my physical self, my imaginative self can't shape-shift. If I feel like writing from the viewpoint of a teenage boy, exiled princess, betrayed soldier, werewolf girl, hunted criminal, spellbound artist or war correspondent, then damnit, that's just what I'm going to do—and in fact have done. And apparently successfully, judging from the reactions of my readers.

Nobody asks how you can possibly write from the viewpoint of say, a werewolf, a sorcerer, or a ghost. It's just assumed the imagination takes over. But when it comes to gender, well-meaning people can sound as though they're think it's a far greater stretch. The idea that a female writer can write from a male viewpoint, successfully, is not as hotly contested as the reverse, but it still hovers there.

So I thought it might be interesting, rather than just talking in generalities, to look at an actual recent experience of writing from the viewpoint of a male character in my recent novel, Trinity: The Koldun Code, first in the Trinity series.

The story is basically told from the viewpoint of two characters: Helen Clement, a 22 year old Londoner in Russia for the first time; and Maxim Serebrov, a disillusioned, divorced Moscow homicide detective in his late thirties. Maxim does not appear in the first few chapters of the book, and he is not, so to speak, the 'hero' of the story(who is young, brave and handsome Alexey Makarov), but as soon as Maxim made his presence known to me, I knew both that he was a very important character—and that I wanted to write some of the story from his viewpoint. Though I had to research his professional environment—such as how police ranks work in Russia, how an investigation is conducted there, the relationship between different police units etc—somehow writing from within Maxim felt very natural to me. I saw the family he'd come from; I saw the flat he lived in(I've been to Moscow twice); I understood his sceptical stoicism and contradictory open-minded generosity; I felt the sweetness and bitterness in him, the harshness and the hope. Seeing events from his eyes was a deeply satisfying experience; in fact sometimes, and contrary to received wisdom, it felt easier to write from his viewpoint than from Helen's. And readers, both male and female, seem to really respond to him too.

And so, in the second book in the series, which I'm writing now, Maxim has even more of a presence, alongside Helen, but so does another important male voice, a character whose unexpected appearance changes everything for everybody, including Maxim, and Helen herself. And he is a very different sort of person—secretive, unreliable and difficult to read, he is someone I have to write slowly, carefully, unpeeling his layers, for he is not someone I warmed to straight away, as I did with Maxim. Yet he is proving more and more interesting to write as he changes not only everything but also himself.

Have one of these five characters named after you in my next book

The Last Quarrrel Episode 1 is out on January 22, with each of the four subsequent episodes released a fortnight after the first.
Meanwhile I have almost finished the first draft of book two of the series, The Bloody Quarrel.
I have five characters who are currently nameless in this book.
Now, I could go online and grab some random names for them - or you could have your name given to one of them.
All you have to do is review one or more episodes of The Last Quarrel on one of the many sites available - or review it on all of them!
Send me the link, either through my website www.duncanlay.com or via the email address on my blog and let me know which of the following characters you might be interested in having named after yourself.
I'm not looking for the most suck-worthy review but instead the more intelligent ones.
So, if you like the idea of playing a pivotal part in the next book in the series, get reading, get reviewing and let me know!
Here's the list:

1) Secret agent of the crown (female/male)
2) A Boluk-bashi (captain) of the Kotterman army (male)
3) A Courbaci (Colonel) of the Kottermna army (male)
4) A harbour lookout (male/female)
5) An angry mother (female)

You can also let me know if you're interested in having them die (pleasantly or unpleasantly) in the third book, The Poisoned Quarrel!
Over to you now...

The maps for the lands of The Last Quarrel

A passing resemblance to some Irish names is more than a coincidence! The people of this land are the Gaelish and their use of the shillelagh will be one of the many aspects explored in The Last Quarrel

Gaelland is a relatively small island nation, which finds itself uncomfortably close to the huge Kotterman Empire, which provides all sorts of interesting trade, even introduces potatoes to the Gaelish - but perhaps is also interested in more than just the Gaelish wool, coal and tin...

Why The Hobbit Battle Of Five Armies does great fights but bad battles

I've just seen The Hobbit BOTFA and there are some truly extraordinary fight scenes. Inventive, jaw-dropping, eye-watering and pure brilliant.
Without giving too much away, what Legolas does is stunning, while the use of Battle Boars, Moose, carts, trolls and the rest is amazing.
But, and here's the but, the battle tactics are so dumb!
I nearly hurled popcorn at the screen at one point.
The dwarves form the perfect shield wall, bristling with spears. Perfect, I thought. Stick elven bowmen behind that and the orcs would be slaughtered.
But nooooooo.
The elves jump OVER the shieldwall to fight man-to-man! Or elf-to-orc, actually.
It drove me crazy!
They are outnumbered but have the best bowmen in the world. Why not pile up the orcs with your bowmen and then use the dwarves as a perfect bulwark for the human pikemen?
If they had fought with an ounce of brains, they wouldn't have needed the eagles, they would have formed a barricade of the dead orcs and then the orcs could not use their numbers and would have been compressed and slaughtered.
Obviously it would not have made for visually compelling viewing, and there would have been less need for death or glory charges.
But that's the point of battles. You don't have to look good to win. You just have to win.
Still, at least it was better than having Bilbo hit his head and miss the whole bloody thing!
So, go ahead and enjoy the individual fights but remember, they could have won the battle so much easier, with so much less loss of extras!