Cecilia Dart-Thornton

Melbournite Cecilia Dart-Thornton is one of Australia’s top fantasy writers, with several lengthy fantasy series under her belt since she was discovered on the internet and a publisher snapped her up at the beginning of this decade.

Her debut series, The Bitterbynde Trilogy is packed full of interesting ideas and creatures drawn from traditional European folk tales and legend, as well as a hint of romance. You can find Keeping the Door‘s review of the first book in the series, The Ill-Made Mute, here.

Dart-Thornton’s second series, The Crowthistle Chronicles, concluded in 2007 with Fallowblade. The series is similarly concerned with Celtic folklore.

But Dart-Thornton isn’t a one-dimensional persion; she has various other areas of her life that are important to her. The author, according to Wikipedia, is a keen supporter of animal rights and wilderness conservation, and is also interested in clay culpting, performing folk music, and even digital media. We conducted an email interview with Dart-Thornton to find out what’s up and what’s next.

With The Crowthistle Chronicles finished, what can you let slip about new projects you’re working on?

I can let slip that my projects are too many and too few. Too many in that as ever I find myself inundated with ideas for stories, but too few in that I have pieces of unfinished work all over the place, because my muse currently appears to have attention deficit disorder. I have always been a writer who’s carried on the waves of passion and spontaneity. If I feel like writing, I write. If not, I don’t. Forcing myself to write kills creativity and leads to a lack-lustre result. If I feel charged with excitement about a story I’ll want to do nothing *but* write.

Recently, however, I have been so taken with new ideas (not always associated with writing) that I have not been seeing old ones through to their conclusion. So there you have it. I may never finish anything again, and if so, ‘c’est la vie’. The world will have to content itself with seven finished novels, a couple of short stories and half a dozen unfinished manuscripts from me!

Having said that, my novella The Enchanted will be coming out next year in an anthology tentatively titled Australian Legends of Fantasy, edited by Jack Dann and Jonathan Strahan. Harpercollins will be publishing it.

(Postscript: being a fully paid-up nerd, one of the projects that I’ve been dabbling in is web design, so feel free to take a look at my lovely new website at http://www.dartthornton.com/ and my webshop at http://www.my-bookcafe.com.)

When reading The Bitterbynde Trilogy, I was struck by the lush language you used in describing your created world. Where did you pick up so many words that we rarely (but probably should) use in the English language?

Ever since childhood, when I read (experienced would be a better term) the Narnia books and then The Lord of the Rings, I have always wanted to create a world of my own. When I was writing Bitterbynde I knew that this was it, and I wanted to pour everything into it – my obsession with languages, my fascination with meteorology, with the seasons, botany, flight, geology, customs and traditions, folklore… all that I loved would go into the making of this world.

In my ‘spare’ time I paint pictures in oils, and when writing The Bitterbynde Trilogy I felt like an artist trying to capture my inner world with words instead of paints. And I wanted to use every shade on the palette that I could possibly blend.

Shakespeare, one of my literary heroes, had an extraordinary vocabulary. ‘About.com’ says, “While most English speakers can boast of a 4,000-word vocabulary, Shakespeare’s vocabulary spanned over 29,000 words.”

Given the quarter of a million words that make up the English language (depending on one’s definition of ‘word’1), I thought, why not use them as they were meant to be used? Why restrict yourself to ‘red’ when you could have nuances of ruby, garnet, scarlet, crimson, amaranth, carmine, vermilion, alizarin and more? Why stick to buttered toast when you could have a twenty course feast? Why not add yet another rhetorical question and consider dipping one’s toe in a puddle as compared to splashing and diving in a life-size champagne fountain?

For years it’s been my habit to read dictionaries and thesauri for recreation so I was able to indulge myself most luxuriously. And self-indulgence was what the creation of The Bitterbynde sprang from. I delighted, too, in resurrecting a number of archaisms that appealed to me. I am a hoarder, not a discarder, and it galls me to think of perfectly good words falling out of use.

Your books so far seem to draw on much Celtic and broader European folklore – but not necessarily the traditional Tolkienesque tropes of the fantasy genre. Do you anticipate that you will continue to be fascinated by this area of myth, or can you see yourselve using different settings?

The folklore of the United Kingdom and Eire is a life-long love, for me. I can never visualise myself losing interest in it. Discovering some new creature or traditional tale still makes the hairs on the back of my neck rise. Nonetheless, one of the part-finished works in my ‘filing system’ deals with creatures inspired, instead, by Biblical myth. I would hesitate to write about elves, dwarves and orcs, because The Lord of Fantasy has already done so, and in short, none can compare. The rest of us are simply Not Worthy.

It’s rare that we find an Australian fantasy author whose work is so well-developed (Keeping the Door is based in Sydney). What is your opinion of the Australian fantasy author scene, and what can be done to improve it?

Hmm. You know Renai, I have a really nice back garden. Visitors exclaim over it because it is a flourishing edible landscape of real beauty and productiveness. But no one ever asks me my opinion on the Australian gardening scene. Thank goodness – because I might be okay at looking after my own patch but I have very little idea of what other people are doing in theirs. (Except when a dose of curly-leaf blows in on my nectarine tree and I know that gardeners nearby haven’t been using Bordeaux Mixture).

I do know that writers such as Alison Goodman and Trudi Canavan have been spectacularly successful internationally, and I have a smattering of other knowledge, but I find it hard to read any fantasy these days a) in case I unconsciously pick up someone else’s ideas and b) because I find myself making technical judgements instead of losing myself in the story.

I do feel that the Internet has made us all more global than local and that there is no reason why an Australian writer should have more or less of a chance to become successful than writers anywhere else.

Critics of your work have negatively focused on the plot and character development in your novels, while praising your descriptive and world-building skills. How would you respond to such criticism?

Renai, it was *you* who said this in your ‘Ill-Made Mute’ review! “…it is in this world that the strength of The Ill-Made Mute lies. …in comparison, the plot and characterisation displayed in the book are somewhat lacking. … I felt they were a little one-dimensional.”

[Editor's note: Fair point!]

And I have no argument. When I wrote the trilogy I was writing it for an audience of one – myself. I wrote the whole trilogy – more than half a million words – not knowing whether it would ever be published. After it was finished I did not show it to anyone for months, and then I only let a close friend take a look. Long afterwards I decided to reveal it to the world, and if the world had rejected it, I would have been disappointed but not shattered. I had done what I set out to do and that would have been enough.

While I like people, I am not consumed by curiosity as to their motives, their idiosyncrasies, their quirks and characteristics. Of course people interest me, but so does the wide world with its myriad surprises. My desire was not to explore characters so much as to discover this virtual world. I make no apology for that. I have never done a course in creative writing and at that stage did not know that writers are ‘supposed to’ develop characters and make stories character-driven.

I did not know that we are not ‘supposed’ to indulge in long descriptions, nor that the literary community largely considers it a grievous error to employ ‘said-bookisms’. I was writing by instinct, not according to the manual. Even my wide vocabulary, I learned later, might normally have proved a stumbling block in the path to publication.

Three of the characters in particular did interest me, and these are the ones best-beloved by readers. They are Ashalind, Thorn and Sianadh. People tell me they *love* these three; that they have wept and laughed with them and cared deeply for them. And yes, the other characters probably were one-dimensional. As for the plot – I had no idea where it was taking me. But it must have had something going for it because well before the final book was due to hit the shops I had received hundreds of email begging for it to be released earlier, and it had to be re-printed in the first week of publication.

I feel that some of the ideas in your books have been gently subversive in the fantasy genre; for example, themes against animal cruelty. Did you set out to provoke discussion in some areas, even subtly?

‘Gently subversive’ is probably something of an understatement. I would tend to use an analogy involving a hammer. There was not a lot of subtlety about it. Yes I was aware that people would probably resent being preached at about animal rights in the Crowthistle Chronicles, but unfortunately for me I am a person whose conscience makes her do what seems to be the right thing even when it is against her own interests.

The fantasy genre as a whole appears to be expanding and taking on new life as so-called urban fantasy (vampires, werewolves in modern life etc) is attracting a lot of attention. What is your reaction to the strong challenge posed to traditional fantasy tropes by urban fantasy?

Bring it on! The more fantasy the better; it’s enriching the genre. I wouldn’t consider urban fantasy as a challenge – it’s more of an augmentation. Buffy? Can’t get enough. Twilight? In all likelihood I would have swooned over it as a teenager.

Over the years, have you gotten a feel for what kind of reader is typically attracted to your books?

The kind of person who resembles me. The kind of person who loves the pre-Raphaelite artists, the romantic poets, the classic authors and movies such as Labyrinth, Willow and The House of Flying Daggers; people whose inner life is set in some misty European-type landscape of snow-capped mountains, dark forests and fast-flowing rivers; people who are kind, intuitive, creative and of course *highly* intelligent with *superb* taste in literature.

What have been your favourite books that you have read over the past several years?

I recommend a book of short stories by Kelly Link called The Wrong Grave. Yes it is fantasy, which I’ve mentioned I normally avoid, but the publishers were kind enough to send it to me for review, so I gave it a look and was truly delighted. During the past few years I’ve greeted Jonathan Strange and Mr Norell with rapture, and I am always ready to devour any of Pratchett’s Discworld books.

I choose to read ‘popular nonfiction’ by people like Simon Winchester, Victoria Finlay and Dava Sobel. I like a good Bill Bryson too, but just to show I’m not *all* about erudition and hilarity I recently enjoyed The Forest of Hands and Teeth by Carrie Ryan, a thrilling zombie romp-in-the-woods.

Could you describe your writing environment (eg desk, computer, room etc)?

A second storey room with a huge window overlooking my leafy garden which is filled with singing birds. Green boughs overhang my balcony. I write at my best among tree tops. I theorise this is something to do with humanity’s ape-like ancestors seeking the heights for shelter; some residual pre-historic gene I ended up with.

There are books and mess strewn everywhere throughout the room, not by my choosing but because I am a hoarder with too many interests. I would prefer uncluttered tidiness but it doesn’t happen to me. Besides, I need my precious books near at hand for reference and entertainment.

Décor colours are calm yet invigorating – a kind of pale peachy-apricot shade. Colours are important. Sunlight is important, and birdsong is vital. (Human music is banned.) Blowing leaves are vital, too. In fact in my ‘baby book’ my Mum recorded that one of my favourite occupations at the age of a few months was to lie in a bassinet in the garden and stare at blowing leaves.

I work on a notebook computer and if any computer company out there would like to sponsor me I’ll say I’m using theirs. Except that now I’ve completely blown my chance as everyone will know I was ready to say *anything* in return for a deal. What a sellout…

Anyway, back to search engine optimisation now. Thanks for interviewing me Renai, it’s been a pleasure!

Greg Egan is one of Australia’s top science fiction authors, with seven novels under his belt and a slew of collections and short stories under his belt. His 1998 novella Oceanic won the 1999 Hugo Award for Best Novella.

Egan’s work is usually referred to as “hard” sci-fi, which is a sub-section of the genre which often focuses on scientific accuracy or detail. It’s easy to understand why the author can bring this approach to his writing when you realise that he holds a Mathematics degree from the University of Western Australia and has a second career as a software developer.

However, as the best sci-fi authors do, he also has a focus on showing the implications for humans of the technology that he writes about. His books are available widely, and watch out for his next novel Zendegi, which is due out in mid-2010.

When doing research about Egan we also found several other interviews going back quite a ways; one with Piffle, with Eidolon, and a short one about Incandescence.

There is also a lengthy rant on Tor.com from Jon Evans wondering why Egan isn’t considered a superstar of the genre. The easy answer is that many people do consider him so :)

From your website it looks like you have two new books upcoming: Zendegi and Orthogonal. What can you let slip about their current status and subject matter?

Zendegi is set in Iran in the very near future; the first part of the novel takes place in 2012. The ultimate focus of the story involves brain mapping and virtual reality, but the backgrounds of all the characters are entwined with the Iranian pro-democracy movement in various ways. It’s due to be published in mid-2010.

Orthogonal is a novel I’m working on right now; it’s set in a universe with laws of physics that are different from our own. One small change in a fundamental equation — just turning a minus sign into a plus sign — leads to some incredibly rich variations in everything from the way biology works to the relativistic effects of space travel.

Do you have any other writing projects on the boil?

No, Orthogonal is taking up all of my time right now.

There was a fairly large gap between your 2002 book Schild’s Ladder and 2008′s Incandescence. Why so large a gap between books?

In 2002, I got involved with the refugee support movement, trying to help some of the asylum seekers who were in long-term detention in Australia. It really was a disgraceful situation; many people were locked up for three or four years, and some for as long as seven. That ended up monopolising my attention for about four years, so I didn’t get much writing done.

And though the current Australian government has been much better than the last one, in recent weeks the whole issue has been turned into an hysterical, politicised mess once more.

We love the notice on your website about photographs of you. In addition, you’ve been described as a famously reclusive author. What’s the background to your approach there?

Photographs of your friends and family mean something to you, because they remind you of people you’ve interacted with face-to-face for years. A photograph of someone like an author, even if you happen to like their books, is utterly meaningless. Actually, the bizarre situation which the note on my web page addresses — the fact that some idiots have been stealing photos from the web sites of other people called “Greg Egan”, and putting them on SF sites as photos of me — only proves the point.

At one stage, about two dozen SF sites had a picture of the same professor of engineering from Monash University that they were representing as a photo of me. But apart from being incredibly rude to this man whose photo they’d stolen, what difference did it make to any reader that this picture wasn’t actually me? None at all.

As for being “reclusive”, that’s pretty funny; I spend my time with people whose company I enjoy. If there are authors who genuinely enjoy spending their long weekends at SF conventions, that’s fine, but I’d be bored out of my skull.

Your work is often described as “hard” science fiction, in that it is characterised by an emphasis on scientific accuracy. And yet it often also focuses on what might be termed an exploration of how technology has the potential to change what it means to be human (a classic sci-fi trope). Is there a tension between the two ideas, and if so, how do you negotiate it?

I’m interested in science as a subject in its own right, just as much as I’m interested in the effects of technology on the human condition. In many things I write the two will be combined, but even then it’s important to try to describe the science accurately. In a novel such as Incandescence, though, the entire point is understanding the science, and it really doesn’t bother me in the least that it’s not an exploration of the human condition.

There are times when it’s worth putting aside the endless myopic navel-gazing that occupies so much literature, in order to look out at the universe itself and value it for what it is.

Australian readers such as myself get a little thrill whenever we pick up a local mention in your books; it’s rare that our country features at all in sci-fi/fantasy literature. What’s your opinion of the state of the Australian sci-fi literature scene, and what can be done to boost it?

Writers should just write to the best of their ability; everything else follows from that.

Computer science is advancing rapidly, yet not always in the arenas which earlier sci-fi writers thought it would. In particular, we appear to have quite a few barriers in the area of artificial intelligence.

Are you personally disappointed by this, or happy to remain in a world where humans are relatively alone for a little bit longer?

I can’t say I’m disappointed, or surprised, that we don’t have artificial intelligence yet. I’ve written things where conscious software is created in the near future, but it’s usually in the form of direct copies of human minds, so it’s more a matter of us migrating from our bodies than creating a new form of intelligence from scratch.

At the moment we’re so far away from creating any kind of conscious software that it’s hard to know which prospects are realistic, and which are pure fantasy. When we do finally grope our way towards some tangible results, I hope we proceed slowly and carefully, because this has the potential to lead to a lot of suffering.

The present generation of humans emerged out of hundreds of millions of years of animals tearing each other’s throats out, and tens of thousands of years of people being prey to famine and disease. We might aspire to do much better than that, but creating an entirely new kind of intelligence that’s happy with its own place in the world is an incredibly daunting prospect.

What methods do you use to keep up to date on mathematical and scientific theory, and to research it for your writing?

I read a lot of general science, and more specialised journal papers and textbooks in areas that I’m focusing on.

What current technologies most fascinate you when you think about their future potential?

Brain mapping is going to be an immensely interesting and important field. In practical terms, it will lead to all kinds of assistive technology for people with disabilities, and in the longer term it’s
going to shed light on the nature of every mental process.

I usually find your books easy to get into right from the first few chapters. But some sections have attracted criticism from reviewers for what has been described as lengthy technical exposition. How would you respond to this criticism?

People with no interest in science are very well catered for in science fiction; 99% of SF is written for them. I make no apology for contributing to the 1% that treats science as something of interest in its own right.

Lastly, in my household we are also vegetarians. What is your favourite vegetarian meal?

Eggplant parmigiana.

Writers in general are just not sane, according to Karen Miller, Australian author of the 2005 novel The Innocent Mage and a whole host of other science fiction and fantasy works.

Writing as a guest blogger on the Babel Clash, the science fiction blog of book retailer Borders to coincide with the launch of her new book The Prodigal Mage, Miller says writers simply have a kink in the brain:

“It’s a kink that means we are at the same time deeply and intimately involved in the process of being human while standing outside that process watching it happen. It means that we can never truly be at one with our own lives because we can’t ever totally lose ourselves in the unconscious moment. A part of us is always conscious, always watching, analysing, pulling the moment apart so we can put it back together again as fiction.”

To illustrate her point, Miller says her first thought during a car accident during her university years wasn’t of whether she could die or what was going to happen next. Instead, her brain went straight to Star Wars. “Wow,” she thought. “This is what it was like when Luke crashed on Dagobah.”

“In what could’ve been my last moments of life, I was thinking about Star Wars,” Miller added. “And by the way, if that doesn’t make me a fan then I don’t know what would.”

Commentary
Setting aside Miller’s more general argument about writers and going onto a slightly tangential track, the idea that science fiction and fantasy writers in particular may be a few bottles short of a six pack in places is one that has probably been bandied about for as long as the genres have existed.

It likely has its basis in the fact that sci-fi/fantasy writers’ work is, of course, rooted in speculative worlds, be they worlds based on our own or completely different realities where concepts like magic exist. The idea goes that the creators of such worlds must be slightly nuts to be able to imagine them, and all their rules of physics and so on that don’t exist in our own world.

I can’t keep track of the number of people that have told me in my life that they couldn’t be bothered reading science fiction or fantasy books because they had “nothing to do with the real world” and were thus irrelevant and boring.

However, personally, I disagree with Miller. I feel that in writers in general are in fact the sanest people in human society. And furthermore, I believe science fiction and fantasy writers are among the best examples to prove that theory.

My reason for stating this is that the observing ability that Miller comments on means that writers are often the first people in society to notice and start to critique the reality that underpins what is often the deceitful surface of human society. When it comes to sci-fi/fantasy writers, I feel their ability to envision speculative worlds heightens their ability to impartially observe their own reality.

A prime example of this observation would be the famous science fiction author Robert Heinlein, who passed away in 1988 at the age of 80, after writing a series of enlightening books that also happened to shed light on and critique American and world society of the day.

Robert Heinlein

In Stranger in a Strange Land, perhaps Heinlein’s most famous work, he pre-empted or perhaps even caused much of the sexual enfranchisement of the 1960′s and 1970′s through depicting the revolutionary sexual mores of Valentine Michael Smith, a human raised on Mars by Martians.

In the 1959 book, Starship Troopers, Heinlein arguably makes a case for individual responsibility and sacrifice for society’s common good; the book has been seen as anti-communist and also as a lightning rod for those who wish to debate the role of the military in society; both positive and negative sides.

And of course, who could forget I Will Fear No Evil, the gender-bending novel which explores human sexuality (from both sides at once and everything in between) and its connection with emotional love, spirituality and more.

Was Heinlein insane? Many people in the late 1950′s society in which he first achieved recognition for his works would certainly have thought so after reading his books. How could any rational person come up with so many crazy ideas at once? There are sections in all of these three books which will make even very open-minded readers a little uncomfortable as they readjust their worldviews.

But in hindsight, and of course many people realised this at the time Heinlein’s books were published, his work also constituted an intense and powerful critique of current human behaviour and societal structures … in a way that revealed Heinlein had a phenomenal understanding of them. Ultimately, Heinlein was probably more sane and clear in his knowledge of the world than most of those around him.

What’s your opinion? Are writers in general sane, or insane?

The Last Stormlord, the first book in Australian fantasy writer Glenda Larke’s new The Watergiver/The Stormlord trilogy has gone to the printers and should hit retail sometime in August in Australia, according to her blog.

The US and UK markets will have to wait until March next year. But wait, there’s more! Information about Larke, known for her two previous series, The Isles of Glory and The Mirage Makers, appears to be popping up all over the place at the moment.

Orbit’s Australian publicist Nicola Pitt, writing on the publisher’s UK blog, notes Larke has said she is starting on the last book of the trilogy already, with her agent and editor being pleased with book two, which has also been handed in.

Then there is Larke’s post on SFNovelists.com, a blog which a number of authors post on. In a post entitled “Where did the Stormlord come from?”, Larke gives a fair amount of background to her latest trilogy.

Here’s just a snippet from the interesting story:

I guess it started when I was kid. We drank rainwater funnelled by guttering from the house roof into a galvanised iron tank. And one long, hot, dry Australian summer in the 1950s, a rat drowned and decomposed in the watertank – and we had to throw the precious water away. Until the next rain, stll a month or two away, we carted water from neighbours – who also went short because they shared. There’s idea number one: water is precious. I hardly remember a time when I didn’t know that.

Orbit’s Pitt also delivered a bunch of other news about Australian science fiction and fantasy authors.

The prolific Sean Williams (you can find out just how prolific he is at his site) has won the Peter McNamara Award for Excellence at the Australian National Convention in Adelaide, while Ian Irvine is “working furiously” on the first book of a new fantasy trilogy for Orbit; it’ll be delivered later this year.

Pitt doesn’t explicitly state it, but it looks as though Orbit has signed Brisbane writer Trent Jamieson, who won the 2005 Aurealis Award for his short story Slow and Ache. Jamieson’s site states he is working on a series called The Players, in association with The Australia Council Literature Board.