I've already blogged about the fascinating phenomenon I watched last year - the rise and rise of Gillian Philip's novel Firebrand via a very 21st century word-of-mouth. Without Facebook, I may never have discovered what an incredible writer Gillian is, but there was no avoiding the regular updates that filled my news feed via Gillian and her proactive publisher, Strident: reviews, awards, more reviews, and a general clamour. Something exciting was going down, no doubt about it - the type of buzz that no marketing campaign can fund.
I knew I had to read this book. Let me tell you, so should you. If you think you don't like fantasy, you haven't met Seth. I foolishly believed I didn't much like fantasy, then I fell for this novel, and I fell hard. It made me want to be Gillian - how does someone write like that? - but I settled for the next best thing and asked if she would allow me to interview her. She kindly agreed.
So settle down with a cup of tea, and enjoy a yummy conversation with one very talented woman. Oh, and I make no apologies for any gushing you may detect in my half of the conversation!
Gillian, the confidence of your writing is staggering. From the opening line of Firebrand, you draw us into a world of heartbreaking, rugged beauty as seen from the damaged perspective of one of YA's most charismatic male characters. May I ask what your writing journey has been and what highs and lows you went through on the path to becoming a full-time author? Any tips for others still on the learning curve?
It's been a very long journey! I always wanted to be a writer - I had other jobs, but could never imagine holding one down long enough to call it a career - but it took me ages to amass the confidence to start sending manuscripts out. I sold my first short story while I was living abroad without a work permit - I thought that with all the time available to me, there was really no excuse. And I did sell quite a few short stories to magazines back in the UK.
I don't especially like writing short stories - it isn't my favourite form - but I honestly had this idea stuck in my head that a novel would be too difficult. Also, I'd heard so many horror stories about the difficulties of getting published, I simply believed I'd never make it. I did have three goes at writing a category romance - none of them sold, but it was useful experience in that I discovered I could write a whole novel, and I could develop a plot from start to finish. But when they didn't sell, I gave up the whole idea.
And then my children were born, and we came back to live in Scotland, and I discovered Young Adult fiction. Suddenly I knew I'd found my writing home, in all kinds of ways. On the back of my short stories I'd joined the Society of Authors, which I found hugely helpful in terms of advice and contacts, and I also discovered literary consultancies through their magazine. Hilary Johnson was especially helpful and supportive, and with help and critiques I at last found the confidence to write and rewrite, and keep writing and rewriting. It was Hilary who recommended me to my agent, who is wonderful. And suddenly publishers wanted my books!
So the best advice I can give to yet-to-be-published writers is simply to keep writing. If you want it enough, and are willing to work hard at it and work though the rejections - and accept constructive criticism - it's likely you'll get there. The more you write the better you get - but I do emphasise that you have to be willing to change, adapt, take advice! It doesn't mean having to compromise your ideas or your style.
Oh and my other piece of advice is never start a land war in Asia, but that may not be so relevant.
I bow humbly at your feet for successfully inserting - or suggesting! - a very fruity word at the end of chapter 35. (I recently tried to use what I think must be the same word in a YA manuscript and was strictly ordered to lose it.) You employ an extremely clever technique to circumnavigate the gatekeepers of publishing. Was there a cheeky little devil in you that wanted to see if you could do this?
Uh-oh, I've been rumbled. Well spotted! Yes, I did do that deliberately, and it was that little devil at work. Originally I wrote the manuscript with the actual word in there. I often do that, just to ease the flow of words, knowing full well that I'll have to take it out later. But in this case I found the character was so bumptious and carefree about it, I couldn't take it away from him altogether. I found that way of writing round it, and my editor was fine with it, and I actually rather liked the way it was finally expressed. If a reader doesn't want to see it, they won't; but the character in question (Torc) just wouldn't have said anything else. So I wanted to be true to him... but not go out of my way to offend. I think with that form of words, any horrified reader would, let's say, have to be very keen to be offended!
I have to ask about Strident. What has the working relationship been like? Firebrand is at the very top end of YA, isn't it? Were there any restrictions placed on the novel, or were you allowed to sally forth?
Strident are wonderful to work with. I'm not just saying that to suck up! With my two books so far for them (I also write for Bloomsbury), they have had a very light editing touch because they were confident about the manuscripts, and they were good at reinforcing my confidence too. They honestly didn't place any restrictions on what I could include, and even steeled my spine when I was unsure about something!
With Bloodstone, on the other hand (the follow-up to Firebrand), I'm much less sure and have had to do a great deal more work - largely because it was originally written before Firebrand, and for a younger readership. The editors at Strident, Alison Stroak and Graham Watson, have been enormously helpful in that rewriting process, and very willing to make suggestions and say where it wasn't working. It's just a lovely, friendly, professional, enthusiastic company.
I adored the Sithe attitude towards sex and relationships - the egalitarianism and utter lack of guilt. Were you consciously trying to give a lesson to your readership, or was this simply an extra nice device for creating an alternative realm?
I'm very averse to giving lessons through fiction! It always irritates me enormously when I feel an author is lecturing me, or when I can hear the author's political and social opinions coming through rather than the characters'. So I try my best to avoid it, though it can be tempting. I suppose inevitably my own attitudes leak through, but I think that has to be done through the prism of the people in the book... and it seemed to me completely in line with the Sithe character that they'd be easygoing in their sexual attitudes. They do live a long time, after all, and I reckoned they'd be pragmatic about the problems of staying faithful to one partner for centuries at a time. A few issues of jealousy do arise, both in Firebrand and in the later books, so I certainly wasn't trying to say this is an ideal way to live - it's just the way they live, and on the whole it works very well for them. Also, they're not a very fertile race, and that makes a big difference!
On the other hand, it's probably a personal and conscious choice that I made them so entirely indifferent to other people's sexuality - because it's such an absurdly huge issue for so many in our own world. There are quite a few gay characters in the series, but I wanted that to be a complete non-issue for the Sithe. It simply doesn't concern them; their sexuality is part of who they are but irrelevant to everything else. I suppose that's my ideal for our own world! Of course that does create problems for the Sithe when they cross over to our own world...
Some of the violence is extreme and extremely well described. I'm thinking in particular of a decapitation in chapter 35! Do you have any advice for describing this type of violence on the page and making it convincing without becoming gratuitous?
Oh, that chapter 35, it was a naughty one! Seriously, I think this is always tricky. Personally I dislike gratuitous violence on the page or on screen, especially when it's for its own sake or it has no realistic consequence. I hate the idea of 'torture porn' like the Saw movies; I couldn't bring myself to watch them.
On the other hand, 'no realistic consequence' also applies to those stories where swords go in one side and come out the other, and the bad guy's painlessly dead. Or - worse - when that dead someone has no life of his or her own, and is simply there to be killed. Or - and this is my personal bugbear - enemies are defeated or killed with the bloodless wave of a magic staff, or the brandishing of an amulet - you know the kind of thing. Don't get me started on the last BBC series of Robin Hood - I honestly don't believe kids should be taught that wars against brutal, bad people can be fought and won with a couple of well-aimed punches and a witty one-liner.
Violence is hideous, but it's also sometimes necessary, and I think in fiction it should be depicted realistically (and that includes what it does to the mind). I'm not a pacifist (though I freely admit that I have no idea what my personal physical courage would be like in extremis). You can depict the pain and the emotional damage that results from violence without being gratuitous, and while also respecting that war can be a necessary evil. Neither Seth nor Conal remain unaffected by what they have to do for their cause, and I think that's something that comes across, especially in the later books.
As well as writing under your own name, you've also written for Hothouse - a fiction packager. May I ask how the two experiences have compared, and what you gain from each different way of working?
Oh, the two are so totally different! I really enjoy the work I do for Hothouse, but it is like a separate job. The editors at Hothouse are the ones who come up with the characters and the general storyline, so inevitably I don't have the same sense of ownership of the characters. In a way I feel I can't get too involved with them, because their fate is not in my hands, as it is with my own characters. On the other hand, I can make as many suggestions as I like, and I can discuss the plot development, argue about a character's fate, object to a twist in the tale... Hothouse are wonderful, and very open to suggestions, and it is very much a two-way street. It's good discipline, too, and a terrific way of stretching my writing muscles - I tend not to plot my own books in any detail, so it's fascinating to work through a plot that has been planned in advance.
Having said I don't plot the Hothouse novels, in fact I've been involved in plotting their latest Darke Academy book - number four - and that's been great fun. It has also tempted me to try that way of working with my new book for Bloomsbury. My last for them, The Opposite of Amber - which is published this April - was very much a seat-of-my-pants novel, and I had to rewrite it a few times before I found the correct plotline. With the next, I think I'm going to try plotting a chapter-by-chapter in advance, as I've just done for Hothouse. It should be an interesting exercise!
Thank you, Gillian.
Lots there for us all to think about. I really like Gillian's advice about finding your proper writing 'home', to take on board feedback and, to paraphrase Bruce Forsyth, Keep Writing!
Bloodstone, Strident, is out in August 2011.
The Opposite of Amber, Bloomsbury, is out in April 2011.
Thank YOU, Karen, for your incredibly kind comments and for wonderful interview questions! I enjoyed doing this so much, and I'm thrilled that you enjoyed Firebrand.
Excellent insights into the subtleties and processes of writing - but then, that's exactly what I'd have expected. Gillian loves writing, is enthusiastic (and protective) about it, and can definitely do it. So subtle was her 'use' of that naughty word in chapter 35 that you had me going back to my copy to find out what it was - clever interviewing. Thanks to both.
Such a terrific interview, Gillian and Karen. This was so interesting to read, both how you came to find your way to writing YA and about your writing process itself. I really do need to read this book. (I'm ashamed not to have got to it, yet. Seth's not going to be happy.)