Fangirling, or why there’s no such thing as too many exclamation marks

You know by now that I am a total fangirl, right?

I mean, I developed extremely nervous hands when I got introduced to Libba Bray at the Emerging Writer’s Festival.  And also, Garth Nix was standing right there, so I could go home and say ‘OMG, I saw Garth Nix!’ to my kids, and they were all ‘Wow, OMG!’ right back.

And I met Lili Wilkinson once! (She is awesome, btw)  And Karen Healey! (Who totally talked to me!)  And I still sometimes tweet replies to Maureen Johnson’s tweets, and live in hope that one day she will tweet back, at which point I will fall over or something, and then start squeeing ‘ OMG, Maureen Johnson!!’ to everyone nearby, and they will look at me weirdly (especially my husband, who doesn’t really know who Maureen Johnson is), but I will not care because OMG, Maureen Johnson!!!

Because to me, this all started with being a fangirl.  Mainly of authors like Susan Cooper and Elynne Mitchell and Roald Dahl and Susie Hinton and Margaret Mahy, and then onto authors like Margaret Atwood and Cormac McCarthy, and somehow at the same time authors like John Marsden and Melina Marchetta and Margo Lanagan (I met her once too!  She signed my copy of Red Spikes!) and so on, until I reach this point I’m at now, where I actually get to meet some of the people who have created some of my favourite books, like Simmone Howell and Leanne Hall and Cath Crowley.

For me, the thrill never goes away.  And I find it pretty inspiring, to know that those real live people out there exist, who keep giving their whole selves to the writing of the words that lift me up and spin me round and make me see the world in a different way.

That’s the promise I try to keep: that I’ll do my utmost to throw myself into the things I write, that I’ll try to give my best (or at least as close to the best that I’m capable of at this moment) to the words.  Basically, that I’ll be the best fangirl I can be, for the worlds I create.

Anyway, I said I was going to Sydney - yeah, well, I went :)  I met my agent, Catherine Drayton, for the first time, and - with her incredible powers of assurance - she filled me with the feeling that Every Breath will be fine, that it will go out into the world and have a happy life.  So thank you, Catherine, it's good to have that feeling in the last few months before your book is released.

I also met the lovely people who work at Allen & Unwin Sydney, who took me out to coffee, and bought me lunch, and listened to me bang on about the book, and my kids, and checked out the photos of Guildford and our house and stuff that I had on my phone.  And I met the cover designer, Lisa, and talked characters and book covers, and then slogged on in the rain to visit bookstores all over Sydney, in the short time I had left.

Now I'm back on the ranch, and it's a freezing Victorian winter (Sydney, you were so warm!), and I'm deep in the writing of the third book, while the winds howl outside.  My littlest son sometimes stops by to sip my tea while I'm working, and I am planning the launches for Every Breath.

Yes - launches.  I said there would be two, and now there are two, one for Melbourne friends and one for Castlemaine friends (although friends from both are welcome to go to both...I'm sure you know that).  They are both in September (the 12th and the 20th) and as we get closer I'll probably send out invites and bake cakes and buy bottles of wine, and all that stuff you do for parties...  I'll let you know more details as the Time Draws Near.

I'm also going to do some special posts soon, with details about giveaways, and competitions, and also some guests, and - this is very exciting - I will be able to show everyone the cover of Every Breath soon, very soon.  Don't worry, you won't miss it - I'll probably make up a giant blow-up poster and stand on the street corner, pointing and grinning like an idiot.

Until then, have a good week.

CALM! We must have CALM!!!!

I leave on Tuesday for Sydney.  I’m going up to see the lovely peoples from Allen & Unwin there, as well as meet my agent, Catherine, for the first time (after communicating via phone/internets for nearly a year).  I’m also going to an Australia Council bash – yes, I have agonised over clothes.  Most of you who know me know that my clothes fall somewhere along the spectrum from ‘chook-shed cleaning/chainsawing clothes’ to ‘look decent at a pub clothes’ and not much in between.

Apart from couture decisions, there’s so much to do!  Planning for meetings and organising flight paperwork and arranging child-care, along with other general life-house-mess stuff, and two of the boys have the lurgy, and…and…

I am repeating the ‘Calm!  We must have CALM!’ mantra.

While I’m away, I will be thinking up ideas for helping get Every Breath out into the world.  I have plans, oh yes.  Plans that involve giving things away, and making trailers, and extra stories, and blog tours, and free stuff…chime in if there’s anything you think I could do that would make the arrival of Every Breath more exciting!

Oh, and I’m going to throw a party!  Actually, I have plans for TWO parties!

I know, I’m going crazy!  Someone, please, stop me!  (Omg, that means I will have to find PARTY CLOTHES.  I’m officially freaking myself out now.)

But the launch is only…crap, it’s only 3 months away.  I’m getting that fluttery nervous anxious feeling in my gut just thinking about it.  Now I’ll have to go watch some Elementary re-runs or something to get a handle on it.

When I come back from Sydney, prepare for plans.  See you then!

The Hot Seat

  

Your palms are clammy.  Your breath feels tight.  Sweat is staining the armpits of your shirt – damn, the Rexona has failed again – and your throat is dry.  People start looking at you, and your heart begins thumping out of your chest…

What is it?  Could it be…yes!  You’re PUBLIC SPEAKING!!!

Check out the hot seat at right, cunningly disguised to look attractive.  You can't see it, but there was even a flickering-flame graphic on the screen in the decommissioned fireplace behind the chair!

Yes, I took to the stage to read at Newstead Short Story Tattoo, and it was stressful.  Getting to watch Cate Kennedy, who speaks so eloquently, and with such a relaxed style, was pretty inspiring.  If Cate can do it, damnit, I can too!  Sadly I was scheduled just before Cate, so it was only in the aftermath of my own turn that I was able to settle down and enjoy the ride.

But it was a fun ride.  I think I’m improving – now my hands only shake at the start.  Which is okay if you can steady them on a lectern, but no good if you’re holding the mike in one hand and your book in the other.  You just look like you’ve got the DT’s.

Anyway, I’m working on it.  I think I’m getting the hands thing under control – except after the shakes leave my hands they head south, so by the halfway mark, my knees are knocking together.

I’ll get the hang of this eventually.  Maybe by the time the next Newstead Tattoo rolls around.

Website: The website is up and running!  Lope on over to www.elliemarney.com and see what you think.  Is the banner too pink?  (If it is - tough!  It's too late now!  Bwahahahahaa!!)  Actually, I love the look of the site, and all the credit for website awesomeness goes to the Amazing Jane from Blue Vapours, who can even make haybales look inspiring!

Guest post:  Tomorrow I’m guest posting at YA Contemporary.  Thank you very much to Jim for inviting me to post – I wrote a piece on YA crime, which I like to think is on the up and up.  Go have a look, hope you like it!

Here's some more shots of the Tattoo, for your viewing pleasure:

Neil Boyack, organiser extraordinnaire...

Someone who must have had the Hot Seat experience before me... 

Lucy Sussex in full flight during the Horror Stories on Friday night...











And finally...when I came out of the Community Hall on Sunday afternoon post-Sister's Salon, I noticed that in fact a story full of drama and pathos had been going on right across the street from us, while we were busy listening...

Here was the final line:

                                                    Hemingway, eat your heart out!

Newstead Short Story Tattoo

It’s on again – the biannual Newstead Short Story Tattoo, in our gorgeously autumnal locale of Newstead, from Friday 3 May to Sunday 5 May.

So take the road less travelled by, and check it out!  There will be campfires!  And a zombie disco!  And of course, stories – more stories than you could poke a stick at.  All organised by the amazing Neil Boyack, seasoned with a cast of thousands!

Go here if you’d like to have a look at the full program, and please come along.  Entry to Newstead Community Centre is largely by donation, and there’ll be a bar, and music, and loads of friendly hillbilly folk.

I’m going to be reading at the Sister’s Salon, on Sunday May 5 at noon, alongside Cate Kennedy, Tru Dowling, Annie Drum, Megan Anderson and Emma Scherlies.  There will be an open mic as well, so if you’re feeling brave (or even if you’re not) come on up and give it a whirl...

Hopefully I'll see you there :)

Social Media Mystery Tour

You might have noticed me lurching towards a better understanding of social media.  This has been a weird experience for everybody.

For my family – they’ve been exceedingly patient with my experimenting, and with all those annoying doodly alert noises from my phone.  Although my partner has been threatening to take my phone and throw it in the dam.  He claims we wouldn’t hear the alerts if my phone was four feet underwater.  My kids all think it’s hilarious – they keep urging me on.  They want me to send a gushing fan message to JK Rowling.  I tell them that I am far too mature and intimidated to do any such thing, and that it’s poor etiquette.  They ask me to explain what ‘etiquette’ is.*

For those of you who read my Facebook page – yeah, apologies for spamming you with recent tweets.  That is poor etiquette.  I know it’s extremely uncool, but I still haven’t figured out all the little dials and buttons yet.  I am trying to figure out how to selectively retweet and stuff like that, so I don’t come off as a complete wanker.  I guess I’ll just have to settle for looking like a confused idiot until I come to some arrangement that works.

For those of you who’ve witnessed me blundering about on Twitter – thank you for your kind patience.  I feel like someone who has walked into a party that wasn’t supposed to be a fancy-dress party, but I thought it was a fancy dress party, so I’ve come dressed as a snail.  Or maybe the other way round – everyone else is dressed to the nines, and I thought it was ‘come-as-you-are’.  Or something.

I’m sure I’ve intruded on a number of quiet conversations that were none of my business, and I’m also sure I’ve introduced myself to various people who wonder exactly why I am talking to them.  I’m trying to glide elegantly around the room, listening to the hum of conversation and injecting the occasional witty bon mot – but I’ve always been terrible at that.  I am the person who laughs like a hyena at other peoples’ jokes, and then trips over the hem of her skirt while trying to get up from her chair.  Dorothy Parker I am not.

I just try to be uniformly nice to everyone.  I’m not trying to make a great impression.  My experience tends to be that when I try to do that, I make an impression of ‘wow, that girl sure is good at falling on her face’.  So I resist the urge to make myself look good.  I just try to be nice, and then maybe someone will invite me back next time.

Sincere apologies to anyone I’ve offended - it was an honest mistake – and I’ll try to obey the rules of propriety.  Or at least the rules of sobriety – someone said recently ‘Never Tweet while drunk’, which seems extremely sound to me.  I’ll steer clear of the bubbly.

But Twitter is a truly eye-opening experience.  I admit I pooh-poohed the idea at first – why would I want to tweet?  How much more stuff about me can I be bothered to write? (or would other people be bothered to read?) – but it’s a very different type of engagement with people.

For one, it’s extremely personal and immediate.  This was amply illustrated to me within a few short days of starting up.  I’d only just figured out how to send messages and give myself a picture when the Boston Marathon bombings happened.  Suddenly it was six in the morning, and I was reading all these cries of distress from people in the US – not just messages of commentary, but actual people, shocked by what they’d experienced, or what they were watching in ghastly ‘on-the-scenes’ photos and clips taken by those who were right there at the time.

There were messages of anger and worry, people trying to get word to their families that they were okay, people trying to find their loved ones…  Those were the most distressing.  One author was receiving messages from people who knew his wife, so he knew she was all right, that she hadn’t been near the explosions (they live in Boston, he was overseas).  Other people were offering their homes to those who’d been in Boston and were too hurt or weary to get back home, or whose flights had been cancelled when the city went into lockdown.

I got a strong impression of a community in distress – this wasn’t a party anymore, this was a crisis, and people were bonding together to grieve, or express their horror, or offer support.  It really affected me: coloured the whole day with the fear and distress that people were experiencing so far away.

It also made me realise that this platform, which is often derided (which I often derided) as a place where people list what they had for breakfast to no useful effect, was actually a means for people to draw closer, and share of themselves, and connect in a genuine way.  It’s a bit like a being at a party, as I said, but equally it’s like being together with a bunch of people on a mystery train trip – or in this case, trapped together in an elevator during a gunfight.  People talk, they connect.  And it is so immediate – that connection is right there, miles and miles and barely a fingertip away.

I wouldn’t have continued with Twitter without this experience.  I think I would have just treated it as a novelty activity, and only poked my nose in every now and then, to see if there was something interesting people were chatting about.  But I can’t approach it like that now.  I’ve seen a different side of it.  And I’ve seen that people are people, regardless of the place they live, or the platform they communicate on, and I quite like the idea of being involved in a community like that.

If they can put up with me falling off my chair and speaking at the wrong moment occasionally.

*omg, Parenting Fail

If you’d like to join me, go to @elliemarney and say hi.  I will try not to bump into you with my drink.

And another thing…

This is a little idea that’s been percolating in my brain for a few days, since I had the wonderful gig at Castlemaine Word Mine, wherein Simmone Howell and Kirsten Krauth and I got to bang on about YA literature, and genre, and writing process, and anything else people in the audience suggested we have a crack at.

Now something that made me look up was that the first question we were asked is Why don’t more men write YA?  Which Simmone and I (being the two YA authors on the panel) found kind of curious, because between us we could list about a dozen male authors of YA off the tops of our heads – I mean, there’s John Marsden, who’s probably the most famous YA author in the country, and John Flanagan, and Scot Gardner, and Barry Jonsberg, and Tim Winton, and Markus Zusak…  And then we could list other non-Aussie YA authors like Jay Asher, James Dashner, Charlie Higson, Michael Grant, Shaun Hutchison, David Levithan, John Green, Andrew Fukuda, Nick Earls, Patrick Ness, Philip Pullman, Scott Westerfeld, Cory Doctorow, James Pattinson, Christopher Paolini, Derek Landry, Walter Dean Myers, Lish McBride, Mark Haddon, Darren Shan, Robert Muchamore…

Basically, we found this question confusing.  Well, I found the question confusing.  Although I can see how the question may have arisen.  It’s true that the numbers of female YA authors are higher than male authors.  Also, many of the big name YA authors are female – I’m thinking of Stephanie Meyer and JK Rowling and Cassandra Clare and so on here.  But it’s not like male authors are non-existent.  In the most recent list of ‘100 best YA books’, while women took out the top 3 spots, the ratio of male to female authors was almost 50/50.

But this issue of gender bias in YA may have come about because of a few other things:

*a perceived bias in YA towards female authors, as perpetuated by articles like this one in the NY Times as analysed in The Mary Sue (about how YA has become ‘too girly’) and a strange understanding that seems to have emerged that boys’ interests are not being met in contemporary YA literature

*peoples’ tendency to think of boys as more ‘action-oriented’ and less interested in reading during adolescence (which may be a combination of both reality and stereotype, and no doubt does them a disservice)

*a lack of equality in both education syllabuses and in the broader field of literature and literary review, which means that if female authors are included, they ‘stick out like dog’s balls’ (as a male friend likes to colourfully say)

*a pre-existing societal trend towards male authors and male-centred stories that focuses attention on men’s literary contributions to such an extent that if women begin to attain popularity in a category or genre, then there’s an impression that the field has been ‘swamped by women’

Anyway, we didn’t point all this stuff out, merely pointed to a large number of male YA authors that we knew who had a wide readership.  So people, like, knew they were there. (If you want a silly version of this, go check out ‘The Dudes of YA’ article in The Weeklings)

But the idea persists that YA is a field dominated by female authors, writing stories aimed at teenaged girls, and largely excluding the needs and interests of boys.  Which I sometimes get cranky about, because y’know, it’s dumb.  In YA awards since 2000 (see this article in lady business), the ratio of male/female authors is almost equal – 44/56.  Male authors get a pretty fair shake.*

Also - so there’s only two fields of literature that have a higher proportion of women than men?  (I’m including romance writing here.  Some people would argue that crime writing is edging in)  And…this is a problem?  Why exactly?  I mean, I grew up on a diet of male authors – in school reading lists, on library shelves…  Most women have.  (See Maureen Johnson’s take on this) So is it okay if we have a category of literature that has a strong representation of female authors now?  God, I hope so.  That would make a nice change.

Anyway, what was interesting about this was that it serendipitously came to my attention soon after that people have been talking for some time about the ‘state of women’s writing’.  I knew this, but specifically I read an article by Deborah Copaken Kogan, about all the crap she’s had to deal with while trying to attain distinction in the literary field.  She’s just been shortlisted for what used to be called the Orange Prize, and is now called the Women’s Prize for Fiction (UK).

And a number of other women have been sending shout-outs to her, and to the world in general, about the pitiful situation made obvious by the VIDA statistics from 2012, which emphatically displayed what most female writers in the lit field have known for some time, that women reviewers are more conspicuous by their absence, and that by and large, books written by men get the lion’s share of reviews/awards/publicity.**

And I started to think about it.  My first thought was, ‘Hey, I’m really lucky that I’m writing in a field that has a more equitable balance of male and female writers – phew, thank god I’m not trying to write lit fiction’.  And then I thought, ‘It’s lucky too, that the field I write in enjoys strong popular support, and female writers have a solid fan base and enjoy access to good reviews/awards/publicity’. (Which is still curious to me, that a field where women authors out-number and outrank male authors, why is the award business split almost 50/50?  What’s that about?)

And then I thought, ‘Hey – is YA the only vaguely equitable field of writing, where women and men can stand side-by-side on their merits?  That’s cool.’

And then I thought, ‘Good grief – in a world where Cassandra Clare can get awesome reviews and enormous fan support and movie deals and stuff like that, and lit fiction authors like Deborah Copaken Kogan get shafted…why the hell doesn’t Deborah start writing YA?’

Damned if I know.

*  See ‘List of Male Authors’ above – and these are just the big name ones.  Also check out the myriad books written by female authors who have male central protagonists eg: Melissa Keil’s gorgeous Life in Outer Space, Fiona Wood’s Six Impossible Things, Holly Black’s Curseworker series, Kendare Blake’s Anna Dressed in Blood series, Susie Hinton’s Outsiders etc etc etc…I could make a longer list but it would be very long and would take all day…

** These are execrable statistics, btw.  So shocking…so not surprising.  Which I think means that the original question should have been something like Why don’t more women get published generally?

Blackberry cider and a teenage view of the world

Slowly coming down from the excitement of my first author talk – I was way too nervous to take photos, and I’m really glad Klare Lansen and Lisa D’Onofrio had the presence of mind to take a few happy snaps!

A lovely evening was had by all at Castlemaine Word Mine (aka the Castlemaine Anglican Church Hall), and the audience was small but welcoming.  Once I got over the knee-knocking terror I always feel before speaking in public – and reading out an excerpt from Every Breath that has never been heard by mortal ears before – I had a really good time.  Simmone Howell offered me blackberry cider and encouragement, and Kirsten Krauth admitted she was as nervous as I was (it’s always good to share the pain!).  We all read bits from our respective novels, then opened the floor for questions, and some really interesting ideas came out.

What is YA? I guess was a big theme, followed closely by Why does YA exist?

It’s hard in retrospect to figure out whether you’ve answered the questions properly, but I’m hoping that our combined responses provided the right answer.  What was interesting to me was how people’s questions and Kirsten and Simmone’s responses gave me a bit of a contemplative moment about my own ideas on the subject.  Some people in the audience pointed out that before YA existed, kids just used to read adult books, and does YA literature really add anything new to the mix?

But I suppose my feeling is that before YA, kids were always reading about life as viewed through the eyes of an adult.  It’s different, that feeling of reading through the lens of someone who isn’t at your own stage of life.  I remember reading The Outsiders by Susie Hinton, and having a ‘wow’ moment – I was so amazed that someone finally got it, that feeling I had, of being a teenager, and had managed to encapsulate that in Ponyboy’s story.

Someone asked what Simmone and Kirsten and I had read as teenagers, and we realised that I was reading Stephen King, Simmone was reading Jackie Collins, and Kirsten was reading Virginia Andrews.  But I have to confess that I didn’t always get everything that happened in those adult books.  All the emotional turmoil behind the sex scenes in Peter Benchley’s Jaws went completely over my head (probably because I was, y’know, twelve).

So I think there’s a lot to be said for being able to find your own experience in the literature you read*.  I think of how teenagers, for a long time, were supposed to just accept that their stage of life was merely a prelude to something else – the bigger adventure of adulthood – without having the chance to enjoy where they were at.  And until YA became an accepted publishing market, teenagers were expected to gain all their insights about life purely from an adult perspective, without the feeling like they themselves had some insights to offer.

Teenagers have a lot to offer – as a high school teacher, I appreciate that all the time.  Their view on the world is unique, sometimes muddled but always interesting.  It’s why I like to put myself back in the mind-set of being a teenager and write what I see and feel.

Here’s a quote, sent to me by my amazing local librarian Robyn Annear, from Adam Phillips’ book ‘Missing Out: In Praise of the Unlived Life’  -

‘ “Perhaps it is only in childhood,” Graham Greene writes in his essay “The Lost Child”, “that books have any deep influence on our lives. In later life we admire, we are entertained, we may modify some views we already hold, but we are more likely to find in books merely a confirmation of what is in our minds already
‘ “But in childhood all books are books of divination, telling us about the future, and like the fortune-teller who sees a long journey in the cards or death by water they influence the future. I suppose that is why books excited us so much.”
‘The desire in childhood reading, Greene tells us, is for experiences we haven’t had yet; as children we are not just lacking these experiences, we are not yet ready for them; because they are what we want, they are what we want to know about. What the child divines in the book is what he (sic) may be capable of; childhood is the developing of an appetite for future possibility.’

 

I think YA books really capture that sense of future possibility, and do so through the perspective of someone who is directly experiencing it.  That’s why I love to read YA, and love to write it.

* I was thinking about this recently when I came across this fantastic article on how LGBT experience is really becoming foregounded in new YA fiction.  It must be good to finally be able to read about your side of the story.