Since we’re on the vamp theme this week, I thought I’d post this…in case there’s someone left out there who hasn’t seen it. It seems that Twilight is undoing all of Joss Whedon’s Girl Power good & rebelliouspixels.com tends to agree with me. What do you think?
"Please!! I can't take it! No more about about Edward @#$%&* Cullen!!"
Fangs, fangs, everywhere. Will vampire fever ever simmer down? Did anyone see the good/evil switcheroo on The Vampire Diaries tonight? (Don’t do it Stefan!!!) Just when you think you know a blood-sucker… Attention fans of the L.J. Smith books: how does the show stack up? Is it a good adaptation?
Now that we’ve been completely inundated with vampy goodness, I wonder who everyone’s favourite characters/books/movies/shows are… One of the many versions of Dracula since Bram Stoker’s original? Vlad the Impaler (Stoker’s inspiration)? Irma Vep? House of Night? The Hunger? Lestat? Vampire Academy? Vampireology? The Vampire Diaries? Marked? Buffy/Angel? Nosferatu? Vampire Hunter D? Twilight? The Lost Boys? Fright Night? Or…you know…this guy:
MUSIC!! An oldie, but a goodie: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pOn1037ZLwA
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1e0u11rgd9Q
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mriBc6NjUhg&feature=related
Ah, the 80s: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sj4jJ2ItqjI&NR=1
Ah, friends. Where would we be without them? And where would some of our favourite books be without them? From Frodo and Sam to Harry, Ron, and Hermione, fiction is filled with wonderful, inspiring friendships.
Over at the Whimsical Fic-ery blog, they’re talking about platonic boy/girl friendships in YA fiction.
likesbooks.com has posted a book list that might interest the romantics among you: ‘Friends in Romance’ (naww).
Penguin’s Vampire Academy site features some nifty wallpapers and widgets of besties Rose and Lissa here.
And…speaking of friends, you can join us over @ the MDP group on Goodreads here.
So which are your favourite literary pals? Which fictitious friendships have inspired and delighted you? Do any parallel your own?
Attention Jewellery Lovers!
Marianne’s newsletter editor extraordinaire also makes fabulous, innovative jewellery. She has a great range, including some special pieces crafted especially for Marianne that relate to her books and characters. Here’s a piece she made for Marianne as a gift!
Check out Belinda’s Baubles.
1. We love your latest brilliant offering, the steampunk novel Worldshaker! How did you first get into steampunk and what drew you to that genre?
I didn’t plan to write a steampunk novel, that’s for sure! When I had the ideas for Worldshaker, over 15 years ago, steampunk was only a small and little-noticed sub-genre of SF. My first idea was for a great gothic castle, but – since I couldn’t just imitate Mervyn Peake – I built my ‘castle’ out of metal and put it on rollers. From then on, the mechanical side got more and more important as I kept on developing the world and narrative. I couldn’t see any chance of getting the story published for a very long while, since no Australian publisher was looking at that kind of fantasy at the time. So I bided my time and kept on developing – and in the end, steampunk/Victorian fiction started to catch on. I started the actual writing of the novel 5 years ago, and now it’s come out right in the middle of a huge steampunk wave in the US, and an ever-spreading wave in Australia. I think it was the novel I always had in me to write. When I look back, steampunky elements keep creeping into many of my previous novels. The Vicar of Morbing Vyle and The Black Crusade are both set in Victorian-type worlds. There’s a metal world in The Dark Edge, industrial scenery in the Humen Camp episodes of the Ferren trilogy, and quirky bits of machinery in (again) the Ferren books and The Black Crusade.I’m just lucky that the world finally wanted to read what I most wanted to write.
By the by, I’m just one day off finishing Liberator, and I’m sure it’s even bigger and better than Worldshaker!
2. I’ve read that you have a fascination with maps. Can you tell us about your interest and how central maps are to your writing?
I draw up elaborate maps for my novels, but they often don’t make it into the printed book. They’re more for my own satisfaction. I like my worlds to be geographically correct and rich with detail, but the details often run off the page and outside the story.
3. If you could live in one of the imaginary realms you’ve created, for a day, which would you choose and why?
A lot of my worlds are great to inhabit in imagination, but I wouldn’t want to inhabit them in real life. There’s a fair bit of darkness in my novels, and the settings are often gloomy, oppressive, and claustrophobic. As in the case ofWorldshaker – I find the Below area fascinating because it is such an incredible hellhole, infinitely threatening and dangerous. I think the most attractive scenery I ever created was for Heaven in Ferren and the Angel. The imagery came from medieval paintings, where Heaven is shown as a walled city, kind of dreamy in the sunlight. Warm creamy-gold stones and pavings – I think the marble ballroom-floor look of Dubrovnik in Croatia came into it too. Not grandly magnificent, quite simple and homely, yet very very calm and peaceful.
4. You’ve written a lot of novels and short stories in your career. Which of your many characters Burns Brightest in your mind and why?
Whoo! That’s a hard one! If I have to pick just one, I’ll say Mr Gibber, the mad schoolteacher in Worldshaker. Based on a real schoolteacher I used to know, he’s so extreme and bizarre, but not a caricature. Cringing yet bumptious, always performing, buttonholing people, grovelling and big-noting himself at the same time … I’ve said in my writing tips (atwww.writingtips.com.au) that a character needs to burn with an inner fire, and Mr Gibber lives up to that. He’s continued to grow and evolve in the sequel to Worldshaker, titled Liberator, and I suspect he’s inexhaustible. He’s certainly irrepressible!
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