Mythic Friday Interview: Number 13 - Dianne Hofmeyr

I'm so glad Dianne agreed to join in and do a Mythic Friday Interview on Scribble City Central. I've been admiring Dianne's posts on An Awfully Big Blog Adventure for some time now.  She always manages to say something interesting--something which makes me think--and the way she uses language is always an object lesson in how to put words together.  I was therefore expecting quite a lot from Fish Notes and Star Songs when it arrived.  I wasn't disappointed.  It is an exquisitely written book--the magical story of Fish, Jonah, Rebecca, Boskind and the unusual but powerful friendships they form--which touched my heart.  It also has the best fictional description of a shamanic journey I have ever read.  I haven't mentioned this before on the blog, but I spent years of my life doing shamanic training, and delving deep into the myths and cultural practices of many civilisations including my own Celtic one.  The shamanic journey Dianne describes (and some may understand it better if described as a journey of the imagination, though it is far more than that) takes place in a cave.  For me that was a striking piece of serendipity, since one of my own most powerful shamanic experiences--where I was given a vision of my shamanic animal, as Fish and Jonah are too--also took place in a cave.  One culture I have never explored--though I have always wanted to, ever since I read Laurens van der Post's novels A Story like the Wind and A Far-off Place--is that of the San Bushmen.  Laurens van der Post is not fashionable nowadays, but these books are two more examples of beautiful writing, and worth seeking out. If nothing else, they have made me a passionate proponent of leaving the indigenous San tribes alone to run their own lives. In these days of worry about carbon footprints, the San Bushmen, like the Native Americans are truly in tune with Mother Earth, and step very lightly upon her.  I'm looking forward to having a long chat with Dianne very soon, and getting her to tell me more San stories.  What she has said in her answers here have only whetted my appetite.  Thank you for visiting, Dianne, and over to you!

1. Do you think that the retelling of myths is important or relevant for the children of today? Why should they care about some “dry old stories” which come from ancient or forgotten cultures they might never even have heard of?
I think telling these stories sparks imagination in a child. Children can be overwhelmed by reality. Myths seem to awaken an inner spirit and a deep archetypal knowledge... a sense of bravery and connection to the earth.

2. What age were you when you came across your first myth or myths? Tell us how you felt then about the myths you first discovered. Did you love them or hate them? Did they scare you, excite you—or were you indifferent? What kind of myths were they? Greek? Norse? Native American? Celtic? Or from another culture entirely? Were they in a book you read? Or did you hear them as oral storytelling from someone else?
My first myths were told to me by my father. In summer when I was about 5 he and I used to lie out on the lawn in the half light and he’d tell me stories about the stars and the moon. I loved the idea that the Milky Way was a path of glowing ashes thrown up into the sky by a young girl from her cooking fire. And that Alderberan (the Red Giant to me) was the husband of seven maidens and when he failed to shoot the three zebras (Orion’s belt) he was watched over for the rest of is life by the Great Lion (Betelgeuse).

I didn’t know it then but these stories were San (bushman) myths. The San people believed in ‘kukummi’. There’s no English equivalent for this word but roughly it means - stories, history, legends of the past. ‘Stories that float from afar’ is how they described ‘kukummi’.

The star myths were so much part of my life that years later when my Ridgeback produced her first litter of eleven puppies they were all registered with star names like Vega, Betelgeuse, Arcturis.

3. Looking back, what is your favourite myth of all time, from any culture? And why would you choose it?
The West African myth of ‘Why the Sun and Moon Live in the Sky’ because it’s a very human. It’s about a husband, Sun, who is overly generous and is beguiled into inviting the Ocean to visit. His wife is a bit disconcerted that she’ll have to put up with all Ocean’s children as well. In the end with Moon scolding her husband, they are left clinging to the rooftop of their home, while Ocean washes in with all her fish and crabs and creatures. Finally with their home completely awash and under water they are forced to go up into the sky. And from that day onwards disenchanted Moon has lived with the stars on the dark side of the sky away from her foolish husband, Sun. Niki Daly’s picturebook of ‘Why the Sun and Moon Live in the Sky’ is wonderful retelling worth looking out for. He has taken an African tale but used Renaissance imagery that works brilliantly.

4. Who is the mythical hero, heroine or being you most dislike, and what made you feel that way about them?
I’m not sure I dislike her but I think Ariadne is not to be trusted. She’s a bit of a minx. (nothing wrong with being a minx!) She was wily enough to know her mother and father’s ways. She knew about her mother’s lover and she knew how the Minotaur had come into existence. She was quite manipulative and coaxed Daedalus (I’m sure by flirting) to do exactly what she wanted… carve dolls for her, build a dancefloor at Knossos and devise a plan to help the handsome Theseus escape the labyrinth so she could run off with him. But I can’t really say I dislike her because she intrigued me so much that I once wrote a short story from her viewpoint.

5. Is there a mythical beast you are particularly fond of? If so, which one?
The Minotaur. I think he deserved better.

6. How have myths had an influence on your writing life, if at all? 
A visit to the Valley of the Kings, seeing the Star goddess, Nut, stretched across the ceiling of a tomb in the Valley of the Kings painted in shades of turquoise and cobalt as freshly as if the artist had just put down his brush, inspired me to write my picture book The Starbearer and from there I went on to write the two novels Eye of the Moon and Eye of the Sun set in Ancient Egypt.

And I must thank my father for the star myths I used in Fish Notes and Star Songs. The San people believe that every time a shooting star appears in the sky, a person dies… When a star falls a heart dies. The star’s noise dying away takes our heart with it. I find it quite breath-taking that they believe stars make sounds or songs.

7. If you could choose to be the demigod child of any one mythical god or goddess, which one would it be? Which power would you like to inherit from them—and what would you do with it? 
I’d like to be the Goddess of the Moon whether she was Diana, or Artemis, or even Hathor the Egyptian Goddess of the Moon as in my novel Eye of the Moon.  The Moon goddess is powerful yet at the same time she has a sense of being a woman. I love the idea that Artemis protected wild places where you could rest and gather strength and that she was very fast. I only discovered I could run fast when I was 40. What a waste. And I like that Diana was also the symbol of the creative insanity that comes with being a poet or artist (read writer for that as well I’m sure.)

More about Dianne:
I grew up on the southern tip of Africa. As a child I loved drawing which is just another way of telling stories. In another life I was an art teacher and a porcelain slipware artist. My first teenage novel was published in 1984. I haven’t stopped writing since – novels, short stories and picture books. My novel Boikie You Better Believe It was short-listed with JM Coetzee and won the M-net Award in South Africa and a short story has appeared in an anthology alongside Doris Lessing, Guy de Maupassant and Roahl Dahl amongst others.

I live in London with my husband and for some of the year on a beach in the southern hemisphere where whales visit. I’m a hopeless on Twitter because I forget, but then I’m hopeless at quite a few things – I can’t ride a bicycle!
Dianne's website is http://www.diannehofmeyr.com/
She blogs at: http://awfullybigblogadventure.blogspot.com/

Mythic Friday Interview: Number 12 - Nicola Morgan

To lure the inimitably crabbit Nicola Morgan to Scribble City Central once may be deemed a triumph.  To do it twice is definitely a coup.  When Nicola agreed to talk about the Oedipus myth and her utterly fabulous new novel Wasted (which I still can't stop thinking about), a few weeks ago, I was delighted, and I wondered if I might lure her in (with the promise of future champagne and biscuits) to do a regular MFI.  To my surprise she agreed (so we'll be drinking the fizzy stuff at the Edinburgh Book Festival, where she and I are both appearing. Phew! I can finally say that without fear now the 'official' programme is out!). Once again, welcome, Nicola, and thank you for your great answers.  I too am fascinated by Achilles--I don't like him very much, but you are quite right, his story encompasses so many interestingly contradictory themes of the human psyche. As for your answer to question 7--I can just see you in some Greek myth version of 'Chariots of Fire'--filmed in Edinburgh, as of course the original was!  
PS: I've said this before, but if you lot ignored me last time and haven't read Wasted yet, please go and do so at once.  No really. It's that good.  And possibly even better.  Definitely one of my 'Top Books of 2010'--but you'll have to wait till the end of the year to see what else I've chosen! Now, over to The Crabbit One herself....

1. Do you think that the retelling of Greek and other myths is important or relevant for the children of today? Why should they care about some “dry old stories” which come from ancient cultures they might never even have heard of?
I could say (and it would be true) that they’d find amazing connections between the myths of all cultures and our own more modern literature. I could say (and it would be true) that they’d be fascinated to discover how people from all cultures around the world have told many of the same stories, even before we’d crossed oceans and met each other. But I’ll just say that ancient myths are exciting, gruesome, violent, passionate, dramatic, romantic and exciting. What more can you want from a story?

2. What age were you when you came across your first myth or myths? Tell us how you felt then about the myths you first discovered. Did you love them or hate them? Did they scare you, excite you—or were you indifferent? What kind of myths were they? Greek? Norse? Native American? Celtic? Or from another culture entirely? Were they in a book you read? Or did you hear them as oral storytelling from someone else?
Greek and Roman myths were the first stories I remember enjoying. The Greek and Roman ones are basically the same, but I prefer the Greek names – they feel more exotic. I think it was all from books rather than orally. They were part of my education, so they were shown to me by my parents and teachers, but I don’t remember feeling I was supposed to read them – I just loved them from an early age. I collected books of myths. I remember they had a different smell, and always thick paper, as though they were special.

3. Looking back, what is your favourite myth of all time, from any culture? And why would you choose it?
The story of Achilles is fascinating. You’ve got a mother, the sea-nymph, Thetis, who tries to protect her baby from death, so she dips him in the river Styx to make him immortal; but she can’t fully protect him because she has to hold him by his heel, which misses contact with the magic water. Besides, she should know that even the gods can’t prevent a human from dying eventually. So, Achilles grows up strong and heroic, but his invincibility also makes him arrogant – because every hero (and every human) has a flaw, and in the Greek myths a flaw will always be punished. In the Trojan War, Achilles refuses to fight because he feels insulted by his commander. His refusal causes many deaths of his own side – so we should perhaps condemn him for this. He eventually decides to fight because the Trojan prince, Hector, kills his lover, Patroclus, so Achilles goes after Hector and viciously kills him, dragging him round the walls of the city in ugly triumph, after threatening to eat him. The story shows everything: a mother’s hopeless and misguided desperation to protect her child; heroism, determination and bravery; cruelty and nastiness, friendship, loyalty and love; the human failing of arrogance when we think we’re better or stronger than everyone else. And the inevitability of death: for, of course, Achilles does die in the end, wounded in the heel. This gives us the well-known phrase, “the Achilles heel” – meaning our weak spot, the flaw in our character that we need to watch out for. Oh, and the fact that Achilles was meant to be the best looking hero in the whole world, ever, helps the story’s romance! Mind you, he was by most accounts a really arrogant hero – which perhaps allows us not to mourn his death when it comes. Achilles is a terribly human mixture of bad and good. He’s certainly very far from being a saint, but I like the story because it’s full of contradictions. There’s lots to argue about.

4. Who is your most hated mythical hero or heroine, and what made you feel that way about them?: Hera, Zeus’s wife. She’s such a jealous, grumpy, vindictive, negative Nora!

5. Is there a mythical beast you are particularly fond of? If so, which one?
No, they’re all way too scary to be fond of!

6. How have myths had an influence on your writing life, if at all?
I find this really difficult – no, impossible – to answer. They’re just deep inside my consciousness and I don’t really notice their influence but I know it must be there.

7. If you could choose to be the demigod child of any one mythical god or goddess, which one would it be? Which power would you like to inherit from them—and what would you do with it?
Artemis, the goddess of hunting. Not because I want to hunt (!), but because she was also the goddess of speed and athleticism. I used to be a fast runner and I’d love to be able to run like the wind now, so if I could inherit her speed and fitness, that would be lovely. What would I do with it? I’d find a really long sandy beach on the south coast of England, or the west coast of Scotland, with no one on it (I might have to hunt and kill them first), and then I’d run, and run, and run, with my feet hardly touching the sand, the wind in my long hair (which I don’t have, but I would if I were Artemis’s daughter) and the sun on my skin.

More about Nicola:
Nicola Morgan is an award-winning author, mostly for teenagers – though she has also written some Thomas the Tank Engine books. She’s best known for her gruesome novel, Fleshmarket, her thriller, Deathwatch, and her internationally-acclaimed book on the teenage brain, Blame My Brain. She also blogs energetically on behalf of writers aiming for publication, and her book on the subject, Write To Be Published, will be published by Snowbooks in 2011. Her brand new YA novel is Wasted, which was published May 2010. Nicola lives in Edinburgh and London.
Nicola's brilliant Wasted blog is HERE
Her extremely useful writing blog is HERE
Nicola tweets as nicolamorgan
and her website is HERE

Mythic Friday Interview: Number 11 - Fiona Dunbar

Making up a good name for a character is an art.  I'm a sucker for a good name, and so when I opened the first volume of Fiona Dunbar's Lulu Baker Trilogy, The Truth Cookie, I was immediately entranced with the idea of Varaminta Le Bone, the woman who has entangled Lulu's poor hapless father.  It is, quite simply, a gem of a name on so many levels--right up there with Cruella De Vil, in my opinion. It's a fantastic achievement for any author to have her books made into a series by the BBC, and Fiona has done just that--Lulu Baker has recently been on British TV screens, starring in the children's series Jinx which is based on the trilogy. It's very funny indeed--I loved watching it. I also found it fascinating to spot the myth references in the books--and I'd never heard of the Sumerian Dumuzi (you'll find out about him below).  What I love about all these mythic interviews is that I'm learning so much stuff.  Having thought I knew a lot, I now realise that there's a whole new world of mythic possibilities out there for me to discover.  Thanks so much for visiting Scribble City Central, Fi--I just wish I could bake some Truth Cookies for our politicians, so they'd tell us just how much of a mess we are really in!

1. Do you think that the retelling of myths is important or relevant for the children of today? Why should they care about some “dry old stories” which come from ancient or forgotten cultures they might never even have heard of?
Gosh, yes, all those dull, dry old stories of magical transformations, gods behaving badly, mortals doing battle with beasts…yawn! Seriously, though; to render these tales at all ‘dry’, you’d have to be the Biggest Dullard in all Drearydom, don’t you think? But of course it’s not just about adventure and excitement; it’s the emotional truth behind the narrative that makes the reader/listener really care. All those fragile mortals making tragically bad decisions…how many times did I pray Orpheus would not turn round this time. And poor old Icarus! That one really resonated for me, for some reason. You can’t fail to care.

2. What age were you when you came across your first myth or myths? Tell us how you felt then about the myths you first discovered. Did you love them or hate them? Did they scare you, excite you—or were you indifferent? What kind of myths were they? Greek? Norse? Native American? Celtic? Or from another culture entirely? Were they in a book you read? Or did you hear them as oral storytelling from someone else?
I wanted to give the impression I was dead clever, and say I knew them all, ooh…since I was about six. In fact, I’ve just dug out my Scholastic Book Club edition of The Greek Gods by Evslin, Evslin & Hoopes; this clearly dates from when I was twelve. I don’t think I read any before then – or knew them from any other source. Astonishing, really. I was deprived! I was blown away by them, and re-read that slim volume over and over again.

3. Looking back, what is your favourite myth of all time, from any culture? And why would you choose it?
Well, I’ve already mentioned Icarus and Orpheus…Pandora’s another one. I seem to like these stories involving irresistible temptations, so this probably indicates I have no willpower whatsoever. But I have to come back to the story of Orpheus and Eurydice, I think, for the tale that probably has it all for me. Orpheus himself is irresistible, and anything involving the underworld holds a particular fascination; so much more interesting than Olympus! I love everything about it; Cerberus the three-headed dog guarding the entrance, the ferryman Charon, the stories of penitents like Sisyphus and Tantalus and their eternal tasks. I love the story of Demeter and Persephone too, the six seeds of the pomegranate, how it relates to the seasons…but no, I can only have one, so I’ll stick with Orpheus and Eurydice.

4. Who is the mythical hero or heroine you most dislike, and what made you feel that way about them?
That’s a really tough one! Easy to think of ones I like; Odysseus is probably my favourite, for his wit and imagination. I have to stick with Greek here because it’s what I know best, and I’m a bit stuck on who would be defined as a ‘heroine’; presumably the likes of Artemis and Athene don’t count as they’re goddesses…? Don’t like Medea for obvious reasons, but I doubt she’s classified as a heroine. OK, so brief recap on the Trojan War makes me think Ajax is probably my least favourite hero; all brawn and no brain.

5. Is there a mythical beast you are particularly fond of? If so, which one?
The Minotaur. I feel sorry for him! Very potent imagery there, too.

6. How have myths had an influence on your writing life, if at all?
Both my trilogies have taken a lot from mythology. In my Lulu Baker trilogy, a very unusual recipe book comes into Lulu’s possession – but she hasn’t heard of any of the ingredients. The more I delved into this subject, the more fun I had inventing rare and wonderful ingredients that come from plants with mythical origins. One favourite is the Idzumo Tree (whose fruit Lulu uses); this is a talking tree. It takes its name from Japanese myth of the Central Land of the Reed Plains, where all the plants used to talk. Another is the Dum’zani plant, that Lulu has to fertilise using her own tears. It is named after Dumuzi, the ancient Sumerian god of fertility and vegetation who was a precursor of Persephone; he descends to the underworld in the height of summer, when all is scorched, and retrieved each autumn by his wife Inanna. Lulu’s recipe book takes its title from the Apples of the Hesperides.
Without sounding poncey (oh, all right, with sounding poncey) you could trace the themes in my Silk Sisters trilogy back to Ovid’s Metamorphoses. Er, via Marvel Comics. Following an accident involving a bolt of lightning and a pet chameleon, Rorie Silk becomes a ‘human chameleon’: when she puts on someone else’s clothes, she becomes like them in appearance, and takes on their skills as well. I’m fascinated by transformation, and Rorie’s changes, apart from giving me an excuse to cram in loads of fun and adventure, are a metaphor for the changes experienced in adolescence.

7. If you could choose to be the demigod child of any one mythical god or goddess, which one would it be? Which power would you like to inherit from them—and what would you do with it?
Clearly with Rorie Silk I was playing out my own fantasy, because I’d be the female offspring of Zeus – able, like him, to transform myself in any way I please. This would have many advantages – not just that of seduction! Though frankly, who can resist that also?

More about Fiona:
Fiona Dunbar is the author of the Lulu Baker trilogy, recently adapted for TV as the popular children’s series Jinx – and the Silk Sisters books, a futuristic adventure trilogy. She has also written a one-off children’s novel, Toonhead. A long time ago, in another lifetime, she was also an illustrator; she illustrated stories for the likes of Francesca Simon and Catherine Storr, as well as three picture books of her own.
Fiona lives in London with her Greek-American husband and two half-Greek teenage children. So far, none of them have exhibited any Percy Jackson-like attributes – although her husband’s tendency to commandeer the TV remote at all times suggests a barely suppressed Zeus complex.
Fiona's website is at http://www.fionadunbar.com/ and you can also follow her on Twitter.

Normal Service Will Be Resumed....

Currently having a few techical hitches with my normal computer--Mythic Friday Interview service will be resumed as soon as possible...I hope by the end of tomorrow.

Mythic Friday Interview: Number 10 - Candy Gourlay

I seem to have known about Candy Gourlay forever, but in fact I only met her "in the flesh" at the infamous "Ashcloud London Book Fair" this April. Now, I'm normally a law-abiding sort of person, but there must have been something in the air that day (other than ash), because I found myself becoming part of a guerilla author group which took over one of the empty stands. Candy was right in the middle of it all, taking photographs, organising us, ordering us about (she's small but pretty feisty). I took to her at once--nothing better than a feisty woman! Now her first novel for children, TALL STORY, which I have just finished reading, has just been published by David Fickling. I can tell you, it's really good and it's really different, and I love the way she has taken the Filipino myth of the giant Bernardo Carpio and woven it into her own present day story. I knew when I asked Candy to do this Mythic Interview that I had some gaps in my knowledge as far as Filipino myth was concerned. I didn't know just how big that gap was until I read her answers, and I can't wait to do some exploring to remedy that lack of knowledge. I really love the fact that Candy learnt the myths of her homeland via oral storytelling. It is a rare thing these days. If you've ever sat round a fire in the dark and swapped ghost stories, you will know how atmospheric and special it is, compared to reading from a book. Don't get me wrong--reading from a book is GREAT. But I have the clearest memories of an old man in our village who used to tell us tales about Hampshire and its folklore--what you should and shouldn't do in case of offending the fairies, forinstance. It was magical in the truest sense. I know you're going to love what Candy has to say here--and enjoy clicking on her links. Over to you, Candy, and thanks again for visiting Scribble City Central and sharing with us.

1. Do you think that the retelling of myths is important or relevant for the children of today? Why should they care about some “dry old stories” which come from ancient or forgotten cultures they might never even have heard of?
Oh yes – the retelling of myths is important. In every myth – whether it’s an ancient Greek story or a Filipino legend – we can hear the voices of storytellers from our long ago past.

Myths give a heartbeat to our culture, they tell us who we are and where we come from – we would be oh so much poorer if we forget them. Without these stories, we are incomplete.

2. What age were you when you came across your first myth or myths? Tell us how you felt then about the myths you first discovered. Did you love them or hate them? Did they scare you, excite you—or were you indifferent? What kind of myths were they? Greek? Norse? Native American? Celtic? Or from another culture entirely? Were they in a book you read? Or did you hear them as oral storytelling from someone else?
I learned about Greek and Norse mythology in school of course. But the mythology that informed my childhood was the mythology of the Philippines where I grew up. It is a mythology that reflects the geography of my country, which is one of several that straddle a split on the earth’s surface that has come to be known as the Ring of Fire – so called because volcanoes rise wherever the fissure lies. The Ring of Fire oozes calamity and our mythology reflects this.

There are few books about Philippine myths, so in the main they are learned as stories told by parents, grandparents and nannies. Much of the mythology is handed down orally – and so every storyteller gives each myth its own spin … and no one version is ever alike!

When I was a little girl, the electricity supply in Manila was constantly interrupted, and during the black-outs (or brown-outs, as we calle them in the Philippines) we would light candles and the adults would stop working and that’s when a lot of the stories got told.

I loved the stories – we didn’t have books read to us at bedtime as most children do here in England, so the candle-lit story telling sessions were a chance to bask in the total attention of our elders.

3. Looking back, what is your favourite myth of all time, from any culture? And why would you choose it?
One of my favourite Philippine myths was a creation myth set around the Callao Caves in Cagayan.

The caves are seven chambers set into a mountain. It is said that the gods used the Callao caves to create man and all living creatures. They shaped people out of mud and rain, popped them into the caves and baked them until done. I loved the idea of the gods baking away and populating the world!

4. Who is the mythical hero or heroine you most dislike, and what made you feel that way about them?
This is an impossible question. I tried thinking of villains in mythology but there is nothing I love more than a good baddy. So I couldn’t dislike any of the baddies. Sorry, I can’t think of a single one that I would dislike.

5. Is there a mythical beast you are particularly fond of? If so, which one?
In the Philippines, we have a marvellous monster called the Manananggal (literally the “disconnect” monster). She is a beautiful woman by day but at night, she sprouts huge leathery pterodactyl wings and her top half rips away from her bottom half. Some say she flies about preying on unfaithful young men. others say she finds pregnant women and using a straw, sucks the unborn child out. The only way to destroy her is to find her bottom half and sprinkle sea salt on the intestines that she has left behind. It’s gruesome and horrible and wonderful!

6. How have myths had an influence on your writing life, if at all?
When I started writing my book TALL STORY, I only wanted to write a story about a boy with gigantism. When I decided to set some of it in the Philippines, I remembered the stories my father used to tell me of Bernardo Carpio, a legendary giant.

I distinctly remember my Dad pointing out imprints on a mountain and telling me, “See, those are Bernardo Carpio’s foot prints!” Dad told me that when there were earthquakes (we have quite a few of those in the Philippines), it was just Bernardo Carpio, shrugging his shoulders.

I thought of using the Bernardo Carpio story. The boy, named Bernardo, in my story grows to eight feet tall and his village comes to believe that he is inhabited by the spirit of Bernardo Carpio. So sparks fly when Bernardo must move to England to join his mother who works in London as a nurse.

Philippine mythology is handed down in the oral tradition so every version of a story is different. In the years when the Philippines was a colony of Spain for example, Bernardo Carpio was portrayed as a revolutionary. So I look upon TALL STORY as my own telling.

I also used elements of Philippine creation mythology in both TALL STORY and an unpublished novel, VOLCANO CHILD. I hope this mythology which though part of my childhood is yet unheard of here in the West gives a fresh angle to my writing. I am also enormously proud to share some of my native culture in my books.

More about Candy:
Upon graduating from college in Manila, Candy was recruited to a magazine set up to oppose the regime of dictator Ferdinand Marcos. The magazine was instrumental to the fall of the Marcos dictatorship in 1986. It was in the midst of the so-called People Power revolution, that she met her husband, who at the time was the FT correspondent. When they moved to England in 1989, she found herself writing about over-the-counter drugs, media-buying, and toilet paper for a marketing magazine, before moving to the news agency Inter Press Service, for which she reported on first world issues from a developing world perspective. She went on to report widely on the Filipino migration phenomenon for various publications. In 2005, she returned to the Philippines to write and present the Radio 4 documentary, MOTHERLESS NATION, about the children left behind by migrant workers. Though her ambition since childhood has been to write fiction for children, she only began to pursue this dream in earnest after her own children were out of nappies. Her stories have appeared in anthologies as well as on the preschool BBC Radio channel, Cbeebies. TALL STORY is her debut novel, out in June.
Tall Story has a website www.tallstory.net. Candy blogs on Notes from the Slushpile, about writing, getting published, surviving the internet and never ever forgetting that some things we just do for love. Her author site is www.candygourlay.com and she tweets as candygourlay
Visit TALL STORY's Facebook page: