Mythic Friday Interview: Number 15 - Gillian Philip

Gillian Philip and I have much in common, not least a deep and visceral love of Scottish myth and legend. (She's also a really superb teller of tales. When I read Gillian's scarily dystopian Bad Faith and her gritty teen novel Crossing the Line last year, I knew I was Onto A Good Thing, and I told her so.) What she says below (quoting Stuart McHardy) about the importance of knowing the myths of the land you live in is something I've been banging on about for years--and in part why I wrote Coll the Storyteller.  There is so much richness and complexity to be found in those Celtic tales (Skye and the Isles providing a particularly fertile vein)--and she's right, the places themselves tell stories without even trying.  I wrote the text of  my first published picturebook on the banks of the River Awe, and I'm convinced the spirit of the water (maybe even a kelpie) whispered it into my ear. 

Like Gillian, I was brought up in a household where the background of Scots superstition was part of everyday life--we had two rowan trees at the gate to prevent faeries and witches from getting in and bespelling us.  As I said last Tuesday over on An Awfully Big Blog Adventure, faeries are not always tiny sugar-pink winged entities from Disney--certainly the Sidhe of Scotland are old and dark and scary--and I find them endlessly fascinating.  Which brings me neatly to Gillian's new book--Firebrand--which is published on 27th August, and is the first of four.  I was lucky enough to wheedle an early copy, and my goodness I'm glad I did, because it's one of the best faerie fantasy books I've ever read.  No kidding--it's that amazing, and you can quote me.  What slightly niggles me about some of the current crop of  'modern faery tales' is that the faeries have been translated from their original Celtic homelands to the USA.  Nothing wrong with that--but sometimes it just doesn't sit quite right.  Gillian's book is not set in the USA, but in the Scotland of the 16th century where there's a whole otherworld of gloriously dangerous telepathic faeries just beyond the Veil.  In the dour and dirty mortal world, on the other hand, witches are burned, superstition is rife and 'different' is often fatal to your chances of living to a ripe old age.

Now, I am quite squeamish about burning people (I walked out of the film Elizabeth as the opening credits rolled).  It takes a lot to get me to read a book where burning witches is described in any sort of detail at all (maybe because I know that if I'd lived in another century, I too would have climbed that brushwood pyre and died in the flames).  Firebrand had me so tight in its grip by the end of the second page that I just didn't care when, later on in the book, Gillian was putting nightmare images of popping, crackling flesh into my head.  It is one of those (sadly unusual) books where I simply forgot I was reading--because I was so totally engaged with her richly created and beautifully crafted world. Her feral yet fiercely loyal Sithe hero, Seth, is a fully-imagined and fascinating character who I fell for immediately. He's a driven, volatile, knife-edge sort of boy--unflinching in his shield of outward fierce pride and yet (in his own head) so vulnerable and so unsure that he is loveable or redeemable in any way. His older brother Conal--opposite to Seth in almost every way on the surface--nearly broke my heart with the power of his generous, breath-stopping love.  The faerie queen, Kate NicNiven is suitably amoral, cruel--and a vicious political genius who knows just exactly when to exercise the power of a grand gesture. I could go on and on here, but I don't want to put up any spoilers, so I will just say this: go and buy the book when it comes--in fact, put in a pre-order right now. 
To sum up, it seems to me that in Firebrand Gillian has taken her own mythic heritage and made it into something rare, new and infinitely exciting.  I don't know how I will possess my soul in patience until the other three in the Rebel Angels series appear.  I seldom use bold capitals in posts to make a point, but just so you know, I REALLY REALLY LOVE THIS BOOK!  (Got it?)  Now it's time for me to welcome Gillian to Scribble City Central, which I do with great joy, and to hand you over to her.  I think you'll find her answers provide a fascinating and wide-ranging contribution to the Mythic Friday Interview series.  I know I did. 

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?
There’s nothing dry about myths! Children need to discover them simply because they are such fabulous stories. And they are completely relevant, because the themes are eternal – heroism, loyalty, sacrifice, betrayal, vengeance, fatal arrogance: you name it, it’s there. Always in such a huge, dramatic context, too – the stakes and the consequences are terrifying, yet we always get to relate to the main characters as real, vulnerable, flawed human beings. You care about them, worry for them, mourn their fates - even if they are the sons and daughters of gods.

Besides the straightforward fact that they’re good stories, though, I think it’s important for children to know mythology, especially their own. Stuart McHardy, who writes about Scottish myths and folklore, quotes an old saying: ‘Gin ye dinnae ken whaur ye’ve been, hou can ye tell whaur ye’re gangin?’ Or, if you don’t know where you’ve been, how can you tell where you’re going? Myths are born out of landscape and history, and they’re a way of understanding your own home.

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’ve cudgelled my brains about this, Lucy, but – I simply can’t remember. I do remember they were Greek myths, and my father introduced me to them, but which ones, or in which books, I just don’t know. They would have been books I borrowed out of his study, which was a lovely place full of old books that smelt of dust. I was fascinated by all things Greek, and he had a copy of Teach Yourself Greek from which I learned the alphabet to no apparent purpose except that, along with the myths, it keeps my husband happy on Saturdays when I can fill gaps in the Telegraph crossword. I soaked up myths from the movies, too – I loved all those films like Jason & the Argonauts and Clash of the Titans, with their fantastic Ray Harryhausen monsters.

I loved myths, always. That didn’t mean I wasn’t scared, or that I didn’t think some of them were just appalling in the way they turned out. I was always deeply offended on Orpheus’s behalf – that was just not fair! He only looked back the once. As for Persephone – her poor mother! The gods always seemed terribly cruel or indifferent, but the mortals never stopped trying to get the better of the deal. I liked that.

I don’t remember either where I first heard Scottish myths about selkies and kelpies and faeries. They were just there, in the background. We knew it wasn’t a good idea to cut down rowans, and it was a bad sign if you saw your own doppelganger. They were the kind of stories we told to scare each other, along with absurd urban myths.

I think I especially love Scottish myths because there seems such a fragile line between them and reality. They’re this close to visible, this close to tangible. Since I think of myself as very boring and rational, this is kind of embarrassing, but it’s true. I’ve a friend who spends a lot of time on the island of Gigha, and she says there are distinct spots where you can feel the closeness of the otherworld; I feel the same about Colonsay. And you only have to look at the hill Schiehallion in the right weather conditions and you know fine there must be Sidhe around up there.

On the other hand, Scotland’s historical tales can be just as wild and outlandish as its myths. There’s a fabulous story in my husband’s clan, the Keppoch MacDonalds, about the clan bard taking revenge on treacherous relatives who had murdered the true chief. Having killed seven of them, he sent their heads to the Privy Council in Edinburgh – but washed them in a well by Loch Oich on the way. There’s still a sculpture there of the heads, and it’s called the Well of the Seven Heads. You see what I mean about a fine line between myth and history!

I have to say that when my children were smaller, I shamelessly used kelpies to frighten them around lochs. There’s such a thing as being too confident around water, and if you know there’s a big horse in there waiting to eat you….

3. Looking back, what is your favourite myth of all time, from any culture? And why would you choose it?
Oh, such a tough choice. I’d have to go for the Iliad, though, because it has everything. When I was an expat and had far too much time on my hands, I decided it was something I should read and I assumed it would be a bit of a chore. But a couple of chapters in, I was hooked. The characters are so human – even the gods are flawed and jealous and fractious – and the themes are timeless. There’s everything from intimate family tragedy and lovers’ quarrels, to epic battlefield scenes. Nothing’s predictable, no one side is in the right; I found myself one minute cheering the Greeks on and the next siding wholeheartedly with the Trojans. I love Achilles and good old Pallas Athene; I love Hector and Priam and Patroclus and of course Odysseus. Oh dear, you shouldn’t have got me started….

4. Who is your most hated mythical hero or heroine, and what made you feel that way about them?This was another difficult one – it’s easy to get angry with many of them, but I find them hard to hate. But I’ll have to agree with Nicola Morgan here and say Hera. The sour old boot – always throwing a spanner in the works and ruining everyone’s plans. Mind you, she did have to put up with a lot from Zeus.

5. Is there a mythical beast you are particularly fond of? If so, which one?
I’m especially fond of kelpies (despite using them to scare my children) and they feature quite prominently in my fantasy books. That water-monster thing is such an atavistic, instinctive terror, they somehow seem very real. Out on the moors, if I’m near water, I’ve often expected to turn and see a temptingly gorgeous horse at my back.

They’re sly, they’re violent and murderous and wild, yet they’re terribly beautiful. In my fiction I’ve tried to use them in a way that puts them on my heroes’ side without compromising their savage, dangerous nature.

6. How have myths had an influence on your writing life, if at all?
A huge amount! Myths seem to creep into my books whether I like it or not; maybe that’s because those old stories are so universal and so timeless, it’s hard not to return to them. I didn’t set out to reference lots of myths in Bad Faith, for instance, yet the Orpheus myth and the Maenads crept in.

And in my Rebel Angels fantasy series I have played fast and loose with Scottish myth and legend. I always wanted to write about faeries and kelpies, witches and ancient warriors. I said earlier that myths are firmly rooted in landscape – well, the Scottish landscape has practically shouted stories at me ever since I can remember. I can’t pass a hill or a loch without ‘seeing’ something happening there. I had to write about it eventually – but what I especially love about myths is that they are so adaptable. We all own them, and we can retell them in our own way. (Not that that’s always a good thing – I give you the movie abomination that is TROY.)

But I had great fun playing with mythic characters, and inventing some of my own. I made my Sithe human – why not? – but a little differently evolved, so that they’re telepathic. (I also made them Sithe instead of Sidhe – I wanted Sith but that was a bit too Star Wars.) My villain, the Sithe queen, was based on a witch from Scottish history, Kate MacNiven; I’ve given a MacLeod clan chief a cameo because the MacLeods of Dunvegan were said to own a faery flag given to them in return for a favour they did for the ‘People of Peace’. Rowans are said to be sacred to the faeries, so I’ve made rowanwood the only thing that can wholly block their telepathy. I’ve used odd details like the rumour that kelpies don’t like liver (I can relate to that) because there was a certain water-weed that got dark and wet and swollen, and people used to assume, when it floated ashore, that a kelpie had left someone’s liver behind. It’s those little details I love...!

7. If you could choose to be the demigod child of any one mythical god or goddess from any culture, which one would it be? Which power would you like to inherit from them—and what would you do with it?
If you can fix it for me, Lucy, I’d like one of the Tuatha de Danaan for a parent, so I can have some faery blood. I’d rather like to have the powers I’ve given the Sithe in my books – speed, telepathy, healing – all except for the Second Sight one of them is cursed with. I’d hate that. If I had to choose just one power, I’ll go for the ability to tame and ride water horses! Thanks – now, if you could manage to sort that by a week on Wednesday…. Thanks for inviting me Lucy – this has been terrific fun! xxxxx

More about Gillian:
Gillian Philip was born in Glasgow, lived for 12 years in Barbados and now lives in the north of Scotland with her husband, nine-year-old twins, one labrador, two sociopathic cats, and four nervous fish.  She has been writing all her life, but has also worked as a record store assistant, theatre usherette, barmaid, sales rep, political assistant, radio presenter, typesetter, and as a singer in an Irish bar in Barbados. In 2001, when her children were born and she moved back to Scotland, she became a full-time writer of Young Adult fiction. Her books include Bad Faith, Crossing The Line, Firebrand (first of four in the Rebel Angels series) and (for Hothouse Fiction) the Darke Academy teen horror series.
Gillian's website is at http://gillianphilip.com/ and she contributes to a children’s authors’ blog at http://awfullybigblogadventure.blogspot.com/;
Gillian tweets by the name of @Gillian_Philip;  she was recently kidnapped by fiendish monsters and will be blogging with the other captives at http://trappedbymonsters.com/;
Gillian's Facebook page is HERE.

Mythic Friday Interview: Number 14 - Peter Dickinson

Peter Dickinson is, quite simply, one of the greatest writers of children's books there has ever been and probably ever will be.  I can find no other way of putting it, and if anyone tells me I am exaggerating, I will be delighted to duel them at dawn. That's how strongly I feel about the matter! So when I asked (in hopefulness rather than in expectation) if Peter would do a short Mythic Interview, and he said yes, well...quite frankly I did a jig of delight and joy around the kitchen, whooping and yelling in a way very unbefitting to a woman of my girth and advancing middle years.  Obviously, I dashed immediately to my bookshelves for an orgy of Dickinson re-reading, and it strikes me that the process of reading Peter's work is an excellent education for any writer, whether of children's books or not.  Not only can the man tell a story which keeps you up far into the night, but the richness and depth of his language--the way he puts words together in a way that makes you say 'yes--that's how it IS (except that I never knew it quite like THIS before)' is nothing short of miraculous.  I expect you're now going to ask me which is my favourite of his many books.  It's so hard to pick just one.  Right now it would probably be The Blue Hawk (for which he won the Guardian Award in 1977).  Meeting Tron the Goat-chosen again made me feel the soul of the hot desert sand under my feet, made me tremble at the terrible, inexorable chanting of the priests of O and Aa, caught me entirely in the soaring webs of godpower and magic and sheer tale-telling mastery Peter wove over 30 years ago. Reader, I was entranced!  But perhaps YOU might think I should have chosen Tulku, or The Kin, or Changes or The Tears of the Salamander or Angel Isle or the Ropemaker--the latter two quite newly-discovered loves of mine? I'm sure lots of you will have your own favourites, and I'd very much like to hear about what you'd choose of Peter's oeuvre--and why--in the comments underneath.

The most recent of Peter's books is Fire: Tales of Elemental Spirits--a collection of short stories he has written jointly with his wife, the marvellous Robin McKinley (who will, I hope, be sharing her own mythic musings with us later in the series). As with the previous book, Water, I enjoyed both their contributions immensely. There's a story in there--one of Peter's--called Phoenix.  It is set, mostly, in a wood.  Now I have spent a lot of time in woods and this particular one is perfectly and carefully observed.  The way Peter has woven the myth of the phoenix right into the deep heart of the English landscape so that it seems entirely natural there,  is quite remarkable.  It's a story I keep thinking about, over and over, because often, when someone else writes about a thing you love greatly and know well (as I do woods), it is disappointing.  In this case, I am left with the comfortable and comforting sense that 'my' woods (or at least my heart's ideas about and memories of what woods should be) are safe--are preserved forever--in Peter's exquisitely imagined words.  I can pay him no greater compliment than that.  And now, I want to hand you over to Peter himself.  I am so glad and honoured that (despite being very unwell earlier in the year) he is here with us all at Scribble City Central--and I am sure you will agree that his mythic answers are admirably informative, succinct and to the point.  I quite agree with him about the dragons, by the way.  Dragons are tricky, intelligent and dangerous beasts--which should always be treated with respect. His answer to question 7 made me laugh a lot.  He's quite right, of course. Who'd be a demigod, given their track records? Here he is:

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?
If a myth is retold as a dry old story it will die. If it is told because it seems to embody, however remotely, some truth or belief that is important to our society, or simply to us as humans, it will survive. When someone talks about “the Dunkirk spirit” they are treating the event as myth, helping to keep alive a part of an unformulated belief of what it means to be British. “When Pearse summoned Cuchulain to his side/ What stalked through the Post Office?” Same sort of thing.

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 don’t think I distinguished myth from story much until somebody told me about the death of Baldur, and presumably told me what it was about. I don’t think I actually hated anything because it was a myth. I remember liking Perseus and Andromeda because I thought winged sandals were really cool, and using them to swoop down and slay the dragon and rescue the girl (I don’t think she was wearing much in the illustration) excited the young male mind. But really it’s just a story. It’s lost its function as a myth if it ever had one.

3. Looking back, what is your favourite myth of all time, from any culture? And why would you choose it?
Oedipus. Terrific story about the sheer inexorability of fate

4. Who is the mythical hero, heroine or being you most dislike, and what made you feel that way about them?
Achilles, Siegfried, all those ultra-masculine bully-boys.

5. Is there a mythical beast you are particularly fond of? If so, which one?
No, but I particularly dislike cute dragons.

6. How have myths had an influence on your writing life, if at all?
 Of course they have, but too vaguely to discuss. They’re just part of the mix, along with King James’s Bible and trashy adventure stories and SF magazines, etc

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?
No thanks. Nightmare scenario. Do you know of any divine by-blow who had a good time? Mostly they ended up as shrubs or rivers or constellations or something.

More about Peter:
Born 1927 in what is now Zambia. Father, British colonial civil servant; mother from South African farming family. Three brothers – he’s the second. Family returned to England when he was 7, but his father died the same year. Very little money, but he was privately educated at boarding schools, thanks to generosity of relatives. Scholarship to Eton. Briefly conscript in British army just after World War 2. Then Cambridge University, then 17 years working for the British humour magazine, Punch. Published his first two books, an adult detective story and a children’s SF adventure, in 1968, and from then on has been a full-time writer. Has been nine times on the Carnegie Medal short list and won it twice, as well as other major prizes. In l952 married his first wife, and they had two daughters and two sons. He now has six grandchildren. His first wife died in 1988, and two years later he married Robin McKinley. They live in a small Hampshire town with a couple of lurchers.

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: