My writing

Questions I get asked

Do I research Arthurian things, or did I mug up for my fiction?

I am afraid I was an Arthurian and Old French epic legend and all sorts of other Medievalist way before I wrote a novel using those stories. My poor editor had to put her foot down to make some bits of Illuminations more accessible to readers.

Now I can split the Medievalist from the novelist much more effectively (look Mum, no footnotes!!)- but I was a novice at dividing my brain down the middle at first.

People always ask me how much of my fiction is based on real life.

I am very impressed that people believe enough to ask me about specific characters, but my characters are entirely my invention. Some incidents are loosely based on things that I have experienced or heard about, but it is more in the nature of being inspired by than recounting things as they happened. And to the kind person who walked right up to me to count my grey hairs to see if I had twenty-one (the number of the male narrator in "Happy Faces for Happy Families") - there are quite a few more since you counted, but I am not there yet.

With my novels, even my footnotes are fictitious and should be treated as such (and if I sound pompous, it is because a lot of people have believed that, because something is in a footnote, it is true - one person even told me a footnote which I know is fictional because I wrote it, refers to some sort of external reality).

Which brings me to - Illuminations

Illuminations, a novel

Did I base Rose/Fay/Ailinn on myself?

Well, sort of.

I base all my characters on what I see of the world through my own perverse vision. So even the most horrible ones express bits of me. But they are not me. Thank goodness.

I get asked about Rose more than any other, because she is a Medievalist who is travelling in France and lo, I am a Medievalist who has travelled in France. In fact, Rose shares some intellectual interests with me, and even went into some of the same shops - I have the figurines she bought her niece! - but we have fundamental differences. Luckily for me, I have never, ever, ever had Bill in my life, for instance.

Think of it this way: all my characters are recalcitrant and follow their own paths. They will all do things in the novels that I would not and could not. So it is not a good idea to say "Gillian is Rose" or "Gillian is Fay".

Twists

I don't intend to put twists at the end of my books. They happen all by themselves. I must just have a twisted brain.

US Tour

It was great, it was wonderful - and here is the stuff we put online during it.

Travels in a red mustang convertible

My name has been in lights and I can die happy? Well, not yet.

The accent

I am very happily Australian. I do not sound like Steve Irwin because I sound like someone from Melbourne. I guess this has something to do with growing up there. 

(Why do I always feel like apologising for my sense of humour?)

A favourite bit of France.

More on Illuminations

Rose, the modern academic who finds such a strange manuscript, has her own webpage. Rose's homepage

People and places

Rose is a Melbourne girl. Here are some photos of those aspects of Melbourne. Don't blame me if they are not scenic - blame her. Rose's Melbourne

Several people have asked me about the addresses in the book.

I invented them. In fact, where Louise lives is actually a bedding shop. Please don't write to these people

I did not invent the coffee and chocolate places on Rose's website. Alan Frew is not fictitious. I asked him about Rose's preferred blend and he says it would be his Espresso Meridionale. My favourite coffees are his Nicaraguan Maragogype and his Yemen Mokha Ismaili.

When I was in France in 1995, I took a bunch of photos related to things in the book. I also have a few from my earlier trip (the exotic part of my doctoral studies) - here are the most interesting of them.

Photos - mostly France.

The Art of Effective Dreaming

The Art of Effective Dreaming is still coming - it was held up by all sorts of factors and will be out soon. Watch this space and watch my publisher's website.

Canberra

Canberra gets a bad rap everywhere. Because it is the city of Australian government, it tends to be seen as a bunch of things it is not, the main one being boring. I am afraid The Art of Effective Dreaming is not a good promotion for it as a city. But I have to say that Fay would not have enjoyed anywhere she lived - the fault lay not with Canberra but with her soul.

I came here years ago. I planned to stay one year, to be close enough to my father so I could visit him heaps when he was dying (which I did). That was in 1988. I never quite got around to leaving, despite vast pressures from family and friends all over the place. They could not see why I stayed. This says a lot about the difference between how Canberra is seen from the outside and what it really is.

Canberra is unpretentious (well, mostly). A giant village, full of informed and thoughtful people. A good sense of humour (we need it to deal with Canberra jokes) and amazing libraries. It is also very pretty.

Here is your standard tourist site: Canberra

Some pictures of standard tourist stuff: More Canberra

And more: And yet more!

Maybe one day I will take some alternate Canberra photos.

Snowy Mountain flowers

I adore the layering effect of the mountain ranges, and the snow on the high peaks. The view that you get driving down Hindmarsh Drive past Red Hill is just spectacular.  And then there are the ancient rock paintings, and...

Morris dancing

Firstly, I have a giant apology to make to my many folkdance and morris dancing friends. Many of them already know about this apology. In fact, a few of them helped me find creative ways to torture poor, innocent dancers for The Art of Effective Dreaming.

I am nevertheless sorry if anything in the book hurts anyone. It was not intended to.

I was feeling quite fine about being tongue in cheek and saying rude things about dancers who died in the course of duty. However (and this is a serious however) a couple of my close friends dance in Britannia Morris, in Melbourne (great side - terrific folks) and when one of their number died during a dance and the side more or less followed (unwittingly) what I had already written about morris dancers and mourning, I wanted to go back and change the whole novel.

I didn't. I wrote that section entirely before what happened in Melbourne and it was not related to it at all (except for me knowing some of the people).

I was distresssed by it, and still am, however. It was a bizarre coincidence. Besides, morris dancers should never die.

In case you need to know, I like morris dancing (especially Cotswold), even though I have been officially certified incompetent at it. And the vast majority of morris dancers are truly the most generous and warm people I know. Fortunately for me, most of them also have senses of humour.

Loch Ard Gorge

Other writing

I have written other things. A few short stories, published long, long ago. I lost over 30 stories in a computer accident, which is my excuse for not having more published. In fact, of all those lost, there were only two that were at all good. The truth is that I really prefer writing short non-fiction and long fiction.

A list of most of my published fiction - along with far more precise lists of fiction by other members of the Canberra Speculative Fiction Group.

Non-fiction

I have produced a few articles on this, that or the other over the years. Here are a couple of the articles, in case you are bored. I am a great believer in battling boredom.

Note: These are the unedited versions. So blame me and not the editors for the writing quality.

My views on racism.

Some thoughts on Women's History Month.

Me and Fiddler on the Roof.

Some thoughts on my latest project.

Continuum 2005.

And here is a list of most of my recent articles.

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