You might think that not having read an author's work would preclude me from going to book events and recapping them. Well, you'd be sorely mistaken, because this is one of my favorite pastimes. In some cases, though, I am especially excited for other reasons. On Friday, I went to go see Margo Lanagan at a branch of the Seattle Public Library. Catie and Tatiana really like Margo Lanagan. She's had two books on the Printz Honor list and won a World Fantasy Award. Everyone tells me to read her books and I'm fairly certain I'll enjoy them (I'm not easily scared off by anything) but I just haven't gotten around to them yet. I felt like I was meeting a literary superstar. At the event, I read a book (Shadows on the Moon) while I built up the courage to go ask Lanagan if she minded that I took a video during her reading. I can't imagine what it is like for people to be speaking and have some random girl clearly taking a video of them. What am I going to do with it? What if I'm going to search online for a selkie sex website and upload Lanagan reading a hot scene? (I did that.) What if we now start getting hits from people searching for "selkie + sex" on the blog? (I'll let you know when this happens, because it will.) Okay, I didn't really upload anything to a website like that. Just to our measly Youtube channel.
Margo Lanagan was friendly, approachable, relaxed, and well-spoken. It was clear that she is confident in her writing and comfortable talking about aspects of her work. Though she discussed several of her works, she read from and primarily discussed her newest young adult book, The Brides of Rollrock Island, which is her take on selkies. One of the aspects of selkie stories that Lanagan always wondered about was why they never seemed to be proactive about finding their stolen skins. The areas where the stories are set are often remote and she never quite understood why the women didn't self-help more, especially considering how they are never truly human and there's always something of the sea in them, which leaves a certain amount of sadness and sets them apart from humans. She said that she wanted portions of the book to be from the male's perspective as an attempt to capture that strangeness. To demonstrate, she read the following section of the book:
Margo Lanagan was friendly, approachable, relaxed, and well-spoken. It was clear that she is confident in her writing and comfortable talking about aspects of her work. Though she discussed several of her works, she read from and primarily discussed her newest young adult book, The Brides of Rollrock Island, which is her take on selkies. One of the aspects of selkie stories that Lanagan always wondered about was why they never seemed to be proactive about finding their stolen skins. The areas where the stories are set are often remote and she never quite understood why the women didn't self-help more, especially considering how they are never truly human and there's always something of the sea in them, which leaves a certain amount of sadness and sets them apart from humans. She said that she wanted portions of the book to be from the male's perspective as an attempt to capture that strangeness. To demonstrate, she read the following section of the book:
| "Seals do not sit about and tell, the way people do, and their lives are not eventful in the way that people's are, lines of story combed out again and again, in the hope that they will yield more sense with every stroke. Seal life already makes perfect sense, and needs no explanation. At the approach of my man-mind, my seal life slips apart into glimpses and half memories: sunlight shafts into the green; the mirror roof crinkles above; the mams race ahead through the halls and cathedrals and along the high roads of the sea; boat bellies rock against the light, and men mumble and splash at their business above; the seal-men spin their big bodies by their delicate tails as lightly as land-lads spin wooden tops, shooting forward, upward, outward. Movement in the sea is very much like flying, through a green air flocking with tiny lives, and massier ones more slowly coasting by." (hardcover, p. 255) |
Between reading portions of the book, the author talked a little bit about aspects of the novel that readers and fans might find of interest. Rollrock (titled Sea Hearts in Australia) began as a novella and that shorter book was told entirely from Daniel's point of view. While writing the novella, she realized just how big the story was and she knew how much possibility laid underneath, waiting to be adapted. She said she just kept asking herself, "Why is the witch doing this thing?" and it was something she wanted to explore. Lanagan also said that a bit of the storyline surrounding the male characters is due to her own empty nest syndrome, since it was written at a time when her sons had left home. Later, an audience member asked her about the symbolism in her writing and whether she is aware of any of it while she is writing, to which she replied that she is usually unaware until after the fact but in the case of missing her sons, she was well aware of why she was writing what she did. Here's Margo reading the first section of Rollrock, a beach scene with several young half human, half selkie male children:
When she'd finished reading from the novel, she opened the event up for questions and I was impressed by several of the audience members and the questions they had for the author. Lanagan told readers that her favorite character was hard to choose, so she picked two: Daniel and Misskaella. She said that Daniel reminded her a bit of her own kids and that she liked that Misskaella exacted her revenge, even though she did it in an unwholesome manner. Another audience member spoke a bit about how Lanagan's work has been labelled anti-feminist in the past and about how she felt about that. In response, Lanagan spoke a bit about the sexual scenes in this book. She said that there are several hot sex scenes that no one ever saw. Her agent shopped around the novella with no sex scenes and she thinks Random House was pleased that her new novel would be easier to stomach than her previous (and more controversial) book, Tender Morsels. She then pointed us to one outtake that was not included in the book but that is available online. Listen to her read Flower and Weed here, at Terra Incognita podcast.
When asked whether writing the novel was a long process, Lanagan said that it took her about eighteen months while she worked part-time. She said that the book had to be wholly re-formed almost twice. "Writing is many levels of self-delusion," she said, "You think you're done when you're not." Editors and publishers might not be an author's favorite people to talk to about their work but she said they asked her all the right questions about this novel and that she knew somewhere inside of her that the problems they mentioned existed, but that she appreciates the criticism because it does not come hand in hand with a presumption about how she can/will fix anything. Tender Morsels took her about the same amount of time. When she started writing that book, she was in the middle of several other half-completed projects and wasn't sure if she could finish anything full-length. Obviously, she said, she felt less tension when writing Rollrock because she had concrete evidence that she was capable. Someone inquired what she's currently working on and the answer is that she's doing short stories now but that she's also working on another full-length novel about an Irish convict who comes to Australia and accidentally brings a goddess with him. (you know, as you do) She wrote a zero draft of the book during NaNoWriMo (presumably last year) but she said it needs a lot of work. When she was writing the first draft of Rollrock, she kept receiving emails from editors asking her to participate in this or that anthology and she said her mental process was like, "Oh! Dragons. Oh! Witches. And short stories are so short, I can definitely do this," and subsequently said yes to quite a few people. As it turns out, she'd agreed to do twelve short stories. She ended up completing every single one of them and they will all be published, though it seemed clear she hoped never to put herself in such a position again. At this point, she has five separate short story collections out, and another one, Yellowcake, containing previously published shorts, will be published in May 2013. (it's already published in Australia)
Here's Lanagan discussing a bit about selkie lore and reading from Rollrock (sorry about the audio quality):
When asked whether writing the novel was a long process, Lanagan said that it took her about eighteen months while she worked part-time. She said that the book had to be wholly re-formed almost twice. "Writing is many levels of self-delusion," she said, "You think you're done when you're not." Editors and publishers might not be an author's favorite people to talk to about their work but she said they asked her all the right questions about this novel and that she knew somewhere inside of her that the problems they mentioned existed, but that she appreciates the criticism because it does not come hand in hand with a presumption about how she can/will fix anything. Tender Morsels took her about the same amount of time. When she started writing that book, she was in the middle of several other half-completed projects and wasn't sure if she could finish anything full-length. Obviously, she said, she felt less tension when writing Rollrock because she had concrete evidence that she was capable. Someone inquired what she's currently working on and the answer is that she's doing short stories now but that she's also working on another full-length novel about an Irish convict who comes to Australia and accidentally brings a goddess with him. (you know, as you do) She wrote a zero draft of the book during NaNoWriMo (presumably last year) but she said it needs a lot of work. When she was writing the first draft of Rollrock, she kept receiving emails from editors asking her to participate in this or that anthology and she said her mental process was like, "Oh! Dragons. Oh! Witches. And short stories are so short, I can definitely do this," and subsequently said yes to quite a few people. As it turns out, she'd agreed to do twelve short stories. She ended up completing every single one of them and they will all be published, though it seemed clear she hoped never to put herself in such a position again. At this point, she has five separate short story collections out, and another one, Yellowcake, containing previously published shorts, will be published in May 2013. (it's already published in Australia)
Here's Lanagan discussing a bit about selkie lore and reading from Rollrock (sorry about the audio quality):
Speaking again about her short stories, Lanagan intrigued me by saying that her agent has a collection of shorts from her that "by no stretch of the imagination can be categorized as YA." She said they are very nasty, and when and audience member asked her if she meant scary, Lanagan replied that they were less scary and more filled with violence, sex, and gore. (I want to read these.) After this, someone asked how she felt about being categorized as YA, especially in the "Dark YA" context that has saturated discussion in the last year or so. She said that she feels as comfortable as one can in any category and that she's certain the people who feel it is their job to "police" YA probably feel much more uncomfortable than she does. Lanagan likes the blurred edges of reader age categories--there will always be adults who read children's, middle grade, and YA, and there will always be children and teens who read up. She said she loves those 13-year-olds who can and do take anything you give them to read and can handle it. Additionally, she feels like the popularity of books like the Twilight series and Harry Potter have made it more acceptable for adults to read YA and that there's less social stigma attached to doing so. When asked if she heard negative feedback from teens, Lanagan said that she really only hears from the teens who love her books but I chuckled when she said that she sometimes goes on Goodreads when she's feeling "particularly strong" to read what some people have to say--and a lot of it isn't great. She knows that her books will be "what some people need at the time," and I think that's a healthy way to look at it.
The last discussion of the event was about the time period in which The Brides of Rollrock Island is set, for that issue caused a bit of confusion with one reader in the audience. The reader said she was just rolling with the story, picturing it mostly in some olden days year and then a bus came along and she did a double take. For the record, Lanagan said she wanted to set it right on the cusp of technology. She also wanted the setting to be remote but not completely removed from our normal world so we could relate to it in some way. The actual time period is somewhere around the turn of the century. The audience member also asked about the witch character (Misskaella), because she seems to outlive a lot of people. To that, the author said, "There's just something about evil, isn't there?"
After the event, while I was waiting in the signing line, Lanagan spoke with two other readers about selkie stories and like the creep I am, I totally eavesdropped. They had a discussion about how popular some topics are in young adult literature--mermaids and angels, for example, but that selkie stories represented a far smaller slice of the genre. One reader suggested that might be because selkie lore is not as well known in the United States as it is in Ireland, Scotland, and the like, though Lanagan mentioned that it is more well-known in fisherman communities from Maine upwards to Newfoundland and other Canadian provinces. She also said, and I found this particularly interesting, that she wanted to write a particular kind of selkie story. Angel stories are often viewed as overly sentimental and she liked that there is an underpinning of unhappiness in selkie lore. Though I don't have notes for this conversation, what I understood Lanagan to be saying (and what is evident in the stories she does choose to write) is that she is less inclined to write fanciful, happy books.
The last discussion of the event was about the time period in which The Brides of Rollrock Island is set, for that issue caused a bit of confusion with one reader in the audience. The reader said she was just rolling with the story, picturing it mostly in some olden days year and then a bus came along and she did a double take. For the record, Lanagan said she wanted to set it right on the cusp of technology. She also wanted the setting to be remote but not completely removed from our normal world so we could relate to it in some way. The actual time period is somewhere around the turn of the century. The audience member also asked about the witch character (Misskaella), because she seems to outlive a lot of people. To that, the author said, "There's just something about evil, isn't there?"
After the event, while I was waiting in the signing line, Lanagan spoke with two other readers about selkie stories and like the creep I am, I totally eavesdropped. They had a discussion about how popular some topics are in young adult literature--mermaids and angels, for example, but that selkie stories represented a far smaller slice of the genre. One reader suggested that might be because selkie lore is not as well known in the United States as it is in Ireland, Scotland, and the like, though Lanagan mentioned that it is more well-known in fisherman communities from Maine upwards to Newfoundland and other Canadian provinces. She also said, and I found this particularly interesting, that she wanted to write a particular kind of selkie story. Angel stories are often viewed as overly sentimental and she liked that there is an underpinning of unhappiness in selkie lore. Though I don't have notes for this conversation, what I understood Lanagan to be saying (and what is evident in the stories she does choose to write) is that she is less inclined to write fanciful, happy books.
Have you seen Margo Lanagan at a book event or read any of her books? What did you think? Also, do you think there are websites about selkie sex fantasies? (I'm not looking!)
