{"id":1742,"date":"2010-10-09T08:00:53","date_gmt":"2010-10-08T19:00:53","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/?p=1742"},"modified":"2010-10-09T14:38:15","modified_gmt":"2010-10-09T01:38:15","slug":"%e2%80%9cthe-heir-of-night%e2%80%9d-f-sf-guest-author-series-nicole-murphy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/2010\/10\/09\/%e2%80%9cthe-heir-of-night%e2%80%9d-f-sf-guest-author-series-nicole-murphy\/","title":{"rendered":"\u201cThe Heir of Night\u201d F-SF Guest Author Series: Nicole Murphy"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>Today The Heir of Night<\/em> F-SF Guest Author Series<\/a> <\/strong>continues with Nicole Murphy<\/strong>, a Paranormal Urban Fantasy writer from Australia, who is also a fellow blogger on the USA-based Supernatural Underground<\/strong><\/a>. I met Nicole in person at the World Science Fiction & Fantasy Convention in Melbourne and am delighted to welcome her to Helen Lowe on Anything, Really<\/em> today, blogging on the series theme of “why F-SF rocks my world.”<\/p>\n

—<\/p>\n

F-SF Guest Series Post: Nicole Murphy on “Loving Humanity \u2013 Why Speculative Fiction Rocks!”<\/h2>\n

The very first story I wrote wasn\u2019t actually a fantasy, although it was fantastical.<\/p>\n

It was called Thunder King<\/em> and it was about a boy and his horse, Thunder King, who won five Melbourne Cups, three Caulfield Cups and in between times had adventures in the Aussie bush, such as killing rampaging lionesses and then adopting the orphaned cubs.<\/p>\n

I was eleven.<\/p>\n

The next story was a fantasy, although not in the genre sense of the word. It was about me and my friends and we\u2019d grown up and become air hostesses and flew around the world having super fabulous adventures.<\/p>\n

Even at the age of eleven, it was quite clear that I\u2019d never be tall enough to be an air hostess.<\/p>\n

However, at the same time that I was writing these very first stories, I was also reading the book that was going to change my life \u2013 The Lord of the Rings<\/em>.<\/p>\n

Suddenly, my head was full of elves and dwarves and orcs and uruk-hai and every walk was a journey to find my hobbit friends and every car journey a trek towards the fiery pit of Mount Doom.<\/p>\n

From that moment, I\u2019ve written fantasy or science fiction in some way. There\u2019s been the occasional foray into the real world (my fanfic with Duran Duran was the saucy hit of my fellow year ten students) but always my mind has been drawn to the unreal, the fantastical, the imaginary.<\/p>\n

I can\u2019t imagine why a writer wouldn\u2019t want to write science fiction or fantasy. What\u2019s so special about our world? Humans are humans, the laws of physics are immutable and once you\u2019ve seen the countryside, there it is.<\/p>\n

Why not let your imagination completely fly? Why not have magic and dragons and monsters and aliens and spaceships?<\/p>\n

Of course, I know it\u2019s not that easy. No matter the world you set your story in, there are certain things that can\u2019t be done, certain boundaries that must be respected. You might be writing about<\/span> fantastical creatures, but you\u2019re writing for<\/span> humans.<\/p>\n

This for me is where speculative fiction becomes really interesting. How do you make something different, yet give it the resonance that readers can connect to? That gets you (the writer) into thinking about people \u2013 who are we, what do we want, what do we need? What are the similarities of the human experience which mean you can take your reader to Tatooine, or Middle Earth, or in my case the town of Sclossin, or in Helen\u2019s case into a keep in the shadow of a mountain wall, and they will believe it and believe in the characters and read the story?<\/p>\n

That\u2019s the real beauty of speculative fiction and why I\u2019ll never tire of writing it \u2013 because in order to do it well, you\u2019ve got to be fully connected to our world. You\u2019ve got to find people and their traumas and triumphs endlessly fascinating. You\u2019ve got to be able to feel part of the human race, and yet be able to step away from it and see it objectively.<\/p>\n

People might THINK that capital L literature is where you will find books that deal with the human condition and offer insight into this madness that we call living. But we who read, write and love speculative fiction know that it\u2019s our often mis-represented and resented genre that truly gives us the opportunity to consider the good, and the bad, of the world around us.<\/p>\n

And that\u2019s why I think fantasy, science fiction and horror rock!<\/p>\n

—<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>

Photo by: Cat Sparks<\/p><\/div>About Nicole Murphy:<\/h2>\n

Nicole Murphy has been a primary school teacher, bookstore owner, journalist and checkout chick. She grew up reading Tolkien, Lewis and Le Guin; spent her twenties discovering Quick, Lindsay and Deveraux, and lives her love of science fiction and fantasy through her involvement with the Conflux science fiction conventions. Her urban fantasy trilogy Dream of Asarlai <\/strong>is published in Australia\/NZ by HarperVoyager. Book one Secret Ones<\/strong><\/em> is out now. She lives with her husband in Queanbeyan, NSW. Visit her website http:\/\/nicolermurphy.com<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Today The Heir of Night F-SF Guest Author Series continues with Nicole Murphy, a Paranormal Urban Fantasy writer from Australia, who is also a fellow blogger on the USA-based Supernatural Underground. I met Nicole in person at the World Science Fiction & Fantasy Convention in Melbourne and am delighted to welcome her to Helen Lowe […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7,22,14],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1742","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-booklaunches","category-fsf-guest-author-series","category-other-writers"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1742","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1742"}],"version-history":[{"count":9,"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1742\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1767,"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1742\/revisions\/1767"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1742"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1742"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1742"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}