{"id":1913,"date":"2010-10-18T06:00:19","date_gmt":"2010-10-17T17:00:19","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/?p=1913"},"modified":"2010-10-22T11:03:34","modified_gmt":"2010-10-21T22:03:34","slug":"the-heir-of-night-guest-author-series-juliet-marillier","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/2010\/10\/18\/the-heir-of-night-guest-author-series-juliet-marillier\/","title":{"rendered":"“The Heir of Night” Guest Author Series: Juliet Marillier"},"content":{"rendered":"

Juliet Marillier<\/strong><\/a>, the eight author in the F-SF Author Guest Series<\/strong><\/a> can legitimately claim to be both a New Zealand and<\/span> Australian author, and I suspect needs very little introduction given the international success of both her adult Sevenwaters<\/em> series and her YA novels that commenced with Wildwood Dancing. <\/strong><\/em>I was pleased to meet Juliet in person at Worldcon<\/strong> in Melbourne and am delighted to have her here as a guest author today, providing her take on the series’ theme of “Why Fantasy-Science Ficton Rocks My World.” <\/em><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>F-SF Guest Author Post: Juliet Marillier<\/h2>\n

Thanks for having me, Helen, and congratulations on the release of The Heir of Night<\/em><\/a>!<\/p>\n

Readers often ask me, \u2018Why did you decide to write fantasy?\u2019 My answer is, I didn\u2019t. There was no conscious decision about it.<\/p>\n

I\u2019ve been a writer since I was five or six. My first effort featured a rampaging killer robot. In my second, scientists found a plesiosaur in Fiordland. At nine, I was starting to look like a science fiction writer. But my reading was not in the least scientific: I devoured all the fairy tales, myths and legends I could get my hands on. I discovered the treasure trove of Welsh mythology, the Mabinogion<\/em>, at about twelve, and I can still remember the awe I felt, reading the dancing words, and being swept into a world of high themes and heroic journeys. A year later, I gave my classmates a comprehensive run-down of The Lord of the Rings<\/em>, complete with a diagram that took up the entire blackboard. I knew nothing about genres then. I just knew I loved a good story, and if it had the same elements of heroism, adventure and magic as those traditional tales I\u2019d grown up on, so much the better.<\/p>\n

Real life got in the way of my writing for a long time. At 45, I was still growing up.<\/p>\n

There\u2019s a point in most old stories where the protagonist reaches a crossroads. My life reached that point and I faced a choice. Be brave and go down the unpredictable path, the twisty way into the forest with its sudden drops, its shaky bridges, its monsters lurking beneath the dark trees? Or keep on the straight, familiar road, which held more than its share of sorrows?<\/p>\n

It turned out my belief in magic was still there, deep down. I took the perilous path and, soon after, became a writer. A fantasy writer? Some would say so, since my novels always include the uncanny, the magical, the voice that whispers in the protagonist\u2019s ear, the character who may not be quite human, the charm that changes lives forever. But I did not set out to write speculative fiction, only to tell a story and tell it in the light of all those years of life experience, the terrible mistakes, the frequent self-doubt, the moments of joy and triumph. I wanted to live a journey with my characters, to walk in their shoes, to discover how they would cope with their own challenges and to experience the wonders their world could offer.<\/p>\n

No wonder my first novel was based on a fairy tale. That it was in the fantasy genre never occurred to me. This was the story I had inside me, a tale of wonder and enchantment, courage and sacrifice, peopled not by superhuman characters, but by ordinary men and women. I found, then, that I had many such stories to tell.<\/p>\n

As speculative fiction writers we wield the same power as the storyteller by the fire, using words to ward off the dark. While our stories entertain, they can also provide codes for living, offer comfort and healing, and make sense of the Other. A horror writer may give us insight into the darkness within a human mind. An SF writer might inspire hope of change. A fantasy writer can keep a reader\u2019s dreams alive in a time of trouble. Each of us can open a portal to realms of wonder, drawing our readers out of their everyday lives and into places where virtues such as courage, faith, loyalty and true love do not hide in the corners, but blaze bright upon the page.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>About Juliet Marillier:<\/h3>\n

Juliet Marillier was born and brought up in Dunedin, New Zealand, and now lives in Western Australia. Her historical fantasy novels have been translated into many languages and have won various awards including the Aurealis (three times), the Sir Julius Vogel Award and France\u2019s Prix Imaginales. Her next book out is Seer of Sevenwaters, to be published by Roc (US) and Pan Macmillan (Australia) in December 2010. Juliet is a member of the druid order OBOD. She lives in a hundred year old cottage which she shares with a small pack of waifs and strays. Find out more at her website: www.julietmarillier.com<\/a> You\u2019ll find regular contributions from Juliet on genre writing blog Writer Unboxed: www.writerunboxed.com <\/a><\/p>\n

—<\/p>\n

To see—and read—the other authors who have posted so far in the Guest Series, click here<\/strong><\/a>.<\/h3>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Juliet Marillier, the eight author in the F-SF Author Guest Series can legitimately claim to be both a New Zealand and Australian author, and I suspect needs very little introduction given the international success of both her adult Sevenwaters series and her YA novels that commenced with Wildwood Dancing. I was pleased to meet Juliet […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[22,14],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1913","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-fsf-guest-author-series","category-other-writers"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1913","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=1913"}],"version-history":[{"count":10,"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1913\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2020,"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1913\/revisions\/2020"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1913"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1913"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1913"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}