Latest / Mythmakers / Megan Whalen Turner: The Queen's Thief and the Secret of a Long Career as a Fantasy Writer

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Megan Whalen Turner: The Queen's Thief and the Secret of a Long Career as a Fantasy Writer · Mythmakers

• 0:00
  Hello, and welcome to MythMakers. MythMakers is the podcast for fancy fans and fantasy
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  creators brought to you by the Oxford Centre for Fantasy. My name is Julia Golding. I'm
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  author but I also run the activities of our centre. And today I am joined by Megan Waland
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  Turner. Have I said your middle name right? Megan, just to get that. It's Waland. Waland,
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  airfield. Megan Waland Turner, thank you. And I'm particularly excited to talk to Megan
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  because she has successfully steered her craft through the choppy waters of publishing
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  since her first book was published in 1996. That was the era of the same time as like the first
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  of the dark materials, the Philip Pullman books and the Harry Potter started coming out around
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  then. So it was obviously a very special time for fantasy literature indeed and Megan was part
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  of that wave. Now Megan is coming over to the UK shortly to appear at the Bath Literary Festival
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  because her series The Queen's Thief is now going to be made available to those in the UK
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  and the Commonwealth after having not been fully available to everyone. So before we talk about
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  you and your background Megan, would you like to just sketch out what the Queen's Thief is like?
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  Who's it meant for and what's it about? So there's a short answer and there's a long answer
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  the very short is the answer first. The Thief opens with a young extremely clever
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  thief who may or may not have an impulse control problem because he has been challenged to steal
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  something the seal ring of the King and he has not only successfully stolen the seal ring of the
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  King. He immediately went and showed it around in a wine shop as proof that he has stolen the King's
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  seal ring which is why the book opens with him in jail because that's what happens to people who
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  show around their spoils in public and he people expect that he's going to remain in jail for the
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  rest of his life but an advisor to the King needs to have something stolen and the agreement is
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  that our hero can get himself out of jail in exchange for stealing something that will
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  convey upon the bearer the right to rule in neighboring country. So he's out of jail, he is on his
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  way to steal something that most people think doesn't even exist and that's the opening of the
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  story from the Thief and it was the first book it was published in in 1996 and in 1997
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  it won a new Barry Honor book award and when my editor called me to congratulate me she said
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  that there was a librarian there who had something she really wanted to say to me which was
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  the sequel and at that point I did sort of lay out in my head the rest of the books and they did
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  take about 20 more years to actually write down. I like to say that I thought of the whole
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  series then in the next 20 minutes and that it took another 20 years to write but because
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  you are the director of the Oxford Center for Fantasy I will say that when I was
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  when I was creating these books I really needed to have a setting. I didn't feel that I had
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  this idea for the Thief. I had this idea that there would be a moment when you realized in
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  in this group of fellow travelers that one of them is not who you thought
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  but I couldn't get started on this idea until I had a setting and the one thing I was really
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  certain about was that I didn't want it to look like Middle-Earth. Okay but of course growing
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  out mostly in the United States and in the eastern half of the United States one of the advantages
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  of where I grew up is that when I stepped outside my door it was really very easy to imagine
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  that I was in Middle-Earth. Tolkien's books were hugely important to me growing up and Middle-Earth
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  was hugely important to me growing up and you know my imagination was living in Middle-Earth
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  that when I first noticed in my adolescence was how many books were knock off of Tolkien,
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  how many worlds had things that weren't actually dwarves but look just like dwarves and weren't
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  actually orcs but look just like orcs and and I I didn't want to do that. So I wanted to find
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  something that wouldn't look like Middle-Earth and it turned out to be exceptionally challenging
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  and what I found luckily during a trip my first trip to Greece in 1992 was exactly the landscape
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  that I was looking for. So the world of my books, the landscape of my books, looks very much like
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  the Mediterranean because I knew that no one would confuse it with Middle-Earth but that everybody
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  would have a sense of familiarity with that world and so I took these things. I took my idea
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  that I would have this group of travelers and that they would be on their way to steal something
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  and I took the idea of a landscape that was not Middle-Earth but that was going to be recognisable
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  and I took a sense that I love Rosemary Southclips books. Oh yes and I wanted to have that grounded
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  feeling of historical fiction in my work and I loved Jonekin. And not they're of my favorite,
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  I think she had a book called The Necklace of Raindrops. Yes, yes, there is a whole
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  of the chase and Black Hearts and Battersea and in those books in particular she has just a delightful
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  twist of absurdity in her work and I loved the humor of Diato and Jones' house moving castle
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  and not the great, I just want to say another great Oxford ride to Dianne's.
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  Yeah and the reason that I'm published, I owe my entire writing career to Dianne.
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  I wrote to her when I just had a couple of short stories and sent them to her and she recommended
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  that I send them to her editor at Green Willow Books Susan Hirschman and Susan Hirschman
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  agreed to publish me. So without that first overletter from Dianne I don't know where I would be
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  right now. Yeah. We often talk about the sort of the Tolkien and the Lewis and Philip
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  Pullman. We must do one of these myth makers totally devoted to Dianne,
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  Win Jones at some point. That would be wonderful. Yeah. That really would be because I feel like
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  she's like the godmother to any number of writers and I think I always thought that it would be
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  wonderful to not maybe to have a zoom but some connection to meet up with all of the other people
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  that she fostered and the people in turn that they fostered. Then I don't know get everybody
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  together at some writing convention or something like that or just a tea party or a chance to meet
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  in person all of these people that I feel like are sort of distant cousins.
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  You've given us a great idea. I'm going to park that one. I think I need to follow that up
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  with you after this. I would just just sort of put a sort of code on this which is I remember
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  meeting her once shortly before she passed away at a children's literary quiz.
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  And I was on her team with David Fickling who is a well-known publisher. He's the publisher
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  of Philip Pullman. Remember feeling I was like a baby writer at the time and feeling a bit out
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  of my depth. I suddenly entered the premier division having been knocking around in the
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  conference league. That's a UK reference. There's probably an equivalent. It was like being a
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  Olympic runner after having just run for your high school. That kind of gap. But she was incredibly
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  down to earth and not at all very welcoming so I can imagine her nurturing young writers.
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  So going back to the Queen's thief. For those of you who wait for a series to complete before
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  starting it, I have my daughter in mind when I say that because she says I have to wait. It's all
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  there. The series is completed. It's six books plus my company. World expanding story,
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  isn't it? Yes, that's right. You can go and get it all now which is great for those of you.
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  Plus there are audio versions which I know is a massive part of the market. Are you pleased
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  with the audio versions of your book? I'm delighted. I don't know how I got quite so lucky.
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  I like the recorded book audio versions made you know back in 2001 or 2002.
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  And then Harper Collins decided to do another version with Steve West and he's just a wonderful
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  performer and he is British and we had numerous phone calls and he worked to produce a different accent
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  for each of the different countries represented in the book. So the world of the Queen's
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  thief is really a world based in the Mediterranean with very small countries that are under threat
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  from a very large imperialist empire that is determined to just roll over them. And these
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  three countries and our hero Jen really have to navigate some way not only for them to survive
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  individually but for all of them to survive together. And each of them has a slightly different
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  accent in West's version of the audiobook which is wonderful and I really thought that that
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  was the best. And I still think it's a it's a wonderful wonderful version. And when hotter said
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  you know we'd like to do an audio version I thought well you know Steve did this really excellent
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  job but they got me Owen Finley and he also has done an absolutely outstanding job reading the books
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  and how I got so lucky to have two such splendid versions going at the same time. I don't know
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  but I'm just thrilled and people can listen to some or both or whatever they like and I think
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  easily move from one audio book to the other because because the reading is exactly what I wanted it to
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  be which is not bubbly not as not excitable it just allows you to sink very naturally I think into
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  experiencing the story instead of just hearing it. Well I'm definitely going to look at those
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  like I love audio books it's actually my favorite way of these days of absorbing new fantasy because
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  it I'm sort of free to imagine and I and if a good voice artist it's brilliant. So your main character
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  is now this is where I'm thinking maybe a Greek pronunciation you genites.
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  Well we call him Jen okay he goes by Jen for short and the thing about names is that
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  when I was very young I got into a knock down drag out fight with a cousin about the pronunciation
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  of the Anna Green Gables books okay and I had it stuck in my head that Anne lived on the island of
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  Avonolia off off the coast of you know Nova Scotia and um and well I guess we're rather
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  Avonolia and at Prince Edward Island Avonolia and my cousin gently explained to me that it's
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  avenue if you look there's there's like one L in that word it's it's avenue and I'm like no it is
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  definitely Avonolia I'm convinced you can't change my mind Anna Avonolia and the fact that I was
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  wrong didn't change my mind and the fact that I grew up to be a much more reasonable adult and
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  still stuck in my mind that it's Anna Avonolia um and I'm so stubborn about this that by Gully when
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  I when I wrote my book I have made it a point to tell people when they asked me how to pronounce
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  the names that my book is a collaboration with the reader you can pronounce that name any way
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  you want it okay never let anybody tell you that you're not saying that name right you can call
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  them Bob yeah and and so I have the way I pronounce the names yes but that doesn't necessarily
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  mean that they are the right way to pronounce the name I yeah I have a slightly different approach
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  if well particularly if it's a historic name so I wrote a book early on in my career set in the Viking
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  world and I was very interested by the story of a traveler who came to the quarter king Alfred who
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  lived in the northernmost part of Norway where's far north as you can grow corn and he tells King
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  Alfred what happens if you sell north up the crinkly bits of Norway to the land where people
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  to change into bears or I like that and the man's name was OTHERE so as I wrote this book I was
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  calling him in my head OTHERE or OTHERE no OTHERE that's it which was fine I wasn't doing the audio
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  version of that book someone else did it and then I was at the York Viking festival
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  advertising this book in a local library somewhere and in the audience was a man dressed as a Viking
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  who introduced me and then there was a very scared because it was like for younger people and then
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  there was also this odd chap sitting on his own with a tome on his lap open a real tome and when he
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  got to the questions he said by the way do you know that you say his name OTHERE and would you like
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  me to read the original notes of the bits you quote from your Egil Sagar or whatever it was like
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  I'd quote it I said oh yeah okay but I wasn't so sure about him then talking in
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  old North order every was but I was grateful for the correction but I wish he hadn't done it in front
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  of my audience right right there in front of everyone yeah I would have thought OTHERE
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  you know because the the the owes in modern Norwegian are are a little bit more the way we say
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  I wish you'd been there you couldn't argue with it yeah I'm maybe I've misremembered that but it was
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  OTHERE as opposed to it there if you write a fantasy you get to say them however you want yeah yeah
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  exactly so wonderful so I say you gennities you gennities and I and I say um
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  relius and to leus and and the queen is Irene um and I pronounce it edis and and the country is
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  soon as um but as I said other people pronounce that that worked very differently and I feel like once
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  you get it stuck in your head as you're reading the book that that's what the character's name is
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  that that you can just stay with that yeah and this was a series that won you the new BreaWood and you
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  also say rather charmingly on your website that you spent one glorious week on the New York Times
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  bestseller list well well done you right I think I think I should update that I think I spent
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  I twice spent one glorious week on the New York Times bestseller list anytime I go to New York Times
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  is to do a wordle um I've never appeared in it so well done that's brilliant so you've already
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  mentioned growing up that you had the sort of I suppose what we called the anxiety of influence
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  of middle earth you know for those of you done your English degree you know I'm talking about
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  there are a lot of us right with the sense of other writers behind us and that
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  fearing that we can't find our own place and you solved it by a whole geographic transplant so
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  you're not reproducing the same mythic landscapes and the you know the elves and the dwarves and
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  the dragons and what have you that co along with the northern sort of world which is the middle
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  earth but were there other fantasy writers perhaps homegrown ones from America that also part
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  of your fantasy journey there were Lloyd Alexander of course the black cauldron was an immense
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  influence but again that's um so much of that it is again uh influenced from
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  the the mythic stories of uh western europe and the uk and um that that Alexander was drawing on
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  Edward Eber is probably one of my favorite american fantasists and he wrote in the 1940s um
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  he wrote marvelous stories of very ordinary american children interacting with magical objects
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  and um within his stories uh he references again british writers so you're you're cruising through
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  your story of american children and in an ordinary american town who find the magical object
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  and they say to each other why goodness this is like a book by enesbit
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  i started to say it sounds like he enesbit yes yes so um so i think this is a is a really important
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  point that when i was growing up almost all of my influences were um western europe the uk
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  norwegian uh you know Scandinavian folk tales dieno in jones cs Lewis Susan Cooper was an american
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  but again drawing on on on wealth mythology um and they're just weren't that many other voices
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  and when i started to write yes i i didn't want to imitate talking i didn't want to imitate Lewis
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  um i wanted to draw on them uh and one of the reasons specifically that i didn't want to imitate
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  Tolkien had to do with Susan Cooper i had i have a very dear friend who is a professor of
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  linguistics at the university of california berkley but um a great reader and you know all of her
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  life a reader so many friends of hers that are authors and a great writing community and i was
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  talking about Susan Cooper and and Eve who has read everything that i've read i swear
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  said oh no i never read i never read the darkness rising series by Susan Cooper and i
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  said why not they should be they should be exactly what you would love and she said well
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  i have this theory that you can only read three books based on Welsh mythology um and then you
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  start to feel like you're repeating yourself and and everything gets to be sort of modeled
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  and everything seems like an imitation of something else that you read even if you're reading them
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  in a different order than they were written and after that she says i just don't enjoy them
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  as much as i would have if that had been the first book like that that i read
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  i want to the things about watching so many imitators of Tolkien when i was in my teens
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  is that i might hate the idea that the somebody could read three imitations of Tolkien
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  and then get to the original and say oh you know elves that i've been there i've done that
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  i'm not reading that book uh so so that was a large part of my reasoning for for not
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  wanting to write something too clueless to Tolkien or to see us Lewis um and i don't know i don't
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  think it's possible to you too closely to to Diana she is such she's so far off the map
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  in so many different directions i don't think you could you could imitate uh Diana win Jones
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  if you if you spend a year trying um but uh but that completely less track of the question i
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  apologize well we started talking about other fantasy writers that you uh particularly from
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  America but i was going to ask you as a follow-up um this idea of reading writers who when even from
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  America who end up their influences are sort of old the old world should we say yes the western old
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  world um and of course now we have many more voices entering fantasy but in a way don't you think
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  that the the diaspora the the their your story is too um i do because it'd be a bit awkward if you
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  said well i'm because i'm in America i'm going to start writing native American in because of
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  the place and you think well is it my story where is i i think i i think that's a it's a slightly
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  ticklish subject i think that it's it's very easy for all of us to agree that it is wonderful
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  for people now in america in the united states in the publishing world to have access to
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  uh stories from so many places that were unavailable before you know um and of course all of the titles
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  have immediately gone out of my head but but they're wonderful stories and they're written by people
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  for whom um who came from the culture that they're writing about and who have a very personal
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  relationship to the stories that they're telling and because they're telling all of those stories
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  they are bringing them into the world of people outside their culture and i do think that once you
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  when you read a story when you're eight years old or when you read a story when you're 14
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  and it grabs hold of you uh that story is your story that is story is going to influence your writing
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  uh no matter what whether whether you recognize the influence or you don't and sometimes you know
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  i go back and i see things that i read when i was 14 and i had forgotten that i had read them
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  but i can see the influence of having loved that book on my writing in retrospect um and i think
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  that one of the results of all of the diversity the multiculturalism of the expansive opportunities
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  for reading that people have today now means that in the future i think that we can expect that
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  it will be very much it'll be very difficult to say that you can um you can trace your influencers
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  as easily as i can trace mine so you know i think i think we have to accept that they own a reader to
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  the 14 year old today owns every story that they read and if they grow up to be a writer they will
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  draw on those stories because they are the stories of their youth and the stories of their youth
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  are going to come from you know Sri Lanka and and Cambodia and the Philippines and more from
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  Norway and all of those stories are going to meld in them and influence the work they then produce
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  and because there are so many yeah i think it's going to be a lot harder for people to say
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  these seven books were the big influence on my life but for me it's really really clear what
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  those influences were because they are pretty much all that was available when i was reading you know
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  from age 8 to 18 yeah and of course we've got all the other i mean got the american products of marvel
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  and star wars and star trek and so in a way we're all culturally in this huge melange and i
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  maybe maybe what i'm trying to get at is we don't want to colonize other people's stories like
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  say there are now you know because that's been happening too much but you could look at a story
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  coming from a culture that's outside the one that you've been growing up in or has is second hand
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  to you and say what a great idea for a story and you can take it sideways into fantasy i don't see
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  that you're offending anybody you're honoring great stories by expanding um maybe who can be a hero
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  or uh it might suggest new ways of talking about um gods or magic or something but you know
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  there's it increases your imagination and your grasp rather than you saying okay i'm going to
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  pretend to be something i'm not exactly exactly and i i think that um that that's very true
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  that uh that there's a huge difference between um presenting yourself as something that you're
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  not when you're writing a story um and um claiming an authority that you don't have when you're
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  writing a story uh there's a difference between that and having your your imagination influenced
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  by story and that is what i mean that all of these stories are going to be
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  influencing a new generation and i think that that's going to have a a tremendous effect on the
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  stories that they then produce as as they grow up to become writers and it'll be very interesting
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  to see just just what the influences are because i think they're all going to be because they've
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  always been tremendously individual you know you could have read exactly the same people
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  when you were 14 that i was reading when i was 14 that in no way means that we would grow up to
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  write similar books yeah both did hear and say how influential us have other games on us and people
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  could be thinking oh really because you know you're writing uh space opera and you're writing
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  a historical fiction and how could this one person have influenced well it does and what we've
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  really done i think for for the new generation of writers is just throw away then a whole vast
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  amount of new things to think about and new ways to spark their imagination and there's no
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  linear way to calculate what's going to come back out of that but it should be wonderful
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  so before we um started recording you mentioned that you have a very interesting process
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  in the way you first approach a book um which i've never heard of before so would you like to
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  mention that at this place because it is about the way you approach story at its heart
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  so when i before i i start writing anything really when i'm working on a new story whether it's a
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  short story or a book um i i tell the story out loud to a listener and usually that listener is my
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  husband but sometimes at one memorable moment it was my editor um and it it started at lunch
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  and you know the waiters came and cleared off all the tables and started to text
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  stack the chairs in the corner and um we were still sitting there having our lunch and i was
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  telling the entire story of uh my book um the king of the tolia and uh and that's how i know
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  when i have the the the plot arc and and the movement and um and the sense of of closure that i want
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  in my story is i sit down i have a whole thing in my head and i tell it to somebody and this is
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  wonderful it is not exactly a substitute or a first draft because there's a lot of what when
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  you're telling a story there's a lot of what i call hand wavium and when you tell the story you can
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  say okay so they realize that um that they've made a terrible mistake and they should have turned
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  left instead of right and then they go back and they start on the and everything that's contained
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  in the they realize they've made a terrible mistake is something you have no idea how you're actually
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  going to get that to work in a book but you know that that's a thing that needs to happen and when
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  you're telling a story you just do it like this it's just the one little gesture and then you move on
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  the rest of the story that you wanted to tell but when you sit down to write the draft of course
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  the hard work is figuring out the hand wavium hmm all of those places where you just wave to hand
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  to make your plot move forward when you're telling a story out loud now you have to actually justify
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  that in actual words and so um when i do do my first draft though it's usually it's neither
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  people talk about about dancing or plotting yeah and and they have the whole plot do they would
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  they fly it by the seat of their pants um obviously i have my plot because i told my story
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  and then i write what i call a sketch it's not an outline it's usually about half the length of
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  the finished work and it's just in the same way that that somebody drawing a picture would make
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  a rough sketch first and then go back and add the detail my first draft is just meant to be a sketch
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  of the story and and where it's going to go and then i go back and add in a detail and it gets to
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  be about three times as long and then the rest of the process is taking out as much as i can
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  possibly take out and still feel like the story i'm trying to tell is on the page so as part of
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  that process um and you mentioned it's influenced by sort of a Mediterranean culture did you ever
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  whilst you were writing go to somewhere like Greece or Italy or somewhere and sit and absorb
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  the atmosphere to fill out you know the your sketch into something a bit more defined so um yes
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  like that first trip to Greece was in 1992 and um and as i said the landscape just um
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  felt perfect to me from the very first moment um that i that i got on a ferry and i went from
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  one on island to the next uh and yes we went back we you know multiple times over the last 25
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  years we have been degrees and every time it it sort of reinvigorates uh everything that i wanted
• 33:45
  to put into my books uh but also anybody anybody who reads the thief and follows up with the rest of
• 33:56
  the series they can see the influence of Greece on these books the books aren't said in Greece
• 34:02
  but they're set in a world that looks not like ancient Greece but much more like Byzantine
• 34:09
  okay and um and at the time that i wrote them that was sort of an odd thing because all fantasy
• 34:19
  was supposed to be set in you know the medieval world nobody ever had um if it was a fantasy it
• 34:28
  had to be swords and sorcerers you know and uh when i was writing a book i didn't want to do the
• 34:35
  sword and sorcerer thing so so the sort of imaginary timeline of my books is a lot more Byzantine
• 34:41
  than it is like ancient Greece but a lot of the books that i read to i had read already before i
• 34:51
  i started the thief and before i ever saw Greece um i had taken a course called Greek thought
• 34:57
  literature in college and i had read the cities and i had read Plato and and i had read um lots of
• 35:07
  Greek plays and lots of Greek dialogues and when i took that first trip to Greece we took 40
• 35:12
  pounds of books because they didn't have kindles back in those days and if you wanted to read
• 35:18
  you know the history of Greece to 32bc which i did it was a book you know 800 page long and it
• 35:26
  and it weighed you know 10 pounds it was and um and so yeah we partied those books all over Greece
• 35:33
  and i sat there on the shore and i looked out at the Mediterranean and i read a lot of ancient
• 35:41
  Greek history but then i went and i wrote a book that was not set in ancient Greece but rather
• 35:46
  more Byzantine and oddly i think today quite a lot of young people would be more familiar with that
• 35:54
  because of the popularity of things like civilization and assassins creed which often use these
• 35:59
  kind of other historical periods which perhaps we're not taught at school um i'm amazed at the
• 36:06
  knowledge when i talked to young people who play these games that they come up with all these
• 36:10
  rulers and small kingdom knowledge which is amazing so i think in a way your world is going to be
• 36:18
  more familiar yes and and you know the other thing is the internet has made a tremendous
• 36:26
  difference in in what we write and what we'd read and what i found is that a lot of those periods
• 36:33
  of history um people just now go down rabbit holes yeah and and that didn't it didn't used to be
• 36:40
  possible in 1987 that you would get a random interest about kings of Norway and you would
• 36:51
  spend the next two and a half hours on the Wikipedia page tracking back a million kings in or
• 36:56
  way or china or you know um the albagancy in crusade it's not really you're you're looking up the
• 37:04
  albagancy in crusade and you're reading for the and so i think people just have um a whole lot more
• 37:12
  random information in their hands maybe then then they did four years ago
• 37:19
  like unless they were actual scholars who actually did scholarly work yeah proper work
• 37:25
  i mean like Harold bluetooth talking about Viking kings you know about Harold bluetooth
• 37:30
  no tell me let me let me google that on wikipedia i could tell you don't worry is the king who first
• 37:36
  united denmark and norway so when some Danish inventors came to thinking up a name for this technology
• 37:45
  that allowed you to pair devices they thought oh we will call it after Harold bluetooth
• 37:50
  hence bluetooth on your phone or whatever comes from herald yeah
• 37:55
  yeah that's a green story that's a great little bit of random knowledge um that i've got in my head
• 38:01
  so without i mean we've both been around in publishing for some years i i was first published in 2006
• 38:09
  you were first published ten years before that so we have managed several many decades
• 38:16
  between us what would you think or would you say was your top tip for surviving and thriving in
• 38:22
  this world of publishing which is probably more knockbacks than bouquets really for most of us
• 38:31
  i see i've made you think quite well you know i'm not sure i feel really um
• 38:39
  entitled to give anybody advice like that um i feel like i started publishing
• 38:46
  in an entirely different world and and and i did i i wrote to diana and she wrote me a letter
• 38:55
  saying and i still remember this worked for word today uh that i was a writer of great style
• 39:02
  competence and originality and she said i should send my my book my stories to Susan Herschemann
• 39:08
  at Green Willow Books um and so i meet people who who want to recreate that and it's it's not as if
• 39:20
  that's possible it's much more important to tell people who are publishing today um that they need to
• 39:29
  put their best work out um and that they need to persevere and that if the the first person doesn't
• 39:39
  take you you need to have the resilience to continue to send your work out to more people um and
• 39:46
  that nothing almost it never happens that you're going to send your books out and somebody's going
• 39:52
  to say why yes i would love to publish that um so it feels really hypocritical of me to say
• 39:58
  you know this is what i did but you go do what i'm going to tell you you know don't try to do as
• 40:04
  i did but do as i tell you which is you know be resilient and uh work hard and um send your
• 40:11
  books out to a lot of of people so i sort of hesitate to tell people how to get published today
• 40:18
  because i'm not sure i know i was very fortunate to be published and once you are published and once
• 40:24
  you want a prize like a newberry honor um it means that at least somebody's going to look at my work
• 40:32
  if i send it to them and and i know i know exactly how fortunate i've been so i i don't know that i
• 40:41
  can give a great deal of advice about exactly how publishing today works for a new writer but
• 40:48
  i can say that um that i do have some advice for writing for publishing you know uh the standard
• 40:59
  advice is uh as i think through um that you don't try to chase a trend that you figure out what it
• 41:08
  is that you want to write and you write it and that um the standard advice is that uh especially
• 41:17
  for instance in in writing for young adults which i think you do and i don't know i don't know if
• 41:22
  you have been given this advice but i think that a lot of the advice for writing for young adults
• 41:28
  is um to always think in terms of a very large audience how you're going to grab your audience
• 41:34
  and how you're going to keep your audience's attention and how you're going to not make your
• 41:40
  sentences too long and you're you're this is the age of television and video games and you got to
• 41:44
  move along and you got to have excitement on every page and and i would say that um i question that
• 41:51
  advice very much um i think it's totally acceptable if you want to write a book for a very narrow
• 42:00
  audience these days if you have somebody specific in mind that you're writing for that it is okay
• 42:08
  to write for that audience and i think today you could get that book published and because of the
• 42:16
  internet um and because of sort of i guess globalization you can get your book to the people who
• 42:23
  really want to read it and that was not necessarily true when my career started yeah there were
• 42:31
  big keepers weren't there yeah there were a lot of gatekeepers and everybody wanted
• 42:37
  everybody needed to be reaching for the mainstream everybody had to um especially in the young adult
• 42:44
  world try to grab their audience and hold on to them for fear that they would wander away um
• 42:53
  and that's always true and if you want if you want to be somebody who does hit the New York Times
• 42:59
  best seller list a lot more often than i do then yes you have to write you have to write then
• 43:07
  to get a huge swath of people who are interested in your book but i think that i am evidence
• 43:15
  that you can have a really rewarding career writing books that a smaller audience reads
• 43:23
  uh and love i've been i've been honored and privileged by the people who have read my books they
• 43:33
  they started reading them in 1996 and they waited 25 years to read the last book in the series
• 43:42
  that means that they stuck with me while they grew up even though i write children's books or
• 43:48
  young adult books about half of my audience is adults um and and a lot of people read my books
• 43:56
  when they were children and continue to read each book that i brought out and reread the books
• 44:01
  over the years and um and if those are the kind of readers that you're trying to reach
• 44:09
  i think you can i think you're starting to write today you should write with the confidence
• 44:16
  that your book can find its reader and that you do not have to bend your vision
• 44:22
  in order to make a book more publishable and that's probably the only advice i can i i feel qualified
• 44:33
  to give about publishing today thank you know that's very helpful i think it's sort of also going
• 44:38
  back to the idea of being authentic isn't it so you're the chasing the trend thing is you can end
• 44:44
  up being inauthentic writing something you don't actually particularly like because you hope
• 44:48
  it will get you an audience whereas you might get an audience if you write what you like
• 44:52
  it's kind of yes around um so just as a bit of fun i want to ask you if you would actually like to
• 44:59
  live in your own world because you mentioned that you felt like you were living in middle earth
• 45:04
  um with me as a child and darnia you know not it was right outside my door i spent a large
• 45:11
  portion of my childhood living in narnia um living in middle if you could enter your own world
• 45:18
  um in a sort of just before way being able to enter a book world uh perhaps take a less dangerous
• 45:24
  role in it you know like a have a nice quiet occupation somewhere without risking your neck
• 45:30
  would you actually enjoy living in that world do you think or is there another fantasy world at this
• 45:36
  stage in your life you'd prefer to walk into and investigate oh that's a thought um i think that um
• 45:45
  i think if i were living in my fantasy world yes it probably would be very comfortable um and and i
• 45:52
  think as you said if i got to be in a in a quieter yeah very quiet and uh existence if i had a
• 46:00
  quiet existence in my world i think it would be lovely because i mean i just spent i think
• 46:05
  40 minutes of our talk talking about how much i like the landscape of greed right so yes you're
• 46:11
  asking me if i would like to move degrees yes that would that that would be splendid um however
• 46:18
  in in my book of conspiracy of kings the main character is the um is the air of the king of
• 46:26
  Sunnis and he doesn't particularly want to be the air of the king of Sunnis he doesn't think he's
• 46:31
  going to be very good at it uh he's very much hoping that his uncle will produce a child and
• 46:38
  that that child can be the air of Sunnis because because sofos does not want the responsibility um and
• 46:47
  the thing about my world is that although they are not the great gods there's a pantheon of gods
• 46:54
  that are constantly meddling with people's lives and poor sofos is like the little
• 47:03
  mode of dust that has been moved into the sun's spotlight whether he wants to be in that spotlight
• 47:13
  or not so like sofos i i i would like to be outside this spotlight in this world but man being in this
• 47:24
  world and having the gods interfering with your life i would not find comfortable at all so yeah
• 47:31
  a lot would be to then would depend upon the very quiet existence in the Greek landscape yeah
• 47:37
  that reminds me of my daughter said where she was growing up which is um she'd like to be king but
• 47:42
  she didn't want to do the paperwork yeah thanks Sarah enough yeah thank you so much for being with
• 47:49
  Megan and uh i hope those of you who are in the UK and can come and see Megan at the
• 47:55
  barf literary festival please do come along we'll put a connection in the show notes so you can
• 48:01
  find out where she'll be speaking uh otherwise uh born by us as you come over our way and uh
• 48:07
  thank you very much for talking to us well thank you for having me this has been a wonderful
• 48:11
  conversation thanks for listening to myth makers podcast brought to you by the oxford center
• 48:24
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• 48:31
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