Latest / Mythmakers / Bramble Fox - Prize-Winning German Fantasy Writer, Kathrin Tordasi, and Portal Fantasy

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Bramble Fox - Prize-Winning German Fantasy Writer, Kathrin Tordasi, and Portal Fantasy · Mythmakers

• 0:00
  Hello and welcome to MythMakers. MythMakers is the podcast for fantasy fans and fantasy
• 0:12
  creatives brought to you by the Oxford Centre for fantasy. My name is Julia Golding. I'm
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  an author but I'm also the director of the Centre. And today I'm very excited because
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  I am joined by a new to me writer from Germany called Catherine Tordassi. So
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  Catherine, first of all, have I got your name right? So I said that. Yeah that's my
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  in the ballpark. And I had great pleasure reading Catherine's new book
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  Bramble Fox. Well it's new to translation which is published by Pushkin Press.
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  And I thought Catherine would be a wonderful person to talk to for many
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  reasons but mostly because this is a fantastic fantasy book for children. So first of
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  all Catherine, do you want to tell us a little bit about yourself and your journey to becoming
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  a writer? And also perhaps where you're sitting right at this moment? Yeah sure. First of all,
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  thank you very much for inviting me to this podcast. It's a real pleasure and I'm really glad I
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  get to do this. So thank you very much. Yeah right now I'm sitting in Berlin in my little flat
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  on the rooftop so to speak. And yeah I've been living here for 10 years now. And yeah this is
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  where I live and work if I'm not travelling. And yeah Bramble Fox is my first, my debut novel.
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  It came out in 2020. It's a fantasy for children. And I'm very chuffed that I got picked up by
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  Pushkin Press and translated. It was the whole process was actually very lovely and a big thank you
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  to Pushkin Press again. And my editor over there Daniel Ceton because I got to work with them
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  on the translation which which is really nice. So I got to sort of see how the book transformed
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  from German to English. Yeah I've been writing or telling stories. Sometimes it feels like forever.
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  So like since I was a little kid, my grandma and my mum were big storytellers and I kind of
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  picked it up from them. So and then just never stopped. And then when I got a bit older,
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  I wanted to do something with literature. And as you do you know you do something. I wanted to be
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  a writer for as long as I knew that it's a job. But then you go into something sensible. Go to
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  university and I studied German literature and English literature and studied in Wales for a while.
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  Then came back to Germany, got a PhD, taught English literature and cultural studies for a couple
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  of years here in Berlin. And then I started publishing books, children's books,
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  Bramble Fox or the German Bombay books was the first. A couple have now followed. I'm still on it.
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  And yeah since of this year I switched jobs and I'm working as a full-time writer and translator now.
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  Well first of all congratulations because people listening may not know how difficult it is to make
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  you know all the pieces of things you do as an author add up to something that pays the bills.
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  So well done. Thank you. We also just before we move on we should do a shout-out to
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  the translator of Bramble Fox for those we do. Catherine Witts, Vince, Vince, yeah.
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  Don't speak German but I sort of knew that Witts. I suspect Catherine that you've sort of
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  given me the answer to the first question I have for you which is one of the things that
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  surprised me when I started reading Bramble Fox is Bramble Fox. Well it's set in Wales and it draws
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  on the fairy law of Wales as well as Shakespeare's Mid-Summer Night Streams. So first question I have
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  is you're sitting in Berlin. What made you want to write a story set in Wales?
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  Oh yeah well first of all a big big shout out to Catherine Witts who wrote a really excellent
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  translation. It was such an amazing experience to read a story that I've written translated into
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  another language and she did this really beautifully. I already told her via email but if she's
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  listening to this thank you Catherine once again. Why did I choose to have this story and have
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  Wales as a setting? Yeah I've been I lived in Wales in North Wales in Banga for about a year
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  and I really loved it there. So it was it was a great time for me. It was a very formative
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  year as well so towards the end of my studies and I loved the landscape. It's a very
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  banga is sort of situated between the sea and the Snowdonia National Park so you have
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  the mountains here, the coastline. I'm very big on hiking so I was outdoors a lot and I also
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  really enjoyed the university program there. So Banga University took a lot of classes, also got
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  into archery which was fun and yeah of an archery club at that's what I did for a while
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  and yeah when I was there I went on hikes I always had my notebook with me and started to sort
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  of collect impressions of the places that I would visit and the different kinds of legends and
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  folklore elements that I came into contact with and yeah so that's how the first ideas for the
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  Bramberfog stories got together and then I got to read I think it's Charlotte Guest a version
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  of the Binogian which is this collection of the Welsh biological and and folkloristic stories
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  that inspired a lot of the King Arthur Law for example and there came first came across
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  Anoun and and around and so that sort of lodged in there I read
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  then more recently I came across a Welsh artist called CCJ Alice who did a wonderful
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  art book on Welsh monsters and creatures so there's a bit of inspiration there and yeah I also
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  when I wrote the book the probably a diski kimreig department at Banga University who
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  who helped me with research questions and language which checks and so on so it's yeah
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  they're born out of a stayed her into sort of a fortive year for me in Wales
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  yeah so we've mentioned for those of you who love your Welsh language or just love languages
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  anyone who like talking's languages will know that it's based on Welsh or partly
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  is there you're using another a little list of vocab at the back you're using the Welsh language
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  as part of the texture and feeling of the tale and also just do a sort of promo for this
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  podcast if you go back a couple of episodes to the Welsh episode you can hear us talking to Claire
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  Faea who is a Welsh lady who collects Welsh tale so this will lovely in 2001 after you've heard
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  Catherine speak today so I was also interested so there you've got Wales as one centre for the
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  story but you then have many of the characters from Shakespeare's Amidsterm and Nightstream
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  Nightstream has an element of existing folkloric characters and one's Shakespeare made up
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  and part of his plays but that's obviously he's the man from Stratford upon Avan
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  an Englishman so how do you go along with the idea of incorporating the Welsh tradition with
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  oh was your fact that you are from Germany make that you could just ignore all that kind of
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  well I would call by method perhaps irreverent homage so I kind of I mean I studied English literature
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  so Shakespeare was very big of course in the courses that I took and the midsummer night was
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  one of the plays that fascinated us and I was also always fascinated by how by sort of the myth
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  surrounding Shakespeare the author so these questions of where did he get his ideas did he write
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  the plays did someone else write the plays so all these these different kinds of
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  yeah myths and questions and stuff so I what I did when I wrote Bramberfox I knew that I wanted
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  to include fairy law or and always appreciated or what I've been fascinated by it comes to the
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  the use of myth and folklore in in literature is how how these myths and legends overlap and
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  transfer and transform in different cultures but also in different types of literature and how they
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  had reread and rewritten so this kind of pastiche or or or or bricolage of different motives put
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  together into into retellings and then slightly issue stories of of other material I always liked when
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  I when I read books that did that so I that was something that I wanted to try out and in in Wales
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  you have this you have a lot of fairy law there they're called or one term that is used there
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  till with till with tech so the fair family as a sort of collective term for
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  for fairies or elves but I did for Bramber I so imagined Shakespeare as a traveler between
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  worlds so I thought what if he actually went through a portal like the children in the books and
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  visited the the the fairy world and came back with a back full of stories but he's made
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  up to that more entertaining and there wasn't an early bramberfox there was this scene where
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  Titania complained about him writing amid someone a donkey story is pure fabrication so it's
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  it's just it's it's a bit of silliness to be honest coming from an English literature student
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  I think we see a perfectly allowed to do that because obviously here at the Oxford Central Fantasy
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  one of our sort of other quatchstones is the Narnia stories and C.S. Lewis completely means
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  no a Greek mythology and all sorts of Arthurian legends and he just goes oh okay
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  chuck a bit of this in bit of that he's like that he's like that chef who's around the kingdom
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  around the kingdom pulling everything out with the cupboards put into his kingdom
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  so I mean you've just touched on it but another way of describing Bramberfox is that it's a portal
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  fantasy which we've had while it's in folklore you know the doors in the hillside you go through
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  into another world and you get it in literature in Alice in Wonderland and back to Lewis again
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  so how do you come up with your version of a portal leading into this liminal land of a land of
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  mist that sits between our world and not many worlds but including the world of the faith
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  yeah so liminal space I find this the idea behind that quite fascinating so this idea that there
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  are places where our understanding of reality dissolves like threshold places or even a space
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  in time where we transition from one state of being to another and of course there's also
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  the real life or metaphorical implications of that there's tons of cultural studies on
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  the idea of liminal rituals or liminal states of being that people in basically all societies that
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  we know have to go through in order to grow up so coming of age rituals would be one one example
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  where you're sort of caught between the status of a child and a grown up and then you go through
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  kind of ritual and then you sort of slip into this new identity and I really like this idea
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  that you have to go through a sort of in-between phase and for Ben and Portia the borderlands
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  between the human world and the fairy world they signify exactly that so they they have to go
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  through this place in order to distance themselves from the world they know but also from their
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  own place in the world so they they change quite a lot in this book Ben needs to find more
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  confidence and move a little bit out of his shell and also confront his own personal grief
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  and Portia will discover that there's a certain wilderness in her that she has to content with
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  so it's yeah I like this idea of the transition that you have to sort of that sort of unlocks things
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  so for people who are wondering what kind of book this is that we're reading I think that as
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  having read it I would say that it feels like quite a traditional children's tale in the sense
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  of you've got children one child going away to stay with relatives because her mother's in a bad
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  place who discovers the secret in the house which will and has the spooky presence of a fox who
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  keeps turning up and she follows the fox and the fox wants something from her she doesn't know what
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  but she kind of gets led along her named Portia and then the other main character is a boy called Ben
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  that you've just mentioned who is sort of following on behind when Portia opens the door to the other
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  world so it's it's got a lot of air of mystery reminded me of things like Tom's midnight garden
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  books by Susan Cooper those sorts of stories so it's it's a wonderful read so thank you so much
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  that's quite a flattering comparison it's not super I mean there's lots of things to discuss but one
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  thing that I was thinking about it about it as from the point of view of also being a writer of
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  fantasy is that you have in it a very interesting take on Good and Evil in that the Bramble Fox
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  who I don't actually want to say who he is because the Bramble Fox himself and Titania who is
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  the queen of the fairies who we go on to meet they are fearsome and they have their own agenda
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  and so do you think that having this you can't say they're evil though they're not like on the
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  same scale as the humans in the story so do you think it's important to complicate what's good
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  and evil in fantasy because your big baddie actually just thinking about him the great king who
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  is this presence in the very scary presence in the the liminal land of mist I mean arguably he's not
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  bad either he's just in the wrong place is my my take on him yeah so tell me about your sort of a take
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  on Good and Evil and how we should approach it in fantasy well thank you that as there's a great
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  question and a big question I mean the short answer is yes I think it's important to have
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  gray characters to as you say to complicate this distinction between Good and Evil especially in
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  stories that that are about a fight between what we might call the good side and the bad side
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  and I really I have to say I really struggle with categorical distinctions between good and bad a
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  lot because I think there's I mean on the one hand there's something deeply satisfying and
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  reading and writing you probably have this experience as well but there's a clear distinction
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  between good and bad perhaps because it speaks to this wish or desire we have that there are
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  people or causes that are fundamentally good and they will prevail in the end and while I also
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  think that that it's important to to critically reflect on what's morally right and wrong and
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  it's it's sometimes also crucial to point out in no uncertain terms that certain acts of
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  behavior are bad in the sense that they heard discriminate against or otherwise harm people I
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  also think that good and bad can be a tricky binary if that makes sense so I think good people
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  can be flawed right and bad people can have relatable motives and to to simplify that in stories
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  to take away the complexity I fear it can encourage skewed expectations about people in real life
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  so for example it could encourage the presumption that people can only be good if they never make a
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  mistake or that they can't be good if if they also have selfish motives or perhaps people might
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  be blindsided when someone who does bad things has a big following because they can't further
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  more understand how that person manages manages to tap into an emotional niche by their followers so
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  yeah I think it's important to have a spectrum of complex characters and stories and fantasy
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  stories especially because they are so often woven from similar stuff than archaic myths about
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  good and evil yeah I think that's why the world are fairly really interesting because they've
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  always in folklore they've stood aside you know they've not been part of the religious world they've
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  been separate so having their own politics their own reasons and it's been a useful third point
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  on the triangle of good bad and oh fey chaotic sometimes yeah and another favorite quote which I
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  always tell my writing students is from Terry Pratchett who says dark lords should be rationed
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  what's interesting about Tolkien is that yes that he will see he has the bad dark lords of them all
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  you know originally meld or in morgoth in the summer in but then saren so he's keen on dark lords
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  but actually when you when you follow his story he's not that interested in saren in lot of the rings
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  he's really interested in what happens when the evil goes out into society and starts to affect people
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  like denathor saren man barameer that's where volume wow you know yeah definitely
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  in the shades of gray and I've always thought that in the harry potter universe the strongest
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  character for them the evil side is not vulnerable who is wonderful as played by rafines and
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  you know gray but actually it's Dolores umbridge oh gosh yeah you know the the aparachic who
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  who is just dire um so I actually find those kind of characters far more interesting than
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  the the uber bad guy well it's okay the bad you know yeah I mean it's wireless you know that's
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  yeah yeah definitely I mean it makes it easier to dismiss them right as the like um saren
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  who so so you know so profoundly clearly evil um that you you can push them sort of away
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  and saying okay this is what we need to fight against but this will never I will never be
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  in danger of becoming like that or becoming corrupted by that so and I think it's
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  it's dangerous to um I really like the terry pretent quote it's it's dangerous to to assume that
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  or to see evil always as something this big and huge and externalized and not as as a more force
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  that can have an impact in so many ways and that we have to engage with in ourselves as well
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  and I think that's actually that's one one thing that talking does pretty well doesn't he
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  this this idea of how it's not just how how do I face an external threat but also how do I deal
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  with my own fears and and flaws and shortcomings and what makes us human is that we are flawed but we
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  can still do good things but yeah yeah I mean what he does is he's a little as embodied by the ring
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  which is kind of like saren in room and it's a test and it shows where people fall on that
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  on that scale of good and bad whereas with you going back to the bramble fox um you make sure
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  your two child characters are tested and tested by in different ways this is really fascinating
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  they're on a separate journey and they often they spend quite large parts of it apart as well
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  it's not a kind of famous slide story where people go off together and spend it together they
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  they've got their separate temptations and I wanted to ask you um about the temptation for Ben
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  which is um the bereavement story um and did you have any sort of thoughts about how to handle
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  this and put it across to a younger reader I mean because obviously it's a big theme in going
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  back to Harry Potter bereavement is a big theme in Harry's backstory and something like the
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  magician's nephew it's yes it's sort of rerunning his own mother's death but happy ending
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  where were you going with that in your thoughts about sensitive handling of that hardest of themes
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  yeah yeah I thought about this quite a lot and um that was one aspect of the story that was
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  really important um to me to get right always right as I could um and um I think when we're dealing
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  with these big things like death and loss and grief I think it's important that they have a place
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  in children's literature um because I mean the sad truth is we all have to engage with these
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  aspects of life and the feelings that they that they might bring up and for some this this moment
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  or perhaps even in the form of first-hand experience of loss comes quite early in life so
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  children will be confronted with with illness and death so in in the book Ben's father has died
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  um a year before the before the story starts his died of cancer and Ben is still dealing
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  with the grief of that and um so I think kids will be confronted with with death in real life
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  it's it's too big a part of um of our existence and of our media frankly um for them to not become
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  aware of it and it can be really scary and confusing so I get why people might want to protect
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  their children from becoming aware of it or confronting it for as long as possible so that's
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  I mean that's very relatable and sensible um but I also think that it makes it easier to
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  deal with the big things the things that scare us if we understand that it's a shared experience
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  um and something that's woven into into everyone's lives um not something that we have to deal with
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  alone without having any reference to how others experience loss and grief and um I think that's
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  actually what stories can do so they can show us that we're not alone with what we're fearing
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  or feeling or hoping and um when it when it comes to two stories that talk about death I think
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  they can acknowledge death as a part of the experience of living but they can also show
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  they can also show them there are many ways in which people can comfort each other how they can
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  love each other through difficult times and how they can ground themselves recover a sense of joy
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  enough safety or simply how to move with grief and how to carry it as you go forward and um to share
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  a bit of that was my hope with when when I wrote Bramble Fox yeah so that was part of my process there
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  and the other thing um on the sort of scale of difficult things to write for a young audience is
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  it's actually very scary in part yes it's just the gray world um the
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  sea world and there's a character another borrowing from Shakespeare Hermia um who has been left behind
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  and kind of taken over um by the mist did you I mean it's it's fun to indulge in the nightmare
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  stuff but again what was how did you think about that in terms of the age of the audience and
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  how you would deal with yeah I mean on a on a very practical level I have a couple of kids who read
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  my stories before they go to the publisher so and I'm talking with them about um what their thoughts
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  on certain uh certain um scenes or images are and um so um and and I do this in in also in
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  collaboration with their parents so it's it's a sort of like a like a better reading book club
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  that we have going on so that that helps a lot um and also yeah the book the book is it has
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  these sort of eerie creepy parts about it um and that is mainly the reason uh the reason behind
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  that is that is the kind of story that I love to read as a kid so I I was one of those kids who
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  loved uh to get goosebumps and to be a little scared um when I was reading a story so one of the one
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  of the books and in movies that that had a real big impact on me was um michael and the never
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  ending story and um I don't know have you have you seen the the movie version of that I think it's
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  like the forties yeah and in in the in the movie version um the the images you get of the of the
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  gmork this wolf-like creature that um sort of pursues the protagonist or this once of sadness so
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  that is very horror-esque as well and I know that this this really left an imprint um but as in in
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  terms of how how to sort of deal with or or prepare kids or talk to kids who who want to read this
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  story I think it very much depends on the kid I mean I know readers aged 10 who love goosebumps
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  and and as much as I did as a kid but I also know kids who don't want to watch finding Mimo because
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  they find find this uh the charm to scary yeah and I mean that's perfectly fine you know it's all
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  it's all depending on uh the individual kid and I think perhaps the best thing that parents or
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  other adults who take care of children can do is to take an interest in what they like to read and
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  to talk with them about it and be there when they have questions or the need to discuss themselves
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  something yes I don't want to give people the wrong impression is definitely with his
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  goosebumps territory rather than the sort of screaming running behind the sofa's territory um
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  one of the things Catherine you've done is is um what they did in the erratic park the first movie is
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  the people who get the most scary things happen to them are adults and I do think there is an
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  element as long as it's not the children you can get away with both things because yeah adults so you
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  know it's a bit of an it's okay I'll say kind of feel yeah and I mean I hope it balances out so
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  the kids get to do really cool stuff in the book as well so Portia gets to transform into an animal
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  I'm not revealing which animal right now because it's a sort of a um surprise to her as well and
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  um band gets to visit a um an underground mystical library um and and uh don't do a bit of magic
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  stuff so I think it's all in the balance with with the grief as well so grief can be in there but
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  then there also needs to be comfort then it needs to be a sense of safety of being protected so um
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  yeah yeah yeah it's not game with phones it's you know no that's literally not
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  people thought oh it's gonna be really horrific it's not it's not um so what I was reading it there
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  was several moments where I um wanted to shout at the hero characters don't do it don't open the
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  door don't open the um don't follow the fox and so on um how much fun with writing those moments when
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  you know your audience is going to be like really angry with your characters for being doing them
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  go they're like oh they into the haunted house then oh lots of fun lots of fun I mean that's um
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  when people make mistakes when they run headlong into disaster because they they're convinced uh
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  they have a have to for some reason that's when the good stuff happens in my opinion when you write
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  I don't know about you is that your experience when you write yeah definitely um I suppose it
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  depends isn't it um sometimes because you know the full picture that you don't get the same
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  feeling because it's you're you're taking them through it and you're just really enjoying taking
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  them through it um bad things have to happen to characters in order but uh but I feel it more as a
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  reader I think then the writer you know that sensation is much more when I'm not in control
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  um and I can't stop whereas if I'm the writer I've got the choice and so I can throw them in
• 33:18
  you know that's true that's true no that makes a lot of sense I mean as a reader it's a little bit like
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  watching a uh football game isn't it you yeah I mean you have this view of the whole field and you
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  can say oh pass pass the ball can't you see um yeah exactly exactly but the characters in the story
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  they don't have the full picture so I had readers uh write to me because Portia makes uh she makes
• 33:44
  a bad decision when she comes into into fairyland and um people people have written to me and said oh
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  I don't get why she did that at this point and I said yeah it wasn't a good decision but at the
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  moment she was in a situation of where she was emotionally very stressed and sometimes she
• 34:03
  don't make the best decisions now in in the situation especially if you don't have the full picture
• 34:10
  yeah absolutely so um you mentioned Michael Ender's book uh in passing um just to hear more broadly
• 34:18
  you've done um study in English literature and German literature do you see a difference between
• 34:23
  the German tradition of fantasy looking at it in the football strokes in the tradition is there
• 34:29
  something you think oh you know that's really Germanic that part of it is really good yeah I hope
• 34:37
  I hope I don't get myself into uh how do you say into uh hot water's deep waters was the phrase
• 34:45
  yeah hot water when I talk about this so I'm by no means an expert but I have I have some thoughts in
• 34:51
  this so um in in Germany there's a there's a long tradition actually of texts that incorporate
• 34:59
  magical and fantastical elements yeah especially during the romantic period um with texts like
• 35:05
  Faust or Etier Hoffmann's Descentmann or Ludwig Tix der Ruhnenberg so those are texts
• 35:15
  um whose settings are closely modeled on the real world with fantastical elements
• 35:20
  bleeding into the everyday and we also had a similar trend to the rise and popularity of
• 35:27
  Gothic fiction in the in the UK and throughout Europe during the I think late 18th early
• 35:32
  19th century so but overall I my my sense is that historically in Germany there's a bit more
• 35:41
  magical realism or proto urban fantasy going on then then high fantasy like what Tolkien did for
• 35:48
  example this whole um fantastical world building and um I mean as for for more recent years very
• 35:58
  generally speaking if I compare and I'm biased yeah but if I compare the role of fantasy literature
• 36:08
  in the German literary canon with its role in British literary canon I'd say there's a notable
• 36:14
  difference in terms of canonization maybe or appreciation even um so for one British academia seems
• 36:23
  a lot more and correct me if I'm wrong but it seems a lot more comfortable with including fantasy
• 36:29
  and science fiction in their curricula these days and um the recognition of these genres as
• 36:37
  worthwhile research subjects has started a lot earlier in the UK then it hasn't Germany
• 36:43
  um and same goes for the field of literary criticism outside of university so in in Germany
• 36:51
  the literary theatre still maintains a very stark division between realist fiction and fantasy
• 36:57
  fiction and there has been pushback and there's a lot of great research on fantasy literature
• 37:04
  in Germany going on as well you have the library for fantasy literature in Wetzlar and the
• 37:12
  Forschung's Institute for a fantastical literature so there's a lot going on but fantasy literature
• 37:20
  still has a harder time getting critical or academic um attention over here which I personally
• 37:27
  think is as I said I'm biased I personally think it's a shame because there's a lot of great books
• 37:32
  out there which excel in um creative world building and their use magic as a metaphor for all kinds
• 37:39
  of issues kids and adults are dealing with and maybe as a as a as a last point um all that said
• 37:47
  the genre is vastly popular in Germany yeah so lots lots of people read it not only but especially
• 37:53
  in the field of children's literature so some of our most um popular and nationally and internationally
• 38:00
  successful authors um have written children's fantasy Michal Ender who we already mentioned
• 38:06
  you have Cornelia Funke and Paul Mar to name just a few of those and um I'm also very excited about
• 38:14
  current trends in German fantasy literature which is getting increasingly creative and
• 38:19
  loud with regards to celebrating diversity so with an increasing number of fantasy books including
• 38:26
  of focusing on queer and bipod characters that's that's really um something that I'm yeah
• 38:32
  that I that I am celebrating as well yeah absolutely um that's definitely happening in the
• 38:38
  the British tradition as well um front covers are changing for example you know yeah
• 38:45
  you see that the heroes heroines are for all works walks of life and people are
• 38:51
  so looking into um folkloric myths from lots of different cultures not just these you know
• 38:58
  UK-centered ones um so you mentioned some there uh is there a underrated German fantasy series
• 39:08
  that we should look up I mean I know off the ones you've mentioned I I know Cornelia Funke and
• 39:15
  Michal Ender already Cornelia Funke was really big when my children were reading I don't
• 39:22
  she still is I haven't you know now they'll wrap up I'm not talking with you or Michal because not
• 39:28
  but certainly um that they were reading her but is there someone we're missing that we need to know
• 39:34
  about in the English people world I mean I could recommend a couple that I think would really
• 39:43
  lovely in translation but um let me think about this for a second I mean one um fantasy author that
• 39:53
  I mean he's definitely not underrated in Germany but I don't know how how widely he is known in
• 40:01
  in an English speaking context is Otfried Poislar who is a children's book author who wrote in
• 40:09
  the 70s so his books are more on on the classic classical side and one of the books I can definitely
• 40:17
  recommend is Krabat and the sorceress Mil which also deals a lot with Slavic folklore in that case
• 40:28
  so it's a bit fairytale fantasy ish for for younger readers that one two series for young readers
• 40:39
  that have a lot of fans in Germany at the moment one is called the Flusterwald Chronicles
• 40:47
  Chronicles of the Whispering Woods by Andrea Suhanek and um shape-shifter series called Woodwalkers
• 40:59
  by Katja Brandes and there's also one book that is very not a series but a one book that's very
• 41:08
  near and dear to my heart because I got to watch it um sort of grow from first idea to to
• 41:15
  finish book and that's Christian Handels Rowan and Ash which is a lovely gay young adult fantasy
• 41:23
  with fairy tale and folklore elements um which is not translated in English yet but I'm hoping
• 41:30
  that will change so yeah listen maybe German readers so they can yeah yeah definitely we have
• 41:38
  to mention in that mix we mustn't forget the Bramble Fox thank you so much Catherine for
• 41:47
  talking to us and as an end we always choose something imagining that we can pick any fantasy world
• 41:54
  it can be something that's you know who being series or on film or in a old series or a new book
• 42:00
  series basically just have to be a fantasy world and we pick where is the best place to be
• 42:07
  or do something so you know we've picked from like the best tavern or the best place
• 42:13
  you know that kind of thing this time in honour of you and in the and for the way that your
• 42:20
  story begins I thought where is the best place to go and stay with an aunt people may think
• 42:27
  that's a strange thing to pick but actually know when you start to think about how many many
• 42:32
  um great children's stories start they start with getting rid of the parents
• 42:40
  or maiden aunts and great aunts are usually kind of the slightly neglectful stand-in parent figures
• 42:47
  so where would you go and stay with an aunt hoping to have an amazing adventure
• 42:54
  I love this question I mean um as is probably noticeable in Bramble Fox as well I am
• 43:02
  I love food and I love sitting somewhere cozy and having tea or or a picnic so
• 43:09
  um I guess for for a nice picnic maybe 500 acrewards or Hobbiton would be a good good place
• 43:20
  or I very recently I've gotten into Thomas Taylor's eerie on C books which is also a fantasy
• 43:29
  adventure series for kids where you have this this coastal town of eerie on C and they have
• 43:34
  really good fish and chips alongside very funny and weird and exciting monster hunts so that
• 43:44
  that actually might be a place where I would go to visit an aunt so I was asking myself the same
• 43:49
  question um I use this in my very first fantasy series for children and I set my character
• 43:55
  away to save an aunt which is why I thought about this um with a companion's quarter but
• 44:01
  think about this we've mentioned it once already I seem to remember at the beginning of Tom's
• 44:07
  midnight garden he goes to stay with his relatives I can't remember exactly an aunt possibly an
• 44:14
  aunt because his brother had scarlet fever or something and he sent away because of illness in
• 44:19
  the household and I've always loved that idea of this this house with a clock that strikes 13
• 44:25
  and you travel back in time I think I'd go to Philip Philip appearances Tom's midnight garden
• 44:31
  world to go and stay with an aunt let's do more than that I'm talking too much Catherine it's been
• 44:40
  wonderful um talking to you today and I wish you all the best with Bramble Fox as it's now coming
• 44:47
  out in English published by Pushkin Press
• 45:02
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• 45:08
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