Latest / Mythmakers / Helen Glynn Jones and The Last Raven: Vampires, Humans and Other Monsters

Transcript

Helen Glynn Jones and The Last Raven: Vampires, Humans and Other Monsters · Mythmakers

• 0:00
  Hello and welcome to MythMakers. MythMakers is the podcast for fantasy fans and fantasy
• 0:11
  creatives brought to you by the Oxford Centre for Fantasy. My name is Julia Golding and
• 0:17
  today I am delighted to be joined by my friend who is also published by HarperCollins, Helen
• 0:26
  but her name on the book is slightly different from how I know her is Helen Glyn Jones and her book
• 0:32
  that's just been published is called The Last Raven. Before we get down to talking about that,
• 0:39
  Helen, hello, welcome to MythMakers. Hello, thank you for having me. So let's start where all of us
• 0:46
  start. We are going to throw you back in the time machine to being that young girl who
• 0:53
  probably loved reading and guessing and was going around the books of the library and bookshops.
• 0:59
  What were the kind of fantasy books that were your the spark that got you interested in writing?
• 1:06
  So I did read a lot as a child and and still do not perhaps as much as I used to but yeah so
• 1:15
  my favourite my fantasy favourites when I was younger were Narnia of course I absolutely devoured
• 1:21
  those books, adored them, still do, still read them now. I also loved Alan Garner, the owl
• 1:29
  service, the weird stone books. I remember I still can feel that claustrophobic feeling I felt
• 1:36
  there's that bit where they go underground and they're in those really tight little tunnels and
• 1:40
  they almost get stuck and oh it just stayed with me that wonderful feeling and the way he wrote it
• 1:47
  and give us that feeling. One of my absolute favourites though is Susan Cooper's Darker's
• 1:53
  Rising series which is just I mean I just think that is utterly, utterly brilliant.
• 1:59
  I wish we'd known each other as little girls because they're all the ones I absolutely adored.
• 2:05
  The funny thing you mentioned in the Alan Garner thing I've been having a bit of an Alan Garner
• 2:09
  moment because I went here his daughter and Robert Powell talk about his work because he's just
• 2:14
  turned 90 and it reminded me that that's the weird stone as you said. I always thought when I
• 2:23
  picked it off the shelf I always thought it was the weird stone of Brising Armand because you
• 2:30
  don't know how to say it. No I don't. I've still don't. The weird stone of the single man I think
• 2:35
  is how you actually say. Is it? Okay. That's one of those words where you embarrass yourself when
• 2:40
  you meet you know the Alan Garner fan who knows exactly how it's. That's why I didn't say it.
• 2:47
  And just going just picking up also on the Narnia I've been listening to Narnia recently
• 2:54
  from projects I'm doing and I decided rather than read it I'd get the
• 3:00
  audible versions of it and there's an absolutely fabulous collection if anyone's wanted to
• 3:05
  cheer themselves up and I particularly recommend Kenneth Branagh reading the magicians their view.
• 3:13
  Oh and I mean it's got Derek Jackaby reading the dawn treader and Patrick Stewart reading the
• 3:24
  last battle. Oh amazing. So that's a little Christmas treat for people if they're listening to
• 3:32
  this we're about to go into Christmas here if we're listening to it just for Christmas put that on
• 3:36
  your list. Yeah so obviously I can I'm I'm completely understand you Helen I feel as though
• 3:41
  we were a very similar kind of child. You also traveled a lot in your life and you and so were you
• 3:49
  born in you've got a little bit of an Aussie twang to your voice so at what point did Australia
• 3:56
  happen in your life. So I was born in the UK I grew up in Coventry and but we moved to Canada
• 4:05
  when I was 11 and I lived there for about 14 years until I met my husband who happens to be
• 4:13
  Australian so I went out to Australia for what was supposed to be a year and ended up staying
• 4:19
  for 17 and and then came back here a few years ago. Yeah so I couldn't quite pigeonhole it as
• 4:27
  Australia but it's some melange that maybe Canada too it's a fascinating sort of accent you've
• 4:33
  landed on and so the last Raven we were talking more detail about it but it is it has a use of
• 4:42
  the vampire myth when you were traveling around the world did you pick up different versions of
• 4:47
  the vampire myth or do you feel we've all now settled fully on the I suppose the gentleman vampire
• 4:53
  aspect. Yeah it's interesting I think among indigenous cultures in North America and in Australia
• 5:06
  they do have there are legends of creatures that are blood suckers there's the when to go
• 5:12
  when to go in native First Nations cultures in North America that it you know it was human but it
• 5:23
  committed a terrible crime and it got transformed into this creature that prays on humans and it's
• 5:28
  immortal unless you manage to kill it in a very specific way and that's somewhat vampiric
• 5:32
  and the skin walkers who also pray on humans are hard to kill but they actually they mesmerize
• 5:42
  humans into doing terrible things perhaps creating when to go in the process you know
• 5:49
  so there's there are sort of vampiric legends and the Australian Aboriginal
• 5:56
  culture in the south particularly have a a legend of a creature that lives in the trees and
• 6:02
  sucks blood but it's and it was never human so there's well there are things that seem to have
• 6:07
  them it's interesting because a lot of cultures around the world seem to have the stories of
• 6:11
  blood sucking monsters of some sort but they're not um they don't always have all the characteristics
• 6:19
  of the so-called European the gentleman vampire that seemed to emanate in Europe.
• 6:25
  Yeah so that that came out in the sort of um beginning of the 19th century largely thanks to
• 6:32
  Byron. Yes on Polidory wrote this short story called The Vampire and that led to Brown Stoker
• 6:39
  and the rest is Twilight history um it's where it's gone. Having said which um you don't I wouldn't
• 6:47
  really class your vampires' gentleman vampires but they have more of the element of not being
• 6:53
  so bestial which I think there is a version of the vampire which is much more of a more like the
• 6:59
  werewolf in the sense it's more sort of creaturely yeah yeah these vampires are not monstrous at all
• 7:04
  no no no they are they are monstrous but so tell us a little bit about what happens in your story
• 7:10
  actually has a good moment to explore your world a bit more um so um the story began it actually
• 7:18
  so began as a germ of an idea I used to blog quite a lot and a friend of mine posted a blog prompt
• 7:24
  which was monster and I thought humans were quite monstrous so I came up with this this character
• 7:32
  came to me this young girl and her parents were vampires she was human and she was the monster
• 7:39
  in the relationship or in the world that they lived in it was a world ruled by vampires
• 7:44
  and she was um basically a genetic throwback um of vampires human DNA they can have live children
• 7:52
  and sometimes they're born human rather than vampire um and it was just this little piece of
• 7:57
  flash fiction but her voice was so strong that stayed with me and um and then more characters
• 8:03
  began to appear like Kyle the the bodyguard who um and as soon as he appeared I thought well this
• 8:09
  is going to be a romance and um so yeah I wanted it to be so basically the book is about um it's
• 8:16
  about Amelia who is about to turn 18 and inherit half the planet it is our world but it's sort of
• 8:23
  a step sideways from our world in that it is now ruled by vampires and the house of Raven which
• 8:29
  Amelia belongs to is um they rule over Europe and North America and uh it's tradition that
• 8:36
  that the vampire takes over at 18 because it stops the line stagnating because vampires live
• 8:41
  such long lives but because she's human uh she's essentially been kept in the dark most of her
• 8:48
  life in many ways uh her parents have done it to protect her but um she's incredibly naive she
• 8:56
  what she does know though is that she does not want to be the air and so this new guard comes into
• 9:01
  her life she got a new personal guard because she's about to step up and become you know the
• 9:06
  anointed air and um this new guard comes along and she sees him as a way out and uh she wants
• 9:13
  to go and live among humans but she finds that perhaps human life isn't what she thought it was
• 9:18
  going to be because they are essentially cattle they're they're farmed yes um it is sort of across
• 9:24
  the barricades type love story in in a way um and finally what you just said reminds me a bit of
• 9:31
  what's it called? Wamp file bodies are Wamp no Wamp bodies the one with the the zombies
• 9:36
  are another culture outside the gates of the city which is all human that idea of seeing the
• 9:43
  humanity in the other population which is regarded as being monstrous it is a wonderful and
• 9:51
  thing to explore um so you've mentioned it's romance I wouldn't say it's entirely romantic though um
• 9:59
  oh no i'm not going to go too far down that um but there is obviously a very strong association
• 10:06
  between vampires and romance in the genre if you look at you know all the books written in the
• 10:13
  urban fantasy genre for example i'm sure we could all name lots of authors who've done this why
• 10:20
  do you think people think this marriage of love and vampires go together like a wholesome
• 10:27
  carriage um because i you know i've got some theories on this but i'd like to hear yours first
• 10:35
  um so i mean first i'll say for me raven is a romance because she gets
• 10:41
  a happily ever after but it's yeah not the one that the reader expects yeah
• 10:48
  and because it's a series there is more of a romantic arc to okay what going forward so
• 10:54
  but it yes i agree it's it's not traditionally structured ups yeah without giving away anything um but uh
• 11:03
  i do think i mean i think going back to what you were saying about Byron and and Polidori and Byron
• 11:09
  being this like had some romantic figure that he based the vampire on and from there
• 11:15
  i also think Dracula Dracula is a love story really once you get past the horror and the gore it's
• 11:20
  a love story that spans time and there's um i think it's the idea of somebody who is a mortal
• 11:28
  somebody who's powerful somebody who is intriguing and beautiful and forever young
• 11:34
  becomes a romantic figure and then you also have the elements of darkness you have the elements of
• 11:40
  i mean if we're going to dig down to it you've got the elements of penetration you've got the
• 11:44
  elements of blood and body fluids and being in the darkness with somebody and it all lends itself
• 11:51
  to romance if you get past the whole blood sucking thing yeah i think actually well that's obviously
• 11:59
  it got an erotic charge to it yeah um you know that's how it worked yeah but the i think there's
• 12:06
  also an element of it has rules because one of the things that make romances work is when there are
• 12:12
  rules um so if you look at a Jane Austen for example there are etiquette rules of how you'd
• 12:20
  you know how many dances you have with someone if you if you write a letter to them that's actually
• 12:24
  Mr. Darcy's letter to Elizabeth is a shocking thing in her time he shouldn't really be writing to
• 12:29
  her we don't we don't get that now but yes the reader at the time would have thought oh gosh
• 12:34
  he's really gone outside the normal protocol um and i think within vampires if it's a a vampire
• 12:41
  to human romance there's that sense of when we've got rules in this relationship which if i
• 12:46
  broke and are dangerous it's not like the you get an unmarried mother pregnancy thing it's it's you
• 12:53
  you could die oh yeah you can turn into a vampire there's all sorts of other things going on there
• 13:00
  and i think putting rules in a romance the harder you make it for a couple to get together the
• 13:06
  the better the romance is but it's just internet dating yes i like you there's no drama you know
• 13:14
  yeah so i do think there is a gap in the market for an internet dating vampire novel i'm
• 13:20
  i thought i'd probably done it but that'd be quite fun oh yeah maybe you should write it
• 13:23
  yeah you haven't done a vampire novel yet it'd be quite fun um so how would you categorise your
• 13:33
  your series in the age range so the the cover has a graphic cover rather lovely graphic cover of
• 13:41
  the two young people at the heart of the first part in this series um but would you say
• 13:47
  i felt that the content was definitely upper end of young adult going into what you it was
• 13:51
  briefly called new adult i don't think this is a category but it seemed quite helpful i think to
• 13:57
  signal that this is somebody going into a mature world with mature themes um or do you think it's an
• 14:07
  adult because i mean it can no i think it's it's very much um that upper end of young adult into new
• 14:14
  adult as you say so that sort of maybe 17 to early 20s kind of age and um yeah so it's um and because
• 14:24
  of that within that genre you tend to get books they're a little bit faster paced and not quite as
• 14:28
  long as some of the adult fantasy um novels that are um that are out there adult room to see fantasy
• 14:36
  novels uh so and it does i think it fits into those categories because of the age of the protagonist
• 14:44
  the life changes that they're going through you know Amelia is figuring out who she is she's growing
• 14:48
  as a person she's taking her first steps into the world in a lot of ways and um there's a world of
• 14:57
  difference in in preference in in the type of things that a 13 year old reader and an 18 year
• 15:04
  would want to read yet they're both said to be served by YA which is why you do get such a
• 15:09
  broad range of books within that so mine is definitely at the upper end yeah no i mean it's it's
• 15:15
  it's almost frustrating with this age range thing because i i really feel it should be this is a
• 15:21
  minimum age for reading not a maximum so i think there's a lot of um enjoyment that adults can get
• 15:28
  from YA novels but they may feel they don't go to those shelves because i think oh someone's looking
• 15:32
  at me if i go there so i encourage you to to roam in a bookshop um because there are a lot such
• 15:39
  great YA that's written so you mentioned just then that it's a coming of age story and
• 15:44
  yes and Amelia definitely has a wonderful character art very satisfying character arc in this
• 15:48
  where she gets finds her power uh definitely which is always wonderful um so thinking back do you
• 15:57
  remember reading some coming of age stories that have sort of meant a lot to you or life lessons
• 16:03
  that you were sort of putting into this um putting into the last raven um so i think for me and i'll
• 16:11
  i'll actually go back to what you're saying before a two about the age ranges because there wasn't
• 16:14
  when i was a youngster there wasn't really any of that i was reading like flowers in the attic when
• 16:19
  i was 13 which was perhaps not the best yes i was i was a bit of a club that was it yeah we literally
• 16:24
  were like the same person when it comes to the books but you know it's quite and i don't think that
• 16:30
  was necessarily a bad thing but i do love that there's this whole genre and age range that is
• 16:36
  targeted to that audience because it kind of keeps the reading going rather than chucking them into
• 16:41
  adult books at the age of 13 you know i digress coming of age so coming of age i was kind of
• 16:49
  i think for me i find in a lot of young adult fantasy books that a lot of the teenage protagonist
• 16:57
  tend to be fully formed they're kind of they you come into this story and they've already had
• 17:02
  their six years as an assassin or you know running a brothel or whatever it is they're doing
• 17:07
  and they kind of and then they they sort of go off on their adventure and they're in a way they're
• 17:12
  kind of fully formed even though they're still teenagers at a time when a lot of kids are actually
• 17:17
  figuring things out so um it was actually really important to me that Amelia started the book
• 17:22
  completely naive and just angry with everybody and making silly choices because
• 17:27
  that's who she is at that point in time because she she is so sheltered now i was kind of thinking i
• 17:34
  know um will is still quite young at the end of the darkest rising series but he is
• 17:40
  very very much changed by what happens to him and i do think that it for me is a little bit of a
• 17:45
  coming of age story like he's still i think he's only sort of 14 at the end of darkest rising but he
• 17:50
  still has this this incredible change within him that he goes through from the start of the first book
• 17:57
  to the end of the last book um i think dark materials is another one that's really great um
• 18:04
  uh the way that lyra becomes who she becomes at the end of at the end of that and um and i will
• 18:10
  also add in an of green gables yes i'm gonna say that all yeah they're so wonderful and you get
• 18:18
  to go all the way through to her i do great and having kids and her kids growing up which i just
• 18:23
  think is marvelous and another shout out for a little house on the prairie series because that
• 18:30
  in another series that follows obviously more of a real life story that one um follows a family
• 18:36
  through it is fascinating to give enough scope for a child to grow into an adult because it is
• 18:42
  the most interesting stage uh to read about really i mean the same thing obviously happens in
• 18:48
  harry potter uh you know give a book per year and naturally everybody is growing up um and he
• 18:57
  he has a few years where he's angry and a bit unfocused which is it's natural um so i think having
• 19:07
  a series where you can explore a character's um maturation like that is is a wonderful place to go
• 19:16
  uh and i think the other just we also mentioned early on the naniah stories but i was reminded that
• 19:23
  even though they're obviously very clearly for children there is an element of sadness in all of
• 19:30
  them where they're told you cannot come back to none again yeah so to find me in your world
• 19:38
  uh he he slightly frudges that by killing the wall off in the lot of time so they don't get to grow up
• 19:44
  but i would actually quite for a season it's episode yeah but she likes lipsticks and more
• 19:48
  sixes yeah maybe she gets there later i suspect she gets there by the i do i do too um but
• 19:56
  i i remember finding that quite difficult how can you not be allowed to go back to naniah so
• 20:01
  and i think one of the lessons of learned of growing up is that feeling of while you've got to find
• 20:06
  your magic in the world that we live in uh not just in the way you've escaped to in your reading so
• 20:15
  that was a good a life lesson i felt um so one of the most again i'm going to be careful about not
• 20:21
  giving it away but there is a very i would say the i would call this a betrayal plot that is the
• 20:29
  major twist in the story so we're not going to talk about who is betrayed by whom but um i was
• 20:36
  thinking about how powerful that was as a a plot line at what point did you did you start with
• 20:42
  that idea or did it just emerge as you were writing now i knew i knew that the betrayal would happen
• 20:50
  when i once the book started taking shape i knew that was going to be a i'm trying really hard not
• 20:56
  to see anything away i knew that would be a pivotal moment um and so the clues are actually there
• 21:06
  in throughout the book there are there are moments um and a couple of people have said to me after
• 21:12
  reading they've gone oh yeah actually when i look back now i can kind of see that the clues
• 21:19
  were there and um for me it was the moment where you know she Amelia is growing and she's making
• 21:28
  choices but she's still with somebody she's you know she's she's she's got somebody backing
• 21:34
  her she's got a guard with her she's got somebody behind her and this was a moment where it was just
• 21:41
  and she had to choose um and it was it was a moment where she had to choose whether to dig in
• 21:50
  and embrace who she was or or crumble because she could have gone either way she could have just
• 21:55
  given up in the face of the betrayal and and you know then there wouldn't be any more books in
• 22:00
  the scene well yeah well there's that yeah we're kind of like you know that moment where um
• 22:08
  you know where the loved one dies in another book for example or in a film or something where the
• 22:13
  loved one dies or the dog dies or something and it spurs the main character onto that final push
• 22:19
  to self-realization i suppose of who who they are and what they what they really really want
• 22:25
  they have to choose what they really want in that moment and other and you know it's one of the
• 22:31
  and that's that's what i wanted that moment to be for her is that bit that pushed her to the
• 22:37
  next level i mean the interesting thing from a sort of technical point of view of writing is
• 22:42
  that a betrayal plot where your main character is the one being betrayed is it makes them
• 22:49
  the victim of other people's decisions and so that could could be passive but actually
• 22:57
  it's it shows you how it's the response to something the decision that you take when
• 23:05
  you know the scales fall from your eyes and you realize what's going on yeah that is what's
• 23:10
  that what makes you the protagonist of this tale rather than it being the person who's plotting
• 23:15
  um yes since you yeah what you do in that moment that defied you as like this is that
• 23:22
  and the other sort of technical thing i was thinking you it was worth raising here that you
• 23:26
  mentioned was how without giving it away uh red flag this person is up to no good you know you
• 23:34
  actually have to also put in elements which mean that the betrayal feels earned it's exactly like
• 23:40
  doing a murder mystery or a thriller you've got to plant in the oh yes of course they were
• 23:46
  moment for the reader otherwise it feels unfair that if you suddenly say you know
• 23:51
  no yeah you've got to like actually everything i wrote about it is really yeah it can't just drop
• 23:57
  from the sky and happen it's yeah it's got it's got to be seeded all the way through and yeah
• 24:04
  particularly that's particularly true when it's a first person narrative and you're not breaking
• 24:08
  away from that person's viewpoint because obviously if you're doing more than one viewpoint
• 24:12
  you can actually show somebody else plotting or hinting that they're plotting yes so
• 24:19
  i mean it's i've written um psychological thriller with half collins a while ago under my
• 24:27
  pen name just sterling and that's a really interesting genre to write in because
• 24:32
  there you're holding out that you're balancing the thing that everybody is untrustworthy in it
• 24:38
  so that's another way of doing betrayal is that you can actually not have any any any center to
• 24:44
  the novels and nobody you don't know who is yes who's on what side in you know that is it's
• 24:50
  quite a difficult thing to write actually technically yeah yeah um but it's a great fun challenge
• 24:56
  so where are you going to go next with your writing i think we've just got a hint that the series
• 25:01
  continues because of title for your next part um yes so i i only have a working title at the moment
• 25:07
  so i won't share it because it may change but i do have it probably well i always get this you will
• 25:14
  charlatan ko at one more chapter they say actually thanks for your title but here you go this one
• 25:20
  this one's better and they're and they're correct probably yeah um yeah so i have written the second
• 25:28
  book it is now we i have just received edits so that's where i'm going next but the third book which
• 25:35
  what wraps it up it's a trilogy is um i am writing that too and then i've got a couple of other
• 25:42
  new story ideas which are more high fantasy they're not set in this world i've got a couple of those
• 25:50
  sort of bubbling under but yeah the moment i'm still very much in the land of raven do you
• 25:57
  enjoy the process of being edited or is it something that you sort of have to bet you know
• 26:04
  grit your teeth to actually read the letter that tells you what's wrong with your script
• 26:09
  um a little bit of both uh now i do i do actually really enjoy it because it is fresh eyes
• 26:15
  we get so close to our work and i think the role of an editor is just so valuable um so i enjoy
• 26:25
  yeah it's like when you get the email it's like oh gosh and you just have to as you say grit your teeth
• 26:30
  and like go okay a little bit at a time i'll just go through it but once i actually get into it
• 26:36
  i do really enjoy the process of of teasing you know teasing out the story a little bit more
• 26:42
  getting it out of the tangles of the first round i think it's always quite interesting editing your
• 26:48
  editors editorial letter because when i usually print it off and i go and look at it and i think
• 26:53
  okay this first paragraph is the let's make Julia feel okay about herself paragraph so i'm not
• 26:59
  going to take take too much notice of that because that's just stopping me having a freak out
• 27:04
  where it starts is the first subheading yes you know so once you've had enough of these you
• 27:12
  still get used to it but i i think it's don't don't write for a publication if you can't take
• 27:21
  editing because um i i i a such a huge privilege of getting someone skill and story to help you
• 27:28
  improve it's absolutely wonderful and i would say i've been edited by Charlotte uh ledger for a while
• 27:36
  um and she is just so canny and it's a question if you start reading you think
• 27:44
  yeah oh yeah that's my round i had an inkling that there was oh yes i thought maybe there was
• 27:51
  something wrong there sort of like going away with that but i'm not going to you're quite right
• 27:57
  no one's going to understand what's going on there yeah so um i i've learned to
• 28:02
  love it i think you love it you do yeah yeah i have Charlotte as well and she is she's amazing isn't
• 28:09
  she she just she can have you on these wonderful details and the book is better i'm like i know
• 28:15
  the book will be better i'm just slightly daunted by the huge email yes if i think the one
• 28:22
  the daunting aspects of it is they do editors do try and break it down for you but once you start
• 28:28
  shifting pieces around it's it's like everything shifts that's the thing so you have to keep your
• 28:35
  whole story in your head and yeah make sure it doesn't sort of start to bits don't start to drop off
• 28:42
  as you start changing out other bits um it's a real yeah if you pull one's red
• 28:51
  yeah it's it's like you've taken all the toys out of the box you've got to figure out how to put
• 28:55
  them all back in again isn't that because the last edit i had for Charlotte is in broad terms it was
• 29:01
  everything's working really well except for the end we really like how the drama of the end but we
• 29:07
  don't like the setup of the drama of the end and i think well how can i keep the drama of the end
• 29:12
  oh gosh without this it was it was really tricky because they wanted way back they want you want
• 29:19
  they want they wanted something but so i had to sort of um what i do i don't know if you're the same
• 29:26
  is i leave it the most difficult parts of the edit i leave to do to the end and i sort of let it
• 29:34
  bubble away and eventually the answer pops up and sometimes it comes through having made the other
• 29:41
  changes yes yeah i'm exactly the same i did that's exactly what i do i just have to let it simmer
• 29:47
  for a while and then oh yeah that that's what i need to do there so don't panic you know it's the
• 29:53
  don't yeah yeah i know i know it's uh but as you say it is it is a privilege i think it's a privilege
• 30:00
  as well i feel very fortunate to be able to work with somebody like Charlotte who's just so
• 30:05
  so very good at what she does um yeah so um Helen you've you've done many forms of writing during
• 30:13
  her life including blogging do you do blogging still are you on sub-stack leading that kind of thing
• 30:19
  or are you moving all now yeah i was on i was on wordpress back when wordpress was
• 30:25
  yeah they keep moving the words you know i'm not i'm not on sub-stack i'm thinking about it but at the
• 30:31
  moment i'm just um it's just time really i haven't blogged in a long time i used to blog i mean
• 30:39
  if you if someone was to go to my blog they'd find like 800 posts they'd find little bits of the
• 30:43
  last raven in there because as i say it started as a blog prompt and then i started writing other
• 30:48
  little scenes as they came to me and i would share some of them on the blog without giving too much
• 30:52
  away um yeah so it's uh i do ghost writing as well so i'm working on a ghost writing project at
• 31:00
  the moment and i've got edits going on and um i used to write content for other people but i
• 31:07
  don't have really time for that at the moment yeah well it's time to write my own content
• 31:14
  i felt and then afri time and then as you say there's the promotional side of things too isn't
• 31:18
  there there's doing all the the various social medias it's a lot yeah no you've got a full plate
• 31:25
  so um to finish off we always have a little bit of a thought experiment where we allow ourselves to
• 31:33
  go into any of the fantasy worlds ever written so you can go into Susan Cooper's world you can
• 31:39
  go into a star trek or nine year or whatever the world of Dracula it doesn't matter um so where in
• 31:48
  all the fantasy worlds is the best place for something and i thought in honor of the last raven
• 31:54
  where in all the fantasy worlds is the best place to become a vampire now i've got this very
• 32:00
  specifically as become a vampire because i don't mean a world where it's already good idea to be one
• 32:07
  one where you are turned into one where do you think would be a good good place for that
• 32:13
  i don't think narnia it doesn't seem to find yourself with the wags and the roses and
• 32:20
  yeah you'd be in the yeah wouldn't be like which is contingent absolutely yeah um i did i actually kind
• 32:29
  of thought this world really is i think the best world to be a vampire um i think this world
• 32:34
  has a lot of darkness in it so there's enough darkness to to shield a creature of the night
• 32:42
  um if i was to choose if i was to actually choose a fantasy realm then it probably would be
• 32:49
  something like star trek or star wars because i think the i think the more fantasy realms i think
• 33:00
  it would be difficult to to sit into you know existing magic systems and all that kind of thing
• 33:07
  to be this creature i think it would be quite difficult if vampires do not exist in that world to be
• 33:12
  a vampire you'd either be hunted or you'd end up ruling the place and i don't think either path
• 33:17
  will be easy so i think perhaps worlds that worlds like like star trek is an incredibly diverse world
• 33:25
  so being a vampire there is probably going to be pretty it's going to be okay you're going to be
• 33:31
  accepted for who you are because that seems to be the message behind the star i think in a similar
• 33:38
  vein uh-huh i think that probably you could imagine a story where you're like the doctor who's
• 33:45
  assistant and you get turned into a vampire and he would make sure you end up in a world where it's
• 33:50
  up like the dark side of the moon he'd find you or she would find you a place that you could exist
• 33:58
  comfortably comfortably i suppose one of the good things about the twilight world
• 34:04
  um no i'm not particularly attracted to always going to american high school
• 34:10
  she was a bit the color and choice a bizarre choice um but at least there was a sort of vegetarian
• 34:17
  vampire option um and you've got sparkly skin yeah yeah i know it is always wonder about the high
• 34:27
  school thing like you're literally a hundred and seventeen years old or something and you want to
• 34:31
  go hang out with a bunch of teenagers and yeah it's it's a rich body you wanted you got loads of
• 34:37
  money you could go anywhere do anything and go to high school yeah but i think on the whole i'll
• 34:42
  choose my doctor who idea because i think we'd find a good place to to be a vampire i wouldn't want
• 34:48
  to be a vampire here you wouldn't no not on earth i can't think of a story where it's a good idea
• 34:54
  but anyway thank you so much Helen for joining us and all the best with this series does the
• 35:00
  series have a series title what was it going to be called the last raven um it is called the ravens
• 35:06
  the ravens okay good luck with ravens um part in two and three and thank you very much for coming
• 35:12
  to talk to us thank you so much for having me it's been a pleasure
• 35:16
  thanks for listening to myth makers podcast brought to you by the oxford center for fantasy
• 35:28
  visit oxfordcenterforfattery.org to join in the fun find out about our online courses
• 35:34
  in person stays in oxford plus visit our shop for great gifts tell a friend and subscribe
• 35:41
  wherever you find your favorite podcasts worldwide