Latest / Mythmakers / Katherine Livesey: Girls in Love

Transcript

Katherine Livesey: Girls in Love · Mythmakers

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Hello and welcome to MythMakers. MythMakers is the podcast for fantasy fans and fantasy
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creatives brought to you by the Oxford Centre for Fantasy. My name is Julia Golding, I'm
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an author but also director of the Centre and today I am joined by a young writer of fantasy
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Catherine Lipsy who has written a very exciting trilogy about which we will hear more later but
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first of all let's say hello to Catherine and hear a little bit about your journey to being an author
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Catherine. Hi yeah thank you so much for having me first and foremost I love talking about fantasy
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books so this is heaven as a conversation for me. I write sort of cozy young adult fantasy
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adventure fiction it's the genre I have always loved and when I started writing it was what I felt
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was missing on my bookshelf so I thought I'd best pick up a pen and and feel the gap myself.
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That is so often the the spur to being a writer isn't it it's it's it's maybe you've
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been one book in your genre and then there's nothing and you think well I better go and write
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something then so yeah absolutely so tell us a little bit about what the young Catherine was
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thinking when she was a teenager looking at these bookshelves and how that then became you know the
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steps you took to being a writer you were saying to me earlier that you also have a full-time job so
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you're one of some of the writers who do the two things at the same time. Yeah so I had the idea
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for a long time that I wanted to be an author and for a while sort of throughout high school and
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college they didn't really get more than just romanticized idea of sitting in a nice garden writing
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shed writing and looking at chickens and that was what I wanted my life to be and it sort of grew
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from this romanticized idea into realizing that I loved spending my time writing and perhaps it
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was something worthwhile pursuing it wasn't just something that should have stayed as a day dream so I
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started to think of what I want to write what I was reading at the time and I was reading sort of
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a lot of Maggie Steve Fatter and Victoria Schwab in that of peak of young adult fiction that happened
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um sort of two thousand years ago now yeah end of two thousand exactly yeah exactly exactly that time
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and a lot of what I was reading was incredible and really exciting there wasn't an awful lot of
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diversity or representations of different kinds of people in those books and I was sort of coming
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to terms with who I was as a person realized I wasn't sort of a straight person and I didn't have
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that kind of representation to read I didn't know where to find it except for sort of the big coming
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out stories that again we're having a sort of a popular um moment in fiction at the time
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and I didn't want a coming out story that's not what I wanted I just wanted to see queer characters
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having a daily life and going up and doing stuff having swords and having magic and going on adventures
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and it just being another part of them like their hair color I didn't see that I couldn't find it
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and so I was really struggling to see myself in the books I was reading and that's sort of what
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triggered this journey for me to take it seriously is that I thought you know if there's a if there's a
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teenager out there like me that needs this and I can write and I love writing then it's my
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responsibility to bring that to other people who are also missing that representation in what they're
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reading so it grew from it grew from there really so I've put pen to paper properly for the first
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time when I was I think 19 in still in university um and then I got the publishing deal when I was
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26 so it took a little bit of time that is not a little bit of time that is very fast and there
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will be a lot of people out there you can get all different decades of their life so don't worry
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if you're if you're still waiting for your deal um so let's go into the actual nature of the book
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or the the first of the series that systems of shadow and was this your first fantasy book
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that you've written was this where you started or were there drafts in a draw somewhere that
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haven't seen the light of day so it was my first um but the way that it came about such a slow
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process um that I did really have chance to write all the drafts and put them in draws like my
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sole focus was just sorry it always was um and so I'd pick it up and put it down and pick it up
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and put it down over over the years um until growing something that I actually wanted it to be
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so there there are previous drafts many many of the same story but it was always this story um that
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I wanted to tell um yeah basically so tell us a little bit about the world of the sisters of shadow
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so people get an idea of the story so sort of as a classic fantasy style it is in a
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historical feeling environment although it's deliberately impossible to pinpoint an exact
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um time but it's definitely not modern day and there's no technology um in the world
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there's a lot of nature and landscape and that's something that's that's really really important
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me and so I wanted to make my characters walk through as many different landscapes that felt
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British um you know you can recognize sort of like Yorkshire Moors and Scottish mountains in there
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um without having that sort of pinpoint location so that I play with those
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environments as much as I wanted to without having to stick to a um a real map um
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do you need anything? No no I'm sorry no it's fine I'll just actually going to come in on that
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which is um as I you know that a lot of the listeners to this are Tolkien fans and what you're doing
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is exactly what he did so when you read Lord the Rings you know you're walking through an English
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landscape uh and you can see the exact trees and but you're not you're also in middle earth so
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um somehow by choosing something that's really real is the best thing for fantasy
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it for sure and and link to that I I grew up in Lancashire at I don't know Recounty I feel like
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in England has some link to Tolkien or claim something to Tolkien um we have Stonyhurst College
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and there is the Tolkien train around Stonyhurst College that really takes in the sort of
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Hobbiton style landscape of the rolling hills um and that were one of the things that I've got
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really strong memories of growing up of that link of landscape and author being something that was
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really important and it was not even deliberately at any an influence I couldn't escape it's something
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that was the most logical thing for me as a writer to include in in how I wrote
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and so tell us about your characters you've got um I was going to say sisters they're not
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they're not actually literally sisters but they're known to are as close as two close sisters
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Lily and Alice tell us a little bit about both of them yeah so I liked to work with the idea of
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this two sides of the same coin idea so these two people who are the antithesis of each other
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and that's what makes their relationships so strong so Lily is sort of the bright light
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um positive character she is happy where she is she likes her life um she doesn't really want to
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change where she is she's got ambitions in her very small sort of country village um she wants to be
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the first female business owner in her village that's what she's aiming for and that is her life
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and she's thrilled with it she doesn't need or want anything else um and then her best friend
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Alice is the exact opposite of that so she is reclusive she's angry she's shy she lives in a cabin
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up in the mountains in the woods not necessarily out of choice but because she's a bit of an outcast
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the village suspicious of her they don't really like having her around and Lily is really the
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uppers that trusted her in the first place and their relationship grew from being
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children who understood each other on a level that I think only children can understand each other
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you doesn't matter if you've got interest in common or anything like that is
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that sort of instance soul connection and their friendship grew from that and the story is
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pinned on the strength of that friendship through adversity yeah absolutely and then um you go on
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from that as you were mentioning to look at different forms of relationships so we get romantic
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relationships and then you get another set of pairings I don't think it's giving too much the way
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is it I don't know anyway there's two more they they kind of all grow
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they realize or at least Lily realizes that Alice has grown their friendship has taken Alice to
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the point where she's able to make connections with other people shall we say yeah and that's where we
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get the the same sex attraction love story and then a heterosexual one as well for what
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who does what because that you can find that but yeah you're I like the way that you're building up
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the different forms of love um so there's friendship love there's romantic love there's familial
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love there's um and people are making these relationships so though there is like a parental
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relationship going on between um there's a character called gem who lives in a a lighthouse who's
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adopted some children he's a young kind of father to them so but it's not his children so there's
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people who are seeing roles because um you can be a father without actually being literally the
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father you can be a sister without literally being a sister that's one of the things I took away
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from reading your story um hopefully that was intentional right it was absolutely and I think
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I really really wanted to make sure there was all different kinds of that love represented as well
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because again what I was reading was these books were so focused on this you know the character
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that you're following falls in love and it is that that becomes the point of the story that's what
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pushes the plot along so often with young adult books or it was when I was first getting the idea
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I wanted to have something deeper and sort of wider ranging than that so you know if romantic love
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isn't your cup of tea if that's not what you want there is so many other kinds of connections
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and characters to connect to in these books that it doesn't it's not just about romantic love
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as life is in yeah yeah the sort of beller and edwood twilight breathless romance that's
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its place you know there are but yeah it can be also a bit of a trap yeah definitely so
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I was there's lots to talk about in terms of the books and the series and how it unfolds you
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might want to think about what teasers you can give to where it goes after the first part
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but I was interested in the way you saw magic because magic seemed to me
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everybody who has fantasy that includes magic needs like a magic economy a magic budget
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how much planning did you put into your magic and what kind of magic is it is it a finite resource
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is it wave you wand and it just comes how did you think about this I always attach to something
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in the self in the soul it's all the combination of all of the things that you just mentioned so
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for a long time I didn't have a structure to it I knew I wanted to include magic I knew I wanted
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to build from it but I didn't know what that looked like so my first draft of the book simply just
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had magic peppered throughout it in a convenient way because I knew I wanted to include it and then
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as I started to build that that's when I started to bring in what it actually means to have
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magic in this world as a character and one of the really key part to the really key parts of this
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book is when two characters we find have this magic and they've got different kinds of magic and
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that was really really important to me because their type of magic reflects who they are as a person
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and it pulls upon the resources resources of the earth so I knew I really wanted to go for the
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sort of earth wind element or water element or magic I knew I wanted from from the get go I knew
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I wanted it to be that because so much else of the book is based on landscape and nature and
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there was just the most logical thing like of course magic also pulls its strength from nature as
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we do but having each of them sort of have that connection to a specific element meant that we could
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create some really interesting dynamics with sort of battles and fights because fire and water
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opposites right so it meant that I could have a lot of fun with that magic as a really key part
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of the books but I was also conscious that I didn't want it to be a super epic deep fantasy where
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magic was everything and so I wanted to keep it fairly paired back as well and that once these
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characters gain their magic that isn't all they are as people they're still people and that was
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another sort of really strong focus for me yeah I think what you were saying about how your
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magic had to be organic because your your context is a world of nature is actually a very good point
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to anyone who's listening to this and is planning a book with magic in it one way of answering
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that question is to step back and say what kind of world are you working in so if you're in some
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kind of steampunk places with lots of technology you need to work out how the magic fits in there
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it can't probably wouldn't be an organic magic like yours it'd be something else yeah or if it
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was more of a sci-fi universe then again you've got to think my mind immediately went to Jedi
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Knights and things but you know you've got to think in another way so connecting your magic to its
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environment is really really important or is it just feels I don't know I'm unconvincing
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yeah so another thing that I wanted to ask you about is the elements of this touch on there's a lot
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of children in here who've been abandoned or damaged or there's even a sort of like child
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snatcher aspect going on with the sort of bad people in the book and there's one there's a couple
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of characters in particular who are really damaged by it are thinking of the little character Glenn
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for example what it's you're thinking about the sort of how you handle the violence the torture
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aspect of those which people see parallels to real life experiences of children who are abused
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in other contexts how do you think about that as you're writing it and the sort of care of the
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reader style that you're approaching yeah so the first thing I'll say about this is the reason why
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that was an important path for me to go down is because when growing up and then when I was at
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university I spent a lot of time studying fairy tales and I've always loved fairy tales and
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the first moment you realize that fairy tales aren't Disney they're dark like it's a real moment
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and for me it was anyway a real awakening I spent a lot of time going through old fairy tales and
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realizing how much sort of darkness there is in there and trauma there is and no one really
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touches on the impact that has on either the people reading it in the first place and the characters
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in those books and initially when I started writing these books it it built from this sort of
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fairy tale idea of the band of witches sort of going across the moors and snatching children that
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was a real strong initial element before I even had a full story that was something that really
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interested me about this story and so I knew that I had to have that element of darkness of those
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really like original fairy tales had but I wanted to draw attention to the fact that you can't
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have that darkness without impacting people and I think fantasy is a really interesting place to
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play with those emotions because people read books or I read fantasy books to escape it's a real
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escapism and so to be able to deal with difficult subjects in a space that feels safe for you to be
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able to explore those feelings felt like a really logical way to approach it for me and glenza
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really nice example because his story is bleak it's sad and as we go through you you go on this
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journey with him and he is sort of like the kid that you would have read about in a fairy tale that
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you know didn't end up having the best time you know he wasn't the Cinderella in the story
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and I really just wanted to look at what that would look like for a character like what
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would they look like how would they deal with life and people around them how would they deal with
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love and relationships had they have been through something so awful and yeah it was it's really
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it's a really interesting place to explore while still being able to be really sensitive to the
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fact that it is a book for young people and you know young people deal with trauma and it's a safe
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place for them to explore those emotions within the escapism of what is otherwise a fairly cozy
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fantasy series like I wanted to be an escapist thing you know to pick up and disappear into so
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that's the motivation why I wanted to have that darkness in there I think I interesting you use
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the word cozy I I think it feels quite I think it feels quite dangerous the world maybe it's
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cozy in the way that there's an element of homeliness to it yes so there's a real sense of home
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and who makes your home and that's what you come back to maybe yes yeah well outside the home
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yeah slightly less cozy yeah so you've already mentioned a little bit about what a lot about
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how where you live and the places you've grown up Langucia Yorkshire gets into Scotland gets into
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the books do you have a particular way is it like all retrospect you're sitting at home and you
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think about places or are you the kind of writer who goes out with your notebook your phone or whatever
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it is and record things thinking I will use this in a book so you're out there your notebook noting
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down the sounds and the how the wind was I wish I had that romantic way of working like I'd
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love to be that person but I'm I'm just not I like to be really present when I'm in a landscape so
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I very rarely have notebooks or anything out I'll take photos I really like having a camera there
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to capture images and moods and feelings that I then collect together to then if I am writing
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and I need to know how I want to describe a specific landscape I will then pull up photos to help
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that process but I have always been really really inspired by landscapes I love being in really
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wild places and so I take myself there and I I just am there without thinking about whether I would
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use it or what I would use it for and often landscapes creep into the books that I I don't even
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remember putting them there so for example the lighthouse I thought I'd just plucked that out
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of my imagination and then a year after I'd really solidified it I went back to a place in
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Cornwall that I'd been to a few years previously saw the lighthouse and went it that's where it came
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from I just I'd just forgotten or I'd stored it somewhere for use and and pulled it out without
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realizing where I'd pulled it from so it's a little bit less sort of conventional than it could be
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yeah no I think that's the idea of actually being really present when you're there is I think
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really really true to it makes the I suppose what it does is it gives the genuineness of an experience
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for a place it's like I often wonder about people at a concert who are all filming
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concert rather than watching the concert or you know are you actually present when you're filming
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I don't know discuss it's a one of those things isn't it yeah um if we're always going to look at
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it through a lens or a or a note actually remembering it um so you you devise this novel you wrote
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this novel tell us a little bit about the experience of getting published I've got to know you
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because you're published by Harper Collins yeah um and so tell us a little bit about the experience
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of being taken on by one of the big bigons yeah so I when I realised I need to just stop editing
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and editing and editing and put it out in the world which was a big enough step in the first place
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to admit that it was as good as I was going to get it and I needed um someone else to be involved
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at that point and I started to reach out to agents primarily um because I've read an awful lot
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that that is the the conventional way to go if you want a big five publisher you get an agent
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and then the agent gets the deal so it's been a lot of time writing to agents and reaching out to
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them um and then a couple of indie publishers as well um I reached out to and over the course of
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a few months I just I wasn't getting anywhere which is a really common story for a lot of people um
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I really I was getting some rejection after rejection after rejection and I saw on so one more
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chapter is an imprint of Harper Collins that published me and I followed them on Instagram because
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they published a comedy novel of one of my friends so one of my writer friends I'd made through
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the is the shared joy of writing um she had recently been published by them so I followed
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them on Instagram I was just keeping an eye on things being aware of them and they posted a post
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asking for submissions for anyone who'd read anything that contained a lesbian storyline
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and I was like well they haven't published any fantasy or young adult currently they're mainly
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publishing romance and crime but I have what they're asking for so I'll submit it and see what
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happens it'll probably be nothing and that was in the April and I sort of forgot about it carried
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on sending to agents carried on saying to indie publishers um and was sort of came a little bit
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fatigued by the constant rejections and I wasn't doing which writing at the time um I realized what
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I was really missing was the creative outlet and I needed to be creating in order to be able to
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deal with the rejections otherwise it was just relentless so I think I woke up one day and I was
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like you know what I'm not going to send out anything else for a while I've got this other idea
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I'm going to start writing it and we'll see what happens and the day after I made that decision
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I got the email from the the woman who became my editor to say that they wanted to sign a full
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trilogy um at one more chapter and that they were making waves into the young adult fantasy genre
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and that's where they that's where they wanted to go so that's how it happened and I I never
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I never got an agent in the end that's a lovely story the almost giving up while not giving up the
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it's the it's the turning to something else it's very healthy um it's very healthy really healthy
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because as you say you get stuck in a loop and I was talking to somebody just yesterday uh
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speaking event I was doing who who's who'd written a story based on her own autobiography
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and had been rejected and I was saying to her the thing is you're not it's not the story that's
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being rejected you mustn't take it personally it's it's the not right for them now and but it is
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hard not to think they don't like me you know we all take it you know it's getting a bit of a
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carapace bit of a shell around you to protect your creativity I think in the whole rejection things
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um so uh just going on to this issue about same sex um relationships I had the impression
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I don't know if this is right that maybe there's more um male same sex relationships in novels and
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there are female am I right or is that that's also the impression I've got I don't have statistics
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but it's it's always been a lot easier to find um yeah male same sex relationships for sure
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I'm thinking of some of the big fantasy like the vampire series and things like that the sort of
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Christine Finn and type books I'm thinking yeah I'm sure that they do that along the way and it's
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just that's just but I can't think of a female one in those big series um so have you come across
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good books for any any listener out there who's looking for these kind of stories perhaps they are
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same sex attraction themselves and looking for these stories are there other than your own books
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of course are there any that you have found that that treat this whole subject well so I haven't
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read any fantasy ones um unfortunately I'm sure they're out there I just haven't I haven't found them
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yet um but I have read some really really good um female led same sex stories of sort of many genres
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so um infamous by Lex Crouches a really really good one I really really enjoyed that she writes
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um regency rom coms with sort of a modern twist oh right that's really really great yeah um so that's
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I love all of her books and I'm a really big fan of hers and that infamous is a really really good one
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um then there's the obvious sort of Sarah Waters always yeah or not always but quite often
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features same sex um women in a mixture of ways not always happily um unfortunately and for a long time
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that's what you had to deal with if you want either representation you had to also deal with the
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sad ending and I'm happily part of hopefully a movement that that is no longer the case and
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we're allowed nice happy endings as well um and then for um modern sort of contemporary books
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there is a writer called Alexandria Belfler who does um rom coms again but in the contemporary
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sphere um and cat Sebastian as well does historical um another historical sort of romantic comedy
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style so if anyone has any fantasy recommendations you can throw them my ways yeah okay
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um I was uh interviewing just recently one of your um fellow Harp Collins authors called
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Jennifer Hayashi Dunn's who's done um uh fantasy very different really different from yours it's
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it's like a prehistory kind but that does have um a variety of queer relationships in it
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um so you might enjoy that just see how she's handled um handled that
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uh it starts with uh in a in a world where they don't have a he and she pronoun
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but it's like a sort of it starts as everybody being conceived as just people
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and so you don't know what the relationships are until there's a moment where they start to say
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they sort of laugh like a fool I suppose and they become he and she I think oh okay so that's
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amazing yeah it must be so hard to write that though I mean I'll take my hat off if I was wearing a hat
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I would take it off um because you know it's a technical challenge that one so thank you for
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for sharing that with us we have a um two regular segments on the podcast one is just a fun one
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about where in all the fantasy world is the best place for something you know it can be I just
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sort of dream them up I think oh where's the best library where's the best shop you know that's
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something and because the lighthouse is your it's a kind of central image uh in in your story I
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thought well what let's think about lighthouse is and you they don't have to be on land they can
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be in space you know they can be anywhere that's like a beacon for for voyages um where do you think
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in all the fantasy world has the best lighthouse so has the best lighthouse or where I would put a
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lighthouse if I could do I'm thinking of where's the best lighthouse actually you know where would
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you like to go and be a lighthouse keeper oh okay so I was thinking where would I put a lighthouse
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I mean we we are allowed to reinterpret where would you like to put a lighthouse I would put a
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lighthouse um on Numenor pre full um because I just think visually it's the most beautiful place um
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I think there's a lot to be said negatively and positive about the rings of power but the way that
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they created um Numenor was incredible so I'd put a lighthouse slap-bying there might well have
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been one because they're a sea-faring nation I reckon I reckon the rest why yeah if you get
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that one I would use if you stop the thing and and sort of expand the screen I'm sure what
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I would be yeah by the entrance to the harbour of course then must be yeah but actually on the
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on sort of the Lord of the Rings world that is actually one of the places where
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I think it's the most amusing lighthouse because do you remember in the Peter Jackson
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um return as a king the wonderful wonderful beacons yes seen where they I mean I think it's he's made
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a little line in the book into this mammoth wonderful set piece with the fantastic soaring music
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but every time we watch it as a family you think those little guys have been sitting at the top
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of that mountain for decades waiting for this bit and there's nothing around them at all
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about a pile of wood and a flaming torch so in a way that's a pretty rough place to be on a
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lighthouse I think and so if I was um I think I would have if I was going to be a lighthouse keeper I
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would be a lighthouse keeper in um is it a fact am I allowed it to be fantasy but in swallows and
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Amazon it is kind of fantasy kids going up in place but that whole kind of that idea of just
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being able to go off sailing um we didn't mean to go to see the the jolly ripping adventures with
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two yeah there's gonna be two jam sandwiches involved um doesn't seem too dangerous being a lighthouse
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keeper in that world that's where I'd go okay and the the other thing we always ask
33:14
is if they have a fantasy tip and this could be a writing tip or it could be something to read or
33:19
watch um that's helped you in your own journey and writing fantasy yeah um so I think in terms of a film
33:29
so my favorite film of all time is the 2007 film Star Dust made from the Neil Gaiman but it's
33:37
nothing like Neil Gaiman's book they're two completely separate entities in my head and you can
33:42
enjoy them both as separate as separate things um but um working from the fairy tale inspired story
33:52
um it was always a massive inspiration for me and just everything about it I adore I love
34:02
how the world looks I love the relationships between the characters I love how they've set it in
34:07
history um and it is just an awful lot of fun as a film when you put it on and you disappear for two
34:14
hours and the time the time disappears and that's what I wanted to replicate in books to to come out
34:20
the end of it and be like wow that was that was fun like I really enjoyed those sort of moments in
34:26
that story with those characters on that journey so that is what I would recommend that's that's a
34:32
great recommendation actually it made me think of what mine would be on this which is a similar
34:37
thing where the book and the film are miles apart so um blade runner the film
34:48
upon me and the original short story it's drawn from which is called
34:53
do androids dream of electric sheep mm-hmm I'm trying to think who wrote that I should I should know
35:03
I want to say Philip Codic but maybe yeah that sounds right yeah that sounds right um you've got a
35:09
younger brain than me thank you for being here but the story do androids dream of electric sheep
35:16
is a wonderful story uh and funny really funny um it kind of it's almost it's more in the
35:25
hitchhiker guides the galaxy feel to observe things like people having a premium or having a real
35:32
animal rather than androids I mean it's it's it's very very funny but the story is the same story
35:38
as what becomes blade runner so if you're thinking how does somebody treat or adapt a work you
35:44
can just look at that and think wow okay that's a different way of interpreting that story um so
35:49
those two star dust in the nil game and work and um Philip Codic thank you uh do androids dream of
35:57
electric sheep and then watch blade runner would be a very very interesting little exercise to
36:01
for sure ideas so thank you so much for joining us Catherine and we wish you all the best are you
36:07
working on something else now have you got some plans going ahead not at the moment so the third
36:13
book in the trilogy came out last November okay so please still soaking up the joy of having
36:19
the trilogy out in the world and being able to talk to people about it so I'm going to give
36:23
myself a few months recovery time before I plow into the next I onto the next thing that's right
36:29
thank you so much well thank you it's been an absolute pleasure to talk to you
36:33
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