Latest / Mythmakers / Lucy Strange: The Island at the Edge of Night

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Lucy Strange: The Island at the Edge of Night · Mythmakers

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  Hello and welcome to MythMakers. MythMakers is the podcast for fantasy fans and fantasy
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  creators brought to you by the Oxford Centre for Fantasy. My name is Julia Golding. I'm
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  an author but I also run the activities that our centre does. And today I am joined
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  by a friend of the centre who is also one of our tutors but today she is here wearing her hat
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  as an author so hello yes a virtual hat hello Lucy Strange now Lucy press you back to just tell
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  up headlines of who you are and you can also hold up your book because for those of you who are
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  watching this on YouTube we can do a kind of yeah coordinate yeah yeah okay book cover so do
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  look it up if you're listening to this on the audio but it's a book called The Island at the
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  Edge of Night. So Lucy how did you get into this business of writing fantasy? Well I don't think
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  I don't think my I don't think I'd pass the test of true fantasy Julia because I think because
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  my stories are all set in the real world but we have like elements of fantasy that is fantasy I'm
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  sorry to burst the bubble it is fantasy is a spectrum so obviously you know we can all say something
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  with like spells and wizards and dragons but there are books which have a fantastical element
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  anything absolutely real verges in it's not it's it is fantasy it's sort of the magical realism end
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  of fantasy yeah yeah yeah that kind of place so I um well I started writing my books are a
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  primarily for younger readers so they're sort of agent agent nine and up my first book is this
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  one secret of night and go wood that came out in 2016 um with a publisher called Chicken House
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  in the UK Scholastic in the US um and um I what I wanted to do um is I wanted to create
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  stories that kind of had it had a classic children's literature feeling to them um but that were
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  much more kind of page tourney and and and that bit more sort of suited to to to modern young readers um
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  and the the the fantastical element has just sort of found its way into into every story that I
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  write and stories for me just don't I suppose don't feel magical enough or special enough without
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  something something kind of eerie and supernatural kind of simmering away somewhere or kind of
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  seeping through um somehow so that's that's kind of how it's happened there's a lot of gothic
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  influence in my books as well um so they they I sort of I play with elements of the gothic and
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  and fantasy the varying degrees in in the different stories um my most fantasy I suppose is this one
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  sister the lost marsh um which came out a couple of years ago um and uh in this one it does it
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  does feel more like a fantastical world yeah I think if we go through our archive I think we talked
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  about that particular book then yeah at the time yeah so when all of us have like gateway drug authors
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  to our addiction to reading did you have that's a probably a strange word explaining but it does
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  feel like you get hooked as a reader yeah um did you have any favorite authors as you were growing up
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  or maybe people who have inspired you to make you want to do this now as a grown-up um I think
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  well I was always a bookworm and I think I mean I can remember various various books that hooked me in
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  um and um actually initially audiobooks was something that that's really really connected with me
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  and I think it's because I used to listen to them over and over again but they I just sort of
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  absorbed I assimilated them and I think it's partly through that so I had Alice in Wonderland I used
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  to listen to an audiobook a Jane Asher narrating that one and um uh the secret garden uh which for
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  me from Francis Hodgson Bennett which for me probably is my it's my like my touchstone
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  um children's literature that I think um and it's not it's not fantasy but there are there are
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  definitely elements of the Gothic there are suggestions of supernatural about it and nature is
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  presented as magical in it as well I think so I think it's um yeah I think there's a huge amount
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  of influence from that story um in all my I think you cut my cut my my um my books open like a like
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  cakes I think you probably find you'd find the secret garden there somewhere in all of them
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  that's actually we probably should do a episode on Francis Hodgson Bennett because she was my
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  favorite author as a as a little girl and it's you're right it's that feeling that the world is
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  magical even though it's ordinary so there is a secret garden hidden behind the wall to which
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  you find the key and there is diamond mines in the case of a little princess but
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  yeah everybody climbs in and decorates your bedroom with these wonderful some Indian
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  tapestries whilst you're the Cinderella working in your old school it's got this blend of well
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  this could be played absolutely straightforward this happens in real life but then
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  there's always this air of fairytale to it yeah that's where you're coming from in a way it's
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  that natural magic yeah I think so also I think um um oh so the princess and the goblin
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  oh yeah gone old which is I think which is probably the the most I did read I did read Narnia as
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  well I did love Narnia but but for me there was something about the princess and the goblin
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  and the whole Christian analogy totally passed me by I totally passed me by but I but I remember feeling
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  really feeling the significance so there's like there's a silver thread that guides them through
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  the store and can take some out of the darkest places necessary extraordinary scene with um it's
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  sort of I suppose like the archetype of a mentor slash with a D kind of character who who's
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  her great great grandmother who possibly does or possibly doesn't exist up in the turret of this castle
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  and there's this deep bar that she puts her into and she sort of sinks into this like she's kind of
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  floating in in sort of the night sky and it's just um something of that has has stayed with me
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  all my life um and for me I think that that was that was um quite a sort of seminal fantasy moment
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  for me as well with with the literature it's but it's hard to pin them down isn't it
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  did you ever read any Charles Kingsley because one of the books I was very influenced by was the
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  Walter Babies which I realized now was in a um abbreviated version I think they must have cut out
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  quite a lot of the moralizing but it's not a bit that has not dated well yeah but it has one
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  for pictures with it by Mabel Lucy at well I think her name was and again it has this heavy
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  handed um sort of Christian moralism going on in it but that totally didn't matter it was a
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  idea that this boy could transform himself into a water baby and live under the water
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  I was taking it like literally he goes it's not baptism or anything it's he literally goes
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  under the water like something yeah yeah me too actually it's very funny but you should
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  mention that I should just say for anyone watching but we didn't we didn't actually plan
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  but I've got I write the I also write these little books for Barrington Stoke these um a short
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  dyslexia friendly children's books and I've got in June I've got a book coming out
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  Julia huh well called the River Spirit which is which is inspired by
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  Charles Kingsley's Walter Babies and it's about a chimney it's based on also the true story of
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  a chimney sweep in Victorian England Chuck George Brewster but I've taken so we've got Tom as
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  the little boy the chimney sweep in it and we've got instead of Ellie the girl means we've got
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  Elle who's a who's like a water and in water spirit and it's kind of it's a sad story told
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  I hope in a in a magical and hopeful way but yeah do you have now this is what I really remember
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  from that but Mrs. Do as you would be done by and this is done by as you did I don't I don't have
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  those characters for what my name's they are they are wonderful and but very my look at boys listening
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  to um the audio book of magic far away tree at the moment and it even blights and owed a lot to
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  those sorts of know we get those sorts of names and even blight and don't be had those games by
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  the stories those those sort of um those characters who were there to teach us a lesson there's
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  a little bit of that but I've been not in my book no no no I mean we're talking Victorians had
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  their own their own understanding of how you write for children um they did they did them
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  and we do so would you just tell us briefly how you got your first deal and then I was going to
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  suggest that you because you've got six books now six big novels something like that five big
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  one five big ones I'm going to identify without explaining too much I'm going to ask you a
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  question about the book before we get on to the island your previous ones about there so quite
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  mysterious for people I'm going to ask you questions about the books and your relationship with
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  them so it would make people want to go away and read them okay yeah why did we talk too much
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  they'll think oh no I know what's going on in that and then but now we can do a little teaser okay
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  how did you get that first deal you're obviously not that older person you're a young mother
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  young young mother I'm actually quite an old one I'm quite a little I left it a bit like but um
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  I yeah so actually I wasn't a very conventional way in when I don't know if that is or isn't
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  encouraging for other people but um I hope that it is so I um was teaching I was a full-time
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  English teacher when I started writing um and I started playing with this idea I think because
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  I'd been a book where more my life because I'd studied English and I was teaching literature I think
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  I had very sort of high standards of what of what you know good writing was and so when I dabbled
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  over the years I was never pleased with it I always felt it was all um and it wasn't really and my
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  my late 30s that I started thinking maybe I maybe I can have another go at this maybe I feel a bit
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  more confident about about what I want to do and how I want to write and um so I was um yeah I
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  was teaching I started writing and I what I did as I entered um some chapters of writing into a
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  competition at a literature festival um and it was through that that in a literary agent judge
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  the competition Luigi Benoimi who's now my agent he helped me to develop the first the first
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  full manuscript of the secret of Nightingale Woods which was at the time called Moth and the Nightingale
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  and he sold its chicken house um and uh chicken house I think just bought one just bought that
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  and then they bought another two and then they bought another two and I've just signed with them
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  for another three so um so it's it all just yeah it just sort of happened I never um went through
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  that had to went through that process of submitting um manuscripts to agents um because it because
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  it happened in this slightly different this slightly different way but I do recommend
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  competitions there are some wonderful competitions including the um Oxford Centre for Fancy's own
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  competition um we push again but there are some um other lovely competitions chicken house runs
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  a competition with the times and it can just be a way to get your work in front of the right people
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  I think I think it I think it can be it can be a different way in a different part rather than
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  what I know can be a really disheartening process but you also have some kind of uh
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  actor training don't you because you do your own audiobooks and others yeah I do thought I so
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  after um university I went to drums going to Oxford School of Drama and um on their postgraduate
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  course I was there for a year and I worked an actor I think worked I loved the work much
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  I looked for work as an actor I did a few bits and bobs um and then and the actor and then
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  pretty soon after that I did my my um English teacher training and went and became an English
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  teacher but it turns out that it was all worthwhile um because you know life takes us on these wiggly
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  paths and nothing's ever wasted so um so uh well for a start actually I think the acting helps
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  with my writing because I'm I very I'm a lot of the time I write in the first person and I
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  I'm very I get very very immersed when I'm writing and I'm always testing things on myself and
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  thinking about how it feels physically and what's going on in my body and and and all of this sort of
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  big um and making myself cry and and and and so on which is embarrassing when writing on trains but
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  nevermind um and pulling all the faces um but yes so um after the first book was published nice and
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  yellowwood they said oh we've sold the audiobook rights um do you want to have any involvement in
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  who's reading it and I said could I read it please and I said oh not sure writers often aren't the
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  best people which is fair enough to celebrate their own books um but they let me audition so I had
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  to record an audition tape me reading it a chapter of the book and then and then I I was allowed to do
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  it which is really nice um and so I now do I know I do the audiobooks for um and my own books and I
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  do the u.s audiobooks as well it's always slightly different but we we record them separately which
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  is interesting and they've done quite they've done quite well in the u.s. I don't know why I think
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  it's the British Act who can say but they've done quite well in the u.s. so I was just shortlisted for
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  the audio of this year's audiobook awards in L.A. a lot on a long side Michelle Obama and Patrick
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  Stewart. I learned which is almost no I didn't win but neither did Patrick Stewart or Michelle Obama
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  so I'm in good company um but yeah and on the strength of that I've been asked to start narrating
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  other people's audiobooks so I've just narrated uh and Howard Walker's brilliant dark dystopian
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  fantasy um once upon a fever which was which is really good highly recommended and the interesting
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  side like I didn't know about the Michelle Obama near miss so we're now going to do our quick
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  fire round where I'm going to ask you some questions I want you to answer with the title of a book
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  okay so the first is which book was most difficult to write the latest one so it's been a long time
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  coming for the island at the edge of night uh yes okay which of your books is the most quirky
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  quirky quirky I'm gonna go with I'm gonna go with this is the most quirky largely because of the
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  the narrative voice in it is very different and has a whole the whole book has a slightly
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  different feeling to it so that's sisters of the Lost Marsh is the Lost Marsh is the most quirky
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  yeah okay and the last one I'm going to ask is which book is most like you
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  which book is most like me um okay probably probably my first one the secret of Nightingale would
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  is probably I think there are a lot of people find that I mean there's nothing in it that's happened
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  to me it's no not not like that but there's probably a lot there was a lot of my heart in that first
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  one um and I wrote it when I was living abroad so when I was teaching in in the Middle East and I was
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  really really homesick and um and I said think that possibly partly part of the reason why I started
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  writing is sort of a way of dealing with with with all of that and um and so although it's not about
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  homesickness but there's a real sense of kind of loss and nostalgia that's in there so it feels it
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  does feel like one of my most personal ones so I hope that's tempting people to go in and look at
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  them through those lenses so tell us about your latest book the island at the edge of night
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  okay so yeah so this is just it's fresh it's fresh out it's virtually still warm from the
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  printing press um the island at the edge of night so it is um a sort of gothic mystery story set
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  on a remote Scottish island um it's a fictitious Scottish island but inspired by real places which
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  we can talk about later on our main character is called Faith It's Gerald and she has sent away
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  to uh to a sinister boarding school the remote Scottish island um and she is told that along with
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  the other children they're only about six other children there girl um she's told that she's
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  been sent to this school because she has done something um but the problem is she can't remember
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  what it is she's supposed to have done because she has blanked out everything that happened
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  on the terrible night so the wicked thing she has done has sort of disappeared into the past
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  so I read it very we're great enjoyment it's a wonderful book but I was also very
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  struck by how it feels like being in a really powerful nightmare it's a nightmare-ish world where
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  you are powerless things happen to you and around you and I suppose for for Faith our main character
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  though of course there is a moment where it shifts where she's able to take more agency it's
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  sort of like a but certainly for the first chapters um it's that feeling which lots of us have as
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  children of course and in nightmares where we're on this it's like we're going down a ski run
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  and there's no stop you know we're just going in a moving force in a direction so when you're writing
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  those kind of passages and do you find yourself caught up in the book and actually have to surface
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  from time to time and say actually real life is still going on outside the door I'm not stuck in
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  this nightmare really a bit a bit yeah I do think interesting that you talk about
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  pilotsness because I think to some degree it is there in all my stories for young readers
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  it's something that I that I think is is particularly pertinent to the age group that I write for
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  I think when when you're when you're that age when you're sort of well you know 11 10 11 12 and you
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  you're you know you're you're a fully formed person really and you're kind of streaming towards
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  having this autonomy and this control over your own life and and yet grown-ups are still completely
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  in charge and I remember that feeling of powerlessness so so powerfully so vividly and that comes
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  that comes through in in the stories definitely um and the nightmareish feeling is absolutely
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  right and I hadn't actually chosen that word for it but it's perfect and that is exactly what
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  they what phase experiencing in the in the early chapters of this story um this feeling of just
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  being carried along in this kind of this sort of hellish dark wave into this unsung into this
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  unknown world um and coupled with the feeling that somehow it's all hurtful yeah and and that's
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  that's part of it as well um and it's quite intense um it to write it's quite intense right and
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  that part of in fact there's a right there's a very personal reason why the story would took me
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  a long time um and that's because my my dear dad died suddenly soon after I started writing it
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  um and there's a father-daughter relationship that's at the heart of the story and um and that I
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  think coupled with with what you're talking about the intensity the intense atmosphere of the story
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  I think made it very hard to write but for quite a long time I found it very hard to work on this
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  story and that's that's why why ended up taking so long I think um but but I also think that through
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  working through working through phase story and and and finding her hope and her happiness at the
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  end I believe all children's books should have hope and happiness in them in the in the uh in their
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  conclusion um that you know it was that it was a wonderful process to do but in those early stages
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  I don't know if this is a common thing I should probably talk to a therapist about it at some
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  point but I wanted to write comedy I didn't want to write something something dark and heavy I
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  wanted to write comedy and to write something really light light and silly which is what I ended up
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  doing and then coming back to this story when I felt ready yeah yeah I think that there is a really
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  important function of writing that many of our listeners probably already know or will discover
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  which is it does help you put a frame around an experience you might not be writing directly at
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  the experience um off-screen breakdown of a relationship but you can kind of transplant it
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  somewhere else and write about it and exercise some of the emotions you don't get rid of them
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  because those emotions are integral to your life and your character but it does help deal deal
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  with it in a way and process it yeah yes yes just to sort of to explore it in quite a gentle
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  slightly detached way I think yeah yeah I think that's very British
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  no I think that probably most people around the world I think would would find that helpful
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  so you're notable in your style to have a very it's a I'm sure it's a wonderful audio book I
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  haven't actually listened to um is it out already as an audio well I don't think the audio book is
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  out yet for this one but it begs to be read aloud so would you like to read us a little short
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  passage and then we perhaps we could talk about your sort of more poetic approach to writing
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  and how it fills to you um when you're actually sitting there at your computer how you sound out
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  the words to yourself yeah lovely yeah I'll read you I'll read you the prologue not all stories
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  have a prologue not all stories need a pro but this one needed one um so here we go
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  hmm the house was all in darkness and the storm was still raging outside just as it had been when
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  I'd gone to bed a few hours before but I wasn't in my bed now I was standing at the top of the stairs
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  with no memory of how I had got there had I been sleepwalking I was in my night dress and the
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  floorboards were as cold as glass beneath my bare feet on Christina father I called but there was
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  no reply lightning flashed sudden and blinding white I gripped the banister to steady myself to
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  steady my heart thunder crashed above the city and rain hammered on the roof and windows pounding
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  a pulse in my brain frightened and furious was it the storm that had woken me or was it something
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  else I made my way down the stairs and out of the kitchen door into the wall garden I remember the
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  wind and rain striking hard making me gasp all in leaves slimmed wet between my toes and my night
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  dress clung heavy and cold I remember going past father's collection of plants all battered and
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  cowering I remember crawling through the hole in the broken fence into the graveyard I remember
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  seeing the old utri a ragged silhouette against the stormlit sky and then and then the memory shatters
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  like a mirror all I have are a handful of splinters flashes of that night that come and go like
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  a metal blade gleaming wet a hacking splitting sound that makes me go cold inside a scream so piercing
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  it still buzzes deep in my bones after that night there was nothing just weeks of stifling dark
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  the city rain relentless on my bedroom window day long dreams left me shaking with terror
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  those dark shards of memory the faintest echo of a voice murmuring in horror what have you done
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  or what have you done you wicked child there we go that's not all brothers dark as that I'll just say
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  but it does sum up the nightmareish quality because that is a kind of nightmare that yeah so I'm
• 24:23
  listening to that for people who are interested in own writing which many of the listeners are
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  is I noticed that this is getting quite granular here but when you're evoking little moments or
• 24:36
  little passages you're using the same consonant sounds yeah is there a thing about the pulse and
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  pounding pulse pounding a pole yes and there was another collection of fighting and furious yeah
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  so it's this is more of a poetic technique so if people are looking to
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  make their raise up their writing to a new level and find a more sort of beautiful treatment of
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  language if you've got any tips how you might want to go about that what do you do I think it's
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  hearing it I think it's I think it's hearing it and when I do a lot of talks in schools and I talk
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  about I talk about why audio books are so wonderful and that it and because we get to hear
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  we get to hear the sounds of the words and the rhythms and the patterns and the sentences
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  because all the sculpt them you know we craft our sentences don't we and sometimes only it's
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  only really through hearing it allowed that you can hear that that crafting and that sculpting
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  and I think I hear my sentences allowed as I write hear it in my head and I do quite often I
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  will say things out loud as I'm writing as well but I think it's I do think it's important to get
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  a balance because I think I can get a bit indulgent with my with my purple prose at times and I think
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  it has it needs to have its moment and and I think when I as I write more and as I get more
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  experienced as a writer I think I'm aware of where we where there's room where there's breathing space
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  in the story for us to have that little bit of kind of lyrical building of atmosphere and
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  and then where actually we need to be much much more much much more sharp and just just allow the
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  plot to move on without being incumbent by by that kind of kind of language play so it is about
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  a balance as well I think yeah I think it's like calorie intake you have to sort of go for fine
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  fine amounts but not like five thousand calorie intake on a page it's got to be much more
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  diet yeah on my first bit my head to said um you're allowed one simile on this page Lucy once
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  one simile I was like okay yeah oh yeah we have to we you know we we can all be indulgent as writers
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  um but uh and it sometimes I don't know sometimes that's part of if that's what it takes to get you
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  through a first draft you just to enjoy the language of it you know then then it has its role to play
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  in that but I think obviously it's very important we think about it from the reader's perspective
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  and what the reader needs at any given point in the story so Lucy you also are one of our tutors on
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  our um on our courses that we run and I we've been doing those for a few years now which is how I've
• 27:26
  got to know you really uh and I always learn something from you and the other tutors every time
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  even though I hear roughly the same presentation it's always something which I take away
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  and one of my favourite take homes that you've said over the years is how you create a mood board
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  and then that same mood board has been used to influence your covers which if people look them up
• 27:52
  they're beautifully illustrated covers with a definite mood about them so what is a mood board
• 27:59
  and how does that process go that it ends up being reflected in your cover
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  so it's essentially it's just a collage I think I believe very much that we need to take time
• 28:11
  we need to take time to allow stories to to be ready to be written I think one of the mistakes
• 28:18
  that we we make all too often is to rush in to rush into the writing before the story is ready
• 28:23
  before we've got enough ingredients in it before it's got before it's you know it needs to stand on
• 28:28
  its own two feet doesn't it needs to have that sense of it like an energy of its own and so we do
• 28:34
  our research and we do our reading and we do our day dreaming and we do our planning and playing
• 28:40
  with ideas and some character work and all of that sort of thing and as part of that process
• 28:46
  I gather a lot of images and I don't I'm I suppose I'm quite a visual person but I find that it
• 28:52
  just sort of nourishes my imagination for the world that I'm creating that story that I'm working on
• 28:58
  so I I guess a lot of photography but particularly artwork particularly paintings and I find that
• 29:08
  generally generally because I base my settings on real world places the artwork is very
• 29:12
  often of those of those real world settings real world places and I find that having those places
• 29:19
  already interpreted by an artist I think that layer of artistic interpretation there
• 29:25
  gives me something it feeds into the creative process in a really really exciting way
• 29:33
  so what I what so what I have lots of images images from research these artworks and various things
• 29:39
  and I create a collage and I call it my mood board and with it I'm trying to evoke
• 29:47
  not just physically physical elements of the story but also a sense of tone and atmosphere and
• 29:52
  what it feels like to be in in the world of my story it makes me think about what I want the icons
• 29:59
  of my story to be what I want those those key elements of the story to be that will stay with
• 30:05
  the reader it makes me think about the aesthetic of the story of particular colors are going to be
• 30:11
  important and and then what happened when I and I and it changes it develops as I as I'm working on
• 30:17
  the book and then in one of the later stages I will send the my mood boards to my publisher and they
• 30:25
  pass it on to the designer and the artist who are working on the book cover and it it's sometimes
• 30:32
  but not always seems to have some influence sometimes more literally so in my my my gothic ghost story
• 30:40
  the ghost of gospel so we have this this dark gothic mansion here and it is that is very very much
• 30:46
  an interpretation of the of the the gothic mansion that I had on on my mood board so it has that
• 30:50
  very practical purpose as well that it feeds into the design of the book and the colors I mean
• 30:56
  so this is the artist for this Helen Crawford White she's a fantastic British artist and this
• 31:02
  one is an artist I hadn't worked before Katie Hickey and she's wonderful so as some people are
• 31:09
  listening to this Lucy's home the latest book The Island of the Edge of the Night because a
• 31:14
  mixture of blue a sort of purple orange kind of red sunset colors really and a sort of a pinky
• 31:22
  foil yeah or mix as well yeah and and that the colors very much came came through from from my
• 31:30
  mood board for that one and so it had that practical purpose too and then when I'm working on the
• 31:35
  story and editing and I have my mood boarders as like my wallpaper on my laptop or have it
• 31:42
  beside me and and I I find it I just find it helps me to be a consistent I suppose I think you know
• 31:49
  as as writers and particularly before before writers get published the time we have to write
• 31:55
  is often very limited isn't it yeah I often feel like I spend if I've got you know a
• 31:59
  couple of hours in a day um to to actually write I often spend I I feel like I spend a lot of
• 32:06
  that time just getting in the zone like just just getting there getting to the right point and I
• 32:12
  do find things like mood boards and mood music really just help help me with that process help me
• 32:17
  to get into the exactly the right zone the right tone with my writing that's brilliant so thank you
• 32:23
  for that so I always sort of conclude with guests with asking them something about wearing all the
• 32:31
  fancy world is the best place for something and as we've got the island at the edge of night which
• 32:36
  to be honest is a kind of mixed bag of a place to go it might be quite nice um by the end of the
• 32:42
  novel but certainly not at the beginning but where would you say is the best island in all the fancy
• 32:47
  worlds to go well that's a good actually I haven't mentioned the Scottish islands that inspired
• 32:52
  this but but it is but it is largely inspired by the hybridies islands the the setting for this one
• 32:56
  of scuffins and kilder and so on um I just think I think islands islands themselves are so
• 33:04
  are so magical as settings I think because they can be their own little world and they can have
• 33:08
  um they can have that I suppose that they can have the the darkness and the light they can have
• 33:14
  all sorts of all sorts of secrets god they islands um so phantica other fantasy island I suppose never
• 33:22
  never land never lands brings to mind yes that's true it's own it's own magical fantasy islands that
• 33:28
  have both heroic and villainous and magical and and so on um what would you pick what would you
• 33:36
  what would be one of your fantasy islands well I've thought of two um so I'm thinking about
• 33:41
  remembering the maxiversi which was the echelagwin story where they're sailing islands but I can't
• 33:48
  remember I'm just thinking I can't remember much about the actual islands I'm just remember the map
• 33:53
  so probably not that one then but then the dawn tredder the voyage of the dawn tredder um which has
• 34:01
  adjusted one thought with each island is different each has an adventure it's very like Odysseus
• 34:06
  I'm sure that was in the back of seas Lewis is blind um that idea reached each island
• 34:13
  moves you further along in the plot and the story and is basically flavoured so maybe I would say an
• 34:20
  island in that ocean that is the voyage of the dawn tredder would be my fate yeah there's a lovely
• 34:27
  lovely book that came out by Nicholas bowling a few years ago song of the far Isles which is
• 34:31
  also inspired by the the why the Scottish um western isles um and it and it but it's fantasy and
• 34:38
  it's the most magical story um in which music is like that everyone has sort of a musical instrument
• 34:44
  that's connected to their soul and it's just and it's kind of music that that that keeps the
• 34:49
  these islands alive um and it's and there's kind of pirates and stuff as well and it's pretty so
• 34:55
  that's a wonderful one song of the far off and then treasurer islands of course but treasurer islands
• 34:59
  are supposed to be purported in the real world isn't it so sort of it ish ish yeah
• 35:05
  instant fruit so it's not terribly magical no no the gallop has travels also has islands
• 35:11
  which is like yeah we granddaddy of the the fantasy voyage story yeah for fantasy tip to share with
• 35:18
  us this could be something you've read or watched recently um or just a tip for anybody who's writing
• 35:26
  I think um fantasy tip um well in terms of a book I would recommend what the book I just mentioned
• 35:33
  once upon a fee rang harrid walker and there's a sequel just come out um a cure ever after um in
• 35:40
  terms of a writing tip I think it would be like a like almost like an fantasy fantasy an fantasy
• 35:47
  sort of a writing tip in a way in that um although you you might be creating a fantastical world
• 35:54
  with fantastical characters and magical things are going on um that it that it needs to feel convincing
• 36:01
  it needs to feel completely real and you'll read and use to be able to connect with it um and so I
• 36:07
  think I think that would that that would probably be my tip and finding ways finding ways to make it
• 36:13
  feel real perhaps through characterisation and and character and making sure your characters are really
• 36:18
  redimensional their responses are convincing and and everything feels very kind of visceral and
• 36:25
  and uh and uh and powerfully you know emotionally and physically it feels convincing um
• 36:31
  and the settings I think I think settings can help with that as well perhaps using real world
• 36:35
  settings and allowing them to become your fantasy setting and give it that that authenticity um uh
• 36:42
  that I think that that I think we need in order to help readers to connect with the fantasy world
• 36:47
  thank you lazy that's a whole bundle of tips there which I'm sure people will find very helpful
• 36:53
  so thank you very much for joining us and thank you everyone for listening
• 37:03
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• 37:09
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