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Mythmakers Season 2 Finale - Seasonal Round-Up · 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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  the director of the Centre and also an author. So we'd come to the end of the second season
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  of MythMakers and I thought it would be a good chance to have a seasonal look back over
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  where we've been with our podcast since May. It seems a long time ago now but we started
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  off with a review of the Fantastic Beasts, Secrets of Dumbledore. I note that that's now
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  coming to be on streaming platforms so maybe some of you will be watching it at Christmas.
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  My review you can hear if you tune into that episode, I don't want to give you any spoilers.
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  It was kind of mixed. I want to love it more than I do. I don't know if any of you feel like that.
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  Here's a little taste of that now. Let's start with a review of the most recent film. This is the
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  third in the Fantastic Beasts and where to find them series called The Secrets of Dumbledore
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  and it comes after two other installments. The very first one is called Fantastic Beasts
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  and where to find them. The second one is the Crimes of Grindelwald and now this one.
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  Now I think it's fair to say that these films are not loved as much as the Harry Potter films.
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  So I'm going to first of all talk about this film on its own merits and how it fits in
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  this series and then compare it to what's going on when you compare it to the Harry Potter
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  sequence. Now I would say that if you haven't yet gone see the film that this particular
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  installment, the third, is not bad. For one thing the plot is more coherent. The second film,
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  the Crimes of Grindelwald, I think struggled under the weight of so many different storylines
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  coming in. It really got quite knotted and was hard to follow and lost a lot of its charm
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  as a result. This one does have a storyline, particularly in the second half of the film where
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  it becomes quite an exciting kind of heist with something they need to achieve and a little bit
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  like an ocean's 11 style thing of how they're going to achieve it but set in a wizarding world.
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  So I appreciated that but I think one of the things about these films which I struggle with
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  is, comes down really to the colour palette. It is all quite dark and the actors are all adults.
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  So you're looking at quite a unmagical visual landscape except for the moments when they dip into
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  Hogwarts or they have some wonderful beasts to enjoy. I think the first film in a sense was the
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  most successful of this franchise because their underlying everything else was the plot line of
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  there's this wonderful suitcase that falls open and then beasts are released in New York and
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  that had so much fun and humour and just had lots of great moments. The second one as I've
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  mentioned the strongest part of that for me was the thought of this macabre circus in Paris so
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  there was elements in that work but this one it stays pretty dark it starts in a sort of Berlin
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  and the themes are dark that fits the themes and the most brightest moment comes towards the end
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  when you get this shift to Bhutan the quite sort of you know out of left field moment and when
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  you're watching it I suppose I'm asking myself is this am I watching it because I've watched the
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  Potter films a sense of loyalty or does it stand up on its own right? Some things are worth the ticket
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  price so I do enjoy sort of knowing more about Dumbledore I think it you know Jude Law as Dumbledore
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  is a great choice he gives it that sort of mischief and gravitas he's very watchable and of course
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  the the film hangs on him really and the new Gellert Grindelwald mad smickelson I think is better
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  than Johnny Depp's he looks as though he's someone that Professor Dumbledore might well have had a
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  younger man's and fling with and he has a sort of wonderful aesthetic face I don't know the the
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  cheekbones maybe but in and demeanor he does seem convincingly as though he's a man with a mission
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  that has turned evil so yeah that works for me Eddie Redmayne is cute but underused I think in
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  these films he has sort of one sort of note that he strikes which is that awkwardness a bit of a
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  shuffle this is the guy of an Oscar you think you know maybe there's more that could be done with him
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  and the other supporting cast well the favorite character I think for many people is Dan Fogler's
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  Jacob Kowalski the the muggle amongst the the wizards and I think he's great fun they clear up
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  the credence figure the Ezra Miller character I'm aware there've been issues about some cast
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  members you know obviously Johnny Depp has stepped out and Ezra Miller has had his brushes with
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  the lore recently so there probably was an external pressure to clear up that character but
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  if you want to find out what happens to that character's storyline it does sort itself out which
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  is quite a relief because it that was part of the what was getting very tangled in the second film
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  and also I think we're very surprising sort of new relationship which I really enjoyed
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  is seeing more of the amphesius the brother to Newt Calum Turner that was some of the funniest
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  moments in fact come with the two brothers together so again there are positive things in this film
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  and I did enjoy I did sit in the cinema enjoying it but there is a bout here what is it that is
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  less attractive about the fantastic beasts to the Harry Potter films and I'm obviously going to be
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  looking at this from a script writing point of view I had Mar-JK Rowling's plotting immensely she's
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  very good at working out long overarching plots and I feel that this is happening in these films
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  but not as successfully as it did in the Harry Potter one of the problems of course is that we
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  already know the end right at the beginning of Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone when they're
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  having the the cards in the chocolate frogs we know that it's going to come to a battle with Dumbledore
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  defeating Grindelwald so we know that's where we're going as you know the plot spoiler happened
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  many years ago so that removes some of the jeopardy but there are ways around that because you can
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  sort of forget that whilst you're watching I think it comes down to the fact that it has lost some
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  of the charm which having a younger person growing up and coming into the world provides almost all
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  the characters except for Jacob are already part of the wizarding world so for them magic is normal
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  I think the magic of Harry Potter is discovering that actually outside the boring world of
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  suburbia the dursity world you can then enter into this fantastic world and it's that journey that
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  Harry goes on and we go with him that's not available so you're supposed to be already sold
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  on the idea of wizards when you reach fantastic beasts which of course most of the audience is but
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  it loses that feeling of gosh how marvelous how spectacular which is really at the heart of the
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  charm of the Harry Potter series and of course there is the vulnerable character Harry himself
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  there isn't the same character with the same vulnerabilities in the fantastic beasts that
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  you do get people who are exposed and abused in some ways that's certainly the case with
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  the Ezra Miller character but they're not the beating heart and I think for me this is why I would
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  turn back to Harry Potter to enjoy in the way that I don't rewatch the fantastic beast films
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  and the locations don't work as well either so with Hogwarts you get in some ways when you
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  think of the you know the economics of the wizarding world which my family and I have discussed
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  a great length during the 2000s you know when these books were coming out I had small children and
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  that's we were enjoying them step by step it was hugely exciting but we did sort of wonder about
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  how the economy works because the way wizards plug into the real world didn't feel quite
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  right somehow but anyway it's fantasy let's not worry too much about that you sort of forgave it
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  the fact that the most strategic place in the world was this school in Scotland that didn't matter
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  we all agreed because we all loved Hogwarts that's fine in this one the the stakes are bigger
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  it feels more like a Nazi takeover of the world so the scale is appropriate but somehow
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  in fantastic beasts we lose our connection because we're not sure what's a stake it's not the teachers
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  we know who are having to man the walls or the pupils manning up to go and you know protect the
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  bridge like Neville does in the the last instalment so it it becomes a drift in a sense a drift
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  so I think in terms of problems for keeping an audience I'm not sure who they're appealing to
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  I wonder if we started with fantastic beasts if I as a parent would feel oh yeah here you are kids
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  here's a really exciting wizarding story I think I probably wouldn't and then if it wasn't meant
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  for kids but for older people the sort of YA audience upwards then is it really is it touching
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  on the themes that fill adult I don't know I have a sort of I don't look forward to these films in
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  the way I really remember looking forward to the Harry Potter films I think there was the aspect
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  in the Harry Potter films of wanting to see the children growing up and flourish whereas this I
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  don't know who I'm who I'm backing yeah I'm less secure as someone watching it but also this
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  season I've had a fantastic time meeting writers so I started off with AJ Lancaster who writes
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  independently her books Lord of Starriel are well worth checking out and for a second bite of
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  our Christmas pudding here is AJ now about Middle-earth basically becoming synonymous with New Zealand
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  I'm basically expecting you to be a cousin of Peter Jackson or something
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  is this true oh yes obviously we're all we're all related to him yeah
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  is just like every New Zealander owns ten sheep yeah that's this and we're all hobbits
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  um and it's one of those those strange things that gets associated with New Zealand when you
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  when you're overseas are you talking to someone from overseas is Lord of the Rings Lord of the Rings
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  sheep rugby one of those three depending on your audience so for me I I'm gonna I'm gonna commit
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  sacrilege and say I actually like the movies better than the books yeah you can you can take that
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  I think it's I'd like I honor what Tolkien did for the genre but it's not my it's not my preferred
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  style I guess I like a slightly more modern slightly faster paste thing whilst admiring all the work
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  he does inventing languages and all the kind of myth kind of level in terms of New Zealand
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  it's a very strange thing because New Zealand is really beautiful and I feel like the the
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  movies really captured that and a lot of it does look like that but Lord of the Rings
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  you know places like the Shire I the land that Tolkien was imagining is is clearly more England
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  yeah it needs to do some odd disconnect isn't it because I I think I live somewhere much more like
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  the Shire than than the Hobbiton that was created which felt have you have you ever been to New Zealand
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  no I'd love to come I I suppose what I was thinking about was more um it's it's quite obviously
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  it's a film set so it's relatively small and it doesn't have the network of villages that the
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  Shire actually is and the pubs and the sense of rival communities and Buckland and all the rest
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  of it which is absolutely necessary for a film set whereas places I live near are very like that
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  and I think you don't have to worry about being identified as a Hobbit because you know there's
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  thank you over here too anyway um so I was wondering if you felt that the use of the middle earth
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  landscapes as being synonymous with New Zealand kind of getting the way of your own fantasy
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  creative rate you know your imagination because you feel it's already been used in that way
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  um and no not really because although the the sort of movie has that sort of very iconic landscape
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  it doesn't feel like New Zealand if it makes sense like oh all right now that that would be
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  an interesting challenge if I came and visited it would I think would I be walking around
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  entirely the wrong wrong lens I think I might be I reckon a lot of these package tours might
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  you would say a bit or like like you say like you go you would go to the you know the tourists
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  set at Matamata which is Hobbiton this when they voted um but uh something you said about the
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  you know like New Zealand doesn't have the the little connections of villages or to other villages
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  is that kind of weight of human history like um obviously New Zealand does have its own history
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  and we have our own indigenous people but in terms of the length of human occupation like
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  like in England there are pubs that are 500 years old and it's not that unusual but
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  that is not the case in New Zealand you know we don't have uh you know
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  it's debatable when when Māori first came to New Zealand but say roughly a thousand years ago
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  also um but then if you go back much further than that you know two thousand years ago there were
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  there were people in England building things but there were birds here
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  and so I'm getting off point um but in terms of like you know like the flora and fauna they sort of
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  that's not so much in the movies I guess because it wouldn't fit with the kind of tokeness
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  see all out all our kind of bird life and like a little bit of the bush but the the spots they chose
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  they chose particularly to more represent kind of very english in european
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  flora flora and trees and things um so when I kind of watch the movies although I can pick out
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  particular landscapes it's not it doesn't kind of evoke kind of that feeling of walking through
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  the New Zealand bush because it doesn't really look so much like they're there has a very different
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  lock um well that's reassuring to know that they haven't edged out the fantasy potential for
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  for yourself as a writer but let's come my my neighborhood as it were because um you told me
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  that you wrote the first draft of the first book in your series the Lord of Starriel while living
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  in Oxford um so did you find the city itself as a source of inspiration I mean there's a lot of
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  Oxford and Cambridge I think in your other city in your book well one of your other cities called
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  Knoxbridge um yes I'm it comingly disguised this no one will ever guess uh uh yes I approached
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  I wrote the first draft I had just moved to Oxford um I'd moved to Oxford in October and I think
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  around 2014 uh and I was starting a new job in uh in november and I needed a way I needed a way
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  to meet people so I thought oh I'll write a novel for um natural novel writing month which is november
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  uh and so that's that's sort of where Starriel came from and it was very influenced by
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  uh living in England um by the kind of uh november it's kind of the weather's getting kind of colder
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  so all the kind of like particularly like the lamps it like the they kind of old old style architecture
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  that is so much of around there in the beautiful buildings um and I'd also recently been up to
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  uh done a little bit of traveling up in Scotland um uh it's thanks the Lord and the North idea
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  yeah yeah well and I'd I'd I'd been rewatching an old um series for a little while ago called
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  Monica of the Glen I don't know if you heard of it yeah yeah yeah so which has uh as a sort of
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  initial it's a sort of set in modern times but the sort of the kickoff of the TV show is that
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  the sort of black sheep with a family gets a call but his his father's dead and goes back to the
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  crumbling older state in Scotland um and so I sort of had that in my head uh and this sort of season
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  of the the turn of seasons um and I thought oh but it would be much cooler if it was magical and set
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  further a go and lift the main character as a woman um I think 18th is great in that way that our
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  thought of magpie tango is why should we use like you watch something like Monica the Glen which is
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  entirely entirely different um yes but you take the thing which sparks your imagination and turn
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  that into your opener because you've got your wonderful main character Heter who was living a life
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  of relative freedom down in the main city as a illusionist on in a stage company
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  um answering the call to go back to the ancestral home to find out which of um her family uh the
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  valstars is that right yes it's um it's going to be picked as the next lord of sterile
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  and then one of my great favorites ta white uh who's written many series but she has an
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  absolutely fascinating backstory of her own so you can uh listen to a little bit of that here
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  it's a very difficult genre to describe because I didn't really obey genre norms but it's kind of
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  like fantasy with sci-fi elements um or sci-fi with fantasy elements depending on who you ask um
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  so that was where I started and I just went off of a dream and it was a very sci-fi-esque dream
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  like chapter one went to a different direction um which was much more fantasy uh so that's where I
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  started and then because I can't think easy on myself I kind of transitioned to like high fantasy
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  with my pathfinders or the broken land series and then from there I went to urban fantasy
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  to sci-fi like straight sci-fi so it's it's I kind of just write what I want
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  my funny uh the urban the urban fantasy series is that the i-lean travels series yes i-lean travels is
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  that urban fantasy and then the firebird chronicles is more of my sci-fi um with a couple of fantastical
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  elements to it yeah so I mean I suppose an interesting question for anyone who's got their hands
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  on an author to ask them is is there a sort of particular thing that started you off as a fantasy
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  writer I was noticing that you talked on your website about starting writing very young uh with
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  the partner who then threw her biscuits at you he's just right just true what happened there uh so
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  I was like that would have been when we lived in North Carolina but I was like in second first grade
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  and I couldn't I had a little I struggled to learn to read which meant I struggled to learn to write
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  and so at that age like I really wanted to write a ghost story um and I had to partner up with
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  somebody who was a little bit older like a year or two older than me because I couldn't do it
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  for myself and like we did it for a day and a half and then they were like I'm bored with this I
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  don't want to do it and I got really mad and I maybe threw a cookie at her head I was pretty young okay
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  that way rap and it was there a particular book once you did get into reading was there a particular
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  book where you inspired you to follow your path yeah it's kind of funny because I started wanting to
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  write before I could actually really like before I started liking to read um and then Nancy drew
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  in third grade the second time around was the book that got me into reading um but the book that
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  got me into fantasy was Tamera Puris the woman who walks like a man um it's the third in the series
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  but I was living in in Okinawa because my dad was stationed there and they didn't have the first two
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  books in the series at that library so I started with the third and it just kind of it was the first
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  time I realized that fantasy could be like this really fun genre that's about real things
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  but told in a different way and that you can have real life problems but with magic and other
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  things mixed in with it to just make it a little bit more interesting is that the Alana series the
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  Alana Chronicles have you read the Kel ones I have Caladri oh she's my favorite the protector of
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  the small I actually think I like her a little bit more than a Atlanta because Atlanta had like
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  magic to fall back on and she had the goddess like she was like kind of a chosen one but you don't
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  find that out till like the second book I think whereas Caladri or Kel she was she's just a normal
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  person who went after their dream and had to work very very hard to make that happen and I really
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  like stories where you have to like it's not just given to you when you're not just special you
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  you have to actually work to be the person you want and to achieve your dream so that's
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  that's like my favorite of her series yeah and I absolutely love that one of the books is all
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  about how to manage a refugee camp for internally displaced people right yeah it's right up my street
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  as a former development aid worker and also it's just such a breath of fresh air after all these
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  big battles things what happens to the civilians you know very very poignant and their great
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  book so another book recommendation for listeners is to go and explore the tomorrow's back library
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  and so what was your journey to being an actual published author after the biscuit throwing episode
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  well it was kind of like a long circuitous journey like I in high school there was this we had
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  where I went to high school you had a senior thesis project that you had to do to graduate
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  and it had to have it written in elements so I decided to write a book and that's the book that nobody
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  will ever see so I wrote that book and then I went to college for journalism at the Ohio University
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  script school journalism because I figured I could work on my craft while having a full-time job
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  and then I graduated and nobody was hiring so my mom told me to join the military which I did
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  and to do public affairs for them which I did so the first time after that was I was in Afghanistan
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  and it's kind of a situation where you're in a very small area and you can't go anywhere except for
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  our missions which I did but you're stuck in a one place and you don't have the distractions of
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  being in like the United States to take away from your creativity and there is a point where you
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  don't want to read anymore books and you don't want to watch anymore TV shows and it had always been
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  my dream to be a writer so I figured hey I'm here for a year why not write a book and that's what I
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  did and that's where Dragonridden Chronicles came and Pathfinder a little bit I had the idea for
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  Pathfinder while I was there and actually that probably sparked a lot of the ideas in Pathfinder
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  so that was kind of when I started and it took me like a year and a half two years to get that
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  book like done and edited and to the point where I felt comfortable releasing it to the public
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  that is absolutely fascinating that's a brilliant story in itself and it also explains the
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  Aileen Travis backstory yeah those three years were very instrumental in forming me as a person
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  so a lot of my books draws from that as like the creative incentive because you went you go through a
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  lot in a very short period of time and you kind of find out who you are and then when you have to
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  write these other things that draw on the military it's just a little bit easier so yeah Aileen
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  Aileen is like a product of me coming home and some of the anger and upset that I had and how
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  disconnected I felt to being home like some of the conversations she has with her mom are things
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  that I've talked with about other people coming home as a soldier and how people think you have
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  PTSD and everybody's the same so yeah that was a big part of that character and why I wrote her
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  because it was kind of cathartic yeah and her her experience in the military is brilliantly
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  specific being the sort of the camera person who goes along with the the guys on patrol and I did
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  the thing oh this is this is really well researched and now I know why you know yeah I did I didn't
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  do her job I was more but I knew the guys who did her job like I was public affairs I did go on
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  the mission but it wasn't just to take photos like I took photos but it was also to get the story
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  and so the combat cameras I had a couple of friends who work combat camera that was really fun
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  to talk to them and figure out how that job differed from mine yeah I think what's really interesting
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  about that experience is but most I would say that all of your heroines have a problem with
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  authority and it's out there and there's a particular thing with is it you call her alien
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  island alien alien but I think it's supposed to be okay um she she's well it's not not a plot
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  spoiler that she's a baby vampire a young vampire so she has had this past where she already
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  probably was in an authority structure which she had thought she left finding herself plunged
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  into this one where you have to be a hundred years before you're given you know you're a chance to
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  go out on your own at all so it makes it makes sense now totally makes sense I also met with the
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  lovely Michelle Diner who writes a kind of space opera style books I'm gradually reading my way
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  through her fantasy series I started with the one that was called Dark Horse partly because
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  it was a free audio at that time and that got me into the rest of the series I don't know about you
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  but I absolutely love listening to fantasy not only reading it I started out as a historical
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  fiction writer my first publishing contract was with Simon and Schuster's gallery books and I wrote
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  three books series for them set around the court of Henry the eighth I think at the time Simon
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  Schuster was owned by CBS and they had the tutors on that television series and so they were very keen
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  on buying books that were set in the in the Tudor era and yeah so and then I wrote a
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  Regency set series for for them but in between those historical books I ended up writing quite a
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  lot of fantasy just because it was a really great break for me I found the historicals very
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  self evidently a very research heavy and I'm quite a perfectionist so I was quite stressed by
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  getting every little detail right and fantasy was a really great escape for me kind of a pressure
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  valve and yeah so that's why I started writing more fancy and then I had the idea for the first book
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  in my class five series Dark Horse and I kind of never looked back I didn't I haven't written any
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  historicals then so I've got the series title wrong so it's not dark class it's class five yes
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  and there are five of them now yes which is wonderful news for readers just cycling back to what
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  you said about writing historical I've written historical fiction under well under various pen names
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  but particularly as writing for Eve Edwards I did a tutors series with Penguin and I remember
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  feeling that same pressure that you talked about so the way I cope with it was focusing down on a
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  year and sort of saying right I'm going to understand this year be it 1580 or whatever it was
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  and it was even worse when I wrote about the second world the first world war because there
• 31:54
  is so much information available and I was writing about the trenches so I did there is I thought
• 32:01
  right I'm going to find an account from somebody in that in the trenches I'm going to see the day
• 32:09
  that I'm talking about from their point of view so I've had diary and thought right I'm just going
• 32:13
  to know it from that perspective because there was so much you're right you just get overwhelmed
• 32:20
  so did you did you do that so I mean I did well with my tutorset books the heroine is Suzanne
• 32:30
  her own boat who was a real person so there wasn't a lot written about her but I did know
• 32:38
  around about when she was when she arrived in London who she married what she did while she was
• 32:46
  there she was an artist in Henry Henry VIII's court and one of the few women artists that was kind
• 32:56
  of recognized at that level so that helps and in my regency series I chose a specific historical
• 33:09
  event event sorry I keep hearing myself yeah yeah yeah yeah so that helps as well to choose as you
• 33:20
  say a specific year or a specific event but in my tutor stuff I mean I found myself
• 33:29
  looking up the tide tables for the Thames and working out what day was high tide for the day in my
• 33:38
  story and the color of the mud in the fields and things like that and I realize I have a problem
• 33:47
  with just getting things super cool I don't know I think I think those sort of details really help
• 33:53
  I mean we might talk about this a bit later on but having a sense of a real time real place really
• 33:58
  helps carry over into fantasy and one of the things I learned recently which I really enjoyed
• 34:04
  was finding out about how Tolkien um because he was during the Second World War a firewalls and
• 34:10
  which meant going up on the roofs of buildings to watch in case fire has broken out in any of the
• 34:14
  historic buildings due to bombing um he he tracked the moon cycle the moon phases and he used
• 34:24
  what he was seeing through a lot of the rings and the journey not in the rings through his own
• 34:30
  actual observations and I think that kind of thing if people are writing fantasy it really helps
• 34:36
  give a sense of so that you know you don't have a full moon one day and a crescent moon the next
• 34:41
  exactly yeah because when people will stop having any faith in your world unless you've got a very
• 34:46
  fast moon cycle in for whatever reason in your you know it's one of different planets I mean let's
• 34:51
  that would be possible um fantastic so it's helping with your plot I think because in in the second
• 35:00
  book in my Tudor series I wrote about the um the boats the boats that kind of rode through the
• 35:10
  archers of London bridge and high tide yeah and those kind of things really add to the story and it
• 35:19
  actually ended up being part of the crescendo at the end and maybe I would not have known that much
• 35:27
  about it hadn't had I not gone into all the tide related information so yeah and just so people
• 35:35
  people know it's not the current London bridge it's the one with all the houses on I wrote a book set
• 35:40
  people looking on the bridge so I also did that and it was really dangerous because they had very
• 35:46
  narrow apertures and so the themes is quite strong tide so it was like shooting a kind of
• 35:52
  ramparts not helped by the fact it was actually called to some of the bridge yeah yeah so exciting I
• 36:00
  love that book out I don't just read fantasy I do I do now myself to read historical so I look forward
• 36:05
  to reading that too and then one of you listeners wrote in and suggested I talked to Victoria
• 36:15
  Goddard thank you so much for that recommendation it introduced me to a really original voice
• 36:22
  I would highly recommend you listening to that podcast because in fact we split it in two because
• 36:28
  there was so many fantastic um things that Victoria said I found two things about her particularly
• 36:34
  memorable one is that she came up with a really original plot in her book hands of the emperor
• 36:41
  I was reminded of this because one of our writers on one of our creative courses were saying
• 36:47
  don't we find that a lot of fantasy has got formulaic now I know what he meant by that sometimes
• 36:54
  there is actually a pleasure in seeing a formula revisited and done in a new way you know like
• 37:00
  a romance or something like that where the couple get together at the end so you don't always
• 37:05
  need to break in new ground but I really do think that Victoria has found something quite original
• 37:11
  she was focusing in her fantasy world on someone thinking about retirement it's much that maybe
• 37:16
  doesn't sound the most probably not on the back of the book is it but actually I fell
• 37:20
  in love with her character and thought that was a brilliant theme because it was about how do you
• 37:24
  pass on power yeah it's a duo kind of friendly a little a little bit of a cozy mystery sort of
• 37:32
  underlying it there and a bit of an adventure and whereas the hands of the emperor is you know
• 37:38
  it's about a and among many things it's about a bureaucrat on the edge of retirement kind of thing
• 37:43
  and so so I suppose in terms of genre I just kind of say well I'm I'm right in the middle of fantasy
• 37:49
  but I tend to write these sort of slightly off of culture towards genre conventions yeah and I
• 37:55
  think that's what is so wonderful about your writing Victoria is that you feel really original
• 38:01
  and that's there's something wrong with reading something which fits in a genre so if you read a
• 38:06
  romance or a detective story you know how it's going to turn out or a western yeah you you know
• 38:12
  before you start what's going to happen more or less but you don't know what the journey is whereas
• 38:16
  when I started reading hands of the emperor I had no idea what the journey was going to be
• 38:20
  and it was a pure delight it's a longer book it's not a sort of thing you can knock out in a
• 38:26
  but I have thoroughly enjoyed my week spent with your main character Cleifer so but before we come
• 38:33
  to him I'm just thinking about the influence and place on your stories because the women and
• 38:41
  darts series feels quite like a sort of 18th century feel I mean people are sort of small
• 38:50
  small village-y town type society there feels like that whereas the the world of the hands of
• 38:56
  the emperor is very much a much bigger scale it's got a sense of or mixture of the sort of Chinese
• 39:07
  bureaucracy and the exams that you still have to do to be part of the Chinese bureaucracy but also
• 39:14
  island culture that could be from I don't know Maori or Pacific islands I mean you're creating
• 39:21
  your own world but I felt that there was a sample of different elements that you were going for
• 39:27
  so as a writer have you travelled first and gone around squirreling away or these ideas
• 39:34
  or is it something that you think oh I want to do this and then go and have a look at it
• 39:39
  it's a little bit of both as I said my family's British and I've spent a number of visits
• 39:44
  and some quite some time visiting family members in various parts of England and Wales
• 39:49
  particularly and I did the year abroad in Scotland when I was in undergrad and and so for me
• 39:57
  I've always really enjoyed that kind of yes the 19th century sort of the Jane Austen or early
• 40:03
  late 18th early 19th century that kind of period of the early novels and then and the
• 40:11
  sort of early regency stuff and then also just sort of the kind of idealized vision that people
• 40:17
  have of Oxford and Cambridge and things like that and I enjoyed playing with that and thinking
• 40:20
  about I have an academic background and so I enjoyed thinking about you know what the good parts
• 40:26
  of that and also the bad parts of that in some ways we haven't seen that much of the university
• 40:30
  experience but I enjoy thinking about it and so for me kind of travel I once spent about six
• 40:38
  months walking down the length of England and staying with various relatives and friends along
• 40:42
  the way and so that kind of sense of the landscape was a great resource for me otherwise I've
• 40:50
  lived around quite I've moved quite a lot around Canada growing up lived in 14 places across the
• 40:57
  country and my parents spent 10 years in Papua New Guinea to north of Australia and so I had a
• 41:04
  lot of stories about Papua New Guinea in Australia growing up and I think that really comes out
• 41:08
  strongly in the hands of the emperor with the white seas islander culture which is quite strongly
• 41:14
  based on sort of Polynesian historic Polynesian culture but there's quite a lot of Papua New Guinea
• 41:18
  in elements in there too from the Trobrand islands and the Highlands which is where my parents lived
• 41:23
  and so I had lots of stories in like the material culture of that that white parents had various
• 41:28
  elements of it and friends of theirs who come to visit us or we visited them I've only been there
• 41:32
  once but that I remember I was there when I was very as a baby but as an adult I've only been
• 41:38
  there once and so it was a very rich experience even being a quite short trip so I enjoy that combination
• 41:46
  I feel like it's important to be very respectful of other cultures and I try really hard to
• 41:52
  not to appropriate cultural elements especially for ones that have been historically colonized
• 42:00
  but at the same time I also think it's very important to try and broaden the base that you're
• 42:04
  building off of so the Green Wing and Darts series is quite largely based off of kind of the
• 42:09
  English country tradition and country like country house stories too right like that kind of
• 42:16
  the mysteries that you get out over and that tradition there but the hands of the emperor and the
• 42:21
  world that that's set in which is Zuni I deliberately wanted it to be a non-Western European
• 42:27
  base society I was I really wanted to to get away from that so I the different parts of Zuni
• 42:33
  that are drawn from different non-Western cultures as a conscious choice there and what the
• 42:42
  person who wrote in said is I something along the lines of I defy you not to fall in love with
• 42:47
  Cleopher now Cleopher is the main character of the hands of the emperor he is the hands of the
• 42:53
  emperor you could describe him very boringly as bureaucrat but actually he is just the most wonderful
• 43:01
  wonderful character I was saying to you just before we started recording that he reminds me very
• 43:08
  much of the Count Rostov who is the lead figure in the fantastic novel gentleman in Moscow by
• 43:18
  Amortals which is a historical novel I think being filmed at the moment but the how that story
• 43:25
  works is that you just love spending time with that character and I felt absolutely the same about
• 43:30
  Cleopher and as you were just saying what you're thinking about in this book are things which
• 43:35
  don't make it into fantasy it's the stuff that's not around the battle it's how do you hand on
• 43:43
  power how do you retire and there's also a really strong theme about what do the people back home
• 43:51
  think of those who have gone into another walk of life and got success elsewhere which doesn't
• 43:57
  translate into the local context at all they completely misunderstand him in sad ways so
• 44:05
  when you started this book did you start with the character and just see where it went or did
• 44:10
  you already have those themes in mind and then you know built him to fit the plot no it was a very
• 44:18
  character driven um different book so my my kind of general project as I said I tend to I write
• 44:25
  these sort of it's a sprawling interconnected stories in my in my narrative universe here and they
• 44:31
  there's sort of two parallel core um to that that project one of them there's this empire called the
• 44:39
  empire of a standalone as which has this catastrophic cataclysmic magical collapse that happens
• 44:46
  and so I it's sort of one of my projects is the lead up to to that collapse and then what happens
• 44:52
  afterwards I'm not really a dystopian kind of writer I'm really much more interested in how do you
• 44:55
  rebuild um what happens afterwards but that that kind of shadow that falls across the entire
• 45:04
  tire cultures and individuals is something that I find a very interesting to think about and I
• 45:09
  think this connects back to something like Tolkien and the shadow of worldward one that's always
• 45:14
  behind um all those authors of the first half of the 20th century and I've always found that
• 45:18
  interwar period quite interesting for that with with people not always talking directly about it but
• 45:23
  it's always there and so in my novels that kind of the fall of a standalone is is that that culture-wide
• 45:30
  devastation that people don't always talk about but is always there so that's one part of the
• 45:35
  project and then the second part of the project is this figure of um of one character um and
• 45:44
  who is um called Fitzrangerson he's a mean character in various books and referred to in other
• 45:49
  ones he's this poet and so as part of that one thing I was interested in with the fall of a
• 45:54
  standalone as in the effects of it was the character of the last emperor of a standalone who survives the
• 45:59
  this destruction and ends up having to kind of rebuild on a personal level and so I started off writing
• 46:04
  this what was going to be a short vignette uh about the last emperor and what he was like in the
• 46:10
  period after things had sort of settled down after the fall and I thought oh his secretary's probably
• 46:14
  a good window onto what he's like as a person and so I started writing about his secretary and it
• 46:19
  was really only intended to be a couple of scenes or maybe one scene like that was all I was doing
• 46:23
  and by the end of the scene I had fallen in love with clear for as a character he was just so
• 46:27
  interesting and he just kind of kept growing and and that was the story was was was an unusual one
• 46:33
  to write because I usually have more of a sense of what the story is to start with or at least
• 46:39
  like I often know what the emotional tone I want to end with is or like the the very the denumer
• 46:44
  I don't always know what the climax is but I usually know what the denumer is and where the characters
• 46:48
  end up and so for that one I had no sense of what the arc was at first I just kind of kept but I
• 46:54
  kept being drawn to writing scenes and I just kept imagining them like I'd be driving or I'd be
• 46:58
  you know taking the dogs for a walk or something and the scene would come into mind and I I just have
• 47:02
  to go write it and so for I don't know a year a year and a half maybe two years I just kind of kept
• 47:08
  going back to it and picking away at it and I was enjoying writing it so much like I just love
• 47:13
  spending time with Cleopher and eventually I was like okay you know what I'm not getting any
• 47:17
  other books done I'm just going to focus on this one and see where it takes me and eventually at
• 47:21
  that point I realized that the reason I had had so much trouble seeing what the arc was was because
• 47:25
  it was an incredibly long book and so I'd written you know 80,000 words which is normally coming
• 47:29
  towards the end of a novel that I usually write but that's really I mean not even a third of the
• 47:35
  way through this one so the the kind of character arc was just really getting going
• 47:42
  and then I was also really privileged to meet Lisa Edmunds another writer who I spend a lot of
• 47:48
  time listening to her Alice Worth books these are brilliant if you haven't met them yet they're
• 47:54
  also very well read as an audio version of it very exciting story about a mage but actually in many
• 48:02
  ways it's a kind of escaped person from a gang theme that's what I really enjoy about urban fantasies
• 48:08
  that you see themes that you're used to in detective stories or or police procedures being reinvented
• 48:15
  with magic and dragons and things like that what's not to like so if you want to hear a little bit
• 48:20
  from Lisa here is an excerpt now well and I also really like the Scandinavian sort of psychological
• 48:30
  thriller mysteries as well like the Heningmankel series and oh gosh the Kenneth break they turn it
• 48:38
  into a TV series Kenneth Branagh and a bunch about like the there's just nobody that does that dark
• 48:44
  psychological really twisted mysteries like norwegian and Swedish and Danish authors so I feel like
• 48:55
  my series is like an amalgamation of all of that Alice is a little a little bit Kinsey Millhone
• 49:02
  who is Su Grafton's PI and a little bit via Worshawski but then also influenced by all the fantasy
• 49:12
  and all of the mysteries and you know sort of across all the subgenres sort of all put together in
• 49:21
  one body yeah talking had this thing he wrote about the Cauldron of stories the idea that all
• 49:28
  these other elements from everything you've read and the traditions have go into this and then you
• 49:33
  ladle out your own version of it and then of course I would say Alice is definitely her own character
• 49:39
  you know she may have had these seeds in her origins but I love her as the the character she's
• 49:44
  grown to be so looking at the Aliceworth series for those who haven't yet read it and I'm stressing
• 49:54
  the yet it's in the urban fantasy genre would you like to give us a little kind of taste of what
• 50:01
  they will find if they start reading the series sure um you know my particular world is sort of
• 50:09
  it's it's very similar Alice's world is very similar to our own with the addition of you know
• 50:15
  supernatural and paranormal creatures and beings so there are shifters and vampires and ghouls
• 50:22
  and things like that and so I like my preference on urban fantasy is like our like our world
• 50:32
  but with these interesting twists excuse me I also enjoy urban fantasy that steps much farther
• 50:38
  away from our own world like ambitious the others series which is very very different um so I sort
• 50:47
  of imagined what would have to change in our world if we suddenly you know had these creatures
• 50:54
  walking among us and so I envision like well they would have to be like a federal agency dedicated
• 51:00
  to sort of tracking monitoring and serving as law enforcement um who are set up for interactions
• 51:07
  with creatures that aren't human don't think like humans and aren't vulnerable to the same
• 51:14
  things that we are um and then sort of just sort of grew from there um so Alice herself is a
• 51:20
  mage so she has magic she has what I call natural magic so um air and earth magic um as well as a
• 51:30
  few other abilities that kind of develop throughout the series um and she is a private investigator
• 51:35
  in my world a mage private investigator sort of specializes in supernatural and paranormal
• 51:42
  type mysteries and almost all of her cases involve solving a supernatural related mystery
• 51:49
  um she has a ghost sidekick um his name is Malcolm right his name is Malcolm um he is I mean he calls
• 51:58
  it he calls himself the comic relief in the partnership um you know he's a lot of fun um he tends
• 52:04
  to be a crowd favorite um and in some ways he's her anchor like he's the one who
• 52:12
  very much sort of the conscience in some cases isn't he he correct uh he's doing
• 52:20
  because Alice had had a really not to spoil anything but she had a very difficult and
• 52:24
  traumatic childhood and upbringing and so there are a lot of times where her reactions are very
• 52:31
  much shaped by her past and Malcolm in some time and a few other characters come in as like her
• 52:38
  chimney cricket and I was sort of like Alice you know think about this a little bit um and you see
• 52:46
  her changing over the course of the books um and adjusting and you know becoming a little bit more
• 52:52
  while she calls it a little bit more human um you're learning how to interact with others and
• 52:57
  how to love how to love others and care for others and how to let them care and love her um which
• 53:04
  is a difficult journey for her you know considering she didn't really have that growing up um so each
• 53:09
  book they're not they're not designed to be read um as standalones each book contains its own
• 53:15
  story its own mystery but there are overarching stories there's a there's a major antagonist that
• 53:20
  everything is sort of building up to her dealing with their storylines that run throughout each book
• 53:25
  so although each book has a self-contained mystery for her to solve because she's a PI
• 53:30
  um you would want to start with one and then uh go forward it's not you know
• 53:36
  not really designed to be read out of order and she's also in I wouldn't call it a love triangle
• 53:42
  that's the wrong word because there's another side to it but she's sort of in the middle of
• 53:46
  pools between a shifter um friend a very close friend um lover but also somebody within the vampire
• 53:56
  community who's very interested in her but also the mage community so like there's three points
• 54:02
  it's not really right in the federal agency you know a federal agent as well oh there we go
• 54:09
  it's you know there's there's definitely a romance angle to it as there is with a lot of
• 54:13
  urban fantasy but I you know I definitely wanted I didn't want to get into the love triangle thing um
• 54:21
  uh too much but there definitely is a little bit of uh what's the word like there there's a
• 54:29
  like she's trying to find the person who like uh you know who completes her who supports her
• 54:36
  who compliments her that's the word I was like if I were who compliments are the best um
• 54:41
  and you know there's a lot of power plays going on too as you know as you would expect with
• 54:47
  any any time that you have um you know you have a like the vampires they've been
• 54:52
  they have hundreds of years old they they're all about the power they're all about the
• 54:56
  what can somebody do for me what benefits me um and that's not necessarily the type of
• 55:03
  partnership relationship uh that someone like Alice would be interested in so I think what I
• 55:08
  was most interested in is exploring power dynamics in personal relationships and you know
• 55:16
  letting Alice sort of figure out what's the healthiest type of relationship to be
• 55:21
  yeah um one trope in urban fantasy and paranormal romance that I'm less of a fan of is the ones where
• 55:31
  you have a um a real like difference in power and you have one partner asserting that dominance over
• 55:38
  the other um I mean I think there's room in any genre for all kinds of you know types of relationships
• 55:45
  but I definitely wanted to focus on a more a healthier type of relationship so I think that is
• 55:51
  an exploration of what's a healthy relationship what's going to be mutually beneficial um what love
• 55:58
  really is um as opposed to what can this person do for me how can they advance my my goals you know
• 56:06
  which isn't to me a healthy relationship yeah and because you've got a long series that you're
• 56:15
  working on that the for example the main central relationship with Sean does become more and more
• 56:22
  important to the readers you go on and I I found it really gutting in I think it's um shadows uh where
• 56:31
  uh she loses I think it's not too much for spoiler say that she's cousin loses her memory I think
• 56:38
  it's in the blurb so I'm allowed to say that yeah so it's a reset of her relationship with Sean but
• 56:46
  it's it's absolutely it's just terrible to see oh no you can't forget all these things you've had
• 56:51
  you know that the reader is really involved in that I thought that was a very good thing to do to
• 56:56
  a relationship if from a craft point of view in the middle of what I my otherwise be
• 57:02
  and they lived happily ever after you know right keep putting the grit in the relationship so
• 57:08
  that it can move on and become actually even deeper as a result yeah and they um you know they have
• 57:14
  a lot of ups and downs um you know as they both kind of adjust to the relationship and you know Sean
• 57:22
  always wanted um and you know him very much did believe and does believe he wanted an equal he's
• 57:28
  not wanting what the rest of the pack wants him to have which is a very submissive um
• 57:35
  uh mate partner you know who's going to just follow orders he wanted someone to stand beside him
• 57:40
  um but that's all well and good in theory until he does get someone who wants to either stand in front
• 57:46
  of him or stand beside him or stand in front of him um and then he's got to try to figure out
• 57:50
  well you know exactly what that means um you know an Alice isn't ever going to be anybody's um
• 57:57
  you know he's not gonna be bossed around uh too so there's a lot of dynamics there uh so you
• 58:02
  have to put your relate you know your your relationship through some ups and downs and and uh
• 58:07
  because I think that's realistic you know I don't know any relationship that's all sunshine and
• 58:12
  roses you know from day one you're gonna run into problems you're gonna run into
• 58:18
  differences of opinion um especially when you have two people who have you know or so
• 58:24
  kind of set in their ways you know so above all I wanted it to be a realistic
• 58:30
  series you know I want my heroin to be relatable um and um realistic I want the relationships the
• 58:39
  the mysteries the drama it all to feel like all things that make sense all things that are relatable
• 58:46
  even though it's you know there's magic and all sorts of other creatures around like I still want
• 58:50
  people to read it to read it and feel like yeah this is something that would really happen
• 58:56
  and then most recently I met with Catherine Tordassi who is a German author whose book
• 59:02
  Bramble Fox has just been translated into English this is a children's book this is a reminder
• 59:09
  of course that many of the great fantasy stories actually are classed as children's books though
• 59:15
  adults get a lot from them and my conversation with Catherine took us into a whole world of German
• 59:22
  fantasy writing which was very enjoyable for me so the first question I have is you're sitting in
• 59:29
  Berlin what made you want to write a story set in Wales oh yeah um oh well first of all
• 59:38
  a big big shout out to Catherine the two wrote a really excellent translation I really it was
• 59:44
  such an amazing experience to to read a story that I've written translated into another language
• 59:51
  and she did this really beautifully um I already told her via email but if she's listening to this
• 59:56
  thank you Catherine once again why did I choose to have this story and have Wales as a setting
• 1:00:08
  yeah I've been I lived in Wales in North Wales in Banger for about a year and I really loved it
• 1:00:15
  there so it was it was a great time for me it was a very formative year as well so towards the end
• 1:00:21
  of my studies and I loved the landscape it's a very um Banger is sort of situated between the sea
• 1:00:31
  and Snodonia National Park so you have the mountains you have the coastline I'm very big on
• 1:00:35
  hiking so I was outdoors a lot and I also really enjoyed the university program there so Banger
• 1:00:43
  University classes also got into to archery which was fun and um yeah of an archery club at
• 1:00:59
  that's what I did for a while and yeah when I was there I went on hikes I always had my notebook
• 1:01:06
  with me and started to sort of collect impressions of of the places that I would visit and the
• 1:01:13
  different kinds of legends and folklore elements that I came into contact with and yeah so that's
• 1:01:20
  have the first ideas for the Bromberfox stories got together and then I got to read um I think
• 1:01:28
  its childhood guest version of the Binogian which is this collection of the the Welsh
• 1:01:38
  Welsh mythological and and folkloristic stories that inspired a lot of the King Arthur Law for
• 1:01:47
  example and there came first came across a noon and and around and so that sort of lodged in there I
• 1:01:58
  read then more recently I came across a Welsh artist called CCJ Ellis who did a wonderful
• 1:02:08
  art book on Welsh monsters and creatures so there's a bit of inspiration there and yeah I also
• 1:02:15
  when I wrote the book the the privilege of a diski kimreig department at Banger University who
• 1:02:26
  who helped me with research such questions and language which checks and so on so it's yeah
• 1:02:31
  they're born out of a stayed her into sort of a fortif year for me in Wales
• 1:02:40
  yeah so we've mentioned for those of you who love your Welsh language or just love languages
• 1:02:46
  anyone who like talking to languages will know that it's based on Welsh or partly um is there
• 1:02:53
  you're using another a little list of vocab at the back you're using the Welsh language as part of
• 1:03:00
  the texture and feeling of the tale and also just do a sort of promo for this podcast if you go
• 1:03:07
  back a couple of episodes to the Welsh episode you can hear us talking to Claire Faea who's a Welsh
• 1:03:13
  lady who collects Welsh tale so this will lovely in 2001 after you've heard Catherine speak today
• 1:03:20
  so um I was also interested so there you've got Wales as one centre for the story but you then
• 1:03:27
  have many of the characters from Shakespeare's Amid Summer night stream night stream has an element
• 1:03:34
  of um existing folkloric characters and ones uh Shakespeare made up
• 1:03:43
  and obviously it's his play um but that's obviously he's the man from Stratford upon Avon
• 1:03:49
  an Englishman so how did you go along with the idea of incorporating the Welsh tradition
• 1:03:56
  with English to different or was your fact that you are from Germany make you could just ignore
• 1:04:01
  all that kind of thing but well I would call by method perhaps irreverent homage
• 1:04:11
  so I'm kind of I mean I studied English literature so Shakespeare was very big of course in the
• 1:04:21
  courses that I took and Amid Summer night was one of the plays um that fascinated a lot and um I
• 1:04:29
  was also always fascinated by how by by sort of the myth surrounding Shakespeare the author so
• 1:04:38
  these questions of where did he get his ideas did he write the plays did someone else write the
• 1:04:43
  plays so all these these different kinds of um yeah myths and questions and stuff so I
• 1:04:50
  what I did when I uh wrote Bramberfox I knew that I wanted to include fairy law for
• 1:04:58
  and um always appreciated or what I've been fascinated by that comes to the um the use of myth
• 1:05:08
  and folklore in literature is how how these myths and um and legends overlap and transfer and
• 1:05:18
  transform in different cultures but also in different types of literature and how they
• 1:05:23
  had um re-read and re-written so this kind of um pastiche or or or or recolash of different motives
• 1:05:31
  put together into into retellings and then slightly history stories of of other material I always
• 1:05:39
  liked when I when I read books that did that so I that was something that I wanted to try out and
• 1:05:45
  in in Wales you have the you have a lot of fairy law there they're called um or one term that is
• 1:05:52
  used there it till with till till with tag so the fair family um as a sort of collective term
• 1:06:04
  for for fairies or elves but I did for Bramber I so imagined Shakespeare as a traveler between
• 1:06:12
  so I thought what if he actually went through a portal like the children in the books and
• 1:06:17
  visited um the the the fairy world and came back with a back full of stories but um
• 1:06:28
  he made up two that more entertaining and there was an early
• 1:06:37
  friend of ox there was the scene where Titania complained about him um riding amid someone
• 1:06:44
  like donkey stories pure fabrication so it's just it's it's a bit of silliness to be honest
• 1:06:49
  um coming from an English literature student I think we're still perfectly allowed to do that
• 1:06:56
  because obviously here at the Oxford Central Fantasy one of our sort of other quatchstones is
• 1:07:02
  the Narnia stories and uh CS Lewis completely means you know a weak mythology and all sorts of
• 1:07:12
  after you're in legends and he just goes oh okay chuck a bit of this in bit of that he's like
• 1:07:16
  that he's like that chef who's around the kingdom um around the kingdom pulling everything out
• 1:07:21
  with the cupboards put into his kingdom um so I mean you've just touched on it but another way
• 1:07:29
  of describing Bramble Fox is that it's a portal fantasy which we've had while it's in folklore
• 1:07:37
  you know the doors in the hillside you go through to into another world and you get it in literature
• 1:07:42
  in Alice in Wonderland and back to Lewis again so how do you come up with your version of a portal
• 1:07:51
  leading into this liminal land of a land of mist that sits between our world and not many
• 1:07:58
  worlds but including the world of the fae yeah so um liminal space I find this the idea behind
• 1:08:08
  that quite fascinating so this idea that there are places where our understanding of reality
• 1:08:18
  dissolves like threshold places or even a space in time where we transition from one state of being
• 1:08:25
  to another and of course there's also the real life or metaphorical implications of that there's
• 1:08:32
  tons of cultural studies on the idea of liminal rituals or liminal states of being that people in
• 1:08:42
  basically all societies that we know have to go through in order to grow up so coming of age
• 1:08:48
  rituals would be one um one example where you're sort of caught between the status of a child
• 1:08:55
  and a grown-up and then you go through a kind of ritual and then um you sort of slip into this
• 1:09:02
  new identity and um I really like this idea that you have to go through a sort of in between
• 1:09:10
  phase and for Ben and Portia the borderlands between the human world and the fairy world they
• 1:09:17
  signify exactly that so they they have to go through this place in order to distance themselves
• 1:09:23
  from the world they know but also from their own place in the world so they they change quite a lot
• 1:09:29
  in this book Ben needs to find more confidence and move a little bit out of his shell um and also
• 1:09:36
  confront uh his his own personal grief and um Portia will discover that there's a certain wilderness
• 1:09:45
  her that she has to contend with so it's yeah I like this idea of the transition that you have to
• 1:09:52
  sort of that sort of unlocks things and that she picks up with another thread because I also
• 1:10:01
  interviewed several of our tutors on the novel in the year course just to introduce them to everybody
• 1:10:08
  out there and that also led us into talking about European fantasy not the sort of Anglo-Saxon
• 1:10:15
  tradition Celtic fantasy as well so with Claire O'Brien we got into a fascinating discussion
• 1:10:24
  about Madame d'Ornoir I hope I've said that right uh who is a forgotten writer of fairy tales who
• 1:10:33
  should be remembered up there with Hans Christian Anderson and the grim brothers so if you're
• 1:10:38
  interested in finding new places to go new fairy tales maybe you're thinking of a new screenplay
• 1:10:45
  something like that do listen to what Claire had to say about that forgotten French writer
• 1:10:51
  and also a bit nearer to home but also not the Anglo-Saxon tradition I had a discussion with Claire
• 1:10:59
  Faye's about Wales where she comes from and Claire's been doing something of a similar job to the
• 1:11:06
  other Claire finding stories that have fallen off most people's radar and bringing them to a younger
• 1:11:14
  audience there is that wonderful image in Tolkien of the Cauldron of stories where all the stories
• 1:11:23
  that have gone before are all bubbling away but some things do sink to the bottom and get forgotten
• 1:11:29
  where others rise to the top and keep being skimmed off and reused stories like beauty in the beast
• 1:11:38
  sleeping beauty little red riding hood we all know them and they keep getting reused and they
• 1:11:44
  can get a bit tired as a result and these writers and researchers I suppose we should call both
• 1:11:52
  our finding new material for us so that when we do go back to that Cauldron of story it's been
• 1:11:56
  enriched one of the great pleasures of setting up the Oxford Centre for Fantasy is getting to know
• 1:12:05
  all sorts of people who share my love for Tolkien one of whom is Jacob Renica and he's made
• 1:12:11
  several appearances as my my partner in podcast and we've been discussing such things as the stone
• 1:12:20
  giants in the Hobbit which led to discussing giants more generally in fantasy he also joined me
• 1:12:27
  along with Paula Calamaris to review the big Tolkien event of this season which has been the
• 1:12:36
  rings of power the Amazon series which if you're interested in hearing what we thought of it and
• 1:12:43
  also what our students on our creative courses thought of it we've got several episodes about that
• 1:12:50
  but because we love the Tolkien version of the rings of power in the third age most that's one of
• 1:12:58
  the that's the final chapter in fact in the Silmarillion we decided to accompany the arrival of
• 1:13:03
  that series with a more back to basics Silmarillion reader thon now how we run our reader thons has
• 1:13:10
  caused a bit of confusion it's not people coming along and reading out chapters because that would
• 1:13:16
  infringe copyright folks no what it is it's more like an online book club where each time somebody
• 1:13:23
  takes charge of a chapter reads it finds a favorite quote and a few reflections upon it and then
• 1:13:29
  shares it with everybody else as you might in a book club and giving the chance for other people
• 1:13:34
  to comment so if that reader thon is still up on our facebook page and on instagram if you want to
• 1:13:41
  see what happened this has been a really good format and brought new people to come and talk to us
• 1:13:48
  which we love and we're finishing off this Christmas with the 12 days of Tolkien where we're going
• 1:13:54
  to do the same thing with the much shorter but seasonal book the father Christmas letters actually
• 1:14:00
  this caused a bit of confusion in OCF headquarters because I was working off the first edition and
• 1:14:07
  my colleagues were working off more recent edition which has more letters so just to clear up any
• 1:14:13
  confusion we are using the most recent edition with the more letters and just as a reminder that we
• 1:14:20
  are not just about writing but also about any kind of fantasy inspired creativity I had a conversation
• 1:14:28
  with animator butch Hartman who's probably best known for his series The Fairly Odd Parents which
• 1:14:34
  I certainly remember my kids watching and we just talked about the world of animation which of course
• 1:14:40
  is one of the richest areas for finding fantasy being realised on the screen at the moment
• 1:14:48
  so I hope you've enjoyed this series and the ones that you've listened to if you do have any
• 1:14:53
  suggestions for writers you'd like me to reach out to do send them in because it's nothing
• 1:14:59
  better for an author to read than an email that comes saying that their fans want to hear from them
• 1:15:06
  same goes for any fantasy illustrators that you would like me to bring into the myth makers studio
• 1:15:14
  all that remains now is to wish you all seasonal greetings happy Christmas and if you want to
• 1:15:22
  really get into the Christmas mood you could perhaps listen to my pick for one the top fantasy
• 1:15:29
  stories you really must read because that is none other than the Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens
• 1:15:38
  so there's no bar humbug about Christmas here but as tiny Tim of course says God bless us everyone
• 1:15:46
  see you for our next season in the new year
• 1:15:52
  thanks for listening to myth makers podcast brought to you by the Oxford Center for Fantasy
• 1:16:07
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• 1:16:14
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• 1:16:21
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• 1:16:51
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