Goe and catch a falling star...
Nov. 14th, 2010 10:12 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
shewhomustWe took an afternoon off last week to go and hear Karen Maitland talking at a local library. This is work-related, since Karen is a client, but it's too much fun to count as actual work.
Some authors enjoy reading to an audience, and do it beautifully (![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
desperance, of course we're looking at you); some don't enjoy it, but do it well nonetheless (when I read Ann Cleeves' books I feel very close to the characters; when she reads them, she brings a dryness of tone and a sense of distance which allows me to see them from outside, which is always entertaining); Karen doesn't enjoy it, and refuses to do it.
Whatever the reason for this refusal - self consciousness or some other inhibition - it doesn't operate when she comes to talk about her books. Or perhaps the reason it doesn't operate is that she doesn't, exactly, talk about her books, but about the Middle Ages and about all the strange and wonderful medieval beliefs and superstitions which fascinate her and feed her writing.
Such as the mandrake root. Karen's next book will not now be called The Mandrake's Tale, although this was its title all the time she was writing it, and it is narrated by a mandrake. But marketing were worried that people wouldn't know what a mandrake is: "They'll think it's some kind of duck," they said. ("Hmph," said someone in the audience. "Don't marketing know that people read Harry Potter?"). Which is why Karen Maitland's next book will be called The Gallows Curse.
I have (exceptionally) some sympathy for marketing: they tend to work in categories, and Karen's books aren't easily categorised. We met her through the Medieval Murderers, an alliance of crime writers whose books are set in the Middle Ages (or thereabouts). And certainly her books are medieval, and contain a number of mysterious deaths. But they are not structured around a Brother Cadfael-like detective. The Owl Killers was nominated for a Shirley Jackson award, which classes it with "the literature of psychological suspense, horror, and the dark fantastic". Yet the books aren't conventional fantasies, either: Company of Liars kept me so busy observing its unreliable narrator that I was some way through the book before I realised that the narrative gave me no option but to believe in some fantastic things. Both books adopt the viewpoint of their medieval characters in believing equally in things which the modern world sees as fact and those which we regard as superstition.
This may explain why, when it came to questions from the audience, instead of the usual "Where do you get your ideas from?" (which she had already answered), Karen was asked, "Have you ever met a witch?" (no, she said, she hadn't, though she had met - and I've forgotten the word she used - healing women).
Afterwards, one lady, who would have liked to speak to Karen had to rush away, asked me to pass on a message. She'd never met a wich, she said, but she had met a Goth. On a bus. In Whitby.
Some authors enjoy reading to an audience, and do it beautifully (
desperance, of course we're looking at you); some don't enjoy it, but do it well nonetheless (when I read Ann Cleeves' books I feel very close to the characters; when she reads them, she brings a dryness of tone and a sense of distance which allows me to see them from outside, which is always entertaining); Karen doesn't enjoy it, and refuses to do it. Whatever the reason for this refusal - self consciousness or some other inhibition - it doesn't operate when she comes to talk about her books. Or perhaps the reason it doesn't operate is that she doesn't, exactly, talk about her books, but about the Middle Ages and about all the strange and wonderful medieval beliefs and superstitions which fascinate her and feed her writing.
Such as the mandrake root. Karen's next book will not now be called The Mandrake's Tale, although this was its title all the time she was writing it, and it is narrated by a mandrake. But marketing were worried that people wouldn't know what a mandrake is: "They'll think it's some kind of duck," they said. ("Hmph," said someone in the audience. "Don't marketing know that people read Harry Potter?"). Which is why Karen Maitland's next book will be called The Gallows Curse.
I have (exceptionally) some sympathy for marketing: they tend to work in categories, and Karen's books aren't easily categorised. We met her through the Medieval Murderers, an alliance of crime writers whose books are set in the Middle Ages (or thereabouts). And certainly her books are medieval, and contain a number of mysterious deaths. But they are not structured around a Brother Cadfael-like detective. The Owl Killers was nominated for a Shirley Jackson award, which classes it with "the literature of psychological suspense, horror, and the dark fantastic". Yet the books aren't conventional fantasies, either: Company of Liars kept me so busy observing its unreliable narrator that I was some way through the book before I realised that the narrative gave me no option but to believe in some fantastic things. Both books adopt the viewpoint of their medieval characters in believing equally in things which the modern world sees as fact and those which we regard as superstition.
This may explain why, when it came to questions from the audience, instead of the usual "Where do you get your ideas from?" (which she had already answered), Karen was asked, "Have you ever met a witch?" (no, she said, she hadn't, though she had met - and I've forgotten the word she used - healing women).
Afterwards, one lady, who would have liked to speak to Karen had to rush away, asked me to pass on a message. She'd never met a wich, she said, but she had met a Goth. On a bus. In Whitby.
