Guest author Wendy Metcalfe
Nov. 15th, 2013 11:36 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
charlie_cochraneSo, Wendy, what inspired you to start writing?
I've written since I was a teenager at school. I read every Famous Five book in the school library, and wanted to write my own adventure stories. I won an English competition when I was eleven, writing about drought in Australia. I must have had a good imagination even then. I was told that I'd won the competition because of my details of the drought. Not bad, considering I'd never been to the country.
Do you have another job (paid or otherwise) apart from being an author? If so, how do you juggle your time?
I'm in the lucky position of not needing a paid 'day job'. Which is fortunate, as I walked out of my last one a few years ago.
I have the luxury of being a full-time writer. I spend most of my days in various local cafes, armed with a pad and pen. With a cappuccino close by, I write my first drafts longhand.
My only 'job' is as a creative writing tutor. I have a group of very loyal students, graduates of the beginner's creative writing course I taught over seven years ago. Some have achieved publication, and it's a privilege to share in their development and success.
What does it feel like watching your first book fledge and leave the nest?
I had a complete mix of emotions. At last I can satisfactorily answer that maddening question every writer hates: "Have you had anything published?" Now I can thrust a copy of the book at them and ask them to buy it.
When I was checking my printed proof copy I felt completely outside the story for the first time. There's something about seeing your words printed and bound up in a book that changes your relationship with them. They somehow didn't seem like mine any more.
Are you character or plot driven? What do you do if one of your characters starts developing at a tangent?
My characters appear first. For the Panthera books, I wanted my major character to be a wildlife conservationist. Cue Ren Hunter. Her brother Nic appeared when she needed some security backup on her journey. Bryn is the creator of the sentient artificial intelligence Panthera, and I wanted those two characters to be foils for each other. I read Donna Andrews' Turing Hopper Mysteries a while ago, and fell in love with Turing Hopper, her sentient AI. I wanted to create my own version of her, hence Pan.
I can't afford to let my characters go off at tangents in these books. If I did I'd be in real trouble. Death Spiral has four viewpoints, and the book I'm just finishing now, Death Song, has five. The action is woven through each viewpoint rather like a braid, and I can't let my characters derail it. I wrote a detailed chapter plan before I started writing, and I've pretty much stuck to it.
The only 'going off at a tangent' I've allowed, I guess, is Panthera's poems. Pan writes poems for himself, as a way to understand life, the universe, and everything.
If you were in a tight corner and had to rely on one of your characters to save you, which would be it and why?
No question about this one. It would have to be Nic Hunter. A veteran of Combined Forces (Earth's combined air force, navy, and land forces), he has experience of intelligence work. He's a handy guy to have around in a pinch. And it doesn't hurt that he's six foot two and broad shouldered.
If you had no constraints of time and a guarantee of publication, what book would you write?
My downfall is that I've always written what I was passionate about, and hang the publication. So I think the book I'd like to see published would be my science fiction book Snowbird. It's the first in a series of stories featuring sentient organic starship Chilai (notice a theme here?), and her creator Jian Kabana.
I've already written the second book in the series, Darius, about the orbital shipyard where most of the action is set, and I have plans for three more books in the series. The guaranteed publication offer would really concentrate my mind on developing these.
Is there a classic book you started and simply couldn't finish?
Being badly educated in secondary school, I didn't really read the classics there. And I have to confess I haven't been drawn to them later either.
The book I struggled most with was The Lord of the Rings. I had three goes at getting past page 100. I finally nailed it when I made it my summer reading task at the end of the first year at university. Now it's a much-loved book I've dipped into many times.
What's your favourite science fiction book? And why?
You want me to choose ONE? Impossible! I'll settle for two.
Number one is Anne McCaffrey's The Ship Who Searched. It's one of her 'brainship' books. In her world, paralysed humans are used as the 'brains' controlling starships, space stations, and orbital hospitals. This particular book has an archaeology theme, and explores the way pirates might work in the future. I love the relationship between the two main characters, and the archaeology setting. They still have digs in the future, but they're excavating the sites of a fabled vanished alien race.
The second book I'd choose is C J Cherryh's The Pride of Chanur. The main character, Pyanfar Chanur, is an alien, a Hani. She's the captain of a merchant starship who gets caught up in interstellar, and inter-species, diplomacy and double-dealing. If you want to know what working on a starship would be like, read this book. The details of the ship's day to day operations are stunning. It's hard to believe she's never been there for real.
What's your next project?
As usual, I have two projects on the go. I'm on the last dozen chapters of the second Panthera book, Death Song. I'm just getting to the big reveal, having my characters discover why big cats are dying/being kidnapped, and who's doing it.
My second project is editing (for the tenth time) a novel I wrote about fifteen years ago called Eyemind. My main characters, Keri Starseer and Bi, are my version of Anne McCaffrey's brain and brawn. Keri and Bi are investigating suspect interactive installation artworks that are causing people to self-harm.
Panthera: Death Spiral is available in paperback and ebook from www.amazon.co.uk
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