‘All The Murmuring Bones’ takes place in a world where the fantastical is real, where water creatures and spirits exist, yet it feels so grounded and realistic, how did you manage to walk such a fine line, and what real world inspirations did you draw from?
A friend of mine wrote an article about how you shift the reader into the “fantastic” – starting with the “ordinary world” first and making them feel at home, then introducing the unreal elements a bit at a time. I guess it’s a bit like the specious frog in increasingly hot water theory! Kelly Link does it brilliantly (“The Fairy Handbag” and “The Summer People”) and Neil Gaiman also (obviously) – the “Harlequin Valentine” is the one of his that stands out for me.
So, I started out with a world that feels recognisable and like a version of ours (except Gothic-y and almost Irish-y), then I start adding in the destabilising details until it’s clear that the world is not like ours. Eventually you’ve got a critical mass of mer, selkies, wolf-boys, kelpies, ghosts, and the reader goes “Hey, wait! How did I get here? Oh, it’s too late now, I need to find out what happens…” And if you’ve done your job as a writer well, they’ll stick with you.
When I was looking for visuals of the location of Hob’s Head and the house of Hob’s Hallow, I found images online of Howth Head and Malahide Castle, both in Ireland. While what’s in my head isn’t exactly the same, these pictures gave me a shape to start with – it’s important to me as a writer to “see” a version of the concrete setting when I’m writing.
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| Malahide Castle, Ireland |
There are a lot of fairy-tale and mythological creatures that appear in the story, were there any that you wanted to include but weren’t able to for any reason?
I try to not throw in too many creatures all at once or it just feels like fairy-tale soup, and it’s hard to distinguish one from the other. There are a lot of mythical sea creatures, but they’re in the same ballpark, so that felt to me like it worked well and helped weave the story together. I would have liked to do more with wolves, but it wasn’t really the right thing to make a focus of in this novel. But I’m doing something more with wolfish things that go sometimes on four feet, sometimes on two in a new novella called The Bone Lantern (also set in the Sourdough world), and with a character who appears in All the Murmuring Bones. And I think he’ll pop up in another story somewhere along the way …
Folk stories and fairy-tales have had something of a resurgence in recent years, with modern retellings and updates, do you think that these stories lose something of their original meanings and intentions when this happens, or are they the next step in what are evolving folk tales?
I think they’re very much cyclical. They reflect the society they’re told into and they are changed by it and in spite of it, and I think they change it in turn. Folk and fairy tales are our oldest stories. I think they’re a kind of small revolution on the tongue and in the mind because every teller tells them differently, adds something, takes something away, adapts it as required. They get sanitised by the Brothers Grim, then Perrault, then Disney … and then we take them back. Writers like Angela Carter and Tanith Lee and Marina Warner bring out their inherent darkness again. And there’s a whole new generation of writers doing that again and again, and in different ways, for example Rivers Solomon’s The Deep, Cassandra Khaw’s “And in Our Daughters, We Find a Voice”, Christina Henry’s The Girl in Red, Alix E. Harrow’s A Spindle Splintered, the Cursed Anthology from editors Marie O’Regan and Paul Kane. That’s just to name a very few. They’re tales we always pass on and on – and they evolve.
The book feels really Gothic, even when there’s nothing particularly spooky happening there are times where the story just drips with atmosphere, is this a genre that appeals to you? Did you know the book was going to have a dark quality before writing it or did it happen through the process of creating it?
I think anything I write will have darkness in it – it’s more just a question of how much! I don’t need to think about it – in fact, if I wrote something light and fluffy, someone would need to take my temperature and ask if I was feeling okay. As younger reader I read fairy and folk tales, myths and legends, and of course the full suite of the Brontës. Daphne Du Maurier, Shirley Jackson, Poe, Wilkie Collins, Henry James and M.R. James. It would have been a miracle if I hadn’t written something Gothic-y. I loved those stories as young reader even though they’re problematic – and I can see that now as an older writer, so what I try to do is reinterpret elements of those stories. Especially the really unhealthy fairy-tale “true love” elements in so many of them – hint: Mr Rochester was not a good catch! He was not misunderstood!
Miren is a really strong main character, one who always feels has a plan, who knows her own mind, even when others around her are plotting things or trying to manipulate her. Was it difficult writing someone like her, who is so competent and strong, yet is being pushed around by others?
She wasn’t difficult to write – I think we get so many heroines who are pushed around and so we’re only supposed to feel sorry for them when they’re get gin kicked. And we only expect them to become active after extreme ill treatment. I like to think that Miren actually starts plotting to extricate herself from this situation well before that – but things move more quickly than expected. She also thinks, for a wee while, that others around her might be reasonable – but once she realises they aren’t going to be, she becomes very pragmatic and ruthless to save herself. You’ve got this dichotomy with her that she’s been brought up to be obedient by someone she loves BUT that someone (or those someones) have also taught her to be strong and to think for herself. So Aoife and Óisín sort of made a bit of a rod for their own backs. And the example she had in front of her for her entire life was her grandmother Aoife, who was very strong and very wilful – and what you can see, you can be. So she picked the characteristics of her grandmother than would serve her best, but also I think rejected the ones that were really selfish and unfair.
I loved the journey Miren went on after she left home, and the things she encountered as she crossed the country, were there any other small adventures along the way that you almost included?
No, I had a very strong idea of this journey between two houses – and showing the differences between the two, but also the similarities. The fairy-tale version of story very much came out the way I had imagined it in the first place.
The story had a lot happen in it, with Miren leaving her home, searching for her parents, and then the mystery that happens once she reaches her parents’ home, were you ever tempted to split the book up, to have one book with her journey to her parents and another on what she finds there?
Again, no. I felt it would not have stretched over two books. I wanted that contained adventure and a definitive ending rather than writing a never-ending series of sequels. I’ve written three mosaic collections set in this world and what I love is the nature of the shorter tales that are interlinked – so doing a “proper” novel in this world really only had one shape for me. And I really like the emotional highs and lows of this book, which I don’t think I’d have been able to maintain as well stretched over a larger frame.
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| Sourdough and Other Short Stories, & The Bitterwood Bible |
‘All The Murmuring Bones’ is a part of the same universe as your ‘Sourdough’ and ‘Bitterwood’ story collections, what kind of things can readers who liked this book find there, and can we learn more about the briefly mentioned vampire kingdom in those books?
Sourdough and Other Stories, The Bitterwood Bible and Other Recountings, and The Tallow-Wife and Other Tales (Tartarus Press) are all mosaic collections set in this same world. They stretch across several centuries, there are some long-lived characters who recur over the three books so we get to see them as young women, middle-aged women, then some as crones, but also some as eternal creatures. There’s also a novella called Of Sorrow and Such (Tor.com) that revisits some of the characters. Basically you’ll get fairy-tale creatures, witches, monsters, a lot of determined female characters who know their own minds and fight for what they want and need in the world. The Tallow-Wife and Other Tales actually has a cross-over with All the Murmuring Bones in the form of a character called Bethany Lawrence – you get her early story in the collection, but you can absolutely read them as standalones. Another thing you can have a look at and download a free ebook at the Brain Jar Press website – it’s a novelette called “No Good Deed” and it’s about the ancestress of Bethany Lawrence from way back in the Sourdough mists of time.
I guess my stories always have a darkness to them, but I also hope there’s hope for them. Characters come out battered, but I think wiser, but generally they do come out alive!
Your blog features articles on other writers’ work, and you offer services to help others with story development and editing, is having a good sense of community in the publishing world something you believe in?
It is! I didn’t really find much of a one when I started writing. I didn’t come up through any fandoms so I had no connections or community. I try my best to encourage a sense of community and networking among writers. Just trying to be helpful where you can, sharing opportunities, helping to spotlight authors in different areas who don’t have the same chances for exposure. Trying to encourage other people too, to offer a hand to those lower on the ladder, so it’s not just about a few people all doing the helping, but something everyone thinks to do automatically. That’s a pipedream, obviously, but one lives in hope! And always remembering that this business is a game of snakes and ladders – one three-book deal doesn’t make a career, you won’t always be the top of the pile – but also, one three-book series that doesn’t sell well also doesn’t necessarily end a career either. So, be nice to people when you’re on your way up, because you mind want them to remember you kindly when you’re sliding down …
What can readers expect from you after ‘All The Murmuring Bones’?
I’m finishing off another gothic fantasy for Titan (currently) called Morwood. I keep describing it as a kind of fairy-tale Frankenstein … has the character of Asher Todd travelling to a remote house to become a governess. The family there seems respectable – but of course they’re not really. But Asher has her own secrets and her own agenda. And there are the usual sorts of creatures you expect of a Sourdough world story, and a new city – the university city of Whitebarrow where doctors learn their trade and join forces with the princes of the church to try and wipe out witchcraft. But the university library holds some surprising secrets. And Asher will do some terrible, terrible things. So, a cheery little tome!
And as I said before, I’m finishing off a novella The Bone Lanter, which is three nested tales also set in the Sourdough world.
After that, I have two uncontracted Sourdough novels to finish, The Briar Book of the Dead and The Crimson Road.
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