Transcript
[0:00] Hello, and welcome to Mythmakers. Mythmakers is the podcast for fantasy fans
[0:05] and fantasy creatives, brought to you by the Oxford Centre for Fantasy. My name is Julia Golding. And today, I am delighted to be joined by my friend, who is also published by HarperCollins, Helen, well, her name on the book, because it's slightly different from how I know her, is Helen Glynn Jones. And her book that's just been published is called The Last Raven. Before we get down to talking about that, Helen, hello, welcome to Mythmakers.
[0:38] Hello, thank you for having me. So let's start where all of us start. We are going to throw you back in the time machine to being that, young girl who probably loved reading, I'm guessing, and was going around the books of the library and bookshops what were the kind of fantasy books that were your the spark that got you interested in writing um so um I did read a lot as a child and and still do not perhaps as much as I used to but uh yeah so my favorite my fantasy favorites when I was younger were Narnia of course I absolutely devoured those books adored them still do still read them now I also loved Alan Garner, The Owl Service, The Weird Stound. I remember I still can feel that claustrophobic feeling I felt. There's that bit where they go underground and they're in those really tight little tunnels and they almost get stuck. And, oh, it just stayed with me, that wonderful feeling and the way he wrote it and give us that feeling.
[1:45] One of my absolute favorites, though, is Susan Cooper's Darkest Rising series, which is just, I mean, I just think that is utterly, utterly brilliant. I wish we'd known each other as little girls because they're all the ones I absolutely adored. The funny thing, you mentioning the Alan Garner thing, I've been having a bit of an Alan Garner moment because I went to hear his daughter and Robert Powell talk about his work because he's just turned 90.
[2:12] And it reminded me that the weird stone, as you said, I always thought when I picked off the shelf I always thought it was the weird stone of brisingarman because you don't know how to say it no I don't I still don't it's the weird stone of brisingarman I think is how you actually say it is it okay yeah it's one of those words where you embarrass yourself when you meet you know the the Alan Garner fan who knows exactly how it's yeah that's why I didn't say it yeah, um and the just going just picking up also on the Narnia um I've been listening to Narnia recently from projects I'm doing, and I decided rather than read it, I'd get the Audible versions of it. And there's an absolutely fabulous collection, if anyone's wanting to cheer themselves up. And I particularly recommend Kenneth Branagh reading The Magician's Nephew. Oh, and I mean, it's got Derek Jacoby reading The Dawn Treader and Patrick Stewart reading The Last Battle. Oh, amazing. I must get that.
[3:24] So that's a little Christmas treat for people if they're listening to this. We're about to go into Christmas here. If you're listening to it just before Christmas, put that on your list.
[3:32] Yeah, so obviously I completely understand you, Helen. I feel as though we were a very similar kind of child. You've also travelled a lot in your life. And so were you born in, you've got a little bit of an Aussie twang to your voice. So at what point did Australia happen in your life? So I was born in the UK. I grew up in Coventry, but we moved to Canada when I was 11. And I lived there for about 14 years until I met my husband who happens to be Australian so I went out to Australia for what was supposed to be a year and ended up staying for 17,
[4:15] and then came back here a few years ago. Yes I couldn't quite pigeonhole it as Australia but it's some melange there maybe a bit of Canada too it's a fascinating sort of accent you've landed on, um so the last raven we'll talk in more detail about it but it is it has a use of the vampire myth when you were traveling around the world did you pick up different versions of the vampire myth or do you feel we've all now settled fully on the i suppose the gentleman vampire aspect.
[4:51] Yeah i it's interesting um i think, Among indigenous cultures in North America and in Australia, there are legends of creatures that are bloodsuckers. There's the Wendigo in First Nations cultures in North America.
[5:16] It was human, but it committed a terrible crime and it got transformed into this creature that preys on humans and it's immortal unless you manage to kill it in a very specific way. and that's somewhat vampiric. And the skinwalkers who also prey on humans are hard to kill, but they actually mesmerise humans into doing terrible things, perhaps creating wendigos in the process, who knows. So there are sort of vampiric legends, and the Australian Aboriginal culture in the South particularly have a, legend of a creature that lives in the trees and sucks blood but it was never human so there's well there are things that seem to have them it's interesting because a lot of cultures around the world seem to have stories of blood sucking monsters of some sort but they're not um, They don't always have all the characteristics of the so-called European, the gentleman vampire that seemed to emanate in Europe. Yeah, so that came out in the sort of beginning of the 19th century, largely thanks to Byron. Yes. John Polidori wrote a short story called The Vampire, and then that led to Bram Stoker and the rest is Twilight history.
[6:38] That's where it's gone. having said which um you you don't i wouldn't really class your vampires as um gentleman vampires but they have more of the element of not being so bestial which i think there is a version of the vampire which is much more of a more like the werewolf in the sense it's more sort of creaturely yeah yeah these vampires are not monstrous at all no no no but they are they are monsters so tell us a little bit about what happens in your story actually that's a good moment to explore your world a bit more um so um the story began it actually sort of began as a germ of an idea i used to blog quite a lot and a friend of mine posted a blog prompt which was monster and i thought humans were quite monstrous so i came up with this this character came to me this young girl and her parents were vampires she was human and she was the monster in the relationship or in the world that they lived in it was a world ruled by vampires and she was um basically a genetic throwback um of vampires human dna they can have live children and sometimes they're born human rather than vampire um and it was just this little piece of flash fiction but her voice was so strong that stayed with me and um and then more characters began to appear like Kyle, the bodyguard who, and as soon as he appeared, I thought, well, this is going to be a romance.
[8:05] And so, yeah, I wanted it to be, so basically the book is about, it's about Amelia who is about to turn 18 and inherit half the planets.
[8:16] It is our world, but it's sort of a step sideways from our world in that it is now ruled by vampires. And the House of Raven, which Amelia belongs to, is they rule over Europe and North America. And it's tradition that the vampire takes over at 18 because it stops the line stagnating because vampires live such long lives. But because she's human, she's essentially been kept in the dark most of her life in many ways. Her parents have done it to protect her, but she's incredibly naive.
[8:51] What she does know, though, is that she does not want to be the heir. And so this new guard comes into her life. She's got a new personal guard because she's about to step up and become, you know, the anointed heir. And this new guard comes along and she sees him as a way out. And she wants to go and live among humans but she finds that perhaps human life isn't what she thought it was going to be because they are essentially cattle they're they're farmed yes um it's sort of across the barricades type love story in in a way um funny what you just said reminds me a bit of what's it called warm vile bodies or warm no warm body is the one with The fact where the zombies are another culture outside the gates of the city, which is all human. That idea of seeing the humanity in the other population, which is regarded as being monstrous, is a wonderful theme to explore. So you've mentioned it's romance. I wouldn't say it was entirely romantic, though.
[9:54] I'm not going to go too far down that. But there is obviously a very strong association between vampires and romance in the genre, if you look at all the books that have been written in the urban fantasy genre, for example. I'm sure we can all name lots of authors who have done this. Why do you think people think this marriage of love and vampires go together like a horse and cow? Carriage um because you know I've got some theories on this but I would like to hear yours first um so I mean first I'll say for me Raven is a romance because she gets a happily ever after but it's not the one that the reader expects yeah and because it's a series there is more of a romantic arc to okay going forward so but yes i agree it's it's not traditionally structured perhaps yeah without giving away anything um but uh i do think i mean i think going back to what you're saying about byron and and polidori and byron being this like handsome romantic figure that he based the vampire on and from there i also think dracula dracula is a love story really once you get past the horror and the gore it's a love story that spans time and.
[11:19] There's um i think it's the idea of somebody who is immortal somebody who is powerful somebody who is intriguing and beautiful and forever young becomes a romantic figure and then you also have the elements of darkness you have the elements of i mean if we're going to dig down to it you've got the elements of penetration you've got the elements of blood and body fluids and being in the darkness with somebody and it all lends itself to romance if you get past the whole blood sucking thing yeah I think actually well that's obviously got an erotic charge to it yeah um you know that's how it works yeah but the I think there's also an element of it has rules because one of the things that make romances work is when there are rules um so if you look at jane austen for example there are etiquette rules of how you you know how many dances you have with someone if you if you write a letter to them that's actually mr darcy's letter to elizabeth a shocking thing in her time he shouldn't really be writing to her we we don't get that.
[12:26] Now but yes the reader at the time would have thought oh gosh he's really gone outside the normal protocol um and i think within vampires if it's a a vampire to human romance there's that sense of well we've got rules in this relationship which have broken are dangerous it's not like the you get an unmarried mother pregnancy thing it's it's you you could die oh yeah you need to turn into a vampire there's all sorts of other things going on there and I think putting rules in a romance the harder you make it for a couple to get together the the better the romance is if it's just.
[13:04] Internet dating yes I like you there's no drama you know yeah so I do think there is a gap in the market for an internet dating vampire novel I'm sure someone's probably done it but that'd be quite fun yeah maybe you should write it you haven't done a vampire novel yet um it'd be quite fun um so how would you categorize your um your series in the age range so the the cover has a graphic cover of a lovely graphic cover of um the two young people at the heart of the first part in this series um but would you say i thought that the content was definitely upper end of young adult going into what was briefly called new adult. I don't know if it still exists as a category, but it seemed quite helpful, I think, to signal that this is somebody going into a mature world with mature themes.
[14:01] Or do you think it's an adult? Because I mean, it could. No, I think it's very much that upper end of young adult into new adult, as you say, So that's sort of maybe 17 to early 20s kind of age. And yeah. Because of that, within that genre, you tend to get books that are a little bit faster paced and not quite as long as some of the adult fantasy novels that are out there, adult-grown fantasy novels.
[14:34] I think it fits into those categories because of the age of the protagonist and the life changes that they're going through. You know, Amelia is figuring out who she is. She's growing as a person. She's taking her first steps into the world in a lot of ways. And there's a world of difference in preference, in the type of things that a 13-year-old reader and an 18-year-old reader would want to read. Yet they're both said to be served by YA, which is why you do get such a broad
[15:05] range of books within that. So mine is definitely at the upper end. yeah no i mean it's it's it's always frustrating with this age range thing because i i really feel it should be this is a minimum age for reading not a maximum so i think there's a lot of um, enjoyment that adults can get from ya novels but they may feel they don't go to those shelves because they oh someone's looking at me if i go there so i would encourage you to to roam in a bookshop um because there are a lot such great ya that's written so you mentioned just then that it's a coming of age story and yes and amelia definitely has a wonderful character arc very satisfying character arc in this where she gets finds her power uh definitely which is always wonderful um.
[15:50] So thinking back, do you remember reading some coming of age stories that have sort of meant a lot to you or life lessons that you were sort of putting into this, putting into The Last Raven?
[16:04] So I think for me, and I'll actually go back to what you're saying before too, but the age ranges, because there wasn't when I was a youngster, there wasn't really any of that. I was reading like Flowers in the Attic when I was 13, which was perhaps not the best. Yeah, so was I. It was a bit in the club, wasn't it? We literally, we're like the same person when it comes to books.
[16:23] But you know, it's quite, and I don't think that was necessarily a bad thing, but I do love that there's this whole genre and age range that is targeted to that audience because it kind of keeps the reading going rather than chucking them into adult books at the age of 13. Anyway, I digress. coming of age so coming of age I was kind of I think for me I find in a lot of young adult fantasy books that a lot of the teenage protagonists tend to be fully formed they're kind of they you come into the story and they've already had their six years as an assassin or you know running a brothel or whatever it is they're doing and they're kind of and then they sort of go off on their adventure and they're in a way they're kind of fully formed even though they're still teenagers at a time when a lot of kids are actually figuring things out. So it was actually really important to me that Amelia started the book completely naive and just angry with everybody and making silly choices because that's who she is at that point in time because she is so sheltered. Now I was kind of thinking, I know Will is still quite young at the end of the Darkest Rising series, but he is very, very much changed by what happens to him. And I do think that for me is a little bit of a coming of age story. Like he's still, I think he's only sort of 14 at the end of Dark is Rising, but he still has this.
[17:48] This incredible change within him that he goes through from the start of the first book to the end of the last book um i think dark materials is another one that's really great um uh the way that lyra becomes who she becomes at the end of at the end of that and um and i will also add in anna of green gables yes yes i was gonna say that oh yeah they're so wonderful and you get to go all the way through to her and having kids and her kids growing up which I just think is marvelous and another shout out for a little house on the prairie series because that is another series which follows obviously more of a real life story that one follows a family through it is fascinating to give enough scope for a child to grow into an adult because it is the most interesting stage.
[18:40] To read about really i mean the same thing obviously happens in harry potter uh you know give a book per year and naturally everybody is growing up um and he he has a few years where he's angry and a bit unfocused which is it's quite horrible yeah it's natural um so i think having a series where you can explore a character's um maturation like that is, is a wonderful place to go. Uh, and I think the other, just, we also mentioned early on the Narnia stories, but I was reminded that even though they're obviously very clearly for children, there is an element of sadness in all of them where they're told, you cannot come back to Narnia again, not to find me in your world. Um.
[19:34] He slightly fudges that by killing them all off in the last couple so they don't get to grow up. Except for Susan. Except for Susan, yeah. She likes lipstick and more sexies. Maybe she gets there later. I suspect she gets there by the long term. I do too, yeah.
[19:51] But I remember finding that quite difficult. How can you not be allowed to go back to Narnia?
[19:56] And I think one of the lessons I've learned of growing up is that feeling of, well, you've got to find your magic in the world that we live in not just in where you've escaped to in your reading so that was a good life lesson I felt um so one of the most again I'm going to be careful about not giving it away but there is a very I would say that I would call this a betrayal plot that is the major twist in the story so we're not going to talk about who is betrayed by whom but um I was thinking about how powerful that was as a plot line at what point did you did you start with that idea or did it just emerge as you were writing no I knew I knew that the betrayal would happen when I once the book started taking shape I knew that was going to be a I'm trying really hard not to say anything away I knew that would be a pivotal moment and so the clues are actually there in throughout the book there are there are moments um and a couple of people have said to me after reading they've gone oh yeah actually like when I look back now I can kind of see that the.
[21:21] Amelia is growing and she's making choices, but she's still with somebody. She's, you know, she's, she's, she's got somebody backing her.
[21:30] She's got a guard with her. She's got somebody behind her. And this was a moment where it was just her and she had to choose. And it was it was a moment where she had to choose whether to dig in and embrace who she was or crumble because she could have gone either way she could have just given up in the face of the betrayal and and you know then there wouldn't be any more books in the series well yeah well there's that yeah it was kind of like you know that moment where um you know where the loved one dies in another book for example or in a film or something where the loved one dies or the dog dies or something and it spurs the main character onto that final push to self-realization I suppose of who they are and what they really really want. They have to choose what they really want in that moment and you know it's one or the other and that's what I wanted that moment to be for her is that bit that pushed her to the next level. I mean, the interesting thing from a sort of technical point of view of writing is that a betrayal plot where your main character is the one being betrayed is it makes them the victim of other people's decisions.
[22:47] And so that could be passive. But actually, it shows you how it's the response to something, The decision that you take when...
[23:01] You know the scales fall from your eyes and you realize what's going on that is what's that what makes you the protagonist of this tale rather than it being the person who's plotting um yes.
[23:11] What you do in that moment that defies you as a protagonist is that and the other sort of technical thing i was thinking you it was worth raising here that you mentioned was how without giving it away a red flag this person is up to no good you know you actually have to also put in elements which mean that the betrayal feels earned it's exactly like doing a murder mystery or a thriller you've got to plant in the oh yes of course they were um moment for the reader otherwise it feels unfair that if you suddenly say you know oh yeah you've got to like actually everything i wrote It's got to seed it. It can't just drop from the sky and happen. It's, yeah, it's got to be seeded all the way through and, yeah. Particularly, that's particularly true when it's a first person narrative and you're not breaking away from that person's viewpoint. Because obviously if you're doing more than one viewpoint, you can actually show somebody else plotting or hinting that they're plotting. Yes so i've written um psychological thriller with half collins a while ago under my pen name joss sterling and that's a really interesting genre to write in because there you're holding out that you're balancing this thing that everybody is untrustworthy in it so that's another way of doing betrayal is that you can actually not have any.
[24:38] Any center to the novel so nobody, you don't know who is, who's on what side in, you know, that is quite a difficult thing to write actually, technically. But it's a great fun challenge.
[24:51] So where are you going to go next with your writing? I think we've just got a hint that the series continues. Have you got a title for your next part? Yes. So I only have a working title at the moment, so I won't share it because it may change, but I do have it. Probably you will. I always get this. Yeah, probably you will. You know, Charlotte and co, one more chapter, they say, actually, thanks for your title, but here you go. This one, this one's better. And they're correct. Probably, yeah. Yeah, so I have written the second book. It is now, I have just received edits. So that's where I'm going next. But the third book, which is what wraps it up, it's a trilogy, is I am writing that too. And then I've got a couple of other new story ideas, which are more high fantasy. They're not set in this world. I've got a couple of those sort of bubbling under. But yeah, at the moment, I'm still very much in the land of Raven.
[25:51] Do you enjoy the process of being edited? Or is it something that you sort of have to grit your teeth to actually read the letter that tells you what's wrong with your script?
[26:04] Um a little bit of both uh no i do i do actually really enjoy it because it is fresh eyes we get so close to our work and i think the role of an editor is just so valuable um, So, I enjoy, yeah, it's like when you get the email, it's like, oh my gosh, and you just have to, as you say, grit your teeth and like go, okay, a little bit at a time, I'll just go through it. But once I actually get into it, I do really enjoy the process of teasing, you know, teasing out the story a little bit more, getting it out of the tangles of the first draft. I think it's always quite interesting editing your editor's editorial letter because when I usually print it off and I go and look at it and I think okay this first paragraph is the let's make Julia feel okay about herself paragraph so I'm not going to take too much notice of that because that's just stopping me having a freak out where it really starts is, the first subheading yes you know so once you've had enough of these you sort of get used to it But I think it's don't write for a publication if you can't take editing because it's such a huge privilege of getting someone skilled in story to help you improve. It's absolutely wonderful. And I would say I've been edited by Charlotte Ledger for a while.
[27:32] And she is just so canny. And it's a question if you start reading you think yeah oh yeah I had an inkling that there was oh yes I thought maybe there was something wrong there so I might get away with that but I'm not going to you're quite right no one's going to understand what's going on there yeah so um I've learned to love it I think you love it you do yeah yeah yeah I have Charlotte as well and she is, she's amazing, isn't she? She just, she can hone in on these wonderful details and the book is better. I'm like, I know the book will be better. I'm just, slightly daunted by the huge email yes if i think the one of the daunting aspects of it is they do editors do try and break it down for you but once you start shifting pieces around.
[28:26] It's it's like everything shifts that's that's the tricky thing so you have to keep your whole story in your head and and make sure it doesn't sort of start to bits don't start to drop off as you start changing out other bits um it's a real yeah if you pull one thread yeah it's it's it's like you've taken all the toys out of the box you've got to figure out how to put them all back in again isn't it because the last edit i had for charlotte is in broad terms it was.
[28:56] Everything's working really well except for the end we really like how the drama of the end but we don't like the setup of the drama of the end and you're thinking well how can i keep the drama of the end oh gosh without this it was it was really tricky because they wanted way back they want you want they want they wanted something but so I had to sort of um what I do I don't know if you're the same is I leave it the most difficult parts of the edit I leave to do to the end, and I sort of let it bubble away and eventually the answer pops up and sometimes it comes through having made the other changes yes yeah I'm exactly the same I do that's exactly what I do I just have to let it simmer for a while and then oh yeah that that's what I need to do there so don't panic you know it's the don't yeah yeah I know it's uh but as you say it is it is a privilege I think it's a privilege as well I feel very fortunate to be able to work with somebody like Charlotte who's just so, so very good at what she does. Yeah.
[30:05] So, Helen, you've done many forms of writing during your life, including blogging. Do you do blogging still? Are you on Substack? Are you doing that kind of thing? Or are you moving to some form now? Yeah, I was on WordPress back when WordPress was. Yeah, it keeps moving where the thing is. I'm not on Substack. I'm thinking about it. But at the moment, I'm just...
[30:29] It's just time really. I haven't blogged in a long time. I used to blog, I mean, if you, if someone was to go to my blog, they'd find like 800 posts, they'd find little bits of The Last Raven in there because as I say, it started as a blog prompt and then I started writing other little scenes as they came to me and I would share some of them on the blog without giving too much away.
[30:48] Um, yeah, so it's, uh, I do ghostwriting as well. So I'm working on a ghost writing project at the moment and i've got edits going on and um i used to write content for other people but i don't have really time for that at the moment yeah well i don't have time to write my own content and then advertising then as you say there's the promotional side of things too isn't there there's doing all the the various social medias it's a lot yeah no you've got a full plate so um to finish off we always have a little bit of a thought experiment where we allow ourselves to go into any of the fantasy worlds ever written so you can go into susan cooper's world you can go into star trek or narnia or whatever the world of dracula it doesn't matter um so where in all the fantasy worlds is the best place for something and i thought in honor of the last raven where in all the fantasy worlds is the best place to become a vampire now i've got this very specifically as become a vampire because i don't mean a world where it's already good idea to be one one where you are turned into one where do you think would be a good good place for that.
[32:09] I don't think narnia no it doesn't seem it doesn't probably find yourself with the wags and the ruses and yeah you'd be in the yeah you wouldn't be like which is contingent yeah absolutely yeah um i did i actually kind of thought this world really is i think the best world to be a vampire um i think this world has a lot of darkness in it so there's enough darkness to to shield shield a creature of the night um if i was to choose if i was to actually choose a fantasy realm, then it probably would be something like Star Trek or Star Wars because I think the.
[32:49] I think the more fantasy realms, I think it would be difficult to set into existing magic systems and all that kind of thing to be this creature. I think it would be quite difficult if vampires do not exist in that world to be a vampire. You'd either be hunted or you'd end up ruling the place. And I don't think either path would be easy. so I think perhaps worlds that worlds like like Star Trek is an incredibly diverse world so being a vampire there is probably going to be pretty it's going to be okay you're going to be accepted for who you are because that seems to be the message behind stuff I think in a similar vein uh-huh I think that probably you could imagine a story where you're like the Doctor who's assistant and you get turned into a vampire and he would make sure you end up in a world where it's like the dark side of the moon where he'd find you or she would find you a place that you could exist comfortably comfortably I suppose one of the good things about the twilight world.
[34:00] Um no I'm not particularly attracted to always going to American high school it was a bit the cullen choice bizarre choice and but at least there was a vegetarian, vampire option um and you got sparkly skin yeah yeah i know i did always wonder about the high school thing like you're literally 117 years old or something and you want to go hang out with a bunch of teenagers yeah it's anything you wanted you've got loads of money you could go anywhere do anything and go to high school yeah but i think on the whole i'll choose my doctor who idea because i think we'd find a good place to to be a vampire i wouldn't want to be a vampire here you wouldn't no not on earth i can't think of a story where it's a good idea, but uh anyway thank you so much helen for joining us and all the best with um this series does the series have a series title or is it going to be called the last raven um it is called the ravens The Ravens. Okay. Good luck with Ravens, part two and three. And thank you very much for coming to talk to us. Thank you so much for having me. It's been a pleasure.
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