Guest: Post by Robyn Walker.
My guest today is Robyn Walker, a good friend for many a year. All yours, Robyn!
*~*~*
Thanks for having me on your blog, LJ.
Today I want to talk about the importance of place in stories, something that has particular resonance with ‘Coming Home’, and the 'Under The Southern Cross' anthology as a whole - neither would exist as a concept if it weren’t for the importance of place in how we view ourselves, view others and experience the world.
Back in the very early days of planning and comparing notes on the stories that would make up the anthology, I already knew that LJ’s story, ‘Body on The Beach’ was going to be set in Adelaide in the 1920s, and I had to make a decision about where to set my own. Maybe I should consider Perth? Round out the entire country by representing the West Coast? This musing only lasted about half an hour though - the Adelaide of LJ’s story is radically different than the future city I intended to build, and I had other reasons for wanting to ground the story in Adelaide instead of elsewhere. Despite the time separation of over a century, the unique flavour of our mutual home city comes through both stories - without feeling repetitious, or that Adelaide is over-represented. They complement each other, which I imagine is why the stories appear next to each other in the printed anthology.
Some places are in the unique position that, even when we are not locals, we feel as if we know them; New York, Los Angeles, and my current home of London saturate cultural media output. We are familiar and comfortable with these places, or at least their media representations, as we are the streets of our own hometowns - some times, even more so.
Writers are told to write what they know - and yet for readers who grow up outside of major urban centers, we often don’t get to read or see the ’scapes of our everyday lives. While we grow to know and identify with the lives presented ‘elsewhere’, it does not compare with the warm glow of reading or seeing a place that we know, that we’ve walked, that we’ve touched, smelt, and experienced. There’s a particular frisson that comes from having the world of fiction brush against our own real world.
The first story I read that really did this for me was in 2003. I have plenty of children’s books that Mum bought for me, or I later bought for myself, that are set in Australia - but they’re still set Elsewhere - usually in the semi-mythical Outback. Which is definitely not the lived experience of the majority of Australians, even though those myths have come to define what it means to be Australian. No, the first story where I got tingly, where I said ‘This is my home’ was a horror short story penned by Sean Williams called ‘Hunting Ground’ that I read in an anthology, Southern Blood (countering the two Adelaide stories out of five in 'Under The Southern Cross,' in this anthology, it was the only Adelaide story in a collection of sixteen).
This feeling was not because the story was set in Adelaide - it goes deeper than this. Despite the otherworldly content and its familiar cop-thriller structure, it was clear that Williams knew Adelaide. He knew which parts of the Adelaide parklands were used for gay cruising, knew the importance of dropping place names like “South Terrace”, “Veale Gardens”, and knew what an off-hand reference to roses would mean to a local when it would only provide an inconsequential detail for any other reader. And maybe this story could have been set elsewhere without it altering the story one whit, but I’m very glad he didn’t.
I remember LJ being particularly gleeful on this blog when she discovered that Aldous Mercer had woven geographically important details into his book Prince and The Program as an Easter Egg. Now Toronto is somewhere I’ve never visited, and it’s not a place I feel I know through a media filter either. Yet here’s the thing - it is precisely because it is ‘other’ that I appreciate it. The detail Mercer went into does more than just flesh out a world, it provides idiosyncrasies, that, even if I don’t know them intimately, I can appreciate either for their similarities or differences to my own lived experiences.
The stories of 'Under The Southern Cross' work for an audience that is so much larger than those who know the city and landscapes painted within its pages precisely because of this - their tales allow some of us to experience the familiar whilst simultaneously providing many readers with the exotic. Even at the micro level, these stories have deliberately retained Australian spelling and language choices which will have some of you pleasantly comfortable in a world you recognize, and have others of you deliciously unsettled, constantly reminded that these stories are very much products of somewhere Else.
The juxtaposition between the exotic and the familiar is the lynchpin of any successful fiction - part of my joy over ‘Hunting Ground’ was precisely because it had taken the city I knew and had twisted it five degrees into the uncanny. The joy to be found in both extremes explains why high science fiction and fantasy stories are consumed with the same vigour as contemporary fiction (despite some readers of speculative works decrying contemporary fiction as ‘mundane’, and some readers of contemporary fiction conversely dismissing speculative works as ‘not realistic’). And it’s why 'Under The Southern Cross' can have two historicals, two contemporaries, and one future fic (which are simultaneously a murder mystery, a sci-fi piece, a paranormal drama, an epic road saga and a slice of life) and remain a cohesive m/m romance collection all built around Australia as a place.
Coming Home
By Robyn Walker.
Blurb: In 2045, Russian-born Nick comes “home” to Australia for the funeral of an old friend. After a ten-year absence, he finds a country scarred by drought and a people scarred by technology. He grieves for Ben, whose death has left his friends bewildered. He grieves for Australia, the country that forced him to leave. But his greatest grief is for Daniel. Although Daniel is alive, it seems their friendship is dead. And Nick has no idea why.
Buy here.
Bio: Robyn Walker seems intent on proving a palm reader’s prediction of “living seven lifetimes in one life” correct. She is getting a little worried that she has only one life left, having worked as a furniture consultant, a cultural studies academic, a researcher for quiz books, a television extra, and a political candidate-as well as a writer.
Until she was eleven years of age, she could be found riding bikes or building tree-forts in Port Augusta, South Australia (pop. 15,000), before being shipped off Harry Potter-style to a boarding school in The Big Smoke City of Adelaide (pop. 1.2 million). Itchy feet found her living for a year in Berlin, Germany (pop. 3.4 million), but she stopped back in Adelaide for a decade to collect her British-born soulmate, and then follow them, in the tradition of all good Anglophiles, to London, England (pop. 8.17 million), where she still resides.
Despite seventeen years together and still using terms like “soulmate,” she strongly denies that there’s a romantic bone in her body.
The stack of reading material that travelled around the world with her begs to differ.
Robyn’s WIPs, navel-gazing, and miscellany can be found at https://www.facebook.com/robyn.walker.3386 and http://walkerrobyn.blogspot.co.uk/.
*~*~*
Thanks for having me on your blog, LJ.
Today I want to talk about the importance of place in stories, something that has particular resonance with ‘Coming Home’, and the 'Under The Southern Cross' anthology as a whole - neither would exist as a concept if it weren’t for the importance of place in how we view ourselves, view others and experience the world.
Back in the very early days of planning and comparing notes on the stories that would make up the anthology, I already knew that LJ’s story, ‘Body on The Beach’ was going to be set in Adelaide in the 1920s, and I had to make a decision about where to set my own. Maybe I should consider Perth? Round out the entire country by representing the West Coast? This musing only lasted about half an hour though - the Adelaide of LJ’s story is radically different than the future city I intended to build, and I had other reasons for wanting to ground the story in Adelaide instead of elsewhere. Despite the time separation of over a century, the unique flavour of our mutual home city comes through both stories - without feeling repetitious, or that Adelaide is over-represented. They complement each other, which I imagine is why the stories appear next to each other in the printed anthology.
Some places are in the unique position that, even when we are not locals, we feel as if we know them; New York, Los Angeles, and my current home of London saturate cultural media output. We are familiar and comfortable with these places, or at least their media representations, as we are the streets of our own hometowns - some times, even more so.
Writers are told to write what they know - and yet for readers who grow up outside of major urban centers, we often don’t get to read or see the ’scapes of our everyday lives. While we grow to know and identify with the lives presented ‘elsewhere’, it does not compare with the warm glow of reading or seeing a place that we know, that we’ve walked, that we’ve touched, smelt, and experienced. There’s a particular frisson that comes from having the world of fiction brush against our own real world.
The first story I read that really did this for me was in 2003. I have plenty of children’s books that Mum bought for me, or I later bought for myself, that are set in Australia - but they’re still set Elsewhere - usually in the semi-mythical Outback. Which is definitely not the lived experience of the majority of Australians, even though those myths have come to define what it means to be Australian. No, the first story where I got tingly, where I said ‘This is my home’ was a horror short story penned by Sean Williams called ‘Hunting Ground’ that I read in an anthology, Southern Blood (countering the two Adelaide stories out of five in 'Under The Southern Cross,' in this anthology, it was the only Adelaide story in a collection of sixteen).
This feeling was not because the story was set in Adelaide - it goes deeper than this. Despite the otherworldly content and its familiar cop-thriller structure, it was clear that Williams knew Adelaide. He knew which parts of the Adelaide parklands were used for gay cruising, knew the importance of dropping place names like “South Terrace”, “Veale Gardens”, and knew what an off-hand reference to roses would mean to a local when it would only provide an inconsequential detail for any other reader. And maybe this story could have been set elsewhere without it altering the story one whit, but I’m very glad he didn’t.
I remember LJ being particularly gleeful on this blog when she discovered that Aldous Mercer had woven geographically important details into his book Prince and The Program as an Easter Egg. Now Toronto is somewhere I’ve never visited, and it’s not a place I feel I know through a media filter either. Yet here’s the thing - it is precisely because it is ‘other’ that I appreciate it. The detail Mercer went into does more than just flesh out a world, it provides idiosyncrasies, that, even if I don’t know them intimately, I can appreciate either for their similarities or differences to my own lived experiences.
The stories of 'Under The Southern Cross' work for an audience that is so much larger than those who know the city and landscapes painted within its pages precisely because of this - their tales allow some of us to experience the familiar whilst simultaneously providing many readers with the exotic. Even at the micro level, these stories have deliberately retained Australian spelling and language choices which will have some of you pleasantly comfortable in a world you recognize, and have others of you deliciously unsettled, constantly reminded that these stories are very much products of somewhere Else.
The juxtaposition between the exotic and the familiar is the lynchpin of any successful fiction - part of my joy over ‘Hunting Ground’ was precisely because it had taken the city I knew and had twisted it five degrees into the uncanny. The joy to be found in both extremes explains why high science fiction and fantasy stories are consumed with the same vigour as contemporary fiction (despite some readers of speculative works decrying contemporary fiction as ‘mundane’, and some readers of contemporary fiction conversely dismissing speculative works as ‘not realistic’). And it’s why 'Under The Southern Cross' can have two historicals, two contemporaries, and one future fic (which are simultaneously a murder mystery, a sci-fi piece, a paranormal drama, an epic road saga and a slice of life) and remain a cohesive m/m romance collection all built around Australia as a place.
Coming Home
By Robyn Walker.
Blurb: In 2045, Russian-born Nick comes “home” to Australia for the funeral of an old friend. After a ten-year absence, he finds a country scarred by drought and a people scarred by technology. He grieves for Ben, whose death has left his friends bewildered. He grieves for Australia, the country that forced him to leave. But his greatest grief is for Daniel. Although Daniel is alive, it seems their friendship is dead. And Nick has no idea why.
Buy here.
Bio: Robyn Walker seems intent on proving a palm reader’s prediction of “living seven lifetimes in one life” correct. She is getting a little worried that she has only one life left, having worked as a furniture consultant, a cultural studies academic, a researcher for quiz books, a television extra, and a political candidate-as well as a writer.
Until she was eleven years of age, she could be found riding bikes or building tree-forts in Port Augusta, South Australia (pop. 15,000), before being shipped off Harry Potter-style to a boarding school in The Big Smoke City of Adelaide (pop. 1.2 million). Itchy feet found her living for a year in Berlin, Germany (pop. 3.4 million), but she stopped back in Adelaide for a decade to collect her British-born soulmate, and then follow them, in the tradition of all good Anglophiles, to London, England (pop. 8.17 million), where she still resides.
Despite seventeen years together and still using terms like “soulmate,” she strongly denies that there’s a romantic bone in her body.
The stack of reading material that travelled around the world with her begs to differ.
Robyn’s WIPs, navel-gazing, and miscellany can be found at https://www.facebook.com/robyn.walker.3386 and http://walkerrobyn.blogspot.co.uk/.