The Anna Tambour Interview

[knivesout]

Anna Tambour, a new writer of fantastic fiction, consented to answer a few questions submittedby the members of Chronicles. Here are her answers to our questions!

1. I would be interested to know what inspired Ms. Tambour to take on
the venerable deal-with-the-devil theme, in Spotted Lily, and how she
was able to bring a fresh sensibility to an old story and create
something so striking and original.

I must backtrack here. First, I had to construct wings of filmy imagination over a skeleton of history, facts, and other narratives; the muscles and sinews were composed of passion. The 'deal' is only the cliff edge from which I jumped.


2. Also, was the choice of an Australian setting something you had any
doubts about? Will you continue to work in this real-life-with-a-twist
mode in future? What attracts you to it?

I enjoyed setting much of the book in Australia, partly because so few books are, partly because so many Australians are frightened to, and partly because, having travelled quite a bit and lived in many places, I hoped to show what mightn't be noticed--or perhaps more accurately, be recognised as fascinating. In the short story, "Strange Incidents in Foreign Parts" I wrote, "Every place is exotic to someplace else." Even the "Australia" in "Spotted Lily" is an assortment of exotics--places and people.

People who live in New York, Bangalore, London and Sydney have more in common with each other than that Sydneyite does with someone who lives, as the sayings go, "out the back of Burke", "beyond the black stump", "out in the woop woops" in Australia.

"English" is also something I love to play with, and had a chance to do in "Spotted Lily". It's important, I think, to celebrate the differences, as illustrated in real life by our politicians and the Americans'. One "great Aussie tradition" is swearing. And it is in swearing that the gravity-pull of the USA is most obvious. Our expressions are flattening, becoming mindlessly dull and meaningless, yet some imagination and colour remain. Not for us, Dick Cheney's "**** yourself" to the a US senator. Here, a recent senator-to-senator to-do had one accusing another of "blowing out the back of your arse", and the insulted one blithely replying, "the only conclusion I can draw is that Senator Heffernan is definitely not a morning person."

3. Where did you learn to write so well about food?

Thank you for enjoying it! Where does anyone learn to write about something they really feel and deeply enjoy? From the viscera, I guess. When I write, I feel and taste and see everything. I hear the people, see the room, smell the air. Food is a piece of cake to write about, as it fills every sense to overflowing.

4. I note that 'Spotted Lily' is Anna's first published novel. I'd
like to know how many books she has written before, if any, that did
not make it into print. Also, whether the publication of this first
book has led to either ideas, or deals for further books.

My collection, "Monterra's Deliciosa & Other Tales &" (Prime, 2003) was my first book. "Spotted Lily" is my second book and the first novel I've written. I'm writing my second novel now.

5. Is Spotted Lily the work of a life time, or just one step toward
that life time's work?

Being my first novel, and written at a time in history that demands response, it must be both the sum of thoughts and experiences, and an interaction with the world. "Spotted Lily" was a highly emotional novel for me to write, and I was often laughing and crying at the same time as I bashed it out on my masochistic keyboard. But just as I'd hate to be singing "Brown Sugar" forty years after I wrote it, I hope that there are many other books in me. The world is a gloriously weird place.

6. What drew you to fantastic fiction? What kind of authors inspired
you to take to this genre?

My favourite fiction is warm, wry, passionate, and true--all at the same time. That means that it is often fantastic, as truth is often told more effectively when it is fantastic. Some authors who inspire me are Gogol, Ilya Ilf and Eugene Petrov, Swift, Daudet, Bangs, Desani and three other writers of the fantastic: Saki and Wodehouse and James Herriot, all of whom put aspects of truth under their microscope and showed them so enlarged that they became fantastic.

7. Naming characters drives me absolutely batty(er). I'd like to hear
what Ms. Tambour has to say about how she names characters - where
does she find names, how does she decide which names fit which
characters, does she use names symbolically?

Ah, names. They're fascinating, and intimidating to so many writers. But they needn't be (I say this having the damndest time naming a cat or dog). Without knowing a person, just knowing the name gives you a feeling about that person, doesn't it? A name can be as misleading as a voice, but even after you know the person, the name can influence you. So what I do about names is try to let them happen, and for that to occur, the person must be firstly so real that I can smell their sweat (or perfume). Every person I write about is so real to me that I think I know what they would do in a certain situation, but learn from them when they do it. Often characters are contrarian, and if they are, then I know that they have truly taken over my mind. It's this reality that I try to plug into, for names. Sometimes names come without me consciously thinking of them. They literally come into a sentence. Other times it's not so easy and that's when I trawl through my ever-growing name collection, looking for inspiration.

That said, I often play with names of minor characters, and of things, brands, and places. Sometimes there is an element of symbolism but more often, there's a pun in there. I like puns that work on the basis that if you don't get it, there's nothing lost and you don't even know it's a pun; but if you do get it, enjoyment zings you--not the upmanship kind of enjoyment--"I know, which elevates me above the masses of buttheads" (I hate that sort of insecurity masquerading as knowingness)--but the zing of aha! ahhh. Ha!

"Spotted Lily" is mined with punning names though not for the two main characters. Oddly enough, "Angela" in Spotted Lily was Angela (because she *is*, you see?) before I noticed that, duh! her name is crayon-and-dull-scissors level crudely obvious symbolism. I'm sure it wasn't a Freudian slip of mine. I'm no subscriber to Freud, and she *is* Angela.

8. I'd also like to know whether Anna felt that getting her anthology
of shorts published in any way contributed towards her getting a deal
for her novel. Does she see writing short stories as a good
preparation for writing novels, or does she view the two disciplines
completely differently?

The anthology gave me both the opportunity and the freedom to write this novel, and more importantly, to write it as I wanted it writ. In pragmatic terms, writing short stories is a good preparation for writing novels, because
1) It can be hard to get a novel published with no track record, unless you are a great networker.
2) It's harder to write short stories, so writing short stories makes you a better writer.
2a) I also recommend that anyone who wants to write fiction (and please! essays) first become a great haikuist. Real haiku isn't three lines, so many words. It's a distillation of a moment into a distinct form with very very few words. Some of the tightest editing in the world is being done to haiku. I think that the philosophy of a writer being someone who does x-thousand words a day can be toxic to unborn stories and books. Talking without stop is something that is no gift to the world. Saying something, something worth saying, and saying it so that infects others--now that is something of immense worth; and that isn't done by the number of words, but by the *choice* of words. Teaching conciseness forces us to (let's change metaphors for a moment) jump off a boat wearing our words. What will be kept and what jettisoned?

The first reason I mention haiku is that I think that more good by far would be done to more writers if they scrapped the x-thousand words a day idea and went instead, for one bloody good haiku a day. A haiku, by the way should read as if it were written effortlessly. It has no annoying look-at-me showmanship. In something around 10 words, it observes something often at first glance (and mostly, haiku are about what doesn't get a first glance) irrelevant to the Big Picture, and ends with an aha that leaves the reader's mind ringing with implications. The second--and for aspiring writers, most important reason--that I recommend haiku is because any writer who learns to deal with an editing process that can be extremely rigorous *over 10 words*, is a writer. A writer is not a writer, I don't think, unless a writer can understand the relationship that a writer *can have* with a brilliant editor.

All of this diversion is to say that yes, I think that it is important to write short stories (and write short forms of all kinds, essays included) before contemplating a novel. I also think that they should be written *after* and sometimes *while*writing novels. Frederick Forsythe's "There Are No Snakes in Ireland" is one of my favourite short stories, yet I find his novels sloppy. If he were to try to write a short story even approaching his great one in quality, maybe he'd write a great novel rather than just another.

Short stories are often seen as stepping stones, and many readers are prejudiced against short stories; but I actually *prefer* short stories and that strange creature, the novella. They can be more insidious, infecting more successfully, often without the infected target being aware of what has happened. (I always want to infect, and look for writing that can infect me and change some of my perceptions forever.) Lastly and so appropriately in this too-long answer: Novels, even widely acclaimed ones, often suffer from a self-indulgence that short fiction doesn't get away with as much, and in the case of haiku, ha!

9. Will you ever write a cook book?

^*&^~#*!!!! (That's meant to read as no discernable word.) I'd love to. Would anyone want it?

10. Anna seems to have a marked penchant for writing fables. My
question is, was it a conscious decision ("the age we live in seems to
be deficient in the production of new fables -- if no one else wants
to write them, I will"), or just the way her mind works naturally?

I didn't know I had this penchant, though taking stories that you can read from my site: "Temptation of the Seven Scientists" is fable style through and through. I thought it the best way to say something about modern life, aspects of which are timeless. "Strange Incidents in Foreign Parts" and "Klokwerk's Heart" are magic realism, aren't they (I'm rotten with genre)? "Me-too" is science fiction. "The Wages of Food-Play" and "The Emperor's Backscratcher" play with history and historical philosophical trends. What genre they would be is your guess. I'm clueless. " Travels with Robert Louis Stevenson in the Cevennes" is straight Robert-Louis-Stevensonian. I wrote it after reading his "Travels with a Donkey in the Cevennes".

I don't write any story thinking of how it relates to what's out there, what is being written in a larger sense. I only write in the tone that I think the story demands. What that is called, I have only begun to learn as I read other people's classifications.

11. What would you recommend as a good starting point for someone new
to your work?

I'm fortunate that there are stories and some essays that you can read online, on sites such as infinity plus. I've also put the 1st chapter of "Spotted Lily" online. All of that is linked on my site, www.annatambour.net.

My blog Medlar Comfits is at http://medlarcomfits.blogspot.com

12. What are you reading at the moment?

I'm usually reading several things at once. I read much more non-fiction than fiction, so what's literally perched on my chair's right arm at the moment is Francis Wheen's "How Mumbo-Jumbo Conquered the World" atop a "A Baghdad Cookery Book: The Book of Dishes (Kitab al-Tabikh)" by Muhammad b. al-Hasan, translated by Charles Perry, atop this week's Nature, New Scientist, and Economist. They're on the arm because the piles on the table beside the arm are ready to topple, and the pile on the floor cut my toe.

Top of my fiction-to-read pile is Keith Brooke's "Genetopia", just out from Pyr. http://www.infinityplus.co.uk/kbrooke/index.htmI
I loved all his YA books (written as "Nick Gifford")--thoughtful and fast-paced thrillers all about issues that matter, on a macro and micro level--real classics. They're too good for just yoof.

13. Your novel and KJ Bishop's The Etched City are two of the most
accomplished and promising debuts I've read in a decade that seems to
be bursting with fresh, exciting new genre writers. Are there any
other upcoming fantasists from Australia we should know about?

It all depends on what interests you. If you haven't read Rjurik Davidson's short story "Passing of the Minotaurs" in SciFiction, read it there while you still can. http://www.scifi.com/scifiction/originals/originals_archive/davidson/
Look for Trent Jamieson's first collection, "Reserved for Travelling Shows", due for release by Prime at any moment.

Rosaleen Love's collection, "The Traveling Tide", http://www.aqueductpress.com/current-pubs.html#Vol5 published by Aqueduct Press, is a gem that you might not know of.

If you like trilogies: although she's hardly up and coming, you might not know of her, so I'll mention Glenda Larke. http://www.glendalarke.blogspot.com/ Her personal history and environment colour her writing. She calls herself "a fantasy author with her feet firmly planted in the real world".

You can read Australian fiction online at Ticonderoga http://ticonderogaonline.org/, Shadowed Realms http://shadowedrealms.com.au/, Antipodean SF http://www.antisf.com/, and a bit of it (teasers) from the hardcopy monthly, Andromeda Spaceways Inflight Magazine http://www.andromedaspaceways.com/ which bills itself as "Australia's pulpiest science fiction magazine". The group blog "Talking Squid" http://www.talkingsquid.net/ will lead you to yet more fiction and names, and if you're reaaally interested in Australian writers (and artists), then you should know about Donna Maree Hanson's recently published guide, the compiling of which took quite an effort. My interview of her is titled, "Are you mad?" http://www.annatambour.net/DonnaMareeHansonInterviewAustralianSpeculativeFict ion.htm

I'm no expert on Australian fiction, so this has just been a small smattering of names. I neither read, write, nor appreciate based on nationality. Indeed, I find nationality no classification at all worth considering. Writers are writers when they write, not national flags waving. Besides, we don't generally classify someone in the US as an American writer, yet it is more likely that someone who's lived only in the USA, writes as a provincial, limited by an outlook that is purely "American" (meaning the USA) than it is for someone in the rest of the world, let alone the arse end.

There are Australians writing fantasy who've never lived anywhere other than in the "outback". You would not know where they came from if you read their books. There are Australians such as Ben Peek, whose upcoming novel "Black Sheep", is so grittily near-future urban that you can taste the grit. So "Australian" means nothing, I think, in terms of looking for authors. Content is all that matters, in my opinion, and the upcoming book I'm looking forward to reading the most is Neil Williamson's "The Ephemera" , his first collection being launched now by Elastic Press. Of the short stories published in 2005 that I read, his "The Euonymist" http://members.aol.com/evzine/euonym.html was my favourite, and high in my all-time favourites list.


14. You were quite - irreverent - about god in this novel. Were you
worried about the impact this might have? Do you in fact conceive of
god in this manner, or is it more the way he had to be in your story?
(I'm not a dogmatic person myself, so no answer is going to offend
me).

If the impact isn't worth worrying about, then the piece isn't worth writing. It's just innocuous but unsustaining "food" being sold as nourishment. You need more "food" quick because it processes so fast. And if you want me to tell you what I think of god, then that breaks into the relationship between you, the reader, and the story itself. I think that authors should butt out of this relationship. "Spotted Lily" doesn't "want" me to interfere with its relationship with you any more than you'd want your parents interfering with you in the middle of a passionate encounter with one you love, or someone you can't stand. But I will say that nothing offends me except dogmatism.

And that's that! I hope it isn't too much.

Thank you! These were such thought-provoking questions. I hope I didn't bore you when I waxed, and waxed, and gaaah, waxed some more.

[Mark Robson]

Great interview. 'Writing about food is a piece of cake ...' Where does she get her lines from?

Thanks for arranging this, Knivesout. A fascinating insight.

[GOLLUM]

I concur, an excellent interview JP, well done.

[Foxbat]

I've never read any of the author's work. Still, that didn't stop me enjoying the interview. As for her thoughts on Haiku...here here! I couldn't agree more.

Well done to both interviewer and interviewee.

[I, Brian]

There's nothing like an interview to create interest.

[Jay]

Late telling you this, but really enjoyed that JP.