With the launch of "From My Cold, Undead Hand" imminent on 15 September, Bookseeker Agency interviewed author Marie Marshall about her youngest novel.
Why
vampires? Tell us what brought this novel on.
What brought it on was an email from my trusty
publisher, asking if I could write a teen-vampire novel. I took that
as a request to write one on commission and just hurled myself into
it.
There are many well-known
writers of vampire stories, from Bram Stoker to Stephenie Meyer, so
much so that it is a well-subscribed – some would say
over-subscribed – niche of adult, teen, and graphic literature.
What makes From
My Cold, Undead Hand
different?
Honestly I wouldn’t know.
I have read Dracula
of course, and Joanne Harris’s The
Evil Seed,
but very little else; oh, and watched Buffy
the Vampire Slayer
and Angel
of course, and many of the old Hammer films. I have always avoided
Twilight
– you can call that prejudice if you wish. I’m very familiar with
vampire images and myths, but I guess I must have absorbed this
knowledge through some kind of cultural osmosis!
What I set out to do was
just to write a story, most of it set in near-future with dystopic
elements but with a nineteenth-century back-story I already had notes
for. I cited a couple of obvious influences in the acknowledgments
section of the book, but by-and-large my aim was to write a good
story, almost as though the vampire theme was incidental. You could
say that the true theme of the book isn’t all the vampire action,
but the way that young people can get marginalised in an adult world.
I think all writers of genre fiction ought to focus on writing the
story first of all, and to hell with the conventions of the genre, if
you see what I mean.
Tell us about Chevonne
Kusnetsov your heroine. You mentioned that you like heroines to be
young, strong-minded females.
Isn’t that the definition of ‘heroine’ anyway? I’ll take it that you mean ‘female protagonist’ if we’re going to generalise here. I do tend to write female protagonists that that are young and strong-minded – Eunice and Jelena in Lupa, Angela in The Everywhen Angels – I don’t know of that many major literary female characters who aren’t young and strong-minded. Well, maybe Bridget Jones, and maybe some of the women in the older Mills and Boon novels would be a bit limp, but not even they would be total dead losses. It is, of course, a literary convention to make your protagonist someone admirable, so that the reader can identify readily with that character. That’s reinforced by the first-person narrative.
Chevonne is, I suppose, a
tomboy character. I wanted someone with whom young female readers
could identify, but who wouldn’t alienate young male readers. I
guess in many respects she is asexual. She certainly has other things
on her mind than dating and what-have-you. I didn’t want her to be
a Bella Swan – she’s closer to Buffy than that, but with a spiky
haircut – so any hint of romance is very low key. But it does crop
up, just wait and see.
I think one of the main reasons I needed her to
be strong-minded was to highlight that theme of marginalisation I
mentioned. Without giving too much away, I can tell you that her
decisiveness doesn’t actually move the plot along, but rather she
is swept along in it. Two of her most important decisions in the
story actually have disastrous consequences for people close to her.
Did you know her surname is the Russian
equivalent of ‘Smith’, by the way?
Tell us more about
Dianne, Chevonne’s friend.
Di is easily led and, true
to the theme of the book, easily marginalised, even by someone she
loves. There’s a kind of gaucheness about her. There is a good
reason why she sticks to Chevonne, and maybe a good reason why
Chevonne sticks to her (although I deliberately don’t make that
clear). She’s the character in the book whom I most want to cuddle
and tell her everything is going to be all right, but of course…
ooh… spoilers, spoilers!
I believe that anyone who
pre-orders From
My Cold, Undead Hand
or is quick off the mark buying it, will learn more about Di from
some extra material that I have written.
Chevonne's
mother is a bit of a shadowy figure. Are you planning to develop her
at some point?
I wasn’t planning to, no.
One of the things I did in writing this story was to focus on
essentials, via the mind of the protagonist. So much is happening in
the story that her mother is hardly on her mind, so she remains
shadowy. It’s a part of Chevonne’s character, which is why I
guess she doesn’t see the possibly consequences of some of her
actions. Add to that I didn’t want Chevonne’s mother to become a
kind of Joyce Summers figure (from Buffy),
so I deliberately kept her out of most of the story.
Having said that, now that I
have written the extra material about Di, I can see the potential for
taking figures from the novel and writing short stories about them.
Maybe stories not directly connected with the novel.
Every
author writes him/herself into the story at some point. Which
character do you associate with most, and why?
I don’t do that. What I do
is mine my own feelings and put them into characters. I’m not
Chevonne, I’m not Di, I’m not Miureen, I’m not Anna Lund.
I did do a bit of kick-boxing when I was young,
like Chevonne, though. I’ll say that much.
The
dystopian future you describe. Is this based on political views you
hold or want to present?
Not particularly. I think
that trying to do that spoils a book. For me, John Wyndham’s
anti-religious stance coloured his science fiction novels too much,
as did C S Lewis’s Christian triumphalism. Even Tressel’s The
Ragged Trousered Philanthropists
doesn’t quite work. You have to be a Dickens or an Orwell to get
away with it. What I did was simply imagine a handful of modern
trends and made them a little worse, and that was mainly to create a
backdrop and context against which and in which the action could take
place.
Which
elements of that future, do you feel, will most probably eventually
happen?
Well, as they are based on
what is already happening… I think the strongest element is the
manipulation of government and other institutions by unaccountable
forces. The only difference is that they’re not vampires doing it
at present. At least I hope not!
You
set the action in America. Was there any reason for this? Do you
think you have successfully captured a kind of American-ness in the
novel?
Well firstly to market the
book! Secondly I wanted to have the gun issue as an element. It gave
me such a good title, which I appropriated from an NRA slogan. Before
you ask, the story is neither pro-gun nor anti-gun. Guns are simply a
fact in the novel, and although there are unforeseen consequences
upon gun ownership laws from one of the major elements of action,
that isn’t moralised upon. I guess anyone with strong pro or anti
gun opinions will assume I’m on one side or the other, and I don’t
mind if they do if it helps to promote the book!
As for American-ness, well that’s secondary.
As I said, I focussed on what was uppermost in the protagonist’s
mind, and that wasn’t giving chapter and verse about the Statue of
Liberty of the Golden Gate Bridge. To help me with aspects of
day-to-day life and expression I had a couple of American ‘beta
readers’. I did have a battle with my editor over one vernacular
phrase which he said was only heard in the mouths of the ignorant and
would pass away. I conceded, but since then I have heard Hilary
Clinton use it, so I’m claiming a moral victory!
Is
there a future for the storyline? We heard noises of a sequel being
under construction?
Yes, a sequel is more than
half-completed. Without giving too much away, I have moved it
forward, so that what we are going to learn about the storyline from
From My
Cold, Undead Hand
we’ll get in back-story. There will be one important character,
however, whom we shall meet again in the sequel. There is also a
‘threequel’ planned, though I have to confess the plot is going
to be a bit tricky.
Having
had this success with vampire fiction, is it something you are going
to stick with beyond the planned trilogy?
Heavens, no! Sorry, I didn’t
mean to sound so vehement there, like I’m slamming the door shut on
vampire fiction. Obviously if a good story occurs to me I’ll write
it. What I really meant was that I had put aside three ideas for
other novels – partly written in some cases – in order to write
this teen-vampire trilogy. I would like to go back to them, and get
back to writing primarily for an adult readership.
Is
there an essential difference between writing for adults and writing
for young adults?
Oh that actually puts me on the spot. No, there
isn’t. You can’t ‘write down’ to either. If anything, though,
younger readers are less tolerant of superfluity, more acutely
observant of inconsistencies, sharper in their use of their critical
faculties – mainly because they haven’t yet been taught how to
misuse them.
Marie
Marshall is the author of “Lupa”, and “The Everywhen Angels”.
Both books are multi-layered, deep stories that explore that area
where the boundaries turn vague between what is, what is perceived
and what is imagined. She is also a widely read and well-respected
Scottish poet.
I’m a regular attender of the Book Festival, and have been for some time, but this is the first time I have ever attended as a hard-working journalist rather than in my other role as a literary agent. But this time, with The Mumble out to make its mark and with myself as one of its new team of reviewers, I have ‘Media Accreditation’. This means I get to walk around with a name-badge hanging round my neck, looking like I belong there.
