by Alicia Carter
Lisa L. Hannett describes herself as a writer of speculative
fiction of the creepy and unsettling kind. Certainly, her debut book of short
stories, Bluegrass Symphony, sits
neatly with this description. However, the stories collected here surpass the
merely creepy and unsettling. Bluegrass
Symphony is also a collection of stories of extraordinary beauty and depth.
Part speculative fiction, part southern gothic, the worlds Hannett conjures are
full of disturbing tales of tricksters and lost souls in landscapes that are at
once familiar and eerily strange.
She began her
career as a writer only a few short years ago, but in that time her stories
have appeared in Clarkesworld, Weird Tales, Shimmer, Fantasy and Electric Velocipede, to name but a few.
‘The February Dragon’, co-written with Angela Slatter, won the 2010 Aurealis
Award for Best Fantasy Short Story, and Hannett will be teaming up with Slatter again in her second collection of short stories, Midnight and Moonshine, to be published in 2012.
Creative writing is
something you've only been doing for about three years. When did you begin to
think of yourself as a writer?
When I got my first rejection. I mean, I'd been jotting down
notes, working out plots, building worlds, creating characters for a while. I
had a totally lame epic fantasy in the desk drawer, and a stack of tragic poems
(we all go through that tragic poetry phase, right?) but I was doing it all
privately. Secretly, even. It wasn't until I went through the process of
sending out a story, waiting to hear from the editor, trying not to think about hearing from the
editor, getting rejected — and then immediately setting myself up to do it all
again — that I felt I was really a
writer.
When you write is there a fully formed plot structure in your mind, or do you find your way as you write?
It depends on the story, really. Occasionally I know the
whole thing in advance, and the process of writing is not much more than
transcribing a piece that has (miraculously) appeared fully formed in my mind.
Those writing days are gold (and sporadic!) More frequently, I know the
beginning and I know the ending – and then it takes a while to work out the
middle bits. You know, the part where the story happens... Most of the time,
though, I know what the ending is going to be – right down to the way the final
line will be phrased – and so I work backwards from there, until I figure out
where the narrative is meant to begin. Having said that, I often just have an
image in my mind – like for ‘Carousel’, for instance, I had a vision of a girl
surrounded by moths and nothing else – and then the story comes later.
Did each of these stories begin with the same narrative perspective they have in their published versions, or did you have to play around with voice?
The short answer is – yes. I spend a lot of time thinking about the story before I set it down, and just as much time working on the opening scene, and even more time writing the piece in full. So any playing with narrative perspective happens, in the first instance, when I’m daydreaming about the story; that way, when I start to write the first scenes, I’ve already got an idea of what the character will sound like. Hesteh’s voice in ‘Them Little Shinin Things’ was there right from the beginning and, as crazy as it sounds, her mood and personality shaped the plot. Same thing with Jesse in ‘Down the Hollow’ – when I was jotting notes down for these stories, the narrators came out sounding just the way they do in the final versions. I’m often happiest writing in the third-person, so I’ll set myself challenges (write in the first-person, write in the second-person, that kind of thing) and then stick to it until the story works. There are so many times when I think it would be incredibly freeing to be a spontaneous writer, one who scribbles things down quickly and then rewrites the entire work from a different point of view. But instead, I write slowly and consider how the characters will sound, what the tone of the piece will be like, the imagery it will draw upon, right from the word go. Nine times out of ten, the final version of the story is virtually the first draft, with a few tweaks to get rid of repetitions. It’s a slow way to write, but cuts back on the time spent editing.
Which other writers,
contemporary or otherwise, inspire you?
This is such a hard question to answer because there are so
many! Gah! In terms of style, I’m perpetually inspired by Margaret Atwood (i.e.
I am blindingly passionate about her turns of phrase, in everything she’s
written – apart from Year of the Flood);
ditto Virginia Woolf; ditto Michael Cunningham; ditto David Malouf; ditto
Robert Shearman (particularly Tiny Deaths).
In terms of characterisation, I constantly think about Flaubert’s Madame Bovary; Susanna Clarke’s Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell;
Michael Chabon’s The Amazing Adventures
of Kavalier & Clay; Patricia Highsmith’s Talented Mr Ripley; Jeff VanderMeer’s Finch. In terms of setting and atmosphere, Shirley Jackson, E.
Annie Proulx, Timothy Findley...
You point out that 'Commonplace Sacrifices' was published first in On Spec. Did you write the other stories with the idea of a collection in mind, or did you have so many stories you decided to do a collection?
I wrote a couple of these stories before I realised that there was a collection’s worth of stuff I wanted to do in this world. Ideas starting coming left, right and centre, so after writing two or three stories I thought I’d just go with it... And then I was lucky enough to get a contract for a solo collection, so instead of filling it with reprints of stories I’d already had published I decided to take a chance and put out a book of originals. To be honest, I love this world so much I think I could probably fill another collection.
All the stories in
this collection are tied together with a sense of place. How important is
landscape in shaping your stories?
There are two types of fantasy writers: those who are initially inspired by characters, and those who are initially inspired by other worlds. Every story needs to have a great mix of both, and every writer will (or should) devote as much time to shaping three-dimensional characters as s/he does to shaping believable worlds. But at first – when that first inkling of a tale creeps into your mind – you’ll either hear a character speaking to you, or you’ll imagine a new world, and the story will develop from that initial spark. I think it’s fair to say that I’d fall into the latter category. Landscape, world-building, setting – whatever you want to call it – makes writing exciting. I love thinking about the restrictions inherent in fictional worlds, their politics, their weather patterns, the migratory habits of their birds – everything that make the ‘real’ world seem real, but in fantasy these elements always come with a twist. And I’m inspired by cold, harsh climates (probably because I grew up in Canada) as well as huge, complicated worlds (probably because I grew up on Earth.)
There are two types of fantasy writers: those who are initially inspired by characters, and those who are initially inspired by other worlds. Every story needs to have a great mix of both, and every writer will (or should) devote as much time to shaping three-dimensional characters as s/he does to shaping believable worlds. But at first – when that first inkling of a tale creeps into your mind – you’ll either hear a character speaking to you, or you’ll imagine a new world, and the story will develop from that initial spark. I think it’s fair to say that I’d fall into the latter category. Landscape, world-building, setting – whatever you want to call it – makes writing exciting. I love thinking about the restrictions inherent in fictional worlds, their politics, their weather patterns, the migratory habits of their birds – everything that make the ‘real’ world seem real, but in fantasy these elements always come with a twist. And I’m inspired by cold, harsh climates (probably because I grew up in Canada) as well as huge, complicated worlds (probably because I grew up on Earth.)
The stories are full
of myth and legend. In a story like 'Fur and Feathers', for example, are there
folk stories or fairy tales you've drawn on for inspiration?
Not explicitly. I have always read a lot of fairy and folk
tales, so it’s not a surprise that mythic elements seep into my work. And I’ve
always been fond of Trickster narratives, whether in traditional folklore or in
new fantasy (such as Charles de Lint’s novels) so I was happy when Reynard made
an appearance in ‘Fur and Feathers’ – and when Tricksters showed up in ‘To Snuff
a Flame’ (which also has a flavour of ‘Red Riding Hood’ in a weird way).
You have a background in photography and fine arts. How important was it to you to have a say in the design of Bluegrass Symphony?
It’s quite unusual for authors to get a say in the art for
their books, and I didn’t expect things to be any different in my case. But
when I got the opportunity to work on the cover, I took it. My background in
Fine Arts does influence the way I look at things – I’m probably overly picky
when it comes to judging covers – but it’s this aesthetic combined with my
background as a bookseller that makes me feel so strongly about book design.
There are so many great stories that will never be read because they are
encased in hideous graphics and labelled with hideous fonts. No matter what
people say, we do judge a book by its
cover – if this weren’t the case, we’d all have books wrapped in brown paper on
our shelves. So it was incredibly important that I got to voice my opinions
about the cover for Bluegrass Symphony,
and also incredibly lucky that the publisher was gracious enough not to be
insulted when I bagged the first version he’d suggested...
Flinders students! Keep checking the blog and watch for
posters with our next call-out for readers. Our next Flinders University
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