Interview: Foz Meadows

Here at Trespass HQ, we are bursting at the seams with pride. One of our resident columnists, the superbly geeky Foz Meadows, has gone ahead and snatched The Writerly Dream out of its alleged realm of impossibility and is now a published author.

Her first Yong Adult novel, Solace and Grief, published by Ford Street Publishers, was officially launched in Melbourne on February 21st and will have its Sydney launch party on March 7th. Giddy with happiness and chock full with advice for emerging writers, Foz took some time out to chat to us about the process of getting a manuscript published – the highs, the lows and the necessity of sleep.

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This last weekend saw the launch of your first novel in Melbourne. Were you beside yourself with excitement?

Beside, below, beyond and possibly some other types of direction. It really did feel as though my brain had drifted away somewhere, possibly into a different plane of existence, and was operating my body via remote control. This may have resulted in some unscheduled babbling, although in deference to the miraculous healing powers of alcohol, it cleared right up after that first glass or two of bubbly.

The process of landing a publisher is a long and largely difficult one. How long did it take you to get someone to look at your manuscript?

Close to a year, I think, or maybe more. It’s hard to remember in exact detail, partly because certain aspects of the experience proved worthy of repression, partly because my brain is rubbish when it comes to dates and numbers, but mostly because, when I first started shopping Solace around, it was as one of a pair of novels, the other being the Great Unpublished Epic Fantasy Work I wrote during high school and university, which I subsequently shelved. There were rejections from agencies and houses alike, an agent who briefly took me on and submitted the book to Penguin before being forced to close up shop for health reasons, and, finally, an email from Ford Street saying they enjoyed the manuscript, and would be interested in seeing it again if I made some changes. And believe me, changes were necessary – given that the first draft was about 20,000 words shorter than the final version and chock-full of suck, I’m frankly amazed that anyone was willing to give it a second glance!

When you got the letter/email/phone call from the publisher, what did you do/say/scream?

First, I blinked. It was an email, and I was at work; the note began by saying how much Ford Street had liked the new version rather than with an outright ‘welcome aboard’, and so I’d braced for disappointment of the ‘but it’s not for us’ kind. It wasn’t until I reached the bit about cover designs and contacting libraries that I started to emit a sort of high-pitched whine, not unlike a generator working beyond its usual capacity. Once I’d read through the whole thing two more times and convinced myself that I wasn’t actually going mad, I may possibly have exploded. Vocally, I mean. It was loud. Then, after some manic giggling, knee-clutching and a few more re-reads, I leapt up and danced my ceremonial Ra-Cha-Cha Victory Dance down the office hallway, past the photocopiers and back again, which probably startled more than a few co-workers, seeing as how it involves prancing and flamboyant arm gestures. By then, my boss was back at her desk; she asked what had happened, and I told her that, owing to the fact that I’d been offered a publishing contract, I would be utterly useless for the rest of the day, and could I have permission to go and get drunk? And she, being a fabulous, sensible woman, said that of course I could, and congratulations, and see you tomorrow if you’re not too hungover. Which was, for any bosses reading this who are desirous of pointers on how to manage their staff, exactly the right response.

So, Solace and Grief. It’s Young Adult, it’s vampires, it’s bang on literary-trend. But you wrote it in high school, before Twilight mania?

Actually, no: I did write all through high school, but that was the Great Unpublished Epic Fantasy Work. Solace began when I was living in Melbourne – either late 2006 or early 2007 – and, unbeknownst to me, the YA vampire craze was just starting to take root. I didn’t read Twilight until after I’d finished the first or second draft; ditto with Cassandra Clare’s Mortal Instruments series, Richelle Mead’s Vampire Academy books and Claudia Gray’s Evernight. In fact, those last three examples are all things I discovered in 2009. My take on the current fascination with vampires – or one of my takes, anyway – is that we’re in a post-Buffy boom. Those few years between the show’s conclusion in 2003 and the new wave in vampire lit, which started around 2006, have, I think, provided a lot of fertile imaginative territory for urban fantasists. Joss Whedon helped to create a whole new breed of female-centric vampire narrative at a time when no one else was doing anything remotely similar, and with such unexpected popularity that it would’ve been impossible for anyone to try and join in without a bit of distance between his work and theirs. Of course, Stephenie Meyer ruins that theory somewhat – by her own admission, she’d never been interested in vampire stories prior to writing her own, so in one instance, at least, there must just have been something vampire-y in the water. Blood, perhaps?

Okay, go on, give us a quick plot summary of Solace and Grief …

Solace is a teenage girl living in foster care; she also happens to be a vampire. She has always tried to keep this to herself, but just before her seventeenth birthday, an encounter with a faceless man forces her to confront the inhuman side of her own nature. Running away, she finds other people with strange abilities, whose existence prompts her to learn more about what she is and where she might have come from. But when you reach out to the weirder side of life, it has a tendency to reach back – and not always with the friendliest of intentions.

Why do you think there’s such a market for YA fiction in Australia at the moment?

Teenage literature has been fantastic for longer than I’ve been reading it, but as much as it’s a clichéd answer, I think Harry Potter made a lot of adults realize that the YA section of the bookshop wasn’t automatically out of bounds. There’s been a lot of talk recently about the negative impact of age banding on kids’ books, and how detrimental the practice is in getting children and teenagers to read, but even before that, I think there was a definite trend in adults shunning wonderful books simply because of the perception that any novel aimed at a younger audience would prove unpalatable to them. Which, to me, is stupid, particularly if you consider how many classic stories – Winnie the Pooh, Alice in Wonderland, The Jungle Book, The Wind in the Willows – were all written for children. But thanks to writers like Rowling and Meyer, adults have started to break down their preconceptions about which books should be read by whom, with fascinating results all round. To take Strange Angels by Lili St Crow and Liar by Justine Larbalestier as examples, the taboo on actual swearing in YA novels has now been lifted, and the content is getting grittier, darker. It’s a sharp sort of narrative honesty that teenagers are well placed to appreciate, because if there’s one thing high school isn’t, it’s politically correct.

Are there enough literary opportunities for emerging writers to have their work published?

Now there’s an incendiary question! Honestly, I’d have to say that, from what I’ve seen, there’s a relative paucity of local Australian presses geared towards genre fiction. It’s clearly a viable market both nationally and internationally; Australian readers obviously love reading it; and as authors like Garth Nix, Justine Larbalestier, Catherine Jinks and Trudi Canavan can attest, it’s not as though being Australian is, of itself, a barrier to success. Genre fiction in general and fantasy in particular is booming everywhere in the world, but while America and the UK are pulling their weight with regard to local houses and imprints, we seem to be lagging behind. Which is a shame, because we really do have some enormously talented genre writers begging to be discovered. The advantage of big publishing houses is their heft and scope, but if you’re just starting out, throwing your manuscript on slushpile after slushpile can end up being more masochistic than constructive; by contrast, what local presses lack in manpower, they make up for in a willingness to take risks, actual human contact and swifter feedback. The problem also seems to be compounded by the (again) comparatively few number of Australian agencies with an interest in fantasy/sci-fi. In that respect, I’ve been incredibly lucky in my relationship with Ford Street, both in terms of genre and finding a publisher as an unagented writer, but given the current climate, I see no reason why the potential radius of that kind of luck, so to speak, shouldn’t start to broaden.

Polished work, persistence and professionalism seem to be the key ingredients to managing a career as a published author. Do you have any advice for budding writers?

Write as if you’re already being paid to do so, and don’t confuse apathy with writer’s block. The latter occurs when you want to write, but can’t find the words; the former is when words are there, but you can’t be bothered to write them. Always leave yourself a little something for tomorrow, rather than writing right up to the hilt of what comes next: it’s easier to coax new words into existence if you don’t always have to stop and think about where to start them. Do edit your manuscript before you send it somewhere – you want it to look polished, after all – but don’t be such a perfectionist that submission never actually occurs. Research before you submit: know who’s most likely to want to see it and why, so that you can tell them so in your covering letter. Learn when to hold fast in the face of criticism, and when to bend: you might understand perfectly why X character behaves as he does, but that’s of small consolation to a baffled reader. And, if at all possible, remember to sleep.

What’s next on the agenda for YA fiction author, Foz Meadows?

Right now? Sleep. Is good. Writing-wise, I have changes to finish making to the second Solace book – some minor structural/timing stuff near the end, plus a few extra scenes from different points of view – and once those are done, I plan to start on the third and final volume. Then there’s my other New Novel, which is a sort of adult-murder-mystery-fantasy thing: it could really do with a thorough editing, so that I can properly sketch out my plans for what comes next. I’ve written a couple of short stories recently, too, which it would be nice to do something with, and then there’s the blog, and the column, and my day job, and Continuum 6, and the Sydney launch, and signings, and events, and that part where I go crazy and strap myself to one of those giant inflatable penguins they always have in Australian Geographic after filling it with helium and drift off into the stratosphere, and then…you get the idea.

Oh and tell us about the Sydney launch of Solace and Grief.

It’ll be held at Kinokuniya books in the Galeries Victoria on George Street from 12:30 on Sunday 7 March. Scott Westerfeld will be MC-ing, which is a cause of astonished, fangirly delight to those parts of my brain which have properly registered the fact. Also, there will be wine and nibbles and hopefully good times, so if you’re in the neighborhood, drop by – I’d love to see you there!

Solace and Grief will be available in bookstores, including Borders and Angus & Robertson, from March 1st.