Q&A with children's author, Lian Tanner!

Tasmanian-based author Lian Tanner's best-selling, award-winning children's novels and picture books include The Keepers series, The Hidden Rogue series, A Clue for Clara and companion novel Rita's Revenge, Ella and the Ocean and Spellhound: A Dragons of Hallow Book.

Lian's latest novel 'Fledgewitch: A Dragons of Hallow Book 2' was just published.
Her second picture book 'When the Lights Went Out', illustrated by Jonathan Bentley, is published in July.
Visit Lian online at liantanner.com.au

​1. Congratulations on your latest release of the whimsical, funny fantasy 'Fledgewitch', the second Dragons of Hallow book after Spellhound. What was your process like for Fledgewitch, from original idea to submitting for publication? And how did it differ from the process for creating Spellhound Book 1?
Spellhound was a really interesting book to write, because for at least the first half of the first draft I had no idea what I was doing – I just wanted to see what would happen if I took more risks in my writing. What came out of that was a delightful narrator and a story that was quite different from anything I’d written before.
 
When I submitted it to Allen & Unwin, they offered me a two-book deal. I’d been thinking of Spellhound as a stand-alone, but at the same time I’d been idly wondering what might happen if a girl from a loving family suddenly sprouted witch feathers from her elbows, and how they’d all deal with it. So the basic idea for Fledgewitch was already there in the back of my mind.
 
Despite this, I found it incredibly hard to find the right voice for the second book, partly because I wasn’t sure if I should use the same narrator or try something else. I had some vague idea about ‘upping my game’, so I went down dozens of rabbit holes and wrote reams of nonsense before I realised (with the help of my lovely critique group) that I was making the whole thing much too complicated and should just go with the same narrator and stop trying to be so clever.
 
It still wasn’t an easy book to write – I knew I wanted a different non-human character from the first book, and eventually settled on a horned glob. But then I worried about whether it was okay to have a protagonist who was liable to be eaten if he ever ran into the Spellhound pup. I also kept changing my mind on the question of whether or not Brim would have her heartbeat stolen, and went through quite a few drafts going back and forth on the answer.
 
 
2. You are renowned for exciting fantasy action books like The Keepers Trilogy and the Hidden Icebreaker series. What is your process when building a whole world for a fantasy story? How do you realise what you just need to know as the author and what to put in or leave out of the story for the reader? 
I know that there are authors who build entire worlds before they write a single word. I am not one of them. I basically just find the bits I need for starting the story, then add more as I go along. I’m not at all methodical with any of this, I wander through books of photography, old maps and anything else that strikes my fancy, grabbing random objects, sticking them in a notebook and asking lots of questions. It’s a bit like the old Cabinets of Curiosity people used to build in the 17th century, only unlike the Cabinets it’s not an end in itself.
 
I also find I have to write with a certain lightness of intent to make this work; I have to be willing to keep my creative ears open and let the story veer off in odd directions, because those directions often contain interesting stuff about either the character or the world.
 
As for what to put in or leave out of the story, I go very much by instinct, and by what the story feels like when I read it aloud. If a bit of worldbuilding slows things down at the wrong moment then it has to either be moved or scrapped. That’s one side of the coin. The other side is something my editor often picks me up on, when I have assumed that a necessary bit of information was on the page, but it was still only in my head. Somewhere between these two lies the happy medium of just enough information!
 
 
3. Is there one thing, or a few things, you know now about the writing and publishing world that you wish you knew earlier in your career? 
I think one of the main things is how patient you have to be. Everything in publishing takes a LONG time, and there’s no hurrying it up. You also have to be incredibly stubborn to make a go of it. I remember when my first book, Rats! was published, I was under the illusion that from then on it would all be smooth sailing. I laugh about it now because there’s no such thing in this business. Even when you’ve got a good track record with a publisher, there’s still a chance that they’ll reject a book you’ve spent months writing. There’s no certainty, no guarantees. 
 
But there’s also the joy of holding a new book in your hands, and of getting messages from parents and kids whose lives you have touched, thanking you for writing your books and telling you how much they love them. It makes all the uncertainty worthwhile.
 
4. You have recently made a foray into tender, touching picture books with 'Ella and the Ocean' and the upcoming 'When the Lights Went Out'. What prompted your decision to try your hand at picture books? And, what is your creation process of a picture book compared to a novel? 
Over the years I’ve found that every idea comes with a specific form attached. Some ideas are clearly meant to be radio plays, some are short stories, some are novels … and every now and again a picture book turns up. This is actually a fairly rare occurrence. I probably have ten novel ideas for every good picture book idea, which is rather frustrating because I love writing picture books.
 
The creative process is very different from a novel. Sometimes I think it’s like writing a poem, because you have to get rid of all the unnecessary stuff, so that every word on the page counts. Sometimes it’s more like a stage play, where you have to leave room for the actors, their actions and emotions – only with picture books it’s leaving room for the illustrations, and their actions and emotions.
 
I usually play around with a whole lot of different approaches, trying to find the voice, trying to find the best way to tell the story. Once I’ve got the basic form right, I set about discovering the essential bones of it, and discarding the rest. I’m always astonished by how many drafts a picture book goes through before I get it right.
 
5. Please tell us about your writing space/room.
I have a room which is called my office, but I actually write on the sofa in the living room. It’s warm, it’s comfortable, and I can write sitting or lying down, whichever I prefer. My main requirements are my laptop, a notebook and pen, and a pot of green tea on the arm of the sofa beside me. Sometimes the neighbour’s cat, Elvis, joins me, which is even better.
 
6. For a fun but tricky question to end with! If you had to recommend a Lian Tanner book to a reader who had never read your work before, which book that best expresses your storyteller's heart do you recommend and why?  
That’s a lovely question and a hard one to answer, but probably Spellhound. I find that I’m getting more playful with my books as I get older, and Spellhound is a really nice example of that. Plus it’s got that sitting-around-a-fire-listening-to-a-story feel to it, which I love.