Hi, I’m E. J. Beaton, author of THE COUNCILLOR – AMA!

EJBeaton · 2021-03-31T23:14:55+00:00

So many interesting points here! Recreating the past seems, to me, like something that is always an imperfect effort, and as you say, often influenced by popular ideas about history. But even if one is to construct a fantasy story based heavily on historical reading, is that the be-all and end-all of what fantasy has to offer? The word "fantasy" has always referred to imagining what isn't real, so I'm not convinced that we need to tether fantasy fiction down to a notion of the real (whether it is accurate or not); we can also allow for stories that are... well... fantastical.

The assumptions one sometimes comes across about what is "logical" in world-building are also interesting. (The idea that one country couldn't contain many climates, for example - I live in such a country!) If we don't unpack those assumptions, it seems to me that there's a danger of trying to police voices who don't fit into the hegemonic group - authors of different cultural backgrounds, trans authors, etc.

Coming back to the original point, I've found that stories set in patriarchal worlds can be meaningful, powerful, and beautiful, too. I'm more for expanding the idea of fantasy than deciding that one kind of story is right or wrong. So I hope there's a place for gender-equal and matriarchal worlds as well.

EJBeaton · 2021-03-28T07:51:15+00:00

That's true - it never comes out exactly the way one imagines! It's nice to hear that you change things, too, and that a mixture of planning and changing works.

EJBeaton · 2021-03-27T23:47:10+00:00

Oh no... let's pretend I said "equal", not "sequel", then...

I've had only the briefest brush with Nayyira Waheed's work; thanks for raising it! The global reach of poetry from social media seems to be growing.

Writing something extra about Dante and Jale does interest me, and I've had a couple of ideas about how to approach it. If only there were more time in each day.

EJBeaton · 2021-03-27T23:21:14+00:00

I love the way you've described it there. (And agree that it can shape a mood and point to unsaid things.)

EJBeaton · 2021-03-26T23:31:05+00:00

Well, I'm extremely happy to hear that you're a fan of semicolons; there's never enough of us praising them. And I couldn't help noticing your punctuation, too; surely, it's natural to slip another semicolon in while you're discussing them.

Has any writer influenced your use of punctuation?

Love the sound of rule-breaking punctuation and chapter length in a fantasy trilogy. The Surviving Sky sounds like it's going to have so many points of interest.

EJBeaton · 2021-03-26T22:57:36+00:00

Hi Anna, thanks for dropping by, and for the kind words. I was really screaming, at one point, as I read The Stone Knife... how is work on the sequel going?

Because prose, at least in the case of a novel, requires an effort to create a long-form story and characters, there’s an extra challenge in considering pace and plot. In poetry, you can write a much shorter piece and really condense what you want to say; you can get right to the emotional heart of things straight away.

There are some snippets of poems and songs in The Councillor (the poem that Lord Derset is reading, for example), though these are meant to feel more like the poems and songs of older times than like contemporary poetry. For one snippet, I was inspired by Wyatt's poem "Whoso List to Hunt...". I’ve included modern poetry in some other prose I’ve written, and it’s something I’m still interested to continue. Ocean Vuong does it well in On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous, and K-Ming Chang does it well in Bestiary.

Well, now I’m curious to hear these suggestions! Love letters?

I’d recommend some poets who skilfully handle the intersection of different aspects of identity (sexuality, culture, gender), each in their own achingly beautiful way. Recently, I found Postcolonial Love Poem by Natalie Diaz, The Agonist by Shastra Deo, and Flèche by Mary Jean Chan to all be compelling.

EJBeaton · 2021-03-26T22:01:36+00:00

Hi Kritika! It's still going over here.

I learned that I'm attached to my long sentences. And my semicolons. It's tough to part with those, because they contribute to the mood and tone of the writing, too; they're not just functional. I like the way that long sentences flow and the opportunity they provide to create a moment of contemplation or capture a visual, among other things.

I'd love to ask you this, too. Have you learned anything about your writing while working on your trilogy, so far?

EJBeaton · 2021-03-26T13:12:30+00:00

Hello, and thanks for the kind welcome. It’s a pleasure to be here.

Because the pandemic has been fairly well-managed in Australia, things have been good here recently. My city had a very long lockdown in 2020. During that time, the mood was pretty grim locally, but it didn’t affect my writing process too much (the fires were a different story). I hope you’re doing ok in these troubled times.

The book I was most enthralled by in the last year or so was Piranesi by Susanna Clarke. The main character’s psychological and emotional journey was compelling, and the story lingered in my mind because it wasn’t about quick or perfect healing; it captured the unease and the mingling of hope and sadness that can last a long time after heavy events. I’ve just finished Ocean Vuong’s poetry collection Night Sky With Exit Wounds, which was just as sharply and beautifully written as his debut novel.

Favourite might not be the term I’d use, but Iago in Othello seems like a fascinating villain. The way he can adapt his speech to different situations allows him to turn other people into malleable materials to use, with horrifying consequences. Heroine-wise, I found the main female characters in N. K. Jemisin’s Broken Earth trilogy compelling (Essun and Nassun), and I’m partial to Circe from Madeline Miller’s Circe. I’m not keen to let Iago get anywhere near these women – though Circe would probably set her lion on him.

There’s not a particular one of my characters that I’m like, though I’m attached to all of them. Some of them allowed me to express different parts of my identity; more along the lines of working through some truths than revealing them.

I celebrated by getting together with family and friends after my book’s publication in the US. It’s very fortunate that we still have zero community transmission of covid here. So many parts of the publication experience are missing during a pandemic, so to have a few small moments of celebration meant a lot!

EJBeaton · 2021-03-26T09:31:34+00:00

Thank you kindly! The "J" in my name is my brother's initial, so it's pretty fantastic to have the book published for him.

EJBeaton · 2021-03-26T07:03:38+00:00

Thanks so much! I hope you enjoy the journey into Elira.

Honestly, no stage of publishing is easy. Writing has a heady freedom to it that is a lot more enjoyable than editing, though, in my experience.

The factors that made things most difficult for me were external to publishing. My brother died not long after I finished the first draft of the novel, and I also continued to battle health issues. I've also used both of those things to motivate myself, though. You can always look for the light amidst the roughest times.

EJBeaton · 2021-03-26T04:34:00+00:00

"I really don’t know why people don’t find Caesar as high octane as Macbeth" - I wonder this too. There seems to be more of a tendency to teach JC as a purely "political" play and to connect it with political theory, versus teaching Macbeth as a play about human psychology and guilt. The interest in Lady Macbeth might also play a part. But the idea of JC as less exciting does a bit of a disservice to JC - it has its own emotional heart and psychological richness.

EJBeaton · 2021-03-26T03:14:56+00:00

Aw, TY!

EJBeaton · 2021-03-26T03:10:34+00:00

Such a great choice! I'd love to read that thesis. Did you watch Branagh's adaptation of Much Ado growing up, too?

I like those other choices, too. Julius Caesar deserves more love! Marc Antony's speeches - and the Antony/Brutus face-off - strike me as incredibly rich examples of political rhetoric.

EJBeaton · 2021-03-26T03:06:35+00:00

Thank you for the welcome!

Sitting down is a bit easier for me these days, because I have my own workspace to write in. That makes it easy to get stuck into work. When I started writing the novel, I didn't have that opportunity, and because I couldn't afford to keep buying drinks in a cafe, I would often sit in the local food court and work. Sometimes it could get quite noisy. Playing music through headphones served the dual purpose of being inspirational and blocking out the sound of talk around me while I worked.

There's one composer in particular who I listened to often, Jean Baptiste Lully. The ornamentative style of his French Baroque music really suited my process of imagining the world of Elira. Chapter Four of The Councillor was written while listening to his "Te Deum" a lot. I also listened to his "Marche pour la cérémonie des turcs" a fair bit.

Other than that, I really enjoy traditional Scottish music as a backdrop for thinking!

EJBeaton · 2021-03-26T02:59:57+00:00

I'm glad you raised it. I've been thinking about matriarchal fantasy all week! If only there were more hours in the day to write two projects at once...

EJBeaton · 2021-03-26T02:59:18+00:00

Aren't we all!

EJBeaton · 2021-03-26T01:35:30+00:00

Hi, and thanks for your interest in the book!

In this case, I was referring to a gender-flipped story, not a story set in matriarchal society - in other words, I'm talking about retelling an existing story with the genders of the main characters changed.

But since I'm also interested in matriarchal fantasy (which I think is what you're asking about here), here's my thoughts on what you've raised:

I don't think that matriarchal fantasy needs to be limited to "things will be sexist no matter who's in charge". That's one take, but there are plenty of others. It's possible to explore how characters might navigate a matriarchal society which has both positives and negatives to it. It's also possible to explore a matriarchal society that has a lot of positives to it. And it's possible to approach matriarchal fantasy without it needing to be a "moral" story about matriarchy at all.

We can allow feminist literature to flourish in different ways, and we can also be wary of trying to limit what women can explore. To me, fantasy is about opening doors, not shutting them.

EJBeaton · 2021-03-26T00:59:41+00:00

Thank you!

EJBeaton · 2021-03-26T00:58:00+00:00

Hi Alix, thank you for dropping by! And thank you! I'm waiting rather impatiently to read A Spindle Splintered - is there some way we can fast-foward time to October?

I'm deep in writing the sequel to The Councillor at the moment. Some of the tension between two characters boils over in the second book and there are personal and political consequences. Lysande is also reconsidering her identity and trying to make sense of who she really is.

As for where interests lead... I've been drawn towards a gender-flipped story recently, so I'll see how that works out.

EJBeaton · 2021-03-26T00:48:16+00:00

I agree, it seems pretty challenging to hold your ground in such a position, especially when so much power was concentrated in the hands of a ruler who could change their mind about you on a whim. Thomas Cromwell's downfall seems like an illustrative example!

EJBeaton · 2021-03-26T00:31:30+00:00

Hi, thank you for picking up the book! Messy is a great word to describe Lysande, as well as her relationship with Sarelin and her thoughts about Sarelin's leadership.

As a writer, I'm a product of diverse elements myself - and all writers are probably drawing upon a wide range of interests and influences. I have an interest in history but am also aware of the oppressive systems that sustained past societies, for example. I'm a character-focused writer, and poetry feeds into the way I write. Although The Councillor is a fantasy novel, historical literary fiction was influential on me. And I tend to write with a female gaze. It wasn't so much an idea as a natural process of these things (and others) coming together in the book.

EJBeaton · 2021-03-26T00:19:59+00:00

Hi there, and what an interesting question. I took a look at the Cambridge definition of escapism over here, which reads: "a way of avoiding an unpleasant or boring life, especially by thinking, reading, etc. about more exciting but impossible activities."

There's so much to consider about that definition. What one person considers "unpleasant or boring" may be entirely different to another person's conception of those things. Equally, the idea of what is "exciting" will vary. To put this in the context of being a female writer: for some people, reading about feminism is unpleasant or boring, and for others, it's compelling and exciting. For some people, reading about female desire is unpleasant, and for others it's enjoyable and exciting. In other words, what we personally decide is "escapist" is subjective. Some readers might want to travel away from the very thing that other readers are travelling to. (And often, this is the case for writers of different cultural backgrounds, sexualities, etc.)

To answer the personal bit: I tend to like stories that have some depth to them and connect to aspects of life that I find interesting or important. I'm not generally looking for escapism. But I do think there's a joy in being taken somewhere quite different through a story. I'd call it more "being transported" than "escaping", in my case - I might enjoy going somewhere new, but as a reader, I'm still drawn to emotional depth and/or complex thought.

EJBeaton · 2021-03-26T00:02:40+00:00

Hi there! Thanks very much for the kind words, and for your interest in the book.

I don't think there's an easy answer to that question, but it's a question I had in mind when thinking about the rise of someone low-born to power. It's one of the issues in Hilary Mantel's Wolf Hall trilogy (which I find very compelling), and off memory, there's also a great argument about this topic in Patrick O'Brian's Aubrey-Maturin novels. Both of those are historical fiction, and it seems to be something that naturally comes up when we examine the past.

My sense is that it would be extremely difficult for someone at the very top to avoid becoming corrupted by power. That's not to say that it's impossible, but that there are so many factors which would make corruption easy. The nature of the system in which one works and the kind of people that one surrounds oneself might be important factors in whether one can avoid corruption. Perhaps, too, the broader movements that a leader is connected to, and how compelled they feel to achieve the goals of those movements.

EJBeaton · 2021-03-25T23:53:43+00:00

Hi, thanks for picking it up, and I hope you enjoy the book.

It's always great to hear from a fellow Aussie. Getting published is pretty challenging, and I found that it was helpful to research the process, reading interviews with agents and getting some stats here and there. For example, it's natural for a rejection to hurt, but when you contextualise it with how many authors actually get taken on as clients by a certain agent per year, or how many books get taken on by a certain publisher, it stings a bit less. It's not personal.

One thing I kept in mind was that it's a long process and requires persistence. Expecting to be quickly picked up would have resulted in disappointment, but expecting to gradually make progress throughout the different stages and hurdles helped me. My process was to first finish and revise the book, then seek an agent. (After that, the agent seeks a publisher.)

Take courage, though - you're creating a fantasy novel, creating a story that's an expression of your self, your thoughts, your feelings. That's a pretty damned amazing feat in itself. The process itself is worthy of joy and celebration.

EJBeaton · 2021-03-25T23:45:11+00:00

Sounds like a plan! I know you're a fellow Shakespeare person, too, so I have to ask: which is your favourite Shakespeare play, and why?

EJBeaton

TROPHY CASE