Interview with RICHARD HARLAND

1-When did you first realize you wanted to be a writer?

I got the bug when I was about 12. My best friend and I wrote out and copied some stories we’d been making up, took them to the school playground, and sold them. ‘Sold’ in the sense that school friends swapped us candy and comix for our stories – never hard cash! That’s when I discovered the feeling when someone who’s read something you wrote says, ‘Hey, that was great, got another one?’ Best feeling in the world! You created and imagined it in your head, and now it’s crossed over into someone else’s head! Amazing!

2-How do you schedule your life when you’re writing?

Total regularity! I write every day, no weekends or holidays, beginning straight after breakfast and working through till 1.30. Then I stop even if in the middle of a paragraph – so I’m ready and eager to go the next day! I discovered the best way to beat my writer’s block was to set up a disciplined writing habit. Now I don’t have to fight myself to start writing, I just start whether I feel inspired or not, and inspiration soon floods in and takes over again. It’s as though the inspiration is there and waiting – not in me but in the story, world and characters.

3-What would you say is your interesting writing quirk?

One quirk is what I call to myself ‘pre-filming’. For an hour or two every afternoon, I think about the episode I’m going to be writing the next day, imagining how it’ll unfold, how it’ll look and sound and feel – like watching a movie in my head. (I guess I’ve always had a strong visual imagination.) I don’t make notes because the real secret is what comes next … I sleep on it! Somehow, my overnight unconscious goes to work and firms it up. By the next morning, it’s as if it really happened!

4-How did you get your book published?

The first version of THE FERREN TRILOGY was published twenty years ago by Penguin Australia, only in Australia. But the books were never properly marketed – internal publisher politics, you don’t want to know! Penguin let them go out of print, but fans of the books wouldn’t let them die. They kept hounding publishers, and they refused to forget – until 18 months ago, I received a letter from IFWG Publishing: would I agree to a reprint? Yes, but only if I could do a total rewrite. The first version had so much potential, but the new version finally made potential into reality!

5-Where did you get your information or idea for your book?

The idea came from a dream – I don’t have to describe it because it’s still there as the first ten pages of FERREN AND THE ANGEL. Just given to me! But then I had a war between Heaven and Earth to flesh out, which required a huge amount of research into ‘angelology’, the old esoteric lore about angels and Heaven. I spent years in musty corners of research libraries, poring through books that hadn’t been opened for decades, if ever. But it was like discovering a vast, rich, new world! Truly, it is the only time I’ve ever enjoyed researching.

6-What do you like to do when you’re not writing?

Taking the dog for a walk and listening to music is very relaxing and a total break from writing. Our Yogi the Labrador lives in a world of smells, and he’s always going off on his own, sniffing here and there. I have to live along with him to know when to call him, what places to steer clear of, etc. Makes a change from living along with angels! – like Miriael, the second most important character in THE FERREN TRILOGY.

7-What was one of the most surprising things you learned in creating your book?

I learned that I’ve become a better writer! When I wrote the first version of THE FERREN TRILOGY twenty years ago, my imagination was running red-hot, but my powers of storytelling weren’t up to my powers of world-creation. Now, doing a total rewrite, I seem to see so clearly what needs to be done and how to give the narrative maximum drive and the events maximum impact. Many times with the first version, I couldn’t see what was truly important as against what wasn’t and often failed to unfold events in their best sequence. My imagination hasn’t improved, but my storytelling sure has!

8-Is there anything you would like to confess about as an author?

A confession in relation to THE FERREN TRILOGY. I make so much use of traditional religious beliefs in creating the world and story, but I’m not actually a believer in Christianity, Judaism or Islam. (All three traditions converge in angelology.) I’d call myself an agnostic – and yet I find angelology beautiful, it stirs me deeply and resonates with me emotionally. My head doesn’t believe my heart – I don’t know where my heart is at! – but those beliefs absolutely fire up my creative imagination! Maybe I’ll be a deathbed convert …

9-As a child, what did you want to do when you grew up?

I wanted to be an inventor. I drew diagrams of all sorts of nifty contraptions that would probably have blown up on first use. Later, when my aviation-mad cousin became my best friend, we drew up diagrams of all the different kinds of planes to be manufactured under the names of Harland or James. We filled whole books with detailed plans and specifications! As an adult, my cousin became a pilot – whereas I took to inventing fantasy machines in books like WORLDSHAKER and THE FERREN TRILOGY.

10-How do you process and deal with negative book reviews?

I don’t, and I wish someone could tell me how to. It’s crazy; I’ve been incredibly lucky with positive and super-positive reviews, yet those few that criticize still niggle at the back of my mind. Why do I let one bad outweigh a hundred good? I know readers have quirks and limitations – I do, too, and I wouldn’t trust my own tastes and evaluations. I’ve sometimes liked or disliked books – and music, and films, etc – and then changed my mind 180 degrees later on. I need thicker skin, that’s the truth about it!

Author Bio

I spent part of my life messing around as a poet, musician/songwriter and postgrad student who couldn’t finish these. Then, another part of my life as a lecturer with three published academic books. But my deepest dream was to be a writer – and I finally got my start with an indie cult horror novel, The Vicar of Morbing Vyle. That led to publication offers, and I’ve been a full-time writer ever since.

My most successful books internationally have been my steampunk fantasies, beginning with Worldshaker. I’ve won the Prix Tam Tam du Livre Jeunesse in France, the Reader Views Silver Seal (Teen) in the US, and six Aurealis Awards (Australia’s Nebulas).