Interviewed by: Cecilia Jansink

Rowena Cory Daniells is well known  to many avid fantasy readers. Her resume is impressive, boasting two successful trilogies under her belt and a third due for a 2012 release and her short stories have been published in numerous magazines.  Now she has teamed up with independent publisher Clan Destine Press, to bring us her first paranormal crime offering; The Price of Fame under the pseudonym R C Daniells. Set in Melbourne and centering around the rock “n” roll bizz, The Price of Fame is due for release in March 2012. Rowena kindly took the time out from her busy schedule to answer some questions about this exciting new venture.

The blurb:

Where will Antonia’s search for truth lead and who will suffer?

When film and TV graduate, Antonia Carlyle sets out to make a documentary about eighties band, ‘The Tough
Romantics’, she uncovers new facts surrounding the death of singer song-writer, Genevieve. This leads her to suspect that the man arrested for her murder was not the killer.

One of the three surviving band members believes it is time to settle old ghosts but the other two have gone on to forge solo careers and don’t want Antonia to rake up the past. One of them knows who the killer is; the other needs to hide their guilt.

A growing psychic link with the dead girl and the conviction that justice must be done, drives Antonia to face her own demons, uncover the past and confront the present.

Cecilia: Firstly congratulations on this exciting new step in your writing career. You mentioned on your blog that you have been working on The Price of Fame in various forms for the last 30 years. Why has this been a story you’ve felt so drawn to tell?

Rowena: Part of the original story set in the 1980s is based on the experiences of a friend who drove taxis.  He was always trying to help the girls working the streets.  He would drop by our house and talk about the things he’d seen. Of course I changed the names to protect the innocent (and not so innocent) and I amalgamated characters and heightened events for dramatic effect so I could create a story from what were unrelated random events.

I tell my students that writers tell lies to reveal truths. By fabricating part of the story, loosely based on his experiences, I felt I’d captured the truth of what he was experiencing.  I felt it was a story worth telling because the problems of runaways, drugs and prostitution are as relevant today as they were then.

Cecilia: You’re well versed when it comes to writing for the fantasy genre with two trilogies already released (T’En and King Rolen’s Kin) and have your next trilogy The Outcast Chronicles hitting shelves next year. Did you find the process for writing crime a major change to that of fantasy?

Rowena: Since this crime novel was amongst one of the first things I wrote, it feels entirely natural. I also wrote two far future SF books and in each of these resolving a mystery was central to the plot. I think the need to resolve mysteries is part of our need to make sense of the world. When we see a news report about a terrorist attack or a murder, we want to understand what would motivate someone to do this. How did it happen? How could it have been averted? And we look for closure.

It’s all about survival. The more we know, the better chance us and our loved ones have of surviving. That’s why the Zombie Apocalypse meme was so popular. (That, and you can shoot zombies without feeling guilty because they’re already dead).

Cecilia: Clan Destine Press is an independent publisher and the brainchild of Aussie crime author Lindy Cameron. Did you find the experience of working with an indie press differed from what you have previously experienced with the larger publishing houses?

Rowena: Since I was part of an Indy Press in the 1980s I’ve lived on both sides of the fence. Lindy is an award winning author in her own right and she is one of the founders of Sisters in Crime which runs SheKilda. It was a real buzz for me when she offered to publish Price of Fame.

My husband and I both have a background in graphic art and now that he’s retired he can concentrate on his book trailers and covers, R&D studios. We used to do covers and internal illustrations for children’s books in the 1980s. When Lindy accepted the book I suggested Daryl could do the cover. She loved the first thing he came up with and so did I.

If Clan Destine Press had been a traditional large publisher, they would have insisted on hiring an artist they knew to do the cover. Lindy was flexible and pleased with the result. Of course, it helps that Daryl and I have both worked professionally as cover artists.

Cecilia: You’ve penned The Price of Fame under the pseudonym R C Daniells. Is this to clearly define that this is a new take on the Rowena we already know?

Rowena: The slight shift in pen-name is so readers can tell that this is a different sort of book from the fantasy series. (Just in case the cover isn’t enough of a clue. LOL)

I don’t like being pinned down to one genre. After all, I read across different genres, so why shouldn’t I write in the genres that call me? I’ve had around thirty children’s books published in a range of genres for a range of ages. And my short stories they range from dark urban fantasy, through steam punk to sociological SF and horror. The funny thing is I hardly ever write a fantasy short story.

Cecilia: Authors writing across genres seems to be coming more and more common. Do you think this is a trend that will continue in the future?

Rowena: I think I just answered that question from my point of view. The publishing industry is in the throes of a major change. The way writers get their books out to readers is going to change. In the past a writer’s publisher would say we only want traditional fantasy from you. And the writer would have to write in that genre or not be published. (They could write in another genre under another name with another publisher, if they managed to juggle the time constraints).

Now, with e-books and Indy Press being so much easier than it was in the past, a writer with an established audience can write in several genres and reach readers. I think one thing publishers forget is that readers read across a range of genres. If they like what a writer writes in one genre, they’ll try their books in another genre. It’s a win-win situation for the writers and the readers.

Cecilia: How would you best sum up The Price of Fame to the reader?

Rowena: That’s cruel. It is so hard for writers to do this. Um…

This is a book about what people will do for fame and it’s a book about friendship and those lean years before you strike it big.

Cecilia: The Price of Fame is set in both the Melbourne of the 1980’s and present day and the crime at its core is very Rock “n” Roll centered. Did any of our Aussie rockers from this era give you inspiration for any of your characters?

Rowena: Actually, I lived in St Kilda. (I make a cameo appearance as the bookshop owner in a flashback sequence).  My boyfriend and I lived upstairs behind the shop in an amazing old boarding house with huge ceilings and hardly any heating. Directly below us lived the members of a punk rock band. They would practice till all hours, fight like cats and dogs and generally make our lives miserable, as we had to get up for work. I never actually spoke to them when we passed in the foyer, but I used them as a leaping off point for the Tough Romantics, the rock band that features in Price of Fame.

Cecilia: By the books blurb your protagonist Antonia sounds feisty and a force to be reckoned with. Although the strong female protagonist is becoming more common in crime fiction, do you still feel that it’s harder for them to join the “big boys” club that dominated for so long?

Rowena: I must admit that when I read Asimov’s SF mysteries, I never noticed that the protagonist was male, same with Simon R Green’s Nightside series. They were just people and I was interested in the story. Having said that, I loved the early Laurell K Hamilton books primarily because Anita Blake was a feisty female protagonist. Conversely, I also love the ditzy heroine Janet Evanovich created in Stephanie Plum.

Is crime and mystery a bit of a boy’s club? In the US and the UK there’s certainly a feeling in fantasy that the genre is a bit of a boy’s club. I wasn’t aware of this because in Australia it is dominated by fantastic female writers. To bring the range of wonderful female fantasy authors to the notice of readers I’ve done a series of interviews on my blog.

Sisters in Crime was formed to ‘celebrate women’s crime writing on the page and screen and bring a collective critical eye to the field.’ (See their who and why page). So there must be a perception that women’s crime writing also needs some affirmative action.

Cecilia: You’ve previously said that you’ve been a fan of crime thrillers for years. Who are some of your strongest influences when it comes to setting justice to rights?

Rowena: I think I answered this question already. I read across so many genres. The genre I keep coming back to, speculative fiction is very flexible. You can have a mystery, it just happens to be set on a space station. I do like a book that brings a bit of the supernatural or humour to the mix.

Cecilia: You’re the co-founder of the Vision Writer’s Group with our very own Marianne and actively post tips for aspiring writers on the ROR blog. How important is the “right” critique group when it comes to following your dream to being published?

Rowena: I’ve met so many wonderful people through writing. It’s a great community. The ROR writing group was formed my Marianne and myself back in 2001 to help us polish our writing skills at the book length level.

Each year or so we get together to critique our works-in-progress. We all read across a range of genres and write across a range of genres and ages. (Richard Harland describes his Eddon and Vail books as ‘science fiction meets thriller meets crime meets horror’. Marianne has won a Davitt for her Tara Sharp books and Tansy has written crime set in Hobart). With this broad background in books, the feedback can be very genre specific. I put Price of Fame through a ROR and the book benefited from my fellow RORees’ input.

When it comes down to it, writing is a solitary business. You sit there alone at your computer with your head full of characters and action, but you are essentially alone. Belonging to a writing group means you pool your knowledge, both writing craft and industry knowledge. With ROR we all have a Squee when one of us sells a book or wins an award.

Cecilia: Are you planning anymore forays into the para-crime field in the future and if so will any of the players from The Price of Fame be making another appearance?

Rowena: Ever since I finished Price of Fame I’ve had an idea for a sequel. It’s a matter of finding the time. I’m currently working on a new fantasy trilogy, which tends to eat up my writing time as each book is a minimum of 100,000 words and fantasy stories come in trilogies. Since I’m not a plotter, I’d have to write the next Antonia book to see where she took me.

Thank you for your time Rowena, and we here at Tara Sharp wish you huge success for The Price of Fame.

This entry was posted on 08.3.11 at 10:31 pm by admin | Print This Post
TAGS: Cecilia Jansink, Clandestine Press, Rowena Cory Daniells