Writers on Wednesday: Jane Routley

Welcome to Writers on Wednesday. This week I am interviewing another great Australian author, Jane Routley ...



Tell me a bit about yourself … 

My main ambition at the moment is to see a live volcano. I write Historical Fantasy with a chick lit twist. (Girls just want to have fun and agency as well.) I also do customer service for the railways.  I enjoy working with the public.  They are so quirky.  I’ve started writing about my experiences in my Blog. In my spare time I love to garden, read and bushwalk. Apart from ten years living in Copenhagen and Frankfurt, I’ve lived in Melbourne all my life.

 Tell us about your most recently published book?

My fourth fantasy novel the Three Sisters is coming out from Clandestine Press in December. Two sisters, a powerful warrior and a mage who refuses to grow up, seek to rescue their kidnapped sister from a ruthless colonizing power but the forces arrayed against them are darker than they think. My books were originally published by Harper Collins but are now being republished in ebook from Clandestine Press and in hard copy by Ticonderoga Press.

Tell us about the first time you were published? 

I plied a New York agent with chocolate ice-cream and free accommodation when I was living in Frankfurt and he agree to read my novel, Mage Heart.  In a couple of months he had sold it to Harper Collins books.

As writer, what has been your proudest achievement so far?

Winning two Aurealis awards for Best Fantasy novel of the Year in 1998 and 1999

What books or writing projects are you currently working on, if anything?

I’m just finishing up my fantasy novel Shadow in the Empire of Light. An orphan without magical gift in a family full of mages finds herself sorting out all sorts of problems when the family visit the estate she lives on. Its being considered by a number of publishers.

Which do you prefer? eBooks or Paper Books? Why? 

I prefer to read paper books, basically because I’m a Luddite and anything to do with computers makes me grouchy and head achy.  Although I have to say I love Blogging.

Indie Publishing, or Traditional Publishing?

Despite my previous remarks, I’m so very grateful to the internet for the ease with which you can talk to readers and other writers and get your books out there.  Thank you Internet! I’ve tried traditional publishing.  It can be very heart-breaking and you have no control at all unless you’re a bestseller.

Aside from your own books, of course, what is one book that you feel everybody should read? 

That’s such a hard question.  I guess Tolkien is a must for fantasy readers but I’m a big Jane Austen fan.  She is such a good describer of character and has such elegant prose.

Finally … is there anything you would like to say to your readers in Adelaide, Australia? 

What a beautiful city you have.  All those wonderful parks and the Adelaide Hills.  I stayed in South Terrace this year and was impressed by how many good restaurants were within walking distance and how suitable the centre was for biking.  Oh and the sustainable housing.

Links

Website http://janeroutley.com/
Ticonderoga Publications http://www.indiebooksonline.com/catalog/product_info.php?products_id=131
Clan Destine Press
http://clandestinepress.com.au/author/jane-routley
Amazon
http://www.amazon.com.au/Mage-Heart-Dion-Chronicles-Book-ebook/dp/B005IT90BS/ref=sr_1_4?ie=UTF8&qid=1412307879&sr=8-4&keywords=jane+routley
Barnes and Noble
http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/mage-heart-jane-j-routley/1002959109?ean=9781921857652
Facebook https://www.facebook.com/jane.routley.5

Goodreads https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/333390.Jane_Routley

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Peppermint Patty: I Cried and Cried and Cried

Image
Unrequited love is a common theme in the Peanuts Comics and is one that I have previously explored on this blog. We know that Lucy loves Schroeder, Sally loves Linus and Charlie Brown has a crush on the unseen, unnamed and utterly unattainable Little Redhaired Girl. But perhaps the saddest unrequited love stories from the comic is that which ran in late June 1972. It was the series of strips where the usually self-confident Peppermint Patty came face-to-face with the Little Redhaired Girl with the intention of thumping her and then something surprising happened: Here we have a usually self-confident girl, who is funny, unashamedly herself and talented at sports reduced to tears by the realisation of who she is not and never can be. I really feel for her in this series of comic strips. She knows that Charlie Brown can never love her, when he is so hung up over a girl who represents a supposedly ideal feminine beauty. Fortunately Linus, the most spiritual member of the Pean
Read more

Charlie Brown, Lucy Van Pelt and the Football

Image
One of the longest, and arguably, most infuriating, running gags in Charles Schulz's otherwise brilliant Peanuts comic strip, is where Lucy promises to hold a football for Charlie Brown and then pulls it away at the last minute, causing Charlie Brown to fall flat on his back. A typical strip looks like this: Source: Go Comics The gag is one of the darker themes in the strip. It works on the concept that every year, Lucy promises to hold a football for Charlie Brown. Every year, Charlie Brown is initially filled with doubt but is eventually pushed on by a kind of optimism that perhaps, this time, Lucy might just let him kick it after all. As a metaphor for life, it is pretty simple. It talks of the moments when we choose to put our trust in people who have let us down only to be taken by surprise when they let us down, again. Lucy is, arguably, one of the crueller characters in the comic. Described as crabby by the other characters, she is often selfish, takes delight in wilfully hu
Read more

Phrases and Idioms: Tickets on Himself

To have tickets on himself: (Australian slang.) To be conceited or vain. To have an overinflated opinion of oneself.  He's got tickets on himself if he thinks that any woman would fall for that. I was thinking about this particular bit of Australian slang the other day, after my boss said, "He's got tickets on himself," to describe the actions of a particular individual. At the time, I smiled, knowing exactly what the boss meant. Later on, I started to ponder on this unusual phrase and wondered where it might have come from. A search on google helped me find the definition, but that was about all. There are no references to it being used in pop culture or literature (if you find one, let me know,) and at the time of writing this post, Tickets on Himself was not listed on Urban Dictionary. (I tried to add it, but the fuckers rejected my definition. They probably think I have tickets on myself or something for trying to add a relatively common piece of A
Read more