Welcome to Inkprint’s monthly Book Spotlight, where we chat with an author about the story behind the stories.
Today our spotlight book is WHERE SHADOWS RISE by Amy Laurens. We caught up with the busy author to ask her five quick questions about her sensational 2017 debut novel.
First off, Amy you’re an Australian author. What differences have you noticed between Aussie YA and the YA you see imported from other English-speaking countries?
First of all, to clarify, Where Shadows Rise sits in that awkward grey zone known as ‘upper MG’. I tend to recommend it to Year 6/7/8 students – and Years 7 and 9 are high school in Australia 😉
On to the question.
Is it terrible to confess that I don’t know a lot of Australian YA? I know it’s out there, and I’ve read little bits of it, but on the whole most of what I read – and a lot of what fills our bookstores – is US-centric. Cultural colonisation, if you will 😀
That said, I know that there are definitely some differences in terms of the slang that’s used, and high school dynamics are obviously going to be different if you’re writing in a setting that includes school. Given pretty all my books are set in Australia somewhere, I find I have to be constantly conscious of how much of our schooling in particular is foreign for people from other countries, and make sure that I provide enough explanation in-text for it to make sense.
Interesting. That does sound tricky.
Second question, WHERE SHADOWS RISE has faeries. Can you tell us a little about the fairy world you created and why you chose this kind of fairy instead of fairies from another kind of mythos?
Actually the fairies, and the fairyland, in this series came from a role-playing thread on a writers’ forum I used to be part of. We had a thread called I think “Tea and Scones”, and it was kind of a garden-party type thing, where you had to describe what you were wearing when you arrived and people described the afternoon-tea type food they were eating and had general chitchat.
Another writer friend and I used to hang out there a bit, and along with some of the older members (as in age of membership, I’m not sure what their physical age was) would sometimes host ‘balls’ where we’d scour the internet for awesome clothes and assign everyone outfits and concoct little scenarios that would inevitably end with the two of us getting into some very light-hearted and innocent mischief. In a lot of ways, it transported me back to being a middle-schooler again, with that innocent blend of adventure and beauty and wonder. That’s what I wanted to capture with the land of Sanctuary, and so Victorian-style fairies seemed like the natural pairing.
(And one of the creatures who gets a brief cameo, the fire salamander, actually came directly from one of the tea party adventures.)
Can you tell us a little about more where you got the idea for this series?
In combination with the above, it mostly came about because my baby sister had to move to Nowra with my mum. In a way, I wanted to write a book to show her that things could be alright—only, of course, I didn’t finish the book until well after she’d grown up :’D
A lot of our Inkprint readers are in book clubs and like to read on themes. Could you give us a reading list of four or five books that would go along with WHERE SHADOWS RISE and maybe a snack menu that you might serve if our book club got together to discuss your book?
Sheesh, nothing like the hard-hitting, difficult questions, is there?!
Okay, for a reading list, I’m going to suggest:
Anne of Green Gables, by L.M. Montgomery, for a similar sense of heart-felt optimism and wonder.
The Girl Who Circumnavigated Fairyland In A Ship Of Her Own Making by Catherynne M. Valente, for the stubborn-girl-doing-what-is-right vibe, though this one could also happily reach a younger age group than Where Shadows Rise.
The Wee Free Men by Terry Pratchett, for the young-girl-looking-after-everyone vibe, and the reliance on mythology.
And ideally something to capture the deep, emotionally-resonant, glittering darkness… but I can’t think of a title that does that in the same way, off hand.
As for snacks, chocolate-mint parfaits (think crushed up mint chocolate, layered with chocolate ganache and mint cream) to represent the unicorn’s connection to the land of Sanctuary; pastel rainbow popcorn, half of which is savoury and half of which is sweet, but there’s no way to tell which is which until you eat it – this represents the fairies; miniature doughnuts with edible gold glitter for the baby unicorns; chocolate shortbread cookies imprinted with lace designs, with rose petals and silver decorations for Edge; dark chocolate cupcakes with navy blue frosting and silver edible glitter for Gem; and dark chocolate waffle cones with charcoal icecream and frozen blackberries for Scott.
…Okay, now I’m both really hungry, and really want to make that menu.
Last but not least, we here at Inkprint are huge fans of Ao3 tags and tropes. In sixty seconds or less please list all the Ao3 tags or tropes in WHERE SHADOWS RISE. For those of you unfamiliar with Ao3 tagging conventions you can check out a list of the best HERE.
Okay, here we go:
Portal fantasy
Ambiguous unicorns
Morally questionable fairies
Soul-sucking shadows
The evil guy is hot
Redemption arc
Parents are alive / Healthy parental relationship
Do the right thing no matter what
Protector MC
Friendship is magic
Never threaten my dog
Ta da! I think that’s about it in a nutshell 😀
Thank you so much for coming to visit Inkprint today! We look forward to reading WHERE SHADOWS RISE at our next book club meeting and eating those delicious snacks!