Interview With Author Richard Harland
Tell us about yourself and how many books you have written.
I’m a full-time author writing fantasy, SF and horror, for an Adult or YA or Children’s readership. I’ve had 17 books published, by Pan Macmillan, Penguin, Scholastic and Allen & Unwin, also indie publishers Karl Evans, Chimera and IFWG Publishing. All my books were first published in Australia, but Worldshaker and its sequels were republished internationally, including by Simon & Schuster in the US. (Worldshaker won the Prix Tam Tam du Livre Jeunesse in France!) I’ve written a few more novels that haven’t been published, and I had 25 years of writer’s block where I produced a whole cupboard-ful of MSS I couldn’t even manage to finish.
What is the name of your latest book and what inspired it?
My latest book is Book 1 of the Ferren Trilogy – Ferren and the Angel. It came out from IFWG last November, and Book 2, Ferren and the Doomsday Mission, comes out in July this year.
The Ferren Trilogy began with a dream. I dreamed I was under a blanket, then peeked out. There were uncanny, moving lights in the night sky, and ominous, inexplicable sounds. Suddenly I knew – the way you can know things in dreams, as though someone just told me – that this was the great war going on between the armies of Heaven and the armies of Earth.
I was still watching when one of the lights came hurtling down out of the sky straight towards me.
That was the moment I woke up, but I was still in the drowsy, not fully conscious state when you come out of a dream too fast. And I decided to myself, ‘That must have been an angel shot down and crashing to the Earth … and she must have landed very close by … perhaps she’s dead or perhaps she’s injured …’
I thought some more about it as I came to full consciousness. One thing I thought was, ‘Wow, I’ve been given the start of a novel!’ And I had! It took me a decade to fill out the background behind that first scene, then many, many drafts and versions. But through every draft and version, one thing always stayed the same: the opening scene. With Ferren the protagonist taking my place, the first ten pages of Ferren and the Angel have never varied. They were just handed to me on a plate!
Do you have any unusual writing habits?
One thing I do is what I call ‘pre-filming.’ After writing through the morning, I do jobs around the house, then some time in the afternoon I relax into a sort of vague, unfocused sort of state and start picturing the episode I’m going to write tomorrow. Like a movie! I think of it as if I’m there, how it’ll look and sound and unfold. But I don’t write it down, it’s just a better version among a hundred other possible versions.
Instead of trying to fix it and clarify it, I let sleep do the job for me. That’s the real trick! I go to bed with all that pre-filming floating around in my head, and the unconscious mind goes to work on it. The not-so-good possibilities are shorn away, and what’s left when I wake up in the morning is the episode as it has to be, the single definite movie! It’s not my imagination any more, it’s as if it really happened. All I have to do is record it.
What authors, or books have influenced you?
A whole mess of influences from all over the place! When I first wrote stories as a kid, I loved Edgar Allan Poe, so all my earliest stories were full of sable drapes and guttering candles! Then there was Tolkien, who took over my mind as a teenager. Later on, Mervyn Peake and his very strange Gormenghast world … I’ve loved many very different kinds of books, including thrillers, crime, literary classics, and I suppose they’ve all left a mark. I could name fantasies nowadays that relate to the fantasies I write, and also fantasy authors I hugely admire, but I don’t know if they influenced me. If I was looking for influences behind the background world of the Ferren Trilogy, I’d have to name some very odd sources, like William Blake, Dante and Milton!
What are you working on now?
Book 3 of the Ferren Trilogy, Ferren and the Invaders of Heaven
What is your best method or website when it comes to promoting your books?
I love doing readings from my books. I think I must’ve always had a would-be actor inside me! And live talks about my books and writing – it’s old-fashioned, it’s time-consuming, but it works. For web promo, I think the video trailer for Ferren and the Angel was a real coup –
https://youtu.be/JGwpmn8nuIc?si=vBseXS_OSKfc6UV5. I can praise it to the skies because someone else created it, the very talented Liana Burrage.
Do you have any advice for new authors?
I guess I can speak from the experience of my 25 years of writer’s block.Never give up! Whether, like me, it’s finishing your first novel, or whether it’s having that first novel accepted, or whether it’s having that accepted novel gain readers and approval, you need to be very patient and very stubborn and very,very persistent.
What is the best advice you have ever heard?
Find the thing yo do best, and do it. I spent many, many years trying to write literary fiction (the first half of those 25 wasted years). I’ve got nothing against literary fiction, but it wasn’t me – my talent is for imagining worlds and telling exciting stories that suck the reader in.
What are you reading now?
I’m reading all the Harry Potter books properly. First time around, I read some books as books and watched movies for the rest – I lost track of some characters and parts of the narrative.
What’s next for you as a writer?
When I finish the Ferren Trilogy, I’ll go back to the big adult fantasy series I was in the middle of developing before.
If you were going to be stranded on a desert island and allowed to take 3 or 4 books with you what books would you bring?
I’d go for books I already know I can keep re-reading: Lord of the Rings, Perdido Street Station, the Old Kingdom trilogy by Garth Nix, and – literary hangover! – Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoevsky.
Author Websites and Profiles
Richard Harland Amazon Profile
Richard Harland’s Social Media Links
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