I am thrilled to learn that The Garden of Empress Cassia US edition is on the USBBY 2012 Outstanding International Books Honour List.

Other Australian books named are Deb Abela’s The Ghosts of Gribblesea Pier, Sonya Hartnett’s The Midnight Zoo and Shaun Tan’s Lost and Found.

‘USBBY is the United States national section of the International Board on Books for Young People (IBBY), a nonprofit organization that facilitates the international exchange of information about books and reading. Since 2006, when we launched the Outstanding International Books list, our mission has been to select titles of high literary and artistic merit that introduce American children to artists and writers from other countries, help our students see the world from other points of view, and provide a fresh perspective or address a topic otherwise missing from U.S. children’s literature, while often presenting a distinct cultural flavor. This year, our committee evaluated more than 225 children’s and young adult books that were published in 2011. We considered all aspects of content and presentation, including the originality or creativity of the approach, the distinctiveness of the topic, and the qualities that engage and appeal to kids.’ School Library Journal

USBBY

How did you get your first book published?

My first several books were written under pseudonyms. They were romance stories for teenage readers, quite formulaic and simple. I’d been writing and publishing poetry for a while, and I’d written a literary mainstream “novel”, which was not a novel at all, because nothing happened in it – it was just a novel’s-amount of words, really. I’d realised as I wrote it that I didn’t actually know how to construct a story – where it should lead, how it should drag readers along from page to page and chapter to chapter. I simply knew nothing about pacing or suspense.

I was working as a freelance (non-fiction) book editor, and one day when I was ringing around publishers looking for work, one of them said, “We haven’t got any editing work, but would you like to try your hand at this new line of teen romances we’re going to put out?” Which I did; I sat down and wrote a chapter breakdown, and a sample chapter, and that worked for the publisher, so then I wrote a chapter a day for two weeks, and at the end of it I had a small (32K), publishable book called NEW GIRL, about a girl who moves to a country town and starts at a high school there.

I wrote 9 or 10 of those novels. The first one published (in the Bantam Wildflower series) came out in 1990. The others were published in the next few years, some with Bantam, some with Dolly Fiction, some with a series called Paradise Point. They gave me a good grounding in holding readers’ interest – and in writing fast, because I stuck to my original habit of writing each one in two weeks, ten pages (3200 words) a day.

Best of all, they taught me that, no matter how hard the writing is on the day, the words produced aren’t noticeably worse than those produced on an “easy” day – so just plugging on regardless of self-doubt is the only way to go.

What is your daily writing routine?

Get up as early as possible and, before I’m awake enough to attack myself with criticisms, start writing (I write the first draft of everything longhand, in biro on lined bank-weight paper). If I can get in a couple of hours before breakfast, that sets me up for a productive rest-of-the-day.

Breakfast, then head off to my rented Writing Room, two blocks from my house. Install myself there, immerse myself again. I still aim for ten pages a day – I’m not allowed to beat myself up about it if I don’t make the count, but I do have to try. I’ve found that if I’m on a roll and write substantially more than ten pages, I’m in fact stealing words (and likely slightly sloppy words) from the next day.

Sometimes the ten pages are done by 11am, sometimes it takes a full 8 hours to get them. Whatever’s happening, don’t let anxiety leak into the process. Keep it as enjoyable and hopeful as possible. Writing snacks: raw carrots, Vita-Weats, anything crunchy – but low fat (don’t want to get sleepy!) – I literally chew my way through plot glitches. If I can, stop writing at a point in a scene where something interesting’s about to happen, to make it easy to start again next day.

Walk away from it and do unrelated things. Exercise is the best; rinse out my brain with oxygen. Put the book out of mind until just before going to sleep, then just gently prod at the scene I’m going to tackle in the morning, get it ready to take up on waking.

I type up what I’ve written towards the end of the week in the evenings, or over the weekend. Or sometimes I wait until I’ve accumulated quite a stack of pages, and spend a couple of days getting it all digital.

My writing room is upstairs in a Victorian terrace house that’s been broken up into 8 little apartments, with a kitchenette in each one and a shared bathroom down the hall. People live in the other apartments, but mine’s just a work space. It’s very, very quiet. It has 2 windows, which both look out into trees. Lately, what with our house renovations, it’s become a bit more crowded with boxes stored from home, but it still feels spacious. As well as the desk and chair and shelves, there’s a very comfortable couch, which is excellent for work avoidance should I need it.

What is your latest publication or WIP?

I’m happy to be able to say that I’ve got a novel coming out in February, Sea Hearts, from Allen & Unwin. It’s about a small island where all the women are selkies, seals that have been magically transformed into humans. It’s very romantic, very tragic, and there is a wonderful snarling witch at its core. It started as a novella, which was published in Keith Stevenson’s X6 anthology in 2009 and won a World Fantasy Award. Then I grew curious about how the situation in the novella had come about – and as I explored the story, the witch herself explained it to me.

Margo blogs at www.amongamidwhile.blogspot.com

Today is the first day of the Year of the Dragon. Happy New Year everyone! I have a feeling that it is going to be good.

On the weekend, my picture book, The Race for the Chinese Zodiac illustrated by Sally Rippin was performed at the Melbourne Recital Centre. It was a wonderful production with music by Wang Zheng Ting and the Australian Chinese Music Ensemble and narrated by Andy White. It was a real buzz seeing it up on the big stage.

Chinese Painting and Dragon Drawing Workshops

After the show I conducted workshops at ArtPlay and the Chinese History Museum.

Here are some wonderful dragons the kids drew.

Hi Joy,

I tried to write back but my email bounced. Perhaps you gave me the wrong email address?

Any way, here is my reply.

Dear Joy,

Before European settlement, the river was clear. But due to intensive land clearing and development after the 1800’s, the water now contains tiny clay particles which makes it appear muddy.

Our destination was a secluded spot on the river bank. I had planned to work on my novel with the occasional lifting of my head to contemplate the tranquil river. My husband was going to do some fly fishing. It was also the perfect opportunity to introduce our new puppy, Hero to the bush.

After we parked the car we walked through a meadow that followed the river. I don’t think there is a more invigorating sound than the deep hollowness of rushing water as it slips over boulders on its way to the sea. It was going to be a perfect day.

And it was.

As soon as Steve cast his line in the water, he had a strike. It was a good sized brown trout too, big enough for the table. But as is his custom, he released the fish back into the water. Again he threw out his line and again caught a brown. He was pleased. I watched him wade around the bend of the river and began setting up my things – my comfy canvas chair, thermos flask of hot tea, a slice of fresh baked rhubarb cake, grapes, editing notes.

By this time Hero was down at the water’s edge doing what dogs do best, digging in the mud. But then I realised he’d have to be on a lead as the river bank suddenly fell away into deep water. I had horrible images of him being swept downstream.

So much for my tranquil time of writing, reading and contemplation.

After that it was downhill all the way. In half an hour I saved him from ingesting a plastic bag full of fishing tackle that he had dug up, picked leeches off his body – one which was already full of somebody’s blood, removed a number of bush ticks ready to do the vampire thing on him, and pulled out an army of grass seeds that were already advancing on his ear canals. Added to this were horse flies the size of cicadas, ready to bite any exposed piece of flesh.

I decided that the only safe place for him was up off the ground in my nice comfy canvas chair.

So while Hero contemplated the quiet river, I pulled out grass seeds, ticks and leeches and shooed the horse flies away.

But the highlight of the day was a walk through the forest of Californian Redwoods. These trees were planted in the 1930’s by the Board of Works for experimental reasons. There are more than 1400 of them with the tallest being 55 metres high. A gold plaque states that the Redwoods are listed by the National Trust.

I found a number of humpies in various stages of completion. I thought of my Poppy books in the Our Australian Girl series. The aborigines used to build temporary shelters like these.

I wondered who had built them. They were like wooden sculptures, quite beautiful and they added a mystery to this already magical place.

But the excitement of the day didn’t end there. At midnight I had to rush to the animal emergency center. Hero was beside himself with itching, racing around the house like a mad dog with rabies. $180 later, dosed with phenergan (the dog that is, not me) we finally made it home at 1.30 am. Whether it was because of the grass seeds or because I washed him for the first time with Oatmeal shampoo when we got back from Warburton, or perhaps there was residual clothes washing powder in the trough, I don’t know. But I gave him a wash with plain warm water when we got home and he finally settled.

It was a day full of adventure and surprise. But these are the things that feed us writers.

I finish this post with a piece by Ernest Hemingway. It arose from a bet he made with colleagues that he could write a six word novel.

For sale: baby shoes, never used.

from Miriam

In May, our daughter Lei Lei left home to live in New York. She has been away before on a gap year in France after Year 12, then an exchange in USA while she was studying at Monash University. But this time, she has really left the nest.

For years she has wanted to live in New York City to pursue a career in fashion. She is lucky to have dual citizenship. In a very short time she found a job working at StyleLikeU, an exciting, innovative online fashion magazine, and then an apartment with great roommates on the Lower East Side. And, like many young New Yorkers, she works two jobs. At night she hostesses in a restaurant frequented by movie stars. There is never a dull moment, she tells me.

We are very proud of our Lei.

Our son, Ren and his band Bleaches have gotten a number of gigs around Melbourne. It’s been a full year of surfing, snowboarding and playing music, with the occasional university lecture.

As for books published this year. Four novels came out. They are the Poppy books in the Our Australian Girl series – Meet Poppy, Poppy at Summerhill, Poppy and the Thief and Poppy Comes Home. While I was on the plane to Europe, I was still working on the final edit for Poppy Comes Home and sent it off just in the nick of time.

I spent two beautiful weeks studying Italian in San Giovanni val d’arno. I was also researching the small medieval town in Tuscany for my new novel The Wish Bird. This was followed by a week at a friend’s two hundred year old farmhouse in the same region. I felt as if I was in Bernardo Bertolucci’s dreamy movie Stealing Beauty.

After Italy it was back to London for a quick stopover before flying to New York to visit my daughter and some publishers. All I can say about New York is that it’s an amazing city.

I heart New York!

But as a bright sunny day can suddenly turn dark, I heard when I was in New York that my dog, Saffy had died. She would have been 15 years old on the 16th December.

Here is the letter I wrote to Saffy the day I found out.

“New York 2nd July 2011

My darling Saff, my gorgeous girl.

You have been with me for 14 years, 14 beautiful years, I can’t believe you are gone.

You shared my dreams. You listened to my stories. You were my constant friend.

Remember when we would go to Lorne, just the two of us? Remember how you loved it there, not the surf or the beach but the St George River where you would wallow in the calm water of the estuary.

Remember too, how you curled up in my suitcase because you were afraid of the dark.

Death comes at the most inopportune times. How I wish I could have been there for you at the end.

You always smelt so good, like a new fluffy toy, not doggy at all.

You came into our lives when Lei was 10 and Ren was 8. That seems like such a long time ago when I think of how much they have grown.

There is such a special bond between dogs and humans like a gift from God.

Remember all the tricks you could do – be a bear, roll over, shake hands, bow, and the cleverest trick of all was how you would get into a bucket to have your paws washed after we came back from a walk in the rain.

Are you with my Rusty now? You know he was my other doggy love.

Make friends with him. I think you will get on well together. Have heavenly babies even and send a little one down to me for when I’m ready to get another dog. Do you think I ever will be?

I will miss you. I will always be saddened for missing out on those last moments we should have had together. That is my only regret. Death comes to us all and I was prepared, but not prepared to not be there when it was your time.

I dreamt about you the night before you died. I dreamt that you were lying dead over cardboard boxes and you were young again and your fur was beautiful. When I woke up I was relieved that it was only a dream.

Was it a premonition? Was it a message?

And these are all the little things I remember:

I remember the look on your face when you were waiting for the microwave to heat up your dinner. You would blink and move from one front foot to the other, just three little steps. I remember the noise of the doggie door, the noise of your toe nails scraping against the wall in our bedroom at night. I remember how sometimes you would be standing at the gate when I drove in. I don’t think you were waiting for me, just looking out, watching the world. I remember the sound of your name tag dinging against the water bowl.

I dreamt about you again on Sunday 17^th. I dreamt that you were running and I was chasing you. But it was as if you were being called because you didn’t wait for me and you ran in between the wall into a dark space then you were gone.

You will be in my heart always, dearest friend.”

I illustrated that dream. It’s titled ‘Calling Me’ and will be published in Ford Street Publishing’s Trust Me Too next year.

Here is a sneak preview.

So to end this post on a happy note, here is Hero, our gorgeous new puppy on his second adventure to Central Park, that’s Central Park, Malvern, not Central Park, New York.

Have a Joyous Christmas and wonderful New Year shared with family and friends.

The main joy of Christmas for us is getting together on Christmas day for a big family feast. We don’t do presents except for KK, so there’s no rushing around having to go shopping at the last moment, trying to think of something to get someone who has everything.

Our family’s main focus is on the food and there is always plenty of that … and laughter, of course.

This year it’s our turn to host the lunch. There will be 26 people coming over but every family brings something yummy to eat.

Christmas is the one festival where we don’t have any Chinese dishes. There are no dumplings or noodles or red cooked meat, not even rice!

Steve always cooks the turkey and I do the stuffing. Last year I posted this recipe but it’s so good it I’m putting it up again. The meat is moist and the best thing is, you don’t have to cook the bird for hours.

It comes from the book “Ferment and Human Nutrition” by Bill Mollison, the founder of permaculture; but the description below is in much more detail than that found in the book. It is actually pretty similar to the famous Chinese dish “Beggar’s Chicken” in that the bird is wrapped thoroughly, moistened, heated to high heat, and then left to cook from the inside.

Here it is if you want to try it yourself.

ROAST TURKEY SLOW COOKED

The night before Christmas:

Pre-heat the oven to as high as it will go. Meanwhile, wrap the turkey’s ankles with tinfoil. Moisten a clean old single bedsheet with water, then wrap the turkey in it. Place in an oven pan. Pour a bottle of claret or other red wine slowly over the wrapped turkey, so that the sheet absorbs most of it. Cover the pan completely with tin foil, tucked in tightly around the edges.When the temperature is as hot as possible, place the turkey in the oven, and leave for one hour (50 minutes for a very small turkey, 70 minutes for a very large turkey; avoid the temptation to leave it longer or you’ll have turkey skeleton and piles of meat — still nice but not very attractive). After the hour or so, turn the oven off, and go to bed.

Yes, turn it *off*.

The next day, several hours before the event, you will need to brown the turkey. So unwrap it: it’ll be pale-red with some red stuff–that’s the wine, not blood. If you’re lucky the meat on the legs hasn’t fallen off.

If you have made stuffing this is a good time to put some in the turkey cavity. Heat the oven to 180C. Use a combination of honey and dark soy sauce (“Mushroom Soy” is best, Kikkoman is not quite dark enough, although better than nothing) to baste the turkey all over, place it in the oven to brown on one side, taking it out to baste once over the next 30-40 minutes.

Then turn it over and brown the other side, basting again once over the next 30-40 minutes.

This recipe will work for all big birds or other meats, or even several smaller birds wrapped up together.

In the beginning, it is natural to worry that it will not cook through, but after using this recipe at least 12 times already, we only had one time it wasn’t quite cooked, and that was when (after over-cooking the year before due to worry) we had a larger bird and turned the oven off at 50 minutes. So the hour is just about right for a medium-large bird, and if very large do only a little bit more than that.

Enjoy and Happy Holidays!

“One of the nicest things about being involved in children’s and YA writing is the people you meet. Gabrielle Wang, the author of several lovely, gentle fantastical books for young readers, is a Melbourne writer, so we’ve met at a number of events at the Centre for Youth Literature and other places. Two of my students, Pepa and Shane, absolutely loved her novel, A Ghost in My Suitcase, which they read for English as part of Literature Circles – so much that they hunted up her other books to read. Pepa is currently enjoying Little Paradise. It seemed a logical follow-up to ask her some questions – and Gabrielle very kindly agreed to answer them – not only that but to publish the interview on her own website.

Take it away, girls!”

P/S: Did you write this book to help children face their fears against ghosts they are afraid to find?

G: I wrote A Ghost in My Suitcase to explore ghosts and ghost hunters and the Chinese idea of death. Hopefully along the way, children will also be able to overcome their fears. The idea came from the character Por Por in The Pearl of Tiger Bay. She was so strong she needed a novel written all about her.

P/S:  Have you seen ghosts?

G: I haven’t seen a ghost but I have heard them calling my name. I’ve also had strange, ghostly things happen like doors opening and even words that suddenly appear the next time I open the word document on my laptop.

P/S: According to your site, you have used ghost-hunting equipment. What equipment have you used?

G: Did I say that? I’ve never actually used any ghost hunting equipment but I do have some coin swords, mirrors and bells.

P/S: Why was the sequel The Pearl of Tiger Bay published before this one?

G: I have already answered this in Question One. When I wrote The Pearl of Tiger Bay I had no idea I was going to write a prequel.

P/S: Okay, I’m going to ask about the characters now, the places and the culture.

About the Characters -

How come Celeste is the only one who has the ability to fight ghosts with her voice? Is she the chosen one? Because according to Por Por, she never found information about this ghost ability she has.

G: Yes, Celeste is the chosen one. It came naturally to her. That’s why she was destined to be a ghost hunter. She was the first ghost hunter to use her voice as a weapon.

P/S: What caused Celeste’s mother to die?

G: She died of cancer. Even though this is not written in the novel, a writer has to know her characters’ complete background.

P/S About Ting Ting, how did you develop her character?

G: When I first began writing A Ghost in My Suitcase, Ting Ting was Celeste’s Shanghai cousin, a university student called Ky. He was also a boy. But I grew bored with Ky and I thought that if I’m bored with him so will my readers be. As soon as I changed Ky into a moody girl, the story suddenly took off.

About the places –

P/S Does Isle of Clouds exist? It seems so real! I want to visit it!

The Isle of Clouds is based on an ancient water town near Shanghai called Wuzhen.

P/S: Does Bao Mansion exist?

Bao mansion is based on an old house in the hills overlooking West Lake in Hangzhou, China. When I was writing the scenes with Bao mansion, I pictured the old house in my mind.

P/S: Is the story based on true events?

G: Everything in the novel is made up except for the historical parts about China and the international settlements.

P/S: If you caught a weak ghost, can you actually turn them into goldfish?

G: I made that up too. I thought it would be fun and far less violent than destroying the poor ghosts. Only Shen Da Pai needed to be destroyed because he was Celeste’s enemy, and an enemy of her family for generations.

P/S: If you were trapped in a mingshen mirror, could you really get out with the help of pure or holy water or tears?

G: I am told you can trap a ghost in a mingshen mirror but the part about using tears I made up.

P/S: What do you think it would be like to be trapped in a mingshen mirror if it was possible?

G: It would be like being trapped in a goldfish bowl. You would be able to see the world outside but not be able to escape. It would be like torture.

P/S: Celeste’s mom made a short appearance in the book. During that short appearance, she was planting tomorrows. What are tomorrows? I tried surfing the net about it and I ended up with ‘How to plant tomatoes’…..-_-.

G: I made up ‘tomorrows’ to symbolise the future. Celeste’s mum was planting them because she knew she didn’t have many ‘tomorrows’ left. She died young.

P/S: About the types of ghosts: were those types of ghosts (such as fat belly etc.) real in Chinese culture? Are there more types of ghosts?

G: All the different ghosts came out of my imagination. It’s so much fun writing novels!

P/S: Are there different techniques to catch or fight ghosts?

G: Some of the techniques I researched are real, like trapping ghosts in mirrors and controlling them with coin swords.

P/S : With all the ghost and supernatural books you have been writing, do you actually believe in supernatural things such as spirits and an afterlife?

G: I do believe in an afterlife. I am not Buddhist but I lean towards that belief – that we are reincarnated.

P/S: Do you celebrate any of the things the Chinese culture celebrates, such as hungry ghosts, mingshen mirrors and others?

G: We celebrate Chinese New Year with a big family dinner, the Autumn Moon festival with moon cakes and grave sweeping day where we clean the grave of my father.

P/S: Do any of your books describe yourself or any of your own memories?

Much of what I write is from personal experience. For example the scene in A Ghost in My Suitcase where Celeste is in the bus on her way to the Isle of Clouds is from a real experience. While I was studying painting in China we went to sketch in the mountains. To get there we rode for hours in a rusty old bus. That chapter is exactly how I experienced it including frogs jumping around our feet and the big hole in the roof. I really did have to put up my umbrella! My YA novel Little Paradise was based on my mother’s story. And my first novel, The Garden of Empress Cassia is based on how I felt when I was a child.

P/S: In the middle of your writing, do you feel that you are the characters or the main character?

G: I am definitely all the characters – even the bad ones. They are parts of myself.

Thank you, Pepa and Shane for the fantastic questions!