The Story is About   +  script

Margo Lanagan

Books (US):

• Walking Through Albert
• Treasure Hunters of Quentaris
• Wildgame
• White Time
• Black Juice
• Red Spikes
• Tender Morsels

Tender Morsels is a dark and vivid story, set in two worlds and worrying at the border between them. Liga lives modestly in her own personal heaven, a world given to her in exchange for her earthly life. Her two daughters grow up in this soft place, protected from the violence that once harmed their mother. But the real world cannot be denied forever—magicked men and wild bears break down the borders of Liga’s refuge. Now, having known Heaven, how will these three women survive in a world where beauty and brutality lie side by side?

The hardest aspect of writing is the fighting off of the rest of life to allow time for writing. Truly. The minute you achieve any measure of success, the amount of writing-related work that comes your way increases to the point where you have to really be strong-minded to claim back time for the writing itself, and for your own reading.

Fear control is another biggie. It changes all the time, fear, to accommodate your latest accomplishments, but probably the worst fear is that this time, with this story, it just won’t work. I’ve let many projects die or lapse because they grew too tainted with fears about themselves. My skin’s grown thicker and I’ve proved quite a bit to myself, but still, it’s just you and the page there in that writing-room; sometimes an elaborate series of self-delusions is necessary to keep you going in your solitude.

The easiest aspect of writing is the collecting of ideas. I can tell that from the journals, it must be dozens now, that I’ve filled with story ideas, quotes that set off an interesting train of thought, tiny details that might be useful to attach to a character one day. I’ve more ideas than I can possibly follow up in the time I’ve got left. But of course, all the succeeding stages require more than a quick whim and a pen and notebook.

Describe your writing style in three words.

Dark, rhythmical, touchedwithhumour.

Do you write with a specific audience in mind?

Not really. I write with an ideal reader in mind, but she’s not very different from myself, so I don’t know if that counts! I’ve found that the less I think about who will be reading, the better my story-making works. If I let the story have its head, and take me where it wants to go, I end up with something that’s good and honest. I might make adjustments when it looks as if a story will be published as YA (as I did with the scenes of sexual violence in Tender Morsels), but I certainly don’t try to lessen the intensity of the reading experience in consideration of readers’ possible ages.

As for more general considerations, Walter Mayes told me that he once recommended my books to a young adult reader who told him she liked ‘dark, weird shit’. Perhaps that would be a rough description of my ideal reader: one who already likes dark, weird shit.

Tender Morsels has been described as controversial. What is your response to that generalization?

Well, there was some controversy in the UK when the book came out last July, but it really was just whipped up by journalists who willfully mistook Tender Morsels for a children’s book, and seemed not to understand the difference between junior and YA fiction.

Sites like Goodreads have widely differing opinions of the book: some people adore it, others are bored, others are repulsed. Except for the bored ones, readers seem to have had quite strong reactions to it. Which is good. You don’t want your book to be shrug-off-able, do you? You want it to make an impression, one way or the other.

What is the most interesting comment you've received about Tender Morsels?

That would have to be this review on Twitter from the Voracious Reader bookshop in Larchmont, NY: “Tender Morsels is astonishing. Like being in a Bruegel painting trying to breathe thru brown wet wool. But in a good way.”

If you could travel back in time for one year, where would you go, and what three things would you take with you?

At the moment, for research purposes, I would pop back to colonial New South Wales, around 1840. I’d take some good walking shoes, some nicely faked letters of reference and a digital camera with extra memory cards. Oh no, maybe I should swap the camera for some antibiotics ...

What are you working on now? Can you tell us anything about it?

I’m just about to submit a new novel, The Brides of Rollrock Island, to publishers. It’s about selkies, seals that turn into humans and live among people on land. It’s a sad story, but full of beauties - the selkie women are very beautiful, for a start. It has another vivid but unhygienic mudwife in it - I think I must be missing Muddy Annie from Tender Morsels. And there is a similar mix of abominable and lovable people in it, with perhaps a smaller measure of violence than there was in Tender Morsels. If you liked TM but were discomfited by the sex and violence, you might find Brides easier to stomach.

Thanks for having me on your blog, Story Siren - those were good questions!

• Monday, March 22, 2010: Through a Glass, Darkly
• Tuesday, March 23, 2010: Steph Su Reads
• Wednesday, March 24, 2010: Bildungsroman
• Thursday, March 25, 2010: Cynsations
• Saturday, March 27, 2010: Shaken & Stirred

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