Masha du Toit

Today I have a guest! 🙂  Writer L J Cohen has kindly let me interview her. She’s just launched her latest book, DREADNOUGHT AND SHUTTLE, book 3 of the Halcyone Space series of science fiction space opera adventures that began with DERELICT and continued with ITHAKA RISING.

Here’s the book description:

When a materials science student gets kidnapped, she’s drawn into a conflict between the young crew of a sentient spaceship, a weapons smuggling ring, and a Commonwealth-wide conspiracy and must escape before her usefulness as a hostage expires. 

Lisa has agreed to give away an ebook copy of one of her books right here on my blog. To participate, leave a comment stating which of her books you’d like, if you win the draw 🙂 We’ll pick a winner in 7 day’s time. (If you don’t know which book to pick, see below! There is a short description of each.)

Do you write for a particular age group? Who is your ideal reader?
When I started writing, I thought of myself as writing YA novels because so many of my protagonists were older teens. But my stories are transitioning to less true coming of age tales than speculative fiction stories that have some young adult characters. My idea reader is a teen or adult who enjoys character-based adventures in fantasy or futuristic settings. Given the emotional stakes, I wouldn’t recommend most of my books to readers younger than 12, even if they are strong readers, though that is something I leave up to parents/guardians to decide.

Which of your books would you recommend a reader should start with? What is it about?
By the time this gets posted, I will have six novels published. There are three possible entry points to my work: the standalone urban fantasy FUTURE TENSE, THE BETWEEN, book 1 of my fantasy/fae changeling series (Changeling’s Choice), or DERELICT, book 1 of my SF/Space Opera series (Halcyone Space). However, I do attempt to write my series novels in such a way that readers can start anywhere and still have a fully enjoyable experience.

In FUTURE TENSE, a 17 year old foster kid struggles to keep the people around him safe from the danger he glimpses in his prescient visions. THE BETWEEN is the story of what happens when Oberon and Titania pick the wrong changeling to become a pawn in their war and that young girl clings to her stubborn humanity. In DERELICT, a group of teens stranded on a sentient spaceship must work together or risk being killed when the ship’s AI wakes believing it’s still fighting the war that damaged it decades ago.

(You can find all of these books at Lisa’s Amazon Author page)

What qualities do you like using in your characters?
That’s a good question! I like to give my characters traits that have both positive and negative features. For example, Ro Maldonado, the main character in DERELICT and Lydia Hawthorne, the main character in THE BETWEEN both have the traits of stubbornness/persistence. Depending on circumstances, this is either a good thing or a very bad thing!

Jem Durbin, also from the Halcyone Space novels, is curious and creative. While he’s great at problem solving, he doesn’t have the maturity to know that sometimes asking questions can be dangerous. It lands him in some very hot water in ITHAKA RISING. Matt Garrison, from FUTURE TENSE has an almost overdeveloped sense of responsibility. While he never runs away from owning his problems, he also doesn’t let himself rely on others or ask for help, which is nearly his undoing.

I think if a character has only positive or negative character traits, it makes for boring reading.

Some people believe that it’s important that a book have a message beyond just the story itself. How do you feel about that?
I don’t think you can avoid imbuing your writing with messages – writing is only partly a conscious process and our subconscious mind is a very tricky bastard. However, I don’t start out trying to embed a particular message in my writing. Do my stories have a message beyond that of the story itself? I’m sure they do. And those messages are probably as much a result of what I put into the story as what the reader reads into it. I do think I have recurrent motifs and themes that show up in all of my work: identity, trust, and choice. Others don’t get to choose your identity. Trust starts with trusting yourself before you can trust others. And choices made out of fear are almost never the right ones. I’d love to know what messages others see in my work.

Is there anything that you have a “chip on the shoulder”about as a writer?
Stories that rely on tricking the reader to work. I hated The Life of Pi. It was beautifully written, immersive, original, and magical. All up to the final chapter where the author basically popped out and said ‘Ha, tricked you. Aren’t I clever?’ It was one of those ‘and it was all a dream’ endings which completely break my trust in the narrative and in the author. I haven’t read a single other word Yan Martell has written.

What are you reading at the moment? Is it any good?
I’m currently reading several manuscripts for critique and can’t name them. The three last published books I read were Aftershock, Rick Wayne’s episode 5 of The Minus Faction (loved it!), James S.A. Coreys’s Abaddon’s Gate (very good), and Audrey Faye’s Grower’s Omen (loved it!).

I’ve come to a place in my leisure reading that if I am not enjoying a story, I stop reading it. Life’s too short and there are too many books out there. And just because I abandon a book, it doesn’t mean it’s not good, just that I didn’t really enjoy it. There is so much subjectivity in what makes a book good and what I love may not be what someone else does.

Thank you for inviting me to your blog!

More about Lisa:

LJ Cohen is a novelist, poet, blogger, ceramics artist, and relentless optimist. After almost twenty-five years as a physical therapist, LJ now uses her anatomical knowledge and myriad clinical skills to injure characters in her science fiction and fantasy novels. She lives in the Boston area with her family, two dogs, and the occasional international student. DREADNOUGHT AND SHUTTLE (book 3 of the SF/Space Opera series Halcyone Space), is her sixth novel. LJ is a member of SFWA, Broad Universe, and the Independent Publishers of New England.

Some links to LJ Cohen:

Homepage: http://www.ljcohen.net/
Blog: http://ljcbluemuse.blogspot.com/
Newsletter: http://www.ljcohen.net/mailinglist/mail.cgi/list/bluemusings
Google+: https://www.google.com/+LisaCohen
Goodreads: https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/5305326.L_J_Cohen
Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/ljcohen
Twitter: @lisajanicecohen

One of the amazing things about having a blog is that every now and then, the people you write about, write back!  Imagine my delight in getting an email from Ermanno Libenzi, the author of quite a few of the books that were my absolute, all-time favorites when I was a little girl.  You might have seen my post on his book “Ernest in the Wild West” which you can see here and which drew a lovely conversation in the comments, from people all over the world who love those books just as much as I do.

Ermanno tells me there is a chance that these books might be republished.  How amazing would that be!  So I’m honored to  host a guest post here by Ermanno Libenzi, in which he reminds us of who he is, and why he wrote those books in the first place.  If you are interested to see more of Ermanno’s books, here is a link to some of them.

 ERMANNO LIBENZI, CHILDREN’S BOOKS WRITER AND JOURNALIST

Autobiographical notes.

I was born in Milan, Italy, and grew up amid printed paper. My father was a journalist at  the “Corriere della Sera”, the leading Italian newspaper, and his  home library room was full not only of books, but also of magazines and newspapers of various nationalities. I was terribly curious to know the meaning of all those big written words I saw in his magic room. I’m sure that it was this curiosity which pressed me to become an early reader.

I began, of course, with the first elementary picture books, then I passed to fairy tales, soon I discovered the joys of comic strips, and through them  I reached the vast world of adventure books: pirates, cow-boys, explorers were my first unforgettable heroes. Years later, I made those stories live again in three hilarious children’s books I wrote: “Robin and the Pirates”, the story of a smart little boy who finds himself on board of a pirate vessel,  and the two adventures of Ernest, a funny gentleman, photographer and explorer. In the first book he wanders  through the astonishing  mysteries of Africa, in the second one, he crosses the savage world  of the Wild West. I entrusted the genius of illustration Adelchi Galloni with the task of realizing at his best the three books’ drawings.  I can say that he really  managed to  bring the imagery and language of comics into the sphere of art.

One day, exploring my father’s bookcases, by chance I opened the Treasure Island by Robert Louis Stevenson. That was for me the entrance door to the fascinating world  of the great European and American novels.

In my opinion, nothing can help a child, and later a boy, to acquire a complete cultural and sentimental education more than an early reading of these masterpieces, when our soul is clean as a white sheet of paper, and our personality is quickly developing. Reading great books is really the best food for our spirit. Moreover, the literary masterpieces  can teach us how to give full expression  to our thoughts and sentiments through the language, both written and spoken.

Thanks to all the printed paper of my childhood,  I started writing  and publishing books  when I was still very young. Everything is new, when you are in your twenties. No conventions bind your fantasy, no obligations, no commonplaces block your creativity, and sometimes  the results  of this state of grace are surprising.

I remember that when I was 25 years old,  a little, sorrowful  idea had been  turning over in my mind for a long time. I thought that it was so pleasant  to go around riding a bicycle or a motorbike.  So pleasant but unfortunately also so dangerous.  Every year a dreadful number of young people  are victims all over the world in road accidents. I thought that writing a book on that argument could certainly be an useful project. The real problem was the way I could transform a boring Road Safety manual into a readable and maybe agreeable children’s book. I thought that the best thing I could do was to keep my hand very light, to be cheerful  but giving affordable tips, and above all to avoid anxiety-inducing lessons, which could only frighten readers.  A fearful, hesitating driver is constantly in danger, more or less like a reckless driver.

After the book was published, it happened an incredible thing.  It won the “Premio Bancarellino”, the main Italian literary prize dedicated to children’s literature. Simply, I couldn’t believe it. Yet that prize was above suspicion, because its jury was, and still is, composed by hundreds of young readers coming from all the Italian regions.

My explanation of the mystery was that it was just this unconventional kind of jury which allowed my book to win the prize. I was on the same unconventional wavelength as them, while a jury made of lofty critics never could admit a manual for young cyclist into the elite of Italian children’s literature.

Nevertheless I felt a little bit guilty: my light-hearted manual had prevailed over demanding biographies and committed historical novels… I decided to redeem myself. Four years later, I managed to win the same prize again with a serious book based on true historical episodes happened in Italy during the Second World War.

In the following years I divided my professional activity among editorial work, journalism and children’s books writing.

I wrote about thirty children’s books of various subjects:  tales, picture books,  young adult science fiction, short stories, historical and scientific non fiction.

My Italian publishers were Mondadori, Garzanti and Vallecchi. Abroad, my books were published  by Hamlyn in the United Kingdom, Platt & Munk in the United States, Nathan and Sarbacane in France, Duculot in Belgium, Südwest Verlag in Germany, Turbine Forlaget in Sweden and Danmark, Lasten Kerkus in Finland, Beijing Timebook Culture Spread in China, Holp Shuppan and Rippu Shobo in Japan, Orell Füssli Verlag  In Switzerland.

First of all, I always tried to stick at the basic duty of every narrator: to entertain, to fascinate his readers – both children and adults, i.e. their parents – with  amusing and/or engaging stories. At the same time, I always tried to pursue a moral aim in my work, yet carefully trying to avoid moralism. In particular, I always cultivated  a strong interest in ecology, environmentalism and human rights. As a journalist, I wrote many articles in defence of animals, particularly against hunting.  Last, but not least, I did my best to keep in mind  that a storyteller has  a fantastic opportunity. He  can deliver – without appearing to do so – a lot of sound principles. Ancient Romans,  two thousand years ago,  called this pedagogical concept “docendo ludere”, that means  “teaching and amusing”.  I hope that this can be my motto.

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It’s been a while since I’ve written a review, but The Wild Shore by Kim Stanley Robinson is one of the best books I’ve read in years. Fantastic story, compelling characters, interesting issues, vivid writing – I just loved it.

It is set in America “after the bombing”. The United States is no more. America has suffered a severe nuclear attack. Millions died in the initial attack, and millions more in the aftermath, struggling to survive in the new pre-industrial world. Getting food by growing and hunting it, avoiding the “scavengers” – the people who live from the looted ruins and hunt one another.

What is more, the outside world is actively preventing any kind of reconstruction, using their space age technology to destroy any attempts to build up an industrialised civilisation.

About sixty years after the bombing seventeen year old Henry is living in a coastal farming community. He has a rather strange view of history, learnt from old Tom, one of the only people who still remember the “old times” before the bombs. This is a combination of truth and tall tales, and in fact, this is a strong theme in the book – the importance of story telling and the need for “lies”.

Henry has to make some hard choices when he meets outsiders urging him to join the “resistance”, a group people who vow to fight the outside worlds attempts to “keep America down”. He learns about betrayal and regret, and what it means to be an adult in a harsh world.

The setting of this story is just awesome. Trees growing on the abandoned highways, crumbling sky-scrapers, flooded cities. Kim Stanley Robinson always loves to dwell on the detail, and its never just “description”. The landscape is as important to the plot as the action.

And apparently there are more – a whole series of “Orange County” books. Off to the library to find some more!

This is one of the saddest books I’ve read.  And yet, despite its subject matter, it is very gentle.  Only at the very end did the story flow away and leave me stranded with the pain of the narrator embedded in my own heart.

It is very difficult to write about “Never Let Me Go” without some spoilers.  I’m about to give away a plot point now because unlike many others whose reviews I’ve read, I don’t believe that this point is in fact, the core of the book, or the source of its sting.

But in case you are like me, and thoroughly allergic to any spoilers at all – I will now say goodbye :).  If you dont mind, read the rest of the review…

…good.  You are still around.  🙂 More