Reading has always been a passion and my tastes varied. Fantasy was something that intrigued me. Alice in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass were introduced to me by my father and have remained lifelong favourites as are the stories of May Gibbs. Whilst I was forbidden to read Grimm and Andersen until upper primary, I loved the way the Grimm Brothers and Hans Christian Anderson shaped stories that never talked down to children but which told carefully constructed cautionary tales of the wiles and wickedness of human nature and the dangers in the world for the unsuspecting. The stories were wonderfully layered and could be read at different ages and stages of life and would reveal more layers with each reading. I read Lord of the Rings non-stop over a day or so and The Hobbit not long after. But it was not just fantasy I read. Forbidden to read my brothers war comics, I quite naturally did. Strangely, my parents had no problem with my reading the magnificent dramas of Shakespeare. I also read everything by Dickens bar Pickwick Papers and most of P.G.Wodehouse, read family sagas like Gone with the Wind and stories by Georgette Heyer, an author much loved by my paternal grandmother. I read Nabokov and Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn as a teenager and the latter gave me a taste for gritty reality based fiction as well. At the same time I was reading the satirically comic autobiography, Coronets Amongst the Weeds, along with numerous nonfiction biographies and histories, including a history of the American Indian’s experience post Caucasian settlement.
Would you say your childhood and teenage reading has had a distinct influence on how you write fiction now, and why?
A strong sense of story has hopefully rubbed off from all that smorgasbord of reading. I love rich imagery and the way words paint pictures. I’ve never been a party person, preferring to be an observer. That, along with the love of the richness of the English language has been a good foundation as a storyteller in print.
Pick one of your favourites among your fiction stories or a story, which is an interesting example from your fiction. What makes this story one of your favourites or an interesting example of your fiction?
A House Divided [Basics of Life] is, I guess, ‘interesting’ in the sense that the story has not let me go. It is fast becoming a series of linked stories. I am now up to number four. It is also ‘interesting’ in the sense that I had no intention whatever of writing a story centred in the period of the American Civil War. But it happened that way. I guess that is part of being right brain oriented. I am enjoying the characters’ journeys and finding out more about them, not just from the unfolding of their own stories, but from that of others along their journey.
I can’t say I have favourites. The themes have been very varied, from teen angst in Winged [Issue 4, Wired Ruby] to moment by moment first person survival story of Soup, or marriage/ family breakdown and resurrection of Postcard from Fujiyama [Stories for Sendai], tip of the hat to Poe in The Crypt [The Spirit of Poe], The Stray, the first person story of a boy surviving orphanage life in Australia of the 50s [AATE anthology, The Girl Who Married a Fly], or the dark humour of Her Ladyship Awaits… [100 Stories for Queensland]. Short story writing is something I have only really started to give serious attention to this year.
Who is another author whose fiction writing you admire and why?
Can’t pick just one… reading is a smorgasbord for me. I love Terry Prachett and Jasper Fforde. They are both highly original, quirky writers with a keen eye for human foibles and uncanny ability to caricature. Rider Haggard was a favourite for his strong sense of adventure, a non-stop boy’s own rollercoaster ride. Emily Rodda’s Deltora Quest series [why aren’t they at least a TV series?] and the dark stories of Edgar Allen Poe were wonderfully original and gripping in their distinctive ways. D.M. Cornish’s Monster Blood Tattoo trilogy is a monumental work. Celia Dart Thornton’s Bitter Bynde trilogy was a fabulous read. Jodi Picoult’s wonderfully researched works like Handle with Care and Kathy Lette’s madcap semi autobiographies and articles – they're 'can't put them downs'.
How would you summarise one of your short stories in one paragraph?
Girl’s Story [Tribute to the Stars, USA] took off on a tangent from the story A House Divided, [Basics of Life]. This tells, in first person, the journey of a deaf, half-caste Afro-American orphan from the cotton fields of the South, through war torn America to freedom in Canada. Both stories are set during the American Civil War and highlight the way events intervene in lives and turn ordinary people into extraordinary, and commonplace settings into stages for high drama.
How would you describe the appeal of this short story to readers?
No one knows what they are capable of until they are put in to extremes. It becomes a journey of self-discovery, pushing the limits and realising a dream. The heroine in Girl’s Story is handicapped by her deafness, by her colour, by being a young woman alone in a war torn country and by being ‘unwed’ and pregnant at a time when this meant further stigma. At no stage is she sorry for herself, she just digs her heels in and keeps going to reach her goal – Canada and a free future for herself and her unborn son.
How would you summarise a scene or sub-section from this short story in one paragraph?
In a passage, halfway through the story, Girl comes upon a deserted and plundered farm and takes the wedding ring from a dead woman’s hand. It is one of innumerable scenes of devastation and death she would have come across in her journey, but this scene gives a positive spin on war’s desolation for Girl. It features the symbolic sealing of the non-formalised wedding vows exchanged with her dead love and her strong survival instincts. Superstitions abounded, in the period of the story, about disturbing the dead and ‘stealing’ from the dead, but practicalities of survival dictated Girl’s actions. She has her unborn child to think of. She takes what she needs, with no disrespect in the taking, and moves on...
How would you describe the contribution this scene or sub-section makes to the short story?
This scene typifies the gritty determination and resolve of a young woman who, in any other circumstances, would have spent her life in servitude but who was bent on freedom and on turning whatever came to hand to good advantage. It also encapsulates the horrors of war and the terrible loss of life among the bystanders, the innocents around and over whom the storms of war break and upon whose lives they wreak undeserved havoc. Such scenes abound in any war and I wanted to show such a scene without overly dwelling on the horror entailed.
The scene highlights transition and the transitory nature of a life being lived with a purpose that is not going to be disrupted in the achieving of one of the greatest of end goals – freedom. Girl could have stayed, could have waited out her pregnancy, taken her chances with whatever might have come. But her goal was greater and so she was prepared to take greater chances to achieve it. In moving on from the deserted farm, Girl demonstrates still further her preparedness to risk all - freedom is priceless, is worth risking everything to obtain!
Do you aspire to primarily write novels in the future, or are you more interested in writing short stories, and why?
Both forms interest me. Two of my YA novels are in submission process and am working on others, including a fictionalised memoir of my mother’s childhood and young life. I have done a collection of short stories for older children in response to images by children's illustrator Shahab Shamshirsaz, also in submission process. Another project consists of the interlinked stories that grew out of A House Divided [Basics of Life]. There are three stories so far and a fourth is being worked on at present. Numbers of individual short stories are also in process for various collections.
Do you read many short story anthologies, and why?
I like the way you can dip into a short story and have the whole world it brings to life in microcosm in your hands. Some people are masters at crystallising a novel down into a short story and some give a cameo glimpse of life as if you peeped through a window in passing and caught a significant moment in a person or connected people’s lives. Both can be richly rewarding. They are the perfect reads in transit. Evidently, Hollywood stars often read short stories between takes.
What lengths of short stories do you usually write, and why?
Flash fiction and longer stories of around 5,000 words are my more usual lengths. With flash, I like the challenge of creating a complete story in miniscule. If you take the limit for flash to be 1,000 words, examples of my flash fiction include Soup, Winged and Her Ladyship Awaits…. Some stories, like The Crypt [The Spirit of Poe] and, A View of Fujiyama [Stories for Sendai] were under 1,500 words. Some stories I have written, including the stories that make up the collection started by A House Divided, are around 6,000 in range. Why? It is not something deliberate, a story takes as long as it takes to tell and I write until it is told – this, I realise, a more right brain way of doing things. That said, I wonder if having a word limit stipulated by the anthology editor might have an impact on the subconscious, much the same way telling yourself you have to be up by 5.00am will see that you are awake by 4.55am. Occasionally, I check the word count for a particular submission and realise I need the story to be a bit longer, so I write in another short scene or some more descriptive passages.
Do you submit for many short story competitions, anthologies and magazines, and what are your main motivations for this?
Anthologies are the main focus of my attention and I have been accepted for nine so far this year in Australia and the USA. I had two stories submitted to and accepted by journals early this year but was a bit dismayed when one of the journals promptly folded. For this reason I have been concentrating on anthologies. I also like to read the stories of others included in the collections, so it is like I’ve got a story in there but I’m getting a bonus – I get to read all of these other wonderful stories by a whole group of diversely talented creatives. Competitions are too expensive to be entering all the time when you have family responsibilities. I used to enter many years ago and received enough awards and places to reassure myself I wasn’t wasting my time and everyone else’s in continuing with my writing.
Author website: http://jrmcrae-subversive.weebly.com/
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