A Journey To The Darker Side of Other People's Lives: Meet Chris Macfarlane

Ladies and gents! You got a chance to meet yours truly on the blog last week, so it is now my pleasure to introduce you to one of my most beloved MA colleagues and fellow Where the Wild Words Are author, Chris Macfarlane.  Last year I had the pleasure of sharing a workshop group with Chris, and I was always struck both by her unparalleled sense of story both in her own writing and in her feedback to others.  I'm thrilled that she decided to develop her piece, A Girl Called Harry, into a full manuscript.  It's a book for teens with a strong moral compass and I'm getting excited right now imagining this novel finding its way into the hands of its intended readership! So, without further ado, I'll let the woman speak for herself.  Dear readers, I give you Chris Macfarlane!

Demons, Daim Bars and Good Advice: The long-awaited interview with Sarah Rees Brennan...

Yael and I met Sarah Rees Brennan on Blackfriars Bridge, one late July evening.

Like all stories, the beginning comes a little before that point.

I’ve been a fan of Sarah since before she was published, back when she blogged about her road through publication and kept livejournal rolling in the aisles with regular updates of wit (sidenote: this still happens), and repeatedly threw her books at Yael until she agreed to read them.

[Yael: You will now go read them too, if you know what’s good for you.]

Sarah Rees Brennan is the author of the Demon's Lexicon trilogy and the Lynburn Legacy trilogy. She's also collaborated with other big name YA authors, such as Cassandra Clare and Justine Larbalestier, is vocal about diversity in YA*, and feeds on the tears of her readers. Inevitably, we had to meet her, and we had to interview her for the blog. 

At the End of the World, the Ocean

I’ve been thinking about the ocean.

Not just because I’m at home in Vancouver now, though that’s definitely a part of it: I felt the pull of the ocean the other day, so I took the long way home on my bicycle. I wanted to hug the water as long as possible.  I needed to be close to it.  I felt the same thing again today – that yearning to be close to the sea.  I took the bus to Wreck Beach and danced in the sand and put my toes in the water.  It was cold, but it reminded me I was alive. 

I know I’m not the only person who feels this – my friend and fellow Chronicles of Word contributor Josh Martin and I were g-chatting about that feeling of being pulled to the sea.  Like the sea is truer compass for us than North.

But there’s another reason I’ve been thinking about the ocean.

Some of the most common writing advice (and by the way, it’s common, because it’s good) is that you should read a lot of books like the one you want to write.  So I’ve been devouring post-Apocalyptic books (especially, but not exclusively, YA) for the past year and a bit.  One thing that comes up over and over in these books about what happens after the end of the world is the ocean.  And when they talk about the ocean, it’s got a mythological, supernatural quality to it.  It’s much more than a place of natural beauty.