30 Day Book Challenge: Day Sixteen

Day Sixteen: Your favourite book turned movie.

Lord of the Rings by JRR Tolkien.

I can easily say this is my favourite book turned movie, because while I wish I had never wasted my time reading this boring testosterone-overloaded epic, I really really loved the films.

I agree with every single change Peter Jackson and his writing team made to the adaptation to make it into a better movie. Every single thing: all the timeline changes (Boromir dying at the end of the first film, Shelob appearing in the final film etc); making Frodo younger; eliminating Tom Bombadill; making Arwen more important and having a bigger presence; making Sam and Frodo’s relationship more interesting with more drama; and many, many others details I can’t be bothered writing here. There are a lot.

Even though I am a fantasy reader and a fantasy writer, I found the book boring and uninspiring. The films, on the other hand, were excellent, the best non-faithful film adaptations ever made. I own the Extended Editions, as I find them even better than the theatrical releases. I don’t see how another film adaptation could ever be made, and be made better than these.
And finally, I need to express the fact that yes, Tolkien is a genius and yes, he is the father of modern fantasy, and yes, I do understand that he invented orcs and was the first person to make elves tall and willowy (as opposed to Santa’s elves) and yes, the story is amazing and the characters are awesome. The films couldn’t have been so wonderful if it weren’t for this source material. However I, personally, did not enjoy reading the books. It’s just not my cup of tea. It was very dry and methodical – I get that from my academic readings, not my fiction. So don’t get all up on your high horse and tell me I don’t ‘understand’ fantasy or that I’m not a fan. The films were simply better.

Why I Decided to Ignore Legacy Houses & Self-Publish

I always had a secret desire to be an author, but was taught from a young age that it was unfeasible. Growing up in the 90s, only people like Roald Dahl and Jodi Picoult and Stephen King got published. I was taught to focus on obtaining a ‘real’ job and only do my writing in my spare time. And I was always good at it: consistently high grades for creativity and so forth at school.

By the time I hit University, I was working towards a basic Arts degree because it was essential to get into the director’s course at NIDA. (Yeah, I honestly thought I had more of a chance at being a film/TV director than being a published author.) While I was doing my degree, the rules changed: you had to go through the acting course to get into the director’s course. I didn’t want to be an actor, I wanted to be a director. I had already invested time into this degree and didn’t want to waste it, so I re-thought my options.

In my third year, I chose to do a writing course. I already knew how to write creatively – a half-written epic fantasy and dozens of other short or unfinished stories. As part of the course we had to critique others. It was then that I fell in love with editing and helping a manuscript become great. So I decided, as being a published author was still too hard to break into, that I would rather work in a publishing house as an editor.

Right? I know. Cue laughter. Traditional publishing – especially the Big Six houses – is one of the hardest industries to break into. I even decided to do an extra year of Uni to get an Honours degree in something respectable – Shakespeare – to help me when I moved to England.

When I did move to England, the crickets chirped and all was quiet on the job front. I started a blog to ensure I was writing at least every two days, tried to find a job, wrote more stories and yearned to finish my fantasy novel, topping out now at 120K words.

No one cared about my degree. It only really helped me write my fiction better. After I competed in NaNoWriMo in 2010 and actually finished my very first full-length novel (The Edge of Darkness), I looked into self-publishing.

I always thought that maybe my fantasy series (which at that point was still only one book, Dadewalker) would get rejected from traditional publishing because it contains underage sex and pregnancy, gory violence, and strong horror themes while still being an epic fantasy without dragons, elves, or wise old wizards in pointy hats. It’s also written in 1st person from two points of view (my heroine and her shapeshifting sidekick), and my heroine is not like any of those paranormal heroines who remain passive and are victims of circumstance: my heroine actively shapes the plot of the entire series. One of her best friends is gay, and this isn’t a big deal. The love interest is not even introduced until the second book. All of these things, in my opinion, make the novel traditionally unpublishable.

But I believed there was a market for the type of books I was writing. Turns out I was writing books aimed specifically at women like me. Of course, I was writing what I wanted to read: strong women who ignore traditional gender roles and don’t need to be rescued by a big strong man. Buffy the Vampire Slayer in the 17th and 25th century. A Xena without all the Warrior Princess stuff. A Mulan of her time: not without fear, but feisty, brave, and capable.

I believe there is a market for my books. I hope I’m right. I’d hate to think that this journey, my ‘calling’ if you will, the thing I have wanted since I was a little girl – my dream rolled up and stuffed into a bottle, and almost delivered to the Archive of Lost Dreams – isn’t my path in life.

30 Day Book Challenge: Day Fifteen

Day Fifteen:  Your favourite book dealing with foreign culture

Memoirs of a Geisha by Arthur Golden.

I’m Australian. I really could have picked any book that deals with a non-Australian culture. I could have picked an English boarding school book or an American finishing school book. They’re both foreign cultures to me.

But the first and only book I thought about was Memoirs of a Geisha.

Memoirs was the first book I read after finishing my Honours degree. I was burnt out with reading, and hadn’t picked up a book for five months. I only read it because I was on holiday visiting my partner in England for five weeks and he insisted I read SOMETHING and I’d really enjoy it.

And I did.

It’s awesome.

Golden did a lot of research writing this book. He reported in the foreword that he’s still approached by people today asking if Sayuri is still alive and doing well, so realistic was the portrayal of Geisha life in Kyoto,  Japan, before and after World War II, and the writing style of Sayuri’s flashbacks.

Not only is it extraordinary that Golden writes so perfectly from a woman’s perspective, but to write of a completely different culture so well is also phenomenal. I was completely immersed in the world and I lapped up every detail.


Memoirs is a special book because geishas are not meant to share the secrets of the trade. It’s supposed to be mysterious and there’s an actual code of silence they must follow. A retired geisha called Mineko Iwasaki, who herself was the most famous and popular of the geisha of her time, was interviewed by Golden as part of his research, and after he revealed her as a source, she was harassed for breaking the code, even though she retired in 1978 when she was 29 years old.

While yes, it is true that Golden has twisted the truth of the culture and made up some customs entirely not recognised by the geisha community, the parts that are accurate are a real insight into this mysterious culture. Memoirs was written to entertain, not educate – not really. It’s fiction, and should be taken with a grain of salt. Similarly the film adaptation concentrates more on Golden’s version of the world as fiction, not portraying the absolute truth.

Honestly, if you want to be educated, go and read Iwasaki’s autobiography Geisha of Gion, or read non-fiction books and watch documentaries. Memoirs is fiction. Some people forget this and criticise it for not being realistic enough.

This is my favourite book dealing with a foreign culture.

30 Day Book Challenge: Day Fourteen

Day Fourteen: A book that should be on the high school/college required reading list

Lady: My Life As A Bitch by Melvin Burgess.

Lady is a pretty awesome book. I picked it up earlier this year when I was going through a talking animal phase. Almost the entire time I was reading it, i was thinking to myself, ‘I wish I read this when I was a teenager!’

Sandra starts off as a normal, rebellious, slightly wild teenager, then through a twist of fate (and a little urban magic) is turned into a pooch. We see the world (or Manchester, at least, where incidentally I have also explored) through her doggy eyes as she turns to the homeless man who turned her as her master, then tries to reconnect with her family who simply think she’s run away.

Sandra’s no Mary Sue, or even an earlier version of Bella Swan or the other goody-goody girls thrown by fate into an urban fantasy/paranormal YA book. She’s not very good at her schoolwork, though it’s not through lack of trying: it’s lack of ability. A lot of guilt follows her, though. Guilt at how she treated her family, guilt at her lack of responsibilities as a human and her railing against the system that wants her to do better academically, choose the right boyfriend, have ‘proper’ friends and generally be a good little robot.

It’s refreshing to read about the dog part of her life vying with all her human memories. Nothing is fluffy here: it’s all gritty, honest, and real-life – from her honest confessions of abandoning her friends for popularity to the loss of her virginity for a second time, this time as a bitch.


Sandra slowly loses control of her humanity as the dog takes over. The most heartbreaking part of the book is when her own mother realises what’s happened, and Sandra dresses herself in her old clothes and attempts to walk on her hind legs, determined to reclaim her role in her broken family.

It’s so good to go back to a YA book written before Twilight came out and took over the ideas of what teenage girls are like.

This book doesn’t have an agenda. It’s not trying to sell safe sex or abstinence or even to study hard. It’s not preaching to teenagers to change, behave, try harder. It’s simply a story about a girl, and the choices she’s made.

It should have been on my academic reading list.

30 Day Book Challenge: Day Thirteen

Day Thirteen: Your favourite childhood book.

On The Way Home by Jill Murphy.

Contrary to what my family believes, I did NOT memorise this book when I read it out loud. I read it. I just read it so often, they thought I did. But at age 5 I really wasn’t smart enough to learn an entire book.

This picture book is the earliest favourite I can remember. It follows the adventures of a little girl (whose name I can’t remember) as she walks home, passing all her friends who ask her why her leg has a plaster on it. So she tells them each a different story, each one more fantastic and adventurous than the last (like getting kidnapped by a gorilla? And being chased by a giant?).

My dad recorded me reading this book once, and on the title page, he told me to say, “Read by Alissa.” But I was under the impression that I was reading what was written in the book, so I spent about ten minutes trying to explain to him that when the book was printed, it couldn’t have known I was going to read it, so it didn’t actually say “Read by Alissa” anywhere on the title page…

I may have been a smart kid, but I was also pretty dumb.

Jill Murphy as wrote the Worst Witch series, among other popular children’s books.