Born and raised in Dublin, Ireland, Celine Kiernan (website) has spent the majority of her working life in the film business. Trained at the SullivanBluth Studio’s, her career as a classical feature character animator has spanned over seventeen years. She’s spent most of her time working between Germany, Ireland and the USA.

Celine wrote her first novel at the age of eleven, and hasn’t stopped writing or drawing since. She has a peculiar weakness for graphic novels as, like animation, they combine the two things she loves to do the most: drawing and story telling. Bookgeeks’ Jennie Blake recently reviewed her forthcoming novel, The Poison Throne, and loved it, so we thought we would ask her about what makes her tick as a writer, and how she has found the process of being published.

Are you a bookgeek?

LOL. I guess I am! I love talking about books. Though I suspect I’m a story geek more then anything else, I’m not precious about the books themselves. In fact our books tend to get hacked about a little due to a preponderance of teens, small-fry, dogs and sundry other destructive influences. We also moved around quite a bit in the early days and many a book has been lost or destroyed in the process (some by a particularly awful storage company who left a box of much loved books in a damp shed.) My graphic novels get treated very well though – they live on a shelf and everything.

Do you have an audience in mind when writing?

In terms of story, the only audience I have in mind is me. I’m very much aware that I can’t please everyone when it comes to story, so I might as well try to please myself. But in terms of communication with the reader, I am very aware of the audience. Readers can’t hear my tone of voice or watch my expressions; a sheet of white paper and a series of little black marks is all they have – and via that sheet of paper and series of little black marks I need to convey an entire universe, I need to make characters who breath. I can’t do that without bearing the audience in mind.

What’s the best piece of writing advice you’ve ever been given (and do you follow it?)

Keep your bum in the chair and your fingers on the keyboard. The book won’t get written otherwise. (yes I follow it )

Where do you write?

All over the place, in armchairs, at the kitchen table, in front of the telly with my headphones jammed in my ears, under the willow trees down by the pond. Variety keeps me from getting into a rut. ( I have a lovely office too – I’ve been writing quite a bit there recently.)

The world feels like “our” world slightly shifted sideways, is that connection really there and is the faint sense of displacement that comes with slight changes to the familiar something you played with deliberately?

Yes. I think this happens in most of my work. I love skewing reality slightly, or introducing the mundane into the fantastical ( space marines ordering take out pizza for example) But I also think it’s something that comes naturally to my perception of the world. I grew up surrounded by people who took ghosts and fairies and banshees for granted. Fortune telling, messages from the dead, knocking on wood, breaking eggshells, saluting magpies: all standard fare for me and probably most other Irish children or teenagers of my generation. All the supernatural things in Moorehawke were added for a reason (The cats and the ghosts, for example, were another way of showing all the things that will be lost should tyranny be allowed overtake the kingdom . I wanted to symbolize freedom of expression, independence, and wonder without being too heavy handed, so I chose spirits and talking cats. I wanted them to be fantastical things which are part of an ordinary setting and so are taken for granted by those around them. Like most things which humans take for granted, the impact of losing such wonderful things as talking cats and ghosts, won’t be felt until they’re gone and it’s too late to turn back.) But I personally don’t find their addition to the world that unusual.

You’ve already written great blogs on your covers and on the process of translating your books into other languages; are there any other aspects of the publishing process that have surprised or fascinated you? How involved are you in all of the aspects of publishing that come *after* you’ve handed in the finished manuscript

The whole editorial process was a new thing for me. I kind of blundered into it like a great big baby elephant – totally unaware of what I was and was not allowed or expected to do. I don’t think this was a bad thing though. I came to the process a completely blank slate – ready to ask questions and learn learn learn. In many ways I’m like a kid tugging at an adult’s jumper whining ‘but why do you do that? But what’s that for? But what if we do it this way?’ For the most part my editors have been outstandingly patient and helpful and amazingly good humored about it. I’m almost completely self taught as an author and thanks to my eds I’ve learned more in the past three years then I think I could have done had I actually gone to college. It helps too that my publishers span the globe – working simultaneously with so many different houses has been a major crash course in international editorial, design and marketing techniques.

Did you have Wynter’s entire story in mind before you began the first book? How much of the trilogy was planned out and how much discovered as you went along?

I had the entire plot figured out and I had all the characters completely formed in my noodle. There was never a point in the writing when I said – oh God what’s going to happen now? Because I knew exactly what was going on and why people were doing what they were doing and what they all expected out of their situation. Mind you, sometimes I’d get to a scene and no-one would react the way I had expected them to react at all! I’d be writing away, expecting a, b or c to be said or done and I’d suddenly realize, ‘hey that’s not how Razi would react’ or ‘no way Wynter would do that here!’ This is because I had been anticipating how I would react in such a situation, and of course I’m a very different person to the characters I write. This kept the scenes fresh for me – I was always waiting to see what the characters would do or say based on this very tough situation I’d tossed them all into. Similarly with the back story that is hinted at by Jonathon and Lorcan’s action and reactions, I know exactly what happened there – but because the reader can only ever know what Wyn knows, or what Lorcan or Jon are willing to tell her and her friends, I need to stick very rigidly to her POV, otherwise it’s not a legitimate exploration of her perspective. She may make assumptions or judgments that are not valid – but they are valid to her, working on the scant knowledge she has available to her. It’s difficult to step back as author at times like this, but necessary, otherwise your characters become too knowing.

Which authors (fantasy or otherwise) do you find most insipiring as a writer?

The list is too long! I’m a big fan of Stephen King’s early work. I love Shirley Jackson. I’m a huge fan of Patrick O’Brian’s Aubrey/Maturin books. I return again and again to Ray Bradbury, John Steinbeck, Neil Gaiiman and Alan Moore. And then there are books I love without having followed their writers, (Moby Dick, The Miracle Life of Edgar Mint, I am Legend. Gah! the list goes on and on and on) I’m inspired by any writer that can draw me in, make me love their characters and move me.

What are you working on at the moment?

I’m waiting for edits to start on my 1974 ghost novel. In the meantime I’m about a quarter of the way through my Victorian sci-fi novel. The words ‘Victorian sci-fi’ automatically makes everyone think steampunk – but it’s not. It’s another one of my based-firmly-in-reality, moody creepy weird fests set partially in 1890′s Dublin.

As usual, I’m taking a few risks with it and as usual I’m bloody terrified that I won’t manage to pull it off – but I’m enjoying it, and that’s all I can ask for at this stage

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