We chat with Isobelle Carmody about her new novel Comes the Night.
A&U: Hi Isobelle! Thank you so much for agreeing to chat with us! First up, would you mind telling us a little about Comes the Night?
IC: Comes The Night arose from several different things in my life, and compelling questions they roused. One was being Emeritus Writer in Residence in Canberra for a month. I was essentially given the keys to the kingdom, and saw a lot of things I would otherwise never have seen, from areas of parliament not open to the public, to the lower levels of the National Library where I held in white gloved hands, the precious and gorgeous silk plan of Canberra that saw Burley Griffin and his wife Marion Mahoney Griffin win the world wide competition to design a capital city for Australia. Hearing how that idealistic plan had been thwarted by politicians, and being in Canberra which was the result of those plans, led me to wonder about how power accrues to certain people, and what it does to them as well as what they do with it. The other main thing that informed the novel was 18 months of post graduate research in four remote Queensland towns with young people using speculative fiction to ask questions and think about what the future of their towns might look like. Working with kids over such a long period and working intensely and deliberately outside of school and parent shaped environments, was an incredible experience. I have never felt closer to young people than those young participant researchers. Their curiosity and courage and imagination fed into the book and I feel it was profoundly enriched by the time I spend with them. The third thing, and there always does seem to be three things, was my concern at the way media and social media is full of fear mongering. Unlike many adults, I do not feel young people should be protected from the events around use shaping the world they will inherit. I thought their fears and ideas should be allowed space in the adult world, and we should listen. I think we should be braver and ask that of our children. Braver is love, in standing up for what we believe in, braver is resisting our own instinct to be safe and comfortable. And of course the world is full of young people right now, doing that, and facing a great deal; of disapproval from those in power. So all of these things coalesced into Comes the Night, and Will’s story.
A&U: You’ve been writing YA since you were 14 years old. What makes you passionate about writing for young people?
IC: I don’t think about the age of the people who might read the book at all. I think about the age of the character, and I try to be as true to that as I possibly can. My allegiance as a writer working on a novel is first and foremost to that novel. That said, I am interested most of all in why people do the things they do – whether it be to make incredible art, or act with amazing courage and/or wisdom, but also why people are cruel and vicious and violent and greedy and full of hatred. That makes adolescence the perfect age for a character because they have not yet made all their life decisions. They are living in the world and they see a lot, in fact a great deal more than adults want them to see, mostly. They see, and then the moments come when they must make big decisions, and I think it is in the making of those big decisions and how they are in the aftermath of them, that shapes the deeds they will do in the future.
A&U: We love the complex world building in Comes the Night. How did you go about creating this high-tech future Canberra?
IC: I think my writing has always played with ideas about the future, but I don’t really world build separately and in advance of a story. It always starts with some stuff that happens and provokes questions and vague imaginative ideas. ‘What if’ ideas. Because there is not too much separation between the real world and the world of my imagination, I find myself asking people those questions and their answers go into the pot, until a character steps out. It is when that character begins to move and act that the world they are in begins to form and firm. But I always see that world first through the eyes of my characters and so like all of the spaces we live in, there is a dialogue between a character and their environment. Will is very much in conversation with his domed Canberra as he goes through the story.
A&U: Comes the Night deals a lot with the concept of lucid dreaming. Was there something in particular that drew you to it?
IC: Well, I don’t dream. I have nightmares, and they are always pretty spectacular and very much like complete stories. One day I was complaining to my daughter and she asked why I didn’t just wake myself. I said how can I when I am asleep. She said, you just say I want to wake up. I said that would require me to know I am dreaming- that would be lucid dreaming. And she said yes. I was amazed to think she had lucid dreamed and the next time I had a nightmare, I realized I was dreaming and I tried it. Waking felt like pulling my face out of mud- an incredible suction I had to resist. But I woke and though it never happened again, I have been interested ever since in the idea of lucid dreaming. And of course in dreams in general – I have used dreams a lot in stories in a structural or metaphorical way. And in Comes the Night, I was thinking of dreams as also being the conscious dreams we have that are ideals and hopes and imaginings, and how they can be damaged or manipulated.
A&U: Will is such an interesting and layered protagonist. How did you go about creating him and finding his voice?
IC: He stepped into my mind as a gentle rather passive young man, young for his age because children and adolescents are quite protected in my imagined future. I think he was somewhat shaped by those young people on the Western Downs. I met some boys who were incredibly competent in a practical way, but gentle, dreamy, and to my mind a little naïve and conservative. I wondered what it would take to rouse a boy like that, and cause him to ask questions about the world around him, rather than simply accepting it. As far as Will is concerned, it is love that wakes and activates him. Love for his uncle and later love for Ender and her sister, and for his mother. I liked seeing how his feelings changed and grew, and how his courage grew, as he matured.
A&U: And lastly, what advice would you have for any budding writers out there who might be reading this Q&A?
IC: I think the best advice I can give any writer is to find out what it is you want to explore as a writer and write about that. Never ever think about the reader since you can’t know what is going on in their mind or how your book will be read. You can only focus on what you know and feel and think and be true to those things. Be truthful and use your writing as a tool to explore the big questions in your life and you will never be bored. You will be capable of writing and writing and writing, and so, of getting better. Of growing.
Comes The Night
by Isobelle Carmody
A superb YA fantasy set in the near future, full of secrets, high stakes, peril, deceptions and dreamwalkers, from the internationally acclaimed and bestselling author of the Obernewtyn Chronicles and The Gathering.
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