I recently had the pleasure of interviewing Gillian Polack. Her latest book ' Langue [dot] doc 1305' has just been released and it looks to be a thrilling read.
There are people involved.
That’s the first mistake.
Scientists were never meant to be part of history.
Anything in the past is better studied from the present.
It’s safer.
When a team of Australian scientists – and a lone historian –
travel back to St-Guilhem-le-Désert in 1305 they discover being impartial,
distant and objective just doesn’t work when you’re surrounded
by the smells, dust and heat of a foreign land.
They’re only human after all.
But by the time Artemisia is able to convince
others that it’s time to worry,
it’s already too late.
‘Viscerally powerful, deeply felt,
strongly written: Langue[dot]doc 1305 challenges reader expectations of
time travel, of ‘Grim-dark’ and of mediaeval life and brings a
haunting, authentic voice both to the past and to the struggles facing
the present.’
~ Kari Sperring, author of Living With Ghosts
What inspired Langue[dot]doc 1305?
It wasn’t
so much an inspiration as being caught in a cleft stick. I’m a Medievalist and
I’m a writer and I swore I’d never write anything straight historical. I’d
stick to fantasy and keep my two worlds safely apart. I wrote the novel as part
of a doctorate, though (third novel, second doctorate, but not the first time
I’ve eaten my words) and it was really important to question the deep truths I
thought I believed in. Keeping those two worlds apart was one of those truths
and it turned out to be not a truth at all, but a giant fear of worlds
colliding. The worlds didn’t collide in the end, but merged gracefully.
And this
is not the answer anyone expects when they ask that question! “I wrote this
book because I said I never would.”
· Can you tell me a little bit
about the main characters?
The novel
is an ensemble creature. There are two casts (and a few extras off to the
side). There is the time travel team, led by the uber-brilliant Luke Mann and
his offsider Dr Sylvia Smith. The historian (who explains the past to us, is
Artemisia Wormwood. She’s not at all the same kind of historian as me, which
made her quite a challenge to write ) – Medievalists are specialists and working
out how the limits of her knowledge were different to mine wasn’t straightforward.
There is a whole bunch of scientists, there is a doctor/cook and there’s a
handyman time-travelling under the hill and they’re all far too strong
personalities to be confined so tightly. It brings out the worst in everyone.
The
leader in the valley (the townsfolk in the valley and they actually belong in
1305) never actually appears, but of those who do appear I love
Guilhem-the-smith most and Fiz almost-most. Fiz is an adolescent who doesn’t
know he’s bored. Guilhem-the-smith bears the weight of the world and deals with
it quite calmly, which is a good thing, given his neighbours. There’s also
Guilhem-the-knight, who only thinks he bears the weight of the world and really
needs to get over himself.
What drives you write?
I love
meeting all these people in my mind. I love putting them in odd situations and
seeing how they react. All my novels, whether they’re fantasy, SF, or something
else are about small lives and how big they are for the people who live in
them. This means I get to play out problems that I see in the bigger world
around me and find out what happens when I give them time in the sun. It also
means I get to turn traditional narratives inside out (gently) and see how they
work.
Do you have a name for your
computer?
Sometimes
I have names for my desktop computer. They’re not polite. This is when my
computer does idiot things like download an update and need reconfiguration
when I’m on a tight deadline, or lose the internet in the middle of final edits
which I’m doing live with my editor.
My
netbook is called “portaoffice” mainly because Sharon Penman calls her
computers exciting names and they all do vile things to her, so I thought that
if I called my travelling computer something unexciting and reliable it would
behave accordingly. So far it’s worked.
How did
you come up with the title?
I didn’t!
My title was exceptionally dull and Janeen Webb suggested that Langue.doc 1305.
My publisher changed the full stop, to make it less confusing to look up. It’s
such a wonderful pun – I love this title!
· What was it like getting into the
nitty gritty of 1305 France, was it hard coming back to 2014?
Because
I’m a middle-aged Medievalist, I’ve been in Medieval France on and off for 25
years, so it wasn’t hard at all. What was hard was convincing everyone that I’m
not still there…
What type of books do you like
reading?
So many!
I love reading. My paper library is about 6,500 books and my e-library is many
times that and it’s not enough, for I am a sad book addict. Or a happy book
addict. A book addict, anyhow.
I read
broadly, and with great pleasure. I always come back to speculative fiction and
to favourite authors. I have hundreds of favourite authors, though, and they
range from Georgette Heyer to Mikhail Bulgakov (The Master and Margarita is
intense and luminous and dangerous) and George Gissing and Jane Austen. Favourite
Australian new books include a collection of short stories by Kim Wilkins (The
year of Ancient Ghosts) and a spectacular novel by Alysse Near (Fairytales for
Wilde Girls).
What
was your favourite chapter (or part) to write and why?
I remember
that my favourite parts of the writing were immersive but each time I think of
a moment I’m back in it. Comparing one with another is tough. When Artemisia
explains to Geoff how people in the Middle Ages might see the sky that the two
of them are looking at during that Medieval moment, even though I was at my
desk in Canberra it felt as if I was lying on the ground and looking up at that
sky and feeling the soft breeze. I knew the sky because an astronomer-friend –
Lara Eakins showed me those skies, and I knew the land and the breeze because
I’ve visited them, but in that moment, for my writing, the research came
together and created something quite different. When I’m
writing a novel, I’m inside the world of the novel to an extent and every bit
is both wonderful (being in that world) and quite difficult (translating what’s
happening in that world into a story for readers). What this means, though, is
that by the time the book is published I’m in a different place entirely.
Artemisia is a beautiful and
unusual name, how did you find it?
I’ve seen
it as a name in Italian works for ages (Artemisia Gentileschi was a famous
artist, for instance), and I’ve loved it for ages. I needed a name with a twist
and it had to be an Italian name, so Artemisia was perfect. It also meant she
got to choose a surname that is actually a pun. Why did she need to choose a
surname and what joke did she make and why is that joke a bit bitter? For that
you’ll have to read the book, I’m afraid.
What are the most important attributes to remaining
sane as a writer?
I’m not
sure that one remains sane as a writer. I would rather be grounded than sane,
anyhow. In touch with reality, not necessarily a part of it. For this, I have
friends. I also try to remember that there is an outside world and that the
worlds in my mind are just invented, and that tomorrow could well be even more
interesting than yesterday, and that I need to ring my mother at least once a
day. Also, chocolate helps.
If you could have a cuppa with
anyone from history, who would it be?
I want to
meet the ancestress who left London with many children and came to Australia
150+ years ago. I have her eyes and I look at her picture and think “What an
interesting woman.” She has an amazing presence in the single photo we have of
her. I would love to drink tea with her.
Do you have a writing routine
that you need to do before you start to write?
Sometimes. Each book develops its own work-patterns
and two of my novels have demanded routines. One was exactly the opposite
though (that was The Art of Effective Dreaming, which Satalyte will release
next year) and insisted on being written anywhere and anytime. With Effective
Dreaming, I had scraps of notes on all kinds of strange material and the novel
changed whenever I entered them into my system.
The only thing all my novels have in common is a
little spreadsheet Jennifer Fallon gave me. I track y deadlines and my
wordcount. This is more a signing-off routine (do a wordcount and update the
spreadsheet at the end of a session) than a starting-up one.
How much research goes into your
writing?
Impossible
amounts. Seriously. I’m a researcher the same way I’m a wordsmith. It’s something
I’ve just done for such a long time I don’t know how not to research or how to
quantify it. I collect possible material for novels wherever I am. I have a
self-created picture library, for instance, just in case I need material for
something, later on. Occasionally those pictures get published. A couple of my
photos were modified for use on the cover of Langue[dot]doc 1305, for instance.
I’m not a photographer, though – I’m a writer and a historian and love the
research side of both.
What would be your ideal century
and why?
I used to
have a clear answer to this. I always said “twelfth century” because it was a
time of pivotal cultural change. So many cool things happened and they produced
a culture that eventually became ours. Right now, though, I’m fascinated by the
seventeenth century. I think I don’t love centuries, but humans and when humans
do interesting things, I get fascinated and the times and places I’m looking at
become my new BFF. I’d be a lousy time traveller!
How did you become interested in
history?
I wish I
knew the answer to this. I’ve always been interested in history. By ‘always,’ I
mean that when I was a child I dragged my family into museums and looked for
old buildings and asked questions about clothes that were different to the ones
we were waring and jumped up and down with joy when I discovered pre-electric
irons. Seriously, I did. When I was ten, I think it was. A country museum in
rural Victoria had a display cabinet with irons that covered a century of
change. I think my family thought I was mad. This latter bit hasn’t changed.
And I still get excited in museums.
What makes this book different to
the other books written about the Languedoc?
It’s the
Middle Ages of historians (or as close to that as I could get) not the Middle
Ages of high fantasy or grimdark. Also, it’s the Languedoc of someone who has
been there and asked many questions. And it’s unashamedly Australian – there’s
even two-up. I can’t think of another time travel novel that has two-up, much
less a time travel novel set in the Languedoc.
Has the dog ever eaten your manuscript?
No, but
the cat once ripped up a few pages to make a nest. I don’t know why cats like
to nest in fiction (or indeed, why they nest at all), but it shows they have
good taste. I can’t have a cat now (I live on a major road) and my stories are
the worse for it.
Thank you Gillian for enticing us with your wonderful novel.
Gillian's book is now available to be ordered in store or if you are after the E-Book version then head over to the
Satalyte Publishing Website and they will help you out :D
Gillian lives in Canberra, Australia and has three published novels, two anthologies and a
historical cookbook. One of the novels (Ms Cellophane/Life through
Cellophane) was a Ditmar Finalist, as was one of the anthologies
(Baggage). She was awarded the Best Achievement Ditmar in 2010.
Her PhDs are in Medieval History and in Creative Writing and she claims she needs a third to ‘round things out.’
