Featured Interview With Linda Thackeray
Tell us a little about yourself. Where were you raised? Where do you live now?
I was born and raised in Singapore but moved to Australia in my teens. I’ve spent some years in country Australia and then moved to the big city, being Sydney, for work. In recent years, I’ve decided that the city is too much for me and have moved to a coastal town called Woy Woy (yes, that really its name – it means big water) and have been there since.
At what age did you realize your fascination with books? When did you start writing?
I was always fascinated by books. My mum tells me I started off with comics as a three-year old and read the children’s illustrated version of the Count of Monte Cristo when I was eight. Yes, such a beasts does exist! I loved to real but didn’t really start to write after going to see Star Wars when I was seven years old. That movie and the world in it filled me with such a sense of wonder that I wanted to read more about it and upon learning there wasn’t much about back then. Mind you I was seven and knew nothing about fan fiction and the internet was still some William Gibson dream.
As a result, I started writing my own stories. I wrote a shocking Star Wars story when I was ten and then decided I could actually create my own characters and I guess that’s where it started. I have stopped since.
My writing though has always been very private. I wrote under a pseudonym ‘The Scribe’ for many years and my original work remained shelved. Recently, I decided that it was time I took a step at going public and am dabbling in self-publishing. We’ll see how we go.
Who are your favorite authors to read? What is your favorite genre to read. Who Inspires you in your writings?
My favourite authors are Stephen King, Frank Herbert, Marion Bradly Zimmer, Arthur C Clarke and Neil Gaiman.
IT and Mists of Avalon are my biggest influences as a writer.
In IT, one of King’s characters asks ‘Why can’t a story be just as story?’ when confronted by a teacher who wants to know what point he was trying to make with a short story that was written. That is why drives me to write because sometimes a story just wants to be told, it sits inside you and demands to be heard.
Also one of King’s famous line in the Gunslinger is why genre writers do what they do (to me at least).
“Go then, there are other worlds than these.”
Reading Stephen King has also taught me that characterisation is key. If you don’t care about your characters, chances are neither will your readers.
Marion Bradley Zimmer was also an enormous influence because of her potrayal of female protagonists. Powerful women dont have to be queens or shield maidens. They can be strong just by rising to extraordinary circumstances. That’s how I have tried to write my female characters, making them strong but also vulnerable and flawed, like that other gender.
Tell us a little about your latest book?
My latest books was actually written about 12 years ago during my Lord of the Rings craze. While I loved the books, I found it was a little lacking in the feminine side of things. I wrote a series of stories based around the females in those books and recently went back to them, I realised that they were so far removed from the fandom they were based that it would not take much to make them unique.
So Queen of Carleon is a story about Arianne, an elf queen who married her beloved king after a lengthy war and discovers upon falling pregnant that an ancient enemy has arisen with designs of taking over the kingdom by implanting itself into her unborn baby. What follows is Arianne’s quest to find and defeat this enemy before the baby is born and ensure the safety of her mortal husband. She’s helped by her friends, the warror maid Celene and Keira, an ordinary woman she’s befriended.
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