An Interview with Trent Jamieson
Trent Jamieson is a multi-award winning Australian novelist, picture book, and short story writer. He is the author of The Stone Road, Day Boy, The Death Works series, The Nightbound Land duology, and the picture books Mr Impoppable and The Giant and the Sea.
Since publishing his short story “Threnody” in 1994, Trent hasn’t looked back. From his own short story collection, to acclaimed series and award-winning novels set in fantastical worlds, we spoke to Trent about how he started his writing journey, his approach to short fiction versus novels, and his recent move into writing children’s books.
Q: What got you into writing in the first place?
Reading. I’ve loved comics, novels and stories since I was very little. Creative writing lessons in primary school were my absolute favourite – and I was a less than stellar student.
All I wanted was to write fiction, and the fiction I wanted to write was SF, and that hasn’t changed.
Q: How has your career influenced your writing?
I’ve been a bookseller for most of it, so there’s definitely a feedback loop, though there’s a real difference between selling books, and reading them, and writing them. I also ran the returns departments in a couple of bookstores so I’ve always been aware of the relatively limited shelf life of books (pun intended).
Most books are on a shelf for about six weeks to three months, and then they’re gone. In the end you just have to make peace with it and do what you want.
Q: How do you find time to write?
I’ve been very lucky this year in that I had a grant (which I’m in the end stages of – sigh) so I’ve had more time than usual to write.
Usually, when not being so lucky, I just have that sort of interstitial writing where you find little spaces and you do what you can – which is surprisingly a lot over a period of months and years. Most of my books and stories have been written out the back of work, or on buses, or in lunch breaks. Ultimately you find what time works for you, and then try and be consistent – but also forgiving, life is more important.
Q: Are there any particular authors you look up to?
Kris Kneen, Marianne de Pierres, Tansy Rayner Roberts, Margo Lanagan, Rowena Cory Daniels, Grace Dugan, Samuel Maguire, Peter Ball, Angela Slatter and Kathleen Jennings who have all been friends and who inspire me in their very different approaches to writing and life. I love M. John Harrison, Claire Keegan, Peter Beagle, Adam Roberts, Ursula Le Guin, and Tolkien all for different reasons.
Q: What are you reading, listening to, or watching at the moment?
I’m reading A Stranger in Olondria by Sofia Samatar which is absolutely wonderful. I devoured the Steerswoman Series by Rosemary Kirstein a few months back. And I just finished a great book on the history of children’s fiction The Haunted Wood by Sam Leith. I’m about to start the new Tim Winton Juice, and the Robbie Arnott Dusk. I have little kids so the tv watching is pretty much zero at the moment, and has been for around five years.
Q: What is your approach to writing short fiction, as opposed to novels? How do you start?
I approach short fiction the same way I do a novel or a picture book. There’s usually an image or a character’s voice and it leads me into the story. It’s rare for me to decide to write a type of short story, or to know much about it until I’m deep in a draft. Though I usually know if a story is a novel or a shorter piece very early on. That said, my last two published novels Day Boy and Stone Road originally began as short stories!
Q: Can you give us a few of your favourite pieces of short fiction that you’ve read over the years?
Oh! That’s like asking what my favourite beer or chocolate is! There’s so many. I’m drawn to quiet stories that build, a recent one is in Joe Lansdale’s collection In the Mad Mountains called “Starlight, Eyes Bright”. Anything by Clare Keegan, the novella Small Things Like These is incredible. I still think about Margo Lanagan’s short story “Singing My Sister Down”. Kathleen Jennings’ collection Kindling is fantastic, every story is a jewel.
Q: What’s one trope you’re tired of seeing at the moment?
Honestly, if I was editing short fiction, I’m sure I’d have one (slush tends to move very obviously with trends), but as I’m pretty selective in my reading there’s nothing that I’m tired of, there’s such depth in the short story field that you’re always playing catch up. Any trope is good if it’s done well.
Q: What’s one thing you wish people wrote about more?
Climate Change (not cli-fi, so much but what we’re experiencing now), class, and people just doing their jobs – I love stories about work.
Q: You’ve written both short stories and novels. Can you talk about the difference between the two formats and how they inform each other?
I love the directness of short fiction, but I also enjoy the meander of a novel. They definitely use different parts of the writing brain. But that said, I’ve written two novels that have come from short stories, so they can work as a seed to a larger project.
Q: What was it like putting together your short story collection Reserved for Travelling Shows?
It was so long ago now! I do remember that I was a reasonably prolific short story writer, but then I put the collection together and then that was it. I’ve hardly written much short fiction since, though I’ve found myself writing a little more lately. The thing that collection shows is how my interests really sit front and centre of my work: time, clocks, death, and loss. I’ve heard that writers write the same story over and over again, I don’t know if that’s true, but we certainly have our obsessions.
Q: What inspired you to write the Death Works trilogy?
I am totally obsessed with tales of psychopomps and the afterlife (maybe a little less so now I’m in my fifties, it’s all getting too real). I wanted to write my own story about the personification of Death, and I wanted it to be Urban Fantasy and set in Brisbane, instead of say, New York, and I wanted to see if I could get away with it. It was a dark romp of a thing that I look back on very fondly.
Q: Both Day Boy and The Stone Road take place in a fantastical post-apocalyptic world in which the supernatural has returned to the world. Both stories are led by younger protagonists. What inspired you to write from this perspective?
Both stories were driven by the voices of the protagonists. It wasn’t so much a choice as a voice-led thing. I felt like the characters found me and then I just had to follow.
Q: In some of your more fantastical stories, there appears to be an Australian flavour to the settings and characters. Certain characters in The Stone Road, for example, sound and behave in ways that suggest an Australian connection despite the magic and monsters teeming the landscape. Is that something you purposely worked into some of your stories?
I’m an Australian writer, and I like to write about what is around me, and the places I’ve lived in. I’ve never been able to pull off a faux European setting. It’s not at all a realist Australian locale, or voice, but it is an amplification. Also, it takes me bloody ages to write a book, I need to be able to live with it in my head for a long time, I can close my eyes and I’m there.
Q: Considering Day Boy and The Stone Road are both set in the same world (but are stand-alone books) should we expect to see a third book set in this world to form an interconnected trilogy? What inspired this particular setting?
Both books came from short stories (see above) that I didn’t realise were connected until I started writing the Stone Road, and I could tell that they were the same world, just different parts of it. I do have an idea, title and POV for a third book, but in a way, I feel like these two novels bookend each other very well, and that I’d really need a very pressing reason to write the third one, something that binds and comments on the books in a more comprehensive way. I think I’ll get there eventually. I do have a small collection of short stories set in that world too, a few of which haven’t been published yet, I’m hoping that will see the light of day in the next year or two.
Q: Worldbuilding is an important element of many speculative fiction stories. Can you tell us how you approach it?
I’m pretty loose. I need a character to build the world for me, if I have a good set of eyes to look through, and a voice then I build from that. I’m not a big picture world builder. I like the muddiness that we all approach the (real) world with, and then the moments of vividness already lost as soon as they are experienced. I’m drawn to the mythic, but I do like to have it grounded in dirt and stone and sky (if you can ground something in sky).
Q: The Stone Road and Day Boy are written with a lyrical approach to the writing. Can you talk about how you tackle prose?
It’s voice for me, if the voice is lyrical, I’ll follow it that way, if it’s more direct then I’ll write it simply. I like voices with rhythm and a bit of a heartbeat to them. I tend to go overboard in early drafts, so rewriting is often about reigning it in a bit.
Q: What was the one moment that made you feel like a Real Author™?
I still think it was my first story sale (“Threnody” to Eidolon magazine), actually getting paid for something I’d written. That was way back in 1994. I’ve felt like a real author ever since.
Q: How do you beat writer’s block?
Being kind to myself. The writing comes eventually. I usually set ridiculously small targets and work from there.
Q: How do you handle rejections?
Better than I used to. Seriously though, it’s part of the process. Some of my best short fiction has been rejected multiple times. And even the stories that have never found homes they’re just mulch for new stories.
Q: What’s one piece of advice you’d like to give to new writers who are eager to break into the speculative fiction world?
Read as widely as you can, and not just the old stuff, read what’s being published now. Reading may not be the fuel of writing, that’s life, but it’s the accelerant.
Q: Is there something about the industry that you wish you knew before you got involved?
How kind and supportive it is. I’m a bit socially anxious, but if you’re going to hang around a bunch of people, writers are the best (and bonus points if they write SF).
But there’s also this.
If you’re going into writing with an intention of more than dabbling (which is fine, by the way), look at the careers of the authors you admire, get a sense of the ups and downs, the way a writing life changes as you change, and the business changes, and think about what kind of writer you want to be, and then be kind to yourself, this business has so many ups and downs, and a writing career can take so many shapes, none of it is easy (except when it is, which is always a surprise), but if you kind of know what you want, you can head in that direction, and if that doesn’t work for you, you can change. While stubbornness is a great trait in a writer, let your career be as fluid as you want it to be. I never expected to write children’s books, as much as I loved them, but it has enriched my practice in so many ways.
Q: Is there any work you have coming up that you would like to speak about?
I have a kid’s graphic novel series coming out next year with Penguin that I co-created with Brent Wilson. We worked on the picture book Mr Impoppable together back in 2022 and I asked him if he wanted to do a graphic novel with me, I’m so glad he said yes. The first book is called Frog, Log, and Dave Almost Save the Day. It was the most fun project, it’s wild and silly, and it’s great to see someone like Brent take to the comics medium like an absolute pro from the get-go.
If someone had told me that I’d get the chance to make comics when I was younger, I would have been over the moon.
Learn more about Trent and his work at www.trentjamieson.com.au and www.avidreader.com.au.