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When I was writing The Ragnor Trilogy, a dragon appeared in the story. I was not so much inventing -- the inventiveness comes later -- as transcribing the story I was seeing in my mind, a version of a bed time story I'd told my children. I never intended to write about a dragon... But there he was, the Venerated Dragon of the Narrowlands.

 For the first two books, Irina The Wolf Queen and Irina and The White Wolf, no-one sees this Dragon.  When I was writing the third volume it became clear that Irina would have to confront him... she is chained to a rock in his lair, and it’s a terrifying moment. But I did wonder, why am I writing about a dragon? Have dragons been reduced to clichés through overuse?

I kept writing, thinking that perhaps I'd replace the dragon with some  monster of my own devising later; but when I was editing, I found that 
 nothing else could stand in for the Venerated Dragon. He was astonishing to me, he was real. Part of his reality was his deep falseness, his layers of lies. This made him a worthy foe for Irina, who has taken on 'the Junsong', Ragnor's creed of truth, as her own personal creed. 

According to the late myth expert, Joseph Campbell, dragons are part of “the agony of spiritual growth.”  The hero must cross threshold after threshold , conquering dragon after dragon, until “the stature of the divinity that he summons to his highest wish increases, until it subsumes the cosmos. Finally, the mind breaks the bounding sphere of the cosmos to a realization transcending all experiences of form ...”

A cliché is something that’s become hackneyed or trite. There’s nothing trite about a dragon. Children understand dragons; they know intuitively what they represent, and they have their own private dragons, real or imagined. This is the dragon’s archetypal power, and it transcends cliché. It’s good, even essential,  to read that dragons can be slain. Storytelling shows us how we can become more truly our best selves.  

Submit your answers by Friday November 27 to my contact form to go in the running to win the cover art for Irina and the White wolf, printed on canvas.  Click here
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Back in 1977, in the dark ages before the internet and Facebook, Susan Sontag wrote in  her long essay "On Photography" that we live in an 'image choked world'. (I wonder what she'd say now, when our appetite for images seems insatiable?) 

Do images steal from our imagination? Or do they inspire? When I was writing Irina The Wolf Queen, I described the appearance of some characters, but omitted details about Irina, and her friend, Prince Andor. My hope was that young readers would imagine them how they wanted; even project themselves into those characters. 

And then, there came the book cover. Decisions had to be made. The designer drew Irina blonde, and the image was attractive and eyecatching enough, we hoped, for readers to choose it from the bookstore shelf. Commercial imperatives intruded on the pure innocence of imagining.

I still wonder whether it is possible to imagine Irina in some other way, or whether the cover has made that impossible? What do you think?


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​Sharon Thompson: Stunning image. Yes, the competitive nature of the market place and the paucity of time (few long, leisurely, loiterings browsing in book shops today) demand work be represented visually and appeal instantly. Gosh, was there really a time before the internet???


Lachie Swann: Images steal from our imagination in the same way that in-articulation prevents us from shaping reality.

View 1 more reply

Leah Swann: Yes, both rob us of the chance to bring out something, however small, that is unique.

Joanne Kyrkilis: Unfortunately I think the image sticks. While I understand the commercial imperative...it does impose on our ability to imagine our own Irina and identify with her.


Anne Hadley: I think when we read no matter the cover our own imagination takes over The cover at first glance maybe important but as I read I confess I shape my own visions.


Leah Swann:  Yes, I'm the same, but I find if I've seen the film of a book the actor tends take over from my imagined character.

Irina: the Trilogy  is now available in print and as an ebook (perfect Christmas gift for 8-13 year olds!)
​Watch the book trailer:  here 

This beautiful canvas poster has Roy Chen's cover art for Irina and The White Wolf, the second adventure in The Ragnor Trilogy. To be in the running to win, answer the questions below, and submit them to the contact form. 

(Clue: all the questions come from the first adventure, Irina The Wolf Queen)

​1/ Who was in the painting that Vilmos brings to show Queen Chloe?

2/ What is the name of Vilmos's rat?

3/On Ragnor, is the realm of Pavel in the North, South, East or West?

4/Where do Prince Andor and King Niklas get trapped?

5/ What is the 'lost book' that outlines the creed of Ragnor?

Submit your answers by Friday, November 27 here: Quiz Answers 

Good luck!

​Recently, I came across this lovely quote from Rumi:

“Don't be satisfied with stories, how things have gone with others. Unfold your own myth.”

I love the word 'unfold';  that we each have a myth curled up within us, complete with our own symbols, motifs and ideas. (I also like that 'unfold' is almost a command -- this is part of our essential work.) 

One individual who has unfolded his own myth is the London/Nigerian writer, and Booker Prize winner, Ben Okri. Read a short interview with him below. 
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​Ben Okri won the Booker Prize in 1991 for The Famished Road. He has published ten novels, three volumes of short stories, two books of essays, and three collections of poems. His work has been translated into more than 26 languages. He has been awarded the OBE, numerous international prizes and honorary doctorates. Born in Nigeria, he lives in London, and was kind enough to be interviewed when he visited Australia earlier this year. His latest novel, The Age of Magic, is a stunning, profoundly considered work of fiction.
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1/  Much of your work has a quality of dreaminess, and yet you have no problem sustaining a narrative. What would you say to writers about the craft of telling a story?

“That what was what I learned first, fortunately. In my first novel, Flowers and Shadows, which I wrote when I was seventeen or eighteen, I had masters such as Maupassant, Ibsen, Chekhov. I had to teach myself formal storytelling. I went from classical to experimental, and now to classical experimental.

“It’s very important that anyone who wants to write should you learn to do that first, because it is much harder to do it later on if you’ve acquired some bad habits of experimentation or innovation. Storytelling should, as the writer’s career advances, become an instinct. It’s not something you can graft back on. I always want to tell young novelists,  leave out all the clever stuff and fancy ideas, and learn the humility of telling a story first.”
 

2/ Where do novels like Starbook, The Age of Magic and Astonishing the Gods come from?


“Astonishing the Gods was a haunting idea that I had from when I was a kid in Nigeria. I carried it with me through all the books I was writing, The Famished Road and all that, and then one day in the summer I just started it. It just turned up. But then a tremendous amount of work goes into getting it right.
           It’s not that ‘anything goes’ in my writing, but I have a logic in each of my books which I follow and I let it lift to its natural place. I follow the logic of each work rigorously, and I follow it in every sentence of that work. So there’s great rigor, but there’s great freedom at the same time. It’s a very strange combination.”

3/What’s your advice for writers and artists?

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“It’s all here. It’s all in the quality of looking. A simple kind of story in the hands of a popular thriller writer is one kind of story. That same simple story in the hands of a master becomes a gateway to a greater understanding of the human condition. It’s not the thing itself. It’s the mind that looks. It’s the mind that sees. That’s what I mean by it’s all here.”

Here's the one sentence story that appears on the 2014 Story Wine label, called "That Inward Eye" after a famous line in Wordworth's poem ...

To launch the 2015 Story Wine Prize competition, Overland and Story Wines, in collaboration with the Emerging Writers' Festival, is hosting book party. The venue, Curtin House’s Metropolis art bookstore, an old Communist headquarters, will add a vintage vibe.

Story Wine will launch and serve (for free) its new vintage shiraz which will have the 2014 prize-winner, Leah Swann's story published on its label. Starts at 6pm.

"What does being a writer mean to me? It means simply being true to my imagination. When I write something, I think of it not as being factually true (mere fact is a web of circumstances and accidents), but as being true to something deeper. When I write a story, I write it because somehow I believe in it -- not as one believes in mere history, but rather as one believes in a dream or in an idea."   Jorge Luis Borges, This Craft of Verse.


In a creative writing exercise on a school visit, a student was stunningly true to his imagination. He told me the most precious thing he could imagine was:
 
"the stone of souls: to look at it is like looking at pure sunlight, to touch it sends a shiver down your spine."

See, it’s great, serious, considered, wild and heady stuff.--Dave Graney, The Adelaide Review

Every so often, a book captures a reader’s imagination and takes on the quality of a stolen moment. Australian Love Stories is one of those gems, allowing readers the secret pleasure of a story at a time.—Amanda Ellis, The West Australian.

Destiny, heat and lust, cold betrayal, unrequited. It’s all here.
—Kerenlee Thompson, Kerenlee Thompson.com


Vintage Mother's Day Card:  http://wordplay.hubpages.com/hub/Free-Printable-Mothers-Day-Cards#slide871182

After almost two hours driving through peak hour traffic in the rain, I pulled up at a bakery in Port Melbourne for directions.
   "You mean Graham Street," said the barista, hot coffee roaring into a paper cup. He nodded at the customer beside me. "That's where we went. They  call it Port Melbourne Primary now." And rolled his eyes.
    "Yeah, we all went there. Just drive down the overpass. You can't miss it."
The customer stepped out into the rain with me, a stranger in his land, to point the way. Pleased to be asked. 
       
Schools are such alive places. After two days, meeting around one hundred students, I was astonished at their attention, and their creativity. We talked about writing and inspiration, and what is most precious to us. One boy tried to tell me his most precious thing was a zombie.
         "An imagined zombie," he laughed, delighting in my (feigned) horror.
         "Surely the best kind," I replied.
Another boy told me he'd like a "golden hoverboard."  A beautiful girl showed me a drawing of her most precious thing, her mother, and my heart went out to her. I kept thinking about everyone long after I'd left that Friday, and was happy when a student called Willow wrote  to say she'd read Irina the Wolf Queen 'all day and all night' and loved how it was dreamy and mysterious.

(You can read WIllow's comments under 'what readers say.')

My thanks go to the warm and friendly teachers at Port Melbourne Primary, and to the librarian, Margaret Whitford, who facilitated the visit.