Between Lost & Found - Chapter 4

The girl sang while she worked. Not any particular song, but just words that she strung together herself like pearls on a necklace. She had always enjoyed singing, but never did so around others, only when she was alone.

Once she had sung in front of the mother at the orphanage. That was the first layer of scars on her little palms. But now, there was no one to berate her, no one to hurt her. So the words flowed out of her mouth like water through a stream, crystal clear and life-giving.

She had decided to try to make herself a house in the grove of fruit trees. At first, she simply lay a pile of sticks against a tree, but she soon figured out that it was not a good idea. Then she tried leaning sticks against each other, forming a triangular shape she could crawl under, but that too did not work very well.

But, as the girl sang and worked, she noticed something peculiar. The trees around her seemed to be bending downwards, for now, she could reach the low hanging fruit. Likewise, the vines and ferns and toadstools that made up the forest she was in had begun to creep around her. 

She paused in her singing a moment and looked around. The short smiling creatures had stuck around, they all crowded around her, some bringing her sticks to add to her house, others bringing her more fruit, but there were other animals too. The deer with the too fine necks had come to watch her, so too had a couple of the stubby mushroom men. Also, there were large turtles with houses on their backs that tiny mice scurried in and out of and birds with long draping feathers that flowed behind them as they flew. And beings made entirely of light. And even a few dogs as black as pitch with eyes that glowed brightly as if they were ignited by flames that seemed oddly familiar.

They all watched her.

She turned back to her pitiful little house and began to sing again, but this time she imagined what she wanted it to look like, she imagined what she wanted the vines and the trees to do. She sang with all of the happiness she felt and, to her delight, the plants obeyed. 

The vines grew up and around the sticks she had collected, holding them in place. The trees bent and twisted together, joining up to the vines and sticks, forming a roof. Soon she had a living house, made entirely of the plants of the forest.

She jumped for joy at the magic she had done. She went inside her little home and lay down on the bed of moss that had been made for her. The ivy vines that flowered with tiny blue stars twinkled with a dim light and it made her green home look like the night sky. Her ceiling was decorated with the multitude of fruits from the tree and the whole thing just made her want to burst with joy.

As she lay on her mossy bed, she thought of the children still left at the orphanage. If only they could see her now. They had been so cruel to her over the years, but surprisingly, she held no anger towards them. They were children just like herself. With no family or home to call their own, having never been shown love, how could anyone expect them to show love themselves?

She sat up, reaching to her ceiling to pick a piece of fruit, one of the purple kind, and as she ate it she wished she could share it with those sad children. The ones that were like herself. The ones that didn’t belong. The sad ones. The lonely and the weak and the unloved. The ones that went through their lives like they were no more than shadows. 

There were no shadows in this place. If the children came here with her they could be happy too.

The girl picked apart the purple skinned fruit, its flesh was creamy-white and had a soft fibrous consistency, similar to sweet bread. She lay her head back down on the pillow and thought about how lucky she was. How brave she was to escape. 

She must have drifted off to sleep for a time. Sleep used to be such a frightening thing, full of unknowns and nightmares and untrustworthies skulking about the orphanage at night. 

Sometimes at the orphanage, children would die in their sleep, the little ones mostly. They would go to bed and just never wake up. 

Some children would cry out and scream in their sleep. Night terrors the sisters called it. The girl even remembered, once or twice or maybe more, children disappearing. They would be in their beds after supper and then when the girl awoke, their beds would be empty. No one would speak of them again as if they had never even existed and the girl had just imagined them.

As she lay in a half sleep, half waking moment, she wondered if that is how the other children felt about her.

Sleep was such an easy thing now, as natural as breathing or eating. She would simply lay down and close her eyes and sleep would come. 

But as she lay on her mossy bed, fruit in hand but almost dropping it to the floor, she thought she must be dreaming, for, in the doorway of her new tree home, she could see the shape of the dragon lady.

But, even though she had seen some strange things in this place, she knew that dragons definitely did not exist. She had to have been dreaming. This creature was too beautiful to be real. 

The girl felt so sleepy. She could barely open her eyes, but every time she managed to open them just a crack the dragon lady with bright green scales and ebony horns curling from the top of her head, her long elegant face and fire hair, was still standing at the door.

Just as she started to think that maybe this was not a dream at all, the girl heard a deep growl and the dragon lady turned and fled, forked tail cracking the air like a whip.

The noise of the growl startled the girl and she sprang up from her mossy bed. If the dragon lady had been real she was gone, but in her place stood a tremendous black dog. It was similar to those that had been watching her work but easily four times the size. 

Even with its head lowered, it still towered over the girl. Its fiery eyes glowed brightly in the dim light of inside and it walked towards the girl slowly.

The girl stumbled backward onto her bed and backed up onto the wall. There was nowhere she could run to. The doorway was completely blocked by the massive bulk of the animal.

All the girl could do was close her eyes and pray that her death would be quick.

The Darkest Part of the Forest Review

Title: The Darkest Part of the Forest

Goodreads rating: 3.93 stars (11,383 reviews)

Genre: YA, Fantasy

Author: Holly Black

Pages: 324

Publisher: Little, Brown Books & Hachette Australia

Formats: Paper back, eBook/Kindle, Audiobook

Imagine you live in a small town and in said town there was a tourist attraction. Local businesses thrive on selling souvenirs and for generations the local kids have held parties at this attraction. Tourists travel from far away to gawk and take selfies in front of the attraction. Now imagine that this “attraction” is not a monument or a big banana, but a horned boy that has been locked away in a crystal coffin in the middles of the woods for as long as the town has existed. This is the town of Fairfold where our story is set.

“Once, there was a girl who vowed she would save everyone in the world, but forgot herself.” 
― Holly Black, The Darkest Part of the Forest.

Hazel and her brother love the horned prince and when he is suddenly no longer there; his casket is smashed and there is no trace of him to be found; they decide to find him. That they need to find him, protect him. But they don’t understand what it is exactly that they will be protecting him from.

With a central message that runs deeper than just what lies at face-value, it is a story that is guaranteed to capture you and drag you into its dark pages. 

The Darkest Part of the Forest is a beautifully constructed novel. Filled with darkness and a creep factor of ten. Holly Black has really out done herself this time. This novel is so easy to fall into. It will make you believe in faeries once again.

Back into the Fae - a conversation with Holly Black the Faerie Queen

On the drive to Hachette Publishing in Sydney, I was skittish to say the least.

We read books and admire the authors that write them, so strongly, so fiercely, that in our heads the magic of celebrity takes over and makes them out to be otherworldly beings. But as one of my good friends said to me while I was mid-panic attack that morning, “Holly Black has two hands and two feet. She is a person like you and me.”

Although, when Holly walked into the room I was beginning to doubt my friend. With her turquoise pixie-cut hair and plum stained lips, Mrs Black looked as if she could have stepped right out of one of her books. A woman made of ink and pages and magic.

Straight away Holly asked, “Are you okay?”

Whoops. My anxiety was showing. Better tuck that back in Adelise.

“I’m just nervous,” I replied.

She laughed a little and smiled a warm generous smile. “You can’t be nervous!” she said. “… Don’t be nervous.”

We were taken back to a far room in the depths of Hachette’s office space where it was dark bar the lights of the traffic crawling across the Sydney Harbour Bridge, shimmering red and white like strung up Christmas lights. It was a beautiful view and the perfect place to sit with someone that had never been to Australia before.

I got straight to it and asked the all-important question that every Aussie fan is wondering. “Have you tried Vegemite or Tim Tams yet?”

She said no but assured me that she had been given a big box of Tim Tams to try.

Ashleigh from Hachette walked in and turned on the lights and handed Holly a coffee. I rather sheepishly passed Holly a small package with the famous Aussie Choky Bickies inside. “Oh! This is great,” said Holly, to my delight. “You can teach me to do the thing,” referring of course to the Tim Tam Slam.

Holly’s latest book, The Darkest Part of the Forest is, in short, about a horned boy in an unbreakable crystal coffin and the celebrity that entails in our modern world. About how we put famous people up on these pedestals and how easy it is to forget that you don’t really know who they are because we only see them through glass. But when the glass is no longer there we can see them for who they really are. Human.

Or in the case of the horned boy in The Darkest Part of the Forest. Dangerous.

How long did it take you to write The Darkest Part of the Forest

and can you explain a little bit about your process?

It took me about a year and a half. It was a very difficult book for me to write. There were a couple of different structural puzzles in it. I spent a lot of that year and a half really panicked and writing and ripping out what I wrote.

I try to write about a thousand words a day. My goal for next year is to try and figure out how to get that to two thousand words a day. I feel like I could be faster.

I’m a very nervous and uncomfortable first drafter and I’m a very quick editor. I really love “big” editing stuff, like ripping out a chapter and redoing it. I love making big changes. That is the times where I feel confident, where I enjoy doing it and I’m really fast. But just getting that first draft is like a plotting slog because I have this great idea for a book in my head and as I am writing it I can just feel the fact that I am not getting it to where it needs to be.  

I was swimming in this pond near my house and it was really cold and I know that if you go in and you stay there, your body adjusts and you can swim. And some of my friends were getting in and then they would get cold and they would get out. But then they would want to get in again, then they would get cold and get out again. And I looked at them and thought, “that’s how I write! That’s my first drafting process.” I start drafting. I find it painful. I stop. I do something else. I come back and try it again. What I need to do is figure out how to be the person to live in the discomfort long enough to be able to be okay with it... 

What was the thing that sparked your love of the Fae?
Brian Froud and Alan Lee’s book Faeries. My mum is a painter and she

had it in the house when I was nine or ten. And it is obviously not a kid’s book and it is kind of terrifying. I remember just paging again and again and again through the illustrations and reading all the little bits of weird folklore and strange facts. That is the thing that set me on the path of reading more folklore and seeking out books with faeries in them. 

Do you ever miss your characters or think about them? Particularly when writing standalone novel.
Absolutely. There is a lot of great things about writing standalones. You can plot out the whole thing right there. You get to put everything in, you don’t have to save anything for the way back cause there is no way back. This is it! But the downside is that, I really feel like by the end of a first book in a series that is when your characters cement. And then over the course of editing a standalone you get to know those characters and then you’re like “Great to meet you. Goodbye!” and that is really hard. 
One of the reasons why I just sold a series is because I was actually starting to feel that I just didn’t want to meet any new people! I want to meet some people that can hang around for a while and that can be here for more than a single book. 
There are definitely people [characters] that I would like to go back and find out what they are doing and there are others that I feel like “Okay, you guys are fine.” One of the interesting things about going back is how easy it is, in a way that writing something new isn’t easy, because you just remember what it is like to write those people and you know who they are and what their stuff is and you just don’t know that going into a first book. One of the things that messed me up with The Darkest Part of the Forest was that I felt that Hazel had a secret but I didn’t know what it was.

What is your favourite part of writing, besides editing?
It is fun to make something up right? Like you do when you’re a kid and you’re playing with dolls and you’re making up a story. You get to tell the story that you wish that someone had written, something that you want to read. You get to make up the story that is customised for your very specific tastes.

Can you give me a bit of a rundown on your process?
Sure, but it is stupid and terrible! Anyone reading this please don’t do what I do!
I often have a couple of things I want to do. Maybe I have a character or a premise. With The Darkest Part of the Forest I knew that I wanted to tell a story of a town called Fairfold in which they believed in faeries and that there were faeries around there and there was this sleeping prince in a glass coffin. They were a tourist stop. Kids would go out and party by the coffin. That is what I knew about the town. And I knew that I wanted to tell the story of a brother and sister and I wanted them to be in love with this sleeping prince.
Then I write a little bit to figure out more and to let the characters breathe and to see how they would behave and to see if I liked the way that they behaved. Then I start to try and plan it out and then I’ll write a little bit more. I’ll try to talk it out with friends, ask them if this sounds good and what they think should happen. Then I will go off and write a chapter and then go back and edit it extensively and then write another chapter. Then I will go back and edit the chapter before, then I’ll write a third chapter and then go back again to the first chapter to edit … it is such a terrible process, but it is often what I will do. And by the time I am done, I’ll have incredibly polished early chapters that descend into complete incomprehensibility.

How do you go tackling family life and professional writing and keeping those two worlds balanced?
I have a two year old, so it’s new and I’m still trying to figure out how to do it. I think that one of the great advantages that I have as a writer that does this for a living is that I get to be home a lot. I get to make my own schedule, so we can go and do something, or I can get up with him in the middle of the night and I get to do all that stuff.
The disadvantages are that I travel. 
My son is adopted and obviously we knew that we were going to adopt him (there is some paper work involved!) but when we found out that we were going to have him, we had a call on a Tuesday and we had a baby by Friday. So, it was a lot of “oh my god, how am I gonna do this!” My husband stays home with him, so it was fine, but I was travelling a lot. And that is hard! It is hard because I miss them so much, it is hard to be away, but that is a problem that every parent has. 
I think the problem is working out when it works for you to write; when does it work for you to be home? A lot of the time I write at night … like, really late at night. So, if my son has any problems or if he needs anything in the middle of the night then I’m the one who is awake so I can go upstairs and sort him out, but I’m not sure if that is a sustainable system. It definitely makes you become more focused when you’re working. I can’t mess around on the internet as much.
I didn’t know what to expect when having a family but it is truly so much fun! And it is good for getting me out of my own head. There us so much about writing that forces you down into the deep recesses of your own feelings and your own desires and your own fears and getting yourself out of your own mind to focus on another person is so good. 

As a female writer and especially one that doesn’t hide behind a pseudonym have you ever felt discriminated against?
There are ways that we [women] are seen differently in the industry that are systemic. I don’t think that I personally have felt discriminated against, but mostly the way I have felt is the systemic sense that the work that I do is probably romance, or is not necessarily for boys or men, or is not necessarily serious in the way that it would be taken seriously if I were a man. And that is something that is very difficult to change because it is such a pervasive thing. Then there is writing for kids, so when I go into writing adult science fiction and fantasy I know people are going to take me less seriously yet again.
You can see the ways in which your work isn’t read the same.

I read online that you have a secret library! Is this true?
It’s true! It’s not so much a secret library as a hidden door. So when you come down the stairs to my basement there is a bookshelf and if you push the bookshelf you go into the library.

Have you thought any further into making a sequel to The Coldest Girl in Coldtown?
I have not only thought about it, I have actually outlined it. However, I think my publisher right not would like me to do these faerie books first. I was going to try to stick the Coldtown sequel in the middle of them, but they thought that seemed weird. So, two faerie books, Coldtown sequel and then third faerie book.

And then fit the Magisterium series in there somewhere too?
Oh yeah! We are actually finishing up the third book this week.

Do you have any advice for aspiring writers?
Read everything. Read in a lot of different genres. Read broadly. Read deeply. Write a lot. Revise a lot. 
It takes a long time to find your voice. So it is going to mean writing and writing and writing. And I think the thing that could help a lot of people, it may not help everyone but I know it helped me, is to find a critique partner. Someone who likes the same kind of writing as you. And someone who likes your writing and whose writing you like and keep each other honest. Keep each other on deadline. 
My first critique partner was Steve Berman and I don’t think I would’ve finished Tithe if it wasn’t for him. He made me … (Laughing) format it properly. He would say, “you said you were going to have the chapter finished this weekend. Where is it?” And not only that but being a reader of his work taught me to be better by seeing and learning to be a better critiquer. When I was a better critiquer of his work I was a better critiquer of my own. 
I think having that is motivating because it is easy to get pulled back into your regular life. Before you have a deadline that is enforceable by contract it is easy to just think “I’ll fit this in when I can.” Having a critique partner creates a feeling of obligation to another person of getting the work done. That person can tell you what’s good and what’s not.

Do you have any hobbies other than writing?
I like to do a little crafting. When the last few books came out I made some things to send out with the ARCs (Advanced Reading Copies). For some bloggers and reviewers I made a vampire hunting kit with little stakes that we hand carved and a little mirror to go out with Coldtown. And we made walnuts that we cut open and left a message inside them for The Darkest Part of the Forest. I like making little weird things. I’m not great necessarily, but I really enjoy it. 

What’s your favourite word?
Capricious.

What’s your least favourite word?
… Pus.

What sort of books turn you on?
I love when characters make a bad choice. I love a bad choice. I have a thing I call the “Ecstatic Fall.” It’s the moment where the character deliberately does the terrible thing. They just know it’s going to go badly, but they don’t care anymore. It is like a *#@! Me. *#@! You. *#@! Everything moment.

If your world, let’s say Fairfold, existed and you woke up there tomorrow morning, what would you do?
Go to the café. I’d go take a selfie! I’d buy some over price merchandise.

If you would like to hear the interview please comment below or contact me via social media and I will post it. 

Hugs

AMC xxx