Mystery and the Art of Author Events

Last Friday I ventured out into the chilly Brisbane night to attend the In Conversation event with Kate Forsyth at the Brisbane Square Library.

There are certain writers that I’ll always make the effort to go see when they do events, because it’s basically a masterclass in how to manage the author/reader relationship. Kate Forsyth is in the top five authors on that list, and her events are always fantastic.

While lots of authors will try to tell you about the story they’ve just written, Kate builds up stories around the act of writing–she tells you the story of the research, of the inspiration, of her own journey as a writer.

Part of Kate’s bio mentions that she’s a verbal storyteller, as well as a novelist, and you can definitely see it as she talks about The Blue Rose. She builds intrigue into the discussion to pull you forward and get you interested in what happens next. Among the hooks that emerged through the first fifteen minutes of conversation were:

• Despite its popularity as a symbol and icon in western culture, the Red Rose is native to China and only got imported in the seventeenth century.
• The man who reportedly brought the red rose to England, Gilbert Slater, may not have actually done so. The ship originally bringing the first sample over sank prior to reaching England, and his gardener’s diaries suggest the red rose wasn’t among their gardens.
• At the same time, England send a trade envoy to China in an attempt to redress the trade imbalance taking place–England imported silks and tea, but exported very little back. The envoy returned with two rose bushes…but there’s no indication of the second’s colour.

Virtually nothing is said about the book at this point, beyond Kate’s story growing from the little mysteries that opened up in the gaps between these facts, but there’s a lot of tension to be resolved here and the promise is that it can only be resolved by reading Kate’s novel (or, perhaps, going back to the non-fiction book that first sparked the idea and recreating her research journey, but whose got the time for that).

As the talk moved away from the initial inspiration and towards theme and content, the same principles were at work–look for the details, create tension that only story can resolve. for example, when Kate talked about the French Revolution which provides the backdrop for the novel, the talk quickly moved towards the way popular vision and real life differed.

Although she grounded her interest in a personal story about reading the Scarlet Pimpernel at a young age, it quickly moved to detail-oriented topics: the way guillotines needed to be moved, because the blood and death started attracting stray dogs and cats who fed upon the gore; about the life of nobility, and how they may have been as eager for change; about the notion of social change itself, and how that rapid social change differed from everything that came before it.

There was more. I mean, I walked away with four pages of notes form the talk, and I was only scribbling for about half the time Kate was speaking, but you can get the general gist from this. There’s an art to talking about your work, and a lot of writers don’t develop it.

If you ever get the chance to see Kate Forsyth speak–even if you’ve never read her fiction–I strongly recommend going for it. She’s one of the best you’re going to see, particularly in Australia.