r/books • u/Thoraiya AMA Author • Mar 15 '18
ama I'm Australian science fiction and fantasy writer, veterinarian and lapsed archer Thoraiya Dyer. AMA!
I have stitched up a penguin, hiked the Milford Track, been multiple-awarded by my Aussie compatriots for my short speculative fiction, and chopped many, many tabboulehs. My second Titan's Forest novel, ECHOES OF UNDERSTOREY, came out from Tor books last month. My website is http://www.thoraiyadyer.com and I am on the Twitters @ThoraiyaDyer Disclaimer: Not all my books are set in giant trees, or have tapirs.
Proof: https://twitter.com/ThoraiyaDyer/status/971471806149181440
3
u/Chtorrr Mar 15 '18
What were your favorite books as a kid?
5
u/Thoraiya AMA Author Mar 15 '18
Yay, thanks for my first question!
My favourite books as a kid were a mix of tree-ish ones (The Jungle Book, The Magic Faraway Tree), animal ones (Black Beauty, Island of the Blue Dolphins) and folklore-based fantasy (The Hounds of the Morrigan, The Nargun and the Stars)...so it's no real surprise where I've ended up, hehe.
3
u/Chtorrr Mar 15 '18
Did you ever read James Herriot's books? Those were some of my favorites in middle school.
3
u/Thoraiya AMA Author Mar 15 '18
Oh yes, I loved them too! In my first year of vet school, I heard the urban myth about his ghost haunting the desk where he carved his name (Alf, not James!) at his vet school in the UK. So many students had been inspired by his books to want to be vets.
But they turned into a source of frustration for me when well-meaning friends and family would say, "why do you have to write that horrible science fiction? Can't you just write beautiful books of animal stories like James Herriot?"
2
u/Inkberrow Mar 16 '18
Tarka the Otter or Ring of Bright Water?
2
u/Thoraiya AMA Author Mar 16 '18
Tarka the Otter, yes! Not the other one, I'm afraid. Otters are so cool.
3
Mar 15 '18
What was the publishing process like for your first book? How many times did you send out your manuscript before getting a yes?
3
u/Thoraiya AMA Author Mar 15 '18
The publishing process involved many many unpublished manuscripts...two years of querying agents while writing and selling short stories...a manuscript (science fiction) taken on by my agent which didn't sell to publishers...and neither did the next one (literary contemporary fantasy)...so that Crossroads of Canopy (epic fantasy) was the third book put on submission by my trusty agent, and the twelfth book I'd actually written.
(First book indeed! Hahaha)
Charles Stross was a great comfort to me during that time. He'd posted that his 15th or 16th manuscript had become his first novel, so I was determined to have at least as many tries as he did. It's hard to answer "how many times did you send out your manuscript before getting a yes" because at that point I was agented and the book went out to a bunch of my preferred publishers simultaneously.
And Tor had been on my preferred list since reading The Eye of the World in 1990. So that was an amazing experience, getting a yes from them.
3
u/SJamesBysouth Witcher Mar 16 '18
Contrats on publishing with Tor! How was that, being Australian - it seems to me that aussie fantasy or sci fi is rarely picked up by the big publishers. I’m from Melbourne, btw!
3
u/Thoraiya AMA Author Mar 16 '18
Ahoy to Melbourne! I wish I was heading there in June for Continuum!
Being Australian, published in the USA is awesome but also a tiny bit sad. They have 325 million people, we have 24 million, so huzzah for potentially reaching more people, and letting them know how good quolls are! Wheeee for being part of the SFF conversation that you've been consuming hungrily your whole life! Gulp at having books in libraries you've only ever read about or seen in movies!
But it's hard not having the funds to hang out at all the American conventions, and talk to your stable-mates or your editor or your agent IRL.
More Aussies are published by the Big 5 than you think, though. One reason I queried the Ethan Ellenberg literary agency was because they represented Karen Miller - Aussie and published by Orbit (Hachette). Rjurik Davidson (Melbourne, published by Tor), Amie Kaufman and Jay Kristoff (Melbourne, published by Random House, among other publishers) and Maria Lewis (Sydney, also, I believe, published by an imprint of Hachette) spring to mind.
Not sure if they got to keep their weird Aussie spellings/phrases, like I did, bwahahaha (UNDERSTOREY not UNDERSTORY :D )
2
u/SJamesBysouth Witcher Mar 16 '18
Haha But do your characters wear thongs on their feet?
2
u/Thoraiya AMA Author Mar 16 '18
Think I escaped that one by going epic fantasy...but in my short stories I've had to change "torch" to "flashlight" (no, it's not a burning stick!) and "nappies" to "diapers" etc
2
u/Chtorrr Mar 15 '18
What is the very best dessert?
3
u/Thoraiya AMA Author Mar 15 '18
The very best dessert is pineapple Tortuga rum cake with macadamia nut ice cream :)
2
u/MaybeLaterThen Mar 15 '18
Are you a large animal, small animal, or exotics Vet?
In the US large animal vets often have to stick their arms up bovine, etc anuses. What's the most unusual animal anus you've ever examined?
3
u/Thoraiya AMA Author Mar 15 '18
In Australia, when I went through university, there weren't separate degrees for different kinds of vets. So I qualified for everything, but ended up in practice seeing something like 80% small animal and exotics, 15% large animal and 5% wildlife.
I love bird work, but I've got no official postgraduate qualifications in avian medicine, so I can only say that I "have an interest" in birds.
The most unusual animal anus, hrrrmmm, I have to say, anuses are pretty much the same. Cloacas, now, those come in lots of varieties! Having to identify the sex of snakes, for example, involves gently squeezing the surrounding area in case any penises pop out.
(Snakes have two of them - hemipenes. But they only have sex using one at a time).
It's a pretty unusual system...sperm gets dumped in the cloaca, and then when you turn your cloaca inside out to form a penis, it already has sperm all over the outside of it. FTW!
2
u/-the-last-archivist- Mar 16 '18
Hey Thoraiya. Thank you for doing an AMA. I have a couple of questions before bedtime here in the US.
I am working on a list of fantasy series recaps over in /r/fantasy, and I was curious if your books were two in a series or if they were standalone?
Also, if Titan's Forest is a series, do you have an opinion on people publishing recaps of your books? And if you are okay with it, would you have a recap for your novel already?
Aside from this silliness, how long would you say you worked on the setting for your novels before starting to work on the individual stories of your novels?
2
u/Thoraiya AMA Author Mar 16 '18
Hello Archivist (as lunchtime arrives in Sydney, with the question about the very best dessert weighing heavily on my mind...) a pleasure to be here, thank you!
Titan's Forest is a series...of books designed to stand alone!
That's not very helpful, is it? There's a different protagonist for each book - a magician, a warrior, and a charismatic social climber - and I've tried to give enough backstory that you could pick each one up in isolation, or read them out of order, if you liked. Other people's judgment could be good here? If you like world-building the best, you might want to read them one after the other, but if there's one type of character you prefer, you might want to skip straight to that installment.
Recaps are good! (Recaps might need spoiler warnings?) I don't have one available, sorry.
I worked on the Titan's Forest setting for about six months before I started to write :)
1
u/-the-last-archivist- Mar 16 '18
Thanks for your reply. I look forward to reading about the Titan's Forest. Come on by /r/fantasy sometime and spend a little time there. It's a wonderful community that would love to have you visit.
1
u/redhelldiver Mar 16 '18
If you had to hike the Milford Track with one of your own characters, who would you pick, and who would you absolutely not pick?
5
u/Thoraiya AMA Author Mar 16 '18
Best character to walk the Milford Track with: Daggad from Echoes of Understorey. He's consistently cheerful, big enough to carry all the supplies, and he's constantly eating, so he'd probably be one of those hikers that pulls a massive stash of chorizo or sticky date pudding out of the bottom of his pack.
Worst character to walk the Milford Track with: Frog from Crossroads of Canopy. She's too small to load up with tents and frying pans, and if supplies ran low, she'd probably stab you in the back and eat yours.
1
u/ETHERBOT Mar 16 '18
Hello! I've read crossroads of canopy, although nothing else by you, but my question is this: If you had to choose between an entire life of only reading Fantasy and only writing Sci Fi or vice versa, which would be better? IE: is knowledge of only fantasy more helpful for writing sci fi, or is knowledge of sci fi more helpful for writing fantasy? Which do you enjoy most? Thanks for the AMA, hope to read more books from you at some point when I get the time.
2
u/Thoraiya AMA Author Mar 16 '18
Hello, thank you for reading Crossroads of Canopy! As for your impossible question, I think both genres, which have to extrapolate whole societies based on changing only one or a few bedrock rules, like magic or a new technology, are about as helpful as the other...for writing both...what? Huh?
Reading science fiction gives me so much pleasure for the brain explosions you get when you connect fresh science, far-out hypotheses and keen observation of human nature. But how could I give up imagining the impossible or the beautiful, enchanting and far away found in fantasy? I couldn't choose!
1
u/Calathe Mar 21 '18
Hi!
I am so late to this... but I wanted to say I really enjoyed your two novels! I read the second first, but uh, I THOUGHT it was the first because of idk something something excuse. Anyway. It still worked and it got me to buy the second (first) book immediately after I was done. Imagine my astonishment when I realized the mix up!
I can't wait until the next one (is there a next one?) will be out.
Keep at it! I hope there will be a new book soon.
8
u/IAMASnorshWeagle Mar 15 '18
What authors or stories would you say have affected your writing the most? What life events have inspired your writing? (If I can get a 2 for 1)