I’m impressed with your imagination more than that of any author I follow. What do you do to feed that imagination, to create such original characters and stories?
This is a bit of a hard one, because I don’t particularly feel like I do anything special. I read (though less than I used to due to time, and I’m getting much pickier), I also like films, though again, I’m getting much pickier. I don’t really watch TV at all. I probably get maybe a third to half my book ideas in dreams, so those I cannot take even the illusion of credit for! The other ideas are split between the ones that come very rapidly to the ones that grow more slowly, but they all develop without any interference from me, at least until I reach the stage of serious plotting, so I think all the credit lies with the Holy Spirit for these as well!
With the growing number of stories tied to your I Am Margaret series, you’ve fully immersed yourself in Margo’s world. How much of that world was developed in the beginning, and how much has grown as the characters have taken on lives of their own?
The core idea for I Am Margaret came in a dream, and in the dream the place where she was imprisoned was like a mine or cave, at least in that the walls were rock not breeze blocks. There weren’t really any other distinguishing features of a cave or mine, that I recall, and as the rest of the story quickly coalesced it soon, and very naturally, morphed into a breeze block prison instead. The shape and feel of her world was fixed when I started writing the books—they were living in a country where religious persecution was in force, inspired largely by the recusant Catholics in Elizabethan England, and where due to a combination of ecological problems and misguided population control, jobs, wages, and even to some extent scientific progress had stayed stagnant for decades. Other settings, such as the Citadel and Vatican State, developed fully once my characters were inbound for them, and once they were there. Life in a normal, non-Believing family home got a little more development when Brothers came along, and life in a quiet African country parish also developed with The Siege of Reginald Hill.
The dystopian world in I Am Margaret clearly has its roots in contemporary culture. What specific present-day threats do you see that, left unchecked, could result in a future as bleak as the one in which Margo and Bane come of age?
The number one thing the I Am Margaret series presents is the logical (or a logical) endpoint of the culture of death. I’ve actually had the odd reviewer say they’re not sure how we got from where we are now to where they are in the series, which always flabbergasts me. Not in one big step, of course. But by tiny incremental steps, gradual erosion of attitudes, we could all too easily end up where they are. I hope we won’t, but we could. Our society already refuses to acknowledge the humanity of the unborn human being. Unsurprisingly, there is now open discussion of infanticide in medical circles, the next logical step. Some now call for the euthanasia of disabled babies, children, or even adults. If euthanasia is brought in, this will most likely follow. Organ donation in the UK is in danger of switching from opt in to opt out (and has done in Wales). Practically speaking, this means the state now owns your organs unless you say otherwise. It’s not far from opt out to compulsory. And once organ donation is compulsory, you’ve just got yet another incentive to get rid of the ‘imperfect’. And so on, and so nauseatingly on.
The second warning in the series is of course militant atheism. We already often hear people say that people’s religion should be kept completely private, i.e. they shouldn’t act on it at all in public. What sort of religion can one have and not act on? Nonsense. But the UK government and media by and large operates as though atheism had in some way been ‘proven’. It’s not far from ‘keep it private’ to ‘don’t believe it at all’.
The third, more minor, warning is that we need to do what we can now to look after the planet, regardless of the cause of the shifting climate. Maybe it’s solely our activity, maybe it’s caused partly by something else—we still need to do what we can to fix it or we’re going to live in a very unstable world in a few decades time—socially as well as ecologically.
Fantasy is, I think, an under-represented but growing subgenre of Christian fiction. How do you explore fantastical elements without violating Christian tenets, and is there an author you think does (or did) this remarkably well?
I think the fundamental issue when writing anything, but especially fantasy, is what the message is. You can use any ‘created creature’ to send any message—and yes, elves, vampires, were-wolves, dragons etc. are all theologically speaking ‘created creatures’ even though imaginary ones (they’re not God, so what else could they be?). None of them can be fundamentally evil, because God didn’t create anything evil (that’s the heresy of Gnosticism, folks!). They’re just imaginary creatures just as bunnies and horses are real creatures, and you can have good ones that portray positive messages and values, and bad ones that portray negative messages and values.
One thing I am cautious with personally is the portrayal of ‘real’ magic. By which I mean traditional witchcraft and sorcery. Because, as a Christian, I know that such things draw their power from the devil, regardless of what many very well-meaning but tragically misled Wiccans and New Age practitioners believe. When I include elements of this nature, I do no research (to ensure they are not accurately presented) and they are always, no surprise, practised by the bad guys, and NOT glamorised in any way. But I don’t have an issue with magic per se. ‘Magic’, in the sense of something supernatural, beyond nature, happens at every Mass, at every Anointing, at every Confession, at every Exorcism, every miraculous healing, every saint who sees a Vision, every conception of new life. Hence I prefer to present good ‘magic’ as something with its roots in the soul and spirit, and the natural order of the world (I hesitate to use the word ‘nature’ which in this context is wide open pagan connotations).
Tolkien and C.S. Lewis are of course the classic masters of Christian fantasy! But I recently read the debut novel of Elizabeth Amy Hajek, The Mermaid and the Unicorn, where the existence of the magical beings is smoothly reconciled with Christianity in a credible and inoffensive way, and I particularly liked the role played by the rich Christian symbolism of the Middle Ages.
I recently read Mandy Lamb and the Full Moon, which is a fun, creative, yet thoughtful book for young readers. The main character Mandy, the result of genetic engineering, is half-girl, half-sheep. Her sheep nature creates some challenges for her – hoofy fingers, an inconvenient tail, wooly hair. I had to wonder how much experience you have in tending or observing sheep.
I have quite a lot of experience tending sheep, and they are one of my favourite animals. I was raised in a town, but after doing my GAP year on an ecological farm in Sweden (and liking the Gotlands sheep particularly), I missed the farm life whilst at university and decided to look for a lambing job over the Easter holidays. By good fortune, I found a job at a lovely farm on the Welsh borders where I was on the lambing team or running the lambing sheds each year for something like the next ten years. I only gave it up when work conflicts prevented me from getting the time off, and would be happy to do it again in future. Hard work, long days, but lambs are just lovely.
You earned a Master of Arts degree from Oxford University, an impressive author credential! How did your education enrich you as an author and as a reader?
Oh dear, how to answer this one honestly! I actually didn’t like most of the literature I studied at Oxford all that much! But I did enjoy the deeply Catholic atmosphere of my small college, a Catholic private hall run by the Franciscans—even though I was an Anglican at the time! I loved discussing Theology over tea with the friars and theology students, and quickly got used to the sheer ‘Catholicness’ of the place (which was such a shock when I first went to visit I was within an inch of bolting before even allowing myself to be shown around! What a mistake that would have been!) I also very much enjoyed being part of the University Officer Training Corps, that part of the Territorial Army that aims to turn out future employers who are sympathetic to their employees joining up (and which plays a big role in Someday and the rest of the Yesterday & Tomorrow series). So I think I gained a lot of experiences at university that have fed into my writing, even if they weren’t so much the ones you might expect.
What projects are you currently working on?
Too many, as usual! I’m trying to finish off the last short story for my I Am Margaret short story collection (for publication some time in 2019), I’m getting a novella called Three Last Things ready for publication either Lent or Easter 2019 (release date TBD), I absolutely must finish writing the rest of the Yesterday & Tomorrow series (next book to be published in 2019, please Lord!), and this week I’m very much hoping to write the next unSPARKed short story/novella. I’m also collaborating on a graphic novel (The Vampire’s Saint) with talented Catholic artist Mary MacArthur, I have a Spanish translation of I Am Margaret on the way (thankfully requiring next to no input from yours truly) and I should be getting the audiobook version under way in January. This is not to mention projects waiting to become ‘active’ projects but not yet making the cut!
Corinna Turner has been writing since she was fourteen and likes strong protagonists with plenty of integrity. She has an MA in English from Oxford University, but has foolishly gone on to work with both children and animals! Juggling work with the disabled and being a midwife to sheep, she spends as much time as she can in a little hut at the bottom of the garden, writing.
She is a Catholic Christian with roots in the Methodist and Anglican churches. A keen cinema-goer, she lives in the UK with her classic campervan ‘Toby’ (short for Tobias!), her larger and more expensive substitute for her lovely Giant African Land Snail, Peter, who sadly passed away in October 2016.
Links:
Website: www.iammargaret.co.uk
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/CorinnaTurnerAuthor/
Twitter: https://twitter.com/CorinnaTAuthor
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