{"id":21776,"date":"2012-01-28T09:05:47","date_gmt":"2012-01-27T22:05:47","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.booktopia.com.au\/?p=21776"},"modified":"2016-03-01T09:48:47","modified_gmt":"2016-02-29T23:48:47","slug":"carrie-tiffany-author-of-mateship-with-birds-answers-ten-terrifying-questions","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.booktopia.com.au\/blog\/2012\/01\/28\/carrie-tiffany-author-of-mateship-with-birds-answers-ten-terrifying-questions\/","title":{"rendered":"Carrie Tiffany, author of Mateship with Birds, answers Ten Terrifying Questions"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>The Booktopia Book Guru asks<\/strong><\/p>\n

Carrie Tiffany<\/strong><\/h1>\n

author of Mateship with Birds<\/em><\/a> and
\nEveryman’s Rules for Scientific Living<\/em> <\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n

Ten Terrifying Questions<\/strong><\/h2>\n

——————————–<\/strong><\/p>\n

1. To begin with why don\u2019t you tell us a little bit about yourself – where were you born? Raised? Schooled?<\/strong><\/p>\n

I was born in Halifax, England. My family migrated to Western Australia when I was six. At eighteen I went to the Northern Territory and worked as a park ranger for a few years. I now live in Victoria where I work as an agricultural journalist.<\/p>\n

2. What did you want to be when you were twelve, eighteen and thirty? And why?\"\"<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n

At twelve I wanted to be a jockey or a show jumper.<\/p>\n

At eighteen I\u2019d just started my khaki years \u2013 working as a park ranger \u2013 and it seemed a good fit for a while.<\/p>\n

At thirty I had two young children and was busy with kinder duties and dress-ups and making pirate hats. It was engrossing and for a few years I didn\u2019t think of anything else. I started writing in my mid thirties.<\/p>\n

3. What strongly held belief did you have at eighteen that you do not have now?<\/strong><\/p>\n

That I would never be loved.<\/p>\n

4. What were three works of art \u2013 book or painting or piece of music, etc \u2013 you can now say, had a great effect on you and influenced your own development as a writer?<\/strong><\/p>\n

I read Dickens when I was a teenager and I think his sympathy for people, his essential tenderness, really touched me. The South American writers like Borges and Garcia Marquez opened my eyes to the possibilities of the landscape.<\/p>\n

More recently I\u2019ve been reading Freud. In Mateship with Birds<\/em><\/a> the character, Harry, conducts a sort of self-analysis through writing letters about his sexual history to a young neighbour. Freud claimed that his letters to his friend Fleiss (they make fascinating reading) had a similar function.<\/p>\n

5. Considering the innumerable artistic avenues open to you, why did you choose to write a novel?<\/strong><\/p>\n

I\u2019m not sure I can answer this. I haven\u2019t always written, I didn\u2019t keep a diary as a child and I was never particularly good at anything at school. I have always read a great deal though and in my mid thirties I sat down and started writing some short stories. I also make pictures, but I don\u2019t sell them.<\/p>\n

6. Please tell us about your latest novel\u2026\u00a0Mateship with Birds<\/em><\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/strong>It is essentially a love story about the developing relationship between a middle-aged dairy farmer and his next door neighbour. Every love story is unique and I hope I\u2019ve conveyed something about the \u2018truth\u2019 of their lives \u2013 the difficulties and obstacles that have brought them to this point. It is a small book with an intimate scale. There is sadness and loneliness and confusion (daily life!), but I hope there is humour and tenderness too.<\/p>\n

(BBGuru:<\/strong> Here is the publisher’s blurb –<\/p>\n

On the outskirts of an Australian country town in the 1950s, a lonely farmer trains his binoculars on a family of kookaburras that roost in a tree near his house. Harry observes the kookaburras through a year of feast, famine, birth, death, war, romance and song. As Harry watches the birds, his next door neighbour has her own set of binoculars trained on him. Ardent, hard-working Betty has escaped to the country with her two fatherless children. Betty is pleased that her son, Michael, wants to spend time with the gentle farmer next door. But when Harry decides to teach Michael about the opposite sex, perilous boundaries are crossed.<\/p>\n

Mateship with Birds<\/em><\/a>\u00a0is a novel about young lust and mature love. It is a hymn to the rhythm of country life \u2013 to vicious birds, virginal cows, adored dogs and ill-used sheep. On one small farm in a vast, ancient landscape, a collection of misfits question the nature of what a family can be.)<\/p>\n

Click here to order a copy of Mateship with Birds<\/em> from Booktopia, Australia’s No.1 Online Book Shop<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n

7. What do you hope people take away with them after reading your work?\"\"<\/strong><\/p>\n

With Mateship with Birds<\/em><\/a>\u00a0I\u2019d like them to be thinking about the nature of families, about the ties that bind us together and our relationships with animals. Perhaps also about sex and their particular \u2018sexual histories.\u2019<\/p>\n

8. Whom do you most admire in the realm of writing and why?<\/strong><\/p>\n

I don\u2019t especially admire writers, but I admire their work. I greatly admire the works of E.L. Doctorow<\/a>, Richard Ford<\/a>, Marilynne Robinson<\/a>, Alice Munro<\/a>, Eudora Welty<\/a>, Elizabeth Jolley<\/a>, Patrick White<\/a> and many others including several hundred poets both dead and alive.<\/p>\n

9. Many artists set themselves very ambitious goals. What are yours?<\/strong><\/p>\n

I\u2019m not sure this is actually true. It is simply about getting up each day and returning to your sentences \u2013 trying to write the cleanest, truest sentences that you can.<\/p>\n

10. What advice do you give aspiring writers?<\/strong><\/p>\n

Just to write. Not to think about readers or publishers or marketing\u2026 to accept that it is the writing itself that matters. And to read and read and then read some more\u2026<\/p>\n

Carrie, thank you for playing.<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Booktopia Book Guru asks Carrie Tiffany author of Mateship with Birds and Everyman’s Rules for Scientific Living Ten Terrifying Questions ——————————– 1. To begin with why don\u2019t you tell us a little bit about yourself – where were you born? Raised? Schooled? I was born in Halifax, England. My family migrated to Western Australia when I was six. At eighteen I went to the Northern Territory and worked as a park ranger for a few years. I now live in Victoria where I work as an agricultural<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"spay_email":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[993,1168,3569,5184],"acf":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.booktopia.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21776"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.booktopia.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.booktopia.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.booktopia.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.booktopia.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=21776"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.booktopia.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21776\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":57419,"href":"https:\/\/www.booktopia.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21776\/revisions\/57419"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.booktopia.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=21776"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.booktopia.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=21776"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.booktopia.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=21776"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}