Minnie Darke answers Ten Terrifying Questions

Minnie Darke – Gemini with Virgo rising, Scrabble cutthroat and knitter, lover of books, freshly sharpened pencils, and Russian Caravan tea – is the pen-name of Tasmanian literary author Danielle Wood.

Her latest novel is the romantic comedy Star-Crossed, which she wrote “to amuse herself and to entertain you.”

Today, Minnie answers Booktopia’s Ten Terrifying Questions…

1. To begin with, why don’t you tell us a little bit about yourself – where were you born? Raised? Schooled?

I’m the only child of two Cancerian parents, and I had two sets of Taurus-Virgo grandparents; I grew up surrounded by interesting adults, lots of love, plenty of books and several good dogs. I feel lucky to have grown up in Tasmania, where stories are in the drinking water.

2. What did you want to be when you were twelve, eighteen and thirty? And why?

At twelve I wanted to be a writer because books were the pathway to ultimate pleasure, and I imagined writing them would have to be at least as good, or better, than reading them. At eighteen I still really wanted to be a writer, largely because Sylvia Plath was the goddess of my teen angst, but by this stage I was caving in to pressure from responsible adults to consider other jobs (journalist, academic) that had actual wages. At thirty, I was a writer, and although I had to do other jobs to make ends meet, I felt that I’d arrived where I’d always wanted to be – telling stories, playing with language, trying to match on the page the visions that I could see in my imagination.

3. What strongly held belief did you have at eighteen that you do not have now?

That there would be plenty of time.

4. What were three works of art – book or painting or piece of music, etc – you can now say, had a great effect on you and influenced your own development as a writer?

A children’s book: Carbonel, by Barbara Sleigh, and also the sequel, The Kingdom of Carbonel. I read these books time, and time, and time again when I was a child. For whatever reason they drew me in, and they taught me that I could always store part of myself in a world of the imagination.

A television series: Jim Henson’s The Storyteller, starring John Hurt and ‘the dog’, written by Anthony Minghella. For a start, this series played into my passion for fairy tales. Secondly, it had the most wonderful tone – funny, melancholy, sweet without being saccharine. I was influenced by the atmosphere, the script (‘I am not domestic, I am a luxury, and therefore, necessary’) and – perhaps above all – Anthony Minghella’s genius for endings.

A novel: Possession, by AS Byatt. Because it combines the pleasure of a rip-roaring narrative (a romance), with the addictive, dusty archive smell of a search through literary history, and demonstrates the sheer pleasure of making stuff up. By ‘stuff’, I mean characters, events and places. This is a book that stretches the grey matter while at the same time offering you beautiful things to look at in your mind’s eye (to whit, Maud’s green bathroom décor).

5. Considering the innumerable artistic avenues open to you, why did you choose to write a novel?

Hm … I wonder if there really were innumerable artistic avenues open to me. I can’t really draw; I gave up the violin because I hated metronomes; dancing is fun, but I don’t need anyone to watch me doing it. I knit pretty well, but other than that, it seems to me that words and stories are my natural medium. As well as writing novels for adults, I’ve written novels for children, short stories, long stories, non-fiction, academic papers, newspaper articles, speeches and prose poems. And shopping lists, of course. I even enjoy writing those.

6. Please tell us about your latest novel…

Star-Crossed is a romantic comedy. Its stars are Aquarius Nicholas Jordan and Sagittarius Justine Carmichael, who are born in the same year, in the same country town, and whose destinies are astrologically entwined from the start. When they meet by chance as adults, not having seen each other since they were awkward teenagers, the stars once again take a hand in their fate.

When Justine, an aspiring journalist, finds out that Nick makes big decisions based on the horoscopes of the magazine where she works, she hits on the idea of tweaking the horoscopes to influence his future. As the sun does the rounds of the twelve astrological signs, Justine tries every trick in the book to convince Nick to follow his dreams – dreams that he is starting to think he might have to give up – all the while hoping all that she might one day be part of them. But for how long can Justine keep her ruse a secret? And how big are the career risks she will need to take to keep up the subterfuge? And what about the Star’s new editor, Daniel Griffin, who’s determined to win Justine’s heart? Might he, not Nick, be the one the stars really have in mind for Justine?

The primary plot of Star-Crossed unfolds over thirteen chapters, beginning and ending with Aquarius, and includes a chapter for each of the other eleven signs of the zodiac. Interspersed between chapters, in sections titled ‘cusp’, other storylines develop and tangle, as the complex consequences of Justine’s astrological handiwork unfold.

It’s a book that, above all, is meant to be fun.

7. What do you hope people take away with them after reading your work?

To answer that question specifically in relation to Star-Crossed, I would say that I hope people will read the last page with love and joy in their hearts. More generally, I hope that people take away from my work the sense that they have ongoing access to a new world – a place where they can always, now, spend time, because it has become part of the fabric of their imagination. I know I can always go to Narnia, or Westeros, or the world of Patrick Rothfuss’ The Name of the Wind, or Michelle Obama’s White House (courtesy of Becoming), or the delicate world of Amy Bonnaffons’ The Wrong Heaven, or the world of The First Fifteen Lives of Harry August – just to name a few worlds that I’ve visited lately. That’s what I hope to share – worlds (which has only one more letter than ‘words’).

8. Whom do you most admire in the realm of writing and why?

That’s the most terrifying of your ten terrifying questions, because there are just so many writers I admire. However, after careful thought, I’m going to go with Margaret Atwood, because she can be clever, pacy, and fun all at once. And she continues to deliver all of that, book after book, decade after decade.

9. Many artists set themselves very ambitious goals. What are yours?

I want to get faster. In my brain is a library of books as yet unwritten, and unless I get faster I’m never going to get them all out! The problem, though, is that I’m fussy about sentences; I think it’s worth labouring over a sentence until it says precisely what you want it to say, and in the most elegant way. So, my current ambition is to learn how to combine pedantry and speed.

10. What advice do you give aspiring writers?

When I die, and if I have become famous enough to be quotable, this will be my most profound quote:

‘Everything ever written, all the books and poems and speeches and stories that set us on fire, began life as something that somebody, one day, just sat down and wrote.’

Thank you for playing!

Star-Crossed

by Minnie Darke

Sometimes destiny needs a nudge in the right direction...

When Justine Carmichael (Sagittarius, aspiring journalist and sceptic) bumps into her old friend Nick Jordan (Aquarius, struggling actor and true believer) it could be by chance. Or perhaps it's written in the stars. Justine works at the Alexandria Park Star - and Nick, she now learns, relies on the magazine’s astrology column to guide him in life. Looking for a way to get Nick’s attention, Justine has the idea of making a few small alterations to ‘Aquarius’ before it goes to print.

It's only a horoscope, after all. What harm could changing it do?

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