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From an article in the Western Australian Newspaper
Cecilia Dart-Thornton
‘Fantasy fiction is going through a golden age. Lord of the Rings films have brought Tolkein to a new generation of readers. The Narnia Chronicles by C.S. Lewis has encouraged children to open their wardrobes with a certain sense of wonder.’
Australia has its own best-selling fantasy writer – Cecilia Dart-Thornton. She was ‘discovered’ only five years ago in an online writing bookshop.
Her first series, The Bitterbynde Trilogy is currently published in five languages and available in more that 70 countries. In Australia it hit the best seller list on publication and reached 250,000 copies. She is now writing The Crowthistle Chronicles.
Cecilia says the creation of her worlds and mythology is not necessarily something that happens all at once. Her own world was influenced by Tolkeins ‘Middle Earth’ and C.S.Lewis’s ‘Narnia’, but it was not just a cloned world, she made it her individual world.
In her persuasive alternative fantasy settings, balances the unusual and other-worldly with credible characters. They have emotions and motivations readers can identify and maybe empathise with. The mix of reality and fantasy is something she strives to achieve.
With the second book in the Crowthistle Chronicles, she has created a world first. This is the creation of an interactive bonus CD-ROM, titled ‘A Glimpse of Tir’. The point of this is to invite readers to share in an intimate and visual way, the world that Cecilia has created. This idea came from being a fantasy writer who would try to visualize how the characters moved across a landscape. So now there is a CD with the whole terrain mapped out with all of the hills and valleys, mountains and forest, so that she could move through this virtual world, go up a hill and look out across the country.'
Cecilia Dart-Thornton is to be a guest at the 2006 UWA PIAF writers’ festival.
From an article in the Western Australian Newspaper
Cecilia Dart-Thornton
‘Fantasy fiction is going through a golden age. Lord of the Rings films have brought Tolkein to a new generation of readers. The Narnia Chronicles by C.S. Lewis has encouraged children to open their wardrobes with a certain sense of wonder.’
Australia has its own best-selling fantasy writer – Cecilia Dart-Thornton. She was ‘discovered’ only five years ago in an online writing bookshop.
Her first series, The Bitterbynde Trilogy is currently published in five languages and available in more that 70 countries. In Australia it hit the best seller list on publication and reached 250,000 copies. She is now writing The Crowthistle Chronicles.
Cecilia says the creation of her worlds and mythology is not necessarily something that happens all at once. Her own world was influenced by Tolkeins ‘Middle Earth’ and C.S.Lewis’s ‘Narnia’, but it was not just a cloned world, she made it her individual world.
In her persuasive alternative fantasy settings, balances the unusual and other-worldly with credible characters. They have emotions and motivations readers can identify and maybe empathise with. The mix of reality and fantasy is something she strives to achieve.
With the second book in the Crowthistle Chronicles, she has created a world first. This is the creation of an interactive bonus CD-ROM, titled ‘A Glimpse of Tir’. The point of this is to invite readers to share in an intimate and visual way, the world that Cecilia has created. This idea came from being a fantasy writer who would try to visualize how the characters moved across a landscape. So now there is a CD with the whole terrain mapped out with all of the hills and valleys, mountains and forest, so that she could move through this virtual world, go up a hill and look out across the country.'
Cecilia Dart-Thornton is to be a guest at the 2006 UWA PIAF writers’ festival.
