Laraine's Web Site

Laraine decided she wanted to be a novelist at the age of eleven. While still at school she wrote several full-length books, none intended for publication. She regarded them as "practice". Unfortunately, she thinks she must have been a very secretive teenager, because her mother insists that, in spite of the incessantly clattering typewriter, she didn't know her daughter wanted to be a writer. Laraine knows her teachers certainly had no idea.
At the age of 18 Laraine started an adult book with the pretentious title "The Verge Of Heaven", which she finished and submitted to Hodder & Stoughton when she was about 21. The rejection letter--which Laraine remembers, with wry amusement, complained that her 18-year-old heroine was "atypical"--was very kind, containing both praise and good advice, including that the story could be rewritten as a children's book. Today she would immediately act on this advice, but in those days she wouldn't have known where to start first. She remembers finding the advice puzzling and perhaps (she admits with shame) a little demeaning. She destroyed both the manuscript and the rejection letter and to this day regrets it.
She carried on spasmodically writing adult novels, none of which was ever finished and all of which she now sees as unbelievably bad.
In the mid 1980s she had no success finding enough fantasy novels for young people as presents for a fantasy-mad 11-year-old boy. And yet the book shops had whole sections devoted to fantasy for adults. She remembers finding only two series, including Ursula Le Guin's Earthsea trilogy, and wonders where books by writers like Diana Wynne Jones were at that time. They certainly weren't in the book shops in Auckland! Young Matthew turned in disgust to adult fantasy, starting with Raymond E Feist's Magician, and in 1987 Laraine settled down in earnest to write fantasy for young people, beginning with the first book of her Earthlight trilogy, The Obsidian Quest, now available from CrossroadsPub. The two sequels will be published later in 2001. She has also written another 7-book fantasy series, two stand-alone spin-off titles from this second series, and a complete romantic suspense. One of the spin-off titles, Silvranja of the Silver Forest, was shortlisted in the Tom Fitzgibbon Award (for previously unpublished New Zealand children's writers). Unfortunately, only the winner of this award is published. The winner in that year was a comedy. Another spin-off, this time a short "chapter book", The Birth of Flame the Tame and Flare the Fearless, Dragons of Lazaronia, will also be published later this year by CrossroadsPub.
Laraine recently started on a companion, stand-alone volume to Silvranja of the Silver Forest. Its working title is Albishadewe, Unicorn of Lazaronia, though she hopes to find something more eye-catching by the time the book is finished. She expects Albishadewe's story to need two books.
You can read excerpts from Laraine's books on her web site.
As a teenager Laraine's favourite writer was Elizabeth Goudge. At the moment she favours (in no particular order) Sherryl Jordan, Maurice Gee, Gaelyn Gordon, Caroline Macdonald (all of whom were born in New Zealand), Lloyd Alexander, Susan Cooper, Susan Price, Tamora Pierce, C S Lewis, Philip Pullman, Diana Wynne Jones, Patricia C Wrede, Annie Dalton, Susan Fletcher, Brian Caswell, Geraldine McCaughrean--and of course the inimitable Tolkien. These are only the writers whose names she can remember at the moment. The list is always growing. She enjoys finding new writers--new to her, anyway. Among writers for adults she enjoys Barbara Hambly (possibly her favourite), Marion Zimmer Bradley, Andre Norton, Anne McCaffrey--and that's not a complete list.
Laraine lives, with her husband and three long-haired miniature Dachshunds, on a 5-acre "life-style" block in a dairy-farming community just south of Rotorua, aka Sulphur City. She thinks she's lucky to live so close to New Zealand's main tourism centre, surrounded by numerous beautiful lakes in a landscape that's partly rugged green hills and partly areas that could be on another planet, with volcanoes, geysers, boiling mud pools and features so fantastic they've been given fanciful names, e.g., the Devil's Bath, the Champagne Pool, the Bridal Veil Falls.
Laraine considers the electronic publishing industry is a very exciting development and is proud to be a part of it, especially while it's still relatively young.