Ideas for stories come from everywhere. They come down through the
water when you're having a shower, or make you run for your notebook
when you're talking with friends, or you're enjoying a bowl of minestrone,
and there in a piece of celery is a complete story, from beginning to
end. Unlock the memories of childhood and countless ideas are released.
An author is like an animal with a million bristling antennae.
The Garden of Empress Cassia is a movie using word images. My
background is in illustration and photography, so I paint with words.
I must see everything in my mind first. I have to create vivid settings
where my characters can perform to the best of their ability and each
chapter is a scene with new sets, new props, new tensions.
Up until the age of three, like Mimi my main character, I lived above
a shop on a busy road. I would stand on the footpath watching the passersby
and the trams rattling down the tracks. Inside the shop, my father sold
bric-a-brac from China - embroidered handkerchiefs, miniature carved
cork landscapes, embroidered slippers, laughing buddhas. In between
customers, my mother would sit in the corner, a gold lacquered box the
size of a biscuit tin on her lap, threading pearls to make necklaces.
It was a very clever box. The wooden walls slid in and out of each other
so that you could make the compartments any size you wanted. These were
filled with glistening pearls, fine silk thread and little gold coils
for attaching the clasps. On the lid of the box was carved a lake with
willows, bridges and pavilions. To a three-year-old child, it was pure
magic.
'Open it,' Miss O'Dell whispered, as though she was about to share
a secret. Mimi let the silk slip away. It was a long wooden box with
a beautiful carving of a miniature oriental garden on the lid, with
willows and pavilions and bridges crossing lakes. As Mimi ran her fingers
over the honey-gold surface, it was like touching the finest silk or
the smooth skin of a newborn baby. Flowing Chinese characters were carved
around the sides and inlaid with mother of pearl.
In The Garden of Empress Cassia, Mimi's magical box is not filled
with pearls, but pastels. With them she can draw beautiful pictures
of gardens on the footpath and passersby are unsuspectingly sucked into
this alternate world. The possibility of being transported inside a
picture came to me one stormy evening when I was a teenager. I had just
finished a day at art school and was invited to stay the weekend at
a friend's holiday house near Wilson's Promontory. She was already there,
so I had to make the two hour journey alone. By the time I arrived,
it was dark and pouring with rain. The house was at the end of a muddy
road surrounded by scrub. There was a note pinned to the front door:
Gone to the store. Back in 5. I sat at the kitchen table tapping
my fingers and gazing at a rather pleasant painting on the wall. The
scene was an English cottage with a kindly lady standing at the gate
waving. As I stared at the picture, I felt drawn into it. The lady was
waving at me and inviting me in. All I had to do was to let go of my
mind. Suddenly I became scared and quickly turned away. I have never
forgotten that night which still leaves me with a cold shiver running
up my spine.
'And what's this?' Miss Sternhop tapped at some words with her walking
stick, then read slowly. 'Under your feet the journey begins. In the
palm of your hand the journey ends. Come, enter the space between Heaven
and Earth. What space? What journey? What rubbish, child!' She began
rubbing away the words with her foot.
'Miss Sternhop don't!' cried Mimi, suddenly fearful. But it was too
late. Miss Sternhop was slowly being sucked into the garden!
I owe a lot to my husband and two children who helped workshop and
edit each chapter as well as adding suggestions when I came to a sticky
part in the story. Whenever this happened, we would go out for dinner
and over a bowl of noodles tackle a particular problem. I like reading
what I have written out aloud so that there is a rhythm in each sentence
and paragraph. My son, who was eleven at the time, was my very willing
sounding board. I put my trust in him not only because he is such a
good reader, but also because his classmates and friends were my target
audience. When he came home from school, I would read out what I'd written.
'She wouldn't talk like that,' he would say or 'You should make the
part where Gemma gets sucked into the bad garden longer.' Two years
on, I still ask his advice. In the beginning of this paragraph, I had
originally written 'over a bowl of spaghetti.' He told me just now to
change it to 'over a bowl of noodles' because 'it sounds more Chinese'.
The Garden of Empress Cassia had been simmering inside me long
before I knew I was going to write a novel. And then when I did start,
I felt as though I was a newborn spring bubbling up through the soft
earth and bursting out into the sunlight. Because it is my first novel,
it has been a joyful and enlightening journey from conception to birth
to initiation into the world of publishing. I have learnt so much along
the way. Writing The Garden of Empress Cassia was a strange and
wondrous pursuit that never ceased to surprise me. The Taoist philosopher,
Lao tsu says, 'It is there within us all the while, draw upon it as
you will, it never runs dry'.
I hope this is true.