On behalf of Darkeva’s Blog, I would like to extend a warm and cordial welcome to Australian fantasy scribe Rowena Cory Daniells!

First, the author bio:

Rowena Cory Daniells has been involved in Speculative Fiction for over thirty years — as a reader and fan, independent press, graphic artist, bookshop owner and writer. She is published in both children and adults’ fiction. Her award winning fantasy trilogy ‘The Last T’En’ was published in Australia, the US and Germany. She also writes short stories, which have appeared in magazines and anthologies including ‘Dreaming Downunder’ which won World Best Fantasy, and ‘Dreaming Again’. Her agent is John Jarrold.

Rowena has a Masters in Arts Research and has taught creative writing to all ages. Over the years, she has served on the management committees of national genre awards, and several state and national Arts Organisations. She lives by the bay with her husband and varying combinations of her six children as they come and go. In her spare time she has devoted five years to studying each of these martial arts, Tae Kwon Do, Aikido and Iaido, the art of the Samurai sword.

With The Chronicles of King Rolen’s Kin, Rowena set out to write the kind of book that you curl up with on a Saturday afternoon after a hard week. She hopes you have as much fun reading the trilogy as she had writing it.

Without further ado, here’s Rowena!

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Nostalgia … what hits your ‘nostalgia nerve?’

First of all, congratulations to Anita, whose Dark Eva Blog was voted one of the 2010 Top Fiction Book Blogs.

Thinking about nostalgia got me wondering if there is an optimum age for discovering an author or a genre.

I discovered Georgette Heyer when I was nineteen and ever since then I’ve judged all Regency books by her standards. I also discovered Fritz Leiber and Joanna Russ around the same time. Both firm favourites for me. Maybe late teens, early twenties is the ideal time to be imprinted by writers?

With popular music, according to research done by Holbrook and Schindler ‘the development of musical tastes and enduring preferences toward popular music (is) acquired during late adolescence (and) that preferences peak at critical periods, about the age of 24.’ Think back … what music gives you shivers, makes you smile and reminds you of good times?

While, according to research done by a colleague of mine, the ideal age to discover a computer game is between 11 and 14. Games discovered during this time are the ones game players look back on with fond nostalgia. (This is work compiled for an ongoing PHd so I can’t link to it, but thanks to Luke McMillan for sharing his research).

As for Radio there are lots of sites where you can access old series. Here’s a site where you can download free old time radio show classic episodes. And yet more on the golden age of radio. I must admit this was before my time, so radio shows don’t hit the ‘nostalgia nerve’ for me.

And then there are movies and TV shows. Here’s a site dedicated to ‘Atomic Age Cinema’; that’s cinema that came out after the second world war. They say:

‘From cold war propaganda to glamorous lifestyles, we hope you enjoy our vintage collection of classic movies from the Atomic Age! The post-war atomic age was full of optimism and scientific advances but also hidden fears.’

Rather than being a specific age for TV shows and movies, we seem to have favourite shows from different periods of our lives, favourite childhood shows, favourite teenage shows etc.

Here, they talk about TV show nostalgia. They make this point:

‘As new material is released, the vast majority will be of mediocre or worse quality, but over time, a powerful selection pressure causes all but the best material (and in some infamous cases, the worst) to be rapidly forgotten, leaving an increasingly inaccurate impression of the overall quality of the genre over time. This is known as “the nostalgia filter”, and can be easily demonstrated by a careful review of the period works that are not remembered today.’

Something doesn’t have to be brilliant–it just has to hit the right note. For those of us of a certain age, Marcia Brady will always be the epitome of a young teenage girl. Many girls wanted to grow up to be her. For me it was Samantha from Bewitched. I wanted to grow up to be a witch just like her. Mind you, I wouldn’t have bothered with Darren, who was always telling her not to use her magic!

So why do we even have a ‘nostalgia nerve’? Here, they look at Neuroscience and Nostalgia. They put forward the theory that nostalgia is a kind of natural anti depressant. I mean, when you think about it, why do we feel nostalgic?

Back to books. For me the Dark Urban Fantasy will always be defined by Laurell K Hamilton’s first five books. I discovered them back in the 90s and devoured them. She’s moved on and lost me now, but I still look for books that combine the elements she used so well.

What books and authors define your genre? Which ones hit your ‘nostalgia nerve’?

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What a fantastic post, Rowena! Thanks very much for sharing!

I think that the thing that struck me as the most interest was Rowena’s point about the ability of films, television, and music to transport us to a different time and place–even one we weren’t alive for, as with the Golden Age of Radio. Many years ago, Toronto’s 104.5CHUM FM used to play an hour of “Theatre of the Mind,” which used to have some of the most brilliant radio plays that I’ve ever heard. Even though they were directed and produced in the twenties and thirties, the power of the medium of radio was so intense that it could actually conjure fear in the listener’s mind (myself included); banish those images in your mind of hokey soap opera music (although quite a few radio plays did use them at the beginning of shows) and click on some of the wonderful links that Rowena generously provided to rediscover–or discover for the first time–some of the greatest produced stories in an all but forgotten medium that has changed so dramatically over the course of the last fifty years.

To Rowena’s point about Laurell K. Hamilton, I couldn’t agree more. For years and years, I’d always seen Laurell’s books in the bookstore where I used to work and I had heard of the reputation of the series and kept thinking to myself that I should just pick them up. After “Guilty Pleasures,” I was absolutely addicted. Floored is more like it. I’d caught glimpses of “Buffy the Vampire Slayer” here and there, and I absolutely loved Xena (oh, come on–who didn’t? lol), but I’d never encountered anyone quite like Anita Blake. Sadly, the sixth book was the turning point for me–Laurell moved in another direction, and my tastes developed in a different movement, but the nostalgia that I get from reading those books transports me to a very unique point in time.

How about you, readers? What makes you nostalgic? What books or authors have influenced you in this way?

Looking forward to reading your thoughts!