About Cordelia Malthere
Author and Director at Malthere Publications, Cordelia Malthere, to date, has published fourteen of her novels. Her first released story was the debut of her Wilton Town's Spooky Tales, while her second novel started The IT-666's Saga. Although both series are classified as Dark Fantasy, Cordelia Malthere, as a writer, does not fit just a particular label or genre. She is currently working on a cook book, a children's book, a fairy tale and a couple of antropological work.
Her creative World is full of stories, books written and published and tales not written yet, poems, novels and drawings. Cordelia Malthere is a versatile author with an abundant imagination. As everything, it did all start somewhere, let us retrace the steps of her writing journey with her Bio:
Childhood:
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Born in Cherbourg, France, in 1976, (her birth name is Celine Nicolas), Cordelia describes herself as much as a child of the eighties (growing up during that decade) as a sea-side girl which enjoyed fishing upon the rocks, during the low tides with her parents. Her childhood if modest was happy. As the middle child of three, she displayed very early on artistic abilities, especially drawing, which were not discouraged by her parents. Although teachers often labelled her as a child living in her own imaginary world, where she would create stories and draw an entire world of paper dolls, animals and objects to enact those stories, she was left and encouraged to express herself by those means. |
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Three negative events in that period did leave their marks. The first, born left handed, she was attached upon a chair by one of her earliest school teacher in order to turn her right handed. She escaped from the school. Her parents immediately took her and her younger brother to another school. But from being called evil just for being left handed, Cordelia Malthere grew a strong dislike of all kind of prejudices. As an author, she addresses the issues of prejudice very often within her novels. Her second negative experience was to nearly drown in a swimming pool while learning how to swim with her class. It left her with plaguing nightmares about drowning and dying. To this day Cordelia does not know how to swim, although she is not scared of going in or onto the sea, and enjoyed sailing classes in her teenage years. Her third happened in her teens when her mother out of spite decided to cut her locks which her elder half sister was jealous off. If it made her older sister feel better to have her younger half sister not so pretty growing up, then the mother was ready to do that. Cutting the hair of someone without their will is a humiliating thing to do. Especially since Cordelia had curly hair, they took a very long while to grow back. Hence in her teens she would not be considered as pretty which pleased her mother and her half sister. This was their nasty ways to show how petty and mean they were. But in all hardships there is a blessing, Cordelia turned to her studies without being distracted by the attention of boys towards her. |
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The Teenage Years:
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Tom boy in dungarees and plaits, Cordelia read books upon trees when she was not visiting so called haunted houses and woods with friends. Her favourite literature then was Alexandre Dumas's work especially the entire Three Musketeers novels. Real life stories stirred her from Helen Keller to Anne Frank. Her parents separated when she was fourteen. Sent to boarding school she concentrated on her studies, graduating with a Baccalaureate in Literature, Philosophy and Art in 1994 with honours. She felt particularly inspired by her teacher of Literature, Francois David (Creator and Director of Les Editions Motus: http://www.leslivresontdesoreilles.com/editions-mo...) During that time, she spent holidays with her father and brother visiting Europe: Belgium, the Netherlands, Germany, Luxembourg, Switzerland, Austria, and Liechtenstein to name a few. After her Baccalaureate, Cordelia pursued higher studies for a couple of years in the Fine Art School of Cherbourg (les Beaux Arts). However, despite her love of Art, she decided not to pursue that path partly due to lack of funding. But also because one of her teachers called Louveau wasn't able to see properly the art of his pupils which got her upset. His inability to have a correct vision was discovered when she went to give back her books borrowed to the library of that school. It would have probably been books about Matisse, Giacometti and Turner. But when she went there, there was a small celebration between teachers who celebrated the first pair of glasses of Louveau. It seams begnin. However it was not. Because one of her friend Helene had been constantly demeaned by the criticism of Louveau about her artwork which he could not see properly. He judged Helen so harshly all the time that the young Helen turned to strong alcohol and became suicidal not believing in her talent any longer. That day Cordelia went on a rant, telling the teachers off in that library. If the director, Audouard, stated that she pinpointed something right, a year later, Cordelia missed her fine art degree by half a point. Half a point which was not accorded by Louveau... It was simply his revenge for her outburst and pointing out what was wrong in that school. |
Moving On:
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Cordelia, looking to improve her English, moved to London in the UK after being hired as an Au Pair in 1996. She fell totally in love with the British capital. Graduating with a City and Guilds in IT from the City and Islington College in 2000, she moved on to study Anthropology and Archaeological Sciences at the University of East London, getting a joint BSc in 2005. To finance her University studies, Cordelia worked as a nanny, at Pizza Hut, but also gave French private tuition. It was a very busy time in her life to say the least but which she truly enjoyed especially since she was an indomitable party goer which the Millennium years provided the perfect background to. Those cheerful years however ended with her short marriage (24/04/2004 to 31/12/2004) which left her in debts, depressed and disgruntled. Being the victim of burglary thrice didn't help either. The outgoing Cordelia clammed into her shell, abandoning her dreams altogether of doing a Master degree in Archaeological Sciences before going for a PhD, in order to repay her debts. She concentrated on her shop job to just scrap a living and repay the year of a lost wedding. |
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The Writing Spark:
At that time, travelling to and from work was somewhat challenging. Proud the cycling author would not even borrow for bus rides until her payday, instead she walked 12 miles back and forth for three days. Having destroyed her bicycle in an accident, she took it upon herself to turn up on time at work until she could afford another medium of transport rather than her own feet. During her journeys, walking or cycling, Cordelia created stories, mainly historical novels which she wrote at night.
Finally, the last drop dropped upon her shoulders when her best friend passed away after a long fight with cancer in 2010, the very friend who welcomed her in England back in 1996. Cordelia was so distraught that she planned to kill herself. However on the day of her intended suicide, she decided to express her feelings instead, right on the platform in Barnet, right on time where two rapid trains passed side by side and would have made it a fast pass to the 'After World'. That night, the first pages of 'the Epic Adventures of Clementine Boatswain in the After World' were written. It then became a blog with some popularity which encouraged Cordelia to write and share her thoughts and creativity.
Malthere Publications:
The next question from her partner came: How would you feel if you did all that without lottery money?
Proud, but how? How do you start a company?
The answer was: 'Let's learn together, shall we?'
In 2014, Malthere Publications was registered as a limited company. In 2015, Cordelia was a full time writer and published author, let alone being joint CEO of a publication company.
The Author: The Stories.
Now in late 2024, Cordelia has published many novels. Most of them are within the set of the Wilton Town Saga comprising 'Hair rising, hair rasing, Erasing.' It is her first published book, which was dedicated to her late father André Nicolas. This short story was the building block of more stories following the lives of her characters. Hence it was the seed of imagination unleashed to the real printed world of words which Cordelia has the key to as a publisher.
This was a ground breaking work which did lead to many other novels. Some were so large that they had to be split in two volumes, like 'the Angels go marching in'. There were to be a tome one 'Theo's Hour' and a tome two 'Sebastien's arrival.' So they were the third and fourth instalments of the Wilton Town Saga as per say. The second instalment was a 'Ghost Spell: A W C's return'. It is not to be dismissed by a long shot for it joins the entire saga, presenting more thoroughly the character of Vincent Valdi, and the one of the vicar Theo Odell. Both are proeminent characters of Wilton Town as much as Abraham Wilton-Cough.
Cordelia Malthere invests a lot of her time in conceiving characters. When she was drawing a lot, she was and still is, very good at drawing caricatures. Her concept is to observe a lot in order to percieve the essential traits of one person. So, of course, her characters, like in her drawings, are a reflection upon someone she encountered. They may become a blend of different traits put together out of different individuals in order to create the very characters for her stories. There is that capturing the moment like in the world of 'Selfies'. But there is is done via writing. It is just the wisdom of an old seeing owl.
In terms of characters, Cordelia felt compelled to write a book about them, 'The Compendium of Charaters'. It works like an explainatory system of her own imaginatory universe. As per say it does decode the players within it: the badies, the goodies, the controversial ones, etc... The second edition of her compendium is under way, which does includes the new characters of her more recent published novels. Fair to say it is also a way for the author to keep track of everything for she is suffuring from epileptic seizures which can partially affects her memory. It is a tool box which helps fixing the flow of her sagas with accuracy.
The complexity comes into play because Cordelia has within her mind multiple creative projects at any one time at the same time. It is like juggling a bulliant mind with many ideas to follow through at once. Otherwise the flow of one idea could be lost with the torrential flow of another one. It is about capturing the moment. When another idea comes popping about in the midst of another one going fully on, Cordelia is ready to ride the rafters in order to set the plan for the bases of the new novel. One would be set at port and safe/saved for later. The other one would be created there and then to become the focus of her attention. It did happen for her whilst writing the Wilton Town Saga when in the midst of it she felt compelled to stop it for a while to pursue, create the IT-666's Saga.
The feeling was one of unease about pursuing that course however she had an urge of beating the iron while it was hot in her mind. IT-666, like many of her ideas, came to Cordelia in a very unsettling dream. She had to write everything down somehow. That project grew from one novel to become a trilogy and then there are two more books on the line ready to be published.
It-666 was a difficult project because the novels were judged by their titles. It, which is a thing, 666 which is felt as a diabolical set of numbers, and of course, the Beast. Those books, in advance were judged by their titles and covers by people who didn't want to read the content. The good old saying is to do not judge a book by its cover. At least read it to have a proper opinion of it before pronouncing a bad opinion of it. Her mother did not read the trilogy but pronounced her opinion harshly against it without knowing what it was all about unable to read English. However others who dared to read them enjoyed the read very much, asking for more.
Another saga was under way after a year and a half of writting 'The Angels go marching in' which was such a large book that it was requested to be split in to two in order to be paperback published. This story is part of the Wilton Town saga. It did bring flesh to more characters in the whimsical Wilton Town. The plan is to create motion animation for the entire saga of Wilton Town. To that effect the author aquired the tools to do it. It is a DIY plan. She is inspired by Aardman Animation as much as for the Tim Burton's movies. We will see what that story unfold.
To go back to the new sagas there are two. One is called 'Wild Flowers'. Under that label which means a lot to the author came the title: 'Wild Flowers: Daisy and Rose'. This novel wasn't proof read whatsoever. Cordelia couldn't afford the wages of someone at that point in time. Yet it was done as it is and published. Because she could do so as the owner of a publishing company she created from sheer hard work. The first novel of this engrossing story was published in 2023. It is a growing Saga as per say. It is going wild in a creative mind.
