Jennifer Freitag's Blog, page 22

The Scenes Inside My Head

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My November has been full of toying with a bunch of plot-points for my novels.  I think I have managed to work out the gist of Talldogs, and some of the larger aspects of my other novels have been tentatively set down.  Three and a half months is a long time to be away: I'm now looking forward to getting back home and settling into the comfortable routine of my life so that I can focus a little better on the scenes inside my head. 

stray snippets
The pale, stormy face wormed its way against his chest as he crouched beside her. Her grip on the open front of his doublet was surprisingly strong: the scent of her fear was biting in Raymond’s nostrils. He put his arms around her, and it occurred to him that he had never held his sister before, not even when she had been a baby: the gesture was awkward and he was not sure how he liked it.talldogs
Raymond had the acute sensation of coming to empathize with the cuckolded husband of second-rate comedic plays.talldogs
[She] must have spotted the figure at the same instant, for along the length of the rampart Alwin could hear her voice raised in a wild cry—deep, for one her size and age—shouting for all she was worth: “That man!—shoot me that man on the caparisoned horse! Shoot him down! All of you, bring everything to bear on that man! Shoot—him—down!” drakeshelm
The bay hurtled by. The black screamed and charged wildly in the track. A body in blue and steel crashed from its back, caught in the stirrup, and was dragged a few plunging paces in a storm of shield-shards and broken lance before detaching and tumbling across the sand. cruxgang
Avery passed over a shield with the Cognizance of the City of God. cruxgang
The man upon whose arm she stood was almost unrecognizable to [him]. Accustomed to plain dress, with perhaps only a little adornment to break the monotony of dark, earthy colours in which the man so often clothed himself, his cousin stood instead this evening in a tunic of crimson: a deep, guttural red chased over heavily with embroidered work of black dragons, picked out with copper thread to lend the creatures a malevolent dimension. cruxgang
“What a rummy piece of novel!” crowed Goddgofang appreciatively.maresgate
“Hate you!” Goddgofang broke into movement and came forward several angry strides. “You exasperate me, you are an incomprehensible handful of unbroken horseflesh, but thunder of heaven, I do not hate you! How could you think such nonsense?”maresgate
"My dear, in my heart of hearts, I am but rarely a gentleman."cruxgang
"Feel that pain? Is it not exquisite?"maresgate

"If You Can't Do Something Smart, Do Something Right"

pinterest"It ain't all buttons and charts, little albatross."malcolm reynolds
As a general rule, I don't read how-to books on writing. I find them incomprehensible and frequently a hindrance if I try to think about their tenants while I'm doing my own writing.  I know they work well for some people, and occasionally I do click on a link on Facebook and scan through someone's blog post on writing (rather like this one here), but otherwise my only teachers on how to write have been actual works of literature.  I have said it before, I started writing long before I realized what I was doing, and I was far too young to analyze my work to death, and so the thing became intuitive.  I learned what a good story was (probably through reading them: my early works are, understandably, abysmal), I learned to appreciate a good storyteller, and I learned most of it through simply doing it without over-thinking the business.  I read once that beginnings are the hardest, because that is where the fear is.  That is true, and I am glad I began when I was too young to realize there was anything to be afraid of.  I loved what I was doing, I loved my characters and my melodramatic plots, I loved hitting the sweet spot with the words that made them taste like rage in your mouth.  I had no idea what I was doing, but I was doing it right.

"You can learn all the math in the 'verse, but you take a boat in the air you don't love, she'll shake you off just as sure as a turn o' the worlds.  Love keeps her in the air when she oughta fall down - tells you when she's hurtin' 'fore she keels.
Makes her a home."
Despite all the hitches and stress and editing and wrangling of plots and characters (without which what I do would not be worth a hill o' beans), I love it: and the love makes the writing work.  While writing Ethandune, my husband remarked that he could tell what a fun time I was having working with it: it bled through the story.  I have ups and downs and mood swings about my writing the same as everyone else.  Some days I stare at the cursor on the page and curse right back at it, feeling that I will never be able to put two words of sense together again.  But maybe I'm just feeling down: maybe my tea hasn't kicked in, or the sun hasn't shone for three days straight.  In the end my husband reminds me that I am a good writer and I know that I love what I do.  And in the end I make something good after all.

I was really shocked by the response to "The Tarot Smile."  I was expecting feedback: instead I got a barrage of "How do you do that!" which naturally put me on the spot and drove me back inside my introverted shell.  Again, I don't know!  I'm not one to analyze my writing - or anyone else's much, for that matter.  I just do it.  How do my husband and I make our relationship work?  We love each other.  How do I make my imagination join with words on the page?  I love it.  There is a certain something which no writing book can give you and which is crucial to the life of a story.  Call it love, call it genius, you can't get it out of a writing book - you can't even get it out of years of practice.

There are writing principles just as there are rules of etiquette in life.  You learn them and you live by them, with respect and honour to the craft just as you respect and honour your fellow men.  But the human imagination is a huge world, with plenty of space for the exploring, and maybe that imagination isn't in line with the marketable writing of your time, maybe it isn't "the thing," - but you're honest, and you love it, and the love makes you good at what you do.  I know that the surest way to take the fighting life out of my writing is to try to cage it.  Writing is about making something alive, not putting a bicycle back together.  No matter how much you shock that corpse, if you haven't got that genius with which to fill it, it will never live.  In the end, our books stand or fall on the basis of the life inside us - and stand they will if the life inside us is good, for an abundance of good things will come out of it.

In the end, I write a little blindly, often unaware of what I do.  Writers are a strange breed of creature, perpetually examined by the outside world as curios of the human race, and I will probably continue to be asked how I write, and I will continue to cast about for an answer: for in all my wordsmithing, that is one piece of dialogue which I will eternally neglect to construct.  In my head the characters are all living people, looking out at the world with countless different views, making countless different stories, and I write those stories, and I love them, and loving them makes them live.  I in them and them in me and somehow in the midst of it all a little creative glory gets thrown in through grace and I am satisfied. 

Goddess Tithe Novella Review

After sending up the cover reveal for Anne Elisabeth Stengl's newest Tales of Goldstone Wood story Goddess Tithe, I was asked if I would like an advance digital copy of the novella to read and review.  It is all of 130 pages, so it didn't take long to read.  And now - the review! I have (mis)used the standard reviewing setup used for the site Squeaky Clean Reviews, because ostensibly I review on that site, and the setup is easy to borrow. 

goddess titheanne elisabeth stengl

What is the plot?
Captain Sunan is the skipper of the Kulap Kanya, and Munny looks up to him as a hero. The Captain always knows what to do and when to do it: when a stowaway is discovered on board the ship, Munny is confident that the Captain will give the miscreant over to the jaws of Risafeth, goddess of the sea—for all stowaways are hers by right. But when Captain Sunan unexpectedly vows to bring the stowaway alive to harbour, the life of everyone on the ship is thrown into jeopardy. With the life of the stowaway placed in Munny’s care, will he choose to let the strange foreigner die, or will he, too, risk the fate of the ship to save one man?

What is the mortality level of this story?
Humankind is accurately portrayed in this novella of Goldstone Wood’s stories. Among heroic sentiments, cowards, the honourable and the superstitious, Stengl maintains a firm line of morality and beautifully praises godly behaviour.

What kind of spiritual content does it have, or not have?
As with the rest of the Goldstone Wood universe, the faerie world comes into play in this novella. Some of the fey proclaim themselves to be gods and goddesses, and accept the worship of mortals, but there are those who do not acknowledge the deity of these beings.

Is there any degree of violence?
Life on shipboard is rough, and as the bottom-most rung of the social ladder, Munny gets stepped on a lot. He is often beaten and mistreated, but the violence, while realistic, is never graphic.

Do people smoke, chew, or get drunk?
All clean here!

Is there any sexual content that I should scrunch my brows at?
None explicit. A character is referenced as having married beneath her station and her family refused to acknowledge the alliance, so that her child is looked on as illegitimate.

Does anyone cuss or behave unseemly?
None.

In conclusion!
This is only a novella, not a full-blown Goldstone Wood novel, but it packs an excellent story all the same, depicting a beautiful image of courage and self-sacrifice and the world’s confusion over watching something foolish be saved from a demise it probably deserves. This is not your typical sea-yarn! Between Munny’s life on shipboard and the intrusion of the faerie world to grasp a mortal’s life, this voyage of the Kulap Kanya is a rollicking ride. It is exciting, sweet, full of the simple ambitions of a boy for whom life is little more than the next seaman’s knot and a cluster of mystical white flowers. Do you enjoy The Tales of Goldstone Wood? I recommend this novella!

interested in purchasing a paperback copy of goddess tithe? check it out on amazon!

The Tarot Smile

Who comes from the bridal chamber?It is Azrael, the angel of death.sir walter scott

chatterbox

It is November (wah!) and time for another Chatterbox session from Rachel Heffington's blog The Inkpen Authoress.  The rules?  She comes up with a topic and all who care to participate write up a scene between their characters involving (or discussing) that topic.  It's quite a bit of fun once you've dashed your brains against the wall and thought of something...  Last month's topic was coffee, and you can read my piece here.  This month's topic is

death 

and by thunder, it is my stock-and-trade, and by thunder it was hard to come up with something to write.  Congratulations, Rachel, you very nearly stumped the Grim Reaper.

the tarot smile

Chink! Chink!Chink!With rhythmic movement, her hand moving only at the wrist, Akilina Loriermayne spun the slender instrument around the little tea cup, her even breathing filling her nostrils with the heady scent of ginger and the pine-tree tang of olibanum.  The metallic report of her spoon against the delicate china was the only sound in the room; the edges of the chamber were darkened, like a room in a dream, but around her low seat and her little work table burned dozens of candles, like a kind of shrine—and she sat like a phoenix in the midst of them, stirring the sheeny brown granules of sugar into the gilt liquid, her breathing even, deep, sleepy.  Outside, the world was kneeling down like a horse, tired, bowing under the dark heavens for rest.  Within, beneath the soft surge of her regulated breathing, Akilina Loriermayne’s heart was afire with battle heat, and in her mind’s eye the sleeping world outside was like the chunks of golden olibanum which smoked on the heated coals clumped in their concave obsidian bowl: it was beautiful, bright, a mere handful of pretty things that she could cup in her palm…and turn over upon the embers of vengeance until it sent up an aroma to heaven.The bells upon the veil outside her chamber sang softly, like the passing of a spirit, and she lifted her head slowly, heavy black hair sliding up her shoulders and falling back from her bare arms.  Her spoon held still.It was her butler who came into the entryway, one arm holding back the curtain, the other hand supporting a little plate of silverwork.  He hesitated, his eyes in the dark shining out at her.  She dropped her chin a fraction and he stepped in, coming forward a pace and kneeling down, pressing his forehead to the carpet.“My Lady,” he said, “there is a gentleman in the Court who wishes to see you.  He has sent his card.”Akilina removed her spoon from her cup and set it aside among the coals.  Putting aside also her steaming cup, which was as yet too hot to drink, she waited as the butler surged to his feet and drew close, extending the platter to her.  She had not grown accustomed to the culture which sent slips of paper by way of address, but as her eye fell with dulled criticism on the object in the centre of the silver, her curiosity was piqued to discover it larger than most cards she had seen, rounded at the edges, much worn, and lying on its face so that all she could see of it was a heavily decorated back of ivy-vine in a faded teal colour.  She did not touch the card, but she murmured,“What is this?”  Then, to the butler, “Honour, I think.”“Indeed, my Lady,” the man replied.She raised her hand and allowed him to place the silver on her work table.  An idea of this gentleman’s identity was swift to congeal in her mind.  “Put him through.  I will speak to him alone.”The butler did as she bade him without a moment’s hesitation.  Presently the bronze bells of the curtain were chiming in the quiet, and Akilina was left kneeling on her large square pillow in the small circle of candlelight, hands upon her knees, staring unblinkingly at the circle of silver before her and the rectangle of worn card directly in the middle of it.  The smell of incense was heavy; the soft throb of fighting spirit, like a three-year-old throwing its chest against the bars of the racing gate, drummed in her quenched, quiet body.  So, he has come, she thought to herself and to the deep-heaven spirits.  Today we will set a key into the keyhole of our victory.  There was a step at the curtain—a whisper of bells.She lifted her head.Today we will prevail.The Devil stood in the entryway, arm outthrust to hold back the curtain.  He was tall, very tall and lean and strong like a horse that has known nothing but war, and he gazed down on Akilina with pale, laughing eyes.  All in a moment she took in that, though he was a southlander, he wore the customary clothing of her people, dark-stitched and understated, but elegant, and over the heavy scent of olibanum rushed a salt-smell like the ocean, and a gentle wind lifted the hair from her brow.  For a moment she was surprised.  She should not have been, she realized, looking up into those almost colourless, mocking eyes which were harsh and bladed like the blade of a knife.  She had not expected him to bear all the hallmarks of a man: handsome, experienced, domineering, with a smile that could wrench a woman’s gut.  But then she, too, smiled, and knew that the Devil could do these things with ease, and she was no longer surprised.Akilina extended her hand to a pillow across from her.  “You have come to call upon me,” she remarked languidly, “and it is very late.”The Devil let the curtain drop behind him and came in on bare feet, making no noise as he moved.  He thrust one foot under the pillow and levered it directly across from Akilina—though it put his back to the curtain.  “I like to see things with my own eyes,” he explained—also with a languid tone, as if he had known Akilina for years.  He, too, folded down upon the pillow, hands upon his knees, back straight and his head up, his dog-teeth shining a little through the part in his lips.  “It was in my mind, also, that you were waiting for me.”She lifted one brow.  Save for the crisp, handsome body in which he walked, he was much as his reputation proclaimed: feeling between her thumb and forefinger like a wet pebble, ready at the least pressure to slip away, very powerful in the ancient way, and very full of the love of himself.  “I called you all.  And indeed,” she added lightly, “you all have come.”He smiled indulgently.  “Verily.  But when you whistle, and the men come to hear what you have to say, it is I who you really want, for it is I who really matters.  Otherwise, my dear,” he lifted his shoulders, “you have a particular taste for one of my neighbours—God pity him—and the rest of us can all go home.”He finished this with an inexplicably ragged edge to his tone.  She let the barb pass by, for it was not worth her while to attend, but she suspected her whistle, as he had termed it, had called him from some business which was more palatable to him.  That pleased her.  The Devil was displeased, and his smiling mouth and mocking eyes were of a piece with the deepest rage of him of which she had heard so much.  She decided to touch him to see how he would move.“If you are all that matters, and the others are mere retainers to you, why have you come into my bower alone?  We are deep enemies, you and I.”But the pebble, it seemed, had been pressed too tight.  The pale eye turned down toward the red-hot olibanum, and travelled upward, following the tendrils of smoke.  “They are not mere retainers.  They have seen much hardship and have endured much, and they know how to bar the house-place door and put their backs into the shield-wall.  I have watched them do it—I have watched them do it for myself.  I am the head of the dragon, your majesty,” the eyes sprang up to hers, fiercely shining and hot with mingled pride and defiance, “but they are the scales.  I would never for the life of me call them mere retainers.”It did not escape Akilina that in his boast, like the boast of a man used to poetry, the Devil had sketched her a pretty warning.  She looked at it to be sure she had got the shape of it memorized, then let it pass from view.“They are not my concern.”  Her tea having cooled sufficiently, she slid a long fine hand around it and raised it to her lips.  “I have small thought for the scale of a worm when it has no skull-fire with which to devastate the land.”There was a small silence.  The coals squealed softly, full of heat; one cracked and spread cinders on the obsidian plate.  The Devil put up one hand, chin in his palm, his fingertips set against his cheek.  It did not adequately hide his smile.  “I see the cards are upon the table.  Do you play?” he asked.Akilina allowed herself a brief frown, hardly more than a passage of thought across her brow.  “I enjoy the game,” she admitted, unwilling to expose the truth that she was a masterful player.  The fighting desire in her wanted both to lift the flesh from the Devil’s bones and to dare him with a game at cards.“Then you will know that I hold a high hand, my dear.”  He pulled his palm from his face, holding it out indicatively.  “Have you seen my hand?  I am like to shoot the moon!”“Again,” said Akilina, “it is of no consequence.  For this is not a game of cards.”“No,” the Devil replied, without a trace of humour, “it is foolhardiness.  I know what you want, my dear—cards are upon the table—and while it perplexes me to wonder why you want it, anyone will tell you that to play against the House is imprudent and unwise.”Akilina tasted ginger and the rattle of drawn steel.  She set the cup down with deliberation on the tabletop, hearing as if from a distance the little click it made.  “Yours is not the first House to be managed under abysmal spirits.  Yours is not the first to be redeemed—as redeemed it must be, from your black alliances and your necromancy.  You have been a long time in the dark.  It is time you were won back.”For a moment the Devil watched her as a tiger watches from the edge of the night.  Akilina could see his teeth shining.  Then he began to laugh, very softly and deeply in his chest; his body shook with his sudden humour, and when he could speak, he broke out, “I never thought I would wish it, but la! how I long to throw my brother at you and listen to the speech you might have had with him.  I think you would have got much satisfaction out of the encounter.”  Then, in a single fluid motion he was on his feet, standing over her with one foot on the low table and the smoke of the olibanum thick around his figure.  With an unprecedented sense of rage she found him thrusting out his hand to her, drawing up her chin with two fingers to look him in the eye.  A similar rage beat back at her from him and the life-thing in her chest began to hammer like the call to arms.“A prince does not lightly give up his principality,” the Devil murmured, “neither will I lightly give up mine.  I have already fought one war: I am not squeamish to do it again.  So come for me, Queen, if you must.  It will be ugly, and it will be bloody, and you will die happy in the bloodshed you have made.”She allowed him to hold her gaze for the rightness of the thing, for it was like two blades in the hands of duelsmen sliding over each other, then she put up her own two fingers and gently pushed his from her chin.  She was done with him.  Tomorrow he would taste heaven’s punitive steel, but for tonight she would let him live to walk out of her presence.  Now was not the time.  The time would come.“You are dismissed,” she said, as if he were one of her own servants.  The Devil’s mouth jarred awry in angry, noiseless laughter.  Was he? his face demanded with scorn.  All in a moment Akilina Loriermayne saw what he thought of her, felt the fiery rage of the worm coupled with the crushing heel.  His fingers still touched hers: in a movement so dexterous she barely had time to see it he had wrapped her left hand up and flung it wide; with his free hand against her cheek he pushed her face to the side.  Her heart exploded with panic and the Devil was crouched beside her, his breath against her neck.“God help you,” he whispered in her native tongue: “You are greatly deluded.”Then he was propelling himself onto his feet and backward, releasing her, whirling and plunging soundlessly into the entryway.  Akilina knelt, panting, staring at the candlelit emptiness of the chamber, listening to the whisper of the bells as the curtain fell back into the place behind the Devil.It was several moments before she could move.  The closeness of the thing ran alternately hot and cold in her veins, but time wore the edge off the shock—though not off the knowledge that the brute could have done her damage had he chose to—and she was able to recollect her wits, calming the thudding thing in her chest, quieting her breathing, cradled in her dark chamber and her crocus-coloured lights.  Her eye fell on the disk of silver and the Devil’s calling card.  She had not touched it and it had not moved.  Now, having sat across from him and looked into his colourless eyes, so small a thing could not compare.  But it was a piece of him, a taboo article shed like the wing-feathers of a great spirit, and it lay within her grasp.  With one hand upon her knee again she reached for it, steady, aware of no real sense of curiosity now but a general’s quieted sense of determination.  She turned the thing over on its back, laying it with a little click on the plate, showing it up in the light.It was the ace of spades.The Ace of Death.

Like Trees in November

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OchWheesht&Get OanWae It

I finished editing Ethandune.  I believe I mentioned that on Facebook, but I don't believe I said it here on The Penslayer.  That is to say, the first draft is edited and is now being proof-read.  I assume.

When I'm not working on writing Talldogs (or scribbling pieces for the other novels as they come to me), my husband has been helping me do my research - which is awesome because I have a hard time reading articles online and comprehending what is passing in front of me.  Books I can manage; online articles are impregnable.  So he reads them aloud to me, and having long ago become accustomed to responding to the sound of his voice, my subconscious can process the information.  It works quite well.

I'm also a little over halfway through Anne Elisabeth Stengl's newest release Goddess Tithe (which is available in retour de papier on Amazon!) in order to review it, so keep your eyes open for my opinion on this novella from The Tales of Goldstone Wood!  Not that my opinion counts for much, but you might like to know what I think.

the fruitiness of my labour
The lane was heavy with the shadows cast by beech and oak, the grass between the aisles of trees a rich, biting green. The air was swimmingly hot, the insects were lazily skirling in the brake, and once, when he chanced to pass a fox under the fern-scrub, the brute did little more than raise its head, panting, lean flanks heaving with the heat. Its beady black eyes followed Raymond until, too hot to mind, the little thing laid its head back down on its forepaws and lost interest. talldogs
“And you,” said his friend with equally brutal honesty, “have got iron ribs and a high-cinched halter.”talldogs
[She] was a great favourite of her sons: they both adored her and played with her, and Raymond had many happy pictures caught as though in amber in his memory of her surrounded by the group of them, flung into a passion by some sharp wit of her eldest’s, and looking for all the houses of heaven like the hearth-fire of a house-place to which a weary soul longs to go home.talldogs
His foot nearly caught on something and he looked down to find a runt, little more than a pup still, sprawling along at his feet. With a wry smile he scooped it up and followed the bigger dogs, the little creature in his hands bloating with youthful energy, stubby, fat legs churning fruitlessly in the air. talldogs
He said simply, “St. Jermaines are not fat.” And he rolled over, pulling the blankets up over his shoulders, fought the old night terror, and finally fell asleep with no more interruptions from his brother.talldogs
Everything in this place was worn and wooden and smelled of horses. By now his own temper had calmed down considerably and he waited placidly, like Redlocke’s four-footed patients, for the physic to come patch him up. Still a little water-blind, Raymond glanced from article to article, from the beaten chair by the old corn-crib that operated as a catch-all these days, to the filthy windowsill clustered with blue- and yellow-glass bottles, to the pegs full of half-furbished tack and the odds and ends of a farrier’s life. Everything, Raymond noted, much the way it had been last Christmas, and last summer, and the Christmas before that…talldogs
“Light of the sun!” Raymond felt his temper go. His chest contracted, his lungs gave his words up with great effort. “Don’t—you—dare—speak to me—of a—gentleman.”talldogs
In a gesture of acknowledgement he had never witnessed in the steward, Ajax put out his hand and touched Goosechase’s brow. “I am sorry, sir,” he said again. “I have—I have done what I can.”talldogs
He set the vial down, much as one might set down a chess-piece, and began twisting off the cap. It came with little resistance. Odd—odd how these things never offered a fight when everything ought to be warning him to turn back.lamblight
For her efforts she got a cuff across the side of her face, dragging off skin, and was flung haphazard through the dark in a turmoil of fear and anger until she came up against a tree and every bone which was not already gouged by pain was shocked senseless by the blow. She lay on her side, sobbing softly into a root, her body wrapped around the tree-trunk. The snow began to drench her clothing. Flakes gathered on her lashes.drakeshelm
"Can you hear the mockingbird?"lamblight
“Wake me up—Richard, wake me up!” lamblight

"So Fragile A Casing"

"That's the drawback to the human body: so full of sensation, yet so fragile a casing!"gingerune
Rachel put together a little tag for her mystery series which she is currently hosting.  Since I am going to write a mystery myself several novels down the road, I thought I would pick up this tag and indulge myself.  It was rather fun, since I have been quietly story-boarding for the mystery in between scribbling for Talldogs.

I'm afraid I don't really fall into the quaint English village mystery ideal, much as I watched "Midsomer Murders" in its earlier seasons.  To me, murder is easy: it's getting away with it that is hard.  Detecting it is even harder, because you start off pitying the corpse and then you start unearthing facts about it and you begin to realize that the person was really a blackguard and he probably deserved very nearly what he got, and then you have to find the murderer, with whom you have begun to sympathize, and you have to turn them over to the law, and you have to watch them hanged.  And then you realize that it isn't all happy hunting for clues.  People got hurt.  People keep getting hurt.  Everything is simply wretched, and if it weren't for your infernal desire to ferret out the truth you would have had done with the whole nasty business long ago.

the questions from the tag, which are a little less serious-serious
1. You are writing a mystery novel and decide to base the detective off of one of your writing friends: whom do you choose?
To be an effective detective he or she would have to be based on Abigail, because she is so eminently logical and also because, being a huge fan of Sherlock Holmes, she has “read the right sorts of books.”

2. If you and the best of your writing-blog friends were living out a mystery, which of you would be most likely to end up as the victim?
That depends on who the murderer was, what was the provocation, and the means presented for the crime. Lots of different people would like to kill lots of different people for lots of different reasons. Knowing myself better than I know anyone else, I can readily imagine someone wanting to murder me, and if the plan went off without a hitch and I did not end up committing a violent act of self-defence (yeah, that’s funny), I would probably be killed so that someone could steal my “muse of fire,” and then I would have to come back as a ghost and team up with Abigail to get my muse back.

“My first girlfriend turned into the moon.”
“That’s tough, buddy.”

3. If you decided to write a mystery (or if, on the other hand, you do write mysteries) would your style fall under thriller, terror, literary, historical or cosy?
I actually do plan on writing a murder mystery, and have had it pending for some time. “Cosy” and “literary” probably do not apply. “Historical” may apply in a rough sense; I think it will cut a line through thriller, terror, and horror. Not one to do things by halves.

4. Who is your favourite mystery author?
I haven’t read much beyond Dorothy Sayers (one Agatha Christie and two Arthur Conan Doyle mysteries), and I have to confess, I’m not really a mystery reader. In a faintly interested sort of way I want to know who the body is and who killed the cat and why, and naturally I prefer to see justice done; but in general I am captivated by the detective. Someone bowled my heart at Lord Peter Wimsey and he cracked it out of the field. I love reading his exploits, and I love the way Dorothy Sayers knows what life is like and grabs the bull by the horns. I rather suspect her character Harriet Vane is a picture of herself in some respects. She knows people; she knows sin and depravity and grace and redemption and she isn’t afraid to strip the romantic pall off murder. She doesn’t do things by halves, and I really appreciate that.

“Do I look like a killer to you?”
“Everyone looks like a killer to me.”

5. What is the best mystery you've ever read?
I don’t feel qualified to define the best mystery, so I will say that the mysteries I most enjoyed were The Scarlet Pimpernel, The Man Who Was Thursday, and Gaudy Night.

6. If you were going to be in charge of solving a mystery, where would you want it to be set and what would the circumstances be?
First of all, this responsibility would have to be thrust upon me out of sheer desperation and by complete fools because surely there must be someone of a more methodical turn of mind who could take the job. Unless, of course, that person had the appalling lack of foresight to become the deceased. From an artistic standpoint I would want the setting to be sleepy and safe, because that amplifies the sense of invasion (assuming this is a murder mystery). But not a little English village, because then we can all assume the vicar did it (blah), or a sleepy New England town, because then we can just blame it on Cthulhu and have done.

7. You walk into a library and find a body on the floor. Your first reaction?
That rather depends on the state of the body. If it were lying innocently on its front I would start and gasp and swallow my heart a few times before going round the body to be sure it was actually dead. If it were “Silence of the Lambs” I would swear and vomit and contaminate the crime scene.

8. Your second reaction:
Don’t touch the body. Call the police.

9. What do you say when the policeman tells you that you are the prime suspect in the murder?
“What.” I would say. “What.”

10. How does your answer affect the powers that be?
God knows.

11. Agatha Christie and Sir Arthur Conan Doyle walk into one of those Solve the Murder Dinner Theatres and sit down and start to spoil the fun by solving all the mysteries before anyone else and shouting the answers to the crowd: do you retaliate, and if so, how?
I don’t know either of them by sight (again, not real into mysteries here), so I would probably go away despising them to the uttermost depths of my soul. I do not retaliate. We are English. We carry on.

12. Post a quote from your favourite mystery//mystery author:
This is an interchange between the main characters of the TV show “Castle.”  Best-selling crime novelist Richard Castle gets roped into a case when someone starts copy-catting some of his murders in real life.
Richard Castle: I'm here for the story.
Kate Beckett: The story?
Richard Castle: Why those people? Why those murders?
Kate Beckett: Sometimes, there is no story. Sometimes, the guy is just a psychopath.
Richard Castle: There's always a story, always a chain of events that makes everything make sense. Take you for example. Under normal circumstances, you should not be here. Most smart, good-looking women become lawyers, not cops. And yet here you are. Why?
Kate Beckett: I don't know, Rick. You're the novelist. You tell me.
Richard Castle: Well, you're not bridge-and-tunnel. No trace of the boroughs when you talk. So that means Manhattan. That means money. You went to college, probably a pretty good one. You had options. Yeah, you had a lot of options, more socially acceptable options. But you still chose this. That tells me—something happened. Not to you. No, you're wounded, but you're not that wounded. No, it was someone you care about, it was someone you loved. And you probably could have lived with that but the person responsible was never caught.
[silence]
Richard Castle: And that, Detective Beckett, is why you are here.
Kate Beckett: Cute trick. But don't think you know me.
Richard Castle: The point is there's always a story.

You just have to find it.

NaNo & Hayao Miyazaki

Some of you (particularly those who follow my Pinterest boards) are probably aware that on occasion I watch anime.  I particularly enjoy Studio Ghibli / Hayao Miyazaki's productions because of their beautiful story-lines, their characters, and their sense of life and dimension which is largely lacking in Disney.  And just the other evening, in need of a Miyazaki fix, my husband and I routed "Whisper of the Heart" off the internet and watched it.  We loved it - for three reasons.

1.  It's Hayao Miyazaki, people.  I've seen "Ponyo," "Princess Mononoke," "Porco Rosso," "Howl's Moving Castle," "Castle in the Sky," "Nausicaa of the Valley of the Wind," "The Secret World of Arrietty," "Tales From Earthsea," "From Up On Poppy Hill," "Kiki's Delivery Service," "My Neighbour Totoro," "Whisper of the Heart," "The Cat Returns," and "Spirited Away."  They are chock full of fascinating characters and, while often bizarre, conscious of the rhythm of life - not the hurry-scurry of Disney's action-driven films, which have their place, but are not usually realistic.

2.  The relationship between Shizuku and Seiji.  These two young people face daunting odds.  Seiji is bound and determined to become a first-class, world-famous violin-maker.  He is driven.  He is full of purpose.  He has been fighting for this for years.  Shizuku, on the other hand, does little besides read voraciously.  Her grades are not good.  She doesn't have a lot of drive and she has no idea what she wants to do with her life.  But when the two realize their mutual passion for each other, Shizuku kicks it into gear and Seiji is determined that not even a two-month trial-run with a violin-maker in Italy, and the possible ten-year apprenticeship after that will break his love for Shizuku.  They fight for their relationship.  Seiji will support and protect Shizuku in any way he can, and Shizuku will encourage and help Seiji all along the way.  Dang and blast it, that is a relationship right there.  That is how it is done.

3.  The passion and fear in both Seiji and Shizuku.  Seiji is a young man who knows what he wants to do with his life and does not look back.  By God's providence and my own headlong determination, I am like this.  Very few other things call to me.  I am not particularly interested in drawing, in music, crafts, etc.  I am a writer and I write.  That is what I want to do and I am going to do it.  But I also appreciated Miyazaki's portrayal of the artist's shyness, self-doubt, and fear in Shizuku when she pours her energy into her very first novel and then stands trembling as she hands it to a friend to read.  She is too terrified to stand and watch, but she cannot bear to not have it read immediately.  After being told gently that the book is good, but is yet a gem in the rough and will now need many hours of tender polishing, she bursts into tears.  She knew that it would need polishing; she was terrified that it would be complete rubbish.  She suffered a combined relief and terror and disappointment that the first draft was not perfect which I can readily understand.  I've felt it before myself; and I was truly grateful to Miyakazi for capturing the agony and the ecstasy of the artist and depicting it so poignantly.

that said...

Is Jenny doing NaNo this year?  Eh, kind of.  Perhaps it would be better to explain that, if I were a man, I would be Howl.  I tell myself very convincingly that I am not going to do something so as to save myself from freaking out while I do it.  I will probably push myself to some NaNoing exercise this year, but my November will be wonderfully truncated at the end by the arrival in Glasgow of my father, mother, and sister.  Naturally I will have absolutely no desire to do any such NaNoing then.  So in the between-time of November I will do some NaNoing, for the sheer sake of keeping myself at a plug-away state on Talldogs.  I think I have always quietly cheated at NaNo.  I probably always will...

Talldogs continues to grow at a gentle, steady rate.  At a mere 18,900 words it is such a baby thing: I've barely set the stage at this point!  My husband and I commiserate over the fate of my protagonist and for the time being Raymond St. Jermaine has become a third member of the household.  I feel rather sorry for my husband: people are always coming and going in his house, it isn't always easy to keep them straight; and he is forever greeting and saying adieu to and making tea for and listening to the exploits of people with whom he has only a passing acquaintance.  It is just as well that he is such a people-person: he copes very well with the crowd that I bring home. 

Cottish Sundrysides

...which is what I said.

This past Saturday, Tim and I took the train up to Pitlochry and Loch Faskally.  It was a positively Scottish day, very rainy - though not all that cold, thankfully.  

When we got in it was lunchtime, and since we had packed our lunches we sat down to eat them under the porch of a local theatre, where we were summarily goggled at (inexplicably) by people going in and out.  Very Brigadoon. 



Remember that scene in "Prince Caspian" in which the children are being chased by Telmarine archers through a wood, and they hide under the rhododendrons?  Rhododendrons.  Rhododendrons everywhere.



After seeing some man-made constructions in Edinburgh and Stirling, it was wonderful to break out and see some damp, forbidding Scottish landscape.  It was breath-taking, and every ten minutes I kept asking myself what ill humour it was that possessed the sun-in-splendour southerners to try to conquer the "big damn foggy island."












This little guy was growing in the crook of a tree.  Very "Princess Mononoke."

While wet, the weather was very atmospheric.  This is a shot off the dam at the base of Loch Faskally.  Those clouds!  They sunk down into the valleys and you could literally watch entire clouds float by.










While it was not that cold, after poorly dodging puddles in the muddy paths, my sneakers had taken a beating and my socks were wet.  Apart from cleaning out my frogs once I trotted home, I was beginning to wonder if a mustard foot-bath wouldn't do me some good...

Irons In My Fire

this may actually be the cover of a book; anyway, pinterestI am coming increasingly more and more aware of the fractured nature of my readers' understanding of what the deuce I am up to.  That's okay, it is fractured to me as well, so it's not really your fault at all!  Perhaps I will be able to alleviate some of this confusion.

After some discussion with a few members of my family, I am coming to grips with the probable fact that I will not be able to tackle Gingerune again until I get back home.  Something remarkable may turn up between now and December, but I think I will not be able to handle the crushing weight of the thing until I am back in my familiar hunting grounds.  I have more or less come to grips with that.  So for now, I'm editing Ethandune, opening up my next novel in the increasingly lengthening train of novels, and poking into a few of the others to see where they might go.

ethandune

Main character: Simon! 
Eh, the plot?  What begins as a case of civil unrest which must be quietly hushed up turns personal for Goddgofang in this fast-paced opening piece of a series.

He laughed in that old way of his, with a slight husky catch and the whiteness still about his mouth, and flung an arm round my shoulders, turning me to the horses. “I can’t lose you, Simon! I have a handful of men to call upon whom I can trust, and you are for sure the foremost among them. I can always depend upon you to have my back.”

talldogs

Who's the guy? Raymond St. Jermaine.
Why do you care?  In the midst of a dysfunctional family, Raymond bears the responsibility of the family estate and keeping the name of the St. Jermaine family from falling into disgrace - but his family is not grateful.

"Don't push me, Geoffrey. I will happily stand for manslaughter."

lamblight

Court du jour: Goddgofang and Bruin.
What is going on?  The sins of the fathers are not always remembered, and when they come back around to bite, Goddgofang and his brother have to determine what is happening to them - or go insane.

“If she died… If he died, she would still not come. Softly!—softly! …But if she died…” His lips spread in an expression of intense satisfaction and horror.

maresgate

Members of the Equestrian families: Simon, Goddgofang, Raymond, etc...
And they are doing...? With his parents yanked off at the start of the shore season to attend an emergency political meeting, Goddgofang is left in charge of the youth of the family.  At loggerheads with his cousins over a potential beau, the summer season grows increasingly less enjoyable as the weeks go by.

He turned exasperatedly from the fireplace. “That you should have chosen now to go out of your head,” he said, 
“when your father is not here to help you, borders on the perverse—even for you!”

drakeshelm

Orderlies: Filigree, Alwin Herro
Marching orders: Upon coming back off the frontier, ambassador Filigree Drakeshelm stops off at the Hunlaw-gang garrison for the night.  When the garrison is attacked by Steppe-Wolf tribesman and the commanding officer is crippled in the action, Filigree decides to stay on to assume command until other arrangements can be made.  The long winter is ahead, the garrison is cut off, the soldiers are restless and tribesmen close in...

His good hand clenched until the blunt nails forced apart the creases in his palm. Glory—dead. His own leg shattered so that he could not even do Rounds with the help of a crutch. This fair-haired, dragonhelm’d wench to assume command—! It was too much. The insult was too high. He wanted to give her a left hook to the jaw with such a ferocity that his drug-crazed mind half believed he had done it. He wanted to hit her. He wanted to hurl her back through the doorway. He wanted to do a lot of things to her, and from the look on her face he saw she perceived many of these things herself.
The side of her lips kicked upward sardonically. “Good-night, Commander. I will be back through in the morning.”

Talldogs is the next book I'm working on; I started at Page One this morning.  Beginnings can be a roughish business, but I think I have a decent start for a first draft.  Meanwhile, the editing of Ethandune goes on.

Some Like It Hot

Rachel recently introduced a new blog feature called "Chatterbox" - and then she deliberately left the internet to go camping.  Thanks for that bombshell.  I confess that at first I was not intending to participate, partly because I had no ideas, partly because I was busy wrapping up Ethandune at the time.  But of course an idea did come to me, just because I said one wouldn't, and next thing I knew I was hunched over the laptop favouring an innocent sheet of Word document fresh out into society with the rakish advances of Times New Roman lettering.

chatterbox

Chatterbox, Rachel had the gall to say, is simple.  Oh, sure, it's lots of fun, but simple - !  In short, she grabs a topic and hurls it at you, and you spend as long as you like sketching a scene with any characters you like featuring that topic as a means of getting to know the characters better.  It is a kind of love-child of Snippets and Beautiful People.  

coffee

The topic this month is coffee.  Coffee has a long and glorious history, a tradition among many societies, and I chose not to touch upon any of that.  I have embarked upon an endeavour to ferret out the personalities of a handful of my characters, and that is what I am going to give you.  I warn you, it is quite lengthy.  You know me.  I never do anything by halves.  If you get to the end, I hope you will have enjoyed it.  

coffee talk

Legion let rip a wolf-whistle that tore through the room.  “Damn and thunder!” he cried, rounding on the others.  “Did you see that!”  He sought the table and fixed upon Buttercup as a likely victim.  “You—sneaking knave!  You did not breathe a word of it—you let him hurl it in our faces and left us to look like complete fools in front of that—that thing!”Buttercup, one ankle crossed over the other, and both tucked under his chair, sifted a thimbleful of soft brown sugar granules into his palm, looking like pieces of a smashed topaz, and shook them into his steaming cup.  “It was not permitted me to tell, and so, naturally, I did not say anything,” he replied coolly.“Oh! is that not just like him!”Rips, glancing aside long enough to draw his spoon into view, reached for it and began stirring the brown cream with which Buttercup had recently favoured him into his own drink.  “Calm down, Legion.  It is not as if it were not of a piece with every other prank Adonis has pulled.”  His mouth twisted slightly.  “Let the man vaunt a little.  The creature is worth it.”“Hmph!”  Legion resumed his seat, from which he had thrown himself in the wake of Adonis and the little golden warrior who had walked beside him.  “Art one to speak.  Nothing stirs your blood, Rips.”With a swift, quelling look the Rose silenced Legion.  The young man coloured a little, but Rips, nothing daunted, continued to stir his coffee twice more, tapped off the spoon, and laid it on the side of the saucer, all the while painstakingly scanning lines in the Land-Owner’s Codex which he held propped open in his right hand.  The Rose attempted to kick up a little more liveliness in the conversation.  “Well, Hurley,” he demanded of the stolid young buck across the table from him, “what is the creature like?  Surely you should know by now.”“She plays a wicked set of marteaux des chevaux,” replied Hurley rather exultantly; “I know she looks willowy, but once she gets astride that bay mare of hers and you put a weapon in her fist, she is a positive Amazon.  And she can dress you down prettily with that blade she has got behind her teeth,” he added, rueful.Legion flung his head horse-like at him.  “I saw the look she gave you!  How long did it take her to put you in your place?”“Not long,” said Buttercup.“Light of the sun! what a monster!  An’ sure I’ve watched Adonis turn heads—he can’t really help that—but I have never yet seen a chit to match him.  He does not take easy to the rein and I’ll be damned if he was of a mind to submit to a girl beneath his abilities.  From the look of her, I would not want to attempt saddling her, but imagine trying to bridle him!  She must be a fire-eater of the first class!  What must that be like!” he added, incredulous and quizzical at once.“Not unlike making love to a thunderbolt, I imagine,” mused Rips without raising his eye.Horsefeathers, who had not spoken a word through the whole interchange save when he had risen to extend his greeting to the Amazon, took up the carafe to refill his cup and said, turning his head a little into the sunlight so that the myriad of freckles on his face sharpened in the glow, “Why, what kind of chit answers to your taste, Legion?”“There’s a pregnant question,” quipped the Rose.Legion catapulted his chair back onto its hind legs.  “Give me a moment,” he demanded, nursing his coffee between his palms.  His head backflung revealed a little puckered scar at the base of his jaw, pinkish and warm, where a chin-strap rubbed.  His eye sought among the lime-washed rafters of the coffee-house for the image he wanted.“Amazons are all well and good,” he admitted at length.  His heel slipped—his chair shunted forward and came down with a bang.  “Personally, I think I would rather take a more temperate girl.  It must be exhausting keeping pace with such a fiend.  No, I’m far too pleasant-humoured for that.  I’ll take a pretty, good-tempered skirt-train.”The patch lifted briefly from the book, the eye narrowing.  “Not unintelligent, I presume.”“An’ sure!  I cannot abide stupid women.  There are hordes enough of them to fight through at galas and parties.  They flock.  Bitterly regretful I find myself to discover I can no longer throw Adonis into the mêlée just to get the biddies off my elbows.”Hurley’s hard, uncompromising face folded into the fulgurant smile which was peculiar to his family.  The dancing, dangerous light jinked from eye to eye.  “It is a trial hard to bear that one is so unutterably handsome.”“Do not mock it.  I know where I fall in the studbook—and so do the biddies!” “All right,” said the Rose, “assuming you can keep your head above water, what sort of skirt-train would you fancy, Hurley?”The buck laughed harshly.  With his heavy hand cupping the rim of his mug—Buttercup looked on, apprehensive, waiting for the china to shatter—his eye scanned the tabletop, brows clenching, looking for a picture even as Legion had searched the ceiling.  “Forswear,” he murmured, “cans’t see around my mother’s face!”“Are not like to find her type!”“No…  Oh,” the wrestler’s shoulders lifted, dismissive, “a buxom girl, sturdy and good-tempered.”“You would not take a fire-eater?” asked Horsefeathers, quietly surprised.Hurley turned to him.  “Oh, I imagine I would, if I fell for a girl who was a fire-eater.  She needn’t change for me.  I come from such a pack of fire-eaters, what difference is one more?  But since you are asking me now, she is not a bad portrait of my ideal.”The young men slewed round to view the destrier-creature which was serving a table at the other end of the room.  She had a carafe of steaming coffee on one hip and a wooden tray of brown cream bottles against the other.  Pleasant-faced and deep-chested, like a spice-ship under full sail on the sea, she cut a soft, solid, rustic figure against the light-washed stone walls.“I can see that,” mused Legion.“Yes, but you do not see a lot of girls her like among the Upper Ten Thousand,” put in Buttercup; “and that is more to the point.”“Tush!  There are bound to be some.  Don’t tread on a fellow’s hopes and dreams.”Rips had the misfortune of discovering their carafe was empty at that moment.  He lifted it and caught the eye of a passing serving girl, who took the message and whisked off for a fresh jug.  But as the gentleman put the carafe back down and readjusted his chair, the chape of his scabbard clawing on the stone flags underfoot, he drew his fellows’ attention, and was borne down on by Legion.  “Do we have to take the Codex away from you, or are you going to come willingly?”The eye came up, brow a little perplexed; Rips gazed around on the others’ faces canted back at him.  “I’m sorry—was I going to the altar now?”“No, but who would you have stand by while you were?”He looked back down into his book.  “I have not yet met her.”“Naturally,” conceded Hurley, jerking his head at him.  “But what sort of girl would she be?”Rips sighed and turned his book face-down on the tabletop.  With his large hands flung down over his knees he leaned back, jawline set.  “I have no patience with children, and I have almost no patience with women.  I have yet to determine which is the stupider.”The Rose looked at his hands clasped before him on the table top—glancing his way, Buttercup saw him begin to circle his thumbs: quiet apprehension bloomed in his breast.“Perhaps,” Rips went on bluntly, “by some grace of God, there is a woman out there agreeable to my nature.  I should almost pity her, for I am not sociable by temperament, nor, to be honest, am I a very agreeable bedfellow.  I am not in the habit of saying what I may think, and when I do, women do not generally take it well.  In passing acquaintance they may think me by-the-book, if they take the time to spare me a thought, and all the better for them.  I will always do my best to present an admirable visage to any woman with whom I must stand up, but I am not deceived into thinking many of them would appreciate an extended acquaintance with me—nor do I suppose any woman would appreciate my offer.”The others stared at him, listening to the bruising of the beaten silence.  The serving girl brought the coffee, set it on the table, and went away perplexed, the heated atmosphere lifting the hair on the back of her neck as she retreated.Buttercup bit his lip a moment, released it, and then said, without looking at Rips, “Did something happen?”With the sense of a turtle snapping back into its shell, Rips took up his book again.  “No.  Nothing which has not been happening for the past twenty years.”“That!” exploded Hurley.  “I had not expected you to put any stock in that, sir.  It is not like you.”“Forgive me if it turns out that it…impacts…certain aspects of my future.”Buttercup lifted his head like a stallion catching the first scent of battle.  Though he was six years the other’s junior, he said levelly, “Forswear!  We are none of us of a morbid disposition.  When once you have got through the chaff, sir, you will find a girl worth your while.  It is in my mind that you are not meant for a fire-eater or a buxom maid, but a lady through and through.  You have much to recommend you, and much which a lady desires.  You know this as well as the rest of us.  So cease at once to be dark and pitying!”“Even Buttercup,” said Horsefeathers with a little rueful smile, “has a mouthful of fangs.”Hurley struck Buttercup between the shoulder-blades.  “A’come, cub!  Let him have it.  No more nonsense, Rips.  Depend upon it, we will find you a bonny set of braids.”“Mercy,” replied Rips in wry monotone.  But his temper was a little better set, and the Rose left off twiddling his thumbs with a heave of relief.   Buttercup relented a fraction.  “I do not take it lightly.  ‘Twould be a fool if I did.  But if you have not the knack of being alone—which I do not believe many men do—then you had better strip off your braces and roll up your sleeves, and get down to the business.  You are not one to be afraid of it.”The Rose said, “He is not afraid of it—pardon me for speaking,” he interrupted himself, turning to Rips. Rips shook his head and held out his hand.The Rose turned back to Buttercup.  “He is not afraid of it, but women can be such a nuisance until you have sifted through the chaff.”The lad smiled cannily.  “I was not seeking confirmation when I said Rips is not afraid.  Rips—God help him—is not afraid of anything, nor waits for anyone’s affirmation.  He is man alone.  But not all alone, I think.  Only I think that a like man and a like woman would be a fair thing to see among the gilt and glitter of the Upper Ten Thousand, and I do say I look forward to that occasion.”Thrown into this light, Rips himself nodded, temper all but completely restored.Choosing to capitalize on this victory, the Rose lifted his fresh cup of coffee to his lips, the steam gently glossing over his upper lip, and said, looking down into its whirling depths, “I have my eye on someone.”They rounded on him.  “Oh?  Who?  Do we know this ill-fated lass?”“As a matter of fact,” he said after he had lightly scorched his tongue, “you do not.  She is from home, and has never set foot within these hallowed city walls.  Sooth, she is not yet out, but she comes of age around Christmas and is going to be presented at Easter.  You may meet her then, if you behave.”“A young filly!  Does she like the taste of a gilt bit?”The Rose laughed shortly.  “How should I know?  She has never said.  She comes with gilt stirrups as is.  But we get on pleasantly, and I imagine we will do very well together.”Buttercup asked, “She is fond of you?”“I know it is some stretch of your imaginations to believe it, but she is.”“No, I am quite pleased to hear it.”The Rose trained a little wry smile on Buttercup.  “You are pleased to hear fair news about any of us.”“You are all of close interest to me,” the young gentleman replied frankly.  “I would see you all happily settled.”“Well?  And what about yourself?”But Buttercup, with a knack he had got from his father, let the question slide from him like pebbles from a tipped palm.  “Horsefeathers first.  You have had some dealing with women.  What is your opinion of your sort of girl—seeing as,” he added with a sudden glint of slyness, “you have begun the whole affair.”Horsefeathers settled his chin into his palm, long face drooping softly into a thoughtful expression.  “Not a fire-eater, certainly,” he said presently, decisively.  “God ha’ mercy, not that.  I have been kicked too many times in the gut by that sort.  I will take a pleasant-tempered girl with a ready wit, brunette, with hazel eyes and a touch of padding.  Nothing too skinny.”“That is specific,” remarked the Rose, brows rampant.Hurley growled, “He is gammoning you.  Really, Horsefeathers!—to heel!”But Horsefeathers took his hand out from under his chin and held both palms up beseechingly.  “But that is the picture I have in my head.  No dashing it.  As soon as I find her, I will tell you.”“And now,” said Rips without looking up from the Codex, “Master Buttercup will set his neck to the block and answer the question.”The young man spread his hands on the tabletop before himself, his smoking black cup of coffee between his thumbs, and watched the symmetry of it with a tiny smile at play upon his lips.  “I will set my neck to the block and I will answer the question.  I will take…a silly girl.”If he had asked for a fire-eater they could not have been more surprised.  Even Rips came out of his book, patch throwing light off its velvet curve, brows collecting shadow.“Verily!” cried Hurley, flinging his elbows on the edge of the table and folding his arms.  He canted round to get a look at Buttercup’s quenched, amused face.  “This is news.  You—silly?  Why, there is no one less silly in my acquaintance!  What would make you do it?”“Vanity, probably,” Buttercup admitted.  “But while I am perhaps not generally amusing—you will have to tell me—I have a great appreciation for humour, and with a little, silly bird of a wife I should be quite happy.  I should like to look after her, and she should like to be looked after, and together we would gambol along quite happily, I think, in great defiance of the majesty of the Upper Ten Thousand.”There was a brief, thoughtful silence.“Damn and thunder,” said Legion warmly, presently.  “I suppose I can see that, after all.” The pale clairvoyant eye lifted from the hands.  “Can you?  That is good.  Like Adonis, I, too, like to think my choice of wife is acceptable to my fellows.  Hurley—” he added, swinging round——And at that moment the great bell of Songmartin Tower went off, crashing through the autumnal stillness of the shaded lane and quiet, shaded coffee-house.  The high tolls and stalling hollows echoed in the crisp air, shaking it like summer thunder.  Hurley swore and leapt to his feet, disentangling his sword as he came.  “Scorpio!  History!  I’ll be late if I don’t show my heels.”  He drained his coffee, nearly choking on the heat, and slammed the china to the wood.  “I will see you after fencing.”“Boxing today, Hurley?” Legion called after him as he plunged toward the door.“Five o’clock!” came the bull-throated answer.The door crashed in the wind.