Jennifer Freitag's Blog, page 29

"Who's the Maid With the Nutbrown Hair?"

As she onward sped, sure I scratched my head,And I looked with a feeling rare,And I said, says I, to a passer-by -"Who's the maid with the nutbrown hair?"The Star of the County Down
This post is mostly written toward Rachel - not because I think she has a problem, but because I've noticed a kindredness of spirit in this regard; but this post is for you other girls too who are writers, hoping for and working toward publication.  I'll tell you about a little incident that happened to me a year or so ago.

We all know that you shouldn't judge a book by its cover.  We also know that nobody follows that advice.  As a rule, I have long since come to expect something unusual, almost inhuman, to show up on the back flyleaf of a book where they generally put the photograph of the author.  They call it the photograph of the author.  I have never been sure what the unfortunate thing really is.  Age is often unkind to humans, and that has to be accounted for (little as we like to admit it), but the fact remains that many of the photographs I have seen of young and middle-aged authors have left me startled and surprised.  Until I picked up a copy of Sharon Kay Penman's When Christ and His Saints Slept.  The cover of the immense hardback is a beautiful piece of work, intricately wrought in gold and painted with battle scenes.  Of course I turned the book over to read the back (I was wrong, of course; the description was on the inside flyleaf) and I was surprised by a black-and-white shot of the author on a lonely bit of countryside, author in a plain black blouse in the foreground and tasteful jewellery, the grim, rocky ramparts of a derelict fortress brooding in the background.  The picture was beautiful.  The author was rather lovely.  Of course she's no Audrey Hepburn - but then, who is?  With a quaint little smile and tilt of her head, windswept hair, simple but elegant clothing, she cut a charming, respectable picture on the back of her historical novel.  Needless to say, I was very surprised.  Had I a hat, I would have taken it off to her.

I wouldn't call myself a fashionista - I haven't the money for it - but I have become increasingly aware that looking smart is very important.  It is a(n unfortunate) fact that people are kindlier and pay more heed to smart, respectable, decent-talking folk, and while I don't mean for it to sound mercenary, it pays to look your best, be polite, and walk like you both own the place and would be willing yourself to lend a helping hand.  One half of manners is keeping your mouth shut, the other half is having your eyes wide open to know where and when you are needed.  There is more to it, of course, but that's the gist of it.  As far as looking sharp, everyone comes in a different shape with a different personality - styles vary widely.  However, I've learned a handful of basic things which can apply to any girl that will help her feel better and look better.  I thought I'd share!

Keep a clean house.  You may not own your own house, but you can always lend a hand in cleaning and you can definitely keep your own room clean.  Whatever other philosophies are involved, there really is something to the idea of zen: orderliness of one's surroundings brings a sense of peace.  Once I got into the habit of tidying and cleaning up my house on a regular basis (to the point that I can be ready for anyone to walk in my door unannounced without cringing), you would not believe how well I felt.  And what a great thing it did for my skin!  I looked clearer, felt cleaner, and was much more at peace than before.  Try it out!  If you're not in the habit of cleaning up regularly, I know it is hard, but once you break yourself of messiness it's hard to revert.

Drink plenty of water.  You hear this all the time, but that's because it's true!  You don't need to drink an insane amount, or even be overly conscious of it.  Just carry around a glass of water with you wherever you go in the house, and be sure to refill it whenever it is empty.  Tea is good when you need a little something extra, but whenever you feel the need for a drink (sometimes even the need for food), don't reach for the soda, grab a glass of water.  It's an easy way to be healthy.

Less meat, more plants.  I like meat.  My mother makes an amazing variety of meat dishes, and I'm pretty fond of my pork tenderloin.  But while I'm perfectly willing to eat these sorts of meals perhaps once in the day, I've learned that I feel and look a lot better if I counterbalance the meat with glasses of orange juice with breakfast, a package of blackberries for snack, a clementine with lunch, bunches of green beans with dinner.  I feel lighter and cleaner and so long as I take in the proteins and calories I need, I'm better off with more fruits and fewer meats.  (WARNING: if you switch wholesale to fruits and vegetables, which are a little harder to digest, your alimentary canal will not thank you - take it slow!)

Take a shower every day.  I take mine in the evening so that I wash all the grime of the day off before I climb into bed.  No one wants to sleep in a dirty bed.  (I also do that because my hair is long and thick and doesn't dry in the morning in time for me to head out of the house, and it frizzes something awful if I use a blow-dryer.)  Not everyone's schedule allows for an evening shower, but showers there must be.  Knowing, even subconsciously, that you are neat and clean allows for a more relaxed demeanour, which definitely shows to anyone you encounter.  And obviously, clean hair and skin is much better than the alternative.  Be clean!

Stay busy.  Not crazy busy, not running around frantically with too much to do, but steadily active.  I've noticed that I get really cranky when I'm stationary all day and don't get my blood flowing.  So get up and move - and I don't mean just occasionally, I mean often.  And keep your mind active.  Don't - (I'm guilty of this) - don't trawl Pinterest for an hour.  If you catch yourself doing something like that with your face glued to the monitor, and you have to be sitting still, grab a book instead.  Or go do something wild and crazy, like clean a bathtub.  I think cleaning bathtubs should be an Olympic sport.  Those things take a lot of elbow-grease, more than I have to give...

"Don't scowl, it'll make ya wrinkly."  Cheap as it sounds, I've been through Wal-Mart, and I know the power of being positive.  I've seen so many faces that would have looked so much better if the people had only smiled.  Don't be saccharine - there's no call for that: Christians, of all people, should have best cause for being kindly, pleasant, positive folk.  I'm no Anne Hathaway, I know I don't have the prettiest smile, but I've seen the magic of an honest smile at work.  It's wonderful!

Pay attention to the details.  People probably won't get close enough to you to notice, but you'll know.  When you get up in the morning, get dressed as soon as you can!  Brush your hair, wash your face, put on whatever level of makeup you are master of (I'm on level one and a half).  Read your Bible (very important!).  Make sure - of all the darndest things - your fingernails are trim!  You will know that you are put together, even if you never walk out of the house that day, and I know that, for myself at the very least, once I am put together I feel like I can face the day with cheer and gusto.

Seven relatively easy ways to look and feel like a sound, healthy individual.   We authors aren't a sloppy, absent-minded bunch!  Care about yourself as much as you care about your grammar.  You'll be glad you took the time: cleanliness isn't just a happenstance, it's a way of life.  It's a state of mind.

J - Journeying

"We actually see the scenery, not just writing good enough to imagine."Lilly
A snapshot of my life at the moment would show a brief but happy tour of the mall with my mother in search of birthday presents for my sister and sister-in-law (they were born, conveniently, within a day of each other, if about a decade apart), a haggle with the clerk at CVS over a handful of cold medicine type articles thinly veiled with a good-natured demeanour, a rambunctious cleaning of the house, the ministrayshuns of the medikals upon a sick patient, chicken noodle soup, and an endless loop of water glasses being filled and drunk.  In short, the angel of the cold has passed over this house and we who are in it have got the ills.  I am getting better, and having someone to care for is a remarkably empowering incentive to feel well.  My poor husband worked a few days into the cold and he is doing nastily bad; at the moment he lingers between waking and sleeping (probably waking) before dragging himself back to the not proverbial drawing board.

Which is one reason why it has taken me so long to get back to my A-Z series for Adamantine.  (The other reason is that I looked at J and thought, "J? I'll be dashed, who on earth wants to do anything with J?"  And it has taken me this long to hit upon a nice word for you.

journeying
You know that old trope of epic fantasies, the journey.  (My sister-in-law was contrary enough to make her main character crippled just so she could break out of the journeying rut, which I think came back to bite her in the end but I give her kudos for the bravery of the thing.)  I'll probably be a little more confined in terms of travel with Gingerune, but certainly Adamantine boasts quite the walking tour.  Now, anyone who has read The Hobbit knows a walking tour can be lots of fun (translation: lethal), but the trick is to make sure one's own rendition of the old trope isn't boring.

New to the neighbourhood?  Back in October I wrote a piece for another blog on world building and how I do it (it's here, by the way - I had to go hunt it down again), so you may know already how much I love discovering new worlds and showing them off to my readers.  I think the joy of that is half the battle - the other half is probably the skill to put it down on paper so that, as Lilly said, "We actually see the scenery, not just writing good enough to imagine."  The scenery isn't always wildly new.  In Adamantine they have mountains same as we have, rivers and hedgerows and chiff-chaffs rosy in the late winter light just as we do here.  But when you can make the reader feel the ominous height of those new mountains, feel the scrape of the hawthorn as you walk by, and hear the rattle of the rivers and the chreep-chreep chreep-chreep of the last chiff-chaff of autumn, then you have made the world come alive for them and as they pass through the long plot of the story, bound from goodness knows where to goodness knows what end, the world becomes not a mere surrounding but another character itself.

Are we there yet?  The fact is, readers don't like to stay in one place long.  They get itchy feet, and while it's nice to get some place and rest awhile so that you don't eternally feel as if you are walking and walking and walking as if this novel were some torment in Hades, you have to keep going to the climax.  Forward movement (up or down, either works), action, drama!  It helps to be running from something (nine riders bent on stealing the world's most nefarious piece of jewellery) or against something (time is probably overused, and yet one of the most nasty of enemies, especially when it comes to term papers).

An offer they can't refuse.  Of course, the reader has to want to get wherever the characters are going, to accomplish whatever they want to accomplish, to see the journey through to the end.  You don't want to build up the basic premise of the plot only to have the reader say, "You know what, guys, I've got another novel I wanted to get to.  You go on without me."  Adamantine has a slower beginning than I would like, and I'm going to be soliciting opinions from people who have read it on whether or not it is an acceptable slow, and whether or not I need to crank it up a notch to keep the reader's interest.  My premise needs to be engaging, my world worth traveling through, the promise of the destination worth striving toward.

The fact is, the reader is as much a presence in the novel as the author, and the author must remember, in all the nitty-gritty details of plot and grammar and character building, that the spectral genius of the reader is constantly there trying to fit in, trying to shadow the characters, trying to be part of the world as well.  And if there is no interest or room for the reader, that ghost will pass on elsewhere.  Maybe you will meet him again at Philippi, but don't count on it.

"Well, If That Doesn't Take the Salt Out of You"

It may just be the frappuccino and the NyQuil speaking: to think this is the first post of 2013 fills me with an unpleasant shivery feeling.  A brief update: I managed to get through another chunk of writing in Plenilune during December, which places me almost at the threshold of my endgame.  Now I am trying to get all my characters in position and hope to goodness everything works out.  There is, of course, always editing.  Additionally, now that I am approaching that stage of the game with Plenilune, I have been able to go back into Adamantine and touch up a few things, make sure of continuity, and tie them both together a little more.  That won't be done for a little longer yet, but I'm really hoping nothing more turns up because I would like to be done.  On the plus side, Gingerune has taken another step or two out of the shadows.  But don't even dream about reading Gingerune yet.  I foresee that one being my trouble child and while it may surprise me I don't expect it to surprise me.

There is always Between Earth and Sky.

January Snip-Whippets(Not much to offer this month!) 
There was a sound like a hammer hitting a gong, a whirling planet of light, a ring in singing motion, a spray of stars—to Margaret it seemed the whole cosmos had met in the teeth and claws and angry, defiant wills of the two slashing and biting on the uneven green before her.Plenilune
Half of it he shaved off, cutting her arm, but the rest, with a little cry of determination, she got wrapped round his head somehow and then it was her turn, with a sense of exultant power, to dig in her heels and heave over on him, driving him backward while he shook and writhed and swore and growled under her grasp like ten tomcats in a weakening sack. Plenilune
Under her feet Margaret felt Plenilune tremble—with fury and with colossal ecstasy...Plenilune
They were close enough that she heard the drumming whoop of Brand’s war-hammer as he whirled it over his head.Plenilune
They were facing west: the sun was in her eyes. She saw a confusion of battle-mass locked and grinding in the tiny valley—and upreared against the halo of sunlight, shining like a beacon, the eagle-Standard of Darkling, the tattered black cloth in a riot of wind hanging from its talons.Plenilune
"You must needs watch your flank!" he roared over the din.Plenilune
She set her hand on his shoulder and pressed hard with her fingers until his leather harness cut her; his face gashed sideways with a smile. That was all: they turned together to pack their own things and fill their faces with the familiar dust of the open road and the ominous glare of summer thunder on the horizon which was the colour of hard crimson, the colour of the hour.Plenilune
...she yelled in [his] ear, hoping—but not really believing—that she would reach him in the red place to which he had gone.Plenilune
Margaret stood...watching Skander’s blue banner dwindle into the purple thunder of the air on the shore of Holywood, a small panic under her heart which she was trying desperately to crush as one crushes out the life of a small broken bird for whom death is the only mercy. Plenilune
It was a city in itself, settled in a little lift of a valley at the bend of a wide, navigable river; with the angry golden sunset-sky behind it, it was a dream-silhouette of black spires and shadowed towers, gilt-edged banners and sable walls: a piece of imagery that had got lost and wandered from the old medieval poetry Margaret had once known on the other side of many bright, black turnings in life. Plenilune
"The sphere of Mars is calling..."Plenilune

A Quivering of Invisible Heat

We are made to feel as if we had seen a heap of common materials so completely burnt up that there remains neither ash nor smoke nor even flame, only a quivering of invisible heat.
The Discarded Image, C.S. Lewis
I suppose one shouldn't feel sorry about 2012.  It's still there, it's just that we're not there ourselves anymore...  Still, it did seem to go by rather fast.  It will be this time next year all over again before we know it.  Why does life hurtle us to the end of itself so quickly?  Why are we all rushing inexorably toward the last question mark on the very last page?  Are we all really that anxious to get to the sequel?  A part of me is.  A larger, treacherous part of me is frightened by the terrific speed at which we are all approaching the end of the book.  I can almost sympathize with Screwtape.  I would despise me too if I were to look at the brief puff of coloured smoke which is my life, if that were all I am.  It rather looks that way sometimes.  Of course it isn't, but sometimes, when the lines I am reading go by so fast that I barely retain them and I forget to look between the lines (or flip ahead to the back of the book and read the teaser for the sequel) it looks like this whirlwind life which gives you hardly enough time to do anything worth being proud of, hardly anything to leave for the sake of posterity, it looks meaningless, and that question mark at the end is so huge...

...What I was going to say was that it is the end of 2012 and I have a list of books I have read this year to share with you.  That was what I meant to say.  I almost started out that way, but my digressive soul went off on a tangent which seemed, to me, pertinent.  I've come back now.  Goodreads said I only read eighteen books this year, but of course that's rubbish because I keep my own notebook of titles I have read and that tells me I have read thirty-three.  But of course that is rubbish too because I only write down new titles and I went through one or two rereads as well.  (Mara, Daughter of the Nile and The Golden Goblet, possibly The Witch of Blackbird Pond, but if there are others I've forgotten them.)  So, just like me, the gist of it is that I don't really know how many books I read this year.  But surely you've come to expect this sort of behaviour from me.  I also am not sure how to organize all these (I used up all my organizational skills on my library post) so bear with me.

I read my first H.G. Wells book The Island of Dr. Moreau two weeks ago.  A very interesting read: good writing, as writing goes, always engaging, and also marrow-chilling in its description of the animals that are "half-human," shuffling about with a weird new law forcibly imposed upon brains that do not know and had no need for morality.  What Wells meant by his book I either discovered and then promptly forgot (having a memory not unlike a sieve) or I never discover it at all; for being an atheist and evolutionist, he does not make a great case in favour of men evolving out of a rank animal ether.  Either that, or he meant to strike a blow at the roots of that tenacious concept of morality, socially acceptable behaviour, and the like.  If he meant to do that, he did it rather poorly in my opinion - but then, I am already strongly biased in favour of morality...

I read a bit of Chesterton and Sayers this year.  The Everlasting Man (good book, but it seemed to wander a little from its original point) and The Ballad of the White Horse (which exhibits that deceptive ease in poetry which makes you think you, too, can turn a beautiful phrase until you try it and learn how deucedly hard it really is) were my Chesterton reads; I had read many of my Chesterton titles before 2012 and I've only recently picked up a few new ones.  Sayers gets the lion's share of attention.  Clouds of Witness, Gaudy Night, Murder Must Advertise (all Lord Peter mysteries) and The Mind of the Maker (one of my favourite titles this year) belong to her.  Out of Lewis I unearthed The Four Loves, Surprised By Joy, and The Discarded Image, the former at the beginning of the year and the latter two just now finished in December.

Courtesy of Abigail I was introduced to Robert Louis Stevenson in the form of Kidnapped and its sequel David Balfour.  Kidnapped has a faster pace (and considerably more Alan Breck Stewart!) but David Balfour will drive you to baldness from tearing your hair out.  I enjoyed them both, but I was a mess over the sequel.  Another 1800s author Theodore Roosevelt gave me the biography Oliver Cromwell, which I tore through in the space of three days and loved.  He deals very fairly with the contentious topic of old Ironsides; his strong appreciation for the man as well as his willingness to admit the man's faults was a breath of fresh air in that long, on-going debate.

I actually read a few "contemporary" books this year.  Ravi Zacharias counts, of course: Can Man Live Without God? and Jesus Among Other Gods.  I still have Deliver Us From Evil to read, which is the only Zacharias book I actually own, but I'll get to that eventually.  The very first book of 2012 was The Kirkbride Conversations by Harry Blamires - a little novel-style book which gives back a bit of dignity to the Anglican clergy.  Diana Wynne-Jones used to be contemporary, until she went and died.  I read Howl's Moving Castle last year and followed it up this year with the two sequels Castle in the Air and House of Many Ways.  Both fun books, though not (in my opinion) as good as the first book.  There is not enough Howl.  I read A Break With Charity, which is technically a reread but it had been so long that I couldn't actually remember the book so I counted it as a new read.

I'm not sure The Art of Medieval Hunting counts as an older book or a contemporary one.  The title seems self-explanatory.  Good book!  It may sound dull, but I enjoyed it.  The Agricola and The Germania by Tacitus definitely count as old books.  These two were my first forays into Tacitus' style and I found him very readable, vivid, and engaging.  (The Agricola actually made me cry.)  Fantasies I read include Starflower (but you already knew that) and the fantastic Riddle-Master series by Patrica A. McKillip.  Many thanks for those go to Mirriam, who introduced me to them.  The Witch's Brat by Rosemary Sutcliff joins Stevenson (and possibly Tacitus) among the historical fiction read this year.  A Girl of the Limberlost sort of floats out there by itself in no real orbit of note.  Strictly Christian books include The Faith of the Modern Christian by James Orr, The Church and the Kingdom by James Denney, The Divine Conquest by A.W. Tozer, The Tome of St. Leo, and Signs Amid the Rubble by Lesslie Newbigin - which was amazing.

If you asked me which were my favourite titles this year, the list would look something like this

The Ballad of the White HorseThe Mind of the MakerSigns Amid the RubbleThe Discarded Image

in no order whatsoever; they were all influential, well written - my mind was not the same after reading them, nor my outlook on life.

I don't know what all I will read this upcoming year, but I did make a little list of titles I am absolutely going to get through unless they prove (against my expectations) to be complete rubbish.

The Black Arrow - Robert Louis StevensonWhen Christ and His Saints Slept - Sharon Kay PenmanMoonblood - Anne Elisabeth StenglThe Confession of St. AugustineOn Christian Truth - Harry BlamiresOn the Incarnation - AthanasiusCount Zinzendorf - John WeinlickAnnals and Antiquities of Rajasthan - James ToddMystery and Manners - Flannery O'ConnorGods and Fighting Men - Lady GregorySohrab and Rustum - Matthew ArnoldThe Song of Roland

Which all should keep me busy!  I have, of course, hexed myself by telling you all this, but what can you do...?

Each Separate Dying Ember

And each separate dying ember wrought its ghost upon the floor.Edgar Allan Poe
I am encased in an enormous tortoiseshell scarf with a cup of tea on one of those sunny, bitingly cold winter days, I have spent much of the morning reading what you might call "intellectual" literature, and I am about to do some thing which you may consider extremely tedious.  If you are not one for long lists you may skip over this post entirely.

I am of the opinion that you can learn a lot about a person by the books they read; I am also of the opinion that learning what books my friends read is very entertaining busybodiness.  That is my indulgent side talking.  The other side of me would like to strike a blow in favour of non-fiction (fiction seems to do all right on its own), and assure my friends who yet have a wariness of non-fiction that it is not only educational (an odious, painful word) but it can be highly entertaining.  I don't read it just for the research value (which is a great way to ruin a book which would otherwise happily be your friend) but for the simple fact that I enjoy it.  It is true that non-fiction is sometimes harder for an imaginative mind to get in to, but I don't think we should let laziness inhibit us from exercising our minds on a material which doesn't immediately offer up grand images without our having to stir out of our lethargic stupour.  And the more you work at it, the easier it becomes for non-fiction to excite your own genius.  So, in case you haven't guessed, I am about to give you my library in toto.  Again, if you are not one for long lists, don't be bothered.  If you are interested in seeing what I read (and perhaps catching a new author or two) please stay! I've made rough categories for my books, but please know that some genres must necessarily overlap.  I've done my best to choose the greater of shared genres in which to place any one book.  (Titles with links lead to my Goodreads reviews.)

Fantasy
The Princess and The Goblin, The Princess and Curdie, The Wise Woman and Other Stories, The Gray Wolf and Other Stories, At the Back of the North Wind, Phantastes by George MacDonald; The Chronicles of Narnia, The Space Trilogy, Till We Have Faces, The Great Divorce by C.S. Lewis; The Dark is Rising Sequence by Susan Cooper; The Hobbit, The Lord of the Rings, The Silmarillion, The Children of Hurin, The Shaping of Middle Earth, The Book of Lost Tales (volumes One and Two), Unfinished Tales, Roverandom by J.R.R. Tolkien; A Wizard of Earthsea, The Tombs of Atuan, The Farthest Shore, Tehanu, Tales From Earthsea, The Other Wind by Ursula K. Le Guin; Tales of Goldstone Wood by Anne Elisabeth Stengl; The Riddle-Master of Hed, Heir of Sea and Fire, Harpist in the Wind by Patricia A. McKillip; A Wrinkle in Time, Wind in the Door, A Swiftly Tilting Planet, Many Waters, An Acceptable Time by Madeleine L'Engle; The Mark of the Star by Liz Patterson; King Arthur and His Knights by Molly Perham; Martin the Warrior, Redwall, Loamhedge by Brian Jacques; Legends of the Guardian-King Series by Karen Hancock; The Sword in the Stone, The Once and Future King by T.H. White; The Worm Ouroboros by E.R. Eddison; The Island of Dr. Moreau by H.G. Wells; The Crystal Cave, The Hollow Hills by Mary Stewart; The Brothers Grimm; The Devil's Hunting Grounds, Cold War in Hell, Highway to Heaven by Harry Blamires; Pilgrim's Progress, The Holy War by John Bunyan; Rewards and Fairies by Rudyard Kipling; Dracula by Bram Stoker

Historical Fiction
A Pillar of Iron by Taylor Caldwell; Kidnapped by Robert Louis Steveson; The Scarlet Pimpernel by Baroness Emmuska Orczy; Beric the Briton, The Dragon and the Raven by G.A. Henty; Ben-Hur by Lew Wallace; Tristan and Iseult, Flame-Coloured Taffeta, Warrior Scarlet, Outcast, The Eagle of the Ninth, The Silver Branch, The Lantern Bearers, The Shining Company, Sword Song, Frontier Wolf, The Shield Ring, The Capricorn Bracelet, Heather-Oak-and-Olive, Sun Horse-Moon Horse, Dawn Wind, Sword at Sunset, The Witch's Brat, Simon, The Flowers of Adonis, The Mark of the Horse Lord, Knight's Fee, Blood Feud, Bonnie Dundee by Rosemary Sutcliff; Watch Fires to the North, The Long Pilgrimage by George Finkel; Sir Gibbie by George MacDonald; The Soldier's Cross by Abigail Hartman; The Wrestler of Philippi by Fannie Newberry; The Spanish Brothers by Deborah Alcock; The Cross Triumphant by Florence Kinglsey; Resolute by Robert Pollok; The Last of the Mohicans by James Fenimore Cooper; Ivanhoe by Sir Walter Scott; Roanoke Hundred by Inglis Fletcher; Time and Chance, When Christ and His Saints Slept by Sharon Kay Penman; Quo Vadis by Henryk Sienkiewicz; The Golden Warrior by Hope Muntz; Bloodline by Katy Moran; The Silver Chalice, The Darkness and the Dawn by Thomas B. Costain; Master Skylark by John Bennett; All Things Bright and Beautiful by James Herriott

Historical
To Rule the Waves by Auther Herman; Annals of Imperial Rome, The Agricola, The Germania by Tacitus; History of the English Church and People by Bede; Everyday Life in Prehistoric Times, Everyday Life in Roman and Anglo-Saxon Times by C.H. B. and M. Quennell; Europe in the Middle Ages by Warren O. Ault; Albion by Peter Ackroyd; Dew on the Grass by Eliuned Lewis; The Auxilia of the Roman Imperial Army by G.L. Cheeseman; Roman Life by Mary Johnston; Roman Britain by H.H. Sculland; The Book of the Ancient Romans by Dorothy Mills; Plutarch's Lives; The Republic by Plato; The Roman Way by Edith Hamilton; Handbook to Life in Ancient Rome by Adkins; The Roman Mind at Work, The Greek Stones Speak, the Mute Stones Speak by Paul MacKendrick; The Twelve Caesars by Suetonius; Selected Works by Cicero; Roman Society from Nero to Marcus Aurelius by Samuel Dills; Greece and Rome by National Geographic; Mary Queen of Scots by Antonia Frasier; The English Revolution: 1600-1660 by E.W. Ives; The Struggle for the Constitution by G.E. Alymer; The Protector by J.H. Merle D'Aubigne; Oliver Cromwell by Theodore Roosevelt; Prince Rupert by Charles Spencer; Bonnie Prince Charlie by Moray McLaren; A Bully Father by Joan Paterson Kerr; When Trumpets Call by Patricia O'Toole; Theodore Rex by Edmund Morris; The World of the Celts by Simon James; The Master of Game by Edward of Norwich; Roman Britain and Early England by Peter Hunter Blair; 1759, 1066 by Frank McLynn; Endurance by F.A. Worsley; Annals and Antiquities of Rajasthan by James Todd; A History of the English Speaking People by Winston Churchill; Arbella by Sarah Gristwood; Illustrated English Social History by G.M. Trevelyan; The Normans by R. Allen Brown; Letters of Marque by Rudyard Kipling; The Art of Medieval Hunting by John Cummins; The History of the Britons by Nennius; Not a Tame Lion by Terry W. Glaspey; Cities and Cemeteries of Etruria by George Dennis; Daily Life in Ancient Rome by Jerome Carcopino; A Severe Mercy by Sheldon Vanauken; Dame Margaret by Earl Lloyd George; The Princes in the Tower by Alison Weir; The Age of King Arthur by John Morris; The River of Doubt by Candice Millard; The Hiding Place by Corrie ten Boom; The Everlasting Man by G.K. Chesterton; Tarquinia and Etruscan Origins by Hugh Hencken; The Reformation, The Age of Faith by Will Durant; The Country Diary of an Edwardian Lady, The Nature Notes of an Edwardian Lady by Edith Holden

Christianity / Philosophy (often, though not always, coextensive in my library)
The Life of God in the Soul of Man by Henry Scougal; The Kirkbride Conversations, The Christian Mind by Harry Blamires; The Weight of Glory, A Mind Awake, A Grief Observed, Mere Christianity, The Screwtape Letters, The World's Last Night and Other Essays, Present Concerns, The Four Loves, The Problem of Pain, The Abolition of Man by C.S. Lewis; The Chronicles of Narnia and Philosophy by Bassham and Walls; Centuries by Thomas Traherne; Human Nature in its Fourfold State by Thomas Boston; The Confessions, The City of God, Concerning the Teacher, On the Immortality of the Soul by St. Augustine; The Imitation of Christ by Thomas a Kempis; On the Incarnation by Athanasius; The Tome of St. Leo; The Improvement of the Mind by Isaac Watts; Stepping Heavenward by Elizabeth Prentiss; The Mystery of Providence by John Flavel; Glorious Freedom by Richard Sibbes; Morning by Morning and Evening by Evening by Charles Spurgeon; Is God Really in Control? by Jerry Bridges; Basic Writings by Anselm; The Rare Jewel of Christian Contentment by Jeremiah Burroughs; The Knowledge of the Holy by A.W. Tozer; To the Rising Generation by Jonathan Edwards; The Fundamentals by Torrey; Philosophy and the Christian Faith by Colin Brown; Philosophy: Who Needs It? by Ayn Rand; Essays and the New Atlantis by Francis Bacon; The Praise of Folly by Desiderius Erasmus; God the Center of Value by C. David Grant; Orthodoxy, Tremendous Trifles, Manalive, The Napoleon of Notting Hill by G.K. Chesterton; This Momentary Marriage, God's Passion for His Glory by John Piper; The Whimsical Christian, The Mind of the Maker, Letters to a Diminished Church by Dorothy Sayers; Meditations by Marcus Aurelius; The Prince by Machiavelli; The Way of Life by Lao Tzu; Logic by Gordon H. Clark; Signs Amid the Rubble by Lesslie Newbigin; Deliver Us From Evil by Ravi Zacharias

Poetry / Mythology (often, though not always, coextensive in anybody's library)
Beowulf; The Ballad of the White Horse by G.K. Chesterton; The Complete Works of William Shakespeare; A Man for All Seasons by Robert Bolt; Paradise Lost, Complete Poems by John Milton; Idylls of the King by Tennyson; The Lays of Ancient Rome by Thomas Babington Macaulay; Sohrab and Rustum by Matthew Arnold; The Song of Roland; Poems by William Cullen Bryant; Gilgamesh; The Divine Comedy by Dante; India's Love Lyrics by Laurence Hope; The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam; Prince of Annwn, The Children of Llyr, The Song of Rhiannon, The Island of the Mighty by Evangeline Walton; The Book of Conquests by Jim FitzPatrick; The Mabinogion; Mythology by Edith Hamilton; The Viking Gods from Snori Sturluson's Edda; The Prose Edda by Snori Sturluson; The Babylonian Genesis by Alexander Heidel; Gods and Fighting Men by Lady Gregory; The Tain ; Poems by C.S. Lewis; The Legend of Sigurd and Gudrun by J.R.R Tolkien; Sir Gawain and the Green Knight; Le Morte D'Arthur by Malory; The Iliad, The Odyssey by Homer; The Serpent's Teeth by Ovid; Antigone, Oedipus Rex by Sophocles; The Aeneid by Virgil; A Selection of His Stories and Poems, Departmental Ditties and Barrack-Room Ballads, A Choice of Kipling's Verse by Rudyard Kipling; The Book of Flower Fairies by Cicely Mary Barker

Mystery
Lord Peter Short Stories, Whose Body?, Murder Must Advertise, Strong Poison, Gaudy Night, In the Teeth of the Evidence, The Five Red Herrings by Dorothy Sayers; Father Brown Stories, The Man Who Was Thursday by G.K. Chesterton; The Mystery of Edwin Drood by Charles Dickens; The Complete Sherlock Holmes by Arthur Conan Doyle

Children's
A Break With Charity by Ann Rinaldi; My Side of the Mountain by Jean George; Children of the River by Linda Crew; The Endless Steppe by Esther Hautzig; The Witch of Blackbird Pond, The Sign of the Beaver by Elizabeth George Speare; The Dog of Bondi Castle by Lynn Hall; Mara Daughter of the Nile, The Golden Goblet by Eloise Jarvis McGraw; The Fiddler's Gun by A.S. Peterson; Carry On Mr. Bowditch by Jean Lee Latham; The Story of Sir Launcelot and His Companions by Howard Pyle; The Snow Queen by Hans Christian Andersen; The Secret Garden by Frances Hodgson Burnett; Johnny Tremain by Esther Forbes; A Girl of the Limberlost by Gene Stratton-Porter; Not Regina by Christmas Carol Kauffman; Augustus Caesar's World by Genevieve Foster; City: a Story of Roman Planning and Construction by David Macaulay; The Crimson Fairy Book, The Yellow Fairy Book, the Green Fairy Book, The Orange Fairy Book by Andrew Lang; Enemy Brothers by Constance Savery; Captains Courageous, The Jungle Book by Rudyard Kipling; Flame Over Tara by Madeleine Pollard; Fairy Tales by Hans Christian Andersen; Irish Folk Tales by Henry Glassie; The Wind in the Willows by Kenneth Grahame; Eight Cousins by Louisa May Alcott; The Little Lame Prince by Dinah Maria Mulock; The Fairy Caravan, Jemima Puddle-Duck by Beatrix Potter; Chucaro: Pony of the Pampas by Francis Kalnay; Justin Morgan Had a Horse, King of the Wind, Sea Star by Marguerite Henry; The Great and Terrible Quest by Margaret Lovett; Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm by Kate Douglas Wiggin; Hittie Warrior by Joanne Williamson; Flash of Phantom Canyon by Agnes V. Ranney; The Wild Mustang by Joanna Campbell; Nabob and the Geranium by Judith Miller; English Fables and Fairy Stories by James Reeves; Sam Pig and the Dragon by Alison Uttley; A Gathering of Days by Joan W. Blos; Archimedes and the Door of Science by Jeanne Bendick; Because of Winn-Dixie by Kate DiCamillo; The Trumpeter of Krakow by Eric P. Kelly; Guardians of Ga'Hoole: the Journey by Kathryn Lasky; Skald of the Vikings by Louise E. Schaff; The Door in the Wall by Marguerite de Angeli; The Ides of April by Mary Ray; Alice in Wonderland, Through the Looking Glass by Lewis Carroll; The Lamplighter by Maria S. Cummins; Sir Knight of the Splendid Way by W.E. Cule; Fables by Aesop; The Gammage Cup by Carol Kendall

Literary Fiction
Pride and Prejudice, Emma, Sense and Sensibility, Persuasion by Jane Austen; Watership Down by Richard Adams; The Heir of Redclyffe by Charlotte Yonge; Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte; Little Dorrit by Charles Dickens; Robinson Crusoe by Daniel Defoe

On Literature
First Principles of Verse by Robert Hillyer; Anatomy by Henry Gray; The Concise British Flora in Colour by W. Keble Martin; Elements of Style by Strunk and White; The Element Encyclopedia of of Magical Creatures by John and Caitlin Matthews; Character Naming Sourcebook by The Writer's Digest; The Discarded Image by C.S. Lewis

Contemporary
The Help by Kathryn Stockett; Mystery and Manners, The Complete Stories by Flannery O'Connor

"It Is Not Your Raging Silence Anymore"

In my latest A-Z post for Adamantine I mentioned my use of silent dialogue and I realized (too late) that I could be misconstrued in my meaning.  How amusing that that should happen to me while I'm talking about dialogue and communication...  It's possible that you thought I meant internalizing, thoughts, that sort of thing.  The dry, ironic part of me which is more like Rhodri digs me in the ribs on this point because I consider myself really bad at writing down people's thoughts in books, and yet Margaret, unlike Adamant, never talks to herself so that all of her thoughts must, necessarily, be done in that awkward, odious manner of italics, accurately disjointed (as thoughts often are) and yet logical enough to keep the reader.  I have painted myself into the proverbial corner and there is nothing I can do but slog it out and hope it gets a little easier as I know Margaret a little better. 

A little late for you to come into an inheritance of caution! she thought angrily.

But that is not what I mean.  Both Margaret and Adamant (I have not yet delved deep enough into the characters of Gingerune to determine their relationships) are closely linked to one other character in their stories.  I'll readily admit that these two circumstances probably stem from my own extremely interconnected friendship or soul-link with my husband, and perhaps admitting that right off the bat will help you understand what I mean by silent dialogue.  Maybe not.  Between these four characters there is such an easy, unquestioning link that they need not speak to each other to know what the other is thinking.

If you have ever experienced this level of connection, you know that's all very well for you, but the potential difficulty lies in communicating this voiceless communication to the reader and that is why I am concerned that, being too ready to indulge in this kind of conversation (there is less room for flippancy in it and more chance for warmth and camaraderie), editors and readers might look at me askance.  Happily I'm skilled in the abstract (as skilled as a blind drunk man is skilled with the quarterstaff) and silent dialogue is very abstract, and somehow (unlike Lewis I have not yet the knack for watching my own abstract step out of its spectral shape into something you can poke and bleed) by some magical art of wordcrafting, I have thus far managed to communicate the movement, the energy, of two minds in union.

[He] got up, his fists clenched, a ring of blackened gold around the crest of him; taking her eyes off the wreck of Bazel Púka, Margaret saw, for a moment, a kinship between him and [Rupert] which had never been before, which would never be again.

A look in the eye, a turn of the head, a change in the atmosphere.  I'm dealing with things the characters do not speak, but feel, and I must make it visual in such a way that it translates to your emotions, so that you feel it as well.  How I do it, I am never sure.  I almost never think, "Here I go, I am writing now," when I am writing (it is more like an enchantment than anything else) and there is no formula for the art - no formula for souls of potent mixtures in thin skins.  So when you asked me what I meant by silent dialogue, I thought, "Ah ha, I will tell you!  ...No, I can't."  But you're smart cookies.  I've watched you react to my writing and I am sure you get it now that I have haphazardly explained.

I dare swear, the hardest part of being an author is being asked how I do what I do.

I - Interlocutors

“Because I belong to neither world,” she replied icily. “Because I am neither fairy nor Catti and am caught between the two worlds, having no particular world of my own and therefore I am the bridge between both sides.” She jerked her arm toward the door. “Now let you leave me alone before I say something I regret.”
Adamantine
Conversation!  Dialogue!  Very difficult when two of your characters are laconic and the third is shy.  I don't consider myself a bad hand at dialogue - I think I'm equal parts strong in narrative and dialogue - but from day one Adamant and I were stuck (both of us of shy turns of nature) between two people who would as lief kill each other as talk to each other, and would, childishly, bait each other into tempers.  And I wasn't always equal parts strong in narrative and dialogue; in the course of my many run-throughs of Adamantine's manuscript, I had some pretty awful dialogue to chop out and spruce up.  Take for instance the occasional but inevitable verbal jabs from one character to the other.  I'm sure you know how easy it is to nitpick and carry on really in the most childish, inane manner.  Both my characters are grown men fueled by racial and personal prejudice; I had to avoid nitpicking and make sure what dialogue there would be was as sensible as two people under such conditions could make.  Of course I didn't always avoid it.  Sometimes I stuck my foot right in it.  But hey, I learned, and after awhile the dialogue began to develop a ring to it.  The ring of weapons against each other, but a decent ring nonetheless.

“Would you two be quiet?” growled Eikin sluggishly.
Rhodri flung his arms suddenly around the back of the couch in a rakish gesture. “Why?” he roared out of some hidden depth of his chest. “Was someone drinking last night?"  His voice twisted in scorn.  "Drinking his heart out, perhaps?"
The framea sliced the horsehair backing on the couch less than an inch from Rhodri’s side. Adamant let out a horrified cry and nearly dropped the cup she was holding.

Coming back to Adamant herself.  She has had it rough, bickered about, disliked, judged, and pestered on all sides.  Thankfully her childhood - which is not so very far behind her - was pleasant and stable, which gave her an underlying strength beneath the worried tempest of her heart.  When Imraldera of Starflower chucked the snarling cat Eanrin at Glomar's face in a fit of exasperation over their bickering, I could laugh and truly appreciate it (no, really, I was in the middle of college presentations and I nearly shrieked out loud).  Unfortunately for Adamant, Eanrin and Glomar were probably only going to pull out some fur: her own companions are primed and ready to kill at a moment's provocation and while there is no time to weigh words, she, caught in between, has to be doubly sure what she says is the right thing to put out any impending volcanic explosions.  Despite being naive, I found her to be pretty sensible, all told.  She often had a high, almost impossible ideal and she was often affronted when people did not match up to it, but she could also be very no-nonsense (the only thing that keeps an idealist from being a fruitcake) and while it took some time for me to develop a good handle on dealing with the interactions between the three of them, that particular trait stood her in good stead.

But it wasn't always difficult.  There were times when the dialogue was really rewarding, almost surprising, when one soul and another actually came together in companionship.

Eikin spun the shaft in his paw and lowered it again. “What do you think about so quietly?” he asked.
Adamant looked round at him. “Things,” she replied vaguely. “And you?”
“The same.”

But then, the warmer the companionship, the easier it is for me to slip into silence. I rather think I am too good at silent dialogue; I don't know if it's entirely looked upon with favour among the reading populace or literary agents or editors.  I get the feeling they all want things done by the book, as it were, and actual dialogue is one of those things.  But then, I had mastered silent dialogue before I hammered out decent conversations, so my perception is skewed and my strengths unbalanced.  I suppose that is fitting, considering my character...

“How did you get away?” The question tumbled out of her mouth at Rhodri, and she was unaware of how woollen it sounded in her tired mouth. If it were not for the yellowness of the fire, he might have looked pale as a ghost, and he was wet and ragged and worn out; she was still not sure he was really there. “I thought I would never see you again.”
Easing forward, he picked up a larger branch and placed it crosswise on the fire. The buds at the ends glowed scarlet and burst into flame. “Would you have minded if you hadn’t?"

Very difficult when two of your characters are laconic and the third is shy.  It makes jokes sparse - save for a sense of dramatic irony on the part of the reader, I suppose - and conversations are often left hanging (as in the case of the above) really as if they have been suddenly dropped at the end of a rope and had their neck snapped.  Plenilune is not this way (and is even more full of silent dialogue than Adamantine) but the characters are all different and drive each a different kind of conversation which has been both entertaining, enlightening, and nerve-wracking to create.  To take those odd shapeless creatures of metaphysics and spirituality (which word has had its spine cut out, I fear, but what can you do?) and crush them into words and feed them through the mind of the main character Adamant so that the reader hears the whole conversation going on around her and with her throughout the book has been a huge challenge.

Thankfully the challenge was divided over, I don't know, five years or some such, so I'm not actually dead or insane and I can still accomplish the words-putting-into-sentence doing myself...

I Bleed In the Same Vein As Lewis & Chesterton

I changed my mind and have decided to embark upon as succinct a riposte as I can manage to the question about magic and romance in fantasy. I have already given a broadbrush view of my take on romance in Between the Music and the Lyrics and Oh, Darling, Let's Run Wild Together.  In brief, some who haven't experienced a romantic relationship either try to argue it away (which is silly, because there's nothing the whole world over like it to which one can compare it) or are too shy to tackle it.  The latter is less egregious a mistake than the first in that it recognizes an honest lack of skill set and one doesn't want to proceed if one doesn't know what one's doing.  On the other side of the spectrum, people assume that once you have waded into a relationship (what a dull, insipid, shallow word for such a plunge of two souls into each other!) an author is bound to embark upon what folk call "adult novels."  I know Anne Elisabeth Stengl was asked if she was going to do this, and she said "No!"  I think if anyone asked me I might have an epithet before the negative...  But what I think both of us would admit to is that our subsequent writing of romance has improved.  What people mean by "adult novels" is vulgarity.  What my fellow readers and writers need to consciously realize (you realize it deep down, but let's bring it to the surface) is that there are acres upon acres of romantic landscape in a "relationship" which are unbounded to the imagination.  Too many of us try to package romance into such a straight-laced box that, far from shaving off all the sins (sins have a way of getting in, no matter how you try to keep them out), you end up divesting your characters of all the blood and fire and sensation that make them so gloriously human.  (Reference Abigail's post Burning the Straw Men.)  There is far more to human interaction, romance and the construction of romance included, which is lawful than you might be willing to admit.  I don't blame you; we live in a time which is heir to the slow, inexorable destruction of meaning and absolutes: what are men? what are women? we believe they are more than intelligent animals, more than creatures driven by finely honed survival instinct - yet, to keep them from descending into animal behaviour, we put them in cages.  Like a zoo.

“I know the high arts and the Golden Tongue which men of old spoke to shape the world, but I use them but rarely since men now are often low and mealy, and it is not sporting fair to come among them as a god come among worms."

Which segues into my view of "magic."  Because of God's decree against witches (which we are all familiar with), anything extraordinary or supernatural in fiction is liable to frighten us and drive us away.  But let me respectfully break down the dividing walls which our culture has, probably inadvertently, placed in our minds separating the biblical narrative from anything historical, futuristic, and real.  There was a man in an ancient garden who walked as a king of the earth beneath his feet, who ruled land and sea and sky and everything in them, a man with power who knew the secret names of things.  It is no legend; he actually lived, and he lived long and, with some struggle, prospered; and fathered nations of great, inventive men who grasped the earth between their hands and bent it to their will.  These antediluvian monarchs of the earth lived for unimaginable years and their stories, passed down - awful and powerful and etched in a cruel, bloody calligraphy - slowly devolved into the little petty stories of the gods we know today.  Once they were human, enormous, powerful, giants in the land, still clinging to some glory of mastery of the world.  If we were to meet them today we would be astonished.  It would be fantastic.  It would be like magic. 

We fear "magic" because we are rational now, sceptical, living in a world of atoms and chemical construction and mute though beautiful biology.  We fear "magic" because we instinctively ascribe all that is supernatural to either demons or the Son of God (but we still divide them from the world of atoms and chemical construction, of course).  We fear "magic" because we have no idea what it is or what we really mean by it; we watch the ancients cower under a sky rent by a thunderbolt and call it superstition because our time can explain the sky exploding into light. 

Just because we know how it works does not mean it isn't magic.

Wherein is the mastery of the human soul?  Wherein is the god-like regency of a race populating a world full of wonder and colour and expression?  We pity and abhor the small, petty witches who play with dark powers too much for them and fill their minds with lies.  There, we know instinctively, is a "magic" to be rigorously avoided.  It is unwholesome.  It is unholy.  But every now and then (less now than when the world was young and the sun brighter than it is now) we get a man of power, a man of vision, and he has half a right by virtue of his strength to stand in the great shadow cast by the mighty men of old.  We try to explain away his greatness - the fault of his education, the circumstance of his home life - but the truth of it stands: the man was great.

Don't tinker with a fear of "magic," don't tinker with an understanding of mankind.  No mother today stands her boy up and straightens his tie, polishes his shoe, and tells him he comes from a people who were once noble and terrible and ruled the earth.  But it would be true.  And the fact of the matter is: it will be true again.  Man is not done being majestic.  Man is not done being the "stones of a crown."  Men like Tolkien and Lewis, and Chesterton before them, wrote the way they did because they were not deceived into believing that the shabby, tattered fabric of the world now is all that there will be, is the only reality, the end-all, the holy backdrop against which men shuffle in their dance like circus monkeys.  We are in the middle to latter half of the story: the glory is diminished, but not put out; the gods are buried, but not dead; the magic of a purer air seeps through a heavenly casement and, out of place in a world that hardly knows them now, a world they hardly know, men are learning the mastery again. 

What else do you call the Kingdom?  What else do you call the promise that Jesus will make all things new?  It is not some detached, airy-fairy notion for which we have no real mental image.  But the problem is, what sketches we are given in Scripture - and in the oldest of the old stories - are as boldly thrown upon the canvas in a blood-red ink as the stories of man's tyranny.  It is frightening.  We played with ideas of ghouls and spells and witches and called them evil - because they are - and said it was magic, and divorced outright all stamp of power completely, little realizing what legacy runs in our own veins, what treasure the hinged bone of our skulls hide, or the charter of creation which was given to us at the very beginning.  We are being made men again, made, not only in the imago Dei, but once more in the imago Christi.  By love and thunder, what a story it makes, too!  And man's realm then (as it was in the past) will be a fitting setting for such a race of monarchs. 

"The great colossus: Man," I called him once.  I still call him that.  Jesus, in some and very important ways unique, is in other ways (for us very important) only the first fruits.  Our heritage is one of power and authority, mercy and love.  I have said it before, I will say it again.  My take on magic in fantasy - my own fantasy - is that: that it paints bold and red and beautiful the humility and the mastery of man.  Too long we have forgotten the rock from whence we were hewn, too long we have ignored what we are becoming.  We read Lewis and Tolkien and think what nice stories, and so well written, so full of virtue, and the blow between the eyes somehow misses us that the crowning jewel of God's creation was a fine creature and a damned fine creature, and is now a bloody redeemed fine creature, and magic - for now perhaps a mere child's drawing of what is really meant by a halo and what is really meant by holiness - is skirted in haste.

So Heavenly Love Shall Outdo Hellish Hate

Farewell, happy fields,Where joy forever dwells!  Hail, horrors! Hail,Infernal world!  And thou, profoundest hell,Receive thy new possessor.paradise lost, john milton
Which quote is, perhaps, more appropriate (or inappropriate? how does one define these things?) for Dragonwitch , but as Dragonwitch has not come out yet, who but the author is to say?  We carry on; the men of the East may spell the stars, and times and triumphs mark, but the men signed of the cross of Christ go gaily in the dark.

I notice that, at the end of book reviews on blogs, people tend to say something like, "I was sent a free copy of this book via its publishing house for in order to review, my thoughts are mine and no soul's else - take it or leave it, so there!"  And so, take it or leave it, I was sent a copy of Starflower , fourth book of the Tales of Goldstone Wood series, to review under no sense of obligation but mine own: it's a free book from a beautiful series by a fantastic author so the sense of obligation on my side was about as high and as self-centred as that of the cat-poet in this book.  I say free: it's more of a bartering system: they give me a free book, I give them a free review.

The review.  I wrote what I lie to myself by calling more professional reviews on Goodreads and Amazon, but here on The Penslayer things are less formal so here I simply want to talk about what I thought and why I liked this book. Where to begin...?  By telling people that there may be spoilers, I suppose.  There may be spoilers.  

I love that, though Starflower happens some sixteen hundred years before Heartless (the technical beginning of Tales of Goldstone Wood) the reader is not jarred by a sense of disconnect.  I suppose the Faerie realm helps that: where is the disconnect when the people who populate the background of Heartless and Veiled Rose are immortal and have lived through that span of time?  I love also that, though Starflower is history compared to the previous three books, there is history beating under the bones of Starflower too - who are the Brothers Ashiun, and what terrible thing did they do that carved their names so deeply into Faerie lore?  I love history.  I love it when novels have history.  I admire the delicate way Stengl weaves well-known fairytale principles into the story (okay, the frogs were a little less delicate, but what can you do?) such as the girl and the wolf and a very faint reminiscence (which could possibly be only my imagination) of Snow White.  I love Starflower's own history which explains why she is so different from all the other women of her people: not a forced history, not a sudden alakazam, deus ex machina, she's a strong-spirited girl unlike everyone else.  Her own life, so different from those of other women, reasonably shaped her into herself.  If I were wearing my cap I would take it off to Stengl over that point.

And then there is the Hound.  As I have attempted to do with Beowulf and Adamantine, Stengl as done with Starflower and the famous, beautiful, heart-wrenching poem by Francis Thompson: The Hound of Heaven.  I did not realize until I was nearly done with the book that Stengl had placed the first stanza of the poem in the back of the book for the reader's enjoyment and education.  I had already been introduced to the poem and had read it in full online, so the unabashed, unapologetic arrival of the Hound upon the scene took me less by surprise and more by a sense of terrific wonder.  If you have not read the poem, Stengl and I both urge you - implore you - to go do so.  Look, I've even left a handy-dandy link so you don't have to go through any trouble: The Hound of Heaven .  It's longish, but gorgeous, and tears down the stuff of dreams and thin sky-castles and the weakness of human flesh and the angry self-sufficiency of the human soul and leaves nothing but him.  And when there is, at the core of all things, himself, all things array themselves aright and the world - even the wretchedness of it - aligns to perfection.  Read it.  Read them both.  I dare you.

that is why I love starflower

Not Without Honour

The thing about Character Letters is that I don't usually intend to do them.  Ordinarily, my characters are all close and tight-knit, and they don't usually have occasion to write each other letters - why would you, when you can just jog on down to the breakfast table, or throw aside a partitioning curtain, or raise your voice a fraction, to be heard by your closest friend?  And yet I keep doing Character Letters.  It must be an obsession.  I trust they are not superfluous, however; many of these Character Letters (well, what few I have so far) really do happen.  The problem with Character Letters - or letters of any sort - is that they reveal the heart and the day-to-day work of the writer, which is in a fair way to being a spoiler of novels that have not been published yet.

a character letter from gingerune

My dear cousin,
            By the time you read this I will be gone—and you will not miss me!  Not until the day that I return, reckoning and to reckon, and you will rue those years that are gone, gone forever, those years in which I was silent and gone away from your midst.  So for a space, my dear, you have a little reprieve from the hammer of my prophetic anger.  I have no doubt in my mind that you will ill-use my silence has you have ill-used my cry.  Do not pity me, should familial ties stir you to a sense of pity: I have cried for years in the wilderness, so that the wilderness to which I go is not unfamiliar to me.  I go out now to overturn the ancient stones and to find the book which writes itself.  Oh yes, my dear—did you shiver?  I will come.  Of that have no doubt.  I will go and uproot what you sought to bury and find what we all had lost.  Heaven and Earth are set against you, my dear, and for that I am almost sorry.  Almost—but I find we buried my own pity more deeply than the earth-secrets, you and I.  My only regret now is that you do not know what you have brought down upon your own head and you have not sense to fear—to fear me and your own fiery god against whom I go out to war as our grandsires did in the Old Days.  But you will not fear, nor will you miss me! for, can anything good come out of the White Cyclamen?              That is for me to prove, and you to rue when I come.—M.