Jennifer Freitag's Blog, page 32

Anne Elisabeth Stengl - Dragonwitch Reveal

It's October 5th, the day when fans everywhere get a glimpse of author Anne Elisabeth Stengl's upcoming novel Dragonwitch, the fifth in her Tales of Goldstone Wood series.  Published books in order are Heartless, Veiled Rose, and Moonblood.  Book Four, Starflower , is scheduled to come out this month (October)!  And now...Dragonwitch!

An Ancient Evil 
Long ago, Etanun buried his sword in the depths of the Netherworld then vanished from all known history. One day, it is said, his heir will find the sword, and the Dragonwitch, firstborn of the Dragon King, will be finally slain. 
A Desperate Hope 
These stories are no more than nursery rhymes. In a world of cold reality, what room is left for fairy tales? Lady Leta of Aiven is pledged to marry a man she does not love...sleepless Lord Alistair struggles to unite the stubborn earls of the North Country . . . Mouse is lost, far from home, slaving as a kitchen drudge...
...and the reclusive Chronicler, keeping the records of Gaheris Castle, bears a secret so dangerous it could cost him his life and plunge the North Country into civil war. 
An Impossible Journey 
But when nursery rhymes begin to come horribly true, will these unlikely heroes find the strength they need to fulfill a prophecy of fire? For the Dragonwitch lives. And she has vowed vengeance on all who have wronged her. 
Coming Summer 2013 Tales of Goldstone Wood Timeless Fantasy that will keep you Spellbound! www.anneelisabethstengl.blogspot.com
Are you excited?  I'm excited!  And I haven't read Moonblood yet, though I've read the first two and I've got a copy of the third book waiting on my shelf.  And can't you just eat up that cover?  How beautiful is that!  (Honestly, that is exactly how I wish the cover of Gingerune, which has not even been written, would look.)  All the covers of the Tales of Goldstone Wood books are lovely like that, so are the stories inside them, and the author - let me tell you - is even lovelier still!   Follow her on her blog, her Facebook page, or even Twitter.  Want fairytales with a rich, unique twist and characters that will stay with you for the rest of your life?  Oh yes, these books are for you.

Marked Evermore With White

Let all the people throng,With chaplets and with offerings,With music and with song; And let the doors and windowsBe hung with garlands all,And let the Knights be summonedTo Mars without the wall:Thence let them ride in purpleWith joyous trumpet-sound,Each mounted on his war-horse,And each with olive crowned...the lays of ancient rome
Mark it as the Romans did with a most auspicious white!  This November will be the second year of The Shadow Things and The Soldier's Cross upon the published scene...and we're going to celebrate!  (For those of you who can't do NaNo this year, we hope this cheers you up!)  Scribbles & Ink Stains, as well as The Penslayer, will be full of posts on our experience as authors, insight into the lessons we learned, what writing our historical novels was like, excerpts and giveaways, and answers to questions our fans send in.  On that last note, heads up!  We want your questions because chances are everyone else wants the answers too!  Through the month of October send your questions in to us at sprigofbroom293@gmail.com (me) and jeanne@squeakycleanreviews.com (Abigail), or post the questions on our blogs! Shout it out, folks!  The more, the merrier! 

IT'S GONNA BE BIG

Don't Tell Me I Gammon With Anyone's Heart

I find myself in the same position as a character of mine - only, he was talking to a patient and I am talking to you...  In short, there are many and sundry things one can say to people who are about to read another snippets post, and I feel I have said, and you have heard, them all.  It is not me but them you have come to read, and as I am going to go back in among them myself as soon as I finish here giving you a peek at what I have been about, why prevaricate any longer - except to say: have you read The Mind of the Maker yet?  HMM?

October Snip-Whippets
The girl raised her head and looked steadily, wide-eyed, into Margaret’s face. The dark lips were parted a little in surprise; she was seeing, again, the horned creature in the woods, and saw Julianna weighing whether to be spooked or at ease with Margaret’s voice. Out of the corner of her eye she saw Centurion, too, looking across the table at his sister’s face, breath bated, willing her with an almost physical power to calm herself.Plenilune
...she felt keenly the stinging wet knife of the wind, but over that there grew another feeling, a feeling akin to the marshlight country around her and the shepherd’s panpipe on the fells, something altogether of Plenilune, which sang out of her heart like the hawk let loose on the wing.Plenilune

“Even a Fool,” he said, “who has nothing to do but look and listen, forgets the sheer bull-headedness of a woman in a rage."Plenilune
Margaret gently drew him back. “It is a harsh portrait you paint. I fear I, like the images of the women of old, have lost the skill of love.”Plenilune
Why did she feel as if this were their last meeting? All at once she wanted to reach across and touch him, though everything in her recoiled at the thought, just to prove to herself that the nightmarish feeling was a fraud. “Don’t be so serious. If you are serious I cannot bear life. You must laugh, or I have no hope at all.”Plenilune
“Nay, you will not run like a coward! I am sick of your face—here, let me make it better pleasing!”Plenilune
She wore the chinaberry dress—which was like wearing the very splendour of the sun—and, though she was afraid, the sloe-bitter bite of vengeance made the sight of it taste better in her mouth.Plenilune
She frowned. “You make so light of it.”“To laugh,” he replied, “is the blithest weapon of those who live in the dark.”Plenilune
Odd how he conjured up the old Bible narratives and gave them a flesh they never had before. Laughing softly, self-deprecatingly, more comfortable and at peace and at a loss than ever before, Margaret murmured, “To whom would I go…?” And she fell asleep before there could be any chestnuts at all.Plenilune
...looking up from her needle-work on her elaborate New Year dress, the longing caught her powerfully by the throat and she wondered why. Why. Why did she so desperately want to sit with the oddest creature in God’s creation who could do her no good, who had a white feather where his heart ought to be?Plenilune
The wild animal stiffened as if an electric charge had been run through him. Only for an instant, not quite a heartbeat, then he leapt from his chair and slashed his hand to the side. Papers whirled and shredded from the force of the gesture. Margaret felt as if all the air had been ripped from her lungs. Plenilune
“Then tell him that I commend him for his agrarian concern but that I am unqualified to give him an answer. I came regarding other matters that lie between my lord’s house and his. The pearl of great price in the glens of Ginseio is a jewel I can neither give nor take.” Spirit
Ji Hazel put the flat of his foot on the man’s face and turned it away so that we would not have to look at its gawking death-mask stare. Then he looked at me, his eyes gleaming beryl-coloured in the moonlight. I could see in his face that he was thinking, She saved my life, but he did not say it, for it would have sounded surprised and untrusting if put into words. So he put his hand in the small of my back instead and drew me close, fitting me a little awkwardly against his side for I was the same height as he. His hand was warm and I was cold, and I shivered into the torn fabric of his impractical white tunic.
“I think I had better go back to Ashanti tonight,” he mused grimly. Then, his voice turning a little into my hair, “Spirit?”
I slid my arms around his narrow hips and turned my cheek against his. “You have but to whistle on the winds,” I replied, “and wherever I am, I will come to you.”
His finger touched my bloody rouge. His eyes, downturned, glinted in the moonlight.
“I know.” Spirit

D - Despair and Dogma

Thou has made me, and shall Thy work decay?Repair me now, for now mine end doth haste;I run to death, and death meets me as fast,And all my pleasures are like yesterday. I dare not move my dim eyes any way; Despair behind, and death before doth cast Such terror, and my feeble flesh doth waste By sin in it, which it towards hell doth weigh. Only Thou art above, and when towards Thee By Thy leave I can look, I rise again; But our old subtle foe so tempteth me, That not one hour myself I can sustain. Thy grace may wing me to prevent his art And thou like adamant draw mine iron heart. john donne
 This is the third post I have made on this topic, so it seems it must be important to me.  The first post I did on Adamantine and the poor in spirit was Noonday Devil, and back in January I wrote One Thousand Disappointments about what we glean from God when he closes his hand against what we ask for.  It seems like every turn I take in my walk among the saints' and God's minds I run into some new plot twist that takes me by surprise (Rahab? a respectable harlot? only he would think of that story-line) and a recurring theme I am noticing in my writing is that of faith-in-the-dark.  It is a theme I find throughout redemptive history, and as it seems so popular among his story-line, I was pleased to discover its entrenchment in my literature.

There's something a bit happy, and something a bit sadIn the faces of the men that God touched mad.

When it comes to heartache and loss and the-bottom-of-the-barrel, Adamantine is no exception.  The characters come at their harsh life with naivete, bitterness, confusion, and hatred, and an almost blind clutching at a hope of a faith in God.  They have their feet knocked out from under them, their lives and honour and sanity hung in the balance, at times all light cut off from view.  In short, they experience despair.  Where is God in the horrible universe and can he possibly hear, or want to hear, the feeble call of a soul so crushed it does not even know if it wants to call for help?  His saints do not walk on air, surrounded by a safe halo of light: they are thrown headlong into the carnage of war - and sometimes they seem to fight impossible odds alone.  And his silence can be so crushing.

I cannot make a claim to having weathered a cataclysm of life and faith.  I do not know experientially what it is like to "look round upon a universe from which every trace of Him seems to have vanished" and to have to trust blindly in the Lord's track record of faithful dealings with his people.  But I have seen it.  It is all through his self-revelation: that there is a living God, and that my Redeemer does live.  And I have seen that, though some of us know that God is faithful, he sometimes tests that faith so that we, too (and perhaps the invisible hosts watching, as in the case of Job) might know our faith is founded on something lasting.  He took Abraham to the brink and taught that old father of nations that yes, indeed, he did believe God was able to raise up Isaac even from the dead.  The faith which had lain smoldering on the central hearth of Abraham's life was proved to Abraham himself to be a bright and abiding flame.  It was as though God were saying to his servant, "See?  I have brought you thus far, and though you never saw the work I was working in you even until now, you see the work is strong and very good.  It will last.  I have made sure of that."

As an author I know that a novel has to have a compelling plot, something at stake which the reader actually cares about: but as a creator what matters to me is that the characters I have created are tried and tested and move from glory to glory.  And sometimes this means despair.  Sometimes this means clutching your head and a glass of brandy in your hands and staring out at the dark with all your moves played and nothing left to put down, and saying, "I cannot see, so see for me."

The characters do believe, and they do find a way of escape: I notice the ways are almost never orthodox, which amuses me, because God's ways are never what any of us would call orthodox either.   Those moments of utter darkness and loss and despair make their way into my novels because they can't not.  It would be lying to not have them, it would be untrue to God and men and life and the way-of-things.  But Marilla Cuthbert was right when she said that to despair was to turn one's back on God, and of course I cannot stop with the mere story of bringing a character to that nakedness and destitution of spirit.  Our dogma admits poorness of spirit, but it does not stop at that.  Nor does Adamantine.

Though worlds will die and worlds will grow Out of death - life Out of night - day, glory from sorrow Out of grief - joy Out of storm, comes strength for tomorrow Out of dust - gold Out of fire - air, comfort forsaken Out of rage - calm Out of loss, find glory awakenwonder, lord of the rings musical

C - Catti

Let all the nations be aware, And let the cities tremble there, Let them know the time is near For the world to be reordered. Babel rose and touched the skies, Rose with whips and piteous cries. But every nation falls and dies, For the world will be reordered. Let the gods cast down their spears, Tremble with unmeasured fears. Let the rulers bow, and seers— For the world has been reordered.an old catti song
The image I have given you, though not made by me, is an accurate representation of the Catti species: indomitable, savage, grim, war-like, staunch, a force to be reckoned with and not one that appears susceptible to reason.  Taken as a whole, this assessment is very true.  The tribes of this cat-like people living outside the Faerie Empire, and among the ebbing surf of the Empire's fortress-studded shore, if they ever knew a time of peace, have long since lost it to memory as they battle the constant threat of subjugation by the fairies and the steady inroads their oppressors have made into their lands.  Given another iron-fisted Emperor with a keen military sense and (very important) funding, another generation might see the total crushing of the Catti people.

Well, perhaps not total.  The Catti clans are, a little like the Highlanders and Lowlanders of Scotland (to claw through our history for some semblance of analogy), divided into two groups, the Dunr and the Black.  While both proudly war-like and devoted to their clans, the Dunr might eventually learn to bear the burden of fairy rule, to learn the sense in law and order and straight roads; the Black Catti, I think, never could.  Blockheaded and insensible to fairy logic the Catti have always been, but given enough time and gentle wear, the Dunr folk could twist the fairy psyche a little to a shape they liked, and perhaps even become used to being ruled by their orderly overlords.  They might one day become a powerful political bloc in the Empire.  But the Black Catti, seeped in their black forest mindset, even further removed from the creeping influence of Faerie rule, react only two ways: kill all fairies and live, or, short of that, die before being conquered.  There is no middle ground, no light to be found in law or civilization.  It would take so many generations to bring them around to that kind of thinking that it is, for all intents and purposes, impossible.  Any fairy general worth his salt will turn his mind toward the barbaric north and know that the far black woods must be razed and the Black Catti blood drained before Faerie will ever plant her raven banners there with any stability.

“You’re asking me to lay out hundreds of years of animosity and bloodshed and say, ‘Even though that lies between us, I shall not lift my paw against thee’? That is a hard thing to do, my lady; very, very hard to do.”

Inhospitable, perhaps?  Yes, as a general rule Catti are tough nuts to crack - tough horse chestnuts with angry sea-urchin spikes all over them...  But once you do crack them, they have remarkably tender insides and even a set of morals that they hold to admirably (if not always by the spirit yet definitely by the letter).  The side of themselves which they rarely show the stockade walls of the border forts is a tender side, full of love and warmth and the magic of living a simple life.  And if you can win their hearts (though it may cost you your own) they will go with you to hell and back and you will have never known a better friend.

The Sounds Our Hearts Make

The Queen took up a little cithern saying, "O my lord, I will sing a sonnet to thee and to you my lords and to sea-girt Demonland."  So saying, she smote the strings and sang in that crystal voice of hers, so true and delicate that all that were in that hall were ravished by its beauty.The Worm Ouroboros
In February Abigail and I made each our own posts on our favourite things.  She has begun the idea anew now, not with favourite things, but with favourite sounds.  One doesn't always talk of near-and-dear things, so it was pleasant even for myself to read her list.  And now I am going to do the same, discovering as I do so that, as with my February post, this is not so easy as I had initially thought. And I wonder - is it that we like the sounds we hear, or that we like the sounds our hearts make when we hear them...?

the cadence of the written word // my husband calling me "baby-doll" //  hot running water in the shower // my cats calling for me // boots running on stone steps // "it's dinner time" // the drum of horse hooves // a thunderstorm at night // my mom calling me "jenny-jenjen" // wind in dry autumn leaves // "are not all lands, all airs, one country unto us, so there be great doings afoot to keep bright our swords?" // the crackle of a fire // daddy reading books aloud // high heels on hardwood floors // snow underfoot // my family's laughter // "sir, we would see jesus" // lord brandoch daha's footstep on the printed page // the bbc aslan's voice // a coffee-maker percolating // falling waves // "as bright and moth-wing blue as the blue in the heart of a flame" // anna's voice in my head as I read her letters // rhodri's silence // the clatter of my fingers on my keyboard // daddy giggling irrepressibly // Chesterton's poetry // 2009 Mr. Knightley // my phone ringing when I know it is my husband calling // my husband's voice - period

What are your favourite sounds?  What sounds are music to your ears?

B - Beowulf

"Stories never really end...even if the books like to pretend they do.  Stories always go on.  They don't end on the last page, any more than they begin on the first page."Cornelia Funke
Beowulf
I am sure I will get mixed reactions when I own (to those who did not already know) that it was the Anglo-Saxon story of Beowulf which gave me the inspiration for Adamantine.  Beowulf, like The Iliad, The Odyssey, The Aeneid, The Song of Roland, belongs among a range of old poetic classics that everyone would have liked to have read and feels a certain hesitance to do so.  When you do sit down to read them you often find they were not so daunting as you had first supposed.  Beowulf is no exception.  I confess I, too, was daunted at the outset...until I became swept up in the plot and the characters and the rich, abbreviated style of poetry and dialogue.  I loved it.  I loved it like autumn and bonfires and tea and spice.  It was all of those colours and tastes to me and I just had to, after the last page and the last line and I was left sitting in a hollow shell of sadness and longing, I just had to write something more.

I was glad to know that Rudyard Kipling wrote Puck of Pook's Hill, for, upon closing A Midsummer Night's Dream, Puck was the character I wanted to know more about - and there was more to read!  But there was no more Beowulf when I closed the book, no more to read, though the story went on...so I would have to write it myself.

There was, of course, no more Beowulf.  The understanding of Beowulf may be a little abbreviated itself among those who haven't read the story.  Everyone knows about Grendel and his watery mother and the triumph of the Geats' champion over the Danes' monstrous oppressors.  What gets perhaps far little press (though around this time of year in 2012 people are unwittingly raving about another book heavily inspired by the second half of Beowulf) is the gentle reign of Beowulf, the prosperity, the love of his people, the many conquests that are strung like pearls upon a string of time throughout his life...until the end, when a runaway servant sneaking into a sleeping dragon's lair steals a cup and gets away, only to wake the dragon's self-avenging fire across the land.

Does that sounds familiar now?
As the representative, governor, and champion of his people, Beowulf, having now exchanged a golden beard for one of badger's grey, sets out to slay the dragon.  There is no champion like him, no one else capable of tackling such a foe, and Beowulf is determined to do or die.

And so Beowulf's followers rode, mourning their beloved leader, crying that no better king had ever lived, no prince so mild, no man so open to his people, so deserving of praise.

There is no happy ending.  Old and valiant Beowulf is pressed by the dragon almost beyond bearing.  At the last moment, when he most needs his sworn followers, every man turns and abandons him.  Every man save his young kinsman Wiglaf, who alone runs forward to save his king from destruction.  Together they kill the dragon, but the cost was heavy and high: Beowulf has been dealt a mortal wound.  With the last great trophy, a dragon's head, the Geats' great king passes into legend, breathing out his last in the arms of the one man who loved lord and loyalty over his own life.  It is no happy ending.

But what of that young man?  After I had cried and been angry and cried some more, I wondered, what about that young man?  What about Wiglaf?  Surely such a hero had the beginnings of a splendid story.  He shone like a star on the page but he deserved even more than that.  So I sat down at my computer, opened up a new Word document, and began a new story, a Puck of Pook's Hill for Wiglaf. 

All Is On the Hazard

Talent is cheap.What matters is discipline.
We are over halfway through the month of September (and we have dined nine times at Rosings!) and, as Abigail and I are going to be at the beach for a week in October, for us, at least, November is going to be here before we know it.  Commence warning tremors of panic.  Abigail has put her upcoming novel Tempus Regina on stand-by, waiting to tackle it during the rush of NaNoWriMo.  While I have participated at least once in NaNo, I don't think I ever began a novel during the month of November.

I cheated.  Yes, I cheated.  Whatever novel I was working on - I think it must have been Between Earth and Sky at the time - I did not begin it on Day One of November.  And I am going to do the same thing this year.  November 1st I am going to open up Plenilune, same as I always do, and launch another 50,000 words forward into the plot by the time my birthday (November 30th) rolls around.  I am currently approaching the crux of the plot (I thought the day would never come in sight!) and I am eager to find where the 50,000 words of November put me in the plot.

But while I like to bend the rules, I don't like to break them.  The whole point of NaNo is to get people who would like to write a novel to actually sit down and write.  My character (myself, I mean, not Margaret) lacks discipline.  I love writing.  I love the heady sense of fire etching events on the page before my eyes.  I love the sudden bloom of foreshadowing, the splicing dark-and-light of the moral gamble, the tumble of some thousand years' worth of philosophical and theological thought falling into the minds and events of my characters and story.  It is simply too much thrill not to love it.  And yet I lack discipline.  If I am disinclined to write, I don't always sit down to do it.  If I am a little stuck the mole-hill may easily be made into a mountain.  It is a plight, I am sure, which you have experienced before.  So I bend the rules - but I don't break them.  I will be starting NaNo with an enormous wordcount, but the wordcount before November 1st I won't give weight to, and the prizes offered the winners (here is assuming I cross the finish line) I will not partake in.  That would not be fair.  But they are not the point!  Plenilune is treasure enough for me.  And so I will be one of the number of eager, frightened little creatures working November 1st to write 50,000 words in a month.  But you cannot count on me to start writing at midnight on the last day of October.  I am not that beside myself with insanity.

Skander crossed to the window and stood by her, looking out on the scene.  Through the heavy grey light and wind-surf noise came back the sound of dogs barking; the hawthorns were bare, the barberry wind-stripped; clouds lay thick in the lower parts of Seescardale and obscured the view within a few miles. 

How I love the autumn!  Mirriam (to whom I have been sending shards and chunks and untidy skeins of writing) has informed me that my writing is best read in autumn - which is gratifying, as I swear it is autumn in my heart all year long.  There is a cool cleanness in the air which sweeps away the muggy sluggishness of summer and lets the brain work freely.  I think many of us are like-minded in this regard.  I am looking forward to NaNo and I am sure you are too.  If you do not follow Abigail's blog, I do want to refer you to an excellent post she just put up for NaNo and organizing one's time during November: A Novel Month.

November is coming.  God willing, I'll see you there!

A - Adamant

Brief introduction: I have so enjoyed Anne Elisabeth's own A-Z series for her novels that, as I am not actively working on Adamantine and so don't often get the opportunity to talk about it, I decided to follow her lead and begin an A-Z series of my own.  And Adamantine conveniently starts at the beginning of the alphabet.

Adamant
I've talked about the main character of Adamantine before.  She's a shy, naive girl, technically an orphan though she has other relations.  She was born in 1827 and at the time of our story is seventeen years old (and unmarried! but that is less of an issue for her than it is for her harried cousin Margaret).  In writing her I have found her to be a sweet, intuitive, well-meaning girl; though she had lost both her parents, her life with them was one of confidence and safety, which engendered in her a good temper and a pleasant countenance, which was more than her cousins could boast living with their bulldog-jowled father and their wedding-worrying mother.

Unfortunately her quiet life heretofore had not taught Adamant strength and survival, as it had taught her cousins; upon moving from London to live with her relations Adamant experiences a cold shock of jealousy and hatred from her cousins and a sense of unbelonging from within.  But what she lacks in physical strength and worldly knowledge she makes up for with faith, conviction, and charity.  In Faerie, a world of stark ambition and self-serving ideals, of conquest and oppression and racial hatred, Adamant is an alien spirit of sweet loyalty.  While she looks bewilderedly on her friends and relations, uncomprehending their sharp, bitter attitudes toward God and life, they stare back at her in mingled mockery and confusion as she holds fast to the certainty of Christ and her own quest, a servant of the servants of God.

Choking out an angry, crying howl, she jerked the weapon she found at her side from its sheath and found herself running, running for all she was worth, alone, to help the grey-bearded king.adamantine

My Ashes Scatter On the Wind

there's people been friendlybut they'd never be your friendssometimes this has bent me to the groundnow that this is all endingI want to hear some music once again'cause it's the finest thing I have ever found"elijah," rich mullins
I seem to be a preeminently approachable person.  I do not say this as a boast, for I do not really mean to be this way.  But the evidence gives weight to the conclusion: when I was walking the High Line in New York City I was stopped by complete strangers and asked to take their picture for them; in the Boston subway station, an Asian woman swung round on me and asked me the way to...some place that started with an A (thankfully there was a native nearby who could help, because I couldn't).  In the grocery store, in shopping centres, I'm stopped by complete strangers and chatted to.  I am usually not alone, and yet people always stop to talk to me.

You know me.  I'm a writer.  I'm an introvert.  I'm five feet tall with half an inch tacked on as a kind of salt-rub in the wry wound.  I've got plain-jane brown eyes, a mane of hair highly susceptible to humidity; due to chronic kidney infections as a child and the medicine I had to take for them, my teeth are permanently stained.  I am not a quick thinker on my feet and I am painfully aware of all my defects.  I have little to nothing to recommend me.  So why do people stop me?

I'm not sure, but I have a suspicion.  This morning at a clothing store, as I was on my way to the cashier, I passed by the manager who was talking to another employee.  I had already breasted them and gone past when I heard the manager ask how I was.  I was in full forward tilt but, realizing I was the one he was speaking to, courtesy demanding I turn back.  And I did so.  I get so peeved with people who mumble, "Fine, thanks..." and shuffle on without making eye contact.  I always make a point of making eye contact, being sincere in my response when asked how I am, and I try always to ask how the other person is doing himself.  So I did so - looking back on it, I think I gave my head the most childish little tilt to the side, too, which only amplified my naive aura.  I'm not sure I want to know what the manager thought of me, but my modus operandi seemed to turn the cashier's haggard expression into interest; she commented on the shirt I had bought and what a nice colour it was, on this and that and the other thing, and she was really nice - I was glad I had taken the time to be nice to her.  The same thing happened at the grocery store, and the Sephora store when I went down to restock on my mascara.  People were polite - you have to be polite in business or you don't get any business - but they seemed to open up more when I looked them in the face and took the time to think and reply and be kind in return.

I know I am a naive creature.  I combine a paradoxical mix of starched cynicism and unflagging naivete, and I am aware of that.  Yet I am always pleasantly surprised by a show of friendliness in other people, and I think people, likewise, are pleasantly surprised by a show of friendliness from me.  My sister-in-law calls me a free spirit and I try to take that sunshine with me whenever I go out.  People seem to brighten up because of it.  I make a point of looking at them like they are real human beings that actually matter in the scheme of the universe, I make a point of asking them how they are as if how they are really matters.  It doesn't matter what they look like or where they work, how good or bad a day they are having: I could make it better just by smiling and being my sincere, naive little self. 

I find it hard not to smile when I am out in public: it's my default setting.  And I think people see that.  I think that might be why they come up and talk to me.  In Rosemary Sutcliff's Bonnie Dundee, John Graham of Claverhouse is described as one who looked at you as if you were the only man in the world.  I want to be like that.  I want to look a person in the face as if they were the only person in the world, smile as if that smile were for them alone, and really mean what I say.  It could be I restore their faith in the basic kindliness of man to man - could be I show them a charity only heaven's kind knows.  Whatever it is, they do matter, and though I may not see them again this side of Judgment Day, I want them to know that, if only for one moment.  I want them to know that to at least one person on the planet their existence was not taken for granted.

It will never hurt you to be kind.  It may be the thing that heals them.