Jennifer Freitag's Blog, page 47

Day Four {Inspiration}

There is always a sort of snag in these subjects, isn't there? No matter how easy any given day may be, there is always some caveat thrown in that will gum up the works. I'm having the same problem with today's question of Lerowen's fifteen-day writer's challenge. To really adequately answer today's question, I would have to yoink the answer away from another day. This calls for some cunning. Cunning which I'm not at all sure I have.

day four: an author or novel that has inspired your writing style

Anyone who knows me knows the answer to this question. But, like any answer to any human question, it's complex. It's very likely that you could say my writing style really came into being around the time and after my mother read The Eagle of the Ninth to me, and when I began to pick up the other Aquila stories (The Silver Branch, Frontier Wolf, the Lantern Bearers, Dawn Wind, the Shield Ring). There are lots of excellent historical fictions out there, books that accurately handle the time-period and impress the reader with the vividness of the story. But the Aquila stories (along with others of the author's works) not only brought to life these Roman times, they put me in them. When I read those books, I was there, breathing those cool British winds, seeing those changeful Northern skies, waiting in the twilight or the fog or the bottleneck of some red-fern Scottish glen for someone to come meet me. I was there like a book has never made me there before. Everything stood out in stark relief: the sedge-grasses that Flavius pushed aside to a slip of wind, the tribesman's new collar of heron-feathers on his war-spear, the tinkle of silver bells, the splendor of a white stallion, the hard, warm Cumbrian fells under Freya's bare feet. Everything was real. There was always a sort of prancing lightness to the prose, the way light shines off a knife when you turn it - and the darkness of the knife, too.

I loved that. More than any other style I had ever read, I loved that. The light-and-darkness of the knife, the rushing beat of ducks' wings at dawn, the scarlet yelp of a horn - that is what those stories are to me. Everything was clear and present and stark on my vision. Rome was suddenly no longer interesting history, she was alive. Britain was no longer a confusing darkness of prehistoric tribes, she was alive too. They were alive and came together, in their scarlet and their gold, in their silver and their blue. I came to feel the union where they met and became one; I felt the difference where they met and did not touch. Everything was real to me.

And I wanted to write like that, more than anything. I wondered if anyone would understand what I was saying in such a style (elemental, Megan calls it), but, I thought, if I could understand then others could understand too. I had a story to tell and a story-telling way to do it. The Shadow Things is a child of my most beloved style. It came surprisingly easy to me, as if I had always been meant to write that way, as if I had always thought that way in my inside self, and it was just waiting to get out.

Day Three {First Times}

There they lie in Ilwëa forgotten,
There they lie asleep.
And no one shall awake them,
Nor stir their shifting dreams.
There they lie with all their
Secrets scatter'd round:
Their books, their jewels,
Their histories engraven on their shadow-beds.
In Ilwëa they lay down,
From Ilwëa they shall never rise
Though all weep for them.
One day Ilwëa shall go down into the Sea,
One day it shall be lost in the Deep
From which Enmella and Midwëo were made.
Let the Sea be silent of the Noliam,
Of Uoi and Yusala, of the mighty sons
Born of the Armelfar.
All time for them has ended.
Let the names of the Noliam
Wash clean from all the forsaken tombs.
There they lie in Ilwäea forgotton.
There they lie asleep.

day three: your first attempt at writing

It's Day Three of Lerowen's fifteen-day writer's challenge. This is probably the most embarrassing of the fifteen questions, considering a writer's skills (we hope) improve over time. Going back and digging up original works from the dark early days is like taking a good long look at the stuff we wore in the early nineties...

Well, I don't actually have my very first piece of writing any more, and it has been so many years that I don't remember it very well. To its credit, I seem to recall that it had some kind of plot, but that's about as much credit as I can give it. So, for the sake of clarity, I'm going to fix on the piece that really launched me into a comfortable world of writing. This piece is a fantasy weighing in around 317,734 words (not including the massive amount of history, backstory, and poetry that went along with it) and styling itself under the title of The Starling. Of all my pieces of writing up to that point, this was the first that really pulled together the things I had learned scrawling my more imaginary works, the works that were really just the writer playing with her characters. The Starling was its own work, my first real piece of stand-alone fiction, the first piece I had written that I could really (in a creator's way) be proud of.

To poke some fun at myself, I have to say that I'm a real American story. I taught myself how to write, I pulled myself up by my own No. 2 pencils. The Starling was my first independent work, but in its own way it was still just another exercise as I honed my skills to make a publishable work. I'm still a little proud of The Starling, though the poor thing bears the tell-tale markings of amateur fantasy.

the characters

The plot is very character-driven, so it would make most sense to touch on the characters for explanation. With elves and humans, and brownies and stars, I had quite a cast to manage. My country-at-the-world's-end was populated by lots of different folk, and a sort of country that is fading out of its primal magical state. But a bit of magic still remained in veins and pockets, and my main character, you might say, was one of those. He was a Starling, a half-breed, part human and part star. Auran Starling was a lot of fun to write. He was a man in his late twenties, early thirties with a young wife and a nephew, he was very close to the land and had a good hand with horses, and in general he was a very strong, quiet individual. His orphaned nephew Cirdil was almost the spitting image of his uncle, having grown up with almost no other standard to go by. The two were peas in a pod. Into this pea-pod I tossed another fellow, a follow-the-leader sort of young man who attached himself willingly to Auran's shadow; I tossed an elf, I tossed a brownie, I tossed another starling. Through all the shifting peoples of my countries, these folk stayed the course together and, though primitive as far as my current skills are concerned, it was enjoyable to see them come together into a single whole with a single purpose.

the single purpose

So, what's the point of all this, hmm? The point goes back, as any epic will, to a happenstance in the past. If Hel had decided to take over Asgard, it would have been similar to Haierel, a fallen star, getting it into her mind that she wanted to take not only her revenge for (from her point of view) past wrongs, but wanting to take everything. She was my cruelest, most calculating, most wicked and womanish character I had written before. When Auran signed up to take on the job of dissuading her from her goals or putting a knife in the hollow of her throat, he was not fully aware of what he was getting into. She was my first stab at the Infernal Venus, and she did not turn out so very badly, either.

This was my world-building story, my chance to get the hang of writing a new world, new peoples, new cultures, new histories and mythologies and whatnot, so on, and further. It's 317,734 plus words of serious abandon, and those 317,734 plus words, I think, really paid off. I still look on Auran and Cirdil, Aeofern and Kelan, and Brownie, with fondness. They taught me a lot.

Star would fall and Starling rise,
Clearing the dark and clouded skies.
Night will fade and dayspring come,
And Fire give way to light of Sun...

Day Two {Male Author}

Looking over Lerowen's list of subjects (that sounds rather royal, doesn't it?) I think today's topic may prove to be the hardest for me. It's another matter of picking out a favourite, and I always supposed that you must have a very few favourites, or else the word "favourite" doesn't mean much anymore. All the same, it is hard.

By way of brief introduction, Lerowen on Eat...Sleep...Write has put up a writers' challenge for the first two weeks of August (I love the word "august"). Fifteen topics are given, to be written about on their corresponding days. Feel free to jump in, and have fun!

day two: your favourite male author

I know it is going to sound terribly cliche and of-the-band-wagonny, but it's the truth. The award of My Favourite Male Author has to go to none other than Mr. C.S. Lewis. It really was a difficult choice; a lot of the authors I read are male, and as I have no patience with books that I don't enjoy, invariably I end up with a list of authors (males included) which I happen to like. It got down to the wire and became a wretched struggle between Lewis and Tolkien, because the two (you may notice) were such good friends and so influenced each other's works that while I was reading Roverandom I was thinking to myself how the author put the same sort of things in his Space Trilogy...before recollecting that two separate men wrote those works.

"Sehnsucht is that unnameable something, desire for which pierces us like a rapier at the smell of a bonefire, the sound of wild ducks flying overhead, the title of The Well at the World's End, the opening lines of Kubla Khan, the morning cobwebs in late summer, or the noise of falling waves."

So, it's C.S. Lewis. I must admit right off that I don't agree with everything Lewis had to say and do and write: he wasn't infallible, but that's his affair. By and large he resonates with me, and he has a way (he, though dead, yet speaks) of pointing out the so totally obvious in such a sublime and beautiful way that you wonder why you had never seen it so before. He could see, in a human's dim but hopeful way, the thing that Plato talked about, the Sublime behind the Base, the Real Thing; as the song points out, the shadow proves the sunshine, and shadow things meant light to him. To him, everything is lingering on the edge of morning, the birds are chirping hesitantly, there is a tell-tale creep of primrose on our nursery-room wall. Any minute now the sun is going to rise. We all anticipate the end of the world and the beginning of all things new, the putting of all things to right, but Lewis caught the ecstasy of it, the uncertain but hopeful twittering of the birds - and he can always transfer that magic to me when I read him.

"There was a real railway accident," said Aslan softly. "Your father and your mother and all of you are - as you used to call it in the Shadow-Lands - dead. The term is over: the holidays have begun. The dream is ended: this is the morning."

And as He spoke, He no longer looked to them like a lion; but the things that began to happen after that were so great and beautiful that I cannot write them. And for us, this is the end of all the stories, and we can most truly say that they all lived happily ever after. But for them it was only the beginning of the real story. All their life in this world and all their adventures in Narnia had been only the cover and the title page: now at last they were beginning Chapter One of the Great Story, which no one on earth has read: which goes on for ever: in which every chapter is better than the one before.


what I have read

The Chronicles of Narnia (7)
The Space Trilogy (3)
Poems
The Great Divorce
The Screwtape Letters (and Screwtape Proposes a Toast)
The Weight of Glory (and Other Essays)
The World's Last Night (and Other Essays)
Til We Have Faces
An Experiment in Criticism
The Abolition of Man
Reflections on the Psalms

Day One {Favourites}

It's day one of the writer's edition fifteen-day challenge. The challenge is hosted by Lerowen on Eat...Sleep...Write, and will cover the first fifteen days (approximately first two weeks) of August. Each day is given a specific subject; participants post each day on the day's topic, if at all possible and, if at all possible, have fun!

day one: your favourite character you have written

I've written a lot of folk in the years that I've been honing my craft, but hands down I would have to say that my favourite so far is Rhodri from my novel Adamantine. The moment he stepped onto the scene I fell in love with his character. I don't want to give a lot away as far as the plot is concerned, which will be difficult because Rhodri is intricately entwined with the plot of Adamantine. Suffice it to say, he's deep, he's layered, he can be very melancholy as well as unusually and almost startlingly tender. At first glance he's a dark splatter of paradoxes, but the more you get to know him - the more I get to know him - the more he makes sense. I love all my characters, wicked ones included, but Rhodri is the one with whom I have always been comfortable. I'm always learning something new about him, there's always something deeper or tangential to learn about his character, but even with that constant changing he is always the same, and I'm always comfortable being there with him and writing him. I feel safe when I write him. He takes me outside of myself, beyond myself; he's a sort of frank, mocking voice of reason that helps me through even other works. You know, we writers never out-grew our imaginary friends, we just get paid to write about them. So, of all the people I have written, I have to say that the genius of Rhodri is my closest and best friend.

"I Aim To Misbehave"

[Bjorn] shouldered in and out among them as though they had been so much undergrowth, until he found Erland in their midst. He went straight up to Erland, without fuss or stir of any sort, and hit him between the eyes as hard as ever he could.

fight!

Most of us are bound to have some kind of scrap or another turn up in our stories. For some perverse reason, writers like giving their characters a scar or two (it builds character!), and readers like holding their breath, waiting for the outcome of the action. "There need to be more battles!" my father exhorts.

I'm not going to go into the psychology (or psychosis) behind having fights in novels. Whether or not you do have fights is dictated by circumstances and the nature of the characters. On the one hand you might have, say, a Bjorn Bjornson from Rosemary Sutcliff's The Shield Ring, who slugs his opponent dead in the face for calling him a coward. In his culture, calling a fellow a coward had much more serious connotations than it necessarily does today, and the reader, picking up on that, feels a thrill as Erland goes down with a bloodied face. On the other hand, you might have a Beowulf, a man from the same kind of culture, politely passing Unferth's backhanded insult off as merely the effects of wine so that (though he knew he could beat Unferth in a heartbeat) he would not cause a stir in his father-friend's hall. The reader, picking up on that magnanimous gesture, cheers for Beowulf.

The insults, the culture, even the men (though very different in age) are very similar in both stories. So what decided that the one should fight, and the other not? What makes the one outcome as believable as the other? I'm going to sound like a broken record: know your characters. If you were to set two characters, very similar to each other, in similar situations, with similar provocation, could you be sure that they would not react perfectly alike?

The problem is, I have found, that the writer is too often caught up in the action with the character. This sort of catching up is all very well and good for a reader, because that's the purpose. But when you're trying to write a decent squabble, you can't let the blurry red of a fight get between you and the black ink on the page. Take a moment to find yourself before you plunge in, if you have to. On the other side of the coin (heads and ships, if it's Roman) if the writer is able to feel that wild buzz of excitement as the words spin off the pen, or the keys rattle beneath the fingers, chances are the reader will be able to feel it too. But the blurry red should probably take a back bench - that sort of mindset isn't conducive for clear, level-headed choreographing.

After that, put on the character's boots. Even if the whole fight is being narrated from a third party's view, getting into the place and mind of the person potentially throwing the punches helps dictate the outcome of the scene. Again, it all comes back to knowing your character. If I were writing Bjorn, I would be stalking along with a grey sick feeling in my stomach, and the annoying blurry scarlet of fury beginning to swallow up my vision until all I could see was Erland's face...but the whole section is told from Freya's view, a third person altogether. If I were writing Beowulf (that sounds horribly presumptuous), I might feel that giddy golden uprush of mead and mead-smell mingled with the firewood scent, and stand a little taller over the others than usual, smiling gently down at Unferth in a knowing sort of way, a laughing, knowing sort of way, and brush off the man's words as a man might brush off a bit of plover-down from his sleeve...though the whole scene is told as from a third person's view.

if they fight

There are scores of ways to fight, whether physically or verbally or covertly. Keep in mind that a man usually has a good idea of how to swing a fist, whereas a woman typically flings herself into the fray like a cat. A man can crush with his words, but a woman can nag and chip and wear and grind (or scream like the devil stepped on Tinker's tail). A man might stab you in the back, but they say poison is a woman's weapon. These are typical situations. Please, please, please don't have your characters use martial arts if they have never learned it. In the film "Serenity" good-guy Malcolm Reynolds goes up against the sinister Operative...and gets sorely beaten. A good story-teller won't suddenly give Malcolm fantastic skills with which to at least match the highly-trained Operative; no, Malcolm's bar-room knuckle-sandwiches, appropriate for the unsteady brawling of back-moon saloons, can't compete with the honed precision of the Operative's offensive moves. Keep it real - but also, if you don't intend to have your character die, give him a way of escape: it was the woman Inara who put black powder in the incense and effectively caused a diversion to get away.

if they don't fight

What tips the balance the other way? What smooths the hackles - if the hackles are smoothed at all? Two characters of mine, always at each other's throats, never actually come to blows. The one is far too small (and knows it) to stand a chance, and continues to not only prompt but diffuse the fury in his opponent. On a basic level, they don't use the same weapons and can't quite meet in a fight: the one is used to employing his physical attributes, the other has always relied on his wits. Though a fight is always pending, it can never quite break: it has no outlet. But people are not static: keep in mind that such a storm must break somehow: your characters as well as your plot will determine which way the two characters will fall out: either together or apart.

hurrah! for the good weapons that keep the war-god's land

If your characters fight, how do they fight? Each different character is bound to fight a little differently: if fighting is a key point of your story (a real to-the-death fight, not just a scrap of fists) you'll probably want to know the answer to this. What sort of weapon would your character's history and lifestyle have made familiar to him? In a story, you have the opportunity to choose which weapon best suits your character's personality. Keep in mind that bows take not only practice to fire accurately, but time to build up the appropriate muscles to draw. A sword is a mighty hunk of metal to be swinging around all day: even a hero's arm is bound to get tired. My fairy is unlikely to snatch up a shield and an axe and hope to have any luck with them; my big brute Catti is unlikely to pick up a bow (girlish weapons, his people call them, but perhaps only because they could never make a decent compact one) except perhaps to beat someone's brains out with it. My fairy, if inclined to fight, fights like a dance: light on his feet and quick; my Catti, when he is fighting, fights like thunder: with a bang and a boom that will knock you right over. People are of such varying temperaments and sizes, they will all come at a brawl a little differently. Keep this in mind.

the peacemaker

"They have never seen my anger, for I have never been angry before. But now I have come to the end of my patience, and now there must be justice. Now there must be justice; there may yet be mercy, but first there must be justice and a putting of all things to right."

The mark of an immature mind, and a cliche character, is that at the slightest provocation a person will fly off the handle-bars into rage. This is very childish and, unless this is a conscious point of the plot, this should probably be avoided as much as possible. Folk can go to the grocery store and listen to nap-less, short-tempered children crying if they want to experience this sort of thing.

The peacemaker is probably the most difficult character to write. By peacemaker, I don't mean "It's not going to help, having a row between you two." I mean someone with the guts and grit and wisdom and wherewithal to wrestle an explosive situation into tranquility. My mother used to tell us, "Do what makes for peace," and I have never forgotten that. It isn't a passive resistance to be irritated, it's an active and benevolent force. Sometimes it has to be a very strong force: the airforce didn't create the intercontinental missile "The Peacekeeper" for nothing. The peacemaker, whether by physical exertion, by rhetoric, or by simple presence, is the person who keeps the tapestry from snarling as it's woven together. These are such characters as Bilbo (The Hobbit), Muggles (The Gammage Cup), and Hwin (The Horse and His Boy): strong, gentle characters with surprisingly well-tempered backbone and courage. They are, I think, the most difficult character to write, but the most rewarding as well.

My father once told my brother (years ago, when we were all much younger than we are now, and the earth was young and the sun was hotter, and the light out of Elvenhome could be seen on the western horizon on Midsummer's Eve), "I don't care if you end a fight, but I don't ever want to hear that you started one." Know how to pick your fights, and how to fight them when you do - and, furthermore, learn how to diffuse them with dexterity.

"Don't much care for fancy parties. Too rough."

Beautiful People - Bunny

I know I already did my official Beautiful People post for Eikin Thrasirson, but on a whim I decided to bang out the answers to the past several months' questions for a new character of mine. I've been concentrating my energies on editing Adamantine, but just to keep my creative juices flowing I've been dabbling in some minor stories. In the spirit of that dabbling, I answered (most of) the Beautiful People questions for my fairy girl -

Bunny

She was a serious child, a serious, black-haired, dark-eyed child with flame-sparks of blue and orange in her black wings. She had her father's uncanny disposition and, uncannily, her mother's laugh. She had the gypsy-witch way about her, and her uncle said she would be a wise woman.

1. What is your character's name?

Bunny.

2. Does her name have any special meaning?

Not in the least. Her father calls her "Bunny baby."

3. Does your character have a methodical or disorganized personality?

Bunny is very organized, though by no means minimalist. She enjoys having a lot of familiar, tidy things around her to make a sort of buffer between herself and the world. She likes feeling like a bird in its nest.

4. Does she think inside herself more than she talks out loud to her friends? (More importantly, does she have any friends?)

Bunny is extremely introspective. She rarely talks, to herself or to others. She only really began talking to other people around the age of five, though she knew perfectly well how to long before then.

5. Is there something she is afraid of?

She is afraid of the dark.

6. Does she write, dream, sing, or dance?

Bunny can do all of these things passably, but she isn't particularly interested in any of them except singing.

7. What is her favourite book (or genre of book)?

The Lay of Colour and Glass, an old epic poem. The author is unknown.

8. Who is her favourite author and who/what inspires her?

She has no favourite author. If pressed for an answer, she might offer the Holy Spirit. Who can argue with that, anyway?

9. What is her favourite flavour of ice cream?

There is no ice cream. Bunny has never had it. She probably wouldn't like it if she was able to try.

10. Favourite season of the year?

Bunny enjoys autumn best. The richness of colour, the coolness, the feeling of the year lingered on the edge of twilight and all the living bustle of harvest resonate with her. She practically drinks the season in.

11. How old is she?

At the moment, Bunny is a very regal seventeen.

12. What does she do in her spare time?

Bunny has no spare time. She is always doing something, whether sewing or reading or writing, cooking or practicing the harp, or thinking. She is always busy in some way or another.

13. Does she see the big picture, or does she live only in the moment?

If you think of swallows flying to and from their holes under the eaves, that is how Bunny thinks. She is always going from the moment to the big picture and back again—like a weaver's shuttle, she ties it all up together. She possesses a good touch of second sight, so this pattern of thought comes naturally to her.

14. Is she a perfectionist?

No, not really. She is very attentive to detail and painfully desirous of doing a good job (on occasion, when she was younger, she would get very angry when she was unable to grasp a subject) but perfection is impossible.

15. What does her handwriting look like? (Round, slanted, curly, skinny, sloppy, neat, decorative, etc.?)

Bunny has a very artistic eye and a good hand; her writing is considered some of the finest of the upper echelon.

16. What is her favourite animal?

Though something of a natural whisperer, and though almost any animal can find itself at ease around her, Bunny is most fond of horses.

17. Does she have any pets?

No, no pets.

18. Does she have any siblings, how many, and where does she fit in?

Bunny has two other siblings, both older: a sister first, and then a brother.

19. Does she have a "life verse," and if so, what is it?

No, not really.

20. Favourite writing utensil?

An ink pen.

21. What type of laugh does she have?

Contrarily, when Bunny does laugh, it's a very sharp laugh. She is so very soft-spoken, and so rarely-spoken, that her laugh is a little startling. She sounds exactly like her mother.

22. Who is her best friend?

Bunny is not naturally given to friendliness. Strangers often find her a little cold and reserved. But she is fiercely loyal to her family; her father and her fiancé are her dearest companions.

23. What is her family like?

Read the book of Ruth and conjure up in your mind what Boaz's estate must have been like. Her immediate family, her "uncle" and "aunt" and "cousins," and the people under and around them are all very close-knit and loyal to each other.

24. Does she believe in fairies?

This question is not applicable.

25. Does she like hedgehogs?

Bunny has never seen a hedgehog. I couldn't say if she would like them or not; she would probably be ambivalent.

26. What is her favourite kind of weather?

A cool, golden autumn day with the wind up, either smelling of salt or cut hay, depending on where she is.

27. Does she have a good sense of humour? What kind is it (slapstick, wit, sarcasm, etc.)?

Bunny has a good sense of humour, but I don't remember the last time she exercised it. She isn't often a joking sort.

28. How did she do in school, or any kind of educations she might have had?

Bunny did very well in the theory aspects of her education; she has an extensive knowledge of history, biology, mathematics, economics, music theory, architecture, and astronomy.

29. Any strange hobbies?

As an aside, Bunny makes a study of the body's ability to survive and manage pain. She can be unusually morbid in her queries and this, too, often puts strangers off.

30. Does she like to go outside?

Oh yes, Bunny dislikes very much being "cooped up," as much as she likes being a bird in a comfortable nest. She is known to wander off for some time to take a walk alone.

31. Is she naturally curious?

Bunny's mind is a honey-combed shelf of knowledge and she is constantly putting new facts and theories in it. She finds just about everything fascinating, though you might not know it to look at her. She does not often get "worked up" over her interests unless she has learned something that particularly disturbs her.

32. Right-handed, or left?

Bunny is right-handed.

33. Favourite colour?

Any rich hue of red, particularly scarlet and burgundy.

34. Where is she from?

Bunny's time is divided between her family's house in town and the farm.

35. Any enemies?

A serial killer whose token is a white chess knight.

36. What are her quirks?

As I mentioned before, Bunny has the second sight, or the sixth sense, or whatever you choose to call it. It manifests itself most often to strangers through an odd, eerie feeling that they cannot explain and don't altogether like. She can usually tell if a person is any good or not merely by feeling their aura. Additionally, Bunny will occasionally dream of her parents' past.

37. What kinds of things get on her nerves?

Injustice, bigotry, cruelty, discordant music, and her father having to be away from her for a long time.

38. Is she independent, or does she need others to help out?

On the surface Bunny comes across as very independent. She has a way of moving among people without really touching them, or seeming to need them. But without her family she would be destitute, and she depends strongly on both her father and her fiancé.

39. What is her biggest secret?

Her nightmares.

40. Has she ever been in love?

Bunny loves few, but those she loves, she loves without reserve. Her fiancé and her father hold the top rank in her affections.

41. What is her comfort food?

Bunny is not really one to derive comfort from eating, though she feels most like a bird comfortably in its feathers when she is drinking a cup of tea.

42. Does she play a musical instrument? If so, what?

Bunny can play the piano a little, but she is most at home with the harp. She is told she can conjure a beautiful tune with it.

43. What colour are her eyes? Hair?

Bunny is the image of a gypsy child. She has rich ruddy-black hair and dark eyes that will turn amber in the firelight.

44. Where is her favourite place to be?

Walking hand in hand through a country lane with her fiancé Linden, or perched on her father's lap.

45. What are some of her dreams or goals?

Practically, Bunny wants to be a good daughter, a good wife, a good mother, and the pride of the royal court. A little more fantastically, she dreams of holding everything that is beautiful in the world in her arms to soak up the light of it, and to nurture it.

46. Does she enjoy sports?

Bunny enjoys horseback riding and games of chess.

47. What is her favourite flower or plant?

The guelder rose, or "water elder." It puts out great clouds of white flowers and its fruit are just the rich sort of redness that she loves.

The Truth About Jenny

This past Saturday evening my husband, my father, my brother, and my sister and I were all congregated in the paternal living room, chatting. The chat ranged mostly through various articles of work between my father and my brother, and at one point they touched upon the difficulty of getting the crew to habitually wear hearing protection. At this point, having a story, I felt the need to chime in.

A few weeks ago Mr Knightley had my husband, my brother, and my sister and I all out to his place to shoot. And not with cameras. Mr Knightley has a beautiful sheaf of firearms that most of us were eager to learn how to operate. (Hudson posted in more geeky terms about it here.) I was kind of leery about it at first. I'm not really a firearms sort of girl. I prefer swords and spears, bows and arrows, though personally, as far as self-defense is concerned, I'd rather go in for a River Tam or Edward Elric sort of thing.

Not like that's happening any time soon.

As an aside, I had barrel-loads of fun. But in the course of the day, as we paused to reload, I took my hearing protection off. They were hot and sweaty and giving me a headache, and I wanted a break. Even with the hearing protection on, the guns were loud, so there was no doubt in my mind about putting them back on. But I had forgot about them, and someone else stepped up to fire while I wasn't wearing the muffs.

The gun went off.

I thought lightning had exploded in my head.

I thought the heavens had been cracked in two like Moses' tablets.

I reached for my hearing protection.

I finished animatedly telling my story of audible torment, along with its pertinent moral, and I was ready to let the conversation lapse back into the subject of work. The conversation did begin again, sort of stragglingly, but within a minute in capered my five-year-old niece. She's a very sweet girl, extremely precocious, and very much her own person. She had been in the hallway listening to my story, and she ran in to take the floor, commanding our attention.

"Why did Aunt Jenny take her hearing protection off?" she asked us, getting into her joking stance.

There was a brief and reverential silence while we all waited for her to deliver the punchline of her joke.

"Because she's silly!"

Beautiful People - Eikin Thrasirson

Once a month Sky and [Georgie] will be posting a list of 10 questions for you to answer about your characters. You can use the same character every month, or choose a new one for each set of questions. Your call. You can answer all the questions, just one, or however many you have the time and energy to answer. Just go for it and have fun.

It's another session of (you guessed it) Beautiful People. I'm enjoying doing these oddment snap-shots of folk; they are entertaining, and they don't give too much away. This is the July/August installment and I'm sorry that July and August haven't been split into separate sessions. Oh well, too much of a good thing, and all that.

Ladies and gentlefolk (please leave your swords by the door, thanks) I regret to say that, much as he disliked it last month, Rhodri is a better sport at this sort of thing than -

Eikin Thrasirson

1. What is his biggest secret?
If he told, it wouldn't be a secret anymore.

2. Has he ever been in love?
Eikin is betrothed; and yes, he does love his girl.

3. What is his comfort food?
Mead. You can try disillusioning him and telling him it isn't foodstuff.

4. Does he play a musical instrument? If so, what?
When the common harp comes around he puts his paws to it, but he's not an exceptional player.

5. What colour are his eyes? Hair?
Eikin's eyes are blue, his "hair" is blond, and his fur is tawny.

6. Does he have any pets?
The closest thing Eikin has to a pet is his mount Kielk, but though he cares for his dragon, he would not consider it a pet. If you asked him, he would probably be confused about the term. In general, his people do not have "pets."

7. Where is his favourite place to be?
Again, Eikin might not understand you if you asked him this. Simple-minded, though by no means blunt, Eikin's comfort usually comes from his mind. Wherever he is, whatever he is doing, if it seems good to him, that is his favourite place.

8. What are some of his dreams or goals?
Eikin has fairly typical goals. He has no ambition, at least. He is already foremost among his village's warriors and he wants only to maintain a good name, marry a good girl, and raise a brood of good children.

9. Does he enjoy sports?
As a boy Eikin enjoyed the rough-housing sorts of games that strengthen youngsters, but having grown up such sports have been displaced by the real thing: hunting and war. He enjoys both.

10. What is his favourite flower or plant?
Eikin isn't a sentimental type, but he likes the marsh marigold best (his people call them gullinblobs) for its hardiness and small prettiness, and its frequency to show up among the less hospitable places. Being of an oppressed people, Eikin sympathizes with the flower.

A grim, impersonal chap? Maybe. Just wait until you get to know him better. He's got a heart of gold and, like the ground beneath your feet, he will always be there to catch you.

Letters Within Letters

In the past year I have had the opportunity to revive a dying art, the art of letter-writing. With telephones and email, and chat rooms, the purpose of the hand-written, stamped letter appears to have faded away. But it hasn't. Unless you have experienced a good, thoughtful, loving letter, a letter from someone you can honestly call a friend, I don't think I can explain to you the joy of letters. It is not something that can be explained. You have to feel it for yourself.

You may remember that Anna is among my few contacts. If you did not know or did not remember, you know now. She far exceeds me in intellect and faith, and I'm enormously glad to be able to putter in her footsteps.

She recently borrowed a book by Dorothy Sayers called Letters to a Diminished Church: Passionate Arguments for the Relevance of Christian Doctrine and, coming across several beautiful passages, she filled her latest letter to me with them. I do not have Sayers' book (sad to say) but I have that letter, and as I fully believe sound Christian doctrine to be relevant, and as I believe the passages Anna copied down are potent, I would like to share them.

"We are constantly assured that the churches are empty because preachers insist too much upon doctrine - dull dogma, as people call it. The fact is the precise opposite. It is the neglect of dogma that makes for dullness. The Christian faith is the most exciting drama that ever staggered the imagination of man - and the dogma is the drama."

and again

"So that is the outline of the official story - the tale of the time when God was the underdog and got beaten, when he submitted to the conditions he had laid down and became a man like the men he had made, and the men he had made broke him and killed him. This is the dogma we find so dull - this terrifying drama of which God is the victim and hero.

"If this is dull, then what, in Heaven's name, is worthy to be called exciting? The people who hanged Christ never, to do them justice, accused him of being a bore - on the contrary, they thought him too dynamic to be safe. It has been left for later generations to muffle up that shattering personality and surround him with an atmosphere of tedium. We have very efficiently pared the claws of the Lion of Judah, certified him "meek and mild," and recommended him for pale curates and pious old ladies. To those who knew him, however, he in no way suggests a milk-and-water person; they objected to him as a dangerous firebrand."

and still further

"That God should play the tyrant over man is a dismal story of unrelieved oppression; that man should play the tyrant over man is the usual dreary record of human futility; but that man should play the tyrant over God and find him a better man than himself is an astonishing drama indeed. Any journalist, hearing of it for the first time, would recognize it as news; those who did hear it for the first time actually called it news, and good news at that; though we are likely to forget that the word Gospel ever meant anything so sensational.

"Perhaps the drama is played out now, and Jesus is safely dead and buried. Perhaps. It is ironical and entertaining to consider that at least once in the world's history those words might have been spoken with complete conviction, and that was upon the eve of the Resurrection."

in conclusion

"Somehow or other, and with the best intentions, we have shown the world the typical Christian in the likeness of a crashing and rather ill-natured bore - and this in the Name of the One who assuredly never bored a soul in those thirty-three years during which he passed through this world like a flame."

This, as Abigail pointed out in The Truth of a Fairytale, is what story we hold to, what actions define our faith, what deeds of consummation God wrought on which we pin our hope of glory. It is not dull. Faint whispers, so faint they were hardly heard, and never understood, of such a thing were the preamble to this drama, but who would have believed it?

Well, we do.

Lounging In A Pink Armchair

You'll never guess, so I'll tell you. First of all, let it be known that Jenny isn't much good at all with the whole writing a book review thing. If you want that sort of thing, you'll have to go to Abigail, because Abigail is all analytical and thoughtful (if it doesn't involve The Last of the Mohicans) and she is good at reviewing books sensibly.

I am not.

So let it be known that the following passages are my thoughts about (probably incoherent) and reactions to (undoubtedly hysterical) the new self-published release The Mark of the Star. I will endeavour not to spoil anything for those of you who haven't read it.

Liz Patterson, supreme ruler and sovereign of the blog around the corner Awake, is a young woman about my age (probably exactly my age, but I'm daft about that sort of thing) and is the author of this fantasy novel. I'm afraid I made her acquaintance just at the tail-end of her grueling work with her novel The Mark of the Star, but nevertheless I was pleased to discover a sensible (unlike myself) young author (like myself) sporting a title to her name. She posted occasional snippets from The Mark of the Star on her blog, and I would read them patiently (reading on the computer is a dreadful nuisance to my eyeballs), and think to myself, "Mmhmm! I must get this tome in a more physical state. It deserves further investigation."

And, at length (I came in on the tail-end of all this drama, you remember), the manuscript was delivered to Lulu and Lulu dutifully delivered the physical tome to Liz. The book was real! It was for sale! I could sympathize with the author's ecstasy, having endured the thrills of holding one's own book too. I shuffled penguin-style into line and purchased my own copy. I'm fairly certain it came on a Friday afternoon to my sister's house (we purchased two copies together) for I had to wait until Saturday morning when we all met to do our weekly cleaning of our church before Abigail could give my copy to me.

The copy was beautiful. It was pristine, white, with a radiant star-design behind the bold title words. (Before any of you panic, it is still pristine and white with a radiant star-design behind its title. I haven't spilled tea on it, or anything.) The surest thing to throw me into giddiness is to hand me a beautiful new book. And I was in raptures. I had my own copy of a fellow writer's book, brand new, beautifully designed, with a whole new world full of strange new characters for me to meet. Pfft, forget cleaning. I was going to read.

All right, so I didn't forget cleaning. I did my cleaning like a good girl. Unfortunately, as well as cleaning, I had other things to do, like clear the decks of all the books I was already reading at the time. But in the due course of time, I got them done, and I was free to crack open The Mark of the Star. Take a deep breath. Hush the dumb angelic choir in the background. Open the book.

Well, that's how it all started. The next thing I knew, I was being hurled through I wasn't sure what, with I didn't fully know who, caught up in a blustery whirl of action and emotion. Maybe before reading The Legends of the Guardian-King books I would have been a bit more leery of reading political-based novels, but having realized that even politics can be written well, I was happy to plunge in after Arvis Talion as she attempts to drag something living out of the dead ashes of her country. Arvis stands out among her companions as a gem in its bezel. I found her to be strong, convincing, determined, tender-hearted: a princess worthy to take a throne. In many ways I could relate to her, in some ways I could look up to her. I could relate to her depth of feeling, her steadfast love for her home; I could look up to her courageous nature, her unswerving determination to do what is right. But one must take in the bezel too, of course. Alongside our stalwart heroine is a little cast of excellent players. The antagonist (despite the fact that I offered to have my cat poop in the antagonist's shoes for revenge) was fantastic. This character was believable, motivated, almost - almost - pitiable. Arvis' friends each brought a unique but necessary element to the story. Brooding, confused, loyal, cheerful: in his or her own way, each character brings a colourful dimension to the story that made me feel at home in it. I could chime in with each of them one way or another, I could sympathize with them all, feel their excitement and pain, anxieties and peace. As Liz herself said, I could sympathize with these characters because the answer to their problems is the same as the answer to my own: God.

As for the pink armchair, I'm sorry. You'll just have to read the book to figure out what that is all about. Read it and enjoy!

book summary

What can you do when an entire country hovers on the brink of collapse and your courage is all that can save it? What can you do when your dearest friend makes the wrong choices and your love is not enough to protect him? What can you do when your blessing turns out to be a curse? When Arvis is suddenly faced with these questions, her search for answers leads her on a journey across the world. Hunted by an elusive enemy and brought low by betrayal, Arvis is forced to rise to the challenge and accept that she was set apart by the mark of the star for a reason.


(My friends and I have classified an emotion called a "literary crush," which is very difficult to explain to Outsiders, but no doubt you understand. I would just like to say that Jadev meets the requirements for me.)