Steve Shilstone's Blog, page 33

PUMPKIN DREAMS FOR HALLOWEEN

Each pumpkin secretly hopes to be

the scariest one you'll ever see.

BROOM FLIGHT

The lavender witch does like to fly

on this broom day or night across the sky.

Above Orrun Mountain or the Wide Great Sea,

her cackle is spilled with a measure of glee.

TREES

Trees are important in many a folk and fairy tale where the action often takes place deep in a forest or wood. The tree below is in my front yard, but I can imagine the shy woodlock from my story, THE WOODLOCK, scrambling up a similar tree trunk in the Woods beyond the Wood of her home.

And the tree below in a park I visit from time to time? It's a perfect fairy tale tree. I can almost see the steps in its hollow trunk leading down to a wonderland.

KAY NIELSEN

Here are Hansel and Gretel gazing at the tasty cottage in the dark forest. Kay Nielsen made this wonderful picture. He was a Danish illustrator of folk and fairy tales in the first half of the 20th century. The Hansel and Gretel witch is an important character in my story, The Carven Flute. She's waiting behind that door.

ALICE PAGES

This is the beginning of the little book C. L. Dodgson designed and wrote in his own hand for Alice Liddell and presented to her one Christmas. It is a story he made up on a summer outing with the Liddell children and was urged to write down by Alice. He called it 'Alice's Adventures Under Ground'. He expanded it later, and it became rather famous.

NAMING A CHARACTER

Jane Horrocks

The Lavender Witch

A long time ago when the very first characters from the world of Boad (It was called Fiddleebod or Fiddleeebod then) began appearing in my head, the good witch squinted at me from the unnamed little group. I knew she was muddled and would have trouble turning her thoughts into words. How did I know this? I already had an example right in front of me, taken from the British TV comedy series, Absolutely Fabulous. The delightful character of Bubble was played by the talented entertainer, Jane Horrocks. Bubble. Jane. Horrocks. Babbling Jam Hatrack. There it was, the name my first narrator, Harpo, gave to the good witch. Much later, when Harpo went blind and needed an assistant to be his scribe, that assistant, Lace, revealed to us the witch's true name, Babba Ja Harick.

STEERPIKE

I nominate this fellow as the greatest villain in all of literature. He stalks and dominates the pages of the first two volumes of the surreal medieval Gormenghast Trilogy by Mervyn Peake. His name is Steerpike. "His face was pale like clay and save for his eyes, mask-like. These eyes were set very close together, and were small, dark red, and of startling concentration." Peake was a great admirer of Charles Dickens, and I wonder if Steerpike was named in honor of Steerforth, the most worthy villain of Dickens' David Copperfield.

SCRAPS

Scraps, the Patchwork Girl, drawn by John R. Neill, is prominently featured in Ruth Plumly Thompson's 1927 Oz book, The Gnome King of Oz. I borrowed Plumly as a name for the Earth girl Bekka meets later in her chronicles because I particularly loved Ruth Plumly Thompson's Oz books when I was a young fellow. Why? Because Scraps is chosen by the Golden Spool of Succession to be the new Queen of the Quilties when Cross Patch, the old Queen, goes to pieces – extremely small pieces, too. What happens when a Quilty goes to pieces? Relatives or friends '…sweep up the scraps and put them away in a tidy scrap-bag and in ten years or so he comes out of the bag as good as ever.' What does Scraps say when she is abducted and brought to Patch in the hilly Winkie country of Oz? 'You villain ragman, Take me back, How dare you hurl, Me in a sack?' Who and what must she encounter to escape the unpleasant task of being Queen of the Quilties and get back to Emerald City? An oztrich, Grumpy bear, a boy from Philadelphia by the name of Peter, the magician Kuma Party, Wumbo, the Wonder Worker, Ruggedo the Gnome King, Tune Town, the Sultan of Suds, Shampoozle, the Scissor Bird and Piecer and Scrapper. Spending a few hours with Ruth Plumly Thompson's imagination and wit remains a delight.

SUMMER TO WINTER

In the Woods Beyond the Wood, where Bekka travels in THE WOODLOCK, there are only two seasons, summer and winter. The transition from summer to winter and winter to summer lasts but a few moments. The riot of summer color on flowers, stems, hedges, trees, branches, leaves, roots, fades to winter white. The winter white ghosts on flowers, stems, hedges, trees, branches, roots, leaves, blush to color. Illustrated above is the change from winter white to summer color on the rainbow ivy climbing the pink walls of Blossom Castle.

McELLIGOT'S POOL

That book right there turned me into a voracious reader. A boy drops his line into a little pool and imagines all of the fantastic fish he might catch. That's it, simple and wonderful. I am still a fan. Around the same time I was captivated by THE 500 HATS OF BARTHOLOMEW CUBBINS, a Dr. Seuss tale not written in rhyme. Well, of course I had to honor Dr. Seuss with an anagram in one of my stories. That's how Dre Suss, a shapeshifter appearing in ZOM FALBU, came to be named.