"How Poorly You Have Sketched My Nature!"

I've been tagged! I didn't realize it at the time. I had to be told. I didn't feel anything. But apparently I have been really, truly tagged, and I'm really, truly flattered. Rachel, from The Inkpen Authoress, realizing the difficulty of engaging lookers-on when writing a story, got it into her head to put together a list of questions for any current works in progress that will help both lookers-on and writers to better be acquainted with their novels. She tagged me, and if I could just warm my fingers enough so I don't fear snapping them off while I type, I'll try to answer these questions. In case there was any confusion, I am doing

Plenilune

"You might call it that," Rupert said.

1. Who are the main characters?

Main characters, ah, gee… Of course you will have met Margaret Coventry. You haven't? She's my main character, a stiff, proper, if feisty young English lady of 1844. Other main characters include Rupert de la Mare, the suitor she does not want and cannot escape; Dammerung, a legendary war-lord who seems to have gone and got himself killed; Skander Rime, a cousin and neighbour; and a cheeky fox. I might add in old Hobden, but he wavers between the lines of first and secondary characters.

2. How did you get the idea for this story?

Get. Get? This one forced its existence upon me and then left me to yank some kind of shape for it out of my mind. As I finished up Adamantine I realized Adamant Firethorne's cousin needed a story too. I had practically wedged myself into a corner with the need to write the story, only I didn't have one. I had to make it. As my stories usually come to me in their own spates of inspiration, I'm rather proud at what my genius managed to create on the spur of an hour-long moment. And, too, I had always wanted to write this kind of story but up until that moment I had not found the proper plot in which to put my place. Now I have.

3. What genre is this story?

This is most definitely fantasy. It would be nothing short of fantastic, quite literally, if such events could occur. Alas, these spirits live only in cloven pines—er, books.

4. Describe your book in three thoughts:

Margaret trying to get home and realizing she does not know what or where home is anymore. A duel between two men that becomes a chess game on a living scale. Desperate times call for desperate measures.

5. The bit that describes an obscure piece of real life best:

Everything seemed impossibly long and far away, as though the House, like a dog in its sleep, stretched out in the night and was twice as big again as it ought to be.

6. The funniest line said by a side-character thus far:

"I am heartily sorry to meet you, Miss Coventry." The fox gave a little sniff and held out a paw, which Margaret came forward and took, feeling very surreal as she did so.

7. Your favourite piece of description:

Overhead was the bulk of earth, dark in its massiveness, the crest of it ablaze with blue light like some enormous frightened cat on All Hallows' Eve stiffened and hackled in the heavens. And beyond earth's arched figure, beyond the long rays of light that broke off its back, stair-stepped the stars of heaven: upward and deeper, so that to Margaret, who had not bothered before to look beyond the inner ring of earth, it was like looking into a pool, a deep pool, a high pool, that went on infinitely until the end of time where eternity hung its veil so that little people like herself might not look in and die.

8. Your biggest fear in the writing of this story:

My biggest fear is probably that I won't be able to capture my main characters to my satisfaction. They are so big and so bold and so important that I feel rather small in their shadows.

9. Last full sentence you wrote:

"In spring, when the Murklestrath is in full spate and the nomadic blood of the Carmarthen is too, then perhaps I go with my lord when my lord goes out to defend our borders."

10. Favourite character thus far:

Thus far. I like that caveat. Thus far. My favourite character thus far… No, I don't like this caveat any more. It's a jostle between the fox, Skander Rime, and—of all people—the secondary figure of Skander's manservant.

11. What books have been written or have you read that are similar in style and flavour to your novel?

I would like to meet someone who has read a book that hasn't been written… I don't read a lot of fantasy, and consequently my fantasies are rather straight-forward save that points here and there and usually their basic premises are impossible. The only books I can think of which I have read that bear similarities in any way to Plenilune are Rosemary Sutcliff's Knight's Fee and E. R. Eddison's The Worm Ouroboros; but even those don't help much, as they were only the critical mass which helped me launch into writing Plenilune. Hmph. Inspiration. What a tricky business.

12. If it was destined to become a book on tape, who would you wish to read it?

Oh, boy, this question has never occurred to me before. Possibly Elisabeth Sladen, but since she is dead now I may have to leave this question blank.


It is my understanding that one, once tagged, must tag others. So I had better do that, hadn't I?

Anna from Insanity Comes Naturally
Megan from Poetry of Lost Things
Mirriam from Thoughts of a Shieldmaiden


Skander pulled on the front of his tunic. "A pretty trick," he sniffed wryly.