Character Interview: Bone & Simon from Elizabeth Baxter’s “Circle Spinner and Other Tales”
I am happy to present another interview where an author was brave enough (foolish enough?) to let me step into their world for a while! Here are Bone and Simon from one of the tales in Circle Spinner and Other Tales by Elizabeth Baxter!
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Bone pulled a cigarette from behind his ear, lit it and took a long pull. As the smoke twirled out his nostrils he sat back in the chair, feeling satisfaction flood through his body. Finally, they had come up with a plan. Finally they were going to act. Finally, those thieving dwarves were going to get what was coming to them! There was a knock on the door and Simon timidly pushed it open. Bone scowled around his cigarette. What did that little pipsqueak want?
Stepping inside with no small amount of visible effort, Simon came up near Bone. Not too close, but close enough. “Do you have a minute? I wanted to ask some, you know, questions. About what’s going on here. In Fey, I mean.”
“S’pose. But if you’ve come here looking to scrounge a cigarette, you can sling your bloody hook. I’m on my last packet. Can’t get more till we get back to your world.”
“No… No… Not looking for a cigarette.” Briefly considering stepping closer, Simon elected against it. “I just wanted to know more about this place, seeing that I’ve agreed to help and all.” He paused, considering just what he wanted to know, but there seemed to be too many questions to choose from. “What’s it like here? Aside from the problems.”
“Prince Dan says I gotta be nice to you. Thinks you’re gonna save us or some such crap. You look like a long streak of nuffin to me. Hang on! Don’t go running off! I can be nice. Alright, take a seat. Hmmm. What’s Fey like? Well, it’s the best of places, if you ask me. What’s the word you’d use in your world? “Cosmapolitan?” Coz that means loads of different people living together, right? And that’s what we got. You walk down a street here and you’ll see elves and trolls and nymphs and goblins and even sometimes a centaur or two. And we got along okay, more or less. Until those blasted Minedigger dwarves changed it all, of course.”
“What happened?” Simon asked, feeling half certain he was okay still standing here. “I mean, how did it start? With the dwarves?”
“They’ve always been a damned miserable bunch those dwarves. But mostly they kept to themselves, up in their mountain cities where they could squabble and feud till their hearts’ content. That was fine until a few years ago when the blasted Minedigger clan took over. Not sure what happened, but there’s rumours of some sort of bloobath up in Rath Kanar. Then all of a sudden, the dwarves are united under the Minediggers and they’re no longer content sitting up in the mountains, oh no. They want what Prince Dan has. Want it all. Want the power. Want the riches. Want just about bloody anything they can get their grubby little hands on. It started small at first. You know, the odd person disappearing here and there, contraband turning up on the streets. Then Prince Dan foiled a protection racket they had going on over at Simmeth. Turns out they’d been terrorizing the goblin villages all down the coast. Well, they didn’t take kindly to the prince putting a stop to it. All hell broke loose. Got a bit nasty for a while, but the prince won out. He can be pretty terrifying when he wants to be. But then they nicked the Iron Crystal and it all changed. They’ve been using it to travel to your world and bring back arms and drugs and gods-knows-what. If they aren’t stopped, it could be the end of Fey.”
‘Terrifying’ hadn’t been a word Simon had thought of for the prince, but he didn’t say so. “What’s to stop them from just doing something else, if you get the Iron Crystal back?”
“Well you’re bloody optimistic aren’t you? Look, they’ve only got so powerful coz they can lay their hands on stuff that we can’t. Stuff they get in your world. If we can cut off their supply, we can stamp them out good and proper. Course, if it were up to me, I’d just trap the buggers in your world and be done with it. But Prince Dan won’t go for that. He’d say, “It’s unethical to inflict non-indigenous races on a new home world”, or some such crap.”
Simon wanted to voice his agreement with Prince Dan, but one look at Bone kept that from happening. “Well, then, I guess we just have to get back that Crystal.”
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Author Bio: Elizabeth Baxter was born and raised in England. In her spare time she enjoys reading, hiking, traveling the world and watching England play cricket. She’s been writing since she was six years old and plans to continue for as long as she’s able to hold a pen (or a keyboard).
Website/Blog: http://elizabethbaxter.blogspot.com
Twitter: https://twitter.com/#!/smallblondhippy
Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/elizabethbaxterauthor
Goodreads: http://www.goodreads.com/user/show/5743309-elizabeth-baxter
Buy Link: Amazon
Buy Link: Amazon UK
