Haunted Mirror

After a month of being stopped on World Domination 101 revision, a little judicial reading seems to have stewed up the right conditions for Idea to spring forth.

It's funny how exposure isn't enough--there has to be that letting-it-sit period. At least for me. This time it felt especially slow since I wanted to have a monthly pace, of tackling aspects thoroughly and getting it done quick as I could.
I get that feeling right now, anyway, of needing the right intersection of input to get the right vantage on it. Queen's Play resurrected my thoughts on the culture-conflict lacking in Outlander, and introduced to me the fact that what I'd thought about on that wasn't in the manuscript.

Who knows? Maybe I wouldn't have been able to write this story I'm working on now the right way if I hadn't heard the song Unwinding Cable Car.
This train of thought often gives me philosophical heebie-jeebies, but I accept it.

Got anything particular in your soundtrack to writing now?

So I really did want to do this meme which is  you comment on a friend's blog, and they pick 7 of your interests to hear you out on. If you've already done this, then I'll pick a few for you to comment here on. rowana tagged me for:

anne shirley, anthropology, beowulf, frances hodgson burnett, global nomad, prince charming and urban legends

Let's go backwards, just to give me a bit of motivation. (I really have a sad lack of random interests, which I realized when "strawberry pocky" came up in someone else's list. Strawberry pocky! The men's kind were the best, but POCKY!? It's the kind of random Japanese cultural thing that just hits me like a beam of joy.)

Phew. I could cut myself short to save my voice. (I set out to say "to save my big toes" but realised at the scene my mind concocted immediately that was a bit too much of an exaggeration.)

As for Lymond? I think I'm hooked now. Just finished Queen's Play and enjoyed it much more (except for the...Oonagh thing. Oh Lymond. You've broken my heart as well as O'LiamRoe's.)
Luckily, it's the kind of thing that you come out of and have an enforced rest. (The Dorothy Dunnett Companion will someday sit by me on a re-read. I'm serious! It's got the quotations translated, everything--good move, Ingenious Scholar-Writer, the world was needing that.)
My brain feels so pounded after a story like that, webbing around names and foreign couplets.

I could probably live a long, healthy, content life without ever hearing the word

FLOUNCE

used in a serious* way again.
Honestly, OtherWriterPeople. Flounce. Think about it--pronounce it aloud and cherish the vowels: Flounce!



* Brian Jacques use of it conveyed a snooty volewife's movements rather aptly. It sets my teeth on edge now, but it was not a bad try. But since when was he going for serious, even if he used it unhumorously?

I read Outlander yesterday.

It was a singularly unproductive day. (*_*)

It was an excellently written piece of work. I'm pretty divided about reading more of them, though.
The most beautiful moment in the book to me was when Jamie walks away from Claire, the most truly romantic. I must be a sot.

I bought stuff to pack today. We shall see how my luggage feels about it some other day. For now, I'm a bit more secure. A bit.

I've started "Women Who Run with Wolves" as my literature-ralated non-fiction. It's quite extraordinary.
    With my latest project (Aolon of the 5 volumes--at p.103 for Vol 4 w00t!) I deliberately thought about how my heroines were going to be alike and dissimilar. The main thread they have is this "Wild Woman" image. They are intuitive, but unabashed. Hirloa is a rather wide-eyed, random girl--her sister is quiet and domestic, but she has a wit and responsibility that is not precisely submissively childish. They are the two mothers of the heroines and heroes to follow.
The heroes aren't exactly the opposing repressed machisimo blunderbusses either. They are all in places of spiritual leadership (except Notable Exceptions who are just not there yet), they are all either artistic, or edging on it.

It will be intriguing to see what there is in this book to help me refine upon the characterization for this.

I don't know if it's a mistake to so engineer that they are all musicians or artists or sophistocates of some sort. I do know it's because I enjoy the company of such people that when I turn to secondary functions I tend to do too much artsy flourishes.

Today's Book Report:
The Game of Kings: And my woeful inadequacy, despite a very good tour of the unrelieved suspense landscape, is revealed. I really did try, with Shaim, this afternoon. But just as he didn't lose a toe in an odd river accident when he wasn't even paying attention, I just didn't see any point for those people to keep him locked up in a dungeon. My writing--episodic? I think so.
This is a tour-de-force of the essential backstory being withheld to great prolongued anguish and interest effect.
Lymond is one of the Trickster figures we all love so much--one of the more desperate I've encountered yet, or at least in the consciousness of the book--and he's rather obnoxious. He has a quote for everything, and all of them mean nothing to me. If I were either illiterate or able to spot more than half of them I wouldn't be so put out. Let it suffice that once I've done with an anthology of references to Surprised By Joy (C. S. Lewis' autobiography) I know what comes next.
But I enjoyed it quite a bit. Despite everything.
I'm, I believe, learning to not quibble with the flaws of other writers, to great support of my peace of mind. If only I'd catch them in what I do before turning it over to other people...

I finished Wildwood Dancing--I really think that if it weren't for the cover I might not have gotten past the first third. I don't know why I didn't feel the magic of it quite as soon as I did Daughter of the Forest. Maybe because I HAD to read it, coming down on the last due-date.
I don't think it stood out as much. Being a more collaged retelling might have a lot to do with it. That I'm not all that enthralled with Transylvania OR snowy winters (snowy winters in Japan, or in New England, or really wherever I like--but it all seemed a tad generic, not just the setting). But I enjoyed it pretty well.
 There were twists to the end that were great, and I

I hit page 99 of Vol. 4 of Aolon. I ought to be half done at this point. This is dubious. I am however revealing Shaim's little thing with disappearing magic, as I'd forgotten about it in the interest of working out some semblance of a plot. Still no success with that, but we've done a full pan on the scenery. *bleargh.* I don't know why I always get to a point where I have to say, "You're allowed to get to the point any time now"...I think I have a faulty concept of "the middle" of a book.

~Next afternoon:~

I finished Un Lun Dun, too. ^_^ I think it definitely got better once I realized the heroine was the one I liked. And it's inventive and fun. On the scale (size-wize) of HP, the postmodern child of The Phantom Tollbooth thematically, and in the likeness of Hitchhiker's Guide for humor-sense.

So let's say you could set a Great-Hall-at-Hogwarts as an office-space in Manhattan--only with Tolkienesque elves walking around, rather than ghosts.
Say you could skip the middle-school madness and go on to capability and professionalism. With plenty of humanity and humor.
Don't try to hard. You should go read Enchanted, Inc {Hex and the City} instead. Shanna Swendson would be thrilled if you bought them, to have her publishers change their mind about not giving us a nice tie-up.

And I recommend it for a fun, well-thought out urban fantasy that has a heroine who is capable without being to butt-kickity like everyone else. (The subtle difference is like the one between me and, say, Miss Congeniality.)

Here's my teaser to tempt you:

"And now both my roommates were dating former frogs. My life was so weird."

That is what [sis] Becky thought I'd said the first time--and honestly, I wouldn't put it past Susanna Clarke to have intended the perception.

I'm almost done with the book: about a 6th left, which (considering I was only a third done a few days ago) is not far from finished at all. This is enough evidence that I love it. Why I am going to expound next, and this will probably be only the beginning. (If you are in a mood for Clarke-esque footnotes, go to my anachronistic_red account on Xanga, and follow the tag for theTword, in which "T" stands for T*lk**n and stand in amazement at one re-reading of the first two volumes' effect on my ability to communicate with the world at large.)


I'm in all-over awe of this book, but my sales pitch is this:

Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell is precisely the book that might have come out of a response to Bronte's faulting of Austen (all shut up in drawing rooms and privet hedges, with no wild moor or tumbling becks in sight, to paraphrase only slightly).
Wild, wild England bookending very British (quintessential age of Britain Britishness) characters and laughing at the magic men have held onto in it's pale weakness no man would accept in his tea.

I never read this book before because all the descriptions started in the wrong place. They start with the MacGuffin or Maguffin--Napoleon--if only in reference to the period. Much more to the point is that this is almost to the Regency era, which frames a sense of magic that feels like that of DeLint's Little Country more than that of Harry Potter.
And Strange is the bright, rebellious pupil. No, that is the wrong start, too. Strange is already a man when he comes into this book, and while I was thinking he was of the make of Nathaniel in the Bartimaeus Trilogy, instead, he's merely a genius under a scholarly Casaubon type (yet not Casaubon, to my utter relief also, and yet the similarity to a character in one of my other favorite classics drew me in to trust). He is married by his second appearance, and he has a patience and kindness that I was not expecting. Certainly he's a bit careless, but his contrariness comes of being too bright among the dull. It's not a main feature.


I think I should post this to Amazon, something I've never considered doing before. But I flatter myself I have important things to say about this book.

I'll probably being poetizing it once I'm finished. For now I'm happy with the bleakly beautiful poems in the text.


~ETA:
While the rest of the world is relieved (or not) that Rowling landed the last Harry book, I'm sitting here bouncing because Clarke got the ending of JS&MrN so perfect, I could never have foreseen it.
And she didn't banish magic from England. *beams*
    I did post that review. My first ever.

I'm writing a short story that opens with the character leaving a poetry reading. It's immensely fun.

The Great God Pan

concerns Pan's doomed love to Iphigenia. Donna Jo Napoli writes this from Pan's immediate perspective, though allowing gaps in the narrative for the sake of story. Much like her Beast, it's beautifully told, though it is threaded throughout with the sexual. While that's perhaps a very realistic male point of view, I don't read male points of view to be flashed as often as their natures read "sex"--which is, I'm led to believe and have no desire to debate the veracity, all the time. Now, the story's not really that bad. But still.

I like filtered point of view. I sacrifice reality to the thematic focus on other-than-sex [-most-of-the-time].

It's intriguing. Iphigenia and Pan's ends are apparently ambiguous in the Greek lore. So Napoli was able to create her own story around it. In this, it exceeds Beast. Beast had too many trappings to either debunk or reweave. It was the gilding that was the focus. The Great God Pan is a story. While the gods were not treated as fascinatingly as WebMage, or MacCaughrean's retellings have done them...I can see why not. It's not a comedy.

It was very good.

The really intriguing thing, though, is that Hayao Miyazaki's Nausicaa is taken from Iphigenia. (Now, if there isn't anything more mystifyingly fascinating than the Japanese renditions on common Western folklore, I don't know what it is.) Not that there's really any relation between the two stories. But she seems to have a certain allure to the modern day reader. For a fairly minor character of Greek folklore—and I didn't really remember the name or story of the character Miyazaki was fascinated by, but once I read the book, it occurred to me they had to be one and the same.

Hey, new friends! (I'll pretend their listening.)

In support of my claims to literary discourse, I proceed to say:
I haven't read anything I haven't written in a few days. I mean, novel things. But before that I had started

Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell

I didn't really get that it was a novel in the style of my favorite classics authors, only with magicians. Okay.
How Wicked is that?

Quite wicked. I'm only a few chapters in, but I love it. When I grow up for real (say, 64 or so) I want to write something like that. Just as clever, so not the same thing, but with that same classic deliberation and clarity, but  with the fey underlying. Though, as I said, I'm only a few chapters in. Shall we say, savoring it. But I don't think I have any more expectations to shatter. It dispenses with dense language, so my first preconception is quite done away with.

It's already improving my syntax, just talking about it. Well, not syntax, as I couldn't define the word in the most vague terms, but hear my word choice? Spectacular.

shanna_s has been talking about Archetypes in heroes, and how the Best Friend isn't usually considered hot, etc. I find personality stuff fascinating, so I've been soaking it up (though, not being a romancer, I never actually read anything about these) but I think, I just might have found a very, very good example of the Best Friend as hero.

Red (Hugh)

Eyes of deep sky, blazing behind secret
And blood-warm heart that found the land's spirit
When it might have denied it reality
Found the living in it worth the agony.
Anger hidden in love too strong to hurt
And love buried in protection, behind anger.

Sevenwaters, bind the peoples to me
There lies a brethren across the sea
There lurks a kindred beyond the wood
And in our wars a painful brotherhoood
That is one in blindness to themselves and beyond
May my silence that stings prick out pride and bond.

I am Sorcha, I am Jenny, I am mother to Naihm
And Liadan--fateful fruit of a mixing of kind.

And I am wife to Hugh, the unson of Sevenwaters,
Sister to the unheir sons of my faltered father.

Daughter of the Forest

Hugh comes in like a warrior, chief of men, and sure of pleasing women--but for Sorcha, he is the lover who can wait for her wounded silence to end, and can give that all up just for the company of his heart.
Simon, his brother, is a Lonely Soul. It's very ambiguous whether he could have been her mate...on purpose. This is literary fantasy, after all. Gorgeous.
I'm very glad it had a definite ending. After all, my library couldn't possibly have the next on in the trilogy. >.<

I just read Peter Pan in Scarlet.

I've enjoyed some of the non-official Pan books more.

First of all: I enjoyed it--and I think McCaughrean is a genius. But if you want to read a Peter Pan story by her go read The Pirate's Son. It's not an actual "sequel" or anything actually related. It has the qualities and a few of the elements Peter Pan in Scarlet did not have, though, that seem more outstanding.

McCaughrean is one of the writers who seems to never do the same thing twice. I personally thing that (with allowances for the original Barrie context) she is just not wacky enough. It's spirited, and has an interesting storyline, genuinely scary ideas, and a sense of characters. It's just not quite as much fun as Peter and the Starcatchers, and not as dreamy as When Pirates Came to Brooklyn, and not as contemporary as my own little efforts in that direction.

If you love Peter Pan, read it. If not, check out the cover copy and first chapter to see if you'll like it.

But for me, it had too much in common with her "Stop That Train!" (which I could not get into) and not as much delightful tongue-in-cheek wit as A Thousand and One Arabian Nights. Which is a shame. Barrie's tongue was either firmly planted in his cheek, or he was suffering self-deprecation while writing a novel from his play.