So, wow.

[truepenny]

There are a lot of y'all reading this blog.

I'm figuring it's time for one of those periodic getting-to-know-you posts. So if you'd like to introduce yourself, or you'd like to ask a question (any question, although I reserve the right not to answer), here's a superlative spot to do it at.

This is not a pressure-y kind of thing. Only an invitation.

And I'll reiterate a couple of things:

1. I almost never add people reciprocally. Because, well, I have 25 people on my reading list right now, and that's almost too many. There are many people whom I like and admire whose blogs I don't read. Apparently, I just need that processing power for something else.

2. I only reply to comments if I actually have something to say. However, I read all comments, and I am always, always grateful for them. (N.b., excluding the occasional and inevitable troll.) I forget to say that a lot, because sometimes I'm kind of a rotten excuse for a human being. But I'm definitely reading and interested.

So here. The lines are open and you're on the air.

Comments

[beautifuldorian.livejournal.com]

In a way, I only read your journal to reassure myself that I'm not the only one who has to answer to the voices in her head, who show up with unrealistic demands and expect me to make it fit into the damn plot. It's nice to know that even professionals who're actually making money for their work are still owned by their muses. Do you ever have to bribe them to leave you be for a bit so you can get things done that aren't related to them?

I read your articles on world building and they just convinced me that I'm on the right road. Does it ever get annoying having a planet in your head? Or are you only vexed by a handful of its inhabitants at a time?

Other than that, I don't have much to say, other than that my name is Sarah, today is my birthday, and I write a lot but I can never stick to one plotline long enough to make a proper story out of it. I've written countless prologues to brilliant stories and never gotten any further. I've mostly given up on novel writing... but I can still amuse myself with my world and my boys.

Another random question - when Felix starts whining at you [he seems the type to whine], how do you get him to stop? My best method so far for getting them to stop sulking is to distract them with a boyfriend. -.- And there has to be a better way because I'm running out of condoms.

[truepenny.livejournal.com]

Actually, Felix does not whine. He refuses to talk, instead.

Which, as I've said in several comments upthread, is just a highly reductive shorthand for what's really going on. But it's easier to conceptualize.

Having thought about it, I don't get planets in my head. I get worlds. Which I don't consider exactly synonymous. (This probably explains why I'm predominantly a fantasy writer. I wonder if sf writers get planets instead.)

And happy birthday!

[seyella.livejournal.com]

I live in England, I'm in my fnial year of school/college and am currently working out where i want to study at uni (wanting to study creative writing combined with drama). I found melusine on a rec from lj user mistful, fell in love with it and am consequently using it in my english coursework essay, comparing the themes of madness within it to that of the madness of king george... Any tips? :)
I'm an aspiring writer, and just like the rest of the crowd I adore your musings/ramblings/everything and the process in which you go about writing.

Question... If you could give one pointer to an 'aspiring writer' wanting to publish their work, what would it be?

[truepenny.livejournal.com]

Much to my shame, I have not read (or seen) The Madness of King George.

My best tip to those aspiring to publish is to practice patience and fortitude. (Patience and Fortitude are the names of the lions that guard the New York Public Library. matociquala got there first, or I would totally be using that in everything I write.) And yeah, that sounds cheesy and flip, but I'm quite serious. You have to be patient and you have to be able to bear up under some pretty hard knocks to the ego.

Also, it works a lot better if you keep your priorities the right way round: no matter how gratifying the publication may be, it's the WRITING that's important.

[gerbilicous.livejournal.com]

Hello, Dr. Monette!

I picked up Melusine off Amazon after reading several good things about it online. It arrived and was promptly buried under a pile of mail. Then, a month ago, I was excavating our dining room table and found it again. I wasn't reading anything at the time, so I decided to have a go before I went to bed. Bad idea. I was up all night because I simply could NOT put the book down. So I called in sick to work the next day and finished it off, and then I ordered The Virtu off Amazon.

Normally, I hate learning about authors. Sometimes they're not like I want them to be and then it ruins their books for me. But I found your site, and then your journal, then your essays and I was hooked! I treasure everything you write.

As someone who spent many years in higher education English classes, I generally try to refrain from gushing. Fangirly behavior is plebian, I tell myself, and an author would value constructive and insightful criticism more than blanket praise. But I just can’t help it. Your books make me giggle and squeal with joy and stay up way past my bed time and I love every moment of it.

Please, never stop writing!

- Rachel

[lferion]

Hallo!

I've forgotten how I found you -- I think I posted a squee about "Melusine" when I first read it and someone pointed me here.

I've just re-read "Melusine" and am about to re-read "Virtu" (yes, in hardcover :-)).

I am a costumer, poet, fangirl (favorites are Phantom Menace, Star Trek TOS, Dr Who original and new, Highlander and LotR), and interested in things religious, spiritual and philosophical. I've taught, and I am always learning.

I really like your way of putting words together, the world you have made real in your stories, and the relationships, especially between Felix and Gideon and Felix and Mildmay.

When do we get the Next Book? I am really looking forward to it.

Also, why sevens as a numerical base? It is fascinating to me (seven being an interesting number to me personally) and I would love to know where/why/how it came to be the way it works in Melusine.

[truepenny.livejournal.com]

As it happens, I stole the base-7 calendar, as well as the word "indiction," from the Byzantine empire. (A fellow student in my introductory Ancient Greek class was a historian of the Byzantines, and happened to mention their calendar--I have no memory of why. The class was at 8:50 in the morning; both student conversation and my memory thereof are consequently erratic. The professor was a morning person, and we all regarded him as an excessively chipper alien.) My reasons were no more profound than, Ooh, shiny!, but then the sevens got into everything. I figure there's some religious significance that's entrenched itself as superstition, but I don't actually know what it is. Or if I do, I've forgotten.

[truepenny.livejournal.com]

Oh, also, Amazon saith the next book will be out August 7th.

Amazon knows all, tells all.

[chipmunk-planet.livejournal.com]

Hi. I'm a SF/thriller/sometimes fantasy writer who came across your blog somehow (can't remember now how but we have several on our friends lists in common). Just wanted to say hello and that I enjoy the blog.

[gardensoil.livejournal.com]

I'm from the Netherlands, studying Hebrew and Aramaic and I sometimes have stories in my head that need out. So they do. But only privately still. Petting cats is a favourite of mine. As is digging up British comedians from the 1960's. And onwards. I'm fascinated by paradoxes, gnosticism and cultures in between cultures. Then there's also painting and my a-thousand-ways-to-use-garlic-in-food philosophy. There's so much other trivia I actually hold very dear but would not be very appropriate to state here.

I came across Melusine in our friendly Amsterdam-based American Book Center, which has a large SF/Fantasy section. I loved it from the start. Such strong, heartfelt characters, the given of the Labyrinth and the Gardens of Nephele where one can wander in astral form, marvelous, needlessly said.

Upon finishing M. found your website, read the first four chapters of The Virtu online and promptly ordered your book from America. And waited a cuticle-biting week.(A small reference to The Virtu, which I loved as well: the Dead Tree and its sole green sprig, now that is evocative. That was a sign of hope, so very beautiful). Since then I often return here to read what you and others write, sometimes feel the odd need to interject some kind remark or other, and above all to see a writer in progress. That and the cryptic divulging of bits about the story, which remains, thank heavens, indecypherable.

Ad astre, ms. Monette!

[april-art.livejournal.com]

I have read and enjoyed Melusine and Virtu... but am mostly just lurking on various LJs. I definitely see no reason why you ought to reply to or friend everyone. I just find some LJs interesting reads.

In RL, I've been a free-lance illustrator and in-house computer game artist for a decade or so, (credits on a dozen PC fantasy rpg or strategy games, traditional art for CCGs, RPGs, the odd magazine or book, once in Spectrum, attended --and sold art at-- a ton of cons, sometimes as a panelist rarely as AG or AGOH). I have degrees in English Lit. from Mt. Holyoke, in History from Oxford University and in Illustration from Art Center College of Design. My great love, though, is reading--primarily fantasy, but also SF, mystery, romance, historicals, sometimes mainstream.

My cat's name is Wells Fargo.

[pukiban.livejournal.com]

Hey. Person who was made disturbingly comfortable with the idea of incest by your books and hates you for it, just a little bit. Also person who keeps releasing copies of Melusine on bookcrossing.com because she can't think of anyone she actually knows who would like to try it, and it wants to be shared. I believe there's still a copy of it in the Ada Commnuity Library sitting atop the book sale shelf where the librarian must have moved it. And finally, one of the people who doesn't hate Felix. (But does hope we will get a better look into his more charismatic side sometime. ^_^) Currently reading your journal as means of putting off writing a paper on Discourse and Discourse Analysis, and studying for a linguistics test. Will be kicking self for this tomorrow, surely.

I wandered across your blog when looking for when your next book would be out, and was rather charmed by how funny and almost silly you were at times, and how intense and intellegent the next. So I hung around.

I've got a boring question for you: In that interview I thought I saw the interviewer called your books the Doctrine of Labyrinths? Is that the official name of the series now? (Not that people are actually going to change what they've been calling them or anything. But, you know. Curious.)

Re: My cat's name is Wells Fargo.

[truepenny.livejournal.com]

The Doctrine of Labyrinths is my title for the series.

[ironphoenix.livejournal.com]

G'day,

I got here via a link to The Ones who Walk away from the West and the Sea, which I quite liked, as well as your follow-up discussion.

I'm a reader, so I tend to get drawn into writers' blogs, although I have less time to read than I'd like.

I'm a lot of other things too, and my profile covers most of the quick labels, so if you're interested, that's where to look.

[minerva710.livejournal.com]

I hope I'm not too late!

I found Melusine because it was recommended to me by a dear friend who works in a bookstore. She's the only person I know who can convince me to pay full price for a hardcover just on her say so, and she promised it had everything I like in a fantasy- brothers, madness, ghosts, the whole works. She was right, and I knew I'd have to read everything you write because Melusine was one of those rare books that not only demanded my full attention, but when I had to set it down to go to bed or work or eat, the world of the novel seemed more real than everything around me, which is a very strange and surreal feeling.

My name is Molly (heh). I have a lovely wife and two cats. I majored in Roman History and Latin in college and according to my original life plan I should be finishing my masters and headed for a PhD somewhere. Instead I find myself working in a cube farm doing tech support. I'm not sure what happened there. I like catching the classical references and I love the running thing with the labyrinths. I read your blog because I love your essays and glimpses of your life and process. I live in VA and will not likely get to meet you in person any time soon. I hope Summerdown is going well, and I am still trying to figure out why I like Felix so much when he can be such a bastard.

My question- Is Summerdown the last we will see of Felix and Mildmay? You probably don't know, but I like the series so much I would be sad to see it end.

[truepenny.livejournal.com]

Summerdown is the last book about them I have planned, yes.

It's not impossible that someday I will write another, but at the moment it's feeling pretty darn unlikely.

Also, your icon is awesome.

[devvieish.livejournal.com]

Hi, I'm not even officially reading this blog cause I feel the same as you, more than a handful of people on my friendslist is just *too much*, so I swing by here periodically instead.

I just wanted to say how much I loved Melusine and The Virtu, and I have a million books in this house breathing down my neck but I still foolishly want The Mirador to come out *now* (and wishing does not help, I know).