![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
truepennyY'all gratified me with questions about Booth, so I shall gratify you by answering them.
Q: You said in the introduction that Booth was your most autobiographical protagonist. Why did you chose to make him a male character?
A: I could be a pain in the ass and tell you I didn't choose, that that's just how he showed up in my head.
And it's true. But it's true for a number of reasons.
It's not an uncommon phenomenon for young women writers to be more comfortable with male viewpoint characters. It's most of what we grew up reading, after all, except for "girls' books" like Little Women and Little House on the Prairie and Anne of Green Gables and so on. (This is changing, I think, and I'm ecstatic about it, but I'm a child of my times and duly warped.) I disliked all of those "girls' books" as a child, and in general did not identify with the female characters at all. (I didn't want to be Lessa. I wanted to be F'lar. Or F'nor, seeing that F'lar is pretty much an asshole.) So I guess what I'm saying is that I didn't see any disjunction, until you pointed it out, between the fact that Booth is a man and the fact that I consider him autobiographical.
I could also make an argument that, really, Booth is gendered "geek" first, as I would admit myself to be, and that the fact that he has male anatomy is a deeply secondary consideration. Certainly, his view of sexuality is very like the view I had when I was between, say, eleven and (to be perfectly honest) seventeen: it's scary and gross and why would anybody want to?
Which is not to say that Booth's gender is irrelevant. It isn't, and in fact I did in a number of significant ways take the easy way out by making him a man. (The fact that he showed up male merely reemphasizes the nature of the assumptions and givens at work. It's easier for me to think up male characters than it is female.) And it's easier to write stories with male protagonists, especially ones set in an earlier period. But it also never occurred to me that he could be a woman until you asked that question.
And, in fact, Kyle Murchison Booth could not be a woman and be who he is.
Q: will there be more?
A: Yes.
Q: do you plan on trying to shop around a second volume of Booth stories when there are enough?
A: I can't see any reason why I wouldn't.
Q: Do you envision the stories as eventually forming a complete mosaic, or are they written as new facets evolve, or is neither of these an applicable question? Also, am I the only person who would like to have seen them illustrated by Edward Gorey?
A: They're written as I find ideas for them. I was actually surprised at how nicely the ten stories in The Bone Key fit together into a narrative arc.
In its original publication in Alchemy, "The Wall of Clouds" had an epigraph from The Iron Tonic. I decided against putting that in The Bone Key because (a.) I didn't want to deal with the permissions headache and (b.) it didn't feel right somehow. But, yes, they're very Gorey-esque in my head.
Q: Have you ever thought about writing Booth a novel? It seems like Bone Key was only the beginning of the story, like one giant exposition.
A: No. There won't be any novel-length Booth stories.
My personal feeling is that horror, as a genre, is ideally suited to the short story. And that goes double for the James/Lovecraft style stories I write. I couldn't sustain Booth for a novel--not in the sense of sustaining the character, but in the sense of sustaining the incident. Long novelettes, yes. Maybe even a novella. But nothing longer than that.
Q: Also. Is there a reason you chose not to have continuously recurring characters that play a central role, besides Booth? I know Blaine shows up in a couple in memories and dreams and such, and...whatshisface shows up in "The Venebretti Necklace" and "Wait for Me," but I mean on a slightly larger scale.
A: Because they wouldn't fit?
If I'm doing them right, Booth stories are fairly tight, compositionally speaking. There's Booth and the Eldritch Horror of the Week and the character(s) involved in the Eldritch Horror. (I figure these stories are as close as I'll ever get to writing sonnets.) Also, all of the Booth stories are designed to stand alone, so other characters can recur, but they can't have continuity.
Q: I would love to know what the Bone key opened. More childhood background on Booth would be cool too.
A: WYSIWYG.
If you've read the stories in The Bone Key, you essentially know as much as I do.
Q: I could never quite figure out when the stories take place. Are they between the world wars, or after WWII, or in some alternate history that doesn't involve either?
A: To me, it's always been obvious that they're set between about 1920 and about 1935 (the same era as Dorothy Sayers' books). This is yet another of those things I didn't set out to make mysterious, but also, the point of the stories is so emphatically NOT to be historical fiction that it's never felt necessary to specify.
And one more so I don't lose track of it.
Q: When you can only write longhand, do you have a pen/paper preference, or will any old thing do?
A: Well, in a pinch, anything that can be deciphered later is a win. *g*
Given my preferences, however, I am exceedingly fussy. I like Moleskine notebooks (ignore their advertising hype, which I find vaguely embarrassing: they're sturdy, hardbacked, perfect bound, narrow-ruled notebooks, neither too fat nor too thin, that aren't pretty, so I don't have to feel vaguely guilty about messing them up. The elastic to hold them closed is fantastic, and the ribbon bookmark is surprisingly useful.) and fountain pens. I have four: a Lamy Safari which is the going-out-in-the-world pen (violet Lamy cartridges which I can keep in a Sucrets tin in my purse); a Cross ATX (Noodler's Ottoman Rose), a Sheaffer Legacy II (Noodler's Couleur Royale), and a Waterman Phileas (currently Mont Blanc black). The Sheaffer Legacy II is the only one that cost me more than $50 (thank you, Fountain Pen Hospital and your Super Specials), and it's had the hardest life. (I dropped it nib point-down once, and although Sheaffer repaired it, you can see quite clearly where they straightened it back out.) I use the different colors to distinguish between different projects (and if it also means I can use all of my pens regularly, well that's just a bonus, isn't it?). I've been using notebooks to compose in since 1999 (lab notebooks at first, and then I found Moleskines) and I'm on #43.
Fussy. And also geeky like a geeky thing.
[To ask a question, go here.]
Q: You said in the introduction that Booth was your most autobiographical protagonist. Why did you chose to make him a male character?
A: I could be a pain in the ass and tell you I didn't choose, that that's just how he showed up in my head.
And it's true. But it's true for a number of reasons.
It's not an uncommon phenomenon for young women writers to be more comfortable with male viewpoint characters. It's most of what we grew up reading, after all, except for "girls' books" like Little Women and Little House on the Prairie and Anne of Green Gables and so on. (This is changing, I think, and I'm ecstatic about it, but I'm a child of my times and duly warped.) I disliked all of those "girls' books" as a child, and in general did not identify with the female characters at all. (I didn't want to be Lessa. I wanted to be F'lar. Or F'nor, seeing that F'lar is pretty much an asshole.) So I guess what I'm saying is that I didn't see any disjunction, until you pointed it out, between the fact that Booth is a man and the fact that I consider him autobiographical.
I could also make an argument that, really, Booth is gendered "geek" first, as I would admit myself to be, and that the fact that he has male anatomy is a deeply secondary consideration. Certainly, his view of sexuality is very like the view I had when I was between, say, eleven and (to be perfectly honest) seventeen: it's scary and gross and why would anybody want to?
Which is not to say that Booth's gender is irrelevant. It isn't, and in fact I did in a number of significant ways take the easy way out by making him a man. (The fact that he showed up male merely reemphasizes the nature of the assumptions and givens at work. It's easier for me to think up male characters than it is female.) And it's easier to write stories with male protagonists, especially ones set in an earlier period. But it also never occurred to me that he could be a woman until you asked that question.
And, in fact, Kyle Murchison Booth could not be a woman and be who he is.
Q: will there be more?
A: Yes.
Q: do you plan on trying to shop around a second volume of Booth stories when there are enough?
A: I can't see any reason why I wouldn't.
Q: Do you envision the stories as eventually forming a complete mosaic, or are they written as new facets evolve, or is neither of these an applicable question? Also, am I the only person who would like to have seen them illustrated by Edward Gorey?
A: They're written as I find ideas for them. I was actually surprised at how nicely the ten stories in The Bone Key fit together into a narrative arc.
In its original publication in Alchemy, "The Wall of Clouds" had an epigraph from The Iron Tonic. I decided against putting that in The Bone Key because (a.) I didn't want to deal with the permissions headache and (b.) it didn't feel right somehow. But, yes, they're very Gorey-esque in my head.
Q: Have you ever thought about writing Booth a novel? It seems like Bone Key was only the beginning of the story, like one giant exposition.
A: No. There won't be any novel-length Booth stories.
My personal feeling is that horror, as a genre, is ideally suited to the short story. And that goes double for the James/Lovecraft style stories I write. I couldn't sustain Booth for a novel--not in the sense of sustaining the character, but in the sense of sustaining the incident. Long novelettes, yes. Maybe even a novella. But nothing longer than that.
Q: Also. Is there a reason you chose not to have continuously recurring characters that play a central role, besides Booth? I know Blaine shows up in a couple in memories and dreams and such, and...whatshisface shows up in "The Venebretti Necklace" and "Wait for Me," but I mean on a slightly larger scale.
A: Because they wouldn't fit?
If I'm doing them right, Booth stories are fairly tight, compositionally speaking. There's Booth and the Eldritch Horror of the Week and the character(s) involved in the Eldritch Horror. (I figure these stories are as close as I'll ever get to writing sonnets.) Also, all of the Booth stories are designed to stand alone, so other characters can recur, but they can't have continuity.
Q: I would love to know what the Bone key opened. More childhood background on Booth would be cool too.
A: WYSIWYG.
If you've read the stories in The Bone Key, you essentially know as much as I do.
Q: I could never quite figure out when the stories take place. Are they between the world wars, or after WWII, or in some alternate history that doesn't involve either?
A: To me, it's always been obvious that they're set between about 1920 and about 1935 (the same era as Dorothy Sayers' books). This is yet another of those things I didn't set out to make mysterious, but also, the point of the stories is so emphatically NOT to be historical fiction that it's never felt necessary to specify.
And one more so I don't lose track of it.
Q: When you can only write longhand, do you have a pen/paper preference, or will any old thing do?
A: Well, in a pinch, anything that can be deciphered later is a win. *g*
Given my preferences, however, I am exceedingly fussy. I like Moleskine notebooks (ignore their advertising hype, which I find vaguely embarrassing: they're sturdy, hardbacked, perfect bound, narrow-ruled notebooks, neither too fat nor too thin, that aren't pretty, so I don't have to feel vaguely guilty about messing them up. The elastic to hold them closed is fantastic, and the ribbon bookmark is surprisingly useful.) and fountain pens. I have four: a Lamy Safari which is the going-out-in-the-world pen (violet Lamy cartridges which I can keep in a Sucrets tin in my purse); a Cross ATX (Noodler's Ottoman Rose), a Sheaffer Legacy II (Noodler's Couleur Royale), and a Waterman Phileas (currently Mont Blanc black). The Sheaffer Legacy II is the only one that cost me more than $50 (thank you, Fountain Pen Hospital and your Super Specials), and it's had the hardest life. (I dropped it nib point-down once, and although Sheaffer repaired it, you can see quite clearly where they straightened it back out.) I use the different colors to distinguish between different projects (and if it also means I can use all of my pens regularly, well that's just a bonus, isn't it?). I've been using notebooks to compose in since 1999 (lab notebooks at first, and then I found Moleskines) and I'm on #43.
Fussy. And also geeky like a geeky thing.
[To ask a question, go here.]
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2008-08-28 11:08 pm (UTC)I have found the same about Moleskine: nice enough for some motivation, yet just utilitarian enough. Do you use the large size or the pocket?
Do you use fine nibs? They tend to behave best with Moleskine. They also save on ink and paper as they write smaller letters.
I'd also be curious how you came by your color choices, but that goes from geekery to full-on neepery. I have found using contrasting colors, one for direct quotations, the other for my commentary upon them, also works.
no subject
Date: 2008-08-28 11:39 pm (UTC)Hip hip hooray!
no subject
Date: 2008-08-28 11:52 pm (UTC)The Waterman and the Lamy are fine nib; the Cross and the Sheaffer are medium. I like 'em both.
My color choices are mostly by trial and error. *g*
no subject
Date: 2008-08-29 12:37 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-08-29 12:46 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-08-29 01:01 am (UTC)I continue to be extremely fond of Alice.
P.
no subject
Date: 2008-08-29 01:04 am (UTC)I do like Booth the way he is, though. And really, when I'm writing an autobiographical character I like a little distance between me and the character. Gender could provide that.
P.
no subject
Date: 2008-08-29 01:05 am (UTC)I love Alice. She's both willful and resourceful. And her favorite phrase is "Let's pretend."
no subject
Date: 2008-08-29 01:08 am (UTC)Diana Wynne Jones is the shining exception.
no subject
Date: 2008-08-29 01:41 am (UTC)I was interested in the bit where you talk about the length of the Booth stories--how they're never likely to be novel length. I think I'm happy about that, because part of what I enjoy about them is their episodic nature. They remind me a little of Doyle's Sherlock Holmes, which was the only series of short stories (until Booth came along, that is) that I could stomach on the long term. And, I don't know, the shorter format just works so well for Booth.
Also, just thought I'd mention that "Elegy for a Demon Lover" broke my heart a little. :)
no subject
Date: 2008-08-29 01:43 am (UTC)"Diana Wynne Jones is the shining exception."
As in so much else.
P.
no subject
Date: 2008-08-29 01:49 am (UTC)Okay, I have enjoyed everything of yours that I've ever read, but now I find out that you're a pen geek too?
I feel a little weak in the knees.
I'm too cheap to buy glorious Moleskines, but the pile of Urban Outfitter knockoffs that I pulled out of the bargain bin years ago have been some of my favorite notebooks, and I wish I'd bought all of them and not just 6.
My pen of choice is the Rotring art pen (http://www.dickblick.com/zz208/19/) (M or B nib). I bought my first one in 1996 for $15, but they've since lost their US distributor, so I went on an eBay spree and now hoard them like dragon gold. I have 2 M nibs, 3 B nibs, and 4 BB nibs ... if I'm very very nice to them (ha ha ha), maybe they'll last the rest of my life. I disagree with just about everyone else in that I want a narrow, lightweight pen.
I love Pendemonium (http://www.pendemonium.com/) for pen porn. They also carry my favorite ink---Private Reserve (plum). Noodler's is also nice, tho I only have it in green and I had to put green ink on long-term ban owing to color fatigue.
Whew! Thanks for letting me babble and for telling me about your pen geekery. Hooray!
no subject
Date: 2008-08-29 03:57 am (UTC)I am happy to hear there will be more stories. I'm usually not a fan of shorts, but as you say, they suit the gothic horror tales very well.
Hmmm... I relate to male characters quite a bit, myself. It seems that it's only been recently that there have been so many kick-ass-type (and other) female MCs. I'm probably too set in my ways to re-orient myself to it all.
Alchemy
Date: 2008-08-29 04:27 am (UTC)Which of course caused me to go out and buy Melusine, and one thing led to another...
It was one of the best things about working at that bookstore.
pen geekery
Date: 2008-08-29 06:23 am (UTC)- Chief
no subject
Date: 2008-08-29 08:55 am (UTC)Ah, good - that's what I thought. I got terribly confused by the review in Strange Horizons in which the reviewer couldn't decide when the stories were set, especially as I don't know enough about the history of the US in that period to say that the reviewer was wrong.
Hm. Does this mean that the stories are set in a 20s-and-early-30s as seen from contemporary genre fiction, rather than one as seen from today's social histories?
no subject
Date: 2008-08-29 12:28 pm (UTC)I love the fountain pen information. ^_^ I have a few myself, and I played with colours and nib widths quite aggressively when I first started out. It's good to see others doing so, too. ^_^
no subject
Date: 2008-08-29 01:43 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-08-29 02:57 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-09-05 12:23 am (UTC)