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truepennyQ: What is Mildmay going to do now? You left them with jobs for Felix and Kay, but Mildmay is just tagging along. The job of taking care of Felix shouldn't be full-time any more. That was the only hugely dangling thread left. Did I miss some obvious hints? Maybe I'll go re-read them again.
A: Mildmay doesn't define himself by what he does in the same way that Felix and Kay do, and thus doesn't have the same need for a definitive job. He's learned the hard way that defining yourself by what you do may well end up defining yourself as something you don't want to be. So it doesn't eat at him not to have a clearly defined job.
There are a couple of clues to directions he might go. One is that letter to the president of the S.A.U.E. chapter in Whallan; I don't think Mildmay would ever teach, but I'm sure he'll take classes. Secondly, his fascination with the workings of the paddle-steamer Lilibet Sawyer points toward the workings of the Lighthouse of Grimglass. I suspect that he's going to end up doing most of the actual lighthouse-keeping while Felix goes ferreting around in the archives, and both of them will be happy.
Q: Where does Felix's last name come from? Anything to do with a gate?
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Q: Nitpicky detail, but is there any backstory to Felix's last name? I've always been a bit curious about it, especially given the references to Melusine's gates, both in reality and in Felix's oneiromantic forays. Since some Lower City denizens have surnames and some don't, did he make it up himself or did someone else (his keeper, Lorenzo, Malkar) name him?
A: Firstly, I got Felix's last name from the English city of Harrogate (and subconsciously, probably from Harrogate, Tennessee). Also the school, Harrow, and then of course the noun harrow (as in the toad beneath the harrow) and the verb, as in the Harrowing of Hell (and there's a terrible pun on "harrowing" in The Yellow Submarine, too). There's also a Harriers' Gate in the Mirador. So, like almost everything else in the Doctrine of Labyrinths, Felix's name is a pun.
Secondly, internal to the books, Harrowgate is the name Malkar chose for him; I don't think this is ever specified, but Mildmay's example makes it clear that kept-thieves don't have surnames. (I've wondered occasionally if Felix was the name he was born with, or if Keeper or Lorenzo chose that--Vincent knows him as Felix, so it was obviously his name pre-Malkar, but I don't know if it's the name Methony gave him or not. He won't tell me.)
Q: Is the ability to use magic a innate one? In other words, is it true that annemers can never learn to use magic in their lives?
A: Yes. You either are a wizard or you aren't one. Abilities usually manifest at or around puberty.
Q: Why is Felix the most powerful wizard in Mirador? Is it because he's very talented and was taught by Malkar?
A: He's the most powerful wizard in the Mirador because his innate ability to do magic is very powerful. There's a tautology for you. Sorry. But it's an inherent quality of an individual wizard's magic. Being taught by Malkar allows him to look at problems in a different way than the orthodox wizards, and thus frequently to be able to solve problems his colleagues can't, but it has nothing to do with his power--except insofar as his power is what drew Malkar to him in the first place.
Q: Can Felix control his true dreams to help him witness or find out the truth about a certain part of the past?
A: He could, but he never has. And I'm not 100% convinced it would be a good idea.
Q: Why was Mildmay so interested in Felix from the first time they met? Is it because Mildmay was quite... well, desperate at that time, so that he was thrilled to see a person that was related to him, even if that person was a hocus and crazy? Or, and this is what I think, he just natrually tends to symphathize with people in a disadvantage place, and Felix looked scared to death.
A: When Mildmay and Felix meet, Mildmay is very much adrift: in a strnage place, with people he doesn't trust and his whole life in ruins around him. Felix gives him (a.) a way to displace all the stuff he doesn't want to think about into worrying about someone else and (b.) lets him feel needed, which is Mildmay's weak point. And, yes, Mildmay is by his nature a champion of the underdog.
Q: How did you develope Kay? You said before that you needed him (and Mehitabel) to narrate a specific part of the story that Felix and Mildmay don't have access to, but how did you approach the making of him as a character? What was first? (His accent, his soldier background, him being blind etc.)
A: Kay presented himself as a blinded and disgraced soldier. The hard part was figuring out what he'd been before that. The voice took some work, as I talked about in a previous Q&A.
Q: As I said in my review I loved the ending, because it was an end to satisfy my need to see the characters I became invested with happy without being sappy. How hard(or easy) was it to write it like that? Did the ending go through many revisions or was it set in stone (in a way) since you started?
A: The ending changed when I was finally persuaded down off the Felix/Kay ledge, but it was really easy to write thereafter. Once I realized they took the paddle-steamer west, the rest of it just fell into place.
Q: From the extra narrators who "flowed" easier Mehitabel or Kay?
A: They were both dreadful. Kay was a little easier because I'd had practice with Mehitabel, but it was still like pushing a hippopotamus up a hill when the hippopotamus doesn't want to go.
Q: I loved this new interpretation of magic as well as how the Corambian society integrated it. What prompted you to let this new country have technology similar to our reality? (I guess it could be somthing simple like time-related reasons)
A: I wanted to be able to write a fantasy with trains. (I love trains.) Also, I wanted to be able to talk about mammoths and bog bodies and how a society with magic would approach the study of pre-historic remains. So the answer really is that I'm a huge geek and I wanted to play.
Q. Did you ever consider giving any of the three a new lover at the end? If yes, who with whom?
See above re: Felix/Kay. It was a terrible idea, and I'm very grateful to everyone who talked me out of it--especially
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matociquala, with whom I was more than a bit stroppy at the time.Q: What do you imagine their daily life in Grimglass to be?(I don't know if you can answer that one, but I'll just try asking anyway)
A: I don't know. I really don't have any feel for what Grimglass is like. The thing I said up above about Mildmay and the lighthouse was totally spur of the moment extrapolation. I'm sure it's true, but it's also more than I knew when I got up this morning.
Q: I'm curious...in The Mirador, you added a new narrator, Tabby, alongside Felix and Mildmay. Did you find that more or less difficult? Did you worry how the fans would accept a new narrator?
A: Mehitabel was very hard to write, for reasons I've talked about in earlier Q&As. I had a hell of a time finding a way to distinguish her voice from Felix's.
And I expected that fans would resent her. I just hoped she'd be able to win them over, and from what I've seen, by and large she has.
Q: Also, was there any point where you had the thought and feeling of, 'I cannot write anything else in this world...'?
A: Starting somewhere in the second draft of Corambis and continuing on to the present, yes. *g*
Q: Now that I have Corambis and have finished all 4 books I am going back and re-reading them all one by one. I'm back in Melusine when Felix is in his "insane" period. Felix seems to see people and things with an uncanny perception for their genuine nature. Are the things he sees his own personal feelings of the people and situations, or is his strong concentration of Aetherealness guiding him to see their true nature? (bears, dogs, etc) I was really quite fascinated by this and wonder if you could elaborate some on how and why Felix became (for lack of a better word) "insane".
A: No, Felix is seeing something that's really there, although his interpretations are strongly colored by the fact that he is, as Mildmay would put it, completely batfuck insane.
And, yes, although I did not have the concept worked out at the time, what Malkar did to Felix, in sundering him from his magic, left his strong aethereal talent wide open, with neither protection nor filters, not even the intervention of his rational mind. That's why he sees ghosts and auras and these weird symbolic animals.
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