truepenny | Q&A 11

Entry tags:

Q&A 11

Thank you to the other person who commented with a link to your review!

More than one person has asked about the possibility of more podcasts. To which I say, I don't know. Maybe?

Q: What was the most difficult writing problem you faced with Corambis?

A: My own dreadful tendency to think with my genre conventions. I had to rip half the book out and try again because of that.

Q: I really enjoyed the way that you articulated class issues in Melusine and The Virtu, but I was surprised by the way you handled them in The Mirador. Specifically, in the first two books we learn from Mildmay about how often the decisions of the Mirador's inhabitants have caused pain, fear, and death for the denizens of the lower city. But Mildmay seems disinclined in The Mirador to connect these injustices with their authors. It's not that I'd expect him to stand up and accuse the Lord Protector before Court and Curia, but I had thought he'd at least be angrier in his own head with the representatives of the ruling class he'd met. Why did you go in this direction?

A: Okay. Complicated question, and I'm not sure I can give you a really satisfactory answer, but here are some reasons:

1. Mildmay has SO MUCH other crap to deal with that I don't think he has the energy to campaign against social injustice.

2. He doesn't believe that complaining will change anything.

3. And if you can't change anything, it's a waste of time and energy to be angry.

4. Alternatively, I could point out that he is angry, but his anger is all aimed (sometimes displaced and sometimes really not) at Felix.

5. And, really, for Mildmay, this is just The Way Things Are. It's not fatalism, exactly, but it is definitely a kind of despair. You don't get angry about things unless you can imagine them being different.

Q: Why did Felix not evince more concern about leaving the Clock of Eclipses running?

A: Um. No idea how to stop it? A metric fuckton of his own problems to deal with? The knowledge that the Corambin magicians were ALL OVER the problem? Good old-fashioned avoidance?

Q: I just got to the bit with the Titan Clock in Corambis, so I wondered if it was just me -- Titan Clocks: related to the red velvet and clockwork room in House on the Rock at all?

A: I didn't visit the House on the Rock until well after I'd come up with the idea of Titan Clocks, but yeah, there is a kind of EXTREMELY CREEPY convergence there.

Q: I thought for sure the Corambins were going to have an explanation for Mildmay's uncanny abilities (with labyrinths, with spell casting, etc.) and why magicians were able to use something of his in their spells when Xanthippe for one said they should not have been able to. I was sure that Felix/Mildmay and Thamuris/Mildmay formed some kind of closed magical circuit in the spell castings--noirant wizard and clairant complement or channel type of thing; Mildmay a yin to Felix's yang or some such--and I was so looking forward to Mildmay's mortification when that came out and Felix having to rethink their relationship based on that. You never really point out a magician in the series and say, here is a clairant, so other than metioning lightness and darkness I had supposed that clairant was more of a materially based gift (Mildmay all over) while noirance was more to the manar. So how does it work in your mind? How exactly does Mildmay complement Felix and Thamuris' magics? What is Mildmay's magic? He certainly had something more than simply non-magic annemer--or didn't he rate an explanation? Kidding.

A: First of all, Mildmay has no magical abilities. (This is a case of "Because I'm the author and I said so." Mildmay as I wrote him has no magical abilities.) His sense of direction is exceptional, but that's not the same as being magical. Secondly, I'm not sure what you're referring to with this: "magicians were able to use something of his in their spells when Xanthippe for one said they should not have been able to." Xanthippe says Thamuris shouldn't have used Mildmay in his Pythian casting, but that's not the same thing as saying he shouldn't have been able to.

Your theory is very interesting, but it's not about the books I wrote.

Q: Did this conversation make it through revisions? Do you mind telling us?

I think that was the conversation about life on other planets, which did make it into the book.

Either that, or it was this conversation about Chattan d'Islay, which had to be cut for space:

Felix had told me about the guy who wrote the book because he said it was important, that you didn't want to go letting people persuade you of things when you didn't know who they were. The philosopher's name was Chattan d'Islay. Midlander name, but he'd grown up in St. Millefleur and gone to Vusantine to study. And stayed there, writing his books in a cubby in the Library of Arx and getting paid by the High King to do it.

"Boy," I'd said. "Nice work if you can get it."

"Exactly," said Felix. "His family was poor--refugees, if I'm remembering right--but he got noticed young. D'Islay was never wealthy, but he had a steady income for most of his life."

Considering how unsteady our income was currently . . . well, yeah, I saw what Felix meant and said so.

"Don't hate him for the things he doesn't know," Felix had said, handing me the book. "Wait and let him explain the things he does."

Of course, at the rate I was reading, we were never going to get to what Chattan d'Islay did know. Powers and saints, I was slow. And stupid with it. Seemed like I got fucking lost in any word that had more than five letters.

Felix was really good about it though. He'd promised he wouldn't make fun of me, and he didn't. He didn't even seem to mind. He just waited and let me wallow through it like a short-legged dog in a mud puddle, and then if he needed to he'd tell me how to say it. And if he needed to, he'd tell me what it meant. And he didn't make fun of me about that, either. He had me stop at the end of every paragraph--and, you know, it's dumb, but I really did like knowing what a paragraph was and what it meant. So we'd stop and we'd talk about what the paragraph said, and sometimes he made me read it again. He wasn't in no kind of hurry, and I was starting to get what he meant about that, too.

I'd been worried at first that A Treatise upon Spirit would turn out to be more hocus-stuff, the stuff that Felix talked about all the time--dreams and ghosts and noirant this and clairant that. But it wasn't. It was about bravery.

But first off, what it was about was about what bravery wasn't, and it was a good thing Felix had warned me, because Mr. d'Islay had some pretty funny ideas about what he was and wasn't going to let in the door. He'd started by saying animals couldn't be brave, that that was only for people, because only people could imagine their deaths, and then he'd gone on to say that women couldn't be brave because they were slaves to their animal minds and acted only out of instinct, and I'd put the book down and asked Felix, "Is he kidding?"

"No," Felix had said, grinning, "he's perfectly serious."

"Powers. What were the women in Vusantine like?"

"Women aren't allowed in the Library of Arx."

"For real?"

"For true," he'd said, the way kids said in the Lower City.

"Because they'll, what? Touch the books or something?"

"I don't know. They probably wouldn't let either of us in, as far as that goes."

"I wouldn't let us in," I'd said, and that'd made him laugh.

So no animals, no women, and we were in the part where he was explaining how peasants couldn't be brave either.

"Peasants?" I said, after Felix had got me not to pronounce it pee-ah-sants, the way it was spelled. "What does he mean?"

"Poor people," Felix said.

"You said his parents were refugees."

"You can't imagine I'm the first person ever to learn how to pretend to be something I'm not." Which was a roundabout way of saying Malkar had taught him to pass for flash, but it was closer than he usually got to talking about that part of his life.

"So he's not writing what he thinks? He's lying?"

"Nothing that simple," Felix said, and made a face. "He's writing what he believes. But he's also lying."

"You lost me."

"Not deliberately lying, any more than he was deliberately lying about women lacking the capacity for bravery."

"He's lying to himself."

"In a way. He's--" He made a frustrated gesture. "He's writing what he's been told instead of going out and talking to a woman, or to a 'peasant.'"

"Oh," I said. "That's, um, not very brave."

The look he gave me just about deboned me. "That's what Gideon said."

We just sat there for a moment, while he decided what he was going to do about it. Finish flaying me or leave or cry or tell me to keep reading. I was kind of holding my breath. I for sure wasn't saying nothing. Because I'd learned the hard way, a septad times, that there wasn't a single thing in the world I could say that wouldn't be the wrong fucking thing.

Finally Felix let out a breath, a little shaky, not quite a sigh. "Keep reading. Watch out for the peasants."

"Fuck you," I said, no heat because there hadn't been heat in what he said. It was a shared joke, not just him laughing at me, and I knew it because of the funny little quirk in his eyebrows when he looked at me, like he wasn't sure it was okay to make jokes with me. Like he wasn't sure it was safe.

So I kept reading. Got through that paragraph, even, and when Felix said, "Well?" I said, "He's full of shit, right?"

"How do you mean?"

"All this stuff about how there's no true bravery in people who, what is it, 'labor for wages.' I mean, c'mon. Does he really think they ain't thinking about it?"

"Aren't thinking about what?"

"What would happen if they got fired," I said. "What would happen if they cut and run. Or if they went and talked to their cousin's husband's friend who works for a spider and maybe knows where there's some extra muscle needed. D'you think the women in Lornless's don't know they're dying?"

"This isn't about what I think."

"Well, I can't fucking ask Chattan d'Islay, now can I?"

Felix blinked at me. I realized the light was almost gone. "Are you asking what I think? Or what I think he thought?"

"I dunno. Both."

"I think that what Chattan d'Islay knew about the world, he learned from books. And his books told him that only the gently born could be courageous. Likewise that only the gently born could have honor. And I think that he hated his own origins, that he spent his entire life trying to become that which he pretended he was." He sighed, ran his hands through his hair. "Or maybe that's me."

"But you don't agree with him."

"No." He shook his head, sharp and firm and meaning it. "I don't agree with him."

"Okay, then."

His head tilted, like a cat realizing something is prey. "What if I did?"

"Sorry?"

"What if I did agree with him?"

I wasn't sure what he wanted. "Well, you don't."

"But what would you have done? If I'd said he was right?"

Now I knew what he wanted. "I'd tell you what I'm telling you right now. Stop yanking my leash."

He didn't flinch, exactly. But his hands came up, fingers spread, and I saw the way his head jerked back, like I was the cat, and I'd taken a swipe at him.

"I told you I wasn't gonna put up with it," I said mildly.

He'd folded in on himself, and with his hands in his hair, his forearms were mostly blocking his face. "Right," he said, kind of muffled. He didn't say sorry, because he never did, but that was okay, because I wasn't mad.

"C'mon," I said. "Let's go have dinner."

And it was all worth it just for the way he stared at me, eyes big as bell-wheels, like nobody'd ever let him off the hook before in his life.

Q: As best I can remember, we're shown only one fully-successful present-day "love match", the Kalliphorne and her husband. (I'm not sure there are any past fully-etc. either.) Was this intentional?

(Oops. I forgot Oliver and Ambrose, but since they have about six lines total and are not actually shown _together_ . . . I still should've remembered them because they are an object lesson to Kay.)

A: Ouch. Good question.

No, it wasn't fully intentional, because I hadn't realized the extent of it until you pointed it out. Certainly, I am very dubious about "romantic love," especially as a teleology for a character arc. (Although it's very instructive in this regard that I had to rewrite both The Mirador and Corambis to get the conventional love story OUT OUT OUT.) And it was very important that both Mildmay and Felix learn not to use romantic love as a crutch or as a way to hide from their problems. But I did not intentionally deprive my characters of possible role models for positive and functional relationships in which love and sex both played equal roles.

Q: Did Corbie show up with her name or did you give it to her? (Foxes, ravens . . . )

A: She brought her name with her. And was utterly and definitively her name from the get-go.

Q: My question is, did you have a reason for the parade of horrible mothers in the series, or was this simply the way the story developed given the lives and backgrounds of most of your characters? The only one I can think of who was protrayed as a reasonably "good" mother was Stephen's, and if I remeber correctly she inexplicably commits suicide.

A: (There is a reason for Stephen's mother's suicide.)

Yes, there are a lot of bad parents in the Doctrine of Labyrinths, fathers (e.g., Philip Lemerius) as well as mothers. This correlates with the fact that most of the people in the Doctrine of Labyrinths aren't very good people.

Many of the women who are bad mothers (I think) are bad mothers because the circumstances of their lives make them that way. Methony, for instance. We don't know what kind of mother she would have been if she hadn't been trapped in a prostitute's life. (Given her strong resemblance to Felix, you are welcome to be dubious about her nurturing potential, but my point is, we don't know.)

Q: Was Mildmay's injury and consequent disability part of your original conception of the story? It so drastically changes the way he is in the world, and his ability to support himself (in more ways than one) that I wonder if depriving him of his "panther-like" grace (doesn't Felix call it that in the Virtu?) had consequences for the story that you didn't anticipate?

In other words, why did you do that to a cat burglar?

A: I did that to Mildmay because I had to have a reason it was impossible for him to go back to his life in the Lower City. (Also because I was 19 and wallowing in angst.) And, yes, his lameness has been frustrating for me as well as for him.

Q: What does Melusine's money look like? Does it all have Stephen Teverius stamped on it or something? (Or perhaps a stylized gorgon, hence the name? )

And, related, what is the relative purchasing power of a gorgon?

Gorgon on the face of the gorgons, yes. I don't know about the centimes. Not Stephen, though. I think I said somewhere that the obverse is a wheel, but I may be making that up (in the delusional rather than creative sense).

I went to a lot of trouble not to have to work out the relative purchasing power of a gorgon, in the same way I went to a lot of trouble not to have to work out any actual distances.

Q: So the hours of the day are either in the 24 hour system, or associated with flowers, the weekdays are, I'm guessing, French inspired?, years are indictions, and what are wheels? And what are the Corambin specifications like "in the Seventh of the oOne Hundred Forty-seventh" for instance, refering to?

The days of the week are actually Italian inspired (Marathine days of the week are French).

Wheels are what Mildmay calls septads: groupings of seven indictions.

So the Seventh of the One Hundred Forty-seventh is the seventh indiction of the one hundred forty-seventh wheel since whatever date the Corambins count their calendar from. (I think that's from the founding of Cassander, the first Cymellunar Corambin city, but I don't remember for sure, and although I know I've got it written down somewhere, I don't know where.)

[Ask your question(s) here.]

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

First of all, Mildmay has no magical abilities. (This is a case of "Because I'm the author and I said so."

Nonsensical in the face of Mildmay's interaction with mazes, including ones he's never been in before. Maybe that was the book in your head, but it wasn't the one you wrote.

Edited 2009-04-16 17:48 (UTC)

I'm trying to assume that you don't intend to be rude and patronizing, but you're making it very hard.

And no. Mildmay's affinity for mazes is an extraordinary ability, but it isn't magical. It isn't aethereal. It doesn't fit into those neat academic categories. It's something else. Because there are plenty of wonders in this secondary world that do not belong to wizards.

I was going to ask this question in the spot you've allocated for questions, but since it relates *exactly* to what's being talked about here (and the earlier question about Corambis/Mildmay's 'magical' abilities or lack thereof), I will jump in.

I think your readers (me included) may be stumbling over genre conventions. (Like, for instance, when there's a prophecy in a fantasy book, you can be 100% ironclad sure that it's Correct and Will Happen before the story is over.) Because of Mildmay's various unusual talents, and some events I still don't understand (like, how did Mildmay bring Thamuris back to life after his prognostication basically killed him? CPR?), we all thought there was something more going on with him than you were letting us see. Not unreasonably, we expected a Big Revelation in the final book. I, at least, expected this revelation would also surprise the crap out of Mildmay, and would involve something much more subtle than actual magical abilities. (I was thinking something along the lines of a Fisher-King type bond to his environment, with some tie-in between his illness in the final book and the problem Felix was having with the Kholdanikos (sp?). Which would also somehow explain Thamuris' return to the living.)

It didn't happen, and that's cool (even though I would have loved to watch whatever expression came over Felix's face if it had). But I am holding onto the bond-to-the-environment idea just to explain things about Mildmay that otherwise remain a perplexing mystery. I like mysteries, but I also like my mysteries solved, so when necessary I try to solve them myself. :-)

Ugh, whoops, that was me, Melanie in Albuquerque.

I agree that it's a subversion of genre conventions not to have Mildmay turn out to be specifically Special in a plot-related way. And, yes, that's on purpose.

(The thing with Thamuris--I had to have something serious enough that Mildmay would actually tell someone what had happened. I didn't mean it to be a mystery, although I can totally see that it would turn into one if you were reading with those genre conventions in mind. To be clear, Thamuris was never dead. My assumption was that either (a.) Mildmay knew enough to clear his airway (I can't imagine you grow up as a kept-thief and a knife fighter and don't figure out some basic first aid, and if Kolkhis made them all learn how to swim, she'd probably make them learn the basics of resuscitation, too.) or (b.) he bolted out and whoever he flagged down--a novice, a celebrant, whatever--managed it, or (c.) Thamuris started breathing again on his own. All of which happened off-stage and wasn't relevant (since there wasn't any mystery about Mildmay's superpowers being hinted at), so I didn't go to the extra trouble of finding a way to drag the discussion into the text. The unintended ambiguity can be laid at the door of my inadequacies as a writer.)

Mildmay's almost complete inability to get lost really should be read more in the magical realism tradition than as part of the magic "systems" beloved of secondary world fantasy. In point of fact, that ability makes no sense in terms of how we see magic work in these books. It doesn't fit. Which is completely on purpose, and because it's magical realism, isn't intended to be a big deal plot-wise. All its importance is thematic.

Why, yes, I am trying to drive people who read with their genre conventions nuts. That was part of the point of the Doctrine of Labyrinths all along.

Like Renatus, I never saw Mildmay's sense of direction as magical. I could get lost in the town I've lived in for a decade - but my boyfriend can find his way around even in places he's never visited before (he says he navigates using a bird's eye map in his head). So I just accepted Mildmay's ability as perfectly normal.

My hiking buddy can do the same thing--dead reckoning. Find his way back to the car in the dark in the woods.

Very cool, that. *g*

FWIW, Mildmay's ability to find his way around never struck me as magical. I've heard about real people purportedly having an uncanny sense of direction like his, so it never occured to me to think of Mildmay's ability as magical, just extraordinary.

Thank you. I admit it's something of a relief to have someone say that.

Not to mention he'd been trained on them regularly since he was a kid, unlike the rest of the group.

I figured it was similar to my little brother who has been fascinated with computers since preschool, and thus has completely intuitive understanding of programming and hardware.

After you've seen enough of a kind of puzzle, certain solutions seem obvious even if you've never encountered this specific one.

Same here, if it helps to have more than one person. When I read the question I was very bewildered by the idea.

Yep, I'll agree with you on that - I don't know about mazes, but I can find my way around cities I visited once 20 years ago, for example; or learn my way around a new place immediately/without actually becoming lost (aside from frustrating construction detours, which shouldn't count!).
My 6 year old daughter has the same ability already. I think some people are born this way.

And, like Felix, my mother (adoptive), can get lost trying to find a restaurant she's been going to for years.

Yeah. Both my mother and my husband have remarkable senses of direction. My husband's in particular really does kind of seem like magic to me (for, lo, like Felix, I can get lost in a paper bag).

I think the problem Marici might be running into is that in high fantasy, Speshul Powers usually get conflated with worth in a troubling way. I mean, I'm sure we'd all have to take our socks off to be able to count the number of books we've read that start out with a powerless (and Powerless) character (orphan, slave, girl, orphan slave girl, etc), who becomes powerful when s/he is identified as having Powers (whether those Powers be magic, the ability to bond with telepathic dragons, or the like). One of the many genre conventions that the DoL breaks down is this conflation of Powers with worth. Since the novels take great pains to show us that Mildmay does have worth, it's easy to suppose that he ought to have (capital-P) Powers, and they're just taking a long time to manifest. But he doesn't.

It *is* important that Mildmay's lowercase-p powers are different from Felix's, and the book *does* give us a way to read that: the Hermaphrodite card, which Felix observes *at least* twice can represent a partnership between wizard and annemer.
It's also important that while Mildmay perceives himself as following Felix around like a dog (and it *is* Felix's needs and goals that drive the narrative), he's not only the brains behind the operation, he's also its chief financier, except for that one disastrous interlude in Corambis. (And that disastrous interlude is *also* important because it shows that during the brief period when the roles are reversed and Mildmay is unable to supply either money or common sense, Felix steps up to the plate. He does just fine with the money part, and really, he's not *too* bad on the common sense thing, provided we keep in mind that he wasn't trying particularly hard to find an alternative to prostitution.) Mildmay is the brains behind the operation especially, but not only, when Felix is mad--most of the plot of most of the novels center around travel, and Felix, we're told more than once, could get lost in a teacup. Without Mildmay, he may be going somewhere, but not where he's trying to go. (There were many, many times during The Mirador that I wanted to shake Felix and demand to know if he didn't *realize* that without Mildmay, he'd be wandering around the countryside with straws in his hair, at best, or locked up, or dead. Yes, he did need to be a seriously badass magician to restore the Virtu, but he'd not have been in a position to do so without Mildmay.) In Mirador, Mildmay's at loose ends perhaps precisely *because* they aren't going anywhere, but he still manages to uncover the assassination plot and do what, in a conventional high fantasy, would be presented as Save the Kingdom. What he does is very different from what Felix does, but just as important. Without being magical.

And here's where I noticed that the comments just below the one I'm responding to already address the genre thing. I've written to much to stop now, so I'll take a quick look at those....hm, it does seem like what I'm saying about genre and what Melanie in Albequerque is saying are related but not identical, so (**whew**) I don't have to delete this whole long comment. (Her point, about hidden abilities becoming manifest in the Big Reveal at the end of a fantasy novel-or-group-of-novels is just as relevant and important as mine, but different, which is nice thematically.)

I want to squee over the DVD-extra you've given us here, too, but I'll do that in a separate comment.

To add to the comments about Mildmay/labyrinths/whatever: it didn't strike me as magical either, although part of that is probably that Mélusine itself never really made sense to me in a mental-map sort of way. (This isn't a criticism; you were writing novels, not a travelogue.)

I have a very good sense of direction and carry mental maps around of the real world, and the feeling I got of Mélusine is that it is a large city, vaguely European-medieval, and good fucking luck trying to find a straight line or a direct path from one point to another, let alone making your way back again.

In other words, if you're a Lower City thief, and a good one, part of your job is being able to find your way in situations like that--not unlike labyrinths--and doing so quickly and confidently, even if you have no idea where you're going. Otherwise, someone outpaces you and you're dead.

Ah, you are saying that her metaphor is wrong.

(Ducks and runs.)

(For the record, I thought Mildmay was annemer too.)

Thank you for sharing that additional conversation. I remember feeling a little sad that we didn't get to see more of Felix actually teaching Mildmay to read, and so reading that made me quite happy. Also, I love Felix's amusement with Mildmay's reaction to the bit about women.

Not reading comments, and averting eyes from spoilers, as Corambis has not yet reached Montreal.

Methony deliberately went to Melusine. She had a perfectly nice home full of lots of Troians and she went all that way and became a prostitute for no reason but caprice. She also joined a nutty cult. She also sold both of her sons, one at a time, as kept thieves. When they were little kids. I think she's the worst mother of all time and I say this as someone with a reasonable baseline of comparison.

You are, of course, welcome to interpret Methony's behavior in any way you wish. I would, however, point out that the only viewpoints we get on her are (a.) her children's, neither of whom remembers her more than vaguely, and (b.) Diokletian's, and surely if we know anything, we know that Diokletian is a biased and untrustworthy observer. So we don't know why Methony made any of the (utterly abysmal) choices she made in her life.

Of course, it all comes out in the same place: she is a spectacularly terrible mother. But I don't think anyone would become a prostitute in Mélusine just on a whim.

I didn't get the same feeling from the text. We know about what happened, but not that much about her decisions.

Hmm, how do we know she sold the kids? It seems move likely her boss did. And we don't know how much choice she had about getting pregnant the second time. She ran away from a home life that wasn't all that great -- she was only valued for her sexuality, her magic was mediocre in a place and family where magic was the only respected hierarchy. And she was young and pregnant, which tends to produce hasty decisions that have a lot of bad-end possibilities (not everyone is as lucky as Bujold's Fawn). Maybe she joined that nutty cult because they promised to protect her baby.

It seems you are judging her for how her life turned out. After all, her son, Mildmay, also wanted to leave that nice home full of Troians. I can't say I blame him for that, even though he ended up a slave in the Mirador.

It seems likely that when Methony left Troia, she didn't know how bad things were going to get. It does seem Troian society doesn't put a high value on doing your own thing, and one thing we can reasonably infer about Methony is that she was a headstrong (sympathetic) or spoiled (unsympathetic) girl. She may have thought--and the more I think about this idea, the more I like it--may have thought that she was the plucky heroine of a fantasy novel, going off on a quest to a foreign land to make her own way in the world and Show Those Smallminded Adults What She Can Really Do. The woman who leaves her perfectly good home with her small child to make her own life is a recognized type--think, I don't know, the Gilmore Girls. Lorelei does exactly this, and for her, it works out just as well as it does poorly for Methony. Poor dear, she didn't realize that that isn't the kind of story she's in. What I like about this theory is the parallel with Ginevra, who also thought she was in a different kind of story. And like Ginevra, she makes choices that would be, if not *great* choices, not terrible ones, if she was in the kind of story that she thinks she's in. We can sort of guess--if we want to be sympathetic to her--that by the time her choices become truly abysmal (selling her kids into slavery), she's boxed into a corner by her previous series of naive, but not evil, choices.

(Thinking that you're in a different kind of story does not, of course, excuse selling your kids into slavery, which there's really no excuse for. It could be that by the time that happened, she was in truly dire circumstances, and selling them was the only way to keep them alive. Or maybe, as Vincent Demabrien theorizes about his own mother, she was sold a pack of lies by some smooth-talking bastard. Or (best, in terms of my theory), both at once: she was desperate, and she chose to let herself believe that being a kept thief would be an OK life (Learning a trade! Having adventures!).)

It was my question about the money- I was trying to figure out if my pet theory was correct. I thought when Thamuris (well the Huphantike talking through him) tells Mildmay "Love and betrayal, the Gorgon and the Wheel" he/it was talking about flip sides of the same coin, because the coins have a gorgon on one side and a wheel on the other. Because I couldn't figure out the gorgon and wheel part any other way (except maybe as cool-sounding creepy mysticism, which is certainly possible with any oracular revelation), and it was bugging me. That would be pretty cool, actually, since I doubt Thamuris has ever seen a Marathine gorgon.

Aha! Yes. That is in fact why it's the gorgon and the wheel. Thank you.

I wanted to ask you, do you answer all the questions we ask you?
I know it´s self-evident that if loads and loads of people ask you questions, you have to pick and choose, and as the author of both your books and this LJ, you reserve the right to answer what questions you like.
The reason I ask this, is because I´ve asked a more than a few questions, but they never appeared in the Q and A, not even in contracted form. (Or they might seem so insipid, I hope not!) I am aware of course, that this Q and A is a kind gesture, a lot of fun, and I hope I do not come across as annoying.

So to end on happy note, I do enjoy this LJ!

Yes, I do answer all the questions (with some conflation for repeated questions). I'm answering them in the order received and have just finished the second page-worth (of four pages of questions thus far); I haven't gotten to your first question yet. Hang in there!

#blush# Thank you. I will hang in there like a hangy thing.

I was wondering how many you got, and thinking the answer was "lots." Good to see that confirmed!

I also really enjoyed the little snippet of Mildmay and Felix reading. I understand why it had to be cut, but I just sort of love it, man.

Also, bearing in mind that I do have an uncanny sense of direction (not as good as Mildmay's, of course),I never found Mildmay's abilities 'magical', and was hoping the whole time you were never going to give him any super magical relevance, and was very relieved at the end of Corambis for that reason amongst many others.

Also hey did you know you're the example quote in the Word Of God (http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/WordOfGod) entry for TV Tropes (until someone changes it again, of course), and that DoL has its own entry (http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/DoctrineOfLabyrinths) therein?

Edited 2009-04-17 02:56 (UTC)

OH MY GOD I'M AN EPIGRAPH!!!!11!!!1!!

I can die happy now.

That is so awesome.

The entry so far only has one "subverted trope" example, to about two dozen non-subverted ones. Someone oughta do something about that. (The only time I tried to edit TVTropes, I messed it up.)

I am pretty much famous for messing up any wiki I touch, BUT. I'm sure if somebody posted something in

the_mirador, there'd be someone who could figure it out >> But I'm just not tedious enough to work with wikis, man. I'm a big picture kinda guy.

Edited 2009-04-17 03:48 (UTC)

Thank you so much for posting that conversation between Mildmay and Felix talking about the book. I especially love this line:

The look he gave me just about deboned me. "That's what Gideon said."

That is just so beautifully written, it made me catch my breath. It connects, emotionally, to two of my favorite scenes in Corambis:(1) the one where Felix is talking about why he misses Gideon, and lady, you really nailed it there...the realization that all these little things that you never really thought about are things you can never have again when someone you love dies, and how it hits you sometimes like a kick in the face. And (2) the earlier one, after Felix gets back to the hotel from his first foray back into prostitution and he bursts into tears, partly from the old memories coming back, but mostly from grief, from missing Gideon. And thinking that his heart is not just broken, it's gone. Yeah. That's how it is.

That extra scene just made me very happy. I loved Felix teaching Mildmay how to read so much and I really don't quite know why. I just did. More of it is wonderful.

I too never considered/wanted that Mildmay had any magical abilities. I'd also just like to add my voice to the "more podcasts please!" It was really nice to get a better idea of how Mildmay sounds-- I'd love to hear some Mehitabel. And experiencing something through a new medium always helps me understand and notice things I haven't before.

I hadn't even thought about it, but it would be wonderful to hear Mehitabel! (Sue Lambiris...yet again...sigh)

Loved this conversation between Felix and Mildmay. Like a few others who have commented already, I wanted to see more of Mildmay learning to read. I can see why it was edited out, as a non-plot-bearing element, but as someone who cares more about character than plot, I'm glad we got to see it. I especially liked the image of the short-legged dog in a mud puddle, and I liked how it shows that Mildmay isn't just learning to decode (as in, sound out words), but to *read*. That's something I've struggled with teaching community college: students who think that because they've identified all of the words, they've read, even if they don't understand what they read. (Speaking of teaching, earlier this week I definitely had Felix's magic lesson with Corbie in mind when I was talking with a student about different metaphors for understanding what parts of an essay do.)

I also loved Mildmay pointing out that not using lived experience to challenge what he knows is true is the opposite of brave. Empiricism *is* brave, because it requires a willingness to be proved wrong.

Anyway, I'm going to print it out and stick it in the book. Where does it go, if you remember?

The very beginning of Chapter 10. (You can see where I salvaged the last line.)

I just love the immense psychological depth of Mildmay´s social skills, because he´s aware of every minute reason for someone's behaviour.

The other thing I love throughout the books is that Felix and Mildmay never really, ahem, 'consumed' their relationship, because that was Felix's issue and it wasn't about them finding comfort in that</> , but it was about them realisng they're sound, life-worthy human beings.

On a silly note though, is that I was imagining Mildmay as an addition to the band the Traveling Wilbury's *s*, and I imagine him with the voice of Bob Dylan, nicely raw. Every story he's ever heard, a slide guitar and a twitch of the eyebrow. Which means of course, that scar has to stay. (The more growling the better) LOL

I have to admit to flittering through the questions and answers as I haven't read The Mirador yet but one of your answers to an earlier question caught my eye:

'Felix had to be male from the get-go because the first thing I knew about him was that he was the middle term between Malkar and the boy he nearly rapes in the Arcane. He had to be, in other words, a person with the potential to be both rapist and victim...'

That scene really struck me. Felix admitting to himself that he had the potential inside him to treat that boy as Malkar treated him..and then to turn around and hand himself over to Malkar for punishment? *gulp*

And my library has purchased Corambis - YAH!

Thank you!

The other-planets conversation seemed to fit very well to me, so I would never have spotted it.

I was wondering if the societies the adult Felix tends to move in had anything to do with the lack of healthy romantic relationships, as they tend toward the academic side of things and I sometimes had the vague impression that many of their residents would have been more comfortable residing at Shrewsbury College than out boating on the Thames. (Not, of course, that academia need imply such an attitude, but it is a not-uncommon perception.)

It also occurs to me that the answer to the question about parents may be relevant. =>

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Q&A 11

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

Tweeter and The Monkey Man

no subject

no subject