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Q&A 24
Q: Who is that guy on the cover of Corambis? I'm guessing it is supposed to be Kay, but I don't remember him chained up like that. Nice pants, though.
(I know you don't get a lot of say about the covers.)
A: "Not a lot" would be "none," actually. And, yes, that's Kay.
Q: I know you've answered several questions on the origins of Mildmay's voice, as well as where his dialect came from, but if you've answered your inspiration for the character, I've sadly missed it, and I apologize. That said, did you have any specific inspirations for the character of Mildmay, or was he as an "entirely original creation" as any of us can manage, realistically?
A: Like most things in fiction that really work, Mildmay is the confluence of several sources. (Fiction as river delta. Discuss.) One is Joan Vinge's character Cat, who was the first antihero I ever encountered (I was twelve or so when I read Psion. Top of my head came off.) And, being as indoctrinated into the conventions of the genre as anyone, I'd made several efforts to write a story about an urban thief. The immediate inspiration for Mildmay, though, goes something like this: I was browsing in the small sff section of the university bookstore and read the back copy of a pink-and-purple fantasy.* I don't remember what the book was, but the protagonist was an assassin. And I stood there for a moment thinking that assassins really shouldn't be protagonists in pink-and-purple fantasy, and I got a line of prose in my head, the way I sometimes do: Assassination is a filthy business. Which is more Philip Marlowe than Mildmay, but I did manage to work it around into this exchange in Corambis:
"Prostitution is a filthy business."
"So's murder for hire," I said.
(p. 188)
And that's Mildmay's origin: I wanted to write a fantasy assassin/thief who was fully aware that his job was ugly and wrong.
---
*When I've told this story before, people have asked what I mean by pink-and-purple fantasy; it's a subgenre, really of fantasy cover art, which uses that particular palette: Jim C. Hines' The Stepsister Scheme has an excellent example of a pink-and-purple cover. And the color scheme tends to reflect something about the novels, although of course that's as unreliable as any other correlation between cover art and book. But seriously. Can you imagine my books with pink-and-purple covers? (N.b., do I need to say that this isn't a value judgment? I write dark angstful psychosexual drama. Jim doesn't. When I point out that a duck isn't a ferret, or a catfish isn't a wallaby, I'm not saying anything bad about either party.)
Q: is it a coincidence that Methony sold Felix around the time Mildmay was born (I seem to recall Felix is 6 years older than Mildmay)or was there a particular reason, like she was in a position to take care of one child, but not two. Which leads me on to my next question - was there another sibling?
A: Felix (who is, yes, six years older than Mildmay) was sold when he was four, not when he was six. And, no, there is no other sibling.
Q: What is the difference between the obligation-de-sang and the obligation-d'ame?
and:
Q: You mentioned that one difference between the obligation de sang and the obligation d'ame is that the one is wizard-wizard and the latter is wizard-annemer. Are there any other major differences? How did Felix break the obligation de sang when he left Malkar?
A: Well, the major difference would be that I never worked out exactly what the obligation de sang was. :) If you've read the books, you know as much about it as I do--aside from the things I can tell you flatly, like the part where it's not the same as the obligation d'âme. (The way my creativity works is, there are things that I know, and then there are things that I have to work out. Because my time and energy are not infinite, I tend not to work things out unless I have to.) The obligation de sang is a little like brainwashing and a little like the hazing rituals where gang members make a new member commit a crime so that the new member will be bound to the gang by his/her guilt, and the consent issues are clearly pretty murky; I think Felix consented to it in the beginning, but he didn't know what he was consenting to.
Q: What is the relationship between Tibernia, Vusantine and the Courterre (some or all of which I may have horrifically misspelled)? Sometimes I'm a little confused about which places are countries and which are places IN countries.
A: Tibernia is the country, Vusantine is its capital city, and the Coeurterre is the governing body of Tibernian wizards. It's associated with a particular campus of buildings in Vusantine, but the buildings aren't the Coeurterre, just its home.
[Ask your question(s) here.]
(I know you don't get a lot of say about the covers.)
A: "Not a lot" would be "none," actually. And, yes, that's Kay.
Q: I know you've answered several questions on the origins of Mildmay's voice, as well as where his dialect came from, but if you've answered your inspiration for the character, I've sadly missed it, and I apologize. That said, did you have any specific inspirations for the character of Mildmay, or was he as an "entirely original creation" as any of us can manage, realistically?
A: Like most things in fiction that really work, Mildmay is the confluence of several sources. (Fiction as river delta. Discuss.) One is Joan Vinge's character Cat, who was the first antihero I ever encountered (I was twelve or so when I read Psion. Top of my head came off.) And, being as indoctrinated into the conventions of the genre as anyone, I'd made several efforts to write a story about an urban thief. The immediate inspiration for Mildmay, though, goes something like this: I was browsing in the small sff section of the university bookstore and read the back copy of a pink-and-purple fantasy.* I don't remember what the book was, but the protagonist was an assassin. And I stood there for a moment thinking that assassins really shouldn't be protagonists in pink-and-purple fantasy, and I got a line of prose in my head, the way I sometimes do: Assassination is a filthy business. Which is more Philip Marlowe than Mildmay, but I did manage to work it around into this exchange in Corambis:
"Prostitution is a filthy business."
"So's murder for hire," I said.
(p. 188)
And that's Mildmay's origin: I wanted to write a fantasy assassin/thief who was fully aware that his job was ugly and wrong.
---
*When I've told this story before, people have asked what I mean by pink-and-purple fantasy; it's a subgenre, really of fantasy cover art, which uses that particular palette: Jim C. Hines' The Stepsister Scheme has an excellent example of a pink-and-purple cover. And the color scheme tends to reflect something about the novels, although of course that's as unreliable as any other correlation between cover art and book. But seriously. Can you imagine my books with pink-and-purple covers? (N.b., do I need to say that this isn't a value judgment? I write dark angstful psychosexual drama. Jim doesn't. When I point out that a duck isn't a ferret, or a catfish isn't a wallaby, I'm not saying anything bad about either party.)
Q: is it a coincidence that Methony sold Felix around the time Mildmay was born (I seem to recall Felix is 6 years older than Mildmay)or was there a particular reason, like she was in a position to take care of one child, but not two. Which leads me on to my next question - was there another sibling?
A: Felix (who is, yes, six years older than Mildmay) was sold when he was four, not when he was six. And, no, there is no other sibling.
Q: What is the difference between the obligation-de-sang and the obligation-d'ame?
and:
Q: You mentioned that one difference between the obligation de sang and the obligation d'ame is that the one is wizard-wizard and the latter is wizard-annemer. Are there any other major differences? How did Felix break the obligation de sang when he left Malkar?
A: Well, the major difference would be that I never worked out exactly what the obligation de sang was. :) If you've read the books, you know as much about it as I do--aside from the things I can tell you flatly, like the part where it's not the same as the obligation d'âme. (The way my creativity works is, there are things that I know, and then there are things that I have to work out. Because my time and energy are not infinite, I tend not to work things out unless I have to.) The obligation de sang is a little like brainwashing and a little like the hazing rituals where gang members make a new member commit a crime so that the new member will be bound to the gang by his/her guilt, and the consent issues are clearly pretty murky; I think Felix consented to it in the beginning, but he didn't know what he was consenting to.
Q: What is the relationship between Tibernia, Vusantine and the Courterre (some or all of which I may have horrifically misspelled)? Sometimes I'm a little confused about which places are countries and which are places IN countries.
A: Tibernia is the country, Vusantine is its capital city, and the Coeurterre is the governing body of Tibernian wizards. It's associated with a particular campus of buildings in Vusantine, but the buildings aren't the Coeurterre, just its home.
[Ask your question(s) here.]
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(Anonymous) 2009-05-09 04:24 pm (UTC)(link)Melanie
Albuquerque
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This is probably not the place to ask a follow-up for the the obligation de sang and the obligation d'ame answer, but....Looking at the names, I imagined that they differed in the way the bindings are cast. Something like the obligation de sang required some form of blood-binding to be established. And, well, there's the obligation d'ame. (Else, how did you come up with these names? Are there other types of obligations that didn't come into play in the books?)
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(I came up with the names by thinking of words that sounded neat and that had roughly the right connotations.)
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Maybe if it was what Felix was wearing. ;)
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::Grin:: Yes, that!
I liked that cover, but I have to say I'm pleased that book two loses the pink and purple.