Return to Castasia

“Enjoy your book,” Ter says, leaving the room to let me read a bit before I go to sleep.

What’s so strange about this, you ask?

I am reading my own book.

Re-reading, actually. I was inspired to revisit The Healing after a work colleague asked if I would take a look at the first few chapters of a fantasy novel she’s writing. I have great respect for this person, not only because she rocks at her finance desk job, but because she has published a bunch of books through real contracts with established publishers. She already identifies me as a capable employee. To have her recognize me as a fellow wordsmith—or at least someone who knows something about writing—was pretty darned cool.

You don’t entrust your fledgling child to just anyone.

After I sent her my review, she dropped by my office for our first real writer-to-writer conversation. We’ve scratched the subject on occasion, but because I respect her practice of keeping her writer’s life separate from her work life, we had never gotten into the meat of it. My effort with her manuscript proved more than she had hoped for—not knowing what I was doing, I did a complete line edit rather than a general overview—and our relationship seems to have shifted in a more comfortable direction as a result.

At the same time, I decided to take another look at The Healing, if for nothing else but to remind myself of how my own fantasy story started. Of course I’d write it differently now … but not by much. My style has evolved in the decade-plus since I finished the first draft. The story itself is good. The characters are complex and colourful. The magic is present but not overpowering—I recall GRRM saying that magic is like anchovies on a pizza: too much and the whole pie is ruined. Best of all, elements are present in The Healing that remained consistent and actually propelled the series forward in subsequent novels. I should be proud of that sucker; it’s a pretty good read, if not a little fatty in places. It’s actually fun to see that I could have cut a line or a paragraph, or even a scene, to make the flow move faster—then again, I always write what I want to read. In 2003, it seems I wanted to read something thick and sticky with detail. Nowadays, not so much.

And that’s okay. Like Treason before it, The Healing deserves better than two of five, so I’ll give it …

Idle Thoughts

One week off is not enough.

Hands up, everyone who’s surprised.

I doubted this would be news.

Truly, I am grateful to have had the time to be Ru. Though I didn’t get everything done that I wanted, everything I did I wanted to do.

I went back to Castasia. I finished the story about Lucius’s twin sister—I started it months ago, so it was good to wrap it up at last—and began another one about his youth, this one from his foster father’s POV and why he (Lucius) went into exile. Geez, this character is a goldmine; I could write Lucius stories forever and never run out of episodes. His influence is so powerful that he even owns the ones that aren’t about him!

I also embarked on a refresh of Orphan Black so I’m primed for season four (expected for my birthday)—no time for a marathon, but I got in a few episodes of season three. I remain an ardent fan of the series. It gets better and better.

And I finally watched the documentary about the late Amy Winehouse that won an Oscar last spring. I could have been a fan if she had been allowed to follow her bliss rather than her path—I had not known she started as a jazz singer before her career went supernova and she went the tragic way of many a broken child whose solace became her undoing. Her story, unfortunately, was the same as too many others—Billie Holliday, Janis Joplin, Kurt Cobain to name a few—but in a way it was worse for her because of the relentless media exposure. She wasn’t free to conquer her demons in private. She was forced to do it publicly, because that’s what the public demanded though her battle was deeply personal. As in “none of our business”, yet it became big business for the media. And how quickly the applause turned to derision! Get famous enough in this world and you’re doomed no matter how talented you are.

Her version of “Will You Still Love Me Tomorrow” is sublime.

Enjoy.

The Singing Sword

Three novels ago, I wrote a scene wherein Lucius is test driving a new sword. I’m no expert, but you needn’t be one to know that a soldier will have specific preferences when it comes to weaponry, and that he’ll likely own more than one example of his favourite make/model. Being an outlaw, however, my hero left most of his gear behind when he escaped Imperial justice in Treason. One broadsword returned with him to Castasia, and though this part is not recorded anywhere in the story, he immediately proceeded to drive the local craftsmen crazy with his quest to replicate its equal. By the time the aforementioned scene was written, he had resorted to the black market to obtain the rare crucible steel, and recruited a foreign smith familiar with the material to forge him a new sword. His requirements were, in his mind, simple, but even as I wrote the scene, I questioned whether such an elite weapon was believable given the technology of his time.

A decade later, I have the answer: a resounding YES!

Lucius’s sword of choice is my fantasy equivalent of the Ulfberht—a high-end broadsword that was forged in northern Europe between the ninth and eleventh centuries. The Vikings didn’t make them, but more than a few Scandinavian warriors managed to get their hands on one during the lifetime of the Volga trade route. It was the Rolls Royce of weapons, and also appears to be a fine example of medieval branding: if it wasn’t marked “Ulfberht”, it wasn’t the real deal. Production spanned two centuries, so it a single smith wasn’t responsible for the line; it seems that a Frankish monastery owned the copyright. There were even knockoffs, easily identified nowadays by a misspelled name and a blade of inferior steel, though they must have sold for as much as the genuine article. The high carbon content made the blade both strong and flexible, and a groove known as the fuller enabled the larger weapon to retain the lighter weight of a smaller sword. It’s the perfect sword for Lucius, and now I know I wasn’t dreaming when I wrote it.

Phew. I write fantasy because I want to rule my world, but some details demand a basis in this reality, else the reader—and I have done it myself—will hitch up and go, Huh? It’s especially gratifying to know that something as vital as the brand of sword my hero wields in battle actually did exist … though I do wonder how I “knew” about it beforehand!

The Leppard Long Weekend

It started with Viva Hysteria! on Friday. Ter got the DVD for her birthday and waited a whole week for the viewing—the Leppards live in Las Vegas, playing their classic album in track order from Women to Love and Affection. Cool show. Had no idea it had been filmed.

One of the bonus features is the opening set they played as Ded Flatbirds—“the best Def Leppard cover band in the world”—and in that set was a song called Undefeated, one of three original tracks recorded for the live album, Mirrorball, in 2011.

I swear, if ever a song was written for Lucius, Undefeated is it.

So, next day, Mirrorball goes onto the car stereo for our sojourn to lunch with my folks. We switch to Yeah! for the drive home, and somewhere on the road, Ter observes that it’s been a Leppard long weekend.

It’s supposed to be a Thanksgiving long weekend.

But hey, I’m thankful for the Leps. Without them, and the King in particular, there would be no Lucius. My legendary hero would not exist, or if he did, it would be in someone else’s world.

I’m so glad that he chose to exist in mine. He takes up a lot of room and burns a lot of energy, but I’m glad of that too, because I’ve been reminded yet again that “it’s about Lucius”. Fixed Fire is the story of a family, and volume seven is Reijo’s romance, but no matter where in the series or who the protagonist, there he is, commandeering the spotlight, the great Golden Savage, Mr. Undefeated himself.

I have lots for which I am grateful. On a daily basis, I have a rotating Top Five, but if where you focus becomes your reality, then right now a rock singer from Sheffield figures high on the list.

Happy Thanksgiving.

With love,

FF Spinoffs

Rather than quit, I have set aside the novel for the nonce. I actually did return to the story of Margaret and King Charles for a time, managing to write a couple of new scenes and get a better idea of the plot before I was called back to Castasia, but not for Reijo’s romance.

This one is about Rikka.

The beauty of a series is one’s ability to write back and forth in time. Treason was the starting point for Fixed Fire, the legend of Lucius Aurelius told in a series of nine volumes. Side projects have sprung from main storyline, usually about the history of Castasia and the characters other than Lucius who figure in the present tale. Over the years I’ve written a few short stories and novellas about some who were either directly or indirectly affected by him in his youth.

Rikka is his twin sister, who probably suffered more from his absence than anyone else did. She’s alluded to it throughout the series, and one day I got curious enough to consider what her life must have been like after he left home.

In a word, yikes.

On the plus side, I am more interested in writing her story than I am in blogging or F***book, so what spare time I have these days is taken up with actual writing instead of writing about writing. It’s a relief to be obsessed again, and my revelation from a few weeks ago still holds true. This may be his sister’s story, but—you guessed it—it’s about Lucius.

All My Children

Adults don’t count. Vampires are certainly excluded. Even the children in my stories must be considered characters rather than offspring, being born to the aforementioned fictitious adults. But I guess, in a funny way, every one I write is my child.

On second thought, maybe not. I did not birth Lucius or Julian or Black or Cassie or any of the other grown ups—mortal or otherwise—who populate my work. They came to me as individuals with stories to be told. I happen to be the scribe. The biographer. Some authors roll their eyes at others like me, who insist that their protagonists appear like ghosts, fully-formed and possessed of a unique personality, looking for a mouthpiece to speak for them. What, do those authors build their heroes from spare parts and assign traits from a personalities app?

Zzzzzzzz.

I have never constructed a character. Perhaps it’s a matter of deconstructing, of working backward from the final result to learn how he/she became who he/she was when I met him/her. Take Lucius, for example. When I met him, he was a battle-scarred warrior of legendary reputation. His “bad dude” potential was right up front and I know some folks who were either scared of him, disliked him, or both. Now, a dozen years and six volumes later, I understand how he became the scary bad hero of Treason. I’ve worked with him for long enough to have learned what makes him tick, and not because he’s confessed to any of it. I’ve learned about him through the eyes of those who knew him as a child, then as a boy, then as a young man. Did I invent those people, each with a story to complement his? I suppose, on some level, it’s possible.

But it’s much more fun to imagine that I simply make myself available and the voice finds me.

Lucius

The Leppard King, circa 1992 - the template for my hero

“Lucius!” I cried. “It’s about Lucius!”

It’s Reijo’s story, but it’s about Lucius. It’s always about Lucius. Always has been, always will be. Fixed Fire is his world, created for him, and while others occasionally take a lead role in the ongoing saga, he is the sun at the center of their galaxy and everyone—everything—revolves around him.

He needn’t even be present to own a scene. Be it a short story,  a novella, or a volumes in the series proper, my great Golden Savage figures prominently in the plot. I got confused with Reijo’s romance because Lucius isn’t a POV character, but I’ve lately been reminded that it doesn’t matter if he’s not the one telling the story. It’s still about him.

He’s a typical Leo male. “Pure-faced and roaring,” as Nicole once described him, putting her impression into a poem that said it all in that one powerful phrase. Love him, loathe him, fear or revere him, he is the driving force in his world.

I must admit, seeing the Leppard King again was a sharp reminder of where it all began. It took the universe eight years to engineer a royal return to Victoria, and in the course of one evening, it all came back. The birth of our hero in 2002, the writing of four fat novels in the following five years, the crazy coincidence of Leppard’s proximity to my creative consciousness. The King eventually fell off my radar but the story continued—albeit with less enthusiasm on my part, and even less understanding of why it was so. Seeing him in April compelled me to pull out the albums that had fuelled my passion for his fictional child, to revisit Treason and remind myself of who the General was when I first met him.

And then, the inner voice stating with crystal clarity that this part of the story, that Reijo’s romance, is also about Lucius. The hopelessly tangled knot suddenly unraveled and has run straight and smooth ever since. I’m rewriting scenes, adding new ones and reorganizing others, and haven’t want to write anything else for weeks.

Not even blog posts.

This is what happens when I am truly obsessed with a project. It becomes my sole focus, to the exclusion of all else—except maybe F***Book and my office gig. My thoughts are all with the story, reworking bits of dialogue, envisioning new scenes, typing so fast from the heart that my head can’t stop my momentum. It’s blazing and brilliant and precisely the point of my existence, to feel this alive in the creation of something wonderful.

So I haven’t been writing, but I have been writing—and it’s looking good.

How can it not, when it’s all about him?

The Return of the Leppard King

I thought I’d fallen out of love with them. Last December, I heard that the former producer of the Q Morning Show had died in a car crash on snowy roads and I was looking up further info on the station’s website. I was so intent my mission that notice of the Leps’ concert date on the coming events list gleaned naught but a huh? Then my wee sister IM’d me: “Def Leppard is coming to town. Are you guys going?”

“I dunno,” I wrote back, feeling uncomfortably lukewarm about what had once sent my temperature to thermonuclear heights. Joe and the boys had fallen off my radar. The world he had inspired was in a holding pattern while my passion for vampires raged anew. Neither Ter nor I listened to their albums anymore; we didn’t follow them on F***book and hadn’t visited their website in years. In fact, we were living in fear of the band turning up to play the River Rock Casino or, worse, on PBS as part of the “Rock of 80s” nostalgia pledge drive package that you just know is coming down the road.

My email pinged. The Q Crew newsletter arrived in my inbox, letting me know that the Leps were coming and tix were going on sale that Friday. I flipped it to Ter with a feeble: “What do you think?”

My phone immediately rang. “Of course!” she practically yelled when I picked up. I hadn’t heard her so pumped about anything in a long while.

“Really? I didn’t think you’d want to go.”

“Why not?” she demanded. “He’s coming to me!” Which, roughly translated, means that she’s done with traveling to see the Leppard King, but if Victoria is on their itinerary, us going is a no-brainer.

Of the Joes we know, Elliott is to Ter what Perry is to me—that mysterious memory of a previous life where he played a role so important that the effect has lingered through dimensions. Crazy, yes. Improbable, maybe. Possible, definitely. Why not? No matter what you believe, something about his current incarnation sparked the birth of our mutual hero, Lucius Aurelius, and the world of Fixed Fire. For that, I am eternally grateful to him, to Ter, and to the band who played the soundtrack for Treason.

So, yeah, she’s right. Of course we must go to the gig. Of course we must pay homage. Of course he’s come for a particular reason at a particular time, and isn’t it funny that I’ve gone back to Castasia once more? His Royal Leppardness has no idea, but it truly is a homecoming for him.

Four of us are going—Ter, my wee sister, my boy sister, and me. The kids are fans for a different reason; they just like to rock, and if you wanna get rocked, then the Leps are DEFinitely the band for the job.

More to come …

Desktop

I ask you, how can I be stuck with the novel when my hero looks like this? He’s been on my desktop (I wish) for years; as with all things taken for granted, eventually I stopped “seeing” him. I considered replacing him last week, then I took a moment to look at him with intent.

I couldn’t do it. Aside from having nothing and no one worthy to replace him, I realized that I don’t want to replace him, probably because doing so would also be admitting defeat. He is the sun around which my novel orbits. Taking him down would be like going dark.

My computer desktops have rarely featured cute animals or pretty flowers. My pics of natural beauty generally pack an alpha Y-chromosome—even the androgynous shot of Jonathan Rhys Meyers was savagely alluring—and almost always provide me with the blueprint for a hero, a villain, a lover, a poet, or sometimes all four. I like to have inspiration close by, especially at the office, where it’s easy to forget how to be creative except when interpreting financial policy. Sometimes I’ll shut down the myriad of windows and take a sec to renew acquaintance with my man o’ the month just to remember what I do for fun … or would do, given half a chance. Or will do, once he’s woven into the fabric of whatever tale one has to tell. Some writers veer away from likening a character to a living person, but come on. Everybody looks like somebody else, and if a man like Joe Elliott can spark a fictional hero like my Lucius, how is that an insult?

By the way, it’s Joe’s birthday today. Happy birthday, Leppard King!

Musings

My first writerly Christmas tree ornament!

No story this week. I have yet to decide which way to go with the next serial. I’d like to post something new, but haven’t got anything new to post. We’ll see what I can do with two more weeks of vacation.

Now that the seasonal festivities have ended, I can devote more attention to Shade. I’ve felt him drifting in the mental background; given time and some solitude, I’ll get his story in writing. There’s a song called “Breathe Me” on Sarah Brightman’s latest album that is so powerful it might be him singing in her voice. Often I will hear a lyric that suggests a character in such condensed detail, I am compelled to expand on the theme and bring him to life. Strangely, Shade himself has not caused any real trouble, though he isn’t as I had originally envisioned him. The other characters are starting to come, crossing wires and messing up the backstory as they emerge. That means some rewriting, some relocating, and some plain – I hate this most of all – deleting. I have yet to accept that it’s okay to write a thousand words and use none. This story will be worth the blood and angst, I think. It’s only that it’s been so long since I’ve tackled a whole new cast in a whole new world and every step I take seems to be on quicksand.

Cristal and her plastic Pony-driving lover are on indefinite hold. Her story seems to be more of a comedy, which is brutally difficult to write well and is not my literary forte. At least Shade isn’t leading me too far off my usual twisty-turny-tragic-romance path. His darkness seems a good fit for winter writing. Maybe Cristal’s story will be less daunting come spring/summer.

As for the novel … kill me now.

I also want to revisit the Cassandra series from a dozen years back, to get that into some sort of shape and resolve the calamities that were left hanging when Lucius took over my life.

Then there’s the Julian series to a) tidy up and b) continue in the present day.

Once the novel is done, the next in that series awaits, too. So much to write, so little time in which to write. I am my own worst enemy in that regard. I don’t make New Year’s resolutions, but perhaps I should start. In 2014, I will write more!!!

The Other Golden Savage

Sav (with Joe) on stage in Victoria 2007

Today is Rick Savage’s 53^rd birthday. He’s the bass player for Def Leppard, and while many people might think that the band is Joe Elliott’s, they’re wrong. Originally, it belonged to Sav. Turned out that Atomic Mass was looking for a singer, Joe was looking for a band – he brought the name as well as the voice – and the Leps were (re)born. Sav is the lone original Leppard. 

He was deadly cute when he was younger, and there’s a lingering sweetness to him as he’s aged. I don’t know a lot about him except that he loves to restore old houses, he does a fair bit of charity work for the local children’s hospital, and back in 2002, his look inspired me to write a Castasian character called Jarkko’s Antero. Tero is Analise’s brother, Lucius’s foster brother, a devoted family man, a good neighbour, a better friend … and a dangerous enemy. Turns out the prettiest ones have the darkest secrets and over the years I have learned a great deal about Irfeu’s devil-with-the-angel’s-face. He’s lovable, all right, and he just might be scarier than the Golden Savage himself. 

I’m confident that Sav does not share Tero’s duplicitous nature … but you can never know for sure, can you?

"Silver From Gold (Preface)"

The story starting on Saturday isn’t a Christmas story. It isn’t even a winter story since it takes place at the turn of spring, but the protagonist has survived the hardest winter of her life and is about to face her greatest challenge yet. I consider it a story for the holiday season because I was inspired to write it based on two Christmas songs that struck me particularly hard.

For years, every year, a Christmas song called Breathof Heaven, recorded by Amy Grant in 1992, brought to mind the dilemma of the girl who my Castasian hero, the indomitable Lucius Aurelius, left behind. The lyric is a plea from the Virgin Mary to the heavens, but it easily fit the situation that young Analise faced when her beloved went into exile. It was a story I wanted to write, but somehow never did … until December 2008.

That year, Ter and I were testing twinkle lights prior to putting up the tree. Enya’s then-new Christmas album, And Winter Came …, was playing for the first time. She sings the most haunting version of OCome O Come Emmanuel that I have ever heard, and when that track began, a voice whispered to me that Reijo was born at night. Reijo is one of my favourite characters, my princely white knight in dented armour, the eldest son of Luko and Analise, but who he is and how he got there really isn’t relevant at this point.

“Silver From Gold” is his mother's story about the night when he was born.

Enjoy.

Romantique, Moi?

I sneer at romance. Chick flicks make me nauseous. Lusty males and swooning heroines send my eyes rolling heavenward. Pink hearts and bridal shows give me migraines. I dunno. Maybe itʼs my Virgoan hardwiring, but what many folk – particularly women – call romantic is what I call cause for a diabetic coma. Kill me now.

So, if I am so adverse to romance, how is it that last Sunday, when Will McAvoy chased down Mackenzie McHale during an election night newscast and clumsily asked her to marry him, I damn near burst into tears? Once I dried up, I had to think about that. Maybe I have been mistaken about romance.

It isnʼt about new love or young love or even strangers exchanging glances across a crowded room. For me, romance is the reward of a punishing struggle to overcome hurt, of lovers who fall out of each otherʼs arms and find their way back again. Romance is an elderly couple holding hands as they walk across the mall parking lot. Romance is the reunion of those parted by war or misadventure or misunderstanding. It is deep and passionate and painful and gorgeous and triumphant and enduring. It is not fluffy or silly or a comedy of errors. Romance is seriously potent stuff. It deserves respect because it overcomes. It surpasses honeymoons and arranged marriages to become something rich and pulsating and radiant. Romance is epic. Legendary. Unstoppable.

True romance is also on the endangered species list because these days love is disposable. Too few couples make the effort anymore. I recall a saying from years ago – I donʼt remember who said it: Love never dies from natural causes.

I am almost always working with lovers in my writing. Julian is my most romantic character, but my most romantic lovers are probably Lucius and Analise. Theirs is the eternally flaming passion that will not die because it has survived loss, conflict, separation and a somewhat volatile reunion. Romance is not for the faint of heart. Romance in its truest form takes time to reach its full potential.

Sometimes, it takes a recovery from the blow that shatters it. Will and Mac were broken for years, but they never stopped loving each other. They cannot go back, but they can certainly go forward. And if itʼs right, if it is a true romance, they will emerge the stronger for it.

But Iʼm not a romantic. Honest.

Female

No matter how many versions of the Arthurian legend I encounter, I cannot make myself like Guinevere. “Camelot” (the musical), “Excalibur”, “King Arthur”, “Camelot” (the TV series that died after one season) – in every one of them, the Queen bugs the hell out of me. She’s either simpering or smug, and while Arthur himself was best portrayed by Clive Owen, even the King can be difficult to respect because he’s more in love with his round table knights than he is with his wife. I watched “Camelot” (the musical) on the weekend and much as I love the music and the scenery and the costumes and even the story … augh. I wanted to smack the Queen, punch out Lancelot, and shake the King until his pearly whites rattled. Was it the writing or the acting? The characters are the stuff of legend, so how could it be them?

Except that, in “Excalibur”, “King Arthur”, and “Camelot” (the TV series that died after one season), I generally feel the same – about Guinevere, at least. I like my knights on the tarnished side so Lancelot does nothing for me, hence I don’t see why she falls for him when Arthur is much more interesting … if you can get him to stop talking to Merlin’s ghost and being so darned idealistic all the time. Richard Harris didn’t have much to work with in the musical, truth be told. Clive Owen put way more grit and savvy into his King Arthur – and Ioan Gruffud’s Lancelot had an appealing ragged edge as well. But Guinevere? She was no mooning milksop when Keira Knightley played her, and I still disliked her.

So. Do I expect more from female characters than I do from male? Tough one. I can’t tell if it’s the way I was raised, the culture in which I was raised, my hardwired chromosomal response to other women, or me seeing in them what I dislike in myself, but I seem to be way less forgiving with females than I am with males. I take more care when I’m writing them, especially in the first person. I like them to be smart and a little sassy, but there’s fine line between confident and pushy. They must stand up to their men without hysteria or henpecking, and they must also know how to stand down without caving. I myself am a smartmouth, so I have to watch that my girls don’t overdo the sass because it gets annoying and I do not want to annoy the audience. Children can get away with it to a point, but even then, Lucius’s daughter Aurelia, who began as an opinionated eight-year-old, is now, at twelve, being schooled in the finer points of diplomacy and artful conduct … though she still blurts her mind in safe company. Despite being more natural for me, writing women is hard work. My guys can be rat bastards and still be appealing, but my girls … yeah, just like in the real world, more is expected of them. They don’t always oblige – I have one or two real peaches in the orchard – but I do worry more about them being likeable than I do their male counterparts. I don’t think it’s a reflection on me; I think they themselves want to be accepted and are therefore more aware of their behaviour. A few of them don’t care. A few others are completely unaware. Many are truly caught between duty and devotion. Most of them are just trying to survive. Gee, they sound like real women!

But I still don’t get Guinevere.

Slipping Into Fiction

The problem with a long weekend is its inevitable end. I got so much writing done over the past three days that this morning I’m finding reality an uncomfortably tight fit. What do I do for a living again? And do I care? I should, but let’s just say I’m exceptionally grateful that I only have three days at the office before I get another three days off. I think I can fake it to Friday.

I’ve been all over the space/time continuum, that’s for sure. Present day angels, 17^th century paragons, my imaginary lovers in Castasia ... I even got some historical blog stuff written, though I forgot my flash drive at home so the post intended for today will go up tomorrow instead.

My reality is surreality.

I worked with Cristal all day Sunday. The story is slow, but at least it’s progressing. I actually over-wrote in that I pushed past my fatigue at the end of the day and wound up finishing at a less than satisfactory point. Having thought about it, I’ll be rolling back and rerouting the scene, most of which is salvageable though I see where I stumbled. I’ve also noticed a few Lincoln Navigators in the ’hood since I started writing this story – have they always been there, or have I dreamed them into being by putting one in Cristal’s parking space?

I’m also resisting the impulse to plunge headlong into my old affair with King Charles – without much success. Though I’m engrossed in the “Weather Warden” series by Rachel Caine, yesterday I pulled Antonia Fraser’s biography of Charles II off the shelf and apparently intend on reading it again. I have to, in fact. “A Royal Encounter” is just too good to let lie, but wouldn’t you know, the next scene ended abruptly and I mean abruptly. Fifteen years ago, I quit writing a scene in the middle of a sentence! Who quits in the middle of a sentence?? Having no idea where the character was going with his observation (and it wasn’t the King, by the way), I must now delve back into the time and see what the heck he could have been about to say. There might be a slight roll back in that scene, as well, though it reads smoothly right up to the thought falling off the page. Mostly I think I want to be in love and I’m pretty deep into it with Old Rowley.

As if that wasn’t enough creativity, I also resumed work on the novel! A cup of Persian Apple tea got me into Jannika’s head and pushed me back to the scene where I left her, and darned if I didn’t get us both out of the mire by the end of the day! Joe Elliott’s birthday probably kicked that one into gear. Lucius is going to be her father-in-law (is that a spoiler?) and she’s finding him easier to comprehend than his eldest son. I thought this romance would be easy. Roll your eyes here.

So, with Right Brain fully in charge, I’m looking at a pile of invoices and wondering what I’m supposed to do with them ... is it Friday yet?

Long Live the King!



His Royal Leppardness

He walks in the snow before me. Ivory-coloured tents mark his path on either side as he strides their long corridor, deep in thought. It is past dusk. He looks toward the trees, the sky a deepening pink and orange, as night falls on the encampment. Yes, an encampment. I walk behind him as a spectre who haunts another’s step, seen yet unseen.

His cloak sways languorously about his shoulders and the length of his body as he takes each masterful step. The collar of the cloak is trimmed with fur and long blond hair flows in lazy waves to the middle of his shoulder blades. His step is quiet, a mere breath upon the frozen landscape.

Suddenly, he stops. He turns his head as if he senses a presence. He turns his head a little more to the left and sets his jaw deeper into his cloak. His eyes are the only things that move as he surveys the emptiness, trying to sense something – or someone. I am quiet, a mere spectator. I wonder if it is me he senses. I lose myself in his face: the length of golden hair, the strong nose, and those eyes; those beautiful green eyes that shine like jewels and bring lesser mortals to their knees with one brief encounter. In this moment, they become mere slits as they quietly survey his surroundings, trying to detect the source of his distraction. He is still, then he moves again. He is satisfied that the source of his distraction will cause him no harm.

I am peaceful here, watching him, yet I must go. I have been fortunate to have this chance again. It has been a long time. It has been too long. I must come again. 

 

* * *

I did not write this piece. I did a little editing, but the bulk of it, the true content, belongs to Ter. She consented to me posting it here, in celebration of today’s dual birthday. The man in this scene is Lucius Aurelius, also known as Irfe’s Luko, a character so complex that it’s easier to get under his skin than inside his head and believe me, you do not want to get under his skin.

 

Lucius was inspired – as so many of my heroes are inspired – by a rock star. Yep, this imagined child belongs to Joe Elliott, the green-eyed god front man of Def Leppard. Lucius was “born” in the spring of 2002, when Ter had a revelation while watching Joe work the arena in the Leps’ In the Round, In Your Face concert DVD. A diehard Joe fan for years, she envisioned a character possessed of his passion and presence, and asked me to write a story about him.

 

Eleven years and 6.5 novels later, Lucius is still going strong. So, I believe, is his birth father, though in truth it’s been some years since we attended a Lep gig. For one thing, the band rarely comes north of the US border these days, and when they do, they play pretty much the same set list every time. When last we saw Papa Joe, Songs from the Sparkle Lounge had just been released and the band was still playing songs off the greatest hits package from two years earlier. Or twenty years earlier, since most of the tunes were hits in the late 1980s.

 

But enough whining about what I cannot change. This is a day of celebration, of recognizing the icon who sired a hero and the hero who spawned a whole new fictional world. The man born on August 1, 1959, set the tone for the biggest, most powerful, most fearsome, most complicated and ultimately the most respected character (by me, anyway) in my cast of thousands. I don’t know how alike father and son may be in nature, but one thing is indisputable – they are both lions.

 

Hear them roar!