For instance, have you ever heard Smetana’s “The Moldau”?  (Note, I said classical that I’m not overly familiar with, earlier…)  It starts out all gentle and floaty, then becomes this dramatic march.  When I listen to it, it becomes the story of the Queen of Winter, and her love for a man of the summer lands, and their battle, and the triumphant end.  “Bolero” is a chess game, fought between a couple and the cruel man who wants to steal the wife from her husband.  Roxette’s “Fading Like a Flower” is a parlor piece, set in the 17^th century…a love story between a highwayman and a young lady.  Maybe it’s because I started listening to the radio in earnest when I received my first radio in 1987, when the TV show Friday Night Videos was still on, showing the rock videos for the most popular songs of the week, but I always see images when I hear a song, I put together a story.

There have been, once in a great while, songs that spurred a story that I would have to write.  There was a song by INXS’s Michael Hutchence, that he sung for a movie soundtrack called “Rooms for the Memory,”  that inspired a short story.  I remember, since this song was on a tape, going over to my Brother Word Processor, hitting play, writing for the length of the song, pausing, rewinding, hitting play again, over and over until the story was done.  To be honest, I’m not sure if the song and the story that eventually came from it match each other very well, but this was how I managed to write…and finish…my first short story.

By the way, the next Drollerie Chat is on Sunday, September 27th, at 4:00 PM eastern.  We’ll be giving away copies of our September releases…so come and talk to us!

Look for the full post to come out on June 21. 

Vivian’s Story

Drollerie Authors Blog Tour Post, May 21^{st, 2009Vivian Belgrave is the mother of Clara in my story “Dead Woman Walking.” She’s a handful. You can read more about her in the “Bump in the Night” anthology that just came out from Drollerie Press.There are no mothers of any worth in the old tales.}

I am a woman of strength, of stature – the Belgrave estate has been in my name for the last ten years and I have managed it, without the aid of a man. I have managed my life. I am present. I am powerful.

Yet even as I feel this child growing in my womb, I see it in their stares when I wander through the market, hear it in their concerned words while on my way to handle the trading of the grain. You need a man, their stares seem to say. You are weakened by your burden, their subtext whispers.

Lessened. Diminished.

I am far from diminished. Do they not know the skill I possess with the Craft? Have they not seen how my property outgrows even the wretched Fowlers’ every year? Have they not seen the abundance of my estate? Even as my pregnancy quickens, I feel the Craft growing ever nimble in my hands. One day, I will be more than a match for Fowler with his handy spells and tidy potions. One day, he will not cast his shadow over me, with false proposals of marriage and degrading propositions.One day, I will have everything he took from me.

Because I am powerful.

I haven’t had a chance to read a lot of the other stories in that book (with work and parenting duties, I manage to finish maybe a page a night of the new novel in progress, and then I’m wiped out), but there’s one right after my poem, called “Sleepwalker” by Darin Bradley, that I’ve started and find really intriguing.

 The Web chat is tomorrow (Thurs 5/21) starting at 10:00.  If I’m not mistaken, the Drollerie Press blog tour also takes place that day.  More info tomorrow on who’s posting what where.

This is National Poetry Month, a month I would have dreaded as a kid. The poems we were exposed to in elementary and junior high were dull to me–institutional things churned out by no doubt hopeful poets and put into text books. Example poems, my teachers called them before telling us to “write in that style” and marking off points if we wrote our own way. I was lucky–at home we had tons of books and I was able to find poems and prose that were more to my liking, namely poems which made me feel profoundly moved and had such a strength of imagery and feeling that I’d be swept up in the words and nearly breathless. When I began writing more and more, really focusing on turning it into something I’d like to share with the world, I thought of the poems I’d read and what made them so special. More than the novels I read and short stories I’d perused, the poems came to mind. They were small stories unto themselves and could hold a universe of meaning in just a few lines. Two of my favorites, Bright Star by Keats and The Old Astronomer to his Pupil by Sarah Williams came up over and over again (though to be honest, I have a long list of favorites, mostly English Romantics such as Byron, Keats, Blake and more and also American poets like Langston Hughes and Maya Angelou).

When writing Unseelie in it’s original three-novella form, Bright Star and The Old Astronomer… kept coming up in my mind as I thought of the relationship between Alfhild and Cadfael. They are coming up even more so now that I’m working on my Demon trilogy and am writing another set of love stories that seem impossible to the characters, obstacles growing between them even as they themselves grow closer. Bright Star speaks so clear and true about Keats’ own love for Fanny Brawne, written as he was dying, that it inspires my own development of the characters’ relationships. The Old Astronomer… is so simple and pure: an old astronomer who is passing away, telling his pupil how to go on, that he is not afraid and the student should not be either, that it inspires me to write characters with backbone, with honesty and forthrightness. The last line of The Old Astronomer was used as an epitaph on the tomb of an astronomer couple in New York–this just makes it additionally poignant for me! Below are the poems I’ve been raving on and on about–I hope you like them as much as I do!

The Old Astronomer to His Pupil

Reach me down my Tycho Brahe, I would know him when we meet,
When I share my later science, sitting humbly at his feet;
He may know the law of all things, yet be ignorant of how
We are working to completion, working on from then to now.

Pray remember that I leave you all my theory complete,
Lacking only certain data for your adding, as is meet,
And remember men will scorn it, ’tis original and true,
And the obloquy of newness may fall bitterly on you.

But, my pupil, as my pupil you have learned the worth of scorn,
You have laughed with me at pity, we have joyed to be forlorn,
What for us are all distractions of men’s fellowship and smiles;
What for us the Goddess Pleasure with her meretricious smiles!

You may tell that German College that their honor comes too late,
But they must not waste repentance on the grizzly savant’s fate.
Though my soul may set in darkness, it will rise in perfect light;
I have loved the stars too fondly to be fearful of the night.

Sarah Williams

Bright Star

Bright star, would I were stedfast as thou art–
Not in lone splendour hung aloft the night
And watching, with eternal lids apart,
Like nature’s patient, sleepless Eremite,
The moving waters at their priestlike task
Of pure ablution round earth’s human shores,
Or gazing on the new soft-fallen mask
Of snow upon the mountains and the moors–
No–yet still stedfast, still unchangeable,
Pillow’d upon my fair love’s ripening breast,
To feel for ever its soft fall and swell,
Awake for ever in a sweet unrest,
Still, still to hear her tender-taken breath,
And so live ever–or else swoon to death.

John Keats

Tam: Did she send you?

(The question hits Christopher out of nowhere–and it instantly raises his hackles. The suspicion that he needs to move again, to lose himself in the anonymity of a new city, has been nagging at him for weeks. Someone’s been watching him; he’s seen the same ragged old woman on Seattle’s streets five times now in as many weeks, studying him with knowing eyes, but he hasn’t been brave enough to confront her. And now? Here’s another stranger, one he’s sure has also been watching him, at least today. And this stranger seems much more hostile.)
Christopher: You got a problem there then? Do I know you?

(Tam steps back from Christopher, who stands at least a head taller than him, and raises one hand as if to protect himself.)
Tam: Did she send you?

(Wait. Confusion briefly strikes the young Newfoundlander before he realizes that this stranger looks as nervous as he himself feels. Hard on the heels of that a second realization strikes him: this one, whoever he is, isn’t human. Not entirely, anyway. Questions flood him then, but he forces them down; it’s none of his business, not if he’s leaving Seattle soon. That nervousness, though… it gives him pause. He backs up a step. The strap of his bouzouki’s gig bag slips a bit on his right shoulder, and he grabs at it to keep it in place, but keeps his other hand out, palm up.)
Christopher: Swear t’ Jesus, man, nobody sent me. Just lookin’ for somewhere to busk tonight, is all.

Tam (relaxing a bit): So you’re a musician?

(Christopher grins crookedly, his hand clutching the strap on his shoulder a bit more tightly; the bouzouki’s weight at his back is a comfort. His guard’s not down, not yet. But of all the words that could describe him, ‘musician’ is perhaps the truest… and the safest. At least until he learns the measure of this stranger.)
Christopher: Yeah… well, I knock around on the zouk a bit, anyway. When I can. (He nods ahead towards the nearest bus stop on the block, and then casts a glance behind him.) And there’s an old lady wit’ a whistle two blocks back. I… ah… thought I’d jump the 43 and try downtown.

(Tam looks puzzled at the instrument case.)
Tam: “Zook?”

(This begins to bring down the Newfoundlander’s guard; maybe he read this stranger wrong? All at once he’s weary, tired of scanning every face around him for any signs of a threat. Maybe this other man is simply nothing more than what he is–a wanderer, ill-fitting his current surroundings, though truth be told he knows he stands out more himself, with a brogue that flags him as Not From Around Here with the first word out of his mouth. Jesus, he could be Warder-blood for all I know, he thought. Not that he can ask, not right out here on the street in earshot of who knows how many passing grungy college kids passing them along the sidewalk of the Ave. And so he opts for the safe topic at hand, swinging the instrument bag forward just enough to reach its zipper so he can undo it and show just enough of the neck of the instrument inside to give the stranger a look.)
Christopher: Bouzouki. The Irish kind. Kind o’ a big mandolin.

(The dark-haired stranger smiles, surprised, and quietly reads the engraving on the instrument’s neck
Tam: Airson mo mhac Crìsdean.
(His accent on the Gaelic words is peculiar and slightly off, about as different as Spanish from Portuguese, but his voice is softly resonant, and the sunlight drifts across the inscription as he reads it, as though reflected off the window of a passing car.)

(Christopher goes still, staring, stunned that the other man gets the pronunciation almost correct. For a moment, memory flares: another voice murmuring those same words. For my son Christopher. His reluctant grin fades, skewing, though his face is no less earnest as he zips the instrument bag closed to protect its cargo from the drizzle in the air. Turning his th’s to d’s, his accent thickens, while he casts one more glance back over his shoulder.)
Christopher: That’s my zouk. (He pauses, then, in a sudden burst of sympathy, he adds…) Listen, man, you want t’ come along, there’s a pub in Ballard lets me play, sometimes. Nothin’ else, we could get a pint.

Tam: Sounds good to me. (Holds out hand) I’m Tam, by the way. Sorry to pick up your name by stealth, Crisdean–it was not my intent.

(The sound of the Gaelic form of his name is enough to ease Christopher considerably, all by itself. It’s not wise, perhaps. But memory still lurks behind the tall Newfoundlander’s eyes, and now the sound of a pint sounds appealing indeed, along with the idea of company, for once. He takes the offered hand and shakes it; his own’s sturdy, a working man’s hand, though with enough calluses on his fingertips to suggest he plays that instrument of his sometimes without a pick. At the bus stop ten feet away, a Metro bus pulls up.)
Christopher: It’s okay. C’mon with you then–that’s the bus that’ll get us to that pint.
(The bus isn’t terribly crowded, not at this hour. But there are enough riders on it to keep Christopher on the alert, and he can’t quite hide his relief that the old woman he’d seen, the woman in the fedora with a whistle in her hands, is nowhere in sight. He doesn’t say much, not while the bus wends its way from the U-district to Ballard, nor once he and his companion are off again and heading on foot towards Molly Maguires. There’s music already there; it’s open mic night and the stage is occupied by a black-haired girl with a bodhran and a grizzled old fellow pulling away on a squeezebox. But Christopher, after tossing off a wave to the tender at the bar, aims for a booth towards the back–where he, and his companion for that matter, can keep an eye on the door. Somehow, for reasons he’s not quite ready to put a finger on, it seems apt.)

Tam: So the writing on your, um, Zook–was that… (He trails off, does not complete the question.)

(One of the young waitstaff of the pub comes over to take both men’s orders; absently, Christopher asks for a Pyramid ale. He waits politely until his companion’s placed his own order, and waits again until the server’s gone on his way, safely out of earshot, before he replies.)
Christopher: Gaelic. Scots Gaelic. My… (A beat.) My mum spoke it. (Another beat.) You say it differently.

Tam: She cares a lot about keeping you safe.

(Present tense. Not past, which is the truth of it. Christopher hasn’t missed that, but he doesn’t bother to correct it, not even with a bottle of local beer to blunt the reminder of memories he’d rather not consider. He’s changed the subject, and Christopher knows it; his hazel gaze swings back to Tam, shadowed now, more than a trifle wary. But he’s promised an amiable pint, and that’s what he’s going to give–even though he’s sure once again that he’s dealing with someone not entirely human. The server comes back again with his bottle of Pyramid, and he thanks the youth by rote, barely aware of his passing. Except to mark when he’s gone… and when, therefore, it’s safe for him to speak beneath the music from the stage.)
Christopher: Y’get that then, from one glimpse of my instrument?

Tam: And from your being so far from home.

(One corner of his mouth quirks up in a grin, though, as he takes a pull off that beer. ‘Far from home’–oh, yeah, quite an easier guess when a man has but to open his mouth and talk. How much he can guess off this Tam, though, is another question entirely. There’s nothing so blatant a clue as an accent, or anything the other man is carrying marked in an obvious other tongue… but still, Christopher has his suspicions.)

Christopher: That I’d be, yeah. I’m thinkin’ you’d know somethin’ o’ that yourself, too.

(Tam smiles and raises his bottle.)
Tam: I hope it’s far enough.

(Habit makes Christopher cast a glance around the place, but most everyone in the pub is focused on the duo of musicians on stage. In the booth he’s claimed with Tam, there’s the relative safety of anonymity. Now there’s the acknowledgement, given and received, that he’s got at least something in common with this other man. He’s dying to know now what more there is–and if this Tam is shirking from crossing paths with the old woman, just as he. Christopher MacSimidh has no talent for dissembling, and so he opts for as direct an approach as he can take without risking sounding daft. He leans forward where he sits, the better to keep his voice pitched low.)
Christopher: I hear that, yeah. Look now… I don’t know who your she is, but if it’s the old woman I saw, the one wit’ the whistle… I’m duckin’ her too.

(Tam cocks an eyebrow.)
Tam: Old woman with a whistle?

(Christopher blows out a breath, ill at ease all over again for having to muster words to come close to what’s been gnawing away at him for weeks in this rain-washed northern city, and never mind saying it outright. The beer helps, but only so much, and only because it gives him something to do with his hands when breaking out the bouzouki isn’t yet an option.)
Christopher: Yeah. I’ve seen ‘er, downtown sometimes, Capitol Hill, Queen Anne… (He frowns and waves a hand towards the door by way of punctuation.) Here, sometimes, but not tonight. If she’s what I think she is, she’s… (How in God’s name can he put this?) She’s someone I’m better off avoidin’.

(Tam stops drinking and sets his bottle down. He examines Christopher carefully for a moment, with a serious look on his face.)

Christopher: Does the word ‘Warder’ mean anythin’ to you?

(A pause. Tam shakes his head.)

(He’s in it now. Christopher braces himself, and it plays out on his face, for a tightening of his jaw betrays his tension. Tam’s not of the line, then, not hiding like he is. Which means he’s something else. There’s a tang of Sidhe about him–but not enough for the Newfoundlander to be certain. Not with his own Warder blood no more than latent, able only to whisper guesses, and sometimes warnings. That he feels no warning now is all that makes him brave enough to answer.)
Christopher: She’s one. The old woman. Means she’ll have a way o’ knowin’ things about this city, who’s in it… and who shouldn’t be.

Tam (Concerned, thinking this through): And she’s after you. Is warder a. . . a euphemism, like “fair folk” or “kindly ones”?

(Christopher almost laughs. Tam’s answer is enough to tell him his instincts were sound–this man does know at least something of the very world he’s avoiding. The relief of that knowledge is strong; at least he won’t be written off as a madman. He glances to the door again by reflex, smiling without any particular humor, eyes distant.)
Christopher: Nah. (His gaze comes back.) But a Warder knows the meanin’ behind those words.

Tam: That’s good to know. The energy coming off you is. . . out of place. I mean, it’s yours, but there’s something about it, like it needs to come to rest. If that’s what she’s after, then you have to get it tucked away, or it’ll be way too easy to peel it off of you.

(All color drains out of Christopher’s face and he slumps back in the booth, tilting his head back a moment, clamping his eyes shut. He does laugh, now, and it’d be a good laugh if it had any pleasure in it; as it stands, it sounds more like fear. )
Christopher: You… you can tell?

(Tam utters a mild profanity in a language similar to, but not the same as Gaelic, the same language he seemed to speak when he read the words on the bouzouki. He slowly, carefully, looks around the room before speaking again.)
Tam: Yeah. I can tell. I shouldn’t have said.

(And now, with a pause in the music as the duo on the little stage gives way to an older woman with a guitar, those not-Gaelic words are clearer to Christopher’s ear. He looks again at his companion, then waves off those last words and plucks up the bottle before him again to drain it dry.)
Christopher: I thought you would. It’s okay. (He sighs.) Well then, Tam, I can say this. If she’s good at the Wardin’ she’ll know you’re here. If you’re after keepin’ your head down, and if you’re passin’ through, she’ll not care. (When his bottle is empty, he sets it back down before him and stares at it, his voice gone very low.) If trouble finds you on Seattle ground, though… that she’ll care for.

Tam: I see. (Pause.) If that’s the case, then why is she after you?

Once you’ve read Cindy’s post, be sure to check out my entry on Fraser Sherman’s blog, and to read the posts of other authors in the tour.  Thanks to Angela Korra’ti for organizing the tour.  And now, without further ado, Heeeeeeeeere’s Cindy!

_____

I’ve been writing since I was in my early teens, but I never felt like a real author until I took a class in college called “Publishing the Magazine.” It was exactly that – a class that took its staff of students (a mix of volunteers and people taking the class…) through every aspect of publishing a magazine. We had to get ads, write a story, sit without twitching while someone edited the story, everything. It was even listed in the Writer’s Market, and there was an actual slush pile.

I remember sitting at the round table, presenting my ideas to the gathered…mostly the professor, Dr. Alan Natali, and the student editor. I kept presenting ideas, and Alan kept rejecting them. “There has to be something interesting…something that only you can write about.”

At which point, shyly, I put forward the fact that my father was a blacksmith and that we used to go to craft shows. This was the first time in my life that a) I felt like maybe I was an interesting individual, and b) that yes, people would think the fact that my father was a blacksmith was really COOL.

It was an amazing experience. I learned that editors are your friends. That I have a voice, and it’s a good one. That non-fiction can actually be a lot of fun to write. And I got to experience that feeling, that pride one can feel, the relief and joy and “OMG ieeee flail!” at seeing one’s words in print.

And I stayed part of the magazine (called Flipside) for the rest of my college years. All my really good memories start from that story. It also taught me a ton of things that I use in my everyday life – how to do design and layout, how to copyedit, and how to get rid of passive voice. So, while it’s not the first real publishing experience, or a story about finishing my first work, I think that it’s the first, honest step I took to where I am now.