Month: August 2011

A few of my favourite things

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Hello darlings! I am traveling, but shall return to amuse you next week. In the meantime, here are a few things to tide you over.

  • I don’t usually consider myself prone to envy, but I can’t read Hark, A Vagrant! without turning green and wishing I’d thought of it. There’s a guest post on the front page at the moment, but dig back through the archives and you’ll find all kinds of fiendishly demented cartoons about Jane Austen and fat ponies and the discovery of Canada and Crazy Nancy Drew. OK, not all in the same strip, but maybe SOME in the same strip. You’ll have to look and find out. A mild language warning for those of you who get the vapours at the idea of St. Brendan the Navigator cussing at Jacques Cartier. That is kind of disturbing, frankly, since they lived in different centuries.
  • That very first guest strip was written by my old friend Jim Ottaviani and illustrated by Leland Myrick. The pair have a graphic about Feynman coming out from Macmillan at the end of the month. If I know Jim (and I think I already mentioned that I do), it’ll be a great read. I’m excited about it.

This afternoon’s symposium

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Ah, welcome! I trust you avoided the homework like a champion. That video was sillier than I remembered, and not in a Monty Python sense, either, alas. You have to feel for the philosopher-host, though: when the guy you’re talking about has only a handful of epigrams left to his name, it’s hard to fill half an hour. Can you blame him for talking about shopping?

Yeah, okay, I suppose I can.

In any case, this looks like the perfect time for a little symposium! And I mean that in the original “drinking together” sense. So pull up a couch, friend, and grab yourself a kylix of whatever pleases you. I’ve got some exotic Canadian tap water here at hand, because nothing makes me chatty like… well, I’m always pretty chatty. The water’s a resulting need, not the source of prolixity.

Prolixity! I know, right? I’m already sounding pompous. This is going to be the best symposium ever!

Long before I was an amateur Medievalist, I was very nearly a professional classicist. I seriously considered it; I looked at graduate programs and attempted to learn Latin on my own (I’d done four years of Greek but no Latin because I was a weirdo Hellenist). I finally came to my senses and skipped grad school althogether, but it was a close thing.

Looking back, I’m not even sure why I studied so much Greek. I’m not particularly talented at language (with the possible exception of English), but some kind of bloody-minded stubbornness kept me coming back year after year for another round of letting the aorist imperative* punch me in the face. I suppose I just liked a challenge, and nothing could knock me out cold like the dative case.

* Aorist is a PAST tense. How can you be imperative in the past? Sat down! Was quiet! I could never get my head around it.

Continue reading →

An introduction to Epicurus

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I am utterly swamped today, friends, so it occurs to me that this would be the perfect opportunity to let someone else do the talking. I’ve been wanting to talk about Epicureanism — not in the modern sense of gourmet or hedonistic sensualist, but the original meaning, the teachings of Epicurus. He’s not a well-known philosopher anymore; of his more than 300 written works, only a handful survive. Most of what is known about him comes from the writings of others, many of them mangy stoics detractors.

But here, I’ll let someone else give you the philosophy lesson:

Here’s Part 2.

And the THRILLING CONCLUSION in Part 3.

Those of you who are at work, or don’t have time, or can’t be bothered, here’s the punchline. Epicurus believed three things were necessary for happiness: friends, self-sufficiency (or independence), and time spent THINKING about your problems. No mention of gourmet food or overindulgence, contrary to popular belief.

How does this relate to Seraphina? Well, that’s another post.

A word from the not-always wise

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Some kind folks have gently expressed concern about the content of that last post. They feared the language and emotional candor might be off-putting to someone encountering my writing for the first time.

That is a very fair criticism, and one I take seriously. Looking back at the post, I have said nothing I feel ashamed of. The words were used in the context of anecdote, not in a contemptuous way. Though I have obliterated most of the story’s details, those words – and how I felt about them – stand out starkly. That was the point: that one’s memory of facts can be mistaken; that one’s memory of feeling remains clear; and that maybe that’s what feeling is for. That idea informs the very heart of Seraphina, but without the story to support it, it’s not very interesting to anyone but me.

Maybe it isn’t interesting to anyone but me even with the story, but that’s another question.

If the language in my Origins II post made you think you’d walked onto the set of a daytime talk show – and that I’d start throwing chairs next – I’m sorry. While I suspect most of my readers are people who have known me for many years, I realize guests might show up at any time. I’ll try harder to keep my muddy boots off the furniture.

If you’re worried that all the posts are going to be that emotional, don’t be. That was an extraordinary event; I don’t go around having epiphanies about the nature of my own mind every day. I certainly don’t get in fights every day.

But here’s something to consider: my profession consists of taking all my disparate thoughts, experiences, observations, sensations, and feelings, and synthesizing them into something new. Emotions are a tool of my profession. There will be discussion of emotions here if I am to talk about what I do, just like the bricklayer’s blog – one assumes – is full of references to bricks.

And I want to talk about what I do, because I think it’s interesting. Luckily for you, I think a lot of other things are interesting too.

About Amy Unbounded

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Long ago, in a galaxy far, far away, I used to write, illustrate, photocopy, and staple a minicomic called Amy Unbounded. It was a pretty good minicomic, as far as these things go. I took it to comic book conventions, made a lot of friends, and had tremendous fun doing it; those were great years, and I wouldn’t change a thing even if I could.

But I have something I need to tell Amy fans, something they’re not going to want to hear. They’ve been asking me for almost ten years, and I’ve been hedging because I don’t like delivering bad news. But here it is, friends, and no more soft-pedaling it:

Amy Unbounded is done. There is no more in me. I will not be making more. I’m sorry.

It’s possible that I will make more comics at some point, for I dearly love to draw, but I can’t promise that. I can guarantee that characters from Amy Unbounded will find their way into other things I do; indeed, some already have. Dame Okra Carmine, Sir Cuthberte, and Squire Foughfaugh all appear in Seraphina. Amy herself, older and wiser, might sneak into another story someday. Goredd goes on.

Continue reading →

Seraphina: Origins I

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(I know, I said I was only posting three times a week. Apparently I’m starting that next week.)

It took me eight years to write Seraphina. More accurately, it took me eight years to write four distinct novels, three of which were called Seraphina. The first was called Theodosia. I started writing it when I was pregnant with my son, but I started thinking about it a couple years before that.

When I was a wee lass, just twenty-nine years old, my parents got divorced. It was a shock; I’d sooner have believed the Law of Gravity was being repealed (in fact, for a time I was certain it had been). I found my feet again, eventually, and as the dust settled I was left with an idea: what would it be like to marry someone with a terrible secret, and then to learn it only after they died?*

*NB: this is not what happened to my parents, exactly. This was just some residue I found on the ground after the explosion.

I didn’t get to work on it right away, though. I’d just won the Xeric Grant and was putting together the collected edition of Amy (and oh, was it ever lucky I’d finished Belondweg Blossoming, because I was in a very different place than when I began it!). I didn’t get a chance to start writing until I was nearly 31, when I was pregnant and about to move across the continent and in the mood to write a dismal novel full of family secrets and futility.

I wrote Theodosia by committing to e-mailing a chapter a month to my sisters and Josh (who was an honorary sister). That’s a slow way to go, 10-12 pages a month, but I was writing in 15-minute stretches while the baby napped (he was never a very good napper). There was a father, Claude, whose wife had died in childbirth — revealing her terrible secret! The child, Theodosia (called Dosey), wasn’t told the terrible secret because of course the best way to deal with such a thing is to continue keeping it secret at all costs! No one must know! And then Claude married into a family of gangsters who would want to know the secret, and there were other secrets as well, the keeping of which eventually exploded Claude’s second marriage. Poor Claude, he just never learned. Then Theodosia, having finally learned all the secrets, decided to keep them.

When I got to the end, my REAL sisters were kind and supportive and give me a dog biscuit for having finished. Josh, that phoney baloney sister, said NO NO NO you can’t end it that way. You’ve written a tragedy, woman! Dosey’s just going to go out and make all the same mistakes as her father!

Yessss, I said. Isn’t it gloriously dismal? It’s like Ibsen, with dragons.

But then I thought about it some more and realized he was probably right. It was depressing. I brightened up the ending, had Dosey leaving home and her father advising her not to be a bonehead like him, and then I called for beta readers on my blog. I was shocked how many volunteers I got.

And that was the beginning. Poor, sad Claude has been with me the whole time. The father-daughter tension is still there, but not as front-and-centre as it was. As tends to happen, my preoccupations changed over time. I’m never able to write the same book twice.

Limelight

/ rachelhartman / 8 Comments

This is the post I had envisioned myself writing first, but it turns out I’m like a whippet: I have to sniff in a circle for a while before I lie down. Once I’m down, of course, I just flop right on top of you and stick my skinny legs in your face and look at you like, What? I’m a whippet. You are my sofa. I’m pretty sure the reverse isn’t true.

So. Here’s the comfy flop: I’m a big nerd, and I like Rush. I intend to talk about music on this blog, and they’ve got a song that’s been on my mind, the lucky lads, so here they are right up front.

The embed function has been disabled on the YouTube video of the song, which is just as well since maybe you’re eating breakfast and maybe you don’t want Geddy Lee staring at you from my blog while you eat. But if you’re not familiar with “Limelight”, here she be. Unless you live in Canada, where a certain percentage of “Canadian content” is required, it’s not on the radio very often.

If you are in a bit of a rush yourself, ha ha, or if you are already rolling your eyes and thinking, “I haven’t liked Rush since I was fourteen years old and male!” — no worries. Here’s the punchline: As I set off on this journey toward publication, as I launch this new blog and poke at the internet, trying to establish some kind of “web presence”, it is a relief to hear my own ambivalence reflected in someone else’s music.

If you’re nerd enough to read on, matey, step into this matter transporter, here: Continue reading →

A little housekeeping

/ rachelhartman / 11 Comments
  • I’m going to try keeping to a schedule with this blog, since I am the sort to fling myself passionately at a new project and then burn out. I’ll be posting on M-W-F for a few weeks and see how that works.
  • Why yes, I do know it’s Tuesday, smarty-pants. I did not write this! I was not here!
  • I’m slowly but surely putting some delicious links down in the blogroll list, for days when you are sad and miss me. Right now it’s mostly book-chat sites, authors I like, and favourite musicians. Soon (by which I mean “whenever my inner chaos permits me to get to it”) I hope to link to a few other places my previous work can be found on the web. Things like the comic strip I linked to last post. There’s more where that came from.
  • If you’re very, very good, I could probably insert some comics directly into the blog here. Many (though not all) of my old comics are set in Goredd, just like my novel, so that might provide some insight and amusement. Or, y’know, bail me out when the day comes that I can’t think of anything to chat at you about.
  • Don’t count on that day coming too soon, however. I actually sat down and brainstormed blog topics – in the interests of not burning out, which is something I’m slowly learning I need to focus on – and I believe I could go on until the proverbial last dog is hung. (NB: no dogs will be hung on my watch, you have my word!)
  • But not today! I vanish as quickly as I appear! You saw nothing!

An oldie but goodie

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Ask the Authorette.

The origins of my cockroach quote, below. I know you were dying to know when I’d said that. DYING.

The scariest part is: I still kind of look like that.

Here’s how it’s gonna be

/ rachelhartman / 4 Comments

I always like to write myself a little mission statement at the beginning of a new blog, so that I can look back years later and say, “Whaa? I said I would do THAT?” It’s like getting a surprise present from myself!

I have a few aspirations for this blog. I often find myself pontificating in my own head whilst walking the dog, explaining to some invisible audience all the myriad odd inspirations for my work – and there are a lot of them. There’s music, of course; the book is deeply concerned with music. There’s neurology, psychology, and philosophy. There’s my Grand Tedious Theories of ART. There’s that feeling I get when I’m walking under the plum trees in March, and I look up and see the first buds, bright as stars, opening against the grey sky.

Inspirations are everywhere, and ideas are not far behind. As I always say, “Ideas are like cockroaches: there’s always more behind the fridge!”

Books are an antique map of the mind, curlicued and elegant, with Zephyrs and grotesquerie all around the margins. Here be the author’s dragons! Here the Mountains of Madness and the Swampland of Piss and Vinegar! Such a map is beautiful, if baroque, but not always an infallible guide to “What was she thinking?”

Sometimes what you want is a GPS. That’s the blog. A crisp, sure voice saying, “In 100 meters, turn right onto Music Theory Road.”

I’m looking back over what I just wrote and trying to decide whether it sounds grand or silly. I’m gonna have to go with silly. Also: nerdy. That sounds like an excellent (and accurate!) start to me.