Half Sick of Shadows, Sick of Anachronisms

Ok, first, let me say that I know that King Arthur is a legend far removed from any real historical character at best, and complete fiction at "worst." However, it's universally accepted that King Arthur is "medieval" - which, yes, I know that leaves about a 1,000 year swath in which the tales can be set. They were first written down in the 12th century (though mentions of names from the Arthurian legends can be found as early as the 800's), but most Arthurian scholars now agree that if Arthur were a real person that he likely lived around 500 AD - technically medieval, but so close to the fall of Rome that it straddles that ancient/medieval line. Personally, this is the era I think of when I think of King Arthur... but my perception is colored by the fact that I saw The Mists of Avalon (set in that early 500ish-600ish "the Saxons are invading" era) before I read any of the original (Mallory or Monmouth) Arthurian works.

Still, going on the "classic" interpretation of Arthur being high medieval (knights in armor) - such as you would expect from Mallory, Monmouth, and De Troyes - or even going on the idea of Arthur somehow being Victorian - per the works of Tennyson and the Rossettis (which of course is at odds with British history of not just the British Isles, but a good chunk of the world being united under Victoria) - that still leaves things just all over the place in terms of artifacts, costumes, architecture and other details in this book. Yes, I know it's a legend - put pick an era and stick with it.

(I recently watched a video on Youtube where the creator broke down the MuLan films by what time period the legend of MuLan is supposed to be set in. This is exactly what I'm talking about. This "legend" is supposed to take place in such-and-such century - let's try and make our film accurate to that period.)

In any case, first - how to classify the time period, as it is written in Half Sick of Shadows?

Throughout the book there is the constant reminder that "Albion" (an old word for England - not including Scotland) is not unified - placing this pre-Alfred the Great (late 9th century). Characters also comment multiple times that someone wearing a risque outfit would get stoned to death if seen like that in Camelot. While I don't know for sure that stoning people for infractions took place in medieval or ancient Britain, that definitely does seems more of an early period punishment (whereas late medieval/early renaissance, you could just as easily be labeled a witchy temptress, but that would get you hanged or burned at the stake, not stoned). But there are also knights in full plate armor (late medieval, and Renaissance era) as well as architecture described in such a way as to make me think of high Gothic (approximately 1100) or later. Glass windows and mirrors are commonplace. The clothing feels even later - corsets are prevalent in the court of Camelot, and at a coronation the courtiers are wearing powdered wigs. Between that, the teacups, the hot cocoa, and the mention of chenille - a fabric that wasn't invented until the 1830's - I want to ask the author if this book takes place inside a Rossetti painting (the Rossettis being Victorian painters that were fond of painting knights, ladies, and other Arthuriana). There was even a point where Merlin mentions that Excalibur was placed in the stone by the ancient first king of Camelot that I started to wonder that maybe this whole thing was taking place in the far future.

I know that's a big long rant. I did mostly enjoy the book. The characters were interesting, the whole premise of moving between past, present, and future as Elaine's visions unfold was fascinating. Indeed there were several nights that I was up reading later than I should have been.

There were a couple places I was disappointed, though:

Visions of the future/spoilers follow

-What happened to Mattie? At one point Elaine, a seer, is introduced to her neice Mathilde (referred to as Mattie to differentiate from another relative by the same name). Mattie has seen the same vision of Elaine's death that Elaine references at the beginning of the book. After the scene where she's introduced to Morgana and Elaine, who discover her skills as a seer, Elaine arranges for Mattie's family to come to court at Camelot so that she (Elaine) can mentor her. But after that scene Mattie is never seen nor referred to again.

-Elaine's saccrifice negated Elaine and the reader both know from the get-go that Elaine will drown, and that it will be her own choice not to fight back up to the surface. We know this, we know this, we know this. We know this, just as anyone who has read Tennyson's "The Lady of Shalot" (or heard Loreena McKenna's adaptation thereof, or listened to Emilie Autumn's "Shalot" which of course is a retelling of Tennyson's work) knows that Elaine, the Lady of Shallot, dies. It's the why and the when that we don't know.
In the end, it turns out that Elaine, having spent the last 400 pages seeing visions of the people she loves the most betray each other in ways that she is tangentially involved in, in ways that she has "set them on the path" of, she decides to take herself out of the equation and drown herself in the lake that surrounds Avalon. It seems a fitting end to a young lady who has spent her time sacrificing to protect others, to a character we know MUST have a tragic end. But wait... what's this? Elaine is... not dead? Brought back to life by the Lady of the Lake? She's now the new Lady of the Lake and... basically hides out on Avalon to watch fate unroll.
I mean... I love a happy ending. I love a book where when all seems lost the characters are somehow able to pull a happy ending out of the air. Don't get me wrong, when it's done well it's incredible. But this made it seem like there was no depth or meaning to her sacrifice, and made the fact that Arthur, Gweneviere, and Lancelot would mourne her unnecessarily seem cruel to those characters. (Though I will say that the author explains in her afterword that she started writing this in high school, rewriting, and rewriting again, and finally finishing over the course of more than a decade. So maybe the ending was something she came up with as a teenager. It is not only what I would have written in highschool but also what I would have wanted to read in high school. And as someone who has been working on 3 novels for more than 10 years now I don't exactly have room to talk...)

1: -What happened to Mattie? At one point Elaine, a seer, is introduced to her neice Mathilde (referred to as Mattie to differentiate from another relative by the same name). Mattie has seen the same vision of Elaine's death that Elaine references at the beginning of the book. After the scene where she's introduced to Morgana and Elaine, who discover her skills as a seer, Elaine arranges for Mattie's family to come to court at Camelot so that she (Elaine) can mentor her. But after that scene Mattie is never seen nor referred to again. -Elaine's saccrifice negated Elaine and the reader both know from the get-go that Elaine will drown, and that it will be her own choice not to fight back up to the surface. We know this, we know this, we know this. We know this, just as anyone who has read Tennyson's The Lady of Shalot (or heard Loreena McKenna's adaptation thereof, or listened to Emilie Autumn's "Shalot" which of course is a retelling of Tennyson's work) knows that Elaine, the Lady of Shallot, dies. It's the why and the when that we don't know. In the end, it turns out that Elaine, having spent the last 400 pages seeing visions of the people she loves the most betray each other in ways that she is tangentially involved in, in ways that she has "set them on the path" of, she decides to take herself out of the equation and drown herself in the lake that surrounds Avalon. It seems a fitting end to a young lady who has spent her time sacrificing to protect others, to a character we know MUST have a tragic end. But wait... what's this? Elaine is... not dead? Brought back to life by the Lady of the Lake? She's now the new Lady of the Lake and... basically hides out on Avalon to watch fate unroll. I mean... I love a happy ending. I love a book where when all seems lost the characters are somehow able to pull a happy ending out of the air. Don't get me wrong, when it's done well it's incredible. But this made it seem like there was no depth or meaning to her sacrifice, and made the fact that Arthur, Gweneviere, and Lancelot would mourne her unnecessarily seem cruel to those characters. (Though I will say that the author explains in her afterword that she started writing this in high school, rewriting, and rewriting again, and finally finishing over the course of more than a decade. So maybe the ending was something she came up with as a teenager. It is not only what I would have written in highschool but also what I would have wanted to read in high school. And as someone who has been working on 3 novels for more than 10 years now I don't exactly have room to talk...) -Gweneviere is a warrior AND a werewolf Yes, really. Full stop. Um, excuse me, why isn't this the main storyline? That sounds funny and sarcastic, but I mean it sincerely. When you have a character whose story is explosively more interesting than the other major characters' stories, it makes me wonder why she isn't the focus. I say this as someone who is very aware that the main character in at least one of my novels-in-progress may be overshadowed by cooler characters in her story.

-Gweneviere is a warrior AND a werewolf Yes, really. Full stop. Um, excuse me, why isn't this the main storyline? That sounds funny and sarcastic, but I mean it sincerely. When you have a character whose story is explosively more interesting than the other major characters' stories, it makes me wonder why she isn't the focus. I say this as someone who is very aware that the main character in at least one of my novels-in-progress may be overshadowed by cooler characters in her story.

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With all that said, though, it wasn't a bad book. Honestly, most people aren't anywhere near as picky as me about all the stuff I went off on above. So, really, this time around I will say don't let my opinion color whether or not you read the book.

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Put the Band on Stage

The past couple days I've been thinking a lot about theatre. Specifically, songs I've listened to have triggered a need to choreograph and/or design. Listening to "Rock Around the Clock," I was thinking about choreography for Grease (particularly egregious, as I turned down an offer to choreograph said show...). Today, driving to Elianna's appointment, my randomizer brought up “Prologue/Tradition” from Fiddler on the Roof and oh... my brain wouldn't shut off.

"Hey. Hey!" my brain said, "What if some of the band were up on stage with the rest of the villagers? What if you hid instruments in the props? Have a mama or a daughter with a tambourine disguised as an embroidery loop. And banging kitchen implements! Oh! And have a papa or a son with a xylophone hidden by an anvil!"

And it kept going. I was brain storming all kinds of props - house and farm implements that could be turned into instruments, or vice versa. Thinking about how to costume everyone. Wondering if we could get away with having an alto woman in a beard playing the Rabbi (there are never enough guys for shows). Heck, can we have the whole band in costume on stage?

Then I started thinking about what other shows you could have the band on stage. When I was in college, we did Cabaret and the band was in costume as the club's band. When I was in high school, we did Anything Goes, and the band all had fancy music stands so they looked like the ship's band. They all had a big moment where they reacted to the news that there was a wanted criminal on board. "SNAKE-EYES JOHNSON?!" the whole band cried in unison. And what about Grease? Put all the band in letter sweaters. Or do period marching band costumes.

And, yeah, I know it increases the costume budget - suggesting period marching band costumes is probably not the way to get the producer or director to agree to having the band in costume on stage.

But Fiddler? Yeah, you could probably do it with Fiddler - raid thrift stores for peasant shirts, old "dress" shirts, floppy pants, broomstick skirts, aprons... Grab surplus fabric for cheap to make head scarves for the ladies. Small throw blankets make great shawls. While that's not the most historically accurate way to do it, I feel that Fiddler is one of those that can be costumed partly from what the cast already owns. Which is probably why I see a lot of community theatres doing it.

I just like the idea of including the band in stage when you can - for a lot of shows, I feel that it adds something.

I also think that if I ever were to get back into theatre, I'd likely be doing costuming or choreography. Possibly directing. I have a feeling that if Elianna ends up getting into theatre that I will definitely get dragged back in. Now I'm reminded of the time I did costumes for our high school's production of I Never Saw Another Butterfly. I was also in the show, and was still madly sewing stars of David onto sweaters and shawls backstage during final dress rehearsal. I accidentally sewed my own sweater to my skirt and had to hobble out onto stage clutching my sweater to my knee. Yeah, let's not do THAT again : )

A Character of His Own

I don't often read non-fiction, and even more rarely do I read personal non-fiction, like memoirs and autobiographies. Right now I'm reading The View From the Cheap Seats, which is a collection of essays and speeches by Neil Gaiman. Technically, I guess it's not a memoir, but many of his essays and speeches are autobiographical.

What I'm really enjoying about this book - aside from the fact that I like his style and his humor - is that Neil's stories about himself as a child or young man make him sound almost like a character in one of his books. He relates the tale of the "feral child raised by patient librarians" in more than one of these essays. He tells of the time that he and his friends encountered a Playboy-style magazine at the age of eight and he was much less interested in the fact that there were "naked ladies" in the magazine than he was by the fact that one of these was a magician's assistant. In the same essay, he discusses how he was called into the principal's office for repeating a joke he heard with the f-word in it and when asked what other four-letter words he knew genuinely assumed this to be some kind of vocabulary test and started naming every word he could think of with only four letters in it.

His descriptions of real people as characters he could have written extends to other authors he has made friends with. He relates Diana Wynne Jones's comically bad luck at travel and the time that he was with her when a door fell off their airplane (fortunately, before take off). He describes the first time he met Terry Pratchett. This was during a time at which both of them were still trying to figure out how to make their way in the world of writing, including each of them seeking out what Gaiman terms a "Proper Author Hat." Neil confesses he eventually gave up and bought a black leather jacket instead, while Terry finally found a hat that has become his signature look.

I'm maybe about half-way through the book and am looking forward to the real characters I have still yet to meet, including Gaiman's wife, Amanda Palmer. I discovered Amanda Palmer's music around the same time I discovered Neil's writing. The first song of hers that I latched onto is about a girl who creates a "coin-operated boy" because she has no luck with real men. The music video with its white-faced makeup, striped tights, and somewhat steam-punk aesthetic were right up 22-ish-year-old me's alley.

I actually don't remember what the first thing I read by Neil Gaiman was. But I think if you had told me 15 years ago that he was going to marry the singer who wrote "Coin-Operated Boy" I would have said, "well, yeah. Obviously."

Telling Stories with Music, Verse 3

A few months ago, my mom and I were having a conversation about the music they play at the store where she works. She was talking about how they've been playing the same mix for so long that she can tell the time by what song is playing. I've worked a lot of retail jobs where they had a mix that we were supposed to play for a certain length of time (during a themed promotion) or at a certain time of year.

"Now, don't get me wrong," she said, "it's a good mix. Fun stuff, a lot of oldies, some songs from movies. But it just gets old after a while."

"Huh," I said, a theory forming. "A lot of oldies?"

"Yeah - Beach Boys."

"And more recent stuff? Billy Joel? A couple songs from Grease?"

"Yeah!"

"And 'Professional Pirate' from Muppet Treasure Island?"

"Oh, my gosh - yes! Were they playing that mix when you worked there?"

"That's the mix I MADE for them when I worked there."

One summer, seven years ago, when I worked at the school supply store she's currently working at, my coworkers and I were lamenting that we had to play the CDs that we sold in the store - kids's songs, nursery rhymes, circle-time songs that in children's high-pitched voices became very grating very quickly. Someone asked why we couldn't listen to the radio. The owners said since we couldn't control what songs are on the radio - even the more family-friendly stations - or that there might be ads for competitors that they really didn't want to do that.

"What if someone brought in CDs?" one of my coworkers asked.

"Well, if everyone brought in CDs, we'd have to approve them all, and that would take a while, especially since we'd have to do it every time someone brought in something new."

"I've got a lot of family-friendly stuff," I said. "What if I made a mix, 2 or 3 hours long, and you guys could approve all the songs on it?" They decided that was decent idea, so I made a mix, kind of on the idea of a family-fun summer mix - the sort of thing you might have playing at a family pool party. I had imagined they'd use it for a few months and then I'd make another mix. But I got a full-time job with Cobb County Public Library shortly after this, and never really gave my mix more thought - until my mom brought it up. It kind of tickles me that they're still playing my mix so many years later.

I like making mixes. I made a playlist for my engagement party. Rather than hire a band or a DJ for my wedding, I made playlists for the "cocktail hour" (before Jason and I came to the reception) and for the reception.

I like making themed play lists that tell a story. I make mix CDs for my parents for presents. I remember back a few years ago, I mentioned this to a coworker (who was only slightly younger than myself) and she said, "aw, that's cute that you still make mix CDs for your parents." The tone kind of said, "how retro and quaint," and to this day I'm not sure if she meant that making mix CDs for other people was retro and quaint or that making mix CDs at all was retro and quaint.

That was a few years ago, before computers stopped coming with CD drives, back when buying a physical album and buying a digital album was probably still 50/50. Now it's getting to where physical media is a lot less common. I'm going to need a new laptop soon, and I have a feeling it won't have a CD drive or burner.

I made three mix CDs for my mom for Mother's Day this year - I don't know if I'll be able to do that next year.

Jo, Laurie, Charles, J. K., and Neil

While I was driving home one beautiful afternoon last week, listening to the Little Women soundtrack, I remembered a scene from the movie. Jo is helping Laurie pack for college (Harvard, if I remember correctly) and laments that she can't fit his favorite Dickens volumes into the trunk he'll be taking with him.

"I won't be taking all of Dickens with me," he chides.

"Oh, of course not, you'll have much more important things to read," Jo snarks.

Until recently, it didn't occur to me that she wasn't just being sarcastic. I mean, she WAS being sarcastic, but not for the reason I had originally thought. Jo and Laurie share a love of Charles Dickens and Jo is worried that now that Laurie's going off to college without her that he'll move on. But what I hadn't realized was that I was looking at this scene without taking the time period into account.

Watching this scene without being grounded in the historical context, you kind of think, "well, Dickens is one of those 'important' authors you would be expected to read in college." But Little Women begins during the Civil War in the 1860's. Charles Dickens started publishing in 1836. He was still alive at the beginning of Little Women. While he was recognized as a great author in his lifetime, this isn't a case of a couple of nerds bonding over their shared love of the classics - this is two friends who enjoy the same popular author.

Imagine your friend is going off to college and you can't. Will he come back still a fan of J. K. Rowling or Neil Gaiman (just for purpose of popular, acclaimed authors who have been writing for 20-30 years)? Or will he come back having found new favorites among the classics, leaving you out of the loop?

Telling Stories with Music: Reprise

So I've been thinking about this a lot the past few weeks.  Up until a few days ago, I was listening to my Halloween mix.  Aside from a couple scenes I mentioned in a Facebook post earlier this week*, a lot of the songs on that mix bring up images in my head of a story I will someday get around to writing that takes place in the week of Halloween.

*If you didn't see that post, between a book I'm reading about the Salem Witch Trials, and an idea I had for a story, I had a scene in my head of the witch trial judges and accusers set to "Men in Black," and then immediately after, 2 other characters who decide to "take back the town" doing one of those slow-mo power walks to "Ghostbusters."  My mind is weird, y'all.

This is also a time of year when I'm very picky about my music.  Most of the time, I listen to my music on random, especially in the car.  I have certain seasonal mixes - fall/Halloween, and Christmas.  But I don't mix them.  I listen to my Fall/Halloween mix from Sept. 21 to Nov. 2 (admittedly skipping the most "Halloween" pieces early on, and the stuff that's not "Halloween enough" later), and I will not start listening to my Christmas mix until after Thanksgiving.  

Now, I like Christmas music.  I have a TON of Christmas music.  So when my entire collection is on random, there's a pretty decent chance that Christmas music will come up.  Usually I skip it, but sometimes I'll let it play (especially if it's Mannheim Steamroller and I'm in a bad mood).  But this time of year, I WILL NOT let the Christmas music play - it has to wait.

The one exception to this rule is the few pieces of Christmas music - a couple instrumental versions of The Holly and the Ivy, and a few chants - that are on the playlist I use for background music/inspiration for The Wolf and the Sheath (due to the "time period," location, and time of year that the story takes place.

I have playlists for everything.  As mentioned above, I have a playlist specifically for the book I'm working on right now.  Each story/serious project gets its own playlist.  I also like making playlists for my parents for gifts.  I always try to have a narrative of sorts in the playlist - songs that transition well either in style or in story from one to the other, the playlist moves from soft and quiet to powerful or vice versa, or the songs themselves, when put together, form a story.

I think it's interesting that I have to have this connection to music for my storytelling, especially since I'm not very good at keeping up with music.  While music is an important part of my life and my writing, I hesitate to call myself a music enthusiast, as I don't actively follow any bands or artists.