Kirsten Bishop
January 13th, 2005, 06:05 AM
Long post - some things I haven't responded to; I'm trying to stay on the right side of the line between helpful and interfering. (Makes me feel like my mum ;) )
Eventine - re the last page: with the mysterious marksman and the old bullets, and the vandal cutting off the creature's head, I guess I wanted readers to think that Gwynn, or something like Gwynn, might still be around in some way. For me, there was always an archetypal aspect to him. (Trivia: he's named after Gwynn ap Nudd (pronounced 'Neethe'), a mythical Welsh figure who turns up in various stories, from different periods in history, in different guises, generally diminishing in power as time goes on. He's been a god of the underworld, the Wild Hunstman, the Fisher King's brother (probably), and the king of the fairies under Glastonbury Tor; he was finally made to vanish by Saint Collen, but I like to think that the saint only succeeded in closing his own eyes to the Otherworld :). So in my little alternative world, the hunter god or angel of death is diminished to a wandering gunslinger; but the archetype is still there in him.)
There are bits and pieces of symbolism in the book. Some of it is kind of broad and in plain view, like the desert landscape, a symbolic place of exile and wandering. Then there are small things, like the guy with the lotus in his navel. That's an image associated with the Hindu god Vishnu. (There's a nice bit about the lotus on this page: http://www.exoticindianart.com/article/vishnu)
Most of the symbols and other references I sprinkled in the book point to one idea, which is that this is a world where stories are worn out and scattered in fragments - ready, possibly, for renewal. So the guy at the wharf fair isn't literally Vishnu; he's a symbol of a myth on its last legs - reduced, like Gwynn, to a somewhat tawdry existence. But I tried to make the fragmented stories idea part of the main, up-front text, just with the mixing of cowboys and gangsters and pseudo-Arab nomads and so forth. So the symbolism is there more in a backup role.
Fitz - I love the tradition of gangster ordinariness, both as comedy and as something chilling - Damon Runyon, The Gang that Couldn't Shoot Straight, and there was an interview I read or watched with some mobster who recalled him and his mates getting dressed up in masks, killing someone, and then going off to one of their kids' parties, as if nothing had happened. Brrr.
Beth a succubus? She isn’t bad, she’s just drawn that way :p. On the other hand... What I was trying to do was suggest that there's both a magical relationship and an ordinary one going on; that the characters are ordinary people from one viewpoint, and magical beings from another; it's like how Gwynn sees Vanbutchell as a drug dealer, but Hart sees him as a wizard, or how Raule is a surgeon, but the doctors in Ashamoil see her as a witchdoctor.
Ficus Fan - About the hands; when Elm really wants to make a point about something, he orders a body part to be cut off. If it's more of a run-of-the-mill execution, he just has the victim beaten up and dumped in the river. Lovely guy... So the crushed hands were just part of a general beating up. Maybe I'm often thinking of hands because I can always see mine in front of me at the keyboard!
What you say about nothing seeming to be covered over with calluses - that was an effect I definitely tried for.
I tried to do more with the talking horse (there's a wonderful talking horse in Edward Dorn's epic poem 'Gunslinger', which made me want to do at least a scene with the horse talking), but it only seemed to work that one time, when Gwynn was high.
I have to admit, I didn't think all that much about the axe! You certainly raise a valid point. I guess we don't really know how much a body can affect a soul. If I was reincarnated as a tiger, a tiger I'd be. Maybe the strongman's wife, now that she's an axe, doesn't have a full range of human thought and emotion anymore. But yeah, you got me - I should have thought about it more, and perhaps I should have had Hart thinking about it.
Re the cover, you've got the Prime edition. Prime are the small press who first bought the book. The Prime and Pan Macmillan (UK) versions are the same inside; the Bantam one is slightly revised. The winged thing is indeed the sphinx; the cover is just a portrait of the sphinx and Gwynn.
Erfael - I think I've been very lucky with my covers, both the Bantam and the Pan Macmillan. I like them both a lot. The sticky object on the Bantam cover is actually a pomegranate. (I wanted it to be a scratch 'n' sniff, but they said no...) The idea behind it was simply to make something that looked lush and decadent, and had mainstream as well as genre appeal. So it doesn't relate directly to anything in the book; it just suggests a mood, and hopefully looks pretty :).
Eventine - re the last page: with the mysterious marksman and the old bullets, and the vandal cutting off the creature's head, I guess I wanted readers to think that Gwynn, or something like Gwynn, might still be around in some way. For me, there was always an archetypal aspect to him. (Trivia: he's named after Gwynn ap Nudd (pronounced 'Neethe'), a mythical Welsh figure who turns up in various stories, from different periods in history, in different guises, generally diminishing in power as time goes on. He's been a god of the underworld, the Wild Hunstman, the Fisher King's brother (probably), and the king of the fairies under Glastonbury Tor; he was finally made to vanish by Saint Collen, but I like to think that the saint only succeeded in closing his own eyes to the Otherworld :). So in my little alternative world, the hunter god or angel of death is diminished to a wandering gunslinger; but the archetype is still there in him.)
There are bits and pieces of symbolism in the book. Some of it is kind of broad and in plain view, like the desert landscape, a symbolic place of exile and wandering. Then there are small things, like the guy with the lotus in his navel. That's an image associated with the Hindu god Vishnu. (There's a nice bit about the lotus on this page: http://www.exoticindianart.com/article/vishnu)
Most of the symbols and other references I sprinkled in the book point to one idea, which is that this is a world where stories are worn out and scattered in fragments - ready, possibly, for renewal. So the guy at the wharf fair isn't literally Vishnu; he's a symbol of a myth on its last legs - reduced, like Gwynn, to a somewhat tawdry existence. But I tried to make the fragmented stories idea part of the main, up-front text, just with the mixing of cowboys and gangsters and pseudo-Arab nomads and so forth. So the symbolism is there more in a backup role.
Fitz - I love the tradition of gangster ordinariness, both as comedy and as something chilling - Damon Runyon, The Gang that Couldn't Shoot Straight, and there was an interview I read or watched with some mobster who recalled him and his mates getting dressed up in masks, killing someone, and then going off to one of their kids' parties, as if nothing had happened. Brrr.
Beth a succubus? She isn’t bad, she’s just drawn that way :p. On the other hand... What I was trying to do was suggest that there's both a magical relationship and an ordinary one going on; that the characters are ordinary people from one viewpoint, and magical beings from another; it's like how Gwynn sees Vanbutchell as a drug dealer, but Hart sees him as a wizard, or how Raule is a surgeon, but the doctors in Ashamoil see her as a witchdoctor.
Ficus Fan - About the hands; when Elm really wants to make a point about something, he orders a body part to be cut off. If it's more of a run-of-the-mill execution, he just has the victim beaten up and dumped in the river. Lovely guy... So the crushed hands were just part of a general beating up. Maybe I'm often thinking of hands because I can always see mine in front of me at the keyboard!
What you say about nothing seeming to be covered over with calluses - that was an effect I definitely tried for.
I tried to do more with the talking horse (there's a wonderful talking horse in Edward Dorn's epic poem 'Gunslinger', which made me want to do at least a scene with the horse talking), but it only seemed to work that one time, when Gwynn was high.
I have to admit, I didn't think all that much about the axe! You certainly raise a valid point. I guess we don't really know how much a body can affect a soul. If I was reincarnated as a tiger, a tiger I'd be. Maybe the strongman's wife, now that she's an axe, doesn't have a full range of human thought and emotion anymore. But yeah, you got me - I should have thought about it more, and perhaps I should have had Hart thinking about it.
Re the cover, you've got the Prime edition. Prime are the small press who first bought the book. The Prime and Pan Macmillan (UK) versions are the same inside; the Bantam one is slightly revised. The winged thing is indeed the sphinx; the cover is just a portrait of the sphinx and Gwynn.
Erfael - I think I've been very lucky with my covers, both the Bantam and the Pan Macmillan. I like them both a lot. The sticky object on the Bantam cover is actually a pomegranate. (I wanted it to be a scratch 'n' sniff, but they said no...) The idea behind it was simply to make something that looked lush and decadent, and had mainstream as well as genre appeal. So it doesn't relate directly to anything in the book; it just suggests a mood, and hopefully looks pretty :).