Blog

You (collectively) met the challenge and blew past my Arbitrary Nice Round Number Sales Target for the Historic Fantasy StoryBundle. So that means I'm giving away five (5) e-books of The Mystic Marriage to the first five people who comment on this thread affirming that they want a copy and that they bought the StoryBundle. (Completely on the honor system--I have no way of verifying this.)

I still have to manually approve comments because my automated spam filters aren't set up yet, so don't freak out and think you haven't posted. I'll be checking in as reguluarly as possible after this goes live so that people know when all the copies have been claimed. If you check back and see that you're a winner, send me an e-mail through the contact link and let me know what format you want so I can coordinate delivery.

ETA: All the giveaway prizes have been claimed. Thanks for your interest!

When one has re-read this story as many times as I have, it’s easy to forget that at the beginning of Chapter 12 (The Other Side of the Wall) we haven’t yet learned just who the Indian Gentleman is and why it’s relevant that he will take an interest in Sara. This chapter is something of a deep breath and a regrouping. We get a series of vignettes revealing what an array of characters are thinking about each other--though in some cases without knowing that’s who they’re thinking of.

Sara has become attached to the Indian Gentleman in that way she has of feeling empathy for anyone with problems, though the only problem he seems to have is poor health and perhaps depression. She begins attributing stories to him, especially when she hears the gossip that he’d had misfortunes involving diamond mines. The similarity to Captain Crewe’s misfortunes is quite enough to attract her sympathy, and this sympathy will serve her in good stead when she eventually learns that the Indian Gentleman is the “wicked friend with the diamond mines” whose brush with ruin may have precipitated her father’s death. We might wonder that the coincidence doesn't strike Sara as curious and suspicious--she makes no direct connection in her mind with her father's friend. But let's not forget that Sara is, after all, a little girl, for whom the idea of diamond minds is an icon rather than a concrete reality. It's a source of romantic notions of fabulous wealth, and the question of just how many fabulous diamond mines there might be in India, and how many of them might have had disastrous financial problems, is not much to the point. The connection between Mr. Carrisford an her father is purely conceptual at this point, not something to be questioned as a practical matter.

And so Sara is free to sympathize with, rather than to resent, Mr. Carrisford. Resentment will be a brief blip in a later chapter between the moment when Sara learns that he is the "wicked friend" and when she learns that he's also "the magician". All that is yet to come, but it serves to set up a parallel narrative in this chapter, first with Sara imagining herself serving as “Little Missus” to Mr. Carrisford (the Indian Gentleman) just as she had for her father, and then with Carrisford recalling how Crewe had called his daughter “Little Missus”.

But before we get to the second part of that echo, we are introduced to the real people behind Sara’s imaginings of the “Large Family” (the Carmichaels), and their interactions with Mr. Carrisford. The Carmichael children evidently have a habit of visiting next door to cheer up their father's client, and to enjoy his curios and stories from India. This will make it plausible for them to be present in his house at the emotional climax later. It’s also in this context that we learn that Ram Dass speaks only Hindi, and that both he and the Carmichael children have been telling Mr. Carrisford about their encounters with, and observations of Sara. Except, of course, that none of them know her by name. She is “the little girl who is not a beggar”, identified by the contrast between her circumstances and her behavior.

Just as Sara has made a connection in her imagination between her father and Mr. Carrisford, Carrisford imagines a connection between the-little-girl-who-is-not-a-beggar and the little girl he is searching for. He wonders if the object of his quest could possibly have ended up in such abject circumstances. It’s interesting that Carmichael--who is portrayed as a kind, jolly, loving, fatherly man--discourages this line of empathy, pointing out that there are plenty of poor servant girls in the world and one can’t make all their lives better. I’m suddenly struck by a Christ allegory embedded here. “For I hungered and you gave me meat. ... Lord, when did we feed thee? ... Inasmuch as you have done it to one of the least of these my brethren, you have done it to me.” The story literalizes this: Carrisford believes he is offering charity to a random stranger for Sara Crewe’s sake, then eventually comes to know that it was Sara herself who benefitted. Carrisford as a "redeemed sinner" archetype hadn't occurred to me before--certainly Sara as a Christ figure hadn't occurred to me before! I may need to think about that more and see if there are other relevant bits.

Carrisford and Carmichael have been trying to trace Sara's whereabouts, hindered by the fact that Carrisford has somehow gotten the impression that she'd been sent to school in Paris because of her mother's French origins. This will cause them to follow a red herring all the way to Moscow (or rather, Carmichael will follow it). This quest is how Carrisford earns his eventual success: by undergoing the pain of failures. In the conversation about the Moscow trip, we see another one of those peculiar digs at pragmatic businesswomen.

Madame Pascal, head of a girls’ school in Paris, had a pupil who was orphaned when her father--an English officer named Crewe or Carew--died in India. The girl was then adopted by the Russian parents of her best friend at the school, who had died. But Carrisford and Carmichael seem to take it as a personal affront that Madame Pascal can’t provide further details of the adoptive parents. And Carmichael notes, “She was a shrewd, worldly Frenchwoman, and was evidently only too glad to get the child so comfortably off her hands when the father’s death left her totally unprovided for. Women of her type do not trouble themselves about the futures of children who might prove burdens.” Evidently Madame Pascal is to be understood as a duplicate of Miss Minchin, rather than as someone who facilitated an adoption that addressed the sorrows of both parties in a positive way. Of course, we aren’t privy to Carmichael’s discussions with Madame Pascal, but there’s that word “worldly” again--one we hear again and again applied to Miss Minchin. It makes me suspicious, that’s all. Wealthy people have the luxury of not being "worldly". The headmistresses of girls' schools need to be worldly to survive.

But before we gloss over it, it’s when Carmichael notes that the girl’s surname was Carew or Crewe that we are first given to understand that it’s Sara they’re talking about. Carrisford immediately confirms this by confirming the details of Sara’s history and berating himself for failing his old friend and the friend’s daughter, ending with the observation that he never learned the details of that daughter’s present situation, not even her actual name. Just the nickname she’d been given: Little Missus. And so the chapter closes, with Carrisford agonizing over his so-far fruitless search for Crewe's "Little Missus" and Sara thinking sorrowfully on the long-lost days when she was that very "Little Missus".

I may, at some point, digress on the topic of how this book fits into Victorian images of girls as "wives in training". From a modern point of view (and I try hard to suppress reading this through a modern point of view) there are some borderline-squicky echoes in how Sara is set up to imagine herself as Captain Crewe's "junior wife". (E.g., visualizing herself as returning to India to function as his hostess, in addition to the whole "little missus" thing.) Some of my own "what happens after" imaginings have asked the question of exactly what Sara's relationship to Carrisford will eventually be. Guardian, yes, but it feels like the door is left open for it to turn into something other than paternal. And the main reason that there are no direct hints in that possible direction is the complete absence in the book of any projection of any of the girls into adulthood. No question of what they will be doing when they leave school. No speculations on eventual love and marriage. It's very refreshing, to be honest. But it means that there are some big blind spots.

Every once in a while, a reader provides an opinion on the Alpenia books that makes me wish my publisher used pull-quotes. A reader posted this on Twitter this morning about The Mystic Marriage: "She has all the girls being competent and intelligent and rounded people. *hugs book* It's Ghostbusters for the Regency set." That goes in my file of "Things to re-read when I worry about whether my books are finding their audience."

One of the things I love doing as I write is to plant random details that may become relevant some day. Quite frankly, I don't always know whether they'll be relevant. And I don't want the reader to be able to tell which ones are foreshadowing and which ones are just part of the background tapestry. Some of them are character details that suggest bits of backstory. In Daughter of Mystery there was a throw-away comment from Aunt Bertrut that, yes, there had been something in her past that she had wanted badly enough to tell the world to go to hell over it, just like the things Margerit wanted. I still don't know exactly what it was, but perhaps some day she'll tell me.

More often it might be a bit of history. A reference to some past event. A description of a building. An object, described and then forgotten. There was one of those mentioned in The Mystic Marriage that comes back to bite Margerit in Mother of Souls, but to say more would be a spoiler. Here's another one, from Chapter 5 of Mother of Souls, providing a suggestion that the social "mystery guilds" prevalent in 19th century Alpennia may have had a much more practical function in the past, when craft guilds were an important part of manufacture and trade. This is a key plot element in a planned independent prequel book about the 15th century philosopher Tanfrit (the subject of the opera in Mother of Souls). The specific object mentioned here is going to be a point of minor interest in a later book, but I'll leave that just as a hint.

* * *

[Margerit and Serafina are preparing for a detailed observation of the Tutela Mystery of Saint Mauriz in Rotenek Cathedral.]

A wistful look came over Serafina, but then something caught her eye and she pointed off toward the base of the donor’s windows where the seats had been placed for the royal family. “What’s happening there?”

Margerit stared where she was pointing. The effects were pale and masked by the light coming through the colored glass. She had never noticed anything odd about the design before, but now that her attention was drawn to it, she could see a thin rain of light drifting down from the fragments of the original window where the saint’s halo encircled the darker glass of his face . The newer portions of the glass only let through mortal light.

“I never noticed that before,” she whispered back. “There’s a legend that one of the glassmakers for the cathedral had set mysteries in the panes, but I never thought what that might mean.” Now that she was looking for it, she could see the fluctus drifting down to the dais where Princess Annek and her family would sit and pooling as it faded there. Some ancient blessing? Or a protection perhaps? Or was it chance that it fell in that spot? Had all the windows trapped fluctus like that at one time? Most were from the renovations in Prince Filip’s day.

“There’s an entire section in the Vatican library on mysteries of the craft guilds,” Serafina whispered. “I never had permission to explore it. A few people still study them, but they say most of the secrets have been lost or were never written down in the first place. If words and prayers can weave a mystery, and art is a prayer of the hands, then why shouldn’t any creation be capable of carrying the living word? I’ve always thought Mesnera Chazillen’s alchemy to have more of mystery than science to it.”

Margerit shook her head. “No, I doubt it. I know that many alchemists combine their work with meditation, but the heart of the practice is different. It must be, for so much of alchemy was learned from unbelievers. A true mystery can only come from God through the saints.”

Serafina gave her an odd sidelong glance. “If you believe that, then there must be many strange and wonderful things in the world that are not true mysteries.”

(The StoryBundle is entering its final stretch--only a few more days to go! Today's post is for those of you who might be looking to spice up your steam-punk adventures with some bad-ass women. Based on some reader reactions, "spice up" may be an apt description. It sounds like Geonn Cannon's inspiration process for stories may be similar to my own: start with a vivid and gripping "snapshot" and then figure  out who these people are and how they got into that situation. Geonn has two books in the Historic Fantasy StoryBundle. I'm immensely flattered--though rather dubious--that he describes me as a "giant" among such company!)

* * *

A Few Words About Trafalgar & Boone - by Geonn Cannon

This is a story I've told before, but it's a good one. And this will hopefully help people who are coming to my blog because of the Storybundle. To which I say...

One morning, I woke up with a segment of a dream still rattling around in my head. All I had was a single "scene": Two women, one black and one white, covered in mud, blood, dirt, and grime. One was wearing a heavy leather duster. The other was a redhead. They were joined by a man who was looking much more composed than either of the ladies. The three of them stepped into an elevator. As the doors closed, the women looked at each other and started to laugh. The man rolled his eyes, exasperated. Beyond that, I only knew that their names were Trafalgar & Boone.

It was such a strong image that I went to Twitter and sort of off-handedly described it. Three different followers pushed me to do more with the idea, prompting me into making it a steampunk lesbian Indiana Jones analog. Who wouldn't want to write something like that?! I had other projects on the table at the time so I set it aside, but I kept coming back to it. Eventually I had to start writing, and the world of Trafalgar & Boone unfolded around me. It was a world just emerging from a Great War, which had been fought with magic. It was a London with airships ferrying passengers across the Thames. And it was a world on the brink of something horrible wrought by the overuse and unpracticed use of magic during the war. Strange and powerful things are afoot in the world, and only by two former enemies joining forces can anyone hope to survive.

Since being published, Trafalgar & Boone have been the recipient of several honors from Kirkus Reviews. It was given a rare starred review, named one of their best Indie books of the month, and one of the best indie books of 2015. The covers, by Rita Fei, are so spectacular that I don't know how I lucked into getting her to do them. I'm trying not to create plots simply to see what she can do for them.

Melissa Scott has been a champion for Trafalgar and Dorothy Boone from the moment they were conceived, and I'm honored she chose to include them in this Storybundle. They're taking a position among such giants as Jo Graham, Martha Wells, Heather Rose Jones, and Judith Tarr. For less than the price of any individual books, you get FIVE great novels. And if you decide to pay a little extra, you more than double your haul.

With your purchase, you're not just supporting creators, you can help charity at the same time. You can donate a portion of your payment to Mighty Writersand Girls Write Now. So go! Pretend you're being selfish in grabbing some great reads and help support young writers at the same time! The Storybundle is only going to be available for a limited time, so get yours now!