Open Book Thread: Midnight Never Come

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Quick reminder: the contest running on the official website for Midnight Never Come goes until midnight GMT on June 30th. All six questions have been posted now, and for every one you get right, your name is entered in the drawing for a $500/£250 gift voucher.

Onward to the purpose of the post.

Consider this the official Open Thread for Midnight Never Come. If you have any comments you’d like to make about the book, questions you’d like to ask, feel free to do it here. Want to inquire about some historical detail? Find out why I chose to do something a particular way? Point out to me some anachronistic words or phrases I failed to scrub out before publication? This is the place. I’ll be linking this post on my website, so if you haven’t read the book yet, you can always come back here later.

(People can and do e-mail me, but I figured I’d try doing this publicly, where people can see what, if anything, others have to say.)

0 Responses to “Open Book Thread: Midnight Never Come”

  1. diatryma

    Deven’s servant Colby. I’m not sure what I want to hear about, but please babble a bit.

    Why pick that period, with Walsingham half-there?

    • Marie Brennan

      Because he’s half-there. <g> Having him die two-fifths of the way through usefully cut Deven loose, and protagonists having to fed for themselves is a good thing. That’s also part of why it was Walsingham and not Burghley (who lived until ’98). It could have been Leicester, who kicked it right after the Armada, but he’s less recognizable of a name and a much different personality.

      Colsey . . . he’s one of those characters who goes in randomly because okay, Deven is a gentleman, he needs a servant. His personality happened by accident, which is how I like it. And he ended up being enough of a personality that he needed his moment in the plot. I substantially re-wrote the scene where he dies because the first time, he got gacked kind of pointlessly, and I really felt he deserved better than that.

      (Ranwell, on the other hand, was stuck in during revisions, because I discovered Gentlemen Pensioners were required to have two manservants and three horses. [I also added a horse.] So if he’s Manservant Barely Appearing In This Book, that’s why. The offstage conflict between him Colsey is there to explain why Ranwell doesn’t get to do anything in the story.)

      • diatryma

        Colsey. Yes. I apologize sincerely for the misstep.

        I really liked Colsey’s personality. Territorial servants don’t show up nearly enough.

        I think I would get the Walsingham thing better were I more into Elizabethan things than I am. I can see where it is useful, I can see how you have made it useful, but my first response is not, “Oh, that’s a wonderful way to use Walsingham’s death!” but, “So why’d she kill him?” This is not terribly optimal for historical fiction.

        Also, I really like that you don’t have Deven meet Lune and fall in love, but have him fall in love and then be Betrayed! horribly Betrayed! followed by the realization that hey, she is the woman he loved, she’s just also this other woman. And Lune, who has been pretending love, finds a partner instead.
        There are so many ways you could have screwed that up, and you didn’t hit a one of them.

        • Marie Brennan

          Servants in general don’t show up often enough, unless they’re there to stab their masters in the back. But they were a fundamental fact of life until fairly recently.

          I hope, at least, that people who think “So why’d she kill him?” will at least go on to think, “Probably because that’s when and how she dies.” But if you’re not up on the history, then no — making use of when and how he dies won’t cause any particular glee.

          As for Deven and Lune, you remind me: when I worked out how that relationship would go, my subconscious insisted on calling their confrontation in the orchard the Big Misunderstanding, borrowing a term particularly used in romance fiction. But it isn’t a Big Misunderstanding, and that’s what pleased me about it: Deven is, in fact, entirely justified and right to be suspicious of Anne. (Though he misses his mark slightly at first, through no fault of his own.)

          Also, the original plan was for Lune to go to Deven for help after she gets out of prison, and to therefore be required to confess that she’s a fae. This? Was not interesting enough. Telling people stuff is not half so fun as having them find out when you don’t want them to. Hence the Cloak Lane scene, when her glamour gets shattered in front of him. (And it let me get him to the Goodemeades, which was useful, since they could actually convince him not to run screaming and/or stab people.)

          • diatryma

            Deven, once he figured things out, is not the type to scream or stab. Death by Latin!

          • Marie Brennan

            “And now and then stab, as occasion serves” is another Marlowe quote, and one Deven would subscribe to. He resorted to the Latin mostly because he didn’t have anything for stabbing. Also, area of effect.

            More to the point, the Goodemeades were useful for convincing him not all fae were lying bitches and/or murdering bastards. (And for cheerfully meddling in his love life. They knew exactly what they were asking for, when they suggested he give Lune a ride back to London.)

          • diatryma

            I included ‘choosing the right weapon for the job’ as part of ‘figuring things out’. But yes, definitely a stabby sort of person when necessary.

            Drat it, *, I do not need more encouragement to become an Elizabethan theatre nerd. Really. I am half-sick of a particular smugness I see in some Elizabethan theatre nerdiness– which I realize may not actually be there– and I cannot learn everything all at once. And here you come with quotes! And spies! And historical context which does not exclude underhill interference!

            *I find I want to say Bryn here, and I am not sure if this is right. Ideally, there would be some confluence of names, a nickname that serves for both, but no.

          • Marie Brennan

            Swan? You can always go with the username as a basis. But, eh, welcome to the confusion of my nomenclative* life.

            My Elizabethan theatre nerdiness is amateur in the extreme. I’ve read only one Marlowe play, and seen none performed, much less anybody else who isn’t Shakespeare. But he’s got some very quotable lines.

            “But that was in another country, and besides, the wench is dead . . . .”

            *I suspect I just made that word up.

  2. Anonymous

    I’m a long-time lurker who has been eagerly following along and awaiting the release of Midnight Never Come. First, as a new mom who usually only has one hand free, I am so grateful that this was released on the Kindle, otherwise I would have been waiting much longer to read it.

    I’ve been playing Changeling for years, so it was really interesting for me to see how MNC was changed to become its own work based on fairy lore. I spent half my time trying to translate back to the world of the game, and to an extent I could, but it really let me see how much further you’d taken the story. The depth of your research really shows.

    I’m really looking forward to And Ashes Lie.

    • Marie Brennan

      The Kindle release is the kind of thing that’s totally out of my hands, but I’m very glad to see it’s been useful to people!

      The major bit of Changeling material excised had to do with freeholds. Originally, Suspiria’s crime (committed in 1399, not way back when) was to reave and destroy a balefire in an attempt to reopen a gate to Arcadia. Creating the Onyx Hall was her attempt at atonement, but she didn’t realize the other half of it would be the choice of what to do with her creation; she reaved it again to destroy the PCs, and thus failed to lift her curse. (That consequences of that plot didn’t actually get dealt with in the game until 2006.)

      Also, Invidiana was a sluagh, since I couldn’t make her a sidhe. Otherwise it would have been a tossup, whether she was Eiluned or Ailil.

      Beyond that, though, most of the Changeling material turned out to be closely enough based on the folklore that there weren’t half so many things to file off as I expected. Most of the other things that went away (like the Seelie and Unseelie Courts) did so because they’re Irish or Scottish in origin, instead of English.

      It’s great to know I have a Changeling player among my readers! ^_^

  3. mrissa

    So what was it you wanted to talk about over here?

    • Marie Brennan

      What it was about the religious stuff you disagreed with. (I figured if I asked you over here, neither of us would have to tiptoe around spoilers.)

      • mrissa

        I think you vastly underestimated the wells of intensity available among non-Puritan Protestants in that era. Elizabeth had a “you don’t have to believe it, you just have to do it” approach, sure, but that didn’t mean her subjects felt equally casual about it.

        • Marie Brennan

          Here’s the impression I formed of it, based on reading.

          You had weird splintering going on because of the history leading up to Elizabeth’s reign: Edward’s was dominated by intensely reform-minded Protestants (including the kind that usually got called “puritan”), while Mary’s then whiplashed back to Catholicism. Your average Englishman working on his farm, in the meanwhile, mostly didn’t like change, and they’d had a lot of it lately. When Elizabeth came to the throne, she was caught between advisers and certain segments of the populace driving for reform, and advisers and certain segments of the populace driving against reform — with the threat of civil war if she pushed for too much change.

          What resulted was the Elizabethan settlement, and frankly, it has all the hallmarks of a compromise that satisfied nobody. The issue is not that non-puritans couldn’t be passionate about religion; the issue is that, at the time, pretty much nobody was passionate about the Church of England. It was a political creation designed to keep England from ripping itself apart; reformers hated it for its Catholic trappings, and Catholics hated it for its insufficient trappings. It served Invidiana’s purposes because it didn’t have all the time-strengthened traditions of Catholicism, and it also didn’t have the active crusading against Satan’s hand in the world of puritan belief. A politically-created church suited her quite well.

          Mind you, that is a particular spin on it, and if there’s one place I felt I did insufficient research, that would be it. I said at one point that I really would need a degree in Renaissance theology before I would feel qualified in what I was saying, and it’s kind of true. Honest disagreement is entirely feasible. I was just curious what you were disagreeing with. 🙂

          • mrissa

            As I said, it’s not that I think you got it wrong, it’s that it’s a spin I wouldn’t have taken myself. (I don’t have a degree in Renaissance theology, but the professor I had for my Tudor-Stuart English class was pretty Reformation theology focused.) I think that while the Church of England itself was a compromise and very few people were passionate about it in itself, I don’t think that means that there weren’t passionate Protestants and passionate Christians who were mainstream CofE at the time. And in particular I think that the use of the vernacular for prayer was a very powerful thing for a lot of the English Prots at the time. Most of the anti-change English had by the point of Elizabeth’s reign become more or less anti-change Prots, with some of the stripped-down rites holding a great deal of power for the people who used them, even if the CofE itself was mostly a matter of safety and calm rather than passion.

            I think it’s very easy for us to underestimate the power of the vernacular service because by now most people our age worldwide take it for granted that there will be Christian services in the vernacular available. But I think — and this is a very Protestant view, I know — that there was a great deal of power in bringing people’s worship to their daily tongues. That it brought more power to the people using it, not less. That even as much of the Reformation as the CofE represents made the people stronger, not weaker. And I wouldn’t have taken that spin in part because I feel pretty strongly about that, and partly because I feel that there are some unfortunate attitudes about what Christianity “really” is and who “really” counts nowadays that this sort of unintentionally underlined for me.

          • Marie Brennan

            This is me hoping you have comment notifications e-mailed to you, because I went away to chew on this and have only come back now.

            The thing I wanted to get across, and maybe didn’t, wasn’t that Latin was special and the vernacular wasn’t. The prayers get their power from two things: devout faith and/or accumulated habit, for lack of a better word. The Latin prayers are older, and therefore have worn sort of a metaphysical channel through which the effect can flow. Deven, being not a terribly passionate Protestant himself, got better results with the traditional method, but if you had put (say) Walsingham down there, he would have flattened them all with English.

            So yes: just because people weren’t passionate about the CoE was not meant to imply that this extended to vernacular Protestantism in general. Far, far from it.

  4. Anonymous

    My dad has always had low blood pressure, but it’s never caused him any problem except after surgery. I’d definitely discuss it with a GP….

  5. Anonymous

    midnight never comes

    Just a quick note of thanks, I just finished MNC and very much enjoyed it. Looking forward to reading more from you.
    Thanks again
    Craig in Hoboken, NJ

    • Marie Brennan

      Re: midnight never comes

      Glad to hear it! I’m plugging steadily away on finishing the sequel, so there will definitely be more to come.

      • orientalflower

        Re: midnight never comes

        I can’t wait for In Ashes Lie. I’ve always been a fan of Tudor history and Brian Froud (plus my character in World of Warcraft is called Onyxith!) and MNC was an incredibly creative marriage of the two.

        I particularly liked the fact that you needed an angel to fight Hell and the only one who could help was Dr Dee. I would’ve liked to know more about what happened between him and his fae scryer though.

        My favourite line: “She moved in an invisible sphere of her own disgrace.”

        Joanne
        Singapore

        • Marie Brennan

          Re: midnight never comes

          Glad to hear you liked it! (Sorry for not responding sooner to the comment you left on a different post; it’s been a mad race of unpacking from a cross-country move and finishing the book over here.)

          John Dee and Edward Kelley are a great pair to read about. In some ways Kelley’s the more interesting character; it’s an open question whether he was conning Dee, or whether he believed in the work the two of them did. I focused on Dee because a) Kelley wasn’t in England at the right time and b) he was more about alchemy than the angelic work, but came across a line in a biography where Kelley said something about faeries — the quote Dee gives from him in the novel, of course. Once I saw that, the whole backstory to that historical relationship suggested itself to me.

          • orientalflower

            Re: midnight never comes

            Here was my preview/plug on my LJ and I think you’ll get some sales out of that. 😉

            Actually, I also didn’t quite get why the Goodmeades were so attached to Suspiria. Or is it just a melodramatic Brownie thing!?

            I think it’s supercool that you studied folklore. Sometimes I wish the Chinese had more of legends of the sort to explore. They tend to be more spirits and ancestors that you don’t want to offend. Not as interesting as pucks and faery courts!

          • Marie Brennan

            Re: midnight never comes

            They were friends with her for years before everything went sour. Someday I may write that story — from Suspiria’s arrival in London through her pact with Hell. You know the outline of it from MNC already, but I suspect readers might be interested in seeing it fleshed out. There’s a whole wealth of history between Suspiria and the Goodemeades, and Suspiria and Francis, and Francis and the Goodemeades; that’s why they’re so upset by what has happened.

            Though they are also melodramatic little brownies, yes. 🙂 Gertrude especially. Rosamund’s a bit more level-headed.

            I suspect you could do equally good fantasy off the Chinese material; if you go digging through the primary sources of the British Isles, a lot of it boils down to creatures you don’t want to offend. We’ve built a whole framework of fantasy on top of that, though, so that now it seems natural to write novels about it all. I don’t see any reason someone couldn’t do the same with Chinese folklore. In fact, I wish more people would!

          • orientalflower

            Re: midnight never comes

            I’d like to be a published author someday so I really am enjoying your LJ. Hope to get to know you better through this channel. Write away, we are all waiting for In Ashes Lie breathlessly!

            PS. And I love how you worked Kit Marlowe’s quote in. XD

  6. pickles360

    I received MNC as a “giveaway” at the Faerieworlds Festival in Oregon. I was totally excited to see a full length novel in my “bag of goodies”. Non the less I did not run home and read it. I should have! I finished last night…..speechless. I fell in love with Lune immediately and can hardly believe she claimed the Onyx Court for her own! I’m thinking I was a bit less surprised then Deven but still surprised. Thank you for an adventure I will not forget anytime soon. I’m looking forward to ‘And Ashes lie’ *jumping up and down*

    • Marie Brennan

      Glad to hear you enjoyed it! I saw some pictures of Faerieworlds; it looked very fun. Maybe I’ll make it there some year . . . .

  7. Anonymous

    Midnight Never Come: Wow!

    What a GREAT book!
    I am an avid reader of anything Tudor. I prefer the Tudor period where Henry 8 and Anne Boleyn are featured, most, but I enjoy reading anything from any part of the Tudor reign. I’ve become something of an amateur historian regarding that period, particularly where H8 and Boleyn are concerned, so I have a pretty good idea of the history around the period of Elizabeth I, from that perspective. Not only am I finding the historical fact solid, but I love the added dimension of the Fae, and am turning some of my self-education efforts to learning about this area of folklore. I just love the ingenius way you have fused these two worlds of existence. What I love most is the way you have managed with the politics and the social dynamics of both worlds. I think it gives the story a very realistic spin because it keeps the “romance” of the era intact yet gives a great perspective of what it might have been like to really live in these times, as either a Fae or a mortal. I picked this book off the shelf to read because of it’s relation to the Tudors, but I love it just for itself! I am absolutely going to read the second in the series, and probably more of your material besides. Love what you did! I have discovered a new writer to follow. Thanks for lending your creative talent to the world!
    Jeri Risin
    Tudor-Writer-Wanna-Be

    • Marie Brennan

      Re: Midnight Never Come: Wow!

      You’re very welcome! I have this secret hope that lots of Tudor history buffs read and enjoy the book, since they’re the only ones who will notice and appreciate a bunch of little details squirreled away in the text. (I mean, if you go to all that effort, you want someone to notice . . . .)

      Since I’m working on a review of it right now, I’ll go ahead and plug Elizabeth Bear’s Ink and Steel and Hell and Earth, which are likewise Elizabethan faerie fantasies. She probably did even more research than I did, if only because she had more time in which to do it, and I think she gets the life of the times very well.

  8. Anonymous

    Midnight Never Comes

    Hi Marie,

    I would like to comment about Midnight Never Comes. My name is Jon Bedingfield and as a hobby I research family history, as my father did for thirty years before he pass on. I use a lot of his prayer work to advance my research. The reason I am telling this to let know were I am coming from.

    I found website through a link on the http://www.faerieworlds.com and I was reading information about your book Midnight Never Comes and found that many parts of the book included some of my family history. On The Court page for example: Queen Elizabeth I while a prisoner at the Tower of London Sir Henry Bedingfield was Constable of the Tower. Second Dr. John Dee was a distance relative through my great Uncles second marriage to my aunt who was my grand mothers sister, and was the father of Frances Dee, an American actress in the thirties and forties. I personal never met them, but my father had. Third Robert Beale is distantly related through my son-in-law Wesley Bell. His great great grand father changed the last name from Beale to Bell when moved they to the United States. I find it very interesting how many members of my family had played a very important part in your book and the history of England.

    • Marie Brennan

      Re: Midnight Never Comes

      Hi Jon,

      Wow! You know, I made a deliberate choice to have as many of the mortal characters be real people as possible — but it never really occurred to me that any of my readers might be related to them! That’s fascinating. I recognize the Bedingfield surname from my research, too, though Sir Henry didn’t end up in the book.

      I must say, you win the prize for boggling the author. 🙂 I hope I didn’t do an injustice to any of your distant relatives . . . .

  9. newsboyhat

    Hi Marie,
    I read Midnight Never Come as part of the Sirens 2010 reading list (I went last October and have already registered for next year) and loved it! You’ve managed to weave some of my favourite things together: English history, cities, political intrigue and fantasy. I’m a bit of a faerie newbie–I’ve read Holly Black’s Tithe books a few years ago but they definitely need a re-read and are more YA besides–so I had a lot of questions about the faerie culture. So thank you for a delightful read! It was wonderfully plotted, and I loved how you blended historical figures in with your tale. That part reminded me a little bit of George Macdonald Frasier’s Flashman books 🙂

    I’m also really happy to learn you’re an anthropologist–I’m only just completing my anthropology studies, and I see a lot of cross-over in anthro and literature (fantasy especially). I was thinking about writing my thesis on the construction of culture in fantasy, but I settled for reading practices of children instead.

    I’ve put In Ashes Lie on my Christmas list, and can’t wait to see what comes after. I poked around on your site and saw you’re currently working on a Victorian one… I love how you’ve made all these the same series. Do you know if you’re going to write one after the Victorian book? If so, which era? (WWI?) I have to admit, I’m hoping a little bit you’ll write The Onyx Court into the present day.

    Faye

    • Marie Brennan

      Hi Faye,

      Glad you enjoyed it! The series may or may not continue on past the Victorian period; it depends on a number of factors, foremost of which is whether I can come up with good premises for more books. (A time period does not a premise make, unfortunately.) If it does, though, there will be one book set during the Blitz, and then yes — one in the modern day.

      • newsboyhat

        Totally understood on the need for a good premise, but here’s to hoping that they do come and that you do write them 🙂

  10. Anonymous

    This has been a fascinating series so far. I look forward to reading the rest.

  11. Anonymous

    Congrats on the new look!

  12. Anonymous

    You got my email, right?

  13. Anonymous

    I also wholeheartedly recommend Fullmetal Alchemist. Alchemy, martial arts, family relationships, complex moral questions, a tightly-woven plot, and a diverse group of SERIOUSLY kickass female characters.

    The first anime is good, but I think the SERIOUSLY kickass female character quotient kicks up a few notches in the manga.

  14. Anonymous

    So this is a little late, but I just finished all three of the current Onyx Court books in a week’s reading binge. (To be perfectly honest, I’d tried reading Midnight Never Come a while ago, and couldn’t get into it… but sometimes that happens, and I try again later, and suddenly I’m purchasing the other two books in the series and having reading binges….)

    This may have been asked in a previous post, but it’s driving me rather more batty than it should:

    How do you pronounce Lune?

    Loon, silent E?
    Loonay?
    Luna, treating the E as an A?

    It’s probably simple and I’m probably making too much of it, but it really has been driving me a little nuts. o.o

    Other than that, ffffff, Galen, and Delphia. Dangit. Just… the whole thing. OH OH MY GODS DR. ANDREWS WHAT DID YOU DOOOO???? I mean, I was sort of expecting it since the moment he killed the salamandar, but that didn’t take any power away from the reveal of the depths of his crimes. Podder. D:

    So now I’m going to just sit here and try to be nice and patient until With Fate Conspire comes out. ::twiddles thumbs::

  15. Anonymous

    Hooray!

    Also, that desk looks great. I hadn’t heard of any that could be adjusted; that’s awesome.

    Hmm, I’ll throw my hat in the ring. My ideal writing environment is my still-just-a-dream writing room: colorful; decorated with fey and South Asian and fun, inspiring images and objects; a nice daybed or chaise lounge; my purple starry curtains; bookcases full of books. One day. . .

  16. Anonymous

    Re hitting, I am English and born 1976 and was hit as a punishment (spanking or ear-boxing, usually) in my childhood, and didn’t (and don’t) think of it as abuse. As far as I know, this happened to my friends too. It certainly didn’t strike me (sorry!) that way in Wilkins’ Tooth, either as a child or as an adult. There was no caning in my school that I know of, but I do remember seeing a teacher slap a naughty child round the legs.

    BTW I am here through and have really enjoyed the posts so far. I hope you don’t mind that I have friended you so as to keep up with them.

  17. Anonymous

    I think that’s what struck me so hard about this book, is the fact that I do and have owned a dog, and consider myself a huge dog lover, so a lot of it really hurt me. When I first read it was an adult, and perhaps I imagine I got some concepts a good deal better then I would have if I was a child.

    And I almost feel the book should have begun with Sirius as a puppy, filling in the trial and exile as we go along

    This was probably why this isn’t my favorite DWJ books, simply because I feel it could have been put together a little better? But that’s just my personal preference. :).

  18. Anonymous

    Here’s one, using public domain period artwork from wikimedia commons.

  19. Anonymous

    I do that too ; and love it when I do.

    If you like reading about this kind of thing (and have some vocabulary for music theory)–I strongly suggest Oliver Sacks, esp Musicophilia…

  20. Anonymous

    An alternative to option one is to sew the fabric right sides together with a very light non fusible interfacing – sewing all the way around the circle. Then cut a small hole in the center making sure not to cut the main fabric. Pull the fabric through the hole and press.. same can be done with fusible interfacing – make sure to put right side of fabric against fusible side of interface, that way when you turn it right side out – you can fuse it in place where you are going to stitch it down.

  21. Anonymous

    I played M&M a while ago, but I think it might have been 2nd ed. Never been much of a fan of d20, though; I don’t find it very flexible, in terms of being able to play different kinds of characters and have them all be useful. But I haven’t looked at 3rd ed.

  22. Anonymous

    Wow, some of them were fantastic, though others were definitely mind bending. Nice way to spend an hour. Thanks for the links.

  23. Anonymous

    Heh. No, I didn’t write it; that would fall under “too close to my professional work” for me. If I’d had that idea, I would have executed it as an original story, maybe even somehow Onyx Court-related. (I’m torn as to whether I’d want that continuity to include London being incarnated as a person. Mostly I’m leaning away from it, because I make some determined arguments in Fate for London being too polyvocal to sum up so singularly. But it’s still a shiny idea.)

  24. Anonymous

    Here’s an example of problems with the DSM-IV… intended as humorous, but…

    http://static.someecards.com/someecards/images/feed_assets/4e04b0664461c.jpg

  25. Anonymous

    This is so very, very true. Gamers can also be a great place to test your world building. If you’ve got a logical flaw and given them a loophole they’ll find it and demonstrate it by taking shameless advantage of it.

    But more than that, I find that creative interplay between a good GM and a group of good roleplayers really stimulates my creativity when I go back to writing, even though what I’m writing may have nothing at all to do with the game.

    Sadly I really need to find a new game. My current groups just don’t really see the game as a priority. I think we spent half of last night’s session on stupid digressions about movies and TV and politics.

  26. Anonymous

    Funny, I had the opposite experience in Bloomington. Lots of pizza yeah, especially at After-Guild, but tons and tons of non-standard pizzas courtesy of Avers, and I’m a traditionalist. BBQ chicken, cream and crimson, some potato and artichoke thing a couple of Guilders came up with, I forget what else… simple tomato sauce and pepperoni or anything like it was scarce to non-existent, unless I made a fuss for paper reading or anime club planning meeting.

    Funny thing was, when I did get my pizza in — Italian sausage, garlic, extra tomato sauce[1] — it was really popular, as in “I’m five minutes late and all my pizza is gone, waah”. To be fair, I think cog sci paper reading kept ordering the BBQ chicken (always dried out) because the professor liked it.

    [1] My parents pointed out that most places don’t use enough, giving a monomolecular layer of sauce buried under like an inch of cheese. Mother Bear’s was a pleasant exception.

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  29. Anonymous

    (Oops — thought I posted this yesterday, but I left the tab sitting open instead!)

    The only association with Yuletide comes from the mods there rejecting it as a fandom nomination. 🙂 (Which I don’t understand, but whatever. We’ll make our own fun!)

    Feel free to ask me any questions you may have; I don’t want the newness to cause any problems for you.

  30. Anonymous

    I definitely agree about the emotional substance, at least with regard to one character in particular (I expect you are thinking about the same thing I am when you say “emotional substance”). Anyway, I’m looking forward to hearing what you have to say about the book.

  31. Anonymous

    Re: The Undying

    I guess that would fit with the Greenwitch comparison – only (some of) the women of Cornwall and the Old Ones seem to view her as anything other than a superstition. Or the way the Greek Gods which we tend to think of as something of an organized pantheon were actually pretty geographically based. Aphrodite’s cult based on Cyprus, Apollo in Delphi… They may have been known in other places, but back in the way old days of antiquity (AIUI) their worship was fairly geographically bounded.

    So the Holy Islanders being the only ones who take Libby Beer and Drowned Ammet as actually existing beings isn’t a deal breaker for me.

    Elaine T

  32. Anonymous

    A little googling (though without access to a library, no confirmation) suggests that the author of the thesis might just possibly be Susan Ang.

    I haven’t read these at all – why have I read so little DWJ? – but I think I need to remedy that at some point.

  33. Anonymous

    Put ” hand cancel” on the envelop. I think the machine might crack the wax.

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