On writing

“While I'm writing, I'm far away; and when I come back, I've gone.” 

 ― Pablo Neruda

Cunning Folk and Familiar Spirits by Emma Wilby

If I had the opportunity to go back to school and study 'Cunning Magic,' I would.  But I do have access to a lot of books, so reading and personal study is the next best thing. I've had this book on my Amazon wishlist for months and months, then a few weeks back, it became unavailable through Amazon, and I knew that if I was going to get a new copy for a decent price, I would have to buy it now from an independent dealer. So, I just went ahead and bought a lot of the folklore books that I am using for research and study. You can see some of them down at the end of the blog. Cunning Magic is the kind of magic that commoners practiced in the medieval ages and early modern times. Traces of it have evolved today into very new things. The thesis of this book is one I've long embraced, but it's not a popular viewpoint.  As a Catholic, I've long explored  the power of mysticism and how ordinary folks from past times have viewed lingering 'old ways' within their new perspectives with their  religion. Yes, because religion is always in a state of flux.

It is safe to say that this state of 'flux' did not happen overnight.  This is how history works, some things fade, others linger, some morph, some are rewritten, and a lot is a mix and mash of all of those. It's never what we think.  It never happens for the expected reasons. Sometimes it's subtle. It's especially never what we think for ordinary people.

Wilby is looking at people accused of witchcraft and why? But what she explores differently is why these people made the confessions that they did. Were they hysterical fictions or did these confessions hold some kind of personal truth?  I certainly believe in the latter for a lot of women who died, excluding the women who suffered in the religious wars of the Reformation, which added a new dimension and has no place in this discussion.

I am interested in women who believed in magic, mystics whose late medieval minds embraced the darkness in the same manner as prehistoric people did, as in darkness was an entity, yes, a 'thing' that could swallow their existence. These were women who lived in the borderlands of folk magic, cunning magic, and the religion of the Church.

As Emma Wilby wrote of Bessie Dunlop, "In her role as a 'cunning woman', or popular magical practitioner, Bessie Dunlop worked at the rock face of the sixteenth-century Scottish life: she delivered babies, healed the sick, consoled the bereaved, identified criminals and recovered lost and stolen goods."

Bessie had a familiar spirit who helped her in these tasks, one she confessed to knowing. A note in her trial records says she was convicted and burned. Most likely she was strangled prior to burning.

From this distance, it's difficult to view witch confessions as just created fictions when cunning folk were involved. It's even more difficult to speculate on what cunning folk really believed. Wilby's book is a wonder, it's thoughtful and provocative. It asks us to step back if we can, in time, and look at the the power of the human mind and how it connected to nature and the world around it.

Highly recommended.

The Hardy Hibiscus

Blue River 1

Pink Rose Mallow

My favorite flower is now the hardy hibiscus. I bought two new plants this year that are small and have almost a dozen of these (above). Next year I'm going to go searching for some special breeds, and try to find the deep pinkish red dinner plates that my father gave me. Roses die in a southern garden these days, due to Black Spot, which is a terrible disease and one that is difficult to get rid of, once it makes its home in your yard. The only way to attempt " control" it is to spray all the time and to monitor fallen leaves which means picking them all up and changing out the mulch frequently. I used to have a yard full of roses. Now I only buy old fashioned ones, what people call cemetery roses, because they are stubborn and Black Spot doesn't like them as well. But they do not bloom but once or twice a season. Since my garden is now organic only, I don't use a lot of sprays. SO roses are out. That's why I have fallen in love with the hardy hibiscus, which is not to be confused with the pretty tropical ones. The hardy comes back year after year and even multiplies and can be divided out. The more akin to the mallow family it is, the hardier it is, meaning, nothing can kill it. I am determined to have a yard full of them. They need little to no care and bees and butterflies love them. Gardening is one of my greatest pleasures. I prefer cottage gardens to formal ones, lots of perennials and old fashion flowers. I don't like things too neat. Smiling.

My favorite fairy

Although I've talked a lot about fairies and death, my favorite fairy is Melusine, a creature that is somewhat mysterious and who probably inspired this beautiful painting by Isobel Gloag. It's called The Enchantress. Melusine has an interesting story, both in myth and history. I think one of the better essays is this one, which talks about how she might have been a real person, like King Arthur, who developed over time into something more. I have incorporated her into my fiction in more ways than one, mainly because I like her name and am completely haunted by this painting.  Also she makes a brief but important appearance in one of my favorite novels, Possession by A.S. Byatt. I always make allusions of some sort in my work to fiction or literary characters that I love.

I think it's safe to say that I write about ordinary people who get swept up in extraordinary circumstances. Imagine a knight, somehow seduced by this creature, then married to her, having children with her, creating a dynasty even, only one day to discover she was not mortal, and that having united with her, he faced something of a curse. That is great conflict. I also imagine this for young girls, tempted by fairies and demons and others.  However, I am very much Team Human. Some very good stories have been destroyed by endings where the human crossed over into the other world, embracing something outside their natural mortal world, without facing any kind of consequences, as though leaving behind mortality is very easy and desirable. The same goes for girls and boys who learn they have secret powers, gifts that have no price or consequences. How does that happen? Why is it that good people never win these days? I don't know these answers but I have thought about them a lot while writing my stories.

I like the idea of being human and part of Nature. I think it's okay.

That's why fairies are interesting to me. They are not human. They are not us. They are part of a long history of human desire. We created them. Understanding why we did this is what makes folklore and fairy tales so important and relevant, even in an age where people feel very modern, secular, and free of superstition.

Briar Queen by Katherine Harbour

At the moment, it's difficult to discuss Briar Queen in the way that I wrote about Thorn Jack. I don't want to spoil the story for new readers. Like Thorn Jack, the story's narrative moves around Finn Sullivan and her mysterious love, Jack, but in a completely different way. We are no longer tangled up in their discovery of each other and the focus of the story is not how they find hope and love with one another. This is a completely different kind of plot.

This is expected of second books in a series. Unfortunately, first books are always about first encounters, first meets, first kisses, first impressions. The reader is always terribly engaged in these first moments, but they cannot be replicated in any series. 

In the trilogy format, authors are always faced with a complicated set of choices. Series will end with the third book, and the third book is usually very powerful. Many series suffer from second book syndrome, which is nothing more than an author making a decision to write a story that will connect the beginning drama with the final. It's not always easy.

Briar Queen is very much a second book, but carries its weight and position by developing the world of the Fata. It is also about the consequences of  Thorn Jack's core action. The rest of the book is one long journey where Finn and Jack find themselves on a difficult mission that will have grave consequences for many of the characters of this trilogy. The heart of Briar Queen belongs to Harbour's skillful worldbuilding and not her characters this time, although we meet some pretty nasty fairies, located in a world called the Ghostlands.

I found this book full of sorrows I did not expect, and a twist in the story that spoke to my feelings about how troubled fairies can be. There is mischief and deceptions.

My greatest pleasure in this story is Moth, a wonderful fairy who has a shadowed and complex past. Moth is old, older than Jack, and even by the end of the story, we are not sure who and what he is. Many of the narrators are unreliable and not to be trusted when it comes to the history of the Fata.

Harbour's gift as a writer is her vivid imagination, her willingness to embrace her uniqueness and to remain true to her fairies.  As I've written before, her fairies are dark, decadent, and masters of deception. They hold no allegiance, not even to one another at times. They can be ruthless and yet, they are so incredibly charming and beautiful, so seductive in their longings and desires.

I'll come back to this story again and talk more about it in detail when I have read it a few more times. I'll do it at a time when I can write about events which would spoil the story for new readers. 

Highly recommended. See my post on Thorn Jack here.

Thorn Jack by Katherine Harbour

Thorn Jack, by Katherine Harbour, will always be one of my favorite novels, the ones that I admire for a variety of reasons as a writer. Technically, it is near flawless and that's quite remarkable in itself. While very accessible, it accomplishes many things at once, part love story, part family drama, part fairy tale, part phantasmagorical dream, part secret history. It is riddled with symbols and themes, and literary allusions. And that is not all. Fair Hollow, the decadent setting, with it's falling leaves and scented roses, its forbidden woods, and those gorgeous decaying houses haunts the imagination.  On the surface, one could describe this as a simple love story, the tale of a young girl who meets the dark brooding guy, and falls into a dangerous situation, but Thorn Jack moves beyond love into the mythic heart of what it means to be human in a world where death is the final end. Fairies are the metaphor here, although Harbour has given them a world and complexity of their own. Fairies live in the night. In the day, they are nothing, and Harbour may have not deliberately planned it, this deep conflict, this dichotomy between the two, but that is aching heart of this book and it is not only striking but primordial. There is also that outer gaze that I often write of when concerning fairies and their mythology. The center of this story is set around Finn Sullivan and her grief for her sister, Lily Rose. Finn has moved to Fair Hollow, the home of her deceased grandmother, and it is here that she sees Jack for the first time. Jack, as metaphor, is the goblin of Christina Rossetti's mysterious and allegorical tale of sisters tempted by the Other. He is dark, dangerous, and dead. What he wants is not love, but life. The outer gaze gives us a glimpse of how desperate fairies are to be among the living, how fairies use the living, and how the dead really envy those alive and bleeding. Jack, himself, was once human. In Finn, he sees a small part of his human self. The fact that he is conflicted in Finn's seduction is given validity by the outer gaze of his past and what it means to be a "Jack." Harbour excelled here. Otherwise this story would have been too simple. That Finn is drawn to Jack resonates in a young girl, who is grieving the death of both a sister and a grandmother, who is transported from the comforts of home and hearth to the dangerous woods of place and longing. Finn has this ferocious longing to connect to something outside the pain she is feeling. That, in itself, is why this novel works so beautifully. Jack is her catalyst. I don't find their love story sentimental in anyway. Jack's desire for life is an easy opening for the other human desires. Finn's desire for life is much the same. Once the connection is there, it becomes a dangerous road, because Jack is not a living breathing thing, nor is he able to live in the light. At times, he is only a dream, and at times, he is nothing. There's meaning there. Harbour develops it by giving us a complex history of the fairy who seduced Jack into her world and it is here that we are given a retelling of Tam Lin. Unlike other similar tales of good young girls and beautiful dangerous boys, Finn is Team Human. She never wants to go to the Other. Instead, she brings Jack back to life. Of course, the deed requires a heavy price and because Thorn Jack is one of three books in a series, we know that while love is a powerful thing, it cannot fix all problems. There are other elements I adore in this book, the fact that reason is often fixed against madness, instead of the old fashioned good versus evil, the fact that human desires, our personal enclosures and escapes are shown in how the fairies function. However, these are some gorgeous and decadent fairies, so colorful and seductive that I found myself, several times, siding with them emotionally. That's dangerous. Fairy Land is a mad, mad place. No human should want to live there, but I was tempted. I suppose that is the heart of all good fairy stories, the fact that we humans envy the immortal dead in some ways. The latter is another post altogether and Freudian. In closing, I want to add that no matter what happens in this series, Thorn Jack is a perfect standalone book, written in a dreamy descriptive language what gives the outer gaze a life. We see, somewhere at the edge of our vision, the powerful Otherness, so dark and seductive, that we can do nothing but long for it.

On Time

Time is a dream, a destroying dream. It lays great cities in dust, it fills the seas. It covers the face of beauty, and tumbles walls.

 Conrad Aiken,  The House of Dust

Tanith Lee Has left this world (1947-2015)

I first read Tanith Lee in the mid-1980s, with this collection of short stories. I've been reading her ever since, and occasionally I gloam all her work for details such as this:

"The shuttered house too was gaunt in the moonlight. Was it not somewhat like a tall thin skull, eye-socket, nostrils, cave of mouth with its teeth knocked out. And what about that phalanx of round attic windows above? Of course, the scars of bullets which had gone through the brain and killed it long ago."-- Stained with Crimson, Book of Paradys. 

Emotionally invested description was her gift. She painted her stories like an artist. She paid attention to color. And I reread her all the time just to see the words, all those beautiful and yes, sometimes, very dark words.

Tanith Lee has died, and I am so sad to hear it. If you look on Goodreads, you'll see that she was in my top five favorite writers, always has been and always will be. Others come and go, but she remains. She was very prolific and I have heard she wrote some 300 short stories and 90 novels. I can't even imagine that. But I want to read them all. I think I had to write this today, I had to post it, because it's difficult to believe there will be no more stories and that she was ill and well, we distant readers, do not ever hear of such things. And now she has died and left this world. 

Another hole in the soul that cannot be filled.

Read as Much as Possible (Fiction)

I don't mind saying, that when people come to my house, they are always looking at my books. I have books all over the house, in every room, even the kitchen and dining area has its books. Every room has books. The first question people ask me about my library is if I have read all of them. Truthfully, there are always a few dozen that I have not read, but the rest of them, well,  I may have read most of them at least five times. I've always loved books, but more than that, I've always loved reading. All kinds of books, poetry, biography, histories, fairy tales, mythology, Bibles, (the Book of Job is my favorite from the Old Testament), Dante (right now I am rereading Dante), and of course, fiction. I adore fiction. Reading good fiction is akin to a big adventure. 

I've developed some great friendships while reading the same fiction. It's a terrible thing to admit, but I'm prejudiced in that I do judge people by their reading! Laughing. Oh, that was mean, but to a degree it's true. I do have some good friendships that are not based on reading, but my deeper friendships have grown out of love of good fiction. A lot of my life is about books and stories and the best relationships that I have are with people who share this passion. It's a good thing Fred and the boys love and read books. And they do, and I am so lucky, and I am going to teach both my grandchildren to read good books.

If you are a writer, it is essential to read as much fiction as you can, all across genres. This is how you will grow as a writer, how you will learn, and how you will understand how fiction changes over time. You can't make good fiction without knowing what it is. It just doesn't happen.

But I guess what I am saying here is, a life is much richer and fuller with books and stories from a variety of styles. The world becomes very big by reading all kinds of stories. So read. I think it was Stephen King who said if you want to be a writer, you need to read a lot and write a lot.

Well, I'm out of here. I moved over five-hundred books today. 

Later...

Green Things

When I was little, I was always fascinated by plants, especially flowers. I noticed them right off when visiting relatives or friends. I'd always remember a person by what they had planted in their yard. "The person with the yellow roses." "That lady with the bushes with orange berries." "The man who swept his lawn with a broom and had neat boxwoods." And on it went for years and years until I became more sophisticated in naming plants. I still remember places and events by carrying an image of the landscape in my mind. It's odd. I remember one particular time when I was having a meeting with a doctor in his office, and the older man was talking to me and all I could do was focus on the roses he had on a table. I finally had to ask him if they came from his garden. They did, but I knew that, because I knew exactly what kind of rose they were, an old china rose called Old Blush. They make terrible cut flowers and the petals and leaves had fallen all over the table, but they were a favorite of mine, and from then on, I kept wondering what kind of man would put them in his office at work. It was totally fascinating, and that man went on to help me with three difficult pregnancies. 

I suppose I am writing this because this morning I am going to work in my garden and because I am thinking about how I look at developing character in my current book. I am thinking about how personal writing can be even when we are writing genre fiction. It's all so telling.

I don't know the name of this painting. It may be a detail from a painting.  I found it on Pinterest. But I love it. It's green and white for one thing and GREEN is the color of my mind. In some ways, it's very telling of me.

Out to the garden for the day.

Day Trips More Fearful Than A Ghost Story

On Sundays we would go out for day trips, right after dinner, or before, depending on how far we were traveling. The weather was never a cause for delay. Sometimes the roads turned to dirt, and dust flew through the inside of the car and I would lie down on the seat, holding my breath. Sometimes it rained so hard Mother would pull over to the side of the road and we all smothered under the weight of water and lightning and thunder. If our destination was not a relative, it was some road Mother wanted to follow, some old house or cemetery or bridge she wanted to see. She told tales like a color commentator on a sports show, with varied voices, tales of people and places and things she knew or had been told.  The tales always grew taller and taller but that didn't matter. "I remember, I remember." Mother said that often. We were time travelers, ghost hunters, bone collectors, bridge walkers. Our pockets were always full of stones and twigs, our knees scraped. We ate gnats while trying to breathe. That is how it was when Mother was restless and she was always restless on a Sunday, following Mass and dinner. That is how it was when days were slow, so slow I thought they would last forever. I saw many things, snakes and raccoons, possums and armadillos, bird nests, and bee hives, turtles bathing and sunning all without a zoo sign. I attended funerals and looked in wooden coffins, kissed the cold cheeks of old dead aunts of aunts of aunts, took home some of their dresses and old bowls, along with the turtles and a fear I did not understand.

I remember, I remember this old bridge. 

One of my favorite quotes

“A thousand butterfly skeletons sleep within my 

walls.” ~ Federico Garcia Lorca

In the art room this week

Nothing moves me more than a beautiful painting. For many people, music motivates writers. For me, art is a key ingredient in the creative process. Of course, my favorite paintings are narrative, and I honestly believe the greatest art is narrative art, and that the greatest books are written the way an artist paints, in layers, with myth and metaphor, with scenes and symbols. This painting is a guilty pleasure. I have an obsession with paintings that are a bit whimsical like this one. It's called "A fair beauty." The artist is Herbert Gustave Schmalz who was influenced by the Pre-Raphaelites. I've previously posted this painting on Facebook but found it on Flickr this past week while I was searching for some paintings of flowers and insects that might help me with a composition I am doing. If I am on the Internet, nine times out of ten, I am looking at paintings. What a wonderful gift that time has been for me, the ability to see all this fabulous art work that normally I'd never get to see. I'll be checking in, but this week, I am in the art room working. Be back next Sunday.

Saturday work update

Cinderella and her stepsisters by Ruth Ives