Day 6 of STAR SHARD WEEK: Coming of Age

Posted on March 10, 2012 by fsdthreshold

Today on Emily Fiegenschuh’s blog, she tells the story of how she developed the cover image for the September 2008 issue of Cricket. She was given free rein by the art director to choose any material from the story that had appeared in the magazine up to that point, and she truly nailed it. She brilliantly rendered a frozen instant that is at once beautiful and dramatic, and conveys the very heart of “The Star Shard” better than any other scene she might have selected.

I’ll try to do this without leaking any spoilers. In that picture, titled A Precarious Perch (which is available for sale as a poster — please see Emily’s blog — I have a framed print in my hallway!), Cymbril stands on a tiny ledge with no guard rail, high on the prow of the Thunder Rake, many stories above the ground. The Rake is rolling forward over rough terrain, so the perch shakes and lurches. The breeze fills Cymbril’s hair and sets her garments flapping. All the vast world is arrayed before her; the sky around is ablaze with stars. There is danger approaching behind her in the Rake’s depths, as yet unseen and unnoticed. The friendly yellow tom cat is worried about her.

It is a moment of revelation for Cymbril. She has learned something new, something staggering, and it changes her perspective. There is so much before her to see and sense, and she will not ever regard it in the same way again. Yes, that is definitely the scene to put on the magazine’s cover.

 When I started out writing “The Star Shard,” I knew it would be about Cymbril trying to escape, trying to gain her freedom. What I didn’t yet know was that, on a deeper level, it wouldn’t be so much about fleeing as it would be about facing, about discovering and embracing who you are. Critics are calling it a coming-of-age story. That’s great to hear, but it’s something the story revealed about itself along the way.

I wrote “The Star Shard” during a time when I was contemplating a major life change, my relocation from Japan to America. I think it’s more or less inevitable that what we’re going through is reflected in our writing. In fact, it often shapes our writing and gives it the focus it needs. Cymbril’s ambivalence toward leaving the Rake is very much what I was also feeling during those years.

There’s a scene in the book in which Cymbril sees a caterpillar crawling across the rock she’s sitting on. She wonders if the worm is happy as a worm or if it’s eager to become a butterfly. Then she realizes that it would be pointless for the worm have regrets or to agonize over what it wanted to do; the creature is what it is. It was born to become a butterfly. I think Cymbril finds some relief from that epiphany.

That scene was borrowed from real life. I encountered a very fat, avocado-green worm on a hot day, on a dusty road near the music practice rooms at Niigata University. Probably a dozen or more students were practicing various instruments and singing in the cubicle-rooms indoors, and all their sound was pouring out of the windows, giving a soundtrack to the dry, wistful day, with the cloudless blue sky over the unoccupied sports fields at the hour of noon, as I looked toward the pine grove at the back edge of the campus, the tree trunks permanently bent by the ceaseless wind off the Sea of Japan.

It was chaotic music: pianos, strings, the voices of young girls like Cymbril singing scales, all the musicians doing something different, all doing it at once. A university is a launching-off place, the beginning of many roads. (On that very campus, Dragonfly had been born years earlier.) I stood there in a rising breeze from the future, having a little conversation with a green worm who crawled past my feet, on his way toward getting his wings.

Day 5 of STAR SHARD WEEK: The Songs

Posted on March 9, 2012 by fsdthreshold

The week-long celebration of The Star Shard continues! Be sure to leap from this blog over to Emily Fiegenschuh’s (she’s the amazing artist who illustrated “The Star Shard” in its original form in Cricket Magazine — and wow, has she got some fascinating things to say over there about techniques and the artist’s process! You’ll never look at harpies the same way again!).

Music is integral to this story. Cymbril sings. Birds all around the Thunder Rake and in its own native treetops sing. The Armfolk sing as they row the Rake along on its travels. In its own juggernautical way, the Rake itself sings, shrieking and booming over the land. To quote from an early chapter:

She had always heard the tones of the world and had always answered them from within herself, matching the sound. As a very small girl, she’d stood in the middle of a deck and sung with the Rake. Her voice echoed the shriek of the axles, the roar of crowds, the stir of wind in leaves . . . and added something of her own, a nameless emotion that was both joy and loneliness, a cry that would not be stilled. When Rombol had determined that nothing ailed her, that she was singing like no child he’d ever heard, he found her a teacher of music and voice. Rombol knew a commodity when he heard one.

Cymbril’s world is a singing world. The book ends with the singing of a bird. The Cricket story begins with the two-word sentence “Cymbril sang.” The book’s cover bears the line, “The magic of music, the power of freedom.” The act of singing is a powerful metaphor for this book, because it’s the story of a girl finding her voice, letting her spirit grow and scintillate.

One of the best things about expanding the shorter tale into a book was that suddenly I had more room to let the story breathe and grow. I could restore some of the descriptions we had to excise from the magazine draft. I could turn the “camera” on more of the shadowy corridors I wanted to explore. I could delve more into the stories behind the story. There’s still not nearly enough of this, is there? — which is why this needs to be a series. There’s so much of Cymbril’s world glimmering beyond the narrow borders of even a 304-page novel!

One element that for certain I wanted to include in the book was some specifics of Cymbril’s songs. In the Cricket version, we got to hear a few titles; we had the briefest hints of what the songs were like. We know that Cymbril sings from a rich tradition. Rombol has seen to it that Cymbril was taught to read, and she has learned some of her songs from books. She has also had the best music teacher that her wealthy master could produce. We learn that her songs are hugely popular with crowds, who also know many of the lyrics by heart. She sings the music of the people — the songs they laugh, clap, dance, and cry to. Sometimes the crowds sing along; sometimes they listen in hushed awe. At the market in Deepdike, Cymbril is spontaneously joined by two minstrels, Bobbin and Argent, who lend her their voices and their instrumental facility to the delight of the audience.

Two songs of Cymbril’s we hear in their entirety, and these came very late in the revision of the book. They were like crowning flowers that blossomed when all the garden was grown and nearly ready. What are the words? I wondered. What are these poems that hold the crowds still, that stir their hearts and unlock their dreams? My clearest memories of the songs coming to me are of days at Niigata University, when I was there to teach. I can remember scribbling lines on the back of a syllabus, on a wobbly table in the crowded student lounge, where I’d go to get 70-yen coffee from a vending machine. I can remember sitting on a bench just outside the building where I taught, eating lunch and jotting lines. I remember tiny, brave flowers growing in the tangled grass. I recall students stopping to wave at me through the windows, giggling about the teacher writing in the courtyard.

But another dimension was coming. My friend Dorothy VanAndel Frisch, known to long-time blog friends as Daylily, had set some of my words to music in the past, and she began doing the same for Cymbril’s songs. What follows is Dorothy’s own account of how she went about it:

“The Green Leaves of Eireigh” began with one stanza Fred wrote for the book and emailed me for my enjoyment. I could see that I would love to set this to music, and I asked him to write more stanzas. That first stanza fired my imagination. I listened to Celtic music and wrote Fred, “It seems to me that the melodies of Cymbril’s culture would bear a relationship to Celtic music. Yet there would be something just a little different about the music. Maybe it would have an unusual scale or mode as the basis for the melodies. Certainly not plain old major or minor! But the music would have the energy and drive of Celtic music. It would have to be music that non-musicians could enjoy. So it would be different, but not too different. That would be an interesting challenge. It would be the equivalent of inventing a folk music for a different culture.” When working with “a steed to carry me back to Eireigh,” I came up with a phrase in D Dorian mode with a raised fourth scale degree. That seemed exotic enough for Cymbril’s culture, and the scale worked well for the entire song, after Fred had written three more stanzas.

I liked “The Green Leaves of Eireigh” so well that I was inspired to make an arrangement of it for three-part women’s chorus, piano, and flute. This piece will be premiered on Thursday, May 3, 2012 at Shrewsbury High School, Shrewsbury, MA in the spring concert beginning at 7:30 p.m. I will be at the concert; if any of the Fellowship of the Blog attend, please introduce yourself to me!

Fred and I enjoyed the collaboration on “Eireigh,” and then he became inspired to write another complete song to include in the book: “Blue Were Her Eyes.” That one I set in D Mixolydian mode with a raised fourth scale degree. So the two songs bear a relationship in style, with that unusual feature of the raised fourth scale degree. At some point, we realized that readers might enjoy having some real music included in the book about Cymbril, since her singing is a central focus of the book.

This is Fred again: it gives me — and I’m sure Dorothy, too — great delight to imagine readers of The Star Shard going to their pianos, picking up their flutes or violins, trombones or oboes or horns or tubas and discovering for themselves the notes as Cymbril might have sung them, under the blue sky and a fair breeze, as marketgoers stopped to listen.

I told you in a blog post awhile back about how, just before I left Japan, a friend and colleague at Niigata University recruited me to be involved with a major artistic event: in a huge concert hall/stage theater, before a packed house, “Blue Were Her Eyes” was on the program. Dressed in my tweed suit, standing in a blinding, Spielberg-like spotlight, I read the poem aloud, while on the stage to my left, a nationally-famous Japanese young man interpreted it through dance, garbed in a costume of his own design. You can review my account of that day here.

As the Urrmsh say: “We push, and we pull, and we sing. It is a good life.”

Join us tomorrow for Day 6! And tell everyone you know that s/he should be reading The Star Shard! 🙂

Day 4 of STAR SHARD WEEK: Across 8 Years

Posted on March 8, 2012 by fsdthreshold

Welcome back to the week-long celebration of The Star Shard — the novel just released and in stores now, and the story that inspired it, which ran as a series in Cricket Magazine from April 2008 – April 2009. This week of reminiscence and celebration is also going on over at http://fabledearth.blogspot.com/, the blog of Emily Fiegenschuh, the artist who illustrated the story in Cricket. Be sure to visit Emily’s website, too, for a full gallery of her work, including a special section devoted to “The Star Shard.”

As we reach the halfway point in this week, I thought it might be a good idea to look back to the time eight years ago when the idea for this story first found me, and when I began writing what would become the Cricket series. Fortunately, at that time I was keeping a daily journal, so I can pinpoint the precise dates and tell you something about what my life was like then. Can you recall what you were doing eight years ago? As it happens, it was right around this same time, in the very early spring . . . that’s when “The Star Shard” was born!

I lived in Japan, teaching English (ESL) and writing at Niigata University. Here are some highlights from my journal entry for Wednesday, February 25, 2004:

Productive day, by grace! Chapter 5 (of a yet-unpublished novel) is printed in Courier! Beautiful, sunny weather, and not too cold. Now I’m halfway through Chapter 15, and everything is done through Chapter 14! . . . I walked for 70 minutes, to Bandai City and back. I got up once at 9:00 a.m. . . . Then I went back to bed, shut off my alarm when it rang, and slept until noon! (I’d been up till after 4:30 a.m., getting all of the book safely stored with each chapter on 2 separate disks.) I read some of Writer’s Digest during a solitary lunch: bread with peanut butter and blueberry jam, Granola cereal, and Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups. Washed dishes. . . . I worked at the big computer — finished keying in revisions to Chapter 5, printed it out in Courier, and started Chapter 15. Now everything is done through Chapter 14. . . . I walked to Bandai City. I’d hoped to check e-mail, but the computers at the Media Cafe were being used. I stopped in at Kinokuniya (a huge bookstore chain), checked the Cafe again, & came home. Very pleasant weather! As I walked, I started getting inspired for a Cricket story — ideas started flowing!. . . Helped [friends] get supper ready: pork chops with green mustard, moyashi-itame, German potatoes (with onions & sausage), miso-nattou, gohan, mixed fruits, kaki-no-tane, & a Reese’s Peanut Butter Cup. I washed the dishes. . . . I worked at the table (small computer) and got halfway through the key-ins to Chapter 15. . . . Did e-mail. I gathered up trash very late tonight. Thank You, Lord, for this precious spring break time! Soli Deo Gloria!

So there you have it: the day when “The Star Shard” first found me, during a walk on a balmy day near the end of February, eight years ago!

Now, here’s from the day I actually began writing it, Friday, March 12, 2004. Isn’t that eerie? It’s almost exactly the same time of year as now!

Very blessed day! I started writing “The Star-Shard” for Cricket. [That’s true: I first hyphenated the title, and the Cricket editors suggested we remove the hyphen.] Also sent a letter to Nick which I wrote in the wee hours of the morning. Good weather — sunny and bright. Clear. Thank You, Lord! I walked for an hour, from home to the Mitsukoshi Starbucks along the Shinano River — then went on to the tobacco shop [where a good friend worked]. Bandai Bridge was alight with its golden lights. . . . I got up once at around 8:30 or 9:00 a.m. . . . I dozed at the kotatsu, drinking coffee, and got up at 11:30 a.m. Got dressed. [I love how I claim to have drunk coffee while dozing! This undoubtedly means that I had a nice cup of coffee sitting on the kotatsu as I dozed, and I drank it cold. The kotatsu is a low table, no higher than a coffee table, with electric heating coils on its underside. The hard tabletop is a separate piece from the frame and legs. A big, thick, soft, quilt-like blanket is centered over the frame, touching the tatami-mat floor all around the table and then some, and the tabletop is placed on the top to provide a surface for working, eating, etc. A person sits or lies half-under the table, with the blanket drawn up around the waist or neck. So cozy on winter days and nights! I read most of Neil Gaiman’s Coraline under a kotatsu. It’s one of the things I wish I could have brought back with me from Japan, along with the baths.]

I microwaved some pasta for the first part of lunch, and when I took its container out as plastic trash, I also bought a glazed bread roll and a ham & cheese sandwich at the Daily Store, which I also ate along with McVitie’s. Read an article from my old Writer’s Digest School materials (about how to sell a book). Then I finished up & mailed my letter to Nick (commenting on his story “The Demon in Joe Camel”). I did more printing on the fun, more condensed version of [the novel], which I started [printing] last night (to show various readers). . . . I did some great planning on my new Cricket story “The Star-Shard” and started writing it on the big computer! Lord willing, it will be the best yet! At 5:20 or so, I set out walking & took Starbucks coffee & tea to [some friends], & the 3 of us went to “Goro” for supper . . . Fun! Read FATE. Bath. Soli Deo Gloria!

Lest you think I did nothing but play around and write in Niigata: these days were both during the long spring break that universities in Japan have, which typically run from about the second week in February through all of March. Then the summer break is from about the second week in August through all of September. I loved that, having two long holidays a year. Four months of hard work, two months off, four months of work, two months off . . . It was an ideal schedule for a writer.

A lot has changed in eight years. That’s the time of two Presidencies; I often measure time in Presidencies. My parents have passed on. I’ve relocated, had to learn a lot about being a homeowner and many other troublesome adult things. I moved half a world away from dearest friends and from a job I deeply loved. Japan suffered a devastating tsunami and nuclear disaster. I’ve discovered World Fantasy Conventions during these eight years. I’ve met new friends, not that older friends can ever be replaced. I’ve struggled and grown. I’m less afraid of the future, closer to a state of aequanimitas (Latin for “evenness of mind, especially under stress; right disposition; balance”).

But that’s just me, and what am I? A passing shadow.

But we have The Star Shard now. It ran for a year in Cricket, and thanks to Emily’s illustrations, a lot of young readers liked it. I believe I heard that, to meet popular demand, Cricket sold sets of the magazines in which it appeared. Through Cricket‘s innovation, Emily and I were able to communicate with a great many burgeoning writers and artists. Readers sent in their artwork (which you can still see; go to THE STAR SHARD’s page on this web site, and there are links to the fan art on Cricket’s site). It’s very striking that, in nearly all the fan art, Cymbril has a strand of hair out of place, falling across her face, which is how Emily drew her, and that had a huge impact on kids! At the other extreme, one young artist went with his own concept and drew Rombol as a sea captain, completely uninfluenced by any images he saw in the magazine. I admire and appreciate all these artists — there’s room for every one of their visions!  

Cricket ran a writing contest in which readers were encouraged to compose songs that the Urrmsh would sing, and the winners among those were published in the magazine.

The story went through changes, like an adolescent growing up. It expanded and contracted. It was awkward and learned things the hard way.

The Star Shard is now a novel. Also, it has songs in it, as we’ll focus on later this week; one song of Cymbril’s has been interpreted through dance in Japan, and another will be featured in an upcoming choral concert in Massachusetts (see my home page). It’s a wonder to me . . . an absolute wonder . . . how a story can grow so far beyond the little head it first enters, so far beyond the tiny hands that first write it down. As Tennyson wrote, “Our echoes roll from soul to soul.” Artists, art directors, editors, proofreaders, agents, designers, binders, printers, promoters, dancers, composers, flutists, pianists, choristers, other writers, dreamers — and readers — readers far and wide — have all had a hand in The Star Shard. It belongs now to so many more people than just me, and that relieves me greatly.

In my uncertain and transitional time of life, a wise friend recently gave me this advice: “Don’t worry. Breathe deeply the breath of God.” And so I will. There are wonders all around, as these eight years attest. It can begin with taking a walk, and being receptive.

Join us tomorrow for Day 5!

 

Day 3 of STAR SHARD WEEK: The Harpy

Posted on March 7, 2012 by fsdthreshold

It’s Day 3 of our week-long blogfest celebrating The Star Shard — both its original incarnation as a serialized story in Cricket and as a just-released novel from Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. Ongoing notes related to this story are appearing throughout the week both here and on the blog of Emily Fiegenschuh, the artist who brought the story to life in Cricket. Her blog is at http://fabledearth.blogspot.com/.

As Cymbril’s adventures take her through the Lower Groag Swamp (also known as Weepwallow), a terrible place of oozy mud and gleaming eyes in the dark, she is terrorized by the harpy.

Harpies come to us from ancient Greek mythology. There, they usually appear in a group as dreadful sisters, the daughters of Poseidon and Gaea (or else, some say, the daughters of Thaumas and Electra). In his Dictionary of Classical Mythology, J.E. Zimmerman tells us, “They were fierce, filthy, winged monsters, with the faces of women, bodies of vultures, and sharp claws. They left a loathsome stench, snatched and defiled the food of their victims, carried away the souls of the dead, served as ministers of divine vengeance, and punished criminals. They were sent by Hera to plunder the tables of Phineus . . . They plundered Aeneas on his way to Italy, and predicted many calamities that would overtake him. (Aeneid iii).”

Greek myth gives names to the Harpies (or Harpyiae), too: Aello, Celaeno, and Ocypete. In the works of Homer, only one appears and is called Podarge. In Theogony, Hesiod mentions two Harpies and calls them Aello and Ocypete.

Poor, blind King Phineus could not eat, though a banquet was spread before him; these filthy sisters kept swooping out of the sky and snatching the food away, spoiling it. Fortunately for Phineus, his brothers-in-law Zetes and Calais (sons of the North Wind) came to his rescue, driving the Harpies away. He even got his sight back, a reward from the gods for advising the Argonauts on how to get past the Clashing Rocks. So a great many tales are interrelated . . .

The harpy in The Star Shard does not snatch away food from people. Rather, she snatches away Loric after narrowly missing Cymbril — and seems interested in them as food for herself, though we really don’t know what her intentions are. Certainly they’re no good.

She is a harpy with a small “h,” which probably suggests that she is not one of the original sisters spoken of by the Greeks. Perhaps this swamp-dwelling harpy (in the way that Shelob and the great spiders of Mirkwood are descended from Ungoliant) is a distant descendant of the Harpyiae. No longer bent on any divine errand, perhaps not capable of speech at all, she is a thing of malice and hunger.

In Cymbril’s world, harpies are well-known enough that the men of the Rake recognize the creature. Loric dreads her greatly and senses her presence before she appears.

For some good looks at this harpy of Weepwallow, please visit Emily’s gallery for “The Star Shard” at www.e-figart.com. Be warned, though: the monster is properly horrifying!

How did the harpy find her way into my story? Well, as a teenager, I read Peter S. Beagle’s book The Last Unicorn. It’s a beautiful, enchanting tale that has, since then, occupied my small shelf of favorites. It features a very, very, very scary harpy. (At least I remember her that way; I haven’t read the book since I was a teenager.) The cover art was by Gervasio Gallardo. I’ll show you both the front cover and the back, with his rendering of the harpy.

Beagle's The Last Unicorn, cover art by Gervasio Gallardo

And here’s the back cover:

Gervasio Gallardo's harpy; back cover of The Last Unicorn, by Peter S. Beagle

And there you have it. Please stop in again tomorrow as STAR SHARD WEEK continues!

 

STAR SHARD WEEK, Day 2: Names and Pronunciation

Posted on March 6, 2012 by fsdthreshold

Naming things, places, and people is one of my favorite aspects of writing a story. Names are inherently powerful. Whether we like it or not, our names help to shape who we are, and in fiction, a well-chosen name goes a long way toward characterization or story-building. As a writer, I love to choose names that echo mythology, folklore, other stories, or certain words in our language. I like it best when names tell us a lot more than who or where or what.

In The Star Shard, then:

The Thunder Rake (for an absolutely staggering look at the visual evolution of the Thunder Rake, don’t miss Emily’s blog post at http://fabledearth.blogspot.com/) — This one is fairly straightforward. The Thunder Rake is an enormous wagon with a city on its many decks. As it crawls across the lands by means of levers and gears that drive a system of land-gouging claws, it makes noises like peals of thunder. The claws crash into the ground. The superstructure rumbles. And I was thinking, too, of a garden rake — we’ve all used them to scour and sweep the soil. Imagine if you were a titanic being, and the rake in your hands made the earth shake. That’s the spirit behind the name Thunder Rake!

Cymbril — She’s our main character in The Star Shard. First, I wanted a pretty name. Second, I wanted it to reflect the music that fills her soul and comes pouring out. I based her name on the word “cymbal.” Certainly her canonical scream in the first chapter is like a cymbal crash that sets her adventures in motion! Third, I was influenced by the names in the works of J.R.R. Tolkien, names such as Idril Celebrindal, Celebrian, Galadriel, and others — beautiful, powerful elvish ladies. That’s the essence of our Cymbril.

Loric — He’s one of the Sidhe or Fey Folk. I wanted his name to include the word “lore,” the very stuff of legend and story. My own name is Frederic, and I think that “-ic” on the end adds a nice flourish — makes it a proper, solid name.

Rombol — In the story of Pinocchio, the wooden doll who comes to life as a boy, there’s a wicked slave-master named Stromboli. His name is actually borrowed from the name of a fiery volcano in Italy, Mt. Stromboli. That’s perfect for his character! I continued the tradition, giving it my own twist. I lifted out the middle of Stromboli — “Rombol.” I liked the round “o” sounds, which speak to me of bigness and solidity. I like the way the name resembles “rumble.” Rombol, like Stromboli, is the master of many slaves.

Wiltwain — A sprawling operation such as the Thunder Rake needs an Overseer, and Wiltwain fills the role. The Rake’s second-in-command, he is tough, competent, formidable, astute, perceptive, and perhaps a bit wiser and more realistic than his master, Rombol. He also turned out to be more sympathetic and compassionate than I’d expected, which surprised me. When I started writing, I supposed he would be nothing but an antagonist to Cymbril. But he is a fair and sensitive individual; when dealing with a character such as our heroine, how can he not be secretly rooting for her? His name is derived from two parts. The first is “wilt,” in the sense of plants and flowers wilting, withering — his presence is severe and searing — yet perhaps also in the archaic future tense of “thou wilt” — it may be that a man such as Wiltwain is the future of the Thunder Rake; he has the mettle of a true leader. The second part of his name is “wain,” an old word for “wagon.” And “wagon,” of course, refers to the Thunder Rake, his home.

Urrt and the Urrmsh — The Armfolk, also called the Strongarms — Urrmsh in their own language — are the gentle, peaceful, powerful creatures who drive the Thunder Rake forward by rowing it, turning the gears that propel it forward. They also more or less “know everything.” Their songs, endlessly repeated and steadily built upon as new information is collected, recount wisdom gleaned from far and wide; they recapitulate facts, memories, and beliefs in the medium of fluid, purring songs incomprehensible to the human ear. Among them, Urrt is Cymbril’s closest friend. The way to pronounce these names is as follows:

1. Stick your lips way out in a circular shape.

2. Say “oo” as in “blue” or “food.”

3. As you begin to draw your lips back, begin to flutter your tongue. This produces a natural, whispery “r” sound, like a giant cat purring.

4. By the time your lips are back against your face, you can finish off the name with a “t” for “Urrt” or an “msh” for “Urrmsh.” For “Urrmsh,” be sure to draw out the “sh.” You can’t possibly go too quickly for names in Urrmsh! If you want to continue the “rr” for awhile, that’s fine — the Armfolk would approve!

Hysthia Giltfeather — I wanted her name to sound a little like “hysteria,” and also to sound proud, ornamental, and somewhat ridiculous. A feather with a gold coating — what could be more ornamental and ridiculous than that?

Runa — I had a student in Japan named Runa. She was serious and businesslike, like the kitchen-maid Cymbril bribes.

Gerta and Berta Curdlebree — I was thinking of the verb “curdle,” as when milk goes bad.

The Knights — You may wonder why sometimes they’re called “The Knights of the Fountains” and sometimes “The Knights Fountainers.” I was thinking of real history there, how the Knights Templar were known as the Knights Templars or simply the Templars, and there were also the Knights Hospitallers. I would guess our knights are sometimes simply called “the Fountainers.” As to what the Fountains are — that’s the subject for another tale!

Ranunculus — To avoid spoilers, I would encourage you to look up this word in your dictionary, and pay special attention to its origins in the Latin rana.

If there are questions about additional character or place names, please feel free to ask!

 

Welcome to THE STAR SHARD WEEK!

Posted on March 4, 2012 by fsdthreshold

Put on your party hats and blow your party horns — it’s STAR SHARD WEEK! Credit for this idea goes to Emily Fiegenschuh, the artist who illustrated “The Star Shard” in its original form in Cricket Magazine. This week on her blog, Emily is celebrating the book’s release with reminiscences, pictures, and never-before-seen-by-the-public sketches of the characters, monsters, architecture, settings, and objects that make up the story’s world. One particularly fascinating aspect is how the concepts emerged as the vision took shape. So stop in throughout this week at Emily’s blog: http://fabledearth.blogspot.com/. (And don’t forget Emily’s main web site, either, at www.e-figart.com, where you can find out all about her work and see all the original illustrations for “The Star Shard” that appeared in Cricket. Also remember that, here on my web site, on the page devoted to The Star Shard, there are links to the archived discussions Emily and I had with young readers, writers, and artists during the year of the story’s serialization; and there are links to the fan art that readers sent in to Cricket.)

Here on my blog, I also intend to celebrate STAR SHARD WEEK with daily posts on various aspects of the story and book. If there are particular topics you’d like me to address, please let me know!

Today — Sunday, Day One — the topic is the Thunder Rake. Just as the town of Harvest Moon is in many ways the real “star” of my novel Dragonfly, the Thunder Rake lies at the heart of this story. It is the environment that has shaped the main character Cymbril in her formative years; it is her prison, her playground, and the only home she has known.

The Thunder Rake is a wooden city on wheels. A ship of the land . . . a rolling fortress . . . it is a defense against robbers and wild beasts, and it is the bringer of goods both mundane and exotic to the people of the far-scattered towns and cities. For slaves like Cymbril, there is no escape from the Rake: even if one could get past the guards and through one of the massive, shut gates or hatches, the wilderness is full of peril, and the Rake’s Master has friends in every community.

Yet for all its confinement and drudgery, the Rake also harbors endless mystery. Its dim corridors call out to Cymbril, begging to be explored. There are dangling crank baskets and stairways; there are crawl spaces, secret chambers, fading inscriptions, and a limitless supply of intriguing paraphernalia, some of it apparently forgotten. Along the darkest stretches, torchmoss casts its pallid glow over the fading outlines of the past. No one knows precisely how many decks the Rake has, for its ongoing construction has jammed buildings into courtyards and bridged gulfs with new balconies. Ceilings on the topmost level can be drawn back on summer nights to let in the breeze and starlight. In this rumbling warren, the passages have names like streets.

Where did the idea of the Thunder Rake come from? From many places, I’m sure. But probably chief among them is the barn in which I spent countless happy hours as a kid:

The barn behind my childhood home

The barn didn’t roll from place to place (except when we kids wanted it to, in our imaginations). But the feeling to it, and the way we explored it — yes, that’s where the Thunder Rake came from. There was the same haphazard architecture, new walls, new doors, new stalls added by different farmers with different minds over the years. There were secret hatches, long-lost tools and other treasures, mysteries, bizarre creatures both of the scaly and winged variety, and cats and dogs. There was danger, the ever-present possibility of real injury. And there were portals grown over and sealed shut by vines, too sacred in their living fetters to be forced open.

I remember that when we started out, Cricket’s Editor-in-Chief Marianne Carus asked me if I could give the artist something to go on, a sketch that might help in the design (because in the story, I really don’t say much about the Rake’s external appearance; there’s a bit more in the book, I think, than in the original shorter story). I produced this:

Prow of the Thunder Rake, preliminary sketch

As you can see, when Emily rendered this into actual paintings, she was painstakingly faithful to my design. She made everything look much better, but she clearly studied my sketch and included everything she could identify. (Some of my squiggles are open to interpretation!)

The Thunder Rake, Fred's sketch

I remember that in my first version of this sketch, I drew the front wheels in a way that showed very obviously that they couldn’t be turned left or right. That would mean that the Rake itself could never be steered! Erase, erase, redraw, redraw . . .

Now here’s an artifact for you: my cover letter when I first submitted the story to Cricket in June, 2004:

Cover letter accompanying first submission of "The Star Shard" to CRICKET

Be sure to tune in again tomorrow for Day Two of STAR SHARD WEEK! (And don’t forget to visit Emily’s blog!)

 

Pittsburgh’s Own Pan

Posted on March 4, 2012 by fsdthreshold

Before we get started, here are two books I’ve been meaning to tell you about!

Instructional drawing book by Emily Fiegenschuh

For anyone who has a young, budding artist at home — or who knows one — or who would like to learn to draw fantasy creatures him/herself, this is the book to have! The Explorer’s Guide to Drawing Fantasy Creatures is by Emily Fiegenschuh. You’ll remember her as the artist of “The Star Shard” in Cricket — she who enabled us to see Cymbril, Loric, Miwa, Urrt, The Thunder Rake, and all the other characters and settings of the story. (I urge everyone to visit Emily’s web site at http://www.e-figart.com, where you can find galleries of many wondrous images, including a section dedicated specifically to the art of “The Star Shard.”) But anyway, this book is receiving rave reviews. It’s a user-friendly, wise, exuberant, step-by-step, entertaining, extremely helpful manual for learning to get those fantastic visions onto the paper or canvas in all their expressive, gesturing, glowering, enchanting glory!

Here’s another really cool new addition to the canon of fantasy:

The first of The Books of the Shaper, by John R. Fultz

 Seven Princes is the first part of The Books of the Shaper trilogy by John R. Fultz. I’ve interviewed John twice before on this blog; just type his name into the search bar, and you can revisit those insightful discussions. I happen to know that John is the real thing, a stellar, kind, generous, wise, and noble friend. But that’s not why I’m recommending his book here. I’m doing it because he also knows how to write. If you like fantastic worlds and epic struggles brought to life on a large, vibrant canvas of language, this is a book you’d love. John goes beyond the tropes and conventions of big fantasy; he makes them his own with original twists, and he always, always tells a human tale, the story of characters that engage us. He asks some pretty big questions and allows Story to illuminate the path toward answers. John R. Fultz. Seven Princes. Orbit Books. This book is on store shelves now!

Groinnk! New subject: mythology is indeed alive and ubiquitous, and Pittsburgh has its own remarkable statue of Pan!

A Song to Nature, a statue in Pittsburgh

The construction of Pittsburgh’s Schenley Park was made possible by a gift of 300 acres from Mary Schenley. In 1911, a design competition was held to create a memorial in her honor. In 1913, the winner was announced: A Song to Nature, sculpted by Victor David Brenner, best known for designing the Lincoln penny.

Pan is serenaded by Sweet Harmony.

The statue was dedicated in 1918. Described as “a happy combination of poetry and passion,” the statue depicts Pan the earth god being serenaded by the nymph Sweet Harmony. At the time, the figures represented culture’s power to tame nature.

Pan and Sweet Harmony

The statue’s architect, H. Van Buren Magonigle, used as the sculpture’s foundation the old Bellefield Bridge, which had been buried during the filling of St. Pierre’s Ravine. So this is yet another instance of the newer Pittsburgh springing from the bones and roots of its past (as in the case of my bookshelves).

A Song to Nature, designed and sculpted by Victor David Brenner

 “What was he doing, the great god Pan,

Down in the reeds by the river?”

The statue stands outside the main Carnegie Library in Pittsburgh.

“Spreading ruin and scattering ban,

Splashing and paddling with hoofs of a goat,

And breaking the golden lilies afloat

With the dragon-fly on the river.”

 — from “A Musical Instrument,” by Elizabeth Barrett Browning

“‘Afraid?’ murmured the Rat, his eyes shining with unutterable love. ‘Afraid! Of Him? O, never, never! And yet — and yet — O, Mole, I am afraid!'”

  — from The Wind in the Willows, by Kenneth Grahame

In the background stands The Cathedral of Learning:

Almost like the eroded natural spires of the American West it appears: The Cathedral of Learning in Pittsburgh.

Here’s a view from inside the Cathedral.

Cathedral windows

And looking down on the city:

Pittsburgh from above

The Carnegie Library as seen from The Cathedral of Learning

So here’s my idea of what to do with that last ARC. For a reading experience, you’re now much better off with a copy of the finished book. But the ARC is a piece of history — a collector’s item if the book does well — or a very eccentric collector’s item if it doesn’t. If someone would like to win it, here’s what I suggest.

This “contest” requires no problem-solving, no decoding, and it’s completely on the honor system. There’s no way of verifying what you claim. This contest will close on March 15th, the Ides of March. The winner will be the person who recommends The Star Shard to the most people by midnight at the end of that date. Here are the rules:

1. I don’t think mass-mailings should count. I’m not encouraging or rewarding spam here. You can’t write one announcement and send it to everyone in your address book, either electronically or on paper. These must be one-on-one human contacts, but yes, they may be written or electronic. If you write a heartfelt letter or e-mail to someone specific, that counts.

2. To count the recommendation, you have to say more than “Buy The Star Shard.” You have to tell the other person something about the book and why s/he might like it.

3. If you are able to get a librarian to order the book for a library, you can count that as five points — five recommendations. But the librarian has to agree; you have to know that s/he is going to order the book; you can’t just have fired off a message to which no response has come. (If you are a librarian and have ordered the book for your library, five points!)

4. Ditto with a bookstore. If the owner is going to order copies to stock because of your recommendation, five points.

5. If you are speaking formally to an audience (in a live setting) and you deliver an impassioned recommendation of this book, yes! — you can count every audience member. You’ve recommended it to them all. (Shouting to the crowds in a bus terminal or on a busy street doesn’t count.)

6. If you post an ad for the book on your blog or web site, count that as five.

7. This is retroactive, so if you’ve already recommended the book to some people according to the above rules, you can count those toward the contest.

8. As with the previous contest, if you already have an ARC of The Star Shard but choose to take part in this contest anyway, and if you win, you and I can decide together to which other player the ARC should go.

I’m signing off for now. Best wishes and blessings to all!

Code-Breaking Overtime

Posted on February 17, 2012 by fsdthreshold

Believe it or not, there’s one final chance to win an advance review copy of The Star Shard! Yes, I have one last ARC to give away. So if anyone has any puzzle-solving energy left, have at it!

Here are the rules:

1. It’s only fair to make former winners ineligible to win, but if you’re a former winner, you can still play! If you should happen to correctly solve the puzzle first, you and I will decide together which other player should receive the ARC.

2. This time, not everyone at the outset will be equally prepared to win. Any player could win, but you’ll require your hands as well as your head, and something more. If you do not have what it takes, my apologies. It’s no reflection upon you as a person! Any one of you can be as prepared as all the others with a short trip. Most of you are prepared already.

If this proves to be too hard in a day of play, I’ll provide a clue before long!

As before, the first person to solve this puzzle correctly is the winner, and I will send him/her an ARC. The contest is open as soon as this entry is posted.

Ready? What follows is a sentence in code. Tell me the sentence in English, and you win! Here is the code:

grape 16 green 21 ink 3 black 40 seed 5 page 1

blue 33 apple 16 cover 3 peel 4 stem 2 paper 13 red 23 rind 8.

 

These rhymes may help you a great deal:

Though friends went to an early grave,

He was from death by fever saved.

 

Born not far from the nether pole,

Behind a leaf he found a hole.

 

One More ARC Giveaway!

Posted on February 14, 2012 by fsdthreshold

Well, one more here, that is! Remember that on Goodreads, you still have a chance to win an advance review copy (ARC) of The Star Shard until the end of the night on Friday, February 17th (this Friday night)! All you have to do is go there, click on “Giveaways,” find my book, and sign up for a chance to win it. The competition is pretty fierce, but it doesn’t hurt to try, right? And you may see a lot of other books in that section that you may want to try winning! It’s all absolutely free!

But right here on the blog, I’m giving away one more ARC. The contest begins the moment this post is published. It ends the moment the correct answer comes in via comment to this entry. We’ll follow the clock faithfully, which means that if the winning comment goes into the queue needing moderation, it will still win if it comes into that queue sooner than another correct answer that doesn’t need moderation. See how that works? That way, there’s no disadvantage to anyone who has never before commented. (This is also an encouragement to any non-commenting readers to start commenting now! You’re welcome to read, and I’m glad you’re here — but it’s more fun for everyone when lots of people take an active part! So don’t be shy. Comment away!)

Next rule: You can’t win with a smart-alecky answer. There actually is a genuine, serious answer to my puzzle. (You’re welcome to be a wiseguy and entertain us, but be aware that the winning answer will be quite legitimate — not a joke, not a sweeping generalization, not a pun, etc.)

Final point: Once I launch this contest, I most likely will not clarify or answer questions about it until it’s over, so you’re better off thinking about the solution rather than asking questions. You’re on your own. This is barbarism. This is Thunderdome!

So, the first person to solve the puzzle correctly will be declared the winner, and I will send that person one advance review copy of my middle-grade fantasy novel The Star Shard.

Ready to go?

The question you have to answer is: What do the words of this composition here below have in common? What distinction do they all share? The composition follows — everything after this next colon is part of the puzzle:

 

ON MY LION

O minion mini-holy,

You limp, oily ninny!

Loll, puny mop; LOL.

No Noun — only homily.

In million, in onion,

On puny, in pin, no HIM, O Opinion Mill!

Un-Ninny, Non-Puny, limn!

Lo, Holy! Lo, Omni! O Only —

My Lion, On!

The Essence of Pittsburgh

Posted on February 2, 2012 by fsdthreshold

One thing that’s so interesting about the Uncanny City is the blending of human-wrought structures into the Earth. Look at this, which is within walking distance of my place. I walked there today and took these photos:

Stone Spaces Beneath the Trees

What do you suppose it once was? Part of a basement? Note the steps in the upper left, coming down to a sheer dropoff. Landscape such as this intrigues me. Such scenes are all over Pittsburgh; all you have to do is turn your head! I’ve passed this place on my walks often, and have been wanting to take pictures of it for a long time.

"Gone are the hands which raised that mossy wall . . . " -- my poem "The Ruin"

“Earth is eating cars, fence posts,

Gutted cars, earth is calling in her little ones,

‘Come home, Come home!'”

— Philip Levine, “They Feed They Lion”

A Collaborative Corner

“Come with me, ladies and gentlemen who are in any wise weary of London: come with me; and those that tire at all of the world we know: for we have new worlds here.”

 — Lord Dunsany, The Book of Wonder

Da Vinci instructed his art students to stare at the cracks in the walls until they saw whole worlds pouring out of them.

“Down in the grasses

Where the grasshoppers hop

And the katydids quarrel

And the flutter-moths flop–

Down in the grasses

Where the beetle goes “plop,”

An old withered fairy

Keeps a second-hand shop.”

— from “The Second-Hand Shop,” by Rowena Bennett

Grow Upward; Grow to the Right; Grow Upward!

“Many things were there, deep down, a rusty dagger, a broken sword blade, and he wandered on, staring at the secrets he discovered.

“‘Grandmother,’ he called. ‘See here. Here’s something under the grass,’ but the good old woman saw nothing at all except heather and whortleberries and the short sweet grass.”

— from “The Pixies’ Scarf,” by Alison Uttley

To Do Today: Read “Flower in the Crannied Wall,” by Alfred, Lord Tennyson.

From “Summons,” by Robert Francis:

Keep me from going to sleep too soon.

Or if I go to sleep too soon

Come wake me up. Come any hour

Of night. Come whistling up the road.

Stomp on the porch. Bang on the door.

 

For None Now Live Who Remember It

“This castle is on no man’s map. ‘Tis here today; ’tis gone tonight.”

— from “Where Hidden Treasure Lies,” by Sheila O’Neill

So one day this past spring, I think it was, I was out walking my aunt and uncle’s dog, and I came to a place beside a country road at the edge of town. It was nothing remarkable: a culvert, some fallen trees, an eroded ditch at the border of a field. But I saw it suddenly with the eyes of childhood memory. No, I had never played there; I was from the far side of town. But it was exactly the sort of place I would have played, and that would have been infinitely interesting to me: perhaps when it was flooded and frozen in the winter, and we might have ice-skated on it; perhaps when it was all muddy and soft and green in spring, alive with scents and squishes and half-buried treasures, with dusk falling and lights in the distance.

The corners of our land are enchanted, O Writers, Poets, Artists, and Musicians! Look to the mossy cracks! Look to the tumbled stones! The world breathes its stories, and we must listen.