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I’ve never seen an illustration that aligns perfectly with the clockwork dragon you might glimpse in the background of the northern arcadia books, but the full-color image here and in the header for the site comes tantalizingly close. The menace … Continue reading
As recently as 1934, sophisticated American citizens still had the capacity to believe in something as marvelous as…
“(S)ecret caves, a lost civilisation and above all, a treasure trove of gold in unimaginable quantities. And all this in the ground below the present-day metropolis of Los Angeles.”
The full article (originally published in the LA Times) detailing the lizard man find is worth a read. The maps of the tunnels are fun, too. Please do note there are no lizard people in Northern Arcadia. There are, of course, toad people. And caves. Also, possibly, cities hidden in the ground long before the arrival of the men from the East.
Ursula K. LeGuin’s decades-old complaints about fantasy protagonists, articulated in a marvelous Slate article about the relationship between her books and the miniseries bearing the Earthsea name, ring true:
I didn’t see why everybody in science fiction had to be a honky named Bob or Joe or Bill. I didn’t see why everybody in heroic fantasy had to be white (and why all the leading women had “violet eyes”).
Abigail Moore is a redhead, with pale skin. Every other major character (including the two principals in THIEF) has olive, tan or coffee-colored skin. Religion divides the colonists, greed corrupts and the desire for power still sets faction against faction.
But while people from many different ethnicities can be found in the New World, ‘race’ as a concept isn’t considered useful or germane. (I’m not sure it’s useful anywhere. But in my fictional world of Northern Arcadia, on this point, people happen to agree with me.)
Wired talks about the dearth of female roles in imaginative fiction. When I worked in a bookstore, decades ago, I was struck by the differences between the blonde haired, blue eyed male protagonists of most sci-fi/fantasy novels and the people reading the books.
You’re wondering why I’ve been so quiet? I blame that darn question: ‘is the manuscript as good as you can make it?”
My sister reviewed the latest draft and was excited by what she read. She was also generous enough to offer up some blunt observations and pose some provocative questions. January I spent working up the plot and doing research for HEIST, the next installment in the Northern Arcadia series. February and March were dedicated to revisions and fixes, but as March comes to a close I’m hoping to shift my attention back to getting WITCH sold.
I’m not promising daily updates, but you’ll be hearing more from me, more often.