Eden

Camelot's Shadow (Sarah Zettel)

Since I'm hoping that the module on King Arthur will run next year, and reading widely in the tradition helped me with the Robin Hood module, I decided to revisit these books. As I said in my review almost two years ago, I'm not really one for romance books, generally, but these are Arthurian -- which helps a lot, since it's something I'm always interested in -- and they're not exactly bodice-rippers, and I do like Sarah Zettel's writing. There's genuinely a plot alongside the romance -- at least in this first book of the four -- and earlier elements of the tradition are woven into the story, while it's also not quite a carbon copy. It could have deviated more from the tradition, easily, and perhaps been more engaging then, but this is interesting enough. I like the portrayal of Guinevere, very much in love with Arthur, and though she's mischievous, she's a good queen. If I remember rightly, the betrayal of Arthur with Lancelot isn't re-enacted in this quartet, which I quite like. That's something new. And I like this portrayal of Gawain, as compared to some quite loutish ones I've read before.

It's interesting how close it sticks to the plot of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, which I'm doing a module on at the moment. I hadn't read that the first time I read this, so I didn't really appreciate how it had taken that plot but also woven in the women, Rhian and Kerra, and how it's also woven in the story of Sir Gawain and Dame Ragnell -- which I haven't read, but I know a decent amount about.

It's nice that there's an overarching plot to these four romances, with the figure of Morgaine, about whom we learn little in this book. It's also nice that they're romances in both the medieval sense and the modern sense. At least, it is for my inner geek.

The Righteous Men (Sam Bourne)

Pretty much like reading a Dan Brown book -- somehow the whole style could almost have been his. Mum said she thought Sam Bourne was better: I'm not sure, maybe a little. It's enjoyable enough as light reading, a page-turner, a pot-boiler, whatever. The sense of urgency was a bit difficult -- for some people in the story, it was the end of the world; for the sceptical reader, and for the main character, it was "just" one woman and her unborn child. A bit lacking, maybe, given that the focus on mystery meant I wasn't very invested in the characters.

The background is, of course, some kind of cult. They emerge quite late in the day, really, and I'm not sure I really kept up with all that was happening. Of course, you can partially blame the huge amounts of information for that. By about halfway through I was letting a lot of it breeze past me...

The writing is okay, perhaps a bit better than Dan Brown's (I refer you, as I have done before, to this article: Dan Brown's writing is, in summary, shockingly bad), though some lines just made me wince. E.g. "Will turned his face into a question mark." I get what it means, but it's such a ridiculous image...

Involving enough, anyway, but nothing really special.

I've been meaning to read The Suspicions of Mr Whicher, and doing a course on crime fiction finally pushed me in that direction. I'd been told it has both the history of 'real life' detection and something of the development of crime fiction -- which is true, it does, though it's somewhat difficult to follow, sometimes, under layers and layers of detail. Kate Summerscale's work is certainly thorough, and from all I can tell, well researched. However, the murder that she's supposed to be writing about is possibly given less space than all the people involved, mostly Mr Whicher (unsurprisingly) and the lives of everyone involved after the case. In some cases it's relevant to the solution and to the history, but sometimes it seems rather tangential. In any case, the sheer amount of detail and the dryness with which it's written put me off somewhat.

A Room of One's Own (Virginia Woolf)

I don't generally enjoy Virginia Woolf's writing very much, I must confess. I don't find her writing, in general, very compelling. But reading this essay, I did. I didn't want to put it down. It helps that it has a narrative, kind of a story, and that it's well-suited to a stream-of-consciousness style.

The things she says are not irrelevant yet, either. Certainly not when you're looking at the development of women's writing, but also not when you're thinking about women's writing now. I'm sure modern female writers disagree about such ideas as the androgynous mind being necessary, or the idea that one might need to get away from having a family to be a writer, or whatever, but I think it's still important to read this. All the better if men read it too. If nothing else, the last few pages, where she points out the impact that women have not -- yet -- had. We're closer now that we were then, but still not close enough.

The Railway Children (Edith Nesbit)

Ah, nostalgia. I've been meaning to reread this for a while, and it's probably a pity I didn't do it in time for my children's literature exam. Still, there it is. I felt like the English Lit student was ticking boxes in my head as I went through: morality lessons, check, didactic narrator, check, discussion of the different roles for men and women, check, happy domestic life, check...

Still, it's also fun to disregard that and read about the three kids getting into trouble and helping their mother, etc, etc. I used to like Roberta/Bobbie the best, but she's really quite goody-goody most of the time.

It's funny reading it now and seeing the narrator talking down to me/the child reader. I can't think how I didn't find that annoying when I was younger, because I generally didn't like being told what to do by books, but I took both this and some of the lessons in Little Women (which in a way is very like this only for older girls) completely to heart. I don't think that was a terribly bad thing.

I love the ending. It's so unlikely, everything going right and all the people and friends they've made feeding into a happy ending, but still, everyone's a sucker for a happy ending sometimes.

I'm a little stalled on my Crossover Big Bang. I've done some editing and some minor adding of words, but I have a bunch of scenes I'm vaguely planning to write and nothing's coming of them. I think I'm going to give it a couple of days and then look at the plan with fresh(er) eyes, and edit it as needed -- and in the meantime, read over what I've got and streamline it or add to it where necessary.

In the meantime, and since there's a check-in on the second of February, I'm working on the AU Big Bang. I only have a handful of paragraphs so far, the opening stuff, because I'm quite sleepy this evening.

Have a tiny, tiny snippet.

Fandom: Supernatural
For: au_bigbang
Quality: Barely checked
Characters: Ellen, Dean

( Sealing her fate )

I just wrote the last scene of my sncross_bigbang. Not because I'm actually finished with it, of course -- there are plenty of scenes left to write, and there's only 8,080 words overall, but I wrote the last scene! And the last couple of lines, I think, are already perfect. I kind of want to share them with people -- but it'll be best to wait, and let people have them in context, so I will try and contain myself.

Still! Over halfway done, now, and before long it can go to feywood for nitpicking and reactions...

4:50 from Paddington (Agatha Christie)

Another one in third person, not first person. It could have been even more fun, I think, if it'd been from a character's point of view -- perhaps Lucy's, since I thought she was a fun character, and I rather hope she shows up again in future... Doubtful, but you never know. She was the most interesting part of it, for me, with her cheerfully getting on with things and working hard and doing detective work at the same time. More of her in general would have been nice -- maybe more of her potential romances, too.

The misdirection was quite well done in this one, since I had no idea who it could be -- I suspected everyone by turns, I think. I knew 'whodunnit' from someone else's review, before I got to the end, so I'm not sure I'd say there were adequate clues to figure it out for yourself, though...

The Heroines (Eileen Favorite)

Picked this one up randomly in the Borders closing down sale, because it sounded like the kind of thing I read for fun that isn't great but fills up a couple of hours. I didn't expect wonders out of it, though someone told me it was more literary than I'd expect. I didn't really find it so, though. I found the thirteen year old girl character annoying -- I certainly wasn't all puberty-puberty-puberty-ooh-handsome-man when I was thirteen, so that might have something to do with it, but I didn't find her a compelling character at all.

I like the idea of the Heroines, but not the execution. For example, just to throw in a reference to Emma Bovary, the author info-dumped all about Madame Bovary. I've read it, I don't need a synopsis. I suppose it's an awkward position to write from: some readers will have read some books, some readers will have read other books. Still, it could have been done in a more interesting way than Penny simply recounting the plot as she read the book. Perhaps by actually, you know. Making Emma Bovary more of a character, since that's the title...

Anyway, found it poorly written and it didn't really catch my attention at all. Chick lit with pretensions.

They Do It With Mirrors (Agatha Christie)

Miss Marple was a bit more of a constant in this book than in others, which was quite nice -- I think it's best when the detective character is more of a character, like Philip Marlowe or Peter Wimsey, or whatever. In this book Miss Marple, and her childhood friend -- mostly her childhood friend, I think -- are the bigger attractions. The plot was, somehow, predictable -- either predictable to anyone, or just predictable because I'm getting far too used to Agatha Christie's writing and way of constructing a mystery.

Carrie Louise is a sweet character, and probably the best thing about this book. I felt like the background characters were less clearly drawn than in some of these books -- nothing like the background romance that's in The Moving Finger, for example.

A Pocket Full Of Rye (Agatha Christie)

I definitely think that I'm starting to be able to pick up on the clues Agatha Christie gives -- or, alternately, the way she thinks: maybe the clues aren't really there, or not large enough to pick up on anyway, since when I started reading her books, I couldn't guess the culprit nearly so well.

Anyway, I liked this one, if only because it made me feel clever. I wished it had more of Miss Marple in it, though. The way she gets involved in the mysteries is getting very contrived, by this point. Which is to be expected, 'cause she can't exactly sit at home and get involved in murder mysteries in one relatively quiet little village.

I think Agatha Christie's writing is actually stronger when she's writing from first person POV, instead of third. I've found the first person stories more compelling than the third person ones, like this one. I guess because the narrators tend to have an affectionate way of looking at the people involved, knowing their weaknesses and liking them all the same, and whatever.

The crossover Big Bang is now at 5k words, about five scenes (and the start of another). I've started working the two canons into each other -- spent a good bit of time yesterday researching the Enochian and Welsh I needed, and then ended up deciding that I wasn't really going to use either, just describe it being used (as in "he swore in Welsh" -- or whatever). Although, if anyone has links to really good sources for Enochian and Welsh, let me have them! Mostly, I need the words for "sorrow", "sword" and "sun", in Enochian: I found them, I think, but they were in situ with other words which may have modified them, and Anglo-Saxon has made me terrified of the effects of things like case...

For a while, I pondered abusing my knowledge of Anglo-Saxon, but I couldn't really fit it in. Anglo-Saxon can't be the Old Speech, though I suppose it could come from it. Enochian would be a better fit for the Old Speech, in this 'verse, but I decided that angels and Old Ones are not that closely linked.

So far, fitting the two canons together is a little bit of a headache, but not too much. When I come to proofreading it, I might want to kill myself slightly.

Will and Bran are continuing to act up and steal the show, somewhat. I'm not arguing with that, I think it's good: it'll make for a stronger fic, since originally I wasn't planning to use them that much. Now they're getting whole scenes to themselves -- or, well, at least one.

The other thing I did was finally make a full plan. I think I know what I'm doing a bit better now. And I think I'm actually going to get to 15k quite easily, even without adding any more scenes than the fifteen I have in mind. I might be hoping for too much, knowing myself.

The first check-in for the AU Big Bang approaches. It's not compulsory, but people are flailing about it a bit, which makes me feel guilty for the fact I haven't done much work on it. I don't expect the crossover Big Bang to take me too much longer, and then I can focus on the AU Big Bang for a while, so my strategy still works, but... Maybe tomorrow I'll actually start writing the AU Big Bang and see if I can work on both at once.

Some of the Big Bang comms have rant/venting communities, etc, and I might make use of those too, but last year I worked on my Big Bang fics quite quietly and I'm not sure many people even knew I was doing them. This year, I'm planning to document my work on them a bit better -- to look back on, maybe, and also to keep me accountable. Each Big Bang I'm signed up for will get a tag of its own.

Right now I'm signed up to three Big Bangs: au_bigbang, spn_j2_bigbang, and sncross_bigbang. If you know of any other Big Bangs you think I'd like to take part in, then poke me -- I'm aiming for 300,000 words this year at getyourwordsout, and Big Bangs certainly help with that.

Anyway, I have rough plans for all of them. Some rougher than others. I've got an outline for the AU Big Bang; I've got extensive notes for the SPN Crossover Big Bang; I've got light notes/a light outline for the SPN/J2 Big Bang.

AU Big Bang: Dean grows up at the roadhouse, as Dean Harvelle. He's also mute. Along comes a Castiel... Characters: Dean, Ellen, Jo, Castiel. Possibly ultimately Dean/Castiel. Target: 15k.
SPN Crossover Big Bang: Supernatural meets The Dark is Rising. Disregards season five. The angels are trying to bring about the apocalypse; Will believes that this is a violation of what he and the others won when Bran cut the silver from the tree. Characters: Sam, Dean, Castiel, Will, Bran. No pairings explicitly intended. Target: 15k.
SPN J2 Big Bang: Dean is blinded. The details depend upon what happens when I catch up with canon. Characters: Dean, Sam, Bobby, Castiel, Jimmy(?). Possibly ultimately Dean/Castiel. Target: 20k.

Mostly, at the moment, I'm working on the crossover. I have 2k words, two scenes. I haven't planned this all the way through to the end, because I'm not quite sure how exactly it's going to go. The original plan was kind of Will-ex-machina-ish, mostly focusing on Dean, but it seems like he's likely to have an emotional arc of his own. And well, can you imagine Bran sitting pretty and not doing anything?

So far: Will likes Dean more than I expected, Dean and Bran really piss each other off, and it's awfully hard figuring out how to fit Will in with Christianity (i.e. angels).

I wonder what I'll get by way of art. It must be hard to cross a book fandom with a TV fandom in art. I haven't seen many artists around for The Dark is Rising in general. I'm looking forward to pairing up with an artist, really, at least if they're anything like auroraprimavera.

I think I'm going to finish the crossover before I get to work on the AU, and I need to catch up with canon before I can do the SPN/J2 Big Bang fic. At least, that's what I'm hoping to do -- I want to tie it in with canon. I might not, though, once I've caught up.

Also, if you have access to this journal/if you're friended by it, then you can see sneaky snippets, now and then.