S is for Starflower Legend

There are actually several S-related legends through the course of  Veiled Rose. Just look at this passage!

He thought of the heroes that peppered his history textbooks. Most of the stories were complete nonsense, he knew, but even so! Had not King Shadow Hand bargained away his own two hands to a powerful Faerie queen for the sake of protecting his kingdom? Had not the child Sight-of-Day stood up in the face of the Dragonwitch even when those around her surrendered? Had not Maid Starflower--the nation's most famous and beloved heroine, for whom half the girls were named to this day--had she not done battle with the dreadful Wolf Lord and, well, if not lived to tell the tale, at the very least lived on in reverent memory? (p.22)

Lots of S's!  And I might have to touch on those other two a bit by the end of this post. However, we'll start with a closer examination of the Starflower legend for now since it is mentioned the most frequently throughout the course of Veiled Rose.

Little hints about this story are dropped here and there. From the beginning, we know that Starflower, the heroine of that tale, faced the Wolf Lord. The rest of the story we have to pick up as we go along. For instance, when Rose Red is making her dreadful journey into the Netherworld, she comes to the dreadful Place of the Teeth.

Rose Red stared. She knew the story behind the Place of the Teeth, a secret hollow somewhere on the slopes of Bald Mountain to which no one ever ventured anymore. It was a site of sacrifice . . . For here, in ancient days, the warlike elders had sacrificed ewe lambs to appease the Beast that was their god.

And here too it was that Maid Starflower had been bound and left under the cold light of the moon. (p. 257)

The Wolf Lord, then, is most likely the "Beast" mentioned in Rose Red's thoughts, a creature who makes itself into a god. A god who demands, upon occasion, human sacrifice. What a dreadful monster! And what a dreadful fate for that famous heroine.

But she must have faced the creature bravely to have gone down in legend as she has. There is even an enormous fountain built in her honor in the front courtyard of the Eldest's House.

It was two stories tall, a fantastic piece of workmanship carved in white marble, portraying Southlands' most famous historic heroine, Maid Starflower, Panther Master's daughter, wearing very little, truth be told. A tiny stone bird sat on one shoulder, a classic icon in every depiction of the maid, the meaning of which everyone had long since forgotten. The maid herself stood with one arm raised above her head, the other flung out before her as though to ward off the monstrous wolf that stood opposite her, baring its marble teeth. (p. 163)

 She did not face the Wolf Lord alone, then. Just as Rose Red hears the song of the wood thrush, her Imaginary Friend, even while traveling into the depths of the Netherworld, so Maid Starflower knew the company and help of the same.

But I hate to give away anything! Allow me merely to point out what has already been said, and you may draw your own conclusions. That, or wait for the release of Starflower later this year!

As to the other legends . . .  We get very little information about the child Sight-of-Day, even less about King Shadow Hand. We know Sight-of-Day faced the Dragonwitch, that awful creature we met soon after the Wolf Lord down in the Netherworld. A dragon without her dragon form, who did not die in fire but rather drowned. From the Legend of Ashiun, as related by Lionheart at the beginning of this novel, we know the Dragonwitch had three lives, two which she lost two the Faerie knight, Etanun. Perhaps the child Sight-of-Day was involved in her third and final death?

As to King Shadow Hand. I have very little I can say about that! Except that the working title of the book I am currently drafting is Shadow Hand. And the Faerie queen with whom he bargained is someone you have already glimpsed in Heartless. As a matter fact, you've already met Shadow Hand as well . . . but you'll never guess who!

I love enigmatic clues, don't you?

Looking forward to sharing more stories with you, dear readers!

Guest Blog Post for Speculative Faith

For those of you interested . . . here is a guest blog I had the opportunity to write for Speculative Faith. You can read the article here along with the lovely comments I received, or read it posted below.

I'll be back to regular A-Z posts later this week!

_____

Bringing the Personal to the Universal

Hardly a fantasy author alive has not heard her or his work referred to as "Tolkien-esque."

You know what I'm talking about, fellow writers! "Tolkien-esque" or the "next C.S. Lewis" or some strange combination thereof. These days, there might be a few new names thrown in for good measure. "An epic romance reminiscent of Twilight." Have you written one of those? Or how about "fun and magic on a par with Harry Potter"?

The fact is, as great a marketing ploy as these comparisons might be, they are often nothing short of embarrassing. I know I've cringed when I've seen my work declared "Tolkien-like." Huh? How are my allegorical fairy tales for teens anything like that VAST adult fantasy epic?

Or, because it contains allegorical threads, my work must be "similar to C.S. Lewis's Narnia." What? Allegory aside, how are my romantic/comedic full-length YA novels even remotely comparable to those short classics written for children?

Worst of all was a big banner in a magazine calling my work: "A Tolkien-esque fantasy for the Twilight audience."

(Insert tears here.)                

"All that work!" I cry. "All those years of English major drudgery! All those carefully constructed literary themes! Shall I then be dismissed as a wanna-be copycat jumping on a popular bandwagon?"

So I take myself away to sulk about it for a while. When the sulking ends, however, I have to start thinking . . .

Great fiction is made up of themes: Love and longing, coming of age, voyage and return, fathers, sons, daughters, mothers, overcoming the monster, death, birth, and more. These are universals, themes that can be, on one level or another, understood by any man or woman. The fantasy genre is a place of extremes, thus these themes become even more dominant. The monsters to overcome are literal dragons or warlords. A maiden's love or a hero's longing means the binding of great alliances, the rise and fall of nations. Fathers are kings, sons are thieves, daughters are warrior maidens, and mothers are enchantresses. All these universals take on a proportion so much bolder than life that they become truly fantastic and unreal.

They can also start looking repetitive.

Because they drew us to fantasy in the first place, these extreme universals and archetypal characters are what we want both to write and to read. But in a sea of handsome Chosen Ones, feisty heroines, dark lords, and made-up names, how can our stories hope to stand out?

We must learn how to bring the personal to the universal.

My most brilliant plot-device, character arc, or surprise twist is never going to be original. Not on its own. All those universal themes have been done before and by better writers. But the one thing those authors (I'm talking to you Messrs Tolkien and Lewis!) can never bring to their work is . . . me.

Only I can do that.

The temptation, especially for young writers, is to ignore this. "After all," we tend to say, "what have I got that's interesting enough to live in the pages of epics? I'm too young. I'm too old. I'm too inexperienced. I'm too boring. That's why I write fantasy, to liven up my ordinary life!"

So we fall into clichés. We fall into cheesiness, writing about epic themes without the personal touch. We take ourselves very seriously and therefore lose credibility.

But I'm here today to argue that cheesiness and clichés need not be our fate! We can work with the brilliant, the epic, the universal themes so wonderful in the genre, but we can use our own experiences. For instance . . .

Did you ever have a first crush? For young and old, this is a pretty universal experience. But your personal experience of those first-time feelings--the sudden sense that maybe childhood perspectives on boys and girls are insufficient, that there might be more, that you might be more--is unique. Have you ever stopped to analyze that singular coming-of-age moment in your life?

Or how about this: Have you ever been assigned a task for which you felt inadequate? Babysitting three toddlers at once? Giving birth? Passing an algebra exam? Organizing a team that simply refuses to be organized? Ordinary experiences, to be sure, hardly the stuff of epics. And yet,  the very real and very stressful feelings of your personal experience are universals that carry over to the world of danger, dragons, and dire deeds that is the fantasy genre.

These are basic examples. Yet they translate beautifully into themes everyone understands! And when I began recognizing this notion of the personal/universal, I first saw my own work take on life.

Like the heroine in Heartless, I have foolishly built dream-castles on a young man who didn't keep his promises. Like the hero in Veiled Rose, I've struggled to redefine my identity and lost myself in the process. Like the hero in Moonblood, I have thought I could earn my own redemption. Like the heroine in upcoming Starflower, I have experienced having no "voice" simply because I am a woman. Like the hero in my recent work-in-progress, I have experienced my human limitations--lack of beauty, lack of brains, lack of respect--and despaired in inadequacy.

Like my characters, I have sinned, I have stumbled, I have made a hash of my life. And I have been the recipient of undeserved grace!

My life experiences have been simple enough. A sheltered child, an ambitious student, a hard worker at various jobs, a friend, a sister, a daughter, a wife, an animal-fanatic . . . Nothing worthy of epics. I am not a brilliant Oxford don with war-time experience and decades of classical and theological education under my belt.

But I have faced my own dragons. I have seen my own kingdoms rise and fall.

So let this be my encouragement to you: Use these universal themes of love and longing, death and life, monsters and kings and Chosen Ones. Use them with excitement, knowing they will touch the hearts of your readers. But remember that your personal experience of these universals will bring the originality, the freshness your work needs. Don't make your heroes Aragorns or Harry Potters . . .  make them you. Don't make your heroines Bella Swans or Lucy Pevensies . . . make them you.

For there has never been a “you” before now. Bring your personal to those classic universals, and you'll find you have something new. Yes, by pure virtue of being fantasy, it will be compared to Tolkien. But you will never be Tolkien. You will only be you.

And that, my friends, is true originality!

R is for Rose Red

One of my favorite characters, Rose Red was loosely inspired by a girl I know (who shall remain nameless), a lovely girl with some seriously physical deformities who never let those deformities define her. The more I got to know this young woman, the more I thought, "Now she is a true heroine!"

And so I began to develop the initial ideas for Rose Red, the veiled, outcast goat girl.

While Rose Red is a straightforward personality--a spunky child with a lively imagination and a keen sense of fun--mystery haunts her footsteps. From the first moment we meet her, we are caught by that mystery ourselves. Such a strange creature she seems, swathed in veils, unseen, unknown, unfathomed! And Rose Red herself scarcely knows who she is.

All she has are the hints the Dragon breathes into her dreams.

 "Tell me, my princess. Why should we have secrets from each other?"

"You knows that you hadn't ought to call me 'princess,' don't you?" she says.
"That is what you are," speaks the one in the pool.
"That's a silly game from when I was a bit of a girl! I'm grown up now. I'm nearly ten! I don't need to play games no more. No pretend."
The one in the pool looks upon her with narrowing eyes. Then he says, "You will always be a princess to me." (p. 50)

We get a few more hints as to Rose Red's background as the story progresses. When she is lost in the depths of the Netherworld and encounters the dragons of the Village, she hears one dragon address the Father of Dragons, saying, "Is this not one of the Veiled Folk? Is she not Vahe's lost one?"
"Indeed," the Dragon purred.
"Does he know you have her?"
"Do you think he would have tried nothing by now if he knew?"
The ruby-clothed woman laughed. There was fire in her mouth. "He hasn't long until the Night of Moonblood. He must be anxious." (p. 319)

Oh, boy! Such more foreshadowing of things to come! But I really shouldn't get into that just now.

Princess or not, Rose Red is definitely an outcast. The village of Torfoot lower down the mountain sees her as some sort of local monster. In the real world, only the old man she calls father and her goat, Beana, speak to her. Otherwise, all she has are dreams and imaginary friends . . . until Leo finds her.

In Leo, Rose Red meets her first true friend. And see how childhood obscures complexities like social standing and outward appearance, allowing children to interact naturally. Leo does not have to worry about being Prince Lionheart with her. Rose Red does not have to worry about being a social reject with him. They simply are who they are with each other.

And they form a bond far more deep than either has ever known. A bond that leads Rose Red to defy the Dragon's wishes and follow Leo to the lowlands . . . with disastrous consequences.

Like all of my characters, Rose Red is a little piece of me. I really relate to her stubborn determination to do the right thing . . . but to do it entirely on her own strength. Though Beana offers her counsel, and though her Imaginary Friend lends her aid, Rose Red wants to manage her own life in her own way. And who can blame her? This poor rejected young woman must feel desperate to seize control any way she can!

But she cannot face the Dragon in her own strength. She will have to humble herself and call on a higher power if she hopes to survive. Sometimes that moment of falling to one's knees can be the most painful of all! That moment of admitting that my strength has run out and my ability to cope has ended.

But it is in humility that true strength may flourish.

Some have expressed interest in knowing how Rose Red came to be named Rose Red. Especially since the name is taken from the Grimm fairy tale, Snow White and Rose Red, and yet the story is dissimilar. It may interest my readers to know that I did not choose the name "Rose Red" as a reference to the classic story.

My Rose Red's real name is Varvare, as is hinted in the novel (and overtly stated in the prologue for Moonblood). When I was first developing the character, Varvare was the name I called her. But she needed to have a more "Southlands" appropriate name while living as the veiled goat-girl up in the mountains. Varvare is a name derived from the Armenian word "vard," which is "rose." "Rose Red" is a close translation of the name "Varvare," worked well as a Southlands name, and carried a strong fairy tale connotation. Thus it was chosen.

Roses, as you will soon discover, play a big role in the upcoming novel, Moonblood. We've already seen hints of this (both Heartless and Veiled Rose reference the lack of roses in the mortal world), and we will see that storyline developed.

I particularly like how the name in and of itself creates a link between my work and old fairy tales. The story Snow White and Rose Red includes a man enchanted into bear form. Men and women taking animal shapes is a recurring theme in the Goldstone Wood stories, and I enjoy having a subtle nod to the classic tales that inspired those ideas. Part of the fun of writing, for me, is making these "literary nods," so to speak. A reader with a quick eye might catch references to classic fairy tales, to Shakespeare, to Robert Browning, to Samuel Taylor Coleridge, to Edmund Spenser, to George MacDonald, and so many more! It's part of how I like to connect myself to the writers of the past.

Q is for Queen Starflower

Okay, confession: I will probably have to resort to various queens for the Q post every time I do an A-Z series. Qs are difficult, my friends! And queens are so nice and handy. Especially when I have an interesting queen such as Starflower to write about . . .

Queen Starflower is the mother of Prince Lionheart, wife of Eldest Hawkeye, and a strong woman. Although she is not a ruling queen and, officially, never crosses her husband, she isn't above moving her own chess pieces across the board of politics and kingdom-keeping. Especially where concerns her son.

This queen is named for Southland's most famous heroine, Maid Starflower, of whom we get hints throughout the course of the novel (though we'll have to wait a few books to hear the whole of her story!). Starflower has become a remarkably popular Southlander's name by this time. But Queen Starflower is very little like the national heroine.

Queen Starflower stood beside her husband on the steps facing the fountain. She was not a beautiful woman like her namesake. But she was strong. King Hawkeye was proud to have her as his queen and depended on her in countless ways of which his subjects had no knowledge. The queen knew, however; she knew without question how indispensable she was to her husband. And she also know how important it would be for her son to have a capable wife. (p. 163)

The queen may seem a cold and even uncaring person at times. But ultimately, she truly wants what's best for her son. Or at least, she wants what's best for Southlands, and in her mind, those two are one and the same. And she worries about her boy.

Lionheart was a handsome boy but weak. Stubborn as well, which Starflower considered the most dangerous form of weakness. It would take a strong woman to manage him as he managed the kingdom. (p. 163)

And that strong woman, Queen Starflower has decided, is Lady Daylily of Middlecrescent. It is through the queen's manipulations that Lionheart finds himself spending the summer with Daylily up at Hill House. She and the Baron of Middlecrescent conspire together to see the strength of Middlecrescent tied to the strength of the throne.

Nothing, however, could have prepared Queen Starflower for the Dragon. And when he comes, we get our first real glimpse at the deeper secrets and fears in this strong queen's heart:

Queen Starflower sat before her long mirror in her private chambers, gazing upon but not seeing her own face. She was alone. She had always been alone. The others were all dead, she knew with a certainty beyond doubt. Perhaps they had never lived. Perhaps they too were nothing but a dream bound to die in this world to which she had awakened. Her husband, her son, her nephew . . . nothing but phantoms in this world, this dark, smoke-shrouded reality where dreams must die. (p. 217)

The strongest woman in all Southlands still falls prey to the Dragon's poison, the Death of Dreams. How then can a simple mountain girl with a hidden face hope to stand up against such a terror?

I quite enjoyed writing Queen Starflower. She is the first queen I have written about in this series so far, for Princess Una's mother is dead, and Queen Starflower has no role in Heartless (though I'll not give away why!).

I feel this woman gives us a more complete picture of Prince Lionheart as well. It's impossible to truly understand a person until you understand the family from which they have stemmed. Queen Starflower has pushed and manipulated Lionheart all his life . . . and, worst of all, she has generally been right about what's best for him! Is it any wonder that when given half the chance (and half the excuse) Lionheart runs away to become a jester and considers never returning?

But Queen Starflower does love her son, I believe. And when she believes he's dead, it leads to her undoing . . .                                                                                      

Enter to Win!

Grand Prize: Signed copies of all three published Tales of Goldstone Wood! That's Heartless, Veiled Rose, and Moonblood, along with specialized bookmarks, Goldstone Wood magnets, pencils, and stickers.

Second Place: A signed copy of Moonblood.

How to Participate: Submit a work of your own original art. You can use any medium: Drawing, painting, sewing, pottery, photography, jewelry-making . . . anything!

Subject: Your art work needs to be Tales of Goldstone Wood inspired. It can be a character portrait, a scene from a story, or (in the case of pottery or sewing) thematically inspired by some aspect of one of the books.

Number of Submissions: You may submit as many pieces as you like. Each one increases your chances of being a winner!

How to Submit: Send a clear and detailed photograph (or several photographs) of your art to my email address: aestengl@gmail.com.

Display: Your art will be displayed in a series of posts on this blog, along with your name, age, medium, and the title of your piece. It will also be featured in an album on my Facebook author page.

Winner Selection: All submissions will be judged by a panel of three (author not included!) according to effort (did you take time over this, or dash off a doodle?), theme (is this Goldstone Wood inspired or just a random picture?), and originality (If you submit stick-figures, those had better be some interesting and detailed stick-figures!). All ages and media will be judged together. Judging will be based on a point system, not artwork against artwork, so that artists of varied skill-levels and media may feel free to participate!

Deadline: April 24th. All submissions will be judged that week, and the winner announced on May 1st.

Be original! Be creative! Have fun!

P is for Portrait

Do you remember it? That strange little moment? It happens in both Veiled Rose and in Heartless. When a character stands in the gallery of Oriana Palace and his or her eye is drawn by an unusual portrait on the wall.

It was a small piece in a very old style; a storytelling style intended to convey a certain truth of the tale without specific accuracy to the characters. There were three men with the same face, two of them chained together, the third one crowned. There was a woman in the center of the piece, and she wept beside a gold stone, an altar, on which lay a figure that was like a man and yet, horribly, like the Dragon. (Veiled Rose, p. 311)

In the course of both these books we do not learn who all of these characters are. However, a careful reading of each text might reveal a few secrets.

This figure that is man-shaped but also the Dragon lies upon a gold stone. It's an easy leap to see the connection between this image and the name of Goldstone Wood. So we might infer, at least, that this scene took place in the Wood between the Far World and the Near and that this golden altar is the Gold Stone for which the Wood is now named.

Just a few pages earlier in Veiled Rose, we see Rose Red in the Netherworld sailing upon the dreadful Lake of Endless Blackness (as it was named by Leo back in a younger, more innocent day). While making this dreadful journey, Rose Red sees an awful sight:

Something flickered in the lantern light. Rose Red gazed forward and a little to her left and saw an enormous rock jutting from the lake. The little stick boat glided past it, and she saw that the rock was smooth and polished and gleaming, a pure gold stone. An altar. The sight of it made her sick, though she did not know why. (Veiled Rose p. 300)

Could this be the same stone as that seen in the portrait? The argument is strong, especially if we look back at the description of that same portrait as described in Heartless, which reveals details omitted in Veiled Rose.

Three men stood on the shores of a black lake; one of the three worse a crown upon his head while the other two were bound in chains. Otherwise, their faces were identical. In the center of the lake lay another man upon a golden altar that rose up out of the water. (Heartless, p. 124)

So it must be the same, the Dark Water, the Lake of Endless Blackness. This place, once located in the Wood, has now sunk to the Netherworld itself.

There are a few more small details we might pick up from these two novels alone. Near the end of Heartless¸ we see three Knights of Farthestshore defending King Fidel against the onslaught of the Dragon. Their defenses are useless against his great fire, and yet Sir Oeric, the ugly, goblin-esque knight, refuses to back down, even when he sees his two companions tossed aside like dolls.

The Dragon laughed again, a thunderous sound. Fidel dropped his own sword and fell to his knees, and even the knight stepped back and cringed away as sparks flew and burned his skin. "I owe you too much to crisp you to cinders," the Dragon said. "I do not forget a service rendered, however unwillingly. If not for you, little knight, I might yet be bound to the Gold Stone!" (Heartless, p. 303)

So what is this Gold Stone, featured in this picture, glimpsed in the Netherworld? Again, we don't know the complete story. All we know is that it served as a prison of some sort, binding the Dragon. But why? For how long? And how was he released?

Many of these questions will have to wait to be answered in Moonblood. Others . . . well, others might have to wait a little longer!

In the meanwhile, what are your thoughts on this odd little image? Who do you think the three men, one a king, two prisoners, might be? Or the woman weeping beside the gold stone? Any guesses?

O is for Oracle

One of the most chilling moments in all of Lionheart's adventures is the moment he sits face-to-face with the Mother's Mouth, the oracle of Ay-Ibunda.

A light struck and flared. It nearly blinded Lionheart and he covered his face with his hands. When he looked again, he saw an ancient, wrinkled woman sitting cross-legged before him, smiling a hideous smile. She held a candle cupped in both hands, and the glow from it cast her face into awful shadows.
Her eyes were white. She was blind. (p. 293)

In this temple set in a world outside the mortal realm, this oracle sits solitary in darkness. Not even the hum of the monks beyond her tiny cell are audible. She is so lost in darkness that she scarcely remembers what it is like to see. All light and song are far from her.

"There is no hope in this place," she says. "There is no hope, only fulfillment."

The fulfillment of a hopeless life. Even the Netherworld offers the light of Asha Lantern to those wandering in the half-lit shadows. But here, there is nothing . ..  nothing but a greedy old woman who devours even the precious pearl Lionheart offers her in exchange for a vision. No beauty, no goodness.

The Life-in-Death has consumed it all.

Using the oracle as a vessel, the Dragon's sister meets Lionheart in this place and finally drags from him the secret-most dream of his heart. And this she vows to give him. Then she vanishes, leaving Lionheart alone once more with the ugly, blind oracle who tells him how he may drive the Dragon from Southlands.

Then she blows out her candle.

The horror of being in the dark with that crone was too much. Lionheart backed out on his hands and knees, finally turning around and crawling as fast as he could. (p. 295)

I don't blame him! After all, that foul old dame, a servant of the Lady Life-in-Death, is a reflection of what Lionheart himself may all too soon become. What dreams did the Life-in-Death fulfill for that blind woman that brought her to a state of such utter wretchedness? We can only wonder. Perhaps she is not even a native Noorhitamin, though the temple is found within the Noorhitam empire? After all, she speaks a language unknown to Lionheart, although he has studied (to varied degrees of success) the various Noorhitam dialects for the last two years.

And one language she speaks translates itself in his head . . . like Faerie tongue. Could this frightful, lost soul be one of the Faerie-folk? Or is she simply so ancient that she has even learned Faerie languages?

All this will have to be left up to speculation for the time being, I'm afraid! After all, I'd hate to give away future storylines. But you can be sure, I hope to one day revisit Noorhitam, Ay-Ibunda, and even the presence of the Life-in-Death's oracle once more . . .