#indiauthor

[luminouse-humaness]

She’s so real for this tbh. It’s so true too, I’ve even had my family members do this to me (I write lots of sapphic films and books)

Never saw the movie but I really adore her words here

[the-lunar-library]

THE PRICE AND PREY OF MAGIC

Eider and the giant serpent she's first trapped with in a magical manor, then starts to befriend. If that sounds a little like Beauty and the Beast, that's because it's a variant telling -- it's based on a version called The Green Serpent in which the heroine, who's hideous rather than blessed with the name Beauty, finds herself living with a mysterious talking snake.

Obviously no one's going to accuse Eider of being hideous though. As in the fairy tale, she and the snake have a rough start, but eventually form a powerful bond.

[averyrogers83]

The Publicist

Since @caramell0w’s new book "The Publicist" gets released tomorrow and Valentine's Day is just around the corner what better way then to have a little contest. Winner will be announced on Monday.

[luminouse-humaness]

Some pages from my notebook about the book I’m writing, The Black Hound of Fanning House. The portraits of my characters, the house layout, and the family tree (well most of it. No spoilers!)

[the-lunar-library]

TO THE RAVENS

All of the character portraits together -- all of the major-ish characters. I'm really pleased with how this series came out, and it's so nice seeing them all collected like this.

Akantha / Alexandros / Genesius

Kokkonas / Tanais / Buca

Brixia / Karyai / Pas

Lykedon / Galana

[the-lunar-library]

TO THE RAVENS

Tanais, Akantha's mother and a skilled midwife. She lives her life in careful devotion to the gods, as if by some mathematical equation, her piety and obedience will keep her and her loved ones in the gods' favor. But she's perceptive enough to realize that doesn't work, and she copes by telling herself humans are helpless before the gods, and the best she can do is accept their trials. She lives in fear for Akantha's well-being – especially when Akantha has the recklessness to blaspheme against the gods themselves.

Tanais (original name Eusebia, “pious”, extremely on the nose) was at first a much more negative and narrow character. Akantha was always intended to be a rebel, and her mother embodied everything she wanted to resist – family expectations, cultural boundaries, and most of all religious strictures. That tension is still there in the novel, but Eusebia was going to be an anxious, constricting presence, full of warnings and outright anger against her defiant daughter.

But time went on and Eusebia started to change, grow more sympathetic. I started to dig into her backstory. And (I know I keep saying this, but it's still true) I did research into the lives of women in Greek culture, women under Roman rule. And there's so much we don't know about them, but one thing we do know in fair detail – because men were interested in it and thus wrote about it – is midwifery. Not all of their medical know-how holds up today, but midwifery was a profession where women displayed skill, intelligence, and authority. And unlike in the stateroom or in the temples or just in marriage, period, this was a place where their power wasn't seen as threatening to men. They were allowed to flourish; even enslaved midwives were seen as notably valuable, which sounds dark (because it is), but it still represents stature, importance.

So while Tanais (she stopped being Eusebia) in many ways chains herself to convention, largely out of fear and uncertainty, she has a means of supporting herself, of dealing with men on a somewhat more equal level, and of helping other women. She wouldn't see herself as a champion of women, as Kokkonas does, and many of the things Akantha does appall her. Some people like to smugly interpret that “Well behaved women rarely make history” line, as if the only value in a woman's life comes from defying norms. Tanais doesn't defy norms, she doesn't make history, but she really does help people.

And her having that role might be why her character ended up softening, becoming more sympathetic to the reader. She and Akantha still are in conflict, Akantha's still angry with her at times, Tanais still does things that might shock the reader, but hopefully there's a stronger bond of sympathy between her and her daughter. Hopefully the reader gets an understanding of why Tanais is the way she is, the sort of pressures she's faced. If Kokkonas has partially defied convention, Tanais has protected herself within it. I'm sure the reader won't agree with all of her decisions, but hopefully they can understand her.

Tanais is Akantha's mom and Karyai's stepmom; there's some resemblance with her daughter, but Karyai and Akantha more closely resemble their shared father. As for her name, during my pre-writing, I spent a fair bit of time flipping through my Latin dictionary, looking for interesting words and potential names, and that's where I found Tanais. (Which is a Greek name, but you find lots of Greek names and terms in Latin.) I really liked the sound of it, much more than Eusebia. Tanais is an ancient name for the Don river. Which, I agree, isn't the most logical choice for a woman who lives on the Moon. But I thought about it, and I don't think it's that unusual for people to name their kids after places they've not only never been, but never have any expectation of seeing. It's not like we don't give our kids names that relate to the Moon, like Luna and Selena. And, being so much larger, planet Earth would loom in the lunar sky pretty inescapably. So let's just say there's a custom among lunar peoples to name their children after things from Earth.

[the-lunar-library]

TO THE RAVENS

The role of women in antiquity, what they're supposed to do, what their lives are like, is a big issue in To the Ravens. And if you want to arrange the major female characters on a spectrum of conventional to unconventional, it would go Tanais → Karyai → Akantha → Kokkonas → Brixia, and then way off, on the next page, Galana here. I don't want to say too much about Galana, because spoilers, so I'll reiterate what it says after her name in the book's cast of characters: she goes her own way.

So, keeping things vague: Galana's direct inspiration comes from Lucian, and while some readers might find her inclusion a bit jarring, I think she adds a welcome, refreshing note to the novel.

She was another hard character to name. I wanted something nature related, particularly water related. A significant number of Greek names include the suffix -rhoe (“river” or “current”). I also wanted something that highlighted her unusual accent. (Which is linguistically inconsistent and not very deep, but involves me using vowel and consonant substitutions that you see across different dialects of Ancient Greek.) So Kallirrhoe (“beautiful stream”), or Qallirrhoe in her case, would have been a good choice, and I think I did consider it. But it's another tricky name, and I didn't go for it. I also considered Rhanis, I think for no other reason that I liked the way it sounded.

And then one day I was flipping through my lexicon, looking for good words. And I found galana, which is the Doric form of the word galene, “the stillness of wind and wave”, or, more simply, “calm, tranquility”. Which hit every note – it's a nature name, it's a name that fits the character's (sometimes off-putting) serenity, it allows for a vowel shift from galene into the more obscure galana, and I think it just sounds beautiful. Really happy I landed on that one.

When it came to her looks, I wanted her to be very different from everyone else in the book. She's unnaturally pale, her hair is a deep pomegranate red and longer than anyone else's. Her features, with her small scooped nose and wide-set eyes and heart-shaped face, are pretty while still veering far away from the Greek ideal. She's almost always smiling, but it's a resting face, not necessarily a true reflection of what she's feeling. That being said, she doesn't often feel deep sadness. What she feels is deep conviction, and may the gods help you if you have a problem with that.

[the-lunar-library]

TO THE RAVENS

To many who live on the Moon, the matriarchal dog-worshipping Dog Heads are barbarians, but Lykedon thrives in the cosmopolitan luxury of the lunar capital – and in the palace of the mysterious King Endymion no less. His exact job isn't on official record, but superficially he's known as the royal librarian, and his knowledge of both lunar and Earthborn literature is second to none. A careful and canny man, Lykedon isn't easily surprised. But when a famous prophet rolls into his city on a strange mission, even Lykedon finds himself surprised – and more than a little amused.

I've talked a lot about how my research ended up shaping the book's setting and placing realistic limitations on the characters. But the Dog Heads? They were a chance to let loose and have fun, so that made Lykedon a fun character to write. I think he's intriguing, a character I've only scratched the surface of. He's very confident and secure, but not at all loud about it. He'll let people insult him, but he almost always retains the upper hand. That can't have always been true. Where did he start in life? Why did he leave his homeland behind? What about his voracious passion for literature? Even as the author, I don't know the answers to all these questions. I think any crucial information about Lykedon would only come drip by drip, and largely by his own choice.

His name is pretty straightforward – Lykedon, “wolf-like”; Dog Heads love incorporating dogs and wolves and foxes and their different attributes into their names. In my write-up about Dog Heads, I talked about how the Greeks and Romans of the time would have had stories of dog-headed men. Though Dog Heads aren't werewolves by any means, they believe they're descended from Artemis' hunting pack, who were honored and turned into humans. The Greeks and Romans had werewolves in their myths, at least humans who were changed into wolves. As far as I know, the myths themselves don't link werewolves to the Moon, but the Greek language does link wolves and nighttime – an ancient Greek word for “twilight” is lykophos, literally “wolf light”. Also, Lucian situates his own “dog-faced men” on the Moon.

As for Lykedon's design, I wanted to incorporate the flame-haired men Lucian writes of. Probably not all Dog Head men dye their hair in fire colors, especially once they leave their homeland. I never give a reason for it, but it probably relates to something in their mythology. One of my sources discussed a (quite cruel) Roman religious ceremony involving tying firebrands to foxes' tails and releasing them to run around. No one really knows why this custom came about. (It reminds me of things like foxfire and kitsune, so I wonder if there's some deeper, very basic symbol at play.) The point is, I think it's fair, when world-building, to include things that exist without explanation. Similarly, Lykedon's silver facial tattoos are mysterious, as the designs are used all across the Moon in Artemis worship, but they're so old no one's entirely sure what they originally meant. Their design is made up, but one of my sources talked about how some Thracians in ancient Greece had silver facial tattoos. (Sadly, no word on what they depicted.)

I like having these things unexplained. If I ever write more about the Dog Heads, it gives me room to experiment and develop their customs more – or leave them open and mysterious.

Through his smarts and excellent people skills, Lykedon has very successfully made his way into Kynthian-Roman culture, but he's proud of his heritage and still does the whole Dog Head thing: fiery hair and a dog-shaped headdress. More often he wears his casual headdress, which includes a small dog skull with false inset eyes. His fancy one is painted wood with dog's teeth and tassels along the back. Its design was inspired by two ancient Greek drinking cups.

Despite his startling hair and headdress, there's something pleasant, optimistic, solid, even a little warm about Lykedon. I wouldn't say don't trust it. Lykedon is certainly capable of forming close relationships, caring about others, even loving others. But he's an intelligent, well-connected, and highly maneuvering man, so... don't always trust it.