Inkwell: Authors and Artists

    
Re: Dogma.  Yes, seeing Neil's name on there made me very happy... as
did discovering that Kevin Smith's daughter is named Harley Quinn.  I
mean, how geeky-cool is that?

Neil-- Although AG covers an abundance of mythologies, it has a strong
focus on Norse myth.  Why did you make that choice?  What about that
set of stories appeals to you?  (I ask as someone who's never "gotten"
Norse myth, despite a vague interest in the Ring Cycle.)

Mary-- HI!  Things here are great, though swelteringly hot.  My
collaborator, Chris, and I are getting things done in our own strange
way... and we may get out of here with a workable draft.  Who knows...
maybe we'll get a reading in Chicago this year, at which your
attendance would be a must.

Anybody seen the Hedwig movie yet?
  

    
Len -- because they're chilly and cold and bleak, and because the gods
of the norsemen are not to be trusted. I'd recommend Kevin
Crossley-holland's Norse Myths --
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0394748468/
enormously readable and a complete delight. It also works if you know
the stuff or if you're coming to it as a novice.
  

    
Neil-- your description (and the reviews of the book) (and, for that
matter, Wednesday and Low Key) have piqued my interest in a way that
D'Aulaire's book of Norse Myth-- and Marvel Comics-- have so far failed
to do.  Thanks for the link.  After reading your response, I went down
to Chris and said, "Maybe we should think about doing something on
Norse myth..."
  

    
Len, you've read Edith Hamilton's _Mythology_ at some point, right?
  

    
JaNell-- Yeah, though longer ago than I'd like to admit. I like her on
the Greek stuff... I don't really remember anything else.
  

    
Len: Congratulations on successful writing work!  You mentioned a
reading: is it a play?  On plays (if it is) and Norse mythology: a
small theater group out here did a remake of _Hamlet_ with a cast full
of Vikings called _The Madboy Chronicles_.  Unfortunately, we couldn't
make it, but it sounded like a lot of fun.

Mary: Thanks for the timeline on the Great Con.  I think that a son
was definitely part of the plan.  What I got from a first read was that
there was Plan A) Odin gets everybody to fight without having to die,
and Plan B) Odin has to take a fall to get things rolling, in which
case a son comes in very handy because he can do the Vigil which puts
Daddy back on the map.  Is this directly from the Norse mythos?  (I'm
not as knowledgeable about this pantheon.)  I'm not really familiar
either with a mythos in which the son saves the father, except maybe a
slant on Isaac/Abraham.

Aside: Along that line, I thought that Dan Simmons did a wonderful
thing on the sacrifice of the children in _Hyperion_.

So, I'm hunting a Shadow.  Trying to figure out who Neil meant him to
be before I go back to see who I think he is.

I found this on the Thunderbird dream.  Aside from being a generally
fabulous article on Native American spirituality and the Trickster
mythos, it contains this quote which might apply to Shadow:

"It was believed among the Lakota and other tribes that if you had a
dream or vision of birds, you were destined to be a medicine man; but
if you had a vision of Thunderbird, it was your destiny to become
something else; heyoka, or sacred clown."
-_Thunderbird and Trickster_, by Steve Mizrach 
at: http://www.fiu.edu/~mizrachs/thunderbird-and-trickster.html

I also really liked the following quote for itself, and as it applies
to _AG_. 

"When a vision comes from the thunder beings of the West, it comes
with terror like a thunder storm; but when the storm of vision has
passed, the world is greener and happier; for wherever the truth of
vision comes upon the world, it is like a rain. The world, you see, is
happier after the terror of the storm... you have noticed that truth
comes into this world with two faces."
--Black Elk
(at link above)

I found myself reading it and thinking about the final scene with
Czernobog/Bielobog, and the coming of spring after a long winter.

At any rate: I can't find anything yet on the Thunderbird nest.  Does
anybody know why someone climbs the Thunderbird nest, or what the
significance of that is?
  

    
I hope Shadow isn't meant to be a clown.  I don't like clowns.
  

    
But sacred clowns are different from scary regular clowns.  I'm right
with you on the clown thing, Will, ugh.
  

    
Will - re: #192... You're still listening to it? I'm impressed. 

Everyone in general (but especially Linda for wondering) - I'm still
here, and trying to catch up, and have been enjoying the discussion
thoroughly. Every time I think I've thought of all the questions I'd
want to ask, someone else comes up with a new one that give AG a
different twist. I have a feeling I'll be reading it a few dozen times
before I'll read the same story twice.

Good work Neil. Thank you.

Re: Kevin Smith movies - No surprise to me that Neil's seen Dogma.
Weren't you supposed to do a cameo in Mall Rats, Neil? Incidentally,
Mall Rats is a really fun movie to watch when the person you're seeing
it with has a) never seen it before, b) grown up in Minneapolis, and c)
performed in that mall... :P

squeaks,
who is still WAAAAAAAAAAY behind on 115... but will catch up soon -
promise.
  

    
I'll be disappearing as (janell) and re-appearing as (goldennokomis)
as I need to downgrade my account... 
  

    
Pamela-- acutally it's a musical.. and it's taking forever to finish..
but I think I'll have a workable third draft by the end of the week,
and that's what I came here to do.  The viking thing sounds awesome,
btw.
  

    
Len: Wow.  A musical is sooo much work!  I'm really impressed.  Do you
and your writing partner split up into librettist/composer, or do you
work on the whole thing together?  Best of luck this week.

Will/Rebecca:  Contemporary clowns creep me out, too.  It's
interesting that so many people have this reaction, because I think
that it really does go back to the original purpose of sacred clowns. 
But it's so divorced from the original source of offense, now, that I
think it's confusing.  I mean, what's so creepy about the funny guy
with the big red nose?  It's like meeting the messenger without the
message.  In the old days, if you saw some bizarre-looking man perform
a gross cultural taboo in the middle of a sacred ceremony, you _knew_
why you were shocked.

What I'm struggling with is what Neil was trying to say about Shadow
with this.  Loki pretty much walks off with the Trickster best actor
award, so what does that mean about Shadow's role?  The heyoka is
something of a cultural lightning strike: an immediate shock into the
infinite now.  There's a lot of primal energy in that role that I don't
really see going on for Shadow.

But Neil is always so well researched that I have to believe it means
something.  Am I just dense?  Or maybe I'm just missing the forest for
the trees, somehow.

Anyway, I was hoping that the Thunderbird nest thing would shed some
light on it, too.
  

    
Neil--
Are there any plans for AG to be available through audible.com, as the
SciFi.com audio dramas are?
  

    
Will--I'm with you on the clowns. Clows give me the wig. Fools and
tricksters, on the other hand...

Speaking of tricksters, there were a LOT of 'em in AG. Hey unca neil,
how come?
  

    
Pamela - I found some stuff on thunderbird egg shards being thrown out
of the nest and creating people, but I'm not sure that helps much.
  

    
I can't speak for Uncle/Daddy Neil, but I can speak *about* him:
He himself is a trickster, as far as I can tell.
  

    
Bill -- not as far as I know. It's about 24 hours of tape though. It
may be out on CD by year's end, if that helps.

Michelle -- I got a message through Dreamhaven when they were filming
Mall Rats that they wanted me to do a cameo. I sent back a message
saying, doing what? And never heard anything back...

Janell -- I am? New one on me.
  

    
Neil - Well, I think so, but what do I know? And you should know by
now to put a big 'N' in my name, dang it...

Let's see... do I need to go back and quote you, all the times you
answer questions with questions, are deliberately enigmatic or evasive,
or are generally Coyote-like?

So, answer the question, then - why so many tricksters, are they an
integral part of the story or just a personal fascination?
  

    
Well, if, as Neil has written, "All writers are liars, my dear.",
then...  but I suppose that liars are not neccessarily tricksters, nor
the reverse.  Still, there seems to be a healthy overlap.
  

    
Dan - he said that, really? I missed that... but you know, Rick
Shelley had 'Professional Liar' put on his business card... do you
remember meeting Rick, Neil?
  

    
Dan- If Neil said that, I think Hemmingway beat him to the punch.  Of
course, it's also one of the paradoxes of fiction; somehow, in lying,
we tell the truth better than all who have the facts.  Am I a liar? 
Well, to be honest, I like Neil's other defintion; I'm a
maker-up-of-stuff (not professional, just yet, but I'm 23.  Gimme a few
years).

JaNell- Personally, I *love* Neil's responses, especially when they're
more obtuse, and cryptic.  It's kind of like the Zen masters, who
always answer the question truthfully and yet never answer the
question.  Like if someone asked, "Do you believe everything happens
for some greater reason, or that there are some things that do, in
fact, just kinda happen," the proper answer is usually "Zebra."  Not
always, but usually.

And a sidenote; found this page about thunderbirds, and thought I'd
share:  www.tbird.org/memorabilia/myth.htm
  

    
I don't think that writers are liars, but the author of Here Comes A
Candle did. And look at what he justified with it.

JaNell -- not from the name. Who was he? What does he look like?
  

    
Pamela-- thanks!  I write book and lyrics, my collab writes music, we
work together on the story... those conversations tend to be the
longest, and as of late, they seem to all happen on bicycles.  Go
figure.
  

    
Neil - Rick Shelley is the author of _The Buchanon Campaign_, among
other military SF stuff... he had me introduce him to you Sunday
morning at ConCat... he's the one that said after seeing all you went
through, he didn't want your career after all...

Anyway, this is way OT, it's just that the liar thing made me think of
his card, and him... I think I told all of y'all this already, about
the heart attack at ChattaCon this year, and dying two weeks later in
Nashville while waiting for a heart...

I can bring it on topic by saying, AG isn't the first time ConCat, or
something related to it, has made it into a book... Rick is/was one of
the authors that's mentioned us, too. But it's still really cool, Neil,
even if ALL you remembered about the event was bad sushi and people in
orange... ;>
  

    
 I just finished AG yesterday, and naturally had a flood of questions
about this and that.  I assume that most of those questions will be
answered when I give it a second reading, so rather than ask any of
them here right now, I'll ask a meta-question:

 Neil, has it always been your nature to lead your readers toward
letting your work reveal its own answers to your readers, or have you
changed from, at some point, wanting to explain everything to letting
things explain themselves?

 My natural impulse is always to explain things to people repeatedly,
in myriad ways if I must, to get them to understand things as I do.  I
can imagine that if I wrote a work of fiction, that it would agitate
me if readers didn't "get it" in the way that I expected them to.
Does that bother you, or are you OK with it?