Invisibility

[dancinghorse]

One of the beauties of writing in invisible ink is, you can do the most outrageous things. And nobody notices.

Quest for the Grail? Check.

Rehabilitate Bad King John? Check.

Moses = Akhenaten = Moses, complete with parting of the Red Sea? Check.

The Lionheart wins the Third Crusade? Twice? Oh yeah.

Now what shall I do next, that nobody notices?

Also, a question: Fairies. I don't get them. At all. And yet everybody's writing about them. What's with that?

Oh. Did them, too. Puca points if you saw through the cloak of invisibility to where.

Comments

[raithen.livejournal.com]

ahem. I sense a certain level of frustration bordering on potential despair here.... Kingdom is sitting near my bed, waiting to be read.

and you know, I am trying to catch up on how many years of work? give a girl TIME.:D.

up with the chin! ;)

also, dumb ass publishers. and {{empathy}}. a dear friend sells christmas trees. She prunes them with care and puts on a campfire and has a sled for the kids and just does such a lovely set up. YOu choose a tree, and they are GORGEOUS, and they cut it for you.

She's had people walk off her property without buying a tree this year. For the first time ever. And she is just so hurt!

[raithen.livejournal.com]

also, I prolly shouldn't type when tired. hope this makes sense....

[dancinghorse.livejournal.com]

One of my publishers once said of me, "She might as well write in invisible ink for all the attention she gets. And I don't understand it."

Been stumbling across too many lists of books about this and authors who influenced that, and "nobody has ever done this" and "nobody ever does that."

Er, hello? Invisible author over here.

I've tried to change the style, the name, the subgenre--some success there. Still trying to figure out how to break through into visibility.

But apparently I kick ass as a test-passage writer. A mutant superpower! At last! Save the passage writer, save the world!

[dancinghorse.livejournal.com]

Why are people not buying this year? Her work is too perfect?

[kateelliott.livejournal.com]

Memories of the Minoans, underneath Rome? Wasn't that you?

The Horns of Hattin long before Orlando Bloom and Edward Norton?

Alexander in the desert?

[dancinghorse.livejournal.com]

Can't ask for better proof that one is a writer's writer. (And writers of quality, too.) ;>

Usually it's enough, but once in a while the frustration breaks through.

[windrose.livejournal.com]

True story: I actually walked out of a movie so I could read Alamut.

The book had only just come out, and I was dying to crack the cover and sink my teeth into it, but I'd agreed to go see a movie with some friends after picking it up at the bookshop. Well, the film turned out to be (imo) bloody awful and after about twenty minutes I started wondering, why am I bothering to sit through this crap when I have a brand new book by one of my favorite authors burning a hole in my backpack? So, I told my friends I was going to curl up on a bench outside and read, and that is exactly what I did. I still think I got the better end of the deal.

[green-knight.livejournal.com]

Thus speaks the true readaholic...

[green-knight.livejournal.com]

And nobody notices.

What am I, nobody?

The Hound and The Falcon trilogy survived even the hideous German translation, and that's saying something...

I blame you and Barbara Hambly's Darwath Trilogy in equal measures for my addiction to fantasy.


Rehabilitate Bad King John?

I've had a lifelong hatred for him, and I would have sworn it wasn't possible. That book was nothing short of a miracle, because if there ever was a biased reader, I'm it.

I liked White Mare's Daughter, but it's the semi-historicals that I want to read more of.

[dancinghorse.livejournal.com]

As one nobody to another: Remember, if you have to be chopped liver, at least you can be foie gras.

It looks as if the "semi-historicals" may be coming back to life. I love writing those.

[lynnesite.livejournal.com]

I think the Hound and the Falcon was the first trade paperback I ever bought.

[sea-pony.livejournal.com]

Oh dear. I have to say I've only just discovered you as an author recently this past September and then only through the Aurelian Empire as I was recuperating long hours -- no, days -- no, weeks on the sofa with a fractured rib from a fall from a horse with a tragic history (but that's a story for a longer, rambling reply). I devoured all three volumes of that series, and was delighted to find there's so much more. Need some time to save my pennies to buy the rest -- and oh yeah, a Lipizzaner too. ;)

[dancinghorse.livejournal.com]

Hey, new victim!

Sorry to hear about your fall and your rib. I hope all's well now.

PMS-y nights aside, I can always fall back on the ultimate consolation: Lipizzans!

[matociquala.livejournal.com]

My abject apologies, by the way, for poor phrasing and insensitivity and being so enamored of Bors and Lionel and my own plot engine kicking over that I was hurtful. I'm very sorry, and I've amended my post.

[dancinghorse.livejournal.com]

There there. Not hurtful, no. I get frustrated sometimes, especially when it's midnight and there's PMS. That's when I reflect that when I'm dead the sensation will be familiar (I'm standing right here, I've been here all along, can't you hear me?). "Coded and obscure" pretty well sums up the career. And usually it doesn't matter. I can't stop, the voices won't let me, so in the end it's myself and the hay bill, and the loyal few readers who have never let go, that I write for. The rest is more or less gravy.

I did Parsifal and the whole enchilada, published in 2000 to great reviews and otherwise crashing obscurity, as usual. Pulled it out like taffy and gave it a few good twists. I still like that book rather well, and it came out in mass market recently so had a few weeks' resurgence.

I've always lamented the utter banality of the Lancelot story btw. I was bored by it as a young reader and I've never come to find it more interesting. My favorite was always Gawain. Flawed, very badly done by in the later matieres, but he was never dull.

[sartorias.livejournal.com]

No fairies here.

Other things to do? Save Sir Phillip Sydney--make him a spy or something.

Boadicea kicks the Romans back to Rome.

Boethius cleans house.

Roland turns the tables at Roncevalles.

[dancinghorse.livejournal.com]

I did actually plot (and start) a Boudicca novel once, but I did it just when historical fantasy started to tank, so it's in the trunk somewhere. Maybe someday I can go back to it.

Your plots would make a very entertaining anthology. 8)

[matociquala.livejournal.com]

Melissa Scott and Linda Barnett did just that with Sydney--and he in his turn saved Kit Marlowe. *g* The book is The Armor Of Light, published by Baen for God knows what reason.

[serasempre.livejournal.com]

I was ecstatic when I found your LJ because I've loved your writing since the first book of the Hounds trilogy came out. I can remember being antsy at not being able to find the third one. They're on my list of "perfect" books, and you're on my list of authors I will always read. There are maybe 3 or 4 others on the list with you.

[dancinghorse.livejournal.com]

Thank you.

[faefall.livejournal.com]

Please, please, please don't write about fairies.

I've been reading your books for years and years. I've even passed you on to other people because your characters have...well...character.

Although I am annoyed at the bookstores because when I go in looking to find something of yours they almost never have anything. You are one of the better authors I've read but for some reason the people who are ordering books are not putting you on the shelves. Which lead me to look for you on Amazon which lead me to this LJ journal.

(But this leads to a question actually. I've recently re-read Alamut and Dagger and the Cross and I'm wondering something. Is there a book(s) wich concern the brothers before these two. I've not been able to find one if it exists.)

[dancinghorse.livejournal.com]

Thank you. :)

That early book is deeeeeep in the trunk among the rest of the juvenilia.

So--why not fairies?

[larryhammer]

You left out "Had Normans save Britain from the evil Saxons."

As for why fairies, ditzes in contemporary fantasy = comedic chick-lit gold.

(I won't tell about your fairies if you won't.)

---L.

[dancinghorse.livejournal.com]

Good one on fairies. What about the ones that play it straight?

It's an actual curiosity-question, because it's never pinged my sensors at all, but I'm seeing a Lot of it of late. Played for laughs, played straight, played dark, fairies are all over the place. I don't expect I'll join the crowd, but it's a trend and trends interest me.

[drakos-inferno.livejournal.com]

Since eleventy billion people chimed it - i might as well too!

Historical fantasy is not typically my bent, but i have copies of the Mountain's Call, and Song of the Unmaking under my bed that i pull out every other month when i go on a reading binge. i love the books, and as someone that is something of a bookaholic - it's saying something. If money werent non-existant right now (a situation that has been in place since well before Shattered Dance came out) I would have all three. Obscurity sucks. One of my best friend was hailed as "the next anne rice" when she published her first and second novels. These days her sales are pretty mediocre. It comes and goes.

Keep chugging along :)

- Sean

[torrilin.livejournal.com]

I've got lots of the historical fantasies (Hatshesput!), mostly acquired through used bookstores. For once I'd like to find a book of yours in a bookstore that sells new books. Besides Amazon.

I like Holly Black's fairies. But I'm not real big on the fairies everywhere trend otherwise. Anything that's in danger of being sweet tends to leave me pretty cold tho.

[kateelliott.livejournal.com]

I'm not sure how you're defining fairies. Not, obviously, Tolkien-style elves, but something else? Or?

[dancinghorse.livejournal.com]

Victorian fairies with gauzy wings.