| It's Friday. You know what that means. Gary is standing over me pissed that no one got into any kerfuffles. Instead of cracking the whip on you, he's taking it out on me. Still we had some fun reading and chatting about HEART OF STONE. Catie Murphy's a doll baby for swinging by as much as she did and remember, later today, she'll make the announcement. Keep checking back to see who'll walk away with her second book in the Negotiator series, HOUSE OF CARDS. Will it be you? Hard to say. Anyway, the last question to distract us from our daily grinds... 5. There are certain thematic elements that resonate in this novel. Care to tackle one or two? Please feel free to add your own questions and keep the chatter rollin'. I'll reveal the February book club choice at the end of the day, so you still have time to vote. Have fun! (or else) |
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Not to go all Hannah Arendt, but I think there's a theme of formal power vs. informal power at work.
The Old Races, in the little we've seen, have some sort of informal power structure. Perhaps a new version of tooth & claw, but it seems person(ality)-based.
Into this comes Margrit. She's butting heads with the formal power structure of "the system" with her clemency hearing. Sure, her person committed a crime, but the system isn't recognizing that there are reasons for deviation from the norms. To this, add Tony, who has a black and white view of the world where the cops wear white and everyone else is a black hat.
Then comes Alban, suspected of a crime (with good reason) but unable to work within the system for various means. To resolve his issues and protect the selkies, Margrit has to leave a lot of the structured formal power system of law and courts behind and rely on the personal, informal power of wits and integrity/honor.
As I've been saying all week, my day job as a legal services lawyer impacts my reading and no one else may see what I see...and not just the dancing pink elephants I frequently get to watch.
TMT, I love your answer on this. And what's also interesting here is that Alban sort of lives outside his structure, informal as it is, and Margrit sort of leaves her structure, too. So they both have that in common. In a way, Margrit works Alban's structure. And no, I didn't mean that dirty!
Oddly, the speakeasy serves as a metaphor for all that, an isolated structure within a larger structure, yet apart from it. But maybe ignore that, that was my English lit training coming out to make sort of useless connections.
But then again, this is sort of a book of the hidden within the larger.
So far I've only read half the book, but I see a feminist theme. Or maybe it's a anti-stereotype theme. Margrit refuses to choose her relationship over her career, holds her own against powerful men, and puts people in their place when they try force her into a weaker role. She's not a romantic heroine, she belongs more to the real world. The scene where she punches Tony in the face instead of capitulating, for example. Somewhere in my brain a heartfelt "Ug, yes, expecting a girl to swoon there. Really." happened when I read that part.
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Thank you!
I'm bringing Katie's question from the day one post up, so people have a chance to read it:
I have a question for Catie though, you mentioned in one of your earlier posts that Grit walked into you head - fully formed, saying 'this is who I am'. Has this been the case with all or most of your characters? If not, how many character revisions go into making them so... tangibly real?
Baaaahm. Um. Hrm.
Margrit was unusual. I didn't even know her name, and names are something that are a big deal with me. She was, I think, maybe the most concrete and most immediately defined character I've encountered.
A little more typically, I think that I usually have...shapes. Of characters. I have things I need to fulfill. With Jo, well, I wanted a shaman. I wanted someone of two clashing-but-potentially-combinable backgrounds, both with a heavy mystical element to them. For the secondaries in that series, Morrison is all the responsibility Jo's turned her back on; Gary is all the adventuresomeness she's walked away from; Billy is the Believer she should be. A lot of that's not deliberate, but I've come to realize they play those roles. They don't usually take much revising. They just develop as I write.
With Alisha in the Strongbox Chronicles, I needed someone who could potentially fit into societies all over the world, so her physical aspect was actually more important than it usually is in my books. A little bit similarly, with Belinda, the main character of THE QUEEN'S BASTARD, physically she had to be attractive but not a bombshell, but that was secondary to what I...knew more or less inherently about the character.
Jeez, this is hard to describe. It sounds utterly psychopathic to say these people live in my head, but they mostly seem to. They fill in the details as I need them. :)
With Alban, I wanted the gentle giant. I had *shapes* for these characters to fill, and as I sat down to write, they filled them. I always knew Janx and Daisani were both charming bastards, but that Janx, especially, should be able to get under anybody's skin and talk them right out of their...anything, really. :)
I *frequently* start writing and let the characters tell me about themselves. I've learned more and more about Gary as I've been writing the Walker Papers. Um. Hm.
One of the most (one. hah. *the* most.) pointed critiques I ever got was someone who'd judged a contest I'd submitted something to, who, upon learning which story was mine, seized my arm and said, enthusiastically, "Oh! You're one of those people who writes *fantastic* plots, right, and then just fills them with cardboard characters?"
...
"Well," I said in a tiny voice, "I didn't /think/ so..."
That was probably the most helpful thing anybody ever said to me as a writer. It forced me to learn a lot more about characterization, about creating depth in characters, about digging deeper into what they wanted (oh, god, that's so important, what they want), and about rounding them out as people.
I mean, honestly, when that was said to me, I literally didn't have the tools to even understand it. I was at a conference that weekend (the *fantastic* Rocky Mountain Fiction Writers' Colorado Gold, which I highly, *highly* recommend attending) and attended panels on characterization and motivation, and left with a better understanding of how to make that work. As far as I'm concerned, that skill is still really a work in progress, so it's really, *really* nice to hear that you feel my characters are real, Katie (and everyone else who's commented, for that matter!).
Boy. I wonder if this is going to be too long to post as one comment. I think I better save it just in case... :)
-Catie
Do your characters name themselves or do you pick symbolic names?
Ladies and gentlemen, I have selected a winner for the signed copy of HOUSE OF CARDS by random draw.
However, I apparently accidentally selected one of the actual League members, so I've re-drawn the number and come up with...
Carolyn Jean!
Please send me your snailmail address at cemurphyauthor@gmail.com! :)
Also, because I am so terribly pleased with tmthomas's professional reaction to HEART OF STONE, he gets one too. Email me your address too. :)
-Catie
Themes? Oh, hands down it's about race. There are a number of correlations between Margrit's issues with racism, and Alban's vehmently defending the Old Races. Human vs. non-human. It's really well done. And the arguments posed are solid, yet the conclusion is somewhat ambiguous as these subjective things tend to be. It lets the reader come to their own conclusion. I really like that. 8^)
tmthomas asks:
Do your characters name themselves or do you pick symbolic names?
I spend a silly amount of time deciding on names, except when I don't. :)
Alban's name is meaningful. Margrit's last name is meaningful. Janx, apparently, is named after the most potent alcohol in the Hitchhiker's Guide books, which was not intentional but which cleared up why I thought "Janx" was such a familiar sounding and reasonable word, once somebody pointed it out to me. :)
I actually think names are hard. I have a habit of wanting to name all men things like Robert, Thomas, and Richard. (It's the Irish in me. As far as I can tell for most of history any one Irish family was allowed a maximum of 5 names for their male children and five for their female children. At least two of those names had to be in common with twenty percent of the non-family population, just to keep it confusing. Hence, in my family, there are generations and generations worth of James Hughs, James Anthonys, Franks, and Peters; and Catherines, Brigids, Roses, and Eileens. I got off track there, didn't I?)
Anyway, short version, I think I put way more thought into names than is actually necessary, but it makes *me* very happy to do so. I'm all like I has a sekrit! :)
-Catie