Tuesday, February 25, 2003
It is ungodly early to be doing this blogger thing, but here I am, regardless, because I'm supposed to be getting an early start today. Another restless night of dreams that weren't quite nightmares, but definitely had ambitions in that direction. And today the weather's cooler again. Not quite cold, but close. Too close for my reptilian ectothermic likings. At least the sun is shining bright. I think there's rain on the way.
I'll throw out an e-mail. I know it's the last resort of the not-quite-awake-enough-to-be-entertaining, but what the frell:
Hi Caitlin,
My apologies; I can't figure out how to do the fada on the 'i' in this e-mail. I just wanted to say that despite what your editor might think, I don't think there's anything wrong with The Queen of Light and Shadows as a title; it echoes T.H. White's The Queen of Air and Darkness. I don't know whether that would be a good thing or not, though.
Yours,
Greg Daly.
Hi, Greg. Thanks. At least you know what a fada is; if only I had a nickel for everyone who'd decided it wasn't worth the trouble to include the Gaeilge accent. At any rate, argh. (No, I'm not trying to sound like a pirate — that was an argh of frustration; then again, maybe pirates are just frustrated writers with wooden legs.) I'd forgotten about the T. H. White book, because it's also known as The Witch in the Wood (1939). Moreover, I wasn't even aware of the fact that there's a Poul Anderson collection (1978) of the same title, until I did a Google search just now. And really, The Queen of Light and Shadow might be too close, by my own reckoning. I do like the way it flows, but dislike unintentional allusion (anti-allusion?), which that would constitute. My editor might be just fine with it, maybe, but it would probably bug me for years. So, now I have to wonder if The Queen of Shadows is still good. Probably as good as it ever was. And, I should add, I sense something fundamentally unnnatural about trying to choose a name in front of the whole web-browsing, blogger-reading world. A bit like changing one's panties on a crowded freeway, I suspect. But I started it. And it's no more unnatural than "unnnatural," after all.
At any rate, I'm off to work on Low Red Moon. Spooky and I made it through the Prologue and Chapter One yesterday; today we need to do chapters Two and Three. The editorial letter wasn't the nasty beast I always dread editorial letters will be, but rarely ever are. But I think I may still not have enough distance from this novel to be objective about it. Of course, that will probably always be true.
|
|
