Maura McHugh has an incredibly nice and super insightful review of Flora Segunda on her blog. Of all the reviews I've gotten so far, Maura's the only one to point out a few effects I was working hard to achieve, and which--since no one else had noted them--I feared I had utterly failed to achieve.
All good reviews are delightful, of course, but this one is particularly pleasing. I find it easy to get all the whiz-bang adventurey hi-jinks down, it's the subtle stuff that is so very very hard. Trying to strike a balance between telegraphing your sub-text (and then it's hardly subtext any more is it?) and being so sub-textual that you are sub-sub and no one notices--that's a difficult teeter-totter to stay on.
Thank you, Maura!
An inquisitive reader asks:
How did you come up with the characters for your spoken magic? Are they taken from the alphabet of a real-life language I'm just not familiar with,or did you actually somehow digitally manufacture a font?
I know it's a real pain for typesetters to have to deal with weird characters or fonts (and alas that several of the letters I use, including the eth in Ha<eth>raa<eth>a and Landa<eth>on, are not standard to most fonts). I've been lucky so far in that the publishers I've dealt with have been very good sports about my wacky spellings and words.
Gramatica is supposed to be the language of those things which can not be spoken, in which Words can take concrete form. Therefore it's a non-alphabetic language. But how do you write down Words that can't be written down? Obviously, you have to use some sort of character set, but it was important to me that whatever these characters be, they not refer to aknown alphabet, nor they be easily read or pronounced.
In mss. form, I just use wing-dings to signify Gramatica Words, and I believe that is what The Magazine of Science Fiction and Fantasy used when they printed the two Hardhands stories. I know they had to manufacture an eth as it wasn't standard to the font they use--what they ended up with wasn't a perfect representation of the real letter, but it was close enough.
The credit for the super cool Gramatica fonts in Flora Segunda lies completely with Harcourt's book designers. Instead of just going with wing-dings, they decided to create their own non-alphabetic font, which they did to great effect. They also had a calligrapher design the wonderful title sequence. I was terribly pleased with how the Gramatica and the title calligraphy came out; Harcourt's desingers did a real whiz-bang job of coming up with lettering and symbols that are evocative and yet mysterious.
NB: In case you were wondering, in Califa eth is pronounced as a hard th. Therefore, Landa<eth>on is LandaTHon and Ha<eth>raa<eth>a is HaTHraTHa. In case you were wondering!
Why The Califa Police Gazette you wonder...
I'm so glad you asked!
Well, older hands (much much older--those who have reached their hundred and fiftieth year or so), may recall once seeing upon the newstands a pink papered publication entitled The National Police Gazette.
First published in the 1840s, the NPG was a cross between COPS and The National Enquirer. Under the guise of warning the public of the wickedness of the world, the NPG covered crimes, celebrity gossip, and rough sports, such as boxing and rat-baiting. Supposedly, the NPG was telling you all this for your own good, because only by knowing about badness could you avoid it, but it's hard to believe that the newspaper's public weren't reading it just for the good stuff.
And the good stuff was pretty good: scalpings, lynchings, high-wire electrocutions, white slavery, abandoned women, pugilists, acrobats, women in trousers, runaway horses, runaway brides, bagnios, and all the other news that the New York Times did not deem fit to print.
And to add to the NPG's charm, it was printed on pink paper!
In the 1860s, the NPG got on the illustrated bandwagon, and began accompanying its lurid articles with lurid black and white pen and ink drawings, and that really got its readership going. Photographs were still expensive and required absolute stillness, so drawings were the only way to capture a scene, and capture the scene the NPG's artists did, filling the pages of the newspaper with lightly clad ladies, train wrecks, execution scenes, horse stampedes, dog fights, and men jumping off the Brooklyn Bridge, among other events.
The NPG stayed in circulation well into the 20th century, but the rise of on-the-fly photography, and the development of cheap photo reproduction processes stole most of the paper's graphic thunder. People had other, more realistic outlets, for their baser urges, and they didn't need the NPG anymore. And eventually the paper died a unlamented death, the relic of another naughty age.
When I decided that Califa needed a similar publication, one which would act as shadow to the more respectable Alta Califa, Califa's paper of record, the National Police Gazette proved the perfect model, so I quickly appropriated the name. Alas, that my blog is not usually nearly as exciting or naughty at its namesake, once removed, still, I do strive to entertain, and to inform, and will try to be occasionally lurid, for old time's sake.
In the interest of entertaining my readers (currently numbering only three!) I have decided to inaugurate two new regular features, which I hope will provide plenty of infotainment for those who have honored me by checking in here regularly. You know who you are--thank you!
New Feature Number 1:
Queries:
Poking around on other blogs, I've noticed that some writers get lots of questions from their readers...no one's asking me any questions (pout)--so I figure I'll ask myself questions, and after a while maybe some one who is not me will pipe up with a query or two.
Questions can be about anything, butI reserve the right to stick with those I know the answer to. How do you query me? Send me an email...And keep it nice and clean, please...
New Feature Number 2:
Califa:
Here's where I burble on uninterrupted about all things Califa--geography, history, characters, food, fashion, etc. The whys and the wherefores, and what exactly was I thinking? Questions re: Califa stuff will also be entertained, also via email.
We now return to our regularly scheduled programing.
Thank you!
PS. What's my email address? Hint.
You didn't fail to telegraph those subtleties, because even I noticed them and I'm subtlety-challenged. But probably not many people will be able to describe the more subtextual dynamics quite as well as M. McHugh did. Instead you'll get kids saying things like, "My [mom/dad/so-called life] is just like that!"
Here's something I don't know if you intended to telegraph or not, but I was glad to see it (even if it turns out my wires were crossed and I'm making it up out of whole cloth): There's room for ordinary, even slightly gauche people in Califa too! So many of your citizens and denizens seem to be gifted with supersized globs of innate "cool." Take Ban ... yikes! downright intimidating! -- and Udo and Val seem like they're on a fast track to hipsterdom. But for me Flora was really true-to-lifesized and approachable from beginning to end, very easy to identify with, yet still a completely effective heroine. I liked her a lot. Consider the next installment bought.
Thanks Ysabeau, I'm glad you liked my review, but of course, it's just a reflection of your excellent writing. :)