graycardinal | Yuletide: Post-Reveal Notes (Reply)

And so 2008 has arrived, the Yuletide author credits are up, and folk are madly wandering round the LJverse hunting Santas. (Elmer Fudd voice: "Be vewy vewy quiet, I'm hunting witers!") While I don't anticipate vast hordes of groupies trampling the furniture hereabouts, both of the stories I wrote have attracted a number of comments and a handful of recs, so it seems appropriate to provide a bit of commentary here.

So:

About The Solitary Sorceress of Oz:

This isn't actually the story I'd initially planned to write. I had a plot in mind very early concerning Uncle Henry, Aunt Em, a unique piano, and two sets of very small critters with Interesting Abilities. However, I spent too much time plotting and not enough time drafting, and I realized as the deadline approached that I had considerably more plot in hand for that story than I did time to get it written down.

So I set that story aside and started thinking about what I did have time to finish. That led me almost at once to Glinda. Her origins are never discussed in any of Baum's Oz books, and to my surprise, neither Thompson nor any other major Oz author seems to have addressed the matter either. [Incidentally, I highly recommend The Royal Timeline of Oz as a fantastic source of information on all things Ozian, including links to original Oz stories.] It also occurred to me that in canon (as Trot points out in the story), it's very rare to see Glinda except when someone needs her help.

I chose Trot to investigate Glinda's origins for a couple of reasons, not least because she is easily my favorite of the three girls who've taken up residence in Ozma's palace. I never really warmed to Betsy Bobbin, and post-Emerald City Dorothy seems to me to lose some of the sense of wonder that makes the first few Oz books as special as they are (also, having the Magic Belt at her disposal makes it difficult for writers to provide Dorothy with much in the way of adventuring challenges). Of the three, Trot's the one who actually tends to go looking for adventures, and the contrast between her small stature and her outsized curiosity makes her particularly appealing to me.

And from there, virtually all that was needed was to put the two of them together. Trot's questions about Glinda's past mirror my own as I looked back at the early Baum books, and the answers -- Glinda's mortal origins and her essentially self-taught powers -- provide a clear, straightforward explanation of why she didn't intervene in Ozian history sooner than she did. That said, the story introduces an even more mysterious puzzle: who originally built the Quadling castle and stocked it with all those books and magical instruments? (I deliberately didn't even try to explain that one, and I don't have the faintest idea what the answer is.) Fortunately, the story is as much about Trot and Glinda making friends as it is about Glinda's secrets, and that gave me an enough material to hang an ending on.

The comments on Solitary Sorceress have been wonderfully gratifying; I was trying very hard to work within the framework of the extended Oz canon in tone as well as detail, and it's good to know that the attempt seems to have succeeded.

About The Story of the Djinni and the Professor:

I have been an Arabian Nights fan since I was knee-high to the proverbial grasshopper. When I was very small, we visited my grandparents' house for a week in June, another week in August, and sometimes after Christmas, and while they had lots of books, there were only about four that I found remotely interesting -- one of them being a one-volume collection of many of the more familiar Arabian Nights stories. I've been scarfing up stories of djinni and sultans and disguised caliphs and scimitar-wielding thieves ever since (I particularly recommend Elizabeth Ann Scarborough's The Harem of Aman Akbar, the two Arabesques anthologies edited by Susan Shwartz, and the three-fourths of a glorious quartet written by Stephen Goldin, all of which deserve not to be out of print, darnit).

I am also, as a couple of commenters have deduced, an SF reader with a taste for Asimovian logic, and they've pegged this story precisely -- it's the classic "three wishes" problem crossed with a "science vs. magic" theme. From a writer's perspective, it's an easy plot to write; the hard part is making the execution distinctive. Arabian Nights stories live or die by their narrative voices; if you can't make the reader hear the sand blowing off the pages (or the LCD display), you're in deep trouble. And "three wishes" stories live or die on the strength of the twist in the tail; it can't be too easy to spot, but it also can't be too much of a curveball. As much of a challenge as those problems present, it was great fun writing this, and again, I'm inordinately pleased that people are enjoying the result.

Thanks very much to everyone who's commented on one or both of these stories; I'll be responding to the individual comments as soon as I can. (I believe I have emailed copies of all the responses to Djinni; several of the comments for Sorceress, however, appear not to have made it through the email engine.)