Saturday, December 11, 2010

We're working on the electronic press kit (EPK) for the book, to be sent to bloggers and teachers and librarians and other influential folk in the hopes they'll read and recommend the book. My marketing assistant has been after me to create a Twitter account for Morgan to tweet from. I sent her a memo last night that might be interesting:

I was thinking about the tweets you wrote. It seems to me that if Morgan were tweeting, it would be things like:

Today I sheltered in darkness and warmth. Yesterday, out in the bright and cold. Summer overflows. Winter makes sharp choices.

Bitter cold today. Quiet descending into the bones of the land.

Strange how the fallow time is only till Solstice. But it’s true. You can feel Earth stirring after Solstice, even if Water is frozen.

Lit candles and said ancient words. But the powers themselves are wordless. The words are for us.

I don't know if anyone would want to read that, but she would tweet about magic. Occasionally about vengeance. Or pain. Or longing.

I think the Buffy tone is not right. I bet lots of YA books go after that tone. The tone of this book is serious.

I think what sets this book apart is that it takes magic seriously. You could read this book and, if you had the ability to do magic, you could go do magic. It's not about waving a wand around and saying things in Latin. It's about invoking power into yourself through will and talent and craft.

I think the book also recreates the time well. It's set in the time when Arthur must have lived -- in Post-Roman Britain, not in medieval England. And it presents that world in a gritty way, based on detailed historical research. For example, our book's Ireland has no chimneys, and no horses to ride, only chariot ponies. Christianity is only just coming to an illiterate, pagan, barbarian land, and it's a new, scary thing. The Irish still refuse to wear armor in battle.In Britain, the ruling class consider themselves Romans, but Rome has been sacked. I think the book gives a refreshing sense of how you felt living then, and how different that was from now, or from Sir Thomas' Malory's medieval England, or from Britain only a hundred years before under the Roman Empire. It was a time when all bets were off.

Teachers and librarians will probably dig the history more than the magic. And some bloggers will dig the magic more than the history.

I think it's a mistake to present the book as something it's not. We would lose the natural audience of the book, and the book would turn off any readers drawn by a flip presentation. This is the book for readers who think HARRY POTTER is, well, a bit cutesy, and THE MISTS OF AVALON is a little too modern and New Age and ... reasonable.

Morgan is not reasonable. That's why I love her. She is Celtic. She is a hard core, old skool character, like Medea, or Judith in the Bible. I don't know how many YA novels allow their heroine to be seriously flawed. I think Morgan is fascinating because her tragic flaw -- her inability to let go of vengeance -- is exactly what gives her strength and even her identity. She is a heroine because she is flawed.

I think the EPK should make these points. To recap, TCC:

a. takes magic seriously

b. shows a strange time in a gritty, realistic, you-are-there way, that happens to be historically dead on

c. has a badass heroine whose flaw gives her strength, but denies her grace.

Oh, and, "poetic terseness." I love that.

Labels: Wicca

11:26 AM

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Saturday, October 31, 2009

Starhawk is one of the Big Witches in the modern Wicca movement, and Reclaiming is her San Francisco coven / community.

The video looks kind of cool and kind of silly. To some extent I guess you have to be there. To some extent, any public ritual looks a little silly. There's a big difference between working real magic in your coven and working a public ritual. In your coven, it's all about where you are spiritually. I remember our high priestess drawing down the Moon once, and I could swear she really had invoked something or someone ancient into herself.

In a public ritual, the leaders have to project what they're doing so the people in back can see it. Which means they can't really go to the same spiritual places they would in a private ritual. It's theatre; and after all, theatre started as ritual.

It's rare to find someone who is a truly spiritual person and a great showman. Myself, I've always envied people who could really take themselves somewhere else in a ritual. I can write a good ritual, and I absolutely know what it should feel like, but I can never really turn off my thinking brain, and that gets in the way.

But the Spiral Dance always raises power. And it looks like Starhawk is a great showman in addition to being an influential spiritual thinker. I bet there's a lot of power flowing around the circle tonight.

Happy Samhain! Blessed be!

Labels: Wicca

10:15 AM

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