![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Alpennia: A diversity of experiences
Jun. 16th, 2015 11:03 amThis is your weekly reminder that my novels can be purchased either from the publisher, from online outlets such as Amazon, or from your local bookstore where you will almost certainly have to special order them but it's worth it because maybe they'll order extras to put on the shelf. (If local Bay Area people, for example, went into Borderlands in SF and asked, "Hey, why don't you have the Alpennia series? I'd really like to buy copies!" it could have ripple effects far beyond a single purchase, because they currently don't think my books are the sort of thing their customers are interested in. Because, you know, nobody has come in and asked for them.) Also, leaving reviews at Amazon or places like Goodreads helps bring my books to other people's notice.
*ahem* OK, that's out of the way.
In Chapter 5 of Mother of Souls we've come around to Luzie's point of view again. Now she's beginning to interact with the other continuing characters, although very much as an outsider to their little social circle. (It feels awkward to me to have her constantly thinking in terms of "Maisetra Talarico" and "Maisetra Sovitre" rather than Serafina and Margerit, but this is exactly the sort of context where I'm using address and reference to signal and manage characters' relationships to each other. (I went into that in rather excessive detail in this post.)
But when I came up with the heading for this post, I wasn't thinking so much of a diversity of social relationships, but of personal relationships. One trap I wanted to avoid in writing the Alpennia series was to have my characters and relationships be too much all of a sameness. When I first identified Serafina and Luzie as the "focal protagonists" of Mother of Souls I was thinking in terms of a standard romantic arc, complicated by the fact that Serafina still has a husband wandering about somewhere. But as I came back to working seriously on these first chapters, that's been shifting. The two of them are going to have a complicated, multi-layered, intertwined relationship evolving throughout the book. But it's not going to be a classic straightforward romance. There will be other relationships along the way. There will be several re-negotiations. And the eventual result will be something other than a predictable "happily ever after" (although I hope it will be just as satisfying).
People come together driven by a variety of needs and desires. Finding a place where one's own desires are met while satisfying another's entirely different desires is what makes for plot complications and drama. And neither of these women is really looking for (or expecting to find) romantic love in their lives. While Daughter of Mystery was definitely as much romance as it was adventure, and The Mystic Marriage had a clear romance arc along with all the other strands, I think it will be very hard to categorize Mother of Souls as a "romance novel" by any useful meaning of the term. I am somewhat in trepidation of what my publisher is going to say to this.
*ahem* OK, that's out of the way.
In Chapter 5 of Mother of Souls we've come around to Luzie's point of view again. Now she's beginning to interact with the other continuing characters, although very much as an outsider to their little social circle. (It feels awkward to me to have her constantly thinking in terms of "Maisetra Talarico" and "Maisetra Sovitre" rather than Serafina and Margerit, but this is exactly the sort of context where I'm using address and reference to signal and manage characters' relationships to each other. (I went into that in rather excessive detail in this post.)
But when I came up with the heading for this post, I wasn't thinking so much of a diversity of social relationships, but of personal relationships. One trap I wanted to avoid in writing the Alpennia series was to have my characters and relationships be too much all of a sameness. When I first identified Serafina and Luzie as the "focal protagonists" of Mother of Souls I was thinking in terms of a standard romantic arc, complicated by the fact that Serafina still has a husband wandering about somewhere. But as I came back to working seriously on these first chapters, that's been shifting. The two of them are going to have a complicated, multi-layered, intertwined relationship evolving throughout the book. But it's not going to be a classic straightforward romance. There will be other relationships along the way. There will be several re-negotiations. And the eventual result will be something other than a predictable "happily ever after" (although I hope it will be just as satisfying).
People come together driven by a variety of needs and desires. Finding a place where one's own desires are met while satisfying another's entirely different desires is what makes for plot complications and drama. And neither of these women is really looking for (or expecting to find) romantic love in their lives. While Daughter of Mystery was definitely as much romance as it was adventure, and The Mystic Marriage had a clear romance arc along with all the other strands, I think it will be very hard to categorize Mother of Souls as a "romance novel" by any useful meaning of the term. I am somewhat in trepidation of what my publisher is going to say to this.
