Share a book you can read again and again without getting bored.

Well, I have to admit I’m a big re-reader of novels. Often I wish I wasn’t, because just think of all the marvellous books out there I never seem to have time to read. But the simple fact is sometimes (if I’m having a bad day, for example) I return to a book I know I’ll love, rather than risk dissatisfaction with something untested.

Today I’m highlighting one of my all time favourite fantasy novels, The Lions of Al-Rassan, by Guy Gavriel Kay. I’ve mentioned it a few times before on this blog, but it’s so fabulous I’m plugging it again. I’ve read it about four times in the past 20 years (nearly) since it came out. And every time I love it.

If you take the novel at face-value, it’s the story of two powerful men from different and opposing backgrounds, each of whom falls out with his respective leader and is exiled to the same remote city where they form an unlikely friendship and mutual respect. The other main characters are a female physician from an outlawed culture, and a young soldier whose personal journey shows how one’s perspective and allegiance can change through experience.

The official book blurb (from Amazon) reads:

Over the centuries, the once stern rulers of Al-Rassan have been seduced by sensuous pleasures. Now King Almalik of Cartada is on the ascendancy, adding city after city to his realm, aided by his friend and advisor, the notorious Ammar ibn Khairan–poet, diplomat, soldier–until a summer day of savage brutality changes their relationship forever. Meanwhile, in the north, the Jaddite’s most celebrated–and feared–military leader, Rodrigo Belmonte, and Ammar meet. Sharing the interwoven fate of both men is Jehane, the beautiful, accomplished court physician, whose own skills play an increasing role as Al-Rassan is swept to the brink of holy war, and beyond….

In a magnificent setting, hauntingly evocative of medieval Spain, The Lions of Al-Rassan is both a brilliant adventure and a deeply moving story of love, divided loyalties, and what happens to men and women when hardening beliefs begin to remake–or destroy–a world.

I love this book for its marvellous characters, thought-provoking drama, and poignant love triangle.

Every time I read it, I get something new out of it. Spending time with these amazing characters in this richly evocative world is a truly immersive and inspiring experience.

It doesn’t take much insight to realise there’s a whole lot simmering beneath the surface of this novel. The fantastical world is an alternate version of medieval Moorish Spain, which experienced a Golden Age of tolerance, art and philosophy, where people of different cultures and religions lived side-by-side in harmony… until it all started to crumble.

Set against a backdrop of the fall of Granada — the last Moorish stronghold in Spain — and the legend of El Cid (who was historically much earlier, but this IS a fantasy novel), The Lions of Al-Rassan explores themes of how religion can underpin prejudices, alliances and conflict.

Says Kay in a 1995 interview with Solaris, reproduced on his web site Bright Weavings:

“Lions is mainly about how organised religion takes away the freedom and breathing space of individuals… I wanted to see what would happen to people’s preconceptions and prejudices about cultures: Christian, Moslem, Jewish, if the names were changed and if the religious beliefs were rendered virtually banal: one religion worships the Sun, another worships the Moon, and another worships the stars. And out of that relatively banal conflict of ideologies, you have crushingly brutal military and psychological conflict.”

I get so much more out of the novel, knowing this.

Moreover, this novel was the number one reason I tailored my last European holiday around visiting the Alhambra in Granada, which provided much of the inspiration for The Lions of Al-Rassan. Here’s one of my favourite photos from that visit.

Nasrid Palaces, The Alhambra, Granada, Spain (my photo)

For further information, reviews and discussion about this remarkable book, visit the dedicated page (with links) on Kay’s web site.

If you’re interested in my travels in Andalucia (the relevant part of Spain), see this series of posts on my other(earlier) blog. This one is about the Alhambra specifically.

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Other participants in today’s WANAFriday blogfest are:

• Margaret Miller shares On the Beach by Nevil Shute
• Rabia Gale shares ??? (page not published until Friday US time)
• Linda Adams observes a common thread to her favourite re-reads

I’ll update this list as more posts become available.

We’ll be tweeting to #wanafriday and tagging blog posts wanafriday as well. If you care to play too, please post your link in the comments and I’ll update the post. Or just join in!

Or, if not, please do share your favourite re-reading books in the comments. I’d love to hear about them.

Here’s the thing. Normally I get just two meals a day. Meager meals. One in the morning and one in the evening.

And always the same food — some expensive dry concoction to stop me from getting urinary tract infections. It’s really all rather dull.

In the morning, I have to sit on Ellen’s pillow and jab her scalp or cheek with my claws until she wakes up. (Have you seen the famous Simon’s Cat clip?) She can never withstand this treatment for very long, and will invariably stagger out of bed and scoop out my food using a measuring spoon.

Did you register that? A measuring spoon. She measures out my food. Every day.

It’s the same deal when she gets home from work. Straight for the measuring scoop… My daily allocation is a pathetic 1/2 cup of dry food every day. (Yeah, OK, I know it’s a nutritionally balanced and calory rich vet food — whatever.)

Now, I know I’m not as svelte as I could be. In fact, the vet suggested Ellen cut down my food even further in an attempt to slim down. But if you think I’m going to stand for having my already tiny meals scaled down even further…

Well, I’m not.

I’m sooo not doing that, I’ve figured out (while Ellen is not working) how to con her into feeding me extra!

It’s actually ridiculously easy. All I need to do is ask.

Yep. All I need to do is jump up onto her desk and get in her face while she’s trying to work, and I get food. Every day she’s home I get an extra scoop. Some days, if I’m persistent and start early enough, I even get two extra scoops.

She grumbles and tells me I’m going to get fat, but she keeps on feeding me because at least it gets me out of her face. (Cold nose on her cheeks… furry rump on her mouse cord… teeth marks on her wrist… )

It’s too too simple. Now I’ve fooled her into thinking three scoops every afternoon/evening is normal, whereas before it used to be two. She’s even adjusted the settings on my automatic feeder, used when she goes away.

I’d call that a victory. Devilcat 1… Ellen 0…

Now, what rule shall I overturn next?

It’s been a long time coming, but here finally is the next in my A-Z of FANTASY series… And it’s been rather tricky to decide which of the many ‘F’ fantasy words should get top billing.

Should it be

Forest – A large area covered chiefly with trees and undergrowth

… in which many fantasy adventures take place? After all, Middle Earth would be something quite different without Mirkwood, Fangorn or Lothlorien. Or perhaps

Fire – Combustion or burning, typically giving out bright light, heat, and smoke

… which is the cornerstone of any good overnight camp when questing in the wilderness; not to mention essential for the hearth in any self-respecting castle or FORT? And then there’s the

Friend(s) – A person whom one knows and with whom one has a bond of mutual affection (pal – mate – chum – buddy – comrade – fellow – companion)

… the essential complement to our esteemed hero. So many fantasy epics feature memorable and merry bands of friends — such as Garion’s lively bunch of travelling companions in David Eddings’ Belgariad and Mallorean series.

But I’ve decided to go with

Faerie – A tiny, mischievous, imaginary being

… because Faeries in their various guises hark back to the earliest FOLKLORE in many cultures. Faeries and fairies have been appearing in fantasy storytelling since the dawn of time and so on until this day…

And an honorable mention to

Fight – To take part in a violent struggle involving the exchange of physical blows or the use of weapons

… because we are talking about fantasy, which embraces swordwielding heroes and bandits, archers, bar brawls, border skirmishes and mega-scale wars.

Some of my favourite fantasy authors beginning with F include:

• Lynn Flewelling — Author of the Nightrunner series and Tamir Triad. The first three of the Nightrunner books (Luck in the Shadows, Stalking Darkness, Traitor’s Moon) are among my favourite fantasy adventure reads.
• Raymond E Feist — Author of all those books that started with Magician, which was one of the earliest fantasy novels I ever read. I haven’t read Feist in a long time, but those early novels of the 1980s (Magician, Silver Thorn, A Darkness at Sethanon) will always be close to my heart.
• Jennifer Fallon — A current Australian fantasy author, whose Second Sons trilogy I particularly enjoyed (although it has been pointed out to me recently these could actually be classified as science fiction).

Finally some notable characters:

• Frodo (enough said!)
• Fitzchivalry Farseer and the Fool from Robin Hobb’s majestic Farseer and Tawny Man trilogies

And that’s kind of where I’m at with F.

As usual, please contribute any additional fantasy F words — including authors, books and characters — you can think of! I’d love for the discussion to continue…

Image courtesy of Wikimedia commons.

Share a favourite or inspiring piece of art

And I have chosen Sandro Botticelli’s famous painting, La nascita di Venere (The Birth of Venus) from 1486.

I love all Botticelli’s paintings — ever since I first saw them in Florence’s Uffizi Gallery many years ago. I can still remember the breathless wonder with which I simply sat in the Botticelli room. Sat and stared and felt.

They are so beautiful. How I would love to have one on my wall.

Here’s a detail of Venus. Even a digital reproduction on this blog takes my breath away.

How could you not be inspired by that?

Check out some of the other contributions to today’s theme:

• Rabia Gale shares her favourite painting, Large Blue Horses
• Siri Paulson shares the wondrous sounds of Barbara Furtuna
• Liv Rancourt shares a painting of Christ and St Michael
• Linda Adams shares the colours of Washington DC
• Margaret Miller ponders how she decides on a favourite piece of art
• Tami Clayton discovers she prefers photography to paintings
• Cora Ramos shares the amazing painting Dance me to the end of love
• Kim Griffin shares several pieces of art she finds inspiring

I’ll update further links as they come to hand.

We’ll be tweeting to #wanafriday and tagging blog posts wanafriday as well. If you care to play too, please post your link in the comments and I’ll update the post. Or just join in!

Images courtesy of Wikimedia commons.

This week’s theme is PATTERN and the following photo is of the gardens in Chateau Villandry in the Loire Valley, France. I took this in October 2010 on my basic Canon Sureshot (and I’ve cropped it).

I really like the colours in this photo — and it’s not retouched (I wouldn’t know how). Note the pumpkins!

We cycled to the chateau from Tours, and it was my first time on a bicycle in a great many years. I couldn’t believe how uncoordinated I was — I think I nearly fell off a few times.

And I haven’t been on a bike since!

And now here are 10 things you may or may not have known about me:

Favorite color – Purple
It took me a while to realise I gravitate towards everything purple: iPhone cover, notebooks, clothes, plastic storage boxes, hair… You name it; if it comes in purple, that’s what I want!

Favorite animal – Cats
After all, I do live with one (even if she is a devilcat)! But I love cats of all shapes and sizes. Ultimately, one day, I rather think I’d like to live with a snow leopard.

Favorite number – 7
I have no idea why. It just popped into my head. But I think it’s because 7 is rather a good number for arranging objects in a randomly aesthetic manner.

Favorite non-alcoholic drink – Coffee
Duh. If you’re a regular reader of this blog and you didn’t know that . . . Coffee is my fuel, my clutch, the key to unlock my brain. Without coffee (a large skinny flat white, as we Australians say — the US equivalent would be a double-shot grande skim latte), I do not function. [PS -- I was actually asked the other day whether I wanted a double shot in my 'large' coffee . . . Duh!]

Favorite alcoholic drink – Red wine
Double duh. Yes, I am a red wine drinker. My wine club (Australian Wine Selectors) delivers me 1.5 cases a quarter and I store them in my wardrobe, once I’ve labelled and sorted into which year each bottle is to be drunk. Red wine is only slightly less necessary than coffee to help me function . . . although I do try to have wine-free days.

Facebook or Twitter? – Facebook
I have a love-hate relationship with Facebook. I love the way it enables me to keep track and have conversations with my friends in all different parts of the city, country and the world. I love my various groups, especially the WANA112 group of kindred spirits. I love the way you don’t have to chase up conversations, or miss conversations; they are all there to pick up on. (Twitter is a bit too transitory and fleeting for me, although I do tweet as @ellenvgreg.) However, I’m not a fan of promotional posts I haven’t subscribed to, and can find my compulsion to not miss anything somewhat binding. I’m working on this.

Passions – Chocolate . . .
Gosh, what an open-ended question. I’m just going to say chocolate and leave it at that.

Prefer getting or giving presents? – Giving
I don’t mean to sound all saintly, but the fact is I give way more presents than I receive, mostly to my various nieces and nephews. I love playing the role of ‘Professional Aunt No Kids’ (PANK) and enjoy buying presents for my little panklings excessively.

Favorite City – London, Madrid, Rome, Paris, Shanghai…
This question is too hard. I’ve lived most of my life in Melbourne, but I guess home towns don’t really count. Of those others I’ve visited (including the ones I’ve listed) I love those majestic cities with loads of personality, the cities you can easily spend three weeks in and still not see everything, the cities with architecture and style that is so unique and distinctive you couldn’t possibly be anywhere else…

Favorite TV Shows – Farscape, Buffy
There are many shows I have loved over the years. Yet two really do stand above the rest in terms of how many times I will sit down and watch them again. Farscape — the science fiction show about a motley group of escaped prisoners on a living ship; Buffy — the paranormal show about a girl and her pals who keep on saving the world.

***

Here are the rules of the Sunshine Award:

• Include the award’s logo in a post or on your blog.
• Link to the person who nominated you.
• Answer the above 10 questions about yourself.
• Nominate 10 bloggers.
• Link your nominees to the post and comment on their blogs, letting them know they have been nominated.

Here are 10 blogs worth checking out. I’m not promising they’ll continue on with the meme, because not everyone likes doing so, but nonetheless, I recommend paying them a visit:

• Tami Clayton (Taking tea in the kasbah)
• Liv Rancourt (Let’s have a devil of a good time)
• Siri Paulson (Everyday enchantments)
• Elizabeth Fais (Where the awesome begins)
• Mike Schulenberg (Realms of perilous wonder)
• Rabia Gale (Writer at play)
• SM Hutchins (Live wonderstruck)
• Kim Griffin (Forever, for now)
• Janice Heck (My time to write)
• Suzanne Stengl (Tuesday cafe)

Got any thoughts about my answers or answers of your own to share? Please do… Comments totally make my day. Thanks for reading.

Our next move is to get out of there. We ascend the stairs leading up from the chamber and emerge onto the eyrie on the side of the mountain, overlooking a picturesque river valley. In the distance shimmers something, perhaps another body of water. This could be our ultimate destination, the place where the Eye of Varrien is located, but our immediate plan is to check out the second of two tunnels leading from the eyrie. (The first being the one we used to arrive here last session.)

A cave-in and a rescue operation

Our rogue informs us the tunnel is unstable and soon we reach a cave-in with a boot (attached to a leg) sticking out of it. Most of us begin to retreat, but our cavalier paladin has other ideas. He starts excavating and causes a further cave-in, trapping himself.

Hmm . . . This is kind of serious. Saffir (our rogue) refuses to have anything to do with the fool, who ignored all her warnings, but Cal senses Intan might still be alive and Ash — with GREAT trepidation — starts digging him out.

The rescue operation takes 5 Bennies (re-rolls), causes another partial cave-in that nearly strands Cal instead of Intan, requires Ash to run and grab Alix (the cleric) to heal Intan who gets stuck trying to wriggle out, costs Intan his pack and cavalier-making enchanted armour (the latter is a good thing, we’ve decided), but gains him a magic short sword (+2).

We return to the original tunnel and descend the steps into the valley we came from. The next adventure — in which Ash goes hunting with Saffir, gets bitten by snakes, ends up with a temporary Constitution of just 1, yet SOMEHOW manages to survive this — seems almost tame by comparison.

Almighty thunder and snow storm

For the next few days we hole up to weather an almighty thunderstorm, which turns to snow. We manage to slay some wild boar that stumble across us (Cal puts them to sleep, making it easy) and Ash gets to use her ranger skills to smoke and preserve the meat — we first haul the raw meat back up to the eyrie, where there’s shelter and fuel. Thus provisioned, we are now ready to continue on down the valley when the weather clears.

The staircase we’ve just descended into the original valley (for the umpteenth time) has a twin, also cut into the mountain side, on the other side of a lake lapping the cliff face. Rather than clamber across the rock face in the wet weather — a death trap, surely — we circumnavigate the lake to reach the foot of the second staircase.

On the way, we camp in the forest without incident, but then battle some wargs and orcs which decide to hunt us down the next morning. We come through relatively unscathed and ascend the second staircase to investigate where it might lead.

Up the second staircase

Although we assume this staircase leads to the second tunnel we attempted to explore when up at the eyrie, it seems too unfathomable for the ancients to build two tunnels so close together with the exact same destination . . .

We are rewarded when we discover another tunnel branching off the main one. Ooooh! Maybe it goes somewhere interesting! There’s little if no hesitation and we’re heading along it.

Soon we arrive at the site of what can only have been a massive cataclysm of sorts in the middle of the mountain. The side of the tunnel falls away d o w n d o w n d o w n . . . And upwards too — as though there’s been an explosion or landslide or eruption inside the mountain. The sides are black and glassy.

A narrow (and fragile) ledge

A sliver of the rocky path remains, a mere ledge, but we figure we can negotiate it so long as we tie ourselves to ropes . . . Alix our cleric has the most difficulty and swings from her ropes for a while, but eventually we all manage to make it to the other side, having mostly destroyed the ledge, which crumbles away — meaning it will be tricky to retrace our steps.

Ah well, onwards and upwards!

We proceed down the tunnel, until we see in the distance an opening into what looks like a large chamber inside the mountain . . . And that is where we lay down our dice and give our heart-rates time to return to normal. (Mine was thudding and scudding all over the place.)

Once again, I really thought Ash was going to die during this session. Every time we play, it seems inevitable. And yet she keeps pulling though somehow. She also regained her lost constitution points, thanks to Alix’s Restoration Spell, but has now got damaged armour, which is not ideal.

I’m really looking forward to the next session — hopefully in about four weeks — and I haven’t a clue what will happen next!

Trick question for canny readers — how many separate staircases did we use in  yesterday’s session?

Look at them! Aren’t they pretty?

None of these are expensive (in pen terms), but they are a step above the average disposable ballpoint. I have this many because, like most writers, I reach for pens in all sorts of places — handbag, computer bag, coffee table, study… And once you start writing with a nice ballpoint, there’s simply no going back.

I also have so many because I’ve developed the habit of buying myself a new pen to cheer myself up or celebrate. Well, there are worse vices!

I’ve been giving my various pens a workout of late (did I mention the 32 scrawled pages of notes trying to figure out what was going to happen next?). And for this reason, PENS are my inspiration of the week.

This image also serves as my entry in the WordPress weekly photo challenge — From Above. I thought the photo might have turned out better (at least it did in my mind), but oh well.

Bring on the pens!

Are you looking for a change from disposable ballpoint pens? Perraz is a very inexpensive brand — three of mine are Perraz. Others are Parker and Shaeffer. Does anyone else treat themselves to small presents from time to time?

No, not “writers block”, per se. I knew where I wanted to go to reach the end of this novel, but I had many debates with myself as to which route I should take to get there.

Then of course there was Conflux itself, which took me out of action for five days. I daresay had I known what I wanted to write, I might have squeezed out some writing time and hit the 25K mark (maybe more), but as it happened I was happy enough to leave the WIP for a bit in the hope my subconscious might figure something out.

A total of 32 hand-scrawled pages later in my trusty writing journal, I finally figured out yesterday what should happen next. So today I got back into it and flung some words down after more than two weeks of pondering. I might only have the next three scenes figured out, but once they’re done I’m hoping the next segment will reveal itself.

The end feels so near, it’s hugely exciting. But still a few weeks away, I think.

Camp NaNoWriMo proved an excellent means of keeping tabs on myself during the month. I really like the community feeling of keeping pace with other writers, even if the “Camps” don’t have nearly the same level of energy as the November real deal. But simply having a place to log my words is really helpful — I really should resume logging my word outputs in a spreadsheet to see if that’s all I need.

How do others deal with obstacles in their creative process? Lots of brainstorming on paper as I do — or do you have some other proven method? Also, does logging your output help with productivity? I’d really like to know.

The centrepiece of this was the so-called “Smackdown — Small press versus mainstream publishers”. In this panel, Russell B Farr of indie Ticonderoga Publishing, literary agent and publishing consultant Alex Adsett, and Angry Robot’s Marc Gascoigne discussed the relative merits of indie presses, medium-sized publishers (such as Angry Robot) and the “big six”, er five.

The main interesting points to come out of this discussion were:

• Indie presses tend to offer superior speed of response to authors and speed to market, particularly when delivering in electronic formats (as most are).
• Even though most indie presses and new e-imprints of large publishers are not offering author advances (or else relatively modest ones), the gap is diminishing for new authors as major publishers have dropped the size of advances substantially.
• Prolific authors are likely to benefit from an indie press’s willingness to publish more than one title a year.
• Indie presses are more likely to focus on the long-term marketing of titles — and less likely to drop authors whose sales are not “performing”.

In all this Gascoigne positioned Angry Robot as somewhere in the middle. He acknowledged their association with larger publishers tended to impact agility, but I got the impression they embraced the more caring attitude towards authors. The discussion was on the whole favourable towards the smaller scale end of things…

It would have been good to have a large publisher represented on the panel to get a more balanced perspective on aspects such as distribution and the benefit of a big publisher’s reputation with readers — I still believe these carry weight with much of the general public. There is a significant percentage of people who buy books from browsing in bookshops, or who expect a book they’ve heard about to be available in hard copy from the local shopping centre.

Nonetheless, it’s good to see so many positive attitudes towards indie presses and even self-publishing. Because all authors know how hard it is to get picked up by a major publisher, and, even if that would be our first choice, it’s encouraging to know there are serious alternatives.

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Alex Adsett also presented a separate talk about contracts and copyright for authors — all very informative, particularly the aspects dealing with e-publishing.

Among other things, she explained the difference in royalty agreements. Whereas standard print royalties are 10% of the RRP, e-book royalties are typically a percentage of net receipts (the amount actually received by the publisher in sales). The e-book royalty will typically be 25% of net receipts for trad publishers and 40-50% for digital-first publishers and imprints. If you self-publish it’s somewhere around 70%, although it’s evidently 85% at smashwords. (This is all very interesting from the perspective of a buyer as well.)

Alex also emphasised the importance of having a reversion clause for e-books as well as print. Because e-books don’t ever technically go “out of print”, the reversion clause should relate to sales volumes. For example, she suggested the reversion clause might state the rights revert to the author if the book is downloaded less than 100 times in 12 months.

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As far as the speculative fiction genre goes, Marc Gascoigne said several times that SFF books are automatically “mid-list” from a large publisher’s perspective. With the exception of George RR Martin, JK Rowling and Tolkien, SFF rarely hits the overall best-seller list. This, then, is a starting disadvantage for new SFF authors with the major publishers.

Nonetheless, Martin in particular has done wonders for the fantasy genre of late, with a current resurgence in publication of new epic fantasy series. Some would say a glut, in fact, as a new audience has discovered the genre. The first wave of these (bought post-season-one of Game of Thrones) are hitting the shelves around now. It remains to be seen how long this trend will last — although Gascoigne posited that fantasy is still here to stay for the long term.

This seems to me a very good thing.

This ends my Conflux 9 round-up posts. (The first on a worldbuilding workshop is here, the second on the importance of having a pitch ready is here.)

I had a fabulous time at the convention, even if I spent most of it lounging and chatting over coffee or in the bar having drinks. The main reason I went was to hang out with other writers, industry pros and readers, to participate in stimulating conversations, and meet new people. All achieved!

Sometimes we just need to be with our people. Don’t you agree?