The adventure continues…
Top 5 Top 5 Confessions about Auralia’s Colors, Chapter 2 – The Concert of Stitching
5. The first sentence was the first sentence about Auralia I ever wrote. Much of this chapter lasted ten years without much revision. (And Page 12’s description of House Bel Amica and House Cent Regus is like a little preview of where we’ll go in Cyndere’s Midnight and Raven’s Ladder.)
4. I wrote this book in hopes that people would read it aloud, and in Chapter 2 I feel I best achieved the kind of rhythms and style I’d intended for the whole series. Most readers tell me they prefer the faster-paced, plot-driven style of Cyndere’s Midnight, and that’s fine. But “A Concert of Stitching” is thick with the kind of stuff I love to write.
3. Spellcheck hates the Gatherers. Their speech, it’s a rough’n’rugged road, it is, lackin’ much of eloquence.
2. Some readers have complained about Abascar’s naming conventions. It’s simple: “Cal-raven ker Cal-marcus” means “Cal-raven, the son of Cal-marcus”… like “Aragorn son of Arathorn”. But I admit, the convention did become a bit cumbersome the more I wrote. If I had it to do over again, I’d drop the hyphens. (The third volume, Raven’s Ladder, includes some conversations about the character names and where they came from. You’ll learn about the meaning of names like Cal-raven, Ark-robin, and Tabor Jan.)
1. I’d love to see this scene in a movie someday. The faint firelight, the sounds of the stitching circle, the close-ups on Auralia’s face as she learns about the runaway Queen Jaralaine. I don’t know what happens when you read it, but it plays like a movie for my mind’s eye.
You can order Auralia’s Colors at Barnes and Noble, Eighth Day Books, Third Place Books, Elliott Bay Book Company, or the independent bookstore nearest you.
So who would you cast as Auralia?
So, who to cast as Auralia?
I’m not a big fan of the hyphenated names either. On the positive side, at least the book doesn’t require a pronunciation guide, as a lot of fantasy does. I HATE pronunciation guides.
I love this series, by the way. Any chance it’ll end right as Raven’s Ladder comes out?
That’d be master planning.
Man, the more I think about it, the more I believe I might have to go back and re-read Auralia’s Colors before I dive into Cal-Raven’s Ladder. I do prefer Cyndere’s Midnight to Auralia’s Colors, but I feel like CM’s contained so much plot-driven action combined with beautiful description that I kinda forgot about how lush and beautiful the language in AC was. I don’t read books twice too often, but I think re-reading them will enhance my appreciation of Cal-Raven’s Ladder in the long run.
And I know you can’t say too much, but what can readers expect from this next one? More plot-driven action like in CM? Back to extensive lush world-creating description like in AC? Or a mix of the two?
I had to laugh when I read your #2 item! I read this to my son and I uttered a pox on Overstreet every time I hit one of those hyphenated names. Seriously, are Tim and Mark not good names for characters in a fantasy novel?