Jacqueline Carey
Feb. 5th, 2009 11:25 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
flighty_dreamsSo picking a top favorite is always hard, but if I had to pick a single favorite author out of the many, many books I've read, I would have to choose Jacqueline Carey. My two most favorite fictional characters (that includes books, movies, tv, etc., folks) were both her wondrous creations. Her Kushiel's Legacy series is a world rich and well-detailed, and inhabited by deep, complicated characters.
If I could acquire even a quarter of her writing talent, I would feel blessed. I'm getting a rare treat this year in that she's releasing two books in 2009 instead of just one. Can't wait!
So why am I posting about her now? I just wanted to share this short essay she wrote several years ago; she had a link to it in her latest blog post. It talks about mythology and angels and the genesis of ideas, etc. I recommend it; it's worth a read! (As are her books of course.)
Hope someone finds this interesting:
"All our archetypes derive from myth. The challenge is to make of them something new."
There's also a beautiful review of her debut novel on that same site, though rife with spoilers. It also contains a couple samples of her writing, if anyone is curious. Here is such a one, a description of the leader of Cereus House:
As everyone knows, beauty is at its most poignant when the cold hand of Death holds poised to wither it imminently. Upon such fragile transience was the fame of Cereus House founded. One could see, still, in the Dowayne, the ghostly echo of the beauty that had blossomed in her heyday, as a pressed flower retains its form, brittle and frail, its essence fled. In the general course of things, when beauty passes, the flower bows its head upon the stem and fails. Sometimes, though, when the petals droop, a framework of tempered steel is revealed within.
Such a one was Miriam Bousceuvre, the Dowayne of Cereus House. Thin and fine as parchment was her skin, and her hair white with age, but her eyes, ah! She sat fixed in her chair, upright as a girl of seventeen, and her eyes were like gimlets, grey as steel.
Work on Spliced continues, albeit slowly... I feel inadequate.
If I could acquire even a quarter of her writing talent, I would feel blessed. I'm getting a rare treat this year in that she's releasing two books in 2009 instead of just one. Can't wait!
So why am I posting about her now? I just wanted to share this short essay she wrote several years ago; she had a link to it in her latest blog post. It talks about mythology and angels and the genesis of ideas, etc. I recommend it; it's worth a read! (As are her books of course.)
Hope someone finds this interesting:
"All our archetypes derive from myth. The challenge is to make of them something new."
There's also a beautiful review of her debut novel on that same site, though rife with spoilers. It also contains a couple samples of her writing, if anyone is curious. Here is such a one, a description of the leader of Cereus House:
As everyone knows, beauty is at its most poignant when the cold hand of Death holds poised to wither it imminently. Upon such fragile transience was the fame of Cereus House founded. One could see, still, in the Dowayne, the ghostly echo of the beauty that had blossomed in her heyday, as a pressed flower retains its form, brittle and frail, its essence fled. In the general course of things, when beauty passes, the flower bows its head upon the stem and fails. Sometimes, though, when the petals droop, a framework of tempered steel is revealed within.
Such a one was Miriam Bousceuvre, the Dowayne of Cereus House. Thin and fine as parchment was her skin, and her hair white with age, but her eyes, ah! She sat fixed in her chair, upright as a girl of seventeen, and her eyes were like gimlets, grey as steel.
Work on Spliced continues, albeit slowly... I feel inadequate.
