but hold me tight and fear not

Autumn is coming; I can smell it and taste it. Today is fey and wet and windy, and the tree I can see from my window is half orange already. The apple tree is heavy with fruit (and occasionally with cats, as Willow loves to settle on one of the top branches and smirk down at the world), the geese are flying, and I am lighting more candles than is usual even for me, enjoying the urge to pull my gothiest clothes out of the closet (to church yesterday I wore an ankle-length black lace skirt, and a very Edwardian black-with-cream-pattern blouse with black pearl buttons and lace edges, and my black and white stockings, of course), and craving even more psych folk than usual, which is pretty startling, but, you know. Last year the band that defined my autumn was Dark Dark Dark (also Nancy Elizabeth!); this year I suspect The Magickal Folk of the Faraway Tree might be important, rather. (Don't let the name fool you -- while they are very odd-sounding psych folk, they are also quite straightforward and gloriously listenable and accessible; no rambling lyrics that even T.S. Eliot would have trouble figuring out, weird droning melodies that take a lot of getting used to, or anything of that sort. Also, even their record label doesn't seem to know anything about them. I'm posting them on musicyardsale tomorrow.)

And with autumn, my folklore loving self roars to full strength; I am listening to Tam-Lin on repeat and realising tenfold how and why I love it so very much. It's got one of the best narratives of any ballad, I think -- the story is weird, but clear, and the characters are awfully well-defined for only occupying a few verses. (Okay, a lot of verses. It's a pretty long ballad.) And Janet. I love Janet so much. I love Janet so much that I think I've got to write a full Tam-Lin retelling someday, about Janet, and not Evangeline-in-the-Janet-role. Janet is the precedent for centuries of Awesome Women In Literature. She's like the godmother to girls like Robin McKinley's Harry Crewe and Sherwood Smith's Meliara and Emma Bull's Eddi McCandry -- fierce girls who fight for the people they love without losing their lovingness. One of my favourite things is that Janet saves Tam-Lin, not by grabbing a sword of iron and driving it through the Faerie Queen's heart, but by loving, by not letting the Faerie Queen's illusions fool her, by stubbornly loving Tam-Lin and holding onto him until he's become himself again. Considering that he turned into a snake and a lion and, in some versions, red-hot iron, that takes some hardcore fierceness. (Huh. When I'm doing the Novel climax, I wonder if I could attempt to represent the various aspects of Mr Caruthers' present and former personality as the traditional things Tam-Lin was transformed into in the ballad.) And I love that it takes place on Halloween, and I love the faeries, and the atmosphere of it, no matter the version.

Now, of course, I am no longer terribly irritated with my subconscious for insisting upon turning the Novel into a Tam-Lin retelling, among other things of course. It puts the pieces together ever so much more neatly. It helps to form the circumstances of Mr Caruthers' captivity amongst the vampires, and also leads me to understand that his in-thrall-ness isn't really finished just because the government got him away from the vampires and he's a librarian now. There's something that's keeping him in thrall until he or Evangeline figures out how to break it. That also explains how and why he's the tithe, whatever that means. The vampire woman who originally led him into this mess must be the Faerie Queen role, and maybe she isn't dead (in a manner of speaking... you know what I mean), I don't know. (Related note: what would you lot think of Reynardine as a taken-name by a female vampire?) I am also pursuing the idea that after his several years of dealing with the vampires and messing in dark things far beyond his ken, Mr Caruthers, like Sunshine* -- like Tam-Lin -- is no longer quite human. Maybe he gained some extra senses when he was learning magics from the vampires. He's probably a little harder to kill, anyway. I'm not giving him Sunshine's night-vision because it always made me sad when she has trouble reading and stuff, like Giles' nightmare-come-to-life when he can't read anymore that makes me really, really sad (and unleashes a flood of OMG GILES YOU ARE SO ADORABLE AND I LOVE YOU), but maybe some vampire-like ability similar to that? Not the urge to eat incredibly raw steaks though, ew. I suppose he could have a little of that ability to appear and disappear suddenly and quietly, cos I've always loved that. Maybe some enhanced hearing/smelling/seeing? ("Didn't anybody ever tell you the whole smelling people thing's a little gross?") I don't know, but that explains why the government really wants him on hand.

* Blimey, every time I read that top blurb I shake my head in consternation. If they described Con as "Dracula's hunky Byronic cousin" they clearly did not actually read the book. What part of "skin the colour of rotting mushrooms" and the bit where his laugh is still spine-unhinging terrifying even when he and Sunshine are friends do you not understand? And Sunshine's narration is bloody well not in "the idiom of Britney, J.Lo, and the Spice Girls", for heaven's sake. (Actually, after having read Robin McKinley's blog, I'd say Sunshine sounds an awful lot like a younger, less British McKinley -- biting and clever and well-read and not just intelligent but interested.) Sorry, I get awfully defensive on the subject of one of my favourite novels.

I don't know; looks like I've got to keep writing. Blah, this is hard. But... I've never got so deep into a novel before. I understand the story far better than I have any of my previous tries, and I have fifty pages of in-order story, and an actual half-idea of where it's going to end up. And the research, oh joy, what I swore would never happen to me.

in which fangirling of mr caruthers' coat is canon

An excerpt from the Novel, mostly for lady_moriel, who suggested -- nay, begged -- that I include it somehow.

   [Mr Caruthers] flung his scarf around his neck, donned his hat, and nodded. “Good night,” he said, and swept out the door and down the stairs.
   “I like his coat,” said Briony approvingly. Evangeline turned round to see her sister peering round the doorjamb with a thoughtful expression. “It’s a bit magnificent, don’t you think? Swirling about as it does.”
    “I… had never thought about it,” said Evangeline.

(Currently writing my fifty-second page! \o/)