[LMB] Re: (chat) series and titles (now with a spoiler for Legacy)

[Lois McMaster Bujold]

[LMB] Re: (chat) series and titles (now with a spoiler for Legacy)
Tora K. Smulders-Srinivasan tora.smulders at gmail.com
Thu Mar 29 09:38:04 BST 2007

  
On 3/28/07, Elvi Dalgaard <elvi at vl.videotron.ca> wrote:
 > Ha! That'll teach me to talk without research. I could have SWORN that I
 > knew long since that this was to be a double duology, i.e. four books in
 > all.


***  Well, so it has been, but only since, let me see, winter of '05 - 
'06, when I started the second duology.  Before that, it was to be one 
stand-alone rather oversized novel, already finished and turned in.  
Lead times, folks.

Well, actually, the whole thing started out as an idea for a novella.  
These Things Happen.



 >But there you go - it's amazing how the brain plays tricks.
 >
 > Elvi

We were told a long time ago that it was going to be a double duology.
 However, we were also told that the first (TSK:B & L) book was a
complete book about Fawn and Dag.


*** And so it was, and so it is.  Thematically complete and round.  In 
*my* opinion.

More comments at this time would be spoilerific (except to the lucky ARC 
readers); ask me about this again in the fall, and I'll give you chapter 
and verse.  The answer involves an exploration of the fundamental 
disparities of fantasy and romance structures/expectations.  And a great 
deal of authorial orneriness.

WGW moves on to explore a different but interlocking level of the themes 
explored in TSK, making it, to my mind, a different book even though the 
surface narratives are closely connected in time and sequence and 
causality.  Moving, in a sense, from the private sphere to the public 
one, individual to social, among other things.

And it couldn't still be a romance, drattit, not in the definition of a 
romance as a courtship story.  It had to devolve back to being a 
fantasy.  Those with dire romance allergies may contain their cheers; it 
still won't be the fantasy their genre expectations assume.  Or so I 
very much hope.  Some romance subplots here and there, maybe, but that's 
just not the same thing, or so it appears.


 I vaguely remember hearing that
Fawn's younger brother was going to be one of the protagonists for the
second duology, so same series, but different main characters, so
essentially, different story.  Sort of like CoC & PoS.



*** This is based on something I said, which was perceived in not quite 
the sense I intended.  Whit will be a major minor character; Dag and 
Fawn remain the sole viewpoint characters.  So, not like CoC and PoS.



 But now it
seems that the third book will be more of a sequel -- a direct
continuation of Fawn and Dag's story!


***  It's as good a way of putting it as any, yes.



Does that make sense?

I'm not sure if that's what everyone else thought, or it was just me,
but that's I how I see it!

-Tora

*** Ta, L.