You’ve met Catirna Elkela, you’ve met Axel Pavlekel … and now it’s time to meet the link that holds them together: a rebellious whirlwind of a princess known to the public as Kityanka Elkela. (But between you and me, that’s not her real name.) She’s not mentioned in the story blurb. However, she’s the reason … Read more
Her name was Marceline Desbordes-Valmore. Born just before French Revolution, she lived at a time of great upheaval and hardship. However, like the best poets, she was able to spin her suffering into beauty, into poetry that still strikes the heart today. I discovered her while reading a little pocket book, sensibly titled French Poetry, several … Read more
As Stephen King advised in his book On Writing, “If you want to be a writer, you must do two things above all others: read a lot and write a lot.” There’s great truth in this for fiction writers. To write well, you not only have to practice — to actually write — but you also have to … Read more
Sometimes it’s possible to read too much. Not horizontally — that is, too often, or too widely — but vertically. By which I mean reading too many books at once. If you’re as excitable and easily distracted as I am, you know the pain. You start off reading one, maybe two books — a fiction and … Read more
In the last Character Spotlight, we had a look at The Whitemaiden‘s protagonist and main POV, Catirna Elkela. Today you’ll meet the secondary POV — the young, cursed sage Axel Pavlekel. This would be the sage mentioned in the story blurb: When a young sage turns up in the woods, tortured and cursed, a disgraced healer must … Read more