11:51 am - Guess what -- I lied.
Decision made; now I can stop being cryptic.
What I said a few months ago? Yeah, change of plans. This is the book I'm writing next.
AND ASHES LIE
September, 1666. In the house of a sleeping baker, a spark leaps free of the oven -- and ignites a blaze that will burn London to the ground.
Six years ago, the King of England returned in triumph to the land that had executed his father. The mortal civil war is done. But the war among the fae is still raging, and London is its battleground. There are forces that despise the Onyx Court, and will do anything to destroy it.
But now a greater threat has come, that could destroy everything. For three harrowing days, the mortals and fae of the city will fight to save their home. While the humans struggle to halt the conflagration that is devouring London street by street, the fae pit themselves against a less tangible foe: the spirit of the fire itself, powerful enough to annihilate everything in its path. Neither side can win on its own -- but can they find a way to fight together?
There's the requisite few paragraphs of handwaving, to give you a sense of what this novel will be. The Victorian book will still be happening, never fear; it just won't be happening now. For a variety of strategic reasons and a few serendipitous ones, we've decided it would be better for me to do this one first.
Yes, this does in fact mean I'm switching tracks after four months of research on what is now the wrong time period. Yes, this does mean I've got barely more time to prep this book than I did for Midnight Never Come. Yes, this does mean I'm crazy. But I think the Victorian book will benefit from having more time to cook in my head; nineteenth-century London is so big and complicated that I won't say no to working up to it more slowly. In the meantime, this one has had a number of factors swing in its favor, until it jumped up the queue and put itself at the top.
So. Great Fire. My, um, Restoration faerie disaster fantasy, I guess I'll have to call it. London go BOOM.
Kind of like my head.
Di
Hello,
The following title is now available for review in JFA. If interested, please drop me a line and be sure to include qualifications.
Sincerely,
Jeffrey
Folklore and the Fantastic in Nineteenth-Century British Fiction
Jason Marc Harris
$99.95/£50.00
Jason Marc Harris's ambitious book argues that the tensions between folk metaphysics and Enlightenment values produce the literary fantastic. Demonstrating that a negotiation with folklore was central to the canon of British literature, he explicates the complicated rhetoric associated with folkloric fiction. His analysis includes a wide range of writers, including James Barrie, William Carleton, Charles Dickens, George Eliot, Sheridan Le Fanu, Neil Gunn, George MacDonald, William Sharp, Robert Louis Stevenson, and James Hogg. These authors, Harris suggests, used folklore to articulate profound cultural ambivalence towards issues of class, domesticity, education, gender, imperialism, nationalism, race, politics, religion, and metaphysics. Harris's analysis of the function of folk metaphysics in nineteenth- and early twentieth-century narratives reveals the ideological agendas of the appropriation of folklore and the artistic potential of superstition in both folkloric and literary contexts of the supernatural.
Contents
Preface; An introduction to folklore and the fantastic in 19th-century British literature; Victorian literary fairy tales: their folklore and function; Victorian fairy-tale fantasies: MacDonald's Fairyland and Barrie's Neverland; MacDonald's Lilith and Phantastes: in pursuit of the soul of fairyland; James Hogg's use of legend: folk metaphysics and narrative authority; Ghosts 'grand ladies', 'the gentry', and 'good neighbors': folkloric representations of the spirit world's intersection with class and racial tensions in Le Fanu; Robert Louis Stevenson: folklore and imperialism; William Carleton and William Sharp: the Celtic renaissance and fantastic folklore; Conclusion: 2nd sight; Bibliography; Index.
About the Author/Editor
Dr Jason Marc Harris teaches at Michigan State University. He is the coauthor (with Birke Duncan) of a folklore study, The Troll Tale and Other Scary Stories (2001). Besides writing various articles about the interaction between folklore and literature, he recently provided an introduction to Robert Louis Stevenson's The Master of Ballantrae for the Barnes and Noble Library of Essential Reading Series (2006).
Further Information
Affiliation: Jason Marc Harris, Michigan State University, USA
ISBN: 0 7546 5766 3
Publication Date: 02/2008
Number of Pages: 248 pages
Binding: Hardback
Binding Options: Available in Hardback only
Book Size: 234 x 156 mm
British Library Reference: 823.8'0937
Library of Congress Reference: 2007023184
Extracts from this title are available to view:
Full contents list
Introduction
Index
ISBN-13 978-0-7546-5766-8
My next book (after I'm done the one I'm working on) is going to be historical fantasy too, in the 15th century, though, and in Italy with gypsies, angels and Medici dukes! I know what you mean about working up to it slowly. I find the longer all those historical facts simmer, the better broth they make. :D
Oh, YEAH.
Oh, I'll be waiting for that one.
Top of the world ma!
Hey, and you are neatly bracketing me again, because my next 17th century one is the Ben Jonson book.
We rock!
FIRE FIRE FIRE!
uhm. not that i support mayhem, or some such.
congrats. sounds fantastic.
London go BOOM!
By the way, the icon is awesome.
Thought you might find some part of that useful.