The RCW recently came across a New Moon Bookclub chat with Patricia C. Wrede, discussing Mairelon the Magician and writing in general. The original transcript was full of difficult to read spelling, capitalization, and punctuation on the girls' parts, so we have written a summary of the questions and answers pertaining particularly to the Mairelon world.
To read the original PDF transcript on the New Moon site, click here.
Patricia C. Wrede/New Moon Bookclub Chat Summary
Q: What inspired you to write Mairelon the Magician?
A: The seed crystal for "Mairelon" was actually a scene that never made it into the book at all, of a fight in a bar that Kim and Mairelon were invovled in. And then I had to figue out who these people were, and the book sort of came on from there.
Q: You have written other books set in this time period [the Regency]. What interests you about it?
A: At this point, part of it is the fact that I know it fairly well. Writing a book set in a historical period requires tons of research, and once you've done the work, it's a lot easier to use it again than to spend months or years researching something new!
Q: Was Kim based on anyone you know?
A: Not really. I don't tend to put real people in my books, because I don't understand real live people very well. I understand imaginary people much better. The only "real people" in my books are some of the cats in the third Enchanted Forest book -- two are mine and one belongs to some friends. But mostly I just make people up.
Q: Did you invent historical fantasy?
A: No, not at all. There have been historical fantasies around forever; there just aren't enough of them to make a whole sperate genre, so they kind of blend in with the "regular" sort.
Q: Was the Saltash Platter based on a real tray?
A: The Saltash Platter is actually a real thing; I inherited this enormous lovely silver tray from my grandmother, and that's what I used as the desciption. The bowl and the balls and the magic, I made up.
Q: Do you do any planning or pre-writing before beginning a book?
A: I plan and I plan; I do plot outlines and chapter outlines and all sorts of background notes. And then I write the first chapter, and it has nothing to do with any of my outlines, so I throw them away and start new ones. And then I write the second chapter, and it has nothing to do with my new outlines, so I throw *them* away and write new ones. I keep this up for about fourteen chapters, until I'm somewhere in the middle of the book, and after that I just write.
So I sort of know where the story is going -- I know the good guys are going to win. But for Mairelon, for instance, I thought it was going to end in London, in a warehouse, with a bunch of Dan Laverham's goons facing Kim and Mairelon. Only it just didn't work out. I think this ending was a lot more fun . . .
Q: Was the book written for teens?
A: I write my books for me, and it's been, um, a while since I was a teen. Right now, they seem to be taking most of my work and republishing it for the teen and YA markets. I don't get a lot of say in that part; the publisher decides the marketing stuff. I just make up the bit between the covers.
Q: Were the Sons of the New Dawn based on a real society?
A: The Sons of the New Dawn were based on a whole bunch of historical "secret societies" that they had in the 18th and 19th centuries. Most of the pretended to be about serious stuff, but they were really just excuses for young men to go out and drink and gamble and party all night in cool robes. So I made up a version that would fit in with my magical world.
Q: Did a lot of girls pretend to be boys during the Regency?
A: Nobody knows for sure, but I've seen some interesting and somewhat suspicious statistics that seem to indicate that nearly a third of casualties in battles turned out to be females who'd joined the army as men. Back then, you didn't need a physical to join the army so they could do that. And there are known historical examples; Deborah Sampson fought in the US Army in the Revolutionary War, and wasn't discovered until she was wounded. So it's safe to say that it did happen, though we can't say for sure how often.
Q: Did the cover turn out the way you imagined?
A: Which cover? There have been at least three. All of them had good points and bad ones. [Note: click here to read the RCW's in-depth study of these points] I think the "teen edition" -- the paperback that shows Kim dressed as boy, with Mairelon's wagon in the background -- is the most accurate, but the spooky original cover with the glowing Saltash bowl lighting up the two main characters is also kind of neat.
Q: Do you picture Kim differently than how she was drawn?
A: I'm not really a visual writer. When somebody asks me what the characters look like, I have to go back and see what I wrote about them. I don't have a picture of them in my head. If an artist gets somebody *totall* wrong, I can tell, but usually my reaction is more like, "Oh, so that's what she looks like, really . . ."
Q: Will there ever be a sequel?
A: You mean a sequel to Mairelon the Magician? There's one already -- MAGICIAN'S WARD. I don't plan on doing any more after that, but Caroline [Stevermer] and I are currently working on the third Kate and Cecy book (those are the letter game books, for people who don't know, and they're set in roughly the same time period, though they don't include any of the same fictional characters).