A look inside Arthur's brain...
>My first podcast for Villainology is up! It's an interview with The Headless Horseman. Just click here: http://www.villainology.com/villainology/interviews/headlessh.mp3
It should play on your computer without much prompting. It will also be available on iTunes soon.
>Where do names come from? What do they mean? And more importantly how does a name affect your destiny? I was listening to CBC Radio on Saturday and they have a lovely show about the English Language called
And Sometimes Y. The topic this week was Name Games, and one of the specialist on the show spoke about how names affect who you become. For instance someone named Sasha might be more likely to go into the arts, or be a more gentle soul than say, someone named Viper. Or someone named Arthur may become an artist (or a writer). Obviously all sorts of factors contribute to the building of our characters, but your name is something that "points" to you. That's how they described what a name does.
Anyway it got me to thinking about how we authors name our characters. In Dust I called the evil rainmaker, Abram Harsich. I chose Abram because it's a biblical name, Harsich because it had a "Har(d)" sound and by adding "sich" it sounded kind of Eastern European. I wanted the name to "point" to the fact that Abram had been around for a long, long time. In my current project one of the evil characters is Miss Hakkadottir. Scary, eh? The good guy is Modo. I sometimes spend ages searching out names for my characters. Other times they appear out of the blue. Anyway, it's one of the (many) fun parts of this whole writing craft. Who else gets to name so many people?
Oh, and on another note found another nice review of Megiddo's Shadow at Relish Now. "Edward Bathe’s journey from teen to young man is a three-tissue read." That's good, right? I hope I get some kind of royalty from the tissue company!
>Ah, yesterday in the post the brand new copy of Villainology arrived. Woo Hoo. I'm impressed by Derek Mah's artwork once again. And the invisible man on the cover is soooo cool. Really.
There it is on my desk next to a cup of hot chocolate and cuddling up to a copy of Monsterology. I'm very pleased with how the book turned out, as you can probably tell. And it's officially my eleventh published book. Yay, for lucky number eleven!
Here's the table of contents:
1. The Wicked Witch of the West
2. Attila the Hun
3. The Wolf
4. Billy The Kid
5. The Headless Horseman
6. Morgan Le Faye
7. Qin Hui
8. Shakespearian Villains
9. The Invisible Man
10. Emperor Nero
11. The Queen (from Little Snow White)
12. Scarface Capone
13. Scrooge
14. Phantom of the Opera
15. Mephistopheles
Cheers!
>Yep, good ol' Sweeney Todd didn't make the Villainology cut. He won't be standing side by side along with Attila the Hun and Emperor Nero. What does a villain have to do to make it?
Sweeney Todd: A fictional barber who lived on Fleet Street in London. Anyone who bumbled in looking for a shave and a haircut, ended up getting a deep throat cut. Sweeney then chopped up their bodies and put them in pies. People pies is what they were called and they sold well. Sweeney first appeared in a penny dreadful (a really cheap story that sold for a penny) called "The String of Pearls: A Romance" (1846) that was likely written by Thomas Prest. Next came a play then musical after musical after Musical. Ah, there’s nothing more musical that cutting people up and stuffing them in pies. Kinda makes you wonder what everyone was eating in Oliver Twist. Sweeney Todd may be based on someone real, but no one has ever proved it. I guess somebody ate the evidence.
Poor, poor Sweeney. Well, at least he keeps people singing. Which reminds me. There was a Heavy Metal band called Fist back in the '80's who had a cool song called Fleet Street. The lyrics were something like:
"Follow the baker,
The people pie maker,
Makin' people pies,
Evil in his eyes!"
Hey, it was a cool song. Still is. It's somewhere on my iPod right now.
Speaking of eyes, here's a villainous eye...any guesses who it belongs to?
Tune in next time when you'll find out why Lizzie Borden didn't make the cut. Get it, the cut? Maybe that should be the whack.
>Well, a nice review for Megiddo's Shadow from Ventura Country Star. I'm always happy to see a good review. It's a real pick-me-up first thing in the morning (although it's evening as I write this, I'm a slow blogger). It's always an odd feeling to think that my book is being read so far away (Ventura is in California, I'm in Saskatchewan, Canada). My books have a more exciting life than I do.
Which is fine. I'm just here to write them.
The real trick of this writing biz is to not read the bad reviews first thing in the morning, tho. That's a buzz kill!
>Ah, the scythe of the editor's mind. Oh, and that whole page limitation thing. Here's another villain who ended up on the cutting room floor.
Svengali: a hypnotist who stars in George Du Maurier's 1894 novel, Trilby. Ok, it’s a boring title, but it’s all about Svengali, a crappy musician who hypnotized Trilby (a girl) and turns her into a famous singer. He lives in luxury off of her concert performances. Then in the middle of a show Svengali has a heart attack and dies. Tribly wakes up, with no memory of being able to sing. The audience shouts at her and she has a nervous attack and dies later that night. Can’t anyone write a happy ending anymore?
Alas, goodbye Svengali.
Oh, hey speaking of Villains who are in the book, here's a body part from one. Can you guess who?
And it's not Scarface.
Have a gleefully villainous day!
