Chapter 17

[elandulin]

At last! I give you Chapter Seventeen, in which we meet more of the Thain’s family and Pippin sets himself to tackle both his children and the Wide World with regard to his future. I have no reasonable excuses for the long delay in creating it; it just took forever to write! It’s here: Read more... )

Comments

Hurrah, again!!!

[grannieof2]

So good to see the new chapter up! Writing it during the rampup to the holidays must have been an Herculean task. Thank you! A lovely post-Yule present.

I've just read through it once and want to go through again. First comments, though: I absolutely have fallen in love with Pippin's family. You're so good at creating unique individuals, even those who don't appear onstage for long. Your descriptions of the family dynamics made my heart warm and ache at the same time. These are truly remarkable people.

How close are they to actually leaving, then? Now that the Tooks are up to speed, and the Brandybucks know that major changes are afoot, what needs to happen before the two dear friends saddle up and take their leave of the Shire? I guarantee I'll cry when that happens.

I've been thinking at some point I want to print out A Secret Gate and Left Behind and make some nice covers and put these with my Tolkien collection. I've many children in my large family who will be Tolkien readers in the future; they will love these stories as part of the larger Tale. Would you have any objection to that? Of course I'm hoping Rowan and Sam give Rachel enough time to create more paintings for this chapter.

Thanks, Elanor! The Professor would be so pleased, I'm sure.

Re: Hurrah, again!!!

[elandulin]

Hello again! I am so happy to see you here, and so glad you like the Tooks! This chapter's purpose was mostly to help us get to know them a little--to know who it was that Pippin would be leaving behind. Of course, as Merry pointed out to Pink, there ARE a great lot of them, many more than their opposite numbers at Brandy Hall, and getting them all in there without lining them up like the Von Trapp Family Singers was a task in itself! :)

I THINK there will be at least 3, MAYBE 4 more chapters before they leave the Shire (this depends in great part on how many surprises the principles serve up--they have been known to submarine me before, which I'm sure you must suspect, having read Left Behind!). But, the titles must be transferred to the Heirs, and Berry and Tom's wedding must take place (in the presence of Tom's many brothers and sisters....). There are several tender domestic scenes at Tuckborough yet to come, and several rather tricky loose ends to tie up at Brandy Hall. Not to mention a couple of parties and then all those decisions about what to pack--what goes in the saddlebags and what gets shipped by trunk....No wonder Bilbo just ran off that first time without bothering to wash up the dishes! Saying goodbye is complicated!!

I am thrilled to think you would like to print these out for your collection, and you are certainly welcome to. How lovely! I did do a very limited printing of Left Behind when I finished it. The Word document was 70 pages, I think, and printed front and back, it was easily bound with a plastic spiral binding. I "borrowed" (ahem) a wonderful picture by the Polish Tolkien artist Catherine Chmiel for the cover, and printed up about ten of them, I think, which I gave away to people who had been helpful and encouraging while it was being written. I still have the file if you would like it (I could probably make it a pdf), or if you would like me to print and bind one for you. My e-mail is in my journal info if you need it. As for A Secret Gate, I have done so much work on it, I'm very much tempted now to actually look into some sort of vanity press (they used to call them that, I think) to get it decently printed and bound. It's too big for a spiral binding at this point, and I'm not sure what places like Kinko's could do with it. Maybe there are people here at LJ who have experience with their own collections; perhaps someone will have some advice on that score. It will be quite a project to print, I think. I have two printers and neither one of them do I trust to do a 2nd-side feed without messing things up!

I'm sorry it took so long for this chapter; I know I promised it wouldn't be four months again, and it was. Actually, I did come in under the wire, but the webmistress couldn't get to it for five days, and by that time it was indeed four months! I have ten pages of the next chapter done already, so hopefully....well, we'll just hope! :)