Dear Yuletide Writer...

[rosemaryandrue]

Dear Yuletide Writer,

Firstly, thank you for offering to write in one of my tiny fandoms :) Secondly, please enjoy yourself. This is supposed to be fun. Write whatever you fancy about these characters and I'll enjoy it ^_^

Comments

[katyjo]

I didn't even see Pendragon on the list! Damn!

I love that book. It's one of those books that my father and I pass back and forth between us, depending on who needs to read it most at any given moment. I really should invest in another copy, just in case.

It's certainly one of the better retellings, although I have a soft spot for Sword at Sunset by Rosemary Sutcliff too.

One day I'll write my own version. I promised my Dad.

[rosemaryandrue]

I was beginning to think I was the only person in the world who'd even read it. I love it so much - I have to read it slowly so I can savour every word.

When I was writing the description here, I was thinking of Sword at Sunset, and how Sutcliff has that same intensively evocative style that makes The Sword and the Flame so evocative for me. (Both the copies I've encountered have been under that title - I got really excited when I found the mention of this book called Pendragon, before I realised it was the same book).

I've got the beginnings of my own retelling tucked away, but it scares me a little. Even the tiny bit I've written took over my life to a frightening degree - the people I was living with at the time had to remind me to eat.

[katyjo]

I know, it's all consuming. I keep thinking that I have to wait until I'm a better writer to tackle it, because I know that, for me, it'll be the most important thing I write. But I have to keep notes and thoughts and things as they come to me, in case they slip away again.

I suspect it will be a story I will tell for all my life, regardless of whatever else I write or do. Because, in so many ways, it is every story.

[rosemaryandrue]

*nods* There's so many different stories in there and so much of our modern literature has its roots in romance and legend that it would be hard not to have some echo of it in a story. It's so rooted in the landscape, too - so much of the country is infused with Arthurian legends and I feel that you almsot have known and walked the land to really understand the stories (I went to Glastonbury last year, and spent half an hour sitting in the apple orchard in the abbey grounds).

[sharaith]

Wow. I need a copy of The Sword and the Flame.

I was heavily into Arthurian fiction when I was younger - Rosemary Sutcliff's The Lantern Bearers was my favorite, so much that I have never been able to bring myself to read Sword at Sunset for fear it would ruin it. Mary Stewart's Merlin series came in second. <3

Re: the comments above - that's the way we regard the bible here in Israel. It hadn't sunk in for me before that it must be the same for Arthurian legend in England.

[rosemaryandrue]

Yay! (because, hey, if I'm not likely to get fic for it, I'm at least going to do my best to plug one of my favourite books as widely as possible ^_^)

The Sword and the Flame is very much in that Romance-influenced historical tradition that Mary Stewart writes. I love the way that she draws in all the historical context as well and the sense, particularly in the first half of the book of the way that the whole of Europe is fracturing as the Roman empire comes apart at the seams - the Greek doctor fleeing Christian riots in Alexandria, the Armorican senators clinging to a Roman identity and refusing to send help to Arthur because he's a native chieftain, Verus' cousin Cai, aged twenty and having nightmares every night because he doesn't know how he can keep feeding all the people on their homestead.

[penhaligonblue]

Hurray!

[rosemaryandrue]

*grins* I love this time of year. I just got my assignment and I'm equal parts excited and awed. It's going to be the best sort of challenge ^_^