Am I just jealous? Or all too wise?

[bluegargantua]

Hi,

So this nice lady, Marie Brennan, is an author and she's written (among other things) this book called Midnight Never Come, which is a sort of Elizabethan historical fantasy novel.

Here's the blurb:

"England flourishes under the hand of its Queen Elizabeth, last and most powerful of the Tudor monarchs. But a great light casts a great shadow. For in hidden catacombs beneath London, a second Queen holds court—Invidiana, ruler of faerie England, a dark mirror to the glory above… A breathtaking novel of intrigue and betrayal set in Elizabethan England; Midnight Never Come seamlessly weaves together history and the fantastic to dazzling effect…"

Not really my sort of thing, but there have even been some pretty positive reviews about it. And so, in a in a recent interview she was asked:

Q: So when and how did the idea for “Midnight Never Come” first come about, how long have you been working on it, and how much has it evolved from its original conception?

Marie: Actually, it started as a role-playing game.

I'm entirely serious. In 2006 I ran a game I called “Memento,” because it was structured much like the Guy Pearce movie of that name; we went through six hundred and fifty years of English history backward. The game system we were using, Changeling: The Dreaming, focuses on faerie souls who reincarnate in mortal bodies, and “Memento” was structured around a group of changelings who were remembering a series of previous lives.

The Elizabethan segment of the game (which was also called “Midnight Never Come”) ended up having this really complex backstory and consequences, so that, although it wasn't the central plot, it stretched from 1350 to 2006. And after the game was done, it wouldn't leave my mind. So I filed off the Changeling-specific serial numbers, cut the Invidiana part of the story loose from the metaplot of “Memento,” and set about turning the skeleton that remained into a novel.

um...oh man. Is it going to be bad because I'm jealous that someone turned their Changeling game into a novel? Or is it going to be bad because gaming fiction is almost always bad? Well, if someone else has a taste for it they might find the trivia useful.

later
Tom

Comments

[kniedzw.livejournal.com]

In case you weren't aware, Marie Brennan is also swan_tower - my wife. I'm never quite sure who in my extended online gaming friend network is aware of this. I had the pleasure of actually portraying a series of NPCs for the game in question, including Doctor John Dee. Quite fun.

...but MNC is definitely not Changeling. She dug deeper into English folklore for it.

[bluegargantua]

"Nobody talks to me that way. I'm Homer Simpson, the most powerful food critic in town, who will never get his comeuppance! You hear me? No comeuppance!"

That's not egg on my face...it's...foundation...
Tom

[kniedzw.livejournal.com]

No worries. I actually agree that most gaming fiction sucks ass. I tend to think that this one bucks the trend, but I'm a bit biased. :)

[katkt.livejournal.com]

Or is it going to be bad because gaming fiction is almost always bad?

In general, gaming fiction is bad because a) the skills involved in running a game and writing a novel are DIFFERENT, and b) good gaming tropes are different from good fiction tropes. It sounds like the conception is at least potentially good novel material (that is, that she might have avoided problem b), which would only leave question is whether or not she's a good novelist.

Now I'm curious if it's any good. We'll see if I'm curious enough to read it.

[asciikitty.livejournal.com]

it's good. It's not gaming fiction. it's worth reading, certainly, although if you can avoid reading it as the book you read between reading ebear's Ink and Steel and then Hell and Earth that might be healthy. Because really, three Elizabethan Fae books in a couple of months might be too many.

[asciikitty.livejournal.com]

You know there's a copy of that book on the kitchen table, right?

[asciikitty.livejournal.com]

And that your wife says it's worth reading, I should add that.