After a long (and acceptable, given my circumstances) bout of ennui, during which I wrote really nothing except some rather fraught poems, I finally broke through the wall and got back into the old swing of things. In fact, I far exceeded the old swing of things, laying down a cool 7,000 words in my second novel. Included in the scenes I wrote: A food fight between pre-adolescent Hatshepsut and her jerk of a half-brother, and the big reveal by her mom that she has a male soul. Or, actually, eight of them. Surprise!
It was a fun day. My characters did some fun things, and we all had a very chummy good time romping together through the harem house and the Great Palace of Waset (aka Thebes). The good times aren't to last, though. Tomorrow sweet little sister Neferubity will meet her untimely demise. Adieu, Nef! You've been fun.
Ah, yes, poor little Neferubity. But the darling has to die to make way for Hatshepsut, right?
ReplyDeleteDo you use a lot of Egyptian names in your writing? I stuck with Waset. Thebes has always sounded too Greek to me anyway- I try to stick with the Egyptian names as much as I can. Too bad so many of them are tongue twisters. That was the biggest thing my betas and critiquers came back with. Hatshepsut, Neferubity, Senenmut, and Thutmosis were a bit much to handle for the non-Egyptian fanatics. But I stuck with them!
yeah, I stick with Egyptian names. It bugs me, honestly, when writers go with the Greek names/words for fiction set in the pre-Ptolemaic periods. It just doesn't feel right to me!
ReplyDeleteI try to have my characters give each other little nicknames that are really for the reader's benefit -- Hatshepsut is called Hati by most of the other characters, Neferubity is Nef, Senenmut is Sen, Mutnofret is Nofret, Thutmose is Tut (which caused some commotion with my long-suffering agent...we played around with timelines and family trees to stick into the manuscript to make it clear that this "Tut" isn't "the" King Tut. Ack!!)
The thing that really worried me was all the "-mose" names in my first novel. Holy cow. Ahmose the female, and some allusions to her grandpa Ahmose, and her great-uncle Kamose, and her nephews Wadjmose, Amunmose, and Ramose...and she's married to Thutmose...yeah, it was hair-raising. But oddly enough, nobody remarked on it. So I guess I managed to keep it straight enough to get to this point safely! We'll see whether an editor is okay with all the -moses.
It's hard to figure out how to communicate all the little bits of history and culture to people who aren't already familiar with it. AND to still keep it (my first book, anyway) under 90,000 words. I've been re-reading my Pauline Gedge books lately and making note of how she does it. That's been helpful.
Well, time to get cracking! Neferubity isn't going to die all by herself!
Another Hattie writer, eh? Pretty cool.
ReplyDeleteYep, she's got a posse, 3500 years later. What can I say? Hatshepsut rocks.
ReplyDeleteYou sure know your characters. If only I knew mine half that well.
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