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Tuesday, February 22, 2011

There's a Sad Sort of Clanging from the Clock in the Hall

As you might expect from the title of this week's entry, I am very fond of the Sound of Music and of Julie Andrews and Christopher Plummer (they were absolutely adorable in that movie and Young!Christopher Plummer is all kinds of hot). I am also very fond of long blog titles, because they just sound more interesting. I'm odd like that.

Most of you who know me and read this blog (the few, the proud, the related...and one or two friends), know that my oldest brother Aaron, is a big factor in whatever I write, whether it's fiction, blog posts, or essays. He's one of the few people who can keep with me and I with him. If he's not borrowing half of my brain, I'm borrowing half of his. We're claustrophobic like that. If it's not Monty Python, it's the Princess Bride, and if it's not the Princess Bride, it's Winnie the Pooh, and if it's not Winnie the Pooh, it's Babar, and if it's not Babar...you get the idea. Facebook only feeds our addiction.  Really, what I've discovered in the nineteen years of my existence, that the only thing to do when I have kids is to have them one after the other, like my mom had us. My kids will just have to band together for survival. With me as their mom, my brothers for uncles, my MOM for their grandmother... they'll have no choice. Just like me and my brothers did. So there. 

Ayden and her six brothers, Arkady, Josef, Silas, the twins Dante and Matteo and the youngest boy Finn, are for the most part, inspired by my brothers and my numerous male cousins. Any lampooning I do of them is meant with the utmost respect and affection. Ayden  is me of course, but me if my brothers and cousins actually listen to what I say, which only happens once in blue moon (never, in other words).  They love each other, but they can also bring out the worst in each other, too. You can't kill 'em and you can't live with 'em. But they are also the source of some of the greatest joys and deepest pains that anyone can ever experience. Ayden had kind of lost sight of that, and it's up to me (and Sydney too, of course) to help her regain it. Even Liam wants to get in on that action and he's proven surprisingly spry for a dead guy! I'll have to host him a dead man's party and find out what he has to say about these shenanigans.

Speaking of Liam, thanks to my friend and fellow aspiring writer Nicole, I'm beginning to hammer out some of Liam's backstory. Like, why he left Halcyon House to begin with and why he never talked of his past. Near  as I can figure it, Liam's father Eamon had no soul and crooked family history. I'm thinking about inserting a brother for Liam in there, but the jury's still out. Nicole also suggested putting in a sister for Gregor (Ayden's father) but I'm thinking of having her die an early death, as so to add some depth to Gregor's character. This chapter of Halcyon House requires ACTUAL RESEARCH (gasp!) and some low-level snooping around in history. Which means Aaron better hurry up and come home so he can lend some of his newly-acquired college research skills.

"This is madness, yet this be the method in it"~
paraphrased Shakespeare, Hamlet.
 
Over & Out,
Rachel

2 comments:

  1. Truly, you have a dizzying intellect. And I'm sure I share your brain more often than you share mine. I suppose your experience with Adam and I probably has been enough for seven brothers over the years. Glad to see you still plugging away at Halcyon House. In other news, I'm writing "Retrieval" again! Yay! I'll e-mail you the latest completed chapter.

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  2. Your mother is about 10 miles behind you. Good thing I'm not expected to contribute to anything you two come up with. All I did was start you off with books & good movies when you were small. Little did I know....

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