Meme time

[rflong]

from xnamkrad

Leave a comment and I will
a) tell you why I friended you,
b) associate you with something - fandom, a song, a colour, a photo, etc.,
c) tell you something I like about you,
d) tell you a memory I have of you,
e) ask something I've always wanted to know about you,
f) tell you my favorite user pic of yours,
g) in return, you must post this in your LJ.

Comments

[tchernabyelo.livejournal.com]

Belatedly, and since I alerady have this meme outstanding, I shall kill two birds with one stone (poor, poor birds) and get your answers as well...

[rflong.livejournal.com]

a) Hatrack, Liberty Hall, Notebored etc... I've known you online for ages! How could I not friend you?

b) Easter mythology and those cranes.

c) Your creativity and your critiques are always insightful and helpful

d) Vying for position with you an Aliette in The Biggest Reject (until you two started selling everything! Talk about a cop out! :D)

e) Where did the name tchernabyelo come from? Why eastern mythology? (Yes, that's two)

f) The cranes, or herons, or whatever the birdies are. (Wait! Those aren't the birds you're going to kill, are they? I like them!)

[tchernabyelo.livejournal.com]

b) threw me for a minute until I realised you'd missed the n off!

d) I'm not selling everything - I'm still top of The Biggest Reject so far this year. The best way of getting the sale is to sub as much as possible, after all... pure scattershot theory!


e) Tchernabyelo is a coined mock-slavic word from the root words for black and white. Before Yi Qin took over, much of what I wrote was set in a Slavic milieu that has yet to see the publishing light of day (there's only one story doing the rounds).

Eastern mythology is a very good question. I wrote a handful of Chinese pieces a long time ago (as in over 20 years - one of them, admittedly polished since, is the one that's in Fictitious Force issue 5), but nothing more until 2005. I grew up loving "The Water Margin", and the recent wuxia films like "Crouching Tiger" and (particularly) "Hero" are just wonderful. For a while I had an idea to do a story about someone who was called just "Walker", who would be going around a vast Chinese-style country tracking down reincarnations of ancient heroes and villains (that was a Water Margin riff, coupled with the idea of someone who walked everywhere to keep in connection with the Earth, Antaeus-style). When I started writing, something in this mutated and, out of nowhere I can consciously recall, Yi Qin and her dead twin sister turned up.

The rest is (ongoing) history. About 2/3 of the stories I've sold have been Yi Qin or that milieu, and several have sold first time out. I have clearly stumbled on something, so I'm damned well going to stick with it.

f) I don't kill birds. Though a time may come when I make an exception for chickens.