Sweet Justice. (And puppets.)

According to Rule 34, someone is getting off on this.

According to Rule 34, someone is getting off on this.

Today’s opening act is a left-over I forgot to include in that last post: a bit of flesh sculpture I was not allowed to show off in “Pones & Bones” because it would have risked  spoiling a yet-to-be-aired episode of “Hannibal”. That episode recently aired, though, so the embargo is lifted. Behold: the hoofed, flayed, and headless wonder that I have christened Hoofnibal, both under construction at Mindwarp workshop (right) and during its formal debut during the episode “Primavera” (below) .

I would like to emphasize that there is no CGI in the sequence: Will’s hallucination is a puppet, moving in real time on the set. Let’s hear it for Practical FX.

*

More to the point, though: Let’s also hear it for The BUG!

A wee bit of background. Early in our courtship, Caitlin Sweet referred to me as “A DOOFUS” (the caps are hers). Stung, I could only reply “That’s Dr. Doofus to you, Unicorn Girl“— which was a not-too-subtle reminder that I write hard-as-nails SF while she writes fluffy rainbow fantasy.

The thing is, though, Caitlin does not write fluffy rainbow fantasy. The only rainbows you’re likely to see in her novels are those that swirl across the oily film on an open sewer. The Pattern Scars begins with its protagonist, a young girl called Nola, going into a trance at the sight of a bloodstain; the next day her mother sells her to the local brothel as a seer. It gets worse from there. (Oh, it seems to get better for a little while. It seems to get suspiciously, unbelievably better, even. But no. Way worse.) I like to think of myself as Captain Stoneface when it comes to my emotional vulnerability to most fiction; I literally teared up at the end of The Pattern Scars.

Caitlin turns tropes inside out. The Pattern Scars, at its heart, is an inversion of the Cassandra myth: instead of a seer whose truthful prophecies are never believed, Caitlin gives us one doomed to prophesy lies which are always accepted as gospel. The Door in the Mountain— part one of a two-parter which concludes with the imminent The Flame in the Maze— retells the Theseus myth through the eyes of an Ariadne who (in a bizarro twist on the sweet hapless innocence of her archetype) is a manipulative sadist driven by rage and jealousy. The supporting cast might best be described as the twisted love-children of Davids Lynch and Cronenberg (Icarus and Daedalus are two personal favorites). Caitlin is way closer to Martin than to Tolkien; the last thing you can call her is “Unicorn Girl”.

Is this not exactly the face that comes to mind when you imagine a female George RR Martin?

Is this not exactly the face that comes to mind when you imagine a female George RR Martin? (Photo: Martin Springett)

Which is, of course, exactly why she enthusiastically embraced the term the moment she saw it (although the official acronym is BUG— Beloved Unicorn Girl— because “UG” lacks the appropriate resonance. Also: Bed BUG).

My point is: Caitlin’s stuff is gritty, gorgeous, and unsentimental. If it contains anything even approaching cliché, you can be assured that that element exists only to be subverted or blown from the water at a later date. She does not do happy endings; the most you’ll get is an ambiguous one.

Did I mention that Erik Mohr's cover art is also up for an Aurora?

Did I mention that Erik Mohr’s cover art is also up for an Aurora?

All of which means she’s not the kind of fantasy author the YA market is likely to swoon over. I think we’ve both lost count of the agents and publishers who’ve turned her down with some variant of You’re a brilliant, brilliant writer but your protagonist is so unlikeable: can’t you make her more like Hermione from Harry Potter?

No. No she can’t, you fucking idiots. She does not write to market. She has never once said I’m going to add a perky sidekick so the popcorn set doesn’t get away. All that matters to the BUG, when she’s writing, is whether the story works the way it’s supposed to. Whether it meets her standards.

And so her stuff gets ignored. Teenyboppers who stumble across it in search of the latest medieval fantasy with a plucky female protagonist scratch their heads and leave, their stomachs vaguely unsettled. When critics find it, they rave; but that doesn’t happen nearly as often as it should.

So I am very glad to point out that Caitlin Sweet’s The Door in the Mountain is a finalist for the Sunburst Award, YA category. That category, I think, is misplaced; but the recognition is not. It is, to put not too fine a point on it, About Fucking Time. And I can say this without fear of vote-skewing, because the award is juried.

Yeah, of course I’m biased. Of course she’s my wife. But she wasn’t always.

Why do you think I fell in love with her in the first place?

 



This entry was posted on Monday, June 22nd, 2015 at 12:30 pm and is filed under ink on art, writing news. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.
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Nestor
Guest
8 years ago

Well now I’m hungry for some Serrano ham slices.

And best of british to Caitlin. Always assumed the BUG thing was some sort of entomological thing, but that acronym makes more sense.

My current fantasy fave is Ashley Cope’s amazing Unsounded webcomic, which is also given to the darker side of the unicorns and rainbows spectrum.

Kurt
Guest
Kurt
8 years ago

And now Hannibal has been canceled. Do you have any more behind the scenes stuff to share?

Mark Russell
Guest
8 years ago

I read DOOR IN THE MOUNTAIN last year and quite liked it. Lots of gore. It took me a few chapters to realize that the protagonist wasn’t just going through a bad patch and would soon learn a valuable lesson about life ™, or whatever cliche kids usually go through in those books.

Kurt: I’d still give Hannibal even odds at coming back. NBC wasn’t kicking in much money or many viewers. But the show is getting mad (mads?) rating in places like Korea and China, and it is such an international coproduction.

Michèle Laframboise
Guest
8 years ago

I guess that the literary ill-treated Minotaur gets a better window from Caitlin’s writing. I always thought of the Minotaur as a tragic figure pushed under the carpet to raise Theseus up.
(Theseus the mystical hero, not the Blindsight ship!)

trackback

[…] If this interview leaves you hungry for more about Caitlin Sweet, check out this post by Peter Watts, here, about the Sunburst nod. […]

Kaz
Guest
Kaz
8 years ago

To be fair, shows don’t just get cancelled nowadays.

whoever
Guest
whoever
8 years ago
janinmi
Guest
8 years ago

Great. MORE books for the to-read list monster. I swear that thing is going to devour me some day …

Da'Schmeef
Guest
Da'Schmeef
8 years ago

Re. Caitlin’s new book, Coolness! I loved the pattern scars, I have not checked her blog in a while so I did not know she had a new one out,
I’m gonna haffta get me some!!

gszczepa
Guest
gszczepa
8 years ago

While I really enjoy your blog these graphic pictures are not compatible with my stomach.

T. gondii
Guest
T. gondii
8 years ago

Nestor:

My current fantasy fave is Ashley Cope’s amazing Unsounded webcomic, which is also given to the darker side of the unicorns and rainbows spectrum.

Yes! Unsounded is great. It isn’t the darkest, and it is a bit cutesy (Sette makes me smile), but it is quite sober about the workings of the world.