The Truth and The Trespassers

Freshly back from the dress rehearsal of The Trespassers, by Morris Panych, at the theatre where I work -- blown away by this production. The design elements, the chemistry between the performers, the casting choices -- all top-notch. The script is brilliant in the way I've come to expect from Panych -- fragmented, skewed, and reflective in unexpected ways, like a shattered mirror reassembled into an indescribable three-dimensional object and then put under stage lights.

The Trespassers is a family drama about a fifteen-year-old boy, Lowell, who comes under suspicion during a murder investigation. Lowell tells his story in pieces, and we have glimpses of his relationship with his mother, his grandfather, and his grandfather's girlfriend, as the police try to sort out the truth. Truth is the big theme here -- truth, lies, bluffs, secrets, and how they all relate to each other. Sometimes we get to learn the truth, or think so, as Lowell tips off the audience to what he was really doing when he's told his mother he was staying with a friend (an imaginary diabetic Mexican Jehovah's Witness). Some truths are left for the audience to sort out for themselves from the pieces Lowell provides, knowing that Lowell himself is an unreliable narrator: he has his reasons to tell stories.

The plot is underpinned by a murder mystery, but I didn't care about solving it. I cared about this boy and his family, and the story he so obviously needed to tell me. I wanted to know about these relationships as soon as they were introduced, and in every sense, the script and the performers delivered. Tonight, I was told a beautiful, sad, occasionally hilarious story about four people. I can't wait to hear it again.

Slow ahead

Things in my brain are taking a nautical turn, as I progress deeper into the sequel to Stuff of Legends and our heroes set sail. Currently reading and dissecting Voyage of the Dawn Treader, The Terror, the ship-board sections of A Song of Ice and Fire and several Terry Pratchett novels, and Robert E. Howard's Queen of the Black Coast. Also re-reading Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, but that one's mostly unrelated to what I'm writing. At the moment, I'm focusing on a pirate attack and looking for an opportunity for Eliott to learn to splice a snotter.

On the other side of things, response to Stuff of Legends continues to be encouraging -- many nice emails from readers, some phenomenal reviews, and some good feedback for me to keep in mind from a few more critical reviewers. I'm being added to at least two public library systems, and this morning, I had my picture taken to go with a review in the local newspaper (link to come when that's up). I'm arranging a book signing next month, and have approached the organizers of a fantasy convention in Vancouver about participating in one of their author events. All this is rather more of a challenge for me than the writing was, but still a great deal of fun.

The mental wind seems to be favouring a return to the pirate attack, so I'd best get back to it.

Cheers,
~Ian

Back on the blog

So this has been a whirlwind couple of weeks! Stuff of Legends is on the shelves everywhere -- I've been sent pictures of it in Las Vegas, Vancouver, hiding out among the romance novels in Seattle (apologies to anyone who picked it up from that last; Jordan the Red is regretfully past his bodice-ripping days). There have been blogs, reviews, a radio interview, and more well-wishers than I know what to do with -- except to say thank you to each and every one who's given this silly fantasy of mine a moment of time.

But now that Stuff of Legends is out there in the world, my attention is back on the sequel. I'm not quite at the point of spilling all the details, but it's coming along well. This weekend, in addition to attending a fantastic party, I spent an hour-long ferry ride re-drafting the outline of chapters five and six. Rough patches have been shaved down, the origin of a plot-significant artifact has shuffled into a later chapter, and someone almost gets eaten by a fish.

And on that pleasant image, back to work I go!