Some lies lead to true adventure...
Maeve, princess of Connacht, was born with her fists clenched. And it's her spirit and courage that make Maeve her father's favorite daughter. But once he becomes the High King, powerful men begin to circle—it's easy to love the girl who brings her husband a kingdom.
Yet Maeve is more than a prize to be won, and she's determined to win the right to decide her own fate. In the court's deadly game of intrigue, she uses her wits to keep her father's friends and enemies close—but not too close. When she strikes up an unlikely friendship with the son of a visiting druid, Maeve faces a brutal decision between her loyalty to her family and to her own heart.
Award-winning author Esther Friesner has a remarkable gift for combining exciting myth and richly researched history. This fiery heroine's fight for independence in first-century Ireland is truly worthy of a bard's tale. Hand Deception's Princess to fans of Tamora Pierce, Shannon Hale, and Malinda Lo.
Oh, the Places I Haven’t Been!
I’ve just flown
back from Ireland, and boy, is
that
old joke tired.
(If you don’t know which
old joke I mean, See Below *)
It was a
business trip.
The heroine of
Deception’s Princess (and its sequel,
Deception’s Pawn) is the legendary
Queen Maeve of Connacht, so I had to check out her home turf in order to write
about it.
Except I didn’t do
that.
One of the most
Frequent of the FAQs I encounter as an author is “Have you ever been to the
places you write about?”
It’s second
only to “Where do you get your ideas?”
Whenever someone asks me that question about the
Princesses of Myth books, I must say “No.”
Young Helen of
Troy’s exploits in
Nobody’s Princess
and
Nobody’s Prize carry her from
Sparta, through greater Greece, to the wild lands bordering the Black Sea and
home again.
Nefertiti’s adventures in
Sphinx’s Princess and
Sphinx’s Queen are set in Egypt.
Have I traveled to Greece or Egypt?
No.
(I
have visited Japan, the setting for
Himiko’s story in
Spirit’s Princess
and
Spirit’s Chosen. I’d love to
return, and I’m pleased beyond belief that I was able to write about such a
lovely country, but that still leaves me two-to-one on the side of Haven’t been
there, haven’t done that.)
Wait a
minute.
How dare I?
Behold, one of the first lessons for aspiring
writers, namely:
Write about what you know. How
can I know a place if I haven’t been there? Should I add this to my
Guilt-of-the-day list?
Again. . .No.
If you’re going to have a happy go at
writing, you need to understand that
Write about what you know does not
mean
Write
about only those things you have experienced firsthand. (Wow.
Italics
and boldface
and underlining?
I must really mean this!)
To quote a great Western philosopher, “Well,
d’uh!”
If it weren’t so—if we could only
write about our firsthand experiences—a huge number of my fellow
fiction-mongers would be in deep, deep trouble.
Or dead.
Or undead.
Or--a fate worse than undeath—they’d be the
perpetrators of some very dull books indeed.
If we could only
write about our firsthand experiences, a lot of fantasy and science fiction
could never see the light.
We’d never be
taken along on journeys through Middle Earth, never matriculate at Hogwarts,
never have it out with Lord Vader aboard the Death Star, never chill to the
knowledge that “Winter is coming.”
And I’d never be
able to write about a single character who’s carrying a Y chromosome.
Here’s another
thing to bear in mind:
Even if I
had been to Ireland, I still could not
say I’d seen
Maeve’s Ireland.
The same goes for Helen’s Greece, Nefertiti’s
Egypt and Himiko’s Japan. To do that, I’d need more than a plane ticket; I’d
need a time machine.
(TSA would
not approve.)
Okay, so how do I
visit the places I haven’t been and—due to lack of time-traveling abilities—I
could never go anyway?
Here’s the short
list:
1.
Books.
That’s a given and--since I love ferreting around in libraries—it’s also
a pleasure. Heavily illustrated books are research jackpots, particularly those
where the artist looks at relics, ruins, grave-goods and monuments, then uses
her imagination to create a picture of what all of these things must have
looked like when they were new, in use, and part of my characters’ everyday
lives.
Funny thing:
Children’s
books are among my favorite resources because they are more picture-enriched
tend to be more enriched with pictures.
2.
Websites. Long live the Internet!
Sometimes I feel as if I can find anything
about any culture at any point in history at the click of a mouse.
But I always double check what I learn from
one website against what several others have to say. On the Internet there are
facts and then there are “facts.”
3.
Tourism
resources. I’m lucky enough to live
within commuting distance of New York City, the location of many nations’
tourism offices.
They’ve always provided
me with materials about countless aspects of the countries I’ve researched,
including some containing priceless information about historical sites.
More pictures!
If I didn’t live
close to NYC, I’d look up the tourism office I needed online and send a request
for information.
Failing that, I’d ask
to a local travel agent to give me a hand.
I’ve been pleasantly surprised by how helpful people can be when you
tell them you’re trying to write a book!
And speaking of people. . .
4.
People.
Some people have been to the places I haven’t and are eager to share
their experiences.
Sometimes their
stories go outside of the cities and give me a sense of the land that I would
not have been able to get from my other research. (A friend of mine who has
been to Ireland tells of how his camera—in perfect working order before and
after—
refused to take photos at one
isolated, prehistoric site.
Apparently
something didn’t want its picture
taken.
I never got chills like that off
the Internet!)
5.
Pause for Thought.
This is essential.
This is where I take all of the hard facts
and pretty pictures that tell me about Ireland, Greece, Egypt or Japan
now
and think about how they differed
then.
I think about how living in a particular
place and culture would affect my heroine.
Most of all, I think about how her society’s values
would not be the same as today’s.
Slavery was a fact of life in ancient Egypt, so Nefertiti would not be
raised to think of it as wrong.
She’d
have to reach that conclusion on her own.
There were no coins in Helen’s Greece.
If she wanted to travel, she’d have to come up with a way to pay for her
needs on the road.
Celtic warriors of
Maeve’s time decorated the entryways to their houses with the preserved heads
of their enemies.
She wouldn’t look at
them and say, “Ew!”; she’d be
proud
to see how many trophies her father had brought home.
And the most
important thing I must think about on my travels to lands and times I’ve never
been is this:
Helen and Himiko and
Nefertiti and Maeve are
not modern
girls playing dress-up.
They don’t enjoy
the rights we take for granted.
Even
though they are princesses, they are still subject to the commands of their
fathers and considered less important, less
valuable
than their brothers.
If they want the
freedom to be themselves and make their own choices in life, they have to fight
for it.
I get to go along
on their journeys, and I wouldn’t trade these travels for any all-expense-paid
real trip in the world.
About the Author:
Esther M. Friesner was educated at Vassar College, where she completed B.A's in both Spanish and Drama. She went to on to Yale University; within five years she was awarded an M.A. and Ph.D. in Spanish. She taught Spanish at Yale for a number of years before going on to become a full-time author of fantasy and science fiction. She has published twenty-seven novels so far; her most recent titles include Temping Fate from Penguin-Puffin and Nobody's Princess from Random House.
Her short fiction and poetry have appeared in Asimov's, Fantasy & Science Fiction, Aboriginal SF, Pulphouse Magazine, Amazing, and Fantasy Book, as well as in numerous anthologies. Her story, "Love's Eldritch Ichor," was featured in the 1990 World Fantasy Convention book.
Her first stint as an anthology editor was Alien Pregnant By Elvis, a collection of truly gonzo original tabloid SF for DAW books. Wisely, she undertook this project with the able collaboration of Martin H. Greenberg. Not having learned their lesson, they have also co-edited the Chicks In Chainmail Amazon comedy anthology series for Baen Books, as well as Blood Muse, an anthology of vampire stories for Donald I Fine, Inc.
"Ask Auntie Esther" was her regular etiquette and advice column to the SFlorn in Pulphouse Magazine. Being paid for telling other people how to run their lives sounds like a pretty good deal to her.
Ms. Friesner won the Nebula Award for Best Short Story of 1995 for her work, "Death and the Librarian," and the Nebula for Best Short Story of 1996 for "A Birth Day." (A Birth Day" was also a 1996 Hugo Award finalist.) Her novelette, "Jesus at the Bat" was on the final Nebula ballot in the same year that "Death and the Librarian" won the award. In addition, she has won the Romantic Times award for Best New Fantasy Writer in 1986 and the Skylark Award in 1994. Her short story, "All Vows," took second place in the Asimov's SF Magazine Readers' Poll for 1993 and was a finalist for the Nebula in 1994. Her Star Trek: Deep Space Nine novel, Warchild, made the USA TODAY bestseller list.
She lives in Connecticut with her husband, two children, two rambunctious cats, and a fluctuating population of hamsters.
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