Today, in the midst of cleaning the house and weeding out in the garden, I came across a few of my writing magazines that I hadn’t finished reading–this happens often enough, that I’ll get one of them and not finish reading them to my satisfaction and then they get shuffled someplace in an effort to get my mother to stop complaining about how everyone’s stuff is everywhere cluttering up her house (not going to offer commentary on that one).  So, at some point today I sat down on the couch and thumbed through an article from the May/June 2010 issue of Writer’s Digest that had YA agents and editors talking about the category — how to break into it, what they’re looking for, that kind of thing.

It got me to thinking a bit.  I’ve always written younger protagonists (there are a few notable exceptions, including several of the major supporting cast members in Epsilon and The Last Colony–heck, Adam Windsor is a PoV character in The Last Colony and he’s in his fifties–as well as characters in Fate and Second Chances and its untitled sequel…though I’m not entirely sure elves and dragons count as “older protagonists”), characters ranging from their late teens through their twenties.  In some ways, my characters have aged with me and in others, they certainly have not.

Paranormal and speculative fiction have become huge in young adult fiction, and that subsegement of the genre have yielded works that have transcended the age category (see: Harry Potter and as much as I hate to mention it, Twilight–Vampires do not sparkle thank you very much!).  To carry this even further and away from the article I read, manga, Japanese graphic novels, tend to have speculative, paranormal, and fantastic elements to them as a matter of course.  Manga is extremely popular in the United States–and growing in popularity all the time.

Which brings me to what really got me thinking–the untitled sequel to my D&D-inspired Fate and Second Chances already has two very strong teenage protagonists in it–Alysta Riverden and Kaelen Verrel–and could quite possibly be transformed into a YA novel.  It’s something I’ll have to think about, because the story as it stands right now (in its very early stages–there’s only about 23500 words of ramble to it) is planned to be about as much about Alysta’s father, Talasin, as it is about Lysta and Kael.

But it’s entirely possible, and could be fun.  I’ll just have to do some homework on it, and some thinking.  But maybe.  Just maybe…

…after all, high adventure does well, too.

His temporibus rex Franciae multos conflictus habuit cum Flandrensibus, sed semper sine victoria remeavit.

His (hic, haec, hoc) – pronoun, dative or ablative form, plural; this, these

temporibus (tempus, temporis) – noun, dative or ablative; time, condition, right time, season, occassion, necessity

rex – noun, nominative; king, ruler

Franciae – noun, gen. possessive; France

rex Franciae – of France

multos – adj, accusative; many, much

conflictus – noun, accusative; clash, collision, impact, fight, contest, impluse, impression, necessity

habuit (habeo, habere, habui, habitus) – verb; have, hold, consider, think, reason, manage, keep, spend/pass (time)

cum – with, together with

Flandrensibus – noun; Flemish, from Flanders

sed – but, but also, yet, however, but in fact/truth, not to mention, yes but

semper – adv; always

sine – without

victoria – noun, ablative; victory

sed semper sine victoria – but always without victory

remeavit (remeo, remeare, remeavi, remeatus) – verb; go or come back, return

This season the King of France had many conflicts with the Flemish but always returned without victory.

Habuit and remeavit are the perfect active forms of the verbs, which are difficult to turn into English and have phrases make sense.

Lugete, O Veneres Cupidinesque
et quantum est hominum venustiorum.

Lugete (lugeo, lugere, luxi, luctum) – verb; mourn, grieve

O – Oh!

Veneres Cupidinesque – Venuses and Cupids

et – and, even, however

quantum - adverb; how much, the most, the greater

est (sum, esse, fui, futurus) – verb; be, is

hominum -  noun; fellow, fellow creature, man, person, mortal

venustiorum – more charming

I grieve, oh Vensuses and Cupids
even of all the people it is one more charming than ordinary men!

Now, this translation is probably wrong because translations of Catullus hate me.  That is all.

In ultimis diebus albi drachonis semen ejus trifarium spergetur.[1]

In – prep.; in, on, into, at, among

ultimis – adj.; far, farther, farthest, latest, last, highest, greatest

diebus – noun; day, daylight

In ultimis diebus – In the last days

albi – white

drachonis – noun; dragon

albi drachonis – of the white dragon

semen – noun; seed

ejus – pronoun; his

trifarium – adj.; three-fold

spergetur -> dispergetur (dispergo, dispergere, dispersi, dispersus) – verb; to scatter

In the last days of the white dragon, his seed will be scattered about threefold.

Now…this translation was dicey because of “spergetur,” which doesn’t appear in any of my dictionaries and such.  Dispergetur, however, is a known word meaning “to scatter.”  I actually had to go back into my dictionary in English looking for a word that meant something that would fit into the phrase (in this case, I was looking for “to seed” or “to scatter (seeds).”  And that’s what I found.

Sextus hybernie menia subuertet

Menia is actually moenia.  I really don’t think that they’re talking about overthrowing a small fish of Ireland.

 Sextus – proper noun in this case, translated simply as Sextus

hybernie – proper noun; Ireland

moenia – noun; walls, ramparts, defenses (all of a town or other area)

subuertet – verb; overturn, cause to topple, overthrow, destroy, subvert

Sextus will overthrow the defenses of Ireland

And now, back to our regularly scheduled thesis.

So I started with a first person point of view and rambled.  My narrator told me pretty quickly that her name was Julia (Julia Rhiannon, no less) and that she’d been living in this creepy little midwestern town for a few months because she’d been taking care of a sick (now deceased) relative that she’d been visiting there since she was eight.  Most of the town, especially the good Reverend at the local evangelical chapel, give her the heebie-jeebies.

Then there was this boy–maybe about her age, maybe a little younger, a mysterious, broken thing that on the surface looked crazy, “special,” or drugged.  He kept popping up, kept looking for her.  She found out his name was Darien fairly early on.  He came to her in moments of almost-lucidity and asked for her help.

Now…I knew by this point (heck, I knew by a few lines into the first page) that this story is in the same universe as my first Nanowrimo project ever, When All’s Said and Done, which has been on my mind in between thinking about Edward I and III because it’s about time I finally gutted the thing, revised it, polished it, and started sending it to publishers.  It’s a strangely disturbing piece, probably because there’s elements of it that are just maybe a little too real to not be creepy.  The freewriting ramble I’ve been working on was very clearly very intimately connected to the story of the Insitute, given Darien’s whisperings about the end and the Institute and how he’s very clearly reluctant to tell Julia the whole truth for fear she’ll either think he’s crazy or get herself into trouble with the sprawling installation just outside of the village of Andover Commonwealth.

I’m writing page 13 and 14 today, where Darien is giving up some of the secrets he knows about the place…and it hits me.  Bam.  Right between the eyes.

Darien isn’t Darien at all.

Darien is Ridley.

Now that revelation isn’t going to mean anything to anyone except for me and maybe one or two other people who may happen to stumble across this.  And if Miss Jen reads it, she’s going to blink and ask me who Ridley is and I’ll tell her.  And her eyes will get big and wide and she’ll be all “Ooh.”

And then she’ll ask if she can read the ramble.  And I’ll let her, because she’s Reece, and maybe someday Reece’ll actually meet up with this broken soul who feels like he’s betrayed people he cared about, people who cared about him in return.

All depends on what the redrafting process brings.  Either way, this ramble…fantastic background and yet another layer added into what was originally a lot less complex than it’s going to become.

Willelmus etc. dilecto filio, Abbati de Whiteby, salutem, gratiam et benedictionem.

Willelmus – William

etc. – et cetera; and so forth

dilecto – adj.; beloved, dear

filio - noun; son

Abbati de Whiteby – Abbot of Whiteby

salutem – greetings

gratiam – noun; thanks

et - and

benedictionem – noun; blessings

William and so forth, beloved son, Abbot of Whiteby, greetings, thanks and blessing.

Today’s Latin phrase is from the medieval Prophecy of the Bull, which dates to around 1327 — right around the beginning of Edward III’s reign as King of England.

Ad bona non tardus, audax veluti leopardus

ad – to, toward, until, almost

bona – good, honest, brave, noble, kind, pleasant, right, useful, valid/correct, healthy

non – no, not, [negative]

tardus – adj.; slow, limping, deliberate, late

audax – adj.; bold, daring, courageous, reckless, rash, audacious, presumptuous, desperate

veluti - adv.; just as, as if

leopardus – noun; leopard

[He] is never slow to [do] good, just as the courageous leopard

Yay for medieval Latin prophecies containing animal imagery!  And poetry.  Yikes.

Now, my research had shown that when Edward I was referred to as the leopard when he was young and a pain in everyone’s ass (often especially in his father’s ass), it was a bad thing.  And yet much later, when his grandson Edward III was called the leopard, it was a good thing.  So why the dichotomy?  How did the image of the leopard shift?  Turns out that there’s a pretty simple answer.

The following is from my scribbles for my thesis:

The heraldric device of the leopard was an accepted symbol of the English crown by the age of Edward III.  The heraldric leopard, however, should not be confused with the actual animal: a heraldric leopard was a lion.  The “leopard” device, a lion passant or lion passant guardant, is in fact a form of lion, shortened to leopard from leo pardes and is referred to by the French as a leopard.  The image of the leoprard is thus a sticky problem.  Beastiaries painted the leopard in a negative light–thus it was a grave invictive when Edward I was called the leopard in his youth–but with the rise fo chivalry and the increase in the importance of heraldry, the image of the leopard, in these cases a reference to the lion passant guardant, began to shift and take on a mmore positive connotation.  The English “leopard” is thus a lion, a strong symbol of royal authority as the king of beasts.

So, if sources such as Caroline Shenton’s article in Heraldry, Pageantry and Social Display in Medieval England (eds. Peter Coss and Maurice Keen) are to be believed…heraldry played a large part in forming positive images of monarchs, at least in the minds of their own people.  It’s an interesting thing to note, however, that the very people that the English were fighting throughout the reign of Edward III are the ones that insist that the lion passant guardant is in fact a leopard, not a lion.

Interesting indeed…considering that the leopard was a symbol of the Antichrist.[1]  Who would have thought that, huh?  Very interesting indeed….

1. Caroline Shenton, “Edward III and the Symbol of the Leopard” in Heraldry, Pageantry and Social Display in Medieval England, Peter Coss and Maurice Keen, eds. (Woodbridge, Suffolk: The Boydell Press, 2002), p. 73.

Bulla Papae missa Principi Walliae

Bulla – noun; [Papal] Bull

Papae - noun; Pope

missa (mitto, mittere, misi, missus) – verb; send, throw, hurl, cast, let out, release, dismiss, disregard

Principi – noun; leader, chief

Walliae - proper noun; Wales

A papal bull had been released by the pope about the leader of Wales.

Very simple, not too taxing…which means I probably got it wrong.  Which would be me all over.