Luna . . .

February 3, 2010Blog, cool posts, fantasy inspiration, Harry Potter, writing inspiration2 Comments

Opening WordPress yesterday, I noticed a vote on Freshly Pressed, ‘to the moon again, or not.’ I voted no because I want the moon to remain pristine, untrammelled, an enigma.  I also believe that we have so much more need for the money on our own planet. But the option to vote prompted me to think how important the moon was in A Thousand Glass Flowers.

The two protagonists are mentored by a celestial spirit.  One calls her the Moonlady and the other calls her the Lady Moon. She’s of indeterminate age, has grey hair like spun sugar floss and a gown of midnight blue organza that wafts in a welkin wind, sparkling with gems as if it were a night-time galaxy.

I had to find a home for her and fortuituously an old friend of mine had lived in a gracious home called ‘Killymoon.’  It’s a beautiful piece of colonial architecture, sitting remotely in the Fingal Valley of Tasmania.  And it most definitely fitted my Moonlady’s needs.  As the story proceeds, the female protagonist  speaks verse which was a part of my own childhood.  The words came via my grandmother and mother and no matter how hard I’ve tried, I can’t find their provenance.  Perhaps someone knows, perhaps one day someone will be able to tell me who wrote it and what the other verses are:

‘The Lady Moon came down one night,

She did, you shouldn’t doubt it.

A lovely lady dressed in blue, I’ll tell you all about it.

They hurried my sister and I to bed, and Auntie said well maybe,

That lovely moon up overhead will bring you down a baby.’

The  protagonists discover a unique paperweight, and its based on one I found: a Venetian paperweight from Murano with a midnight blue sky and a field of stars in which sits a quarter moon.  It’s quite, quite lovely.

I often ask myself why the moon has held such fascination . . . just the last few nights it has been a bold ivory disc in the sky and there has been a solid reflection across the river: ‘a moonbridge, a path to the Others, or so the folk in the village would say.’

And because I have a predilection for things lunar, I bought some Chinese lanterns for the garden.  They’re solar-powered and as the night darkens so my trees become filled with a small galaxy of planets. If you look outside in the middle of the night, you can be forgiven for imaging UFO’s, or that you are floating along the Milky Way with blue moons flying past.

By the way, the editing of the book trailer has begun. And yes, we are all still speaking.

Oh, and PS: Luna Lovegood from Harry Potter is one of my favourite characters. Especially in the movies . . .  wonderfully eccentric and  fey.