Seanan McGuire (seanan_mcguire) wrote,
Seanan McGuire
seanan_mcguire
  • Mood: hopeful
  • Music: Katie Tinney, "Dear Gina."

Birthday giveaway #2: The FAQ Challenge.

So as you may have noticed, I love FAQs. I love writing them, I love updating them, and I love pointing people to them. With that in mind, we come to our second giveaway for the day:

Here is the current October Daye FAQ. You may notice that it's pretty sparse. That's why I'm turning to you, my best-beloved people who live free things, to ask for more questions. Be creative, be specific, be general, be pedantic, be whatever makes you happy, but ask questions.

I will be adding the best questions to the FAQ. I will also be selecting two winners from out those questions. One will receive a signed copy of Rosemary and Rue (and if you already have one, I can send a copy to your local high school or library).

One will receive a signed ARC of A Local Habitation.

I'll take entries until tomorrow morning. Now please, please, question me! Get rewarded! Flesh out my website! I'll be your bestest blonde if you will...
Tags: a local habitation, common questions, giving stuff away, rosemary and rue, shameless plea, toby daye
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  • 101 comments

tigertoy

January 6 2010, 03:55:21 UTC 7 years ago

I've never really studied the folklore that Faerie is drawn from, but I know that you have. How many of the creatures we see in Toby's world do you trace back to folklore, and how many are your own inventions? I know kelpies are from folklore. I'm guessing you invented rose goblins. But I'm just not sure about Cait Sidhe.

On a sort of related note, not something you'd likely put in the FAQ but something I'm curious about, and I imagine you (the folklore expert) know -- how much of A Midsummer Night's Dream did Shakespeare draw from existing folklore, and how much did he make up?

Can you talk more about why the fae guard the secret of their existence so closely? Do they make a habit of killing humans who see or know too much other than the ones who breed changelings? If they do, doesn't that tend to leave enough bodies to start to make more humans curious? Also, given that we have these legends and folk tales, it seems like humans were once allowed to know that the fae and magic existed. How did it change?

I want to know more about hope chests and Oberon's feelings about changelings, but I have a sneaking suspicion I have to wait for more books for that.

seanan_mcguire

January 6 2010, 17:42:24 UTC 7 years ago

Almost all of them trace to folklore, with some small modifications. Most of the Firstborn are all mine, for example. The only races encountered in book one that aren't directly drawn from folklore are the rose goblins and the night-haunts.

Quite a bit of it was drawn from the existing, although he added a lot of flourishes, and prior to him, Puck wasn't that much of a big-deal individual.

The fae guard their existence because we spent a long time killing them. The rise of iron and organized men with swords made going underground a very good idea. Remember, in the oldest myths, the fae are pretty clearly predators of humans. As that changed, and as humans became more powerful, hiding became essential. There aren't enough fae to be fully known, not with examples like the Djinni and the Selkies to show what happens when the worlds intersect.