Idea to Book: Complementary
Complementary is a f/f novella in 1910, and it’s full of art, forced proximity, and a dash of folklore. Fundamentally, Complementary exists for two reasons. First, I wanted to spend a bit more time with Elizabeth Mason (who appears in several other books, notably Pastiche, The Fossil Door, and Old As The Hills.) Second, I knew people who were getting a collaborative project off the ground to feature f/f or sapphic romance, Kalikoi. Elizabeth Mason Mason – as she is widely known – and Witt are both Penelopes, a relatively small community of specialists who figure out what magical chaos has happened now and fix it (or at least get it stable). They’re Albion’s forensic scientist specialists, but they’re also the people you call in when someone has done something troublesome in an alchemy lab or with one of those ritual methods that really, no one should mess with. They were apprentices at the same time, and have worked together closely ever since, in the manner of people who can and do finish each other’s sentences. They’re not the same, though. There’s a theory out there – first put forward by forward by Dahilia Lithwick in 2012 that divides people and characters into Order Muppets and Chaos Muppets. (I should note that the original article discusses Supreme Court justices in the US in ways that have aged unevenly, shall we say.) This also applies to Penelopes. Mason is the Chaos Muppet of the two, and Witt is definitely the Order Muppet. […]