Unicorns and more

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I recently got a letter from a friend who had just read Mistress of the Sun, which features a white horse which is mythic in spirit, magical — rather in the way of a unicorn. She reminded me of a party I’d gone to over 35 years ago. The theme of the party was to come as your “true essence," and I’d gone as a unicorn.

I have only a vague recollection of this. People ask me, "What is the significance of the horse in the novel?" My answer has been that it’s my main character’s true self, Petite's unbridled essence. And now I begin to see how much this is about me, as well.

In St. Louis, while on tour this last June, I had the pleasure to meet Beckah Voigt, the woman who had danced the part of Josephine in an amazing one-woman production. She understood that I might be too tired to meet — and I was — but mentioned that she did "energy work." I told her I could use "energy work"; I didn't know what it was, but, as the Quakers say, "it spoke to my condition." We made a date: we would meet, and I would rest. (The ultimate in multi-tasking.)

Meeting Beckah was like discovering a sister, and after the "work" — which was meditative in the extreme — she talked of what she had sensed. She didn't know anything about Mistress of the Sun, so I was astonished when she said that she got a very strong impression of a flying white horse.

All this just to say that it seems to me that the process of creation — whether it be a novel, a poem, a painting — has deep roots in an unconscious personal mythology, and that you won't really even know this until long after the work is completed.

Picking out a signing pen

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My husband can go in and out of an office supply store in 5 minutes. Not me. Yesterday I had the luxury of time, and I walked all the aisles, lingering. I did have a list -- printer inkers, storage boxes (for packing away Mistress of the Sun notes), stick-on dots (for coding the research books on my shelves), and, most importantly, a good pen for signing my books.

When my first book was published, Richard gave me a beautiful Waterman fountain pen, which I treasure. But it proved challenging to use as a signing pen: it sometimes blotched, stained my fingers, and it could leak in-flight. Also, and most importantly, I had to carefully blot the signed title page before closing the book. In the beginning, when I had only few books to sign, I welcomed a time-consuming process. Now, when I'm signing as many as 40 books, I need to be more efficient.

Recently, I stopped into a Chapters/Indigo store in Toronto, and offered to sign my books. I did not have a pen with me, and I was quickly offered a Sharpie. Well. Not that elegant, but — "They don't blot," the clerk told me. "Which is why we use them." The other nice thing about a felt-tip marker, I later thought, is that you are given notice when it's drying up — not like a fountain or ball-point pen that can quit mid-signature. Making a mess in a $30 book is not a good thing.

So I lingered long at the felt-tip marker section. It wasn't an independent office supply store — the wonderful type of store where you can test the pens on a scrap of paper provided — so I purchased a selection, and headed north, to Petawawa Stables, where I had my horse to visit ... and a book to sign.

I've known Dawn and her mother Yvonne since before I began writing Mistress of the Sun. I used to take riding lessons there, and my horse, Finnegan, is wonderfully looked after there during the winter.

I was delighted to sign Yvonne's book, a gift to her from Dawn. I had tested the markers in the car: the Sharpies, a medium tip, were too fat — a fine-point would be a better choice — but the blue Staedtler (1.0 Medium) worked quite nicely ... if only I didn't have to buy a set of eight in assorted colors to get that one blue.

I'll be in New York soon, with time, I hope, for one of my favorite past-times: lingering in the aisles of an office supply store.

Photo: Finnegan and me, taken by Dawn Townshend at Petawawa Stables.