Gregory Frost’s fantasy novel Rhymer places a recent spin on Thomas the Rhymer, a personality from Scottish folklore whose poems have been reputed to foretell the long run.
“It’s the origin story of Thomas the Rhymer as a type of Michael Moorcock Everlasting Champion battling towards aliens—successfully, these elves that are passing into our world from one other world,” Frost says in Episode 544 of the Geek’s Information to the Galaxy podcast. “He’s only one individual combating this warfare that no person even is aware of is happening proper below their noses.”
Rhymer contains a wild mixture of Lovecraftian horror and fantasy, and presents a marked departure from earlier variations of the Thomas the Rhymer story. Frost felt it was vital to do one thing massive to set his story aside. “Ellen Kushner plenty of years in the past wrote, to my thoughts, the definitive retelling of Thomas the Rhymer from the ballad,” he says, “and I didn’t wish to go there in any respect, as a result of I’d have felt like, ‘Oh, it’s already been achieved to perfection. There’s no purpose for me to the touch that.’”
Frost stumble on his unique approach, the concept of a time-skipping Thomas the Rhymer, when he seen placing similarities between Thomas and the later character Tam Lin, who lived in the identical space and who additionally had dealings with the Queen of Elfland. “You’ve obtained Thomas the Rhymer, whose full identify in some circumstances is Thomas Lindsay Rimor de Ercildoun—which is the city he was from, which is now Earlston,” Frost says. “And then you definitely’ve obtained Tam Lin. So that you’ve obtained Thomas Lindsay and also you’ve obtained Tam Lin, and I’m going, ‘This is identical individual.’”
Frost is at work on a sequel to Rhymer, which is able to see Thomas the Rhymer skip ahead in time to grow to be the legendary outlaw Robin Hood. “All the variations of Robin Hood anyone’s ever seen have principally been the Sir Walter Scott riffs on Robin Hood, and that’s probably not who Robin Hood was,” Frost says. “So I’m type of having a subject day a century after Thomas the Rhymer would have existed and attempting to map a journey by the world of Robin Hood that no person’s ever performed with earlier than.”
Hearken to the entire interview with Gregory Frost in Episode 544 of Geek’s Information to the Galaxy (above). And take a look at some highlights from the dialogue beneath.
Gregory Frost on the Clarion Writers Workshop:
There was a operating gag that yearly Damon Knight would, sooner or later throughout the week, pull out a squirt gun and go looking college students, so all people got here with squirt weapons … He was chasing us by the dormitory, and Damon sooner or later smacked right into a door and just about retreated for the evening. We couldn’t discover him, so all of us went to his room—there have been separate quarters for Damon and Kate—and knocked on the door, and it was like being 5 years previous once more, as a result of Kate Wilhelm opens the door and we mentioned, “Can Damon come out and play?” and he or she mentioned, “No, Damon has to remain in the remainder of the evening,” and closed the door on us, and that was the top of that.
Gregory Frost on the Liars Membership writers group:
For a few years we went round to largely unbiased bookstores within the Philadelphia space and did group signings, group occasions, which have been an terrible lot of enjoyable to do. There’s nothing extra suicidal-driving than sitting at a bookstore by your self attempting to make eye contact with folks coming by the door, as a result of, no less than in my expertise, the very first thing they do is see that there’s a author sitting there with their e-book and so they instantly look in every single place else however on the author with their e-book, and so they go proper previous you such as you don’t exist, so if there’s a gaggle it’s lots tougher to get round you.
Gregory Frost on Invoice Johnson:
We began riffing on a narrative concept based mostly on the coldest spot within the universe, which is the Boomerang Nebula, and went backwards and forwards and backwards and forwards on it, and got here up with nearly a point-by-point construction of the story that we have been going to put in writing collectively. Invoice had suffered his complete life with Marfan syndrome. It’s a extremely unhealthy situation in your blood vessels the place they principally begin to come aside, and he’d dodged that for a really very long time. Proper after we had structured the story out, he went into the hospital for a easy checkup or one thing and just about didn’t come out. So I had all the notes for that story, and I assumed, “I’ve obtained to put in writing this story. I can’t simply set this apart as a result of Invoice’s gone.”
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