Josiah Bancroft's Blog - Posts Tagged "senlin"

I took the name "Senlin" from a poem by Conrad Aiken, who, notably was the US Poet Laureate from 1950 to 1952. Aiken was an interesting man whose work and life are worthy of study. I was researching his work around the same time I began to draft the Books of Babel, and I happened upon his poem, "Morning Song of Senlin."

I'm not sure exactly what I found so appealing about the name. It might've been the sibilance of it, especially in the context of the poem, which made it sound like a secret been lisped into a confidant's ear, or it might have been the personality of the namesake, who struck me as pensive, prim, hesitant, and intelligent.

These were the same characteristics I wanted for my protagonist, who I was calling something else entirely at the time... I think it was Lewis-something-or-other. My friend Nick recommended the first name Thomas, and so Thomas Senlin was born.

Coincidentally, the title of one of my favorite childhood books, "A Swiftly Tilting Planet" by Madeleine L'Engle, was taken from this same poem. Here's the opening stanza:

"It is morning, Senlin says, and in the morning
When the light drips through the shutters like the dew,
I arise, I face the sunrise,
And do the things my feathers learned to do.
Stars in the purple dusk above the rooftops
Pale in a saffron mist and seem to die,
And I myself on a swiftly tilting planet
Stand before a glass and tie my tie."

For all you Kindle users, the first part of Arm of the Sphinx is available for download. If you'll recall, Senlin Ascends ended with Senlin and his friends stealing an airship and escaping Finn Goll's tyrannical employment and Commissioner Pound's dread warship.

Part 1 of Book 2 finds Senlin and his friends have had to resort to piracy to survive, though their brand of piracy is not as bold or bloody as most.

Senlin leads his friends and captains the Stone Cloud under the pseudonym "Tom Mudd." Here's an excerpt from the first chapter:

Captain Mudd had a talent for devising unorthodox ways to raid a ship. His crew, to their credit, followed his outlandish direction with hardly a squint.

On one occasion, they had snuck onto a merchant ship under the cover of fog and opened a barrel of cooking oil on the deck. The natural sway of the ship distributed the slick evenly, and the next morning they invaded on spiked cleats while the unsuspecting crew skated helplessly about, trying very hard not to impale themselves on their own swords. On another occasion, Mudd's crew had dropped several pounds of rotting fish onto a ship's envelope, and then boarded amid a horde of frenzied seagulls. They had once resorted to posing as a wounded vessel full of collapsed damsels. Their would-be princes, who rode in on a barge of cured tobacco, helpfully lashed the two ships together and came aboard armed with decanters of brandy to revive the ladies from their swoon. The rescuers rushed to the sides of the fallen women only to be greeted by gun barrels drawn from under skirts.

“The rules of engagement,” Captain Tom Mudd explained to the irate captain who'd been duped by this rouse, “were invented by men who would benefit most from them.”

This philosophical pronouncement might've commanded more respect had it not been delivered by a man wearing a frilly bonnet.

I just published Part 2 of Arm of the Sphinx on Amazon, and I have to admit, I’m quite pleased with it.

The adventure continues with the marooning of the crew of the Stone Cloud within a dilapidated and infested ringdom called the Silk Gardens. There, Senlin and Edith must trek to a mission deep inside a perilous forest, to confer with the mysterious zealot, Luc Marat.

The stories of Adam, Voleta, and Iren diverge as each must confront the dire reality of their circumstance and grapple with the irresistible tug of hope and regret. The tension between Edith and Senlin comes to a head, too, and they are forced to address the difficulty of their intimate arrangement, even as their vulnerability grows.

But will Senlin find a way into Pelphia at last? Will he come any closer to reuniting with Marya? Will he finally escape the torment of the specter of his lost wife?

Read Part 2, The Golden Zoo, to find out!