The sea gives, and the sea takes.
It takes the heat from your body and the breath from your lungs.
It gives you mystery and awe.
It takes the living, and gives back the dead.
It takes the dead and gives back the beyond dead… the changed… the terrifying.
The sea takes from the living and gives us shipwrecks, salvage, treasures to use for daily life.
It gives us people who did not want to be here.
And sometimes, just sometimes, what the sea brings to us
Is life.
Those of you who have read Volume 3 – Victims – will know there’s a silly bit where Owen and Salamandra are going to a party. Salamandra has always been good at illusions and likes messing about with appearances, so she dresses them up. I was vague with the script, suggesting that Owen’s might be more silly and less flattering. Tom decided to give Salamandra a distinctly Japanese look.
This caught Dr Abbey’s imagination, and below is his take on Sal in her party gear.
Of course it raised questions – not least being why Salamandra chooses to look this way at this moment.
There are outside the story reasons – that this is an aesthetic Tom likes, and that he has always wanted to appeal to a Japanese audience is most of it. Manga has been a big influence on Mr Brown and there’s a desire to offer something back. Also, this is how Tom does things – he draws whatever arrives in his head and then someone else (usually, but not always me) has to work out how that makes any kind of sense.
So, why is Salamandra inclined to look this way? Has she seen an image like this in a book? Was there a dream, or a scrying experience? Is there a slightly disturbing doll of her mother’s somewhere, wearing just this attire?
I don’t know. Maybe you do. If you are the person who knows how this story goes, please do get in touch and tell us!
Jed Grimes runs the Hopeless Maine hardware store. However, sourcing on Hopeless is a bit haphazard. People who make stuff tend to want to sell or trade it themselves. Mostly what Jed sells is stuff he has scavenged, and he’s a really good scavenger. He also plays the long game. When a ship flounders off the Hopeless coast, most people are out there looking for exciting things they can use or eat straight away. Jed takes home bits of wood, and nails.
He’s really into nails.
Jed is also the sort of person to take a length of heavy ship’s rope and pick it apart for usable threads. He’s almost as much into string as he is nails.
If you’ve read Hopeless Maine: Victims, you’ll already know a few other things about Jed. His life is complicated, but, no spoilers for the people who haven’t got that far.
This week we bring you another Dr Abbey art.
There is an extra story to tell with this one, and on this occasion it is more about the materials than the image. That textured paper was my grandmother’s. I inherited her art equipment, and had quite a stash of paper and oil pastels that were hers. It’s been good putting the paper to use, and I’ve wondered repeatedly what she would make of this process. Hopeless is very different from the kind of art she used to do.
I’m fairly sure that some of the colouring materials used in this were from Dr Abbey’s family as well, and that it is a meeting of people in a rather magical way.
Hello people! (and others)
We can now reveal that Hopeless, Maine is returning to North America with Outland Entertainment! The first two volumes will be printed and released soon, along with illustrated prose novels by Nimue Brown and Keith Errington and the Hopeless, Maine RPG is in development and may well be out at the same time. Here is the press release!
Cover art – collaboration between Nimue and myself.
The above image comes from The Gathering. The young man on the right is a very young James Weaselgrease (to use my son’s steampunk performance name). He is the child in this story who Salamandra rescues and to whom she gives her bear.
James Weaselgrease and the bear
She gave me this small toy bear
Torn, battered, restored with care
Softness in my open arms
Best of magic, best of charms.
Old toy bear to ward off fear
Wonky face and sewn up ear
Damaged but not yet destroyed
Comforting, my spirits buoyed
Courage with a messy face
Saved, repaired and full of grace
Saw who I could choose to be
Found the hope to uplift me.
Nights are long and dark and grim
Demons tear us limb from limb
Days are cold and grim and grey
Much to steal your life away.
Even in the darkness, light
Find the means to live and fight
Fill this time with something good
Do the best, the most we could.
In each tiny action seek
Kindest ways, protect the weak
Every chance there is for joy
All your wits and strength deploy
She gave me this bear to hold
Ease my fear and make me bold
Do for others what I can
And this is how my work began.
Image at the top by Tom Brown, poem by Nimue, bear by Dr Abbey.
Next to last in the series of These Our Revels, which started with a concept from Hopeless, Maine and has been brought into the world by a concerted creative effort lead by Fiona Sawle and Nimrod Lancaster. This stunning eerie photo was taken by Gregg McNeill of Darkbox Photography during the Sanctuary event.
Gregg has this to say about this plate-
” I love this plate. Exposure time was a trim 4 seconds because it was taken out doors, under a marquee, so lots of ambient soft UV light. It’s only the second time ever I’ve made portraits outside at an event. ”
There were additional challenges due to the weather conditions that day, and their Marquis nearly blew down overnight.
Steampunks in general, and our people in particular are absolutely bloody amazing.
Darkbox Photography have a patreon which can be found here. Please do support their work!
One of the main characters in the first half of The Gathering is never named. She’s deliberately a manga satire, she’s the big eyed, be-ribboned innocent, but she’s also something else entirely, and nasty with it. In the script, she’s The Poor Little Me – a reference to the Eliza Carthy song that inspired her. Where that was too clunky, I’ve also called her Ribbons, but she doesn’t really have a name, she’s not that sort of girl.
Ribbons
I will be your friend, your best friend
I bet I’m the first pretty girl who
Ever wanted to be friends with you. I bet
Even the unpopular girls mostly do not want
To be friends with you. You’re so alone.
You are so odd, so awkward, so unlovely
It is as well I am so good and kind.
I’m very generous, everyone says so.
And now I take pity on poor you.
Poor little you, unloved, unwanted. Here I am
For you, here to be yours and in return
You’ll be so glad to do what I want
So happy with anything to make me smile.
Poor you, not much to smile about, is there?
But I can put up with you, I’m so kind
And you will be my best friend, my most
Loyal, devoted, trusting, obedient friend
So grateful because you know you don’t deserve
A friend as pretty and lovely as me.
I will be kind to you and you will say
How kind I am, how nice, how sweet
You will say I am the best, the very best.
I will be patient with your mistakes and failures
You are so slow, and clumsy, and sad.
Poor you. Poor little you. So hard, being you
Never happy, are you? Poor you. So sad.
So hard for me, being around you all the time
So tiring, with never enough joy to feed on
Never enough life in your marrow for me.
But I try, I do my best, it’s so hard
Being your friend, you are so useless
So weak.
Poor me.
Poor little me.
Art by Dr Abbey,
I had a lot of conversations with Dr Abbey about child Salamandra as he started getting to know the deeper lives of the characters on our fictional island. It’s always interesting bringing someone new into the inner life of the books, seeing what is obvious to them, and what I need to talk about, and what new things are discovered in that process.
“How old is she in this book?” he asked. I had to admit that I couldn’t tell him. Her age is vague, reliably, for reasons.
It’s always difficult to know what to say when there are things in a story that are important, and you want people to notice them, but you also don’t want to spell them out. How old is Salamandra? Is she a physically small child? A precocious child? A magical child? What kind of child is she? If you’ve read New England Gothic, you’ll know that many of the monsters on and around the island are probably her mother’s children. What does that make Sal? What was really going on with her when she was thrown into the sea in The Blind Fisherman?
Who is she? What is she? These are questions at the heart of the story. I can encourage you to think about it, but that’s about as far as I’m ready to go.
In this image by Dr Abbey, we see child Salamandra as she starts to add wrappings to her regular attire. The strips of cloth have prayers, charms and spells written onto them and they are a form of protective magic that she builds up over the years until she has an entire dress of it. She is a grumpy child, and with good reason.
A very long time ago, I read a quote from Toni Morrison to the effect that often the most important part of a story is how we shape holes for other people to put things into. It’s an idea I’ve spent a lot of time with. The holes are where we write ourselves in, bring our own stories and experiences to fill in the gaps. The holes are where the collaboration happens between author and reader. Hopeless Maine is the project in which I have given most thought to the gaps. It’s also the only project I’ve done where a lot of people have responded by wanting to bring their own creativity to those spaces. It’s a truly exciting process.
Who is child Salamandra? She’s the awkward, unacceptable one. She’s the child who refused to be tamed. She is your lost inner child. She is the magic your child self wanted. She is the resilience to survive bullying and to overcome setback. She is herself despite where she came from, she is not simply a product of her parents. She is childhood rage and frustration, and a child’s keen sense of justice and fair play. She might rescue you. She might glower at you. She might set fire to your kitchen chair. If she whispers to you, listen carefully – she may have secrets to share, or demands to make.