To Snog, Perchance To Dream*
Today's guest bloggist had my attention at word one: Novembrance, (the title of her blog). Talk about clever! Luisa Perkins lives in New York (ish), attends Broadway plays on a regular basis and is a seeker of beauty in all things. She is pretty brilliant--take, for instance, the title of this post (hers, of course). Reading her offering for today made me feel just a wee bit smart in light of our similar tastes (see list below). What's more, she has published a novel and a short story. Check out her blog and discover Luisa for yourself at Novembrance.
I’m honored to be guest posting here at Dunhaven Place today. As I contemplated what I would write while filling in for the creator of the delicious Sir Anthony, I remembered something I wrote eons ago (as blog time is reckoned). It was huge fun to write, though I must confess: I didn’t come up with the idea. Credit for that must go to Veronica Mitchell, the genius blogger at Toddled Dredge. Without further ado, I give you:
Ten Literary Characters I Would Totally Make Out With If I Were Single and They Were Real But I’m Not, Single I Mean, I Am Real, But I’m Also Happily Married and Want to Stay That Way So Maybe We Should Forget This
My husband Patrick is out of town for the next few days; what better way to console myself in his absence than to wax poetical over literary flames who have warmed my heart in the past? That—and a little Black & Green’s Milk Chocolate Butterscotch, plus maybe another viewing of The Scarlet Pimpernel—and I’m almost fine. I’ll list my literary crushes in chronological order.
1. Will Scarlet was my first literary love. (Ned Nickerson never really did it for me, and I probably would have had a crush on Almanzo if I hadn’t been distracted by Laura Ingalls Wilder’s fabulous descriptions of food.) I have an ancient copy of Philip Schuyler Allen’s Robin Hood that I read over and over again when I was nine. I pictured myself as one of Maid Marian’s junior attendants, running around the woods and having archery competitions with the handsome, tempestuous Will.
2. Rhett Butler: I read Gone With the Wind three times the summer I was ten; I’ve probably read it at least another fifteen times since then. “Oh, Rhett, Rhett,” I’d practice sighing in my idea of a cultured Georgia accent when I was sure no one was around.
He was kissing her now and his mustache tickled her mouth, kissing her with slow, hot lips that were so leisurely as though he had the whole night before him. Charles had never kissed her like this. Never had the kisses of the Tarleton and Calvert boys made her go hot and cold and shaky like this. He bent her body backward and his lips traveled down her throat to where the cameo fastened her basque. “Sweet,” he whispered. “Sweet.”
Holy cow. I can’t believe I was reading that when I was ten.
3. Éomer from The Lord of the Rings came next. I knew I couldn’t compete with the eternally beautiful Arwen, so Aragorn was right out. Faramir is awesome, but he’s clearly the man for Éowyn. Éomer, however, is completely unattached. (Oh, I know he eventually marries Lothíriel. Give me a break.) He’s a manly Marshal with fabulous, long blond hair, and he knows how to handle horses; he commands. I felt vindicated in my love for him when Karl Urban played him in the movie version of The Two Towers. Good grief: he is out of control.
4. When I was twelve, I was blown away by Anne McCaffrey’s Dragonriders of Pern series (not the lame, tame version that has been edited and reissued for kids). Chief among its attractions (the fabulous telepathic dragons aside) was the amber-eyed, haughty F’lar, leader of the dragonriders.
5. In Eighth Grade Honors English, we read Much Ado About Nothing, then went and saw the play at San Francisco’s American Conservatory Theatre. Benedick had me at “I will do myself the right to trust none; and the fine is, for the which I may go the finer, I will live a bachelor.” Oh, the challenge…again, validation of this crush came when Brian Stokes Mitchell recently played Benedick in Kiss Me, Kate on Broadway.
6. Captain Wentworth: Of course I adore Mr. Darcy, but sometimes I go for the less obvious guy; the reserved hero of Jane Austen’s Persuasion is just the ticket. I know he rightly belongs to Anne. It’s just that I, like the Musgrove girls, have “a little fever of admiration” for him (especially as realized by Ciarán Hinds in the 1995 movie).
7. Including Chris McIlroy of my own first novel Shannon’s Mirror is not an act of shameless self-promotion. It’s just that he is an aggregate of all my favorite teen-age boyfriends. Heaven knows they were attractive enough in real life. How much more their composite ideal?
8. Who cares whether Llewelyn ap Iorwerth happens to be one of my real-life ancestors? There are almost 1,000 years between us. In Sharon Kay Penman’s historical novel Here There Be Dragons, he fights hard to keep Wales unified in the face of John Lackland’s inroads; he’s unfailingly loyal to Richard the Lionhearted; and he completely forgives his wonderful wife Joanna a grievous hurt. Their makeup scene not only made me cry when I first read it, it gets me a little misty just writing about it now.
9. John Uskglass, a.k.a. The Raven King: He looks like Lord Byron, only better. He’s powerfully magical and oh, so mysterious. He rules all of Faerie. He’s one of the reasons why Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell, by Susanna Clarke, is one of my favorite books of all time.
10. Jake from New Moon and Eclipse: Can someone please explain to me why Bella is such a goner for a cold undead guy when there is a wolfishly hot, motorcycle-riding, live human right at her elbow? (Edward fans, that’s a rhetorical question.) The makeout scene between Jake and Bella in Eclipse is by far my favorite thing that Stephenie Meyer has yet published.
* Hamlet didn't make the cut. Unless it's the Hamlet played by Ralph Fiennes on Broadway back in 1995. Get out of my way, Ophelia...Other contenders were Heathcliff (except I’d be too scared of Cathy’s revenge); Elizabeth George’s Inspector Lynley; Diana Gabaldon’s Jamie Fraser; and of course, the incomparable Barney Snaith.
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