The Blueberry Fields: Author's Notes on The Black Swan

... Oh, yeesh, is this ever embarassing.
This was written over the summer of 1995, I think, since this was the first assignment I handed in for Writing 12. In any case, I would have been 16 or 17 when I wrote this.
Oh no!

The teacher was apparently unimpressed by the faux-period-piece fantasy-novel tone, and commented that it was a "fine example of its ilk". Well, I mostly just remember the combination of positive-sounding words, and "ilk". In retrospect, there's something terribly self-absorbed about the hokey accents and speech patterns. Nevertheless, this story has remained one of my favourites, and in 1995 I attempted to write actual excerpts from Lord Brock's Gramaryes. This world was going to be linked with the world of The Villager's Tale, and I even wrote some story scraps where "subtle" cross-references would be made.

For the record, the complete list of The Gramaryes of Lord Brock of Heatherwood included:

As you can see, I got a little fixated on the two-word alliteration theme. Actual entries were written for the Gramarye of Plants and Poisons; it appears that the story was designed to also crossover with an unfinished work from Grade 10 (1994/5. I would have been about 16), which may be included here whenever I actually get further than the scene-setting.

The main inspiration for this story was an ancient two-volume edition of Webster's New Twentieth Century Dictionary that resides in our family library. At the time, I liked to investigate the second volume's "Quotes in Foreign Languages" and "Figures from Mythology and Literature" section, mostly for interesting bits of Arthurian legend and Greek mythology. One day, I came across the entry for "swan maiden", and was delighted that the dictionary would go so far as to actually include such a fanciful entry.

Possibly inspired by a book called The Seventh Swan, which I may have read in elementary school, I began to ponder: What if there was a swan-man? What would that be like?

(Years later, a Wargamer Society member told me that in certain Role-Playing Worlds, there was a male equivalent to a Swan Maiden... called a Man-Drake.)
o.O

I was also haunted by memories of black swans that I'd seen at Stanley Park. For some reason, the idea of these black swans, their ruby eyes glinting in the sunlight, appealed to me a lot more than the idea of plain old white swans. Thus began the story.

Problem: as I discovered while doing research for an Aquatic Science 11 report on penguins, black swans are native to Australia.

.... Which, at the time of the story, would probably be chiefly populated by Aborigine people. If the Black Swans had the ability to transform into people, logic (my kind of logic, anyways) would dictate that they transform into people who would "fit in"...

Leaving aside that tangled problem (for this story doesn't quite have a set period in time...), the fact remains that the "harshly accented" tones of the Swan would, in fact, have been harsh Australian accents. Visions of Paul Hogan stomping around in a pond came to mind when I discovered the awful truth. It was a dark day indeed.

Names are always a tough one for me, since I have a terrible time coming up with them. Maybe it's because of Japanese shojo manga (comics for girls), where the characters used to create the names almost always reflect the person in some way. Or maybe it's because I haven't had enough exposure to real people, and thus I panick when I have to think of them. The notable names in this story are:

Nathan Brock: A name used by Mr. Sinister, one of my favourite villains from the comic book series X-men. Because of this, I went through a period of naming many of my male characters "Nathan" or "Nathaniel". "Brock", of course, also means "badger", and so the estate was named "Heatherwood" to create a sense of bucolic calm. God knows how the old Lord was able to afford a life of doing nothing but write, given that the castle didn't appear to have any kind of major industry or trade.
James: I remembered that there were a lot of English kings named James. It sounded medieval.
Lord Hewlett of Purves: Our computer at the time was a Hewlett Packard. Over the computer area was a promotional calendar from the lady who sold us our current house, Ms. Purves.
Master Archer Williams: The major road near us is called Williams Road. I think that the "Master Archer" thing comes from vague memories of She-ra, and some red-headed moustached character named Bow.

Despite the "ilk" comment, I ended up handing in a few more fantasy stories for my assignments. I don't think any of them were quite as hokey as this one, though, in terms of character-types and dialects.

PS: How many cygnets did those two swans have, anyways?! And do male swans even take care of their offspring? I seem to recall reading that swans mate for life, but that may just be a myth.

The Black Swan: Author's Notes