Wisdom's Kiss (56 page)

Aren't they just? I adore them, every single one.

I've read books told with wildly contrasting fonts, and after a while all I can focus on are the letters: "Oh, look at this g!" I didn't want
Wisdom's Kiss
to have that ransom-note quality; the eight points of view are distinct enough that the text doesn't need much distinguishing. The headers, however, I consider illustrations—not just Felis's memoir and the play, but all of them. I wanted the encyclopedia super boring, which is a terrible thing to ask of a graphic designer, but isn't that what an encyclopedia cries out to be? I was very, very blessed to be allowed to contribute my thoughts on their final appearance. (My editor is doubtless snorting right now; my "thoughts" filled three pages.)

How did Puss in Boots end up in
Wisdom's Kiss?
Was that always your plan?

Princess Ben
has many fairy-tale references, and I wanted to do the same in
Wisdom's Kiss.
I've always loved "Puss in Boots," yet when I reread Fred Marcellino's lovely edition, I was mostly struck by Puss's narcissism. Why not distill that feline egotism to its ridiculous extreme, add oblique versions of the other characters, and get myself a knockout ending in the bargain? Which is to say that the ending is a knockout for me—no one else seems familiar with "
Puss in Boots
." But I compose a book's last sentence quite early in my writing process, so I'll be forever grateful that Felis and Fred Marcellino and Charles Perrault (who wrote the original fairy tale in 1697) provided me with an endpoint to aim for.

What do you consider the book's moral? Its overall message?

That fairy-tale endings aren't all they're cracked up to be. Every book I read—or write, thank you—seems to conclude with Happily Ever After. I don't want my kids considering themselves failures if they reach the ripe old age of sixteen without their own true love. Thus a story about a girl who doesn't get her guy but who ends up satisfied and happy anyway.

You're describing a lot of subtlety—obscure references, foreign terms, clues buried within clues ... Will
Wisdom's Kiss
need an accompanying guidebook or decoder ring?

A decoder ring ... I like that. Twist it counterclockwise three times and the book turns into a white-footed rabbit. Seriously, there is a website and also this whole enhanced e-book to explain the backstory and such, should readers be interested. As my daughter used to say, peel your eyeballs for them.

At the end of it all, who's your favorite character?

Escoffier
. He's based on our cat Charcoal, who is equally affectionate and vain.

The older I get, the more I enjoy words and playing with words. Recently, for example, my husband while reading the newspaper came across "skein" ("a coiled length of yarn, or a tangled situation"; we both knew
that),
and he wondered how to pronounce it. Turns out we were both wrong: it's "skein" as in "pain," not "skein" as in "ween." But in the process of researching this, I learned that "skein" also refers to the V-shaped pattern of flying swans or geese; in other words, they're stretched like a thread across the sky. How cool is that?

Needless to say to anyone familiar with
Wisdom's Kiss,
I adore unearthing strange words (see the
glossary
), concocting
epitaphs
, fabricating
aphorisms
, and counterfeiting geographies. Here I've assembled
Wisdom's Kiss's
more unusual place names ("gazetteer" = "a geographical dictionary") for readers seeking the words' meanings and pronunciations, or curious as to how I ended up with these oddballs.

For real words, check your e-reader's dictionary. Who knows? You might find something even cooler than skein.

***

AHMB Pronounced as it's spelled. Originally called the
Sultanate of Om
because "om" is such a wacky word. But it turns out I'm not the only one tickled by its wackiness;
Discworld
author Terry Pratchett used it for the name of a god. So I tweaked my version to something even more exotic.
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AJAR (ah•JAR) You know the riddle, right? "When is a door not a door? When it's ajar." Snicker. Some words just tickle my fancy; this is one of them. Also, the letter
j
is worth 8 points in Scrabble, so file "ajar" away for future winnings.
The Imperial Gastric and Psychiatric Journal of Ajar
made even my children laugh; my thirteen-year-old asked, "What the heck do gastric and psychiatric have to do with each other?" Nothing, son, nothing; that's the joke.
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ALPSBURG "Alps" as in "Swiss"; "burg" as in "the thing you eat at cookouts." In German,
burg
(Hamburg, Salzburg, Regensburg, Augsburg) means a fortress or castle. So "Alpsburg," therefore, means a mountain castle.
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ALPSBURGSTADT Pronounced "Alpsburg" + "stot" as in "lot." The capital of the ancient barony of Alpsburg, or "mountain castle town." Fun.
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ANCIENNE (on•SYEN) Ancienne, the highest mountain in central Lax, has
long been rumored
to have magical powers. Ancien is French for "ancient" or "old;" it can also mean "old man," "military veteran," or "forefather." Add
-ne
for the feminine version, which by inference would mean "old woman." I learn from my tattered French dictionary that
anciennement
means "of former times" but it literally translates as "anciently," a word I now want to use at the first available opportunity, in either French or English: "Anciently people used typewriters."
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BACIO (BAHTCH•e•o) Italian for "kiss," and the name of a well-known Italian chocolate akin to Hershey's Kisses. For the five people reading
Wisdom's Kiss
who either speak Italian or know their candy brands, it's a cute joke:
Trudy and Tips
come from the town of Kiss.
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BRIDGERIVER Pronounced "bridge" + "river." Astoundingly enough, this compound noun—according to my Google search, anyway—does not exist. I made it up! Such a great place name, too—will definitely put it to use should I ever write a byproduct of
Wisdom's Kiss.
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