Welcome to the first Bright Weavings newsletter! I'd like to take this opportunity to thank you all for subscribing, and to say how much I am enjoying not only running the site itself, but also meeting the many people who visit Bright Weavings, both through the forums and via email. I don't think I really had any idea what this site would develop into when I first began putting it together, and it continues to be a fantastic and very rewarding experience.

What's New on Bright Weavings
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>Springettfest

Regular visitors to the site will no doubt have noticed that we have a wonderful 'resident' artist for the site; Martin Springett, who was the artist who created the beautiful covers for the first edition of The Fionavar Tapestry trilogy. We already have copies of his posters of those covers on the site, as well as some other offerings, including music inspired by GGK's books, and more artwork inspired by Fionavar. Well, starting now, we're having a bit of a 'Springettfest' with a lot more from Martin appearing on the site. So be alert, because there's cool stuff on its way. But for February, we have 2 new features on the site from the Springettmeister...

* A new poster in his 'People of Fionavar' series. To join his poster of Ceinwen the Huntress with Dave, we now have a poster by Martin of that most ambiguous of characters, Galadan of the Andain. Martin has depicted Galadan in his wolf form, with Jennifer in the foreground. See the poster by clicking through: http://www.brightweavings.com/artgallery/galadan.htm

* Martin has created a new art form called booklarks (which you might know as bookmarks)... He has created four so far; one for each of the books of The Fionavar Tapestry, featuring a detail from the poster, and one of his Ceinwen poster. They're available to buy, and they're laminated, which means they'll last. A great gift for any Fionavar fan, and kind of cool to use yourself! Click through to see them: http://www.brightweavings.com/artgallery/bookmarks.htm

> Cover Art

As was announced in the news section last month, the British edition of Lord of Emperors is being published in paperback with a different cover than the hardback. It's now hit the shops, as have all the LoE paperback editions, and we have a copy of the new cover on the site. Also up is the cover of the Spanish edition of Sailing to Sarantium, just published, titled Los Mosaicos de Sarantium. The cover is an adaptation of the Canadian design by Cathy MacLean. See both of the covers here: http://www.brightweavings.com/artgallery/covsarantium.htm

> Links

I've added some links to the links page, all connected with Byzantium and the inspiration behind The Sarantine Mosaic. There's a great website about 6th century Byzantium, which is kind of a directory, with links to over 100 sites about Byzantium. The same person responsible for that site has also put up an interactive translation of Procopius' The Secret History, which is the historical equivalent of what Crispin sees Pertennius writing. It's interactive because scholars can leave their annotations in the appropriate place on the page; a very cool idea! There's also a link to a page which has a description and image of Justinian's Column, which stood on the south-west of Hagia Sophia and was nearly as high as its dome. You can get to all those links here: http://www.brightweavings.com/links/index.htm

I've also added a link to a Finnish review of The Lions of Al-Rassan on the reviews index page. If there is anyone out there receiving this newsletter who can translate it, and wants to make the attempt, do feel free... http://www.brightweavings.com/reviews/index.htm

If anyone has any relevant links they think belong in the links section, send them in.

> Tidbits

There are a couple of little additions to the site which I thought I'd let you know about that don't appear on the 'what's new' section on the homepage. First of all, another 'GGK's note' is up on the site... he has left a comment on the 'histories' page that went up in January together with the dialogue/review of GGK's books by Strange Horizons. And secondly, Joe Doyle sent in a comment on one of the annotations that can be found in the scholarship section. He offers an alternate theory on how GGK came to choose Macha and Nemain as names for the goddesses of war in Fionavar. His comment can be found on the page, under Sean's initial annotation. If anyone else has anything to contribute along those lines, please do send it in. Someone once commented that they'd like to try and collect all the allusions to Yeats in The Sarantine Mosaic - that's the kind of thing that would be a great addition to the annotations page.

In the Forums...
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There's a fair amount of activity going on in the forums, with some very interesting ongoing threads, some of which I'll introduce here.

Who did Blaise give the yellow rose to?

Castiron writes: "If the three roses are not ordinary roses -- that is, if they aren't going to shrivel up and lose all their petals within a couple weeks, but rather will keep their form for years -- then I could see Blaise saving the yellow rose against a time when he finds a woman who he can love openly. If the roses are ordinary, non-magical, dry-up-and-scatter roses.... I suddenly have this mental image of Blaise putting the rose in a box, and taking it back with him to Gorhaut, and burying the rose there, giving it to the country that he loves."

Click through to the discussion here to leave your own opinion: http://www.brightweavings.com/scgi-bin/discus/show.cgi?3/54

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Favourite lines from favourite books?

Thunderchild writes: "I have two that for me captured the stories they came from:

"I will never understand how you can possibly be so pleased to see a man who calls you Pigeon Two!" Devin in Tigana. This one because I'd gone through so much and this was like the happiness at the end of the tunnel, and then Guy Kay rips my heart out with his little riselka bit. And even though I've spent years trying to work out who I might be willing to let go and cursing the fact that I must, it only makes the book better.

and..

"I do. I go as deep as you" and "I am here" - both spoken by Lancelot before his battle with the oldest one. The first one speaks to me of mystery because it works on levels I can only imagine and the second because it's such an incredible statement to make in that situation. The simplicity encompasses the whole challenge/dance.

Do you have a favourite line from one of GGK's books that you'd like to share? Click through to the forum: http://www.brightweavings.com/scgi-bin/discus/show.cgi?3/43

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Is A Song for Arbonne sexist?

In the Strange Horizons review/dialogue that I mentioned before, the reviewers discuss each book at length. When it comes to A Song for Arbonne, both of them seem to take issue with the way GGK works in one of his themes:

"Kay creates a dualistic religion in Arbonne that elevates a female figure over a male, which infuriates the northerners, leading a fanatic against them to whip the country into a frenzied crusade. . .and he ties that in with what felt like the overarching theme of the book to me -- the position of women in society. I admire him for what he seems to be trying to say -- to work against the conception of women as useless beings. . .but I think there are several places in the book where his handling of the women becomes very problematic, most centrally in the fact that it is a woman's foolishness that almost dooms them all..."

I'd recommend reading the article before visiting the forums to discuss this, but there has been some interesting discussion about this issue going on in the forums, which has grown to encompass a discussion of GGK's female heroines, and more.

Strange Horizons Article: http://www.brightweavings.com/reviews/strangehorizons.htm
Is Arbonne sexist forum: http://www.brightweavings.com/scgi-bin/discus/show.cgi?3/48

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Other News
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Our host site, SFSite.com, recently published its 'Best Books of 2000' list, decided upon by the SF site staff and contributors (reader votes come in to make up a separate list next month). The time period for reader votes is up, unfortunately, or I might have been delicately hinting that folks might want to hop along there and cast their vote for a certain Sarantine book. Well, whether or not Lord of Emperors appears on the reader list, it does appear on the SFSite official list, at number 3. This is what Neil Walsh has to say:

"... It's obvious that when Kay sets out to write a fantasy novel, he researches a particular period until he knows it so well that when he presents a parallel setting in his creation there is no doubt in the reader's mind that this imaginative locale is as real as any that ever existed. In this case, Sarantium is parallel to Constantinople at the peak of the Byzantine Empire. Personally, I have a healthy respect for a fantasy writer whose hero is a mosaicist who only ever draws a sword once and is greatly relieved that he doesn't actually have to use it, since he's not really sure how. But even the grand players in this novel -- the Emperor and Empress of Sarantium, for example -- are equally human: real and complex credible characters. And, best of all, what happens is not at all what you expect. A brilliant conclusion to a terrific series."

For those who want to know more, Mary Gentle's Ash: A Secret History came in at number one, and you can see the whole list by clicking through to SFSite here: http://www.sfsite.com/columns/best01.htm

And that's it from me for this newsletter (and not before time, they cry!) There's lots more new stuff lined up to be added to Bright Weavings over the next few weeks, including an essay by Martin Springett about the process of creating his Fionavar covers, including some early sketches, a great new piece of fan art, and an announcement about the identity of the artists who've created the new covers for the new release of The Fionavar Tapestry trilogy in the U.S.

Until next time,

Deborah