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Eugene author takes tweens of all ages through a fantasy filled with adventure
By Randi Bjornstad, The Register-Guard Newspaper, Eugene,
Oregon
Published: Nov 16, 2008 07:42AM
It's been a long time — very, very — since I was a tween or even a teen, but
I still like to read a great kids' book as much as anybody, and I was hooked
on “Glory Rose and the Gloaming” from the first page.
Even the first paragraph: “Yes, appearances can be deceiving,
for it appeared to be a perfectly splendid spring evening.
Long sunrays punctured the tree branches, dappling the forest
floor, and at the edge of a tiny glade, high in an ancient
oak tree, Archimedes perched... watching figures in the clearing
below. Attempts to camouflage himself amid the leaves and
remain undetected were not going all that well. He was constantly
preening and fluffing... in general quite restless... for
with that insight that telepaths through all speechless creatures,
Archimedes knew that something was very, very wrong.”
And it quickly gets more disturbing from there. I have to admit, I read the first chapter with a feeling of great dread, and those expectations were not unfounded.
I was happy when the second chapter started out on a lighter note. However,
I haven't made it quite all the way through “Glory Rose” yet, and I'm sure
I haven't seen the last of Eugene author Sharon Brandsma's nail-biting plot
line.
At least I know that Glory Rose — a pink-haired creature, half-fairy and half-human — makes
it through this fantasy of wizards, dragons and leathery “bat beasts,” because
this in fact is the first book of a trilogy. Brandsma is mostly done with the
second book — “Glory Rose and the Book of Shadows” — and she says she's got
a good working outline done already for the third.
Book No. 2 should be out in 2009 — “soon, hopefully,” Brandsma says — although
her writing schedule is slowed by the rigors of marketing the first installment.
So far, the book is on the shelves in several local libraries and bookstores
as well as on the Internet.
Just writing her books is a fantasy of sorts in this age of computerized cut-and-paste,
instant editing.
Believe it or not, Brandsma literally writes her manuscripts with a black gel
pen on white lined paper and then types them using an old Brother typewriter.
She's been telling stories at least since she was 4 years old, when, “My mother
used to give me the phone book and tell me to entertain my brother,” Brandsma
recalls. “I could sit there for hours, turning the pages and telling him stories.”
She says the just-released “Glory Rose” practically wrote itself.
“Book One was so powerful in my mind that I just wrote it — I didn't have an
outline — and it took only four months,” she says. “Everything you read says, ‘Write
with an outline,' so Book Two has an outline, and I'm over half done with it
now. Book Three is ready to go; it's just waiting” for its predecessor to be
finished.
In describing the character of Glory Rose, Brandsma says she wanted to get
away from the idea of the “perfect hero” in favor of a heroine “who was not
perfect at all — who was in fact flawed — yet still achieved what she set
out to do.”
In the face of grave danger from an evil sorcerer and assorted other dangerous
characters, the girl sets out to save the Magic Realm.
Not surprisingly, along the way she comes into contact — for good or evil — with a vast array of magical creatures, from cats to witches and including the fabled Merlin, known in this tale as an “alchemist.”
Brandsma has been living with the Glory Rose stories in her head since long
before J.K. Rowling wrote her immensely popular series about the young wizard,
Harry Potter.
“J.K. Rowling has done a wonderful thing for children, getting them excited about
reading,” she says. “I think her work actually made it easier for women to write
in the (fantasy) genre, which in the past has been dominated by men.”
For that reason, she published “Glory Rose and the Gloaming” — which means “twilight” in
Middle English and Scottish — precisely to follow Rowling's example by using
her initials, S.M. Brandsma, instead of her feminine first name.
It's a trick the girlish Glory Rose might want to keep in mind as she battles
her way through three books fraught with peril, taking on the evil sorcerer,
Bassarab, with the future of her beloved Magic Realm at stake.