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The Slow Palace is, in some part, an exploration of a parallel Christianity in its early-middle stages, one rooted in fire and time instead of blood and sanctity. Ever since I first began pondering the novel, I've been trying to come up with a symbol for this religion: their crucifix, if you will, something to embroider on the chasubles and nail above the altars. For the duration of this draft, I'd settled on a symbol that sort of worked (that worked better than the previous symbol, anyway), but it didn't really resonate for me, either symbolically or visually.
Today, a refinement or a replacement popped into my head, and it works on no fewer than four symbolic levels! I find it deeply satisfying; it feels "right" the way nothing before has. It's prettier, too, and would make a great cover illustration. (Not to get ahead of myself or anything.)
As a side benefit, it provides a source of angst for clockmakers, who, somewhere in the unwritten backstory of the book, tore their hair out over theohorological solutions to the "problem" that crown escapements have to have an odd number of teeth. Clockmakers always need more angst. Cheeky bastards.
Today, a refinement or a replacement popped into my head, and it works on no fewer than four symbolic levels! I find it deeply satisfying; it feels "right" the way nothing before has. It's prettier, too, and would make a great cover illustration. (Not to get ahead of myself or anything.)
As a side benefit, it provides a source of angst for clockmakers, who, somewhere in the unwritten backstory of the book, tore their hair out over theohorological solutions to the "problem" that crown escapements have to have an odd number of teeth. Clockmakers always need more angst. Cheeky bastards.
