Q. Is Bed of Rose and Thorns (R&T) a love story?
A. It is high fantasy. It is a fairy tale. And it is a fantasy of love. So … sure.
Q. Why are the sex scenes so graphic?
A. They have to be. For three reasons. The first is that this is a story about powerful emotions and passions. Ezra’s love, the Queen’s arduous work and voracious sexual appetite. The Queen has been betrayed and abused, and now she works herself to the limit … all this has resulted in her need for sexual release taking on a scary intensity. It is both release and addiction, in balance with her need to serve her Queendom.
Q. What is the second reason?
A. The Queen has a power like Ezra’s. Both of them are incredibly primal. And it comes out sexually.
Q. Dare I ask what the final reason is for this sexual maelstrom?
A. Sure. This story has a certain fairy tale element to it. It is romantic and idealistic. Ezra is impossibly devoted. To balance that, we have a very raw depiction of sex.
Q. So this is a story of unconditional love?
A. Ezra’s love for the Queen is total and unconditional. It is in effect equally when he is awake and when he is asleep. He loves her when they are apart, and even more fiercely when they are together. He is almost insane with love.
Q. Stalker much?
A. Yes, it is fair to wonder if Ezra’s love is slavish or perhaps even something worse until we find out what is going on underneath.
Q. Does such a love exist in the world?
A. I am certain of it, though, perhaps this kind of selfless devotion and deep imaginative love is rare.
Q. One of your readers thought that you wrote a very ‘male-oriented’ sexual style. What do you think of that?
A. Not all men are the same, and not all women are the same. In life and in bed. The Queen is very aggressive, and has some male tendencies. But she is a woman, and there are women like her in real life.
Q. But what about the way everyone is attracted to Ezra and fawns over him? Isn’t that some kind of male fantasy?
A. You mean the way he is treated as a sexual object by certain individuals? If Ezra was a woman constantly having to fend off getting her butt pinched, I doubt it would seem like a male fantasy. It is true that Ezra is the center of sexual tension in the story (along with the Queen), but that works both for and against him. It is part of what comes with his emotional gift.
Q. Aside from Ezra’s mad feelings, R&T explores other aspects of love, too, doesn’t it?
A. Yes. Pure platonic love and the complex love that can exist between friends who are also attracted to each other.
Q. Ah, platonic love. You mean Pontes.
A. Yes. I had a much smaller role in mind for Pontes when I started writing R&T, but his importance grew with the story. Eventually I started feeling the depth of love he had for Ezra and realized how crucial their relationship was.
Q. Why does Pontes love Ezra?
A. Why does anyone love another person? It’s complicated. And in this case, it’s subtle. It started with something small. Ezra respected the importance of Pontes’ work as an accountant.
Q. Most of your ARC readers grew quite attached to Pontes. Why do you think that is?
A. Pontes occupies an important position in R&T. He is a calm, understated center. Everyone else is larger than life: Ezra with his hyperemotional chiming, the mysterious and dark Queen, and brash, honest Marigold. There is a certain power and chaos around each of the other characters. But Pontes, is cool and loyal. Polite. Whatever he is thinking is its own mystery, one that is only revealed by watching him carefully.
Q. Why is Pontes’ love important?
A. He is the one character who never tries to take advantage of Ezra. He always looks out for his friend, and simply helps him. Pontes is the fantasy of pure, loyal, friendship.
Q. Is Pontes gay?
A. He never says.
Q. Sir Marigold is quite different. More conflicted.
A. Yes, Marigold is a fiery character, with mixed loyalties and a long past with both Ezra and the Queen.
Q. How is her complex past important?
A. Marigold loves Ezra, both as a friend and perhaps as something more. But she also carries this intense guilt over leaving both the Queen and Ezra to their fates on the night that the Prince of Erle died. That guilt is enough to compromise Marigold into keeping the big secret from Ezra.
Q. What is Marigold’s love the fantasy of?
A. Her love is an example of that strange place that friends sometimes get to, when their love takes on—through history—a multi-dimensional richness.
Q. That richness leads to some of the more interesting lines in R&T.
A. Yes. Marigold know how to speak up for herself.
Pontes’ face turned instantly scarlet, and he fumbled his reins, hands clumsy with upset. “Don’t be absurd. You love him. That’s been as obvious as sunrise for eleven years.”
Marigold laughed. “You can’t embarrass me, secretary. He’s been my friend forever. Trained together. I held his other hand when his wife died, fought beside him, faced pee-myself ridiculousness and shit yourself danger right by his side. I practically am married to him, Pontes. I’ve sewed him up with enough thread to make the wedding dress. And like any good wife, I’ve called him an idiot more times than there are days in the year.”
Q. Ah, love.
Sir Ezra is an Elysian Bell; he has a frightening potential that he keeps hidden deep beneath tight layers of steel armor. He secretly loves a dark Queen whose touch would mean his death.
Banished for brutally slaughtering the Prince of Erle and husband to the Queen, Sir Ezra can only dream of seeing her again. Every night, his soul travels to distant lands, remembering the Queen, her deep convictions, brilliant mind, unending work, hidden loneliness, and a single night of horrific bloodshed.
Recalled to the Queendom after eleven years, Ezra hopes to catch at least a fleeting glimpse of the woman he was sacrificed for. Instead, he finds a nation in rebellion and the Queen to be an elusive phantom. His only friend, Sir Marigold, challenges his presence and tells him that he is not needed in the capitol. Looking for both the truth and the absent Queen, Ezra finds only more secrets and enemies.
Ezra’s armor is dented, scarred, and ruined by friend and enemy alike; his secret potential is about to become unbound.
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***
“Where am I?” asks the man. He seems to be bobbing high in clear aquamarine water. All he can see is a vast expanse of ocean and a clear crystalline structure that floats nearby. Something seems familiar. He had been in a desert, travelling with friends, but now he swims upon an endless ocean.
“Have I been here before?” he asks. The tug of oceanic currents and the endless blue horizon pull on some memory . . . something important.
“You are in the sea of Eydos,” says the crystalline structure. It has been floating toward him, quietly, its approach, until then, unnoticed.
“And you are an iceberg,” the man says, smiling, unconcerned, unsurprised by the nearness of the mountainous structure. He does not know what Eydos is, but he thinks he may recognize this vast icy creature. Something tells him that he may have seen her before, though his memory is as difficult to make out as a words written on water.
The iceberg shakes from side to side, creating little ripples and dancing waves. “I suppose that I am.”
“Your sides are so smooth,” says the man. “I like you.”
The iceberg shakes again and glides right up beside the man. He floats high enough in the water that her ripples of laughter do not threaten to drown him. “You are brave, aren’t you?”
“I am not afraid to look upon that which I like. And say so.”
“Look down then, man, and tell me what you see.”
The man dives down a few body lengths, searching. When he resurfaces, he is smiling even more widely than before. “You go down and down, out of sight, beyond light and reckoning.” He shakes his head at her. “Most of you is down below, unknowable. How vast are you?”
“Never ask a lady her size,” the iceberg says, creating even bigger waves as she shakes the waters, laughing. “My size is my depth, and my depth is my size.”
“Well, I like it. I am just a man. Not vast or mysterious like an iceberg.”
“An amusing man, I think,” replies the berg.
The man asks, “Where are you going?”
“On currents that are my own, on purposes that are my own, for reasons that are my own.”
“I don’t know what I am doing here or where I am going,” says the man.
“Typical,” replies the iceberg lightly. “Most do not.”
The man, swimming hard beside her, says, “You are certainly moving fast through this ocean.”
“Indeed,” says the iceberg. “I am an agent of my own destiny.” After a moment, she adds, “If you come around back and swim in my eddy, you will be pulled along. You can rest while we talk.”
The man looks at the smooth surface of the iceberg. “Can I not just slide up onto you and rest there?”
“No!” says the iceberg, firm. “I am hard and cold. I would burn you. If you touch me, you will be undone.” Her voice softens as she adds, “It is nice in my eddy. Swim there, man.”
He shrugs and does as she says.
“Oh, this is nice,” says the man. “I can look at you and talk at the same time.”
“Glad to help you do two things at once,” giggles the iceberg, making tears of water jiggle and parade.
And they talk on through the day, the man endlessly curious about the magnificent creature of the waters.
***
“I love you, iceberg,” declares the man.
“That’s nice, but you don’t even know a tenth of me.”
“Good point,” laughs the man. “I need to dive deeper.” He takes a deep breath and dives into the dark again.
Missing completely the iceberg’s cry of “No!”
The water starts at a clear color, or is it green? Then it turns light blue, and then to deeper and darker shades. The man pushes and kicks, fighting his buoyancy, feeling the weight of water build and build, following the clean lines of ice down into oblivion.
Heavy, crushing pressure begins to squeeze him. It is like the weight of memory, everywhere pushing, everywhere trying to change and deform him from his human shape, trying to make his courage fail and shatter his hope. But he loves the iceberg and he needs to follow her down.
At the utmost point of indigo darkness, he finds a new light. It shines from a clear chamber in the ice where a figure waits. Lungs bursting, he pushes deeper, drawing level to the translucent walls and the woman who lies inside.
She is naked but for her long, tawny hair. Like a lion’s mane, it frames her long, pure face and spills over her delicate, perfect shoulders. She looks at peace. Her eyes are closed, but she is smiling.
This is the heart of the iceberg, the man thinks, in the crushing pressure of the deep. So beautiful.
Then he sees that she rests upon a bed of long, sharp thorns.
Lee’s interests are eclectic. He is an Ironman Triathlete, hiker, traveler, and an enthusiastic sport rock climber. Lee also continues to work as a geophysicist on Carbon Capture and Sequestration projects, and is a writer for BIG-Media.ca.
The dream of understanding and being understood has never left his mind, and Lee continues that in his works of fiction through metaphor. His works include The Dynamicist Trilogy, Last Worst Hopes and Bed of Rose and Thorns.
Author Website: https://www.leehunt.org/
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