It Is A Circle Blog

I’ve had a fair few names along the way. My birth name, chosen name, one married name… and now I’m poised for a new identity.

For practical reasons, I want to keep the work I do with Tom separate from the erotica I write. For personal, emotional reasons, I want to be sharing his surname. All being well we get to do that in a legal sense this summer. So legally, I’m going to be Brynneth Nimue Brown some time soon, and very much looking forward to it.

But, what to do with the names? Bryn Colvin has a modest reputation as a smut writer, and I don’t want to mess with that. Bryn Brown, and Brynneth Brown are not really names that work at all. Not for book covers. Very comfortable with being that for every day, but the alliteration makes it a touch odd as an author name, and B.B is already in use.

After some consideration and talking and whatnot, I’m going to start using the name Nimue Brown for work I do with Tom – on the webcomic, here, and potentially other things. Wherever that makes sense. I’m not yet sure who I’m going to be when writing pagan things – Brynneth Nimue is a distinct possibility. Hopefully it will help keep the strands separate without confusing anyone (especially me) too much.

Names are important things. They are words of power. In some traditions, to be able to truly name a thing, is to be able to control it. To change a name is to change a destiny. I don’t really know who Nimue Brown is, yet. I get the impression she’s lighter of heart, more playful and fey than Bryn Colvin. She laughs easily, and at the moment she exists almost exclusively in relation to Tom, although she sneaks out to play without him sometimes. She exists because of him, and for him. I suspect her of being obsessed. Her writing is different from Bryn’s – lighter, faster, more in your face, less angsty.

I realise I’ve just written my first Nimue post in third person. Hey ho. I’m sleep deprived and my relationship with reality is… a bit creative just now.

Creator of The Desert Peach webcomic Donna Barr spent a while swapping emails with me over the weekend. The results of which are below…

 

Bryn: I’m fascinated by the idea of The Desert Peach – what led you to come up with that?

 

Donna: It’s a terrible pun. I was working in the files at the University of Washington, 2 February, 1978. The file room was being painted an odd, pale, terra-cotta sort of color. The file crew stood around wondering what color it was.
“Peach?”
“Desert tan?”
“Desert peach?”
Poof.  The Desert Fox’s brother sashayed into my life. The whole file room did Peach skits for a week. The first drawing of him was on the back of a card, the other side of which listed the codes I used as holds officer to describe student financial status. The codes were acronyms based on abbreviations of 16th-century Italianate German banking terms. The only other copy was in the hands of a 50-year-old Philippine woman I’d been unfairly promoted ahead of for racial reasons (but not because I was white; another race). She still had it after I left — suddenly, with my card, in the middle of spring registration –  and the university gave her the job. They kind of had to. No bomb like a paper bomb; they take longer to build but they close down everything. The original drawing is now in the San Diego State University special collection. Hm. I guess you could say they have a little terrorist machine.

 

Bryn: That’s quite some backstory! Which came first for you, the writing or the drawing? Or have you always done both?

 

Donna: I began drawing in 1954, and really writing in 1962.

 

Bryn: What made you decide to do comics?

 

Donna: Because I can write and I can draw. (Sorry this is kind of simple; that’s all it was). I never read them as a kid. Edd Vick, one of my first publishers, said it was as though I’d invented the form all by myself, independently of where it was going at the time. More notes for the original style here:  http://www.moderntales.com/comics/midnightlibrary.php

 

Bryn: I can’t help but feel it’s perceived as being more of a boys thing – that comics are assumed to be written for blokes, by blokes. I read a bit in my youth but most of it (aside from the Neil Gaiman’s stuff) I didn’t identify with much. I’m wondering if to be female in this industry is to inevitably be (re)inventing the form.

 

Donna: Guys have a tendency to herd and copy — team sports, armies, corporations. Females often form their own underground, sometimes of one, and most of these undergrounds are in contact with one another. The world is a war-zone for women, and to survive we always need a quiet insurgency, to get around the dead zones. We always need to watch our backs, especially when alone. Any female in the industry can tell you about all kinds of guys — in surprisingly mature ages and roles — who have cornered and hit on them at comiccons. The first thing the male screams if accused or backed off is “lawsuit!” like the bad son in “Pudd’nhead Wilson.”

Sometimes female groups are as cliquish as the males, or do copy art — but that’s a sign nobody in their group is a grown-up yet.

 

Bryn: I’m entirely new to this, and a comic-con virgin…. but am both tall and scary! This may be as well. It’s crazy that we still have such things going on. It also makes me fume on behalf of the decent blokes out there, the honourable ones who get tarred with the same brush. Power is not healthy for people, I think. Subversion is good…. the concept of The Desert Peach seems so beautifully subversive to me.

 

Donna: Well, it’s the job of the decent blokes to protect us females because it’s THEIR side causing the trouble. That includes any warrior (tribal) or soldier (salaried): it’s guys making war, so please back the other guys off — or take it outside the village so we can get the hides processed, if guys insist on doing that stuff (tho’ American tribal people stopped wars if it began to rain: it took a woman 2 snows to make a beautiful war costume and just think what would happen if Black Lighting came back home with the war costume all muddy. He’d be re-named All-His-Stuff-Dropped-In-Front-of-His-Mother’s-Tipi in 30 seconds).

On the other hand, a colleague just emailed me this appropriate comment:

Even after all this time
The sun never says to the earth,
“You owe Me.”

Look what happens with
A love like that,
It lights the Whole Sky.

Hafez – Iranian Poet

In other words, if you save a female, she’s not obligated to breed with you. She will probably just get the hell out of there with a whole skin. Younger guys also need to be told that just because you bought her a corn-dog and a movie does not mean you get to have her risk 20 years of raising your genes.

 

Bryn: Much there to agree with. Thank you. Where can you be found online?

 

Donna: 

 

blog http://www.donnabarr.com

Desert Peach webcomic http://www.desert-peach.com (Desert Peach webcomic)

Little store: http://donnabarr.blogspot.com/2007/04/my-emergency-website.html

AFTERDEAD http://www.webcomicsnation.com/dbarr/afterdead/series.php

Lulu site:  http://www.lulu.com/desertpeach

Gallery:  http://www.rummelhart.deviantart.com/  (Latest journal about NOT getting too close to artists or at least not linking their personal lives and their art).

Wikipedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Donna_Barr