Fantasy novels by Gregory Frost rhyme puts a new twist on Thomas the Rhymer, a figure in Scottish folklore whose famous poems predict the future.
“It was the origin story of Thomas the Rhymer as a kind of Michael Moorcock Eternal Champion fight the aliens—effectively, these goblins are entering our world from another world,” Frost said in Episode 544 of Geek’s Guide to the Galaxy audio file. “He’s just someone fighting in this war that no one even knows is happening right in front of their noses.”
rhyme features a wild blend of Lovecraftian horror and fantasy, while presenting a marked departure from previous versions of the Thomas the Rhymer story. Frost felt it was important to do something big to make his story stand out. “Ellen Kushner a few years ago, I wrote, in my mind, Thomas the Rhymer’s definitive retelling of the ballad,” he said, “and I didn’t want to go there at all, because I would feel like , ‘Oh, that’s been done to perfection. There’s no reason for me to touch it.’”
Frost hits on his new angle, the idea of a timeless Thomas the Rhymer, as he notices striking similarities between Thomas and the latter character. Tam Lin, who lived in the same area and also had dealings with the Queen of Elfland. “You have Thomas the Rhymer, in some cases his full name was Thomas Lindsay Rimor de Ercildoun—the town he was born in, now Earlston,” says Frost. “And then you’ve got Tam Lin. So you have Thomas Lindsay and you have Tam Lin, and I would say, ‘This is the same person.’”
Frost is working on a sequel to rhyme, will see Thomas the Rhymer pass through time to become the legendary Robin Hood living outlaw. “All versions of Robin Hood that anyone has ever seen are basically versions Sir Walter Scott riff about Robin Hood, and that’s not really Robin Hood,” Frost said. “So I’m about to have a field day a century after Thomas the Rhymer existed and try to map Robin Hood’s journey through the world that no one has ever played with before.”
Listen to the full interview with Gregory Frost in Episode 544 of Geek’s Guide to the Galaxy (above). And check out some highlights from the discussion below.
Gregory Frost on Clarion Writers Workshop:
There is a gag that every year Damon Knight would, at some point during the week, pull out a spray gun and go hunting students, so everyone had a spray gun… He chased us all over the dorm, and Damon had a smash at one point. a door and almost retreat into the night. We couldn’t find him, so we all went to his room – there’s a separate area for Damon and Kate – and knocked on the door, and it was like being 5 years old again, because Kate Wilhelm opened the door and we said, “Can Damon come out and play?” and she said, “No, Damon has to stay the night,” and closed the door on us, and that was it.
Gregory Frost on Liars Club group of authors:
For a couple of years, we went around mostly independent bookstores in the Philadelphia area and did group signings, group events, which was a lot of fun to do. There’s nothing more suicidal than sitting in a bookstore alone and trying to make eye contact with people walking through the door, because, at least in my experience, the first thing they do is see a writers are sitting there with their book and they immediately look everywhere else except the writer with their book and they pass you by like you don’t exist so if there is a group it will be difficult much more to go around you.
Gregory Frost on Bill Johnson:
We started discussing a story idea based on the coldest point in the universe, which is Boomerang Nebula, and watch it over and over, and come up with roughly the point-by-point structure of the story that we’re going to write together. Bill has suffered all his life with Marfan’s syndrome. It’s a really bad condition for your blood vessels, they’re basically starting to split and he’s been dodging that for a very long time. As soon as we finished sorting out the story, he went into the hospital for a simple health check or something and barely came out. So I had all the notes for that story, and I thought, “I have to write this story. I can’t put this aside just because Bill’s gone.”
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