He is, arguably, one of the most enigmatic of all the beings in Tolkien's Lord of the Rings. A mystery that intrigued me from the moment I met him. Tom Bombadil in his bright blue jacket and yellow boots, the self-avowed “Eldest” and “Master.”


Others have speculated on who – and what – he is: one of the Mala … a Maiar … perhaps even Eru Illuvatar. One blogger, the Ranger of the North, speculated he is the spirit of the Music of the Ainar, by which the world was created.


That's a most intriguing thought. Take it one step further. JRR Tolkien in one of his letters once described Tom Bombadil as “the spirit of the vanishing landscapes of Oxfordshire and Berkshire.” In the same letter, he described Goldberry – Tom's lady – as the seasonal changes in nature.


Perhaps Tom is the spirit – or perhaps more accurately – the embodiment, of Middle Earth itself: Middle Earth as it has existed from the beginnings to the Third Age – the age imperiled by the Dark Lord Sauron. Tom says he remembered the first raindrop and the first acorn, and – significantly – he knew the dark under the stars when it was fearless … before the Dark Lord came from Outside. The Elves' name for him translates to “Oldest and Fatherless.” Gandalf says he is “the eldest being in existence.”


The One Ring has no effect on him. He takes little note of it, and at the Council of Elrond, Gandalf expresses concern that, if entrusted with it, Tom would not understand its importance and in fact would lose it. Yet one of the Elves, Galdor, suggests that Tom would be unable to withstand a siege by Sauron “unless such power is in the earth itself.” Indeed, there is the suggestion that Bombadil would not survive if the Dark Lord comes into power.


That, to me, holds the key. Tom Bombadil can only survive if Frodo, Gandalf, Aragorn and their allies can succeed in destroying the One Ring, thereby defeating Sauron. The same is true for Middle Earth.


The world itself will be forever changed, destroyed, if Sauron comes to power.


It's an intriguing idea. At least … I find it so.


It's all speculation, of course. We can have no certain answer to Tom Bombadil's identity, and … It would seem that Tolkien intended it that way. He himself said there are some things that should remain mysterious in any narrative.


So Tom Bombadil remains – as Winston Churchill once said of Russia – “a riddle wrapped in a mystery, inside an enigma.”


May he ever be so.

William Morris wrote his influential fantasy in language based on the medieval tales that were his models – which is the reason that some modern-day readers complain of being bogged down. This isn't a book that will appeal to everyone. You have to remember that it was published in 1896 – and written, intentionally, with a much older flavor.


Yet I think those who love fantasy in the vein of C.S. Lewis and J.R.R. Tolkien – two writers whose own works owe a debt to Morris' tale – this book belongs on the must-read shelf.


The story is basic, an echo of many tales found in folklore and in the fairy tales of the Brothers Grimm: Ralph, the fourth and youngest son of a minor king, sets out in search of the Well at the World's End, a magical source that confers near-immortality and strengthened destiny on those who drink from it. After many adventures – including the loss of a lady he loves – Ralph and two companions find the well, and drink from it. The three then face a new decision, whether to settle down to a righteous but stodgy life in Ralph's home kingdom, or set out as almost immortal heroes to right the wrongs in a wider world.


In spite of – or maybe because of – the familiarity of the tale, Morris' book was well received on publication. H.G. Wells compared the book to the writings of Malory, calling the book's workmanship “stout oaken stuff.” And, among parallels to the world Tolkien creates in Lord of the Rings, when Ralph finally returns home after all his adventures, it's to find his homeland overrun by brigands that must be conquered. He uses the strength he has gained on his quest for the Well to rouse the countryside and drive them out.


Author of the Well, William Morris wrote and published poetry, fiction and translations of ancient and medieval texts throughout his life. He also was a textile designer and socialist, and he had a lifelong interest in architecture that led him, in 1877, to found the Society for the Protection of Ancient Buildings.


He was associated both with the English Arts and Crafts Movement and the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood – the latter an organization of English painters, poets and critics who rejected the classical poses and compositions of Raphael in particular as being a corrupting influence on art. Pre-Raphaelites were fascinated by medieval culture, believing it to possess a spiritual and creative integrity lost in later eras.


Morris began the series of “prose romances,” works that included The Well at the World's End, during the last nine years of his life. They were attempts to revive the genre of medieval romance. In fact, as the first novels set in an entirely invented fantasy world, they paved the way for the later works of authors such as Lewis and Tolkien.

As a reader, I'm drawn to books with characters I can care about. I was pulled into Lord of the Rings – high on my list of all-time favorite trilogies – by the depth of its plot, but what kept me turning page after page was the characters that JRR Tolkien created. Frodo … Sam Gamgee … Aragorn … Legolas and Gimli …

I wanted to know not just “what happens next” but –

 What happens next to these characters that I've come to know.

  I don't think I'm an atypical reader. I do like the books I read to have some kind of plot. But for me what's important isn't what's happening but …

Who is it happening to? And how does that character react?

  As a writer, I am thrilled when readers tell me that they've fallen in love with the characters in my Portals books. Because … I also love my characters, and I get a kind of parental glow when somebody tells me that they like my kids.

  That's the key to creating characters your readers will at least care about: You as a writer have to care about them first. Because if you don't … and if that care, that love, doesn't show … Why should I as a reader care what happens to them?

  Here's the Prime Directive (with apologies to Star Trek) for creating memorable characters: They are not something to hang a plot on. They are people, with minds and thoughts and lives of their own.

  Many years ago, I was reading a short story written by an acquaintance. She had done a reasonable job of creating a believable protagonist – then came a snag. The protagonist (I'll call him “John”) did something so totally out of character it stopped me cold.

  I told my friend, “I just can't see John doing this.”

She said, “But I need him to do it, because otherwise, the plot won't work.”

That's fine, I told her, but give him a reason to do it. If you've created an upstanding citizen – but you need him to rob a bank later – then give him motive. Rewrite the character to be a bit less upstanding. Have someone kidnap his wife, his sister, his kids, his beloved dog, and force him to rob the bank on pain of death to whatever he loves. Put him through some mind-altering crisis that changes how he thinks, or renders him incapable of recognizing the difference between right and wrong.

  But don't just out-of-the-blue have Mr. Straitlaced and Upstanding wake up one morning and decide to rob a bank. Your readers won't buy it.

  As a writer, if I'm to make my characters real to my readers, they have to be real to me. Some writers go so far as to write out complete biographies of their major characters – even down to where, or if, this character went to school, what he/she likes for breakfast, hobbies, games …

 I don't go into that much detail, but it's mainly because my approach to writing is one of telling my story to myself as I go along. My characters come to me the same way as my friends and acquaintances in the “real world”: I see them, we shake hands, and I learn more about them as we hang out together.

 How you get to know your characters isn't as important, I think, as that you do get to know them. Care about them. Love them. Spend some time with them. If you care about them as a writer, then your readers will care about them too.

Anyway … that's my humble opinion. What do you think?

(By the way, the photo above is the new Kat Morales, Corpus Christi, Texas, police detective and human protagonist in my Portals books.)

  The Wizard who features so prominently in JRR Tolkien's The Hobbit and Lord of the Rings is a “wand elf.”

That's the meaning of “Gandalf” in old Norse.

Since I've started writing my Portals books – a blend of police procedural and our own folklore and mythology – I've become intrigued by how many modern names, and words, are rooted in our ancestors' beliefs in elves, faeries and other magical beings.

My own grandfather's name was Aubrey – derived from two Germanic words that meant “elf” and “ruler.” Aha! I'm a descendant of a ruler of elves!

If you're named Alvin, or Alvina, you're an “elf friend” - from the Latin “Alvinius.”

Alfred E. Neuman of “Mad” Magazine fame? His name is from Old English and has been interpreted as “elf counsel” or “magical counsel.”

Oliver, from the French Olivier, is believed to come from Germanic Alfihar – “elf army.”

But the belief in these supernatural beings has entered our everyday vocabulary too.

Sudden, inexplicable illnesses of people or animals were once attributed to the person or animal being “elf shot” – wounded by an arrow or bolt shot by elves or some other fae being.

A person who's “pixilated” – slightly eccentric, whimsical, or under the influence – is being “pixie-led,” drawn astray by the pixies.

The puca, a mischievous, sometimes dangerous nature spirit in English folklore, gives us the term “puckish” for someone who's mischievous or, possibly, devilish.

From Greek and Roman myth, we get such words as “herculean,” meaning something that requires great strength or tremendous effort to achieve. The origin is with Hercules, son of Zeus (or Jove, the Roman equivalent) and a mortal woman, a demigod perhaps best-noted for performing 12 impossible labors.

From the fifth of those labors – cleaning the Augean Stables in a single day – comes another word still in use today: “Augean” now means any task that is difficult and unpleasant.

The link between myth (or folklore) and modern-day words isn't always obvious – and I love to discover new ones. There's “oaf,” for example. That's from the Old Norse “alfr” – an elf. The word originally meant someone who was rendered clumsy or stupid by elven enchantment, or – at least as early as the 1620s – a changling, a “foolish child” left by faeries in exchange for a human mother's own infant.

And … I've never associated Napoleon with the dwarves of Norse (or Germanic) mythology, but some etymologists now say there's a connection.

Rather than the origin of the name being in Naples, they say, the name may come from the Germanic “Nibelungen” – a race of subterranean dwarves who hoarded an immense treasure of gold and jewels.

I love to collect this kind of lore, so any of you who know other names or words that derive from our folklore … Please come share!

Thanks!

  As recently as 2011, the downfall of Irish businessman Sean Quinn – who went from being the richest man in Ireland in 2008 to declaring bankruptcy in 2011 – was the result, according to at least one of his neighbors, of his moving a fairy fort.

Fairy forts – also called fairy mounds and fairy raths – can be found scattered across Ireland and Scotland, and in the folklore of the British Isles, they're the home of the sidhe – the ancient gods of those nations, who diminished and became the Good Folk or Fair Folk, the Celtic equivalent of the French fae (which is the root of the English “faerie” or “fairy”).

In Irish and Scottish mythology, these folk variously were said to live underground in fairy mounds (or forts), across the western sea, or in an invisible world that coexists with the world of humans.

In JRR Tolkien's Middle Earth mythos, the lands of the elves are in the West – and it is to these lands that the elves retreat, as described in Tolkien's epic Lord of the Rings, at the end of the Third Age when the elves and their power in Middle Earth diminish.

For my Portals urban fantasy/suspense books, I've borrowed from the Irish/Scottish concept that the fae are native to a realm separate from our own. In the Portals mythos, this land is the Realms of Magic, a parallel world that contains all of the creatures of our human mythologies and folklore – elves, wizards, pixies, dragons, ogres, trolls …

In the Portals universe, as I've envisioned it, the fairy mounds are gateways between the Realms of Magic and our human world.

Tradition holds that the mounds in particular are imbued with the powerful magic of the druids, and that to disturb them is to invite disaster. Folklore offers many tales of people who suffered bad luck, illness, injury or even death because they disturbed a fairy mound.

That, says a one-time neighbor of Quinn's in the town of Ballyconnell, is what happened to Quinn.

In 1992, Quinn Concrete, one of Quinn's business ventures, moved the Wedge Tomb, a megalithic burial tomb that had stood for 4,000 years in Ireland's Aughrim townland, two miles from Ballyconnell. The goal for the concrete company was to expand a quarry.

Financial experts said the loss of his $8 billion business empire was due to Quinn's decision to gamble on Anglo Irish Bank shares.

But the Fair Folk work in most mysterious ways, and who's to say whether Sean Quinn staked his empire on bank shares because he thought, at the time, it would be a good idea …

Or whether it came, perhaps through dreams in the middle of the night, from some one or some thing that resented having its ancient home disturbed ...