Maskerade

16

Now this is an annotation that is going to need some explaining. The short version of the story is as follows:

Colette is Colette Reap, a long-time a.f.p. regular, who impressed Terry by attending a book signing wearing earrings made out of Clarecraft’s anorankhs.

The longer version goes as follows:

Clarecraft is a company that sells highly popular handcrafted Discworld miniatures and jewellery. Information on Clarecraft can be found in the Discworld Merchandise FAQ, available from the Pratchett Archives.

One particular item of jewellery they sell is the anorankh, a small model of an Egyptian cross wearing an anorak. (Don’t ask — but in case you think you want to know: the precise story of how the anorankh came into existence can be found in the Holy Anorankh file, also available from the Pratchett Archives.)

Meanwhile, over on alt.fan.pratchett, it became, for some reason, standard practice for the male readers of the group to propose marriage (often all of them at the same time) to female readers. Colette, our resident net.goddess and therefore one of the most ‘visible’ females on the group, was one of the most popular proposal targets. (For more detailed information about marriage proposals and other characteristic a.f.p. habits, see the A.f.p. Timeline file, also available from — you guessed it — the Pratchett Archives.)

With all this background information in mind, I’ll let Colette herself tell the rest of the story:

“The interesting earrings thing comes from when I went to the Discworld Companion signing in central London in May 1994. The signing was at lunch-time on a weekday and I was going to see our main computer supplier in the afternoon so I was fairly smartly dressed, but I was wearing my anorankh earrings, which Terry suddenly noticed while I was standing in front of him getting my book signed, and it was the first time he’d seen them made into earrings.

On 31st December 1994, completely out of the blue, I got an email from Terry. In it he said he was doing the polishing draft of Maskerade and which of the following two characters would I like to be called Colette — the make-up girl at the Opera House, or one of the ‘young ladies’ at Mrs. Palm’s and that mention might be made of her interesting earrings. When I had picked myself up off the floor, and being the mischievous soul that I am, I wrote back to Terry and asked if Colette could be one of the ‘young ladies’ at Mrs. Palm’s, explaining that I felt that such a ‘young lady’ would be much more likely not only to wear interesting earrings, but also to receive lots of marriage proposals from men she hardly knew.

When I got my copy of Maskerade signed, Terry wrote in it ‘What’s a nice girl like you doing in a book like this?’ — a dedication in the same league as that which he wrote when he signed my Discworld game booklet, which was ‘To Colette, Will you marry me?’”