response 67 of 195:

Jan 30 05:51 UTC 1999

  as far as I know the half-florin has never been a scottish coin
  denomination.  whether it has or not you may safely assume that
  this tale is not set in Scotland...

  continuing with the quote, we'll give a longer passage this time
  and highlight the writer's distinctive and sardonic style of dialog:  


        "Well spoken!" declared the crofter.  "The times of the
        world would flow in halcyon joy, if everyone were so
        open-hearted and forthright as you!  Give me the coin."

        A___ tendered the half-florin piece.  "Whom do I address?"

        "You may know me as Cwyd.  And you, sir, and your
        mistress?"

        "I am A___, and this is T___."

        "She seems somewhat morose and out of sorts.  Do you
        beat her often?"

        "I must admit that I do not."

        "There is the answer!  Beat her well, beat her often!
        It will bring the roses to her cheeks!  There is
        nothing better to induce good cheer in a woman
        than a fine constitutional beating, since they are
        exceptionally jolly during the intervals in an effort
        to postpone the next of the series."

        A woman came to join them.  "Cwyd speaks the truth!
        When he raises his fist to me I laugh and smile,
        with all the good humour in the world, for my head is
        full of merry thoughts.  Cwyd's beating has served
        its purpose.  Nevertheless Cwyd himself becomes
        gloomy, through bafflement.  How did the roaches find
        their way into his pudding?  Where except in Cwyd's
        small-clothes are household nettles known to grow?
        Sometimes as Cwyd dozes in the sunlight a sheep
        wanders by and urinates in his face.  Ghosts have
        even been known to skulk up behind Cwyd in the dark
        and beat him mercilessly with mallets and cudgels."

        Cwyd nodded.  "Admittedly when Threlka is beaten
        for her faults there is often a peculiar aftermath.
        Nonetheless the basic concept is sound.  Your mistress
        has the look of costive asthenia, as if she were an
        arsenic eater."

        "I think not," said A___.

        "In that case, a thrashing or two might well release
        the bile into her blood and soon she would be skipping
        and singing and larking about with the rest of us.
        Threlka, what is your opinion?"

response 69 of 195:

Jan 30 22:57 UTC 1999

Hi Brenda!  Long time no see.

response 71 of 195:

Jan 31 10:07 UTC 1999

ah, oops, i see, yes, a modern tongue-in-cheek tone to it... now i feel 
comfortably stupid...  definitely not someone i've read and or know, 
but i like the tone, so i shall sit back and look forward to finding 
out who it is, so i can go and get a copy...:)

response 73 of 195:

Jan 31 22:32 UTC 1999

  All interested parties are encouraged to keep guessing..

response 75 of 195:

Feb 1 16:19 UTC 1999

  Nope..  Recent guesses have at least been in the right genre, though,
  and are correct on several other counts (writer is male and currently
  living.)

response 77 of 195:

Feb 3 05:51 UTC 1999

  Nope.  

  I'd actually picked this one because I wanted something that would be 
  easy to guess:  I thought that between the number of science fiction and
  fantasy fans on Grex and the distinctive flavor of this writer's dialog
  that someone would quickly identify him.

  Perhaps we need more quote, I'll enter a bit more in a bit..

response 79 of 195:

Feb 3 12:25 UTC 1999

Hmm.  I've lost track of the quotes themselves.

response 81 of 195:

Feb 3 16:26 UTC 1999

  Not Michael Moorcock or Stanislaw Lem (though I highly recommend Lem.)
  The quotes are in responses #59, #67, and possibly not-yet-numbered
  responses to be enterered soon..  :-)  You can see the currently entered
  ones by typing "only 59; only 67" at the "Respond, pass, forget, quit?"
  prompt.

response 83 of 195:

Feb 3 18:20 UTC 1999

(For purposes of this game, you don't have to identify the work, just 
the author.)

response 85 of 195:

Feb 4 02:36 UTC 1999

Doesn't sound the least like Mary Stewart to me.  (I reread/read all 4 of the
Arthurian ones about a month back, having discovered that I never read the
last two at all way back when.)  Presumably if jep's right the A___ is Arthur.
I'll guess vaguely at L. Sprague de Camp; the diction sounds a bit like him,
and he might have done an Arthurian job that I've never read.

response 87 of 195:

Feb 4 04:49 UTC 1999

half-florins?  arthur?...

response 89 of 195:

Feb 4 14:41 UTC 1999

I got as far as searching the WWW to verify that florins and 
half-florins are some sort of monetary unit.  It's true, they are; I 
found coin-collector references to them.  "Cwyd" is almost certainly 
Welsh.

In the last 20 years, at least 50,000 writers have written fantasy 
novels with a Welsh background.  To my mind, 49,686 of these were 
identical, and I have long since given up finding the rest.  (Some that 
I did read were good, to be sure, but finding any that are 
distinguishable from the rest seems as difficult as finding an original 
disco song.)

Maybe this author one-upped Mary Stewart's misogyny.  It's a common 
technique; find a good, successful author, and copy some of what they 
did, while trying to go a little further.  This thought doesn't doesn't 
help to identify the author.

Maybe more clues and quotes are in order.

response 91 of 195:

Feb 4 22:41 UTC 1999

L. Sprague de Camp was at least alive in 1992, which is the latest book 
of his available to me at the moment.  It would surprise me if he were 
dead.