06 June 2024, Writing - part xxx707 Writing a Novel to Entertain, Ideas for the Protagonists, Khione: Enchantment and the Fox
Announcement: Delay, my new novels can be seen on the
internet, but my primary publisher has gone out of business—they couldn’t
succeed in the past business and publishing environment. I’ll keep you
informed, but I need a new publisher.
More information can be found at www.ancientlight.com. Check out my novels—I think you’ll
really enjoy them.
Introduction: I wrote the novel Aksinya:
Enchantment and the Daemon. This was my 21st novel and through
this blog, I gave you the entire novel in installments that included commentary
on the writing. In the commentary, in addition to other general information on
writing, I explained, how the novel was constructed, the metaphors and symbols
in it, the writing techniques and tricks I used, and the way I built the
scenes. You can look back through this blog and read the entire novel beginning
with http://www.pilotlion.blogspot.com/2010/10/new-novel-part-3-girl-and-demon.html.
I’m using this novel
as an example of how I produce, market, and eventually (we hope) get a novel
published. I’ll keep you informed along the way.
Today’s Blog: To see the steps in the publication process,
visit my writing websites http://www.sisteroflight.com/.
The four plus two
basic rules I employ when writing:
1. Don’t confuse your readers.
2. Entertain your readers.
3. Ground your readers in the writing.
4. Don’t show (or tell) everything.
4a. Show what can be seen, heard, felt, smelled, and tasted on the stage
of the novel.
5. Immerse yourself in the world of
your writing.
6. The initial scene is the most
important scene.
These are the steps I use to write a
novel including the five discrete parts of a novel:
1. Design the initial
scene
2.
Develop
a theme statement (initial setting, protagonist, protagonist’s helper or antagonist,
action statement)
a. Research as required
b. Develop the initial
setting
c. Develop the
characters
d. Identify the telic
flaw (internal and external)
3.
Write
the initial scene (identify the output: implied setting, implied characters,
implied action movement)
4.
Write
the next scene(s) to the climax (rising action)
5.
Write
the climax scene
6.
Write
the falling action scene(s)
7. Write the dénouement
scene
I finished writing my 31st
novel, working title, Cassandra, potential title Cassandra: Enchantment and the Warriors. The theme statement is: Deirdre and Sorcha
are redirected to French finishing school where they discover difficult
mysteries, people, and events.
I finished writing my 34th
novel (actually my 32nd completed novel), Seoirse, potential
title Seoirse: Enchantment and the Assignment. The theme statement is: Seoirse is assigned
to be Rose’s protector and helper at Monmouth while Rose deals with five
goddesses and schoolwork; unfortunately, Seoirse has fallen in love with Rose.
Here is the cover
proposal for Seoirse: Enchantment and the Assignment:
|
Cover
Proposal |
The most important
scene in any novel is the initial scene, but eventually, you have to move to
the rising action. I am continuing to write on my 30th novel,
working title Red Sonja. I finished my 29th novel, working
title Detective. I finished writing number 31, working title Cassandra: Enchantment and the Warrior. I just finished my 32nd novel and
33rd novel: Rose: Enchantment and the Flower, and Seoirse:
Enchantment and the Assignment.
How to begin a novel. Number one thought, we need an entertaining
idea. I usually encapsulate such an idea
with a theme statement. Since I’m
writing a new novel, we need a new theme statement. Here is an initial cut.
For novel 30: Red Sonja, a Soviet spy, infiltrates the
X-plane programs at Edwards AFB as a test pilot’s administrative clerk, learns
about freedom, and is redeemed.
For Novel 32: Shiggy Tash finds a lost girl in the isolated
Scottish safe house her organization gives her for her latest assignment: Rose
Craigie has nothing, is alone, and needs someone or something to rescue and acknowledge
her as a human being.
For novel 33, Book girl: Siobhàn Shaw is Morven McLean’s savior—they
are both attending Kilgraston School in Scotland when Morven loses everything,
her wealth, position, and friends, and Siobhàn Shaw is the only one left to
befriend and help her discover the one thing that might save Morven’s family
and existence.
For novel 34: Seoirse is assigned to be Rose’s protector
and helper at Monmouth while Rose deals with five goddesses and schoolwork;
unfortunately, Seoirse has fallen in love with Rose.
For novel 35: Eoghan,
a Scottish National Park Authority Ranger, while handing a supernatural problem
in Loch Lomond and The Trossachs National Park discovers the crypt of Aine and
accidentally releases her into the world; Eoghan wants more from the world and
Aine desires a new life and perhaps love.
Here
is the scene development outline:
1.
Scene input (comes from the previous scene output or is an initial scene)
2.
Write the scene setting (place, time, stuff, and characters)
3.
Imagine the output, creative elements, plot, telic flaw resolution (climax) and
develop the tension and release.
4.
Write the scene using the output and creative elements to build the tension.
5.
Write the release
6.
Write the kicker
Today:
Let me tell you a little about writing.
Writing isn’t so much a hobby, a career, or a pastime. Writing is a habit and an obsession. We who love to write love to write.
If
you love to write, the problem is gaining the skills to write well. We want to write well enough to have others
enjoy our writing. This is
important. No one writes just for
themselves the idea is absolutely irrational and silly. I can prove why.
In
the first place, the purpose of writing is communication—that’s the only
purpose. Writing is the abstract
communication of the mind through symbols.
As time goes by, we as writers gain more and better tools and our
readers gain more and better appreciation for those tools and skills—even if
they have no idea what they are.
We
are in the modern era. In this time, the
action and dialog style along with the push of technology forced novels into
the form of third person, past tense, action and dialog style, implying the
future. This is the modern style of the
novel. I also showed how the end of
literature created the reflected worldview.
We have three possible worldviews for a novel: the real, the reflected,
and the created. I choose to work in the
reflected worldview.
Why
don’t we go back to the basics and just writing a novel? I can tell you what I do, and show you how I
go about putting a novel together. We
can start with developing an idea then move into the details of the
writing.
Ideas.
We need ideas. Ideas allow us to
figure out the protagonist and the telic flaw.
Ideas don’t come fully armed from the mind of Zeus. We need to cultivate ideas.
1. Read novels.
2.
Fill
your mind with good stuff—basically the stuff you want to write about.
3.
Figure
out what will build ideas in your mind and what will kill ideas in your mind.
4.
Study.
5.
Teach.
6.
Make
the catharsis.
7. Write.
The development of ideas is based on
study and research, but it is also based on creativity. Creativity is the extrapolation of older
ideas to form new ones or to present old ideas in a new form. It is a reflection of something new created
with ties to the history, science, and logic (the intellect). Creativity requires consuming, thinking, and
producing.
If we have filled our mind with all
kinds of information and ideas, we are ready to become creative. Creativity means the extrapolation of older
ideas to form new ones or to present old ideas in a new form. Literally, we are seeing the world in a new
way, or actually, we are seeing some part of the world in a new way.
The beginning of creativity is study
and effort. We can use this to
extrapolate to creativity. In addition,
we need to look at recording ideas and working with ideas.
With that said, where should we
go? Should I delve into ideas and
creativity again, or should we just move into the novel again? Should I develop a new protagonist, which, we
know, will result in a new novel. I’ve
got an idea, but it went stale. Let’s
look at the outline for a novel again:
1.
The initial scene
2.
The rising action
scenes
3.
The climax scene
4.
The falling action
scene(s)
5.
The dénouement scene(s)
The initial scene is the most important
scene and part of any novel. To get to
the initial scene, you don’t need a plot, you need a protagonist.
My main focus, at the moment, is
marketing my novels. That specifically
means submissions. I’m aiming for agents
because if I can get an agent, I think that might give me more contacts with
publishers plus a let up in the business.
I would like to write another novel, but I’m holding off and editing one
of my older novels Shadow of Darkness.
I thought that novel would have fit perfectly with one potential agent
who said they were looking for Jewish based and non-Western mythology in
fantasy. That’s exactly what Shadow
of Darkness is, but they passed on it.
In any case, I’m looking for an agent who will fall in love with my
writing and then promote it to publishers.
That’s the goal.
I’m back to
my main point—we are looking for entertaining ideas to write about. I covered some real territory in the last few
blogs, and I’ll pull this information together is a cognizant way.
The last
point I made was about experience. I
really think an author needs a broad level of experience in something, and I
don’t think writing is enough by itself.
If you look at our favorite authors from the Twentieth Century, you’ll
find a huge number happened to participate in the fighting in World War I and
World War 11. This seems to be a
favorite history fact for the World War I authors, but ignored in the World War
II authors. I find this fascinating in
itself.
When I
researched the lives of my favorite authors, I found many had military or at
least government connections into the fighting in some way. Even the great women writers of the time
participated in some way. The same is
true, to a lesser extent in the modern era.
We find many authors, especially of political and topical novels to have
experience in the military. Perhaps the
publishers are keeping their histories an intentionally secret, which I think
was the plan for the World War II authors.
In any case,
experience is a critical element of the writer both for their depth of
knowledge and their depth of understanding.
I think we perhaps see less of this in authors and less quality works
because of the obvious prejudice against certain types of writers, settings,
and plots. Yes, there is something wrong
with the world when exciting and true tales are buried by the surreal and
silly. When the makeup of ones
chromosomes are more important than one’s writing skill or thoughts. This is a real problem for art and
literature. It’s an even worse problem
for society and culture with the loss of true knowledge and skill.
You can see
it in the writing as well as the stories.
I wonder all the time, where is the next Frank Herbert and where is the
next great movie? Jack Vance made a
great mark on the world of science fiction, but none of his novels have been
turned into movies. Instead, we get the
insipid Star Trek dreck and Star Bores both written by the clueless without any
idea how to entertain.
There is
still hope. We see the movie industry
turning out redo after redo. Star Trek
and Star Bores are into their multiple renditions still without much
entertainment. Plus, without much
reality either—they need an experienced scientist or real astronaut to write
for them. It doesn’t help when the
imaginations of the mentally crippled become the surefire fantasy worlds of the
media. It also leads the stupid and
youth to think the world is much different than their experience—babes in
libland.
So, you
might ask—why not write exactly what the market wants? That’s a great idea, but really more attune
to the nonfiction market. You can indeed
write a book about contemporary events and have a nearly surefire work—well
especially if you are already recognized and known, ouch. You can also break into the nonfiction
marketplace and establish yourself. I
have a great writer friend who is building his brand in writing about
writing. He’s also moving into other
fields in the nonfiction space. I’m watching
closely.
Unfortunately,
my skills and knowledge aren’t exactly in the popular nonfiction areas. I could move outward into some areas, but
maybe not. I work in a couple of dead
languages, ancient Greek and Anglo-Saxon.
I could pull a Tolkien with a translation of some Anglo-Saxon text, but
without students who are forced to buy your textbook or tome, that’s usually
not very lucrative. I could and have
written essays and historical accounts of my flying experiences. They might have some traction. I have tried to get some movement there, but I
was hoping to get reestablished with a publisher and then move out a
little. Then there is the muse.
What are you
excited and inspired to write? I get
inspired every time I design a protagonist for this writing blog. The inspiration isn’t nonfiction—the
inspiration is fiction and something that is unique and new, hopefully in the
world. And, that’s that.
What I mean
is this. As fiction writers, we hope for
our Harry Potty or Sparkly Vampires.
Really both the Harry Potty novels and the Sparkly Vampire novels are
not the best written works in literature.
They both ended with movie adaptations that brought in buckets of
cash. Count the Throne Game among those
as well. A boring and mendicant fantasy
novel that spawned a thousand copiers and mucho audiences. That’s all we want as writers, and I can
assure you—you won’t achieve these levels by writing to the market or even by
following the herd. Whatever you write
must be new, exciting, entertaining, and somehow touch the market and needs of
people all over the place. That’s exactly
what the novels I mentioned did. They
were real breakouts. Harry Potty
especially. Who could imagine that those
novels for kids would put magic realism on the map. Who could imagine a kid’s novel could set the
world ablaze in more than one way.
So, this is
my advice, and this is what I’m going to continue to do. Keep writing what inspires you. Gain your experience as a writer. You need to write eight to ten novels to
really be there. Continue to write and
write what is exciting, entertaining, and interesting to you. Especially if your day job isn’t writing. Maybe even if your day job is writing. You know someone out there will love your
writing, other than your mother. You
know as long as you gain the skills, and you write what you love to read, you
will also be writing something others will want to read. You just have to find a publisher who also
love and believes in your writing. I did
find that, and then my publisher went out of business. Oh well.
So is life. I’m looking for
another publisher. Until I do, I’m going
to continue to write about writing and keep up my search for a publisher. I’ll work on my other writing until I get
back to novel November or earlier. I
really do need to write a fun novel.
I’ve even outlined it for you—so to speak. Until then, I’ll see what I can do to help
your and my writing.
In any case,
let us continue with entertaining ideas.
That’s what leads to entertaining writing.
I get most
of my ideas from other writing, stories, and shows. That’s not to say I borrow the plots or
characters wholesale. In fact, I usually
don’t use any of the plots or the characters at all. The ideas I get are usually the circumstances
or the situations. Sometimes the
circumstances and situations of the characters.
In fact, one of the most memorable ideas I got from another’s writing
was from a fellow author under my previous publisher. I think the book was The Least of These. The character who intrigued me was a
child. I think she was named Trish or
something like that. Trish was left, by
her mother in an empty house and given a small allowance to buy food. She subsisted on cereal and milk—that’s about
it. Trish eventually went to school
where a teacher noted her poverty and issues.
I based my character Nikita an abandoned child in a science fiction
environment on Trish.
Nikita was
nothing like Trish. Nikita was a Freetrader
child whose father abandoned her and whose mother died. She lived on garbage on the planet El Reshad
in my world of The Chronicles of the Dragon and the Fox in a later time
with novels called The Ghostship Chronicles.
Nikita was
an entirely different kind of character.
She was an abandoned child like Trish, but in an entirely different
environment and with very different characteristics. She was a telepath which brought her to the
attention of Den and Natana Protania, the primary characters in my Ghostship
novels.
So, here’s
the point. This is how I get ideas and
incorporate them in my novels. I found
Trish in a friend’s novel. I made Nikita
a similar, but very different character.
This is how we develop ideas.
Notice, the means is through reading and study.
I consider
reading and study to be the main means of idea development. This is how you get ideas and how you develop
stories. The ideas might come from a
mundane or a very esoteric source, but the point is to make them your own.
The
development of a protagonist from Trish is a direct example of using an idea to
build an entirely new concept or character.
Usually, I don’t have such a direct or specific line of development from
one to the other. Most of my characters
and plots are composites of many characters and ideas not just from one. Then much of my characters come from history.
For example,
Hestia from my novel Hestia: Enchantment and the Hearth, is the goddess
Hestia. She isn’t the protagonist, but
she comes directly from myth and history.
Likewise, in Aksinya: Enchantment and the Daemon, the demon
Asmodeus comes from history and historical sources. A few other characters and people come from
history, and all the settings come from history and are real places. Let’s look deeper at this and especially how
we might develop and borrow characters and settings from history.
I’ve written
before, “Creativity means the extrapolation of older ideas to form new
ones or to present old ideas in a new form.
Literally, we are seeing the world in a new way, or actually, we are
seeing some part of the world in a new way.” This
is where ideas and especially new ideas come from, and, yes, there can be
completely new ideas, but we must realize that even completely new ideas are
only made possible by the ideas that foreshadowed and came before them.
For example,
every new aircraft comes from the design, knowledge, and experience of every
previous aircraft. Every piece of
electronics comes from the design, knowledge, and experience represented by every
previous electronic device. The next
great invention will come about because someone is experimenting with previous
ideas and previous inventions. Then
again, there is always the possibility of an accidental discovery.
Science
fiction authors were enamored with the idea that FTL (Faster than Light) travel
came as an accident rather than an incremental change. Let me tell you a secret. The universities and the epoch of modern
education and research are all about incremental and not revolutionary
change. If you have a revolutionary
idea, you are better off in industry. In
industry, if it works and can make money, it’s welcome—it doesn’t matter if
it’s incremental or revolutionary.
Almost every great and new idea, by the way, comes out of industry and
not out of the university.
Incrementalism is the reason. If
a professor can’t fully comprehend it, it doesn’t exist. Oh well.
In science
fiction, it’s more likely that an industry or a scientist in industry will accidentally
or intentionally invent something wonderful in the future—like a DVD player, an
iPhone, or something else that will completely blow the world away
(figuratively). In fact, the DVD player
was incrementally destined to be blown away by streaming. Many scientists and knowledgeable leaders
predicted this years ago. It just
required time and development. The
iPhone was inevitable as well. As computers
became smaller and smaller, a pocket computer is just an incremental design.
You can interpolate and extrapolate technology pretty well if you know
shat you are about.
Ideas and
creativity are no different. We as
artists and writers study the ideas of the past and present to create the ideas
of the future. That’s what we are
writing. How can we do this? That’s next.
I develop
characters, plots, and settings from history and studying other art. That’s the way all artists create their
art. It isn’t by copying or reproducing
past art—it’s through the study of art in the past and reflecting it in
something new in our art. This is the
way all creativity works. Creativity,
like science and engineering is built on the shoulders of the inventors of the
past. How do we accomplish this in real
time, and how do we reflect this in our work.
Let’s
develop a setting. I like to research a
setting for my works by finding some place and time to match my protagonist and
plots. Which comes first: protagonist,
plot, or setting. It really depends.
I like to
start with the protagonist but each of the main elements, characters, plots,
and settings are connected together. If
you can’t start with anything else, begin with a setting. (I like to start with the protagonist first,
but a setting is easy).
Find some
exciting, interesting, and exotic place, or perhaps just some place you have
been or that interests you. Let’s say
you took a trip to Britain. I lived in
Britain and speant lots of time working with the Brits and flying in the
nation. I use Britian as a setting for
many of my novels, for many reasons, but one of the main ones is that it fits
my worldview in myth and history. I’ve
also used parts of the USA.
I’ve set
novels in the places I went to university in the USA: Tacoma Washington and
Boston. I also set one of my earliest
novels at the Whitesands Range, that is in the beginning. It went to ancient Greece later on. That novel was The Second Mission.
Why these
locations? I’d been there. I knew them intimately. I knew some of their excitement and they were
interesting. I could make them fit my
needs and they were fun. That’s also why
I use Britain and also France. Perhaps
we should look at some other aspects of developing settings, characters, and
plots from what we know and understand.
I usually
develop a setting from a protagonist.
Starting with the protagonist is the easiest, for me, method of
developing ideas. From my standpoint,
the protagonist is the most important element of any novel, and indeed, the
novel itself is the revelation of the protagonist. I mean this in every sense.
Every
protagonist comes with all the elements necessary to make a great novel. Or, I should write that theoretically, every
protagonist comes with enough baggage (information) to produce a great
novel. In fact, as I noted, I like to
start with the protagonist because they give a setting as well as all the other
information required for a novel.
You might
ask: where does the setting come from?
The answer is directly from the protagonist. In the background and development of the
protagonist, the question is always, what is their history? Where do they come from? Who are they?
These questions answer exactly the setting. Where is the protagonist and what part of
their life and experience are they? In
the case of Aine, the protagonist still lives at home with his father, mother,
and sister. That means the setting is
where he lives. This makes setting
development and setting design easy. We
just take the real world setting I the time period defined and produce a
setting. I won’t go into the details
here—I already have gone into great detail on this specific subject. The importance is that you see how I can take
a protagonist and develop a setting. The
same is true of the plots and all.
Now, then,
the question becomes how do we develop a protagonist, and especially a
protagonist who will fill, fulfill, and create a novel? This is the real question, everything else
falls into place from this.
I have
answered the question, more than once on how to develop a protagonist, but I’m
not certain I’ve covered enough, how to get a basic idea for a
protagonist. Perhaps the easiest way
would be to describe how I came about my protagonists from my novels. Here’s a list:
The Second
Mission (399 to 400 BC) – This is a published novel. I wanted to write a novel about Socrate’s
writing. The reason is there is a
continuing conflict in historical thinking and historians about the accuracy of
the observations and recorded accounts of witnesses to history. I wanted to address this in my novel. I posed it as a problem, but my answer was
that the records were completely accurate, so I went about putting together a
novel that showed that from the standpoint of a modern person. The way I got a modern person back into the
time of Socrates was with time travel. My
protagonist was an accidental time traveler.
He was in the wrong place at the right time and accidentally was pulled
back with the actual time traveler. My
protagonist happened to be a nuclear physicist who would eventually invent theory
that led to the invention of time travel.
He’s a totally made up character.
I named him Alan Fisher, and chose the name using my normal naming
methods. The setting was easy as was the
character development. Where else would
you find a nuclear scientist in a remote place where future people might be
making time travel experiments—White Sands of course. My character, Alan Fisher, happened to be on
the monument that marks the first nuclear blast. The future scientists chose this as isolated
and unpopulous enough that they shouldn’t have the problem they did of an
accidental time traveler. That’s just
what happened to Alan.
The initial
setting is White Sands and the nuclear monument. The next scene is in ancient Greece 400
BC. The setting is specifically north
and east of Athens with the actual time traveler. So the novel moves on. Alan Fisher is very important in the overall
scheme of the novel, and he came out of the idea for the novel itself. I noted already how and why I came about the
idea. By the way, the first mission in
time was to observe the life and resurrection of Christ Jesus.
Centurion (6
BC to 33 AD) – as I wrote on my secrets pages for Centurion, I was
intrigued by the words of the Centurion who crucified Christ and his words,
“Surely, this was a son of God.” I
wondered what would make a Centurion say such a thing, so I wrote a novel about
that Centurion. I used Greek and Roman
sources as well as the New Testament documents to write the novel. I learned to translate ancient Greek to write
The Second Mission, and this really helped me in the translation and
understanding of the Roman Legion during the First Century.
Just like The
Second Mission, a historical novel defines the setting and to a degree the
characters. This made the development of
the protagonist easy as well as the plots and of course the history is set.
I officially
used just great history and my knowledge of the military to wrote the story
(novel) about the Centurion Abenadar (the traditional name of the Centurion). The end result was a great novel and
story. The end result was very positive and
my most popular published novel.
Aksinya:
Enchantment and the Daemon 1917 – 1918 (1920) – I wrote this novel as a really
fun challenge to Goethe and Fauste.
My Enchantment novels are about characters who would never be considered
capable to redemption. The redemption
isn’t necessarily about salvation, but Aksinya is both physical and spiritual
redemption. I designed Aksinya as a
character who needed redemption because she was a sorceress and she called a
demon.
The basis
for the plot of Aksinya came from Fauste. In Fauste, a man, Dr. Fauste called
the devil (or a demon) to grant his every wish for his soul. Fauste is a tragedy and the end is
tragic, but expected for a person who calls a demon. Aksinya is different.
Aksinya is a
Romantic plot with a Romantic protagonist.
Her skills happen to be sorcery and evil. The climax resolution is impossible until it
is inevitable. The end of Aksinya is
both unexpected, but still inevitable and wondrous. That’s the kind of novel I wanted to write,
and as I noted, it came from the basis of Fauste. It’s a great example of how an author through
study develops an entirely new idea and creativity.
I should
mention that Centurion was developed form the basis of Ben Hur
and The Robe. These were
older novels that excited my interest in writing Centurion.
Aegypt 1926
– this is the novel that launched a thousand ships, so to speak. I got the idea for Aegypt from two main
sources. The first was the protagonist,
Paul Bolang. Paul Bolang was my Foreign
Legion character from the great war (WWI).
I developed a character who was a language and hieroglyphic scholar who
learned to love warfare during World War One.
He became an initial officer cadre into the French Foreign Legion in
Tunisia. In addition, I propelled the
idea of Egyptian hieroglyphics plus the idea of a person coming from the far
past into the modern world. That was the
real power of this novel.
I was in a
phase of my writing (one I haven’t grown out of) where I was trying to figure
out ways for my characters to meet and interact with people from the past. In The Second Mission, they went back
in time. In Centurion, I
presented a standard historical novel.
In Aegypt, the characters had been preserved alive as mummies so
they could be brought back to life through some thaumaturgic process. The Goddess of Darkness made the spell and
The Goddess of Light was caught up in it.
Paul Bolang discovered the strange hieroglyphics on the remains of the
tomb near Fort Saint, a legion stronghold.
I think the
screen writers for the Mummy borrowed my ideas from Aegypt when I was
shopping it around in the late 1980s.
The Mummy movie copied many of the ideas from Aegypt. They missed some of the most important
and best. The Goddess of Light was
revived whole into the world while the Goddess of Darkness was revived only as
a ka, spirit. Paul Bolang married Leroa,
the Goddess of Light. This step up a
circumstance for future novels and ideas related to the Bolang family and the
Goddess of Darkness.
Sister of
Light 1926 – 1934 – from the end of Aegypt, I intended to write another
novel about the continuing saga of the Bolang family, Paul and Leora (the
Goddess of Light), and the Goddess of Darkness.
Sister of Light was the first.
In this
novel, I continued the story of Paul and Leora.
He sought a place of sunshine for Leroa—a continuing theme is that
Leroa, as the Goddess of Light must have a lot of light. She had plenty in Egypt and then Tunisia, but
France and Europe isn’t as blessed with sunshine. In addition, Leora learned how the world had
changed since her time in the tomb, plus she and Paul overcame the obstacles of
Paul’s parents and family. This was all
part of the beginning of the novel. Then
they travel to America and have children.
In the
middle of the novel Paul is recalled to France for a special mission, and Leora
must handle the problems there. A lot
goes on, but it was a novel on contract and a really fun read.
In any case,
the idea for the novel came directly out of Aegypt the characters grew
from there. We see new and old
characters from the original novel plus the children and Paul’s family. The novel filled the inner war years between
1926 to 1934.
I should
mention that through the novel, the Goddess of Darkness is trying to destroy
Paul and Leora Bolang. That’s the real
story, plus Leora fighting back against the darkness.
Sister of
Darkness 1939 – 1945 – At the end of Sister of Light, the Goddess of
Darkness is still kicking and causing problems for the world. In fact, I project that the Goddess of
Darkness working through the German people and Hitler were one of the big
causes of WWII. She also had a great
hate for the Children of Israel and used the Germans to enact her revenge. The idea for the novel came out of history
and the pretext of the Aegypt plot and characters.
At the
beginning, the Germans are attacking France in the early part of that war and
Leroa and Paul are targets because of the Goddess of Darkness and her
influence. Paul is at war in Norway and
Leora barely escapes with the help of Bruce Lyons to England. The novel covers Leroa and her children’s
work and experiences in British controlled areas. She is working for the Crown and protecting
her children. At the same time, she
discovers some powerful items that can help her and the Allies fight the war.
I won’t go
into great detail, but the novel was on contract and fully edited and ready for
publication when my publisher went out of business. The novel covers WWII and is mostly focused
on Lumiere, Paul and Leora’s oldest daughter who is kidnapped by the Goddess of
Darkness and trained to the dark tablet.
Lumiere is more akin to the Goddess of Darkness than a Goddess of Light,
and both must always physically exist in the world. Lumiere learns so she can oppose the Goddess
of Darkness. In the end, Paul and Leora
can’t save her—they think she is dead, but this sets up the next novel. At the end of Sister of Darkness, WWII
ends and Paul and Leora are reunited with their children, but Lumiere is still
alive and hunting the Goddess of Darkness, this time in the Soviet Union. I’m raising new protagonists through the
Bolang family and their fight with evil.
Shadow of
Darkness 1945 – 1953 – This is one of my favorite books. All of the Aegypt or Ancient Light novels
incorporate history with some degree of fantasy (magic realism), but Shadow
of Darkness is about the Soviet Union from history and all about the inner
workings of their society and the MKVD, which became the KGB.
Shadow of
Darkness continues with Lumiere as my protagonist.
She is seeking the Goddess of Darkness to stop her destruction against
humankind. The Goddess of Darkness has
influenced Stalin and the Soviet Union was the result.
How did I
get the idea for this novel? It just
followed along from the other Aegypt novels. Following the fall of Berlin, Lumiere and her
servant Oba were seeking to escape to the East to track and attack the Goddess
of Darkness. I should mention that
Lumiere inherited the tablet of the Goddess of Darkness and knows how to use
it. That tablet had been completely
black—it is now black and gold.
Shadow of
Darkness continues until the death of Stalin in 1953. That’s when Lumiere must escape the Soviet
Union or be captured and imprisoned.
Lumiere can’t stand that—she spent most of World War Two in the prison
of the Goddess of Darkness. Thus the
next novel is Shadow of Light.
Shadow of
Light 1953 – 1956 – at the end of Shadow of Darkness, Lumiere and
Alexander, her love, escape from the Soviet Union and are reunited with
Lumiere’s parents who live in the USA.
Only an act of the Crown and Mr. Churchill prevent them from being
deported back to the Soviet Union.
Meanwhile,
Lumiere goes back to submarining her relationships and creates a gulf between
her and Alexander that might not be fixable.
At the end of Shadow of Darkness, Lumiere also loses her servant
Oba and her tablet to the USA state department.
In any case, I still am using the same protagonist, Lumiere from the
previous novel and the entire circumstances of the previous world and
developments.
I also use
the history of the times, like I did in the previous novels to develop all the
plot and circumstances in this novel, Shadow of Light. You might say I’m taking advantage of all
the advantages of a series of novels, but without the need or constraints of a
series. What I mean is that each of the
novels builds on the others, but they can be read individually. They are a true series in ideas and
characters but not completely dependent on each other. I hate novels, like The Lord of the Rings
that are completely dependent on each other.
I want novels that are deep and complex but stand alone, and I also like
them to fit into other novels in a series so I can enjoy them all separately or
together. In any case, Shadow of
Light is a standalone novel that documents Lumiere’s journey in the British
Foreign Affairs Office as well as The Organization as she works in early
Chinese politics and to seek the Goddess of Darkness. Eventually, she gets back Alexander and
eventually she gets to Communist China where she is exposed by the Soviets and
still wins the hearts of the Chinese.
Her goal is the end of the Goddess of Darkness.
Antebellum
1965 (1860 to 1865) – Since I listed my novels by their start, we get one of my
first in the middle of some later ones.
This wasn’t the first novel I wrote, but it’s pretty close. The idea for the protagonist came from my
experience and past in living in the South and Louisiana. The plot came from the same. The basic idea was for a plantation house and
a person who disappeared during a battle in the Civil War. In the modern era (1965), I had a young woman
who was trying to earn money to go to college as well as investigating her
namesake and the disappearance of her family’s plantation house during the
Civil War. Like all my novels, the
initial scene defines it, and the protagonist, while taking a shortcut to one
of her jobs comes across the missing plantation house. She sees a vision within it and has an
experience beyond anything she’s seen before.
That’s what propels the character and the novel.
I had the
idea from some experimental writing I was doing about houses retaining the
history that went on inside them. I got
the idea itself from reading Ray Bradbury and others. I’m not sure Ray presented exactly the same
ideas I did, but my idea was that in some very old houses, the history of the
place would be grand and important enough that it could exist within it and be
lived out to those who were sensitive.
The sensitive, in this case, were Heather and her family.
This is an
interesting novel that I still have high hopes for. I suspect it wouldn’t be an initial
publication for a new publisher. It’s a
pretty tough subject, the Civil War in the deep south and the ideas of the
people from the time and 1965. It’s more
of a history novel encased in a mystery story, which is the kind of novels I
love to write. So, I’d need a publisher
who is into magic realism with history.
Children of
Light and Darkness 1970 – 1971 – Continuing on with the Aegypt novels, Children
of Light and Darkness has the same characters with a new protagonist and
protagonist’s helper. Kathrin is my new
protagonist. I introduced her in Shadow
of Light as the new interviewer and interrogator for the Organization. She is now in Burma with James, an MI6 share,
searching for Lumiere and Alexandr. They
find their children, Sveta and Klava.
Sveta and Klava happen to be goddesses, the new incarnations of the
Goddess of Light and the Goddess of Darkness.
Kathrin is
also a goddess—she is Ceridwen, the Celtic goddess of the seasons and the
leader of all the Celtic and Gaelic courts.
This is why I developed the character of Kathrin. In the first place, the other goddesses were
all from Egypt, that’s great but I had been introducing other gods and
goddesses from Britain and those environs.
Kathrin was the great mother goddess, and I wanted to reveal and build
up this idea. The perfect mother who was
also unwilling to take her place. If you
know anything about the Ceridwen myth, there is no positives for Ceridwen as a mother
or a wife. I wanted to expand my own
novels to the redemption of those who were unredeemable, and Kathrin was one of
those. I should write that Ceridwen was
one of those. My novel Hestia:
Enchantment of the Hearth is the first of the Enchantment novels
where I split off from the Aegypt novels to investigate those characters
who are normally not considered redeemable.
I’ll get to those novels in time.
In this
novel, I continue the characters, themes, and plots all around British
intelligence with these people and the families started with Aegypt and
Leora and Paul Bolang. Their family and
the characters have grown. The world is
different and history moves on ahead.
Also, Kathrin must take her place as the great goddess Ceridwen in this
generation. That’s the novel along with
all the fun and fixings.
Warrior of
Light 1974 – 1976 – I had an idea for a male protagonist for this series. Children of Light and Darkness
introduced two girls, daughters of Lumiere and Alexandre. Lumiere and Alexandre are still missing in
China, meanwhile their daughters Sveta and Klava are growing up. What I wanted was a young man who had great
potential, and who wanted to make the most of that potential, thus Danny
Long. Daniel Long was the son of
neighbors to Sveta and Klava’s adopted parents Kathrin and James. Daniel Long’s father was a character who
managed the intel assets in the Foreign Office for the Organization. With a promotion, he was also placed in the
special neighborhood for officers of the Organization.
Danny Long
meets Sveta and Klava and they go to school together. Daniel wants to learn languages so he can
follow his father into the business, so to speak. Sveta and Klava want the same, but they also
see the strength and goodness in Daniel. They want to raise him as a potential
candidate for themselves, as well as a compatriot in the Organization. The novel is a coming of age type with a
strong theme of military training for Daniel and magic realism training for
Sveta and Klava. This novel is really
fun, and ends with the rescue of Lumiere and Alexandre.
Warrior of
Darkness 1980 – 1981 – I wrote Warrior of Light to highlight Sveta and
Klave in the train of goddesses. Warrior
of Light was about Sveta with her warrior Danny Long. I had to write a novel about Klava and her
warrior, thus Warrior of Darkness.
Warrior
of Darkness may be my darkest and most controversial novel. It’s still a very fun and entertaining
read. The protagonist is Klava, and she
is the protector of Ireland from the PIRA.
If I failed to note that each of these Ancient Light and Aegypt
novels covers a specific and important area of history, that was my
mistake. Each does, and Warrior of Darkness
is all about the times after the troubles in Northen Ireland. Klave is the protector, but Klava has her own
problems as well.
That tells
you how I came about the protagonist, but I should get into more details about
the history in the novel as well as why this is the final novel in the
series. The answer is that I had no
specific reason for not continuing the series, in fact, if you look at the
protagonists and the characters in my other long Enchantment series,
they all are related in some way or they all in some way touch on the characters
in the Ancient Light series. I
didn’t quit the series, I just expanded my artistry.
Warrior
of Darkness is a peak work. In the beginning of
the series, I had a Goddess of Light who was basically good and moral, and a Goddess
of Darkness who caused great human suffering and was bad and immoral. This was a basic characterization, not
necessarily about light and darkness but about people as goddesses. Throughout the series, the characters were
wary that one of the Goddesses in the sequence could become like the original Goddess
of Darkness, evil and destructive. In
the novels, we see the women each taking their proper roles but in some cases stifling
their power to prevent these problems.
Thus, Lumiere, a Goddess of Darkness never embraced her role but
considered herself the Goddess of Shadows.
When we get to Klava, she fully understands how darkness itself isn’t
bad or evil and completely embraces her role as the Goddess of Darkness. Along the way, she commits actions that alarm
the Courts of the Land—in that I mean her stepmother’s Courts most specifically,
and her stepmother is Ceridwen (Kathrin).
Thus, with
Klava, we have a person who is acting very ethically, but in some ways
differently than her society accepts.
The novel explores this from many angles. In the end, the resolution is positive. That’s the ultimate change and point of this
series, therefore the proper end.
Darkness isn’t the problem. Darkness
itself can provide resolution and solutions that light cannot. It isn’t meant as a moral question or answer
but as a question about the power of light and darkness in society. If it was simple, I wouldn’t have written an entire
series about it.
Deirdre:
Enchantment and the School 1992 – 1993 – Hestia: Enchantment and the Hearth
was my first novel that cut a different course than the Ancient Light
series. Although all of Ancient Light
was about magic realism and ancient gods, my Enchantment series was
about creatures whom we would not ever expect to be redeemed. That redemption wasn’t necessarily spiritual,
but could be spiritual. In fact, Hestia
was exactly about the reawakening of the goddess Hestia and her acceptance of
certain spiritual realities. Other
novels in the series deal with different types of redemption and different
characters. Deirdre: Enchantment and
the School is about three very different redemptions.
I wrote Deirdre:
Enchantment and the School as a Romantic protagonist development for this
blog. In the blog, I built Sorcha as a half
Fae girl hiding in a girl’s school Wycombe Abbey to be exact. She was using glamour to hide and for her
uniform. For creative reasons, I brought
in a not as Romantic protagonist Deirdre, a toff (rich kid) who was banished
for fighting as a last chance to Wycombe, but whose claim to fame was that she
was a daughter of Ceridwen, could see through Fae glamour, was very accomplished
in certain fields, and really needed a friend.
On the first
day of school, Deirde discovered Sorcha and her secret by fighting her, and
forced Sorcha to be her first friend.
She was also Sorcha’s first friend.
Deirdre shared everything with Sorcha.
The plot came out of the entire of idea of a Fae girl hiding out in a
girl’s school to get a great education—Sorcha was that girl, but Deirdre needs
redemption too.
I should
mention that one of my prepublication readers caused this novel setting to some
degree. They really liked Sveta and
Klava in the school setting of Children of Light and Darkness, and I
found that school settings are indeed pretty fun to write in. Thus, when possible and reasonable, I’ve put
some of my Enchantment novels into school and boarding school settings.
I should
also mention that a third character requires redemption in Deirdre:
Enchantment and the School, and she is Mariread Rowley. Mariread hasn’t moved up to protagonist in
any of my novels although she is a great supporting character. Mariread was broken by magic and is redeemed
from magic and to the protection of Ceridwen in this novel. Mariread plays a part in many of the Enchantment
novels.
Cassandra:
Enchantment and the Warriors 1993 – 1994 – I wasn’t finished with Deirdre or
Sorcha as characters, and their previous novel ended with their gross failure
even though they did resolve the telic flaw, so I wanted to continue their tales
and get them in a better state.
At the end
of Deirdre: Enchantment and the School Deirdre and Sorcha were supposed
to go to France to train in the language, culture, society, and to be aviation
cadets. Unfortunately, they are still 16
and not quite up to the height or physical maturity required to appear the
proper age or maturity to enter flight training. Their brains and abilities are there, but
they physically aren’t, plus their mentor and instructor, General Bolang is
being reassigned to the middle east—it’s 1993 and the French are ramping up their
operations there due to Iraq and Kuwait.
So, what’s to be done with Deirdre and Sorcha? They get new orders and identities.
Deirdre and
Sorcha are provided the name and identities Deirdre and Sorcha Bolang and sent
to a Catholic boarding school at Saint Malo, France. They aren’t told much more than their contact
in the school, who wants nothing to do with them, and that they are to be
finished. In the school, they make friends
and discover a great mystery, of course.
They find a
girl who has been in the school for hundreds of years under the imprisonment of
the sisters who run the school. At about
the same time, Luna Bolang makes her appearance and brings the ancient girl,
she hasn’t appeared to have aged a bit, into the school and insists that
Deirdre and Sorcha help her to integrate with the world and the French
culture.
Here's what
I am doing in this novel. The entire
situation was caused by a shake up in the British government caused by Baron
Wishart. Baron Wishart was the Keeper of
the Book of the Fae and managed the affairs of the Fae and some other special
creatures for the Queen, but he began embezzling funds. One of the main funds he was taking is that
for Cassandra, the strange girl who doesn’t age and is in the school at Saint
Malo. Because of these improprieties, the
British Parliament has been cutting funding to these ancient and not explained
expenses, thus Cassandra, who hates the French, only speaks Celtic, Gaelic,
Breton, and Latin, is being mainstreamed into the school because the cost no
longer pay fully for her isolation and incarceration.
One of the
main points of this novel is to setup for another novel Blue Rose:
Enchantment and the Detective. The
novel also introduces Lady Wishart’s cousin, a witch hunter from the Wishart
family and abandoned in Saint Malo. I
also bring in another vampire, a known one from Saint Malo, plus, the ladies
all make friends with well set ladies of Breton. I’m not certain how I’ll use this in the
future, but it’s all in great fun. This troop
of ladies is the warriors of the enchantment.
They face a mighty foe built up from the beginning of the novel. All in all, I bring in a host of characters
from other novels and who are connected to other novels, as well as those I
will use in the future. Most
specifically, Lady Wishart, Deridre, Sorcha, Lady Wishart’s father, Luna
Bolang, and I haven’t figured out what to do with Cassandra, Angelica Wishart,
Gissel, or the other connections Sorcha and Deirdre have made. I’ll figure out something. I’ve discovered in all these novels and
series that having completely and well developed characters to pull from is
always worthwhile—some even turn into protagonists.
Hestia:
Enchantment of the Hearth 2000 – 2001 - Hestia: Enchantment of the Hearth
was the first of my Enchantment novel series. I had the idea when I was translating and
studying an ancient Mysterium text that included a spell to call a god. The god, I think was Mithras. I had this great idea, what if an archeologist
while reciting and translating such a spell accidentally called a real god into
the world. I did a few months of research
to decide that Hestia would make the perfect god to bring into the world this
way. The reasons were because there was
so little information and myth about Hestia while she was the only remaining
Titian in the Greek pantheon and the most important god in the pantheon. Hestia was so important to the Greek and Hellenized
world that the first libation and first sacrifice always went to her. So, with a focus for the novel, I needed a
protagonist.
This novel
starts with the junior archeologist reading the spell while on a dig in
Greece. He’s kind of clueless and indeed
Hestia shows up and is really pissed. It’s
a great scene, but this junior archeologist couldn’t act as the
protagonist. I developed a party of four
archeologists. Two senior supervisors
and two graduate students—it’s a small dig.
The protagonist I aimed for was one of the seniors, a female and second
in command. Their senior is a hardened
type who refuses to believe the evidence right in front of him. Hestia has powers, but not the powers we
usually assume the gods have. She can
control taste and the hearth as well as well being and comfort. That’s the kind of god she is.
I went about
developing this protagonist, Angela, as part of the setting and the plot. She tries to accommodate Hestia while
figuring out that the world does contain the spiritual as well as the physical. Their, the two junior and Angela’s, journey
with Hestia in Greece goes from their dig site to Olympia then to Athens. It gets really jammed up with demigods as
well as modern day problems and a great mystery.
Hestia was
my first attempt at answering the great question of redemption (not necessarily
spiritual redemption, but this novel is about spiritual redemption). I wanted to know how a god brought into the
modern world might view the idea of Christianity and the events of the
time. In this regard, Hestia has to
reconcile herself to the religion and society of modern Greece. Likewise, Angela and the other archeologists
must confront what it means to meet an actual god. I thought this was a pretty good start to the
Enchantment series.
Essie:
Enchantment and the Aos Si 2002 – 2005 – I put my books in order of time, so
there is some disconnect artistically and developmentally between them. Hestia is an early novel, and Essie:
Enchantment and the Aos Si is a little later novel. Don’t get me wrong, they are both very
entertaining novels, but Essie: Enchantment and the Aos Si is longer and
more integrated in some ways. Hestia
is somewhat isolated from my other works because it is part of a new series. In any case, Essie, came from the idea
of an unreconcilable and incredible event.
Essie is the protagonist of Essie, and she came out of the mythic
antithesis to Ceridwen. If you’ve been
following along, I brought in Ceridwen as the protagonist of Children of
Light and Darkness. She appears through
out my novels, along with Queen Elizabeth and the Archbishops of Canterbury as
the head of the Crown. You see, in my novels,
the Crown knows about the Fae denizens of the land and accommodates them through
Ceridwen’s courts. Ceridwen is the
overall ruler of the British Isles, all of them as well as the other Gaelic and
Celtic lands. Essie or the Aos Si is not
supposed to be her antithesis but rather the ruler of the Fae courts.
There are
four Fae courts: the Seelie that includes Oberon and the general Fae, the Welsh
Fae, and the Gaelic or Irish Fae, and the Unseelie. All the Fae courts are overseen by their
Queen and mistress, the Aos Si. To understand
this you must know that the Fae are the neutral angels who didn’t support God
or Satan in the fall. God, instead of
sending them to Hell, banished them to earth.
God also provided them a means of redemption, that was the Aos Si, and
they hate her.
The angels,
that is the Fae see themselves as beautiful, perfect, not human, and separate
from the earth. The see the Aos Si as
ugly, earth bound, imperfect, and stupid.
Essie really isn’t, but the Fae hate their mistress, but they are compelled
to obey her. They also betrayed her through
Ceridwen. When Ceridwen first ascended
to her place in Children of Light and Darkness, the Welsh Faw tricked
Ceridwen into having the Aos Si captured and kept imprisoned. The Morfans kept Essie in her special silver
cage. That’s all backstory.
The
beginning of Essie is when Mrs. Tilly Lyons, a mainstay character from Sister
of Light on, in her very old age, discovers the escaped Aos Si, starkers in
her pantry and eating her breakfast ham.
Mrs. Lyons is able to capture the Aos Si and eventually gives her the
name Essie (that’s what Aos Si sounds like in Gaelic). Essie sticks around with Mrs. Lyons just
because she is Essie. Mrs. Lyons has
found a daughter and a person to love and protect.
The overall
plot is about how Essie is eventually reconciled to the Fae and to
Ceridwen. It really is an exciting novel
that brings in all the main characters and some side characters in the Aegypt
or Ancient Light series. We
get a taste of the first Sorcha plus Ceridwen’s sister, and the Queen. Yes, a lot of the Fae, and some foreshadowing
of future Fae we will meet in other novels.
In any case, Essie is one of my favorite novels. The Aos Si is a very different kind of ruler
than anyone else in the world, but she still controls unimaginable powers and
beings. This is part of the fun and
entertainment in the novel.
Khione:
Enchantment and the Fox 2003 – 2004 – Khione: Enchantment and the Fox is
a nearly direct follow-on to Hestia.
The protagonist is Pierce a graduate student at Boston University. I developed this protagonist as a foil to
Khione. Khione is a demigod, actually a
demigoddess who is the child of the Greek goddess Khione and the uncatchable
fox. Khione is the child of a rape and
has been constantly owned and abused since the beginning thousands of years
ago. She was given back her earthstuff
at the end of Hestia, but was cursed by Hestia even before the modern times or
world. Suffice to say that Khione has
great problems that only someone who really loves her might help…and
Hestia.
What was
really fun about Khione is that she is part fox as well as a demigod. She shows characteristics of both. Peirce rescues her when she is accidently hit
by an electric bus on the street. She’s
like a wild animal, but he can’t leave her alone, and he accidentally acquires
her earthstuff, an ancient Greek coin.
In my vision of the demigods of Greece, their souls are held in
inanimate objects like those of metal, stone, and bone. If these items are held by a person, the
demigod becomes their slave. At the end
of Hestia, Angela returned the earthstuff to the demigods she and Hestia
rescued. In any case, I developed the protagonist
for Peirce to be a great help and compassion to the very dangerous and wild
Khione.
I haven’t
reused many of the characters from Hestia or Khione in other novels, not
yet. Hestia and Khione are not
necessarily one-offs, they just fit in a different niche of the universe of Ancient
Light.
Blue Rose:
Enchantment and the Detective 2008 - 2009
Dana-ana:
Enchantment and the Maiden 2009 - 2010
Valeska:
Enchantment and the Vampire 2014 - 2015
Lilly:
Enchantment and the Computer 2014 - 2015
September
2022 – death of Elizabeth
Sorcha:
Enchantment and the Curse 2025 - 2026
2026 death
of Mrs. Calloway
Rose:
Enchantment and the Flower January to April 2028
Seoirse:
Enchantment and the Assignment August to November 2028
science
fiction
The End of
Honor
The Fox’s
Honor
A Season of
Honor
Athelstan
Cying
Twilight
Lamb
Regia
Anglorum
Shadowed
Vale
Ddraig Goch
– not completed
I’ll look at
the origin of the protagonists and the ideas for these novels, next.
I want to write another book based on
Rose and Seoirse, and the topic will be the raising of Ceridwen—at least that’s
my plan. Before I get to that, I want to
write another novel about dependency as a theme. We shall see.
More
tomorrow.
For more information, you can visit my
author site http://www.ldalford.com/, and my individual
novel websites:
http://www.ancientlight.com/
http://www.aegyptnovel.com/
http://www.centurionnovel.com
http://www.thesecondmission.com/
http://www.theendofhonor.com/
http://www.thefoxshonor.com
http://www.aseasonofhonor.com
fiction, theme, plot,
story, storyline, character development, scene, setting, conversation, novel,
book, writing, information, study, marketing, tension, release, creative, idea,
logic
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