Writing - part xxx723 Writing a Novel to Entertain, Ideas for the Protagonists, Escape from Freedom

22 June 2024, Writing - part xxx723 Writing a Novel to Entertain, Ideas for the Protagonists, Escape from Freedom

Announcement: I still need a new publisher.  However, I’ve taken the step to republish my previously published novels.  I’m starting with Centurion, and we’ll see from there.  Since previously published novels have little chance of publication in the market (unless they are huge best sellers) I might as well get those older novels back out.  I’m going through Amazon Publishing, and I’ll pass the information on to you.

Introduction: I wrote the novel Aksinya: Enchantment and the Daemon. This was my 21^st 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 31^st 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 34^th novel (actually my 32^nd 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 30^th novel, working title Red Sonja.  I finished my 29^th novel, working title Detective.  I finished writing number 31, working title Cassandra: Enchantment and the Warrior.  I just finished my 32^nd novel and 33^rd 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 – I needed to develop a protagonist for my blog with a strong and obvious telic flaw, etc.  To do that, I wrote a detective novel and plot with a detective protagonist.  The detective was Azure Rose Wishart.  She fit very nicely in my world of Ancient Light because she was a new and foreshadowed character from the background of Cassandra: Enchantment and the Warriors.  Lady Wishart’s father cheated the Crown and stole from them while he was the Keeper of the Book of the Fae.  When he went to prison, Azure Rose Wishart was destitute.  She lost everything.  She became the Keeper of the Book of the Fae, and was fostered out as a charity case.  She learned to play golf and became an expert, but her real goal was to regain her estate and she thinks she knows how to do this.  Azure is working as the Keeper of the Book of the Fae and taking pay from the Fae for her judgements.  The problem with this is that it has put her sideways with Ceridwen and the Queen—plus, Azure can’t really turn the money she makes into real money without the help of the Crown.  Then comes Lachlann and falls in love with her.

Here is the real problem for Azure.  Lachlann is the youngest son of Ceridwen—so we have a very serious problem.  Azure is at odds with Ceridwen and yet her sone in wooing her.  This along with Azure’s problems with the Crown makes everything even more interesting.  Lachlann is her real hope even though she claims not to need or want a boyfriend of any kind.

Things get really dicey before they get better, but in this novel, the mystery and detective issue is the crime of Dana-ana.  I wrote Dana-ana before this novel, but the Dana-ana problem is a very important part of the next novel.

Dana-ana: Enchantment and the Maiden 2009 – 2010 – when I wrote this novel, all the characters, pretty much, were new and shiny.  The protagonist was Byron and the focus was Dana-ana.  Dana-ana was an irredeemable being.  The novel is a very complex mystery about just who Dana-ana is.  She appears in a small backwater town in Louisiana—actually a city big enough to have a University.  I never tell you which town, but it is based on a real place.  Byron rescues a strange girl who everyone seems to hate.  Right from the beginning, Dana-ana act like she thinks she is an Anglo-Saxon person in the modern world.  She follows a cultural beat that is very different than the real world, and Byron’s dad can see it because he is a professor of ancient British languages.  Dana-ana can speak all kinds of ancient British languages and that’s where her very interesting reality meets the modern in a tremendous clash.  Is Dana-ana crazy, a time traveler, an exiled royal?  The State Department says she was banished from England—is she a criminal? 

For you I’ll give a spoiler.  Dana-ana committed a horrible crime by omission.  She was a goddess, but her worshipers murdered many magic users without her knowledge and she was punished by being given a curse and by taking her status of goddess.  She is just a normal human albeit with some special skills that were inherent to her.  She just seeks to be a normal person, but that might be entirely denied her. 

Thus we get into the point of the Enchantment novels—beings whom we think could normally never be redeemed in any fashion.  The question is can a goddess who committed a grave crime be redeemed.  That’s the question I ask in Dana-ana and about Dana-ana.  Back to the protagonist, that’s Byron.  I chose Byron because he was a schoolmate and connected to Dana-ana through family and time.  That’s true of his family as well.  These connections are important, but Byron himself is a person who eventually needs redemption.   

Valeska: Enchantment and the Vampire 2014 – 2015 – I told you all not to follow trends and definitely don’t write a novel about Vampires, then I had an idea I couldn’t get rid of without writing a novel about it.  I had an idea about what a real vampire might be like, and it isn’t at all what most people imagine.  In addition, as I wrote more than once, the Enchantment series is about creatures we think can’t be redeemed.  I wanted to try this with a vampire.

My vampires must drink human blood during a full moon.  If they don’t, they will dissipate.  They must live near a cemetery so they can sleep, during the day with their bodies touching the soil of the dead.  They are isolated and generally solitary.  They have little except what they can take from the dead, and they don’t usually kill their victims nor make them a vampire.  They can’t attack a Christian (cross bearer).  This makes sense as a rule.  How could a vampire attack a person who was supposed to be marked with the sign of Christ?  In my novel, George is the protagonist and while a Christian, allows Valeska to feed on his blood because he thinks he is about to die from a bullet wound and he doesn’t believe in vampires.

Back to the beginning.  I imagined an agent who was ambushed during what should have been a simple mission.  He happened to be wounded during the full moon and accidentally meets a vampire, Valeska, who was hunting one of the agent’s contacts.  He grants her blood, and she provides some miraculous healing.  The problem is that once a vampire, in my world, tastes the blood of a cross bearer, they are doomed to only drink that person’s blood, forever. 

Valeska and George begin a symbiotic relationship based on mutual agreement.  They meet and he is assigned to Gdansk Poland.  She lives in his house and actually protects and helps him during some very dicey circumstances.  Eventually, due to these circumstances and the unusual events around them, George is recalled to England—that’s when the fun begins.

The protagonist, George came out of the intelligence system of my world with the Organization.  George is an MI6 language share from the Organization.  He fits into my world because he was a one date gentleman for Sorcha from Sorcha: Enchantment and the Curse.  He eventually becomes the warrior of Leila, another very important side character who is the child of Klava.  The setup for George is that since he is touched by death, through a vampire, he becomes the perfect warrior for Leila.  In addition, Leila is my gun making, bad girl, good girl who shows up in Essie, as well as a few other novels.  By the way, Valeska is the perfect helper for Leila.  Leila and George as well as Valeska have parts to play in a few novels, mostly as side characters, but their love story, shown through the PoV of George with Valeska is in this novel.  I haven’t done enough with Valeska, but I plan to.      

Lilly: Enchantment and the Computer 2014 – 2015 – This focus and protagonist didn’t really come out of the blue either.  I was developing a protagonist on my blog who became a focus—that happens a lot.  The focus was Lilly.  I’m not sure what I was reading at the time, but Lilly is kinda based on some of the powerhouses of the computer industry.  Except Lilly has it harder and is a focus of some real issues.  I imagined the initial scene where a girl, Lilly was using store credits that she hacked to buy food.  That’s the main point—Lilly is an expert hacker and computer person.  She is a genius in math and computer programing and building.  In the Fastmart, Lilly is caught by a bad customer, when she hacks his Fastmart bucks.  Luckily, Dane, the protagonist is there to save her.  Dane is an Engineering graduate student.  He’s more interested in a person like Lilly for her math and computer hacking skills than in her as a person, but that slowly changes.  Lilly for her part is really interested in a man who cares about her capabilities rather than the fact she is a female.  She changes mainly because of him.  The change is really interesting. 

Now, all this would be fun and interesting except, like all my novels, I add a real supernatural kicker into it.  This is an Enchantment novel after all.  Lilly lives on the street, actually in a cardboard box on top of one of the student buildings.  Her scholarship pays for classes, but not for room and board, and that’s the way she wants it.  Lilly has made friends with an odd oriental (Japanese) man, also on the street, or so it appears.  This man happens to be a Japanese deity of metal and metalwork who moved to the Seattle area to gain more worshipers.  His deity wife moved too, but she succumbed to the lack of worshipers and went away.  The deity is looking for a person who he can trust with his shrine and powers—he’s found Lilly with Dane as her priest.  That’s the long setup. 

There is much more complexity in this novel.  It’s a really fun novel and setup.  The question of the novel is the compatibility of religions and ideas in religions.

September 2022 – death of Elizabeth

Sorcha: Enchantment and the Curse 2025 – 2026 – This Enchantment novel goes back to the basics of supernatural and the intelligence business.  The premise is really fun—it’s all about Shiggy.  Shiggy is one of those pretentious, over-educated, over-babyfied, over-indulged, people who keep failing but keep being retrained and retained when everyone knows they should be back on the street looking for work.  The problem is that Shiggy has been moved from every major intelligence and clandestine office in the British MI system.  She knows way too much and flunked out of every place and responsibility she was given—whoops.  Sorcha buys her, so to speak.  Sorcha, is part of Stela and the Organization, and she has taken Shiggy under her wing and control to do something with her.  Sorcha’s training techniques are severe, and just what Shiggy may need.

In this novel, the focus and the protagonist are the same.  Shiggy is the focus, and Shiggy is the protagonist.  I got the idea from all my coworker and other complaints about modern younger workers.  Shiggy is one of those who many despise in the workforce and workplace.  She is an amalgamation of all that is bad in the worst of any generation of workers.  The entire novel is supposed to be tongue in cheek as well as an exaggeration of how Sorcha whips Shiggy into shape and a person who is worthwhile to the intelligence system. 

There is, of course, more to the story.  I incorporate the supernatural and the inclusion of Stela from the Organization automatically includes the supernatural.  Stela is the branch of the intelligence system that protects Britian from supernatural threats and enemies.  Shiggy doesn’t believe in the supernatural, and that’s another part of the novel that is really fun—Shiggy gets to meet Valeska, George, Leila, George and Leila’s children (boys and twin girls the future goddesses of light and darkness), plus Ceridwen, as well as a few other gods and goddesses, and the Fae who guard Sorcha’s house and Sherwood.  All this is fun as is Shiggy’s interaction with the community who trusts Sorcha, but not so much Shiggy.

All in all, Sorcha both introduces new characters and builds on the other Enchantment novels.  It’s focused on mainly the intelligence parts of those and the British settings.  Shiggy will play a much bigger role in the future as will some of the other characters, plus we will get to reacquaint with some others from earlier novels.

I should mention that the death of Elizabeth is very important in the context of the novels because Elizabeth, the Queen features so much in the Enchantment novels.  In my world, the nobility, or at least, the Queen knows all about Stela and Ceridwen.  She rules the human courts while Ceridwen rules over all the courts.   

2026 death of Mrs. Calloway

Rose: Enchantment and the Flower - January to April 2028 – The next two books kinda set up for the replacement of Mrs. Calloway (Ceridwen).  That’s why her death is important.  The next two books move slightly into the future.  Rose, was a protagonist and a focus I developed for my blog.  I created Rose to be a perfect Romantic protagonist, plus I wanted to take many of the characters I used in other novels and integrate them into Rose’s life.  In fact, Shiggy is the character who discovers Rose.

Ultimately and initially, I had this idea for a character, Rose, who was an abandoned person in a house.  Rose is, in a way, a blank slate on which many interesting skills were placed, but no real impression, except nearly perfect manners and deportment.  Rose is a person who is just learning to be a person.  Shiggy begins her education, but she is able to soar when she gets her own assignment.  You see Rose is half Fae and very powerful.  Shiggy teaches her to be what Shiggy wants and what the Organization wants.  Once the Organization gets their hands on Rose, the world changes in a significant way.  Rose is sent to school with a wayward child to bring up in a positive fashion.  It doesn’t help that the wayward child is a precocious goddess who can cause destruction through her actions. 

In this novel, we learn a lot about Rose.  This is a revelation of Rose, and she doesn’t disappoint.  I mentioned that I developed her as a perfect Romantic protagonist.  The novel shows her growth from abused and abandoned to successful and accomplished, and you know there must be much more to her.  That’s why the next novel.

Seoirse: Enchantment and the Assignment - August to November 2028 – I really thought hard about developing this protagonist.  I thought I might reuse Rose as the protagonist of this novel because this is a follow-on to the previous novel Rose: Enchantment and the Flower.  At the end of Rose, Rose has been reinstated to school and is still trying to rewin her property.  At the beginning of Seoirse: Enchantment and the Assignment, Seoirse is being installed as Rose’s handler.  The reason is that Rose, although very capable is still vulnerable, and her assignment is being expanded.  Rose is being given the responsibility of overseeing four other dangerous girls including two very dangerous goddesses. 

I chose Seoirse to be the protagonist because I wanted to create a romantic relationship between him and Rose.  Because Seoirse is her handler, Rose and he put up a pretend relationship that allows them to meet together.  Meanwhile, Rose sees some opportunities to further her own ends.  The reason, Seoirse is the son of Lady Wishart and Commander Calloway.  Lady Wishart is the Keeper of the Book of the Fae.  Since Rose is half Fae, she sees great possibilities in keeping Seoirse close and Lady Wishart closer.  Then the great crisis of the novel.

I wanted the crises to be the initial scene, but I needed some build up to it, so it ended up a couple of chapters in.  Rose attempts to use the tea party method of bringing the bad and dangerous girls together—it worked with Robyn and the girls in the previous novel; however, it doesn’t work at all with Sveta, the future Goddess of Light.  In fact, Sveta smells a rat and the meeting gets very heated.  Sveta attacks Rose and Robyn, which is not a good idea at all.  She puts the other girls at risk—all Rose was trying to do is make friends and influence the girls.  She ends up having to quell a magic storm.  That results in her breaking her agreement to prevent injury and damage by these young ladies—and Rose runs away.

As I noted, this was the scene I wanted for the initial scene of the novel.  To set it up, I needed much more than a jump directly into it.  The big point is that Seoirse was required to find and bring back Rose.  Rose may have failed in her first attempt with the goddesses, but she is the only one who can control and stop them.  She is literally the only hope of the British nation to containing these girls and teaching them to control themselves, and Seoirse is her handler.  Pretty fun setup. 

This isn’t the end of the Enchantment series.  I’ve prepped a new protagonist, Eoghen for a novel, Aine which I want to write, but I’ve decided to focus on getting an agent or publisher before I produce another novel.  I may not be able to hold out much longer.  Writing is much more fun than the details of submissions and such.

science fiction

The End of Honor – My science fiction actually started with A Season of Honor, and the other novels kind of followed in sequence.  The first in the series Chronicles of the Dragon and the Fox was The End of Honor.  The protagonist of The End of Honor is the same person, Prince John-Mark who is also the Baron Shawn du Locke.  Prince John-Mark is the tragic protagonist of The End of Honor.  He loses his honor by losing his position and rank.  He also loses his love and his princess, Lyral Neuterra. 

I developed Prince John-Mark to be a Romantic protagonist who was also smitten with love for Lyral.  John-Mark is the dragon in the teaming of the Dragon and the Fox.  The Fox is Prince Devon Rathenburg.  These novels are all developed loosely on Anglo-Saxon culture and the idea of genetic manipulation.  The leaders of the Human Galactic Empire were made to be leaders through genetic manipulation and then by eugenic mating of the aristocracy.  This was the basis for the novels and part of point was the decline of the aristocracy and the strength of the leaders and leadership.  So, my protagonist John-Mark was a man accused of crimes by his older brother.  Prince Perod-Mark murders the Emperor, Lyral, and precipitates a war between the houses of the Human Galactic Empire.  Prince John-Mark fights against the Emperor Perodus (Prince Period-Mark) and wins, but the end is a loss and the end of honor. 

Where did this protagonist come from?  As I noted, I wrote A Season of Honor before The End of Honor.  In fact, The End of Honor was the last book I wrote in the series, but the fits book in time.  Prince John-Mark came out of A Season of Honor and The Fox’s Honor.  He was bereft of him title and his position in A Season of Honor.  I had to reverse his life and existence in The End of Honor to create his character.     

The Fox’s Honor – The absolutely selfless and honorable actions of Prince John-Mark made him great enemies and great friends, but the leaders of the rebellion in the Human Galactic Empire as well as the loyalists knew Prince John-Mark could not continue as the Crown Prince—he had too much baggage and issues.  Enter Devon Rathenburg, the Fox.  Unfortunately, the Fox is on a mission to die to prevent the problem that just happened in the empire.  While Prince John-Mark was my protagonist who got caught up in unintentional intrigue, Devon Rathenburg got caught up in his own mechanizations that then led to his death.  Fortunately for him and the Empire, he declared his love to Tamar Falkeep, and Tamar was the kind of woman who would never forgive him or let him go.  He picked the wrong maiden to fall in love with and then desert.  Tamar brought him back to life, protected, saved, and eventually accepted him in everything.  She is the honorable woman who was willing to sacrifice everything except the man who claimed to love her. 

I developed Devon Rathenburg as the clandestine and intelligence based opposite to Prince John-Mark.  Where John-Mark is forward and direct, Devon, the Fox is circumspect and filled with trickery.  The wooing of Prince John-Mark was straightforward and normal.  Devon Rathenburg made his declaration and ran away.  He caused a train of event that he couldn’t control or stop.  In the end, Devon Rathenburg was forced to become the new Crown Prince.  A step that the Human Galactic Empire needed at just that time. 

All of the characters for these three novels, The Chronicles of the Dragon and the Fox, were based on different types and reflections of honor in human society.  The protagonists as well as the side characters focused this honor and the differences in the types and degrees of honor.  Plus, they were shaped and placed in an honor-based society.       

A Season of Honor – In The Fox’s Honor, Devon Rathenburg regained his honor by taking back his estate and power.  In The End of Honor, the Prince John-Mark lost his honor, estate, and power and was banished to Devon Rathenburg’s planet.  A Season of Honor brings back Prince John-Mark’s power.  He starts with his new name—Shawn du Locke.  He is a Baron without an estate, position, or power in the Human Galactic Empire.  His evil brother still holds the Iron Throne, and at first, Shawn doesn’t intend to do anything about that, but the affairs of the Empire intrude on Shawn’s life and he has to take sides and action. 

Basically, Shawn du Locke is the same character as Prince John-Mark.  Any differences are due to time, experience, and loss of his honor.  His goal really isn’t to regain his honor, but he is forced to change due to Elina Acier.  Shawn is contracted to move Elian Acier from the planet Acier to Arienth, the capital planet and protect her from the Emperor.  Elina Acier provides a great danger to the power of the Emperor, and the Emperor will do anything to remove her from the world.  Unfortunately, Elina is related to Lyral, Shawn’s previous love, so he is conflicted about her, and she becomes the reason for al his actions. 

In A Season of Honor, we have a man who is suddenly knocked out of his inaction to then regain his honor and his place in the Empire.   

Athelstan Cying – fast forward a few thousand years from the Human Galactic Empire.  In this novel, Athelstan Cying, the protagonist was the spirit of a psionic master whose body died with his comrades abord the Athelstan Cying, a ship, following a misjump.  The end of the Human Galactic Empire was a horrific war that was lost by the Empire and won by a much worse group, the Reps.  The Empire was splintered but eventually came under a more stable representative government called the Confederation of Space.  In the Confederation, the Family Traders are the main intragalactic trading group and their enormous ships are the equivalents of planets for power and representation.  That’s all to say that my protagonist was a spirit who accidentally became the mind and soul of the failure Den Protania.  Den Protania was the son of the Captain of the Twilight Lamb, a Family Trading vessel.  When the Twilight Lamb investigated the Athelstan Cying, Den disobeyed his orders and was mortally wounded.  The spirit tried to save Den and was locked into his mind and body.  I created my protagonist from this idea. 

The novels in this series which I call the Ghost Ship Chronicles are all about the Family Traders and the actions and life of Den Protiana and his successes as well as failures.  He has a protagonist’s helper Natana Kern—once his enemy and now his ally.  What was interesting to me in developing this protagonist was the idea that Den didn’t fully recognize his memories, his identity, or his new existence. 

The world of the Family Traders is one of complete capitalism—one of work and compensation by position and leadership.  The original Den was a person without drive and possibly without the real skills required to achieve any goals in the Family Traders.  The new Den has the skills and the desire.  The novel is about his achievements and integration into the world of the Family Traders. 

Twilight Lamb – The ship Den and Nata are on together is the Twilight Lamb.  That’s the Family trader.  At the end of Athelstan Cying, Den and Natana are married and Den is well on his way to success in the Family Traders, but they meet and are kidnapped by the Athenian Charter a group that is using mechanical psionics.  Den and Natana find a new enemy and a new goal—to investigate the Athenian Charter and the psionic research areas they are raiding that used to be part of the Human Galactic Empire and the Reps’ psionic research.  However, one of the real problems confronting Den and Natana is the attention of the Athenian Charter. 

The Athenian Charter captures a passenger liner, the Regia Anglorum and uses the hijacked vessel and passengers to infiltrate the Twilight Lamb.  Den and Natana save the day and rescue the Twilight Lamb.  The Athenian Charter has laid down a line in the sand and is targeting the Family Traders.

Regia Anglorum – At the end of Twilight Lamb, Den and Natana have captured the Regia Anglorum.  By the laws of space and the Confederation, the Twilight Lamb now can claim that ship, the Regia Anglorum as their property and the property of the Family Traders.  At the beginning of Regia Anglorum, Den and Natana are accepting the leadership of the Regia Anglorum for the Family Traders.  We get the pomp and circumstance of the christening of a new Family Trader with the oaths of the Captain, Den, and the First Officer and Astrogator, Natana, as well as their new anthem and community.  The Regia Anglorum is the latest and newest of the Family Traders.  However, the protagonist is new in this novel too.

I developed the new protagonist, Nikita, based on a non-science fiction protagonist by a writer friend.  The girl, Nikita, my new protagonist was abandoned by her Family Trader father on El Rashad.  Her mother died and she lives on the streets of Carnival, a place I based on Jack Vance’s carnival from one of his Alistor novels.  In any case, one of the first ports of call for Regia Anglorum is El Rashad.  Natana goes planetside to see the amazing Carnival and discovers psionically, Nikita.  Nikita is a very powerful psionic—her father was a Kern from the Family Traders.  As I noted, she lives on the street and keeps hidden from the people of Carnival who would enslave and abuse her. 

Natana convinces Nikata to come and join their family in the Regia Anglorum.  Both Nikita’s skills and her background (Family Trader) make it impossible for her to leave Nikita in Carnival and on El Rashad.  Since Nikita is still relatively young, about 14 but small due to malnourishment and illness, the novel becomes one of self-discovery and coming of age as Nikita enters the Family Trader schooling and integrates into the family of Den and Natana.  Nikita has issues she must overcome. 

Perhaps the most interesting part of the novel is to see how the Family Traders work from a familial and at a school and basic level.      

Shadowed Vale – Nikita is my protagonist for Shadowed Vale too.  She is integrating into the Family Traders as well as into the special mission by Den and Natana against the Athenian Charter.  Meanwhile Nikita is making new friends and solving real Family Trader problems. 

So, with a series, the protagonist isn’t determined, but it can be.  It depends on how exciting the life and the revelation of the character is.  Nikita is a very interesting character.  I had expected to use Nikita as the protagonist for the last novel I planned in the series, but we shall see.

I planned to use Nikita because she was such a powerful psionic and so resourceful.  Den and Natana, as if not more powerful as a psionic team were to play a very important role in the final novel as well.

In Shadowed Vale, a host of Family Trader ships (six) have gone missing and no one can explain why.  This happens yearly for six years and gives Nikita, her brothers and sister and her friend Alex time to grow up.  The novel is about their coming of age and revelation of the Family Trader ships and systems.  In addition, we get more on the Confederation of Space that rules the planets and the Family Traders.  The point is to setup and prepare for the final novel, Ddraig Goch.   

Ddraig Goch – not completed – I originally planned for Nikita to be the protagonist of this novel, but I’m thinking I may make it Mara, her sister, or some other character.  I haven’t written this novel.  My previous publisher was interested in the series but went out of business before they put it on contract.  I haven’t totally lost interest in finishing the series, but without the motivation of potential publication, it’s hard to do anything with it.  In any case, I do intend to finish this novel and series in the future, but I’d like to have some hope of publication. 

Since I write stand-alone novels in most of my series, the Ghostship Chronicles is unusual for me and my writing.  I’ll move on to the next novel.  It actually should have been before The End of Honor, but I forgot about it.

Escape from Freedom – The idea for this novel came out of the blue, so to speak.  I was flying over the Mediterranean between Italy and Greece, and I was keeping an eye out for potential places to land, that is on islands.  That’s when I had a wonderful idea.  What if my protagonist was flying over a part of the world that wasn’t free and was forced to make an emergency landing on that nation.  That’s when I created the nation of Freedom and my protagonist, Scott Phillips.  Scott routinely broke the rules to fly his heavy lifting shuttle over Freedom to save thousands of miles and hour of flight time in delivering his cargo.  He got away with it because Freedom was like Cuba in our age, isolated both physically and politically from the rest of their free world.  Few knew much about Freedom, but Scott is going to learn much more than he wanted to.  His shuttle engine fails near Freedom and the only place he can set down is on the island nation.

Scott happens to set his shuttle down directly in front of Reb.  Reb, or V10+S10537 Rebecka, is a very highly bred and intellectually superior citizen of Freedom.  She will also do anything to escape Freedom.  Even though she knows nothing about the rest of the world, she realizes that something is terribly wrong with the nation of Freedom, and indeed there is. 

Freedom, the name, is an irony.  There is no freedom in Freedom.  There are three groups of people: citizens, armed citizens, and the party members.  Freedom is a socialist paradise where the people are starving, fed artificial food products, and given drugs to control them.  They are like a modern version of the Soviet.  The hospitals are not for helping people but for harvesting their organs and bodily fluids for the party members.  Let’s just say, Freedom is a terrible place, and Scott learns this by observing it first hand.  Reb helps him, but her only desire is to escape. 

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  

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