It takes some getting used to, just as writing on an electric typewriter and using a copy machine replaced slogging away on a manual typewriter with carbon paper, and just as that gave way to electronic word processing and the ever-easier use of the computer and word processing programmes with discs and CDs for back-up, just as the thought process made the transition between writing everything out first in black ink in a lined yellow pad to being able to actually compose on a keyboard...now I have to get used to reading my own books on not just the computer screen, but...oh the incredibility of it...on my iPhone.
Yesterday "Uneasy Lies The Head", Volume I of the Glastonbury Chronicles went up on Kindle on Amazon.com and I am told "The Sword of The King", Volume II of the Glastonbury Chronicles and "Son of Air and Darkness" (although it is not advertised as such, Volume I of Tales of the Dearg-Sidhe) are not far behind. Books, months of writing and editing, all available on that tiny little screen of my cell phone as well as on my computer or a Kindle reading device. What once was printed on hundreds of sheets of paper, now electronically sent to my phone and computer and now truly the size that can fit into my pocket or purse.
What would the great authors I grew up reading have thought? William Shakespeare? Mark Twain? Charles Dickens? Even Robert Heinlein and Isaac Asimov? J. R. R. Tolkien? Would they have been amazed at this new frontier of publication? Would it have been considered wizardry or witchcraft? For that matter , how would Mr. Shakespeare have felt about motion picture versions of his plays? Or Mr. Dickens about audiobooks?
Oh brave new world that hath such contraptions in it!
And now this brand new e-Author has to go find her book...it's ringing in the background.
Sunday, December 5, 2010
Wednesday, November 10, 2010
SEQUELS
THE SWORD OF THE KING is the second installment of The Glastonbury Chronicles. It was a joy to write, as the main characters are not only identical twins, they were conjoined at birth...difficult enough, though the physical separation was fairly easy (the 22nd Century has marvellous medical procedures) but in this case extremely important, for it makes both of them the first-born son of the King and Queen of England, therefore both first in line for the throne. It doesn't make matters easier that they have not only the special communication twins are famous for having; these two, Kieran and Neil, are totally telepathic. Possibly this comes from the fact that in a prior life they had died together, Stephen and Kevin, King and King-slayer, and the bloodlines of both had merged when Stephen had married a descendant of Walter Tyrell and Kevin, a Watson of the Tyrell line, had married Stephen's sister Stacy.
The situation of course gets more complicated when they both fall in love with the same woman and mysterious deaths begin plaguing the royal families of both England and Scotland, and both brothers realise where their destinies lie: one must become the King, the other must eventually kill him...but which is which?
I was not even sure of the final outcome until about 5 pages before I wrote it.
Reading it is one thing; writing it is another, entirely.
When you finish reading a book you can put it down and go on with your life. When you finish writing a book you are left wondering what about the lives you have created in the book...what happens to them next?
When I finished UNEASY LIES THE HEAD I thought it was over. That was it. There was not going to be a sequel. I had effectively done everything in my power to clean up all the loose ends so there would not, could not, be a sequel.
Or so I thought.
The Lads, as I have come to call them, had different ideas. They began pestering me at all hours, wanting to come out and play again. I even started writing another novel, a book about Dubhghall. Somehow they worked themselves into it. And still they wanted more. Finally I gave in, and there was another book. A journal of Kevin Watson, called THE SWORD BENEATH THE ROSE (which is scheduled to be published at the end of the series) And that one was going to be the last. But no: There were more stories, and they wanted to tell them. THE SWORD OF THE KING is the second chronological story in the series. So far there are five books plus the journals, plus whatever else they cook up. (Did I mention the Tarot cards?)
The Lads are still nattering at me in the background as I try to put together the second volume of Tales of the Dearg-Sidhe, THE GREAT QUEEN'S HOUND. Poor Dubhghall is having a hard time getting a word in edgewise, but he will prevail. They have to sleep sometime. He doesn't sleep.
Neither, it seems, do I.
The situation of course gets more complicated when they both fall in love with the same woman and mysterious deaths begin plaguing the royal families of both England and Scotland, and both brothers realise where their destinies lie: one must become the King, the other must eventually kill him...but which is which?
I was not even sure of the final outcome until about 5 pages before I wrote it.
Reading it is one thing; writing it is another, entirely.
When you finish reading a book you can put it down and go on with your life. When you finish writing a book you are left wondering what about the lives you have created in the book...what happens to them next?
When I finished UNEASY LIES THE HEAD I thought it was over. That was it. There was not going to be a sequel. I had effectively done everything in my power to clean up all the loose ends so there would not, could not, be a sequel.
Or so I thought.
The Lads, as I have come to call them, had different ideas. They began pestering me at all hours, wanting to come out and play again. I even started writing another novel, a book about Dubhghall. Somehow they worked themselves into it. And still they wanted more. Finally I gave in, and there was another book. A journal of Kevin Watson, called THE SWORD BENEATH THE ROSE (which is scheduled to be published at the end of the series) And that one was going to be the last. But no: There were more stories, and they wanted to tell them. THE SWORD OF THE KING is the second chronological story in the series. So far there are five books plus the journals, plus whatever else they cook up. (Did I mention the Tarot cards?)
The Lads are still nattering at me in the background as I try to put together the second volume of Tales of the Dearg-Sidhe, THE GREAT QUEEN'S HOUND. Poor Dubhghall is having a hard time getting a word in edgewise, but he will prevail. They have to sleep sometime. He doesn't sleep.
Neither, it seems, do I.
Sunday, October 31, 2010
Samhain
Today marks Samhain, the ancient Celtic New Year. It is a time when the Veil between the Worlds is thin, or in some cases non-existent. Spirits of the ancestors walk among their descendants, offering wisdom and wise counsel, if we are ourselves wise enough to listen.
This is the background against which the first volume of The Glastonbury Chronicles was written. UNEASY LIES THE HEAD opens with Stephen Windsor celebrating his 25th birthday on 31 October 2065. It is also the 25th anniversary of his father Richard's death. It is a magical time, when the forces of the ancient Celtic Gods interact with mankind and anything can happen, and in this case, does, setting the scene for all manner of interesting revelations and complications in history, both past and future
The second volume in the series, THE SWORD OF THE KING went to press last week It is available for pre-order from Pendraig Publishing and should be up on Amazon.com within a few days.
May you all have a Blessed Samhain.
This is the background against which the first volume of The Glastonbury Chronicles was written. UNEASY LIES THE HEAD opens with Stephen Windsor celebrating his 25th birthday on 31 October 2065. It is also the 25th anniversary of his father Richard's death. It is a magical time, when the forces of the ancient Celtic Gods interact with mankind and anything can happen, and in this case, does, setting the scene for all manner of interesting revelations and complications in history, both past and future
The second volume in the series, THE SWORD OF THE KING went to press last week It is available for pre-order from Pendraig Publishing and should be up on Amazon.com within a few days.
May you all have a Blessed Samhain.
Saturday, October 16, 2010
CHAPTER ONE
It really wasn't so hard to write those terrifying words: CHAPTER ONE.
After nearly two weeks of post-partum depression following the completion of THE BLOOD OF KINGS and frantic editing of Volume II of The Glastonbury Chronicles: THE SWORD OF THE KING for release in about two weeks from now, I needed to start a new project, or rather to resurrect an old one.
SON OF AIR AND DARKNESS was itself Volume I of another series, Tales of the Dearg-Sidhe, and Dubhghall has been awaiting his turn to have his second tale told. I had originally begin to write it several books ago, but The Lads as I call them, the heroes of The Glastonbury Chronicles had taken my Muse hostage and demanded their stories be told first. Dubhghall retaliated, by showing up here and there in the background until by the last linear novel* in that series he had become a major character. He has since wooed both me and the Muse back into his semi-historical world and I found the original first chapter of his second volume THE GREAT QUEEN'S HOUND languishing in an all but forgotten folder on my computer, but it wasn't really a chapter, considering what I knew he would experience in his far future. It was a Prologue. And Prologues lead to writing, in their own right, things called CHAPTER ONE.
It is done. I'm hooked. Dubhghall has his teeth in my neck and is draining every word from my mind as he rides me off into his next adventure, a long way through time and space from where he mounted the white mare at the end of his last adventure, but then, as he explains it, he does not always tell his stories in the order in which they happened, merely in the order in which he remembers them.
What a ride!
*last linear novel: There will be more Glastonbury Chronicles...journals, stories of others related to the original characters, but not following the time line in a linear manner as the first 5 books do
After nearly two weeks of post-partum depression following the completion of THE BLOOD OF KINGS and frantic editing of Volume II of The Glastonbury Chronicles: THE SWORD OF THE KING for release in about two weeks from now, I needed to start a new project, or rather to resurrect an old one.
SON OF AIR AND DARKNESS was itself Volume I of another series, Tales of the Dearg-Sidhe, and Dubhghall has been awaiting his turn to have his second tale told. I had originally begin to write it several books ago, but The Lads as I call them, the heroes of The Glastonbury Chronicles had taken my Muse hostage and demanded their stories be told first. Dubhghall retaliated, by showing up here and there in the background until by the last linear novel* in that series he had become a major character. He has since wooed both me and the Muse back into his semi-historical world and I found the original first chapter of his second volume THE GREAT QUEEN'S HOUND languishing in an all but forgotten folder on my computer, but it wasn't really a chapter, considering what I knew he would experience in his far future. It was a Prologue. And Prologues lead to writing, in their own right, things called CHAPTER ONE.
It is done. I'm hooked. Dubhghall has his teeth in my neck and is draining every word from my mind as he rides me off into his next adventure, a long way through time and space from where he mounted the white mare at the end of his last adventure, but then, as he explains it, he does not always tell his stories in the order in which they happened, merely in the order in which he remembers them.
What a ride!
*last linear novel: There will be more Glastonbury Chronicles...journals, stories of others related to the original characters, but not following the time line in a linear manner as the first 5 books do
Friday, October 1, 2010
Aftermath
I finished THE BLOOD OF KINGS at 6:30 this morning. I had gone to bed at 2AM, not comfortable with what I had written. It was blah. It was dreary. It was meandering, losing the force behind the words. I was exhausted.
At 5:30 the Muse woke me again and ordered me to sit at the keyboard and not get up again until I got it right, and I obeyed.
I shaved off 2 pages of rubbish which didn't belong, added one or two things that should have been there, and sat back to read the words.
The biggest problem was that I always knew how it would end, at least the basic shape of it. For the last couple of weeks I have been absent from my blog because I have been racing toward that ending, the one I felt every minute of every day, saw, tasted, smelled, heard, every word they said together, every ripple of every muscle in Kevin's upper arms, every beat of Stephen's heart, every sanguine drop of it, and yet as I held it in my mind I knew no matter how badly I wanted to write it if I did so then I would never go back and write the chapters which led up to it and made it all work.
And so I held off, surprising myself along the way with hairpin turns of the plot I had not seen, characters I had not known existed, all important, all leading up to the final moments.
Perhaps it was my reluctance to let go that stayed my hand from the last few pages when the time was right to set them down. Perhaps it was because I knew what finding those last few words to wrap it up would mean,: I had lost them, this time perhaps forever. Three months this time...who knows how many in the books before...and this was what I had been racing toward all along, never knowing it until the last, until the last few words were finally set down, and when they were, and when they sounded right it was as if the sword had found my heart and emptied it.
I cried.
I was alone, hollow, no voices in my head. And in the aftermath...
The rest is silence.
At 5:30 the Muse woke me again and ordered me to sit at the keyboard and not get up again until I got it right, and I obeyed.
I shaved off 2 pages of rubbish which didn't belong, added one or two things that should have been there, and sat back to read the words.
The biggest problem was that I always knew how it would end, at least the basic shape of it. For the last couple of weeks I have been absent from my blog because I have been racing toward that ending, the one I felt every minute of every day, saw, tasted, smelled, heard, every word they said together, every ripple of every muscle in Kevin's upper arms, every beat of Stephen's heart, every sanguine drop of it, and yet as I held it in my mind I knew no matter how badly I wanted to write it if I did so then I would never go back and write the chapters which led up to it and made it all work.
And so I held off, surprising myself along the way with hairpin turns of the plot I had not seen, characters I had not known existed, all important, all leading up to the final moments.
Perhaps it was my reluctance to let go that stayed my hand from the last few pages when the time was right to set them down. Perhaps it was because I knew what finding those last few words to wrap it up would mean,: I had lost them, this time perhaps forever. Three months this time...who knows how many in the books before...and this was what I had been racing toward all along, never knowing it until the last, until the last few words were finally set down, and when they were, and when they sounded right it was as if the sword had found my heart and emptied it.
I cried.
I was alone, hollow, no voices in my head. And in the aftermath...
The rest is silence.
Friday, September 17, 2010
Busy, Busy, Busy
Where did the time go? I just looked up and it's already past the middle of the month. And what a busy month it has been so far!
Last weekend it was a book signing at Crescenta Valley Park in La Crescenta, California in conjunction with the Society for Creative Anachronism's celebration of the 40th Anniversary of the Barony of the Angels. This coming Saturday (the 18th) I will be signing books at the Kern County Pagan Pride Day celebration in Bakersfield, California at the Kern County Shriners' Club, 700 South P Street, Bakersfield, adjacent to the Fairgrounds. Next Saturday (the 25th) another book signing at the Antelope Valley Pagan Pride Day celebration at Poncitlan Square, 937 East Ave. Q9, Palmdale, California.
In between that it's Write! Write! Write! Starting Chapter 37 of THE BLOOD OF KINGS (Volume 5 of The Glastonbury Chronicles). Although it's not scheduled for publication till 2012, the story won't leave me alone, and since the hero of "Son of Air and Darkness" will be joining the regulars for this jam-packed adventure, I am having a hard time staying away from the computer keyboard. Twists, turns, a real Celtic interlace of mythology, fantasy, history and science fiction are making me pay rapt attention to every word The Muse lays down in this one.
Once again, sleep is for wimps!
Last weekend it was a book signing at Crescenta Valley Park in La Crescenta, California in conjunction with the Society for Creative Anachronism's celebration of the 40th Anniversary of the Barony of the Angels. This coming Saturday (the 18th) I will be signing books at the Kern County Pagan Pride Day celebration in Bakersfield, California at the Kern County Shriners' Club, 700 South P Street, Bakersfield, adjacent to the Fairgrounds. Next Saturday (the 25th) another book signing at the Antelope Valley Pagan Pride Day celebration at Poncitlan Square, 937 East Ave. Q9, Palmdale, California.
In between that it's Write! Write! Write! Starting Chapter 37 of THE BLOOD OF KINGS (Volume 5 of The Glastonbury Chronicles). Although it's not scheduled for publication till 2012, the story won't leave me alone, and since the hero of "Son of Air and Darkness" will be joining the regulars for this jam-packed adventure, I am having a hard time staying away from the computer keyboard. Twists, turns, a real Celtic interlace of mythology, fantasy, history and science fiction are making me pay rapt attention to every word The Muse lays down in this one.
Once again, sleep is for wimps!
Thursday, September 9, 2010
No...Really...A Giraffe
It was more than a year ago I first saw him...just a glance out of the corner of my eye, and then I shook my head. Travelling at 65 miles per hour on the freeway and seeing something like that near the foothills above Southern California...nah, couldn't possibly have been...
But yes, this is Southern California, and anything really is possible, so I looked again about a week later on the same route home, and all I saw was a very tall barn with no sign of life. Two days later on the same drive I looked again and he was there, tall and sort of yellowish and brown, but he wasn't moving. It must have been a very large stuffed animal.
It became the only possible way to go home, to see if there was anything to be seen on the right side of the freeway in that tiny window of opportunity when that barn could be seen, and occasionally my vigilance was rewarded with the sight of...well...a giraffe. The first time he moved I was ecstatic. A real live giraffe was living within 2 miles of me. A giraffe!
And then there was always the possibility that I had been writing too many strange things and I had only thought I had seen a...well...you know...a camelopard, Giraffa camelopardalis, (named camelopardus by the Romans because to their eyes it had characteristics of both the camel and the leopard).
So for days I was afraid to say much of anything about it, lest I be accused of having finally lost touch with reality, and for days I continued to drive by my long-necked friend to see how he was doing. He. How did I know if it were a he or a she, especially travelling down the freeway at 55 miles per hour? Of course I didn't, but I recalled a TV commercial for a toy store called Toys R Us (with a backwards R that my keyboard will not duplicate) and remembered they had a giraffe named Geoffrey as their -uh- spokesanimal, so Geoffrey he became. Or she. It no longer mattered. Geoffrey had become my equivalent of the 6-foot invisible rabbit Jimmy Stewart used to talk to in the film "Harvey", and I was duly waving hello to this giraffe as I drove by at 45 miles an hour.
And then one day I let it slip to a friend who had lived in this end of town much longer than I had and I asked her if she had ever seen a giraffe in the area.
She laughed and said "Oh sure, He's an animal actor. He does a lot of commercials and all. You can see him off the freeway not too far from here."
So if you see me driving down the freeway at 35 miles an hour, don't honk. I'm just trying to wave at Geoffrey on my way home. And if you look over to the right side of the freeway after you have slowed down, you may see him too.
After all, anything is possible in Southern California
But yes, this is Southern California, and anything really is possible, so I looked again about a week later on the same route home, and all I saw was a very tall barn with no sign of life. Two days later on the same drive I looked again and he was there, tall and sort of yellowish and brown, but he wasn't moving. It must have been a very large stuffed animal.
It became the only possible way to go home, to see if there was anything to be seen on the right side of the freeway in that tiny window of opportunity when that barn could be seen, and occasionally my vigilance was rewarded with the sight of...well...a giraffe. The first time he moved I was ecstatic. A real live giraffe was living within 2 miles of me. A giraffe!
And then there was always the possibility that I had been writing too many strange things and I had only thought I had seen a...well...you know...a camelopard, Giraffa camelopardalis, (named camelopardus by the Romans because to their eyes it had characteristics of both the camel and the leopard).
So for days I was afraid to say much of anything about it, lest I be accused of having finally lost touch with reality, and for days I continued to drive by my long-necked friend to see how he was doing. He. How did I know if it were a he or a she, especially travelling down the freeway at 55 miles per hour? Of course I didn't, but I recalled a TV commercial for a toy store called Toys R Us (with a backwards R that my keyboard will not duplicate) and remembered they had a giraffe named Geoffrey as their -uh- spokesanimal, so Geoffrey he became. Or she. It no longer mattered. Geoffrey had become my equivalent of the 6-foot invisible rabbit Jimmy Stewart used to talk to in the film "Harvey", and I was duly waving hello to this giraffe as I drove by at 45 miles an hour.
And then one day I let it slip to a friend who had lived in this end of town much longer than I had and I asked her if she had ever seen a giraffe in the area.
She laughed and said "Oh sure, He's an animal actor. He does a lot of commercials and all. You can see him off the freeway not too far from here."
So if you see me driving down the freeway at 35 miles an hour, don't honk. I'm just trying to wave at Geoffrey on my way home. And if you look over to the right side of the freeway after you have slowed down, you may see him too.
After all, anything is possible in Southern California
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