The king isn't dead, he's just lurking

[pjthompson]

It appears I'm not quite done with Dark Ages Britain because I just had to buy another book on the subject, Battles of the Dark Ages by Peter Marren. It arrived from Amazon today. Which I suppose means, by extension, that I am not quite through with Night Warrior/The Making Blood and vampires.

Oh, I'm not looking to do a second draft any time soon, and not looking to write the other two books in the trilogy any time long, but it's still alive inside me regardless of what I say (even though I'm always perfectly sincere at the time I say it).

Ideas, stories, characters haunt us until we give them their do—at least they do me. There are few ideas, partially written books or stories, even some completed novels which ever truly leave me and become a dead issue. The generic quest fantasy I wrote a mountain of years ago is probably a dead issue—but that was a "practice novel," anyway, something I had to get out of my system, something to prove I really could finish a novel. I was dead serious about it at the time, even tried marketing it a little, but I managed to move on from it fairly quickly.

That's the largest of my "truly finished" projects. Everything else, it seems, is still up for negotiation. I could probably fill up the next dozen years with the hulks of partial novels and novel ideas on the harddrive. They're waiting, lurking.

Sometimes when I turn the computer on, I think I hear that shark stalking music from Jaws.

Comments

[sartorias.livejournal.com]

I know whereof! Oh yes I do!

[pjthompson]

lol--I bet it's a writer thing, huh? ;-)

[makoiyi.livejournal.com]

Oh, I have about six of those that won't let go. I used to think I was being sentimental, but I don't think I am. There is worth in them, but maybe, at the time, I just wasn't ready to write them. I may not be just yet, but I think I will one day, and then they can be truly what I wish.

Hope so, anyway. I don't want to lose them.

[pjthompson]

You know, I think that's true because as time goes by solutions to problems with those old things pops up and, as you said, I become more capable of writing the story then I was at the time I started it. My third completed novel was one that I'd started about five years before and couldn't make work; Night Warrior was started 12 years before I actually finished it! CWF is the freak--I just started playing with the idea about 2 years before I sat down to write it.

So, yeah. I'd say time is the writer's friend. :-)

[kmkibble75.livejournal.com]

Would it be wrong for me to be glad you're not done with it yet?

[pjthompson]

Not at all. Gratifying, in fact. And I'm sort of happy I'm not done with it yet. I was so worn out after that marathon that I think I needed time and new projects to even face the possibility of facing up to it again.

[sollersuk.livejournal.com]

Just out of interest, which battles are covered? I tend to switch off when I see "Dark Ages" in a book title, but am aware I may be wrong in doing this. Does he deal with things like Clovis' campaigns or is he looking at later battles?

[(Anonymous)]

It's strictly centered on Britain, 410-1065, and it covers everything from the Gododdin to Hardrada. Chapter titles: the Saxon Conquest; Mount Badon and Arthur; the Battles for Northern England; Dunnichen: Destiny in the North; King Ecgbert and the Vikings; the Battles of King Alfred; Brunanburh: The Greatest Battle; Spears As Tribute: the Battle of Maldon; Calamity under Aethelred. And there's an Introduction chapter which deals with armament (from what I can see with a cursory glance). Published by Pen & Sword.

[sollersuk.livejournal.com]

Oh, imaginative fiction, then? Archaeologists who have found plenty of stuff from Boudicca's rebellion still haven't found anything from the battles of Saxon arrival (I certainly wouldn't call hentist and Horsa's lot achieving anything like a "conquest" given that all they ended up with was half Kent, just what according to "Nennius they had been promiesed), and not only does nobody have a clue where Badon was, there is a certain amount of vagueness about who the other side was.

The latest ones might be OK, but how can anything post Charlemagne (or Alfred, come to that) be called "Dark"??

[pjthompson]

I've been reading in this area long enough to know that no one has a clear answer on any of the early stuff, but I enjoy reading the speculation, anyway. And I don't think Marren is suggesting he's got the definitive answer. He seems to be giving his best shot.

I may not be an expert like you are, but I'm not a neophyte in this area, either, and I really, really don't like being patronized.

[sollersuk.livejournal.com]

I'm sorry, I didn't intend to sound patronising. It's just that I have read a distressing number of books pontificating on Arthur's tactics and stating as if it was a fact that Badon was at such and such a place; and it's tricky to see what one can usefully say about the battle without being certain where it was, what the terrain was like, what the communication was like. And I am most terribly allergic to the term "Dark Ages" which always has an air of the "History-begins-in-1066" school of thought.

[pjthompson]

Obviously that anonymous person was me!