Echoes in a Hollow Space

When I was twelve or thirteen a teacher gave me a book because she thought I might like it. The book was The Eagle of the Ninth by Rosemary Sutcliff—and the teacher was oh so right. It followed a young Roman officer, Marcus, on his first command in the frontier fort of Isca Dumnoniorum, present day Exeter in Britain, circa 129 A.D.. The larger story was about him trying to find out what happened to his father, a centurion in the infamous Lost Ninth Legion, whom legend said marched into the wilds of Caledonia never to be heard of again.

I ate that book up, and started scouring all the libraries in the area for other books in the series, all set in Roman Britain and the Dark Ages, and tracing many generations of the same family as they lived through the chaos and war of those years. I never found them all and back in the day there were no used book dealers all hooked up by the Internet so I rarely found one in stores.

I remember what a huge sense of victory I felt when I actually did find a Sutcliff book in a store: The Shield Ring. I can't remember now if I found it in a new or used bookstore. Another big moment came when I browsed the bookshelf of a neighbor and found Sword at Sunset, Sutcliff's version of the Arthurian saga. It was a nice hardcover edition and I had to beg for weeks before she'd let me borrow it. I didn't immediately tear into it like I wanted to. I had a sense that it might be amongst the last of Sutcliff's books I'd be able to lay hands on because I really had wrung out all the libraries and I wanted to savor it. In point of fact, it was the last Sutcliff book I read.

Many years flowed under the bridge of my life and I'd occasionally think about those Sutcliff books I'd tried so hard to find and never did. I always remembered The Eagle of the Ninth with a special place in my heart: it became one of those primogenitor books for me, one that burned like a steady light in the back of my imagination. My character from The Making Blood, Caius Cassivellaunus, was a kind of tribute to those books. Because of them I was fascinated by Dark Age Britain and always wanted to write something about it.

Writing about Caius, I think, is what finally prompted me to remember Ms. Sutcliff and the profound effect she'd had on my imagination. I started looking for those books online. I didn't have to look far. Amazon had a newly published copy of Eagle and some of the others. I immediately bought Eagle and when it arrived, I put it in the To Be Read Pile...and never read it. I was afraid to read it, truth be told, afraid that it wouldn't be as special as I remembered, and then that luminous place in my heart would be tarnished. It must have sat in that pile for four or five years until last week when I came across Rosemary Sutcliff again while researching something else on the Net. It was time to take a chance, I thought.

I'm thrilled to report that I love this book as much as I loved it all those years ago, that practically every page tells me just how much of Ms. Sutcliff's style and worldview I internalized, how she taught me so much about telling a damned good story with heart. I owe her a great deal.

I owe the teacher who gave me that book so many years ago a great deal, too. Rarely do teachers ever find out how far the ripples spread from their good deeds, from those they teach and out into the world. Teachers create a little piece of eternity inside their students when they do things like this, the ripples spreading on in little and big ways, as long as someone remembers and shares what they remember with the people they know.

Lately I've been taking a page out of the book of kmkibble75. No, I haven't mutilated his ms. I've been outlining and moving around the puzzle pieces for the finale of Night Warrior. I've always known what happened at the end (you'll be glad to know), but it's starting to get complicated as the three timelines come together. In the big push towards the end I wanted to feel as if I really did have a handle on things.

What with the household move, I didn't work on the ms. for about a week and a half, and that's too much time to keep the feel of the narrative alive and coherent inside my mind. It's all there if I pay attention to it every day or almost every day. But if I get seriously sidetracked for a week or more, I have to circle back and reacquaint myself. It's not the plot, exactly, that fades, but the emotional resonance. The method acting; the grip of the characters' innards. It's hard enough to ride my own emotional life without mollycoddling theirs, as well, and my psyche seems ready to abandon them at a moment's notice.

Outlining ahead of time might have saved me outlining now, but as I've said before (ad nauseam, in fact), that process doesn't work for me. I think it's because the narrative tends to be an emotional ride for me rather than a left brain exercise. I have to feel my way along because I have to stay in touch with the feelings of my characters. But I do sometimes have to stop and make "spot outlines" to make sure I still know where I'm going. Because the plot has a tendency to shift on me sometimes as I go along, and when paying attention to the way everyone feels.

Meme of the day:

My Roman Name is Aemilia.
Take The Roman Name Generator today!
Created with Rum and Monkey's Name Generator Generator.

I've got a thing for Romans, but only since I started researching them for my characters, Annia Sabina and Caius Cassivellaunus. I never thought Romans were all that cool before. I suppose Steven Saylor went a long way towards coolizing them for me. I loves me some Gordianus the Finder.

Typo of note: Llamrei didn't shy from the grizzily burden

(You can tell I'm a native Westerner, huh?)

Socks of the day: White with little blue-grey flowers.