I’m rewriting the first 3 books of my series

Greetings, folks. There are big things going on with The Swithen series of King Arthur novels, and I thought it’s time to let you know what’s going on. I’ve been happy that some of you are eager for Book 6 to continue the saga—now that Arthur is finally at the beginning of his reign—but there’s been a bit of maintenance that needs to happen before the series can move forward. 

Specifically, I’ve completely rewritten the first book of the series, and am in the process of giving Books 2 and 3 a serious revision. I’ve heard published authors say that they wish they could go back and rework their first novels once they’ve learned more about writing, and I feel lucky to have that opportunity as an indie author. It took me a while to settle into a writing style that works for this series, and now it’s time to rework the first installments to fit.

First, if you’ve been keeping up with the series, there is no need to go back to read the revised novels. Nothing about the story will change if you just continue with Book 6. But if you do, you’ll get a wholly different Book 1 and significantly refocused Books 2 and 3. 

Now, why am I doing this? The main reason is that the early books weren’t always that great—the first one flat-out sucks—and I am grateful that anyone stuck with the series in spite of them. I was basically trying to be Henry James and include serious psychologizing, which I thought would be interesting to explore, especially given the Arthurian characters as they exist are archetypes, light on psychology. But the hard reality is that I’m not Henry James, and just wasn’t up to the task. 

By Book 4 I settled into a style that I think works for the series—one that reveals the psychology through the character’s actions—and now find the first books gunked up with reams of dreary character explanations. Not really enlightening, but sloggy telling when I should have kept the explaining light and let the reader imagine what each character is thinking. I arrived at a more fleet style by Book 4 and take it as a sign of success that readers are starting to say Books 4 and 5 fly by, and they are later surprised how long they are because the reading went so smoothly.

The other fact is that the beginning of a series—especially the first book—has to be great, flat-out great, and I didn’t feel readers were continuing after the first one, and many more dropped off after the dreary slog of number three. With twenty-five books planned in the whole series—that’s an issue! Now we’ll talk about specific novels and what changes you can expect.

Book 1
The truth is, I’ve never been happy with the first book. I’ve actually already revised it three times without making much of a deal about it. I also had a concept; that we would start with this very quiet, intimate novel that is not at all what you expect from Arthurian fiction, then slip into the story from this unusual angle. Not sure it worked, and then crashing into the second novel caused, as my friend succinctly put it, a bit of “Huh? What? Where?” And, as we noted, the first book of a series has to be absolutely great.

The revelation came when my partner, out of the blue, bought me early Arthurian texts by Wace and Layamon as a birthday present (good partner, right?), which contained the story of Vortigern from the beginning. The primary source I had been using before was the Vulgate Cycle, which, just like my current novels, summarizes Vortigern’s story after the story of Merlin’s birth. Wace and Layamon lets Vortigern’s story unfold, and I realized that his story, along with Merlin’s birth, is actually the beginning of the entire saga. 

So what is actually different about Book 1? The biggest change is that it is no longer just the story of Merlin’s mother, it now alternates between her and Vortigern. So we get a new character in Vortigern, whom I found very fun to write because he’s just so gosh-darn evil! And the story continues into Book 2 much more smoothly; we now see the Saxons arrive, we meet Uther, Pendragon and Ulfius as boys and see them go into hiding, we meet Hengist and Rowena and we have kings, knights and battles, so it all continues seamlessly into Book 2. We also get a whole new character in Vortigern’s son Vortimer, so while we see Meylinde be a very good mom, we also see Vortigern be a very, very bad dad.

Another change is that we have to bid adieu to Meylinde and say hello to Adhan. I invented the name Meylinde since I thought Merlin’s mother was never named in the sources, but it turns out she does have a name in some very obscure source. So, according to my own rules, I am now bound to use that name, whether I like it or not—and I did not like it. But I softened once I learned how it is pronounced: Ah-DAAN, not AD-Han, and as I beefed up her character I am now fully behind her enhanced incarnation. I also took the opportunity to let us get to know her family, enhance her relationship with her sister and the midwives, as well as round out Norris, the judge on whom her fate depends. 

Having read through the first new draft, I’m pretty excited and feel the book makes a much stronger entry to the series. It moves quickly and now, courtesy of Vortigern, has a lot of treachery, murder and intrigue. Now I’m much more confident readers will want to continue directly into Book 2.

Book 2
Since the beginning of Vortigern’s story is in Book 1, I was required to modify the first part of Book 2, since Vortigern’s entire story was contained there in the past. The outline is still mostly the same, but now Vortigern is much richer as a character, bringing his entire history from Book 1. I was going to stop there and only provide a cosmetic retouch to the rest of the book, but you know how a can of worms is once you open it….

The fact is I always thought Pendragon and Uther were both a bit weak as characters. We just don’t ever really get to know or understand them. And this is Pendragon’s big moment—he doesn’t appear in any of the other novels. So, what is his story? What does it mean? This is where this series forces me to do some intense literary study of the source legends, as I have to really read and think about what Pendragon is doing there and his meaning as a character. This is also the first part of the Uther story (Ulfius, too), so I wanted to firm up who these characters are at this point and what their lives mean to the overall saga. Since Uther becomes the main character of Book 3, I really want us to get to know him here before his mettle is tested there. 

Book 3
I’ve never, ever been happy with Book 3. And from the start, readers were unhappy as well. No one says so, but I had the feeling a lot of people were giving up on the series after Book 3. Which is a problem! 

My big disappointment is that I wanted Book 3 to be very emotional, but readers’ comments about it were coming back very cool. One thing I kept hearing is that Uther was a self-centered, whiny loser and just keeps droning on and on about the same little problems. That, I had to face, was largely due to my ham-handed attempts to be Henry James. The story at this point is devastating for everyone involved, but readers were not devastated—they were irritated. 

I haven’t gotten to this one yet (I’m in the final section of Book 2), but I plan to eviscerate all the whining and give it the new approach, where I stick to what the characters are doing and saying and let the reader fill in the thoughts and emotions.  

I’m hoping this approach will help readers connect to the emotions of this book. The stories of Uther, Igraine, Ulfius, Morgan and Margause are all devastating in this book, and if that isn’t coming through, then I need to fix it. One of the things I was also excited about here is to introduce what we would recognize as a major depression into the Arthurian saga, as well as detail a character driven to absolute despair when confronted with the existential questions Merlin’s intrusion into his life raises… and none of it was coming through. So I am eager to give this one a good scrub and hope that the many crosscurrents come through more smoothly this time. You could say that the whole saga unwinds from the events in this book, so I want to be sure it is right.

So that’s it. I’ve been busy typing away and realized I hadn’t reached out in a while… that’s what’s going on in the world of The Swithen. My joke to myself is: “A new beginning… No really, the whole beginning is new.” The revised books should be out (all three at once) probably early in the new year. Then I’ll get right into Book 6 and we’ll dive into the first years of Arthur’s reign! Thanks for reading and all comments are welcome. Bye for now!