Book 7 is now available
Greetings, delightful readers!
Did you know that the seventh book in The Swithen series is now available?
This one tells the first half of the Balin / Balan story, which will be familiar to anyone who has read Malory’s Le Morte d’Arthur. Balin commits a shocking murder at the beginning and is banished from Arthur’s court. He settles on a plan to win his way back into Arthur’s court, but it will take unbelievable prowess and courage. Meanwhile, Guinevere and Arthur’s romance continues to grow. The book ends with Arthur’s fight with the giant of St. Michael’s Mount, which has always been one of my favorite moments in the legend.
I like it because it adapts a different source than the ones we’ve been in up until now, and this source has a lot more darkness and evil. This book features the emergence of a lot of villains, and starts to move Arthur himself into the background, shifting the focus to the knights of his court. Balin and Balan’s story will be completed in the next book, which should gain great resonance from the history we’ve built up here.
Check out The Adventure God Will Choose: The Swithen Book Seven in ebook or paperback.
“Telek writes short chapters that alternate between multiple plots, but the result is a continual interest on the reader’s part because no one plot becomes boring or tedious. The pattern changes at the end of the novel when Arthur fights a giant devasting part of his kingdom. This section was the longest because it was also the novel’s climax, and Telek did a magnificent job in depicting it. Arthur is not some invincible hero here but a fully realized, multi-faceted man deeply concerned about his people, self-conscious about his own faults, and prone to frailty and doubt because of his past. Telek also brings the giant to life, allowing him to speak his truth so that Arthur understands why he ravages the land. The encounter between King Arthur and the giant is a masterly piece of prose.”
—Tyler Tichelaar, author of the Children of Arthur series
“The author has delivered probably the most terrifyingly convincing fight against a giant any of us could imagine… These two giant scenes are the most shocking and powerful in all seven of the books.”
—Poor Boy Sixtyish, Amazon UK review
Book 7 Preview / Le Morte d’Arthur guided reading
Greetings interested parties–
Two major items of note.
Book 7 preview
It is quite possible to get a view of what to expect in Book 7 of The Swithen series with this exciting new piece, Book 7 Preview. I like this book but it is different… it adapts a different souce, one with a lot of spookiness and magic, and a lot of horror and the emergence of several villains. It also shifts into a different phase of the saga, in which we start following an interconnected cast of characters as their paths cross and connect with oine another. I’ll be interested to know what you think.
It is also well within the realm of possibility to pre-order an ebook of Book 7 right this very second, saving a whopping $4 off the price it will have once it is released.
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Our Guided Reading of Le Morte d’Arthur officially gets started
With all the introductory material out of the way, we now begin our guided reading of Sir Thomas Malory’s Le Morte d’Arthur with Book 1, Chapter 1.
if you’ve ever wanted to read this but been intimidated, I will literally read it to you and we will go chapter by chapter discussing what is happening, what it all means and the larger context of the story and how it all came together. I think it will offer many people a new way to approac h the work, especially hearing it read with the intonations making more sense of it and getting the wider context.
Check out the guided reading now > > >
Alrighty, that’s it! Hope you are well and surviving, you know, like everything with aplomb!
Part 1 of the guided reading of Le Morte d’Arthur is up
Greetings, delightful ones…
Remember how I said I was going to start a video/article series taking you through Sir Thomas Malory’s Le Morte d’Arthur chapter by chapter?
Well you know, it’s all a bit of “before you can do this, you have to do that, and before you can do that…” most of which involved getting the companion book of the entire series up and available before the series started. Where can you find it, you ask? Why, right here:
Anyway, the first article and video sets up what Le Morte d’Arthur IS, like what were the circumstances under which it was written and how did it all come to be. It’s not just fluff, it’s very crucial to understanding all the articles that follow, so if you plan to follow along with the series, check it out!
So without futher ado, here is Part 1 of the Guided Reading of Le Morte d’Arthur: What is Le Morte d’Arthur?
New translation and guided reading of Malory’s Le Morte d’Arthur, Book One
Greetings folks! It’s been a long time, but I have been busily working away. I am almost done with Book 7 of The Swithen and that will be going to the proofreader soon, but in the meantime I have worked on another project. A new translation and guided reading of Sir Thomas Malory’s Le Morte d’Arthur.
If you’ve ever tried to read Le Morte d’Arthur and not gotten very far, this is the book for you. I walk you through an easy new translation of the text, stopping every few paragraphs to explain what’s happening and what it all means. It’s also aimed at the average person who likes Game of Thrones and Lord of the Rings and maybe just wants to check out what this King Arthur stuff is all about—so it’s not pretentious and lofty, it’s casual and funny and really just about helping you get through.
P.S. This is just Book One of the Twenty-One Book work, but it still amounts to 183 pages and still includes the sword in the stone, Merlin, the Lady of the Lake and Excalibur. I will continue moving on to the other books in time and by the end will have one huge new translation and guide to Malory’s monumental work.
This is a project that definitely evolved from a small idea. On my YouTube channel @theswithenbookseries my videos do okay… but the one called How to Read Le Morte d’Arthur outperforms them all by thousands of views. So I thought, “I’ll do a series that goes through Le Morte d’Arthur chapter by chapter.” Then I realized that I couldn’t include any of Malory’s text, because it is a copyrighted translation. So I thought it was time to do my own translation. And then I thought it should be a book. And then I thought there should be an intro and a afterward… so it all just started and continued to grow.
Anyway, if you’ve ever wanted to read Le Morte d’Arthur but been intimidated by the text, give it a shot! It is only ebook now, but the paperback will follow soon. Thanks, and Book 7 of The Swithen should be out in the Fall.
Music playlist: Atmopsphere of The Swithen
Greetings happy ones…
I made a playlist that expresses the atmosphere of my Arthurian book series The Swithen. It’s an hour and 15 minutes of dark, brooding, mysterious and moody music that captures the mood I’m trying to create in my books. It will work even if you’ve never read the books!
Listen below or go to this page where you will find track-by-track discussion of what I hear in each song.
Preview tracks below. To listen to full songs, click the three dots and right and select “Play on Spotify.”
The Swithen 