Excerpt from forthcoming Book Six
Greetings delightful people!
Let’s keep it short: I posted an excerpt from Book Six in progress. I am only at the first draft stage and we’re probably looking at Fall 2024 for final release, but I got excited and wanted to share!
This book corresponds to Chapter One of Malory’s Le Morte D’Arthur, and if you’re familiar with that you probably remember the scene in which Arthur learns who his parents really were and Ulfius make a pretty serious accusation against Arthur’s birth mother, Igraine. That’s what happens in this scene.
Another thing I like about this book is that all the characters from all the storylines converge here, and this scene certainly demonstrates that as we have Arthur’s foster family, his birth family, future knights like Gawain, kings making war on him… basically everyone.
Take a look and let me know what you think!
Book 6 Progress Report
Greetings all fine peoples, I hope you are well. I am coming up on finishing the first draft of Book 6 of The Swithen series, which as I must remind you is the only book series that remains completely faithful to the 1136-1485 Arthurian legend (I have to put that in there for any newbies who happen to come in here). I plan 25 novels to tell the full Arthurian legend in all the scope and majesty it deserves and 5 are out now and here’s a progress report on Book 6!
I am at about 400 double-spaced pages and almost finished with a first draft, meaning I am filling in the last missing chapters and then will start revising. I love this moment because when I read the book through for the first time I get to see what it is that I’ve created… like, obviously I know what happens, but when I read through is when I first get a sense of the tone and rise and fall of action, and just kind of see what’s working and what isn’t. Then I start revising, which is where I get to make those parts that don’t work better (hopefully) and tighten the entire thing so it all works together.
If you have been keeping up with the series (and THANK YOU if you have) you know that we are now at the very beginning of King Arthur’s reign, and that all five previous books have led us up to here. This is when Sir Thomas Malory begins Le Morte D’Arthur and where the main story of King Arthur begins, so it’s pretty exciting. Also, the last two books (four and five in the series) were largely invented by me, and this one is very firmly back in adapting the established legend, and boy, there sure were a lot of story elements that had to be crammed in here!
What’s exciting (to me, at least) is that from here on, we are in the main story. The first five books give crucial setup and background (which definitely pay off when you know the histories of these characters as they begin to interact), but from here forward we have our main set of characters that will be with us to the end, and we are beginning the main storyline that will carry us through Arthur’s first years, his marriage to Guinevere, the arrival of Lancelot, the quest for the Holy Grail…. as I think more about it, I will feel good about recommending this as a place to start for those who want to get right into the knights, battles and action.
Here are some of the things to expect from Book 6:
All characters converge
Almost all storylines that have been unfurling separately in the series come together here. Arthur is finally with Merlin… his adoptive family is involved… Ulfius and Bretel are at his side… they all meet Igraine, Morgan le Fay and Margause… King Lot makes war on Arthur… King Pellinor enters the court… even the Lady of the Lake gets a featured appearance. I don’t think there is any character currently living in the books that doesn’t interact here.
Guinevere!
This book has the first significant Guinevere storyline, and I’m pleased to say she has a little intrigue of her own that has nothing to do with Arthur. I really enjoyed writing her and I can clearly see how her character will continue to evolve going forward.
Lots of battles.
SO many battles. There are three major ones in the book. Writing a medieval battle is a challenge, as I discovered. Do you try to cover the epic sweep? Do you try to detail individual interactions? Do you give the whole layout of the battlefield? I had a hard time, but think I came to an effective solution.
Lots of magic.
Arthur and Merlin are together now, so there are some major magic events. This book has the first major extended sequences of Arthurian mysticism, in which we go a long while in circumstances that do not make logical sense, so those were fun to write and hopefully will be fascinating to read.
A ton of twists, turns, revelations, challenges and events.
You know I am remaining faithful to the legend, and this part of the legend has many, many disparate events and things that have to happen but… how to make them all work within one consistent story? There are so many, I originally wondered if this needed to be more than one book. The only way to handle it was to have the sheer amount of events become part of the story itself.
Major new characters.
Some new knights who will be with us for the duration of the series enter here, plus major characters such as King Ban and King Bors, as well as larger roles for King Leodegrance and his wife, who are Guinevere’s parents. Both of them also have significant servants who end up having little stories of their own in the future, so this book required a lot of research into each character and what happens to them in the future of the legend, so I can introduce them properly now.
That’s it for now! At this point I would estimate late summer or fall for the book to be released, as I spend a lot of time in revising and making sure that it all works together. Thanks again for your interest and be well!
Scott
New video: Excalibur: Movie vs. Legend
If you’re following me you probably like King Arthur a little bit, and if you like King Arthur a little bit, you probably love John Boorman’s film Excalibur. Me too! And what I’ve just done is posted a video that discusses the film and how closely it does or doesn’t stay faithful to the Arthurian legend.
The film says it is adapted from Sir Thomas Malory’s Le Morte D’Arthur, so it is already proceeding from a severely edited version of the legend, and since the film is only two hours and twenty minutes long, it has to take several liberties with the story, condensing it, leaving out or significantly reducing several characters (Galahad, where are ye?) and generally galloping through major events without a look back.
In my video I take apart what was left out and discuss which characters have been combined, which major events are deleted and how several elements were reimagined in a way not technically faithful to the legend but with care to retain the spirit and magic of the story.
So let no time be lost! Click to find my new video comparing the film Excalibur to the actual Arthurian legend.
New video: How to read Le Morte D’Arthur
Greetings lovely ones, I just posted a video to my site called “How to Read Le Morte D’Arthur,” which, as you might have surmised, gives my perspective on how a new reader should approach Sir Thomas Malory’s famed Arthurian work.
It just occurred to me that most people’s entry point into the Arthurian legend is Le Morte D’Arthur, yet when the average reader of today picks it up, it’s a lot more difficult to read than they expect. It is also, for people who have only been raised on the King Arthur TV and movies, not at all what they expect. So I try to address some of these issues before they come up and give the newbie some advice on how to handle the pacing, the language, and some of the things about the work that simply don’t make sense.
Basically I just thought about my own experience reading Le Morte D’Arthur and what a shock it was. I had decided I was going to read “the real story” of King Arthur, and was in for a series of surprises. I was shocked at what happens to Merlin, I expected a lot more swashbuckling and romance, and I couldn’t believe how fast it moved. At first I was reading on the New York City subway, in small chunks at a time, so the whole thing just created a surreal music in my brain as all these tiny impressions of the Arthurian world broke through the bustle and noise.
I also address the issue of Tristram, because my experience—and I’m sure I’m not the only one—was to come up against all these Tristram chapters smack dab in the middle. I knew Tristram from Tristan and Isolde, but I did not know this was an Arthurian character. So all of a sudden there’s this completely unrelated character in the middle of the story and his adventures just go on forever. Perhaps when I am older I will return to the Tristram chapters and find them beautiful and moving, but for now I advise the average reader to just skip them.
You might also notice some hypnotic background videos. Those are all shot by me. Basically I just like to take slo-mo videos of patterns in nature or anything that could be described as “trippy,” and now I get to use those in my videos. Some of the ones in this video are from Iceland and one is this cool lava lamp with metallic fragments floating that I found in Chicago.
I’m going to continue making videos such as this one, some “educational” like this, and some with interviews or readings from the books. If you have a suggestion of anything you think would be interesting, please let me know. Otherwise, go take a look at the video for How to Read Le Morte D’Arthur.
Free Ebook of the New Book One
Greetings readers, and right to the point: I am having a Goodreads Giveaway of 100 copies of the newly-rewritten Book One of the series, A Man of Our Kind. If you’ve been curious about the rewrite, now you can try one for free!
This is the story of Merlin’s birth… his mother impregnated by the devil and finding a way to turn him to good, but now also includes Vortigern’s story, his rise to power through treachery, his inviting the Saxons into the country, his marriage to Rowena, the Saxon leader’s daughter, and his relationship to his son, Vortimer, who eventually leads the war on his own father.
Here is a link to the giveaway, which will start on Saturday, September 9th and run through the 21st.
Enter the Goodreads Giveaway for a free ebook of A Man of Our Kind
I have been very happy to see that the rewrite has been well-received and that readers are taking it the way it was intended. Here’s a sample of some of the reviews:
“An excellent beginning to the Arthurian story with a sense of maintaining the original story but humanizing the characters rather than making them historical bores. Seems that they are just pretty much normal, emotional humans wherein greatness may have come accidentally. I’ve read everything Arthurian that I can lay my hands on and this is certainly the best in years.”
—Scott T., Amazon review
“I really liked what he had done with Vortigern in Book Two and the first book had for me been a stand-alone triumph. I was afraid the rewrite might ruin things or over-egg an already tasty pudding. On the contrary, what he has done is used his considerable writing skills as a film blogger combined with his nous about screenplay structure to create, (or recreate) what I can only call a page-turner.”
—Steve Gladwin, Author of The Seven
“While I cannot wait to start reading the future books in this series, I’m really happy that the author decided to rewrite this first book. It’s better, the characters and the writing are more development and the reader can have an amazing time while reading it.”
—Mariana, Amazon review
The rest of the series relaunch is complete
In other news, Covid finally caught up to me. I had avoided it until now, and am very thankful to have had a mild case, but it sure has lingered in annoying little ongoing symptoms. And it caused me to cancel an international vacation. But the good news is…
I was able to use that time to do the myriad little tasks required to complete the relaunch of the newly-rewritten/revised versions of the series. I was able to add them to Smashwords, which distributes ebooks to Barnes & Noble, Apple books, Kobo, libraries, etc. Basically everywhere that is not Amazon. And on Amazon, I was able to take the time to format the books for paperback and design the covers. I was looking forward to my vacation, but also thinking “WHEN am I going to get to all these tasks done?” So in a way I’m happy to have been able to hunker down and get all that work done.
That means that the ebooks are all updates and available at all online retailers, and the paperbacks are available from Amazon. Which means I can move fully onto writing Book 6 and promoting the series, which had been on pause while I was rewriting. And I’m mostly feeling better with a little lingering congestion. Happy day!
The Swithen 