Insertions do not have to be painful!

I suppose it depends what type of writer you are, whether you are a planner who gets everything sorted well before the creative writing starts or if you are more like me, someone who prefers to get the heart of the story onto the page and then go back and sort things out a bit?

There are pro’s and con’s to both systems, of course, it really comes down to a personal choice rather than one being right and one being wrong; it really is whatever works for you!

That said there are times when I wish that I took the more structured approach as I think that it might just save me a bit of time and work in the long run.

I am working on volume two of The Sorrow Song Trilogy and I have about 72,000 words written. There’s a dynamic relationship between two major characters that needs developing to bring a bit more excitement and drama to the narrative whilst the story heads towards an almighty climax.

Now when I was writing the 72,000 words I knew that I would have to go back and develop certain points, events and characters. It is not so much a problem as a need to insert a passage with a little consideration, perception and skill.

When I reviewed the draft manuscript I saw an opportunity to insert an episode that would build up the tension and make the reader (hopefully) care about one of the characters in particular. It also gives this character, her name is Mildryth by the way, a chance to prove her strength of character in dealing with a very dangerous situation instigated by a man who has already been revealed to a murderer and thief.

As this is historical fiction I have to be aware of the chronology of events in both a historical sense and with regards to the chronology of the plot, which all means that finding the opportune moment to introduce this new episode is crucial. It has to fit seamlessly, a fact all good writers understand, into what has already been written, which is where the consideration comes in.

To achieve this I picked a likely spot in the manuscript, marked it, and then read every chapter leading up to it. This gave me a fresh memory of what I had written and confirmed that I had picked the right moment in the story to insert the new work.

Again, because of my preferred style, this was not a one shot deal. I wrote the piece quickly to try and get all the excitement down on the page. Then I rewrote it almost immediately, only this time conscious of the material already written earlier in the novel, the historical background and the fact that female ninjas did not exist in 11^th century England!

Next came the proof reading, spell checking, the enriching of the cultural background and the editing to rid the piece of any pretence of being a historical essay; I sometimes find that my urge to retain a degree of historical integrity can lead me into writing in a very dry and academic style; something that must be amended at all costs!

Finally, if I am happy with the final written piece, I go back and re-read the manuscript again, making notes where necessary, and carry out a final judgement; did it work? Do the characters interact sufficiently? Is there tension? Did I achieve what I set out to do? Was the insertion invisible in consideration of the rest of the manuscript?

Happily, I can say yes in each instance. It did not hurt at all really. I enjoyed the writing and the editing, but you know what, a female ninja might make a good character for a more contemporary novel!

Holding your first novel in your hands

Today I started reading the proof copy of my book The War Wolf from CreateSpace. I have to admit that it was pretty exciting to be holding an actual printed copy of my book! It looks fantastic, but then I would say that; I wrote it!

Joking aside it was a very special moment, even though this is the proof version, which means that it is not yet fully approved. I still felt a kind of reverence for what I was holding; I expect most first time novelists do. It was exciting seeing the image on amazon.com but to have it there in front of me was somehow more moving. I like e-books, in fact I am getting to like them even more having just inherited a Kobo e-reader, but I am old enough to remember when such devices did not exist and a book was just that – a book!

I expect that I will have to knuckle down and stop just lovingly looking at the thing and actually start turning the pages. Yes, I know, I said that I had started reading it, but in truth all I have done is...well...just lovingly looked at it!

More to follow along with a picture of myself and my treasured possession!

My book has gone to Kindle for publishing

After two days of intensive work at the prompting of ‘M’ (you know how you are!) I finally submitted my manuscript to Kindle last night!

At last, I have written a book and sent it for publication.

I’d like to say that it was easy but it wasn’t. Even going down to the last wire I discovered some formatting problems that I had not expected, but I got them sorted in the end...I hope!

‘The War Wolf’ is not sitting on my Kindle bookshelf with ‘Publishing’ written underneath it, even seeing that leaves me with a great feeling of satisfaction! It feels better than I had expected to be honest, but then I began this project with the idea of following the traditional route for publishing a literary work. That did not work out, got a lot of rejections to prove it, but as the book developed the idea of e-publishing became more and more attractive.

Some might see it as an easy option but I do not think that that is necessarily true, at least not for the dedicated writer. The reason why I spent two days working until late each evening was because I wanted my manuscript to be right. I did not want to see any silly spelling mistakes or careless grammatical errors in the finished article. I wanted people to concentrate on what I got right not what I got wrong.

As a result I feel more closely bound to my manuscript than maybe I expected. I am very proud of it. I think that it is a story that is worth telling; in fact I know it is. It no longer matters to me that I could not get a literary agent interested because I know that that really does not signify anything. A literary agent is just another person expressing a subjective opinion bound by the parameters of commercial success. If they did not see The War Wolf as being a commercially successful book then they are not likely to accept it. I understand this point and move on.

The real litmus test is not the literary agents and, perhaps not even the critics, it is the reader. Obviously the critics can have a massive impact upon a book, I don’t discount that, but you have to stop and think who did you write this book for? It was not for the critics, it was people who enjoy a good story, empathise with your characters and want to know what happens to them. Of course critics are such people, so they figure in their anyway!

Now I wait for Amazon to tell me that my book is out in the wide public domain, it’s like waiting for Christmas morning!

When the finish line is in sight!

 Taking a break for a family holiday seemed like a good idea at the time but now that it is over and I am back at my desk I have to admit that I feel somewhat under pressure! Perhaps that is not so surprising when I look at my notes and realise that I started this project in September 2009!

4 years ago!

Wow! That’s a lot of exclamation marks! (There’s another one!)

To be fair a large portion of that time was spent in learning all about my chosen subject, the Anglo-Saxon period of English history. Also, there was time taken to develop the story into a trilogy, several re-writes, and 2 major surgical procedures to recover from as well. Tempus fugit as they say.

I also spent a considerable amount of time trying to get a literary agent interested in my project, to no avail. That is all water under the bridge, another popular saying. Having given up on the traditional route to publication, at least for now, I decided to go through the experience of e-publishing.

I only have myself to blame!

Ha, no, not really. It is not a question of blame. The thing is, I like this story that I have written, I like the characters of Coenred, the Saxon warrior forged in battled and honed by a sense of honour that would put a modern-day ‘right honourable’ politician to shame, and Mildryth, a woman fighting to recover what’s due to her and then hang onto it and then avoid the rapacious thief Thrydwulf and then wonder at the sense of falling in love with a warrior like Coenred and then....well, you’ll have to read the book! I believe in this book. I think that the story has human interest and that it plays out against an interesting backdrop featuring a people who have been much maligned since 1066, probably because the victors get to write the history and sadly the winners were not the proud Anglo-Saxons.

The whole world of 1066 has become a part of my world and enriched it as a result. Will ‘The War Wolf’ become a massive international bestseller? I don’t know (although I can dream) but I have set the bar a little low, all I want is for 1 person I do not know to contact me and tell me that they enjoyed my book, not too much to ask for really is it?

I will, of course, be doing the rounds to sell my book, after 4 years work it would be plain stupid not to, especially considering that ‘The War Wold’ is the first instalment in ‘The Sorrow Song Trilogy’, I mean, it’s not likely that anyone will read volume 2 if no one knows about volume 1.

First, however, I have to get my book ready for publication. Actually, it is 98% ready, I am sure of that, but there is still that niggling 2% to sort out. A friend is currently speed-reading through the manuscript to try and offer yet another insight into how I might make the story better, very many thanks Mike. I have joined Kindle and from today I will start the countdown to launch day, which I hope will be on September 20^th, the anniversary of the Battle of Fulford Gate as this is both the main event around which ‘The War Wolf’ takes place and also the anniversary of the actual battle.

I have crossed my Rubicon!

The Forgotten Battle of 1066

Most British people can name at least one battle from 1066; the Battle of Hastings. In fact this is the one event that seems to encapsulate the very essence of 1066 as a subject; the killing of King Harold and (almost) inevitable Norman Conquest of England.

Some people can also name a second, earlier encounter; the Battle of Stamford Bridge. It is often reported that this is the battle that fatally injured King Harold’s Saxon army, along with the forced route march from London to York and back again to reach Hastings, making the Norman Conquest of England (almost) inevitable.

But why did King Harold have to march north to save his kingdom and let the Normans land in the south unopposed? The answer is because there was a third battle, one that preceded Stamford Bridge; the forgotten battle of 1066.

For some reason most accounts of the Battle of Fulford Gate held on Wednesday 20^th September 1066 are reduced to a sentence in the preamble to the Battle of Hastings. I find this curious as major engagements are usually considered important in telling the history of campaigns, especially those events that lead to such drastic consequences as seen in 1066; an entire civilisation was destroyed!

For Harald Hardrada, the King of Norway, the invasion of Northumbria represented a tactical masterpiece in his attempt to claim the English throne. He landed his army at Riccall, close to York, which was too far for King Harold to interfere with. He expected some resistance from the local eoldermen of course, they were duty bound to protect the kingdom but he probably anticipated a siege of the walled city of York. What he actually got was a pitched battle at site not of his choosing.

King Hardrada was a very experienced military commander who had only ever been on the losing side once and even then he had been but a boy. He had fought all over the known world from Norway to Russia and onto the Holy Land. Against him at Fulford Gate stood two young brothers, the eorls Edwin and Morcar, and they had chosen a defensively strong position.

The Saxons fielded a mixed force of approximately 4500 men, about 2,000 of which might have been well armed and armoured, the remaining 2500 would have been less well equipped and trained peasants and villagers. Against them the Vikings brought an army of some 7000 Norse warriors with another 3000 guarding the fleet at Riccall. For the early medieval period these figures are impressive and are similar to those engaged later at Stamdord Bridge and Hastings, in other words this was a very serious encounter.

In fact there is much about the Battle of Fulford Gate to occupy the imagination of anyone with an interest in this kind of history. The defence of York by the Saxons has about it a quality similar to the more famous Battle of Thermopylae (480 BC) in that a smaller indigenous army attempted to hold back a much larger invader at a strong defensive position. It is almost a hopeless cause but undertaken with admirable bravery on the part of the Anglo-Saxons.

There is also the chance to see how the military mind of Harald Hardrada might have worked in formulating a plan to nullify the advantages of his enemy. Although the battles of this period most often involved the pitting of two shield-wall formations against each other this does not mean that there was not some tactical manoeuvring going on as well. King Hardrda displayed his experience in the way he was able to coax his younger adversaries into making a critical mistake.

The strategic impact of the Battle of Fulford Gate is also important. At the conclusion of the battle the Norwegians found themselves in a seemingly strong position. They had captured the capital of Northumbria and knew that it would take King Harold, who was in London watching the movements of the Normans, some time to arrange a response to the threat that they now posed. At this point it was King Hardrada of Norway who posed the greatest threat to England, that is why King Harold moved north to meet him.

If Eorl Edwin and Eorl Morcar had chosen to act differently, however, then the course of 1066 might have been very different. Although their army was smaller than the Vikings’ it was sufficient to man the walls of York and repel any attacks; a siege would have been necessary. Had the eorls employed that tactic then Harald Hardrada might well have found himself trapped between two Saxon forces when King Harold did move north and the subsequent battle might have left the Saxons in a much better condition to meet the threat of the Normans; but that’s history for you!

The Social World of the Anglo-Saxons: The Theigns

Above the ceorls, the peasants of the Anglo-Saxon world, sat the ‘theigns’. They were to all intents and purposes the middle class. To qualify as a theign a man needed to own a minimum of 5 hides of land. A hide was not an exact measurement in Anglo-Saxon England but roughly equated to enough land for a family to live on. Although a ceorl from the top end of that class, a geatsas, might own that much or even more land this alone did not qualify them to be considered theign-worthy; they still had to be promoted to that position.

Theigns were appointed by the king initially and they did service to him accordingly, if they failed in this respect they could lose their lands and be demoted to the peasant classes or even suffer execution if their transgression was considered serious enough. In the begin it seems that theigns were warriors who took on the more common duties of management and they were made responsible for overseeing the building and maintaining of defences, bridges, and the organisation of the fyrd; the Saxon army. They were expected to give military service for which they would supply their own equipment; horses, servants, arms and armour. Later, the theigns also took on a more administrative role in ensuring that the peasant classes obeyed the king’s law and fulfilled their duties.

As with the peasants the theigns had within their class further sub-divisions but these were not as clearly separated as in the ceorls. A theign’s rank with regard to his peers would largely depend upon how much land and wealth he owned. Lower theigns would have at least the minimum five hides although most would have more than that. Middling theigns would probably have double to three times as much whereas high-theigns would own land holdings of the size of estates.

Royal-theigns were high-theigns who had been appointed by the king and they were only one step down from becoming eoldermen, that is, a member of the ruling classes. As with the peasants ability and achievement were rewarded with grants of land and money, so it was quite possible for an adept Saxon to move from being a ceorl to becoming a theign. The law did not allow him to move beyond that class but his son, if equally capable, had the opportunity to become an eolderman and be granted an eorldom of his own.

As with huscarls the king was not alone in enjoying the service of theigns, particularly rich eoldermen also appointed their own theigns. Indeed, it was even possible for a high-theign to have lower theigns giving service to them.

In many respects the theigns were the backbone of the fyrd. They could be expected to be reasonably well equipped and they had the wealth to allow them the time to practice the martial arts needed by a Saxon warrior. Although not as numerous as the coerls the theigns were a more capable body of fighting men and would have formed the front line of a shield wall; most certainly they would be in the second line. Battle gave the theigns a chance to prove their bravery and prowess, and many a many enjoyed the boon of a new grant of land or pieces of gold given by whichever lord they owed allegiance to after such a display. This would make them eager warriors and, therefore, dangerous men when swords were drawn and battle joined.