I don’t need to tell you what I’ve been doing. You already know. This time I was up past 0600 working on the peripheral materials for my Arthur stories. I spent the greater part of the day scouring through all the different lines of Irish kings for a suitable candidate for Anguish, the father of Iseult. I needed someone preferably named a variant of Angus who reigned around the turn of the 6th Century. I found my man in King Aenghus of Osraige. Being on the west coast, sandwiched between Leinster and Munster, made vassalage to Cornwall plausible, thus setting the stage for the Tristan and Iseult story. I sure do go to a lot of work to give some historical basis to something some French troubadour just made up.

The quickest answer would have been to conflate Anguish with Angusel of Moray, but I wanted an actual Irish king if I could swing it. And I did, so that’s something.

I need to get things more or less resolved soon because there’s supposed to be a big project this week that I’m going to have to really devote a lot of time to. As interesting as all this work is, it has to take a back seat to higher priorities. I imagine I’ll still be fiddling with stuff over the course of the week, but I should probably start thinking about writing on the stories currently in serialization. We’ll see what happens. Stay tuned.

Arthur Mania just won’t quit. In fact, this update comes so late because I was up till 0530 working on it, woke up around 1300 and picked things right back up. It’s been a while since I’ve been this consumed by my work. I’m mildly concerned about the potential consequences, but I suppose the only solution is to just keep pushing and get to a place I feel I can leave it.

I’ve been a lover of myth, fable and legend ever since I was a child. This should come as no surprise given that I’m an SFF author, but I’m also big into history. In fact, my minor was in history. I could easily have made it my second major, but I was getting a little weary of school by that point and was eager to begin my adventures in the Orient. One of the great things about the Arthurian mythos is that it blends the historical, pseudo-historical and the fantastic all into a single bundle, much as I’ve tried to do with my own story canon.

I was still in high school when I sketched out the first ideas for what would become The Brothers Pendragon. I wanted to use Excalibur, so it naturally followed that I would adopt the Pendragon name. I had the patriarch call himself Adam in the pretension that he was starting a new humanity. Of course, naming your two sons Cain and Abel is just asking for trouble. Going back to Excalibur, though, I envisioned this Adam Pendragon as a forgotten castoff of Uther Pendragon’s excessive womanizing who fancied himself as Uther’s true heir, seizing the opportunity he had long been seeking at the Battle of Camlann. When Bedivere goes to cast Excalibur back into the Lake, Adam (who I’ve recently decided to call Lother prior to his arrival on Tellus) intercepts and kills him, but he and his followers are transported from our world. Ever the pragmatist, he conquers the new land just as he intended to do with Britannia.

I won’t deny being rather strongly influenced by the ’98 Merlin mini series. (No, I haven’t really watched the more recent series, just caught some glimpses as my roommate was watching it.) The inclusion of Mab in the mini series had a bit of a domino effect for me. Mab happens to be involved in The Trident War Chronicles. She’s bound by Rowland in TTWC3 and forced to serve the Promethean Alliance. You remember that barrier around Maximilion that drove out the Third Legion back in Cronos’ section? Her work. Anyway, certain things are going to happen with her that I’m not going to spoil. If you’ll recall, I did a big shift of the timeline of the Tellus Arc not that long ago to resolve an issue relating to this very spoiler item. I will reveal that it’s related to the Arthurian mythos. Because the Earth and Tellus timelines are synched up (though time flows more slowly on Tellus, similar to how time flows faster in the Fairy Realm, a.k.a. Avalon), there were fixed events I couldn’t wiggle around. I originally resolved the problem with chronomancy, sending the character in question 20 years into the past to make things work. Much like Old Joe in Looper, I don’t like messing around with time travel too much, so this bit of juryrigging never did set right with me. (Speaking of time travel, there were two projects in pre-production I scrapped because of my decision to adopt a “no time travel” rule. Maybe I’ll tell you about them one day.)

Perhaps it’s that recent edit to the timeline that got me thinking about what little I’d already put down for an Arthurian story I was considering. Whatever the case, I’ve pulled out all the stops and this obsession is going to continue until I pretty well have the peripheral materials settled. Sorting through the fragmentary and often contradictory stories can be a pain, but it’s like solving a puzzle. The link to my own canon restricts my freedom of movement a little, but I’m coming up with some innovative solutions. I believe I’ve mentioned before how the already tangled genealogies of the major characters have been tangled further thanks to my love of interconnectedness. I honestly think I’ll have a hard time finding someone who isn’t related to one degree or another. Royalty!

I’m trying to find a balance among all the English, Welsh, French and Latin and it’s a little tricky to say the least. I want it to be accessible but not too anachronistic. I still have time to settle things but it’s a bit of a pain. I’ve actually taken to drawing up my own map of the British Isles rather than sifting through a couple dozen at a time to find this or than ancient and/or mythical border or feature. Learning a fair bit of British geography this way. ^_^; It’s a wonder just how much is packed into so little space. The world really was a bigger place back then.

Speaking of back then, I’ve got to curtail how far I venture into the timeline in either direction after the timeframe of the stories. I really don’t have any business going further back than the 4th Century or further forward than the 7th, but the urge to fill out the chronology is strong.

Okay, that’s enough rambling for now. There’s plenty more work to be done. Away!

I continue to be neck-deep in my work fleshing out the background of my Arthurian Cycle. Trying to compile so many disparate and often conflicting sources and weave them into a single cohesive narrative is no mean feat. Besides making the timeline, encyclopedia and story outlines, I’m also doing my requisite genealogical work and, man, is there ever the tangled web (which I am, admittedly, tangling a bit further). It’s a bit funny. I started my now terribly complex family tree with an eye for the royal family in Tellus, but it’s been the Arthurian period I’ve focused on. This sort of thing is really addictive, a testament to how much I love worldbuilding.

I’m presumably going to keep at this a while, so I might pepper future updates with some fun tidbits. Stay tuned.

I spent an insane amount of time yesterday working on the peripheral materials for the new Arthurian Cycle. The Arthurian mythos is so vast and varied combining that with both actual 5th-6th Century history and my own story canon is proving to be quite a feat but an incredibly enticing one. Honestly, all this work is coming to the detriment of my other priorities, but I’m sure I can set things aright.

Now I’ve got to decide how I want to break down the series. I’m thinking that the first book should be devoted to the lead-up to Arthur’s birth, the next one to Arthur’s tutelage under Merlin, and the last one all the tragedy leading up to the Battle of Camlann. It’s kinda funny. I’m getting so wrapped up in Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table that I start to forget the character who acts as my primary link with The Brothers Pendragon. (I will say, though, man, does he ever get what’s coming to him.) That isn’t to say I lost sight of all links to the Tellus Arc, as a significant portion of the cast has been reimagined to inextricably link them up. (You’ll probably be surprised at some of the connections made.)

Honestly, I could write a whole novel just about the rise and fall of Constantine III, but all that is more a distraction that anything to the main story. Perhaps I’ll make a spinoff. We’ll see. Stay tuned.

I managed to pretty well finish Ionathas’ Chapter 3 and then pretty much skipped over Chapter 4 to start on Chapter 5. (I’ll get back to it later.) I also worked on the peripheral materials which has me thinking about formalizing my own take on the Arthurian mythos and how it ties into my stories’ canon. As The Brothers Pendragon is a story I’ve got a particular soft spot for, the inclination to draw up plans for a trilogy is pretty strong. Be on the lookout for new teasers soon. Stay tuned.

I’ve pretty well finished Ionathas’ Chapter 2 of TTWC1. Honestly, it turned out a fair bit differently than what I originally envisioned, but that might be a good thing. I will tease one thing: Duke Cronos gets a bit of redemption in this one. Given how poorly his own section of the book went for him, it’ll be a nice change of pace. In other news, Chapter 3 shouldn’t take very long to finish as I’ve already written the dialog and just have to flesh out some narrative. I may even get through Chapter 4 before I switch back to working on Tico3. How far will I get? Stay tuned.

I started by resuming work on Ionathas’ Chapter 2 of TTWC1 (which is turning out to be a fair bit longer than I originally intended), played around with a related side story, and even found myself doing a little writing on The Witch Hunters, all the while doing a fair bit of work on the peripheral materials. All in all, a rather productive day, but perhaps I should’ve been devoting a little of that time and energy toward other things. So it goes. I hope to at least finish Ionathas’ Chapters 2 and 3 this week and after that we’ll see if I continue on a bit further or switch back to Tico3. Stay tuned.

I had one of my flights of fancy and decided to jot down some of the early dialog for Candidate 03. I also played around in the peripheral materials some to detail some of the changes to the social order as part of the formation of the Fifth Empire. A big part of it was just flipping the numerical order, but there was more to it than just that. Maybe when we actually get into the Aether War I’ll provide further insight into Imperial society. Stay tuned.