Believability by Paul May

All fiction is a kind of conspiracy between author and reader. The author pretends that what they are writing is true and the reader pretends to believe them. I know there's a lot more to it than that—the author probably has something they want to say through shaping the events and characters in their story and the reader may be searching for some kind of truth, or a new way of looking at things, and what is truth anyway? But for the whole thing to work the reader has to be able to convince themselves while they are reading that what they are reading is true. 

So when I started reading Meg Rosoff's Carnegie Winner Just in Case and discovered that the central character is named Justin Case, that contract between the writer and this particular reader was immediately undermined. I mean, Justin's parents seem quite ineffectual, but I couldn't believe that any parents would deliberately do that to their child.

Justin lives in a weird world. It's a world where toddlers have complex thoughts well beyond their years and where Justin's imaginary dog is mysteriously visible to other people. It's a world where Justin reacts to a close shave—the little brother he's meant to be looking after nearly falls out of a window—by deciding that Fate is out to get him (Justin) and he's no longer safe anywhere. Fate in this book is a disembodied character who speaks in bold type. A lot of bad things happen to Justin, but who knows whether Fate has anything to do with it? Is he mentally ill? Is he imagining everything? I have no idea. I did not believe in Justin Case for a single second so that, despite the assured and often very funny writing, I found it a real struggle to finish this book. 

You, of course, may well love it! These days when I go to the cinema or the theatre I'm astonished to hear people guffawing at things I don't think are remotely funny. Maybe there's a limit to how much laughing we can do in our lives and I used up too much watching Marx Brothers movies when I was a student. Of course, I'm not the intended audience for this book, but should that even make a difference? I'm also starting to think I must have been a very odd teenage boy because almost none of the teenage boys I've read about in Carnegie winners and elsewhere seem to be like any teenage boy I've ever known, and certainly not like me. I'd have to look to Jan Mark, maybe, and Robert Westall for characters I can relate to.

And then—Oh, wow!—I read Philip Reeve's Here Lies Arthur. It was almost like the clock had been turned back to the late 1950s when historical novels from OUP won the Carnegie almost every year. Except that Philip Reeve begins his Author's Note by saying: 'Here Lies Arthur is not a historical novel, and in writing it I did not set out to portray"the real King Arthur", only to add my little thimbleful to the sea of stories which surrounds him.' 

But this is an utterly believable story, even though it's all made up. I love the tag line on the cover: Everyone's heard of Arthur. But no one's heard the truth . . .

Well, this is Philip Reeves's truth. Merlin is a storyteller, conman and chancer who attaches himself to a minor leader of a war band in the aftermath of the Roman departure from Britain. He plans to make Arthur into a great leader by spreading stories about him, creating a myth. He's a kind of sixth century spin-doctor for Arthur. So in one way this is a book about the power of story, and about people believing what they want to believe when they're given a little prompting by an expert manipulator. Merlin, or Myrddin as he's called here, is more of a conjurer than a magician. He loves tricks and illusions and so when he finds a young girl who is fleeing from a Saxon raid and who is a brilliant swimmer he sees a chance to create the illusion of a sword rising out of a misty lake.

Crisp, clear narrative with real drive, vivid scene setting, great dialogue. I felt an enormous sense of relief when I started reading, knowing at once that this was a book I could sink into and truly enjoy.

The girl, Gwyna, is the narrator of the story, and she spends a large part of the book disguised as a boy. As a boy she sees all the rough brutality of the lives of Arthur's soldiery, and then as a girl she is in the confidence of Arthur's wife, Gwenhwyfar. Another character, Peredur, has been brought up by his mother as a girl to prevent him being taken as a soldier. A lot of people are fooled in this book, in one way or another, which nicely underlines the point that nobody really knows anything about Arthur. In his Author's Note Philip Reeve recommends Kevin Crossley-Holland's Arthur trilogy and Paul White's King Arthur—Man or Myth. He also says his interest in Arthur was inspired by John Boorman's film Excalibur! But there's another book that's much closer in feel to Here Lies Arthur and that's Rosemary Sutcliff's Sword at Sunset.

Sutcliff's book also attempts to imagine what a real Arthur might have been like. Sword at Sunset follows on from the action of The Lantern Bearers, and this Arthur, too, is the leader of a band of mounted cavalry trying to keep the Saxon invaders at bay. It is a long and incredibly detailed account of a military campaign lasting for years. It deals with the procurement and breeding of war horses capable of bearing armoured warriors; it deals with the logistics of keeping a band of 300 men (and camp followers) fed and watered. There is extreme violence, rape, murder and treachery (Philip Reeve's version has most of this too), and at its heart is a portrait of a damaged man. Many of Sutcliff's heroes are physically damaged, but Arthur is mentally scarred after he is seduced by his half-sister who bears him a child that she rears in hate to betray Arthur. She may or may not be a witch, but she is bitter and revengeful at her mother's abandonment by Arthur's father.

That encounter at the start of the book leaves Arthur impotent, unable, save on one occasion, to consummate his marriage to Guenhamara. Sutcliff is interested in bitter misunderstandings between men and women, which reflect her own experiences, but while that element of the plot does make Arthur a more complex character, it isn't the plot that makes this such a great book. A lesser writer might have made Arthur's betrayal by his son the whole reason for Arthur's downfall, but what Sutcliff shows is a gradual erosion of the power and willingness to fight of the British; a gradual dawning of the awareness that the Saxons are not going to go away and that larger historical forces are in play. In the end, as in Philip Reeve's book, it is the myth of Arthur, not his force of arms, that will carry the dream of Britain through the Dark Ages.

Of course, you do have to buy into the 'Romano-British (and Celts)= good, Saxons, Angles, Scots and Jutes = bad' idea, and, indeed, into the concept of 'The Dark Ages'. You also have to not mind Sutcliff's occasional archaism: 'Sa, sa. It is in my mind that the Saxons will attack at dawn.' I made that up, but there's quite a bit of that kind of thing. But on the whole I felt I'd been immersed for 450 pages in a completely believable world, and as for Sutcliff's descriptions of nature, landscape and weather, they are second to none.

Sword at Sunset and Here Lies Arthur both try to imagine a version of what the real Arthur might have been like. Kevin Crossley-Holland's Arthur trilogy does something rather different, imagining the mediaeval world out of which the legend of Arthur arose. So it shows us, in great and vividly depicted detail, life in late twelfth century England and then in Europe as Crusaders gather in Venice. In these books, twelfth century Arthur is first a page, and then a knight who 'takes the cross' and goes off on a crusade. He's able to look in a 'seeing stone' given him by Merlin to see events in the court of the mythical Arthur, with his round table and all the acoutrements of the Arthur who Malory invented a couple of centuries later. 

The final book in the series, which I just re-read, is very dark in many ways, but in different ways to Sutcliff and Philip Reeve. There is murder, rape and treachery here, too, but there is also the Holy Catholic and Apostolic Church. With Reeve and Sutcliff we see Christianity in its infancy in Britain, and both books show how the old Roman and Celtic religions still have power. In Kevin Crossley-Holland's books, priests condemn love, banish women and children from the Crusade and endorse the slaughter of Infidels, and, really, anyone who gets in the way of retaking the 'Holy Places'. The Church takes almost as thorough a beating here as it does in Philip Pullman's Northern Lights trilogy. I remember writing a while back that I felt  Kevin Crossley-Holland's Storm  was a bit slight for a Carnegie winner. Perhaps I can make up for that by saying that if I'd been making the decision in 2003 I'd have given the award to Arthur—King of the Middle March.

As Philip Reeve says, these books are a good way in to the world of Arthur. Kevin Crossley-Holland also wrote an excellent compilation of stories and information about Arthur full of lovely illustrations by Peter Malone called The King Who Was and Will Be.

One last thing—my copy of Sword at Sunset is a horrible book club edition with small blurry type on browning paper, and it has NO MAPS! Can anyone tell me which is the best edition of this book? The American one? The original Hodder one? I can't tell looking at them online.

The Flower of Chivalry. Writers in their Landscape. Scott Telek by Steve Gladwin

PART TWO - The Flower of Chivalry and the new rights of women.

I'm pleased to still be conducting this series of interviews in the face of Corvid 19 and all its disruptions and tragedies. The concept of the wasteland has long been both powerful and popular in Arthurian literature, whether applied to the original source material, or in the warehouse full of novels and analysis there have been since. 

When I interviewed authors Kevin Crossley-Holland and John Matthews and storyteller Andy Harrop-Smith last year about their contrasting takes on all things Arthurian, I had no idea that Scott Telek was out there already publishing the first three books of his own massive undertaking, 'The Swithen', where the boyhood of Arthur only begins in book four. In case you didn't read the first part of the interview, Scott has already written and published Book Four of what he intends to be a twenty five novel series, He has given himself twenty more years to complete this endeavour. The fourth novel, The Flower of Chivalry, can be read on its own without the initial trilogy, something I reiterate in  my review of the book later. You will also find - should you have the nose of your average Arthurian bloodhound, the beginnings of the wasteland in this book, with the introduction of two brother knights.

As I write, the world's particular 'wasteland', has fallen upon it with a sudden stealth- if that doesn't sound too much of a contradiction in terms. Who doled out the 'dolorous stroke', if there was one, we may never know. But we are in need of both our Perceval - and need the right candidate again, to fill the siege perilous -  before long.

So, before returning to Scott, here, as promised is the second part of his biography.

Scott had some short stories published early on and has a few unpublished novels under his belt before he gave up attempting to get published in a rapidly changing industry. He started the well-received movie website Cinema de Merde, then took up oil painting and video making, starting the LGBTQ oral history documentary series Queer Profiles. Scott had begun reading Le Morte D'Arthur while in New York, and it took quite a while to finally finish it. At that point he started reading the older sources for it, thinking he would soon lose interest. He only grew more obsessed, however, and realizing that most people don;t know what's in the real legend, and that the story could benefit from being slowed down instead of sped up, he conceived of a grand plan to tell the most deluxe, cohesive version of the story in existence, while filling in the psychology and character development missing, and beef up the female characters so they are more than just symbols and accompaniments to the men, And thus The Swithen was born.

Before I read any of your books, Scott, a lot of the comments I read were about the searching insights you provided to the psychology of the characters and their inner dialogue. You do all that and more, so that we know these characters in the way you portray them in real depth, including that which would normally be hidden. You’ve said before that this is something which has never really been done before. Do you think this is overdue, then?

Well, I’d love to know which comments you’re talking about, but I'm glad someone out there is making them! I’m also not sure that I would claim that this has never been done before—at least in terms of psychology, because I don’t know that.

But as I said, the source literature, being from the Middle Ages, is very light on character and psychology, and they describe only about five emotions. So as you read about Merlin’s mother’s family being killed off, you think “What must she be thinking?” And there are just such delicious moments in the legends—I personally adore the whole episode in Book 2 where the man tries to trick Merlin—and again, you just think; “What must they be feeling? How would they mentally process that?” And also, part of the challenge for me as a writer is to take these unbelievable circumstances and imagine what the character would be thinking as they experience it, or to imagine what they must be going through in order to do what they do.

Trying the Perilous Seat results in a series of disastrous consequences.

So for example, in Book 3 you have this case where the man wants to try the Perilous Seat, and Uther lets him. Since I’ve decided I have to stay faithful to the legend, I can’t just drop that episode—it has to go in there, even though it’s kind of disconnected from anything else. Now also, Uther is about to lose his shit over Igraine, which is also something that is rather inexplicable and happens for no reason. So what I did in that case was imply that the incident with the Perilous Seat caused Uther to fall for Igraine… His failure with the seat sends him into a depression that he thinks only Igraine can pull him out of. I was also fascinated with the idea of placing a major depression back then, and I like how we readers recognize that this man is depressed, but the characters don’t understand it as we do. And the whole episode with Vortiger’s last day out in nature, that you were so complimentary about and I appreciated, came solely out of the wish to take a character who is a tyrant and end his story in an unexpected way. We know he dies and pays for his crimes, but what could happen to him in the meantime that would make it interesting and unexpected?

I will say, however, that as I start to read more and more Arthurian fiction to understand what’s out there, that most of them focus on the heroic aspects, the valiance and the triumph, and very few of them include the failure and loss, which is so much part of the literature. The whole thing is ultimately a tragedy, and I think one of the major themes is how the mistakes of one’s youth come back to haunt one in later life—Mordred being the most obvious example. The other thing they don’t do, because everyone is so busy being noble, is laugh and joke and have a good time. So I really strive to take these archetypes and make them as real as possible, which means dealing with darkness and mistakes, and also lightness and love and humour.

*The first three books, issued as ‘Merlin Creates Arthur’ and consisting of ‘Our man on Earth’, ‘The Sons of Constance’ and ‘The Void Place’, show a wide range of characters, many of them, such as Vortigern and Pendragon, previously pretty much neglected. But always in the background right from boyhood and in fact not yet anywhere near adulthood, is Merlin. Of all the brave things you do, Scott, I think the way you characterise Merlin, as someone who can choose to appear how he is, but still retains the uncomplicated and often unsympathetic attitudes of a young boy, is one of the most effective. For once he truly has a dual role. What made you decide to do that?

I actually did not have this conception of Merlin when I started. When I began, I was picturing him as the perfect, sage wizard that we usually see. But I was curious about one thing; if we start the tale with Merlin’s origin as an aborted plan by the devil, then that casts the entire story of Arthur as the result of that aborted plan. So that made me think about what that would mean.

Now, the sources are a little bit cagey about whether Merlin explicitly creates Arthur, or it just kind of happened, but I was fascinated, just for my own existential concerns, with the idea of this wizard creating this man as a sort of massive social engineering experiment, and then of course, what would it mean for Arthur to be this creation, and to be thrown out into the world for someone else’s purpose. This is where it’s all a bit sci-fi.

The random patterns of nature

But I’ll tell you a bit of the process of how this Merlin developed. What is “fact” in the sources is that Merlin can see all of history backward and forward, and that he needs to be away from all people sometimes. So in Book One I wanted to show how his mother influenced his sense of right and wrong, and for that reason I played up his arrogance and his insensitivity to individual suffering, because he sees history as a whole. In Book Two, there are scenes from the sources where he’s quite a dick—in an awesome way, of course—and I knew that we were heading into Book Three, where he does some very bad things.

The scene where Pendragon apologizes to him was invented by me, and the thing where Merlin admits that he is only ten years old at that time just came out, but by then I was intrigued by the idea that he thought of this idea to create Arthur when he was an infant, and with that the idea of knowledge received in his brain versus wisdom that comes from experience. In that way I was starting to think about young people today growing up with the internet, and how much does it matter to have knowledge plopped into your head versus wisdom gained through experience. I was also thinking about Mark Zuckerberg, who created Facebook when he was very young, and we (and hopefully he) are only starting to wake up to the vast consequences and implications of this thing he rashly created and foisted on society.

So when I have Merlin berate and really kind of abuse Uther at the end of Book Two, that was a key moment, because as I was writing that I was thinking; “Do I really want to take this there?” At the same time, Merlin still developing gives him a character arc and gives him a place to evolve to, making him a much more interesting character. 

But around then I started putting together an idea I had to tie the entire legend together—which is one of my big goals, to make the entire saga more unified and hang together more holistically. So what with Merlin and Nimue, and the Dolorous Stroke, and the Grail coming up, I started to see where Merlin being more closely tied to his Satanic side could really work for this. So when I went back to revise Book 1, I beefed up Merlin’s devilish appearance and added his attack on the midwife right after birth, because I really wanted us to see him as a devil, and after that I was fully committed to his being a very, very shaded character, who may not really know what he’s doing. In Book Five you will start to get my idea for the overarching idea for the series, and by the end of Book Six it will be completely in effect—and I hope people get into it! But for obvious reasons I don’t want to spoil it yet. Suffice to say that Merlin, like almost everyone else, has some harsh revelations to face, and is not going to get off easy.

The random patterns of nature - seaweed.

*Women too, are given a huge part in the first three books and we begin as you clearly mean to continue, with the entire first book concerning Meylinde,, as you call her, Merlin’s mother. She’s a wonderful character and we follow her plight all the way. As you say there’s barely a handful of lines written about her in the sources, but you’ve certainly redressed the balance.

That also was something not at all planned from the start, but one of the things I’m very happy about. I had always planned to flesh out the female characters and give their psychology equal weight—like, I just could not feel right if I allowed Guinevere to be as flighty and irresponsible as she is in the sources. But it began to occur to me that some female characters are very seriously under-served, and when I realized that Merlin’s mother doesn’t even receive a name, I could see that simply making her a weighty character becomes a progressive thing in itself. Another major character who never receives a name and really only gets one or two lines is Lady Ector, Arthur’s adoptive mother. And you will see that she is a very fleshed-out and important character in Book Four, and then she becomes one of these “free range” characters that drop out of the sources, and I then have full creative license to do whatever I want with her.

Now one of the things coming up is the Pentacostal Oath, which largely focuses on treating women better, and I am emphasizing that as a way of making this series have some contemporary resonance. So Book Four is titled The Flower of Chivalry, but you will see that it’s also meant as the flowering of chivalry, because we can see where Arthur starts to get the ideas that will flower into the Pentacostal Oath later.

The night time Toronto skyline, where the author is based.

All that said, one of the ways the Medieval sources are fascinating is that they largely focus on gender and power relationships, and I am definitely going to emphasize that. One of the things I really look forward to is fleshing out Arthur’s marriage with Guinevere, and the challenge of having that unfold over 17 novels. I want to give her adequate depth and for us to understand her affair with Lancelot without judging her unfairly. And also some of the other notable women, like Elaine of Astolat. I don’t always know how I'm going to do it, but that’s the challenge, and so far it’s been very rewarding.

With such a weight of potential ahead of you, and having already delivered so much, Scott, I was all too aware that this interview could have gone on for a long time longer. But that, as they say, is for another day. All that remains is for me to say thank you so much for being so generous with your time and responses to my questions.

It would also seem unfair to be given so much by Scott without him gaining something in return. Happily, I have just finished The Flower of Chivalry, which makes this a perfect time to review it.

Deals with the origins of the Pentecostal Oath

My Review of 'The Flower of Chivalry by Scott Telek.

Women! It's their stories which stand out for me when reading the first few books of Scott Telek's 'The Swithen', a massive Arthurian under-taking in twenty five novel-length stages. The fourth book in the series, 'The Flower of Chivalry' is no different in this respect from the first  or third, in being a world where the stories and point of view of the women dominate, in one or two cases even after they are dead. For this is a world of women silenced, marginalised and casually brutalised by husband and foe alike, a world where a brave woman who stands up to a man is quickly struck down and faces the ultimate betrayal for the male sex's betrayal of the female's - either to be burned at the stake as a witch or adulterer, or taken from her home after dark and buried alive. As I read Scott Telek's 'The Flower of Chivalry', I thought - not for the first time- that it was if Galadriel had unceremoniously wrested the history of middle earth from its creator and skewed it back from a women's perspective.

This author's revisionary pro feminine stance, is one of his trademarks and in the seeding of the idea of the Pentacostal Oath that he refers to in our interview, (for indeed where did all that Round Table chivalry originate), he enriches the bare bones of women's rights that have so long been absent from The Matter of Britain. Not content with inventing Merlin's brave revolutionary of a mother, Meylinde (the first book stands well and truly on its own in this respect alone), he now produces another strong female role-model in the uncomplaining and  previously unnoticed character Nerina, Lady Ector, who Arthur believes to be his mother. It is she, who unwittingly becomes the 'test case' of the need for the Pentecostal oath, long before it reaches the statute books.

The majority of the book - save for brief, appetite whetting, (and in the case of the grown-up queens Morgawse and Morgan, hilarious) visits to some of the characters we have met before and one or two new ones, alternates between the Hector's house and the landscape in which Arthur meets his friend Frog. Frog, a three feet tall sometimes fully amphibian/sometimes half amphibian is a creature cast out and tormented by society, who Arthur goes out of his way to befriend, despite the barely concealed disgust of his father and brother Kay. Frog, its fair to say, is a lot more than he seems, but there's more in the way of Frog fun and gasps of revelation for those of us who remember the end of Book Three, The Void Place. Frog and Arthur have lots of fun and the teaching and love they give unconditionally to each other is one of the great strengths of the book, and this always seeking and finding the humanity in people, is a laudable trait which the author develops and enriches book after book. If you want just magic, battle and bonking, then there are plenty more places to go. What Scott Telek continues to do in this series is to give us the real deal without stinting, and at the same time making new concepts and tangents flown off at, really work, and nowhere is this validated more than in his characterisation of Frog.

Arthur's foster brother Kay is here too of course, just as bullying, sour and uncompromising as he appears elsewhere, but a respect for Arthur grows as their story does, and we can already sense the strong right arm of the future king.

The book ends with the familiar scene if the sword in the stone, but what makes this interpretation stand out, is that finally we get a realistic version of the reactions from a pent-up crowd of some unknown kid of fourteen claiming to have done the impossible. The idea of a crowd turning has never felt more potent.

A word about the use of American language and expressions, which I'm aware some people will find grating, but I'm not one of them. It worked for Mark Twain, right!

Besides, it would, I guess, be a huge pain in the ass to try to take them out, or replace them - and d'you know, I've kinda gotten used to them.


Just time for a plug for next month's 'Writers in their Landscape', when appropriately enough I'm talking to Elen Caldecott about her wonderful and exciting and soon to be released YA novel 'The Short Knife', which is set around the same time in history.

And special thanks to Sue for giving up her spot so I could include all of this interview. Remember that you can find Scott's four books here.
https://www.amazon.co.uk/s?k=scott+telek&i=stripbooks&crid=24LX52GT7WDRE&sprefix=scott+telek%2Caps%2C144&ref=nb_sb_ss_fb_1_11

Thanks all.

.Steve Gladwin - Stories of Feeling and Being

Writer, Drama Practitioner, Storyteller and Blogger.

Creation and Story Enhancement/Screen writing.

Author of 'The Seven', 'Fragon Tales' and 'The Raven's Call'

01938 500728/01485007189/imagepoet7@gmail.com/mrwilliamsromance@gmail.com

https://www.storiesoffeelingandbeing.com/

Merlin Creates Arthur. Writers in their Landscape with Scott Telek by Steve Gladwin

  Part One - Why and How?

Just one strange and atmospheric thing - a frozen lake gives off mist in warm weather.

Just recently, The Flower of Chivalry, the fourth volume in Scott Telek's epic series, (even by the standard of epic series), 'The Swithen', was published. Scott intends to produce the rest of his twenty five volume series of stories on what has become called 'The Matter of Britain', the stories of King Arthur and his knights, in the next twenty years and judging from the quality of books one to four, he will make it with ease. My interview with Scott is wide-ranging and barely touches on landscape in covering everything else. It is also in two parts, and the second, shorter part will follow in a week's time. I'm already become a bit of an evangelist for The Swithen, which incidentally is an Anglo-Saxon term for land that has been left to re-generate - and am unashamedly using this blog to spread the word. Scott also provided a short biography, the first part of which we begin with here. You will find the second part of this at the beginning of part two on April 23rd, and the all important details of how to buy both the separate books and volumes 1-3 in one, (the way I read it, and which I recommend) at the bottom here.

Scott's Biography - Part One - Background and Travels

Scott lived in Detroit, Michigan, where he had a very nice neighborhood existence until he turned 8. At that point his family moved out to a much more rural place in Michigan, which happened to have 55 acres of forest and meadow behind it. Scott spent the majority of his years from 10-18 wandering in there with his dog, which is where he developed his love of nature. Scott always loved reading, and studied English literature and Psychology at university. At 30, Scott moved to New York City. It was the place he had always dreamed of living, but was quickly changing from the place he thought it was. Eventually Scott moved to Chicago, and a few years later married his partner (to whom The Flower of Chivalry is dedicated) and settled in Toronto, Canada. There, Scott is much closer to the nature and hiking that he loves, as well as being around generally more humane people. 

Scott, in the last month or so, you and I have been corresponding quite a bit, and its pretty much that and reading the first three books that led me to interview you for this blog. I’d like to begin by referring back to something you said when I previously asked you whether writing this massive version of King Arthur was something you’d always wanted to do. How did it all come about?

I periodically get it in my head to explore a certain topic, and I decided that I wanted to know the real story of King Arthur. So I got Le Morte D’Arthur, and was reading it off and on for a year while commuting on the New York subway. The first thing that totally shocked me is when Merlin is trapped by Nimue, and I kept thinking “Okay, he’ll come back at some point…” and when he didn’t, that’s when I realized that there’s a lot in the legend that I didn’t know. By the time I finished it, I was fairly obsessed, and then I started to go back and read the earlier sources, like the Prose Merlin and then the Vulgate/Post-Vulgate. And I thought; “Okay, I’ll probably lose interest after reading these.” But I didn’t, I just became more obsessed.

The first book deals with Merlin's conception and birth from his brave and resourceful mother Meylinde.

When I read the story of Merlin’s mother, I thought one, people don’t know this story, and two, this is a great little self-contained thriller. And so are some of the other little episodes, like the Malegant story later on. And what really intrigued me is to wonder “What must these people be thinking and feeling while these extraordinary events are going on?” Because the Middle English sources don’t write about emotions or psychology in depth—or much at all—and I thought an interesting place existed to explore that. And I thought it would make a fascinating challenge as a writer to constrain myself to staying faithful to the story, and to have to make it work within that.

Your reply at the time surprised me, because what I think you were saying was that was more as if it was in a line of a series of big projects you periodically took on, albeit one you had developed a particular interest in. Is that a fair description?

What I said was that up until then I had explored numerous other creative outlets, like video making and oil painting, but I would only stay with them for a few years and then move on to something else, so none of them ever really flourished. So I thought, if I embark on this series, this is going to be my big project, and I’m going to focus on this one thing. And I knew that if I stayed with it, it will be my life’s work, which I was also okay with. So that’s what I meant. And in the meantime I have thought “Oh, I’d like to start making these videos, or do these art pieces,” but now I say, “No, you just continue to focus on your book series, and stick to that.”

Let’s now fit that into the context of the sort of thing you read or have read. Are you a lover of fantasy, or history, or a little of both?

Neither, actually. I have to say I hate the kind of fantasy writing such as Mary Stewart does, with all the “Fie on thee, foul enchantress!” stuff. You can tell that my writing is much more plain, and I really just want them to sound like real people. History… I have to say that this series has made me get more into it, but I am not a history guy.

What I am into is literature. I love the Arthurian literature, and you could say that what I’m doing is a massive interpretation of the existing literature. I'm also, I discover, very much into folklore, and this series also fits into that. Reading the unexpurgated Grimm’s fairy tales, one before bed each night, was one of the great reading experiences of my life.

What I see in these books—not that I am comparing myself with any of these writers—is the influence of extensive reading of Henry James in terms of describing states of mind and psychology. I love noir crime fiction and pulp writer Jim Thompson very much shows up in the sudden, brutal violence. And then I definitely see Alexandre Dumas’ The Count of Monte Cristo, another of my greatest reading experiences, just because it’s lightly literary while also just being so pulpy and fun. I would say that novel encapsulates exactly what I'm going for… it’s light literature, but I also really want it to be fun and give you all those classic King Arthur thrills.

So, you’ve decided to tackle this, you’ve done all the research, you have – as you’ve said – decided to take the whole story from the available source material and fill in the gaps creatively yourself. It sounds like you’ve got the best of both worlds there?

Yes, because in a way I have always felt that I am better at elaborating something that exists rather than inventing from whole cloth, and this works perfectly that way. Having some constraints works for me creatively, because then there’s an element of a puzzle to it, a challenge for myself to make it work. Also, working with a time-tested story, I know that it’s good. I don’t have as much of that self-doubt that comes when you’ve created something all yourself, and you start to think maybe it’s all just stupid. I know this is good, and I can build on its strengths to make it better.

But I’ve also found as I start to head into the main thrust of the story—meaning that now Arthur is born we mostly have a set of characters that will be with us for a while, as opposed to the first three books—that this opens up unexpected creative avenues. For example, there are a number of characters who simply drop out of the source material, like Arthur’s adoptive dad Sir Ector, or King Rion (AKA Reince), and for me, that means I can do anything I want to with them. I can also make up earlier periods for characters who come into the story later—like Percival’s mother.

The other thing I didn’t really think of when I started, but is coming clear to me now, is that I will have this entire society of intertwined characters, most of whom we’ll be following from birth to death, which is really an unprecedented opportunity for a writer. It also just works out that, since the Arthurian legend is really about life itself, this project allows me a great framework to overlay my own existential fascinations on, so it has turned out to offer me much more creative satisfaction than I imagined when I embarked on it.

The sons in question are Pendragon and Uther - but they have to get rid of the sitting King Vortiger first.

*Talk to us a little about the process of doing something like this. I mean three books are out and the fourth, the first time we really meet Arthur, will be with us soon. Do you have a series of wall charts, or a big floor?

I have two Excel spreadsheets, one that has a sheet for each book that I can jot notes into when I think of them, and sheets for notes on each character, my physical descriptions of each character, the names of new characters, and stuff like that. So that one pretty much has everything, and I make new sheets whenever I think of something.

Then I have another one, which is the main one I’m using lately to lay out the series as a whole. This is just one sheet with all the characters down the side, and each projected book going across. And I put in the major events for each character, when they enter the story and when they die, and this helps me know where any specific person is at any one time, and what’s happening with the other characters at that time, so I can start to group events thematically when I have some leeway, and that’s how I laid out the series and came to the total of 25 novels.

This is also really helpful for tracking back for characters that are not yet in the story. For example, I plan to write some childhood scenes for Guinevere, so we can start to see how her character was formed, and this helps me track back and say “Okay, if she meets Arthur here, then she would have been about thirteen back here, and she would have been about eight here…” and that helps, because I want to also include what went down with the False Guinevere when they were children, so that when she shows up later in the story we’ll have experienced the history, not just have heard about it.

This series of interviews is chiefly on landscape about what inspiration it has for an author, and how he or she goes about creating it themselves. So, I’m going to ask you – especially as someone from the other side of the pond – about the landscapes have inspired your work and why?

I have been in the English countryside a few times, spent a week in Cornwall and a week in Scotland, and I definitely call on those visits as I am writing. A real experience of a green field full of rabbits in Dover appears in Book 4. I also sometimes look at pictures of England, Wales and Scotland as I'm writing, especially if it’s referring to a real place, like Dinas Emrys. Then sometimes I have to throw it out and say, “Well, maybe it changed in the meantime,” because I was looking at topographical maps of Stonehenge, and finally had to say; “Damn it, I need it to be hilly!”

Forests like this one in Ontario, help to inspire the series more 'English' forests.

Very formative for me is that, after living in Detroit until I was eight, we moved to an area that had 55 acres of undeveloped meadow and forest behind it, and I spent many days, for years, just wandering through there with my dog, and I know this general love of being in nature sprang from that, and definitely informs the novels. When you hear Merlin or Arthur say he was “just out looking at the plants and bugs” that’s what that’s referring to.

Luckily also my partner is very much into nature and hiking, and now that I live in Canada there is abundant wildness and forest everywhere, and I can name several instances and landscapes that appear directly in the books. There is a beach with rounded black-and-red rocks sitting upon yellow sand in a lake that appears in Book 4, and that is a real place here in Ontario.

I am also definitely trying to play up the presence of nature in the novels. For one because thematically we are going to start seeing more of nature vs civilization, and also Paganism vs Christianity, but also just because… these people are out in nature. Historical writers tend to focus on how dirty everything was, but they were also out in nature and closer to animals—and much more at the mercy of nature—so I really wanted that to be a major force in the books. It’s also just pleasant to think about, the simple life out in the fields and forests, and on a very basic level I simply want these novels to be a pleasant and lovely escape into a beautiful and intriguing world.

A collapsed viewing platform. For Scott, this illustrates the rise of nature against the plans of human kind.

The stories of King Arthur and his knights have had many versions since the original source material of the likes of Geoffrey of Monmouth and the Mabinogi stories.  Have the sources been hard work, or a joy?

Oh, I adore them. That’s really the inspiration, because the original sources have such a weirdness and unique tone that I think gets lost the further one gets away from them. Most Arthurian fiction strays from the sources, and in doing so, they often lose what makes it so great and powerful in the first place. What I really aim for is to retain the tone of Malory or the Vulgate Cycle, just flesh it out so it can be read as a novel.

Something that is very important in the original stories and perhaps especially the ones of the Grail Quest, is the idea of an inner landscape which on the outside is represented by the signs and symbols, the rule of three, the grail procession, the colours of the knights and their pavilions. Is that something you reflect in the work that you’ve done, or are planning? Do you believe that there is hidden meaning, maybe some of the clues to our own grail quest?

Your question caused some reflection in me, because I wouldn’t think of myself as being on any sort of grail quest… that is, I don’t think I have some sort of big goal in mind that I’m working toward, except maybe to one day be able to live off my writing and no longer having to be at the mercy of the workplace. But for me I have never been that goal directed—which is perhaps also why I also haven’t achieved that much monetary success, haha—but for me, the whole thing (i.e. life) is about the journey, and seeing what comes to you.

For whatever reason, I find that I can't think too much about monetary success when it comes to my writing, or I get bogged down and it becomes impossible for me to create. When I started this, I decided that I was going to keep at it and just keep adding to it even if none of the books sold, and just think of the whole thing as a form of folk art. Like a quilt. So it's very important to me to keep the focus on creating art for its own sake, and because I enjoy it and want to make something good, rather than expecting any great reward. And it's funny, this made it into the upcoming book, when the Lady of the Lake appears and she says that her people make beautiful things, but it's important that they do it only for the sake of creation, rather than to sell or make money, because in that way it stays pure.

All that said, I’ve been happy with the sales of the books—I’m just thrilled that people are reading and getting into what I’m writing—but if they did bring monetary success, that would be fine, too! So I guess the Holy Grail for me would be to be able to live off of them and do nothing but write.

Something magical can be created from just a simple phenomena like water.

As for the colors and symbols you mention, I am slowly learning about them as I start to explore Celtic and Medieval British symbolism and folklore. Up until recently, I was still trying to get through the 9-volume Vulgate and Post-Vulgate versions of the legend, which I felt I needed to finish. That said, I am already working certain images and symbols into the books that (I hope) will remain fairly subtle until you start to see them over several novels. We are, ultimately, talking about one huge novel in 25 parts, so there are many things that I’m working in that won’t become apparent until later. As for the grail quest itself, I plan three whole novels for it, and look forward to the challenge of portraying the bizarre world in which the knights find themselves.

Well, Scott this has already been fascinating and I look forward to hearing more. In the meantime, this is the perfect chance to tell our readers that all your books are available both as actual books and in the kindle version I read. Here a quick link to Amazon, where you should be able to find all of them. You'll also notice quite a few from your previous life as a film blogger, Scott.

https://www.amazon.co.uk/s?k=scott+telek&i=stripbooks&ref=nb_sb_noss

And thank you for letting us explore the landscape and story of The Swithen with us.

Thanks. I've really enjoyed, it.

-- 

.Steve Gladwin - Stories of Feeling and Being

Writer, Drama Practitioner, Storyteller and Blogger.

Creation and Story Enhancement/Screen writing.

Author of 'The Seven', 'Fragon Tales' and 'The Raven's Call'

01938 500728/01485007189/imagepoet7@gmail.com/mrwilliamsromance@gmail.com

https://www.storiesoffeelingandbeing.com/

Two Mid-Wales Writers Chat About Myth, Poetry And The Donald

In a thoroughly enjoyable year of interviews, which have given us three different takes on King Arthur by Celtic expert and author John Matthews, fellow storyteller Andy Harrop Smith and acclaimed poet, translator and children's writer Kevin Crossley Holland, I have also enjoyed my interview swap with my friend and fellow writer Sharon Tregenza and a fascinating chat with Marty Stewart, whose first two books are Riverkeep and The Sacrifice Box. But we end the year with a real treat, a wide-ranging chat with four time Tir Na nOg winning writer and fellow resident of glorious Mid Wales, Frances Thomas.

Now Frances is someone who my old editor Viv suggested that I should get in touch with several years ago and now I'm delighted to have finally done so. Recently it led us to a book swap where I got by far the better end of the deal in that I was able to enjoy over a weekend her first trilogy about the Welsh bard and mythic figure, Taliesin, one of my own great heroes. Among the many things i enjoyed was the way she brought together the two very contrasting versions of Taliesin and it was that which really prompted this chat.

So, Frances, first many thanks for agreeing to this chat and for responding so enthusiastically to my questions.

Thanks for asking me, Steve. I've really enjoyed doing it.

1. I’ve always been fascinated by the origins of someone’s art. It’s that first workbook and the glimmers of the ideas within that intrigue me. Recently I’ve read your Taliesin trilogy from the 90’s, which you very kindly provided in a rather uneven swap. After telling you how much I enjoyed it and ripped through the whole thing over a weekend, you told me it was all so long ago that you could hardly remember it. But do you remember its genesis and what intrigued you so much about the figure of Taliesin?

How it all started; well, I really can't remember. Except that I've always been fascinated by Welsh mythology, and when I first decided that I was going to try and finish a book (rather than making the endless false starts I'd done until them) I'd look for a Welsh theme. And Taliesin seemed an interesting subject - not so over-written as Arthur- there was a good deal of scope for me to make up my own story, combined with the scraps of legends; a known yet unknown figure if you like.

2. Now I’ve been fascinated by the figure of Taliesin for twenty years or so, but for me it’s always been more the Taliesin that wrote the mythological poems - multi-layered and full of meaning - and was said to be King Arthur’s bard – the one if you like who was present in The Spoils of Annwn or in the company of the Singing Head. You, on the other hand, in the second and third books in your trilogy in particular, chose to concentrate far more on the less mythic figure, the Taliesin who was court bard to Owain of Rheged and indeed Owain features significantly in your series. Why did you choose that version?

Although I love myth and magic, I find that when I'm writing, I want to write about people and their relationships and their connections with the world about them. And I want to find reality in the magical/mythical  elements.

3. Taking a massive leap forward to the past few years, you’ve been concentrating your attentions on Greek Myth with your Troy books. What do you think are the main differences in the mythology of your native land and that of classical mythology?

Our versions of Greek mythology have been much cleaned up and sanitised by countless retellings. And when you first read the Mabinogion, the stories can feel strange and rambling; you look hard into them to find the connections and structures you expect from modern tale-telling. (Probably the stories as we now know them have been worked on by their Christian scribes, so we don't find out too much about the pre-Christian deities who were there originally, which also  adds to the strangeness). You need to find your own way of reading them, and then they are suddenly full of  real people -loves, betrayals, friendships, cruelties, quests and disappointments, revenges  and triumphs. 

4. What is it, do you think, that myth has to offer not just the growing child, but the questing adult, and how well equipped are we as a society to provide that kind of nurturing?

Myths have an especial richness, in that they've been worked on over centuries by people trying to find answers to the basic questions of life - why are we here, what are we  supposed to be doing, how is it that things go wrong, how  can we do the right things, how do we relate to other people, why are some feelings - love, hate, revenge, excitement - so strong and so universal?  When we read them, we tread in all of those thousands and thousands of footsteps that have gone down that road before us. So for both adults and children there is a feeling both of strangeness and familiarity; we benefit from being exposed to them in so many ways. (This in spite of the publisher who rejected my 'Helen's Daughter' with 'These sorts of things don't sell' - well, I think they do, if children have the chance  to see them)

5. Would you say there have been distinct periods of writing in your career. Has happiness necessarily coincided with success?

I don't think I've ever been very successful - there have been periods when things seem to be going quite well, but then they're followed by disasters. Publishers are never very easy to work with, and most writers can't rely on the expectation of success. I found that out the hard way at the very start of my career when the second and third books in my Taliesin trilogy were turned down by the publisher of the first one.

But happiness comes from writing - when I'm writing, I'm perfectly absorbed in my writing world and perfectly happy. That's what a writer should look for and enjoy rather than 'success' which is transient and unreliable.

6. How important is the home and the landscape you live in, do you think, to the life of a writer? I’m thinking particularly of that fascinating and almost indefinable Welsh word hiraeth, that I’ve mentioned in a previous blog. Is that longing a part of what you write or what makes you write?

I love living in mid-Wales, which as you know, is one of the most beautiful places in the world. I love being able to look out of my window every morning and see the light and the colours, different and gorgeous every day. I'm less mobile than I was, for various reasons, so the joys of sight are especially blessed. But I'm also - and this might sound paradoxical - a Londoner at heart, since I lived there for more years than I have lived in Wales- and I feel 'hiraeth' for London when I'm in Wales.

But looking back over my stories, I don't think I write about either; I try to bring to life the landscapes of the places I write about, even if I don't know them well. I  remember when I was a child I always believed that Rosemary Sutcliff must have been a great traveller, as she wrote about places so vividly; and I found out later that she was so disabled, she must have travelled very little and with great difficulty. It's imagination that does the trick.

7. And apart from skills, in this day and age its tolerance and understanding that seem increasingly to be going. On one of your blogs, you wonder what Donald Trump’s favourite poem might be, and the actual answer turns out to be fascinating. Can you tell us about that.

I don't suppose the Donald has ever really read a poem in his life, but he quotes as his 'favourite poem' the words of a song called 'Snake' originally sung by black soul singer Al Wilson in 1968. It's about a woman who out of compassion takes home and nurtures a wounded snake, which, when healed, turns round and bites her. Before she dies, the snake sneers 'You knew I was a snake when you found me.' For snake, of course, read Mexicans, Muslims, immigrants generally.  In spite of objections by Wilson's family, Trump continues to quote it.

8. Now poetry is important to you – not just your own, but clearly other people’s. This has led to you publishing two rather extraordinary books of poetry. Can you tell us the thinking behind that?

I love reading poetry and I try to write it, though I don't think I'm very good. My two 'poetry' books, A  Bracelet of Bright Hair, and Dancing In The Chequered Shade, are basically journals in which I about the events of my day, and try to match a poem to it. Some of the poems are by me, but mostly they're by real poets. Readers have told me that they've found the books helpful and inspiring. Certainly they were very enjoyable to write.

9.Two years or so ago I did a wonderful six week course on Mental Health in Literature with Future Learn and co-tutored by Doctor Jonathan Bate and Professor Paula Byrne, (now Lord and Lady Bate). Among the many wonderful things covered was the therapeutic nature of poetry and I was able to give first hand experience of how wonderfully it worked for Rosie, who was quite ill at the time, on one of my blogs. I also learned how very different an experience it was to read a poem out loud when Jonathan gave us the task of doing this with On Westminster Bridge – admittedly after we’d heard Sir Ian McKellen have a stab at it! Do you think there’s any particular way of approaching poetry that’s more effective for you?

10, I think good poetry can make you a better person if you give it your full attention. I don't think it would work on Trump though. Remember Auden's marvellous poem on the death of a tyrant; 'the poetry he wrote was easy to understand...'  I don't think there's a better or worse way of approaching poetry; just give it your full attention and then watch out for those poems that suddenly grab you by the throat. I remember how Donne's love poems did this for me when I first read them as a teenager.

11. Let’s move back to the present and your Girls of Troy series. How did that fascination with classical mythology finally bear fruit and what made you tackle it in this way?

I realized that there were also figures half-hidden on the margins of the well-known Greek legends just asking to be let out, and these figures were mostly women and girls; and I suddenly found them clamoring to tell me their stories. When I found that Helen of Troy had a daughter, Hermione, I knew I had to find out her story. Then I discovered that Achilles had a son, Pyrrhus, and that Hermione and Pyrrhus had a relationship. How could I resist such a beginning? This became 'Helen's Daughter' the first volume in the trilogy. Then I knew I had to write about the actual battle for Troy, so I give this story to a slave girl who witnesses it all, in The Burning Towers.. Finally, the story has to be finished off by writing about the murder of Agamemnon and the subsequent revenge taken by his children Electra and Orestes. For a long while I tried to find ways of telling this using a voice other than Electra's; but finally I realized that she had to tell her story herself. This became the final volume, The Silver Handled Knife.

12. Rosie and I are currently listening to Anton Lesser narrating The Iliad on Audible. It’s a long and confusing narrative with so many lists of names that it makes the Welsh story of Culwch and Olwen seem positively half-hearted in comparison. How do you de-bug something like that and make is more accessible – the same I suppose with the ancient Welsh books and the poems of Taliesin. Or do we just have to accept them as they are as much as we do Shakespeare’s plays and not soften or reduce them?

Anton Lesser must be great to listen to - what a voice. We have Derek Jacobi doing the same thing, and it's great to listen to in the car. I think that in their raw form, the stories can be a bit indigestible especially for children. But they can be retold in such a way that you concentrate on the universal and exciting elements of the tales, and children can 'get' them. When I was young, my father bought me a copy of  the Odyssey in Barbara Leonie Picard's adaptation  and read it to me at night. I loved it, and Odysseus has always been one of my heroes. (yes, there are gruesome bits in the story, but somehow I absorbed those).

13. This seems a nice point to ask you about the pictures, Frances. I asked you to select several which had some kind of meaning for you. Could you tell us about them and what led to your choices?

Apart from a little bit of self-advertising for my Greek books, there the Lion Gate in Mycenae, which we first visited a few years ago, after longing for years to go there. Seeing it inspired me to write about Mycenae, and Agamemnon and his family. There's also a little Greek Athene owl, which I bought in Greece, and sat on my windowsill while I was writing the trilogy,, and I hope , gave me inspiration from the goddess!  Lastly two pictures taken from our house, just showing how beautiful Wales is, and how lovely it is to be able to wake up every morning and see such beauty for free - it's different every day and I never take it for granted. I don't have any pictures for the first trilogy, but certainly the beauty of the countryside inspired me to write about it.

14. The second picture looks very like a place I walk in regularly. That's Mid-Wales for you. But finally, Frances, are there still remaining characters, themes and ideas you want to work with and why?

I have a story that I wrote some years ago, set in the seventeenth century and the era of tulip fever. My agent wouldn't send it out, so it's still sitting there. It's probably a bit 'quiet' for today's market, but I'd like to work on it a  bit, and bring it out myself. I don't have many indulgences any more, so self-publishing  is one I can allow myself, I think.

Well I hope your tulips get to flourish at some time in the future, Frances,Thank you so much for chatting to me and everyone who reads this blog.

Steve, it's been a pleasure.

And I, everyone, will see you next in January so I'll look forward to that.




Steve Gladwin

Author of 'The Seven' and 'The Raven's Call.'

Writer and Screenwriter

imagepoet7@gmail.com