Robert Treskillard's Blog — Epic tales reaching beyond the wisdom of the ages™

I ran across a fun news article about Conrwall’s mid-summer Golowan Festival, which has its strongest representation in Penzance.

(If you want to get a taste of the culture of Cornwall, make sure you watch the video as well.)

So what was the theme of this year’s Golowan Festival in Penzance? Well… it was the Cornish story where King Arthur protects the coast from Viking raiders.

And I laughed when I heard this, because the Vikings didn’t come until the 700’s, and King Arthur lived in the 500’s. How could King Arthur fight the Vikings when they didn’t overlap?

But then my daughter, Adele, told me a few of her theories. Now, mind you, her theories may sound strange, but she has researched both widely and deeply into the myths of Britain, Ireland, England, and Scotland, and you would be hard-pressed to gainsay her.

Her first (less controversial) theory is that there was more than one King Arthur … first of all an earlier one whose legends became attached to and confused with the later, 6th century one.

Her second (more controversial) theory is that this early King Arthur, Fionn mac Cumhaill (Finn McCool), and Robin Hood were all three contemporaries who fought the same people… in B.C. Britain.

This theory is “felt” as much as it is fact-based: She perceives the many threads of similarity at the heart of these legends and has found clues that other people dismiss or skip over.

And so she posited a very interesting idea: Since she has found evidence of both Robin Hood as well as Fionn mac Cumhaill fighting the Lochlainn (Norse, or pre-Vikings), then surely King Arthur did as well.

This was entirely a guess on her part. She challenged me to look at the oldest Welsh text about King Arthur found in the Red Book of Hergest to see who his enemies were.

So I looked, and after much digging, was very surprised to find that King Arthur did indeed fight the Norse. Here is what “A Dictionary of Celtic Mythology” by JAMES MacKILLOP says about the Dream Of Rhonabwy (a story in the Red Book Of Hergest):

The different heroes and companions that compose Arthur’s army are minutely described. Although Arthur is to ride to do battle with his enemies from Llychlyn [Norway] and Denmark, he is more concerned with the chess-like game of gwyddbwyll he is playing with Owain son of Urien.

There it was. The text even uses the Welsh “Llychlyn“, which is equivalent to the Irish Gaelic “Lochlainn“, the EXACT word my daughter had used before we knew it was in the text.

So, maybe that Golowan Festival in Penzance is right after all. Amazing!

The other nice thing about this is that I have now learned the ancient name for Norway, which will come in mighty handy for my Book 2 of the Merlin Spiral: Merlin’s Shadow.

Not that there’s any invasion from Norway in the book, but I’m delving into the fascinating history of King Lot and his family background.

My internet friend, Samuel D. Smith, has just gone internet-savvy with a new website and blog, complete with pics and great humor.

At his new site, you can:

• View his “gun pose” photo, which is a preview for his up and coming movie, “Caps".
• Find out why “Wooten Major” is Sam’s middle name.
• Check out his latest blog posts where his wittificatious attitude is made clear (which also happens to be his favorite color).
• Peruse his bio and learn about his legitimate issues.
• Find out more about his writings, especially the Fledge Chronicles, now a flying success and soon to be turned into a book.
• Read his FAQ where he explains what FAQ actually means.
• Climb his link-ladder and see the finer places on the internet.
• Contact Sam, especially if you are a publisher or an agent looking for quality writing by a man of quality.
• See his touching pictures, even though you can’t touch them. See ma, no fingerprints!
• And last but not least, receive a boon of humor ala S.D. Smith style.

Do it!

For all of you fans of literary agent blogs, Steve Laube has just started his own!

His first post is titled “Who Decides to Publish Your Book?“. He gives excellent advice about the publishing process, using examples from his own experience.

As part of this, he covers the three stages that a book must go through prior to getting a contract, as well as who is responsible for “terminating” the book if it’s not a fit.

Go on over, take a look, and add him to your blogroll!

The ever-energetic Frank Creed (of the Lost Genre Guild fame) sent me over to check out Double Edge Publishing, and I ended up finding a regular column called “Writer’s Cramps” in their Mindflights magazine.

Not only did I find some generally terrific writing advice perusing the fully four years of columns, but I also came away with my mind whirring about a writing problem I have in my first book.

What is the problem with my first book? It’s bloated at 120,000 words. A first time novelist seeking publication in the Christian market needs to be under 100,000.

And I had cut all I could (24,000 words) to get it down to 120,000—and I despaired of ever finding a way to cut it further. Or so I thought.

Here’s one snippet of the writing advice:

So I began pruning my novel. Radically. I got rid of the whole thing before the last scene of chapter nine, and worked on tucking tidbits of the backstory into the novel. No infodumping allowed.

The result is a much tighter novel that dropped about 20k words

What? The author dumped everything up to the end of chapter nine? Of course, all of that was backstory—and my novel certainly didn’t err by putting in that much backstory. After all, the writing is witty, the story fun, even ominous, and everything is needed to setup what follows.

Or is it all needed?

Hmmmm…

I have decided to give it a try. I found a key point in part one (strangely, at the end of chapter nine) and have cut EVERYTHING before it. Keeping the prologue, that still cuts 27,000 words. And now I am trying to work all that back material slowly and organically into what follows.

It just might work! If so, then I even have some wiggle room as the newly slimmed down novel sits at 95,000 words. Wow. It just might be possible!

The only problem with this approach is that I must delay my work on Book 2: Merlin’s Shadow. Ah well, this is the time to fix book 1 if there is a way.

Anyway, Double Edge Publishing puts out some great Webzines you should check out:

Today I am reviewing VANISH by Tom Pawlik.

This review is part of the June Christian Science Fiction and Fantasy Blog Tour, and we are reviewing Tom’s first book even though his second book, VALLEY OF THE SHADOW, has just come out.

The first thing I did when I heard about this tour was to go over to Tom’s website and read the first chapter of Vanish—and I was hooked. Tom obviously knows how to write, and to write a book filled with suspense mystery and the supernatural.

Here’s a quick critique of what I’ve seen:

The Opening Lines Of VANISH

It all began with a feeling. Just an eerie feeling.

Conner Hayden peered out his office window at the hazy downtown Chicago vista. Heat plumes radiated from tar-covered rooftops baking in the midafternoon sun. A late-summer heat wave had every AC unit in the city running at full capacity.

He narrowed his eyes. Every unit except the one on the building across the street. On that roof, a lone maintenance worker in blue coveralls crouched beside the bulky air conditioner with his toolbox open beside him.

Conner watched the man toil in the oppressive August heat. Something hadn’t felt right all day. Despite the relative seclusion of his thirty-ninth-floor office, Conner couldn’t shake the feeling that he was being watched.

This is pretty good. It’s not perfect. It gets me interested right away, and give me the man’s name, where he lives, where he works, and builds tension.

But there’s still not much action. We don’t see Conner do much. But does he have to? I still want to read more, so I’m caught.

The Dialogue In VANISH

The first time people talk to each other, Tom shows he knows what he’s doing:

By the time he got to the office, he had been in full paranoia. His neck and shoulders were tense. He stopped at his secretary’s desk. “Nancy, do you notice anything strange about me today? People have been staring at me all morning.”

Nancy just curled an eyebrow. “You mean other than the horns sticking out of your head?”

“Very funny.”

Nancy loved her lawyer jokes.

This got me. I immediately trust that Tom can write witty, realistic dialogue that will carry me through the rest of the book.

VANISH’s Writing Style

Tom used a certain three little characters here and there in the first chapter—and this surprised me. What were they? The “ellipse", or three periods. And not just in dialogue, but in the narrative.

This surprised me because I started out writing this way, and was told by a published author that they were surprised I did that. I assumed from his surprise that you couldn’t do it, so I took them out of my text.

But there they are, in a published novel. And you know what? They work. Why? Because I’m inside Conner’s head, and so if his thinking pauses, the text should pause, and there is no better punctuation to communicate this to the reader. Here’s a sample:

The maintenance guy was still there, crouched down, working on the AC unit.

Conner rubbed the tension out of his neck and watched for a few minutes. His gaze drifted down to the street, and when he looked up again, the repairman was standing. Toolbox in hand. Facing him.

Conner blinked. Facing him?

He jerked back in his chair. The guy was watching him!

He squinted and leaned closer. He had a hard time focusing but . . .

This guy . . . had no face!

Perfect! A guy who is “staring” at Conner that has no face! He uses the ellipse sparingly, but for excellent effect. I just might put a few back into my novel…

Spiritual Content

To discern this, I read the reviews on Amazon, and from them it’s pretty clear that both VANISH and VALLEY OF THE SHADOW are pretty intense in their depictions of the spiritual realm. Enough to scare Jesus into someone, I follow!

One of the greatest compliments people paid to Tom was that the book was ORIGINAL. Yes, not some cliche’d reworking. So that gives it a big thumb’s up from me.

An interesting note is that EVERY single review was either four or five stars—except one three star review by a non-Christian man that “[Doesn’t] care … to read [a] Christianity themed or inspired work". The man hadn’t even read the book.

He was just complaining that the book was being put forward by Amazon “secretly” with its Christian message. But Amazon’s review made it clear that the book was an “Inspirational Suspense". Ah well, you can’t please everyone.

My Verdict

If you’re looking for an excellent supernatural thriller, these books are for you! Obviously this is written more for adults, but I would guess that mature teens would enjoy this as well. Again, I haven’t read the entire book, so parental discretion is advised.

Here’s a list of the other tour members:

Merlin’s blade is gone. Whither has it gone? You’ll have to read book one to find out. You have a guess, you say? You may be right in your guess, but the question is HOW does it happen? And why? And what will be the result?

(S.D. Smith, you’re not allowed to answer these questions! Shhhhh… )

Either way, I have composted my plot for book two to the point that I can now officially begin growing words from its fertile soil! I had previously authored three scenes, and these put me already at a nice 3% toward my goal.

What are my expectation for this book? While my last book finished out at a bloated 154,000 words before I sliced it down to 120,000, this book will be purposefully slimmer. Using my writing plan and log, I calculate:

That should help me keep my manuscript to a reasonable length! If my imagination pushes it up around 100,000 words, that would be great.

As time goes on, you’ll be able to check my progress in the sidebar.

So the question for this new book is this: What exactly is Merlin’s Shadow? There is actually more than one answer to this question, which is what makes the book’s title so appropriate. Here’s a hint for one of the answers:

Who is this you ask? (No, it’s not Merlin.) Despite the ferocity and pure evil of this picture that I have imagined and created, this is not a book filled with horror. My goal is that when you read this book—you will weep. Weep at the horror that man can stoop to. Weep at the depth of evil in our own hearts.

The nice thing about writing again, is that tomorrow will be exactly one year to the day from when I finished draft 1 of Merlin’s Blade!

That means I spent an entire year editing. That may seem long, but being my first book, I had a lot to learn. This new book, with the Lord’s help and favor, should be decidedly faster in both writing and editing.

Off to my inkpot!

Yes, its has finally happened! My most popular blog post has received 1,000 page views.

No, this isn’t a huge number, but its a great start only two years into blogging. People are consistently coming to my blog for information on King Arthur, Merlin, and the British Isles, and that’s good.

And no, that 1,000 number is not accurate. Blogs are notorious for inaccuracy for which posts have been read by whom. Anytime someone brings up a page with more than one blog post, it can’t register anything because it doesn’t know which post(s) they read.

That means that the 1,000 visitors represents people that specifically came to my most popular post and read only that. Many more come and read multiple posts but nothing ever gets registered.

Oh … you wonder which post was my most popular? Its in my side-bar, but if you want a quick link, here it is:

• White Stag Spotted In Scotland

Yes, that little post about an actual white stag found in Scotland is my most popular! Very strange!

Nathan Bransford, literary agent blogonaire (yes, I just invented that word), has pulled together a post linking together ALL of his writing advice dating back to October of 2006.

Go get it!

I am privileged to share the “CSFF Top Blogger” award for May with John Otte!

So go on over to John’s blog and congratulate him! (And it is surely NOT the least read blog on the web, I can assure you.)

He’s a pastor in the Missouri-Lutheran denomination in my home state of Minnesota. I had the blessing of meeting John at last year’s ACFW writing conference, and he’s a gentle giant with a fun sense of humor.

His posts that won him the co-spot for May’s book tour can be found here:

• Introduction To Tuck, and thoughts on Lawhead
• Spiritual Perspectives In Tuck
• Comparison of the King Raven trilogy to Movie versions

But make sure you check out John Otte’s latest posts, there is quite an eclectic mix—from Zombie games, to MMORPGs, to Star Wars, to Book Reviews, to updates on his writing, to scripture texts—he has it all!

And yes, he really does look like that Simpson guy! (Only minus the yellow skin, and his hair more brown than black.)

Stephen Lawhead happens to be touring the U.S. right now, and last night he read from his book, Hood, at the public library in Kearney, Nebraska, which is where he grew up.

So Kearney’s news site has published a short interview with him covering how he began writing.

One of the interesting quotes is about how Lawhead thinks publishing has changed since he began in 1982:

[Publishers used to] find writers and nurture their careers.

“…Now it would be very, very difficult. It’s all best-selling oriented. You have one shot, and if that doesn’t work, that’s it.”

Too bad he’s not coming through the St. Louis area! I would love to meet him!

You can read the entire interview over at KearneyHub.com.