I'm not very visual when it comes to people. If you're trying to remind me of someone I have met, describing their appearance to me probably won't trigger my memory. You'll have more luck giving me their name or telling me something about them. Faces don't stick with me very well.
I don't know why that is, but I must not be typical, because novelists spend a lot of effort describing how their characters look. When I read a novel, this mostly just goes over my head, but if I want to write a novel, I'm going to have to pay attention to how my characters look and communicate that to my readers even if I have a hard time visualizing them myself.
I've written about creating Abanoub, the protagonist of The Sorcerer's Apprentice. But what does he look like? Modern technology is a great help here.You can just go to Google and do an image search of Egyptian Men. For better results, perhaps Young Egyptian Men or Attractive Egyptian Men or Handsome Egyptian Men or even Sexy Egyptian Men. The last one is different only in that you get slightly more pictures of Egyptian guys with their shirts off (and pictures of Justin Bieber and Zachary Quinto, for some reason), which for a writer is good, because Abanoub is definitely going to take his shirt off once or twice in the course of this novel.
In fact, I'm doing this for all the characters in The Sorcerer's Apprentice. I'm using Scrivener to write the novel, and Scrivener will allow me to pluck pictures out of my Google searches and save them with the novel, filed away by character for future reference.
For some characters, I find a picture on the Internet that jumps out at me as exactly how my character should look, and that's that. But that's rare. More often, I shop around for features, and come up with, say, these eyes, and these shoulders, and this hair, and these cheekbones, all from different pictures. Which is fine. I file them all away in Scrivener, and refer to them as I need to.
For Abanoub, I picture him as tall and lanky, with curly black hair. I imagine him with a relatively fair complexion, by Egyptian standards, with hazel eyes and striking dark eyebrows. There are reasons for some of this. Since he's going to be living in Anglo-Saxon Britain, I want him to look different enough from the other characters that whenever anyone meets him, their first reaction is, "Wow. Get a load of the hair and the eyes." Abanoub definitely stands out in a crowd, but not too much. Just enough to make it clear that he's different.
He's a sorcerer's apprentice, so I imagine him a bookish kind of guy. He's fascinated by books, by ancient learning, and by sorcery. If he were living in our time, we'd call him a geek. I guess that's why I want him lanky and fair skinned, as in, doesn't get out in the sun much. His looks tell you a lot about where he spends his time.
I'm still working on the other project, a science fiction novel, for a little while longer, so no word count here.
Thursday, January 21, 2016
Wednesday, January 13, 2016
Abanoub the Apprentice
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| St. Abanoub |
So I needed a name for my Egyptian Christian expatriate sorcerer's apprentice.
I figured the obvious thing to do was find a list of Coptic saints and see if there was a name that jumped out at me.
There was. St. Abanoub. Maybe it helped that he was the third name on the list. Okay, though, I told myself, you can't just pick a name in the "As" without checking out the rest of the list.
So I went over the list. Then I went over the list again. I don't know exactly why, but I fell in love with the name "Abanoub." It means "Father of Gold." I guess I just like the sound of it. I learned that Abanoub is a saint not just in Coptic Orthodoxy, but in Eastern Orthodoxy and Roman Catholicism as well.
His story is here, along with a photograph of an alleged apparition of the saint in 2003.
Now, Abanoub is a fourth-century saint, and my Abanoub is a seventh-century Coptic Christian, so there's nothing very improbable about my hero being named after one of the saints of his Church.
The story of St. Abanoub is a grisly one. He was martyred at the age of 12, for preaching the faith to Roman authorities during the era of the persecutions of Diocletian. There are a lot of martyrs from this period, and their stories all sort of sound the same after a while. But I thought it would be interesting to adapt the saint's life into my character's life. As I mentioned, my Abanoub grew up during the conquest of Egypt by Arab Muslims. Perhaps he, too, in a fit of youthful zeal, challenged the religious views of the ruling class.
For my purposes, though, I'm going to imagine that my Abanoub did this when he was eighteen, because the image of a 12-year old boy getting beaten and tortured goes a little too far for me. So let's say my Abanoub, at the age of 18 and a little too headstrong, challenges the Arab rulers. It doesn't end well, only instead of getting killed, he just gets out of town. Way out. Like...Britain.
So there's my protagonist, Abanoub. And now you know why the blog URL is what it is.
No word counts just now, because I've had to set aside The Sorcerer's Apprentice for a little bit while I polish up a different novel.
Sunday, January 3, 2016
Rome: Not Fallen Yet
Edward Gibbon's History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire draws the line for the end of the Empire at 476, the year the last Western Roman Emperor was deposed, and most historians since have followed his lead.
This reflects a Western European worldview. The second half of the fifth century was a bad time for Romans living in Spain or Britain or France, but in the Eastern Empire, things chugged along as usual. The surviving portion of the Empire is usually dubbed "The Byzantine Empire" from 476 onward, but that is a modern convention. They called their state "The Roman Empire."
In the year 600, as you can see from the map above, a good portion of what we think of as the Roman Empire was still holding up over a century later. It was still the undisputed superpower of the ancient world. Not a lot had changed since 476 for the Romans of the East. But in the next 50 years, the Empire would lose half its area and between 65 and 75 percent of its population and GDP.
What happened? Mohammed. Islam. Arab conquest.
The wealth of the Roman lands seized by the Arabs was the basis of a new Arab Empire that would rival the old Roman Empire. To my mind, this is where you should draw the line between the fall of the ancient world and the dawn of the medieval one. This is where the remaining Roman Empire becomes "The Byzantine Empire," a second-tier power that is a shadow of the old empire.
The loss of Egypt to the Arabs in 641, fifteen years before The Sorcerer's Apprentice opens, is the key moment. The wealth of Egypt was the basis of Roman Power for almost 700 years. When it was gone, so was Roman power.
The protagonist of my story would have seen it happen. He would have been a child in Alexandria when it fell to the Caliphate. A decade or so later, when he is a young adult, he will leave Egypt and travel across the world, winding up in Britain.
Why?
The Arab conquest may well be part of it, although I would expect someone who was just a boy when it happened to be pretty used to the idea by the time he's eighteen. Things must have gotten dicey for him when he reached adulthood.
Today's word count is 57,161.
Saturday, January 2, 2016
The Protagonist
Okay. The story is called The Sorcerer's Apprentice. Obviously, the protagonist is the apprentice. In Dragonslayer, the apprentice was Galen. The movie doesn't tell us anything about Galen's background, but he doesn't seem too different from anyone else in the story. He seems like a guy who grew up somewhere nearby.
I don't want to do that.
I want my apprentice to be a misfit. I want him to be someone the Anglo-Saxon community around him doesn't fully understand. I want him to look on the Anglo-Saxons from an outsider's point of view.
There's a really good writing reason to do that. If he's an outsider, and he looks at the other characters and the world in which he lives with an outsider perspective, then he's well-positioned to explain them to the reader, who is also an outsider. For example, a fellow Anglo-Saxon isn't going to explain to the reader how Anglo-Saxons are fair-skinned and often have red or blond hair, right? He or she is just going to take that for granted as something not worth thinking about. But an outsider would mention it.
Also, remember my first line?
Why is he lonely? After all, he's got a job and a place to live. A sorcerer's apprentice probably lives a higher standard of living than a peasant farmer's kid, right? But if he's an outsider, someone from a far-off land who doesn't quite fit in? Then he's likely to feel lonely and out of place from time to time even if he as a master and a community he calls home. That makes for an interesting protagonist. At least, to me.
The story is set in Britain. So I thought, what's the farthest country I can think of, one of whose sons might plausibly find his way to Britain in the seventh century?
People got around more in those days than you might think. Some people, anyway. Upper class people. Okay, I guess my protagonist comes from an upper class family. But where?
Someplace really far, like China or India, is not out of the question. It's not physically impossible. But there's no known case of a person traveling that far in the seventh century.
On the other hand, there's St. Theodore of Tarsus, who was Archbishop of Canterbury from 668-690, almost contemporaneous with my book. In 656, when my story starts, St. Theodore is 54 years old and living in Rome. But he was born in Tarsus, in the Byzantine Empire, and will later be living in Britain. So there's precedent for someone traveling at least that far.
I picked Egypt. Partly because if I picture a map of the Roman Empire at its height, Britain is in the extreme northwest corner, and Egypt in the extreme southeast. So, two places very far apart, but with a common heritage of having been in the Roman Empire in the not-too-distant past.
And there was some interesting stuff going on in Egypt in the seventh century. More about that later.
I don't want to do that.
I want my apprentice to be a misfit. I want him to be someone the Anglo-Saxon community around him doesn't fully understand. I want him to look on the Anglo-Saxons from an outsider's point of view.
There's a really good writing reason to do that. If he's an outsider, and he looks at the other characters and the world in which he lives with an outsider perspective, then he's well-positioned to explain them to the reader, who is also an outsider. For example, a fellow Anglo-Saxon isn't going to explain to the reader how Anglo-Saxons are fair-skinned and often have red or blond hair, right? He or she is just going to take that for granted as something not worth thinking about. But an outsider would mention it.
Also, remember my first line?
From a window atop a lonely tower, perched on a lonely rock at the edge of a lonely kingdom, a lonely man looked out upon a lonely land.
Why is he lonely? After all, he's got a job and a place to live. A sorcerer's apprentice probably lives a higher standard of living than a peasant farmer's kid, right? But if he's an outsider, someone from a far-off land who doesn't quite fit in? Then he's likely to feel lonely and out of place from time to time even if he as a master and a community he calls home. That makes for an interesting protagonist. At least, to me.
The story is set in Britain. So I thought, what's the farthest country I can think of, one of whose sons might plausibly find his way to Britain in the seventh century?
People got around more in those days than you might think. Some people, anyway. Upper class people. Okay, I guess my protagonist comes from an upper class family. But where?
Someplace really far, like China or India, is not out of the question. It's not physically impossible. But there's no known case of a person traveling that far in the seventh century.
On the other hand, there's St. Theodore of Tarsus, who was Archbishop of Canterbury from 668-690, almost contemporaneous with my book. In 656, when my story starts, St. Theodore is 54 years old and living in Rome. But he was born in Tarsus, in the Byzantine Empire, and will later be living in Britain. So there's precedent for someone traveling at least that far.
I picked Egypt. Partly because if I picture a map of the Roman Empire at its height, Britain is in the extreme northwest corner, and Egypt in the extreme southeast. So, two places very far apart, but with a common heritage of having been in the Roman Empire in the not-too-distant past.
And there was some interesting stuff going on in Egypt in the seventh century. More about that later.
Friday, January 1, 2016
The Fall of Mercia
My wife is a United Methodist minister.
You may wonder what it is like to be married to a minister. Well, imagine you are married to a butcher. Now ask yourself how you, the spouse of a butcher, would feel about sausage.
That's what it's like to be married to a minister. Often I feel that way about the church.
So I decided my novel would be about Mercia. Then I read the Wikipedia article on Mercia, which, by the way, has this to say about Mercia and J.R.R. Tolkien:
The mid-seventh century was a bad time for Mercia. The king, Penda, died in battle against Northumberland in 655. His eldest son, Peada, became king. Peada was already married to the daughter of the king of Northumberland, apparently an effort to promote peace between the two kingdoms, an effort that obviously failed.
The royal family of Mercia were by this time the only Anglo-Saxon kings who remained pagan and had not yet converted to Christianity. It is sometimes said that Mercia was the last kingdom to convert to Christianity, but the truth is, our sources only tell us what religion the royals were. The faith of ordinary people is left unrecorded. No doubt there were both pagans and Christians in all the kingdoms, though in what proportions we can only guess.
Anyway, King Oswiu of Northumberland was a Christian, and so was his daughter. That Peada, eldest son of King Penda, convert to Christianity was a requirement of the marriage. Peada did indeed convert and marry Oswiu's daughter, Alchflæd. After his father died, Oswiu took over. He annexed northern Mercia into Northumberland outright, and set up his son-in-law as a vassal king over the southern portion of Mercia.
But even that arrangement didn't last long. Just a few months later, at Easter 656, Peada was murdered at Oswiu's command and apparently with Alchflæd's assistance. I like to think of this as Peada stabbed in the back at Easter Mass. Yeah, I had days like that in church, too.
Peada had a younger brother, Wulfhere. Little is known of his life up to this time. After the death of his older brother, Oswiu took control of all Mercia and Wulfhere disappears from the story. But two years later, in 658, Wulfhere reappears, leading a revolt against Oswiu that re-establishes the Kingdom of Mercia with Wulfhere on the throne.
Now that's a story worthy of a fantasy novel. And so I decided my story takes place during Wulfhere's "lost years" of 656-8. If he spent the time hiding out, far away from Oswiu's assassins (likely), and if he had some help from a sorcerer's apprentice (highly unlikely, but you can't prove it didn't happen) who protected him from Oswiu's men and helped him plot and execute his return to power, well, that would make a pretty good story, I think.
Today's word count is 56,738.
You may wonder what it is like to be married to a minister. Well, imagine you are married to a butcher. Now ask yourself how you, the spouse of a butcher, would feel about sausage.
That's what it's like to be married to a minister. Often I feel that way about the church.
So I decided my novel would be about Mercia. Then I read the Wikipedia article on Mercia, which, by the way, has this to say about Mercia and J.R.R. Tolkien:
J. R. R. Tolkien is one of many scholars who have studied and promoted the Mercian dialect of Old English, and introduced various Mercian terms into his legendarium – especially in relation to the Kingdom of Rohan, otherwise known as the Mark (a name cognate with Mercia). Not only is the language of Rohan actually represented as[16] the Mercian dialect of Old English, but a number of its kings are given the same names as monarchs who appear in the Mercian royal genealogy, e.g. Fréawine, Fréaláf and Éomer (see List of kings of the Angles).[17]
The mid-seventh century was a bad time for Mercia. The king, Penda, died in battle against Northumberland in 655. His eldest son, Peada, became king. Peada was already married to the daughter of the king of Northumberland, apparently an effort to promote peace between the two kingdoms, an effort that obviously failed.
The royal family of Mercia were by this time the only Anglo-Saxon kings who remained pagan and had not yet converted to Christianity. It is sometimes said that Mercia was the last kingdom to convert to Christianity, but the truth is, our sources only tell us what religion the royals were. The faith of ordinary people is left unrecorded. No doubt there were both pagans and Christians in all the kingdoms, though in what proportions we can only guess.
Anyway, King Oswiu of Northumberland was a Christian, and so was his daughter. That Peada, eldest son of King Penda, convert to Christianity was a requirement of the marriage. Peada did indeed convert and marry Oswiu's daughter, Alchflæd. After his father died, Oswiu took over. He annexed northern Mercia into Northumberland outright, and set up his son-in-law as a vassal king over the southern portion of Mercia.
But even that arrangement didn't last long. Just a few months later, at Easter 656, Peada was murdered at Oswiu's command and apparently with Alchflæd's assistance. I like to think of this as Peada stabbed in the back at Easter Mass. Yeah, I had days like that in church, too.
Peada had a younger brother, Wulfhere. Little is known of his life up to this time. After the death of his older brother, Oswiu took control of all Mercia and Wulfhere disappears from the story. But two years later, in 658, Wulfhere reappears, leading a revolt against Oswiu that re-establishes the Kingdom of Mercia with Wulfhere on the throne.
Now that's a story worthy of a fantasy novel. And so I decided my story takes place during Wulfhere's "lost years" of 656-8. If he spent the time hiding out, far away from Oswiu's assassins (likely), and if he had some help from a sorcerer's apprentice (highly unlikely, but you can't prove it didn't happen) who protected him from Oswiu's men and helped him plot and execute his return to power, well, that would make a pretty good story, I think.
Today's word count is 56,738.
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