Bringing King Arthur to Life

I’ve been a King Arthur fan for as long as I can remember. From Malory’s Le Morte d’Arthur to White’s entrancing The Once and Future King, from Bradshaw’s epic series to Bradley’s wonderful The Mists of Avalon, the story of Arthur and his Knights of the Round Table have left me spellbound. More recently, I’ve read depictions of what a true Arthur could have been like, set in the 5th century, highlighted by Cornwell’s The Warlord Chronicles.

Such fiction led me to weed through attempts by historians to determine whether Arthur truly existed and, if so, when and where. Of course, when attempting to piece together much of anything in the shadow of the Roman Empire, the difficulty ramps up. So much oral history replacing a written one in the aftermath of the fall, so much life turned into chaos amidst the dark age that followed.

And so in some sense, this story has always been in me, awaiting the right spark to bring it to life. That spark occurred in the winter of 2016, on an online forum, where a member issued a New Year’s Writing Challenge: to write a 30,000 word novella per month for each of the first three months of 2017. Now, I had been struggling with the sequel to Ahvarra for almost two years, having written perhaps only 30,000 words over that entire stretch of time.

But, I considered the possibility of jumping out of one world and into another as a way to jolt me from the rut I’d been in. And, as I said, there was always this story inside me, just waiting to be told. So, being brash, I announced that not only would I write a 30,000 word novella for each of the first three months of 2017, but that I would write such a novella for every month of the year.

I had my twelve tasks in mind, you see.

The one thing I wanted to do, when writing an Arthur origins story, was to bring something new to it. I did not want to write the standard tale. What I wanted to do was suggest that the tales we all know and love about King Arthur and his Knights of the Round Table, of Queen Guinevere, of the wizard Merlin, were stories that had been embellished over time. Stories that, with every telling, grew to be larger than life. But that at the beginning there was a kernel of truth to them.

I hope you see in this story the seeds of the legend that came after.

And so I turned to that blank page in history, just after the Romans departed the British Isles. A time that truly was at a crossroads in many different ways. The organized structure of the world collapsed, opening the door for those who choose might over right to benefit. Christianity was still growing, replacing paganism. But it has always struck me how the mighty Thor is the only one capable of lifting his hammer and that Arthur was the only one capable of pulling the sword from the stone. And thus I married those together to bring about my version of the legend.

Also, I love The Princess Bride. I’ve seen the movie more than a hundred times. It’s my favorite movie of all time. And what I love most about it is its sense of humor, the whimsical nature of the characters to capture humor within even the most dangerous of circumstances. And so I wanted my Arthur to capture that, to have characters capable of laughter, regardless of their circumstances.

I have truly enjoyed writing this story. I look back and find it difficult to believe I have done it in the space of a year. A year in which I lost my mother… and many of her last words are captured here, in the monk’s letters from his mother. A year in which the political climate of the world is divided, and you will no doubt see much of that in my writing as well. Inspiration can come from anywhere.

If you are interested in reading The Knight's Journal, hop over to Amazon and pick up either the first novella (Knight Descendent) or the first collection of three (The Knight's Journal I).