Sunday, March 23, 2008

A Novel, King Arthur, and Trips to England

For the last 6 years, I have been working on writing a novel. It comes in fits and spurts, but it is mostly done, or so it seems. My blogging friend Senta asked me what I am writing about, so this is an answer to her and to also to me. Me you might ask? Yes, I think I need to refocus myself because it has been a while since I first started.
Background:
The story is about the rise and fall of King Arthur, but written in a more historically accurate time frame. The idea came while taking a shower and reflecting on a radio program I heard that mentioned how the great Arthurian literary works (by Geoffrey of Monmouth, Chrétien de Troyes, and Thomas Mallory, for example) were written between the 12th and 15th centuries. The stories are great in scope and epic in their own right, but they can not be taken seriously as historical works. Many of the stories take place with contemporary backgrounds, making them anachronistic to the time period of the supposed historical Arthur of the 6th century. One glaring example is that the idea of knighthood didn't come about until some 5 or 6 centuries later.
So, what if ... Hmm. I'm a little skiddish in divuldging too much. OK, synopsis: An engineering guy who is disillusioned by his present state in a technological world often finds himself escaping into his own Walter Mitty world only to find himself (through a timewarp caused by something he is working on) in the time and company of the historical Arthur. This Arthur is more a successful war lord than a king. The main character uses what he knows of engineering, management theory, theater, psychology and wits to "engineer" this Arthur into a king worthy of Camelot -- all of which would not happen on its own, thus allowing everything we know about King Arthur and pop culture to take seed.

That is the very basic idea of the story.

Now I've done a fair amount of research into the time period of England in the 5th -6th centuries, especially in the area of the Roman influence on the landscape and culture. I've looked into many things such as warfare and weaponry, clothing, language, and religious practices. The one thing that I felt I needed to do was to actually go to England and get a sense of being there. I wanted to get a feel of the landscape patterns, weather patterns, scope of distances and other intangibles. Last year I went there and in a way, got my bearings. This year I plan to return and do more research and writing to fill in the blanks, work on my settings and descriptions and to tie up some story elements and loose ends.
I can't wait to get it finished and published. I can even see a movie . . .

Anyone out there know an agent that would be willing to help me get my work published? Or an editor who would like to help me out?

I may consider posting select passages or chapters online in the future.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

Thanks for the answer, the novel sounds very interesting! I would definitely read it. Visiting over there does definitely give you such a sense of history, something we don't have as much of in our relatively young country, don't you think? Do you have one of those Writer's Market books, that lists all the publishers and their contact info and all that? I have the one for Children's Writers but I have not made good use of it yet...

Arrrteest said...

I don't have one of those books yet. I don't know if I'm supposed to have a finished product or not before I go and peddle my book. I do need a good editor to help refine some of the work. I hope by this time next year to have it done. But then again, I never imagined being at this point 6 years ago!

Peter L. Winkler said...

Writer's Market is a waste of money. Anyway, your search for an agent is premature, given your admission that your novel still requires editing.

Here's an excellent free resource for finding agents and editors.

http://everyonewhosanyone.com/

I also recommend agentquery.com when you're ready to approach agents.