A Writer’s Life: The Avalon Project

Years ago, when I was living in Wisconsin, I had a lot of time to think.  I was living alone for the first time in many years. I was working a systems analyst job that I greatly enjoyed. I spent my weekends reading, making cold-process soap… and thinking about what I really wanted to write.

See, I knew I was going to write a book.  Had known, for decades.  I just had to pick a subject and stick to it.

Over the years, I had read in many genres, but the one I always went back to was fantasy. Epic or Urban or Historical, it did not matter.  If I was transported somewhere, I was happy.

I read extensively in Arthurian Legend. Over the course of many years, I had devoured the Marion Zimmer Bradley (And later, Diane L. Paxton) series about Avalon and its origins. T.H. White, Stephen Lawhead, Bernard Cornwell, Mary Stewart…I read the classics like Geoffrey of Monmouth as well.  It was by far my favorite legend-based fantasy.

But there were things about it that bothered me, too.

Why did most of the legends end immediately when Mordred and Arthur fought?

Why was it assumed that Morgan was evil?  And while we are at it, why was it assumed she only ever had one child?

I never got a satisfactory answer to my queries.  So, I decided to write my own.

That is my current project in a nutshell.

What happens after the battle?  And what happens to Morgan (Morgaine, in my books) and her other children? All that power and magic did not suddenly poof the moment Arthur died, did it?

I finished my fifth edit of the first book of what I have conceived as a trilogy.  I am now shopping editors and hope to have it with an editor by the end of the summer. I have started the outline of book two and have made copious notes about book three.

But it will not end there. 

My hope is that once the trilogy is finished, and I have a fully functional world built, I would like to bring that world of magic, mysticism, and legend into the present day with another series about the descendants of the people you will meet in the original trilogy. I have a loose concept of it, and I am sure as I traverse the world again in books two and three, more will come into focus.

That is my plan.  And I am sticking to it.

Stories end where your imagination ends.

If you want more story, write it.