Kindle version of Legends of Haergill and Conniker's Tale is available!

Here's the link for the Amazon / Kindle version of the fourth book in the Wealdland series.

click here for Kindle link to Legends of Haergill and Conniker's Tale

Book Four of the Wealdland Stories

It has been a long time coming.

Legends of Haergill and Conniker's Tale has been published.

You'll understand, when you read the book, that it wasn't the size of the book (it's average in length) but the complexity. Many, many things had to fit together just so.

And, it took me a lot longer than I anticipated.

So, I apologize for the delay, but not for the book as a whole, which I am very, very proud of.

So what's in this book? Several short stories you might have seen before, but completely rewritten. And, you'll see now how those short stories fit into the overall world of Wealdland.

There are the two novellas: Legends of Haergill, which I am personally quite fond of; and Conniker's Tale, which is a little mind bending. But, the few who have read it have understood what I am trying to do, and actually got quite excited. So, that's good.

There are two poems, one in Miranei, with its translation, that tell the story of Iounelle's parent's fate. The other poem is the Ballad of Sehen, which Yulenth mentions a couple of times in The Lord of Lightning.

And lastly there are a couple of short stories that set up Iounelle's continuing story in Mathematics and Magic, the next series, of which Ancient Science will be the first book, probably ready about this time next year.

In the mean time, early next year (I am very excited about this) you will get Berand Fool, the first book in the Chronicles of the Elf Human Wars. Trust  me when I tell you that the Berand stories are going to be great. These stories take place three thousand years before Iounelle, and are going to be very unusual, to say the least.

In the middle of the year, if all goes as planned, you'll get the first of the Ostigris series: The Tiger's Mouth. This series fits in with the other series, but I can't explain how. You'll understand once you've read Legends of Haergill and Conniker's Tale.

enjoy

cheers,

Kurt

A comment from a reader...

This is a comment I felt the need to share:

I'm in the United States Navy and while I love being a sailor, going underway is always hard. When your work day is done and you go down to your rack alot of the time its hard to sleep just for how much you miss home and your family. I talked to my dad about this and he told me that when he was in he would read and it would give him for just a couple of hours a place where you weren't sad or lonely. Reading gives you a chance to take a vacation any time you want inside yourself. Saying all of this i found the last elf about two weeks ago and could not put it down, now im on to the archer and i just wanted to say thank you and tell you how much i appreciate your work. its a quiet place to lose my self and thats worth way more than the price for the books.

V/r,
CTMSN Spence USN

(The original post and my response can be found here. click here )

A confession

Wow. I am really bad at this blog every day stuff. Sorry.

So, the confession? I put myself in the trilogy. I admit it. 

In The Lord of Lightning, the Archer discovers an Old Man fishing by himself on the wasted shores of Lake Ettonne. That's me. 

I'm probably younger than you pictured the Old Man. I mean, I pictured him in his late sixties. I'm in my earlier fifties, and I look nothing like the literary physical description of the Old Man.

But, that voice, those words, that's me speaking directly to you.

Every writer uses pieces of himself, and those he knows, to create characters. Plus, a writer who's been at it a while develops a 'voice'. However, that 'voice' is not always the writer's actual, unvarnished way of speaking, thoughts, idioms, or philosophy.

The Old Man is unadulterated me. That is what I had to say without the trappings and filigree of fiction. It is also the central theme of the trilogy. Read the Old Man's words again, you'll see what I mean.

cheers,

Kurt

musings on life

Very sick today. It seems I'm very allergic to the neighbor's cat. Almost like a mild flu, or a nasty hangover, today was all about getting well. Tea, as it turns out, makes me sick to my stomach when in  the throes of an attack like this. But, coffee makes me feel much better.

Strange how the body works.

The planet is covered in life. All life needs to generate some kind of caloric conversion to stay alive. The furnace of life needs fuel. Plants convert sunshine, air, water, and minerals into sugars via photosynthesis. Nearly, completely alien to the needs of the animal kingdom.

What if...

I LOVE those words. "What if..." is the jumping off point for all art. What if I could represent this person's visage with these oil paints? What if I could convey, by written words, the struggles of life in my home town, decades ago. What if I arrange these musical notes in this order?

What if we find life on other planets that satisfy their 'caloric' needs in a completely unthought of way? Well, the universe offers light, solids, liquids, gases, and combinations of those basics as converted by some other form of life. But...

What if... we find a form of life that meets its caloric needs through the transition of methane from liquid to gaseous states? It would probably be a very small, cow-like grazer, living on a place like Titan, the largest moon of Saturn. I can imagine such an animal being on a bacterial scale. And, it might not use  DNA at all! That would be a discovery that would set the world on its end.

Somebody get the Cassini people on the phone.

Kurt

self portrait

Hello. This is me.

Kurt

new world order

Although my primary job is to write and rewrite, and generate stories for you, I am going to try to post a little something, anything, here on this blog on a more daily basis.

So, today, I am about a third of the way through the second draft of the fourth book of the Wealdland Stories: Legends of Haergil and Conniker's Tale. 

The next book I'll be working on, Berand the Fool, keeps tugging at my imagination. I am taking lots of notes, but will hold off on the first draft until I get Legends of Haergill squared away. I have tried writing two books at once, and it doesn't work for me.  One always gets neglected, and sometimes ideas get duplicated.

I have a feeling, however, that the first draft of Berand the Fool will surge out of my head like a tsunami. I have thought about making it a NaNoWriMo project, but that never works, either, because the holidays inevitably intrude and must be attended. 

National Novel Writing Month must have been started by a modern day Scrooge who hated his family, otherwise, why set the project in November? 

I can just see some bent over crone cackling, "Let's ruin the holidays by making as many writers as we can write a novel! Hahahah. But, December will be too obvious! No! Let's set it up in November! And that way, when they fail, as they all do, it will ruin not only Thanksgiving, but Christmas and New Year's as well! aHAhahAhAHA!!!"

cheers,

Kurt

LoHaCt 2nd pass

I'm thirty pages into the second draft of Legends of Haergill and Conniker's Tale. It is going quite well. I'll try to up my page count in the coming days. I could conceivably be through the second draft by the end of next week. Which, of course means the release draws near. Huzzah!

I'm pretty happy with this volume. It will fill in a LOT of back story, set up the coming stories and generally entertain in a full and vivid way. I'm very happy with the two novellas mentioned in the title. I really think you'll enjoy them, too.

I had this idea to write a trilogy with an extended fourth volume that filled in all the historical and future events back in 2007. And, darn it, if I didn't actually accomplish what I set out to do. I'm very chuffed with myself. I planned something rather complex, and requiring a lot of effort, and I did it.

Which is kind of a relief  to me in a strange kind of way, because the whole over-arching network of books will total eighteen novels.

yeah.

Eighteen.

heh, heh. Of course, it's a gigantic endeavor. But who thought I could pull off the four novels I originally envisioned? I'll admit I had my doubts. 

But, here we are. The books continue to gain in popularity. I'll probably have to hire a pro editor at some point to really spit-polish the whole works. I know, I know there are some mistakes here and there. It's astounding how the mind fills in, or skips over what is actually on the page. But, I find I'm definitely getting better, the more I write. makes sense.

I have no idea if an actual print run is in the near or extended future. That really isn't up to me. It's much too time consuming and expensive to set up a printed edition of the books on my own. Some publisher will have to ultimately realize that they will make a truckload of money when they decide to print these novels. so, I wait.

In the meantime, my job is to write my heart out. 

I had hoped to have another novel, Berand the Fool, out by christmas, but that seems unrealistic now. Legends of Haergill and Conniker's Tale took a little longer to write than I originally planned.  To have a novel ready by christmas, I would have to write first, second, and third drafts in about two months. I can't see producing a work of quality in that short of a time. But I do hope to have that novel out early next year in the late winter. And if all goes well, you'll have The Tiger's Mouth in early summer, and then Ancient Science in late autumn, or early winter of 2013. 

I should, all things being equal, be able to produce three novels a year. Which means that in about five years time I should be done with the whole set, ending with The Sun in All Its Glory, the last Iounelle book.

It can happen. I've already proved I can do big things. Here's to even bigger things.


cheers,

Kurt

Question for readers of the Wealdland stories

Should I include my dictionary of Miranei, the elven language I constructed, as an appendix to the fourth book: Legends of Hergill and Conniker's Tale?

PG-13

Yes. The blog statistics here show search words and search engines, so I know how some have come here.


The search words today were "Is the Last Elf of Lanis suitable for children?"


yes. and no. it depends really... 


...on the age, or maturity of the child.


The story is one of courage, honesty, honor and, most importantly, community and what it means to stand with your fellow human.


But there is some violence. I wouldn't call it gratuitous, but it is there. The story is about a family thrust into a time of war.


There is nothing I would call overtly sexual, definitely not lurid, not even suggestive. A boy realizes he loves a girl after she is kidnapped. An elf comes to have deep emotional feelings for a mysterious Archer, who is human. But nothing that would make this work rated R.


There is no profanity. Not even the made up kind. That kind of thing doesn't interest me as a writer or a reader. I find most real people who use a lot of profanity usually use it to cover how unintelligent they are. I am interested in intelligent people. Characters, in my story, appeal to the gods of their age, some may say something like "Oh, Eann!" but is a plea of desperation and not an oath, blasphemy, or curse.


The bad guys are scary. They are called 'garonds'. They're pretty much equivalent to what we know as the Neanderthal subspecies of humanity. Ape-like, but organized into efficient armies, their natural gentle nature has been twisted into a violent military by a Dark Wizard.


I don't think there isn't anything in my book that wouldn't pass on television. If you let your child watch regular TV, then my book is about that speed.


Now there are many adult themes in this book, and by 'adult' I mean 'mature', the idea of what it means to be in a nation, a family, a village. What is honor, cowardice, courage, and betrayal? These things might go right over a young child's head, but eventually, these are things that every person of quality must think about. So, I think 'that is a good thing' as Martha Stewart would say.


There is a little magic, if that offends anyone. This is, after all, a book in the genre of 'fantasy', so expect wizards, elves, magic swords, and magic beasts.


Characters die. This isn't the kind of story where everybody wins and gets to live happily ever after. That kind of story is called a fairy tale. My works are more akin to mainstream literature in that the characters are in real jeopardy in their fictional world. For this reason... you may shed a tear or two. But again, that is a good thing. People leave this world, and it's good to talk about it and think about it. It can make you cherish each other, and forgive each other, realizing how precious is this time we have.


Finally, and most importantly, this is a work of adventure, like The Wizard of Oz, The Lord of the Rings, The Martian Chronicles, Asimov's Foundation works, the book will take you away to a place that is imaginary but fully thought out. Like imagining a foreign land, this book will ignite the mind and fire the imagination. 


I hope this helps.




Kurt




also I would add that I have tried to create several, very strong, female characters: two mothers, a grandmother, a young girl, and a female elf all who stand for themselves, fight as best they can, and grow and face difficulty.


Many of the fans of these books are women, and I think that is no coincidence.

A clue few have mentioned...

There was a clue mentioned in the very first pages of The Last Elf of Lanis and few have mentioned it.

In the first chapter, the elf turns to look at the Archer with 'sea green eyes'.


At the very beginning of the second chapter, the human woman Wynnfrith turns to look at her son Arnwylf with 'sea green eyes'.


A simple assumption leads in a straight line to the conclusion that Wynnfrith has elven blood somewhere in her family history.


Then when we find out Wynnfrith is a 'heid', a seeress, and her mother, Alrhett, can speak with animals, it is undeniable that these humans have an elven ancestor somewhere in their past lineage. 


Aha! It was all there in the very first pages... :)




cheers,
Kurt

The Lord of Lightning for iBooks and Nook

The Lord of Lightning, the third book of the Last Elf Series, will be finally shipping to the B&N Nook, Sony eReader, and iBook and other Apple platforms.

The publisher, Smashwords, has been very successful of late, and consequently their success has yielded a massive glut of eBooks to screen and approve.

I apologize to the readers who are not using a Kindle. I uploaded the book to Smashwords on the same day, May 1st, that I uploaded to Amazon, and it has taken this long for them to move the book forward.

cheers,

Kurt 

What does this guy look like?

I played a small role for a friend for his excellent web series Tyranny. I come in at minute 3:13.

click here for the webisode

I think I'm also in the episode before this one, but have less to say. Anyway, if you were ever wondering what I look and sound like... here ya go.

cheers,

Kurt

Legends of Haergill and Conniker's Tale

What is in the fourth book?

Admittedly you could leave the Last Elf Trilogy right with the last page of The Lord of Lightning and feel as though you've reached the conclusions necessary for closure. I designed the trilogy that way.


However.


There are other stories, which I have written, or am in the process of writing, that add to the world of Wealdland, that weren't absolutely essential to the overall plot of the acquiring and use of the Heaven's Key. These stories would just have made the trilogy that much longer, and I felt as though they would be better served as a collection added to the trilogy as an Apocrypha.

So, what's in the Fourth book of the Wealdland Stories?


Well, from the title, you can make a pretty educated guess. There is a novella about Haergill, when he flees Ethgeow, the capitol of the Northern Kingdom of Man, to save the life of his wife Halldora, and his daughter, Frea.


And then there is a strange and wonderful story of Conniker, the white wolf, and what happened to him during the seven days he went missing in The Last Elf of Lanis. I guarantee this story will astound, amaze, and entertain you.


Also, there are four stories set in Lanis Rhyl Landemiriam, hundreds of years before the attack by the garond army. One involves Iounelle as a child and how she got the lifename Treelaughter, and another, the story of how she snuck into Bawn Hae, the tower forbidden to unmarried elven females.


There is a story of Weylund and his journey out into the Farther Lands.


There is the story of Hanarry and Myanne, and Hetwing's challenge for the crown of Reia against her uncle Eoric.


There are two stories that answer questions about Yulenth.


There is the Ballad of Sehen, and several other elven poem/songs, most notably, the heroic poem/song Veranelle dae Galehthaire, the story of the great, last battle of Iounelle's parents.


And lastly there are two stories that answer the many questions I have been asked, about the fate of little Mót. One involves the writing on the cliff face of the Red Mountains. But, what happens with Mót will shock and tantalize you.


More than half of this collection is already written. I hope to have the book ready for release on or soon after August 1, 2012.


Later in the year, probably around Christmas, you will get a present in your stocking of the first of the elven stories about Berand, the forger of the Mattear Gram and the Moon Sword that Iounelle carries. 


That book will be entitled Berand the Fool. I am very excited about the Berand Trilogy as it will be very strange and adventurous. 




cheers,


Kurt

Kindle link for The Lord of Lightning

Click here to go to Amazon

The Lord of Lightning has been released.

click the link to find where the Lord of Lightning is available.


click here

map of Wealdland - full size - Last Elf of Lanis

Click on the map and drag it to your desktop.

You can print this out, if you would like.

Facebook page

Here is my facebook page for those so inclined.

https://www.facebook.com/Kurt.J.Hargan

March 31st goal

My gosh, I have ONE page left to write to reach my goal of finishing the second draft of The Lord of Lightning. But it is a hard page to write.

I am agonizing over this page. When you read the book, you will know exactly which page I am talking about right now.

It has to be right. It has to work. It has to be... just so. It has to be...  perfect.

When you read this page, if I have written it as it needs to be written, it will rip your guts out.

I have one more day to reach my goal of finishing this crucial second draft.

So.

I'm going to sleep on this, and hope the Muse clonks me on the head with her magic wand during the night.

I am certain I will get there. Don't worry. It will be beautiful.

A poem of mine...

A poem I wrote has been featured and criticized by a poet I respect very highly: Angel Uriel Perales. 


The poem is The Train Out of Bangor, a favorite of mine.

click here to go to the blog where my poem has been featured.


enjoy,


Kurt








Post-Script. In the poem look at two things: The use of slant, or half rhymes 'Bay/gain' 'heart/hurt'. I love these types of rhymes because they exact a little more effort from both the writer and teh reader. And, that seems to add an extra, emotional spice to the verse. Second, the use of place. Where are we? We're travelling, not just physically, but also in our relationship. So look for allusions and direct references to movement, place, and geography. KJH 3/3/12

Today and Tomorrow

Today and tomorrow I will be spending all day on the Plains of Syrenf.


The place in Wealdland where it all goes down, the Final Battle.


Today and tomorrow the fate of the Wanderer is decided.


Some will stand. Some will fall.


Maybe the Plains of Syrenf, where Deifol Hroth has constructed his new citadel, is somewhere near here:


copy and paste this to Google Maps: 


A344 junction, Amesbury, United Kingdom


;)


Kurt

Sunday Musings 3-18-2012

Life Out in the Rest of the Universe

I believe there is life out there. I believe in the banal, the mundane, the ordinary. It's why we, as humans crave the extraordinary. I believe, however, that AVERAGE is a universal constant. Now I may sound like Douglas Adams here, but I believe that as a species, we humans, so astounding with our intelligence and capabilities, are very, very, boringly average.


Think about it. All of the requirements for ascension to sentient life are, statistically speaking, the same: opposable digits on extending limbs for tool creation; upright posture to explore and conquer; organs for gathering information, eyes, ears, nose, mouth, skin; digestive tract to process calories into energy; sexual reproduction; large brain capacity used in a variety of ways for problem solving. 


Stack up the cards however you like, intelligent life, somewhere out there, is going to look depressingly, exactly like us. Occam's Razor: the simplest answer is usually the correct one. We are intelligent life. Intelligent life looks like us; other intelligent life will look pretty much like us.


You can answer until the barman throws us out that we, as a species, may not qualify as intelligent. But, you are arguing criticism, which is just subjectivity. I'm talking about cold hard data. We are at this amazing distance from the other life on our planet in terms of problem solving and creation. Life, at the same distance, on other planets, is going to look and behave sadly, exactly like the human species.


But why then, haven't we heard from the stars?


It's true radio signals take a long time to travel the vast distances of interstellar space. We have been diligently scanning the radio band for approximately fifty years now. Not a very long time to be listening in on the infinity of space. But, surely we would have heard something by now, I hear you slur into your pint. Look at the figurative ton of radio, laser, microwave and digital signals we have been vomiting out into the Great Blackness. Surely we should have detected something similar if the other races out there are as cryingly average as we are. Maybe and maybe not.  


What if.


In all the television shows I've ever enjoyed about ETs; ancient aliens; possible galatic life, never once have I heard the equivalent of Occam's Razor to the question as to why we haven't heard anything from  our assumed neighbors in space. I think there are two possibilities that fill the bill.


One: The don't want US to hear THEM. Now, admittedly, this is a paranoid approach. Why wouldn't they be interested in us? When I hear some skeptical scientist ask "Why WOULD aliens want to talk to us?" I think to myself, "Why are you a scientist?" Doesn't curiosity and discovery compel you? Wouldn't it compel a similarly intelligent species? Why do we risk life and limb to go stare at gorillas in their reserves in Africa? Because we are fascinated and curious. I believe, again as an average quality, that intelligence is naturally inquisitive. 


So, they don't want us to hear them. Why? Are we dangerous? Only to ourselves. To a species as little as a light year away, not even remotely. Are they cooking up such super secret plans that they don't want us to know about the interstellar treehouse they're building in their back yard, and they don't want us in their club? The No Humans Club. Puh-leez.


So. The paranoid answer is pretty much ridiculous. It's akin to worrying that someone in Denver with his hand to his ear is going to somehow take advantage of you because of the physical conversation you're having on the street corner with someone in Moscow.  


So that brings us to an answer that I think is pretty close to being the reason we haven't heard from the big headed aliens and why they aren't out there abducting people. Occam's Razor: The simplest answer is usually the correct answer.


Two: We are the oldest intelligent life in the universe.


I'm going to go get a cup of tea while you pick up the shattered remains of your mind, which I have just blown.


It makes complete sense. Life is ubiquitous. We already know that. What does that mean? When life CAN find a way to survive and thrive, it WILL survive and thrive. Accept it. Life is a constant and ordinary construct of our universe. So therefore, there must be life similar to ours out there. But not necessarily as old.


It stand to reason that some life will be older, some younger. Again, the power of the average. But hold on. In any subset, there is a first. Why can't that first be us? 


But the universe is 13.75 billions years old! Life on earth is only 4 (or so) billion years old!


Oh, uh, wait... it took a third of the age of the universe to get to where we are. Assuming that in the first 5 to 6 billion years radioactivity in the universe was so high, no life was possible, that still puts us right at the front of the race track, only a measly billion years or so for someone to be ahead of us!

Yes. There could be intelligent life out there that is older than ours. Further along. Assuming they haven't blown themselves to smithereens in a nuclear holocaust, which we flirted with for nearly forty years. But we would have heard from them. Something. Anything! But all we have is silence.

Again there is a caveat: What if a race evolved just like ours and blew themselves up? The window for radio waves would be rather short, time-wise. We only began to pollute the universe in earnest at the turn of the century. A hundred years of inadvertently yelling, "Hey! We're over here!" is a drop in the bucket when considered against the millions of years spanning out in the age of the universe.

It could have been that the sitcoms and military communiques of a distant race briefly bathed our planet, in that hundred year window, when we were swinging iron swords at each other. But then you have to consider the distance in terms of time.


If an alien race was ahead of us, maturity-wise, then you factor in the time it takes for their 'radio-vomit' to reach us, and you get to a fine balancing act of pushing evolution maturity to that time period when life was even possible.


Instead of running to your chalkboard to pound out the math, consider Occam again... 


We haven't heard from them yet, because they have yet to develop the capability for us to hear them!

That's not to say, in relative terms, they haven't already. Again we factor in distance against arrival of signal. It takes only four years for a radio wave from Alpha Centari, our closest neighbor, to reach us. If there is life there at a similar level to ours, we would have detected it by now.


But what if life advanced and flamed out a hundred light years distant? We probably missed it.
If life advanced and continued more than a hundred light years distant, we would have heard them by now, or we very shortly will.

Again, the odds are for picking up the simplest radio waves from an advanced race as every day here on earth passes. Because, like a land surveyor on a speeding train, the area available to search increases with every passing day. Time equals distance. As more time passes with our search, the farthest stars become available to reach us with a radio signal.


So. A hundred light years out? A drop in the bucket, galactically speaking. The milky way is estimated to be between 100, 000 to 120, 000 lightyears wide. We have only heard from a thousandth of just our own galaxy. 


What does that mean? Of the sample available to us, so far, zilch, nada, zip. Even just a thousandth of a pretty awesome piece of pie is still a pretty good statistic to draw conclusions from. They may be out there, but they're either all dead and we missed it, or they haven't developed to the level we are currently at.

And please don't bring the but-we-may-not-understand-what-their-signals-look-like argument to the table. I will pour Occam all over that shit. Life advanced as ours will look boringly like us, and behave depressingly like us, and their technology will be tediously, exactly like ours. We will immediately recognize the radio wave signals when they come. The sporting events, advertisements, and soap operas will be astoundingly, heartbreakingly familiar.


And they will come. I believe that. The radio wave signals will come. And their sitcoms and military communiques will be studied and enjoyed for centuries before we can respond. And they will study and enjoy the 'radio-vomit' we've been spewing, too. 


And I think, after we get a good look at each other, the banal similarities taken into account, we probably both won't want the other in our own treehouse.


cheers,


Kurt

The Lord of Lightning release date

I'm feeling really good about this second draft of the third book of the Wealdland Stories, and so...


I am tentatively setting a release date of May 1st, 2012 for The Lord of Lightning.


I hope this brightens your day, even if just a little.


cheers,


Kurt

Legends of Haergill

Legends of Haergill is turning out to be a very satisfying novella. I'm more than half finished with the first draft, and on schedule to meet my goal of completion by Feb. 29.
I'm incorporating much of the mythos I've constructed to support the whole world of Wealdland, but also adding links to the Berand Stories.
Two characters I always wanted to explore more, because they die rather early in The Last Elf of Lanis, were Haergill and the Mage. Well, of course the Mage helps Haergill and family escape Ethgeow when it falls...


;)


cheers,


Kurt

Right here, right now

I received a five star review of The Last Elf of Lanis that was sort of a back-handed compliment, then I felt somewhat insulted, and then my mind started on overdrive, so I knew this was a blog-idea.


The review in question on the Amazon kindle page:

Must Read If You Are Willing to Finish This Series, 

Rianne Freeman ;) 

you might as well stop reading now because the kindle store doesnt even have the last book!! wish me luck TRYING to find the other book. its probably not published yet, but i not that good at that type of stuff!!! lolz <3 me!!

Ok. Ms. Freeman obviously liked my work, but the idea of telling a potential reader "you might as well stop reading now" because the third of the series is not ready yet made me smile, and then frown, and then smile again. Smile; because she clearly likes the trilogy enough to be frustrated that the third isn't available yet. Frown; why would she tell anyone to not enjoy the series??? Smile; because I am reading too much into the notion. She likes the stories and wants all of them now.


And that's where I got to thinking...


I grew up on The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings. When I finished Frodo's great quest, and Middle Earth passed into the Fourth Age... I WANTED MORE! I read Tolkien's works as a lad, in the late 60's. The Silmarillion didn't come out until 1977. 


I am certain that the desire for MORE is what has motivated almost all writers in the fantasy genre. I will freely admit that it motivated me. "What happens next?" It is supreme frustration for a reader, but a rousing chorus of approval for the writer. Because, someone out there likes my work, and they want MORE.


But think of it...


What of the lucky few who found Tolkien's work AS IT WAS PUBLISHED! What secret joy and feeling of inner power they must have felt to touch those worlds before they became widely understood and accepted. They know that the author is there, just waiting to give you the next book. It's what fans of J. K. Rowling must have felt as the Harry Potter books came out.


So, Ms. Freeman, I salute you. You have made me feel, just a tiny bit, like J. R. R. Tolkien, like J. K. Rowling, like an author that people want MORE from. I'm feeling ten feet tall right about now, so I better close this blog before it gets sappy.


Don't worry, to all of you, there will be MORE, lots MORE...


cheers,


Kurt

refilling my head

I've just started work on a new series of novels related to the Wealdland Stories; the Berand Tales. 


Berand is the elf who forged the Sun and Moon Swords as a peace pact to end the Elf Human Wars, two thousand years before The Last Elf of Lanis.


Although I have a pretty exciting outline to tackle, I find myself wandering through news stories on the internet, and flipping through books in my modest library, wasting time. And then it hit me, and I smiled to myself.


I need to refill my head.


Stories and ideas play on an endless loop somewhere in the back of my mind until I can get them out by writing them in context in some novel or short story. I've described writing as a kind of exorcism for me, and it sure feels like it. The ideas of a story can become irritating, buzzing around my consciousness, coming to the fore at the most inopportune moments. Usually I bore my wife to tears when an idea gets too overwhelming in my head by yakking about it until I see her eyes glaze over. 


The completion of the Wealdland Stories, with the first draft of The Lord of Lightning, has left a vast hole in my mind. These were ideas that were playing on that endless loop since 2005! Six years! And now my mind is calm and rather placid. 


But calm and placid does not make for good novel writing. Although I have the skeleton of a good outline, it has no meat. So, I need to look around and see relationships, see troubles, see worries, feel connected, then the ideas that matter will come to me. 


What are the ideas that matter? The personal problems of the fictional characters. Readers have said to me that they enjoy my novels because they felt engaged with the characters, their problems seemed real, and they worried what would happen to those fictional characters in the course of the story. That's a very nice complement to a writer.


So... I haven't quite got there for Berand and the other characters of his world. I will tell you that Berand will be more 'Bilbo-ish' if I'm allowed to say that. He is someone who will grow and change with the telling of his tale. Iounelle was someone who was mostly locked into the horror of her world, and in that sense, the Wealdland Stories are more like The Lord of the Rings, again if I am permitted to say that. 


So I'm telling my complete saga kind of backwards. But not really, because there is so much more. Once you read the The Lord of Lightning, and then Legends of Haergill and Conniker's Tale, you'll understand. There is SO much more to come.


But, in the mean time, I have to fill my head back up: books, news articles, myths, music, plays, movies, talk, all the threads that create the cloth of our existence; they become reflections of the threads that make up the cloth of my fictional worlds.


And then, when I'm ready... the beautiful music of the clacking of the keyboard!


cheers,


Kurt


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The Lord of Lightning

I believe I forgot to mention here, although I have been crowing it everywhere else, that I finished the first draft of The Lord of Lightning on my goal date, this last Tuesday, January 31st, 2012.


If all goes well, the third of the Wealdland Stories should be available sometime between May of this year and June, possibly sooner.


There's been some real momentum building with the Wealdland Stories, and I thank you readers for your support. It has been the discovery and involvement of you that has made Iounelle and her story a growing success.


The fourth book, Legends of Haergill and Conniker's Tale will probably be ready sometime in late summer, as half of that is already written. But, it will be ready before the end of the year. 


Also this year I hope to offer a very exciting project, for me at least, that begins chronicling the Elf Human Wars with the first story of Berand, the elf who forged the Moon Sword that Iounelle carries and the Mattear Gram, the Sun Sword. So watch for Berand the Fool sometime later this year. 


I am VERY excited about the plot line I've sketched out for the three books that will encompass the Berand Stories. 


The best is yet to come!


Iounelle laefra!!


cheers,


Kurt




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Possibly a better resolution of map

This may be a better file of the map of Wealdland.


click here for map of Wealdland


thanks to Kenneth Wilson of Coventry, UK for helping.


Cheers, Kurt

New Map of wealdland

Here is a better file of the map of Wealdland.

cheers,

Kurt