Legion of Mono captures the resolve of a people’s last military leader in the hours before what he knows will be a final battle. His grief at leaving his partner and their child; his pride in his family’s honour; his strong bonds with his fellow soldiers: all are skillfully expressed. The author has created, in twenty-five pages, a glimpse into a world that feels solid and complete, a remarkable achievement. The ending left me wanting more, of both the world and the story. Highly recommended.

A hard truth about being a writer is that we mine everything that happens in our lives, if not to recreate the actual event, then to use the emotions involved.

My brother died last week, too young at sixty-four, taken by an aggressive cancer diagnosed too late, a lack of symptoms until it had spread irrecoverably. I am devastated; even writing these words is hard.

There is a difficult balance to maintain, too: I am the bereaved sister, but I also must be the strong adult aunt, the practical sister-in-law, all at once. Not easy, and tiring, on top of the jet lag.

But. There is that detached observer in my brain, saying: remember this. Remember how you feel, every bit of it. Watch how your family members are reacting, remember it. Remember how the two days and 5000+ miles of travel felt, the exhaustion. Remember that peanut M&Ms and Tim Horton’s coffee made you cry, because that’s what we shared on birding trips. Remember the deep breaths you took before facing your sister-and-law and the nieces and nephew. Remember everything, because some day, you’ll use it. Not in its present form, but you’ll use it.

And part of me hates that. I can’t stop it, though; it’s who I am. I shape and define and explain my world with words, some of them – most, these days  –  fiction. Imagination can take a piece of writing only so far; it needs to be fed by honest emotion as well.

So I accept that detached observer in my mind, recording dispassionately what’s happening. Some day these feelings will make their way into a story. I have no idea when, or what story.  Maybe they’ll generate their own. It won’t be soon. But when they do, that story will be, in its way, a memorial for my brother, whom I loved, and love, and will miss forever.

In the third book of my Empire’s Legacy trilogy, my protagonist Lena is thinking about language:

“I tried to sort out the inchoate ideas forming in my mind. About language, and meaning, and if all concepts were universal, and could be translated. About the gap between intent and comprehension, between what was meant and what was understood, and the assumptions and shared experience encompassed—or not—in any exchange.’

While this is a theme in the Empire’s Legacy trilogy, and the sequel currently in progress, it’s also recently become of immediate personal interest to me. Exactly how to categorize the series for Amazon’s keywords and classifications is very far from simple, because of that gap between what is meant, and what is understood.

I’ve always called the series ‘historical fantasy’. But that has resulted in some vocal protest: it’s not fantasy, because there is no magic. But the world is not real, I would counter, so doesn’t that make it fantasy?  Not in everyone’s mind. I tried ‘alternative history’. Again, disagreement, because there is no historical event being mirrored, only an echo of the Roman Empire and its provinces. Speculative fiction? Perhaps, but a term misunderstood or not familiar to too many.

This is minor, of course: I’m marketing books, not trying to create a shared understanding of world-changing issues. But in Book III, Empire’s Exile, and more so in the work-in-progress, Empire’s Reckoning, that’s exactly what my characters are doing, trying to negotiate treaties that change the world. Which makes me think about Lena’s question, and its applicability to both my fictional world and our real one. How do you reach a shared understanding when simple words like ‘fantasy’ – or ‘equality’ or ‘citizen’ – mean such different things to different people? When a word like ‘immigrant’ conjures up positives in one mind and only negatives in another?

As writers we often strive for clarity (unless perhaps you are a poet, or James Joyce), but there will always be a gap between what is meant by the writer and what is understood by the reader. That is good, because it makes the world the reader enters theirs alone: shared by others, but always comprehended slightly differently. As long as we recognize that, and recognize too that another reader’s experience may different from yours. A starting place to discuss assumptions and shared experience, not a reason to end a conversation that might enlighten, illuminate and surprise.

As for the series?  How about ‘imaginative fiction’?

This is a reflection about coincidence, or synchronicity, or possibly about me seeing connections where there are none, except in my mind. It doesn’t matter, really.

I am, by training and education and part of my working life, a scientist; an applied geneticist, precisely, and that training and education spills over to my avocation as a birder and amateur field biologist. But by possibly a deeper inclination, a desire for a mythological interpretation of existence that goes beyond the seeming black-and-white of science, I find deeper truths in the worlds created by certain writers: JRR Tolkien first and foremost.

A friend of mine is groaning at this point…not elves, he is thinking, much as CS Lewis said at the meetings of the Inklings. Which brings me back to the coincidence, or synchronicity, I mentioned at the beginning. The Inklings, or more precisely their meeting place, are part of this: for many years, their famed Oxford writing group met at a pub called the Eagle and Child, better known as the Bird and Baby, in St Giles’ Street. Here CS Lewis and Tolkien and many others shared and discussed their writing, giving feedback on what are some of the most influential fantasy and science fiction novels of the twentieth century, the books that made me, first, want to be a writer, and then taught me how to write.

But about 75 miles away, and a few years later, at the pub named the Eagle (but once the Eagle and Child, too)  in Cambridge, Francis Crick and James Watson announced their discovery of the structure of DNA at lunchtime one day. This too, later, caught my imagination, in a different part of my brain: there is another magic in unravelling the secrets the double helix carries, deciphering the language written in the pairings of arginine and guanine, thiamine and cytosine.  Nor are the day to day processes of scientific research – the planning, the first attempts, the repetition and the fine-tuning, interspersed with moments of inspiration and realization – very different from those of writing.

There is a place – not a physical place, or not one in this world – where the helix of life and the helix of story intersect. The axle-tree of all the worlds, Guy Gavriel Kay called it: Spiral Castle, the still point around which the worlds spin, a mystical, sacred place from Welsh mythology, where resurrection is possible and life can be created, or recreated. As it can be, from DNA, or from story.

DNA writes our stories in one way; words write them in another. That both these crucibles of meaning in my life occurred in part at pubs that at one time shared the name of The Eagle and Child is only coincidence, but out of such connections we create meaning. Or perhaps, recognize it.

If you are lucky enough to live in Guelph, Ontario, or nearby, your options to purchase any or all of the Empire’s Legacy trilogy, including the third book, Empire’s Exile, include:

The Bookshelf – this would always be where I would direct purchasers first, as buying here supports both the business and myself

or

directly from the publisher arboretumpress.com (which includes free delivery in Guelph and nearby).

In a world reminiscent of northern Europe after the fall of the Roman Empire, this historical fantasy series explores the meaning of loyalty and love in a rapidly changing society. Following the protagonist, Lena, over a period of four years, from the day a soldier rides into her small village with an audacious request – that women learn to fight – to a last, desperate battle to save her land – Empire’s Legacy considers the impact of war and violence on men and women, and the price we pay for freedom.

“Involving, evocative, intelligent – an outstanding historical fantasy…Lena is many-sided—soldier, sailor, horsewoman, hunter, student of history. She is also appealingly complex—bisexual, willful, sensitive, caring…” Maria Luisa Lang

“The consistency of the ever-evolving plotlines and character development has been nothing short of brilliance…” Cover to Cover

“Lena is many-sided—soldier, sailor, horsewoman, hunter, student of history. She is also appealingly complex—bisexual, willful, sensitive, caring…”  Maria Luisa Lang

“..a goldmine of anticipation, apprehension, joys and hardships, survival and all-consuming, accepting love.”  Liis Scanlon, Cover to Cover

99 cent weekend continues on Amazon

https://tinyurl.com/empireslegacy

Available Nov 29 – Dec 4 for 0.99 cents each on Amazon

In a world reminiscent of northern Europe after the fall of the Roman Empire, this historical fantasy series explores the meaning of loyalty and love in a rapidly changing society. Following the protagonist, Lena, over a period of four years, from the day a soldier rides into her small village with an audacious request – that women learn to fight – to a last, desperate battle to save her land – Empire’s Legacy considers the impact of war and violence on men and women, and the price we pay for freedom.

“Involving, evocative, intelligent – an outstanding historical fantasy.” Maria Luisa Lang

“The consistency of the ever-evolving plotlines and character development has been nothing short of brilliance…” Cover to Cover