Let me tell you about my book...

This is Part One of my serial Novel THE SHIELD OF LOCKSLEY which is on my 'stack, and FREE to read. But why would you read it, if you don't know what it's about? So, let me break it down for you...

I want to tell you where my story’s going because it’s long, and it’s getting longer. I have it “sort of” plotted out, and by that, I mean I have a Table of Contents that I wrote when I was still a teenager. The idea was to write a series of books, maybe five of them, (think THE THREE MUSKETEERS). I wanted to create a young knight and follow his career as he moved up to become a Knight of the Round Table. I had it all figured out, but put it aside, telling myself I’d get back to it later. I don’t know what the reason was because I was young and frivolous at the time, (so it was probably drug related), just like everyone else around me. Suffice it to say…it was the 80’s and leave it at that.

And now I’m getting back to it, and it’s literally been fifty years. I don’t think I could have written this book when I was younger. I mean, c’mon, I was probably still a virgin when I came up with this. So no, if I wrote this fifty years ago, it would’ve been a shit-show. Now, older, wiser, retired, and having written for fifty years, I’ve actually learned a thing or two about writing.

So let me fill you in on what my book's about. I’ve seen a few of those “essays” where writers tell you about their characters, and then they get into their psyche and tell you all sorts of things you never even thought about asking. I’m not going to do that. I’m going to tell you what prompted me to write this story in the first place. In case you don’t know, the serial I’m writing is called THE SHIELD OF LOCKSLEY. I hate the title, but that doesn’t matter at the moment. (BTW, I like the title THE BEGGAR’S KNAVE.)

Anyway, let me tell you where all of this came from, and then you can decide as to whether or not you want to subscribe and read it. (It’s dirt cheap at $30/year.) I went to a high school that had a pretty good library for the time. (In the 70’s). I say that because they had a copy of Tennyson’s IDYLLS OF THE KING, and I was just getting to know him in one of my classes. It was the kind of book that has the text on one side of the page and annotated notes on the other. I regret to say, somewhat abashedly, that I stole that book. My only regret doing that was that it was a paperback. I was the only one to ever sign it out, and it had been there since 1965.

After reading that, I stumbled across a Penguin copy of Le Morte D’Arthur; I bought that one. I read it and loved it. It was Olde English and had a glossary with the names of every knight in there. It also had definitions for the text to make for easier reading. I lost that book over time, but managed to find another copy; instead of two volumes, it was one. Even better.

That’s where I first came across the name of Sir Grummer Grummerson, a Scottish Knight, who only has the one appearance in the book. My first thought of this Knight was that he was a drunk. A laggard drunkard would be the better description of him. I needed a hero though, and he certainly wasn’t ideal “hero” material. I came up with my own character: Locksley. It was never intended that the name of Locksley was supposed to be confused with Robin Hood, that just happened. He was a young bachelor knight on his way to Camelot to take part in the Tournament Of Youth, and I placed the story in and around the year 535 CE.

And this is where things just…happen when you’re a pantser.

I found my notebook. It was a duo-tang binder from high school and had fifty pages of pencil scribbled story that was so faded I could barely make sense of it. Part of it was in pencil, part of it was ink; all of it was shit.

But I typed up the Table of Contents. It was seven pages long. Each chapter had a heading. And there were a few that I’d divided into sub-chapters. Like CHAPTER FOUR. That one is called: THE QUEEN’S GAMBIT and comes to you in five parts. I even went as far as to write down the page numbers before I even started writing. I’d plotted out the length of the book before I even wrote a page of it. I made a PROLOGUE, when every How To Write book out there said, don’t use a Prologue.

So I made it into two parts.

The book itself is in FIVE PARTS.

Now, in order for me to know where the book was going, I had to have an idea of where I was going with it fifty years ago. This is not a spoiler alert, but just so you know, some of these guys actually die in Le Morte D’Arthur. In fact, most of them will. But not Grummer. You see, I’d already written a novelette/short story (IN DAYS OF VAST DARING)

that had Sir Grummer in it, and in that story, he had one leg. He lost that leg in the battle before King Arthur’s final battle against Modred. So you see, he has to live. And Sir Bedivere was the “first made and last” knight of King Arthur, (according to Tennyson, okay, and Mallory) so he has to live as well. That’s why I chose them as major secondary characters. And the third one, Sir Lamorak de Gales, was “beset upon and slain,” by Gawain.

This is all background info I had picked up.

Now, in order to weave my story through this, I had to have something to draw all of these characters together, and that is the Tournament of Youth. Grummer and Bedivere are old drinking buddies. The other thing I wanted to show, was that most of the Knights were old. I mean old. Arthur’s been on the throne some 30-35 years. So someone like Bedivere, and Grummer, who were there from the beginning, are in their fifties. They’re old and worn out. The younger generation — Locksley and his crowd — are looking to replace the Old Guard.

Now I needed bad guys. Well, that’s not hard. Gawain kills Lamorak, it says it right there in Black and White, and Modred kills Arthur, which is also there in B&W. (But we already know all this going in, right?) Gawain and Modred are brothers. But there are other Orkney brothers, and together, I called them The Orkney Knights. Agravaine, and Gaheris stand with Modred. Gawain stands with Arthur (he was once his Squire), and the youngest, Gareth, is coming to Camelot to take part in the Tournament of Youth.

Are you with me so far?

Now all of these things fit together perfectly. These are “the circumstances” of the story, in that: I know how it ends, and I know how it starts. But what else is there that will make it just that much more? Well, the Orkney Knights want to kill King Pellinore for having slain their father during what is known as THE WAR OF THE TWELVE KINGS. There’s a big battle, and Pellinore is said to have slain King Lot of the Orkney Islands. This is the battle that is fought in the second part of the Prologue, and after which Locksley is knighted for having saved King Pellinore. Locksley is dubbed Knight Of The Field. Thing is, in the beginning of my story, the Orkney knights have sworn vengeance on King Pellinore for having killed their father.

What’s another little fact…? Well, Lamorak de Gales is the son of King Pellinore. And the biggest secret of all? Locksley is the one that killed King Lot, saving Pellinore from almost certain death by doing so. (These are not big reveals so don’t get your panties in a knot.) The final straw is Lamorak, as it’s now a dozen years after the war, and he is dinking King Lot’s widow. Yes, that’s right, he’s banging the bitch! Now the Orkney boys want to kill him for doin’ the deed with their mother, as well as killing his father for killing theirs.

And that is the background of the story as it’s laid out in the first few chapters, or so.

In order to understand what’s going on, we have to tell you who Locksley and Grummer are travelling with. The Boys are the foot soldiers who have been with Grummer for a good thirty years. They are his drinking companions. There is no Squire. That used to be Locksley. They’ve known Locksley since he first came to Inverness Castle when he was just a child. Locksley’s parents were killed during the first battle of The Saxon Wars.

The story has a lot of political intrigue. We’re going to call it that because it’s one faction against another. The younger generation against the older; the New Religion of the White Christ, going up against the old Druidic lore. As well as the love affair of Lancelot and Guinevere sort of hanging in the background.

The story starts off on the rode to Camelot where Grummer is telling Locksley about Palomides and the fact the man has camels that he rides. One for him, and one for his Squire. Palomides is a Saracen, married, and the son of a tribal king. He’s a Pagan Prince, but educated. Grummer is also an educated man — but self taught. He and Bedivere hired themselves out as mercenaries and fought in lands as far away as Italy, where Grummer learned to read and write during a year-long convalescence of Bedivere. He started to study philosophy, and reads Marcus Aurelius. But he is great friends with Lamorak, and in order to entrap Lamorak, the Orkneys feel they have to get Grummer out of the way. Problem is, Grummer and Locksley run across Ector de Maris, the half-brother of Lancelot, at the same time the Orkneys decide to kidnap Grummer and send him into slavery. It’s a matter of being in the wrong place and wrong time for Ector s he is kidnapped as well.

But they fail to do anything with Locksley, who at the time is locked in a room with two whores.

Now while all of that is going on…

Lancelot and his Squire, Lionel, (nephew of both Lancelot and Ector) have gone out “adventuring.” They’ve been gone for quite a while. But one day Lancelot takes a nap and Lionel goes out for a ride, only to get captured by the same bad Knight who has Grummer and Ector locked up.

**The Queen, in the meantime, leaves Camelot and goes out in search of Lancelot… (but more on that in a bit.)

Locksley has picked up a young Squire, Brennis. He’s a boy who lived at the whore house they were visiting before all the shit hit the fan. They, (and by they I mean Locksley, his new Squire, and The Boys,) set out to free Grummer and Ector, and bump into the Queen’s party. And who do you think is in the Queen’s party? Pellinore, who is escorting his daughter and young niece to Camelot, where he hopes to marry them off. He’s an old friend of the Queen’s, and they are invited in for breakfast. Pellinore starts to tell a tale of the old days, but then suffers a debilitating stroke. It’s the same time that Locksley and his Squire appear in the Queen’s camp with news that Grummer and Ector have been taken prisoners. The Queen refuses to offer him help, saying Grummer probably neglected to pay his last bill. But Locksley has just seen the love of his life — the King’s niece, the Lady Gwenellyn.

In the meantime, Locksley and The Boys pursue their efforts to find Grummer and Sir Ector. They stumble across the camp of the Orkney Knights and overhear a plot against the King. Not good. They leave, and later, the small group runs into Lamorak, the very man the Orkneys are trying to kill, and hoping to keep Grummer away from.

He’s not alone though; Lamorak is a womanizer. To be honest, he’s a fuck-rat, and will do it with any woman, willing or unwilling, because, you know: No means maybe. He happens to be with The Lady of the Lake, a fancy title for a Druid priestess who has taken over the position of the Myrrdin (Merlin’s old post). He’s been banging her, planning to pass her off to his Squire when he’s bored with her. Yeah, not a nice guy when it comes to women. However, the woman has powers beyond anything Lamorak knows, and after having what she needs from him, melts into a pool of water.

Like whoa!

Yeah. This all happens in the first four chapters. It’s the fourth chapter that is divided into five parts, remember when I said that?

So now they have Lamorak on their side. He’s considered to be one of the best Knights of the Round Table, right up there with Lancelot and Tristram. Probably the third greatest Knight of the realm. But just his being there improves their chances. That’s when they run into Palomides, on his camel, and their chances are even better. In the meantime, one of The Boys has left to find more supplies and hopefully more help. Locksley and the others come up with a plan. But before they can do anything, they are attacked just as Geoffrey, ( The Boy sent out to get supplies) comes riding into camp with an arrow sticking out of him. It is the Orkney Knights attacking. Godfrey, the other one of The Boys, has his leg shattered, and will end up losing it.

And here is where it gets interesting…

The Queen, Morgana Le Fey, is the lover of Tarquin. She is plotting against the King, her half-brother. She is using Tarquin to get what she needs out of him. Tarquin captures knights and locks them up in his Keep, then sells them to a Gaul named Accolon, who takes them out to the slave markets of Constantinople. Accolon also happens to be a lover of the Queen. (She likes to spread her good will about, it seems.) During his journey to the Keep to pick up his latest batch of prisoners, Accolon attacked Pellinore’s group. (They had decided to turn back to Listinois.) Pellinore’s daughter is up in the hills enjoying the hot springs when the attack occurs. Gwenellyn, Pellinore’s niece, is taken Prisoner and thrown into the dungeon.

Licking their wounds, they stumble across Lancelot, and tell him his brother has been taken prisoner and is being held in the Keep of a man named Tarquin. Lancelot vows to help. Locksley has devised a plan where he and his young Squire, Brennis, will sneak into the Keep and set the prisoners in the dungeon free, while Lancelot and Lamorak distract the guards of the Keep.

And who should Locksley find upon entering the dungeon area? Why Gwenellyn, of course. But he’s locked in the cell with her when Morgana closes the door behind him and seals him in. In the meantime, Brennis finds a cell where there are other women locked up, as he frees them, he comes across the Lady of the Lake, who has appeared as a vision to talk to Brennis and tell him who he really is.

Brennis leaves, confused, and finds the imprisoned Knights. In the meantime Locksley has managed to break the door down, but breaks his sword in the process. (Oh, and by the way, he had taken his chain mail off in an effort to climb up the Keep’s wall and enter through the garbage chute.) Locksley grabs a torch and throws it into the next cell. It starts a fire and they run out, hoping to escape. Thing is, the Keep is made of wood, surrounded by a large moat.

Long story short, Locksley saves the girl and loses his armour as the Keep comes down on top of it. You see, the moat comes crashing through the walls and eats at the very foundations of the Keep.

This has been Part One. It is fourteen Chapters, and those chapters are available for FREE. They are not paywalled. The rest of it is, however.

This is a King Arthur tale without the King, insomuch as it is about those around him. It is about the aging Knights reluctant to do battle when they could retire to the countryside, drink wine, and visit the nearby brothels. They just want a little peace and quiet.

But that ain’t about to happen.

It is slated for 52 Chapters. Right now, taking a break from it and writing this, I’m on Chapter 37. This is NOT the King Arthur you grew up on. It’s not PRINCE VALIANT, nor is it THE MISTS OF AVALON or THE ONCE AND FUTURE KING. It is my own take on the story. It is near the end of Camelot. You can say it is an end of days story if you want. It has sex, and violence, swearing, and loss, and deaths; it is not what you might think it is. It’s a rollicking adventure, with political manoeuvring against the reign of an old King by both the Northern Forces and the Church in Rome.

So far, this story is 187,000 words. I looked at what’s left, averaged out every chapter for about 3200 words (and one of these chapters also has sub-chapters), and we’re looking at another 72,000 words. If I bring it in “light”, it will be 250,000 words. If I get carried away, it could be anywhere from 260,000-275,000.

THIS is the book I want to publish…

At those numbers, we’re looking at a 760 page novel. The only way I can publish something that big, is to self publish. The only way I can afford to do that, is for my Subscribers and Followers to up-grade. For my little novella length books, I would need 70-75 PAID, but for this…

I’d have to have 150 Paid Subscribers.

Is that you? Are you an avid book collector? Are you willing to spend $30 to have a First Edition limited printing of what has the potential to be a best seller? Then what are you waiting for?

Up-Grade today!