Book-writing is a three-ring circus (complete with clowns and animals). At any given time there is 1: The Book Just Written, which is being edited, typeset, proofed, published, and needs to be promoted. While this is going on I am trying to write 2: The Book of the Moment: the one I’m working on pretty much nine-to-five, five days a week. It takes about ten months of writing and two months of re-writing from first word to last. Meanwhile, I’m beginning to think ahead to 3: The Next Book. I work up a proposal for the new project several months before finishing the current one so that by the time I’m ready to begin writing, the idea is set and the publisher is on board.
The actual writing, then, takes about a year—but it takes roughly three years from concept to printed copies.
This is a far cry from the romantic vision of the writer, locked away in his garret with nothing but a typewriter, a bottle of whiskey, and an overflowing ashtray, with his editor—and creditors—banging at the door, demanding that he slip a few pages of his deathless prose underneath the door…but it works for me.
When I was a teenager, I was reading Ian Fleming, Robert Heinlein, Mark Twain, and (under duress) Thomas Hardy. My wife says the influence of the James Bond books is marked. Charles Dickens, Walter Scott, Jules Verne, Stevenson, and Dumas are my literary heroes. I’ve had great enjoyment and drawn great inspiration from the Norwegian author Mika Waltari (The Egyptian, The Etruscan, The Roman, The Wanderer, and others). Martin Cruz Smith is the living novelist I most enjoy for solid entertainment. Lawrence Block’s columns in The Writer and his book Telling Lies for Fun and Profit were greatly encouraging and instructive in the early days. I am irresistibly drawn to historical heretics because they give me new ideas on what might have been; Julian Jayne’s masterpiece, The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind is a book I come back to every now and then. Really.
To get a chronological reading of the Pendragon Cycle, first read Taliesin. Then read Merlin. Next, read the first two parts of Arthur, followed by Pendragon and Grail in order. Finally, read the last part of Arthur, and, if you’re keen to complete the marathon, finish with Avalon, which recapitulates the themes in a modern setting.
The names I used in the Pendragon books came from various sources, mostly ancient texts of one sort or another, including the Mabinogion. Some are names which continue, with slight alterations, in Welsh, Scottish, and Irish, today; others are names which are no longer in common use, but could be revived.
My surname is Scottish, deriving from a placename which can be found in the Border country of Scotland where a “law” is a hill, and those who dwelled at the foremost part of the hill lived at the “head”. There is a tiny village in the Borders bearing the name Lawhead, and I visited it once to see Lawhead Farm, Lawhead Croft, and even a Law-Head Cottage. I’d never seen the name hyphenated before and asked the woman living there what it meant. She told me it meant the sign painter got carried away in a fit of creativity and took it on himself to add the hyphen.
Lancelot has not been left out, I have simply returned to him his Celtic name Llenlleawg. You will also find Galahad (Gwalchavad) and all the other lads. However, my treatment of Lancelot will not track with Mallory’s late medieval, largely French, re-telling of the Arthurian myths; rather, it is consistent with earlier and, to my mind, more authentic Celtic myth and history. All this guff about courtly love is a perverted concoction of late medieval French romance which has no real part in the legends of Britain.
In the late 1800’s, the intrepid Professor Rhys traveled around Britain and her islands for many years gathering legends and tales from the last of the Celtic speakers who were dying out. He collected, organized, and analyzed these stories and the results were presented in Celtic Folklore, a two volume edition published by Oxford University Press in 1901. Professor Rhys was the first person I ever encountered who suggested that Llyonesse (an old name for the extreme southwest portion of Britain) and Atlantis shared a connection, and that many of the legends involving Fair Folk derived from this connection. Enchanted with this notion, I wove it into the Pendragon Cycle in order to explain some of the puzzles and questions surrounding the myths of Taliesin, Merlin, and Arthur. Thus, although it is not widely known, the Atlantis/Britain connection is well documented, at least in terms of folklore.
All the places mentioned in The Pendragon Cycle really exist, or once did. The difficulty in finding them on the present-day map is due to the fact that I’ve employed the ancient place names in use in fifth and sixth century Britain. Some of these, oddly enough, can still be found pretty much intact in Wales, but most have changed. Caer Lial, for example, is near modern-day Carlisle in Scotland; and Caer Myrdden is Carmarthen in southern Wales. In those two names you can see the ancient word still peeking through, as it were. Ynys Avallach is a little more challenging—it is Glastonbury; but Glastonbury is one of those places that has worn a number of names over the years. For most of the names in the book a little detective work will soon yield the modern name.
I visit virtually every place in virtually every book, trying to imagine what that place would have been like during the period I’m writing about.
After living in North Africa and troubling Rome for a considerable time—having migrated there from their homelands in what is now southeastern Europe—the Romans grew tired of the harassment and decided to put an end to it by invading Carthage, which the Vandals had made their capital. The invasion went ahead, and the Vandals fought; but when the battle turned against them, they climbed into their ships and sailed right out of recorded history. What happened to them after that remains a matter of historical debate, but it is not too great a stretch to believe they sailed north, arriving first in Ireland and then Britain. I suspect the invasion is recorded in Arthurian tradition as an animal tale: Arthur and his warrior band fighting a giant wild Boar, first in Ireland and then in Britain, which appeared and devastated the land. My book, Pendragon, details the account of this obscure event as it may have happened.
In the story, Merlin is driven insane with grief and rage; all hope gone, he flees into the forest and hides from a world he can no longer trust or love. There he spews out his demented, yet curiously moving, rants to the earth and stars, awaiting the day of his release and redemption. While some readers can find this extremely upsetting, I think it was essential to the story, and helped increase the emotional depth and richness of the tale. Also, there were good historical reasons for putting Merlin through this harrowing time; many of the old legends speak of him as a madman and mystical forest dweller. This was a way to incorporate those legends into my tale.
When Christianity came to the British Isles, possibly as early as 54 AD, it was welcomed and embraced in an extraordinary way. Many viewed the new faith as the fulfillment of what they already believed. In several ancient legends, Arthur is spoken of as a true Christian king. It has been my attempt to put flesh onto these bones, to speculate how this aspect of the tales might have played a part in the legends, as well as how it all might have looked to someone alive then. In other words, to try to put back in what so many others leave out.
While it is true that the historic record is sketchy, there are scores of tantalizing clues and traces—a fragment of verse here, a place name there—but little that academic historians will accept as definitive proof of his existence.
All the same, that is slowly beginning to change as more is learned about the so-called “Dark Ages” and the time of Arthur. Every now and then there is word that someone in Wales or Scotland has uncovered a gravestone, a provocative ruin, or some other possible clue that promises to solve the puzzle…. Some believe, as I do, that if the search were to be moved from the southwest of England to the Borders of Scotland it might bear more fruit.
On another level, though, I ask myself what person or series of events has created such an enduring story? Is it likely to be based on nothing? I believe that, once all the layers of legend are stripped away, there remains a kernel of truth. In other words, Arthur—or someone so much like him that it may just as well be him—did exist and did rise to the defense of his land when all hope seemed lost, and that act was so momentous it lives on in the Arthurian myths.
Copyright © Stephen Lawhead, 2003