‘Behind the Text 33. ‘The Wanderer’ 3 : ‘Isle Of Disorder’

 Hi,

This book is the third in ‘The Wanderer’ saga and is set in Ireland (981-84) divided between the native Celts and Viking invaders (largely based in Dublin, Wexford, Waterford, Cork & Limerick). The earliest written chapter I can date is 2:2 on 30/12/93 but it was extensively revived both in 1998 and subsequently.

Ethelwulf the Wanderer and his followers land near Waterford keen to sell their swords in this land of turmoil but quickly find themselves out of their depth. The machinations of a treacherous employer and their destruction of him win few friends. Ethelwulf’s involvement with Gormflath (a dominant figure in that period being married in order to Olaf, King of Dublin, and then the rivals Mael Sechlainn & Brian Boru before retiring into a nunnery) make matters worse and the strangers are expelled from Ireland – including a new recruit, Gunnar Thorgeirsson, destined to be a major figure in the rest of the saga

This book is heavily involved with historical events so the detailed End-Notes (easily accessible) should be very useful. However, it also deals with myth and magic which affect events in a manner not seen elsewhere in ‘The Wanderer’ saga. I was attracted to basing part of the saga in Ireland by both the above factors. To some extent I exceed my aim to write HISTORICAL Fiction but I make no apology because all may well be included in  FICTION. Could such creatures as a Phouka or Pishogue really exist? And what about the goddess Morrigan, especially in a form appearing here? They all exist in Irish mythology and folklore

I’ve made much play with characterisation in ‘Isle of Disorder’. There are villains – Brian of Clonmel and Harald, the psychotic killer outside the walls of Waterford; then the more ambiguous such as the traitor, Fergus O’Malley or Queen Gormflath or Cuan the Pishogue; finally here are the good, but few of them, such as Padrid O’Mara and his daughter, Deirdre. Perhaps the most important character to appear for the first time is the Gall-Gael, Gunnar Thorgeirsson, a self-serving master of the axe whose dreams are so cruelly shattered. Throughout the rest of ‘The Wanderer’ his character starts to unfold, gradually learning to master weaknesses such as his temper and to use his brain as well as his muscles. Here, for perhaps the first time, Ethelwulf reveals abilities in battlefield tactics – much borrowed from ancient authorities. In this book the three leading characters of the saga (Ethelwulf, Edwine and Morkere, twin sons of Elfhere Ethwoldsson) deepen their characterisation; the latter two abandon hope of return to home and family while Ethelwulf lays aside memories filled with sorrow and accepts the ‘wyrd’ (fate) of lifetime exile.

Bob Hyslop

‘Behind the Text 32. ‘The Wanderer’ 2 : ‘Isle of Intrigues’

 

Hi

The second book in ‘The Wanderer’ saga is very different from its predecessor – if only because Ethelwulf the Wanderer and his followers spend most of the time in the background It is really a set of short stories covering murder, theft, intrigue, brutality and an academic debate about fossils! It was one of the last parts of the saga written (actually started on 15 Oct 2001 although much enlarged & revised) – none of the parts were really completed sequentially which made sewing together the tapestry of the Wanderer more difficult. I delayed writing ‘Isle of Intrigues’ because so little is known about 10^th century Jersey, the setting of the book in 979-81. Officially it was controlled Richard the Fearless, Marquess of Normandy, and a slowly developing feudal structure was emerging , but the inhabitants were a mixture of natives, Vikings, Normans (the grandsons of Viking raiders) and others. Archaeology has uncovered remains of houses and an abbey but little else: Norman history really starts a century later, perhaps with the influence of the administratively advanced England which had been conquered in 1066.

The initial story concerns murder, grave-robbing and a little matter of official corruption while Ethelwulf’s intrusion may gain him friends but also powerful enemies. The next one concerns the details of a Benedictine Monastery undermined by factional strife. Then family discord forms the backcloth to the uncovering of fossils and what medieval thinkers thought of them. Then there is a murder mystery – not so difficult if one can look beyond the obvious. Finally his seizure means Ethelwulf faces expulsion to England and certain death. His cousins secure an alliance with Viking pirates and Jersey suffers extreme violence as Ethelwulf is rescued from Gorey castle.

The title comes from the amount of activity eluding the hero – culminating in his arrest. These include: a plot to frame a prominent merchant which results in 3 murders; a plot to take over control of the local Benedictine House by those willing to ‘cooperate more fully’ with the Norman authorities; a plot to seize fossils discovered on Jersey & destroy them as anathema to the Church; a plot to murder a merchant and seize his property; two plots – the first to seize Ethelwulf and send him to his death & the second to organise a pirate raid on the island and so secure Ethelwulf’s release. Mysteries remain: the extra vote in the monastic elections, the future lives of Jeanne, Brendan the Wiry and other villains, what happened to a hoard of fossils and who won the battle of St. Helier.

Bob Hyslop

‘Behind the Text 31. ‘The Wanderer’ 1 : ‘Witness To Murder’

 

Hi,

This book may be the first in ‘The Wanderer’ saga but it wasn’t the first written - for the details go to ‘Behind The Text’ 35. This book was started on 23 Oct 1992 but  was the first part to have detailed End-Notes.. Nine ebooks make up ‘The Wanderer’ saga, originally appearing as a paperback trilogy, which spans the northern world in the late 10^th century. The hero, Ethelwulf of Arne, travels from England to Palestine over 22 years.so I deliberately started the work slowly, getting the reader OUT of the 21^st century and into Dorset in 979. It’s part of England which eighty years before was divided between the native Saxons and the invading Vikings, resulting in the use of several languages and dialects, differing customs and values, both Christianity and paganism - all resting on a tradition of honour and vengeance and racial hostility

This book is set 979.Ethelwulf is a nobleman fighting off control by his widowed mother and drawn towards a neighbour, ten years his senior, the step-mother of King Edward. But the Queen at Corfe is plotting for her young son, Ethelred, to be the sovereign and that means assassinating her step-son. Ethelwulf by chance witnesses the murder on 18 March, narrowly escapes with his life and is blamed for the crime, becoming a Wolfs-Head or outlaw. Although the area is terrorised by Haakon, chief assassin and tool of the Queen, Ethelwulf gains supporters and, trusting Truth will out, challenges that authority. It doesn’t and he fights his way out of England at a frightful personal cost.

“The Wanderer’ has extensive notes ‘so you can learn as well as be entertained! Full of historical detail, this is an epic saga!’ (to quote one reviewer). Certainly I have my influences (e.g. Franz Bengtsson’s ‘The Long Ships’ and the Icelandic sagas) but it rests firmly on historical events. My hero tends to interfere when he shouldn’t (starting at Corfe castle and ending in a back-street in Jerusalem), wins both loyalty and enmity, drifts into the life of an exile affecting his personality (see the Anglo-Saxon poem ‘The Wanderer’ for that aspect). His cousins, Edwine and Morkere, represent the good and darker side of his personality. Such inner turmoil appears in other characters (e.g. the Queen and Haakon)

The background is a 10^th century England perhaps more organised and ‘tidied up’ than reality. Once the story gets going it moves quickly  - sometimes graphically – towards a climax with a sea-battle in Poole Harbour.

Bob Hyslop

Behind the Text 1 INTRODUCING THE BLOGS

Welcome To The World Of The Self-Published
Hi,

I've now reached the stage where I feel it’s time to analyse what I've done over the last few years. I don't intend to write any more - not because I've run out of ideas but because I've run out of energy. Believe me, that's what you need to write. To misapply Edison's alleged comment on genius, writing is '1% inspiration & 99% perspiration'.

Although I’ve dabbled with writing, especially short stories, most of my life, it wasn’t until 1992 that I really got stuck in. It started as yet another short story, expanded into a novel and finished up as a trilogy called ‘The Wanderer’. It’s about a Saxon, falsely accused of killing King Edward in 979 at Corfe who flees into exile and travels throughout the Viking world for the next twenty years. As I could only tackle it now and then it took me 16 years to bring it to the publication stage. I had to do extensive research and the results I included in detailed End Notes so the reader, if they wished, could learn about ‘the facts’. This later horrified one reviewer as near sacrilege for a novel. It also didn’t help when it came to interesting potential publishers.

These days for 99.9% of would-be writers there’s a major barrier called the Publishing Industry. They’re keen on certain books by certain people but otherwise you can, more or less, forget about getting anything published. Fortunately this situation is being drastically changed by e-books and companies like Amazon.

I wasted months emailing many publishing houses, going through all the hoops required to actually submit my work, & found that 90%+ couldn't even bother to send an email acknowledgement. So, after looking at ‘Vanity Publishing’ and not being too impressed, I decided to self-publish. It’s not difficult & you’ll find there’s a lot of very helpful people out there. I arranged for the printing, the purchase of 10 ISBN’s etc.etc. The one factor I did little about was marketing - a BIG mistake.

Even so, having enjoyed the whole experience, I got out a half-written novel on Henry VIII and his wives. I expanded it, added the End Notes and passed through the SELF-publishing process again. I made one major mistake. As it’s all about CHANGE – wives, Ministers, religion, laws – I took a legal term meaning roughly ‘Change What Must Be Changed’ and called it ‘Mutatis Mutandis’. With hindsight, NOT a crowd puller.

So I switched to e-books, because I don’t like seeing unsold books lying around, and that’s what this series of blogs is MAINLY going to be about. Details of all my books can be found at www.cuthanbooks.co.uk.

See you next time,

Bob Hyslop

Behind the Text 2 FIRST THOUGHTS

How did I get here?

Hi,

Firstly, please don't take what follows as a guide on HOW to write thrillers. In many ways it demonstrates how NOT to do it. I've made mistakes, plenty of them, but I'll try to describe them honestly. I've written to please myself - so the product, at least, has pleased / amused one person - and sometimes brought surprises.

All my books are listed at www.cuthanbooks.co.uk. Wait a minute. Who or What is/are cuthanbooks? Quite simply it’s me. Last time I said I’d obtained ISBNs but for that I needed a unique Publisher Name. As my hero is a tenth century Saxon fugitive I picked on the Old English /Anglo-Saxon word for ‘bring forth’ (which could = ‘publish’) & so I became cuthan books – and that is a UNIQUE name

However, this series of blogs isn’t really about what I've written in print  - but if anybody's got any questions or comments on them, just fire away.

These blogs are about 16 thrillers set in the period 1954-73. Here is one of  the covers I've  used.

As a group they are the ‘Jonas Forbes Saga’ & I'll start  by answering a few basic questions such as WHAT, WHO, WHY & HOW.

WHAT : The series is about an ‘Enquiry Agent’ usually hired by the UK government to sort out problems which require ‘no comebacks’. They're set all over the world & employ extensive historical research to TRY and get the facts right. The opposition may be foreign governments, spies or just plain 'nasties'. They’re written light-heartedly, almost as a spoof perhaps, although they do contain adult material.

WHO: The hero is JONAS FORBES – really a combination of ‘The Saint’ and James Bond and definitely NOT myself, unless my alter-ego is having fun jerking my chain. Sometimes real historical characters appear (& usually the background is a real historical situation). However, the stories are peopled by a whole range of characters – some using traits of real personalities (including myself) but others are just conjured out of......Perhaps a psychiatrist might complete that sentence in some cases.

WHY: After publishing my 4 books in print  I’d certainly been bitten by the writing bug. These thrillers are the result. I set them in that period because the first story was written nearly 40 years ago and set in 1965. When I decided to release it as an e-book it had become HISTORICAL Fiction so I had to do a lot of research even though I'd lived through (& taught the history of) that period. 

They were written chiefly to please myself & often the stories run away into dark corners I hadn’t planned. They’re out there just in case somebody might get a few hours entertainment by reading them. They’ve been released through Amazon Kindle, Google & Smashwords. The price (May 2015) is 0.99$ each.

HOW: Really a big thank you to organisations & people who’ve helped with the e-books. So here are some in the order I encountered them - the last three are where to find my e-books:

http://www.isbn.nielsenbook.co.uk/  for advice on ISBNs  & much more besides

http://calibre-ebook.com/ for transforming my work into the various formats needed for e-books

https://www.smashwords.com/profile/view/BobHyslop   : for so much advice re’ formatting e-books & publishing my work

https://play.google.com/store/books/author?id=Bob+Hyslop&hl=en_GB  : for help in publishing

https://www.amazon.com/Bob-Hyslop/e/B005ESGSIQ   : for help with publishing

That’s enough for now. I’ll get into the real business next time but if you have any questions  I’ll do my best to answer them.

Bob Hyslop

Behind the Text 3 A FALSE START

Meet Jonas Forbes

Jonas Forbes first made his appearance in ‘And Death Will Have His Day’ in 1977. I decided to write a spoof on the ‘sex & violence’ novels of the day. As my characters ‘borrowed’ traits from friends, colleagues & students at Chichester College where I was a lecturer, you can understand why it had to be VERY secret. Of course, I dedicated the tale ‘For all friends and acquaintances who have stimulated my imagination’. Even so, I added the ryder: ‘In no way is this a tale of fact nor could they ever be part of it.’ Only a couple of people knew the book existed and nobody ever read a page.

Where did the name ‘Jonas Forbes’ come from? To star in this ‘epic’ I needed somebody with a very different name from those familiar to my particular circle  – more glamorous, so more exciting and, perhaps more ‘American’. I picked on ‘Jonas Forbes’ but since I’ve been using the internet I’ve discovered several people with that combination so they have my full apologies for taking their name in vain!

Jonas himself was loosely based on three of my favourite characters in the thriller genre: ‘The Saint’ by Leslie Charteris, James Bond by Ian Fleming and Philip Marlowe by Raymond Chandler. So respectively, he had a tendency to bend if not break the law, a distinct eye for the ladies and a run-down office.

The plot is set in 1965 with a conspiracy to initiate race riots throughout the UK and, in the chaos, make a fortune. It opens with an assassination but of the wrong man. Jonas is hired to protect a politician who’s obviously the intended target. There follows a catalogue of murder, violence and mayhem liberally spiced with sex and cynical one-liners until the ‘ungodly’ (to use a Charteris term) are routed. The police inevitably appear too late to do anything but clear up the mess. I should add here that Detective Chief Inspector John Wyatt, the long-suffering partner / stooge of Jonas possesses a lot of my own traits.

In 1983 I thought I’d try to have it published under the pen-name of ‘James Marston’ & approached a literary agent. He was impressed by the book but felt it needed to be ‘brought up-to-date’. So Jonas acquired a smarter office, with a computer, photo-copier & other contemporary gadgetry. This meant retyping the whole book on my Remington typewriter. He thanked me for my efforts and then said he preferred the original. By then the original had been all covered by comments, amendments etc., so I gave up and shoved the manuscript away in a drawer

In my next Post, ‘Phoenix’, I’ll deal with what happened next and the problems that’s caused me.

 

Bob Hyslop

Behind the Text 4 PHOENIX

Long Live Internet Publishing

Hi,

Last time I described how the first Jonas Forbes thriller was written way back in 1977 and then abandoned. It lay nestled in a drawer awaiting resurrection for 30 years.

Go forward to 2009 and I decided to launch the original as an e-book, toning down some of the original ‘sex & violence’ and fitting it more firmly into 1965. It was to be part of a series for which I'd produced short plot outlines – over time the series became extended & the plot lines amazingly distorted when 1 actually started writing. Three characters appear in virtually all the thrillers – Jonas Forbes, Vanessa Holmes nee Clarke & John Wyatt. The first story actually written finished up as 11/16 and that meant problems, especially as the others were not written sequentially.

If you go down this particular ‘primrose path’, it doesn’t quite lead to ‘destruction’ but here are some of the pitfalls I fell into & how to climb out, perhaps:

 

One character married twice so don’t get the wrong spouse in any book.

 One character married and had 3 daughters. Get the details correct.

 People’s abilities change with the years.  Get the details correct.

Careers develop. John Wyatt (aka me!) moves from Detective Sergeant to Detective Chief Superintendent between 1956 & 1973 so make sure he’s at the right level. I think I may have over-promoted the man!

 The same character may appear in several books (e.g. Tim Ripley or Lt. Boykov) but beware of all the above problems.

 Societies, including institutions, politics, personalities and history, change over time so don’t get muddled.

 

So how might you limit the effect of problems like the above?

Work sequentially. If I’d started the series in 1965 Jonas would have had a much shorter career & I‘d  have had far less fun with the research. So I rejected what’s usually the wise policy.

Keep DETAILED analyses of key characters. I ‘know’ where Jonas went to school (more than 10 years in front of myself at a school in Croydon), his early jobs, his physique, habits & preferences etc.

Produce a list of characters in each book including EXACTLY where they’re described & key events. They MIGHT reappear further along the line & this is essential for checking details..

Keep notes on details of the settings. In my case, for example, it included accounts of sections, leaders etc. of both the KGB & GRU Soviet security systems over the period.

Note down minor details to drop into the narrative. In my case, these included Che Guevara’s command of English, the 1958 French railway system in 1958, Mafia terminology, phrases in a variety of languages & UK TV in 1959. The internet has made such research (exciting in itself) all much easier.

I seem to have gone on for far too long. Next time, I’ll look at the first book chronologically in the ‘Jonas Forbes Saga’ and how it DOESN’T fit in with the others.

N. B. In this Blog individual books in passing may be identified as BOOK 7 etc.
which link to lists in every book.

BEWARE EVERY DISCUSSION MAY CONTAIN SPOILERS.

 

Bob Hyslop