Dark Garret

 Hello everyone!

It looks like its a day where I do two posts. I don't think I've done that yet. The previous post was about some sad news in the graphic novel and comic industry. Its a shame that Kevin O'Neill has died. He was as old as my dad and had also been the illustrator for some of the earliest graphic novels and comics I'd read, beyond the obligatory Asterixes, Tintins, Beanos and Dandys.

But onto some other things.

What started out as a break from my fantasy novella involving an elf barbarian and his adventures to Fomori lands with a wizard because of strange gods, I wanted to write something that I could use the Lester Dent Mast Formula on. I wanted to give it a go, see if it was a fun way of writing and if the story would be any good. Well, I've not started it yet, even after a week.

Lester Dent of Doc Savage fame

I might do an article on the Lester Dent Master Formula, or a couple, one explaining what it is and another as a sort of review perhaps, but regardless, this last week, I seem to have gone done a rabbit hole of Anglo Saxon history.

It started out as an attempt to buff up on some local history. I was also familiar with the time period so thought it would be an easy enough fit to getting a story started. But no.

The villages that I wanted to base the story in never quite fitted because the lordship of the place would be taken over by a Norman lord who wasn't really present, so I decided to base the story in the village I grew up in.

With decades of first hand experience of the place, writing a story on the place should be easy, yes? No, the village, at the time, was run by three separate lords, only one of which was present.

You can fit the story around all the politics involved in that can't you? Maybe, but I've had to learn about a fair amount of Anglo-Saxon law and land demarcation, as well as with the three sets of lords that constantly change, and with armies being raised in the area.

It doesn't help that parts of the land were held by the king, who conveniently kept changing every so often because politics likes to poison or stab their kings, and also with ever changing list of Earls who held the lands. One of whom was Leofric of Mercia, who was married to Lady Godiva. Another was Aelfgar of Mercia. Both of which had trouble with the Vikings. Then before that there was a Morcar who got stabbed by an agent of Aethelred the Unready, who previously have made him fairly autonomous in the area who later got stabbed for being a traitor.

Aethelred the Unready

Earl Leofric of Mercia with
Lady Godiva

Lady Godiva

Earl Leofric in The Last Kingdom

That's not forgetting that there was another Morcar, who became Earl of Northumbria because he sorted out civil unrest, but was only Earl for a year. He led an army raised in the area with his Brother, Edwin, who became Earl of Mercia. But there was a gap of about four years before he took up the title from his father, Aelfgar, who in turn became Earl of Mercia twice, Earl of East Anglia twice and was exiled at one point to France - where a lot of exiled Mercians seem to go. exiled Northumbrians seem to come to Mercia for some reason.

Earl Edwin of Mercia

Earl Edwin of Mercia

Earl Morcar of Northumbria

Earl Morcar of Northumbria

Earl Edwin of Mercia and
Earl Morcar of Northumbria

But part of the problem with all of that is, I was sort of hoping to make my character an illegitimate son of one of the Earls, but none seem to have been in the area at the right time to have sired a bastard son, despite all the convoluted stuff that would put Game of Thrones to shame.

With there being a sub-manor in the village of Aston on Trent, I thought I could have the lord of that - Uctebrand - as the main character. Maybe. But at the time I want my hero to be active, he'll be in his early 50s, which isn't necessarily a bad thing, but he's been such a loyal farmer for his entire life, I am really struggling to see him take up the mantle of a sword and sorcery hero.

All Saints, part Saxon church, Aston on Trent

As Uctebrand is virtually unheard of - even his name is uncommon in the history books as there were only ever four people in the books to have ever been called Uctebrand - it could be possibly that he had a bastard son of his very own, maybe I'll try and work something out with that.

But struth, that feels like its been a long and arduous journey. I described it to a friend as being as if you looked at all the stabbings and dragons in the Games of Thrones, replaced the dragons with more stabbings, added a few more stabs as sprinkles on top and then washed it down with a nice warm mug of stabbings.

Anyway, hopefully I'll have deciphered something useful from all this and will have actually have made headway into a story by the time I write another blog post.

I'll see you all next week.