DruidsBook

It’s all SO exciting!

December 1, 2009, 5:00 pm – 7:30 pm.  Stony Plain Public Library (4613 52 Ave.,  Stony Plain) Buy a Signed Book for Some for Christmas!  Twenty Alberta authors, illustrators, and storytellers will be selling and signing books.

December 9, 2009 7:00 pm – 8:00 pm  Strathcona County Library, in the Sherwood Park Mall, 300, 2020 Sherwood Drive in Sherwood Park.  The entrance is located on the east side of the mall! I’ll be talking about “How We Did It” : a collaboration over 4 books, 10 years, and 3000 km!

December 12, 2009 12:00 – 4:00 pm Coles Books at Londonderry Mall (main floor 148A) .  I’ll be book-signing all afternoon, so drop by for a chat! 

December 17, 2009 7 pm – 9:00 pm in Calgary at the Indigo Books at CrossIron Mills, 261055 Crossiron Blvd.  I’ll be there signing with other authors which will be a lot of fun!  Come by and say hello!  And just so you know, this is the brand new location north of the International Airport.  Access from the north: Hwy 566 turnoff (east) and then south on Barlow Trail NE (I hope).  From the south, pretty much the same thing, except I think you can keep going north on Barlow Trail NE and get there!  It’s in the mall on the east side of Hwy 2.

No, it wasn’t the Swine flu, but on the airplane from Edmonton to San Jose, I caught a cough.  A mighty cough as any of you who went to World Fantasy Convention may recall!  Today, exactly one month later, the cough is finally gone–last night’s coughless sleep was awesome!  THAT leads to the important stuff!

Scenes are being written for book 2.  Relax.. don’t panic!  Book 2- CAPTIVES- is done, although we decided in doing a final edit pass we needed a couple of bridge scenes to make it smoother.  One’s written and the other in my head..awaiting the early evening when my brain best churns the stuff out! Then Josh will do his magic and we’ll have something we both love.  Of course, we will pass it back and forth a few times, just to be on the safe side! 

Stay tuned for news of where I’m going to be over the next couple of weeks!

In the process of writing and researching Druids, it became quickly obvious that most of what we know today about the Celts, and druids in particular, was written by people who didn’t like them.  Julius Caesar, for instance, was not a huge fan of the Celts.  In the sequel to Druids we suggest what might have set Caesar on an eventual course of conquest over the Gauls.  It’s a logical, albeit entirely fictional rationale for Caesar’s quest to eradicate druids.  In reality, he needed a reason to stay out of Rome so he wouldn’t be arrested and charged with crimes against the state.  The Celts were handy.  Largely disorganized and often nomadic, they were a fairly easy target.

The propaganda machines were cranked up (Caesar’s own aggrandizing commentary still serves as an “instructional” document); the legions were dispatched, and the Gauls were crushed, tribe by tribe.  Along the way, the druids were demonized.  That’s hardly surprising given their role in holding Celtic culture together.  Wipe out the educated class of any society and it will collapse.

I recently watched a History Channel production about druids.  They reported that new evidence had been uncovered suggesting that the ancient Celts practiced cannibalism, and they had one site in Wales and a handful of bones to back up the claim.  As I recall, Pliny is also cited as an expert on the topic.  Wow.  If the tribulations of the pioneering Donner party were treated the same way, would that make me a cannibal?  I’m American, after all, and so was the Donner party.  No, I wasn’t trapped and starving in a mountain pass like they were, but we share a heritage.

The Celts had some beliefs we would find uber strange today.  Barb and I tried to put some of that strangeness in perspective in our books.  Only you can determine if we succeeded.  And please, feel free to let us know!  I can only imagine how strange the Celts would think we are.

I’ve been to several World Fantasy Cons, but I can honestly say, this one was by far: the best, the most fun, and the most rewarding.  San Jose is a beautiful city, and the venue was spectacular.  The Fairmont Hotel with its classical motif was the perfect setting for the launch of a Roman-era historical fantasy.  Okay, I admit, a Celtic hill fort setting might have been a wee bit more comfortable for Rhonwen and Mallec.  But, since Barb and I were there LIVE, and Rhonwen and Mallec attended two-dimensionally, our feelings had to take precedence.

I did my first public reading and chose a short, humorous scene in which Rhonwen and Baia are eating dinner when a Roman arrives and summons them to work for the Roman governor, Fufidious.  Barb did a great job on her reading — the dramatic confrontation between Rhonwen’s brother Telo, their mother, Baia, and an Iberian warrior drunk on wine and thirsting for Roman blood.  The room was absolutely packed, and our audience was attentive and very kind, ignoring ringing phones, clinking wine glasses, and the communal munching of chocolate.

What a complete gas!  I look forward to launching as many new books as we can!