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Lest Camelot Fall has now appeared both on Amazon and Musa Publishing's page (which also includes epub and PDF), and I'm feeling like a literary version of the parent sending their kid off on the school bus for the first time, waving hopefully from the driveway. "Have fun! Make lots of friends!" Plus all the standard worries thereof.
But it's out! I've been pins and needles all day--though I managed to mail out more house-buying material, along with enjoying a celebratory lunch that Laurie took me to at my favorite restaurant while we talked potential publicity. But I'll still be holding that deep breath for awhile.
(And building an author page on Wordpress while I'm holding it. If you look at the page when it debuts and see strings of random characters, that's probably where my head hit the keyboard after I passed out from holding my breath.)
For any and all gentlefolk who would like a sample, I'm posting an excerpt below--the entirety of the prologue. If that's not quite enough, Amazon has a Look Inside linked to my cover that will add the first two chapters and opening lines of the third.
# # #
Prologue
The Land After Arthur
December, 580 A.D.
When I was a young man I often heard—though I did not
usually listen to—the complaints of my elders about age. They
bemoaned the failures of their bodies, of strong warriors now
long withered, and how their very thoughts would break down like dust in
a river. But only now, as an old man, do I understand what they meant when
they said their greatest burdens were memories.
I have owned several names and titles in my lifetime, a few more
important than others — though I usually mistook their importance at the
time. The name I have gone by since birth, however, is Lucian. Short for
Lucianus Flavius Aurelianus. I am the grandson of Ambrosius Aurelianus,
who was High King of Britain a century ago, himself son of Constantine the
Great, the Roman emperor who made it safe for Christians to worship in
the Roman Empire. I am a descendant of Magnus Maximus, who brought
strength to Britain as emperor toward the last days of Rome’s occupation of
our island. I am the cousin of Arthur Pendragon, who was Britain’s greatest
warrior until his death four decades ago. And I am the last surviving Roman
in Britain.
My friends and foes alike care not for my genealogy; to them I am at
once both much and little. I am a horizon for them, a bridge between the
earth of what has been and the sky of what could be. I am more than they
know and less than they make me out to be.
I am seventy years old in this winter at the end of the year 580, and have
little time left. No point in wasting it with riddles and ambiguity, is there? I
bless you, Merlin, my old friend, for teaching me the Druidic art of memory
so all these things may be preserved.
I will not tell of the dark days when the Romans left this island forever,
chopping the musical name of Britannia into Britain, a hundred years
before I was born. Those are stories well known. Nor will I recount the
numerous legends, true and false and those with a healthy stew of both,
of the tyrant Vortigern or the Saxon invasions from across the sea, both
of which crafted our need for freedom that ultimately gave rise to Arthur.
Nor will I, God help me, recount the more voluminous and vigorous tales of
Merlin’s extended life or Arthur’s sadly shortened one—though people have
already nearly forgotten that Arthur never took the crown of the High King
of Britain but only called himself the Dux Bellorum of Britain, the Lord of
War. And that he fought to become what the ancients and Merlin called the
Restitutor Orbis—Restorer of the World. The one who would return the light
of civilization to Europe.
No, mine is the tale of those of us who struggled to preserve freedom
across this great island when Arthur died and the world nearly ended.
By the terrible Battle of Camlann in the spring of 537, Arthur was nearly
sixty and exhausted by many years of war and self-imposed hardship. Yet
even so, he may have yet survived but for the Long Winter—the freezing
that descended upon Britain late in 535 and gave us no warm days for a
full year—and the Great Famine that followed. Nature herself had turned
against Camelot, it seemed, and armies moved against it.
With Arthur’s death at the hands of his nephew Modred at Camlann
during what the bards now call the Lost Spring, the songs ended.
But only the songs. There were still a few of us who survived and were
forced to deal with the aftermath. We hoped to rekindle the flame of
Camelot. How we fought all our days thereafter to keep alive the smallest of
lights against the greatest darkness. And I, Lucian Aurelianus, a descendant
of kings and emperors who was once a prince of Camelot, vow my life to the
truth of the events I am about to relate. For I was there to witness them all
and would in my last days relieve this greatest burden of my memories.
But it's out! I've been pins and needles all day--though I managed to mail out more house-buying material, along with enjoying a celebratory lunch that Laurie took me to at my favorite restaurant while we talked potential publicity. But I'll still be holding that deep breath for awhile.
(And building an author page on Wordpress while I'm holding it. If you look at the page when it debuts and see strings of random characters, that's probably where my head hit the keyboard after I passed out from holding my breath.)
For any and all gentlefolk who would like a sample, I'm posting an excerpt below--the entirety of the prologue. If that's not quite enough, Amazon has a Look Inside linked to my cover that will add the first two chapters and opening lines of the third.
The Land After Arthur
December, 580 A.D.
When I was a young man I often heard—though I did not
usually listen to—the complaints of my elders about age. They
bemoaned the failures of their bodies, of strong warriors now
long withered, and how their very thoughts would break down like dust in
a river. But only now, as an old man, do I understand what they meant when
they said their greatest burdens were memories.
I have owned several names and titles in my lifetime, a few more
important than others — though I usually mistook their importance at the
time. The name I have gone by since birth, however, is Lucian. Short for
Lucianus Flavius Aurelianus. I am the grandson of Ambrosius Aurelianus,
who was High King of Britain a century ago, himself son of Constantine the
Great, the Roman emperor who made it safe for Christians to worship in
the Roman Empire. I am a descendant of Magnus Maximus, who brought
strength to Britain as emperor toward the last days of Rome’s occupation of
our island. I am the cousin of Arthur Pendragon, who was Britain’s greatest
warrior until his death four decades ago. And I am the last surviving Roman
in Britain.
My friends and foes alike care not for my genealogy; to them I am at
once both much and little. I am a horizon for them, a bridge between the
earth of what has been and the sky of what could be. I am more than they
know and less than they make me out to be.
I am seventy years old in this winter at the end of the year 580, and have
little time left. No point in wasting it with riddles and ambiguity, is there? I
bless you, Merlin, my old friend, for teaching me the Druidic art of memory
so all these things may be preserved.
I will not tell of the dark days when the Romans left this island forever,
chopping the musical name of Britannia into Britain, a hundred years
before I was born. Those are stories well known. Nor will I recount the
numerous legends, true and false and those with a healthy stew of both,
of the tyrant Vortigern or the Saxon invasions from across the sea, both
of which crafted our need for freedom that ultimately gave rise to Arthur.
Nor will I, God help me, recount the more voluminous and vigorous tales of
Merlin’s extended life or Arthur’s sadly shortened one—though people have
already nearly forgotten that Arthur never took the crown of the High King
of Britain but only called himself the Dux Bellorum of Britain, the Lord of
War. And that he fought to become what the ancients and Merlin called the
Restitutor Orbis—Restorer of the World. The one who would return the light
of civilization to Europe.
No, mine is the tale of those of us who struggled to preserve freedom
across this great island when Arthur died and the world nearly ended.
By the terrible Battle of Camlann in the spring of 537, Arthur was nearly
sixty and exhausted by many years of war and self-imposed hardship. Yet
even so, he may have yet survived but for the Long Winter—the freezing
that descended upon Britain late in 535 and gave us no warm days for a
full year—and the Great Famine that followed. Nature herself had turned
against Camelot, it seemed, and armies moved against it.
With Arthur’s death at the hands of his nephew Modred at Camlann
during what the bards now call the Lost Spring, the songs ended.
But only the songs. There were still a few of us who survived and were
forced to deal with the aftermath. We hoped to rekindle the flame of
Camelot. How we fought all our days thereafter to keep alive the smallest of
lights against the greatest darkness. And I, Lucian Aurelianus, a descendant
of kings and emperors who was once a prince of Camelot, vow my life to the
truth of the events I am about to relate. For I was there to witness them all
and would in my last days relieve this greatest burden of my memories.
