In 1972, I was working as head surgical technician in the dental service of a naval hospital. We did quite a bit of exciting work, but the day to day routine consisted of assisting in the extraction of impacted wisdom teeth.

The next day after the vision of the young boy in the tower (yesterday’s post), some unfilled appointments left me with a couple of hours to kill. I sat down and wrote the first chapter of what would become a fantasy series.

I typed the last period on the last polishing of that story in June of 2013.

Mark Twain said of a writer starting a novel, “. . . in the beginning he is only proposing to tell a little tale; a very little tale; a six-page tale.”

In 1972 I had no intention of writing a novel, much less becoming a novelist, but the boy’s story already had me by the throat.

In that first chapter, which I wrote there in the dental office, Marquart, the boy’s father, comes in on horseback (kakais came later), in midwinter, to take up his new lands in the Valley of the Menhir. His new wife is with him, pregnant with the boy. They are seen by Harthka, wife of a free forester and, as they pass on, we follow her to her crude, hidden dwelling. She is followed by a ‘shifter (only a simple werewolf in this first iteration) who attacks her. She is saved by her husband Amon (later Amyn, to avoid confusion with Amon Ra).

A simple story, and very medieval at first. Everything would grow, deepen, and morph as the fantasy elements crystalized, but I did not know that in 1972. I did realize, as I wrote that first chapter, that when Marquart was killed, the boy would flee to the hills, would be found and raised by the forester Amyn, and that those years would be the making of him.

I also knew the boy’s name, which I will share next post.

A young marine knocked on the door. I put the papers aside, called the oral surgeon, and went back to work. That night I took the chapter home and filed it away, where it would lie fallow for the next five years, then re-emerge to blow a hole in my career.

More next post.

Mark Twain said:     (see posts 18, 19, and 20)     “(In the beginning a writer) has no clear idea of his story; in fact he has no story. He . . . can only find out what it is by listening as it goes along telling itself . . .”      

Been there; done that. Spirit Deer and Jandrax presented themselves to my typewriter with reasonable speed and ease. My third work, Valley of the Menhir, was a kakai of a different color.

          (Kakai – the native riding beast of the World of the Menhir.)

VOTM actually came to me about three years before I had any idea of becoming a novelist. I was stationed at a California naval base and my wife was with me. She was working at the base library and taking a reference librarian class at a local junior college. I took it with her, for company. One night in the college library, waiting for her to finish her work, bored, I took down a copy of Beowulf. I opened the book and the words “all that lonely winter . . .” jumped out at me.

I slammed the book shut and put it away. I didn’t know what part of the story I was in, or what the actual context was, and I didn’t care.

I had had a vision of a young boy in the open window of a stone tower, looking out across a leafless, snow bound landscape. He was newly an orphan. The master of the tower had saved him, but in doing so, the boy had become captive to his world’s expectations. He would now have to spend his childhood in preparation for gaining revenge on the slayer of his father. But he wanted no revenge. His only feelings for his cold and distant father was a vague fear, even now that he was dead.

I wasn’t a novelist yet, but I knew a story when I saw one. I didn’t know I would still be haunted by it forty-some years later.

More next post.