FUN, FUN, FUN, till your daddy takes your jousting horse away.

Since in my last blog, I wrote about evil and witch-hunts, etc., I will keep it light this week. There is nothing wrong about writing about deep thought subjects, but once in a while you need to clean your literary pallet and write something less serious.


I thought we would reexamine some topics I featured in my novel, which are entertaining or just a bit of trivia. To give you a sense of what my novel is about, and how I intertwined historical facts into the fantasy portion.

As many of you readers know, although the time frame of my novel is set today, it is an alternate reality where the middle ages never ended. History as we know it ended in 1100 A.D., and this new reality now takes place.

This alternate reality is still based on facts, but reality is skewed in this new history. Bram Stoker, as we know is the author of "Dracula", but in my novel that book was never written. Because there are evil creatures in the world, society is totally dedicated to the destruction of that evil. Bram Stoker instead of being a fiction writer is now a writer of technical books on how to kill vampires.

As homage to some of my favorite actors and writers, I included their names into my novel. When my book is released, I hope you will take the time and see if you can find these references and where I have placed them in context of the novel.

I used historical accounts in my novel to describe some of the evil creatures which exist. The Beast of Gévaudan is an example of this. Between the years 1764 to 1767, a wolf like dog terrorized an area of France. The victims from the attacks from this wolf-dog had their throats slit. The number of victims associated to this beast, range from 60 to over 200. This animal was finally killed by Jean Chastel as part of a large hunting party.

The story of the vicious wolf-dog fits perfectly in my novel. This creature did not follow the typical patterns of an animal; this unusual behavior, however, does fit in my concept of a world overrun with evil creatures. Of course in my novel, this creature is described as a werewolf not a wolf-dog hybrid.

Technology in my book has also stopped at the middle ages. I wanted to reflect some of the unusual or rarely known aspects of medieval life. In my novel, I describe Gong Farmers; these were people who cleaned privies, and then took the human waste to fields to be used as fertilizer.

Not everything in the middle ages was wolf-dogs or cleaning privies, so I described some games in my novel also. The pages in my novel play a game of Nine Men’s Morris. This was a strategy board game with different phases. Archeologists have found clay tiles with the game carved into them dating back to the Romans.

Faires were very popular in the middle ages. Some faires were set up as a place for merchants to share goods, commodities and to exchange ideas, think of these types as being similar to the trade shows we have today. Other faires were a time of merriment and fun, while others were to celebrate religious anniversaries. My novel I use the latter definition.

The faire I describe is a celebration for the kingdom being rebuilt after a dragon attack. Many knights come from distant lands to compete in a jousting tournament. Games and music were also provided for the common people to enjoy.

Since my novel is filled with monstrous creatures that terrorize the world, I needed to show that humankind will survive. I included games and other entertainment to illustrate that people will not be kept done; they will find a way to enjoy life, even if that life is in a hostile unfriendly world.



Next Time: More about Clothing