The most-cited obstacle among those writers inclined to try their hand at ancient historical fiction is the difficulty in researching the times.  The ancient historical is cousin to the created-world fantasy; both require vast amounts of detail in order to breathe life into their respective narratives.  But, where fantasy is created from imagination that is reinforced with research, the ancient historical is built out of existing research that is reinforced with imagination.  Thus far, for Serpent of Hellas – my upcoming novel about the battle of Artemisium – I’ve had to research the topography of Attika (that region of Greece under Athenian control), farming in the 5th century BC, and the social and legal ramifications of ancient Greek illegitimacy.  Was I writing a fantasy, I could base my creative decisions on a mix of research and fancy . . . which is not as easy as it sounds.  Fantasy authors cut their own puzzle pieces from the fabric of history; the good ones work hard at smoothing the edges of their created bits, ensuring what’s borrowed meshes perfectly with what’s imagined.  The bad ones simply arrange their pieces willy-nilly, without thought for cohesion or logic.

Historical authors also assemble the pieces of our narrative puzzle from the fabric of history.  But rather than cutting and shaping to meet our needs, we tease out the threads of a single tapestry to illuminate the colors and textures within.  Some threads are bold, representing the deeds and personalities that resonate through time.  Others are more subtle, muted, hidden, colorless, even forgotten.  Themistokles versus the nameless soldier who lit the warning beacons on Skiathos; Thermopylae versus Artemisium.  Each is important in their own right, unable to exist without the other, but one is given precedence in popular imagination while the other fades to obscurity.  It becomes the job of historical fiction, then, to go where historians can’t – or won’t.

The worlds we write about are not necessarily the “real” world.  True, many of the events that sustain our prose actually happened; our cast of characters includes men and women, who lived, loved, died, and were immortalized in history.  But our portrayal of them, of their times, is no more real than Tennyson’s Arthur in Idylls of the King.  It’s an illusion, you see.  The phrase we use is historical accuracy, and it is as important to the genre as the willing suspension of disbelief is to fantasy.  The world must appear real, torn from the pages of a text book, and the more real it seems the more latitude the writer has in introducing anachronisms.  And ancient historicals require anachronisms; they require a touch of inaccuracy in order for the writer to translate the attitudes and mores of so remote a time into modern vernacular.

So, we come back to research, to peering at the tiny threads of a tapestry to understand the colors, textures, tastes, and smells of the world that created it.  Much of the information we uncover will, if we’re subtle, appear almost invisible on the page.  It will exist as a color palette, a vocabulary, a style of description; research is the stage upon which the actors deliver their lines: the skeleton of the theater, the boards underfoot, the costumes and set dressing.  And when the research eludes us – and it will – imagination must fill the gap.

The unanswered questions can be great or small: what did Themistokles and Leonidas discuss the night before their respective forces deployed for Artemisium and Thermopylae, respectively?  What did the temple of Artemis that lent Artemisium its name look like?  In what year was the ancient monument to the battle at Artemisium dedicated?  Barring hard facts, the answers must come from within – though filtered through the threads already known to us and shaped to fill that tiny void in the tapestry.  The artistry is in making the created bits match so perfectly to history that only an expert can tell the difference.  And that is also the beauty of the ancient historical: if done well, it informs the reader’s own studies on the time in question, breathing life into men and women who might otherwise be forgotten, making flesh the cold marble busts of great men, and lending a sense of blood and thunder to events that shaped our world.

Here’s a snippet for your consideration:

Muzgaash led them deeper into the East Bank of Siphäis, into that part of the city which had borne the brunt of the Butcher’s siege engines, back in the early days of the War.  By the faint light of a gibbous moon, the mismatched pair skirted ruined plazas and cut through the gutted remnants of shops and homes.  Once, the city had boasted a population of well over five-hundred thousand, sprawling as it did over the east and west banks of the sluggish Aornus River.  Half died in the siege, of starvation, disease, or the relentless hail of stone, arrow, fire, and spear; of those who survived to kneel before their Orcish masters, nine out of every ten later succumbed to the Black Death.  Siphäis had become a city of ghosts, and the Orc-captain could feel their eyes on him.

Though uneasy, Kraibag nevertheless kept pace with the fast-moving Witch Hound, past landmarks he remembered from the 10^th’s bloody push for the river, after the rams had split Siphäis’ eastern gates asunder.  They darted down a broad street lined with colonnades, where his archers and shield-crews had fought a battle of wits with their human counterparts.  Kraibag’s eyes swept the colonnade roofs, the sense of scrutiny growing more pronounced.  He snarled.

“Someone’s watching us!”

“Blasted rebels,” Muzgaash spat.  “Lurking about like they still have a chance to win the War.”

The two Orcs paused in the lee of a shattered bell tower, Muzgaash snuffling the air and the ground.  Kraibag recalled the place well, for here he’d dueled a champion of Siphäis, a knight whose axe the Orc still carried; doubtless the bastard’s bones yet moldered somewhere along the tower’s foundations.

“It’s taking its sweet time,” Muzgaash whispered.  The Witch Hound started under the thick stone arches that upheld the bell tower, but stopped.  His nostrils flared as he inhaled deeply.  “Gharn!  The little rat doubled back.”  He motioned to Kraibag; they went back they way they had come and plunged down an alley hemmed in by high, windowless walls.  The elements had eroded the roadbed and exposed the trickling stream of foul water that was the city’s sewer.  A hedge of weeds and thorny brambles grew along the banks of this makeshift brook.  Instantly, Kraibag’s hackles rose.

Muzgaash was on the verge of pushing through that hedge when the captain of the 10^th grabbed him and hauled him back.  “Open your eyes, snuffler.”  He pointed to the edge of the thicket, where the bones of animals and birds mingled in the leaf-mold.  “One thorn-prick will send you off, as quick and pretty as you like.  It’s an old trick the whiteskins used, after we’d broken through the gate and brought the fight to them.  Find a way around.”

Muzgaash shook his head.  “Trail goes through it, not around it.”

“And I say find another way!”

Snarling, the Witch Hound spun around . . . and froze.  A figure stood at the mouth of the alley, cloaked and hooded, dark with menace.  Even as Kraibag turned, Muzgaash raised his bow and loosed an arrow.  The broad-head struck the figure square in the chest; the silhouette rocked back but did not fall.  Muzgaash snatched another arrow from his quiver, but before he could nock and draw, Kraibag pushed his bow aside.

“Fool!  It’s a scarecrow!”

The cloak fluttered, revealing a dressmaker’s mannequin, its arms and legs pieced together from delicately-carved wooden spindles, twisted nails, and bundles of yellowed bone; a severed Orc head was lashed to its neck, empty eye-sockets like holes in a dry and leathery mask.  Salt-rime gleamed in the moonlight.

Amarante is available now on Kindle, as a pdf download from DriveThruFiction, and coming soon to Smashwords!  The gorgeous cover art comes courtesy of the phenomenal Richard (RW) Ware!

1. It’s been seven years since Men of Bronze came out; six years since Memnon . . . where does the time go?  Both continue to sell well, especially in ebook version, and Men of Bronze keeps getting it’s theatrical option renewed by an interested party.  Perhaps one day it will come to the silver screen . . .

2. To the Alabama lawmaker who wants to use the Bible to put a cap on teacher salaries: there are some children in my community who, according to the Bible, should be stoned to death for disrespecting their parents.  Will you join me in that?  Or are you just an ill-informed douchebag who needs to think before he speaks?  I vote the latter . . .

3. I’ve noticed this about myself: the closer the deadline, the more I want to play Left4Dead2 instead of work.  Avoidance?  Procrastination?  A writer craves not these things!

4. Scrivener rocks the llama’s ass!

Good luck!

The classes I taught last year on manuscript preparation made me realize I might have something to offer up-and-coming writers, those ready to submit but who might need a hand.  A mercenary beta-reader with a few books under his belt and some experience reading slush for a literary agent.  I think it’s exactly what some writers need.

To this end, I’m starting up a service called THE EDITORIAL GOBLIN.  It’s almost ready to go live, once I figure out how to handle payments and get that page of the website assembled.  So, if you’re in the market for a fresh pair of eyes, some advice, a good critique, and maybe a nudge in the right direction, then please keep THE EDITORIAL GOBLIN in mind.

Here’s the website: THE EDITORIAL GOBLIN.

That’s not what I’m looking for.  That sort of tale will be returned with a polite “thanks-but-no-thanks”, regardless of the level of polish reflected in the prose.

So, what DO I want?  Can I toss out some examples?  Of course.  I want Steven Pressfield’s GATES OF FIRE . . . with zombies.  I want Steven Saylor’s ROMAN BLOOD . . . with zombies.  I want Mika Waltari’s THE EGYPTIAN . . . with zombies.  In other words: top-notch historical prose, with culture and time period evident from the first paragraph, that’s been married with a single speculative concept: the dead walk once more.  HOW you get the dead to rise is up to you, but I’m not interested in tales with D&D-style necromancy or sorcery, overt visits from the gods, or standard fantasy tropes like world-conquering necromancers.  Give me the folklore of the walking dead: Roman, Greek, Egyptian, Babylonian, Persian; from the far Orient or from our Native American ancestors.  Give me something akin to David Drake’s “The Mantichore” or “Black Iron” (set in the appropriate time-frame for this anthology).  Do that and I will love you forever.

A good premise, I thought.  And, upon doing a bit of research, I discovered a dearth of zombie stories written in the BC.  Curious, I thought — mine came about after watching THE WALKING DEAD and wondering, loudly, why no one bothered to hit the library in Atlanta for a couple of books on tactics of the Roman legion, then swing by Museum Replicas and get kitted out in mail, helmet, shield, spear, axe/mace, and a good sword.  THAT led to wondering how our Classical Greek ancestors might have viewed a zombie apocalypse — undead horde versus phalanx, FTW!

A chance comment by my friend, Louis Agresta, got me thinking: wouldn’t it be cool to do an anthology of ancient historical zombie tales?  Yeah, that WOULD be cool.  And because I never go through the proper procedure for these things, I put the word out on Facebook, and my writer friends responded.  Which brings me to this: newbie, pro or in between, if you’d like to contribute a story to an anthology still in its infancy (not secured a publisher, yet, so not sure what rates I can pay), here are the initial guidelines:

1) Stories MUST take place before 1 BC and no earlier than 5000 BC.  No pre-history.

2) Stories must be between 3,000 and 7, 000 words (this is firm unless you have prior permission — or you’re the one true Stephen King).

3) Deadline TBD

Send your submissions in standard manuscript format (txt or doc) to me at scottoden (at) gmail.com.  As an historical author, despite the presence of the shambling and unquiet dead, I must insist on settings and portrayals of the ancient world that ring true.  Do your research . . . then add zombies

And so, to paraphrase the Bard: “Cry Zombie, and let slip the undead horde!”

Edit 1: Revised the lower word count limit down from 5K to 3K . . . otherwise my own tale would be disqualified!

Edit 2: Changed 1st century BC to 1 BC; and added the qualifier of no stories prior to 5000 BC, and no pre-history.

I am thankful for my wife, Shannon.  Without her, I fear the reaper’s tally would have been one higher this year.  She keeps me sane.

I am thankful for my friends, both online and in life.  They’re an understanding bunch and never fail to cheer me up when I need it.  I hope someday I can repay their myriad kindnesses.

I am thankful that I have books to be written and an agent and publishers who are patient.  I’ve not yet found my voice after all this, despite my best efforts, but I know to trust the Muses in their wisdom.  The words will come.  Hopefully soon.

And I am thankful for the family that remains to me.  My wish is that we can get through this and come out stronger on the other side.

Have a good Thanksgiving, dear friends . . .

And, as my wife and I try to regain our equilibrium, there is much writing to do.  The Serpent of Hellas.  The Orc Book.  The Damascene Blade and the yet-unnamed third book in the Emir of the Knife trilogy.  Perhaps the last bit of work on the Secret Project will take precedence, who knows.  Then there are the short stories and ATTIKA, things that bring in nary a penny, but that I like doing.  It is a busy time.

Even so, through these somber days I only want to sit with my back to the wall in the room where both my parents died and talk to them.  I want to ask them if I did enough to help them . . .

Rest in peace, Mom.