We have moved!

Dear readers, 'Vilu Nilenad' has moved to a new home with the folks over at Wordpress. This site will be an archive of the first half of 'The Endless Circle'. Hope you enjoy the new site!

Lifting the Lid - Part 2: Friends come and go ...

It's funny how a story can evolve. Looking back on chapter 17 of 'The Endless Circle', 'Falen', I am reminded of what could have been.

In the first draft of the book Falen did not die. In fact, the plan was for him to join our trio on their journey to Padascel, where he would have played a big part in the rescue of Father and the eventual confrontation of the galac-men. However, things can change a lot on the long road from "Once upon a time" to "The End" and sometimes there are casualties.

The character of Falen sprang from the young soldier you last saw cradling the dying form of an older comrade in the camp in the forest. I wrote that scene to suggest that the concepts of 'good' and 'bad' cannot be pre-judged, and that we cannot condemn someone based on first impressions alone but rather by what we observe of them over time. At the time of writing I just thought it was a nice scene and gave little thought to who these two people were or where they were coming from (which, looking back on it, seems a little hypocritical).

Then I began to write more about Haemel. I fleshed out his story and gave him some motivation, and when they got to Craec Annwn and I saw the line in my notes that said, "Haemel goes and interrogates a soldier," I realised that I had to show Haemel for who he was - a hardened warrior himself - and to do this he had to get nasty.

This was when the character of the young soldier popped back into my mind. I reasoned that seeing as I had a character the readers already knew, I could exploit a sense of attachment and have Haemel interrogate him violently, in order to create some ambiguity around Haemel.

This would reinforce the point that Banac makes when he says that he and Balor cannot trust Haemel, and would help create dramatic tension, with the reader knowing something about Haemel that the boys did not. I should note that at this time I had not written in Haemel's interrogation of the white-robed man.


I made the switch to Falen's point of view, and had a whole long flashback starting with him burying the old soldier (whose name does not spring to mind at the moment) then remembering how he was enlisted in the Baron's guard and how the gruff old soldier was his only friend. I wanted to create a connection between Falen and the reader, then sever that connection suddenly and violently by means of Haemel.

I wrote the death scene (more gruesome than it is in the book) then had Hamel bury the body and walk away back to the sleeping Banac and Balor. In the notebook I was using at the time I then immediately drew a line and wrote, "No. Don't kill Falen. He's too nice to lose." I had fallen into my own trap! Plus I felt that it was a bit harsh to kill a fourteen-year-old (for no good reason) in a book written for teenagers.

So I saved Falen's life. Haemel interrogated him, took pity on him, and brought him along for the ride.

However.

This created two problems, unforeseen by me at the time:

1. I had inadvertently changed Haemel's character. No longer was he an enigmatic beremer, imbuing the boys' quest with an air of uncertainty and menace. Instead he became a kindly uncle-figure, mentoring Falen and Banac as they sparked off each other. It did create a neat situation where Banac saw his place being usurped by Falen, arousing feelings of jealousy which were nice to write - but ultimately Haemel was suffering. I had taken away his teeth, and thus the very thing that made him interesting in the first place.

2. I now had an extra character on my hands, on what was already becoming a very crowded stage. As I said, there was some nice tension between Banac and Falen, with Falen replacing Banac as a more dependable and likeable brother-figure for Balor; but I had to create extra motivations for this new guy, give him a place in dialogue, and, ultimately, give him something to do.

This last point was the clincher. When they arrived at Padascel Falen pretty much faded into the background. I gave him things to do, even his own subplot involving a wicked uncle and a plan to infiltrate the ranks of the galac-men. But in the end I realised that he had no use other than to bother Banac, which, while fun in its own way, was a function already fulfilled by Haemel and so a distraction from the story.

This is a lesson learned the hard way by most writers: Story is King. If a character, scene, subplot, turn of phrase or anything else gets in the way if the story, it has to go. I liked Falen. I had become fond of him. I had saved his life, for crying out loud! But, alas, it seemed that his time had come.

I went back through the chapters and gently excised Falen from them, until he was nothing more than a ghost on the pages of my memory. I had Haemel kill him off, though I altered it so that he was not the young soldier and never would be. Who knows - I may just go back and write The Adventures of the Young Soldier and the Old Dude Before He Got Himself Killed.

But for now Falen is dead.

Long live Falen.

P.S: On my latest re-write I came across a remnant of Falen hidden in the text. These happen all the time (who noticed the wood-pigeons that magically became rabbits?) where I change something in one place and not in another. In Falen's case he turned up in the phrase "the three of them" where it should have been changed to "the two of them" in a scene where Falen had been present before his untimely demise at my hands. It made me laugh to think that Falen was still hanging around in the ether, a shadowy form seen out of the corner of Haemel's eye, haunting him for the evils he had performed upon him.

Good News!

Good news everyone! To celebrate the half-way point of 'The Endless Circle' I have released the first volume in print form. Subtitled 'The Holy Place', it is available to buy from Lulu.com. Click on the links to see a preview and to buy the book. I will release the second volume when all the chapters are posted.

As always, enjoy!

The Endless Circle - Chapter 19: Trust

"The river was a white-flecked torrent, a roaring,
rushing monster with no discernible way to cross."

They woke after midnight, roused by Haemel’s touch, and packed up the camp with bleary eyes and jaw-cracking yawns. Banac was the worst-tempered of the three, bothered by his argument with Haemel and his lack of sleep. Balor left him to himself, and helped Haemel as much as he could.

Half an hour later they left the dell and made their way silently down the hill.  Haemel led the way with Balor beside him, and Banac bringing up the rear in stony silence. No-one said anything. The moon was out in a clear sky, waning from the full, and her clean silver light threw sharp shadows away from them across the ground. Occasionally Banac glanced over at Balor, but mostly he kept his eyes on Haemel’s broad back, turning his resentment over in his mind, trying to think of a way to prove himself right.

At the bottom of the hill they turned on to a narrow road that twisted between tall trees; after half an hour of following it they began to hear a faint rushing of water coming from their left. The road forked, and Haemel led them left down a long slope. At the bottom of the slope the hedgerows came to an end and they found themselves in an open meadow that ran down to the bank of the wide, fast-flowing river glimmering in the moonlight.

The Year Ahead ...

Happy New Year, all. Thanks to all those who have been following 'The Endless Circle' on this blog. I hope you are enjoying it.

Hopefully 2012 will be a year of expansion here at Vilu Nilenad. I have plenty more to add, and will be branching out into other threads, including:

• 'The Christmas Cat': A winter story for ages 8+, written for my nephews a couple of years ago and featuring them in the main roles. I plan to illustrate this one myself!
• A lot more 'Lifting the Lid', including scans of original drafts, sketches, artwork, and an insight into my own writing process.
• Reviews of books I have read and particularly enjoy, focusing on those with strong moral content.
• The opportunity for Q&As.
• More short stories and books as they come.

Plus, I might even tell you what 'Vilu Nilenad' actually means. If you're good.

So here's to the coming year. Keep reading, keep commenting, and keep enjoying.

The Endless Circle - Chapter 18: Responsibility

"The town’s main street was the dirtiest, smelliest
and most crowded place they had ever seen in their lives."

After an hour of waiting Banac was beginning to grow restless. He sat at the edge of the clearing with his knees drawn up to his chest, looking down into the valley, watching for any sign of the white-skinned figure returning.

“Where is he?” he muttered, half to himself. “He should have been back by now.”

Balor looked up from where he was collecting mushrooms on the far side of the clearing.

“He’ll come back,” he said, unconcerned.

“I don’t know,” said Banac. He looked out again. Balor seemed to have forgotten that somewhere down there Father was being held, probably in a dungeon filled with rats. It rankled Banac that he had to sit up here waiting for Haemel to return, when by rights he should be down there, rescuing Father.

He sat for a while longer, shifting his weight whenever his legs began to fall to sleep. The incessant splashing of the waterfall behind him had begun to grate on his nerves. He tried to think of something else, to imagine something other than Father rotting in a cell, but in the end he could wait not longer.

“I’m going down,” he said, standing and brushing himself down.

The Endless Circle - Chapter 17: Falen

"The hillside was quiet, apart from the sighing of the wind
and the mournful bleating of the sheep."

In the hall of Craec Annwn the soldiers were waking up after their night of revelry. Coughs and groans filled the air as they stirred their stinking, ale-soaked bodies.

The last to wake was a young man whose name was Falen. At twenty years old he was allowed to call himself a man, but in truth he was scarcely more than a lad: his beard was sparse, and his voice still cracked occasionally. He was more hung-over than the rest, his eyeballs as dry as sandpaper and an ache in his head the size of a fist; as he sat up and rubbed his eyes the pain intensified, making him wince and clap his hands to his temples.

There were laughs from the other end of the hall.

“Hey! Look! Baby’s up at last!”

“You all right, mate? Bit of a lightweight, ain’t yer?”

“‘E is, isn’t ‘e?”

“Oi! Falen! You should stick to milk, mate!”

Lifting the Lid - Part 1

For those of you who are interested in the craft of writing, I've put together a series of articles that lift the lid on my own writing process.

Of course, everyone's writing process is different, and I can only speak for myself. But I hope that these may prove helpful and instructional for readers wanting to get into writing themselves.


For this first installment, I thought it would be interesting to give an example of something that happens more often than you might think: life imitating art (or as we say in the business - 'blind luck').

When I wrote the sixteenth chapter of 'The Endless Circle' I spent some time coming up with the description of Craec Annwn. Here are the resulting drafts (scroll down if these bore you):

'The Endless Circle' - Chapter 16: Haemel

"Upon its summit a castle crouched, like some predatory beast ..."

Banac woke with a start and sat up sharply, looking around in confusion. For some reason he was not in his warm, comfortable bed, but in the middle of a wood with the bright sun shining down in dappled shades of green through the canopy overhead. For a moment he was baffled, then he looked down at Balor’s small form lying with his head in his lap, and slowly the events of the night before came back to him, and he knew it had not been a dream.

He yawned and stretched his aching limbs, taking care not to disturb Balor. He looked around again, remembering more and more of the details of the previous twelve hours. In the cheerful light of day it seemed impossible that such things had taken place, here in this peaceful wood. But they had: the standing stones, the fire, the galac-men, the beremer ...

The beremer! He twisted his head, looking this way and that, but the glade was empty. They were alone. The beremer had not kept his word. He had left them here and run off.

The Endless Circle - Chapter 15: The Feasting-Hall

"In the middle place sat the Baron, champing on his food
as spit and juices dribbled down his chin."

As the soldiers rode away from the hollow in the forest Father’s only thought was of Banac. He was proud of his boy, proud that he had found him, that he had dared to come after him in the first place. But mingled with the pride was fear, and shame: he should never have allowed Banac to get involved in this.

He tried to comfort himself. Haemel was there, Haemel would be with him. If there was anyone in the world he would trust with Banac’s life it was Haemel.

He offered up a prayer to Cafan that they would be kept safe and brought out alive. But even as he formed the words in his mind he felt the same doubt that had come to him when he had seen the soldiers on the beach and the look of fear in his wife’s eyes. When the test had come, when the world had intruded on his faith, his faith had wavered, and now he trusted more in Haemel than he ever had in Cafan.