About Books: The Search

 

One of my interests is the Middle Ages. The problem is, I’m a bit lazy about research. The result is that anything with a medieval flavor to it ends up being fantasy.

I’m okay with that. Fantasy is popular.

So it should come as no surprise that I have written – albeit several years ago – a fantasy novel with kings, queens, princes, pirates a haunted woods, a boy who may or may not be fae and a quest. As soon as I get a cover, I’ll be publishing it – so if you know someone interested in doing book covers, let me know.

I also like studying foreign languages. At one point I started to learn Russian, but then I returned to college full time, and couldn’t continue my foreign language studies.

When I finished my college studies, I was interested in learning Welsh. While I can say more things in Russian – perhaps 20 things, and I still don’t know how to ask for the bathroom – I really like the interesting spellings and pronunciations of Welsh. I’m probably the biggest non-Welsh advocate for the Welsh language going –at least in America.

It should come as no surprise that I’ve not only used my love of languages, but also put a bit of Welsh spelling and Russian pronunciation in a blender in order to create names and places in my fantasy world. A writer needs a hook to stand out from other writers. (And don’t worry, there’s a pronunciation guide at the end of the book.)

The British Royal family in the 1980s and ‘90s kind of sparked the writing of this book. My being left-handed also played a role.

Imagine a place where left-handed people learn to read and write upside down and backwards. (Ink, you know. And so they can take dictation so that the person dictating can read it at the same time.) 

Their scarcity makes them prized. The fact that they can master writing upside down and backwards, resulting in beautiful penmanship means that they are the only people in this kingdom who can become scribes.

Now imagine that one of the best scribes is the second son of the king. 

This sort of thing doesn’t usually happen. In fact, when he is made master scribe of the kingdom, there is some grumbling from masters and journeymen alike. Having a member of the royal family as a scribe has never been done before.

The industriousness of his youngest child makes it all the more painful for the king to discover that the heir is a slacker. He thinks nothing of throwing money around for the entertainment of his friends, but also doesn’t care that anyone can best him in any of the studies or weapons he’s supposed to have mastered – including his younger brother. Even his twin sister can beat him at most things.

Oddities don’t end there. In this kingdom, the Princess twin sister of the heir would become the heir should anything happen to her brother. In fact, if she’d been firstborn, she would have been the heir. 

While this is no big thing in the 21^st century, in the mid-1990s, when the tale was first written, this was cause for smirks, head shakes and the occasional, “Yeah, right.”

Having been denied things in life for no better reason than the lack of a Y chromosome, I have always been sensitive to fairness. I’ve never been in the “girls are better” camp. I’ve always been in the “we’re all better” camp. 

Just try to deny me something for no better reason than I’m “just a girl” and you’ll discover that fencing and kick boxing weren’t wasted on me.

To say the king is irked by his eldest son’s behavior – especially since it had to be brought to his attention by the boy’s instructors – is an understatement. 

He demands the boy relearn every one of his studies, from history of the kingdom to proper use of the bow and arrow to horsemanship, beginning immediately – destroying his chances of a planned liaison with a certain maid, attendance at the next ball and an evening of fun with his cronies. 

The king will hear no excuses. The heir is answerable to whichever instructor has him in his/her charge. Furthermore, he will be addressed as a commoner until he learns his skills, and failure to do so will result in his being disinherited.

Needless to say, the heir isn’t happy.

As the story progresses, an accident occurs in which the heir is injured. During his recovery, he decides he must go on Search.

Search is dangerous. One has a horse and whatever food, clothing, weapons and other goods one can carry on said horse. The searcher enters the great woods looking for whatever he is led to. 

Many don’t return. Those who do are never quite the same. But no member of the Royal Family has ever gone on search. It isn’t certain they are allowed to. But the heir insists, threatening to sneak off if he isn’t allowed to go.

The quest is very much a D&D activity. As such, it would be recognized by gamers as well as historians. That is what the Search is, without the dice. The heir’s adventures on Search are very much "real life in a Medieval world" activities – or at least the sort of thing we’ve seen in movies.

The heir’s ultimate fate and his true character are brought out in how he handles his fate.

Things They Did Not Teach Us in School

I love to watch the expression on the faces of the students I work with when I tell them that I was never taught to print.

When they hear that I learned cursive in first grade, they generally want to know, “What about kindergarten?”

Then I tell them that my school didn’t have kindergarten, and my mother saw no reason to send me to public school to play dress-up, play in the playground and the sandbox, and take naps. I had all of those things at home; no reason to catch other people’s germs.

Nowadays, kindergarten has replaced first grade in the learning department, and what my peers did in kindergarten, children now do in pre-school.

I only missed out on the socialization part, and I’m not sure I ever quite caught up.

But those are not the only differences in schools of today versus “in my day.”

I still think I had the advantage, learning cursive and never having been formally taught to print. Our teachers assumed we were all intelligent enough to figure out how to print. It isn’t that hard.

I did.  Well, with the exception of the letters that I reversed until mid-high school. Even those, I figured out ways to fix.

 Z, for example. I reversed that. But I discovered that if I wrote Zorro (a popular TV show of my childhood) on the bottom line of the letter, if all of the letters came before the Z when I tried to read it, it was backwards.

Now teachers teach the children who reverse b and d to make two fists with their thumbs up. The one that comes first (the left) is the b, while the one on the right is the d.

I had my own way. Make the bed.

Huh?

Well, you need a headboard and a foot board. Then put the pillows (the half circles that make up the rest of the two letters letters) in the middle. Then let e jump on it (since monkeys aren’t allowed to jump on the bed.)

Okay, it’s a bit out there. There I go, thinking outside the box again.

But having learned to write, there were other subjects to master. While I know when to use fewer and when to use less – something many do not – and which to/two/too to use, as well as when and how to use lie and lay, there were other things I did not learn in school.

For example, when my husband, Blue Scream of Jeff, told me he learned about the Vietnam War in school, I thought he was joking. Yes, he’s younger than I am by about a decade, but still! We did not learn that in school.

We lived through it.

When I was a senior in high school, they had finally finished arguing about what shape the table should be – I thought at the time round was a no-brainer – and had started the Paris Peace Talks. We sometimes watched that on television in Social Studies class.

Years later, after failing to get a job in my field of study from college, I fell into teaching fifth grade quite by accident. While the school was still as white as mine had been, some color had been introduced to the history books.

“In my day,” African Americans – who were called, by the nun who taught me, Negroes and Nigresses – were not introduced into American culture until we studied slavery. Yes, it was mentioned in passing that George Washington and Thomas Jefferson owned plantations, and therefore slaves – although Sally Hemmings was never mentioned in Catholic school! – the idea that there were free blacks in any of the northern states was something we were not told.

Imagine my surprise as a teacher when, preparing my class notes on the Boston Massacre, I discovered that the first person killed in the skirmish was a man of color, one Crispus Attucks! And he wasn’t the only black man who fought against the British! It was a revelation.

While I learned all sorts of things about Russia, India and China in World Cultures I and II, I never learned word one about the French Revolution. The first time I ever heard of Trafalgar was when I bought a Bee Gees album of that name (With Barry Gibb dressed as Lord Nelson after his having been shot).

We were taught about the French and Indian War – a war not between the French and the Indians – but no one ever mentioned that was a portion of the 7-Year’s War in Europe.

Likewise, we were taught nothing of Spanish, Italian or Scandinavian history, other than where history had to do with the popes or Christopher Columbus.

Moving on to Geography, we were taught countries of modern Europe, Asia and Africa – well the African countries with the names they had back “in my day.” But while Egypt has remained Egypt throughout history, I was never able to locate places like Persia, the Ottoman Empire and the Austro-Hungarian empire in relation to places we have now, like Iran, Iraq, Turkey, Bulgaria, Serbia, Bosnia, Herzegovina, Croatia, etc.

I only know Zimbabwe in Africa used to be what I knew as Rhodesia because it became Zimbabwe-Rhodesia while I was studying in the UK, and their news was full of that fact.

And what ever happened to Sparta? That was my favorite place in ancient Greece! I loved the story about the Spartan boy who stole the fox. You still have Athens, Thermopile and lots of other places, but just try to book a vacation to Sparta (or for that matter, Troy, to see the Trojan Horse.)

I suppose some years had too much jammed into them. Fourth grade was almost entirely the Middle Ages – which is probably why fourth grade was my favorite. Sixth grade had Greek, Roman and Ancient Egyptian history – which is probably why I absolutely hated sixth grade.

Seventh grade had Westward expansion and the Civil War, and Eighth grade covered the Reconstruction era, World War I (for about 5 minutes one afternoon), the great Depression (for a depressingly long time), World War II (forever, but without mentioning much of importance like the D-Day invasion or Iwo Jima), and the Korean War (which was only mentioned as having been a war).

While I believe in general I received an excellent education in my first 12 years of school, much of history was sketchy at best.

We learned about the wave of Irish immigration, followed by the Italian immigration, and then war and things, but we were never taught any reasons why those immigrants left their homes to come to our shores.

Even our shameful treatment of Native Americans was well hidden with excuses such as the idea that they were savages, most of whom refused to accept Catholic Christianity. No mention was ever made of small-pox-infected blankets being given to these people, or the fact that the US government violated every treaty it ever made with the Native Americans.

What I learned of the Potato Famine or Native American history came from my love of reading, well after I had finished my schooling.

All I know about the French Revolution came from reading Dickens’ A Tale of Two Cities.

I suppose I could have been a history major in college, although I can’t see that as a good route to a career, especially since most of the history I did learn didn’t much interest me.

I loved the Middle Ages, but my parents refused my request to stay two extra terms at Penn State to earn a minor in Medieval History on top of my dual bachelor’s degrees.

Who knows where it could have led? I could have really been something at the Renaissance Faires!