Phew!
I've been time-traveling again but am back in the present - at least for the moment.
The research for this the 'last' book of the Mamm set has been and remains just as exhaustive as the others, perhaps more so as this one has to cover a lot of territory and pull everything together so as to fit with the beginning of SONG and make the circles of the books link together the way they're supposed to.
*laughing*
The basic story line(s) are pretty well set, right?
Right.
So what do the Younglings of Dunnottar do?
They do what they always do: jump in and insist on being totally included!
And that's fine by me. I kinda like them, and it gives my psyche a break from the trauma and drama of the rest of it.
As the story lines unfold, I'm finding that this time they're doing it in a bit of a different way.
The story lines are completing themselves 'independently' - separately - as in they're not presenting themselves to me in the same 'taking turns' way of the others. It won't make any difference in the end result as they'll be put together the same as the others. It's just that the story lines have been taking me to each time period for longer stretches, getting bigger parts of each line done before going into the 'other' time-span.
The others, except of course SONG, progressed basically side by side as the books went along - as in the doings of the Dunnottar folk would take up however many pages they took, and then the next set of pages would come along with the Mamm stories, and back and forth they would go until both got done at the same time when each book ended.
THIS book, on the other hand, has requirements that the others don't.
It has to conclude at a specific time and set up a specific set of circumstances, and it has to follow more closely a timeline of actual events which play a role in the Mamm part of the story.
Sure it's still fiction but some of the Characters that show up in this book were historic figures. While I'm admittedly free-handed with the fiction part of things, making my own interpretations about a lot of stuff, still the 'history' part of it is important enough to me to make me do my best to at least try to get the timing right.
Moving out of the realm of legend and mythology and into the real 'history' of the times kind of impacts both the research aspect of these up-coming books (which is truly great fun for me, reading and studying as much as I can find about each era as it comes along!) - and the methods I use to put the books together.
It makes it easier in some ways, actually. The 'timelines' are already laid out in the 'history' books; the world events are pre-set for me to follow; there's more information and written-down documentation that I can use to get details as 'right' as I can.
And, you know, fiction is still fiction. The Characters aren't 'real', so to speak. They're free to retain whatever they want from the ones we've already met - and they can change with the times as they go along if they want.
The Alianora we'll meet in the 700s is likely to be basically the same Alianora we already know, and so will Drustann still be Drustann, and all the others.
Which is essentially one of the main points that this series sets out to make.
Even SMALL TOWN and VICTOR carry their weight in the overall goal of the books.
Times change, circumstances are presented in different milieus, but people are people.
I could take the people out of SMALL TOWN and VICTOR and put them into the SONG series - the Characters are all both there and here, then and now. We are Them and They are Us.
And it's one-thirty in the morning - time for this woman to be getting some rest.
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