Showing posts with label 'The Circles of Dunnottar'. Show all posts
Showing posts with label 'The Circles of Dunnottar'. Show all posts

Sunday, May 5, 2019

Getting back into RICIMER mode ... BUT MEANWHILE ...

Let it be a challenge to me.

We left him at age 12 with almost the whole of his very active life ahead of him.

He's got places to go, things to do, people to see.

Protege of Aetius, along with Majorian and Aegidius, Ricimer's Destiny is not going to be an easy one.

In between us abandoning Ricimer in the days of his youth, Our Characters have taken the bit in their collective teeth and skipped ahead to when they journey to America in the year 1600. Two of the AINE Books are written and in print (and on Kindle). Then we skip ahead yet again to meet the lot of them in the 1800s - in America's Wild West. That they bring their own Wild Ways with them is a given since the Young Ones show up (Colum, Saorsa, Marra, and Mamm the Younger). IF you've met them already, you don't need to wonder that the American West might be just about to get a little more wild than it already was.
This is the painting I used for the cover of the 'Go West!' book that has Our Characters moving from western Kansas into eastern Colorado, and then preparing for their next western move - to the Colorado Rockies.

So ... it's going to be a toss-up between RICIMER and these Characters of the American West (along with finishing the rest of the AINE Books) as to which will manage to get done in what order.

Stay tuned.


Wednesday, August 15, 2018

Phrases From SONG Dialogues Come To Mind


The general idea behind the books of SONG is the survival of families, nations, cultures in the face of what seem to be impossible odds.



Ringing in my ears are echoes of words long ago spoken - 

What are you going to do about it?

It's coming - you can't stop it.

Your ways are out-dated.

Comply or die.



No.

No.

No.

No.

No.



No.






WE SAY NO.






Tuesday, July 10, 2018

RICIMER of the Series They Are My Song (and a bit about Justice, Mercy, and Peace)



RICIMER is 'on hold' for the time being for a couple of reasons.

One is that right now I need to be prepping for some art-related stuff that's on my horizon and that's going to be taking all of my available time and energy for a while here.

The other, perhaps more significant, reason is that my instinctively-pattern-seeking brain is trying to cope with a pattern that I darned well should have anticipated and been prepared for - but I honestly wasn't expecting things to accelerate the way they have just recently.

The pattern?

It's sort of a double-or-triple pattern. Quadruple maybe even, or more for all I know - although it's the same pattern repeating ...

We'll go back only as far as the Roman Empire - set out to conquer Europe and did all right with that, relatively speaking, right up until it got too big for its britches so to speak and disrupted the Balance. Down went the Western Roman Empire and up rose the new Nations of Europe, forged of their own wills and by the sheer strength and determination of their respective Peoples finding their Balance.

Then it was the Church of Rome. Again, did all right, relatively speaking, right up until it got too big for its britches, so to speak and disrupted the Balance. The Church of Rome sank in power and up rose the Protestant Denominations as the Peoples and the Nations of Europe were finding their Balance.

Now it's the EU apparently getting too big for its britches, so to speak and disrupting the Balance.

When will the lesson finally be learnt?

The Peoples of Europe will only stand for so much before they unequivocally say, "NO MORE!"

What with one thing and another, the time of RICIMER bears an eerie resemblance to the time of Now.

I already know how the RICIMER story ends so have been watching the current version play out, that eerie sensation kind of haunting the whole thing.

That yet another version of the same pattern has been playing itself out in the United States only adds to that haunting sense of familiarity ...

It's become notably uncomfortable, writing a Story [that's supposed to be fiction based really loosely on historic times] while the danged Story Line is happening in Real Time in front of my face. So I'm taking all the energy I would normally be putting into writing out the RICIMER Story and using it instead to pray that the path to the end of this repetition of the pattern will be one of Peaceful Balance.

The reason I have Hope for that is a little on the mystic side.

Our Fictional Family has a Destiny that includes enforcing the Will of the Holy Trinity, which has a pattern of its own:

Justice
Mercy
Peace

In that order.

Justice was served when the Western Roman Empire went down.
Mercy was served when the Protestants did not utterly destroy the Church of Rome.
So it's time for Peace to have a turn I reckon.

Yes I realize that already things are a bit less than altogether Peaceful - but nor are they what could become.

And no, I'm not talking about that utopian magical world peace everyone lives happily ever after thing. That's not going to happen, sorry. At least not yet, not now, and likely not any time in the foreseeable future.

But a relatively Peaceful and Balanced resolution can and will be found if people put their minds and their wills to it. If you've been paying attention, you might realize that there are people who are putting their minds and their wills to it already, so yes there IS Hope that a Peaceful Balance will be possible, relatively speaking.


*wry chuckle*

Went looking for a symbol for Hope and Balance.

Guess what showed up.
Yeah, there are others, but this one sort of jumped out of the bunch as it's pretty darned familiar.

And this one of course, also quite very familiar:













O_O




Monday, May 28, 2018

Welcome Back to Danann and Sidhelagh of Dunnottar!



Seriously enjoying being back at the familiar south hearth of the Dunnottar roundhouse, I tell you true.
Mamm has begun telling the Ricimer Story and I honestly can't wait to 'hear' more of it.
See, this is the fun part of the whole thing: research as done as it's going to get, document files formatted, endless sorting and filing and organizing of information (you would NOT believe it; this is way 'worse' than Alaric, holy cow), so all that stuff is settled into place in the appropriate niches of my mind.
Being as Mamm and the others can read my mind (🙄) and take it from there, all I have to do is watch the Charactors play out the RICIMER Story Line, so to speak, and try to keep up with them as it unfolds.
A very special bonus, at least for me, is that this story is being told shortly after Alianora, Drustann, Merri, and Dothann get home from their long years of travel, during that gap of time between 487 Spring Equinox and May Day when SONG kicks in. And THAT means guess who get to have living breathing parts in the Dunnottar story line ... Danann and Sidhelagh!
As usual I have no idea what any of them are going to be getting me into. That bunch of Dunnottar Characters tends to ad lib stuff as we go along, so we shall see what we shall see. The *good* news is that I don't think there are going to be any major crises among them (I hope). At least the RICIMER Cast of Characters is somewhat predictable. :)
[note: the image at the top was chosen because it kind of reminds me of Danann of Dunnottar, some of whose tools we see here ... so it's a 'welcome back' image for him and Sidhelagh]
THIS one is for Everyone :)


Thursday, May 24, 2018

They've Already Told This RICIMER Tale

The histories have already SPOKEN, the story-tellers have already HAD their say, the documentaries have already been DONE, and the movie-makers have ALREADY addressed the issue. The verdict is in.

All I'm doing is presenting a different point of view (and a fictional one at that), not arguing with the experts.

Nobody, and I mean NOBODY, in their right mind, in any of those industries is going to want to touch this story's point of view with a ten foot pole, not in the world in which we live in today.

At the very beginning of writing the books of SONG I thought I might make the Catholics and the Baptists mad but so far they've not been critical of the 'truth' as it seems to me: by definition you CANNOT have a Father and a Son without a Mother - so how can that third Person of the Holy Trinity be anyone except the Mother? It's pretty obvious who a person's mother is at birth. There have been cases where fathers' identities haven't been all too clear, though. Female lineages are a lot more clear and easier to track, if you ask me. That's a scientific fact: mDNA is way easier to work with. It's consistent and accurate, relatively speaking. Point being that women are at least as important as men. If you find that threatening in some way, oh well.

Be that as it may be, I take the Mother's place in the Trinity as a given, something patriarchal ideologies could take exception to so I guess I'm lucky to be ignored.

And the women of Celt ancestry still bow to no-one. Ever.

So there's that to not worry about.

Not being overly fond of ideologies that go around trying to shove their beliefs down people's throats, and separating said throats from bodies and heads if opposed, yes I've taken a dim view of Rome's usurpation of the Faith they could not manage to eradicate in 300 years of trying. That they then weaponized it while denying half of the human population equal representation doesn't set too well with me, either. Being a descendant of the ones who held out, never gave up, never gave in, and won in the end, maybe it's something in my DNA that refutes the right of any to dictate to any other, let alone all.

Maybe it's because the church came to its senses in the end, after too long a time and too much brutality, that my condemnation of the early practices of the Roman church isn't being lashed out about.

Maybe it's because the peoples of Europe did, in the end, form themselves into strong independent nations once Rome's boot was off their throats - again, not quickly and not easily and with too much brutality - but they did it. And the very peoples who had held Europe for millennia before Rome came calling were back in control of their Continent. Fussin' and fuedin' an't nothin' new, folks. The factions of the Celts had been perfecting it for thousands of years already. That they'd HAD thousands of years TO perfect it says something about the stability of their culture, appearances to the contrary be damned. They were fussin' and fuedin', not trying to own everybody else body and soul.

So there are two more things to not worry about since who's gonna argue with what's already done and over with, right?

Right.

So far, so good.

The kicker here is that while I'm writing all this stuff about the past, there are a few things going on in our present that are liable to become obviously connected to said past. That's what's gonna keep me safe from media, from politics, from religion, and from invasive ideologies. Ain't nobody gonna want to go out on THAT limb I tell you true.

Writing fiction about ancient times is one thing. Connecting it incontrovertibly to current events is not gonna fly. So it's a good thing I just want to tell the Story and am not ambitious.

Because what motivates Ullin of Iona, RICIMER, and all the rest of our Characters is what lies at the heart of our current situations.

These Circles mean something:


That center Circle is FAITH
The rest of them represent
FAMILY
FRIENDS
FREEDOM
FUTURE
They're our Legacy.


This symbol, which you haven't seen as much of, means something too:


It's a pretty design, this is true.
It's also a warning.
This is the way it is NOT supposed to be.
It will not work.

Here is a representation of the underlying design by which our world is governed:

I call it the Father Phi Spiral.
That's for a couple of reasons.
One is that the line through the middle makes the Spiral look more like the symbol we recognize as PHI.
Phi is the blueprint of our world.
You can look it up if you doubt me.
The second reason is that it's one of the oldest of all symbols preserved by humankind. 
It means something.
It has always meant something.
It has always meant the same thing.
CREATION
GOD
1.618
BALANCE
And you know what the building blocks of the Spiral consist of?
TRIANGLES

What I'm about to suggest might make every religion except for maybe Buddhism and Hindu mad as hornets but I don't particularly care.

[WARNING: SIDETRACK]
Because it's not 'just' that the Holy Trinity has to have a female function if creation is to continue to procreate, which it most assuredly will, with or without humankind.

It's not 'just' that I find it personally offensive, what has been done in the name of 'religion' for all this time.

As a matter of fact it doesn't have much of anything to do with 'religion' at all, because people get to choose what (if anything) they want to believe.

What it has to do with is that attempts to twist the Spiral out of balance have caused, are causing, and will cause literal harm to innocent folk.

Half of us can't be heading in one direction and the other half heading in the opposite direction, and any of us expect balance to be maintained. It hasn't worked yet and it ain't gonna EVER WORK. Our universal - literally - governing principles will not allow it. [sidetrack inside sidetrack: speaking of governing principles, the Constitutional Republic government of the United States of America is fundamentally based on PHI.]

Look again at this warning symbol:


Say you're on one side of this 'twisted spiral' thing and I'm on the other, just walking along.
Where are we going to end up?
We'll either hit a dead end
or collide in the middle.
Either way we lose.
Plus, that spiral ain't gonna stay twisted like that because by design it CAN'T stay that way.
One side or the other is gonna flip back around so it's all in balance again.
So what in the heck do we think we're DOING?
May as well stick with the PHI thing and not lose our balance in the first place, if you ask me.
Which I realize you didn't.
[END SIDETRACK]

I think that maybe, just maybe, the significance of triangles and spirals and such clear back as far as we can track humankind has to do with something we ALL instinctively KNOW somehow.

There's no conflict between Science and Faith. They're the same thing.

Which is another thing to not worry about because Science is zipping right along to prove it and Faith is plodding reluctantly to accept it.

So what's the worry?

Me, I'm not worried because I'm just a little old lady with no real stake in much of anything - nothing to lose that I haven't already lost or don't care if I do lose.

But there are folks in our world who would likely not appreciate having people's attention drawn to parallels between historic fact and current events.

The divisions caused by 'identity politics', for example, mean that twisted Spiral is already out of balance. And I don't have to tell you who's been pushing that for a while now. I doubt they know what they're doing, but maybe they're hoping that when the time comes it will be the other side of the twist that will swing around and the Spiral will balance itself in their favor.

On the other end of the spectrum, but on that same side of the twisted Spiral, are the folks trying to shove the EU down the throats of the peoples of Europe. They don't want anyone reminded of how that ended when Rome tried to do it - twice - once via military and once via ideology. Neither ended well for Rome although Europe, once recovered from the ravages inflicted by the attempts, came out of it with those strong independent nations that Ullin and RICIMER and the others were betting on. Rome struck out twice trying what they're trying now.

Yet another loser in this equation is an ideology that can't seem to wrap its head around either the Holy Trinity OR that a Mother is required if there are to even BE a Father and a Son - OR that what they're trying to do has already failed more than once.

None of those people want to be challenged to explain how on earth they think they're going to take two failures and turn out a success by trying the exact same things. It's not like math where two negatives can produce a positive.

Honestly.

What did they do, look at history and say, 'Hey, check this out! This thing here FAILED spectacularly, and that thing over there FAILED just as spectacularly! Let's put them together and they'll be GREAT! We'll rule the world!'

Considering that the goal of both examples had been to 'rule the world', and both FAILED spectacularly, success by combining the two doesn't exactly seem very promising.

My point here, and in the books, is that our fictional folk (some not quite all the way fictional) SUCCEEDED in what they set out to do, not because they themselves were masters at what they did (although they were) but because their goal was WHAT THE COLLECTIVE, INSTINCTIVE, WILL OF THE PEOPLES AFFECTED WANTED.

So the moral of the Story is: the EU is doomed, and so is that invasive ideology. One is trying what Rome tried first; the other is trying what Rome tried second. Against the exact same populations of people. For that matter, some folks in the States are trying to do do what Rome also tried: pitting folks against each other. That, if you recall, resulted in something called the Barbarian Conspiracy, which didn't work out so well for Rome in the end did it?

Mamm of Dunnottar, fictionally speaking, asked Attila, "How stupid are you?!?"

Me, I would never think of asking anyone any such thing.

Out loud.

I might wonder it to myself, though.

If you're going to try stuff, you might want to first do a little homework so you know a little something about the people you're up against.

Not to be a spoil sport or anything, but at least three quarters of the citizens of the United States of America are probably descendants of the peoples Rome FAILED against - twice. The percentage in Europe is likely higher yet.

Fussin' and fuedin' is one thing Rome thought was more than it was.

Leave off the crap and leave our Legacy alone. 

Our instincts are still intact.

Believe me.


Go play in the rest of the world, and quit tryin' to mess with our Circles.

RICIMER MIGHT COME BACK.

And see how you like them apples.



Wednesday, May 23, 2018

Where To Begin?

Let our Younglings of Dunnottar take you back with them to flights of fancy while they introduce you to themselves and to the place and time they live in.

We will come to know them as The Younglings of Dunnottar, but they don't start out that way.

In a world filled with tumult and conflict, the kin cousins Diann, Corrbed, and Rua come to Dunnottar for safety as their own homelands become more and more dangerous. Merri and Dothann's mother Alianora grew up on Dunnottar but she and her little family have been traveling for as long as the siblings have been alive. It's time to go home, to peace and security.

Yes, these are 'kid books' but they carry within them warnings we might want to pay a little attention to. It's not all about fun adventures. Our Younglings of Dunnottar are some of the lucky ones - and some of them have some serious issues to try to deal with, between adventures. Making a new home in a strange place isn't always easy, but in the process these younglings forge a bond that will last for generations.










You'll find the Younglings of Dunnottar at Amazon Books

Corrections and Updates










For the moment at least, and hopefully for all time, the updates and corrections to the Mamm Books and DANANN are as complete as I'm going to get them.

Thankfully HELL AND HIGH WATER has relatively independent story lines (WHEW) and I'm not going to fret about them right now.

As for why I've fretted about getting these fine-edited right now, it's because I read them all over again in preparation for the writing of RICIMER and found a couple of things that I wanted fixed.

So I fixed them.

Hopefully tomorrow I'll get the new files submitted for print, and the Kindle editions will be fixed at the same time. None of the Story Lines changed, mind you - just a touch-up here and there.

When they're all ready I'll post links.