Soon SOON I'll be on track to be able to focus on finishing this set of books!
The symbol(s) are a helix fossil shell and the Circles of Dunnottar. The ancient spiral shell represents ... well ... ancient times. The Circles of Dunnottar are familiar to anyone who's read any of the books of SONG - the outer ones are Family, Friends, Freedom, Future - all interlocked - and bound together by the central circle of Faith.
That they are together in this image has to do with the times they represent ... sort of. The ancient spiral comes into play because in the upcoming set of books COME HELL AND HIGH WATER a couple of the Dunnottar Folk head back in time in search of confirmation that the Faith they share is indeed what it's supposed to be.
They end up a LOT further back in time than they had anticipated, and find that 'Something Happened' way back then - more than ten thousand years before their own time and more than twelve thousand before ours. What it has to do with their Faith they aren't sure but they're there to find out.
The 'Something' that 'Happened' was an Extinction Level Event (ELE), the one that took many of the big mammals from us, especially those of North America - mammoth, mastodon, giant sloth, camelops, saber cats, dire wolves, many of the larger birds including the Aiolornis (look it up, you'll be amazed!), along with a whole long list of others. The Bison survived; so did the American Bald Eagle and the Crane ... so did others ... but not many of any of them. Whatever people were on North America at the time were also lost to us.
At any rate, the fictional premise of the book has a lot to do with our own incredible rate of technological advances in just the past century, decade, year - and the fact that we are no different from the people who came before us. If we can figure this stuff out, so might they have been able to, at least some of them. The Story Line premise is also based on recent archaeological findings that tell us our ancient forebears were a lot more 'advanced' than we give them credit for.
They knew math, geometry, physics, architecture, geography, astronomy, cartography, and who knows what all else, and they were skilled enough to produce what even our most powerful equipment cannot replicate. All of this a long time before we thought they could possibly have been doing much of anything except hunting, gathering, and just trying to survive.
Fictionally speaking, we've located a small but extremely advanced society in the middle of North America back in the day - more than 12,000 years ago.
Nobody can prove they existed.
Nobody can prove they didn't.
For our purposes nobody has to try to prove anything. That's one of the joys of writing fiction. It doesn't matter, not really, for our purposes, whether anything like Phi is 'real'. There's no absolute 'evidence', that anyone knows of right now anyway, one way or the other.
Because, you see, 'Something Happened' right around twelve thousand years ago - and about a thousand years worth of life on North America is now compressed into a condensed black mat of carbon way down there under our feet. Beneath that 'black mat' lie the remains of what was here before 'Something Happened'; above it lies the archaeological story of what's happened since. The black mat might have its own story to tell if we can find a way to read it.
The Little Dryas was a rather trying time for everyone but North America bore the brunt of it and was practically scrubbed clear of almost all life forms.
The fact that our fictional culture of Phi was as technologically advanced as it was (fictionally) allowed some of her folk to escape - but they could not escape the consequences/fallout/impact to all of Earth that the ELE brought.
So that's the general idea of one of the two Story Lines of this set of books.
The other one has to do with what was going on with our fictional Dunnottar Folk and in the world in general (sort of) starting in the year 500 CE. The Dark Ages were actually a pretty busy time, much more so than I expected when I started writing about them.
We've got the Younglings of Dunnottar following their Destinies here and there and all over the place. The Young Ones are right on their heels and the New Younglings are by no means willing to allow their older cousins to hog all the attention.
Mythology, Legend, and History merge partly for the fun of it and partly because how do we know there aren't other Dimensions and Realms all entangled with us on one eternal Journey through Time and Space via the Spiral (PHI, the Golden Mean, the Perfect Balance, etc. known to us as 1.618...)?
We're only just beginning to grasp the possibilities that quantum physics (for example) might present us with. Give us a few millennia (or a few years at the rate we're going!) ... which our fictional Phi Folk would have had before that ELE hit and 'Something Happened' ... the point here being that all this might be pure-dee fiction as it's intended to be - or it might not.
I ain't even kiddin' ya.
Trying to keep up with our Characters is hard enough once they all get on a roll - throw in trying to keep up with our own archaeologists, physicists, astronomers, technologists, and plenty of other '-ists' with all the darned recent things they're all coming out with and it's no wonder I'm wondering what the heck our Characters are getting me into this time.
Even so, it's a Journey I would not trade for all the tea in China or almost anything else.
We've got a preliminary Part One out and the 'actual' one in the works with the additions and changes. It's slated to come out at Summer Solstice; Part Two will hopefully be ready for print at Fall Equinox; with Part Three coming out at Winter Solstice to round out the year. That's the 'plan'.
Considering the fact that this is an extremely busy time for me personally, it's a good thing our Characters have proven to be effective and efficient when need be. All I have to do is write stuff down ;)
The Mamm Books, Danann, and the Youngling Books are all about the same fictional family that has to make it through some seriously trying times as they both survive themselves and make sure the Legacy of which they are the Keepers survives - and they succeed, which isn't really a 'spoiler' because we are living proof of the Inheritance they've lived, fought, and died to Preserve and Protect on our behalf.
Just sayin' ... the Circles of Dunnottar : Faith, Family, Friends, Freedom, Future : are just as important to a lot of us today as they've been to all of the generations the SONG series is going to take us through as we share the Journey.
In case you were wondering what these books are all about, that kind of sums it up.
They aren't 'fancy'; they aren't 'scientific'; they aren't 'provocative' (unless you're in a mood to be provoked); they don't have a lot of graphic sex or blood and gore. They're just 'family stories' that are told around the hearth fires of a lot of generations of these Characters.
Welcome to the Alianora Books of SONG!!
A side note here: all royalties generated by on-line sales of all my books go into a 'kitty account' and the current crop of 'Younglings' chooses a charity to donate them to. Last year they chose one of their own local groups, the Stonehaven Fireballs, in honor of the great job the Fireballs do to Protect and Preserve meaningful traditions, and because it was a Fireball event that led to the development of some wonderful friendships.
