The Author’s Kingdom is a series of articles, where the Author explains his perception of Heirs to the Kingdom. It is written to cover the festive season of Christmas 2016.
Creating Loxley and the Woodland Realm.
For those of you who do not know me, the woodland of the UK is a precious and very important place in my life. From the age of five I have had the luxury of being able to slip over the fence and walk in amongst the trees, and it is a place to which I hold great affinity. For me personally the tree is massively important, I see it as the symbol of life itself and the true form to which I identify the natural world.
When I first began to write Heirs to the Kingdom I was told not to title the first book “The Bowman of Loxley,” because people would think it was just another Robin Hood story, which for those of you who have read it, you know it most certainly is not.
This story is indeed inspired by a few of my favourite stories from childhood, firstly my love of King Arthur and Merlin, combined with the tales of Robin Hood, but more than that is also my love of books such as Treasure Island, Robinson Crusoe and the Swiss Family Robinson. All of these books at an early age inspired me so much; they left a mark on me that even to this day has never left me. As I passed into my teenage days, I was captivated by books like Day of the Triffids, and the Crysalids, War of the Worlds and the Three Musketeers. I guess I got hooked on post-apocalyptic tales and anything that had great comradery as well as survival topics.
I still love all things that involve living an alternative life within nature, going off grid, and leaving the modern world behind me. I find the modern world at times to be quite tiresome. I see it as a world that values possession’s and money more than humanity and compassion, and with the addition of social media, it does feel at times like all people want these days is to be validated for actually doing very little, I mean let’s be honest, posting 1000 selfies is hardly an achievement. I cannot deny there have been moments when I have sat and watched the world and thought maybe mankind should end tomorrow before we ruin everything on this planet, or just feel the urge to build a tree house and go live alone in the woodland, where I would be surprisingly happy alone.
Of course that then leads me into thinking about what would happen if a massive disaster wiped most of us out, could modern people honestly survive, have we salvaged enough of the arts and crafts skills and growing techniques of the past to really make it? It was at moments of thought like this in my youth that I began to play out different scenarios in my head. It is actually a brilliant topic of thought, and with some time you can really look at a million different combinations of how life after destruction would look, and Kingdom is just one of many.
Add to that the end of one of my favourite books, King Arthur, which clearly states he will return one day to save us all, which has been a popular theme throughout all the mythology of history, and you can pretty much see where HTTK began. My ponderings of all the above were eventually going to splice at some point, which was actually around the early 1980’s.
When I first began to look at how I would set up the world I have now created, I hadn’t really decided on what had actually caused the end of modern mankind. I started at the heart of all of things and so selected a farm, as I knew the remote location and ability to produce food would be vastly important. It was also clear to me just by looking at modern news broadcasts, if we ever really do have a massive disaster on this planet, cities would be the last place you would want to be. I know from my horticultural experience that most crops are sown between January and March depending on which crops they are, and so it was clear to me to have any chance of making this plausible, the tragic event whatever it would become, had to take place from April onwards.
So I had a farm and with a little research, I found some old records from Loxley on the border of Derbyshire and Yorkshire, which showed that in the 1600’s an archaeological dig unearthed 14 dwellings which were close together and dated back to the Early Medieval period. The lord of the time who conducted the dig, said he had found evidence that this was the actual home of Robert of Barnsdale, the young son of a local who shot his neighbour’s dog, for killing some of his sheep with a long bow. He was fined a penny by the Barnsdale Magistrate, but did not pay it as he absconded into the large bordering Sherwood Forest and was branded an outlaw. Old maps show that Sherwood Forest was much larger than it is today, in fact not only did it cover most of Nottingham; it spread across a great deal of Derbyshire as well. The whole area of Barnsdale was in later days divided into small hamlets, of which the one in that area was named Loxley as it still is today. It was perfect, and so now I had a farm and 14 houses to build my story around, and from that point on with more research and a lot of creative license, I created what the readers now know to be the Stockade.
I started initially with a family tree; I put the head of the Lox household Jake at the top, added his wife, and then began to work on his three sons and their family. Jake was the land owner, and the eldest son had to be the parent of Robbie, who at that point in my mind was still a very young boy. That gave me the occupants of the farm, which was a big operation, so then I added a few staff, of which Ann Kirk and Agatha Patterdale both worked for Jake and lived in two of the 14 houses, later this was to change and they became business owners and tenants of Jake. Alf Smith came next, followed by the Appleton family, and slowly the circle of people expanded, at which point I came up with my reason for the introduction of Runestone, via her mother moving in and setting up Trinkets and Trousers, the shop that sold jewellery and clothing.
I wrote the part of the meeting between Robbie and Runestone at her gate in the very early days, but it wasn’t until I started the fifth book I decided to dig out the very small piece I had noted down in the early 1980’s and give it a full make over to update it to fit better within what had become the evolving storyline.
The actual idea of the Stockade came in 2005, not long before I began the massive task of arranging all the notes which would come a year later. It occurred to me that at some point Robbie would need to be pushed into the limelight, and even though all my notes to that point had him as a 12 year old and Runestone as a 11 year old, I knew to make the story have a more believable factor, it had to have a lead character that could actually take the people forward. It was at this time, I decided Jake had to leave the story and make way for his son Robert, who would eventually pass the title on to his heir, so story the evolved behind the scenes with the death of old Jake Lox and Robbie aged to almost 18 years of age literally overnight.
It made sense that if the country was falling apart and you had a large property filled with fields of food, you would be open to raids from those of a more violent nature, and so Jake being a smart man, began to erect a wall from the vast forests of pine and fir that surrounded him. I was clear it would be hard and gruelling work, and it was obvious to me that a man like Jake would offer to support others around him. Having lived there all his life, he would be well known in the area, and I thought he would be the type of man to gather those in need together on his property to protect them, but also he would need the extra help. So by the time he began his wall of tree trunks, there would have been no shortage of willing hands. All this was carefully worked into the background via small short stories, which eventually lead to the accident with Jake that ultimately caused his demise. Even though I was creating this story, I pretty much used Heirs to the Kingdom as a working title, and so I was always aware this would be a tale that slowly reduced the cast to those final few remaining heirs. I suppose in one way, I always considered the point that once I reached those final few, I could then create another continuing tale of those who came later, although I will say at this point, this is not something I have worked on to date.
As I planned and day dreamed in my spare time, I found myself really getting into the idea of setting up my own farm commune, it was a powerful idea that really inspired me. I laugh a little as I think back now, I worked in horticulture at a large Garden Centre at the time, and there were many hours of long laborious tasks to do, especially in early spring. On all those times alone in a greenhouse I would let my mind wander as I pricked out seedlings or potted hundreds of plants up, it was some of my happiest times alone in the greenhouse’s working on planting up hanging baskets or lining out the floors with thousands of fresh new seedlings. It was the kind of work where you just got on with it, because the routine was such that you worked on auto pilot, and that was wonderful as it allowed my thoughts to wander. Every night I made notes in a scruffy old pad, and in many ways this was just a way to distract my constantly busy mind as this imaginary village set on the moors got more and more elaborate. I can honestly say, I never once considered what I was doing, it was just a way to control the endless internal dialogue of my busy mind, and it was never meant to be published.
In April 1993, I got the flu. I had watched how we had lost members of staff at work to sick leave, and had just taken up the slack with the other members of our team to cope, but this flu was pretty different and we struggled for a few weeks with low staff numbers that left me exhausted. One Sunday night after a long day and feeling really tired, I prepared for work and then went to bed. To my surprise I woke up on Wednesday morning feeling really rough. My partner at the time told me of how I turned almost white as I burned with a fever for two days, and she was greatly relieved to see me awake, even if I was coughing and sneezing like a mad man. Once recovered and back in work, I was amazed at how I had slept for two days without even being aware of it, I understood that this flu had just hit me out of nowhere, and I think that was the moment when I realised how susceptible we are to virus infections. It was during the months that followed that I began to read of the great flu epidemic that wiped out millions, and I understood I had found my way to explain how Loxley had become such an isolated place. This was the time when the Red Death entered my thoughts, just as always I took fact and blended it with a little fiction, and then worked out the stages at which the virus would spread and incubate to create a scenario that could be applied to my now fast growing village of people and notes. The picture was beginning to widen as my virus swept across the country and finally I had a great backdrop for my small community. Possibly the oddest thing was when I did eventually start to write HTTK, the Red Death was just a loose definition even though I had a good amount of notes on it. The detail came later and was included at the start of book five, and written from the point of view of looking back at the events of that time.
I am not sure where twenty twelve really came from; I know I wrote it on my file in 1989 in red marker pen. It could have been something I read, I really do not know, but for some unexplained reason that was a date fixed in my mind, and I never really felt a need to change it, as this was not something I had ever thought of publishing. Parts of my notes were extensive family trees with dates, that went right back to the times of King Arthur, I literally listed ever fictitious member of the family and who they married and who their children were, I giggle now when I look at it and think “How Obsessed was I back then?” The time line it provides has been an incredible tool as I wrote through the series of books, so even though I think of myself at times as being quite bonkers, it has served me very well, and is the most used tool in my note stack. Shortly after I published the first version of HTTK I realised it was 2009, and only three years short of the actual fictional event. I think with hindsight maybe I should have changed it, the problem was once I started working on the story, the task of changing the time line and then changing the manuscripts to fit the amended dates was simply too mammoth to carry out, and so it has remained as originally written.
With a reason for world change, a good community growing daily, and my lead characters aged and in place with a fictitious history behind them from distant mythical tales, I had most of my imaginary world in place. Between 2000 and 2005 I spent a lot of time filling in gaps, I looked at the world through slightly destructive eyes, as I pulled it apart to see what would last and what would fall. I hit the books and studied the growth rates of plants, the destructive powers of earthquakes, how the weather could bring damage and chaos, and I devoured books on plagues, Virus’s, HIV, Mad Cows disease, Chicken Flu etc.. I am sure my local library saw me as some wild villain looking to kill off the planet.
I added religion in the form of a slightly altered and updated Pagan based faith, I looked into alternative energy, natural fuels, and ancient weapons, and as I learned more, I pencilled it in between the lines. By 2006 I had a huge mountain of notes all scribbled on pads and crammed into my old metal filing cabinet, it was a mess, and so I decided that I would finally start to sort it all out.
Before Christmas of 2005 I bought a second hand computer, it was a little old and needed a good cleaning out, but it worked and had a word processor which was all I really wanted. After a few updates and a more advanced copy of Windows installing, it was ready to use. On New Year’s Day I switched on the computer and opened the top draw of the filing cabinet and began to type up all the hand written notes creating files to store them in as I went. It took almost a year to actually type it all up and file it where I could find it quickly, it did not help that once I began, I also started to make more additions as the process was very creative and the size of the task doubled. Eventually the task was done, my battered and slightly out of date computer became my first real vehicle for writing properly, and although I typed with only two fingers at the time, I rapidly became a very fast and efficient typist, something that has not changed much today, as I rarely use more than three fingers. Even though I have since added a more up to date desktop and laptop computers for editing on to more advanced and up to date programs, that first computer became my only writing computer for HTTK, sadly I got the first six and half of book seven out of it before it burned out in 2014, but it served me very well, and in honour of my wonderfully battered PC, I replaced it with a second hand computer, just to keep that familiar feel. I very much like the idea of using old technology for writing this story on, and I have always felt that somewhere in Harry’s shed is and old PC just waiting for him to find it and tinker with it to get it going again, and maybe one day, Blades will use it to write her side of the story of what it was like growing up with Mad Harry as her father, and becoming the first new recruit of the Specialists.
Finally with the task completed which also involved many small back stories from the past, I had enough material to seriously start. What had begun as a day dream was now a whole race of woodland dwelling people, who lived a sustainable life on the land, and worked hard to survive in peace. I had the Stockade protected by the land owner, the food, the salvaged technology to assist and a whole bag of interesting character profiles to introduce into the story as and when I needed them. The woodland Realm had finally taken on its true shape.
In May 2007 with a computer filled with neatly ordered notes, I began to write, “Loxley is a town set deep in the wild moor,” and I was off… Above my desk was a map of my Loxley, a family tree that spanned four feet by three feet, and in my mind was a picture of snow on a farm house that had a huge industrial greenhouse set away from the back door. Beside it was a barn that rang to the sound of steel, and in the distance behind the now bare rows of apple trees, you could just make out the distant silhouette of a tall wooden wall. Behind me was the long driveway that lead to the hawthorn clad lane, and that took you through the crisp white snow to the cold empty street of fourteen houses, where only a few occupants had risen to start the cold wintery day. Years of scribbling notes, and filing suddenly came alive as I took the best part of twenty years’ worth of work, and just as Eve did so long ago, I breathed life into it, and set it free to grow and evolve. This was going to be my kingdom and a world I would love to walk in.
It felt like an extraordinary feeling as I wrote. I combined all those wonderful moments of my childhood alone in the woodland, and every little dirt path I ran along became a road in my story, all the hidden paths I knew between the trees became the routes taken by my Specialists. The steep embankments I struggled up were the same ones my hero climbed to hunt or look out across the now deserted tree filled landscape, and all those trees I loved to climb, which are still some of my all-time favourite trees, became the prominent trees of my story. Each and every step my characters took, I could see as clear as watching video in my mind, and it all became the foundation on which I would build a story.
It probably sounds quite selfish, but at the time it was my story, I guarded it and kept it to myself, literally no other living soul knew about it, not even my parents. It was precious and special and just for me, and at that time I had absolutely no intention at all of sharing it. That was to come a little later when quite by accident I mentioned I had written something to an employee, but that is not a tale for here, the result is now known, I eventually submitted under pressure to share it, and as a result and after a lot of convincing, reluctantly I published it.
From my own point of view, I have not really considered what being a writer really is, I suppose it is something that I have naturally fallen into. I look at the world today and see the wealth of writers that are around, and whereas I use to see them as these untouchable people, I think I now understand that like myself they too have this internal desire to express the chaos of their minds in a written form. There is a deep satisfaction in the process of starting from scratch, and then slowly layering together all the facts and building up a world that even though is make believe, its feels as realistic as the one we live in. I have given many hours to the kingdom and it has proven to be one of the most rewarding experiences of my life, especially considering that today others may walk within it. There is no doubt that isolation plays a big role in writing, and also I think putting yourself in any form in front of the world can breed some insecurity, and yet I think finally after ten years of none stop work I can say it has all been worthwhile.
Over the following articles I will start to pull apart my word and show you some of the deeper aspects of it, and I hope that again for you as a reader of this work, it will provide yet deeper illumination.
