The Silurian and Other Stories

Silurian downloads and Arthur of the Britons

2009-11-18T16:32:00.008+11:00

If you RUSH on over to Lulu, you'll find a nice shiny new edition of The Silurian book one - book one is now a free download all over the Net; well, sort of. I'm working on it. You can also find me, somewhere, on Smashwords.com. For some reason, The Silurian is on the last page under 'historical'. Why must it be on the last page? But the Lulu version is the most up to date; it's damn hard work, travelling all over the Net to update my ebook.

I'm also working on trying this epub idea, and I also have The Silurian 1 as a mobipocket file, and tying to work out how readers can download it from this site. But I'm not tech-headed computer geek.

I'm also excitedly awaiting a box set of DVDs from the UK called Arthur of the Britons. It's an old 1970s TV show starring Oliver Tobias as Arthur. Now back in those days, I used to have the hots of Oliver Tobias, but I didn't know he played Arthur on TV till only a few years ago. This wonderful little show tried to do it right; to set Arthur in his true period, set him in reality where he belongs and not in silly fantasies of dragons, Merlin waving magic wands, silly women who all think they're the ones who ran the show, magic crystals and floating watery tarts who lobbed swords at men while lying around in ponds, (yes, acknowledgments here to Monty Python and The Holy Grail).

People will never get it through their heads that Arthur was a real person as long as their ideas of him are clouded by ridiculous fairy stories. Reality is far better than that; reality is truer, grittier, more honest, more tragic because it is real people it is happening to, and reality is where you find real love and real lives.

This is why I admire this old TV show; it attempted, long before anyone else, to place Arthur within the true historical context of Dark Age Britain. And on its probably limited budget, it tried hard to interpret how life might have been in those days, given too that since the early 70s, a lot more research has been done on this era, with the upshot being that it probably wasn't as decayed as a lot of historians portray. I don't believe it was. This idea of 'decay' only comes from the withdrawal of the Romans from Britain, circa 410AD. And of course, no one can really look after themselves without the Romans, now can they? Especially if you're a Celt; you can only decay when you ain't got no big people looking out for you. But it was the Celts of post-Roman Britain who could read and write in Latin. They were the ones who preserved the language and then passed it to the Saxons and Angles, who did not speak or write in Latin.
So when historians lord it up for the Angles, the English, for preserving Latin, it was in fact, the British Celts who had originally preserved it, teaching it to the Saxons by way of clerics.

But there you go. History is written by the conquers, and they like to forget who it was that came before them.

Arthur rules!

Book One of The Silurian

2009-08-11T17:07:00.002+10:00

Is now up for grabs as a free download, but for those who like to help out a struggling author, there should be a donate to author button on the download page, pay is via Paypal.

Click the free download button on the right, or jump on over to Free-ebooks.net

Soon too, there could be a new Silurian book, called The Silurian, Book Nine and Three Quarters. All things Silurian are precious to me, but I'm forced to give things away in my penuary. I can't even afford to buy decent cover art for any of the books that I love so much.

The other night I had this fantasy dream where someone made awesome art for the covers of all eight books. I cried about it, as for some reason, having artwork that is true to the story, to Arthur and especailly to Bedwyr is a great dream of mine. So I will dream on...and on...

New 5 Star review: Son of the Sun

2009-06-22T13:51:00.005+10:00

A long time coming, but here it is at last: my first five star review from the great reader/reviewers at Manic Readers:

Manic Readers Review

Son of the Sun

by L.A. Wilson

Jes is hunting. That is his job, Bounty Hunter. But Jes is no ordinary bounty hunter, he is the king’s bounty hunter, sworn to serve him for life. But Jes doesn’t believe in his task anymore- dragging heretics before the king to be killed and made sacred in the sacred fire. He wants out, and his latest target, he believes, will buy him freedom. He finds his prey, his own brother Adare, a black robed priest of the king’s religion and a heretic, preaching against the king. Jes does his job, capturing Adare and bringing him before the king, suppressing the disgust and self-loathing rising in him at the process. But the king denies him his wish to be free, instead commanding Jes to prepare his own brother for sacrifice, even walking him up to the sacrificial pyramid, all the while Jes’ doubt, anger, and disgust rising. But before the pyre can be lit, one of the king’s wives drugs Jes, knocking him unconscious. He awakes to find the king has a new target, and if he values his own life, and the life of his mother, he will comply. But his hunt is filled with danger and experiences Jes never imagined. It changes his life and the lives of everyone on Earth forever.

Son of the Sun is a deeply moving, intensely emotional journey, a profound vision of a future in peril. The emotion that pours from the characters, especially Jes, is so insightful, so intense, that you almost get swamped in the revelations that come upon him, but the fluidity of the story keeps it moving at the same time. It’s powerful and makes you realize just how different this world could be in the wrong hands. If you're open-minded enough to take in the revelations in this story (of which many of us are already aware, but which become all the more amazing when seen through Jes' eyes) this story will resonate deeply for you. There are simply no words suitable to describe the intensity of this story - it’s one of the best I have ever read. Ever.

Son of the Sun is also at Amazon

My thanks to Stacey, my reviwer; you know your stuff!

What's hot right now? VAMPIRES

2009-05-02T19:30:00.003+10:00

Quickly get your copy of 'In Blood Covenant' on Amazon.com

The vampire is Altair Salvar, young, beautiful and Spanish, from the time of the Spanish Inquistition.

Scroll down to number 45 - that's me folks, get a copy and feel the fangs!

Fangs very much

http://www.amazon.com/s/qid=1241256522/ref=sr_pg_4?ie=UTF8&rs=&keywords=in%20blood%20covenant&rh=n:!1000,i:stripbooks,k:in%20blood%20covenant&page=4

The Hero's Journey

2009-03-31T13:42:00.009+11:00

-The Hero's Journey-

All stories are about conflict, even love stories. If there’s no conflict, there’s no story. And conflict doesn’t mean people running around and getting into fights every other page. It means the overall conflict that the characters are facing in their lives: what is the problem they have to solve? What is standing in their way that’s stopping them from achieving their goals? Sometimes conflict can be between a character and himself; his own internal problems. E.g.; the Fox’s conflict within himself over his homosexuality in The Silurian; or a greater conflict that comes from the outside world, or a combination of both external and internal conflict, as again in The Silurian.

Take a careful reading of any novel and see what the conflicts are that motivate the characters. If there’s no conflict, there’s nothing to motivate them to do what it is that they do. In fact, it is the nature of the conflict within the characters lives that forms the plot. A story without character conflict has no discernible plot. And without conflict a novel will become nothing more than a series of scenes, each following on from the other until the end, where the reader will ask, ‘what was all that about?’ No conflict, no plot, and an author risks losing his readers through lack of emotional involvement with the characters, thus with the novel itself. A simple question for an author to ask is: what does your hero want? What is he seeking—his goal? And what is it that’s standing in his way that’s stopping him from achieving what he wants? If a character doesn’t want anything, then what is his story really about?

Advice for new writers: try to bring in conflict as soon as possible into your story and this will set up tension and emotional involvement, not just for the hero but the reader as well.

-The Hero-

If you’re looking to write a novel with resonance, or what I call pointy stories (stories with a point), then think and be a creative writer on a mythic scale and have your characters go on the ‘Heroes Journey’ (see note at the end of this article). Sometimes this is a literal journey, like Frodo and Sam’s journey to Mordor in Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings; and other times it is a symbolic journey through life, where heroes challenge themselves or their societies; to test the boundaries of what is possible, thereby enacting change—true heroes change their societies in some way; they not only risk their own lives for the greater good of their society, but they bring about a change in doing so. In The Silurian, Prince Bedwyr the Fox risked his own princedom and cantref by choosing to fight for the greater good of Britain with Arthur, rather than stay a local warlord in his larger Gwynedd dynasty; this choice came back to punish him in Book Five of the Silurian: Longhand, White-tooth, and The Fox. This is the heroes’ journey: Bedwyr challenged his own society and by doing so, became a hero that helped Britain to survive the Saxon invasions, and standing firm at Arthur’s side, he told his whole world: I fight for the greater good…

Arthur himself is of course the essential hero, and his own hero’s journey is no less fraught with challenges to authority than the Fox’s. Arthur challenged more than Bedwyr did; in that he challenged the very rule of Britain itself, for like Bedwyr, he knew he must do this in order for Britain to survive the coming threat of the sea-wolves: the Saxons.

Sometimes these challenges in fiction are wholly successfully, when your protagonist will attain true heroship, or sometimes they fail and it becomes a tragedy, as Arthur's story was in the final end. The point being, as always, is what the heroes do on their journey that’s important. The Journey itself.

So on this journey some kind of change needs to have taken place for the heroes or their society; e.g.—the gaining of some profound knowledge that was lacking before; both literal knowledge, like my character Jes Jarldane in Son of the Sun when he returns the knowledge of science and reason to a dark world governed by superstition. This is the Heroes Journey: the setting out on his trails, the journey that will win some great prize, the ‘Holy Grail’ that he then brings back to his society in order to change it or evolve it into something better. Or in an anti-hero way, for the worse: like Sir Mordred does in the King Arthur romance stories, when he destroys the Golden Age of Camelot and breaks the Round Table Fellowship.

To expand on conflict and the Heroes Journey—this brings in the villain himself; the ‘bad guy’, the antagonist who puts up barriers before the hero to stop him from achieving his goals.

A lot of writers just don’t have good antagonists or make use of their great anti-hero powers to hold a compelling story together. My own personal opinion of the antagonist is the same as the hero—even the bad guy exacts change of some kind; he leaves his mark, usually for the worst, but he still leaves his mark, because he has pushed the boundaries and challenged his society just as did the hero. Sir Mordred is again the perfect example of the essential ‘bad guy’ who left his mark on the world; his name and Arthur’s are now forever bound together, like twins on a wheel eternally turning around each other in the symbolic battle between good and evil, and yet they are one; the dark and the light of each other. Not as father and son as in all other Arthurian stories, but peers, cousins in The Silurian, who are opposites to each other, ying and yang, one fair, the other dark, and yet it is Arthur here who is the dark one; a symbolic reversal of the natural order--a trick of the light.

Advice to new writers is: make your ‘bad guy’ as mythic and as powerful as your hero, thus they counterbalance each other in a constant battle of powers: light and dark, day and night, awake and asleep, conscious and unconscious, they are each other. Once a new writer understands the mythical, symbolic and metaphorical power of stories, of your hero and your anti-hero, your writing will suddenly open on a whole new world of possibilities and powerful conflict.

This brings in redemption for the anti-hero. The antagonist is still a part of the Hero’s Journey; maybe it was the hero himself who helps the bad guy reach redemption and thus, everything that was once broken, is now made whole again at the end and the story comes full circle. In darker stories, everything is already whole, and that wholeness is broken, like the Round Table, by an antagonist who never learns his lessons from the hero. It is all a part of the mythical cycle, and both redemption and failure are of equal value in story-telling; something is learned, and the thing that is lost is mourned for its inherent value. (That ‘you don’t know what it is that you have till it’s gone’ truth).

A lot of writers never make full use of their antagonists, and yet they are essential to the hero’s journey; without the ‘bad guy’ always standing in the way, how do you know your hero is a hero? As doing good works isn’t enough to prove he is a hero, for he could be doing his goods works purely for his own selfish end. Without the bad guy, how do we know the good guy is the good guy?

A good antagonist will raise the stakes, create tension (will the hero overcome or not?) and juxtapose himself as a contrast to the hero. No antagonist too means no conflict, and again, this means no story, no emotional tension, and renders the whole thing boring and flat. The hero must have his antagonist there all through the story in some form or other; if he’s not there in person, he must be there in ‘spirit’, burrowing his way into the hero’s tortured psyche.

The anti-hero also doesn’t even have to belong to an opposing group, or the enemy. He can be a ‘friendly antagonist’ like Captain Jack Sparrow is to Will Turner and Elizabeth Swan in the Pirates of the Caribbean trilogy. What would this story be without Jack Sparrow? The ‘bad boy’ is often the most interesting character in a story and it’s often through his actions that heroes can rise or fall. Or again like Han Solo in the original and best Star Wars—that bad boy whose really a good boy is a great character of conflict within himself (played by Bedwyr in The Silurian).

And in The Silurian, Medraut gravitates between friendly camps and enemy camps—Medraut’s power is that he can enter both, and a reader may be left wondering exactly in which camp he truly belongs; this raises the emotional tension, for you can never be sure whether he will betray Arthur in the end or not. Mordred’s traditional role is the ultimate betrayer—but The Silurian is a heroic mythic journey and it challenges its own genre…Medraut may or may not betray Arthur, for here his role is not set in stone.

Every hero must have his ‘kryptonite’ (his antagonist); the one thing that weakens him, or threatens to break his spirit or to bring him down before he can overcome all the odds stacked against him. In The Silurian for example, Arthur says a number of times to Bedwyr, "You are the one man who can bring me to my knees..." Bedwyr is Arthur's kryptonite...

Thus the hero, in order to be a hero at all, must pass through great trails and ordeals; he must pass through the fire and the crucible and come out either transformed into a true hero, or he dies within the flames in a tragic end.

If a hero has no outer antagonist, he needs to be in conflict with himself or someone close to him that he cares about, and who cares about him. This raises the stakes again, creates tension and emotional involvement between character and reader, and compels us to read on merely to find out what will happen next.

-A note about Context-

Another thing that can be added to a story to create a greater meaning is context; that is a larger background conflict against which the main action takes place and can be juxtaposed against, contrasted with or mirrored.

In The Silurian for instance, the context is the British struggle for survival in the face of foreign invasions. Arthur, of course, becomes the savior who rescues his people from Saxon oppression, only to fall to his own people in the end. But on his journey to become a great leader, he lives his own private life of conflicts, mostly in The Silurian with his foster-brother, Bedwyr the Fox. So in The Silurian, the struggles of these two men, and sometimes with Medraut, are played out against the larger background of external threats. If someone manages to bring Arthur down, this will leave Britain open to Saxon invasion, for Arthur is the British shield against Saxon aggression, and so the stakes are raised and Arthur’s life and survival becomes paramount.

Context gives a greater imperative to the story and the heroes lives that makes their survival so much more important. Having a strong context can help raise the level of tension in a story and add background colour and interest; context can make the lives of the characters even more real and crucial to their societies. That is, the risks they take to survive then come to mean an awful lot more if their possible failure will take everyone else down with them.

Footnote: For those interested in knowing more about the ‘Heroes Journey’ try “The Writer’s Journey: 3rd Edition: Mythic structure for writers’ by Christopher Vogler. This book explains really well the many different character archetypes that exist in all cultures through all time in legend and myth, and why they are so important to good story-telling and fiction construction.

2009-03-16T11:49:00.003+11:00

Here's an old interview that I forgot to post; interview by Theodocia McLean at Books In Sync

‘Books In Sync’ Interviews Author L. A. Wilson

L.A. Wilson resides in Sydney, New South Wales, Australia

What makes you proud to be an author from Sydney, Australia? The great thing about Australia is it's so vast; you can still escape to places where another soul can't be seen for hundreds of miles in any direction; the country itself is so unique in flora and fauna, it's always a great inspiration and even consolation, as I know when you're suffocating in the city, the Outback is just waiting to rescue you from mediocrity and suburbia; there's nothing mediocre about the Outback, or even just country Australia; it's beautiful, exotic, lonesome, challenging, dangerous, rich and sometimes barren, but never, ever dull.

Who or what inspired you to become a writer? I've always been an artist and a creator; it's born in my blood, and so, I guess, I wasn't destined to do anything else but write. It's what I HAVE to do, and it's the only thing I'm really good at. I can't cook, sew, mend or even drive a car, I can only write.

What genres do you write and why? My main writing falls what some publishers term Arthurian - only most don't; they call it 'fantasy', which it definitely is not. The myths and legends of King Arthur go further beyond mere genre; they are a part of our living heritage, our history, our culture and our collective memory and Western psychology (but not to everyone of course). So King Arthur's story has its own sphere of writing and creating. (I could go on about this for hours, so I won't, I'll just give you the quick version!) I also dabble a bit in speculative and sci-fi fantasy, and have one gothic vampire novel to my name. Very odd collection...

What special projects do we have to look forward in the future? Right now I'm tentatively writing the last book in ‘The Silurian’ series: Book Nine, The Last Man...I say tentatively, as I'm not sure that this IS the last book - I have been toying with the idea of writing a companion book to the series when it's over. I'm not sure what the future holds, but I do want to explore something set in ancient Rome.

L.A. Wilson's Books

2009-02-18T15:48:00.000+11:00

2009-02-05T14:07:00.007+11:00

Introducing "Son of the Sun", to be launched on Saturday or Sunday, February 7, at Eternal Press.

The cover art is by Dawne Dominique; good, isn't it? I'm going to work with Dawne some more, as I'd like her to do cover art for my Lulu Silurian books...

Anyway, back to Son of the Sun - I'm not sure how to describe this story...that is, without giving away the revelation at the end.

It was written as a speculative fantasy back when I was still almost, and I stress almost, a rookie writer; it speculates about what the world would be like if in the future, we returned to living as we did in the distant and ancient past:

"The extraordinary Jes Jarldane is under dire contract to his Divine-king as a bounty hunter, one of the king's chosen 'Sons of the Son'.

Jes himself is unaware of the massive and secret power hidden within him; a power that will be unleashed when he is sent to hunt down the Divine-king's missing wife, the King-Maker, Zahra Veeta.

Hunting this elusive prey alone through searing deserts and towering mountain ranges, Jes' ordeal forces him to confront his true self; a tortured self so powerful and destructive that he will strip away all the falsehoods of the 'Men of Truth'. He will strip away all that remains of life on Earth, leaving only a long open-ended destiny that mirrors the Eternity of the Sun, the creative power of the Sun, and its ultimate power of destruction. All of this hidden within the body of a boy, the Son of the Sun..."

But there's far more to Jes than just a mere bounty hunter; he was so abused in his younger life that he has lost all knowledge of himself, and so, when the Divine-King sends him on one last hunt--for the King's missing wife, the King Maker, Zahra Veeta, Jes journey's alone out into the searing deserts of his land, where under the power of the sun, he finds that long lost hidden knowledge of himself; and it is a knowledge so powerful, he could bring the entire world to a complete end...or, he can rebirth it. What will Jes choose?

Extract: Son of the Sun:

All the land spread out before him as he walked the desert, and the sands swept on into the boundless distances. Behind him came Deva and her women, trailing Adare and his two companions. The followers brought up the camels, packed and ready for the final leg homeward.

As the day wore on, the divisions behind Jes grew wider and wider. Deva and her women walked far to his right, while Adare and his men walked far to his left, all with an intensity of atmosphere between them that he could feel worrying at his back. He could feel them watching him, one side in possession, one side in protection. Somehow, as the day turned to evening, he knew there would be conflict between Deva and Adare. He knew he must stand in the middle, just as he walked now, centre of them all.

Night came, colder than ever. Stars like frozen crystals sparked fiercer than diamonds as the wind blew in icy gusts across the sands. The absence of the sun gave freedom to the forces of space, endlessly dark and cold above.

The small troop divided into opposites and Jes stood still and watched them making camp, and when they had settled, they looked at him, imploring him silently, Make fire, make your sun come to warm us.

Deva’s eyes, black and shining, showed the deepest need. So cold now, she had wrapped herself in layers of clothing, her beautiful hair covered by a fur-lined hood.

She stood in the whipping wind, staring into his eye. Going to him then, Deva pushed into his arms, where Jes wrapped his cloak around her and kissed her lips.

She whispered, “Make the sun, please Jesse, make your sun come and warm us. Your power is not to be feared; you are not a god but a man with powers beyond our own, use them, learn to control them. Use your willpower and warm us, warm me. I love you.”

“You love what you do not understand,” Adare interrupted, pushing between her and Jes, talking into her face. “You dare to love a god? You, a mere woman, daughter of a witch, corrupter of god’s flesh? No mere man is my brother. He is a god and you tempt him to use his powers for your own weak needs. Withstand the cold and set him aside.”

Looking between Adare and Deva, Jes could not decide. He saw and recognised Deva’s need for warmth, to see the power of his sun and he remembered…remembered Rain.

Make the sun, Jesse, make your sun.

Beside him now stood the very man who had killed Rain for the making of that sun.

“I can’t,” he answered Deva. “I cannot control it.”

“You can! I have seen you control it. Remember in the forest? How you brought the sun on my face? You can control it. You do not need to fear your brother anymore. With your sun you can free yourself from him, from the Divine-king and his nonsense prophesies, from all that binds you. Make it come and show him that your power cannot be manipulated for the ends of others. That is Adare’s true intent: to manipulate you for his own ends.”

“And what is it that you do now, woman? If not manipulate for your own ends?” Adare snarled at her, “Speaker of Heresy.”

“At least I am no inquisitor,” Deva replied to Adare, softly, sadly. “No murderer of innocent women, of knowledge. I am a witness to all of you men of truth. The Sisters of Suniva died because of you, Ohn Adare, Divine-king’s High Inquisitor. The Sisters here are survivors of your inquisitions, your manipulations. We are all your victims, Jes most of all. You will never stop in your quest for power, never.”

The wind blew stronger around them and Jes turned to Adare; he said, “Inquisitor? The temple in the mountains, raped and destroyed, that was you? Yes, of course, doing the king’s dirty work as you told me. That was the work you were doing for him, hunting and killing innocent women. And you and your Men of Truth call me the Black Sun. You call me that because you fear I will destroy you and your power.” He advanced on Adare.

Adare stepped away, shaking his head, begging, “No, you do not understand. Destroy not our world, but all of the world, all of the world, Jes, all of it.”

Adare dropped to his knees, snatched up Jes’ hands and pleaded, “Save us, do not destroy us. I beg you, I beg you my brother, my beloved brother.” And he kissed his brother’s hands in a savage act of contrition. “Forgive me. I cannot go on without your forgiveness, and if you will not, finish me now. Finish me before the king claims me in his Sacrificial Fire. I do not want to die that way.”

Deva intervened, saying, “If you forgive him, Jesse, you will only free him to carry on with his evil. Forgiveness does not banish evil, but gives it permission to carry on. Let him go into his king’s fire, let him die that terrible way…the way he killed the Sisters.”

And it all seemed too intense for Jes to decide between them.

Great new review from Squidoo!

2009-01-06T10:25:00.008+11:00

http://www.squidoo.com/susannaduffy-bookshelf-arthur

The Silurian : Book One The Fox and The Bear

by L.A. Wilson available from Lulu.com

Thank heavens for self publishing! Without it, we would have no chance of reading The Silurian from L.A. Wilson. But take my word for it, if this book is not snaffled by a publisher soon then I will eat my Easter Bonnet.

The Silurian is an adventure book, action and more action without being regaled by endless gore. I don't want to read a battle blow by blow, clot by clot, but I do like a clear picture of what opposing forces are doing. Are they engaged in single combat between Champions, Celtic style? Is one side rushing pell mell to overwhelm with numbers, brute force and bravery like the Saxons? Is there a plan with Roman military manoeuvres?

When I say 'adventure' I'm happy to say that there are no gratituous sex scenes. If I want to read a book with these scenes, then I will go out and buy one, something I do quite often. I just don't want to come across them unexpectedly in the middle of a novel when there's really no need for them at all. All the same this in an adult book, with adult themes of Love. The bond of comradeship between fighting men is a constant theme and the passions of Love are explored. " Men, women, boys and girls, and even the dogs loved him to madness. He did this to everyone who met him."

Wilson makes Arthur a Welshman, one of the Silures, a tribe which waged effective guerilla warfare against the Roman Occupation. (The Romans never forgave the Silures for harbouring Caratacus).

The story is told by Bedwyr, Prince of Dogfeiling, who prefers to be called simply Fox and I won't spoil the story by saying too much about the familiar Medraut. Fox is now a friend of mine, someone I feel that I know, for Wilson has that wonderful gift of bringing a character into real life.

Wilson's language is superb. Simple English, stark as the landscape and beautiful as only English can be without later borrowed European words. Reading this at home in a summer afternoon of 30 Celsius, I shivered with cold as much as with anticipation. The setting is so very, very real. Luguvalos ... I stood looking up the road into the darkness, at the dark brooding hills around me, the silence and the cold. I pulled my cloak tight and walked forward, so dark in these bloody hills. Much of the time it's cold in The Silurian, a freezing, stone-cold freezing. The kind of cold that was painful. Brrrr!

An excellent addition to my collection of Arthurian novels. I highly recommend it.

Susanna Duffy, on Squidoo.com

Book of the Month

2008-12-03T19:14:00.005+11:00

Got something to tell...The Silurian Book One, The Fox and The Bear is now Book of the Month on Booksy.co.uk

for all you lazy ones who don't want to click on the link, here's the review:

I have recently discovered L.A. Wilson's visionary series 'The Silurian'. Here at last is Arthur of the Britons, King Arthur the Silurian with 'thick straight black hair and ebony-black eyes'. Arthur, child of the sun, emerging from the darkness of a bitter and abusive childhood to burn through these books like dragon fire. This is the story of the last defence of Britain against the invading Saxons, and of the old gods against the 'misery and sin and guilt' brought by missionary Christians.
The narrator is Bedwyr the Fox, Prince of Gwynedd, and foster brother to Arthur, Artorius Rex the Bear. The rhythm and intensity of Bedwyr's words takes the reader directly to the torn heart of 5th century Britain, a place where lives could be lost in the flash of a Saxon sword, and where the constant possibility of death intensifies every feeling.
Bedwyr gives the truth of his life - everything - incredible courage, wild rebellion, deep suffering, sexual passion, and love. Love most of all. Love is the power of these books, the love between Arthur and Bedwyr, love between fellow warriors on the battlefield, love between parent and child, and sexual love unrestricted by gender. 'Love those you are with while you live, and have no care for those who judge you, for the judges do not have to live your life.'
L.A. Wilson is an artist and a poet. These are my favourite books ever!

Review by marycade

2008-11-24T17:42:00.003+11:00

Just found another outlet who are working hard to promote their authors: Smashwords.com
Smashwords convert your book, or your MS to digital format to be sold as downloads for handheld e-book readers like Palm handhelds, and formats for other readers like Mobipocket and Adobe on your PC.

I've put the first book of the Silurian on Smashwords, again for 4$ US.
Here's a sample from their website to explain it better than me:

What is an ebook, and how do I read these books?

Ebooks are digital books. The ebooks on Smashwords can be read online using our online readers, or they can be downloaded to other reading devices such as the the Amazon Kindle, Sony Reader or IRex Iliad, or to smart phones such as the iPhone or Treo. Once purchased, Smashwords books can be downloaded and printed on your PC or viewed offline. Smashwords offers generous sampling options so readers can try before they buy. For many books that are for sale on the site, you can read over 50% of it online, for free.

This is a new and exciting way to go for self publishers who want to keep full control of their own work, like I do with The Silurian series.
Congratulations to Smashwords founder, Mark Coker; this is a great idea and I hope it starts making money for all of us.

2008-11-14T17:19:00.006+11:00

Ok, call me weak, but I went running back to Lulu today...if I want the Silurian series read, there's little I can do to get it out there. On Lulu, I published as E-books. All of them for $4 US, so come everyone, roll up, roll up! Only four dollars a pop, and I guarantee you a great read for your money.

All eight books are there now. Book One too as a paperback, as well as book eight...the others will follow soon in hardcopy form.

These are the book titles:
1 The Fox and the Bear
2 The King of Battles
3 Arthur's Army
4 Hunters and Killers
5 Longhand, White-tooth and the Fox
6 Bedwyr's Loss
7 The Blacksmith's Hammer
8 Facing the Bear

2008-11-14T12:17:00.004+11:00

Nice new cover image, the book is at Wordclay.com
Coming soon, they say. Book ID: 41869

One day when I grow up I will have a real cover for my precious book...yeah...

Still in battle with Amazon. They still won't take down the Silurian with the old defunct ISBN - this means they're still selling my copyrighted product without payment to me the author.

Fat bloated and greedy, Amazon is a parasite that lives off the back of small struggling artists like myself. I bet they wouldn't treat Stephen King or JK Rowling this way, oh no, only us little people will they disregard copyright over. No one has the right to sell The Silurian other than me, and Amazon says to me, sorry, we ain't taking your book off our site, and no, you don't get a cut of any sales made. (Not that they WILL make any sales, but that's not the point).

Lulu.com too is becoming bloated. When I first published with Lulu, they offered authors a mass of template cover art for their books (ps, these covers are still available for E-book publishers, but on my account, they don't work, as nothing ever does), and even tho the templates were mostly crap, at least they did offer a choice. Now they don't. Now that they've grown fat and bloated and greedy like Amazon, they've taken down all the free cover art, leaving only miserable blank colours: black, blue red and a sickly green. This of course is designed to force self publishers to pay for cover art that they, Lulu, will take a commission on from their cover art designers.

Like all other artists, whether we be writers, painters, poets, or anyone else in the art industry, we work hard, we spend hours on producing good work, and this is rarely respected. Artists after all are bums, so treat us like bums...

New EP book on the way

2008-11-02T11:56:00.002+11:00

Just signed another contract to publish with Eternal Press; oh happy day.

The new book is a speculative fantasy called Son of the Sun; have only just signed the contracts, so there's a while yet before it's published, but there's no hurry. Will tell more about it when the time comes; for now tho, I have decided to get on and publish books seven and eight of The Silurian.

Book eight will end the series, but I plan to write more of Bedwyr's life in a series of books called "The Last Man", which I will publish privately and will be available only by request. I just cannot stop writing about the Fox; he is my life, my soul, my alter ego and so powerful he empowers me to carry on, without him, I'm lost. He has become too compelling to deny, and is so beautiful and sexy, he's an irresistible force and I am an immovable object; as I will not move from being his devoted author, loyal, and slavish author. For Bedwyr I will walk over broken glass and face the critics, boldly. I will slap you down if you hurt him, and I will be as loyal to you if you love him.

These are the words of a mad author; this is what happens to the creative mind once it has found its power-source. When you live off that power, it can only ever consume you, and you grow wild and dedicated, inspired and brilliant, and finally, dead.

I am the living breathing embodiment of the power of the Arthurian myth, and the men who balanced, and unbalanced him. The sword is in Arthur's hand, and Bedwyr is his fire and his furnace. To plunge that sword forward, Bedwyr would take the blade in joyous and enrapt love. So be it...the story continues with The Last Man.

I have a fan!

2008-10-22T12:30:00.006+11:00

Have begun uploading the Silurian series to Authonomy dot com... (have to do a search for me)

and have bagged myself a wonderful reader, who understands me...oh...and is loving the Silurian series. It was a really nice surprise, to have a fan at Authonomy; it means me and the Fox are not alone!

Tis a long lonely journey, and I suppose I'm slightly batty, but I had a good laugh this morning, when I read an extract from an old novel based on King Arthur (what else do you think I'm going to read?)... I would have bought the full book, but it was too expensive for a download, at 15.99, but the line that had me laughing was this one:

"In one of the bedchambers of the castle, Mordred lay tossing on his bed..."

Even now it has me laughing. Oh, I want the book so much, but I refuse to pay that amount for a download...my own downloads are only 4.00$...and I can assure you, I put an infinite amount of work into producing the best books I can. I do all of my own editing, again and again and again, and yes, even then I miss things (I challenge anyone to fully edit, single-handedly, eight books where each book is around 140,000 words each--it's a huge task...so it would be really nice if critics could cut me a bit of slack, cos of funny punctuation or typos...try editing all eight of my books for me and we'll see how well you do)...Another reason why there's often odd words and punctuation is that Bedwyr's story is meant to be a spoken narrative; that is, he does not speak grammatically correctly, and he does relate his story in a breathless manner, and I try to slow him down by adding semi colons. Ok, there are too many, and I've been weeding them out over the past months, but really, this is hard yakka, and I do take on board criticism. I'm not the type of writer who rejects out of hand other's suggestions. I take everything and mull it over for validity...

Anyway, The Silurian is now only on YouPublish.com www.youpublish.com/lawilson
and Zimbo.com
under ebooks...Zimbo price their books themselves at 10$ US. All PDF downloads, as I have cut ties with Lulu (for the time being).

In Blood Covenant now published!

2008-07-09T16:00:00.003+10:00

Yes, guys and gals, the new vampire book is published online at Eternal Press; it's a quick PDF download for $5.95 - get a copy now, you'll love it!

Here's an extract:

Later that same night, as the mortals slept in their beds like children, the vampire walked the house alone. For a long time he stood at the foot of the stairs, staring at nothing other than the blood red colour of the carpet.
He walked up the stairs.
He stepped before Jagger and Vicky’s open bedroom door and stood still, staring at them as they slept. It was easy for him to see them in the dark, so innocent, bathed in the palest light from the lowering moon. He came into the room, walking by the foot of their bed without sound. Their sleep was gentle, their breathing hardly discernible. Vicky slept with her hair falling over her face, strands lying over the gap of her lips. Altair could smell her, a smell of the time of woman.
For a while, he studied the two sleepers. So still and silent did he stand that he became nothing but a long black shadow.
He moved back to Vicky’s side, where he leant over her and, with cool hands, drew open her nightdress to reveal her throat, her breasts. Kneeling to her side, he lowered himself over her, put his arms around her body, and lifted her to his lips. He drove into her throat deeply under her left ear, every nerve in his body burning with the love of her blood; as her blood welled into his mouth, he closed his eyes.
The force of his bite and the flow of her blood flooded him until he felt only rapture. In blood, he knew the force of the human orgasm heightened ten-fold, so that he drank the strength of her, swooned with the taste of her, pushed his teeth in deeper and deeper until she whimpered in her sleep.
Her sleep that could not be broken.
His bite had suffocated her will to wake and fight back, as if a great weight were crushing her chest. He sucked and drew on her, every part of him swelling as he lifted her body higher from the bed. He held her closer so that her heartbeat could be felt thrashing against his own.
Sensing something in his sleep, Jagger woke. He turned to his right and saw the shadowed vampire bent over his wife, growling, growling like a wolf. He heard the sound of sucking lips and saw clearly through the darkness, saw the vampire stripping his wife of her blood; and Jagger did not move to stop him. He watched in a dark dream as Altair’s hand caressed Vicky’s face, her neck, her naked and exposed breasts. He saw his hand stroke down her body as he pulled the nightgown from her, leaving her naked in his arms.
Still Jagger could not move. The vision before him thrilled, excited, burned his mind so that he could not tell right from wrong, good from bad, god from devil. He watched, his chest rising and falling with an excited breath as Altair continued to feed; and as before, the taking of blood from a living source became an open door to the fundamental passions that drove the human psyche, a form of appetite that was dark and cruel, that transformed the consciousness.
For an age, Altair seemed to feed, but he lifted his eyes and connected with Jagger. They stared eye to eye, the vampire seeing Jagger’s naked chest rise and fall in a pant.
Now lowering Vicky to the bed, Altair came and stood over Jagger, the fever for blood drying his throat until he felt the hard press of his fangs against his lips. He crouched at Jagger’s side and lifted his hand.
Jagger said nothing, did nothing; in a trance, he stared into Altair’s black eyes. Slowly he saw Altair open his mouth, come down, and lick his throat. At any moment, he believed, he would feel jaws lock around his windpipe—he was sure the vampire had now lost all restraint. He felt Altair lick a path down his naked arm to his wrist; the vampire released a growling moan that came from deep within his throat.
Closing his eyes for the end, Jagger gasped when he felt the tip of Altair’s fangs press against the skin of his wrist, felt his hot breath, felt his wet animal tongue.
“Altair,” he whispered. “Don’t, don’t kill me, save me, only save me.”
“No,” Altair moaned, his black eyes staring. “I will not make you. I will take Victoria, her strength. I will take her blood to make her weak, or she will betray us. That is why you cling so tightly to me—you are more afraid of losing me than you are of losing her. Is this the truth?” He stood now, a dark shadow.
Jagger stared up at him. Beautiful the Spaniard was, yet with eyes so unfathomable, they un-nerved some part of his soul.
He whispered, “Why don’t you just kill her? What reason—”
Altair came and leant close, resting his hands on the pillow on either side of Jagger’s head.
He answered, “I need no reasons. I take without reason. But what you must know”—he came closer again, his mouth to Jagger’s—“is that there are lies in her blood, and now they are stronger, her lies. She will betray us, and if that is so, I will suck her blood to make her weak. Then she will not have the strength to fight me. If you want my bite of immortality, Victoria must never see that or know it; she will never see that what I offer you may yet become a reality.”
To this, Jagger could not answer; endlessly helpless, he watched as Altair turned away and opened the window, his form silhouetted against the pale dawning sky before he leapt out.

Why do names change so much in The Silurian?

2008-05-15T11:15:00.008+10:00

Time to get back to work, right?

First thing is I'm 40,000 words into book nine, The Last Man. It's not been an easy road, as my mind tries to grasp the fact that this could be the last book of The Silurian: if it is, this is traumatic for me. I have been living Bedwyr's life since late 2003; he is my alter ego, my gay hero, and I love him to madness. And to know this could be the end of my life with him is as painful to me as losing a real life companion that I love so dearly, to see him end is near unmentionable. So I'm planning on extending the book, if it is the last, to be much longer than the other Silurian books. I'm hoping the writing of it will take up the rest of this year, and hopefully into 2009.

I know too that because these books are constantly evolving, I can go back to him when I update and when I edit. And speaking of editing, I have done all new editions of the Silurian on Lulu. Lulu allows me to constantly update, thus allowing me to keep control of my own work; in that I can constantly do research and Arthurian reading to help bring the books closer and closer to perfection (as I see it). This means, for some readers, there are shocks when they read say, book two, where one character is named 'Cadwr' and now in book three, he's named 'Cadarn'.
I wish to apologise for this: but I don't change character names for the hell of it; there are reasons. The reasons usually result from research, where I come upon snippets of information I have never found before, that allow me to bring certain characters closer to their mythological or legendary status. So, forgive me, but in these new editions, a whole string of characters have had their names changed to fit the legends.

These characters are first Cadwr, who first appears in Book Three, Arthur's Army.
I changed his name because it is too close in sound to Prince Cador, who was a close ally of Arthur's in most Arthurian tales; in most, Prince Cador is Arthur's heir after his death at Camlann. In The Silurian world, Cadwr becomes Bedwyr's enemy, and I didn't want Cadwr and Cador to become confused, even though Prince Cador in my books plays only a very minor role. So I changed Cadwr's name to Cadarn.

The other minor character I updated was the father of Princess Indec who appears first in book two: her father, in The Silurian, was called Cant of the Selgovae, or King Cant. Recently, I was doing some reading of old Welsh legends and saw that Indec's father appeared named Garwy Hir - in Welsh, 'hir' means 'long', as in Llawhir, Cadwallon Longhand, and is synonymous with 'tall'. Thus Indec's father was tall. Readers will now find the name Garwy Hir, or King Garwy, whereas before, he was called 'Cant'.

Another major change, for me anyway, was the rubbing out of Osla Big-Knife, as an early rebel to Arthur's rule. Osla was often named as a member of Arthur's retinue; some scholars even suggest Osla was a Saxon and did seem to have caused some trouble, but as he seems consistenly a part of Arthur's band (but not in The Silurian) I changed his name to another early rebel: Gleis ap Merin. Gleis could possibly be a metaphorical character, so many of these characters populate Arthurian myths and legend; the real and the fantastical all lived together in one great warhost, headed by Arthur and flanked by Bedwyr and Cai.
Gleis ap Merin now appears in The Silurian as the Atrebatan rebel, who wants to throw Arthur out of his territory (and pays for it in very nasty ways in Book Four...) Gleis ap Merin appears in the ancient Welsh tale: 'Culwch and Olwen'. He is mentioned as a man that Arthur destroyed along with his warhost; thus, Gleis falls to the Silurian's sword.

But there is more to this, as Gleis is another of those insane coincidences that have followed my entire career of writing about Arthur. Many years ago I began a very early version of the Silurian, still narrated by Bedwyr, but in a very different and more formal style; I could not sustain this style as it was totally alien to the Fox's way of speaking, but in this early aborted version, one of Arthur's fist enemies was a man named Gleis...and it was a name I had made up, or pulled out of a hat, completely unaware that it was even a real name, and that this Gleis was in fact an enemy of Arthur's! This is amazing to me, as this kind of thing has happened to me time and time again - I invent names, only to discover down the path that there WAS a so-and-so, or such-and-such a name associated with Arthur's legend.

But now to the major, major change: and that is Bedwyr's father's name. In my version, Bedwyr's father was always named Bridlaw, an obscure name I found in some obscure myth, years and years ago. And because of its obscurity, I wanted to use it. But these days, I've become more and more interested in the myth, 'Culhwch and Olwen' (Culhwch himself actually appears in Book Four, as the little cow herder boy who leads Arthur out of the mountains on his hunt for Amr of the Boar Clan). In 'Culhwch and Olwen', Bedwyr's father's name is Pedrawg. I have changed this name from 'Bridlaw' to 'Pedrawg'.

For a snippet of fun: Bedwyr is named as one of the three most handsome men in Britain, which pleases me no end, and justifies, to me anyway, Bedwyr's devastating good looks. - "Arthur also summoned Bedwyr, who never avoided any errand on which Cai went. No one in the island was as handsome as Bedwyr, and though he was one handed, no three warriors on the same field could draw blood faster than he; moreover, he would make one thrust of his spear and nine counter thrusts."
So sayeth the legend...

These are some of the reasons why there are so many name changes in The Silurian; not because I am inconsistent, but because I constantly find more accurate detail as I read my way through everything Arthurian. I apologise to anyone who reads these books and keeps on finding characters who were once called so and so, and are now called such and such. It's just my devotion to accuracy, my need to keep the story alive and evolving to reach my own visions of perfection.

The Silurian Books

2008-04-08T10:51:00.003+10:00

Ok, here are the books in order ( bit later on, I'll add a short synopsis for each book, but I'm a bit busy with other things right now...)
The Silurian
Book One: The Fox and The Bear - book one is the star of the show at the moment, as it recently received an Honourary Mention in the 2007 London Book Festival novel writing competition; The Silurian was right there with the best of them.
This book also has an ISBN: 978-1-84799-852-1
Lulu ID: 734142

Book Two: The King of Battles - Lulu ID: 756013

Book Three: Arthur's Army - Lulu ID: 2076985

Book Four: Hunters and Killers - Lulu ID: 895931

Book Five: Longhand, White-tooth and the Fox - Lulu ID: 1114449

Book Six: Bedwyr's Loss - Lulu ID: 1153594

Book Seven: The Blacksmith's Hammer - Lulu ID: 2151492

And Book Eight, not published yet due to editing, Facing the Bear

Yesterday, I began book nine, that is, I pretended to start book nine and wrote about three pages. I'll do more today and keep on pretending to write book nine, until I finish it, only then will I be able to admit I actually wrote it...

more later