This week, we're pleased to welcome author Danny Adams with his latest novel, LEST CAMELOT FALL. The author will offer a free DIGITAL copy of Lest Camelot Fall to a lucky blog visitor. Be sure to leave your email address in the comments of today's author interview for a chance to win. Winner(s) are contacted privately by email. Here's the blurb.
Millions of people around the world know the legend of King Arthur, but the stories always end with Arthur’s death and never reveal what happened to the surviving Knights of the Round Table—or Camelot itself. Lest Camelot Fall begins with Arthur’s death and tells of the survivors’ struggle to keep Camelot’s flame of freedom burning against the darkness both of Saxon invaders and native British would-be tyrants.
Lucian Aurelianus is a descendant of Roman emperors and British kings alike, as well as being Arthur’s cousin. He receives an urgent summons to Camelot from Merlin only to arrive after the slaughter of the Battle of Camlann, in time to see Arthur’s body taken away to Avalon. Soon afterward Lucian’s brother, Constantine, claims the right to be High King of Britain—and exiles anyone who challenges him, including the surviving Knights. At the same time, the sons of Arthur’s nephew and mortal enemy, Modred, have joined forces with the Saxons, along with soldiers from a reborn Roman Empire with designs on Britain, for a final attack against Camelot.
Lucian decides he must stay to help Merlin and the Knights—and his increasingly despotic brother—if anything of Arthur’s dream is to survive. Ultimately he will do whatever it takes to keep Camelot alive, even when that means challenging the armies of southern Britain, enduring Saxon slavery, and the possibility of taking what is left of Camelot and leaving Britain behind forever.
How did you come to write about Camelot after Arthur had died?
Lucian Aurelianus is a descendant of Roman emperors and British kings alike, as well as being Arthur’s cousin. He receives an urgent summons to Camelot from Merlin only to arrive after the slaughter of the Battle of Camlann, in time to see Arthur’s body taken away to Avalon. Soon afterward Lucian’s brother, Constantine, claims the right to be High King of Britain—and exiles anyone who challenges him, including the surviving Knights. At the same time, the sons of Arthur’s nephew and mortal enemy, Modred, have joined forces with the Saxons, along with soldiers from a reborn Roman Empire with designs on Britain, for a final attack against Camelot.
**Author Interview with Danny Adams**
How did you come to write about Camelot after Arthur had died?
I’d always wondered what happened to the surviving Knights
of the Round Table after Arthur’s death, though the medieval stories weren't much help – some say, for example, that many of the survivors went to the Holy
Land to fight the “Infidel”, but in the 6th century A.D. Islam
didn’t exist, and the Holy Land was in the hands of the (Christian) Eastern Roman / Byzantine Empire.
I got to thinking about this again after reading Jack
Whyte’s fabulous (and super-realistically detailed) Chronicles of Camulod series, and this time went looking for
answers among the earliest medieval stories of Arthur, primarily from Wales and
Cornwall with some from Brittany thrown in. Those writers were as interested in
the question as I was, and not long into the process of this research before I
realized I wanted to answer my own question by writing a novel about them. Lest Camelot Fall, well flavored with
pieces of those early tales, was the result.
What
famous author do you wish had written about Camelot / King Arthur, and what
writing styles are best adapted for telling that story?
This is a quirky question for me because the author I would
most like to have seen write it didn’t write in the style I think would be best
for it. I would have been interested in seeing James A. Michener’s take on it –
it would have been epic and the period detail would have been meticulous. (And
he likely would have written about all the generations leading up to Arthur’s
death too, as Jack Whyte did.)
But while he wrote adventure tales and about people up
against incredibly difficult circumstances, the sheer scope of his work meant a
lot of characterization was left out. And I think the characters are really at
the heart of the story. So it’s a pretty tall order: I would want to see
someone take it on who could preserve a spirit of adventure, who understood
what a challenge living and fighting in 6th century Britain was, and
who would fill the story with fully-dimensional characters as well as lush
period detail.
In Lest
Camelot Fall, Merlin is a title rather than a single person. What are the
challenges of making this character both practically wise and spectacularly
magical for readers living in a sophisticated, technology-heavy world?
With Merlin I found myself in the odd position of trying to
create suspension of belief over things that were actually real. That is, until
the 4th century you had this great advanced civilization existing in
Britain; by the 6th century that civilization was gone but its
traces were everywhere, most notably in the monumental stone buildings and
straight roads. Technology that would have awed whomever saw it, which couldn't be replicated by that point…but if you had access to Roman books, you could
pull a lot of it off. So for the magic, there’s nothing that Merlin does that
is outside the ability of Late Roman science, but to most people in 6th
century Britain it would seem like he had spectacular powers.
As for the wisdom…well, he was inheriting a title, and with
that title came knowledge from countless generations of Celts and Druids before
him. He understands all the responsibilities this entails, both practical and
in other ways. I think by the time someone gets to the point in his training
and life that Merlin reached by the time of Lest
Camelot Fall, they would have naturally picked up a great deal of wisdom
along the way.
Part of
the great appeal of Arthurian legend is the tragic love triangle and the
tension it creates between Arthur, Guinevere, and Lancelot. What do you feel Lest
Camelot Fall offers readers who want the kind of romantic, courtly drama?
I wanted to make Lest
Camelot Fall as historically accurate as possible…with one exception. I
didn’t think I could tell the story without Lancelot and Guinevere, even though
they were much later medieval additions.
On the other hand, after their betrayals—they blamed
themselves for Arthur’s death, as did many others—there really couldn't be any
kind of happy ending for them. As it is, any romantic ending would likely be
out of the question anyway, since both took sanctuary by joining religious
orders after Arthur’s death. But there was a possibility of them encountering
one another again, so readers of Lest
Camelot Fall will see the results of this when it finally happens.
As for the other characters…this book was mainly about
survival in the immediate aftermath of Camelot’s all-but-destruction, but if
other books follow it, the world they’re building will certainly allow for more
romantic drama.
Are
there people (contemporary, or at least within the last 100 years) who you
think fit into the archetypes set by King Arthur and the Knights of the Round
Table? Who and why?
My first thought was Nikola Tesla for Merlin – and there’s a
story I might like to write someday!
But the more I think about the question, the more I realize
– and am ashamed by realizing this – that I don’t know the names of a lot of
people I would consider as fitting the archetypes of Arthur and his knights.
The way I see Camelot, and the way I wrote it, it was as a band of people
struggling against darkness and violence to try building something good that
would last not just for their own lifetimes but for the generations that
follow. There are people all over the world right now – South Sudan, Syria,
Ukraine, right here in the United States, and almost countless other places – struggling
against violence and other kinds of darkness of one sort or another. These are
people whose names we may never know, but they are every bit as worthy of
remembrance as Arthur and his knights.
When
writing character motivations, how do you prevent contemporary sensibilities
from taking over, and instead remain true to the mindset of the times you are
writing about?
That’s actually my biggest hurdle when writing historical
fiction, and I’m sure I’m not alone. But it has a (deceptively simple)
solution.
All historical fiction authors know that they need to become
experts in the period they’re writing about if they want it to sound authentic,
but in doing so you also have to become an expert in your characters who live in that time. These two are inseparable, flip
sides of the same coin. If you intimately know the world you’re writing about,
then you should also come to intimately know the people who populate it. What
they want and what drives them – and how they’ll be different than someone in
the 21st century.
What is
the key element for capturing the feeling of a bygone age and translating that
for your readers?
I like to make a story as “interactive” as a book can possibly be. That is, I don’t want to just draw a reader into the story in a basic way. I want them to feel the way the character is feeling. To think what the character is feeling. To touch, hear, and smell what the characters are sensing. I tend to do that through a lot of detail, both period detail and what is going through characters’ mind. To feel like they’re living in the place alongside the characters. I can’t time travel (which is still disappointing to me), but I've always felt like historical novels were the next best thing, and if my readers feel like they've at least gotten a good long glimpse at the place and time I’m writing about, then I’m happy with that.
