Faintheart

In which The Author experiences another mere coincidence

The book I'm currently working on is the third instalment in Christian Cameron's 'Age of Chivalry' series, which began with The Ill-Made Knight and continued in The Long Sword. I’d worked with Christian back in the spring, on the latest part of the 'The Long War' saga, so I was quite flattered when Orion approached me and asked me if I'd like to copy-edit his latest novel. (I won't reveal the title here, because I don't know whether it's been officially announced yet.) I'd like to think I did such a good job on The Rage of Ares that Christian himself asked if I was available. I haven't asked him directly, though. I'm not that conceited, after all.

Since I'm familiar with his style, and I'd had such a great time – buried under a mountain of books in Aberdare Library, some of which had probably been untouched since they arrived on the shelves – I jumped at the chance.

Well, I have to say that it’s been a bit like battling the Hydra. You put one query to bed, only for another two to spring up. I haven’t attempted to draw up a query sheet this time. Instead, I’ve been using the ‘Comment’ feature in LibreOffice Writer (the cheapskate’s Open Source equivalent of MS Word) to insert my Notes and Queries directly into the margin of the document.

Most of them are pretty short – 'Please see my Names Checklist', that sort of thing. A few point out homophones which have crept into the text. It happens to everyone, after all (see The Death of Rhydwen Williams in my other blog). A few of them – concerning points of historical accuracy or linguistic variations – are almost as long as the page they're pinned to.

Needless to say, I've been taking advantage of Aberdare Library's half-decent Reference section to deal with most of the obstacles I've come up against. On Thursday afternoon I took a photo of the collection of books I'd accumulated through the day, and sent it to Christian on Twitter.

(Incidentally, The Chambers Dictionary is the one I donated myself, as I told you in The Gift of Words. The Oxford Spelling Dictionary was also from my own personal stash, but when I upgraded to the latest edition I didn't need them both at home. I figured that Aberdare Library might take it off my hands, simply so they could say they had two dictionaries published after 1992.)

Anyway, I stayed there until closing time on Thursday, and didn’t bother reshelving them. Instead, I left a note on top of the pile, saying I’d be back in the morning, so they might as well stay there overnight. And on Friday morning I returned, along with five books from my own collection. I had the three Oxford University Press ‘Black Books’ -- essential parts of every proofreader’s and copy-editor’s toolkit. I also had John Julius Norwich’s book on the Popes, and a book on the Knights Templar, both of which I’d picked up in The Works in recent weeks.

I checked my emails and Christian had replied to my Tweet. Since he lives in Toronto, it came in overnight: Are all those for TGC? I replied, They're just the ones I was using yesterday. In the afternoon, I took another photo and Tweeted it to Christian, with the caption We're gonna need a bigger table.

As a matter of fact, we're gonna need a bigger library.

I had a quick look in the history section of the Lending department on Thursday afternoon. This might sound shocking, but as far as the reading public of Aberdare are aware, absolutely nothing happened in the world between the fall of the Roman Empire and the rise of Napoleon. That extends the so-called 'Dark Ages' to nearly fourteen centuries: there's nothing on the Carolingian Renaissance, the Norman Conquest, the Crusades, the Hundred Years War, the Renaissance, the Wars of the Roses, the Age of Exploration, the Reformation, the Counter-Reformation, the English Civil War, the Restoration, the American War of Independence, the Industrial Revolution, the French Revolution …

Even the one book which Rhondda Cynon Taf CBC Libraries do have in stock – a historical account by Judith Barker – covers the second half of the Hundred Years War. I only found that out after I'd requested a transfer. Christian's book is set during the first half. Go figure …

Anyway, the coincidence came about last night, in the Prince of Wales, of all places. Karen and I were chatting about our latest romantic disappointments: mine with Clare; hers with a chap she's keen on, but who – yeah, you've got it in one – 'just likes her as a friend'.

Karen said, 'Your trouble is that you're too much of a gentleman. Girls take advantage of you, because you're kind and good. You've got …' She hesitated for a few moments, searching for the right word. '… chivalry.'

Well, what do you make of that? Karen knew I was working on a book, but she had no idea of the content, or even the historical setting. Why on earth would she have chosen that particular word at this point in my life?

But I thought about it afterwards. As I said in The Return of the King?, I've always been a fan of King Arthur, going back to when I first encountered some of the stories in junior school. In particular, the Grail cycle is a long-standing fascination of mine. And I'm sure everybody knows the bare bones of the Grail myth, even if they haven't read the stories in much detail.

We all know that Lancelot let the side down because he couldn't keep it in his britches. Gawain was a worthy knight and a brave soul, but he failed to find the Grail. Only Galahad – pure of heart and mind and body – was vouchsafed the sight of the Grail, but even he was defeated by his own self-doubt, and the vision faded.

It's still an odd thing for Karen to say, isn't it? I certainly don't fit the description of 'chivalrous' as lived by Sir William Gold in Christian's novels, or as defined by Ramón Llull, who literally wrote the book on the subject. For one thing, with my back and shoulders, I'd be absolutely no bloody use in a fight. I'm hardly a staunch servant of our lord Jesus Christ, either. (We never did heal the schism between the early Church and the Discordian Heresy, after all.) Roistering and wenching aren't really my thing – chance would be a fine thing, as I found out last week.

But, like Sir William, I do like to meet people from different places and cultures, who've had different experiences and hold differing beliefs. My life is certainly richer as a result. In fact, just this morning I was chatting to Jamila on Facebook. I wanted to pick her brains about an aspect of Islam which crops up in the book, and which I wanted to double-check before I finalise the edit. I teased her that, throughout all her time studying Forensic Science, she probably never expected she'd be asked to act as an expert witness in a historical novel.

Anyway, that's this week's mere coincidence. Just thought you'd like to know.