I had every intention of settling back and doing some editting on the four books that I have written so far, and there is much to be done. I have indeed got quite a long way on ‘A Song at Daybreak’. Much of what I have done has been purely literary, correcting typos – of which there are still some – and amending text to better conform to grammar and style, but I have also made a few additions and alterations.
The problem is that I recognised quite early on in the piece that Raela, the woman that Marac saved from the bandits in the first chapter of ‘A Song at Daybreak’ has a much larger part to play in the wider narrative. She and Marac will, of course be reunited for some time much later, after Talivan has been proclaimed Queen and Marac is once more a fugitive. But there is much, much more to this than simply blowing on the embers of an old and brief relationship, little more than a youthful fling while both of them were uncommitted.
I did not know how deep this relationship actually did run until in a sudden flash I realised that they had been there before, and for a much longer time. Their previous relationship – one of them? – had occurred some fifteen centuries before, when Kendas was growing powerful and the Kendaic family was waxing strong. Marac and Raela – under different names – had been married and he, a prominent member of the Kendaic, had been Lord of the Chailam called Watcher over the West, the remains of which served as a staging area on the road to the High Pass.
Despite myself, I have had had to clarify this series of events, because it is germane to the later narrative that sees Marac and Talivan become lovers, then become betrothed and ultimately married in the time of Colubal IX. I have already mapped out a rough plot outline, and I will try to contain myself for now, but I suspect that this tale, ‘A Journey in Winter’ is going to push harder and harder to get out. I may have to submit to the inevitable.
Poddimok 