The birth of Lancelot and the Tides of Time

No one's asked me how I got the idea for my book, but I don't have to be asked to talk. I had always heard the stories of Lancelot du Lac. I knew that du Lac meant "of the lake" but I never knew what Lancelot had to do with the lake until I did some research. Now you have to understand that I first started researching for this book five years ago at least, so I may have forgotten some of this. I read that Lancelot was raised by the Lady of the Lake to serve as a bodyguard to her son.

One day, I was messing around with this voice recognition software, and I had this scene in my mind. It all started with an important question that writers ask all the time, "What if ..."

My question was, "What if a knight wound up in the future in the middle of a large city?" I stated using this software and dictating the scene. Lancelot, the knight, is in a pitch-black city street and he sees flames. Being the knight he is, he assumes this flame is a dragon and he decides to slay it. Well, it's not a dragon. But anyway, that scene become a section of the third major part of the novel when Lancelot has been transported hundreds of years into the future. Did I mention that Lancelot is possessed by the spirits of a feisty female warrior, not unlike Xena for those of you who remember that show, and a grumpy warrior who is just a bit over the hill but still pretty vicious. I won't tell you how their spirits wound up possessing Lancelot except to say that it was all Merlin's idea.

At any rate, the history of my book has been interesting. It took me a couple of years to write it. At that time, I wrote everything except for one or two scenes out with ink and paper. (Turns out the voice recognition software wasn't all that accurate, and I had to retype almost all of it anyway.) I put it all on the computer and submitted. It was accepted immediately, but unfortunately, the company that accepted it went bankrupt, so Lancelot faded away somewhere on the outskirts of Camelot. One of the writers who also published with this company started an independent publishing house. I talked to him about Lancelot, and when he saw it, he chose to publish it. Now, that's been about a year ago.

Today, I wrote the acknowledgments for it and the dedication. That's always cool. I'm just waiting for the digital edit, so I can give it a final proofing. I'll post a teaser or two in here for you.

Work on my other novel goes well. I'm 25,000 words into it. About 40% finished.