I am in the midst of editing The Ancient, friends, so this will be brief.
First: good news! I’ve read through the whole thing once, and . . . I like it. I really, really like it. I was crying so hard at the end that I could barely see to read. This is more than mildly encouraging.
Second: someone asked me recently if this book is a collection of short stories. I realized that the tidbits I’ve been sharing on the blog might lead one to believe that, so I wanted to clarify the nature of this work.
The Ancient is a novel – my first post-Gatekeeper novel. However, it’s very different from the Gatekeeper trilogy:
~ For one thing, it’s longer – about twenty-five percent longer than Gatekeeper III, the longest of the Anna Merritt tales.
~ For another, in The Ancient, I am finally returning to the fantastical roots buried deep in my imagination. In one post of the blog series about “How I Became an Author”, I recounted my own surprise at how modern my first writing efforts turned out to be. Until this year, all my finished works have been firmly grounded in the reality of the day-to-day world (unless you count my dark, fairy tale-ish, narrative poem, “The Witch of Hampstead Heath”, which I published in my first poetry collection, Songs in the Gate). I mentioned in that post that The Ancient would be different: finally, I am treading familiar paths, surrounded by mythological creatures and the possibility of actually encountering a Griffin in the woods. And it feels like home.
~ Lastly, the Gatekeeper tales are all about a girl – one Anna Merritt, bless her hyper-analytical little heart. The Ancient centers on three male figures – Man, Griffin, Phoenix – and is set at a monastery, so the female presence in the book is virtually nil, particularly when comparing it to Gatekeeper. Speaking strictly of human females, there are only two in the whole book, and one of them gets a cumulative two minutes of “screen time”. We never even learn her name. I didn’t think about this element as I was writing; I was focused on telling the story as I discovered it. It was a lovely surprise when it hit me yesterday, leading me to exclaim to my husband: “Hey! I wrote a dude story! I’m expanding my demographic!!!”
(NOTE: I firmly believe that The Ancient is for everyone, regardless of gender, and that all who read it will be impacted in some way. It was just a fun revelation for an authorial heart that spent the better part of a decade living inside a twenty-something girl’s head.)
However, upon further reflection, I have found kernels of kinship betwixt these two tales. As the excerpt I published in the post Genre-Bending and Other Daring Endeavors reveals, the Ancients are immortal beings created to be guardians of the Light of creation. As time goes on, the Wasting eats away at creation, and the Ancients find themselves doing more preserving than cultivating. It is the weary strain of this labor that forms the cornerstone of my main character’s tormented personality.
As I was musing on this yesterday, I found myself suddenly thinking of a scene in Gatekeeper III:
“I guess I never took you for much of a brooder.”
“Guess again, m’lady. I come from a long line of inveterate brooders. We Trumans practically invented brooding. No; strike that.” An alarming note Anna had never heard before – a note sounding suspiciously like bitterness – crept into his voice. “We Trumans don’t ‘invent’ anything. We are not creators; merely . . . custodians.”
There was a heavy pause.
“You preserve beautiful things,” Anna ventured.
“Sometimes.” Eddie rubbed his eyes wearily. “Occasionally – a few glorious instances, spread out over centuries – we manage to restore and preserve and pass on. Most times, though, we are forced to expend our resources on this.” He gestured disgustedly at the table bearing its bureaucratic weight, and the bitter note edged its way into a full-blown underscoring melody of rancor. “Cleaning up the mess.”
The work of the Truman Foundation sounds suspiciously . . . Ancient-ish.
I guess I’m telling the same story after all – or, rather, the next chapter in the unfolding Story: that which I referenced in one of my first blog posts as the banner under which I live – the longing for which, as I described in my post about the writing of Gatekeeper III, has woven itself into all my writing – that never-ending saga into which I seek daily to be more caught up.
Back to editing, friends.
What a lovely excerpt from Gatekeeper III – I have not read it yet and now I am chomping at the bit to get to it! <3
The quote from III has told me so much more than all the banter that came before. That glimpse into his soul made me know he had the depth Anna needed. AND, I surely see the connection!!! What a lovely discovery!!!