Forthcoming: "Old Blood, Bright Fire"

Hello everyone!

     Well, I am hard at work on a number of projects, as I outlined on my blog post for Wednesday. Today, I wanted to take a moment to talk about my next upcoming story for Tales From Midhgardhur, titled "Old Blood, Bright Fire". It constitutes a seeming departure from my usual Midhgardhur projects in that it is not primarily based on Norse mythology and fantasy, but rather on Arthurian mythology and fantasy.

     This is not actually a new direction for me, just the first time my interest in Arthurian fantasy will be reaching a public, general audience. When I first discovered NaNoWriMo, in fact, the very first project I ever attempted was a novel that dealt with Vikings in Midhgardhur's equivalent of the Danelaw finding that my version of Arthurian myth was linked to my version of Norse myth. I never finished that one (and it was intended to be the first of a trilogy!), but maybe I shall return to it someday. I'm certainly laying the kind of groundwork I would want with this story!

     So, to be clear, yes, it is a Midhgardhur story! It is set on the island of Prytania (Britannia), and deals with events leading up to the birth of King Urtur (Midhgardhur's version of King Arthur). it covers ground others have covered before in their own way, but this is the Midhgardhur "twist" on Arthurian legend. Favorites from my childhood lurk in the back of my mind and certainly affect the shape of the narrative (the movie Excalibur, Mary Stewart's Crystal Cave novels, Marion Zimmer Bradley's The Mists of Avalon, etc.) but it is definitely my story.

     So why am I coming back to this now? Well, this is my Channillo story for May. May 1st is Beltane, or Bealtaine to give it a better spelling (used in the story) - the Festival of Bright Fire. A festival of love and sex and fertility and all that good stuff! I wanted to write a story about Beltane. Once I started thinking of Beltane stories I wanted to tell, I came back to my version of Arthurian mythology in Midhgardhur, and realized that my version of Ygraine (Ygrayne in the story) fit perfectly. May is also the birth month of a dear friend of mine who was as fond of Arthurian myth as I was when we were younger, and was very fond of the character of Ygraine at one time. So in a sense, the story is partly for her.

     Anyway, I do hope everyone enjoys "Old Blood, Bright Fire" - I probably shan't have much opportunity to return to Arthuriana any time soon, not when I have so many more Viking stories to tell, but Midhgardhur's Arthuriana is always there in the background, and maybe someday I'll even return to the novels I intended to write about it all . . .

Happy Reading! Skál!
~ Colin Anders Brodd