What have you been working on?
In my travelogue of the UK trip I mentioned how both Joyce and I wound up with a (non-contagious, thank goodness!) intestinal flu, and then returned home with colds. I still have only a lingering cough, but Joyce has had conjunctivitis twice and is relapsing back into a cold, and stayed in bed all day yesterday.
In between bringing her chicken soup (yes, it was actually prescribed by the doctor [not PA] at MedExpess), I did some work on the novel I want to write. It concerns four returning Crusaders: two Knights Templar, a Knight Hospitaller, and a Bard. And yes, eventually, they will walk into an inn—which can be a funny and ironic joke since I’m trying to conjure up connections and echoes of the present while remaining true and non-anachronistic to the past in the narrative style, dialogue, and actions.
I really like some of the prose I created yesterday from the notes I had taken back in January. I decided to start with references to the descriptions of the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse in the Book of Revelations, and color the four horses on that model. Okay, actually, the Bard rides a donkey for both comic and metaphoric effect and to conjure an image of Sancho Panza in Don Quixote. I also used astrology and mythology to supply character traits for the four. Perhaps more interestingly, following the model of Pope Joan, gender will play a minor role in the narrative.
The names for the characters were tough, and I’m still not happy with what I came up with. I decided to ask ChatGPT for a list of Knight and Bard names that were non-gender-specific and that conjured up the Medieval era. Most of them sound like rejects from the World of Warcraft NPC Creation Workshop. I need to refine the names.
Oh, and yes, while taking a break I decided to ask an AI Image Generation tool (that I pay for) for an illustration of the first of the knights. I used the description I had in that character’s introductory paragraph. Imagine my (lack of) surprise when the generic result didn’t even have the markings of a Knight Templar which I specifically asked for. Where are these reality-confusing AI images I keep hearing about?
I’ll be working on this for awhile. I have the first two chapters mapped out, and we’ll see what happens beyond that. There are eight planned episodes, with the introduction as a stand-alone chapter, and then their encounters each involve one of the Deadly Sins.
What to title a work about four battle-weary Crusaders returning home to Europe in 1190? So far, I don’t know. Any suggestions?
MUSOFYR 