In the spirit of Kit Fielding, whose posts on the Facebook page of the Devon Book Club I admire, I am going to talk here about writing rather than just publication. I am looking at a five-year period in the creation of what is conventionally known as a ‘saga’, which will conclude in January 2025. Four connected novels over that time, running through the spring and summer of successive years, 1795 and 1796.
Why a ‘saga’? Well, because that was what the publisher decided, and it may be there is no other term for it. Since the expansion of Kindle Unlimited, serial reading has become something of a norm, as it lends itself to binge reading, which sells books well to new readers. A series can take several forms: familiar characters in different scenarios, different episodes in an extended story, and many other variations.
Mine proved to be not like that… I grew up alongside a regency romance writer, my mother Alice Chetwynd Ley (you can see her life and writings at alicechetwyndley.co.uk), and my first novel was meant to be much the same as hers. But it was different, with the outside world impinging more, men separated from women by war, and a post-Brexit linkage between Devon and Brittany, that historic relationship which goes back at least two thousand years – as far back as the iron-age tribes of the Dumnonii and Cornovii, names still found in the Breton regions of Dumnonée and Cornouaille.
I was also more interested in politics. My chosen period was the era of the aftershock of the execution of the French monarchy and the establishment of a Republic, acts despised by many Bretons of that time, and feared in Britain. And I was determined to be more explicit about aspects of social change and upheaval: so the abolitionist movement in England, revolt in the French slave plantations of the Caribbean, the confiscation of church and aristocratic lands in Brittany, growing signs of women’s independence of mind and will, divided loyalties in principled men.
The result was more characters. Characters spread very easily, and multiply like cells. Writers tend to slap them down, restrict their growth to fit with a core plot and the strict tropes of contemporary publishing, notably in romance. Yet characters can only serve the stories of other characters up to a certain point. After that, they demand their own space, and they may get tied up with each other: or they may well have been so, over time. By the end of the first novel, I had unfinished business in more restless characters, and in resolving that issue I found that I added more…
One novel becomes two becomes three, and what can you call that if not a saga, even if it bears no trace of the influence of Snorri Sturlson? Yet the frustration is that a saga cannot be read in one novel, and reads with some difficulty when its four parts come out over five years. So you can see why I might be rejoicing that in January the full story will be finally in view.
They say that a picture is worth a thousand words; there are only five hundred words or so here, but four covers will stand in well. The first three novels, all published by Sapere Books, are already available on Amazon; the concluding novel is on pre-order before publication on 17 January 2025:
https://getbook.at/MoonlightAtCuckmere
Graham Ley 