The elements of the series are Earth, Air, Fire and Water; or more accurately Fire, Water; and I’m not sure in which order I’ll do the other two.

I’m pairing each element with a cardinal direction. Thus the first novel, The Legions of Fire, mixes Norse myths with classical myths about the far north. The second novel, Out of the Waters (July 2011), involves both Native American myths and classical myths about the Western Ocean. The third novel in the series is tentatively titled Demons from the Earth and will relate to myths of the east. I have notes as to how I’ll handle south, but it’s too early to seriously discuss that one.

The cover art by Donato is stunning. Click on the image for a larger view.

The Legions of Fire is the first of a quartet of fantasies in The Books of the Elements series from Tor.

First and foremost, The Legions of Fire is a novel about a fictional city named Carce (pronounced CAR-see) and the empire which Carce rules. It is not a novel about Rome and the Roman Empire in 30 ad, under the emperor Tiberius.

Having said that, a reader who knows a little about Roman history and culture will find similarities with my Carce. A reader who knows a great deal about Rome will find even more similarities. I’m not writing a historical novel, however, or even a historical novel with fantasy elements.

The fantasy elements which I’ve used here, like the historical and cultural elements, are real. The Cumean Sibyl did exist; so did and do the Sibylline Books, which a committee of Senators examined when Rome was in particularly grave danger (for example, after the disaster at Cannae).

I prefer to use real things instead of inventing pastiches which I hope will sound right. The magical verses of this novel come from the Sibylline Books and (for reasons which will become clear to the reader) from the Voluspa, a Norse prophetic poem. (Occasionally you will find lines from other poems of The Elder Edda as well.)

There are various literary borrowings throughout The Legions of Fire. This wasn’t research on my part, exactly: I read classical literature for fun, and I found it easier to snatch something from (for example) the elder Seneca, or the Homeric Hymns, or Silius Italicus, than to invent it myself. (This is the first time in forty-odd years that I’ve found familiarity with Silius Italicus to be useful knowledge.)

One final note: the word “servant” occurs frequently in this novel. In Carce as in ancient Rome, the word generally means “slave.”

Click on this image to see the detail of the central panel

I’ve heard intelligent people state that classical slavery wasn’t as bad as slavery in America’s Antebellum South. You can make a case for that, but I consider it along the lines of arguing that the Spanish Inquisition wasn’t as bad as the Gestapo.

A Roman householder had the power of life and death–and sexual control–over the slaves in his or her “family,” and this power could be extended to freed slaves as well. I’m not writing a political tract, but the reader should be aware of this background in order to understand the social dynamics of The Legions of Fire. A servant in Victorian England might lose her position if the mistress became angry. A servant in Rome–or Carce–could lose considerably more.

I’ve had a lot of fun in trying to make a foreign culture accessible to modern readers. The fact that the culture is (pretty much) real and is one of the major underpinnings of Western Civilization made my task even more fun.

Paperback cover

But I’m not an educator. I’ll have succeeded if you readers also have fun with my story.

–Dave Drake

The Legions of Fire. The Books of the Elements. 2010, New York, NY: Tor. 368 p. 9780765320780 (hc) $25.99
Paperback May 2011 ISBN: 9780765360458

Cover art by Donato. Click on the image to see a larger view.

Out of the Waters is the second in the Books of the Elements fantasy series from Tor.

AUTHOR’S NOTE

Out of the Waters is set in a fictional city named Carce (pronounced CAR-see). Things occur in this novel and in all The Books of the Elements which did not happen and could not have happened in the historical Rome in 30 ad. This is a fantasy novel, not a historical novel with fantasy elements. I’m trying to keep that fact at the front of readers’ minds by referring to Carce (in homage to The Worm Ouroboros by ER Eddison, by the way). 

That said, I have hewed closely to Roman culture and to events from Roman history in creating the background of the series. The literary works which occur in the series (including the Sibylline Books and The Book of the Dead), and the quotes from them, are real.

The Native American myths which form the core of Out of the Waters are real also. I found the story of Uktena very powerful when I first read it. In reworking the story for my use here, I at last understood why it resonated so strongly with me.

While you should not assume that everything in the series is historical truth–it isn’t–you can be sure that I research the details which go into my fiction. This brings me to another reason for setting The Books of the Elements in Carce, not Rome.

Paperback edition 2012

Most educated people have an idea of what Ancient Rome was like. Much of what they think they know is false. I find it distressing to have folks write (and even phone!) me to complain about some “mistake” in my fiction when in fact my statement was correct.

For example, I’ve learned not to refer to Roman shields as being plywood, though in fact they were plywood and archeologists use “plywood” to describe the material from which they were molded. If I say the shields were  “laminated wood,” people don’t complain (and I hope that I avoid breaking their suspension of disbelief).

Whereas I could say that the legions of Carce go to war wearing topcoats and tails without anybody claiming I was historically wrong. (They might think I was a complete twit–I would think I was a complete twit if I did something so silly–but that’s a separate matter.)

My purpose in writing is to tell interesting, exciting stories that many people will take pleasure in reading; my role is not to educate readers. I hope, however, that those who read The Books of the Elements will get glimpses of a culture very different from our own–but which is nonetheless one of the major supports on which our culture has been built.

Still, I’ll be satisfied if you tell me that you had a good time reading Out of the Waters. I certainly hope that you do.

–Dave Drake

Out of the Waters. Books of the Elements Series. 2011, New York, NY: Tor. 400 p. 978-0765320797 (hc). $25.99
Paperback May 2012 ISBN: 978-0765360465

Last year when Tor asked me for an essay to accompany the publication of The Legions of Fire, the first of my Books of the Elements fantasy series, I explained that riding a motorcycle focuses my conscious mind and thus frees my subconscious. Plotting isn’t simply an intellectual activity for me. The really subtle, really complex structures come from my subconscious.

For this year’s essay to accompany Out of the Waters, the second book of the series, I’m going to write about how translating Latin helps me plot.

Okay, I know that motorcycles are sexier than Latin translation. Bear with me, though, because where I’m going with this may not be the place you expect.

I like to base my fiction on existing literature and historical events. Because I read Latin (basically to take myself out of the present) I frequently use classical settings. Sometimes I do it directly, as when I turned the Odyssey into the plot for the space opera Cross the Stars, but mostly it’s indirect. For example, Philip the Fifth’s invasion of Southern Greece at the end of the Third century bc became the template for my Military SF novel Paying the Piper.

But that sort of thing is minor: my interest in history and literature isn’t limited to the Classical Period. I based the Northworld Trilogy (an SF—basically space opera—series) on the poems of The Elder Edda, and many other non-classical sources have given me plots and settings.

Because The Books of the Elements are set in a world very similar to Rome in 30 ad, it’s only reasonable to assume that there’d be a direct connection between the plot and the Latin translations I’m working on at the same time. With a tiny exception, though, that hasn’t been the case.

Ovid is the only author I’m translating on my website. Specifically, I’m working with lyric poems from the Amores and also with sections of the Metamorphoses.

The lyrics are witty and often self-mocking. They’re not so much love poems as poems about love (broadly defined). They show the first-person viewpoint character (he certainly isn’t a hero) courting a woman, watching her go off with another man after a night of hard drinking, seducing the woman’s maid, and many similar slices from the life of a man who likes women.

Now, this gives me bits of business for my fiction (and not just my Rome-based fiction). Clearly, though it doesn’t help with plots for the action/adventure stories that I write.

The Metamorphoses is a wonderful ramble of epic length through Classical mythology. The title comes from the fact that the stories generally involve a change of some sort, but Ovid allows himself as much leeway in definition as the editor of a modern theme anthology would. For example, the attempt of Nessus to carry off Deianira, the wife of Hercules, doesn’t involve any change whatever (unless you want to count Nessus changing from centaur to fertilizer).

The Metamorphoses contains many connected narratives of some length. The Hercules Cycle runs for almost three hundred lines, and there are a number of longer threads. Even so, none would serve as the plot for an entire novel.

The unique thing which I gain from translating Ovid over reading an author in English of comparable quality (Kipling, say; or if I were a different person, Henry James) is the concentration which the task demands. When I put translations on line, I’m displaying my level of skill for the world to see–and to mock me if I screw up.

That doesn’t mean I won’t screw up, but it does mean that I’ll put everything I’ve got into the job. I kept working for a week on the description of Arachne’s tapestry until finally I realized that the rainbow wasn’t a literal image: Ovid was using it as a simile for the subtlety with which the weaver blended colors together.

When my conscious mind is focused that sharply on a translation, my subconscious can get on with working out plot problems. That’s how the Hercules Cycle helped me to plot Out of the Waters.

I said there was a tiny direct connection between my plot and the translation I was doing at the time. I needed an opening scene for Out of the Waters to set up the action to come. It occurred to me that I could use a stage show, a lavishly expensive mime of the sort that was popular in the Early Empire… and come to think, episodes from the life of Hercules–though not the same ones as in the Metamorphoses–would work perfectly for the purpose.

And so they did. Thank you, Ovid.

–Dave Drake

Written for the Tor/Forge May 2010 Newsletter

THE MOTORCYCLE WAY TO COMPLEX PLOTTING

Writers use various tools in their work. One of my tools is my motorcycle.

Well, plural: my motorcycles. Bikers learn quickly that if they expect to ride every day, they’d better have two. (And that’s if they’re Japanese, as both of my current rides are. More exotic bikes tend to be two-wheeled versions of owning a Lotus Elan.)

It’s a bit of an overstatement when I say I ride daily, but most weekdays I make a run from our home in the country to my post office box in the center of Chapel Hill, about a 40-mile round trip. My wife has a car and drives it whenever we go somewhere together, but I haven’t driven a car since 1986 or ’87. That was to carry Larry Niven and his luggage to the airport, something I couldn’t do on a motorcycle.

And there’s the real beauty of a bike for a writer: you’re alone. You know how rare it is to be really alone and how valuable that can be.

People who drive cars can do a lot of things that engage their intellects beyond their immediate physical surroundings. Cell phones and texting are modern examples, but fiddling with the CD changer, reading a newspaper (really), and chatting with a passenger (or screaming at the kids/dogs in the back seat) all take you out of the experience. A serious-minded driver can even zone out listening to recorded lectures on Greek philosophy.

A biker can get a helmet with a cell phone (or CB), just as most bikes will carry a passenger…but nobody expects you to do that. Windrush makes even an MP3 player doubtful at best. (My hearing loss from Nam makes it impossible.)

A (surviving) biker is in the moment at all times. Is that car at the intersection ahead going to start across? Will there be a garbage truck stopped around that curve, like there was last week? Is this rain starting to freeze?

Or even: Holy Crap! The woman beside me is pulling into my lane to get around the bus ahead of her!

Even when riding on a lovely day and a familiar road, my conscious mind is wholly focused on my immediate physical surroundings. It’s amazing how much complicated work your subconscious mind gets done under those circumstances. It’s even better than sleeping on problems.

I create complex plots and my prose structure tends to be very tight. Part of the reason I can accomplish those things is that when I pull off my helmet, I suddenly see how to combine three clumsy sentences into two clear ones, or I realize that if I transfer a bit of business from Hedia to Alphena, everything will work.

Cover art: Donato

Hedia to Alphena? They’re two of the four viewpoint characters in my new Tor fantasy, The Legions of Fire. This novel uses a setting very similar to that of Ancient Rome–and by that I mean the real Rome, not the cardboard fakery you get from Hollywood or HBO. I know the background pretty well (you can find my translations of Latin poetry on my website), but fitting my usual considerable amount of action into a world so complicated took all the help I could get. My bikes provided a lot of that help.

But besides those practical reasons, a long sweeping curve on a bright Spring day makes me a much happier writer than I would be otherwise.

–Dave Drake, May 2010

The Legions of Fire (0-7653-2078-9; $25.99) is available from Tor.