Publication by Baen July 6, 2021
The Serpent is based on the legendry of King Arthur as were The Spark and The Storm. Much of the action is adapted from the romances of Chretien de Troyes and the Prose Lancelot. These provided plot points, but more important was the feel of what went into a medieval romance.
Besides those sources directly in the Matter of Britain (to use the term of Jean Bodin) I also used The Knight in Pantherskin, an Armenian epic of the 12th century. There are Armenian castles in the neighborhood of Adana, Turkey, and I was privileged to visit one when we were visting friends there. The world is full of wonderful things, especially if you’re willing to broaden your horizon to regions and subjects which are off the beaten track. When you visit a castle you get a feeling for why it was built there which a map only suggests.
I suppose what I’m saying is that fiction isn’t divorced from reality, but that it should emphasize an emotional response over facts and logic.
For the first time in this series I incorporated scenes from Ariosto’s Orlando Furioso. There are wonderful vivid scenes in the work, but to my surprise there is very little plot and I was reading it for connected plot. This is useful reminder for any writer: action is not story.
Some while ago I titled an RCN novel: In the Stormy Red Sky. The title was from The Voyage of Maeldune, a poem of Alfred, Lord Tennyson. Tennyson had read an Irish epic which survives in a 12th century form but probably goes back to the 8th century. I went back to the Irish work, The Voyage of Mael Duin, for inspiration. It wasn’t as complete a model as I’d have liked because it involved a boat load of adventurers, rather than one or two, but it did provide vivid scenes.
I incorporated elements from Flemish Legends, compiled by Charles de Coster and A Book of Danish Ballads by Axel Olrik, to get a pre-literary feel to my work.
–Dave Drake