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| Liravada - Mythic King (2017) |
The first instalment in the three-part groundbreaking series.
Available for Download
Visit youtube.com/theFourKingLegend
Mission Statement:
The tale of the Liravada would begin as a tale of my own family’s history, and that tale then morphed into something far greater. I followed the rabbit hole, delving deeper into the story and allowed it to engulf and enthral me. Initially supposed to span forty kingships over the course of fifteen hundred years, I took myself to the recounting of the pre-dynastic phase and found myself trapped and entrenched in the telling of the tale whose scope widened before me. I negotiated with myself and rationalised my pacing, believing initially that the pre-dynastic period would comprise five thousand words – between 10 to 15 pages, depending on formatting – only to realise that the negotiation fell ever to the side of the story, whose voice began to speak louder than mine.
Who is the protagonist?
The protagonist is the kingdom of the Susavu’r, located in the country and region of Quš, and the complex maze of districts and cities that define it. There is no actual protagonist otherwise. In the beginning, I wanted to tell the story of an empire – an anthology, of sorts – spanning over some 1500 years. I then extended that period by another 400 years in order to tell a pre-dynastic story of a nation in its glory before its eventual fall. It was within that dark age that lay between the time of glory and the time of empire that I wound up telling the story, and it is out of this that the core tale was born.
The king Memna’r was an addition that came about afterwards because, truthfully, I wished at heart to tell the story of Vioso, the Abaślanun king, but did not yet know what story I was trying to write, exactly.
The protagonist is the kingdom of the Susavu’r, located in the country and region of Quš, and the complex maze of districts and cities that define it. There is no actual protagonist otherwise. In the beginning, I wanted to tell the story of an empire – an anthology, of sorts – spanning over some 1500 years. I then extended that period by another 400 years in order to tell a pre-dynastic story of a nation in its glory before its eventual fall. It was within that dark age that lay between the time of glory and the time of empire that I wound up telling the story, and it is out of this that the core tale was born.
The king Memna’r was an addition that came about afterwards because, truthfully, I wished at heart to tell the story of Vioso, the Abaślanun king, but did not yet know what story I was trying to write, exactly.
How did the characters come about?
The last question veers into this question. I believed that one character might carry the pre-dynastic arc and found myself attempting to create characters who were distant and mysterious. I partly did this because I didn’t know where I was going to go with these characters. I had no idea what the story would become, as I was aiming to write about 40 monarchs over the scope of 200 000 words, spending 5000 thousand words on each monarch. It was imperative in that earlier time for me to keep the word count for the earlier rulers to a minimum, but I then realised that would become impossible because I had written so much already and would need to write equally as much for the others in order to balance them all out.
I continued to negotiate with myself – I would tell the story of fewer kings. Instead of kings, I would speak of the dynasties that comprised the kings; instead of dynasties, I would speak of the periods and eras that comprised the dynasties. And on and on this thought process went as I continued to stack the characters and build them. And I was short on the dialogue because I did not know the spirit of these characters and did not wish to ruin them with needless conversation. It worked out successfully, in my estimation, because this silence on the part of the earlier characters ended up giving them that dark and distant mystery that I had been aiming for.
In the beginning, the characters were based upon real historical figures of the past, and the stories were based upon historical events of the past. It is when I had set a mood and a tone, honing my craft as I went along, that I introduced the greater aspects of my imagination and dared myself to turn the anthology into a full-fledged novel. I then knew that this story would be a true adventure – one that I would relish because it had been forever my aim to build enchantment – and that I would obliterate the 200 000 word mark.
It was upon the finishing of the Battle of the Ašelon that I began to seriously consider introducing king Memnon into the fray because I believed that his story needed to be emboldened and told. Much was known about his advent in Troy, but I had wished to create the backdrop for him – and it would be to that backdrop that his story would actually become the backdrop. The civil war in the Susavu’r provided exactly the premise that I needed to fulfil these ambitions.
It is with Memna’r that the novel truly begins and that we see a story; that the tale is assailed by a constant stream of consciousness which closes the time of the dark age, ushering in the tumult of the burgeoning age of light and enlightenment. And this was mirrored by the clarity of thought and speech in the characters who suddenly become alive and real.
I continued to negotiate with myself – I would tell the story of fewer kings. Instead of kings, I would speak of the dynasties that comprised the kings; instead of dynasties, I would speak of the periods and eras that comprised the dynasties. And on and on this thought process went as I continued to stack the characters and build them. And I was short on the dialogue because I did not know the spirit of these characters and did not wish to ruin them with needless conversation. It worked out successfully, in my estimation, because this silence on the part of the earlier characters ended up giving them that dark and distant mystery that I had been aiming for.
In the beginning, the characters were based upon real historical figures of the past, and the stories were based upon historical events of the past. It is when I had set a mood and a tone, honing my craft as I went along, that I introduced the greater aspects of my imagination and dared myself to turn the anthology into a full-fledged novel. I then knew that this story would be a true adventure – one that I would relish because it had been forever my aim to build enchantment – and that I would obliterate the 200 000 word mark.
It was upon the finishing of the Battle of the Ašelon that I began to seriously consider introducing king Memnon into the fray because I believed that his story needed to be emboldened and told. Much was known about his advent in Troy, but I had wished to create the backdrop for him – and it would be to that backdrop that his story would actually become the backdrop. The civil war in the Susavu’r provided exactly the premise that I needed to fulfil these ambitions.
It is with Memna’r that the novel truly begins and that we see a story; that the tale is assailed by a constant stream of consciousness which closes the time of the dark age, ushering in the tumult of the burgeoning age of light and enlightenment. And this was mirrored by the clarity of thought and speech in the characters who suddenly become alive and real.
What was the conceptual inspiration? What was the trigger that prompted you to write this tale?
The trigger was a documentary that I watched in which a White liberal, standing on the banks of the river Nile, declared with a straight face that the British had introduced the first school into (the whole of) Africa in the 1850s.
The trigger was a documentary that I watched in which a White liberal, standing on the banks of the river Nile, declared with a straight face that the British had introduced the first school into (the whole of) Africa in the 1850s.
I did enjoy the documentary, but that was the straw that broke the camel’s back. I thought that no more could I proceed to debate the issue, neither would historical books do. No. Compelling content would need to be written that would engage the people through a cathartic story that involved their emotions so that they could feel the characters, and so that the characters could resonate with them. I wanted to create a culture around the story, as well as a franchise and enterprise. I wanted the characters to enter into folklore, just as the other characters in other cultures had. And I knew that the book that I would have to write to do it did not otherwise exist, nor would it be written by other African descended writers. I had long sought after the big African epic and had found the same, structurally adjusted literature everywhere. And that had frustrated me because I wanted to be regaled by great adventures and wide-spanning tales of African history. Instead, there were books 200 and 300 pages long written in the limited first person, and usually these books were slanted with some type of cheap agenda. And I raged that African people always tended to do things half-cocked; including defending their own history, only to complain that it was being stolen from them. Complaining and then plagiarising the historical works of our dead scholars was never going to remedy the situation; we have the information, now we must create a compelling narrative – all engrossing – such as the likes of the great European and Asian writers of Epic fiction have done. This, I reasoned, was my charge to carry out, as no one else was going to do it. This was to be my contribution, such as it could be.
Increasingly, I had begun to desire to write a medieval story, first of all. But then I realised that I was going to have to reach back – further back than European history, at least – in order to cement the point that I was trying to carry across into the minds of those who would read it. I wanted to show that, by the time western Europe was barely constructing their first clay and stone houses in Etruria and Rome, the Saharan African was already long in the tooth in civilisation, well-versed and well-established (not all Africans because, as with European barbarians, there were many primitive peoples – only, those primitive peoples have deliberately been distorted and overrepresented in order to fit a false narrative). All of this, I had to do with dignity and class because I could not cheapen my story – for this story is part of my own personal legacy, also.
I had been attempting to write another novel in which the theme was ambition, but I fell short of accomplishing that and developed writer's block for four years after having written 25000 words. Set in the 1990s and 2000, it told of the rise to power of young men from the bottom of society. Indeed, although I could not rightly know it at the time, the Liravada had been the story that I was attempting to tell. Once I started the Liravada – once I hit my stride and knew my mark – I dug myself deep and wrote 2000-3000 words a day for over a year, such was my passion and conviction. And the story kept expanding with the introduction of new plots and characters; new subplots and supporting characters, as one plot was required in order to explain another plot, and one character was required to complement another character. I could not believe the ridiculous proportions that my story was beginning to take, and had to check myself upon several occasions. I was careful not to overcomplicate the story with frivolous intellectualisation and intellectualised only to the extent that it was absolutely necessary.
Indeed, I experienced the Susavu’r by tapping into its universe that lay within me. I became each character and even, at one point, wrote myself into the story through the intermediary of one of the characters in it. And each character was some aspect or reflection of myself, naturally; I could not have created them otherwise. But I became the Liravada universe and stumbled upon historical fact through speculation and logical conclusion reached within my own internal understanding. Upon my research, I would discover that things that I would believe myself to have made up had actually truly occurred in that era. And the storylines came together seamlessly. All came together despite the other technical (and real-life) problems that occurred around the writing of this novel.
Just how long is the story, really?
In total, the Liravada is over a million words long; to be split into three volumes in order to sequence the story and make it easier on the reader to go through.
Describe the creative process of how the story came together. And describe the nature of the writing.
I wanted to write the narrative so that the decisions taken by each character were followed by the reader through a stream of consciousness that allowed them to understand the thought process of the character. The reader is made to understand why such and such a decision was taken, and why that decision – although, perhaps, insane – might have been interpreted as logical by the character. I tried to be somewhat big on that because I wanted to understand, even for myself, the mentality of people who can be so trapped in a thought that their reality becomes warped and distorted. It’s a question of perception. The better example for that, I think, was the character Helon – the Outlaw chieftain in the forest.
The characters might also behave differently, depending on who they talk to. That is how people are, really; they carry a different energy that can change from person to person. That is why certain people appear unrecognisable. I wanted to embrace that. The nature of the writing is that of an involved approach at times – as in, I am aware, as a narrator, of the innermost feelings and thoughts of the character that I am describing. At other times I switch to epistemic and retract myself and allow the scenario to play out with no innate knowledge of what the character knows or doesn’t know, feels or doesn’t feel. I feel that certain things are not my business as the narrator and keep my distance in favour of a position that is more informed on the perception in its aftermath. I might say something like “Such and such a character would confound historians for generations to come with his next move”, and write as if I had no knowledge of the internal council of his decision-making. It is a very convenient approach, but one that I feel that I am entitled to because of the breadth of the story and because of expediency. I need to be able to switch from one analogue to another – from one character to another – in order to properly contextualise the way others perceive that character, whether that other is an opposite character (such as his cousin, her friend, etc) or a wider, more generalised character, such as the collective consciousness of future generations who will have heard of these stories after the players had long died and passed into legend. I was very aware of this and broke certain boundaries, including the fourth wall, so to speak, on rare occasion even addressing the reader directly by way of either a didactic or by way of some random intrusion into the story to advise or caution the audience.
The creative process of the story was simple; as I wrote, I wrote more. As the story expanded, I simply wished to explain more and explore the branches that shot from the initial story. I had begun with the idea that I would write an anthology of forty kings and queens over the scope of 1500 years. Then I realised that I needed a pre-dynasty – a pre-dynastic race of warrior-kings to lay the foundations for the new civilisation of the Susavu’r that would then become the greater power that it would become.
I had fleshed out some vague outline as to how this story would pan out, ascribing 5000 words for forty monarchs, along with perhaps 5000 for the prelude (the pre-dynastic period). I then began upon this course and found myself eroding that initial 5000, writing 10 000, then 20 000, then 30 000, negotiating the word count as I went along.
I began telling myself that I would simply cut out certain rulers rather than spend inordinate amounts of time upon one and not the other. I then decided that I would simply speak upon the various dynasties that had grouped these forty monarchs since I had spoken of several rulers and clashing kings of the pre-dynastic period, only focusing upon the main ones as it served to illustrate their struggle against the opposing entities that had formed against them.
And then I crossed the 50 000 word count and found myself still in the pre-dynastic era, and so I rationalised again, deciding that, rather than the dynasties that came after, I would simply speak on the eras that had comprised the dynasties. So I would speak of a Golden Age within which two or three dynasties, spanning some six or seven monarchs, and that era could also comprise 30 or 50 thousand words with perhaps one or two monarchs receiving special treatment and attention.
But it was then at that time that I had introduced Memna’r into the story, and his arc blew away those possibilities, and I realised then – by the way that I so eagerly pressed myself to tell his tale– that I simply could not stop myself from telling it. I realised here that I had a novel, and this realisation came to me at around the 70 000thword. This was also revelatory – a revelation – and I rejoiced in that I had truly discovered my story. And, at 70-75 000 words, I knew that I had the substance, the material and the confidence to carry it over to my 200 000 word mark.
But my conspiring did not end there because I pressed even further in my negotiations with myself, going further to hit certain milestones, balancing quality with quantity. What this means is that I was forever waging a battle between passing a particular milestone (100k words, 150k words, etc; comparing my word count to this or that author's word count) and assuring a continued quality to my work so that I was not simply writing for writing’s sake. I achieved that balance, I believe, and allowed myself to tap into a source of wonder in that I seemed to be replicating the same patterns in my storytelling, allowing the story to come full-circle at precisely the right moment. Surely there were a lot of subconscious effects at play, as I tended to spend a specific amount of words on one character or theatre, developing a pattern of personal navigation, introspection, introduction of inner and outer conflict (inner conflict with the Self and outer conflict with the enemy) and the corruption and absolutism of thought until unravelled by the other side whose argument was just as compelling – so compelling because I had, in some shape or form, conducted the same experiment with that character elsewhere in the book. And I liked that there was always the backstory before the storm in my writing. And I did this once or twice accidentally and then, thereafter, in the interests of maintaining a particular standard, I did it of a necessity.
I believe that I was struggling in the beginning to create a compelling character and, if the truth is told, the same characters – or the same character arcs – tended to be retold in different settings through different people, each time more fleshed out and defined. I found refuge in the fact that the characters expanded as the book went along, and more and more people found a voice in what became the telling of universal themes. That is why I felt no way about recycling characters. As the years went by and the Dark Age of that ancient period ceased, things become clearer to the historian (as in real life), and so I took the opportunity to delve further into the same character arc.
So Vioso becomes Anuviesu, for example, and Anuviesu is very active, whereas Vioso only has two or three significant dialogues. He is further back in time and, thus, darker and more mysterious. Anuviesu, however, lives a hundred years later and is more coherent to the reader because of it – because, in his era, the Dark Ages are upon their last legs. He talks more, and the reader gets to know of his interactions with the people around him, whereas the interactions with Vioso and the people around him are shrouded in suggestion and speculation. There are but dark and shadowy faces moving around him – interacting with him – of whom just as little – if not even less – is ever truly known. And I appreciated this greatly, as I had always kept in mind an idea to become more descriptive as the story progressed, and as I found my feet as a writer.
As the story progresses, the magical realism subsides for the cold and calculated talk about wealth and politics. Suddenly, the agents are no longer the mystical Yiva and the like, but, rather, the cunning and conniving Qušra who takes the stage and changes the entire disposition and direction of the story – and, therefore, the kingdom. I placed my telling and developing of the story on a parallel course to the unfolding and developing of the kingdom of the Susavu’r, and it was in that way that I was able to truly synchronise with the flow and aspect of the tale and its conversion from stage to stage.
Ideas that I had played around with for years now found the opportunity to come forward and express themselves in these books. One of those, for instance, was perhaps the idea of the province versus the city. Or the city-states versus the Capital, and all of the tribality that such dynamics entailed. August on that agenda was a personal touch that I had always sought to put into a book, which was the concept of the Eastern Cities as well as, to a lesser – although more significant – extent, the concept of the distant city on the mountain. And those eastern cities were Pun’r and Susa, and that city upon the mountain was Avu’r.
It was early on in the city of Dine, while describing it, that I first realised my habit of holing myself up in a location, as I had spent several episodes describing the activity there. It was something that I dared not do because I did not want to set myself up for a failure in raising the bar too high and having to do the same every single time I introduced a new place. It was something that, by the sheer nature of need and will, I found myself doing, regardless, and nowhere had that been more evident than with the case of Avu’r which is largely neglected in the first book. Avu’r then becomes the sole focus of the second book and I spend more time describing it and its system than I spend anywhere else in the saga. It is actually through Avu’r – in explaining her relationship with the other cities – that I believe myself to best describe the country and kingdom as a whole. I have to admit that this was ultimately unexpected, as I had only sought to tell a short and brutal story of Aromo. But, falling in love with the world I was beginning to create around him, I allowed myself 350 000 words in, to temporarily abandon the eastern and northern cities of Susa and Sula, respectively – as well as the Natolian War in Asia – in order to focus on the south-western portion of the Susavu’r. I had always intended to do so, at some point, but believed that the diversion would be much shorter. I would end up treating the city with more depth and understanding than I had treated any other before it. And I was comfortable with this because I had transformed into a confident writer by this point and hit my stride with verve and aplomb. (I think).
How many characters are in this story?
There are well over a hundred characters in the story, I am sure, but I have not yet had the time to count them all. If I had to guess, I would guess that the main characters, however, number some thirty to forty characters.
How long did the story take you to write?
All of the books were written as one – in one sitting – but the first book was finished in four months. But all in all, the Liravada took me a year and a half to write.
Have you written any other works besides this one?
Yes, I have. I have written two non-fiction books (the second non-fiction work was partially fiction) and I had begun two fiction works which, in hindsight, I see as precursors to this story; only, those stories had been set in the 1990s-2000s whereas this story held more freedom of movement and activity for me (if not freedom of technology – the Liravada is set over three thousand years ago). It was ultimately the story of redemption.
I had, however, been thinking of writing an ancient story – and I finally achieved it when I did. The truth is that I could not have written this book five years ago. All of the elements that came together in order for me to indulge in its telling came to me in bits and pieces through a time period that I had to endure in order for me to understand myself, my surroundings and history for me to even decide to go forth with it. And I am well-aware that the quality of the writing of the book begins somewhat shakily, and I chose to keep that in so that the proof of evolution could be present.
I had, however, been thinking of writing an ancient story – and I finally achieved it when I did. The truth is that I could not have written this book five years ago. All of the elements that came together in order for me to indulge in its telling came to me in bits and pieces through a time period that I had to endure in order for me to understand myself, my surroundings and history for me to even decide to go forth with it. And I am well-aware that the quality of the writing of the book begins somewhat shakily, and I chose to keep that in so that the proof of evolution could be present.
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| Liravada - Mythic King (2017) |
The first instalment in the three-part groundbreaking series.
Available for Download
Visit youtube.com/theFourKingLegend
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