by Ben Parris

To me, a manuscript is to be respected as a pristine document, so it must be constrained with the utmost precision. If you’re a writer, you’ll know what I mean.

I’m okay now, but my original procedure for going over my manuscript drafts was to have no one see the first draft for nine months while it soaked in olive oil. If that came out all right, I had a really trusted friend submit her comments over tea, followed by two people from a writer’s group who would have a violent disagreement over what direction it should take.

This could only be resolved by a group of 6 beta readers who read it while they hung upside down like bats. Then I would use a device called a sawzall to cut the first 75,000 words, and feed the remainder to a grammar software program called Usuck.

From there it went to a modest twelve member church choir who would add spiritual gusto. They would pass it off to team of 25 self-styled “Oompa Loompahs” who would test it for sweetness and then package it in an unnatural positon. Thus primed, it would go to a team of 535 people to be brow beaten in a procedure we called “a Congressional hearing.”

Lastly, a firefighter would hit the smoking wreck with a hose, and a circus performer would fire it out of a cannon as it was tracked by satellite.
Then I found out that you actually have to publish it.

Right now I am following the process I employ when I’m between books, which is to go to a writing seminar on H.G. Wells’ Island of Dr. Moreau where I sit with other frustrated half-men and learn such rules as “Do not go on all-fours,” and “Do not claw the bark of trees.”

When people that I meet find out that I am a writer they always ask, “What kind of books do you write?”

I never know what to tell them because we’ve just met and I have no idea what level of detail they are looking for or would understand. As I start to explain, some will say, “Wait. Which type of book is fiction and what is non-fiction?”

If I’m really on the ball that day, I might say, “Well, it’s urban fantasy and historical fantasy time travel with a large number of characters and multiple arcs on the cusp of YA level but with an SAT vocabulary.”

And increasingly, I’ll find myself speaking to a scholar who knows much more than I do, and she’ll reply, “Ah, I know that mix. It’s just like so and so.” (It’s always someone I never heard of because my TBR pile reaches the sky). Then she’ll read my work and ferret out similarities for every passage. “Ah, that’s Bradbury, that’s Gaiman, that’s Whedon, it’s like Dresden, and Scalzi…” And so on.

But the most curious response of all is when someone reads my Wade of Aquitaine series, and before they know it, find themselves immersed in historical fiction and then go either one way or another. Some completely ignore it and just enjoy the emotional experience while others grab hold of history books or Google it to learn even more.

These latter types make it all worthwhile for me. I will spend years reading every dry history book I can get my hands on, and I find these amazing historical figures under amazing circumstances, but with huge gaps in the record and sometimes a vast amount of confusion in the mind of the historian. As a result, I’m forced to become a “better” historian, which to me is one who reconciles the differences based on human nature and everything that’s known about the technology, economics, and culture of those or similar peoples. So the writing is an adventure in sociology and psychology, exploring how prejudices, jealousies and financial gain are the real drivers of history. No one has yet realized that my most deeply rooted influences are scholars such as financial historians Charles and Mary Beard.

This is how I end up devoting so much of Amynta of Anatolia to Princess Euphrosyne who was exiled to an island prison as a little child and spent her life restoring her dignity. She is one of the most astonishing, least known people who ever lived and she belongs to the time period I’m writing about. In the past year I’ve taught entire courses to all ages of students based on my writing about her. Her story arc is, and probably will always be, my favorite part of the whole book.

–Ben Parris
Enter the Goodreads Giveaway here:

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/55815885-amynta-of-anatolia