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Tue, 08/02/2005 - 3:21am
#1
The sword in the stone
Mr. Whyte,
You have said that you figured out the "secret" of the Excalibur and how it came to be in the stone, and that your extensive writings have centered around this one fact. As an aspiring writer myself, I am simply amazed at how much story you were able to put forth. How much intitial research did you do before writing The Skystone?
Also, when did you figure out the "secret" of Excalibur?
Thanks
(I Love the new site)
Hi, johns:
How much research did I do prior to starting? The truth is that I had been doing research all my life, pretty much since I first learned to read, because the first books i ever received as a kidcertainly the most memorable bookswere books on King Arthur . . . "Idylls of the King" and "Morte d' Arthur" . . . elaborately illustrated with magnificent engravings. That captured my imagination forever... Then, in high school, I had this wonderful teacher who chose to teach us Roman History by showing us, and physically taking us to places, where the Romans had actually been, two thousand years ago. He showed us a stretch of Hadrian's Wall where a group of Roman legionaries had chiseled their names and their unit number into the stones, laying claim to that stretch of the wall that they themselves had built. That kind of thing stays with you.
So all my life, I read everything I could find on the Arthurian legend, and on the Roman military occupation of Britain from 44BC until 407 AD, but it never occurred to me at any time that I would combine my two areas of interest in a work of fiction... Nor did it ever occur to me that I would become a writer. I simply had an interest in these things that amounted to a decades-long fascination, and when I did eventually start to write about them, I found that I had quite a background of knowledge and information that I could draw against.
Jack Whyte
That sounds incredible. I would love to see some of Hadrians wall, and even the fort described in "The Fort at Rivers Bend". I live in Tennessee and have dreamed of traveling to England most of my life. I'm relatively young (26), so I hope to make it there.
I had a teacher like that as well. He was my literature Professor in College. Before him, I had no real intrest in literature, I mean...I had read, but nothing real substantial, nothing that hit me the way your work has done. As a matter of fact, we were reading "The Once and Future King" and I told him that I was a huge Arthur fan, and he told me about you. The first book I read of yours was "The Eagles Brood", and I was instantly in love.
Have you done any teaching? And if so, did you have this type of impact on your students?
Thanks for your time!
HI, Johns:
Yes, I began my "career" as a teacher of English, and I've been told I was a good one. Mt actualty specialty was "The Teaching of English Through Speech and Drama," and I loved doing it, and had several profoundly satisfying successes involving students who went on from my Drama classes to careers in Theatre.
Howya gonna get from Tennessee to England? Well, it can be done... I did it in reverse. I visited Tennessee on a promotional tour for one of my books, and it may have been "The Eagles' Brood", although a wee voice in my head is whispering "The Saxon Shore". I can't remember any of the bookstores I visited, because that was at least six years ago, but I toured the entire South-Eastern region, starting at the annual South-Eastern Booksellers' Association (SEBA)meeting in Mobile, Alabama and heading northwards from there. I was in Nashville, of course, but I also got to Knoxville and to Memphis (my visit to Beale Street was one of the highlights of my entire trip.)
Hope you make it "Over There" one of these days.
Jack W.