Authors and Angels: Welcome, and thank you for taking time out of your busy day to sit down and talk with me.
Aleksandra Layland: Thank you for having me!
Authors and Angels: The Windflower Saga is epic fantasy, to say the least. What birthed this epic fantasy saga?
Aleksandra Layland (AL): Back in my late twenties I started to see a story in my dreams. It was what became the love story between Lady Keridwen and Lord Leofric in the first three chapters of Part II of the trilogy, Of Wisdom and Valor. At the time the characters as I saw them in my head were simpler. I didn’t yet know the details of their “back stories.” What I saw and felt as these dreams came to me, and I saw them as if I were watching a film but with a device that let me feel the emotions of the characters within me, was the simple story of a warlord coming to a convent to marry the new queen and take her (supposedly) to the Palace, but (actually) to a remote castle, where he was to hold her a prisoner without her knowing it. In my dreams, I saw the young queen and the warlord come to love each other, his spiritual transformation which accompanied that, her learning the truth and locking herself in the dungeon with a “You can’t be both my husband and my jailor. You’ve got to pick one,” position, and his choosing to be her husband and fight for her against those who were her enemies. That was the start, but I never got it written, and I never saw the background. That didn’t happen until my 60s after I retired.
Authors and Angels: The chronological order of the saga is quite different from most book trilogies and chronicles. There are three main novels, but then there are a bunch of “branch off novellas” I like to call them that coincide with each one of the main novels. Was this planned, or did it just happen? Were you worried this might confuse readers?
AL: It wasn’t planned. When the story of Keridwen and Leofric first came to me, I saw it as part of a trilogy, though I didn’t know where in the trilogy it was going to fall until I started to write it. I had no thought at that point about the novellas. The first one came to me as I was seeing the story of Keholani in my dreams. I couldn’t tell all her story, much of which related to her family history and being raised by her uncle, in the length of the book that I felt the first volume of the trilogy, Ansgar, should be constrained to. I’m daunted by a very long book myself, as much of a reader as I was since childhood. So I intentionally left very little detail about her early life, and that of her cousin Koritane and their uncle the high chief, out. I saw them in my head, I knew how she became the woman and leader that she was, and how her uncle became the wise leader he was, but there wasn’t space. After the trilogy was completed, I decided that I would write a short novella about the High Chief’s life and Keholani’s and Kori’s childhoods. The same with the next novella, Bind Not the Heart. Ermentrude is mentioned only in a few chapters; her brother only in a few lines. And nothing in detail is told of Lady Keridwen’s parents and their love story. There’s more about Leofric’s parents than hers. I wasn’t worried that people might get confused because it’s the way life is. We all see our own story through our own eyes, and other people see our story through a different set of eyes. What I saw of my parents’ life story was from a different perspective than what they saw on their life story. And I tried as best as I could to make each novella able to stand on its own, and not be repetitive of what was in the trilogy, but to fill in between the lines.
Author and Angels: Each novel also seems to be a stand alone book so to speak. Meaning each book is kind of an individual book on its own with all new characters, yet each book does blend into each other for we are following the genial line of this fictional ducal family. It’s an indifferent approach. What made you believe that it could work?
AL: I’m not a professional writer or trained in novel writing in any way, so I’m sure critics could find many faults. The story came to me, and I told it. The story of Leofric and Keridwen came first, and I ended up deciding it would be in the middle of the trilogy. Keridwen came from a line of royal dukes and duchesses who at times were elected to be kings and queens. The story of Ansgar didn’t come into my thoughts and dreams until Of Wisdom and Valor was almost complete. I ended up editing OWAV to make references to the Ansgar story after OWAV was written but not yet published. The third part of the trilogy, Far Haven, started to come to me while I was finishing up Ansgar and editing OWAV. There were a couple of months when characters from all three novels were speaking to me at the same time. That was a strange experience.
Author and Angels: Now I have to ask this being a reader of the saga. The names throughout the books are quite unique. Where did you come up with them?
AL: There are two different cultures, as you know. The Aspatrian-based people, such as the Kimbrians and Pomeranians, or the “dark ones,” as they’re sometimes called. The descendants of the colonists from Aspatria. And then there are the fair-skinned people, the indigenous people, the Kimbrii as they are called on Kimbria. Since this is a fantasy world, I felt entirely free to use any names I liked, and I decided that the Aspatrian characters would use names based primarily in European cultures from which my own family are descended, such as English, German, Celtic, Scandinavian, Polish, and so forth, or variations of them. In some cases, I chose names for their meanings, such as the four sons of King Bogumil all being a version of “God’s spear” in translation. For the Kimbrii, I wanted to evoke what, in comparison to the European names, would sound “exotic.” I used Polynesian and Japanese names for the most part, with a few other Asian-based names added in. Of course, by the time of the second part of the trilogy, many of the mixed-race people use Kimbrian names for their children instead, or in some cases, give them both. For example, the heroine of “Courage of Ansgar” is named Kerys Pualiani. “Kerys” is inspired by the Welsh name Carys (meaning love) but I altered it to become a “modern variation” or short form of the name “Keridwen,” which is the name of a heroine in each novel and was Ansgar’s sister’s name. “Pualani” is Hawaiian (meaning Heavenly flower).
Authors and Angels: What about the world the story takes place in? How was that created and the names?
AL: I had fun with the place names. My family is primarily English on my mother’s side and Polish on my father’s side. My mother’s ancestors came primarily from northern England, now Lancashire and Cumbria. The Lakes is one of the most beautiful parts of that area. You may remember that as the later home of the author Beatrix Potter. I used place names from that part of England, including towns and villages where my ancestors lived; and I used place names from areas in Poland where my father’s ancestors were from. For example, Pomerania is the name of a region of Poland, and Lomza (the island where Ansgar heals after the storm) is the name of a city in Poland where my great-great-grandfather lived. Whitehaven, Longridge, and Hesket are all towns in England. And the island where Lord Leofric’s swords were forged was named after Helvellyn, a mountain in the Lake District.
Authors and Angels: Is The Windflower Saga your first attempt at writing? What made you decide to pick up the pen and write?
AL: TWS is my only attempt at fiction writing, other than poetry. The story and the characters talked to me, so I wrote them down. I felt a great deal of emotion in telling their stories, and I hope anyone who reads them will get a glimpse of that same emotion. Romantic love is a foundation for the start of many families, but it had to buoyed up by spiritual love. Peacefulness is a virtue we can try to instill in our children and in our culture, but there are many forces that work against it. The struggle of the individual soul to find its way, and the struggle of a culture or a society to find its way, were compelling to me. If no one ever read the stories, I still had to write them.
Author and Angels: Is The Windflower Saga going to be it for you? What else can we as readers look forward to from you?
AL: This is the only story within me. Once I finish the last of the novellas, and a book called “An Author’s Commentary and Illustrated Companion,” I expect to be finished. If I write anything more about TWS, it would be what I describe as the prequel. Basically, I’ve summed it up in “The Story of the Kimbrii” chapter of Ansgar. The early exploration of the lands around the Great Aspatrian Sea and their eventual colonization by shiploads of settlers coming across the Great Ocean from Aspatria. I’ve seen much of it in my head, but I’ve not wanted to go there. As you can imagine, while there were a few individual cases of friendship and love between the two peoples, in general, it’s a lot of violence, treachery, and so forth as one group tries to annihilate the other. If you think about the things that happened as Europeans explored and colonized Africa and the “new world” of the Americas, it’s similar. With one major difference. The Europeans were experts at pitting one tribe or group against another and forging alliances so that indigenous people fought with them, against other indigenous people. The Aspatrians tried that when they arrived in Pomerania and other lands in the northern region, but it didn’t work. None of that is in any of the novels or novellas, but I’ll explain that and other things like it in the Author’s Commentary.
Authors and Angels: Final question. WRITER’S BLOCK. Never had it. Never will. Yes, I have had it.
AL: Hmmm. Let me answer with a “sort of but no.” The characters speak to me. There are times when one becomes quiet, and that’s ok. I sit back and snooze until he or she is ready to speak again. I’m under no deadline.
Much thanks to Aleksandra Layland for the lovely interview. If you haven’t already check out THE WINDFLOWER SAGA by Aleksandra Layland available on AMAZON.
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