The Chronicle of Eboracum VI...

Part Six – The Author’s Note

The genesis of The Chronicle of Eboracum was extraordinarily simple. Having realised that my writing was becoming increasingly disjointed I decided that something drastic had to be done. I needed to write a story that had an ending. A simple feat you might think, aside from the debilitating panic that consumes me whenever I consider creating any form of conclusion. After many long walks to work, several delayed train journeys, and writing primarily on the back of till receipts, I had finally a severely disjointed but almost complete story.

Though primarily a work of utter fantasy this story is also akin to Frankenstein’s monster. It includes a patchwork of half-remembrances, obscure facts and more than a little desperation. Eboracum was the name of the Roman settlement which developed into the city we know today as York. Wallachia was the name of the kingdom that Vlad the Impaler ruled during the Middle Ages. Medieval bestiaries described the pard as a creature that could kill with a single leap. Meanwhile Costica was my exhausted brain latching onto the discarded coffee cup of a fellow traveller. There is also an actual plant called the Peruvian Sheep Eater (puya chilensis), which has recently bloomed at the RHS garden Wisley in Surrey, and acts in exactly the manner I described.

Am I pleased with my monstrous creation? There are so many things that ought to be better, so many ways it is inferior, and so many parts that are incomplete. Yet for the half-crazed scribbling of an author who seemingly cannot write the words THE END it is not an entirely bad effort. Whilst it may not be perfect my one hope is that it will help make the next story that much less painful to see to its proper conclusion.