Monday 31 December 2012

last post for the year

Just under twelve and a half months ago I set out to write a novel. Two and a half months later I started on an historical novel about Vashti, Queen of the Ancient Medes. Six months later it was complete at 152,000 words. It was impossible to stop at our (Hamma Mirwaisi, whose unique research on the Ancient Airyanem civilisation of the Middle East was the co-author and researcher) original goal of 120,000 words so I felt it was quite ok to make my first novel an epic.
Perhaps that was  a mistake because trying to sell it has not  been a good experience. Literary agents posit an incredibly competitive and cash starved publishing industry.  Only the best of the best makes it.Our book is now on Amazon but still frozen there.
Undaunted, we have started on the sequel, Esther Mystery Queen of the Medes, also written on the basis that King Ahasuerus of the Biblical book of Esther and husband of Queen Vashti was the father of Darius the Mede of the Biblical book of Daniel. Because Darius was aged 62 in 539 BCE at the fall of Babylon, he cannot be the son of King Xerxes, who was born in 519 BCE. So King Xerxes was not the husband of Queens Vashti and Esther. There seems to be little evidence about this in historical accounts, so once again the Bible provides valuable historical proof about the origins of an heroic figure who has not received the acclaim she deserves but would probably not have pursued.

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