The ecology of publishing is changing.
In the Industrial Age, books were printed and bound in quantitites. They were then transported, stored, distributed and stacked. It was an expensive and fairly complex process, but essentially the same as any sort of manufacturing industry.
That still goes on, of course. But new technology has allowed alternative publishing models to thrive. Now, a writer can register online with a print-on-demand company. He or she can then create two files (one for the inside of the book, one for the outside) and send them to the printers. A bar code or "ISBN" on the book means that all the relevant details can then be displayed by online booksellers, such as the mighty Amazon. When the book is ordered, the message goes out to the printers, and a copy is printed, bound, packaged and sent out. Overheads ... practically nil.
And then there are ebooks. Once a book has been written, edited, formatted and converted into the right kind of file, the sky is the limit here. Any number of ebooks can be sold and instantly despatched to ebook readers at no real cost. There aren't any production overheads: as long as the consumer has a Kindle, a tablet, a computer, an ebook reader, then the book can be "produced" for free. Which means that most of the profits go straight to the author.
What this means is that a whole new publishing industry has developed. Gone are the old, painful processes of acquiring agents, approaching publishers, piles of rejection letters, long waits and tiny royalties. Publishing can now be almost instantaneous. Everything is in the hands of the writer now.
But what about the reader? Well, there's suddenly a lot more choice out there. And most books published by the new methods are considerably cheaper to buy than those which have gone through the traditional process. A newly published ebook, or nicely-produced print-on-demand copy, can be purchased for - what? - about $3 maybe.
When there's an explosion of new product, readily accessible at relatively low cost, a new form of marketing has to emerge. The old system relied on the marketing contacts, resources and budgets of the publishing houses. The new system relies on networking, social media and recommendations.
Reviewing books is effectively the new trend. It's about the only way that a reader and prospective purchaser can decide whether or not they want to try out a new book. And this year, reviewing is taking off in a BIG way. I've just received a new hardback novel to review for one of my favourite historical websites (those lovely Historical Honeys), and will soon be getting a couple more to review from the fascinating Moon Books stable.
Authors are going to be spending a lot more of their time reviewing other authors' books, because we can no longer rely on the traditional marketing methods. Now, we do it ourselves.
So ... it gives me great pleasure to announce the launch of a new blog dedicated to reviews of new books, along with author interviews, competitions and prize giveaways. This REVIEW blog grew out of a very active and exciting Facebook group, and such has been the interest in the new REVIEW group blog that the official launch party has been extended from a week to a fortnight!
Please pop over and have a look. My day is Day 6 - Thursday - and I'll be giving away a free signed copy of Who Killed William Shakespeare? to go with my own blogpost about historical fact and fiction.
This is how we do things nowadays. The old media are lumbering along. New media is where publishing is really happening.
http://thereviewgroup.blogspot.co.uk/2013/09/welcome-to-review-group-blog.html
Showing posts with label Kindle. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Kindle. Show all posts
Saturday, 7 September 2013
Sunday, 1 September 2013
When is a Book not a Book?
(Don't worry, dedicated followers - there's more on the Cobbe Portrait and Shakespeare's face to come!)
I've just discovered that a Kindle edition of Who Killed William Shakespeare? is now available, even in those parts of the world - such as the United States - where the hardback will not be released for a month or two yet.
It's a slightly odd thought. You just about get used to the fact that all your long, hard work has resulted in a rather lovely object - a Book - which can be sniffed, handled, written in and stacked on a shelf, and then a sort of virtual edition appears. A version of your book which (like Schroedinger's cat) simultaneously does and doesn't exist.
There have been a few conversations about Kindle in our household lately, following on from a TV advert which shows children talking about reading their favourite books on a Kindle device. My considerably better half reached for the Compact Oxford Dictionary:
book n. 1 a a written or printed work consisting of pages glued or sewn together along one side and bound in covers. b a literary composition intended for publication (is working on her book) ...
And so on. In effect, Kim had proven that, according to the first definition, anything on a Kindle device cannot in fact be a 'book'.
This all got me thinking. I'm ancient enough to remember the days when you saved up and then got the bus to go to a record shop to buy the music of your chosen band on vinyl.
That was rather like purchasing the hardback edition of a book. It was BIG. It had a big illustrated cover. And you cherished it, like a precious first edition.
Then came CDs. Which were a bit like paperbacks.
Now, downloads. Cheaper and quicker (cover art is neither here nor there, really), and you store them, thousands of them, on a little pocket device. You listen at random. There's no actual collection of albums or CDs - just some sort of enormous digital (i.e. virtual) memory.
Do we appreciate the music as much as we used to? Do we treasure the tracks? We certainly don't pore over the album and its cover for hours, admiring the detail, the feel of the thing. We don't shut ourselves in a room and play our singles over and over. And we don't have to go to all the trouble of guiding the stylus into position and trying so hard not to scratch the record, or even of assembling a handful of meaningful tunes onto a 'mix-tape' for a friend or lover.
I'm not getting all dewy-eyed and nostalgic. I just don't feel that music matters as much these days, when we can just download a track in seconds, as it did when we had to go out and buy it and then find somewhere to put it. After all, whatever is 'virtual' doesn't really exist, does it? And if it doesn't exist - in the way that an actual book or album exists - then why should we care for it?
Will books go the same way? Will there be a small but zealous community of hardback enthusiasts (like the music lovers who insist on vinyl) and a far greater community of ebook downloaders who quite like reading but have no sense of the value of the book as an object of desire?
Will we just shuffle ebooks at random, dipping in whenever we see fit, downloading whatever takes our fancy with no real intention of building a library? Are we in danger of snatching at the odd thing that passes by without any real discrimination - and then adding it to our massive, but largely neglected, collection of virtual stuff?
And what happens when we discover that the infrastructure required to support an internet is no longer sustainable? Books, it has to be said, are sustainable: forests grow, we pulp a few trees, we have a book, which can then be recycled. I'm not sure that the devices necessary for downloading and storing ebooks are sustainable in any meaningful sense of the word.
Actually, what most interests me about Kindles and other ebooks is their place in the circularity of history and human progress. You know that the oldest surviving work of literature - the Mesopotamian Epic of Gilgamesh, which is about 5,000 years old - was written on clay tablets?
Aren't some ebook reading devices known as 'tablets'?
You can trace the course of human progress, and the transformations of our society from 'primitive' to 'civilised', by way of the written record. Not just what was written, but how it was written. From clay to papyrus. Parchment to vellum. Goose quills to moveable type. When Johannes Gutenberg introduced moveable type printing to Europe, he kickstarted the Reformation. The arrival of cheap paperbacks spread the printed word still further.
And then came the internet, and a billion voices all talking at once, all writing, all publishing.
That can't go on forever. It's too costly to sustain. Kindles might just be the last word in a certain process of development. It's a revolution every bit as fundamental, in its way, as the Gutenberg press. But it might be the last of its kind.
We'll all go back to actual books because, while it might be simpler right now to download, the resources necessary to make that sort of thing possible are finite and stretched to breaking point. The genuine book will return because books have always been here (although we might yet resort to recording our most important stories on 'tablets' again, one day).
But it will also happen because the historical cycle of civilisations strongly suggests that it must. In the beginning, the ability to read and write was enjoyed by a carefully selected few. The arrival of Christianity gave a boost to the spread of literacy (under strict control, of course), and monks were employed in the scriptoria of medieval monasteries to copy out the sacred texts. We've come a long, long way from the painstaking transcription of illuminated manuscripts. Now anybody can write and publish, and anybody can access one of those publications in seconds on their ebook readers.
History teaches us, though, that civilisations collapse, and the growth of those civilisations follows a fairly predictable pattern, as does their eventual implosion.
So, what I would say to you, dear reader, is this -
Please feel free to purchase and download Who Killed William Shakespeare? (or any other book) on Kindle. And I hope you enjoy it.
But if you really treasure books, and want one that will last, maybe it would be better to invest in the real copy, rather than the virtual one.
I've just discovered that a Kindle edition of Who Killed William Shakespeare? is now available, even in those parts of the world - such as the United States - where the hardback will not be released for a month or two yet.
It's a slightly odd thought. You just about get used to the fact that all your long, hard work has resulted in a rather lovely object - a Book - which can be sniffed, handled, written in and stacked on a shelf, and then a sort of virtual edition appears. A version of your book which (like Schroedinger's cat) simultaneously does and doesn't exist.
There have been a few conversations about Kindle in our household lately, following on from a TV advert which shows children talking about reading their favourite books on a Kindle device. My considerably better half reached for the Compact Oxford Dictionary:
book n. 1 a a written or printed work consisting of pages glued or sewn together along one side and bound in covers. b a literary composition intended for publication (is working on her book) ...
And so on. In effect, Kim had proven that, according to the first definition, anything on a Kindle device cannot in fact be a 'book'.
This all got me thinking. I'm ancient enough to remember the days when you saved up and then got the bus to go to a record shop to buy the music of your chosen band on vinyl.
That was rather like purchasing the hardback edition of a book. It was BIG. It had a big illustrated cover. And you cherished it, like a precious first edition.
Then came CDs. Which were a bit like paperbacks.
Now, downloads. Cheaper and quicker (cover art is neither here nor there, really), and you store them, thousands of them, on a little pocket device. You listen at random. There's no actual collection of albums or CDs - just some sort of enormous digital (i.e. virtual) memory.
Do we appreciate the music as much as we used to? Do we treasure the tracks? We certainly don't pore over the album and its cover for hours, admiring the detail, the feel of the thing. We don't shut ourselves in a room and play our singles over and over. And we don't have to go to all the trouble of guiding the stylus into position and trying so hard not to scratch the record, or even of assembling a handful of meaningful tunes onto a 'mix-tape' for a friend or lover.
I'm not getting all dewy-eyed and nostalgic. I just don't feel that music matters as much these days, when we can just download a track in seconds, as it did when we had to go out and buy it and then find somewhere to put it. After all, whatever is 'virtual' doesn't really exist, does it? And if it doesn't exist - in the way that an actual book or album exists - then why should we care for it?
Will books go the same way? Will there be a small but zealous community of hardback enthusiasts (like the music lovers who insist on vinyl) and a far greater community of ebook downloaders who quite like reading but have no sense of the value of the book as an object of desire?
Will we just shuffle ebooks at random, dipping in whenever we see fit, downloading whatever takes our fancy with no real intention of building a library? Are we in danger of snatching at the odd thing that passes by without any real discrimination - and then adding it to our massive, but largely neglected, collection of virtual stuff?
And what happens when we discover that the infrastructure required to support an internet is no longer sustainable? Books, it has to be said, are sustainable: forests grow, we pulp a few trees, we have a book, which can then be recycled. I'm not sure that the devices necessary for downloading and storing ebooks are sustainable in any meaningful sense of the word.
Actually, what most interests me about Kindles and other ebooks is their place in the circularity of history and human progress. You know that the oldest surviving work of literature - the Mesopotamian Epic of Gilgamesh, which is about 5,000 years old - was written on clay tablets?
Aren't some ebook reading devices known as 'tablets'?
You can trace the course of human progress, and the transformations of our society from 'primitive' to 'civilised', by way of the written record. Not just what was written, but how it was written. From clay to papyrus. Parchment to vellum. Goose quills to moveable type. When Johannes Gutenberg introduced moveable type printing to Europe, he kickstarted the Reformation. The arrival of cheap paperbacks spread the printed word still further.
And then came the internet, and a billion voices all talking at once, all writing, all publishing.
That can't go on forever. It's too costly to sustain. Kindles might just be the last word in a certain process of development. It's a revolution every bit as fundamental, in its way, as the Gutenberg press. But it might be the last of its kind.
We'll all go back to actual books because, while it might be simpler right now to download, the resources necessary to make that sort of thing possible are finite and stretched to breaking point. The genuine book will return because books have always been here (although we might yet resort to recording our most important stories on 'tablets' again, one day).
But it will also happen because the historical cycle of civilisations strongly suggests that it must. In the beginning, the ability to read and write was enjoyed by a carefully selected few. The arrival of Christianity gave a boost to the spread of literacy (under strict control, of course), and monks were employed in the scriptoria of medieval monasteries to copy out the sacred texts. We've come a long, long way from the painstaking transcription of illuminated manuscripts. Now anybody can write and publish, and anybody can access one of those publications in seconds on their ebook readers.
History teaches us, though, that civilisations collapse, and the growth of those civilisations follows a fairly predictable pattern, as does their eventual implosion.
So, what I would say to you, dear reader, is this -
Please feel free to purchase and download Who Killed William Shakespeare? (or any other book) on Kindle. And I hope you enjoy it.
But if you really treasure books, and want one that will last, maybe it would be better to invest in the real copy, rather than the virtual one.
Monday, 17 June 2013
Lives of the Apostates
They call it Zeitgeist - the spirit of the times. And like any phantom, it's insubstantial, difficult to grasp. You can sense it, but you can't force it to do anything or to be what you want it to be. The best you can hope for is to be (dimly) aware of it. Millions aren't. They assume that they know what the Zeitgeist is, but it has already passed them by, moved on, and is beginning to express itself in odd places, out on the fringes, far from the mainstream.
I've had a few Zeitgeist moments recently: a radio interview about the Baby Boomer generation, an email from my collaborator in New Mexico, a Facebook status put up by a fellow writer in British Columbia, a book about Native American science, metaphysics and philosophy ... But one of the most stirring and satisfying of these glimpses was reading The Lives of the Apostates by Eric O. Scott.
The Lives of the Apostates is a novella which will be published very shortly - later this month, in fact - by Moon Books (it's already available on Kindle). It's short enough to be readable in one sustained sitting, but don't let the length fool you: there's plenty of food for thought in those pages.
Set in the American Midwest, the book is a first-person narrative. On the one hand, the narrator - Lou - is a pretty normal college student, sharing accommodation with a scruffy friend, longing for his childhood sweetheart and earning a few spare dollars by keeping a night-time eye on a couple of adult males with special needs. But Lou is also a second-generation pagan - his parents raised him in the Wicca tradition. Studying religion and philosophy at college, Lou finds that he is being subtly forced into accepting and reiterating a Christian view of history.
Lou's room-mate has gravitated towards paganism, even though his mother is a practising Christian and 'Grimalkin', as he prefers to be called, was brought up attending the very church where Lou's college tutor is also the pastor. And so the stage is set for something of a showdown between different worldviews.
Given that this is a first-person narrative, the author inevitably runs the risk of being wholly one-sided (and I daresay that many Christian fundamentalist or traditionalist readers will claim that the book is just that). In fact, I felt that Scott was pretty fair. The narrator's increasing frustration at feeling quietly coerced into participating in the ongoing rewriting of history - the complacent assumption that Christianity, and all that it entails, was and is the only logical development and conclusion of mankind's beliefs; the perennial misrepresentation of what pagan beliefs are, and what pagans actually do - and the subtle persecution of people who can't and don't subscribe to the conformist position, these things are handled with care and sensitivity. And there is much more to the book than a simple debate about different belief systems. It is well-observed and written with wit and verve - and courage, too, given its Midwest setting.
Personally, I was much taken with the narrative thread which concerned Lou's determination to write a college paper about the Emperor Julian. The Christians called him the 'Apostate' or the 'Traitor'. Why? Because he was a pagan - the 'Last Pagan', as certain authorities have had the temerity to assert. Julian is a fascinating historical individual (as even Lou's Christian tutor admits) - his family was slaughtered by a supposedly Christian Emperor, who assumed that Julian would reign as a sort of puppet. Julian in fact proved to be an effective general and, were it not for one of those accidents of history, he might have altered the direction of European (and World) history. But it wasn't to be.
Lou's attempts to write a fair appraisal of Julian bring him into conflict with his tutor, who insists that Lou present Julian in the way that generations of Christian writers have sought to portray him - regardless of historical accuracy. In that regard, The Lives of the Apostates is not an example of church-bashing so much as an earnest appeal for honesty - about history, about other people's beliefs - which is both long overdue and absolutely what is needed in our fractious, fragmented age. The frustration at being persistently denied this, at being bombarded, time and again, with one side of the story and told to believe it or else, is a major part of what drives the narrative.
I've been writing about the Emperor Julian (whom the Christians hated) and the Emperor Constantine (whom the Christians adored, to the extent of forging documents about him) in my book about the Grail - also for Moon Books - so there was a pleasant sense of recognition, and of writers in different continents beginning to ask similar questions of the past. It's that Zeitgeist thing. Maybe - hopefully - this is where we're at, with an increasing number of people desperate to see the truth about our mutual history told. The partisan approach to history favours division and social control. It's a form of brainwashing. But if we are to achieve tolerance, the values enshrined in the US Constitution, and wise, informed, sensible solutions to the problems we all face we must stop telling lies about the past. Understanding the truth about today requires a true understanding of the past. Conversely, lies about history become lies about the present - and our problems simply become more entrenched and intractable, while our capacity to address those problems is handicapped by the falsehoods we have been taught to embrace.
Don't get me wrong - Eric O. Scott's Lives of the Apostates is a thoroughly enjoyable read, deceptively easy to get through. And that might be the book's greatest achievement. There are big issues in there, big questions and no easy answers, but they occur to you after you have read the book. And I can offer no higher recommendation than that.
I've had a few Zeitgeist moments recently: a radio interview about the Baby Boomer generation, an email from my collaborator in New Mexico, a Facebook status put up by a fellow writer in British Columbia, a book about Native American science, metaphysics and philosophy ... But one of the most stirring and satisfying of these glimpses was reading The Lives of the Apostates by Eric O. Scott.
The Lives of the Apostates is a novella which will be published very shortly - later this month, in fact - by Moon Books (it's already available on Kindle). It's short enough to be readable in one sustained sitting, but don't let the length fool you: there's plenty of food for thought in those pages.
Set in the American Midwest, the book is a first-person narrative. On the one hand, the narrator - Lou - is a pretty normal college student, sharing accommodation with a scruffy friend, longing for his childhood sweetheart and earning a few spare dollars by keeping a night-time eye on a couple of adult males with special needs. But Lou is also a second-generation pagan - his parents raised him in the Wicca tradition. Studying religion and philosophy at college, Lou finds that he is being subtly forced into accepting and reiterating a Christian view of history.
Lou's room-mate has gravitated towards paganism, even though his mother is a practising Christian and 'Grimalkin', as he prefers to be called, was brought up attending the very church where Lou's college tutor is also the pastor. And so the stage is set for something of a showdown between different worldviews.
Given that this is a first-person narrative, the author inevitably runs the risk of being wholly one-sided (and I daresay that many Christian fundamentalist or traditionalist readers will claim that the book is just that). In fact, I felt that Scott was pretty fair. The narrator's increasing frustration at feeling quietly coerced into participating in the ongoing rewriting of history - the complacent assumption that Christianity, and all that it entails, was and is the only logical development and conclusion of mankind's beliefs; the perennial misrepresentation of what pagan beliefs are, and what pagans actually do - and the subtle persecution of people who can't and don't subscribe to the conformist position, these things are handled with care and sensitivity. And there is much more to the book than a simple debate about different belief systems. It is well-observed and written with wit and verve - and courage, too, given its Midwest setting.
Personally, I was much taken with the narrative thread which concerned Lou's determination to write a college paper about the Emperor Julian. The Christians called him the 'Apostate' or the 'Traitor'. Why? Because he was a pagan - the 'Last Pagan', as certain authorities have had the temerity to assert. Julian is a fascinating historical individual (as even Lou's Christian tutor admits) - his family was slaughtered by a supposedly Christian Emperor, who assumed that Julian would reign as a sort of puppet. Julian in fact proved to be an effective general and, were it not for one of those accidents of history, he might have altered the direction of European (and World) history. But it wasn't to be.
Lou's attempts to write a fair appraisal of Julian bring him into conflict with his tutor, who insists that Lou present Julian in the way that generations of Christian writers have sought to portray him - regardless of historical accuracy. In that regard, The Lives of the Apostates is not an example of church-bashing so much as an earnest appeal for honesty - about history, about other people's beliefs - which is both long overdue and absolutely what is needed in our fractious, fragmented age. The frustration at being persistently denied this, at being bombarded, time and again, with one side of the story and told to believe it or else, is a major part of what drives the narrative.
I've been writing about the Emperor Julian (whom the Christians hated) and the Emperor Constantine (whom the Christians adored, to the extent of forging documents about him) in my book about the Grail - also for Moon Books - so there was a pleasant sense of recognition, and of writers in different continents beginning to ask similar questions of the past. It's that Zeitgeist thing. Maybe - hopefully - this is where we're at, with an increasing number of people desperate to see the truth about our mutual history told. The partisan approach to history favours division and social control. It's a form of brainwashing. But if we are to achieve tolerance, the values enshrined in the US Constitution, and wise, informed, sensible solutions to the problems we all face we must stop telling lies about the past. Understanding the truth about today requires a true understanding of the past. Conversely, lies about history become lies about the present - and our problems simply become more entrenched and intractable, while our capacity to address those problems is handicapped by the falsehoods we have been taught to embrace.
Don't get me wrong - Eric O. Scott's Lives of the Apostates is a thoroughly enjoyable read, deceptively easy to get through. And that might be the book's greatest achievement. There are big issues in there, big questions and no easy answers, but they occur to you after you have read the book. And I can offer no higher recommendation than that.
Tuesday, 19 June 2012
To Kindle Interest
It's out! On Kindle, that is.
The real books will be on their way soon. But for those who Kindle, or those who just fancy a taster, Amazon is the place:
http://www.amazon.co.uk/The-King-Arthur-Conspiracy-Scottish/dp/0752476858/ref=sr_1_2?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1340102692&sr=1-2
I'll also provide updates on the publicity as it happens. A couple of magazine articles are pending, including a big piece in History Today (August edition). We'll keep you posted.
But that's enough about The King Arthur Conspiracy. I'd also like to draw your attention to another new book. Not one that I've been involved with in any way. It's the first of a trilogy.
The Chronicles of Iona: Exile by Paula de Fougerolles is a novel about "the two men who laid the foundations of the Scottish nation" - Aedan mac Gabrain, King of the Scots, and St Columba. The author describes them as "a real-life sixth-century Merlin and King Arthur".
The similarities between St Columba and the literary invention that is Merlin had occured to me whilst I was researching and writing my history of Arthur. Aedan mac Gabrain was Arthur's father (the first man on record to be known as Arthur, that is). The original Merlin (a name of later date) was fairly close in age to the historical Arthur. He also did not look much like the Merlin we have come to know and love.
Arguably, St Columba did look a bit more like the traditional Merlin. Hair cut in the Druidic tonsure (shaved at the front, long at the back), with a blackthorn staff and stained eyelids, Columba might have passed for a Merlin figure.
But the "real" Merlin was an enemy of Columba. I've even wondered whether their antipathy had anything to do with Geoffrey of Monmouth's invention, in the twelfth century, of the name Merlin.
You see, Columba's adoptive name meant "Dove". And the hunting bird known as the merlin is scientifically known as Falco columbarius. Merlin, you could say, was the raptor who hunted the Dove.
Anyway, that's all by the bye. Please feel free to check out The King Arthur Conspiracy on Amazon. And then, when you've done that, and ordered copies for everyone you know, check out this page:
http://www.amazon.co.uk/The-Chronicles-Iona-Paula-Fougerolles/dp/0615602541/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1340103057&sr=1-1
The Chronicles of Iona - potentially, a companion-piece to The King Arthur Conspiracy: How a Scottish Prince Became a Mythical Hero.
The real books will be on their way soon. But for those who Kindle, or those who just fancy a taster, Amazon is the place:
http://www.amazon.co.uk/The-King-Arthur-Conspiracy-Scottish/dp/0752476858/ref=sr_1_2?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1340102692&sr=1-2
I'll also provide updates on the publicity as it happens. A couple of magazine articles are pending, including a big piece in History Today (August edition). We'll keep you posted.
But that's enough about The King Arthur Conspiracy. I'd also like to draw your attention to another new book. Not one that I've been involved with in any way. It's the first of a trilogy.
The Chronicles of Iona: Exile by Paula de Fougerolles is a novel about "the two men who laid the foundations of the Scottish nation" - Aedan mac Gabrain, King of the Scots, and St Columba. The author describes them as "a real-life sixth-century Merlin and King Arthur".
The similarities between St Columba and the literary invention that is Merlin had occured to me whilst I was researching and writing my history of Arthur. Aedan mac Gabrain was Arthur's father (the first man on record to be known as Arthur, that is). The original Merlin (a name of later date) was fairly close in age to the historical Arthur. He also did not look much like the Merlin we have come to know and love.
Arguably, St Columba did look a bit more like the traditional Merlin. Hair cut in the Druidic tonsure (shaved at the front, long at the back), with a blackthorn staff and stained eyelids, Columba might have passed for a Merlin figure.
But the "real" Merlin was an enemy of Columba. I've even wondered whether their antipathy had anything to do with Geoffrey of Monmouth's invention, in the twelfth century, of the name Merlin.
You see, Columba's adoptive name meant "Dove". And the hunting bird known as the merlin is scientifically known as Falco columbarius. Merlin, you could say, was the raptor who hunted the Dove.
Anyway, that's all by the bye. Please feel free to check out The King Arthur Conspiracy on Amazon. And then, when you've done that, and ordered copies for everyone you know, check out this page:
http://www.amazon.co.uk/The-Chronicles-Iona-Paula-Fougerolles/dp/0615602541/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1340103057&sr=1-1
The Chronicles of Iona - potentially, a companion-piece to The King Arthur Conspiracy: How a Scottish Prince Became a Mythical Hero.
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