All posts by JMetz

Behind the scene: Making the Book The Last Eleven Days of Earl Durand into a stage play

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I thought those of you who read my blogs might enjoy an inside look at the process of going from the book The Last Eleven Days of Earl Durand, to a script, to a play. I am sending the correspondence between Don MacKay and me.

The play will be read before an audience at Pegasus Theater in Aspen, Colorado as part of the Aspen Fringe Festival. Don is an actor, a friend of mine and Sarah’s, co-artistic producer at Pegasus. Don has taken on the task of writing the stage version of the book. Sarah Barker is working with Don on the play.

From Don: Well, I was completely blown away by how well Part One read yesterday afternoon.  The running time was 52 minutes (not including music and getting some of the younger actors to slow down a bit) and it had an amazing build to it.  The cast was really thrilled with it.  I don’t think I need to revise anything in Part One, other than a couple of very minor tweaks.

I have an 11 year old (who is 5’10” and looks and sounds older) playing the Tom Spint track. I asked if he ever got restless or bored with Part One and he said very enthusiastically “No, I was hooked the entire time!”

I also have an older (late 60’s) equity actor who is known for being cantankerous and he LOVED it. He said, “This has such incredible contemporary resonance.” He named the recent Bundy situation in Nevada.  So I think we have something here!

There was also some great moments of humor.  This cast’s voices are really bringing it to life.  And we have a GREAT Earl Durand who looks and sounds the part!  The Sheriff is a really good actor, too.  The two women are great.  Ronnie is PERFECT.  And we have such a wide range of ages that it really helps bring it to life.

The two women reading Argento and Linabary is an accidental stroke of comic genius as they are hilarious and it’s the one aspect of Part One that can be a little over the top.

Since I don’t have to do hardly anything with Part One revisions I get to spend all day today and Tuesday concentrating on further revising Part Two.

Very happy here!!!

I wrote: I am thrilled by your observations about the play.

The next day Don wrote that he gets a daily poem as an e-mail. On the day the poem was read in the play, the daily poem was “Crossing the Bar”, by Alfred, Lord Tennyson.

Don wrote, “The coincidence of the poem appearing today is a good sign, don’t you think?

I wrote back: “Don, there is a version of the poem set to music by folks who often appear on Prairie Home Companion, the Hopeful Gospel Quartet. It is thoroughly moving.

Don sent me this link and asked if it what I had in mind. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ELp0YvtBUUE

I wrote, “This is a lovely version. Yes. There are a few key words whose meaning is not apparent: Bar, moan, and Pilot. I listened again, and tears came. Did we decide to use it for the play? It is moving, especially when sung.”

Don replied, “Yes, the musicians will play it during the funeral as the sister starts to recite the poem.”

I wrote, “It might be extra strong to have her read the poem while the music is played and some of the actors sing it. It will be truly moving. It would not be bad to move the audience toward tears. The story is really tragic. No one wins. It is not exactly like Hamlet, with the stage strewn with bodies. But there is no one who benefits from what took place, no one made happy. That is part of what I love about the story, the book, and the play. And, there are no heroes, no villains. Just fate, winding her sorrowful threads.

Next day Don wrote, “Part Two read like a dream.  47 minutes in length.  Didn’t lag once.  The Ronnie Knopp as narrator taking us to the AFTERMATH first, before showing what finally happened at the bank played perfectly.  The cast was thrilled with it.

We started with Part One which read really well again.  And then took a 10 minute break before starting Part Two.

Couldn’t be happier!  And the music going to be FABULOUS.  We’re going to underscore from the moment the stage direction of FUNERAL with “Crossing The Bar” version that you suggested, Jerred.  Beautiful.  Resonant guitar+muted fiddle.  Gorgeous.

I know this is much longer than a blog usually is. I don’t give any advise. I would love to hear (see) from you about what you read here.

 

Why I love ”the wickedest man in the world”

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Aliester Crowley was initiated into the Outer Order of the Golden Dawn in 1898 by the group’s leader, MacGregor Mathers. The ceremony took place at the Isis-Urania Temple in London, where Crowley took the magical name, “Frater Perdurabo”, meaning “Brother I shall endure to the end.”

A senior Golden Dawn member became his personal tutor in ceremonial magic and the ritual use of drugs. He performed the rituals of the Goetia,[ A year later he was expelled from the order, not enduing to the end, at least as a member. In the ultimate sense, he did continue dark practices for most of the rest of his life, establishing his own religious order and attracting many adherents.

In the history of the occult Aliester Crowley, was referred to as “the wickedest man in the world.”

For the purpose of my novel, The Angel of Mons, I am grateful that he belonged to the Order of the Golden Dawn. The book has a chapter on the reaction of the Order—William Butler Yeats, leader, and other prominent members–to St. George’s intervention in the Battle of Mons. I wanted a chapter in which the reaction of an occult order would be explosive. What better than to have a confrontation between Yeats, a practitioner of benign magic, and Crowley, the master of dark magic? Read the book (soon to be published) to see what happens.

Because Crowley fit so nicely with what I needed, I love the “wickedest man in the world.”

Why I disparaged and misrepresented the writer Arthur Machen

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When I began planning the novel The Angel of Mons: A World War I Legend I wanted it to extend beyond the battlefield and present the effects of the apparition on the esoteric, spiritualist, occult, and psychical societies in England. I especially hoped to find a way to have William Butler Yeats be a major character.

The source of the legend of the Angel of Mons was not reports of sightings from soldiers on the battlefield. The source was a story, The Bowmen, Arthur Machen wrote and was published in the Evening Standard.

I had the good fortune to discover that at one time the writer, Arthur Machen, had belonged to The Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn. Yeats was the Order’s leader and head. Thus, a connection between Yeats and the Angel of Mons.

To work Machen into the novel I played several writer’s tricks. First, by 1914, when the war started, Machen was no longer a member of the Golden Dawn. So I switched the time of his membership and his standing in the Order. Secondly, to make the coincidence of his short story and his membership compelling, I introduced conflict and betrayal. Thus, I misrepresented and maligned a perfectly good writer. To see how I did this, read the book, soon to appear. Stay tuned.

 

 

St. George, the Angel of Mons and Arthur Machen

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This writer, Arthur Machen,  known now to few is, more than anyone else, the “cause” of the legend of the Angel of Mons. There are many in Mons who claim that angels really did intercede in the battle of Mons. However, the facts as I, and the one other expert I know of on the subject, David Clarke (The Angel of Mons), are that the legend had its origin in a story that appeared in the newspaper, the Evening Standard. “The Bowmen”, by Arthur Machen, tells a story that came to be thought of as an account of angels stepping in to save an army from defeat. He does not name a time, a place, or who the combatants were. Word of mouth and other means led it to be thought of as a truthful account of what happened at Mons.

In a later time, Orson Wells and the Mercury Theater’s presentation of the War of the Worlds had a similar effect, though the response by the public and the repudiation of the truth of that event were immediate.

In fact, the legend of the Angel of Mons encouraged the British people, believing as they did, that God and the angels were on their side. More about Machen next week. My apologies to him. Do you know about Arthur Machen? There is a web site called Friends of Arthur Machen. Let us talk about him and his writings.

St. George, the Angel of Mons and a New Cover

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I realized that the cover I had selected for St. George, the Angel of Mons led in the wrong direction. So, as luck would have it, I found a picture from a book, The Chariot of God, (1915) that depicted one of the central scenes in my novel. I have a license to use the picture from the Mary Evans Picture Library in London. The picture was done by Charles Pearce, a well-known illustrator. Here is the new cover. Please let me know what you think. There is a second picture he did that corresponds to another stage in the battle. Go on-line to see it.St.George-cover

William Butler Yeats and St. George, the Angel of Mons

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Often, when beginning a book, especially an historical novel, an author has in mind hoping to have certain characters play a prominent role. Last week I wrote about the way I was able to insert Sir Arthur Conan Doyle into the novel. This week it is the poet William Butler Yeats. My first encounter with Yeats’ poetry was in a survey of modern British literature. I “discovered” a meaning beyond the poem’s surface when I studied, on my own, his poem “Leda and the Swan.” Then I took a graduate course in Yeats with the scholar Leonard Unger and did my Ph.D. dissertation under his direction in a facet of Yeats’ poetry and thought. So I dearly hoped to find a way to include him in the mystical novel, St. George, the Angel of Mons. It was my good fortune to find a connection between Yeats and the novel’s events. Yeats was for many years the leader of a branch of a mystical order, the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn. The actual origin of the legend of the Angel of Mon came about, not from the battlefield, but from a story written by Arthur Machen, a well-known writer of the time. As luck would have it, Machen was (at an earlier time) a member of the Order of the Golden Dawn. By juggling the chronology, making him a member at the time of the novel, I was able to involve Yeats in the story. When the book comes out you will discover a fantastic voyage between realms of reality that Yeats takes, an exciting, poetic, mystical read.

Question: If you read Yeats, what do you most appreciate about his poetry? Which of his poems do you best recall? Where do you rate his poetry among all the poets you have read?

Are you familiar with the lesser-known writer Arthur Machen? What is your view of his work? If you do not know his work, I think you will find it of interest, especially the story directly related to St. George, the Angel of Mons, The Bowmen and Other Legends of War. The work has recently been reprinted and is available on Amazon.

Sir Arthur Conan Doyle and St. George, the Angel of Mons

The Angels of Mons

I want to introduce some of the historical figures who play a prominent role in the novel.

Though many know of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s  Sherlock Holmes stories and characters, few know of his importance in the world of spiritualism. In fact, the two interests seem to be at odds with one another. The Holmes stories giving evidence of an author who is skilled in reason and the material world. Spiritualism, the belief that the soul survives bodily death, represents a view that goes far beyond the material.

Many Conan Doyle biographies recount a crucial event in his life that represents a turning point. The event is directly connected to the battle at Mons, Belgium on 23 August, 1914, the very battle at which the angel St. George and his horde of angel warriors fight for the British. I picked the salient at Nimy Bridge as the location for my soldier-characters. As it happened, Conan Doyle’s brother in-law, Captain Malcolm Leckie, was in fact the medical officer for the company they belong to.

The facts: Captain Leckie was struck by shrapnel at the battle and died six days later. That day, 29 August, Leckie died of his wounds. That night at the Doyle home, a friend was practicing “automatic writing.” She wrote a message from Captain Leckie in which he reported that he was now “on the other side”, meaning that he was dead in body though alive in soul or spirit. At that time no one in the Doyle family knew of the death. This revelation profoundly changed Doyle’s life.

Thus, I discovered that Conan Doyle was perfectly suited to be a major character in St. George, the Angel of Mons. Conan Doyle appears in several chapters. (While most of the events in the novel take place in Belgium and France, several take place in England.)

Have you encountered this facet of Conan Doyle’s life? What do you suppose the effect of the event I described had on his beliefs, writing, and lecturing? Can you foresee how the novel will tie the message he received to the Angel of Mons? What genre of story-telling would you place such a tale in? I am eager to hear (read) from you.

Note: I prefer the word “glob” to “blog”. Using the same letters, my choice is for the word that describes a group of ideas, a glob.

 

A Preview of “St. George and the Angels of Mons” through the book’s epigraphs

The Angels of Mons

I have selected two epigraphs (quotations that introduce the book, setting the reader’s mind in the right direction) that will appear at the beginning of the book. One if from a most important book about the causes of the war, and its first month, “The Guns of August”, by Barbara Tuchman.

That was the Battle of Mons. As the opening British engagement of what was to become the Great War, it became endowed in retrospect with every quality of greatness and was given a place in the British pantheon equal to the battles of Hastings and Agincourt. Legends like that of the Angels of Mons settled upon it.

 The second passage appeared in a magazine that dealt with occult subjects only a few months after the war began.

Long after the war is over, and the facts of it have been recorded in histories, one of the most widely known events will be the appearance of St. George and angel-warriors fighting in defence (sic) of the British during the retreat from Mons. We say ‘know’ because posterity will ‘know’ that the guardian Saint came down. People ‘know’ it already. The papers are full of it and testimony pours in from all sides.

Harold Bigbie, “On the Side of the Angels”, 1915.

These should give you a hint of where the Angels of Mons stand in the history of the war. The novel is based on this legend.

 

Mons 1914: The BEF’s Tactical Triumph (Campaign)

The Angels of Mons

This is the third glob I am writing about source material for people to read and study in connection with the forthcoming novel, St. George and the Angels of Mons. David Lomas’ book Mons 1914: The BEF’s Tactical Triumph (Campaign) by David Lomas and Ed Dovey (Sep 15, 1997). The book presents briefly the background of the war, the key generals on the British and German, and French armies. There are clear maps, descriptions of weaponry, and, most importantly, a description of the day’s battle. The second part of the book describes the battle two days later at Le Cateau in France. Mr. Lomas’ book is factual and clear.

In my novel, St. George and the Angels of Mons, angels join the fight at Mon, the Forest of Mormal, and  at Le Cateau. The novel will be published in May.

Mr. Lomas’ book might be considered a guide to the novel. You will see where the novel is true to the facts and where it deviates.

The next set of globs will introduce historical characters who appear in the novel. Stay tuned.