Wyrd Sisters Publishing News
Wyrd Sisters Publishing proudly presents the series In Search of Ancient Freedom which traces the history of the peoples of Atland, the land rediscovered beneath the North Sea.
This series is in five parts and is still under development.
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Volume 1. In process of development and entitled Atland follows the Folk, hunter gatherers living a free life under the guidance of the Council of Mothers.
As the land disappears below the waters of the melting glaciers to the north, they are surrounded and hemmed in on a shrinking island, now the Dogger Bank, by the rising waters of the growing North Sea. Eventually they must flee yet again to the high land to east and west.
There they find they must fight or die, that their freedom is lost and that they must change their roaming life style to one forever surrounded by high wooden walls; that they must learn from their enemies how to survive, or perish.
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Volume 2. The Axe the Shield and the Triton (completed and to be published in August 2011)
The Folk are long settled in the fortified East Holding. Atland is just a legend told and sung by the Chieftains scop.
Gewis, the chieftain Baeldaeg's son, secretly in love with his elder brother's betrothed Elwine, lovelorn, runs away from the East Holding, seeking service in some Lord's war band.
Fate has other ideas and he finds himself in North Africa serving in the Vandal pirate fleet. Rising over the years to a position of some power he returns home to the East Holding and along the way becomes immensely rich.
He is able to save his folk and the widowed Elwine, from famine and the encroaching Danings, by planning and financing their migration to post Roman Britannia, to the east coast, inhabited by people of the same blood, long ago migrants from Atland.
Driven by storms they land far from their planned destination, amongst strangers in South West Britannia, where again they must fight or die.
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Volume 3 The Axe the Shield and the Halig Rood (completed and to be published in January 2012)
The Folk ally themselves with the local warlord Cerdic, Dux of Durnovaria and become embroiled in the endless local wars between petty chiefdoms.
In exchange for their alliance they receive land on which they build a new settlement. They become the Gewissae, 'the trusted ones' and intermingle with the Durotriges, the ancient inhabitants of their new land.
Creoda, the nephew of Gewis, suffers many tragic losses before becoming Cerdic's successor, as King over the growing land of Wessex.
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Volume 4 Edith ( in process, forecast publication date November 2012) follows the Folk as they lose their hard won land to conquest by the ruthless and cruel Duke William of Normandy. This is the story of the consequences of Hastings: the tragedy of Edith Swanneschals, Harold II's wife by a heathen ceremony; the story of the English resistance after Hastings and its bloody suppression; the genocide of the English people by a ruthless invader.
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Volume 5 Freedom Regained ( in concept) skips a half millennium to the English civil war where the Folk finally regain those freedoms lost with the melting of the ice edge.
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About the Author
James Hockey combined a career as a seaman with that of educator.
Over a period of 50 years he has served as Captain on many merchant ships.
As an educator he has been lecturer, Head of a Navigation and Maritime studies Department, Principal of two FE Colleges and, on retirement, trained as a college inspector.
He now divides his time between his beloved West Country and a home in the sun on the Nature Coast of Florida. Here he works at studying Creative Writing with the Open University and obsessing over writing and publishing his Epic story of The Folk.