OMN Welcomes Tony Hays, Author of the Arthurian Mystery Series Featuring Malgwyn ap Cuneglas

Omnimystery News is pleased to welcome Tony Hays, author of the Arthurian mystery series featuring Malgwyn ap Cuneglas. The third book in his series is The Beloved Dead (Forge Books, March 2011 Hardcover, 978-0-765-32628-7).

Today Tony writes about where his characters come from. And he's also providing three of our readers with an opportunity to win a copy of his book. Visit Mystery Book Contests, click on the "Tony Hays: The Beloved Dead" contest link, enter your name, e-mail address, and this code (8298) for a chance to win! (One entry per person; contest ends 04/18/2011.)

— ◊ —

Photo provided courtesy of
Tony Hays

Where do my characters come from? I don’t know. Sometimes they spring from some unfathomable wrinkle of that odd gelatinous thing called a brain. And sometimes, you get them handed to you on the proverbial platter. For me, it has been a combination of the two.

With my Arthurian series, it was mostly that second option. But even at that it wasn’t cut and dried. Sure, I had Arthur, Merlin, Bedevere, Kay, Guinevere, even some pleasing supporting characters such as Accolon, Gawain, Mordred. But what about that pesky Lancelot and Galahad and Morgan le Fay? But here’s the thing, I had decided that I was going for an historically accurate, Dark Ages setting. By doing so, I had cut down my list of acceptable characters significantly.

First, Lancelot and Galahad are creations of Chretien de Troyes, a French romancier, who post-dated Geoffrey of Monmouth. And it was Geoffrey who gave us the Arthurian story as most of us understand it. Neither Geoffrey nor any of the earlier Welsh sources so much as mention Lancelot or Galahad. Morgan le Fay, the alleged half-sister of Arthur, does not appear in the earlier Welsh material either. Scratch them all. In fact, there are some who say that the original of Morgan le Fay was one Morgan ap Tud, Arthur’s court physician according to the Mabinogion. In terms of strictly fictional characters, those came rather easily. Malgwyn, the protagonist, is the most complex of them all. I decided early on that I needed a very human Arthur. If I were to portray Dark Ages Britain as accurately as possible, I needed a man, not Sean Connery in First Knight. So, the idea occurred to have my protagonist be a man who hated Arthur, at first. But I had to give him a reason to hate Arthur. Every fictional investigator needs a tag, a label of their own. Lawrence Block had the guy who never slept, the sleep center in his brain had been destroyed. We’ve had alcoholics, drug addicts, obese detectives, and on and on. I looked at the landscape in Dark Ages Britain. I looked at what act that Arthur could do for Malgwyn that was both charitable and subject to hatred. For whatever reason, the idea of Malgwyn as a one-armed man in a time when such men were considered cursed by the gods popped up. Yes, and Arthur would have saved him on the battlefield, condemning him, in Malgwyn’s mind to life as half a man. That Malgwyn is Guinevere’s cousin just seemed natural. The population of Dark Ages Britain was not all that large, and that Malgwyn and Guinevere might be related to some degree was well within the realm of possibility.

I need to make a special note about Merlin. Most likely, there was a character named Merlin, or perhaps Myrddin, who lived around the same time as Arthur, but probably in the generation after Arthur. He first appears in the Vita Merlini, written by Geoffrey of Monmouth. Because of his ambiguous status, I decided to keep him.

The various lords all have various degree of reality about them. David, Mordred, Celyn, Lauhiir, Melwas all have some basis in the old Welsh tales or other sources. Young Lord Celyn, who appears in both The Killing Way and The Beloved Dead, was said to be a son of Caw. He was brother to the monk Gildas and the pirate Huail, who Arthur is said to have beheaded for failing to pay obeisance to him. Vortimer, of The Killing Way, was, historically, the son of the disgraced Vortigern.

The other fictional characters like the abbot Coroticus, the young monk Ider (who may have a basis in truth), Malgwyn’s brother Cuneglas, Ygerne, Gareth the bandit, all grew out of a need for such characters. You might call them stock characters, but I sure do love trying to breathe life into them.

William Faulkner used to speak of “character possession,” that moment in the novel when the characters rise up and take possession of the story. I guess that most authors have experienced that. If you draw your characters well, keep their actions within their personalities, then it is almost inevitable.

And that’s one of the mysteries and pleasures of writing.

— ◊ —

An active member of Mystery Writers of America and the Appalachian Writer's Association, Tony is the author of five novels, four historical mysteries, and a contemporary satire, The Trouble With Patriots, set in the Middle East, which has been optioned for film. His first novel, Murder on the Twelfth Night, was nominated for the Tennessee Volunteer Book Award. Visit his website at TonyHays.com.

— ◊ —

About The Beloved Dead: Malgwyn ap Cuneglas was one of King Arthur’s earliest companions and now is his most trusted counselor. Despite the malice of his enemies, who fear Arthur’s power, and the machinations of the still powerful druids who mightily resist him, Malgwyn knows that Arthur will stop at nothing in his efforts to lead his people to Christ and help to bring civil law and justice to a people who have known little such.

To consolidate his power, Arthur decides that it is time to take a noble wife. But in this Malgwyn knows not only his lord’s ambition but his personal grief, because in order to take a queen Arthur must set aside his love Guinevere, because he believes that the scandal surrounding their affair has tainted her for the crown.

Malgwyn is sent north to fetch the young woman who is to be Arthur’s bride. The way is fraught with tension and disaster for there are forces who would not see the king wed. When Malgwyn discovers a string of killings involving young virginal women who are slaughtered in a horrific manner—not unlike a ritual sacrifice—he is left with a question that he must answer quickly.

Are these murders portents of the gods taking vengeance on the intrusion of a new faith?

Or mortal men plotting to unseat the king?

The Beloved Dead is available in Hardcover and popular eBook formats (see icons below book cover above).

For a chance to win a copy of The Beloved Dead, courtesy of the author, visit Mystery Book Contests, click on the "Tony Hays: The Beloved Dead" contest link, enter your name, e-mail address, and this code (8298) for a chance to win! (One entry per person; contest ends 04/18/2011.)