BIBLIOFANCY

On the Emmberrg Saga:

The impetus for the first volume came from a visit to a public access site on the Wabash River when the farmland around about and much of the woods lining the riverbank was awash in high water.  A hard and fast snowstorm had left the landscape blanketed, and as the weather warmed, the melt water inundated the farmlands, and the river rose to cover yet more.  Some of the photographs I took during those days (of snow, ice, and flood) I shot specifically on the chance of using them for a photo illustration.

Later, as I looked at the images and wondered what story I might conjure with them, the notion of families fleeing rising sea levels crossed my mind: as referenced in Mr. Langer's first blurb, I wondered what it might have been like for the very early humans who surely would have inhabited what is now known as Dogger Bank--a rise on the floor of the North Sea, what is believed to have been high and dry several thousands of years ago but was eventually overcome by rising tides.

From that initial cover, I figured I may as well keep going--as is often my want--but to continue a series based solely on a people escaping ever-higher water wasn't working.  After all, how long can a clan just keep on staying one step ahead of the disaster?  Makes no sense; they'd leave, wouldn't they?  

Some of them would leave, and so began the second trilogy, focused on the travails and successes as the "New Clans" make their way to higher, drier lands that could become a new homeland.  As happens in life, there are those who, for myriad reasons, will not face the uncertainty of change and remain where they are; their ultimate fate is up to the reader.

From the first, some of the effort was to not only depict the changes in seasons, but to add in something that is out of place.  With the exception of the second volume, each illustration features bits and pieces of industrial landscapes intermingled on the natural scene. 

Inspiration for these springs from my "usual suspects:" Stephen King's Dark Tower series and M. John Harrison's Viriconium stories.  In both, as King put it, "the world has moved on," leaving relics--some usable, some not, some dangerous--things that have been cast up by the floods or left long since by previous generations--remnants--testimonials to what had been, now markers of the passage of time and the passing of memory.

The title of the 8th book is taken more-or-less directly from Mr. Harrison's works.

The snowy and flooded landscape on that second cover has a background shot of a public golf course!