What I’m writing* this week, No5: a new Robin Hood novel

It’s been a strange week so far and I’ve found myself – most unusually – without very much work to do. So I’ve started a new Outlaw Chronicles novel, with the working title Robin Hood and the Caliph’s Gold. It is going to be set in 1191/92 just after the second book in my series, Holy Warrior (see cover below) and before King’s Man, which is number three, and has my heroes back in England.

Holy Warrior - Angus Donald

I haven’t got very far with the plot yet but I know it is going to take place in the Mediterranean, in Byzantine Crete and North Africa and Muslim Spain and that our friends – Robin, Alan, Little John and Co – are trying to get home from the Third Crusade when Robin sees an opportunity to steal a massive consignment of gold from the Almohad Empire. Typical, eh? Alan thinks it’s a very bad idea.

I don’t have a publisher for this project, and I don’t really expect to get one any time soon, so I will probably be trying to crowd-fund it. If you want to help make this happen, I will let you know in due course (a few weeks’ time) how to pledge money and what the rewards will be. I just want to put a bit more flesh on the bones of the idea first and get things sorted out in my own mind.

One draw, I hope, will be that Hanno, the leather-tough Bavarian man-at-arms and mentor to Alan, will be playing a central role in this story. I killed him off in Warlord (book 4) and I have regretted it many times since then. He is one of my all-time favourite Outlaw Chronicles characters.

Anyway, that’s what I’m writing* this week. And when I get myself sorted out, I hope you will all join in and help me make this novel a reality.

*  I say “writing”, but I’ve only done a few hundred words so far. It should really be “thinking about”.

 

0 0 votes
Article Rating
4 Comments
Oldest
Newest Most Voted
Inline Feedbacks
View all comments
Steve
5 years ago

Quite surprised the publisher of the original books won’t pick it up – I’m no author though, so is that usual???

Fantasys
5 years ago

Robin Hood has also been claimed for the pagan witch-cult supposed by Margaret Murray to have existed in medieval Europe, and his anti-clericalism and Marianism interpreted in this light.