The Chronicles of Not-Narnia

[urbeatle]

I only got about four hours sleep last night, but I couldn't sleep any longer, because my brain was on fire. not with fever or anything like that, but with ideas. see, back on my H-mas wish list, I suggested the perfect gift for the_misha would be a series of children's books with all the style and magic of The Chronicles of Narnia, but without the christian subtext. now, I would not have suggested such a gift unless I was actually considering writing something like that... and last night, I was brainstorming what I would write in such a series.


here are my initial planning notes for the series:

1. since Narnia has seven books in keeping with christian symbolism, I'm figuring on five books and a recurring pentagram theme. it's not going to be any specific pagan religion, however; more likely, just some pagan symbolism wrapped around my own pantheist beliefs. it has to be non-obvious, however; after all, nonchristian children read Narnia without noticing the christianity lurking beneath. why should I be more blatant than C. S. Lewis?
2. another theme I'd like to use in addition to the pentagram one: "the sisterhood of the sun and moon". a friend of mine once had a dream where he was being chased by unspecified bad guys; in the dream, he ran until he found a group of what appeared to be druids and asked them, "do you believe in the brotherhood of the sun and moon?" they replied, "why yes!" and then he sicced the druids on the people chasing him. I always liked that little story, and want to work the concept of the sun and moon being our siblings into this series.
3. the first book will introduce three children: Susan, age 9; Colin, age 7; and Karen, age 5. Susan has to be there because Narnia has a Susan who gets dissed for becoming too worldly; this Susan will be the wisest of the three children and won't "fall away from the faith". every character in the series who is "redeemed" or learns something important will stay "redeemed".
4. since Narnia follows christian eschatology and builds up to a final battle that destroys the world, my series will follow the idea of natural cyles of time. the fifth book will be about the children of the original three children. the adults will still remember their adventures as children and will play a role in the story.

since the_misha is expecting, I figure I have about five to six years to write and publish all these books before his child reaches reading age. sorry about the delay, kiddo. in the meantime, here's Michael Moorcock trashing C. S. Lewis, grumbling about Tolkien, and pointing out why the Harry Potter books and the "Dark Is Rising" series are a billion times better than the thousand so-called classic children's fantasy stories.

happy H-mas, Misha.