About
Rik was born in the small village of Dymchurch on the Romney Marshes in Kent, England. Dymchurch has three Martello Towers and a station on the Romney Hythe and Dymchurch Light Railway. This was Rik's world for the first 24 years of his life, except for six terms away at college - the North East Surrey College of Technology: Rik somehow managed to fail his final school exams and thus never made it to university.
When he is not daydreaming, Rik finds himself studying for that elusive degree with the Open University and writing the occasional screed of verse alongside working on his second novel. Rik used to work for Her Majesty's Civil Service which is, he says, a perfect training ground for people wanting to write novels based on alternate realities and fantasy.
Godwine Kingmaker: Part One of The Last Great Saxon Earls
Description
<p><span><span>Harold Godwineson, the Last Anglo-Saxon King, owed everything to his father. Who was this Godwine, first Earl of Wessex and known as the Kingmaker? Was he an unscrupulous schemer, using King and Witan to gain power? Or was he the greatest of all Saxon Earls, protector of the English against the hated Normans? The answer depends on who you ask. He was befriended by the Danes, raised up by Canute the Great, given an Earldom and a wife from the highest Danish ranks. He sired nine children, among them four Earls, a Queen and a future King. Along with his power came a struggle to keep his enemies at bay, and Godwine's best efforts were brought down by the misdeeds of his eldest son Swegn. Although he became father-in-law to a reluctant Edward the Confessor, his fortunes dwindled as the Normans gained prominence at court. Driven into exile, Godwine regathered his forces and came back even stronger, only to discover that his second son Harold was destined to surpass him in renown and glory.</span></span></p>
Story Behind The Book
I only live part-time on Earth; for the past three and a half decades much of my spare time has been spent in my constructed world, Kalieda. In this world, I have learned to be a benificent and bountiful God, populating the place with a paradise-worth of landscapes and lifeforms to go alongside the various civilisations and societies that have grown up there.
Since 1998 I have spent an unhealthy amount of time transferring Kalieda to the web. The Kalieda Encyclopaedia is the gateway for visitors to come and experience this world, with maps, descriptions, histories and languages peppered haphazardly across the site. The Encyclopaedia is a form of living book, subjected to regular review and improvement.
The Kalieda novels, starting with 'The Gods in the Jungle', are intended to be a second gateway into the Kalieda world, offering people glimpses of the world through stories based on the histories and mythologies of the people who live in that world. The Kalieda novels can be thought of as the 'bottom-up' complement to the Encyclopaedia's 'top-down' approach to displaying my world to the Real World; each (novel and website) is the equal to the other.
