crispina kemp

Biography of a work-in-progress.

Saramequai was conceived in what now seems the long-distant past. It was then called Saram.

Saram is the sky god of Dal Uest. Saramequai = horsemen of Saram.

In its earliest version there are five povs (point of view characters):

• Demekin (the protagonist Detah’s brother who has, as it were, a foot in two camps)
• Drea (Detah’s sister)
• Megovis (Saramequai)
• Glania (Saramequai)
• Hegrea (of Spinner’s milieu)

While all the characters have remained from this first incarnation, only Megovis was destined to retain his pov status.

But how strange that in this earliest version the protagonist Detah doesn’t  even have her own pov.

Experimental, obviously!

The infant Saram simmered away on backburner while I wrote other stories: i.e. the three Feast Fables which later became the five books of Spinner’s Game. As with stories before and after, I posted these in weekly instalments to WP. But Feast Fables was privileged to have its own dedicated WP site (Feast Fables, no longer active)

By 2012 Saram was ready for its next outing.

First, it received a new name: Alsalda.

Next, Detah (protagonist) became a pov.

And while Demekn and Megovis remained, I brought in Eblan Erspne (a shaman, sort of).

By 2015 Alsalda was ready for its public debut.

Alsalda appeared on WordPress in 79 weekly instalments from August 2015 through to April 2016. Wordcount was slightly over 204k.

And there it remained, dipping its naïve toes into the ethernet until I had prepared the 5 books of The Spinner’s Game for publication. Meanwhile I had written another story in that same Spinner’s Milieu: The King’s Wife. And resting on the backburner since 2005 was yet another book in the same milieu: Hare and Adder.

In 2020, with The Spinner’s Game now published on Amazon, along with Roots of Rookeri and Learning To Fly, I took another look at those three books, Hare and Adder, Alsalda and The King’s Wife and decided it would be a jolly good idea to publish these three too.

WRONG! It was not a good idea. It was crazy, rushed and ill-considered. That my life was in turmoil at the time certainly didn’t help.

The spotlight returns to Alsalda.

With a wordcount of 204k it was too-too-too-too long. Between 2020 and 2022 I managed to reduce that to 199k. Wow! How did you do that, you ask. I removed one of the previous 4 point-of-view characters. I also pruned away lots of exposition. Snip. Snip. Snip. And reduced it by 5k.

Although wordcount makes no difference to Kindle books, Alsalda (now Alsalda Bear) was slightly too hefty for an Amazon paperback. More trimming ensued, and a few tweaks to the formatting. And… yay!… published.

And there it sat. Partly because of… (see above, life in turmoil), partly because of lack of reviews, definitely because of lack of any great promotional effort.

Jump ahead two years. 2025.

As I’ve already said (WOW Issue 1), I read through my entire published oeuvre in 2025 and pulled all but a few of those books off Amazon. I then had another look at Alsalda.

Alsalda Bear gets a new name. Saramequai

Why?

Firstly, what was wrong with Alsalda Bear?

I laugh! Although the name comes from a myth told within the story, it sounds too much like a children’s story. It had to go.

The decision to name it Saramequai grew out of the blurb.

“Detah fears she’s turning to stone. She longs for freedom yet is terrified of the granary ghosts that bind her in servitude. In the disruptive wake of invading warriors hope flares only to shatter when she sees her father killed.

When given  the opportunity to become the warriors’ guide to the land they plan to conquer, Detah swallows her grief, musters the courage and accepts. Yet with her growing affection for the lead warrior she fears she’ll fail her instructions to confuse and dissuade the enemy and thus rob her people and family of their freedom.

Will Detah persist with her tactics to rid the land of these invaders knowing that her success will return her to servitude and a loss of her dreams?”

Those invading warriors are the Saramequai. And it’s only through her association with these warriors that Detah is able to rise above her fears and grasp the freedom she desires.

And there you have it, Saram’s transformation, via Alsalda, to Saramequai, 2006 to 2026.

But still lots of work required. This has got to be GOOD!

BTW wordcount now hovers around 180k!