Ron Fritsch, author of Promised Valley Rebellion {Guest #Author}

Readers have asked me how extensively Jean Auel‘s Earth’s Children series of novels, beginning with The Clan of the Cave Bear published in 1980, has influenced the writing of my Promised Valley novels. The question is especially pertinent in view of the March 29, 2011, release of her sixth, and presumably last, novel in the series, The Land of Painted Caves.

As the most prominent writer of prehistorical fiction—which is a subcategory of both historical and speculative fiction, but perhaps most like scientific fiction in its need to posit alternative worlds—Auel has without question laid down a path I’ve followed like a child into a realm far more fascinating to me than the one in which I live.

If I were asked whether I’d rather be, with all their prehistorical limitations, any of my characters—or at least the ones I wish the reader to sympathize with—than the person I am, I’d instantly answer I would.

I haven’t yet read The Land of Painted Caves, but I’ve seen, once again since her fourth novel in the series, that Auel faces criticism for what reviewers describe as repetitious details and lack of plot.

Those points of views haven’t bothered me as a reader. When you fall in love as deeply as I’ve done, you can never cease being a lover. I care what her characters do and what becomes of them.

As a writer, though, I’ve taken an approach different from Auel’s. One difference is obvious. Auel’s Earth’s Children series is set 25,000 to 28,000 years ago and deals with interactions among Neanderthal and Cro-Magnon humans. My Promised Valley series is set 6,000 to 10,000 years ago, near the end of prehistory, and deals with conflict between hunters following a traditional way of life and farmers pursuing, as we do today, the new.

To me, more importantly, the story is everything. I imagined and wrote mine, from its beginning to its end, before I dared bring its beginning to light.

I’m as interested as Auel is in what archaeologists have to say about the people and times we’re writing about. As a writer of realistic fiction, though, I rely upon their findings only to make certain that what I’ve written could’ve happened—and might’ve led to a far better world for humans to live in than the one we inhabit today with its endless, mindless wars.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR…Ron Fritsch grew up in rural northern Illinois. His father and mother were poor but hard-working tenant farmers who loved to read. So did he and his siblings (one older sister, one older brother, one younger sister) .

Prehistoric farmers inhabit a fertile river valley they believe their gods promised them in return for their good behavior and obedience. Their enemies, hunters roaming the mostly barren hills beyond the mountains enclosing the valley, believe their gods gave it to them. When the farmers’ king refuses to allow the marriage of the coming-of-age prince to the daughter of the farmer who saved the king’s life in the last war with the hunters, her brother decides he has to help his sister and the prince, his boyhood friend, correct the flagrant injustice. That decision leads them and their youthful allies into a rebellion against the king and his officials, who rule the kingdom from their bluff-top town. The far more numerous farmers in the villages below, who despise most of the officials but not the king, and who admire the prince, are in a position to determine whether the rebels will succeed or face execution for treason. As the story unfolds, the world in which it takes place reveals itself. Men who go with men and self-selected women who go with women—we would call such people “gay” and “lesbian”—occupy a kind of priesthood. They’re called “tellers” because, in a time before the invention of writing, they not only memorize and retell the stories of their gods, ancestors, and contemporaries, but they also tell their people, who might or might not wish to know, what the gods expect of them—what they can and cannot do. The tellers preside at full-moon and change-of-season holidays, as well as at mating ceremonies and funerals. In place of the king, they hear and decide disputes among their people. Perhaps most importantly, though, they astronomically track the seasons to assist the farmers in raising their crops (mainly wheat, barley, and lentils), and breeding their livestock (mostly cattle, sheep, and goats). Men who go with men and women who go with women in Promised Valley Rebellion occupy their privileged positions as tellers because they don’t have children to care for. They therefore have the time, which their child-rearing kin lack, to conduct ceremonies, memorize stories, hear disputes, and track seasons. The male tellers also fight in the front ranks in their battles in order to spare the lives of their brothers, cousins, and neighbors whose wives and lovers have given, or might give, birth to their children, who will need their care and sustenance. Some of the characters in Promised Valley Rebellion question whether their ancestors’ and gods’ stories are necessarily true. To them, it seems more likely that the stories were made up, embellished, and otherwise changed in order to fit the circumstances of the time in which they were told. And that leads the skeptics to ask whether their ancestors, for their own earthly purposes, invented the gods. Promised Valley Rebellion is the first of four Promised Valley novels asking whether civilization and history, with their countless heaven-sanctioned wars and genocides, could’ve begun differently. The subsequent titles will be, in order, Promised Valley War, Promised Valley Conspiracy, and Promised Valley Peace.- FROM AMAZON.COM