Magical journey a labour of love

There’s a touch of blarney about White Rock resident Ian Lauder, and the twinkle in his eye of a born tale-teller.

With Elfindale, his seven-part novel revising the Arthurian legend and the myths of Merlin and Morgan le Fay, he aimed to create “an instant classic.” Only generations of readers will be able to say, in the final analysis, if he succeeded.

But, just as with the other works of this writer/photographer/artist and sculptor – best known locally for his collection of floral photographs, FlowerDance, which became, with music, the first of 7 DVD's constituting “the world’s premier PhotoSymphony” – he has delivered on his claims.

Starting with what appears to be a simple tale of young Angelica – gifted by doting parents with a puppy, Thunder, who is both wise and magical – he has created a book that indisputably captures the attention, and smoothly and swiftly whisks readers off into a world of fantasy spiced with his own mischievous and irreverent brand of social comment.

Along the way, Angelica – who is followed in the novel from age 9 to age 25 – discovers that she and Thunder are predestined to become part of the story of King Arthur, slowly healing in Avalon until he can fully rejoin the world; and the wizard Merlin and his female counterpart Morgan le Fay, reunited, in spite of early Christian versions of the legend that recast them as opponents.

From the well-sketched world of a typical Canadian child at the beginning, Angelica soon becomes used to zapping to Ireland and other spots around the world; to wizards, talking dogs and tall leprechauns; and at home in the parallel faerie world of Elfindale.

There are surprises in every twist of the story, but Lauder hints at the underlying arc: “Merlin and Morgan have a hand in everything,” he said.

Lauder, 63, is well aware that this is the stuff of contemporary movies – he has also written screenplays and has tried before to gain the attention of Hollywood.

But this time he may well have a shot – at novella length, as he points out, each of Elfindale's seven parts is the right size to be adapted to feature film form, without sacrificing characters and incidents in the manner of the Lord of the Rings cycle.

He’s published Elfindale himself through the online publishing house Trafford, with a cover photo created by his wife, Pamela Grier, and designed by Jon Willis, their partner in Mud Valley Productions. Lauder is marketing it at local bookstores, through their website and through Trafford’s distribution connections.

Elfindale might be considered only the latest outpouring of an extraordinarily restless and multi-faced creative intellect.

Actually it isn’t new: Lauder, not one to rush his words into print, has been revising and refining it over some 13 years.

“It’s reached the point where I can’t change a word,” he said recalling a quote from one of his literary idols, Oscar Wilde, who was once challenged about the lateness of his arrival at an event. “He said he’d spent all morning putting a comma into one of his plays, and all afternoon taking it out.”

Lauder, a lateral thinker who tends to express himself in conversation in a rapid, tumbling flow of overlapping ideas, was born in a log cabin 20 miles from Red Lake in Northern Ontario.

Studying for a master’s degree in fine art at the University of Toronto, he got the strong message that he needed to be a creator rather than a scholar.

Lauder became a full-time artist, but his rich life – he claims to have travelled to and lived in every province and territory of Canada – has included stints as a cook in the High Arctic, a kayak guide in the Queen Charlottes, a fish gutter at a Victoria processing plant, a hotshot in the Alberta oil fields and an art teacher here and there.

He began Elfindale 18 months after he and his family settled in White Rock in 1993.

The first part was originally inspired by a school story-writing assignment his son, then 10, had. He wrote all of it in virtually one sitting at a now-defunct Crescent Beach coffee shop and store, Full Circle Books.

That’s not unusual for him, he said.

“One writer out of every 1,000 may be a natural writer,” said Lauder, who has also created many other, to this point unpublished, volumes of poetry, fiction and non-fiction. “These books write themselves – I have to scramble to get them down on paper.”

He believes his natural ability to tell a story was honed by “a lifetime of reading and writing,” he said.

“I read 5,000 books by the time I was 30. When I was 10 years old I was carrying around a dictionary almost as big as me under one arm and a Complete Works of Shakespeare under the other.

“By the time I was 14, I’d read everything Dickens wrote, everything by Shaw and dozens of others. I wasn’t interested in comic books, I was interested in Dostoevsky, and what made people like what he wrote.

“You have to learn all the tricks of the trade, all the rules, and then break them – it’s called style.”

Lauder, who has studied all the historic versions of the Arthurian myth, knows he may ruffle a few feathers of British traditionalists with his take on the story. But he reserves the same right to create and embroider employed by previous authors going back as far as Thomas Malory – and even further.

Ian is proud to have created a book that appeals, judging by those who have read it, to both young and old, but has particular resonance for female readers, who like the resourceful heroine and the general ambience.

One of his major achievements in the book, he feels, is restoring the Yin and Yang of masculine and feminine power, as represented by Merlin and Morgan.

“I didn’t like the idea of Morgan le Fay being a villain. But when I studied the literature I found it was a bastardization of the original – the early Christian attitude to the female side of healing.”

For more information on Elfindale, visit mudvalley.com