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BACKGROUND
LADY ASHLEY & LORD LOUIE is fiction set in modern times, beginning and ending in
London, but playing out in Brazil's Amazon jungle. The first draft was completed
in 2009 and has been in constant revision since then. Originally, Lord Louie was
to be the lead character, but Lady Ashley soon upstaged him. I encountered a
possible publisher in 2010, but after six months of consideration, that publisher
stepped aside. So I've been seeking an agent since then.
Still, this work has already sold 16 books. Those are the 16 I bought and read,
covering the many things I needed to know in order to write LA & LL. I have never
set foot in the Amazon, but my mind has spent a great deal of time there. That's
what books are for. And, of course, the file includes several maps and relevant
magazine articles.
All told, I've really enjoyed reading some amazing books about the Amazon and some
very thought-provoking stuff about the Neanderthal / Cro-Magnon interface. Lord
Louie, you see is a Neanderthal and most of the rest of us are Cro-Magnons.
Consider for a moment, that human evolution goes back 3 or 4 million years. Let's
call it 3 million years and use a yardstick time line in which each foot represents one
million years. Two very dramatic things happened about 30 to 40,000 years ago; (1) planet
earth warmed up as the last ice age ended, and (2) the Neanderthals disappeared.
40,000 years is .04 percent of one million years and can be represented
by a little less than a half inch on our yardstick. Of course, recorded human
civilization (towns, clay tablets, farms, etc.)only goes back about 8,000 years. That's
a fifth of 40,000, so human civilization began in the last tenth inch of our evolutionary
yardstick. In evolutionary terms, human civilization is a very recent thing.
Some say the rapid change was due to the end of the ice age. A tiny minority say
that the Neanderthals had a bigger cerebellum (the seat of imagination) than the
Cro-Magnons, and the Cro-Magnons had a larger cerebrum (the seat of reasoning) than
the Neanderthals. Thus intermarriage may have resulted in greater over-all intelligence
and an apparent disappearance of the Neanderthals.
In the novel, Lady Victoria Ashley is desperately seeking a new start in life in London
after a disastrous divorce in Boston. She is hired by an eminent anthropologist to serve as
teacher to the anthropologist's nineteen-year old ward, Lord Louie Edgecombe, who is
living at an isolated camp in the Amazon jungle. Too late, Lady Ashley discovers that she
has been promised to Lord Louie as his mate. Unavoidably, but peacefully, the mating takes
place and they have seven children together; six Neanderthals and a Cro-Magnon daughter,
Andromeda.
Lady Ashley becomes ferociously devoted to her family. Together, she and Lord Louie
destroy all who attack them. Two of their Neanderthal children marry into a neighboring
Indian tribe. Lady Ashley realizes that she and Louie have become a king and queen to their
piece of the world. So she ends their 28-year isolation by going back to London with Lord
Louie and Andromeda to reestablish their credentials. She hopes to steer Andromeda into a
position of political power in Brazil and use their considerable wealth to bring the better
parts of civilization to their Amazon domain while also maintaining their roots in England.
As icing on the cake, she finds that her ex-hubby has been found guilty of the perjury she
had been accused of and she has regained her son and daughter from the first marriage.
Will the Neanderthal-Indian marriages create a new human hybrid? Interesting question.
Please be sure to tell every literary agent you know that this novel is rife with
possibilities.
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