Clovis ruled from 486 to 511, which places him not-so-firmly in a couple of possible places. There are those who bring the Early Medieval descriptor across these years (I don't, by the way, disagree with this), and of course the proximity to the deposition of Augustulus and the end of the Western Roman Empire allows me to call the period Late Antiquity, which is a hugely popular time ... but does tend to evoke Rome, which is far less present in my novel than Late Antiquity fans might prefer. Another option is to call it the Dark Ages - but (a) I never liked that descriptor, for its pejorative (and therefore incorrect) connotations, and (b) it can be said the DA began in 535 - which puts it too late to include my story. Finally, we could place it in the Migration Period - and very accurately - but who really talks about the Migration Period? It's not what you could call a marketing buzzword. Even Late Antiquity might demand too much, by some lights, for some PR and/or readership purposes.
Most often, in pitching, I personally place the work in Late Antiquity. It might not be as widely understood a term as the Dark Ages, but its meaning is fairly obvious, and it has that nicely Roman feel, which I sort of think evokes adventure and political intrigue. In my mind, though, I'm a little unsure whether I think of it as belonging to any specific famous era. This can make querying tricky, when you market around the vagaries of naming your setting in time. So I set it in LA (hee), but note the appeal to readers in other areas - including Arthurian lovers.
Probably, this is a bad move. But I've vetted my query, and gotten good love out of it regularly enough I have hope it's not a disaster, and it's been very much polished and honesd over the period (*there's* that word) since I have been sending it out.
I'm interested in what readers of histfic like to see. I know I myself can be turned on or off by an era-descriptor, so am wondering how much this choice does for or against whatever I hope to accomplish. Throw me a comment! And thank you all in advance ...
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2 comments:
Forget the particular era. It was a time of change, an old order morphing into new dynasties. Uncertainty, into which steps the decisive hero. The era is Change, and you've got a book about the Changer.
Or something like that.
Well, that's the only vote standing! :)
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