Characters

Dancing King Stories: Michael Kent-Hughes

June 18, 2018 By Glynn Young Leave a Comment

Michael Kent (married name, Kent-Hughes) started out fictional life as an unnamed priest dancing on a beach in Italy. He was inspired by a song, “Luna Rossa,” sung by Mario Frangoulis. I first heard the song on an airplane flight to San Francisco in 2002. The image of a dancing priest stuck in my head and wouldn’t let go.

The priest stayed in my head for the next three years. He moved off the beach and into a tourist group. He changed religions, from Roman Catholic to Anglican. He had a mild flirtation with a young American woman who was part of the tour group. The beach, Italy, and the tour group were left behind, and the priest was moved to Scotland. He was finishing his theology studies at the University of Edinburgh. He gained a named, Michael Kent. He gained a reason for being English but living in Scotland – he was raised by guardians.

In August 2004 I started biking, which meant Michael started biking, too. Except he was training for the Olympics. Michael and I had a lot of conversations on various biking trails around St. Louis, the Lachine Canal Trail in Montreal, the Katy Trail in Missouri, and the Yorktown-Jamestown Colonial Parkway in Virginia.

From 2002 to 2005, the story arc of Michael Kent was laid out – in my imagination. Nowhere else. I said nothing about the story to anyone, including my wife, because I wasn’t sure what I was going to do with it. In the fall of 2005, inspired by Hurricane Katrina, I began to type it. It took two months, and when I finally stopped, three months later, I had a 250,000 word manuscript and the entire story line that would eventually become Dancing Priest, A Light Shining, and Dancing King.

For the next five years, the manuscript was rewritten, edited, split into three pieces, re-edited, re-rewritten, and continually worked over. More pieces of the story, extending beyond Dancing King, were added. Query letters went out to agents and publishers, with the net result of zero interest. An editor and an agent read a chunk at a writers’ conference; they offered enough encouragement that I kept working on it. Dancing Priestfinally found a publishing home in 2011.

The three novels tell the story of Michael Kent-Hughes. Through the three books, he’s moved from a priest-in-training to Buckingham Palace. He’s now 27, married, with two adopted sons and a young baby. Instead of being a priest, he finds himself the head of the Church of England, in conflict with the church hierarchy.

Michael Kent-Hughes had serious doubts. He occupies a leadership role that he’s not sure he’s at all qualified for. He knows what he’s been called to do, and it’s daunting. He finds himself the object of personal and institutional attacks. And he learns he has to depend upon people, and how much of his success depends upon finding good people to work for him.

He adores his wife Sarah and his family. The importance of his family begins to reshape how he undertakes his royal duties. Not being raised among Britain’s elites means his orientation, values, and priorities are very different.

Although born in southern England, Michael considers Scotland, and the McLarens’ farm, as home. He still rides his bike, even if he’s not competing professionally. In spite of the wealth and royal trappings surrounding them, the Kent-Hughes family will maintain something of a middle- to-upper-middle-class lifestyle.

Michael has been positioned and is being prepared for something much larger than he has yet imagined.

Top photograph by Justin Chenand cyclist photo by Max Libertine, both via Unsplash. Photograph of baby and dad sleeping by Vera Kratochvil via Public Domain Pictures. All used with permission.

Dancing King Stories: Ian McLaren, Guardian

June 11, 2018 By Glynn Young 1 Comment

Dancing King Ian McLaren

A childless couple, he 40, she 39, feel a drifting apart in their marriage. They always wanted children, but pregnancy hadn’t happened. So, one Saturday night, they go out for dinner and play, in the New Town area of Edinburgh. When they arrive home, the phone is ringing, which, at that hour, usually means an emergency with a horse. The man is a horse veterinarian, and a good one, so good that he finds himself traveling all over Britain to attend to horses.

The phone call is not about a horse. It’s about a boy, a 6-year-old suddenly orphaned by the deaths of his parents in a car crash outside of London. The man learns that the boy is being driven to their home outside Edinburgh; he and his wife are the designated guardians. He’ll arrive within the hour.

Dancing King The boy is the son of Henry and Anna Kent, who live a quiet life in southern England. Henry races horses, and his veterinarian is Ian McLaren. He had watched Ian work a near miracle when a valuable racehorse was injured. He had also come to know Ian McLaren the man, and it was to Ian and his wife Iris that Henry Kent entrusted his son Michael.

In Dancing King, the third novel in the Dancy Priest series, Ian McLaren has a small role, but it’s a critical one. Michael and his family come home to Edinburgh from London for Christmas, and it’s to Ian whom Michael turns for counsel and companionship. This is the man Michael thinks of as his “Da,” his memories of his real father being buried in time.

Michael seeks Ian out in the barn, where Ian is attending to horses. Conscious of his healing arm and shoulder injury, Michael does what he’s been doing since he was six – “mucking out the stable,” as Ian describes it. It’s something rather below the station of a king. But Michael, beset by doubts about his abilities and beginning to see enemies unexpectedly rising up, seeks refuge in the familiar – the mucking of hay and the rock that Ian represents.

Ian is a big man physically, tall, broad-shouldered, and barrel-chested. His red hair has gone to gray. He’s now in his late 60s, and he continues to work at his profession. His only concession to age was the hiring of an assistant – Roger Pitts, Michael’s cycling nemesis in Dancing Priest, the cyclist who disgraced himself at the Olympics. Michael had prevailed upon Ian to hire him, Roger also began veterinary studies, and he’s done so well that Ian is beginning to see his successor in his veterinary practice.

Dancing Priest Ian and Iris are Presbyterians, “good Calvinists,” as Iris says. They raised Michael in their church, until he reached about 14 or 15, when he calmly informed them that he was being called to the ministry – in the Anglican Church. Ian didn’t know all of what was happening, but he sensed there was something larger at work. He knew Michael, and he knew Michael’s seriousness, and he and Iris had acquiesced in Michael’s decision. Ian may be a “good Calvinist,” but he doesn’t let sectarianism get in the way of what he can see is God’s plan.

It’s a private, tender moment in the barn, the young man feeling the burden of extraordinary responsibilities leaning upon the older man he considers his father. Ian offers insight, counsel, and laughter.

That moment is a picture of what we all want with our earthly fathers, and what we yearn for with our heavenly Father.

Top photograph by Eberhard Grossgasteiger via Unsplash. Used with permission.

Dancing King Stories: Josh Gittings, Chief of Staff

June 4, 2018 By Glynn Young 4 Comments

In my second novel A Light Shining, Josh Gittings is a special assistant to Prime Minister Peter Bolting. And in his case, “special” means “political.” Gittings does what Bolting needs him to do, and much of that is ruthless. Gittings has been involved in Labour Party politics and working for Bolting since he graduated from college 20 years before.

He’s a character who understands what his value is, what his role is, and what’s expected of him. He knows he’s often called “Rasputin,” and he’s self-aware enough to understand that it’s a justified nickname. He watches everything. He pays attention to small details. He can deal with political friends and enemies alike, and he sees little difference between them, because who’s your political friend today will be your political enemy tomorrow.

Josh Gittings is a man of the political 21^stcentury.

When the royal family is assassinated in Britain and Michael Kent-Hughes is shot in San Francisco, Gittings, 41, is dispatched by the prime minister to California to be his man on the ground. He’s there to do the PM’s bidding. If Michael survives the shooting and surgery, Gittings is there to assist and guide. If Michael dies, Gittings is there to help Sarah Kent-Hughes and her newborn son. He’s there to make sure the world knows that the PM is with the new royal family.

It’s a cold, calculating, and rather bloodless job. And Gittings is perfectly suited for it. And it all goes according to Gittings’ playbook, until he meets and begins to work with Sarah, as Michael remains unconscious after surgery. Within two days of meeting her, he’s beginning to question what he considers the fundamentals of his career and of his life. When she speaks at her press conference, calling passionately for an end to The Violence in Britain, he finds himself in tears.

The third novel in the series, Dancing King, opens with Gittings leaving San Francisco with Britain’s new royal family. It is seven weeks after Michael’s discharge from the hospital; Gittings has spent those seven weeks working with Michael and Sarah, helping them in innumerable ways. And in the process, he has discovered that being with them has begun to change his own life profoundly. As he tells them later in the book, “I began to learn what’s really important in life.”

For those seven weeks, Gittings lives in Michael’s old apartment at St. Anselm’s Church, across the plaza from Michael and Sarah’s loft. He has ample opportunities to talk with Father John Stevens, the church’s head pastor and Michael’s boss. Father John plays a critical role as well, mostly in telling Gittings stories about the church and stories about Michael.

During the trans-Atlantic telephone conversations, Josh’s live-in girlfriend, Zena Chatwick, can hear the change that’s happening in Gittings simply by listening to his voice. When he arrives with Michael and Sarah in London, he tells Zena he’s moving out of their flat in Chelsea. And he asks her to marry him, “to make an honest man of myself.” He helps Michael interview and staff various palace positions, eventually submitting his own application for chief of staff. That such a ruthless character as Gittings becomes one of Michael’s closest confidantes raises questions in the minds of many. Michael doesn’t care; he knows how his new friend has changed.

The character of Josh Gittings is fictional, but there are elements of two people who contributed to his creation. One was an individual much like Gittings – political, ruthless, prepared to do whatever was required to achieve the desired ends. The other is rather more famous – Charles Colson, President Richard Nixon’s “hatchet man.” Colson was one of the most ruthless of political operatives, until the Nixonian world collapsed, he went to prison, and people reached out to him in love and faith. Colson became a profoundly changed man.

And that’s what happens to Josh Gittings in A Light Shining and Dancing King.

Photograph by George Hodan via Public Domain Pictures. Used with permission.

He Wants to See You. Now.

June 1, 2018 By Glynn Young Leave a Comment

The phone rang. Focused on the words on my computer screen, I absentmindedly picked up the phone.

“He wants to see you.”

“Now?” I asked.

“Now.”

I grabbed my suit coat (that’s what we wore in those days), made a mad dash down my building’s back stairs to the tunnel connecting all of the buildings on our campus. I surfaced in the executive building next store – a place of granite, art work, and polished wood bathed in toney silence.

In corporate communication circles, I occupied one of the high positions – the CEO’s speechwriter. I had written for CEOs before him, and I would write for CEOs after him. But no one had the reputation this CEO did.

He had run through three speechwriters in four months before I received the dreaded invitation. I had written a speech for another executive that had received outsized attention inside and outside the company. And that call came from the head of communications: The CEO wants you to write his speeches.

In normal circumstances, I would’ve been thrilled. These were not normal circumstances. This CEO could be awful to work for. He seemed to relish being awful to work for. His supervisory style was known as management by intimidation.

I had already set a record for being one of his speechwriters – I had lasted more than a year.

I reached the outer office where his secretary sat. She nodded toward his door, slightly arching a eyebrow.

The eyebrow was code. The CEO was not in a good mood. I didn’t know how I was going to handle going back to square one in our working relationship.

I took a step toward his office and he started yelling at me. Literally yelling. And waving the pages of a speech draft I had written.

You don’t know how to write. This is trash. It’s the worst thing you’ve written. You think you’re a writer but you’re not. I don’t have flacks write for me. This went on for some time.

I sat in the chair in front of his desk and let him finish his rant. I knew it wasn’t the speech draft. I knew I had written a really fine draft. But I knew it must be something, so I listened for clues.

When he finally muttered something about me not knowing how to write for certain audiences, it clicked.

“It’s the audience, isn’t it?” I asked.

He exploded.

After the rant subsided again, I spoke. “You’ve never spoken to a minority audience before, have you?” I asked, surprising myself at how abrupt I was being.

He sat there, glowering at me.

“What if we do this,” I said. “I will send the draft to” – I named two company executives who happened to be minorities – “and have them read it. And see if they think it’s OK for this audience.”

Grumbling, he agreed.

The CEO never allowed anyone to read his speeches beforehand. So, this was a rather unusual move for him, underscoring his high anxiety.

The two executives read the draft. One suggested a single word change (in a 2,000-word text). The other said he wouldn’t change anything, and that he would give the speech if the CEO wouldn’t.

The CEO gave the speech, to a group of 250 minority business students.

A couple of days later, I received another phone call.

“He wants to see you.”

“Now?” I asked, knowing the answer.

“Now.”

When I arrived, the secretary nodded me toward the door and winked.

That was a good sign.

I walked in his office.

“I gave a great speech,” he said. “I knew it would go over well. They gave me a standing ovation.”

I nodded. “I don’t think I would have expected anything less.”

He nodded. “So, let’s talk about the Boston speech next month.”

After 18 months of my career being over once a week, we both had had one of those business epiphanies. He realized that I might know more about something than he did. And I realized that there was a human being sitting behind that executive desk.

(This story is one of many that helped to create the character of Jay Lanham, a communications professional in my novel Dancing King.)

Photograph by Taylor Nicole via Unsplash. Used with permission.

Dancing King Stories: Trevor Barry, Attorney and Counselor

May 28, 2018 By Glynn Young Leave a Comment

Trevor Barry is a case of a character who wasn’t meant to show up in Dancing King. He was originally destined for the next novel in the series. Somehow, he broke into line.

Trevor and his wife Liz live in the northwestern suburbs of London. They have two children, Jane, 16, and Andrew, 12. Both children attend International Christian School, which is where Jason and Jim, the two adopted sons of Michael and Sarah Kent-Hughes, will also attend.

It’s not through school that Trevor and Michael meet. Born in Yorkshire, Trevor is an attorney, or barrister. He works in chambers with several other barristers on Essex Street in the Temple area of central London, near the Royal Courts of Justice. He handles a variety of legal cases, but his specialty is constitutional law. And Trevor’s hobby is the monarchy – the hobby is so serious that he’s known as something of an expert on the monarchy, its history, its legal standing, and even the various coronations. He’s also an avid amateur cyclist, and he can often be found on weekends on the Northwest London trail (a fictitious biking trail invented for the story).

Essex Street Temple — Essex Street, where Trevor Barry has his chambers.

It’s the hobby that brings Trevor to the attention of Josh Gittings, Michael’s chief of staff, and what gets him hired as a consultant. But it’s his knowledge and understanding of constitutional law that becomes just as valuable to Michael. Michael needs tutoring in constitutional law and the history of the monarchy, and Trevor happens to be able to do cover both.

Gittings meets Trevor at the palace security station and escorts him to his first meeting with Michael. The two are the same age, 41 but it would be difficult to find two more different people. Gittings is the former political shark for the prime minister; Trevor is quiet, something of an introvert, and wondering how someone with Michael’s reputation could have aligned himself with someone like Josh Gittings. Gittings doesn’t wait for Trevor to ask, and he brings it up himself.

Michael is so impressed with Trevor that he asks him to join the Coronation Committee. Afterward, Trevor asks Gittings is his lack of enthusiasm – meaning faith – will hurt him with Michael. And Gittings says Michael is hiring him for what he knows. Michael is intrigued by Trevor’s neutral references to church and faith, but he recognizes that the man knows what he’s talking about.

At 26, Michael is almost a generation younger than both men. He has come to rely heavily on Gittings, and he will come to rely equally as much on Trevor. Because of the challenges presented by the Archbishop of Canterbury and his political consultant Geoffrey Venneman, Trevor finds himself called repeatedly to the palace, including to help Michael deal with the protestors who have demanded a meeting. Trevor uses his courtroom experience to prepare Michael for what will be an intense discussion with the protestors.

The character of Trevor Barry injected himself in the Dancing Priest stories earlier than planned. The reason was that, in the rewriting and redrafting that went on, I needed an expert on the monarchy earlier than expected. So, I moved him up a book.

Trevor’s role in the Dancing Priest stories will grow and assume a greater importance. While he gives the appearance of a successful attorney, one who becomes connected at the highest levels of British government and society, Trevor has a history, unknown even to his own family. And it will be Michael Kent-Hughes who unexpectedly stumbles into it.

Top photograph by Ryan Holloway via Unsplash. Used with permission. I’m not sure if I would give Trevor Baryr a beard and mustache, but the man’s expression suggests something to me of what Trevor would be about.

Dancing King Stories: Geoffrey Venneman, Villain

May 21, 2018 By Glynn Young 3 Comments

Venneman Dancing King

Every story needs a good villain, or at least someone with villainous tendencies. My first novel, Dancing Priest, didn’t really have a villain, or at least one as a main character. The second in the series, A Light Shining, has an unnamed assassin. The third, Dancing King, has a public relations and political operative named Geoffrey Venneman.

I spent a few decades in corporate communications, working with and for public relations people and often collaborating with outside public relations firms. Contrary to the common perception, most PR people, or at least the vast majority I worked with, were capable, ethical people. They didn’t do anything that might be asked, regardless of whether it was good, bad, or indifferent. They would argue with wrongheaded decisions. They resisted bad advice. They worked hard to stay true to industry ethics codes.

A reporter once asked me if I had ever lied for any company or client I worked for. I could truthfully answer a firm no. Of course, the reporter likely asked the wrong question. I might have had a different answer if he asked me if I had ever been asked to lie for any company or client I worked for.

That’s been my experience. It has also been my experience to know a few PR people, and a few journalists, and it is a very few, who would never have been accused of being ethical. And it is a composite of those people (many of whom are no longer alive) who form the character of Geoffrey Venneman in Dancing King.

Dancing King Venneman won’t do any and everything his client (in the novel, the Archbishop of Canterbury) asks, but it’s less a matter of ethical concerns and more a matter of what will and won’t work. He’s working for church officials he feels profound disdain for, and he’s working against Michael Kent-Hughes because he hates the monarchy. Mr. Venneman has his own agenda, and he’s ruthless in pursuing it.

I could have just as easily taking his character from national news reports and even reports in my own state of Missouri at the moment. But he was conceived and appeared on my computer screen some years ago, long before current political issues and fights. Instead, he came from a remark here, an action there, a situation somewhere else, a few people who liked to operate in the shadows, and people pulling strings without being seen or identified. I’ve dealt with all kinds of people in my career, including these kinds.

Venneman is polished; he’s an Oxford graduate, after all, and he maintains a polished Oxford accent. He uses people, without any regret for what might happen to them as a result. But he’s resourceful, and he has keen insight and perception – he knows and can appreciate when Michael and his communications man Jay Lanham successfully beat back an attack, including his own.

His plans include falsely interviewing for Michael’s communications job, the one eventually filled by Lanham, and it’s here that he makes a strategic mistake. He thinks he’ll be able to easily charm Michael, because Venneman so easily charms everyone else. And he thinks that happens. What he doesn’t know is that Michael comes away from the interview instinctively appalled; he doesn’t know why, but he reacts badly to Venneman as a person.

In short, Michael recognized the evil at work.

Venneman largely fails in his repeated attacks on Michael, but not every operation ends in failure. And he will have a significant role to play in the next story in the series.

Top photograph: What Geoffrey Venneman might look like, by Drew Hays via Unsplash. Used with permission.

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