Michael Kent-Hughes

Dancing King Stories: Writing as an Act of Faith

August 6, 2018 By Glynn Young Leave a Comment

Southwark Cathedral

We writers would all love to be Stephen King, James Patterson, J.K. Rowlings, and other successful people who turn everything to gold simply by their touch. For most of us, writing is difficult, frustrating, depressing, discouraging, and lacking any kind of return even remotely like the effort we put into our work. We pour ourselves into what we write, often for a very long time, and once it sees the light of day, the world yawns and moves on to books that are badly written, semi- (or totally) pornographic, or so lacking in anything of value that we wonder why we continue to do what we do.

Writing can be a slog. For most of us, writing is a slog.

A scene inDancing King unintentionally speaks to writers, what we write, our platforms (or lack thereof), and the whole question of “why do we write.” I wasn’t thinking of writers when I wrote it, but I believe it applies to what we writers try to do.

It’s two days before Christmas. Michael Kent-Hughes flies from Scotland, where he’s on holiday with his family, to London. He’s giving the first in a series of sermons on the need to reform the church, and he’s at Southwark Cathedral. It’s an old church, dating back to early Anglo-Saxon times, but it’s a church that has managed to flourish. (Southwark is an overlooked gem for tourists, likely overshadowed by its much larger and better-known brethren like Westminster Abbey and St. Paul’s Cathedral.)

Dancing King Michael gives the sermon. He has friends and staffers visiting among the 400 people in the congregation – his chief of staff, his communications leader, and his security people. People are taken aback, first by the fact of the king giving the regular Sunday sermon, and second, by what he says and how he says it. Jay Lanham, Michael’s communications man, is narrating what is happening. And he learns that Michael is speaking with an authority that seems to come from outside him. Lanham’s there in his communications capacity; he’s what might be called a “cultural Christian.” He can recall the order of the worship service from his childhood, but he finds himself overwhelmed by the truth he hears in the sermon.

Afterward, Michael treats the staff people in attendance to lunch at a nearby pub. His chief of staff, Josh Gittings, asks him if he has any expectations as to how many people might attend the Bible study the next evening being organized by the church, which Michael had just encouraged the congregation to attend.

“I don’t know, Joshua,” Michael says. “And the number doesn’t matter. God can do wonders with one or two just as easily as 400.”

The response will actually be something a bit more than one or two; Michael’s sermon will spark something of a revival in the diocese. But Michael knows that this is less about what he says and how many may or may not respond, and more about what God puts in people’s hearts. Michael is a vessel; he’s not what pours into and out of the vessel.

That is the “how” and the “why” of what I write. Do I want thousands and tens of thousands to buy my books? Sure. But if that was the goal, I would not be writing the kinds of books I write.

And while the number may matter to a publisher, the number of readers doesn’t, in the end, matter. Wonders can be worked with one or two as with 400, or 10,000. We write to tell a story; what happens to that story is someone else’s business.

Top photograph: Southwark Cathedral, with the office building known as “The Shard” in the background.

Dancing King Stories: Sarah Kent-Hughes

July 2, 2018 By Glynn Young 2 Comments

The story of Michael Kent and Sarah Hughes begins in Dancing Priest, the first novel in the Dancing Priest series. And while other narratives will stream through the series, the love story of Michael and Sarah remains the core.

They meet at the University of Edinburgh. She’s an art student at the University of Southern California, studying a year abroad with her brother David Hughes. She and Michael share a class in medieval church history; he sees her sitting a few rows away and is instantly smitten. He introduces himself after the class, she thinks she’s been hit on for the fourth time that day; and she dismisses him with an Anglo-Saxon profanity, believing his statement about studying for the priesthood to be a come-on line.

But they both get passed that, and at a school festival, dance what comes to be known as the “last tango in Edinburgh.” And it’s during that dance that the dancing priest of the title is born.

Dancing Priest is the story of how Michael and Sarah find each other, lose each other, and then find each other again. In the process, they are both growing and maturing, Sarah moving steadily toward the faith that divided her from Michael and Michael learning that the priesthood of study and preparation may not be the same as the priesthood meeting life on the streets.

In A Light Shining, the second novel in the series, Sarah almost becomes the main character. She and Michael are married, living in San Francisco, and soon expecting their first child. And then comes The Violence, a planned and coordinated terrorist attack on Britain’s royal family, Michael’s brother Henry, and Michael and Sarah. The attack on a very pregnant Sarah is thwarted by their two adopted son, Jason and Jim, but Michael almost dies. Sarah goes through childbirth while Michael is in surgery. And while he’s recovering and still unconscious, she assumes responsibilities far beyond the typical new young mother.

In Dancing King, the third in the Dancing Priest series, Sarah becomes one of the narrators of the story – the arrival in London, the upheavals with palace staff, the creation of a new staff, and the growing attacks by people determined to drive Michael and Sarah from the throne.

Sarah is self-confident and assured, but she is also shy. She’s also slightly terrified at dealing with all of her new responsibilities. Physically, she’s about 5 feet 7, golden-brown hair, brown eyes, with high cheekbones. Michael thinks she’s absolutely dazzling. Her favorites clothes to wear are jeans and a man’s dress shirt (which is what she was wearing when she and Michael first met).

She also is an artist, with an artist’s soul and temperament. Sarah had been on her way to establishing a successful career in painting when she met Michael again and married him. She will continue to paint, in addition to all of her new responsibilities. Her painting style is Realism; people often think her paintings are photographs.

At the very beginning of Dancing King, as the family is leaving their life in San Francisco and flying to London, the man who will become Michael’s chief of staff is sitting on a jump seat across from Michael and Sarah in the car to the airport. Reflecting on the events detailed in A Light Shining, what he says about Sarah and her husband is the key theme of the book:

“This young woman, this young queen with a new baby sitting across from me in the SUV, had been the pivotal player. The PM knew that. I knew that. And I had had to insert myself into her fear, confusion, and shock. I didn’t expect to be inserted into the middle of her faith. And her husband’s faith.”

Photograph by Andrei Lazarev via Unsplash. Used with permission.

Dancing King Stories: Master of the Household

June 25, 2018 By Glynn Young 1 Comment

In Dancing King, Michael Kent-Hughes has a recurring problem – finding the right people for his key palace staff positions.

A wide array of people is considered for the communications job; Michael doesn’t find the right person he’s looking for until a resume arrives unsolicited. A similar problem occurs with his chief of staff position – he finds capable people, but the chemistry doesn’t seem right. What’s happened there is that Michael has been consciously and unconsciously comparing them all to Josh Gittings, the prime minister’s chief aide sent to help Michael and his wife Sarah in San Francisco. That problem is solved when Gittings directly applies for the job.

A third key position is an operating job – Master of the Household at the palace, or as Michael shortens it, “Master of the House.” Today, the position is responsible for all of the operational positions for all of the Royal Households in the nation. In addition to Buckingham Palace, that includes Windsor Castle, Kensington Palace, other palaces and residences, and the staffs charged with managing the activities of many of the members of the royal family.

The position has a long history – it first officially appeared in 1603, when James I ascended the throne after the death of Queen Elizabeth. It was generally held by aristocrats and / or friends of the monarch until early in the reign of Queen Victoria, when it took a decided military turn. Since that time, the position has been usually held by a ranking military officer – lieutenant colonels, brigadiers, generals, air marshals, and lords of the Admiralty.

Michael and Josh Gittings are looking for someone to run the day-to-day operational activities of Buckingham Palace. These include the kitchens, the gardening staff, the housekeeping staff, and more – all of the people responsible for functioning the of palace. They do find one qualified applicant, but he decides not to take the job.

On a cold winter’s day, Michael and Gittings are driven to the Mayfair flat of Michael’s dead brother Henry, murdered during The Violence of the previous fall, the same upheaval that led to Michael being shot and almost dying in San Francisco. At Henry’s flat, they have two objectives: assess what needs to be done with the furnishings (and art collection) before it’s sold and consider the position of Henry’s butler or “man.” Michael feels an obligation to make sure the man who ran Henry’s household is taken care of in some way.

They find Brent Epworth, a former lieutenant in the British Army. And he has a story.

Epworth had planned a military career. An only child, married but with no children of his own yet, he had been stationed in Iraq, a member of the British and allied forces involved in an ongoing if somewhat stalemated war. A roadside mine kills almost all of the unit he leads; Epworth himself loses most of his left leg and is eventually honorably discharged. His wife, unable to deal with his injuries, divorces him, and his life slides into a downward spiral of alcohol and drugs.

Henry had found him recovering after detox in a military hospital in Chelsea and offered him a job of running his household affairs in London and the country estate in Kent if he could stay free of addictions. Epworth accepted the offer and his life turned around.

Impressed by the man’s obvious competence and his demeanor, Michael offers Epworth the Master of the House position on the spot. Within weeks, Epworth proves his value and the wisdom of Michael’s intuitive if impulsive offer.

In a sense, the military flavor of the Master of the Household position continues its long history.

Top photograph by Jeslyn Chanchaleune via Unsplash. Used with permission.

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: The Coronation at Westminster Abbey

May 7, 2018 By Glynn Young Leave a Comment

Westminster Abbey

In the 1040s, King Edward of England (later St. Edward the Confessor) began to enlarge the church of a small Benedictine monastery near his palace. It was referred to as the “west minster,” to distinguish it from the “east minister,” aka St. Paul’s Cathedral. The large stone church was dedicated to St. Peter.

In 1066, William I invaded and conquered England. On Christmas Day, he was crowned in Edward’s church. Every English and British monarch since 1066 has been crowned in Edward’s church. The complex has grown over the tears, especially during the 13^thto 16^thcenturies. Today, Westminster Abbey is one of the most popular sites in Britain, visited by millions of tourists annually and a center of major worship activities.

It’s also a rather large cemetery. Some 3,300 people are buried here, including Queen Elizabeth I and her sister Queen Mary, King Edward (he was moved a century or so after his death), Henry V, Sir Isaac Newton, Geoffrey Chaucer, and Charles Dickens (he didn’t want to be buried in the Abbey, but no one paid attention to his wishes). Poet’s Corner is a veritable who’s who of British literary history, containing both graves and plaques (including a fairly recent one for C.S. Lewis).

The complex is soaked in British history, literature, science, government, and philosophy. The soaring Gothic architecture is overwhelming. The beauty of the Henry VII Lady Chapel is simply astounding. And the complex keeps growing, with a new Abbey museum, the Queen’s Jubilee Galleries, opening on June 11 this year.

Westminster Abbey interior — The interior of Westminster Abbey

A coronation of a monarch is a massive undertaking. The interior of the Abbey has to be remodeled to accommodate viewing stands, seating, platforms, and a number of other structures. Planning can go on for a year or more. The ceremony is plotted out to the smallest detail.

The last coronation in the Abbey was Queen Elizabeth II’s in 1953; consider that there had been three in the 36 years after Queen Victoria’s death in 1901.

In addition to quite a few YouTube videos (like this one), the primary resource for the coronation scene in Dancing King was Crown, Orb & Sceptre: The True Story of English Coronations by David Hilliam. It’s actually a fun read, full of odd things that have happened over the years and unusual events, like Richard III being crowned in his bare feet. Hilliam describes the processions to the Abbey and the ceremonies themselves.

The coronation scene in Dancing King follows Hilliam’s description of Queen Elizabeth’s ceremony very closely, with a few major exceptions. The Archbishop of Canterbury, as the lead official in the Church of England, usually crowns the monarch. A different official does it in the novel, largely because of the ongoing conflict between Michael Kent-Hughes and the Archbishop of Canterbury, a major narrative line in the novel that is not resolved by the end of the book. Michael also makes changes in how monarchs-to-be-crowned are usually dressed and adds a segment to the ceremony at the end.

It is a moving ceremony. The coronation follows the near destruction of the royal family in A Light Shining, the second novel in the Dancing Priest series. There almost wasn’t a coronation, or anyone left to crown. Like the real coronation event, that of Michael Kent-Hughes is meant to signify the continuance of family, faith, and tradition, even in the face of constant societal and cultural change, and, in the Dancing King story, near-annihilation.

One element of the coronation that Michael does not change is the singing of “Zadok the Priest” by George Frederic Handel, which has become the traditional coronation anthem.

Michael Kent-Hughes

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