The world of Elder Earth and Wester New England was conceived of for the story Up Shingle Creek, written for my niece Jamie in Utah. [This became the novel Wife— which was completed in November of 2022.] Having merely begun that work in October 2021, and left it fallow for my return to the location, I became deathly ill and resurrected the discarded outline for The Sorcerer and re-titled it Sorcerer! and began fleshing out the wider setting of Elder Earth for to place the story in a setting I had been.

The excitement of one reader, Paul Bingham, for Sorcerer! moved me to write Ranger? set in locations where I had been with my friend Riley in 2018 in Red Rock Canyon and Denver, Colorado, and through which I had journeyed by train, hiked and lived for a week of my passage to Paul and Leanna in Southwestern Missouri. The third portion of that novel I am writing now, set in the windy quarters of The Four States that Paul and Leanna showed me.

I have yet to conclude Up Shingle Creek and must, before winter sets in, complete Knight also. [The former complete now, in 2023, and the latter yet to be begun and awaits my hopeful 2024 return to Montana.] This would do the bare minimum of fleshing out Wester New England and carrying the narrative begun with Sorcerer! to a satisfying conclusion.

However, if wicked Fate and uncaring Time permit, a more complete series might conclude as such:

[Modern locations in Brackets are the locations I have traveled to in support of that novel.]

(Modern location in parentheses are those I must travel to to write this book.)

Depending on time left and travel open to the writer, these novels may well be written out of their series order, which is chronological.

-1. Sorcerer!

Set in Awes West and Awes South

[Wyoming]

-2. Ranger?

Set in Awes West and Awes South

[Colorado, Oklahoma, Arkansas, Missouri]

-3. Wife—

Set in Awes West

[Utah]

-4. Slave.

Set in Awes West and Czardoor

[Pacific Northwest, Oregon and Utah]

-5. Knight:

Set in Awes West and North

[Redlodge and Whitefish, Montana] (Tobacco Valley, Montana)

-6. Booger…

Set in Awes South and Voodoory

(Arkansas, Louisiana)

-7. Vagger;

Set in Easter New England and New Ireland

[Ohio, Illinois, Kentucky, Tennessee, West Virginia, Virginia, Maryland, Pennsylvania]

-8. Scout’

Set in Wester New Ireland

[Kentucky, Tennessee, West Virginia, Virginia, Maryland, Pennsylvania]

-9. Paladin*

Set in Awes North and West

(Wisconsin, Michigan)

-10. Alienist ~

Set in New Spain

[California] (Texas, Arizona, New Mexico, Southern Utah)

-11. Factor#

Conclusion set in Awes South, Voodoory, New Ireland and Saint Mary’s Town on The Bay of the Mother of God in Easter New England

[The above as well as New Jersey and Delaware]

I do not expect to conclude this and leave this here largely as a fancy for readers who might wish to pursue the thing to its conclusion.

Thank you for your interest.

I wish Paul Bingham to be the series reader.

Thanks to Zack Berk, Leanna and Reuben Chandler for their reading and encouragement.

James LaFond, May, 14 2022, Harford County, Maryland

Note on the Literary Conceit

The numbers below indicate the authorship of the novel in the series listed above.

The narrative device of assigning authorship from among the cast of literate characters is the source of the sue of odd punctuation in the titles of the various books. The factors Blair West [1, 11], Hayward [3, 5, 11], Ghast, Book [2, 11], Dast [4, 11] as well as the Confessor at Saint George [2], Minstrel Jim [7, 8], Paladin 2031 [9], the Alienist Ulysses Saddler [6,10,11] who examined The White Lady as a child and became the foremost authority on Monstery and Voodoory, and the various letter writers of Wester and Easter New England

The last volume in the series, being Factor# is envisioned as a Council called by the Archbishop to which frontier factors, alienists and paladins are summoned to discuss the risings of Monstery and Voodoory and the possibility of a peace with Voodoory and alliance with Dastardy and New Spain in the face of the terrible scourge of “hellish upwellings” that has cut off oceanic navigation—the crescendo of the series being the turning of the very Oceans against Christendom and the separation of New England, New France and New Spain from their mother countries, as well as Dastardy from Czary.

This council would be the event at which the actual 9 volumes of recent lore are presented, the various authors meet or are reunited, and the calling of a Crusade devolves upon the Archbishop of New England at Saint Mary’s Cathedral.

-Corrected and expanded, after proofing and editing Ranger? in East Baltimore, August 27, 2023