Robin Hardy's Abbey Lands
Previous Questions & Answers
Dec. 5, 2024: Where are you on Facebook? Sorry, I'm not. This is almost a hardship for me, because most of my family is on FB. A few years ago I did have a public page—it's a tricky thing for authors, who are so personally invested in their public offerings. Not only did my page attract trolls, but some family members posted on private or contentious matters that I didn't want to publicly share. It got to be such a mess that I dropped it.
​Nov. 8, 2024: Why don't you have a comments section? Because I want to encourage word of mouth. If you like my books, tell your friends and family about them. If you hate my books, do the same. Some of those people may be curious enough to read for themselves to find out how bad they are. :D
​Oct. 29, 2024: Your books are not Christian. Your hero Efran is a serial adulterer. Then stop reading them and pick up your Bible instead. Start with Romans and then skip over to the Psalms, which tell us that no one is righteous before God.
When you're done there, hop on over to 2 Chronicles, 1 John, and Proverbs, which explain that the way to get right with God is to repent and stop doing wrong.
This is probably the dominant theme of the Abbey stories: that God accepts sinners who repent, and clothes them with the righteousness of the only Man who never sinned.
​Oct. 13, 2024: Is this series supposed to be medieval? It doesn't sound like it. You're right; it's not. I threw in "medieval" to connect it with the Annals and the Latter Annals, which were poorly researched. When I discovered how really nasty fortresses with garderobes were, I knew I couldn't put my people there. But I love horses, so they had to be essential to my stories. Also, I wanted to avoid the technology trap. Within 6 months or a year of completing a modern story, the technology in it is obsolete. SO, I went my own way writing Scripturally based mythopoeia. You'll find my explanation of that in the Afterword. ​
One more point: in my books, I preach as little as possible. If you want to see what I believe, look at what happens. The plots do my preaching for me. The outcomes of the stories tell you what I have experienced of the grace of God.
​Oct. 10, 2024: How long did it take you to write all these? I began the rough draft of the first book on May 1, 2021, and finished the rough draft of the last book on August 6, 2023. To keep all the names, dates, and events straight, I drew up timelines for each book. Click here to see the timeline for Book 10: Lord Efran and the Runaway Bride. (The dates in the top right corner are the begin and end dates of work on the first draft.)​​​​​
Oct. 8, 2024: You talk about how short Minka is and how tall Efran is, but you don't ever give their heights, at least in the first book. Did I not mention that? Minka is 5' 3" and Efran is 6'.
Sept. 25, 2024: If the maps are important, why don't you post them here? I can't; there are too many, and they're too large. Plus, the maps are updated with each book, as the Abbey Lands change. To give you an idea of how that looks, here's a comparison between the Abbey Lands main road in Book 1 and that in Book 15.
Sept. 11, 2024: Why do you have fairies in Christian books? Ho boy, there's not only faeries, but Leviathans, trolls, Nephilim, and time hops. I think all that is best explained by the Afterword that comes at the end of Book 36, Lord Efran in the Apocalypse. For readers who want to know now, I've attached the Afterword here.
Sept. 6, 2024: Where did the Polonti come from? Actually, they originated in the first book, Chataine's Guardian, as Roman was half-Polonti. I visualize them as South Sea Islanders/Native Americans, and drew heavily from the Hawaiian language for their words. As far as their origin on the Continent, their major city, Eledith, was located deep in the Fastnesses, far from the cities of Eurus and Westford. About 50 years prior to Efran and Minka's time, the Polonti elders relocated Eledith closer to the rest of the Southern Continent.
​
​Here's where the maps come into play. No other stories I've written have been so site-specific; that is, understanding the events is greatly enhanced by seeing the physical layout. So I'm urging readers who have only the epubs to look at the pdfs just for the maps.
Sept. 4, 2024: Are these books as explicit as Nicole of Prie Mer? Ouch. No, I learned my lesson when I had to edit out several scenes from both Nicole and Ares of Westford. With the Abbey books, I've been careful to moderate intimate passages. However, when one early reader was offended by Efran's telling Minka, "[Remember how] you trusted me to ward you and not--use you?" I knew that some readers would find fault with just about anything I wrote.
Sept. 3, 2024: Are the pictures you show here from your books? Yes, they're in both the pdfs and the epubs. All of the books have an illustration. As a novice illustrator, I created them from public domain images online. Notes accompany all the illustrations with links to the image sources. See an example below.
Aug. 30, 2024: Why are you giving these books away? Publishing them conventionally is impossible—who would read all that? This site gives me the opportunity to get them out there for readers to taste. Just know that the books comprise one complete, ongoing story from the beginning to a definite end.
Just for fun, here's an extra illustration I did for Book 16 Lord Efran and the Water Giant. This shows the faeries celebrating the arrival of the white doe and her fawns. Click here to see the Notes.
You could call it Chataine’s Guardian 2.0​