If I Should Live So Long

Julian Plectrum #1

by Mark Lind-Hanson

Julian Plectrum of Chester is a minstrel who has grown up in Cheshire and lived there all his life. At the age of fourteen he made a lifelong friend of Stephen, son of a wool and textile merchant, whom he saves from drowning. He meets Porcull, an older hermit who lives on Stephen’s estate, and who sparks in him the need to travel afar, to London. Which he does, but only to end up in a lawsuit with an olde-tyme song-stealing music industry shark. His adventures of three years time between Chester and Penzance bring him renown and connections. These connections are a good thing to have, once he’s met his true love, Mary, the daughter of a Chester carpenter, and a budding puppet-mistress.
On his last return from Penzance he happens right into the battle of Shrewsbury, between King Henry IV of England and his once aide-de-camp, now turned rebel, Henry Percy, and his allies among the Cheshire gentry, the Scots, and the Welsh. Julian happens upon his long-left brother Simon among the wounded and dying at day’s end. Returning to Chester with Simon, the rebellion for the moment crushed, he marries Mary and they begin their new life with a trip to the new home in Penzance. They’d be all too happy to settle right down, but Stephen has asked them to come along with him on a trip to France.
IF I SHOULD LIVE SO LONG is the first in a planned series of three works of historical fantasy. Julian and his friends are common folk, but the breezes of war, and the complications of seeming peace, are never far from them, all too often, closer for comfort than they’d like.

151 pages, ebook

First published January 18, 2014

About the author

I am a guitarist and composer as well as a writer. My sequel (separate from my coauthor Kevin Donohue's DeathCo, Mongoose Moon, & Waiting For Shiva) to Third Eye Patch is Bus Of Fools (Pub 8-18-13) Bus is intended to be general fiction, light humor & romance, while keeping a few characters from Patch.
The others (all written solo) are As I Was Telling You While Sleeping, a collection of short stories, a few of which make up a basis for Bus of Fools, Everything Is Beautiful In Its Own Way (a psycho-dramatic tragedy), and the Julian Plectrum series. set in medieval England:
If I Should Live So Long, Many Worlds Since I Left Home, and Oh What Will You Give Me; Fistfight at Judas Gulch is a Western humor fantasy which takes place in the California Gold Rush of 1850. Flight of the Oberon, is a "science fiction fairy tale,"
By the Waters of Oblivion, is set in ancient India at the time of Gautama Buddha, and concerns a young prince, exiled by his father for marrying a noncaste, but nonetheless due to inherit the kingdom someday. His wife is actually a reincarnated apsara, a musical deva with supernatural powers... And there are plenty of troubles yet ahead.
The latest one From A Starlit Shore is scifi, set on the planet of a faraway star, where people have no sense of any 'divine creation" and are free of the usual human trappings of 'embarrassment or sexual shame." On Ztam, Games are held each year which keep the population happy and well-sexed... it's a different place than you may imagine!
Finally, Pigpen's Black Forest Blues is a short story by my friend Kevin Donohue and myself which we came up over the holidays(21-22) in which the historic rock band's original "leader," mistaken for Jerry Garcia, is kidnapped by German Red terrorists during their 1972 tour of Europe. Will he even make it to Munich?
Historical fantasy, you might say...
All of these can be purchased at Smashwords.com in all ebook formats.
Samples (20%) are free! (As well as the entire Pigpen story)...