Hittites and Leprechaun
I think everyone who writes historical fiction is drawn to a period. My first was the 19114 rebellion in South Africa when the more nationalistic Afrikaners disputed the decision by Jan Smuts and Louis Botha to side with the British, or should I say English. That resulted in Shadows in the veldt and King or Kaiser. I still have to finish that sequence.
The next was triggered by a programme about the lost Hittite city of Hattusa. The inhabitants had been warriors but no one knew why their city had been abandoned. I decided they had gone to Britain. Someone had brought a piece of metal which scored bronze and the only chap who had any ideas guessed it came from Britain. He was sent off (There was a story there that I won’t go into) to find out how it was made. He and his family traversed Eastern Europe, fightin off tribes with poisoned arrows and ferocious beasts until they got to the Danish coast. The North Sea was no more than a marsh and they had adventures crossing. When they landed in Britain it was near Berwick and they found the people wanting to farm were at war with the hunter gatherers because the farmers were burning the forest to make way for cattle and sheep. (There’s a lot of allegory in historical fiction) They get caught up in the fighting and escape across another swamp to Ireland where they find the metallurgists are the Leprechaun, who are under threat from ordinary humans.
Now, do they discover the secret of making iron from the Leprechaun and send it back to Hattusa or is it lost when the Leprechaun are driven underground when the Hittites abandoned Hattusa and moved to Ireland?
Obviously there’s a lot more to the tale than I’ve written here but if some publisher or literary agent wants a proper synopsis and a few chapters, I’ll get my head down and oblige. I might do it just for fun, anyway.
There are glimpses of archaeological evidence to support most of this and, of course, the Irish know the Leprechaun were the original inhabitants of Britain but were forced to live in caves etc. by the ‘giants’ who crossed the swamps from Europe. Not by the Giants Causeway, that would be stretching belief too far.