The Historical Novel Review

Lady Vernon and Her Daughter

2009-11-11T05:30:00.005-07:00

Lady Vernon and Her Daughter is an extended version of Jane Austen's forgotten manuscript, 'Lady Susan'. The storyline focuses on the economic and romantic plights of two heroines displaced when the family home passes to an unworthy heir on the death of Sir Frederick Vernon.

The style is truly reminiscent of Jane Austen, with some of the letters and original text from the novella of Lady Susan. It contains all the witty repartee and poking fun at the mores of society and the fickle minds of the Regency landed classes. The language is colourful, intricate and flows beautifully with some ironic and amusing touches that stayed with me after I put the book down. Such as this little gem:

.....declaring what a fortunate thing it was for a girl when an early engagement relieved her of the tedious business of accomplishment.

Unlike Jane Austen, the villain is a darker, more sinister presence to the two heroines than I have previously encountered in a Jane Austen novel. [Or perhaps I haven't read the right ones] The implication that the antagonist, in the form of Sir Frederick’s brother Charles, is not so much cold and uncaring, but may be a murderer too which adds another aspect to the story.

Dislodged from their comfortable lives, Lady Susan and Frederica have to find a way to secure their own future in a society which has no compassion for the impoverished and dispossessed. Frederica, who is intelligent as well as beautiful, and has aspirations for science, is suspicious of her uncle and detaches herself from him very quickly. This action gives Lady Vernon’s detractors more ammunition to use against her, piling neglectful mother onto her other faults of outrageous flirt and labelling her as being desperate to secure a second husband.

The authors create sympathy for Lady Susan Vernon immediately, and I would certainly not have been able to maintain the aloof dignity and measured silence she did with so many nasty Regency cats dishing unfounded dirt about her, and some not so privately.

Ms Rubino and Rubino-Bradway’s skill makes Lady Susan Vernon far more than a pretty face or a victim of circumstance, who doesn't panic when she discovers her brother-in-law intends to renege on any promises to look after her and Frederica. She handles her situation with aplomb, and I especially like the character of Catherine Vernon, the superior and morally bereft sister-in-law, who is the most outrageously nasty character. I was glued to the book, wondering what the awful woman would say next.

I shan’t reveal any more as I wouldn’t want to spoil a satisfying read, because this is certainly a novel to get lost in.

There is also an excellent, and very professionally produced trailer, by yet another Rubino

Revelation by C J Sansom

2009-11-08T05:00:00.000-07:00

Revelation is the fourth in CJ Sansom's Tudor detective series featuring the hunchback lawyer, Matthew Shardlake, set at the time when Henry VIII is trying to get Catherine Parr to be his sixth wife.

The year is 1543 and Matthew has sworn not to involve himself in any more affairs of state after his last brush with the dubious factions of King Henry's court in ‘Sovereign’.

However his old friend Roger Elliard, a fellow lawyer, is found with his throat dramatically cut in Lincoln's Inn fountain. When the king's coroner appears to be covering up the murder, Shardlake promises Elliard's widow, the lost love of his youth, that he will find the killer. This is a mission he shares with Archbishop Cranmer, who must keep the investigation a secret from the king. If it fails, they could all lose their heads.

Shardlake and his hot-blooded young assistant Jack Barak uncover multiple murders, and find themselves on the search for a serial killer who is on what he sees as a holy mission using the book of Revelation as his guide.

The character of Matthew Shardlake is solitary, cerebral, occasionally flawed and driven by a belief in justice, but he has a sentimental side as his physical infirmities have deprived him of the love he has always yearned for.

The historical research is rich and colourful, so you walk the Tudor streets and into alleys seeing and smelling all their pageantry as well as the filth. Revelation takes a little time to get its main plot rolling but the finale is not a disappointment.

Royal Harlot by Susan Holloway-Scott

2009-11-06T05:28:00.000-07:00

King Charles II has been living in impoverished exile for nearly twelve years, and Europe has pretty much given up on him as a prospective monarch of England. However in early 1660, General Monck puts forward the idea that with Cromwell dead and his son Richard a useless alternative, it’s time for the king to return.

Barbara Villiers, born into a notorious family but discarded by her cold mother as a child. Left to her own devices, albeit in a privileged world, Barbara decides her future is bound up with the young, passionate returning king. She knows from a young age what she is, and never apologises for it, though her amoral opportunism loses her friends and her lover, Lord Phillip Stanhope, Earl of Chesterfield along the way.

She marries Roger Palmer for expediency, but it is a loveless, desultory marriage and when her husband sees Barbara as a useful tool to help return the king to his throne, Barbara is no victim, more a willing participant. Inevitably, her first meeting with Charles II is magnetic, and when he regains his throne, Barbara is right there with him at Whitehall.

Admired by most of the Restoration court for her wit and beauty, it isn’t long before the king must marry and Barbara is relegated to the position of ‘whore’. Undeterred, Barbara wheedles her way into the new queen’s household and bears the king’s children, even claiming paternity for more than Charles fathered. Despite the titles and money she obtained for them as well as herself, her passionate nature doesn’t allow her to remain faithful, and among the men she takes as lovers is her profligate cousin, George Villiers, Duke of Buckingham and her lover’s illegitimate son, the teen age Duke of Monmouth.

Eventually, Barbara’s tantrums and demands grow tiresome and she is forced to concede to her younger competition. She converts to Catholicism, which gives her royal lover an excuse to have her exiled from court, leaving me with the impression this was less a love affair than a sexual enslavement and Charles was eager to disentangle himself.

Barbara never apologises, or pretends to be what she is not, for which I admire her, but I also feel her calculating character deprived her of real happiness. Her outrageous and notorious sexual appetite didn’t bring her happiness either, so in many ways I feel sorry for her, as I know she died almost impoverished and alone.
Ms Holloway Scott’s novel is written from Barbara’s perspective, thus her portrayal could have been done for authenticity and the coldness of Barbara’s character not the author’s invention. If so, Ms Holloway Scott did a great job, and I always longed for Barbara to feel more than triumph when things went her way and anger when they didn’t.

She even capitulated to being rejected by Chesterfield, her first lover with pragmatic coolness, which seemed out of place for a young woman not yet twenty. Even the sex, though very well written, was cold, dispassionate as it had a purpose. Then again, I cannot blame the author for that, this may be her interpretation of Barbara’s own inner emotions. Or perhaps, Charles II was the man Barbara really loved, but knew she could not have, for his notorious charm was well documented.

Ms Holloway-Scott’s depiction of the Restoration court is masterly, as is her understanding of political events and intrigues that have confused many before her.

If I expected this book to be a rags-to-riches romance with a happy ending, I was always going to be disappointed. However, as an accurate account of the volatile love between a King and his mistress, this book is a gripping read.

The Rage of Achilles Excerpt

2009-11-04T00:00:00.003-07:00

ACHILLES ON THE BEACH

The sun has been up a long time, but Paris is still in bed. Light streams in through windows generously large in his house far from the walls. There is no fear of arrows or stray javelins here, high up in the citadel.

He scissors his legs lazily through a tangle of silk sheets still damp from dawn’s lovemaking. He likes watching his legs move. He runs his hands over his thighs and traces with his fingers the big muscles’ divide. He stares at his belly: sometimes it reminds him of his warrior brother’s breastplate, rippled and ridged like a god’s. As he stares at his belly and thighs, the snake between stirs, needing no attention but his.

But it has attracted another’s. She stands at the window wrapped in a robe his mother embroidered a long time ago. “Somebody’s awake,” she says. She has a little lisp. He once thought, long ago, that it would drive him crazy. It never has. She comes to the edge of the bed, near its foot. He smiles lazily and, holding her eye, runs the tip of his index finger down his shaft. The snake leaves its bed on his thigh and starts to strain upwards. Her eyes leave his and drift down. The wall behind her is painted with a garden that never existed on this earth; her head is garlanded with pigment lotus. “No war today?” she asks. A painted fingernail traces his instep.

“No war today.” The snake is throbbing and he admires it. “You haven’t heard the news?”

“I won’t know till you tell me what it is.” The lisp gets a little stronger when she grows petulant. Her head dips and her tongue takes her finger’s place, slipping between his toes and finally down the arch. He whimpers.

“Achilles is out of the war.”

Her head snaps up. “What?”

“Come on,” he laughs, “don’t stop.” Her head stays up. “Don’t stop or I won’t tell you.”

She dives back to his foot and splayed fingers start working their way up his calf. “The spies told us last night. Agamemnon stole Briseis from him. He said it was only fair because he was king and he had to give up his girl to save the Achaeans. Achilles went crazy. He swore he wouldn’t raise a hand again for Agamemnon. Or his brother, your husband. Did you do this for him?” His voice is suddenly sharp with anxiety.

“Never,” she slurs around his big toe.

“Good,” he says. Relaxing against the cushions, he wraps his hand around himself and squeezes. “So this is very good. The Achaeans don’t know what to do, and soon we will drive them into the sea.” He starts to pump himself. “Let me see them.”
Obediently, she releases his toe and sits up at the edge of the bed. She slips the robe off her left shoulder. Shrugging, she exposes it entirely. Even now, near ten years later, her breast affects him as it did the first time he saw it. It is like a mountain, like Olympus itself, pure white and thrusting arrogantly from the plain of her ribs, its crest a peak of coral that tightens and darkens as he watches. Any larger and it would sag to her waist; big as it is, on a woman nearly thirty, its continuing firmness is widely viewed as a sign of divine favor on the Trojan cause.
He moans. “Both.” She shrugs the robe off the other shoulder and it falls to her hips. “Touch them for me.” She smiles and reaches for the pot of oil beside the bed. Filling her hands, she anoints herself, delicately at first, then with a two-handed grip that makes the coral crests an impossible blood red that he has never seen on another woman. Her breath begins to labor and whistle.

She stops and reaches for the oil pot again. She hands it to him, smiles crookedly. “Touch yourself for me.” He grins and fills his hands with unguent.

***

The sun is directly overhead. The only shelter is in the lee of a canted ship. Two veterans have found it, as veterans will always find comfort when it is there to be found.

One, Cephales, mends the strap of his shield. It does not need mending. The old soldier just wants to be sure; he does not want to go out to face the Trojans tomorrow to find himself with an unguarded left one minute, and the next paying the boatman to take him across the River Styx. As he works, he wonders whether he is weakening the strap with his constant attention, and he gnaws his beard with anxiety. He knows he has been in the lines too long and that his heart is going if not gone. He prays that he will die before his friends know.
Lacademon, not so long in the lines but long enough to find shade when he can, does nothing. He sits on the sand with his back flush against a hull out of water so long that the barnacles might be fossils. He watches Cephales work the braided leather without guessing his purpose or his fear. Once, he glances at his own shield pitched beside him, and decides that the strap will do.

A third, Polycrates, approaches. He plants his javelin point down in the sand and leans his shield against the long, immobile ship, then drops on his ass in the shade and plants his back against the hull. “Hot,” he says. His friends grunt. “Heard the news?” The man doing nothing says nothing. The man fixing his strap must ask. “What news?”

“The boy wonder.”

“What about him?” Cephales has stopped his busy work; Lacademon turns his head.

“You heard that King Agamemnon took his girl?”

“Right. Big deal.”

“Fucking right it’s a big deal. Achilles is acting like he fucked his father. He’s running around screaming that he’s out of the fucking war and he’ll just sit on the beach and get a nice tan while we get our asses kicked.”

“No shit?” says Lacademon.

“No shit,” Polycrates says.

They sit in silence for a while. At last, Cephales puts down his worrisome shield and speaks. “What does Achilles care about one piece of ass more or less? He has a dozen girls and Patroclus, too.”

Polycrates shakes his head. “Brother, this isn’t just some piece of ass. I haven’t seen her, but one of my buddies did. Fifteen years old if she’s a day, tits like melons that stick straight out, and a face like Pallas Athena.” He shakes his head again. “What do you think it means?”

Cephales considers. “I think we will have a very hard time without Achilles.”

Polycrates nods. He turns to Lacademon. “You?”

“I think I’m glad I’m not Patroclus.”

All three laugh. Cephales stops before the others and starts working at his shield again.

***

The kings’ tents are pitched on hills, or the closest thing—dunes whose sand is anchored by tenacious, long-rooted grass. Still, each can sit on his little eminence and look down on his ships and men and see the other kings on their own dunes.
There is an ox-hide and olivewood stool at Odysseus’ canvas door. From where he sits he can look east to Achilles and west to Agamemnon. Last night he heard the gored-heifer bellowings from the east. This afternoon he looks west and sees Agamemnon, crowned with a wreath of field flowers, strolling with his arm around Briseis’ shoulders while a piper flutes behind them.

Odysseus sits alone and watches. He looks towards Achilles’ tent, from which no sound comes now, nor has it all day. He looks back to happy Agamemnon. He raises a bowl to his lips and takes a swallow of watered wine flavored with resin. He spits it onto the ground before him. “Nice work, shithead,” he says.

***

Achilles has been on the beach since just after the sun rose. As he raved and wept it traced its long course across the sky and now verges on drowning itself at the rim of the western sea. No one has dared disturb him in this rocky little cove a mile away from the farthest outpost of the shore-hugging Achaean fleet. A few Myrmidons, his very best, nervous equally from Trojan presence and their lord’s despair, at first followed him covertly as he made his way up the coast. His storm troopers, they thought themselves invisible even from him, dropping soundlessly to their faces or fading into brush whenever he even appeared to sense their presence. They thought they could post guard without his knowing. But just as he was about to climb down to the strand at the beginning of the rocky descent from the trail, he turned without a word and loosed one of the twin javelins he carried. It landed quivering between the two men in the lead. They stood open-mouthed, staring at their lord. He raised his arm and pointed wordlessly back down the trail. One by one, his commandos left rock clefts and trees and shambled back to camp.

He has spent the day in grief. He would not let his men hear again what they heard last night, so he kept silent until he drove them away. Certain of his solitude, he howled. At first he raged. Big rocks were raised overhead and shattered into gravel against unyielding cliff. The roaring surf could not hear itself crash over his shrieks. An unlucky octopus, caught in a tidal pool, found itself Agamemnon’s effigy: its eyes plucked out, each foot-long arm torn off slowly as ink jetted down Achilles’ chest, its bag of a head sloppily vivisected with fingers and teeth.

Finally, everything that could be broken had been broken and everything that lived had been killed. He was alone with himself. It was past noon. Achilles turned on Achilles. At first he was crude. He tore at his face and splashed salt water across the bleeding tracks. Shells crunched in his mouth to lacerate gums and tongue, but he could not make himself swallow. He stripped and ground his crotch across a boulder crusted with mussels, watching blood drip from his scrotum into the water. When he shat he rubbed his own filth into his hair and beard and cried out to Olympus to make it all end. The gods remained stubbornly silent.

Twice, he battered his head against rock, not because he wants to die, but because he wants the shame to stop. Yet he lives, and so does his shame. He is exhausted, but he cannot stop. Finally, he sits in the sea and stares at the sun, now an orange semicircle gilding fat clouds. He is slumped, his forearms resting against his thighs half submerged in surf growing colder with each wave. He feels sand shifting beneath him and knows that if he sits here long enough, the tide will rise and take him out to sea. This is not how it is supposed to end.

Finally, he speaks the words he knows he must. “Mother. Mother, please. Please.

Please help me, mother.” He waits. He waits a long time.

The sun is down to a quadrant, less, an octant, just one segment of an orange. The world before him is twilight, the world behind him dark. His head throbs with last night’s wine and today’s multiple stony traumas. He has given up hope and waits for the waves to take him away. He takes comfort in the knowledge that he will be asleep when the big fishes take off his toes and work their way up his legs. The cold water is now up to his sternum and its icy kiss makes him tired. He tries one more time. “Mother, please.”

The water is over his nipples. He thinks about getting up, running back to his clothes and arms, and walking back to the camp where there is a fire and wine. But there is shame there too, and he is tired anyway, and now he is beginning to feel warm rather than cold. So perhaps the glorious death he was promised is here in the water, with his last enemy an octopus not three feet across. The water is at his collarbone. He raises an arm out of the surf and notices that his fingers are blue. He is about to lean back, to recline as though at a banquet, and inhale salt water and drown his shame. But just as he rises up for a last backstroke, the water in front of him erupts. Twenty yards offshore a geyser rises, steam curling a hundred yards into the air, water boiling all around it. Suddenly he is in a whirlpool. Alive again and astonished, he sits up. “Mother? Mother, is it you?”

***

He stares straight into the heart of the geyser now subsiding into a boiling fountain, knowing that that is where she is. Then, just back from Hades’ grasp though he is, he remembers what it means to look at an immortal, even if he slipped into the world from between her thighs, and throws a forearm over his eyes. The water boils. He can hear it. He steals a glimpse down past his forearm and sees that thighs livid from cold a minute before have grown boiled-lobster red. If the water gets any hotter, the flesh will blister and part from bone. But it does not. The roiling has stopped; so has the geyser’s jet and crash. So too has the surf. Again he peeks at the water and sees it flat as a bath in which he has fallen asleep. He waits.

He thinks an hour has passed, but he knows enough not to expose his eyes. Never curious about anything other than war, he finally notices that no matter how many times his heart beats here in the surf at sunset, the sky grows no darker, as though the movement of the sun stopped with the surf. He knows then that he is no longer in time. He waits. Finally, he can bear it no longer. His back shrieks with his prolonged half crouch; his arm trembles with the effort of shielding himself from the divine. Eyes screwed shut, he drops his right arm into the water and begins to raise his left into its place. Something thick and wet and rubbery wraps itself around his left leg. Circles of cartilage hard as bone bite into his skin. His eyes pop open as a tentacle thick as his own arm wraps its way up to his groin and tightens hard enough to make him cry out.

As though awaiting that signal, the tentacle tightens further and pulls. He jerks forward against submerged sand and his head disappears under water. His mouth, still open, takes in water like a siphon. He claws at air and light. With another yank from the tentacle, his hands submerge as well.

The salt water bites his lungs. He flails and panics and coughs, expelling the last of his air in a few pathetic bubbles that race to the shimmering surface and break and are gone. He does not notice that the dark has yet to gather in his eyes, and so he fights, clutching at the sand and rocks speeding below him and kicking at the tentacle.

He snaps his head forward. Lungs and ears full of water, his groan is something he can only feel. He sees he has been taken by an octopus that must surely be the great-great-grandfather of this afternoon’s victim, fifty feet across with a head as big as an ox, eyes the size of platters, human as his own, that stare at him with neither pity nor reproach. He thinks that he has offended his mother by killing one of her creatures and knows himself to be a dead man taking the long way to Hades. He stops struggling.

The octopus descends. The dim light roofing Achilles’ new world fades. He wonders whom he will see, whether those he sent there himself will mock him, whether the friends who preceded him will welcome him at whatever tables the dead can keep. Still, the octopus dives. The light, rather than disappearing entirely, seems only to have shifted. Now it comes from below, a hazy point of brightness ahead and down. The octopus flexes and jets and pulses towards the light.

They arrive. The tentacle around his leg relaxes and Achilles drifts down to find a seat on a submerged rock. The octopus flaps once more and is gone. Ahead of him is what looks like a roofless temple: a dozen columns of coral, pink and white, arranged in a circle twenty yards across. Within is the source of light: a ball of lightning that rolls and dances from pillar to pillar. Knowing himself dead, he dares to look directly. Inside the ambient electricity he sees what seems to be the shadow of a human form.

He draws his eyes away. What looked like a temple now seems a military camp. Around it circle hundreds of great fish, orderly as cavalry patrols, each bigger than the biggest man, armed with serried ranks of white teeth and festooned with dimly glowing lights hanging from scalloped lips and fins. On the sand around are ranks of infantry: lobsters big as hunting dogs, crabs like wild boar. Clams the size of chariot cars snap open and shut in rhythm like bacchantes banging their cymbals.
Achilles sits and waits. Water seems to nourish a dead man’s lungs just as well as air, and now that he has died, he has plenty of time. He stares at the rolling light in the roofless temple. At length it stills and a voice fills his head. I know why you weep, Achilles, my son.

Achilles is startled. He had expected the voice of Charon.

I know why you rage. The voice comes from the fireball. Achilles weeps, his salt tears blending imperceptibly with the water around him. His mother has come through after all.

The fireball grows brighter. He is bathed in warmth, not of water boiling from the divine presence, but the radiance of her love. Speak, Achilles. You can.
He opens his mouth. It is an effort for lungs and diaphragm to push water rather than air, for teeth and tongue to form words in this new medium, but she is right. “I hurt,” he says.

"I know. I know, my son.

“He has shamed me before the fleet, before all the kings, before all my men, before the Trojans, before the gods.”

I know, I know.

“How can I make him pay?”

The fireball is silent. Poor boy. My poor boy. I bore you for a short life but promised you glory. Not this. Not shame before your friends. But don’t be afraid. Your mother won’t let this happen. I will speak to my father, your grandfather, the Lord of Lightning. He will bring Agamemnon grief beyond telling. And while this happens, you must rest by your ships. Stay out of the war. Let Agamemnon know what life is like without my boy.

The fireball has grown brighter by degrees until he can barely look at it. The figure inside stands out in sharper contrast. This is as close to seeing her as he will ever come. Though the glare around her makes his head throb, he forces himself to look anyway. Don’t worry, son. Do as I say and Agamemnon will regret this. And I promise you that you will have glory before you die.

He is about to speak again, but the light winks out. For a fraction of a second, he knows himself to be alone at the bottom of the sea. Then darkness enfolds him as well.

***

It is night when he awakens on the beach face down in gravel and sand, fifty yards from the water line, half covered with slimy weed. For a few seconds, he lies there without moving. The beach is bright with a full moon. Little crabs like spiders dance a few feet from his eyes, wondering whether he is dead enough to eat. So does he. Not until the bravest scuttles close and brushes his ear does he move. He rolls fast and crushes it with his fist, then crazed with rage and disgust, spins and pounds three more into twitching pulp before the others scatter.

Weaving and stumbling like a boxer in his last rounds, he staggers to the water and, kneeling in the surf, rinses shell fragments and guts from his hands. Then he vomits gallons of seawater back into its source. Only then does he remember. He walks into the water until it has risen to his waist and splashes his chest and face. When he can stand the cold no longer, he walks back onto the shore and towards the rocks where his clothes and weapons wait.

He will do as his mother told him.

Interview with Terence Hawkins

2009-11-03T00:01:00.002-07:00

Terence Hawkins was born in Uniontown, Pennsylvania, and graduated from Yale. His work has appeared in Poor Mojo's Almanac(k), Keyhole, Pindeldyboz, Ape Culture, Eclectica, Megaera, the Binnacle, and the New Haven Register. It has also appeared on Connecticut Public Radio. He is a trial lawyer in Connecticut. His website can be found at www.terencehawkins.net.

A warm welcome to Terence Hawkins. I'm very excited about hosting you here today. I truly enjoyed your novel with it's "in-your-face" tell it kind of style. I'd like to learn a little more about you and your novel, so thanks for sharing with us.

Welcome, I’m so glad to have this opportunity to chat with you. Can you share with my readers the essence of the story you’ve penned?

Thank you for having me. The book is a novelization of the Iliad in modern prose, realistically told. The Trojan War as a real war, fought by real men.

You’ve chosen a very interesting title. What inspired the title? What inspired the book?

The title comes from the first line of the Iliad: “Sing, muse, of the rage of Achilles.” Oddly enough it took me quite a while to come up with that. I thought about calling it “The Battle for Troy,” or simply “Troy” but ultimately I realized that the book----both mine and the original----were about Achilles and not the war. I think I ignored the obvious because for so much of the book he is so supremely repellent.

As to the book itself, I happened to be reading Christopher Logue’s War Music, a loose translation of the Iliad in modern verse, at the same time I saw “Saving Private Ryan” for the first time. I wondered what the Iliad would look like if it were told with the same kind of realism. And of course being a lawyer I was confident that Homer is way too dead to sue me.

The other thing behind the work is Julian Jaynes’ The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind. Real title, real book. Jaynes theorized that true modern consciousness didn’t begin until language was sufficiently complex to make one hemisphere of the brain predominate over the other, and that before that time people were essentially automatons driven by voices in their heads that they believed to be those of the gods. Based on literary and linguistic evidence----including the Iliad itself----Jaynes believed that this transformation in consciousness took place in Homeric times. In my book, the gods appear as hallucinations, which is what Jaynes thought them to have been.

What makes this book special to you?

More than anything else it was an opportunity to rediscover Homer. Or more accurately discover him; my freshman English class was at eight in the morning and I’m not the earliest of risers. There’s a lot there that I’d forgotten or simply hadn’t noticed. What struck me most is that this is a story of brothers-----Agamemnon and Menelaus on one side, Hector and Paris on the other. And while the beef is between the younger----Paris stole Menelaus’ wife--- the war is prosecuted by the older. Though Homer doesn’t mention them I try to address the humiliations and resentments that must have flowed from big brothers fighting little brothers’ battles. Also, there’s a great deal in the original that is deeply, deeply strange and brutal, and far different from what we ordinarily associate with Classical heroism-----human sacrifice, for example.

Speaking of freshman English, it occurred to me long after I’d written the book that it might be some kind of psychic payback. My first paper at Yale was called “Shame and Guilt in the Iliad.” I think. In any event it got a c minus and a tart observation about the difference between literature and sociology. Guess I showed them.

What makes this a book that people MUST read and WHY?

The Iliad is the cornerstone of our literary tradition. This book makes it new. The original story is incredibly rich and deeply human, but I think its form as an epic poem in translation limits its accessibility. I’m not suggesting that my book is a dumbed-down version of the original----at least it’s no dumber than I am-----but rather an attempt to give its readers the same sense of immediacy and reality it must have had to its first audience.

What sparks your creativity? Any tips to help others spark their own creativity?

I take notes. If I hear something on the street that strikes me as funny I write it down. If I think something I don’t want to forget I write it down. Usually on 3 x 5’s in a Levenger card holder, by the way, though I also use a Moleskine reporter’s notebook. Every so often I go through the notes in no particular order and that seems to get things moving, perhaps by promoting random connections between otherwise disparate ideas. Couple of pops doesn’t hurt, either.

Speaking of randomness and creativity, I urge everyone to watch “Topsy-Turvey”, a brilliantly written and acted film about the first production of Gilbert and Sullivan’s “The Mikado.” See it, and you’ll see what I mean.

What has been the biggest stumbling block in your writing? Can you share some tips to help others get past similar problems?

I’m a practicing lawyer so time would at first seem to be the most important issue. It is an issue, that’s certain---but worse is having the emotional energy at the end of the day, which is when I have the time, to write. What I’ve done----and I think this only works with a saintly spouse, which I happen to have----is to set aside large blocks of time, like Friday nights, to write. What I’ve also done recently is to set aside an hour to write in the office in the evening after my paralegal’s gone and the phones aren’t ringing. This, though, works better for revisions than first drafts.

Tell me about the most unusual things you have done to promote your book?

I had the first chapter printed up as a chapbook which I then distributed around my various local hangouts. Sad to say there isn’t a lot of interest in the classics in Connecticut saloons, and I can show you a photograph of several of them wadded up to level off a wobbly elliptical trainer in the Yale gym. I also circulated a few among defense lawyers on the other side of some of my cases, just to see how they’d respond. One said, “When I got to the point where he threw her off the cliff, I wondered where your mother had gone wrong.”

Each author is different in the way they create a work of fiction. Please describe for us how you plan or plot a story.

This book was easier than most for the very good reason that the skeleton of plot and character were provided by somebody else. As to the former I changed what I had to in order to comport with military reality; as to the latter I added characters consistent with that reality.

Ordinarily I start a story with an idea----guy sends an email intended for his girlfriend to his wife by mistake----and start writing. After a while I start having some notion of where it’s going to end and begin to work towards that point. Sometimes I know the words that end the story well in advance, though sometimes they surprise me.

Authors are very unique in the way they write, the tools they use, when they write, etc. Please describe a typical writing day for you? How do you organize your day?

When working on a substantial project----a novel or long story-----I try to set aside two evenings a week on which my wife is invited to babysit, so I can work at home. I write for about forty minutes at a stretch. Formerly I would break by taking my dog for a quick walk during which I would smoke about half of a small cigar. Since he died I just take a walk and have half of a small cigar. (I only smoke when writing by the way.) When revising I work either at my desk at home in the morning or in the office in the early evening. No cigars in either event. I used to listen to music while working. No longer; it gets in the way of what’s in my head. I always use word for mac to write; I can’t imagine what they did before.

Incidentally, there’s a piece of advice usually attributed to Hemingway that I stick to-----always stop in the middle of a sentence. Finishing it the next day gets you back into the flow.

10. What is your current work in progress?

I’m now revising my second novel, American Neolithic. It’s a political satire set a few years from now, after a bloodless right wing coup has set up a Police State Lite. After the election of 2008 I thought the triumph of virtue meant that political satire was dead, but the right has proven me wrong. Birthers? Tenthers? Teabaggers? Thank you, thank you all.

Can you tell us where to find more information about you and your books and how readers can reach you?

My writing website is www.terencehawkins.net. and I can be reached at terry@terencehawkins.net.

What would you like our readers to know about you and your writing?

I like to think the work speaks for itself. As for me, I’ve loved historical fiction since earliest boyhood---when, in fact, I was somewhat improvidently allowed to read Julian at age 12. That book made the past alive for me. I hope this does the same for you.

The Rage of Achilles by Terence Hawkins

2009-11-02T00:01:00.002-07:00

The Rage of Achilles by Terence Hawkins

Perhaps one of the greatest stories ever told is that of the Illiad, the Trojan war. It has been told and rediscovered by new generations through the decades. And now, author Terence Hawkins adapts this passionate story into a powerful and compelling, in-your-face retelling.

Achilles is a legendary Greek warrior of paramount grandeur. An enigma, he is renowned for his prowess in battle, noble demeanour, cruel ruthlessness, and egotistical, sometimes outrageous, behaviour. He is Ancient Greece’s most powerful weapon.

The winds of war begin to blow when Paris, the son of King Priam of Troy, steals the not-so-virtuous wife of Menelaus, brother to King Agamemnon of Greece. The Greeks send their army to Troy to retrieve her and exact their revenge. No matter how they struggle, however, they cannot breach Troy’s resistant walls.

In the turmoil that ensues between the Greeks and Trojans, Achilles’ bride is stolen. Furious, he refuses to lend his military prowess to his army against the Trojans. Without his skill, the Greeks struggle and the Trojans, led by their mightiest warrior, Hector, gain the upper hand. Even so, Achilles continues to refuse to participate. In his stead, Achilles permits his best friend and lover, to fight on his behalf. Donned in Achille’s armour, Hector kills him. When Achilles learns of the death of his beloved friend, his grief and rage knows no bounds. Achilles enters the battlefield to retrieve the body. The Trojans worry and beg Hector to withdraw, but Hector refuses.

On the battlefield, Achilles confronts Hector, who turns and runs. Exhausted and aware of the futility of his flight, Hector stops and faces his pursuer. Achilles kills him with his sword. Still enraged at the death of his lover, Achilles mutilates and vengefully drags Hector’s body around the walls of Troy.

THE RAGE OF ACHILLES is Terence Hawkins’ first novel. Within its pages, he vividly brings to life the glory and guts of a long forgotten era. He recounts this monumental tale with grim brutality and raw, violent descriptions. Hawkins delves deep into the most intrinsic of human emotions and expounds upon them with detailed intensity and an all-too-believable reality. Not for the faint of heart, Hawkins’ novel explores war with all its smells, terrors, and blood. It is the kind of heart-pumping, edge-of-your-seat book that readers long for and diligently seek.

The Rage of Achilles by Terence Hawkins

2009-11-01T00:01:00.003-06:00

Blood. Guts. Pride. Wrath.

The ancient clash of armies outside the walls of Troy is a cornerstone of Western literature. In The Rage of Achilles, Terence Hawkins brilliantly reimagines that titanic encounter. His stunningly original telling captures the brutality of the battlefield, the glory and the gore, in language that never relents.

Raw and compelling, The Rage of Achilles tells the story of Achilles, a monstrous hero, by turns vain and selfish, cruel and noble; of Paris, weak and consumed by lust for his stolen bride; of Agamemnon, driven nearly to insanity by the voices of the gods; and of Trojans and Achaeans, warriors and peasants, caught up in the conflict, their families torn apart by a decade-long war. The Rage of Achilles is an exhilarating story that has captured the imaginations of readers for thousands of years restored to immediacy.

"The Rage of Achilles is that rare thing--a genuinely fresh take on a classic text. Terence Hawkins' modern retelling of The Iliad has the paradoxical, invigorating effect of making Homer's epic feel oddly familiar, and of highlighting its deep strangeness at the same time." - Tom Perrotta, author of Little Children

"In this masterful account by Terence Hawkins, the Trojan War is infused with all the immediacy of a current event." - Richard Selzer, author of The Doctor Stories

The French Blue by Richard Wise

2009-10-28T10:53:00.002-06:00

The beautiful Hope Diamond as it looks today in the Smithsonian Museum

The French Blue Book Trailer

The First Line: A tall walnut case with long slender drawers was set against a whitewashed wall in the first floor shop of the building my father shared with a sail maker.

The French Blue is a biographical novel depicting the fascinating life of Jean-Baptiste Tavernier, the man who brought the Hope Diamond to the French Court. Tavernier, the son of a modestly poor map-maker, travels the world in pursuit of the finest gems. His travels take him to Indonesia, Persia, India, Burma, and beyond. During his travels, he encounters dangerous kings and scrupulous and unscrupulous gem merchants, with whom he strikes bargains to purchase rare pearls, diamonds, sapphires, and rubies.

It truly is a tale worth telling. Tavernier travelled the world in a time when it was virtually wrought with peril, exoticness, intrigue. The reader is given a glimpse into life during this century with accurate retelling and brilliant descriptions.

Based upon the actual journals Tavernier wrote during the six voyages he completed during his life, Richard Wise has successfully brought to life the dangers, intrigues, and mystery of the world in the 17th century. Drawing on his own expertise as a gemologist, Mr. Wise is able to lend credibility and vividness to scenes where gems are bartered for and exchanged.

It is an impressive book, one that teaches as well as entertains.

The Triumph of Deborah

2009-10-24T05:23:00.001-06:00

Eva Etzioni-Halevy's novel opens with two women, each of whom scan the horizon for the return of their men from battle. Both women know that their men must be the victor – only they are on opposite sides. Asherah searches for Sisra, her new husband who has been sent to defeat the Israelites, while Deborah, watches for Barak, the warrior she has chosen to lead the army to defeat Canaan.

Barak returns in triumph with Asherah and Nogah, two daughters of the Canaanite King as his captives, though one is a princess and the other a slave. Deborah, despite her undying loyalty to the husband who rejected her, forms an affinity for Barak. However the two princesses have their own feelings towards the warrior who captured them. Asherah, Sisra’s widow, who recoils from any feelings that develop between her and the man who killed her husband. Nogah, whose mother was an Israelite slave, feels gratitude when Barak saves her mother’s life, but is still conflicted with what is expected of her.

Barak himself is more concerned with his warrior role than the feelings of women, who are a frangible and a temporary part of his life, but these three, with Deborah as a fourth element, form a web of betrayal and jealousy. His casual treatment of all his women, Deborah amongst them, was a surprising element, the way he uses the two princesses for his own pleasure and forces Asherah to marry him, and yet they all still want him.

Despite being forcibly divorced, Deborah's husband and father of her five sons expects her to keep her marriage vows. She has to balance her growing feelings for Barak and her self respect in the role as Prophetess of the Israelites and a judge revered by her people. Feminine but powerful, her independence shows through as she takes her people into war.

Written in omniscient point of view, this novel draws a colourful picture of life in ancient times, from palaces, to marriage rituals, the status of princesses and slaves alike, and how men behaved toward both. The battle scenes are of epic proportions, where Barak’s horror on the battlefield is well portrayed as the dead and dying pile up before his eyes.

Eva Etzioni-Halevy’s other biblical novels are, The Song of Hannah and The Garden of Ruth, and she is working on a fourth.

Am I Not A Man by Mark L. Shurtleff

2009-10-16T05:02:00.005-06:00

The Back Cover:

An Illiterate slave, Dred Scott trusted in an all-white, slave-owning jury to declare him free. But after briefly experiencing the glory of freedom and manhood, a new state Supreme Court ordered the cold steel of the shackles to be closed again around his wrists and ankles. Falling to his knees, Dred cried, “Ain’t I a man?” Dred answered his own question by rising and taking his fight to the U.S. Supreme Court.

Dred ultimately lost his epic battle when the Chief Justice declared that a black man was so inferior that he had “no rights a white man was bound to respect.”
Dred died not knowing that his undying courage led directly to the election of President Abraham Lincoln and the Emancipation Proclamation.

Dred Scott’s inspiring and compelling true story of adventure, courage, love, hatred, and friendship parallels the history of this nation from the long night of slavery to the narrow crack in the door that would ultimately lead to freedom and equality for all men.

The First Line:

To him, the river sang.

Utah State Attorney General, Mark Shurtleff, first learned the story of Dred Scott while in law school. The heartwrenching tale of Dred Scott, an unassuming black slave, and his battle against longstanding laws of slavery to gain his freedom, and that of his family, not only captured his interest, but it ignited a passion that would take him on a journey of discovery through the annals of history.

Shurtleff's research led him to the actual locations where Dred Scott lived and breathed, toiled and suffered. He was able to breathe life and passion into his rendering of the overwhelming, near insurmountable legal struggle towards the abolition of slavery in the United States of America.

It is an incredible tale, one I knew little about as a Canadian. Through rich details and well-researched historical facts and occurrences, I was drawn into the struggles of the American slaves. Part novel and part non-fiction, this book is one that will survive for generations. It is a great tale of courage, of suffering, of faith, and of soldiering on in the face of adversity.

Cleopatra's Daughter by Michelle Moran

2009-10-13T13:13:00.002-06:00

Cover:

The marriage of Marc Antony and Cleopatra is one of the greatest love stories of all time, a tale of unbridled passion with earth-shaking political consequences. Feared and hunted by the powers in Ronme, the lovers choose to die by their own hands as the triumphant armies of Antony's vengeful rival, Octavian, sweep into Egypt. Their orphaned children - ten-year-old twins, Selene and Alexander - are taken in chains to Rome. Delivered to the household of Octavian's sister, the siblings cling to each other and to the hope that they will return one day to their rightful place on the throne of Egypt. As they come of age, they are buffeted by the personal ambitions of Octavian's family and courts, by the ever-present threat of slave rebellion, and by the longings and desires deep within their own hearts.

The fateful tale of Selene and Alexander is brought brilliantly to life in Cleopatra's Daughter. Recounted in Selene's youthful and engaging voice, it introduces a compelling cast of historical characters, Octvia, the emperor Octavian's kind and compassionate sister; abandoned by Marc Antony for Cleopatra; Livia, Octavian's bitter and jealous wife; Marcellus, Octvian's handsome, flirtatious nephew and heir apparent; Tiberius, Livia's sardonic son and Marcellus's great rival for power; and Juba, Octavian's watchful aide, whose honored position at court has far-reaching effects on the lives of the young Egyptian royals.

Selene's narrative is animated by the concerns of a young girl in any time and place - the possibility of finding love, the pull of friendship and family, and the pursuit of her unique interests and talents. While coping with the loss of both her family and her ancestral kingdom, Selene must also find a path around the dangers of a foreign land. Her accounts of life in Rome are filled with historical details that vividly capture the glories and horrors of the times. She dines with the empires' most illustrous poets and politicians, witnesses the creation of the Pantheon, and navigates the colorful crowded marketplaces of the city where Roman-style justice is meted out with merciless authority. In these chaotic streets and whispering palaces, Selene confronts the same forces that destroyed her mother and struggles to meet a different fate.

Based on meticulous research, Cleopatra's Daughter, is a fascinating portrait of imperial Rome and of the people and events of the glorious and tumultuous period in human history. Emerging from the shadows of the past, Selen, a young woman of irrestible charm and preternatural intelligence, will capture your heart.

First line: While we waited for the news to arrive, we played dice.

In this third novel by author, Michelle Moran, the reader is swept from the pyramids of Egypt into the glory of Rome. Cleopatra's daughter, Selene, is the narrative voice of the novel as she journeys into the year 30 B.C. and the decadence of the Eternal City.

The novel is geared to appeal to a wider audience, which includes young adults. Thus most readers will find this novel a smooth, comfortable read. Nevertheless, it packs a mighty punch. The strength of this novel is not only found in its intricate details of architecture, art, sport, fashions, and politics of the time, but is also rich with court intrigues and brutalities of the Roman Empire when it was at its peak.

For lovers of historical fiction, Michelle Moran's books never disappoint, and this novel is no exception. Filled with grand details and numerous emotional scenes, the reader is immersed in the times, so accurately and confidently portrayed. A hgihly recommended read.

Pope Joan by Donna Woolfolk Cross

2009-10-02T08:56:00.006-06:00

Synopsis:

For a thousand years her existence has been denied. She is the legend that will not die - Pope Jon, the ninth century woman who disguised herself as a man and rose to become the only female ever to sit on the throne of St. Peter. Now in this riveting novel, Donna Woolfolk Cross paints a sweeping portrait of an unforgettable heroine who struggles against restrictions her soul cannot accept.

Brilliant and talented, young Joan rebels against medieval social strictures forbidding women to learn. When her brother is brutally killed during a Viking attack, Joan takes up his cloak - and his identity - and enters the monastery of Fulda. As Brother John Angelicus, Joan distinguishes herself as a great scholar and healer. Eventually, she is drawn to Rome, where she becomes enmeshed in a dangerous web of love, passion, and politics. Triumphing over appalling odds, she finally attains the highest office in Christendom - wielding a power greater than any woman before or since. But such power always comes at a price.

In this international best seller, Cross brings the Dark Ages to life in all their brutal splendour and shares the dramatic story of a woman whose strength of vision led her to defy the social restrictions of her day.

Opening sentence - Prologue:

It was the twenty-eighth day of Wintarmanoth in the year of our Lord 814, the harshest winter in living memory.

Opening sentence - Chapter One:

Thunder sounded, very near, and the child awoke. She moved in the bed, seeing the warmth and comfort of her older brothers' sleeping forms. Then she remembered. Her brothers were gone.

Pope Joan is one of those remarkable novels that evokes images of a spectacular time and period. Pope Joan's achievements, in the face of social oppression against women punishable by death, are remarkable, even in today's world. How a impoverished child, abused, ignored, and trod upon, achieved the greatest throne in Christendom is truly a marvel. But that is not the only reason why this story is so endearing. It is the impeccable research and details into the Dark Ages that makes this novel resound with vibrancy.

The novel is rich with intrigue, murderous plots, deadly secrets, adversity, religious zealots, and power mongers. Add to this, a secondary plot of love and loss, and you have a tale that is truly riveting. It is no wonder the novel will soon be made into a major motion picture.

The Heretic Queen by Michelle Moran

2009-09-30T10:02:00.004-06:00

Summary:

In ancient Egypt, a forgotten princess must overcome her family’s past and remake history.

The winds of change are blowing through Thebes. A devastating palace fire has killed the Eighteenth Dynasty’s royal family—all with the exception of Nefertari, the niece of the reviled former queen, Nefertiti. The girl’s deceased family has been branded as heretical, and no one in Egypt will speak their names. A relic of a previous reign, Nefertari is pushed aside, an unimportant princess left to run wild in the palace. But this changes when she is taken under the wing of the Pharaoh’s aunt, then brought to the Temple of Hathor, where she is educated in a manner befitting a future queen.

Soon Nefertari catches the eye of the Crown Prince, and despite her family’s history, they fall in love and wish to marry. Yet all of Egypt opposes this union between the rising star of a new dynasty and the fading star of an old, heretical one. While political adversity sets the country on edge, Nefertari becomes the wife of Ramesses the Great. Destined to be the most powerful Pharaoh in Egypt, he is also the man who must confront the most famous exodus in history.

Sweeping in scope and meticulous in detail, The Heretic Queen is a novel of passion and power, heartbreak and redemption. – Crown

Opening Line: I am sure that if I sat in a quiet place, away from the palace and the bustle of the court, I could remember scenes from my childhood much earlier than six years old.

The Heretic Queen is a sequel to Nefertiti, however, you don’t have to read the first book to enjoy this one. Both stories can easily stand alone.

For those who love Ancient Egypt, with all its mysteries and brutalities, this novel will surely please. The gentle, unassuming prose lulls readers deep into the story, capturing interest and garnering suspense with each page turned. It is the story of a young, orphaned princess, shunned because of the sins of her ancestors, who faces adversity and achieves the highest rewards. Filled with palace intrigues, murder plots, greed, love, and desire, The Heretic Queen is sure to please. A highly recommended read!

A Hidden Legacy by Heather Garside

2009-09-30T07:28:00.002-06:00

For most of his life, Matt Jones believed he was the uneducated son of kindly servants who work at Fenham Manor in England. But when he discovers they are not his true parents, and that he is the grandson of the lord of the manor who has always treated him with disdain, Matt sets off to Australia to search for his parents.

With little money, he is temporarily hired by his mother’s brother, a wealthy stockman who holds nothing but contempt for Matt’s father, a man of low rank who married his mother after getting her pregnant with Matt years before. From his uncle, he learns the whereabouts of his family’s ranch, complete with both parents and numerous siblings.

But acceptance into his new family and life becomes a struggle as Matt finds himself embroiled in sibling rivalry and an illicit love affair with Isabella, the daughter of a neighbouring stockman. Soon, Matt leaves Isabella for the gold fields to make his fortune. Unprepared for the harsh life of a gold miner, Matt soon finds himself in unfairly in trouble with the law. It is only then that he realizes the depth of his love for Isabella.

A HIDDEN LEGACY is more than a love story. It is a realistic family saga steeped with family secrets, scandals, and rich, twisting plot themes. Heather Garside has realistically recreated 19th century life in the harsh Australian countryside. Although it is the sequel to The Cornstalk, it easily stands alone.

Drawing on her own, real life experiences regarding her own life and work on an Australian ranch, Ms. Garside s has written a realistic, compelling novel about the lives of early settlers in Queensland. This is one of the best Australian novels I have encountered and highly recommend it.

Interview With Paula Phelan

2009-09-25T04:53:00.000-06:00

Thank you for joining me on the Historical Novel Review Blog, Paula.

1. How long have you been writing historical fiction, and is this genre your only foray into writing?

I began writing historical fiction in 2003. I was inspired after not being able to travel on a business trip to China due to SARs. I wanted to understand how the threat of a flu should stop one’s ability to do business as usual. I discovered that the 1918 flu epidemic had been a great example of under-reported history. This spurred me to uncover other facts, events, and people that had slipped through the cracks of time.

Historical fiction is only one of my writing outlets, as the CEO of a robust technology public relations firms in Silicon Valley, I write non-fiction daily including articles for management publications and technology journals. I have also written fictional short stories for adults and children.

2. What other eras are you interested in writing about, apart from early 20th century American history, which are the settings for your trilogy?

When I started on the road of historical discovery I decided I would write Ten-of-Nine. Ten books on a year that ended in nine, that would span three centuries the 20th, 19th, and 18th centuries.

3. What made you choose such an unusual format for your novel, 1939-Into The Dark, and how did you come up with the template?

1939 was the first year I knew I would write about because of the great output of film and theatre in that year. In order to be able to provide commentary I created Alan Stipple a contemporary of the powerful critics of that day men and women who could make or break an artistic endeavour.

Nancy Ames, the African American reporter, is based on a real person who wrote for one of the negro papers in 1939 and spoke plainly about the atrocities in Europe and the implications for young black men who would be called up to serve.

4. I got the impression from the novel that the war correspondent was shouting at her readers, trying to get them to sit up and take notice, but no one was listening. It was a powerful premise. Was that what you intended?

Indeed, as an African American in the United States at that time Nancy Ames had the ability to recognize racism and its dangers. She, and other reporters like her, attempted to awaken the American public to what was going on. At the time the country was committed to neutrality, no one wanted another war. It had been twenty years since the First World War which was very unpopular when the citizens realized it was a war of economics not righting wrongs. The young men born when their fathers returned would be sent off if another war should occur.

5. What was your personal view of how American citizens regarded the outbreak of war in Europe, and did your own perspective form part of the story?

I had grown up believing people in the U.S. didn’t know, which proved not to be true. I asked individuals who were in their twenties at the time – why there wasn’t an outcry and the answer was poignant, “We were so worn down by the depression, excited by the glimmer of light that things could get better, that it was easier to say nothing. Besides what could one person do?”

And in truth how different is that from today? We all know about Dafur, however, feel powerless to do much besides send money.

6. I found myself waiting for the rest of the cast to fall in line with the premise that something had to be done about the atrocities being perpetrated on the Jewish community, but no one really did. As President Roosevelt held out until the end of 1941 before entering the war, was that a social comment?

Yes, there were a few people, the Roosevelts, Churchill and others who wanted to do something, however the sentiment was so strong toward neutrality these individuals were in the minority. What’s more there was a great deal of anti-Semitism in the U.S. at the time (which Nancy Ames reports on) another reason why Jewish Americans were afraid to speak up.
7. You leave the reader hanging – sort of – at the end as three characters sail off into the sunset with their own agendas. Is that to leave us with our own ending to the story, or do you hope to get across that those who are worth redeeming find their way?

The characters defined their own outcomes. I personally believe that life is an adventure and the more it can be faced pure of heart the greater the chances for success. In fact all three gentlemen make it back and appear in 1969 – The Dream of Aquarius as supporting characters.

8. In the UK, apart from being too caught up with our own survival, the consensus of opinion was that Americans didn’t know what went on in Europe. Your novel shows that news reports were readily available and that the apathy was voluntary. Is that what you were trying to say?

The apathy or unwillingness to engage is one of those ‘under-reported’ facts of history. In the U.S. we are told of our contributions to World War II, however, there is never any mention of our unwillingness to act until after the bombing of Pearl Harbor.

9. Now the more frivolous bit. What has been the biggest stumbling block in writing and getting your work published?

The biggest challenge for me was getting the novel published without allowing a publisher to significantly alter my work. I had a vision for how the novel would look and feel, and the first publisher I worked with wanted to turn it into a romance novel. After numerous historical characters were removed I finally drew the line when I was told to take out Ernest Hemingway because no one would know who he was. Needless to say, I didn’t end up working with that publisher.
10. What would you like our readers to know about you and your writing?

I truly believe we can learn from history. Learn how to not to make the same mistakes. History taught in schools is packaged and polished to take off all the rough edges – it lacks the whys and personalities that brought us to this moment in time.

That is why I focused each book on one year, in order to not be overwhelmed and able to find the nuggets of under reported history and bring them to light.

To write historical fiction for me is to be part private investigator, part empathetic therapist, and mostly willing to be awed by what I don’t know and share what I learn with others in a way that entertains and inspires.
You have quite an unique view on your ambitions as a writer, Paula.many thanks for talking to me and may I wish you every success with 1939 Into The Dark

1939-Into The Dark by Paula Phelan

2009-09-24T05:16:00.000-06:00

The focus of Paula Phelan’s story, 1939 - Into the Dark, published by ZAP Media New York, takes place over a twelve month period with her characters interacting with famous names of the day in both New York Society's arts and entertainment world.

Set during the months before the declaration of war in Europe, Jason Rothman, is writing a play starring Carole Lombard which promises to be a huge success, but he is distracted by the events in Europe.

Having no knowledge of how the US greeted the news and events of the opening months of the war, being weaned on The Blitz, rationing and telegrams received by my family from the War Office, this perspective was what attracted me about this novel.

Consumed with their own problems after the great depression and the threats to playwrights and actors, although most of the characters seem aware of the gathering storm, they are reluctant to do more than discuss its implications dispassionately. Some are even glad to have escaped it, but no one wants to do anything positive.

Miriam, Jason’s wife, is an aspiring poet whose parents are trapped in Germany. The letters they send to Jason and Miriam are distressing, and Jason cannot understand why New York is so ambivalent about what is happening in Europe. Faced with success after many years of hard work, Jason is torn between a desire to do something to help the Jews, and concentrating on his career.

The novel takes the form of short, cameo scenes, each starring a different set of characters; a playwright, an artist, a musician, an architect, an activist and a gangster, the events of their lives, interspersed with press reports of dire warnings about the coming war, mixed in with film reviews. This unusual, fast-paced format was somewhat confusing at first, and I couldn’t get a handle on who the main characters of the book actually were. I also found myself waiting for the rest of the cast to fall in line with the premise that something had to be done about the war in Europe and the atrocities being perpetrated on the Jewish community.

This novel isn’t as simple at that, however and the realisation of how world changing this war would be takes longer to dawn on those watching it from afar, as well as others who turn off the radio due to the burgeoning difficulties of their own lives.

My initial impatience with their lethargy is soon dispelled as Ms Phelan shows me that perhaps they can be excused for their self absorption. Her characters all have intense, interesting lives, and their denial becomes understandable when their own conflicts are taken into account. No one has a free ride in this book, and in their place, I wondered if I would have instantly clamoured to be involved in a conflict everyone hopes will burn out before it becomes too serious.

With the WPA Federal Theatre Project, the Un-American Activities Committee, the Spanish Civil War, and demonstrations by communist unions thrown into the mix, this goes some way to exonerate those who resist involving themselves in a foreign war. Ms Phelan manages to weave them all together in the later stages, where she also makes a comment on the film Wuthering Heights which made me smile.

The characters who stood out for me, apart from Jason and Miriam and their prickly marriage, was Sarah the harpist whose independence and compassion brings some emotion to the series of loosely connected events. Ms Phelan’s meticulous research adds depth and colour to her story, as well as references to Mayor La Guardia, the hedonistic Gables, Tallulah Bankhead, Katherine Hepburn and many others.

1939-Into The Dark is the second of a trilogy, which deals with iconic events in American history in an unusual way. The first novel is 1919 Misfortune’s End, and the next book to be released is 1969 The Dream of Aquarius.

A Land Beyond Ravens by Kathleen Guler

2009-09-14T09:55:00.008-06:00

A Land Beyond Ravens - Book Four of the Macsen’s Treasure Series

In 5th century Britain, High King Uther Pendragon is old, frail, and sick. He has no known heir and must name one before he dies. Lesser king, Cadwallon, waits impatiently to take his place. But Uther Pendragon does indeed have an heir, his whereabouts a secret even to him. A son named Arthur who has been hidden away since birth under the guidance of an old, wise wizard. Almost no one knows of his existence. Soon, Arthur will be acknowledged as Uther Pendragon’s sole heir and high king. But until then, doubts swirl about his existence.

Marcus is a fallen confidant of Uther Pendragon. Over the years, he served as the high king’s spy. But now, he knows too much and he is no longer favoured or trusted by the king. He struggles to keep the peace between Cadwallon and the Christian Church, both desirous of increasing their power.

Marcus’ beloved wife, Claerwen is gifted with “fire in the head” (the ability to see the future). She was also a trusted servant of the king, having protected Uther’s daughter by taking her to Avalon. When her sister, Drysi, and a strange monk, Gwion, seek shelter with Marcus at their fortress, trouble mysteriously ensues.
A Land Beyond Ravens is the 4th and final book of the Macsen’s Treasure Series. Even though I had not read the preceding novels, I was easily able to follow the plot and relevant backstory through clever, brief snippets throughout the story. The reader follows the numerous twists and turns of the story through the point of view of the two main characters, Marcus and Claerwan, created completely from the imagination of author Kathleen Cunningham Guler. As such, this keeps the story fresh and unique from the actual Arthurian Legend. Guler writes with a strong voice and vibrant prose. Her use of Welsh and Celtic names and words adds realism to the skilfully woven tale. She is a master at creating unique, unusual characters which draw the reader deeper into the story in anxious desire to unlock their secrets.

I highly recommend this book to afficionado’s of the Arthurian legend. The previous books in the series are Into the Path of Gods, In the Shadow of Dragons, and The Anvil Stone.

Author Interview - Rita Gerlach

2009-08-05T00:00:00.004-06:00

1. Welcome, I’m so glad to have this opportunity to chat with you. Can you share with my readers the essence of the story you’ve penned?

Thanks for having me, Mirella. It is a privilege.

While Surrender the Wind focuses on relationships both marital and within a family, it is in every sense of the word of romantic historical novel with the historical ambience of the period in which it is written, with twists and turns that take readers back to a time of raw courage and ideal love.

Seth’s journey brings him many trials, where his devotion to those he loves is tested. For our heroine, Juleah, she must stand against all odds to be with Seth, no matter what the cost. In so doing, she discovers how very deep the waters of love can flow.

So, the essence of this story is multi-faceted. It is a layering of commitment, devotion, sacrifice, duty, honour, and the search for truth, all wrapped up in one word - Love.

2. You’ve chosen a very interesting title. What inspired the title? What inspired the book?

I wanted to give the book a title that reflects the ‘essence’ of the story. Surrender means to release, to yield, to relinquish. Wind is representative of the hardships that knock us to the ground, that buffet us and push against us, that try to impede our happiness and peace. Thus, Surrender the Wind is all about Seth and Juleah releasing those things that came against them to something great than themselves, and a recognition that they could not survive the storms of life without it.

3. What makes this book special to you?

Each book that I write has special meaning to me. Surrender the Wind is special because I really do consider it my break through novel. My other books were published through print on demand which, honestly, impeded sales. Surrender the Wind is published by a highly respected publisher and available in bookstores everywhere. It is gaining broader recognition, and the reviews have been awesome.

4. What makes this a book that people MUST read and WHY?

Robert Frost said, ‘No tears in the writer, no tears in the reader. No surprise in the writer, no surprise in the reader’. When I first read his quote, I took it to heart. This is what I set out to do in Surrender the Wind. I make every attempt to write something unique historically, and to allow the reader to feel they are in the story, that they see, hear, taste, and touch, what the characters are experiencing. My novels are emotionally charged, and pull the reader back in time.

Today’s world is very stressful and fast-paced. The goal of my writing is to give readers a respite from a harried life, help them forget their worries for a while, and inspire them to live fully and gratefully.

Warning: There are places in this story where you will tear up. There are surprises, twists and turns. There are times you will smile and become endeared to the characters, except for the villain and the odious constable. You will loathe them.

5. What sparks your creativity? Any tips to help others spark their own creativity?

I’ve always had a vivid imagination. I remember standing in my mother’s kitchen at age four telling her with great enthusiasm a story. I’d go to sleep at night making stories up in my mind. The spark is innate. That is not to say I don’t have periods of writer’s block. I do. And it is frustrating. But to be specific, I’d have to say reading historical classics and watching period movies such as Jane Eyre and Pride and Prejudice, listening to classical music or soundtracks, and taking a day’s outing to the country spark my creativity and give me the desire to write. Tips on how other writers can spark their creativity? Well, you must find what works for you. It might be reading a novel in your genre. It might be music or a walk down a country lane. The key is to be patient for the spark, but do all you can to ignite it.

6. What has been the biggest stumbling block in your writing? Can you share some tips to help others get past similar problems?

I read your question over several times and really thought long and hard about it. Perhaps it is my tendency to not want to write what the market requires. For example, most publishers are looking for novels where the heroine is the central character. I am drawn to writing about the strong hero who risks life and limb for the woman he loves. Surrender the Wind was rejected by one publishing company because of Seth being the main character in the beginning of the story. But as it moves forward, Seth and Juleah share the main stage together.

When it came to technique, point of view was once my roadblock. I had to learn to stick to one point of view instead of head hopping. The way I learned to do this is to read aloud my writing in first person, as if the character that is the focus in a scene is speaking.

My advice to writers having similar problems is to think about why a particular thing is a stumbling block. Can you make it a strength?

7. Tell me about the most unusual things you have done to promote your book?

I’ve sent out gift packages of stationary to the first three readers who preordered the book. I wish I could afford to do this for everyone that purchases a copy. One thing that I plan to do is to have a bumper sticker made with http://ritagerlach.com/ on it and slap it on the rear bumper of my car.

8. Each author is different in the way they create a work of fiction. Please describe for us how you plan or plot a story.

An idea pops into my head. I jot it down. Then characters come to mind. I keep a notebook for each novel and as things come to me, scenes, setting, dialogue, and narrative, I write them down. I do not do a plot outline. But I do write a short synopsis that guides me along. When I start a book, of often don’t know where it is going exactly. The story unfolds as I write it.

9. Authors are very unique in the way they write, the tools they use, when they write, etc. Please describe a typical writing day for you? How do you organize your day?

Organize my day? I wish that were always the case. In this household, no day is alike, and something always seems to come up to ‘disorganize’ my life. But I like to write mostly in the morning when the house is quiet and there are fewer interruptions. I start the morning by reading emails and responding to them. Then I read a couple online newspapers, and writers’ blogs. After a cup of eye-opening coffee, I’m ready to delve into my novel in progress. The weekends I set aside for spending time with family. I work on things like interviews, my website and blog, and marketing during the week.

10. What is your current work in progress?

I’m writing a novel set in England once again. It begins with a traumatic event in my heroine’s childhood, and then moves forward to when she is a grown woman. It is a love story and a tragedy wrapped up in one, but with the promise of a happy ending.

11. Can you tell us where to find more information about you and your books and how readers can reach you?

You can find more about me on my website. I have a contact page with my email address. The url is http://ritagerlach.com/

12. What would you like our readers to know about you and your writing?

I want readers to know that I am a writer whose goal is to please. I want to give you your money’s worth. I don’t want to write the same-old-same-old. So, I am hoping I will give you a break from the mundane.

One more thing about me, I will leave as a mystery. I am the cousin of the most famous romance writer in America. Can you guess whom?

Thanks, Mirella, for the interview. It was a pleasure. And thank you for reading and reviewing Surrender the Wind!

Surrender the Wind Book Review

2009-08-04T00:00:00.002-06:00

Seth Braxton fought loyally in the American Revolution. Not for England, his homeland, but for America and the rich Virginian farmland he owns and cherishes. It is a way of life he has wholeheartedly come to love. But the war and his role as an American patriot has torn his family apart when his younger sister, Caroline, is sent to England to live with their loyalist grandfather whom Seth believes has disowned him.

Much to his surprise, Seth Braxton learns of his grandfather's death and that the old man left his entire estate, Ten Width, to him. Although reluctant to leave his beloved Virginia, he travels to England to check on his sister and conclude matters regarding his inheritance. Then he dreams of returning to America. When he arrives he is dismayed to learn that tragedy has struck. Caroline has lost not only her husband, but her young son too. She is bedridden with illness and grief. At her side is her long-time friend Juleah, the daughter of eccentric gentleman and delicate mother.

Juleah's beauty and strength instantly win Seth and they soon wed. But Juleah's past rises to the forefront and prevents harmony in their new marriage. An old suitor, the son of Seth's grandfather's second wife, is angered at Juleah's marriage and he sets out to take back what he has always sought --- Juleah and Ten Width Manor.

Bit by bit, Seth and Juleah find themselves embroiled in treachey. From kidnapping to deceit, betrayal to murder, one sinister plot after another fills the pages of this novel to ensnare the reader to the very end.

Surrender the Wind is a gripping tale of intrigue that kept me turning the pages long after I should have turned out the lights. I found the characters believable and well-rounded, their dialogue vividly realistic. The pace quickens chapter by chapter as one story twists after another is revealed. Historically accurate, the reader is drawn into the detailed description of English life.

Expect the unexpected in this inspirational tale of romance and history.

Surrender the Wind by Rita Gerlach

2009-08-03T00:00:00.002-06:00

SURRENDER THE WIND

A quick~match tale of unexpected love . . .

A fuse that burned rapidly ...

Coming to a bookstore near you August 2009!

After a harrowing escape from the British, patriot Seth Braxton finds his father dead at Yorktown. Now battle scarred and grieving, he endeavors to settle down for a peaceful life along the shores of the Potomac by restoring the land his father loved.

Thinking he will forever stay in the secluded wilderness, he receives a message that he has inherited his grandfather's estate in faraway England. Seth is torn between the land he's fought for and the prospect of reuniting with his sister, Caroline, who was a motherless child at the onset of the Revolution, taken to England in order to spare her the horrors of war.

With no intention of making his stay at Ten Width permanent, he journeys to England to do his duty. When he arrives, he finds his sister in the throes of grief after being told her young son has died of a fever. In the midst of so much tragedy, he meets Juleah, the daughter of an eccentric landed gentleman. Her independent spirit and gentle soul steal his heart, and she becomes his wife and lady of the manor, enraging the man who once sought her hand and hoped Ten Width would be his own.

From the Virginia wilderness, to the dark halls of an isolated English estate, Seth inherits more than a crumbling ancestral home. He uncovers a sinister plot that leads to murder, abduction, and betrayal --- an ominous mix that threatens to destroy his new life and new love.

The Interpretation of Murder by Jeb Rubenfeld

2009-07-10T05:00:00.000-06:00

New York City, 1909. The first skyscrapers were being built and luxurious apartment living became all the rage amongst the rich and fashionable city dwellers. Elizabeth Riverford, a young socialite is found murdered in the newly built Balmoral Hotel in Manhattan by a killer with a penchant for knives, silk ties, and a riding crop.

Psychoanalyst, Stratham Younger is scheduled to meet Dr Sigmund Freud and Carl Jung to speak at American Universities in an age when psychoanalysis is in its infancy. Freud offers advice to the budding psychoanalyst, Younger, as to how to treat one of the murderer's surviving victims. The young lady, Nora Acton, has lost her voice and cannot remember the details of her attack, but her injuries are remarkably similar to the murdered girl's.

Dr Younger finds himself becoming increasingly attracted to the child-like Nora, whose inner thoughts are darker than even Younger can sometimes cope with. To complicate matters, Younger is also caught up in the rivalry between Freud and protégé Carl Jung, as well as corruption in the New York police force, a seedy era in Chinatown, the construction of the Manhattan Bridge, and Younger’s changing theories about the motivations of Hamlet.

The detective investigating the murder, Jimmie Littlemore, takes a leading role in the narrative, with his red bow tie and straw boater. Coroner Hugel asks for Littlemore to be assigned to the case because, ‘He cannot be bought. At least not yet’.

The story takes the reader into seedier parts of the city and brothel’s used by leading citizens, as well as the intimidation of sweatshop workers in an age of budding union organisation.
Mr Rubenfeld's account of what New York looked, smelled and felt like during the turn of the century when skyscrapers began to rise out of the busy streets.

Added to that, the fact Dr Younger was also a nephew of Mamie Stuyvesant Fish and is invited to one of her socialite parties, gives us yet another dimension in the Vanderbilt/Astor feud which I found particularly compelling.

Added to the mix of characters are the wealthy industrialist who thinks he is completely beyond the law, together with the Mayor who is in his pocket, a well meaning but inadequate coroner and various city workers who are out for themselves and for whom the truth is a distant concept they have no aspiration for.

Carl Jung is portrayed as having serious personality order of his own which degenerates into insanity, but the amiable Dr Freud seems unaffected by his raw ambition and seems to want to protect the man. Freud himself also has a physiologically weak bladder, which I felt didn't add much to the story but I'm sure the author had a reason for it.

I found the descriptions of the building of the Brooklyn Bridge and the terrible conditions the workers lived and died in, compared to the grand houses of the wealthy in Gramercy Park, the onset of mechanical taxicabs in New York – green ones not yellow, was so atmospheric I could see it all.

My only criticism would be that the author pontificates at length on the meaning of Hamlet's 'To be or not to be' speech and the motives for his procrastination in the killing of his uncle. I couldn't help feeling these convoluted theories had no relevance to this story other than to pad out an already very long book – over 200,000 words.

I would heartily recommend this story, for all the reasons I stated earlier and felt my skimming through the 'Hamlet' parts didn't detract from my own enjoyment at all. There is also an informative website at: www.interpretationofmurder.com which also gives more information about New York in 1909 with maps, and some interesting information about Sigmund Freud.

by Anita Davison

The Lady and The Poet

2009-06-26T05:00:00.001-06:00

The story Of John Donne and Ann More by Maeve Haran

From the moment I opened the first page and read how Ann castigated her sister Bett for the disruption she had been put to in order to sweeten the house in preparation for Bett’s forthcoming wedding, I knew I was going to enjoy this book.

Ann More is the fourth of five daughters whose mother died when she was still a child. The More girls have been brought up at the manor of Loseley, near Guildford in Surrey, by their grandparents, Sir William and the Lady Margaret More. Their brother, Robert, lives with his pompous father and shrewish step-mother, Constance nearby.

Ann is fourteen when the story opens, and she asks God if her fate is to be the same as her sister’s who have been married to debtors and dolts by their father. She longs for more, possibly even a meeting of minds in a husband in late Elizabethan England, a time and place when women were property for their fathers to barter with into marriages to forge family alliances.

Ann doubts her courage in standing up for what she wants, but you know she is certainly going to give it all she has. Her wilfulness and intelligence are seen as barriers to her marriageability and her grandparents forbid her to study after three in the afternoon in case she becomes ‘too clever to be a wife’ when chastity, silence and obedience are what is asked for in a woman.

After Bett’s wedding, Ann hears that her father is planning on a marriage for her, but that in the meantime she is to be sent to London to learn to be a court lady in the dying years of Queen Elizabeth’s reign. This must surely be a good thing, for Ann reads Ovid, and doesn’t the Virgin Queen do likewise?

She goes to live with her aunt and uncle, who is the Lord keeper of the Privy Seal at York House on The Strand. However, much to her aunt's agner, Ann rejects the suggestion she become a lady in waiting to the ageing Queen whose displays her jealousy of all younger women with staggering cruelly.

Despite that the man Sir George chooses for Ann, Mr Richard Manners is not unlikeable and seems bonded to Ann already, she has no wish to become betrothed to him. When her Aunt Elizabeth is ill with smallpox, Ann elects to stay and help nurse her. During these days when her movements are less restricted, she and John Donne meet in secret. Their love is strong, although at this stage still pure, but Sir George More, her father is incandescent with rage that a nobody like Donne should look at his daughter.

This story has all the elements of a doomed love, and with the might of Ann’s family ranged against her in her father and sisters, you wonder how this couple will ever be together. Ms Haran portrays the atmosphere and detailed elements of Elizabethan life wonderfully well with this book, reiterating the fact no one in Elizabethan England rose to any position without friends in high places, and could equally be brought down by those friends as well.

I am sure readers will suffer along with Ann as she is taken from her love and virtually incarcerated back at Loseley to be betrothed to Mr Manners. The fact this is a true story makes it all the more poignant as they are forced to enter into a secret marriage which spells the near ruin of both Ann and her intellectually superior husband.

John Donne, who went on to become Dean of St Pauls under the auspices of James I, summed up his personal situation in what, I hope, wasn’t a regretful phrase: "John Donne, Ann Donne, Undone."

Chapter One - The Confession of Piers Gaveston

2009-06-22T00:00:00.004-06:00

The Beginning: The Burning

In every candle flame, in every torch, camp and bon fire, I see her face. Every time I stretch out my hands to the hearth’s welcoming warmth, I see her writhing in agony amongst the flames: blackened, burnt, and bald, her beautiful long black hair all gone, eaten up by the hungry flames. And I hear the rattle of the heavy chains binding her firmly against the stake.

Her eyes alone—so deep a brown they appear black, just like mine—remain the same, human still, amidst the ruins of a beauty the flames would render monstrous. The fire, and those who condemned her to this fate, have stripped her of everything else—her dignity, her liberty, her property, her life. They have also deprived two young children—a boy of seven and a newborn girl—of their mother. But “Justice must be done,” “Thou shall not suffer a witch to live,” her judges sanctimoniously declare.

Though twenty years have come and gone, her eyes haunt me still. Awake or dreaming, I see them, pain-filled and beseeching, rimmed in red and overflowing with tears, as they turn to me, silently conveying a message heart-heavy with a mother’s love and regret that she will not be there to care for me and see me to manhood grown.

I hold her gaze, and it is as if we two are alone, and my ears are deaf and my eyes blind to the boorish Gascon peasants and French soldiers that surround us. Even though my nursemaid, Agnes, is there, her hand upon my shoulder, I neither hear nor heed her tearful, urgent pleas that we leave this accursed place. In this moment only my mother and I exist, everything else is as nothing, and time has stopped.

Even should I be cursed with eternal life, forgetfulness would never find me. The memory is seared into my mind just as surely as if it had been branded there. Indeed, my body is branded. I carry the mark of that day upon my hands in the form of scars from when I, a foolish and hysterical child, tried to pull her from the flames.

Even now I am haunted by the laughter of those who watched as I yelped and leapt back, reeling, nearly fainting from the blistering intensity of the pain radiating from my palms. I hated myself then; defeated by the least little lick of the flames, when she stood powerless and trapped within their midst. And, most of all, I hated them—that merry, mocking crowd, cavorting round the bonfire like May Day revelers while my mother burned!

How many of them had come to her for healing herbs, salves, and specially brewed teas to help ease their aches and pains, to have their wounds dressed, their bones set, and their children brought into the world? How many of them had found their way, in tears and dire need, to our door? My mother, Claremunda of Marcia, was as kind and wise as she was beautiful, and her heart and door were always open to those in need; no one was ever turned away. And now they dubbed her “Satan’s handmaiden” and cast her into “the purifying power of flame!” Hypocrites! My heart screamed.

Nowadays those who gaze upon my hands say the scars are the Devil’s Mark, left upon my flesh when Satan’s crimson-eyed night-black hellhounds reared their ugly heads to lick Piers Gaveston’s hands the night he swore his allegiance to the Dark Lord. I make no attempt to hide them. I wear gloves only in winter and when I ride. All other times, I flaunt them, decking them with a glittering array of rings, especially rubies which I adore above all gems. Even though they ceased to pain me long ago, Edward, His Most Christian Majesty King Edward II by the Grace of God, (or Nedikins as he prefers me to call him in our most intimate moments), covers them with kisses and soothing lotions as if they still festered and throbbed. But the truth is, no lotion, no matter how cool or sweet smelling, can soothe away the pain of seeing the person you love best in the world being burned alive before your very eyes while you stand by, small, helpless, and alone, surrounded by those who do naught but laugh and cheer.

No sooner had I leapt back from the fire’s agonizing kiss than I was swept up, high into the air, by the village priest. “Thou shall not suffer a witch to live!” his voice thundered as he held me above the dancing flames and I felt the soles of my red leather shoes scorch. Choking and nauseous from the scent of smoke, and her dear burning flesh, he drew me back, and a tearful sigh escaped me, for I had grown so slick with sweat I feared I would slip from his grasp and fall straight into the flames. He turned me round to face him and I remember thinking what a crime it was to entrust a man with such soulless eyes with the salvation of men’s souls. “Thou shall not suffer a witch to live!” he repeated, shaking me hard. “Remember that, Piers Gaveston, witch’s brat!” With that he cast me aside, flinging me from him as if I were some stinking bit of offal that offended his nose and eyes. I struck the ground so hard that my shoulder was jarred from its socket and the breath knocked from my lungs.

Before I could regain my breath or wits and summon strength enough to scream the curses that raged within my heart, Agnes snatched me up and fled as fast as her legs could carry her. From over her shoulder I had my last glimpse of my mother. The chains had stopped rattling. She was still now; her head sagged forward, like a flower grown too heavy for its stem.

This is how my story begins. Of course I was born like everyone else, but it was the day my mother died that changed forever the course of my life; a life, like hers, that is also likely to end in murder.

Thus here I sit in gloomy, windswept Scarborough Castle, perched high upon the cliffs above a raging sea, awaiting Edward’s return with reinforcements—by which I mean a miracle—while Pembroke’s army bays for my blood. Or is that but a delusion wrought by the crashing waves and the wind whistling through the cold stone walls?

Our provisions, like our numbers, are few; few would rally to the cause of the most hated man in England. And with every day that passes that number shrinks as yet more of my supporters slink away into the night.

The time to surrender draws nigh. I will not see this siege drawn out until all are skeletons and starving. But not yet, not while a slender hope remains that Edward may return in time, even though that hope has no more substance than a cobweb, I will cling to it for just a little while longer. Soon, I will do what needs to be done, soon; but not yet. For now I shall while away the anxious hours with this little book Edward gave me.

The covers are gold, embossed with vibrant emeralds and peerless pearls, but the pages are blank, a clean creamy field of vellum that awaits my words. When he gave it to me, Edward said that the words I would fill it with would far eclipse the value of the gems outside, though I daresay he intended that I should immortalize our love in poetry or pen laments to dying swans.

Poor Nedikins, I fear the value he places upon both me and my words will plummet when he reads this; if he reads this. Whether this book will ever reach him, I do not know. But, if it does, and should it survive that encounter, it will be in a very battered state. You see, I know Edward very well. For twelve years I have been the center of his world. Verily, I can see him now as he reads the revelations I shall soon set down. Pearls and emeralds will fly as he bashes this book against the wall, or flings it onto the floor and leaps and stomps upon it, screaming: “How could you do this to me?” Like as not, he will end by throwing it in the fire then burn his fingers snatching it out again. He may even set his tunic afire beating out the flames. But be that as it may, I am determined to set down the truth about my life since no one else can do it for me. Edward is blinded by desire, to him I am perfection. His behavior does naught to belie the rumors that I have bewitched him. In England they say there are two kings: Edward who reigns and Gaveston who rules. And to my child bride Meg. so sweet and trusting, I have been too much a stranger. Agnes and Dragon, who know all, can neither read nor write. Others know fragments of the story, but not the whole, and by everyone else I am despised.

Mayhap even now, when I have only just begun, it is already too late to set the story straight. My infamy, I fear, is too well entrenched. Whenever they tell the story of Edward’s reign I will always be the villain and Edward, the poor, weak-willed, pliant king who fell under my spell, the golden victim of a dark enchantment. There are two sides to every coin, but when the bards and chroniclers, the men who write the histories, tell this story will anyone remember that?

People say so many things: facts, falsehoods, and fanciful marriages betwixt the two, but nothing is ever exactly as it seems. Whatever I am—good or bad; wrong or wronged; guilty or not—please do not condemn me unheard. As the end of my life draws nigh, please allow me to have my say; withhold your judgment for just a little while…

Interview with Brandy Purdy

2009-06-21T00:00:00.004-06:00

1. Welcome, I’m so glad to have this opportunity to chat with you. Can you share with my readers the essence of the story you’ve penned?
Thank you, I’m glad to have this opportunity. THE CONFESSION OF PIERS GAVESTON is the story of Edward II’s notorious favourite, told in Gaveston’s own words as his life is about to come to an end. But Gaveston is an unreliable narrator, one is never quite sure if he is telling the whole truth, some, or none of it, or if he is trying to show himself in the most favourable light or garner sympathy; so one has to take it all with a grain of salt, maybe even a whole shaker of salt. And, one also has to remember, the way the various characters are depicted is how Gaveston is seeing them at that particular time in his life—a life that is about to end in murder—so some measure of bitterness and resentment can be expected to cast a shadow.

2. You’ve chosen a very interesting title. What inspired the title? What inspired the book?

Thank you. The use of the word “confession” in the title comes from the religious atmosphere of the Middle Ages, and also, it’s a bit of a play on words given that there have always been persistent rumours of witchcraft associated with Gaveston, and in my novel witchcraft is indeed his religion; he only pays lip service to Christianity, so one has to wonder how seriously he would take the idea of Confession; in other words: how sincere and sacred is this, his final, confession?

As for the way I came to write it, the book wasn’t born out of a burning ambition to be a writer or anything like that. It just sort of happened. Ever since I first learned to read I’ve always been a voracious reader, books are my consolation, they have always been the only constant in my life, so when I can’t read, when there is some situation or emotional disturbance that robs me of the desire or attacks and disables my concentration, then I KNOW I’m in trouble. Such was the case a few years ago when my mother died. I kept trying to read but I just couldn’t focus, I would read the same sentence over and over again, but I couldn’t take it in. I kept trying different books, trying to find something my mind could latch onto and digest. Finally I picked up a book about royal scandals, it was written in a lively, sort of gossipy tone, a factual but not a scholarly work. I started at the beginning but I couldn’t manage it, I was so frustrated I felt like throwing the book at the wall. I decided to try one more time before I gave up and opened it at random. The page I turned to was the first page of the chapter on Edward II and Piers Gaveston.

I had no familiarity with the story at all, if I had ever even heard of Piers Gaveston before it wasn’t enough to make an impression on me and I have no memory of it. But, for some reason, I was able to read that chapter, and I became fascinated by the story. I started reading everything I could find about Piers Gaveston, and I became particularly intrigued by the rumours and the gaps in his life; there is so little actually known about him as a person, we don’t know what he looked like, there are no letters telling us what he thought or felt, and I was drawn to the challenge of trying to give him a voice. And the novel just happened; I just sat down one day and started writing.

3. What makes this book special to you?

Well I probably shouldn’t say this in an interview that I’m hoping may give a boost to book sales, but I will: This little book has faced a lot of opposition, both personally and professionally. I have even been told on more than one occasion that I should be ashamed of myself for writing it. When no one else would take a chance on it I decided to gamble and take the chance myself via self-publishing after having spent years trying to find a publisher in the traditional manner. Although I had an agent who genuinely liked the book, and a senior editor at one of the major publishing houses fell in love with it, in this world, money talks, and every time this book has come up against the powers that be in a publisher’s marketing department it has always been rejected because they believe that a historical novel about personalities who are not as well known as say Anne Boleyn or Alexander the Great, written from the viewpoint of a man will fail to attract readers, it has also been implied, though not explicitly stated, that the homosexuality of the characters makes it even more difficult from a marketing standpoint. Personally I happen to disagree, and not just because my book is on the receiving end of their rejections, as a straight female who has been a dedicated reader of historical fiction since the age of ten, I read any novel that intrigues me and holds my interest, the gender and sexual preferences of the characters is immaterial and has never been a deciding factor; I like a good, well-told story. As for my novel, I guess I just feel that this book needs me more; to believe in it and try to do the best I can for it since no one else will.

4. What makes this a book that people MUST read and WHY?

My novel gives Piers Gaveston a voice, it is an attempt to reconstruct a personality that has been largely lost in the mists of time and history and obscured by sensationalism and rumours that began even in his own lifetime. And for readers who like the concept of an unreliable narrator, I think they might find my version of Gaveston both interesting and entertaining.

5. What sparks your creativity? Any tips to help others spark their own creativity?

I wish I could answer this one better, but I don’t know, with me it just happens. I read or hear or see something and it just latches onto my mind and won’t let go; I have to write whatever it is down on a sort of ideas list to get any peace, otherwise, it will just keep gnawing and pulling at my attention until I do. Sometimes these “little sparks of inspiration” stay with me for years, like with Lady Rochford. I became interested in Tudor England, especially Anne Boleyn who sparked my interest in history in general, at an early age, and I was always fascinated by the role her sister-in-law played in her story. Lady Rochford accused her husband, George Boleyn, of committing incest with his sister Anne, and they both ended their lives on the scaffold, then some years later she acted as go-between in Katherine Howard’s adultery, and, in an act of what some might call poetic justice, ended up bowing her own head to the headsman. The “Why?” and “How?” of it always intrigued me—Why did she do it? How did she live with herself afterwards? You don’t just do something like that and then it’s over and done and you just don’t think about it anymore, it has to touch you in some lingering way that stays with you, even if you try to push it away and bury it in the back of your mind, there will be times when it burrows its way back up to the forefront again, and that’s what eventually drove me to write my second novel, VENGEANCE IS MINE, which will be reprinted and published as THE BOLEYN WIFE in February 2010.

6. What has been the biggest stumbling block in your writing?

Loneliness, and the lack of encouragement and moral support as a consistent and Real presence in my life. At least I have the internet; it allows me to talk to people in distant places, and some of them are very supportive of my writing, and I am grateful for that.

7. Tell me about the most unusual things you have done to promote your book.

I haven’t really done anything unusual. I have my website, a blog, and I’ve just recently joined Twitter, I also have bookmarks that I give out, I always include these in the used books I sell on ebay, and I have a shop on www.cafepress.com that offers t-shirts and other items with my book’s peacock cover design on them. I’m a shy person and the idea of public speaking absolutely terrifies me, but fortunately I haven’t been asked to do anything like that yet.

8. Each author is different in the way they create a work of fiction. Please describe for us how you plan or plot a story.

I don’t really know how to explain it. I do research and take notes, I look at portraits and photographs, I jot down ideas as they come to me, I always keep notebooks at hand for this as sometimes they come to me after I’ve turned out the light to try to sleep or while I’m in the bath. I always write out a chronological list of events and dates I know I need to include, but beyond that I just do it. Writing seems to be an instinctual process for me, I have no formal training, I never took a class or read a how-to book, so I can’t really explain how I learned to do it, maybe I just absorbed it from reading so much.

9. Authors are very unique in the way they write, the tools they use, when they write, etc. Please describe a typical writing day for you? How do you organize your day?

I am a very unproductive writer, I don’t write on a daily basis. I am constantly criticized for this; people are always trying to push me to hurry up and get another book done, despite the tension and pressure this creates. I always try to explain that it’s an emotional process with me; I have to be all there, it’s not something I can do on autopilot, I have to be in the right mood, it’s not like ringing up sales at Wal-Mart or digging a ditch, but no one ever listens to me. The creative urge to sit down in front of the computer and write comes when it comes, and when it does, I answer the call, I don’t like to try to force it; that never achieves good results. When it’s there I just go with it, I will sit at the computer and write until I’m exhausted and I can’t see to keep going. I’m fortunate in that I am a fast typist; I can keep up with what my mind dictates, I could never do this longhand and write even remotely legibly, I always say my handwriting went to the Devil when I learned to type. My bursts of creativity don’t follow a pattern, I might write one night and it might be two weeks before it happens again, or I might write for two weeks then break for two days before I’m back at it again, or the period of inactivity may be even more lengthy; it’s entirely random. When I do write, I tend to do it at night as there are fewer interruptions and distractions like telemarketers ringing the phone and chores to do, and I have a tendency to insomnia.

10. What is your current work in progress?

I am doing research and taking notes for another historical novel, but I prefer not to go into specifics; I might jinx myself by talking about it. I would prefer to wait until I am further along before I make any public statements.

11. Can you tell us where to find more information about you and your books and how readers can reach you?

Gladly, I have a website, www.brandypurdy.com, a blog, http://brandypurdy.blogspot.com, and good old-fashioned email, of course, bkpbooks@yahoo.com

12. What would you like our readers to know about you and your writing?
There’s really not much to tell about me. In my writing I prefer quality over quantity, I would rather have two good books to my name, books that were written because I wanted to write them, than twenty that are just written because it is expected of me or to try to earn a profit.

The Confession of Piers Gaveston

2009-06-20T00:00:00.005-06:00

The Confession of Piers Gaveston is the tale of a true person who died in the early 14th century. He was a very close companion to King Edward II. So close, in fact, rumors still abound that they were actual lovers. Piers Gaveston literally rises from the ashes into the highest realm of the English empire because his good looks, arrogance, flamboyant personality, and outrageous behavior attract the interest of the King. Subsequently, he is showered with gifts which include land grants, titles, and jewels. All this attention increases the ire of other nobles towards Gaveston resulting in years of disrespect, hatred, and painful accusations of Gaveston.

The novel is written in the format of a journal. It begins in Gaveston’s childhood with an impassioned retelling of the burning of his mother who was convicted as a witch. As a young child, alone, he must resort to prostitution to earn his way. But Piers is craft and he is a survivor. He gains acclaim as a soldier fighting in King Edward I’s army. Because of his reputation as a tough, successful soldier, he is assigned to become a companion to the lazy and weak Prince Edward as companion. A strong bond is formed, one that soon leads into Prince Edward seducing Piers. For Edward, the attraction is much more – Piers becomes his obsession, an ill-fated burden for Gaveston to carry.

From the very first sentence, Purdy managed to make me sit up and take a close look at the words on each page. Her prose is one of the most brilliant I have come across. Every scene, every word engaged me. The first person narration of Piers Gaveston was not only powerful, it evoked strong emotions throughout. Her “tell it like it is” style of writing brings the reader deep into the main character’s frame of mind, portraying him as both loveable and abhorrent. The scenes of homosexuality are written vividly but tastefully in an openly honest manner.

Brandy Purdy is an up and coming author one must watch carefully in the future for I have no doubt she will become a favorite for many readers of historical fiction.