The Writing Desk

Extract from a letter written by Queen Henrietta Maria to her son, the exiled Prince Charles (later King Charles II).

2026-11-06T08:13:43.346+00:00

I discovered this long letter during my research, and thought this extract from the end offers a poignant impression of the widowed queen's mind and relationship with her son:

I have no other rainbow than that of remembering that I am your mother, and in your generous spirit it is well seen that you are the son of so great a father; and if God, who is above destiny, should please to replace you on his throne, which I cannot hope to see in my few remaining days, you will show yourself still more so. But meanwhile, what can your wretched mother advise you? The crowns of Scotland and Ireland are doubtless fitting steps to bring you to your entire kingdom of Great Britain, yet, nevertheless, I fear the infidelity of the Scots, who for the price of a few pieces of money, sold the life of the king, your incomparable father, to the Parliament. My afflicted heart knows that if you declare yourself Catholic, as you have so often promised me, they will not think your title good ; and if you do not do so, with what affection will Ireland follow you ? I will never believe that this promise will betray you, for he who fears God, cannot be faithless to his prince. Would it had pleased heaven that Henry VIII., your ancestor, had never apostatized from God ! then would the kingdom of England not now have committed, with so detestable infidelity, so execrable a parricide to the king!

Would that my father, the great Henry, could rise again, to read you a lecture on the manner in which you should govern these kingdoms ! recommend yourself, however, to the Most High, that He may direct your actions to the desirable end ; — as all the remaining hours of my few days will be for you, and to unite you with God, though I am so cast down and dispirited by grief, that I do not remember any more to say to you. Yet my real afflictions do not make me forget your brothers, and that unfortunate Elizabeth. Oh ! if before my death, I could see her out of the hands of the traitors, I could die content. To this at least, I will exhort you, to employ every force, to use every artifice, to withdraw so dear a part of my own heart, this innocent victim of their fury, your worthy sister, from London. Do it, I pray and conjure you, by the spirit of the king, my lord and your father.

Instead of the counsels which I could give you, and which you ask from me, you must receive all I have to give, which my secretary will deliver you in my name, with a most fervent embrace ; that is, almost all the jewels which I have left, reserving two only, one for Elizabeth, if I can give it to her, and the other for my own support, during my short residue of life ; whilst, having taken leave of the court, I retire with only two maids, my secretary, and confessor, to private life, to finish my days with the least possible disturbance, disentangled from the world ; and you may be even sure that my spirit, which hopes for eternal rest in imperturbable felicity, will ever pray for you and your happy success. I conclude by remaining.

Yours as ever.

Special Guest Interview with Gerard Stahl, Author of Tides of Renderis: Forged Slumber

2026-11-06T07:38:20.063+00:00

Available from Amazon UK and Amazon US

What if the person you were meant to love existed in a world y

ou were never supposed to find?

I'm plasrd to welcome author Gerard Stahl to The Writing Desk:

Tell us about your latest book.

At its core, Tides of Renderis: Forged Slumber is about five individuals who have created a family of their own. When I started developing this series, I wanted to create characters readers would genuinely want to spend time with. Characters you'd want to call on the phone, invite over for dinner, or have by your side when life gets a little crazy. I wanted them to feel like real people, even though the world I've thrown them into is anything but ordinary!

Set in the quaint coastal town of Cobalt Cove, Forged Slumber introduces readers to a group of friends whose lives become entangled in a supernatural mystery involving another realm, dark magic, and secrets that challenge everything they thought they knew. From the opening line, "I fell in love with someone I never met," to the mysterious words, "Someone forged his slumber," there are clues and twists waiting to be discovered.

There's also a love story at the heart of it all. I'm a sucker for a good slow-burn romance! Ultimately, I wanted readers to come for the mystery and magic but stay because they've fallen in love with the characters.

What is your preferred writing routine?

I'm a part-time writer, although sometimes I feel like I'm writing all day! I've been an English Language Arts teacher for more than 25 years, helping elementary school students develop a love of reading and writing.

My own creative writing usually happens at night, after I've finished my teaching responsibilities and settled in at home. I've never considered teaching a hindrance to being an author. Quite the opposite, actually! During the school day, I'm constantly surrounded by stories, creativity, and young imaginations. My students inspire me to think differently, and sometimes their enthusiasm for storytelling sparks ideas of my own.

Once that final school bell rings, it's my turn to put those creative muscles to work. I think teaching is the perfect companion career for an indie author. At least, it certainly has been for me!

What advice do you have for new writers?

I would tell aspiring authors that the key to good writing is getting there. Don't rush an ending just because you're excited to reach it. All the things that happen along the way are the heart of the story.

Those quieter conversations, unexpected friendships, difficult decisions, and little moments of growth are what make readers care about your characters. You can write the biggest, most spectacular ending imaginable, but if readers haven't connected with the people experiencing it, that ending won't have nearly the same impact.

Give your characters room to grow, make mistakes, and surprise you. When you finally reach that big ending, you want it to mean something.

What have you found to be the best way to raise awareness of your books?

I think the best way to answer that question is with one word: perseverance. The writing is the easy part. Finding your audience presents a challenge, but it isn't an impossible feat if you're willing to persevere.

I've always been a visual learner, so I take the time to create imagery and even videos that help convey what my stories are about. I share them across various social media platforms in the hope that they'll reach the right readers. I'm constantly experimenting with different ways to bring my stories to life beyond the pages of a book.

I also firmly believe in the power of word of mouth. Everyone knows somebody who knows somebody! I'm proud of my work, and I'm certainly not shy about talking about it. I think that enthusiasm is important, especially as an independent author. You have to believe in what you've created and be willing to keep putting it out into the world.

Tell us something unexpected you discovered during your research.

My answer might be a little unexpected, but I'd have to say love. We love our fellow human beings, places, experiences, and so many other things in life. What I didn't expect was to discover an entirely new level of love for my creative process once I hit that publish button and sent my book out into the world.

I loved my book from the very beginning. After all, I spent years creating its world and developing its characters. But what surprised me most was hearing why other people loved it, too. Sometimes readers connect with characters or moments in ways I hadn't even considered.

As a writer, you can spend so much time trapped inside your own head, building worlds and creating characters that feel incredibly real to you. There's something wonderful about finally opening that door, inviting other people inside, and hearing what they have to say. That has been one of the most unexpected and rewarding parts of this entire experience.

What was the hardest scene you remember writing?

What a challenging but welcome question! I don't want to give too much away, but there is a scene in my book that required me to place a character in two different realms at once.

This character possesses certain core qualities that remain consistent across both realms, but their behavior and personality are distinctly different in each one. They also have a task to carry out in both realms, and each task directly affects another character's life.

The challenge was balancing the positive and negative aspects of this character's personality while making sure everything remained consistent with the larger story. I had to consider how their actions in one realm would affect events in the other without disrupting the continuity of the narrative.

It was definitely one of the more challenging scenes I've written, but I think I accomplished what I set out to do. And I'll leave readers with one little hint: this character is both young and old across the two realms. Make of that what you will!

What are you planning to write next?

Book two of my Tides of Renderis trilogy, Forged Realities, is pretty much ready to go! Book three, Forged Sunder, is also completely written, although I recently decided to revisit its final story arc. I'm spending some time reworking a few elements because I want the conclusion of the trilogy to feel earned and give these characters the ending they deserve.

It's strange and exciting to be this far into a world that existed only in my imagination for so many years. Forged Slumber introduced readers to these characters and their world, but their story is far from over. There are still plenty of secrets to uncover, relationships to explore, and surprises waiting for readers.

And believe me, these characters still have quite a journey ahead of them!

Gerard Stahl

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About the Author

Gerard Stahl is an independent author and elementary school English Language Arts educator from New Jersey with more than 25 years of teaching experience. His writing combines his love of supernatural fantasy, suspense, and character-driven storytelling. His debut dark fantasy trilogy, Tides of Renderis, begins with Forged Slumber, a story of friendship, romance, and supernatural mysteries spanning two realms. When he isn't teaching or writing, Gerard enjoys spending time with his family, exploring his love of pop culture, and finding inspiration in the world around him. Find out more at Gerard's Website: https://storiesbystahl.com and find him on TikTok: @gerard.916 and Instagram @storiesbystahl

Bess Raleigh and the Gunpowder Plot: A Family Affair

2026-11-05T10:41:59.035+00:00

When we think of the Gunpowder Plot of 1605, the names that usually spring to mind are Guy Fawkes, Robert Catesby and Thomas Percy. Yet behind the conspirators was an extensive network of family relationships, and one woman found herself remarkably close to the centre of it all: Elizabeth, Lady Raleigh, better known as Bess Throckmorton, wife of Sir Walter Raleigh.

Bess was born into the influential Throckmorton family, one of England's most prominent Catholic dynasties. Although Bess herself was a Protestant, her extended family included numerous Catholics whose religious convictions had brought them into conflict with the Crown. These family connections extended into the households of the Gunpowder Plotters.

Robert Catesby

Catesby's mother was Anne Throckmorton, daughter of Sir Robert Throckmorton of Coughton Court. Through the Throckmortons, Bess was related to the wives of nearly all the principal conspirators. Among them were Martha Wright, whose husband Thomas Percy was involved in the plot and whose brothers John and Christopher Wright were also conspirators; Anne Tufton, wife of Francis Tresham; and women connected to the Wintour, Grant and other conspirator families.

These were not simply distant acquaintances. They belonged to an interconnected world of Catholic gentry families, where marriages strengthened relationships, secured property and maintained networks of influence. Family loyalties could survive differences in religious conviction, although the events of 1605 would put those loyalties under extraordinary pressure.

Bess occupied a particularly interesting position. Unlike many of her Catholic relatives, she remained a Protestant. This distinction mattered enormously when the authorities began investigating the conspiracy. Catholic households were searched, women were questioned, and several of the plotters' wives were arrested and brought to London for examination.

Bess had another, rather more immediate reason to be anxious.

Her husband, Sir Walter Raleigh, was already imprisoned in the Tower of London. Arrested in 1603 following the alleged Main Plot against James I, Raleigh had been convicted of treason and sentenced to death. His execution was postponed, however, and his sentence was eventually commuted to imprisonment for life.

The discovery of the Gunpowder Plot therefore brought an additional danger to a household already living under suspicion. Raleigh's reputation, his previous political difficulties and Bess's family connections made them particularly vulnerable to rumours that they might have known more about the conspiracy than they admitted.

Both Bess and Walter came under suspicion following the discovery of the plot. However, no evidence was found to establish their involvement, and the accusations were dropped.

For Bess, the consequences were nevertheless serious. She had two surviving sons to support, a husband whose freedom depended upon the King's mercy, and relatives whose names were now associated with one of the most notorious acts of treason in English history.

There is something particularly compelling about Bess's position. She was a Protestant woman surrounded by Catholic relatives, married to a man who had himself been condemned for treason, yet she managed to navigate the dangerous political and religious divisions of Jacobean England.

The Gunpowder Plot is usually remembered as a story of thirteen men and their terrible conspiracy. But for Bess Raleigh, it was also a family crisis. The explosion that never happened threatened to destroy lives and reputations far beyond the conspirators themselves.

Her story reminds us that behind the great political events of history were families, marriages and women who had to live with the consequences of decisions they had not made.

Discover the world of Bess Raleighin the final book of my Elizabethan series: Bess - Tudor Gentlewonan

Tony Riches

Book Launch Guest Post by Kari Lee Townsend, Author of The Shadow in the Mirror (A Harrow & Marrow Mystery Book 1)

2026-11-04T08:22:48.224+00:00

Available for pre-order

from Amazon UK and Amazon US

A portrait artist whose brushstrokes reveal murder, a skeptical inspector who can't explain what she knows, and a killer using mirrors as instruments of death — a gothic paranormal mystery set in Victorian London's most shadowed corners, where the line between vision and madness is razor thin.

Mercury, Poison Powder, and a River Under London: What Surprised Me While Researching The Shadow in the Mirror

When I started The Shadow in the Mirror, the first book in my Harrow & Marrow Mysteries, I thought I knew what a Victorian gothic needed: fog, gaslight, a brooding inspector, and a mirror or two. I didn’t expect the research to take me through poison, plumbing, and the dangerous habits of fashionable ladies. Every one of those discoveries ended up in the plot.

The book is set in London in 1887. Inspector Lucien Harrow and portrait artist Seraphine Marrow, who has a gift she doesn’t yet understand, investigate a string of deaths among young women in the city’s most polished social circles. The deaths look unrelated, but they aren’t.
The mirror was a poisoned object

I wanted mirrors at the heart of the story, so I looked into how a Victorian mirror was actually made. For centuries, glass was silvered with a tin-and-mercury amalgam. The result was beautiful, but the workers who made them were slowly poisoned by mercury. Silver nitrate methods arrived in the nineteenth century and gradually changed the trade, so for a while both processes, and both kinds of danger, overlapped.
I had assumed the mirrors were the spooky part of my story. It turns out they were a toxic part of the trade too, an everyday object in every fashionable drawing room with a hidden dark side.

Beauty was a dangerous business

The detail that stopped me cold was how far Victorian women went to look pale. A fashionable complexion was ghostly white, and the cosmetics of the day delivered it with ingredients that would horrify us now. Lead-based face powders were common, and arsenic was sold as a complexion aid, even in the form of “wafers” women ate to clear and whiten their skin. Some used belladonna to widen their eyes. Women were deliberately dosing themselves in pursuit of an ideal, and the damage built up quietly.

For a mystery writer, that’s irresistible. When young women in high society start falling ill and dying, how do you tell poison from fashion? A pale, wan, fragile look was the goal, so early warning signs could be mistaken for beauty. That gave my characters a built-in problem to solve.

A painter’s studio is basically a chemistry lab

Seraphine’s studio had to be accurate, and it was just as hazardous. Pigments came from lead, mercury, and arsenic compounds, so even the lovely whites and greens had a body count attached. This research shaped how she sees the world. A painter notices tiny shifts in color, skin tone, and reflection, which is exactly the attention a mystery needs. She can look at a pale complexion and wonder what put it there.

The river that London buried

My favorite discovery came from the ground itself. The Fleet was once a real river, and it still runs beneath London. Over the centuries it was covered over and absorbed into the city’s sewers, so it’s still down there, hidden under the streets.

For a mystery writer, a lost river is the perfect hiding place. It’s dark, fast-moving, and out of sight, with culverts, tunnels, and sluice gates that only a few people understand. If you needed to bury a body, or hide a ledger, a weapon, or any evidence that could ruin a family, you couldn’t ask for a better spot. The Fleet had long been a dumping ground, so no one would question what drifted through it. Getting the water logic right turned into a puzzle of its own, and I’m proud of how it plays out in the climax, though I promise no spoilers.

Every detective needs a few good sidekicks

Research gives a story its bones, but the ensemble gives it a heartbeat. I come from cozy mysteries, where the recurring cast is half the fun, so I wasn’t about to write a gothic without one.

Seraphine has Rook, the dog who appears on the cover. He’s loyal, observant, and has opinions about suspicious characters. Then there’s her housekeeper, Mrs. Clove, who keeps Seraphine’s household running and has no patience for nonsense, whether it comes from a ghost or a duke. Inspector Harrow has Constable Oakes, his steady right hand, who brings warmth and humor to the cases and balances his brooding boss.

They are the heart of the series, and early readers have told me they feel like family. I think that’s the cozy writer in me. Even in the fog, I want my characters to have people who have their backs.
That may be the most surprising thing I learned. Research isn’t a chore you finish before the story starts. It keeps handing you plot, and the more oddly specific the fact, the better it works. Add a loyal dog and a couple of devoted friends, and you have a world worth coming back to.

Join the giveaway

If you’d like to step into 1887 London, I’m giving away 10 paperback copies of The Shadow in the Mirror on Goodreads, running from October 19 to November 15, 2026.

Book giveaway for The Shadow in the Mirror (A Harrow & Marrow Mystery) by Kari Lee Townsend Oct 19-Nov 15, 2026 | Goodreads

Thank you so much to Tony for having me on The Writing Desk!

Kari Lee Townsend

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About the author

National Bestselling Author, Agatha, RT Reviewer's Choice and Golden Duck Award Nominee. Kari lives in Central New York with her husband & Samoyeds. She's a lover of wine & travel, obsessed with reality TV, and loves a good book with mystery, romance & humor. She writes paranormal and fantasy cozy mysteries, historical mysteries & upper middle grade as Kari Lee Townsend, as well as suspense, romance, romantic comedy & women's fiction as Kari Lee Harmon.
You can find her at www.karileetownsend.com and on Instagram, Twitter/X @karileetownsend and Bluesky @karileetownsend.bsky.social

Blog Tour Spotlight: Grace: Historical fiction about Grace Darling, the lighthouse keeper’s daughter, by Helen Steadman

2026-11-04T06:30:49.603+00:00

Available from Amazon UK and Amazon US

A young woman answers a cry across the water and loses herself

in the echo. Longstone Lighthouse, 1838.

Grace Darling wakens to the howl of wind screaming over stone and the sight of a ship smashed against the rocks. No stranger to the fury of the sea, she braves the raging waters, risking her life to save nine survivors.

Her valour captures the nation’s heart, and in the aftermath of her daring rescue, she is hailed as a heroine. Painted, praised and relentlessly pursued, Grace is swept out from the shadows of solitude and into the limelight. But fame brings its own tempest, and the lighthouse keeper’s daughter soon finds herself eclipsed by her own legend.

Grace is a haunting portrait of a modest young woman consumed by the voracious gaze of Victorian Britain.

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About the Author

Helen Steadman mostly writes biographical historical fiction (think herbs, healing, witch trials, swords, shipwrecks and lighthouses) set in the north east of England. Find out more at Helen's website: https://helensteadman.com/ and find her on Facebook:and Twitter / X: @AuthorStea60177

Historical Fiction Spotlight: The Colour of Malice: A Sebastian Foxley Medieval Murder Mystery, by Toni Mount

2026-11-03T06:51:43.752+00:00

Available from Amazon UK and Amazon US

Winter, 1482. A strange new weapon has appeared on the frozen streets of medieval London. Few have seen its like before. Sadly, someone has already learned how deadly it can be, and artist, scribe and sometime sleuth Sebastian Foxley must investigate this new murder mystery.

Seb's search for answers takes him from London's humble fisherfolk to the court of Richard, Duke of Gloucester, where he has been commanded to paint a portrait of the Duchess, Anne Neville.

But perhaps the deaths are not the work of a stranger. An enemy from Seb's past has returned, bringing old malice and new danger to the city. With London gripped by bitter cold, Seb must discover who is behind the killings and what they really want before another victim pays the ultimate price.

Join Seb, his family and friends in The Colour of Malice, the fourteenth Sebastian Foxley Medieval Murder Mystery, as secrets are uncovered and murder comes again to the stinking streets of medieval London.

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About the Author

Toni Mount earned her Master’s Degree as a mature student at the University of Kent by completing original research into a unique 15th-century medical manuscript. She is the author of several successful non-fiction books including the number one bestsellers, Everyday Life in Medieval London and How to Survive in Medieval England, which reflect her detailed knowledge of the lives of ordinary people in the Middle Ages. Toni’s enthusiastic understanding of the period allows her to create accurate, atmospheric settings and realistic characters for her Sebastian Foxley medieval murder mysteries. Find Toni on Facebook

Charles II’s Secret Queen: Lucy Walter: An Infamous Mistress or Forsaken Queen? by Stephen M Carter

2026-10-30T07:06:07.996+00:00

Available from Amazon UK

and pre-order on Amazon US

Lucy Walter was no stranger to conflict after watching her parents fight like cats, only to become the target of her father’s fists. She fell in love as the bloody Civil War ripped England and her family apart. She was with her lover when he learnt of his father’s execution, only to read that the death warrant was signed by a relative. Then she had fight to save her children from being dragged away, and her family being destroyed.

Charles II's Secret Queen is the true story of court intrigues, scandal, and seduction. It is the tale of a woman’s fight for survival against the odds, and the thin line between loyalty and betrayal. Of a mother who had to choose between her king, her lover, and her children.

Charles II's Secret Queen is based on new research, lost manuscripts, and fresh insights. To some, Lucy Walter is Charles II's treacherous whore, she’s the villain without a voice, and even less virtue. After three centuries of bias, it's time to let Lucy be heard. It’s time to answer the question: Was Lucy an Infamous Mistress or Forsaken Queen? When you know the answer, your perspective will change forever. Reader beware, this book is treason

Book Review: On Display: Henrietta Maria and the Materials of Magnificence at the Stuart Court (The Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art) by Erin Griffey.

2026-10-28T06:22:35.890+00:00

Available from Amazon UK and Amazon US

Queen Henrietta Maria is often remembered as the French Catholic queen whose religious beliefs and political influence made her unpopular with many of her English subjects. This book looks beyond the familiar accounts and explores the the objects, clothes and surroundings that shaped her life at court.

Erin Griffey's central argument is that magnificence was about much more than wealth or personal vanity. In the seventeenth century, clothing, jewellery, paintings, furnishings and architecture communicated status and authority. Henrietta Maria understood this instinctively. She brought the traditions and tastes of the French court to England and used her patronage to establish a distinctive identity within the Stuart monarchy.

I particularly like the way Erin Griffey looks beyond familiar portraits by Anthony van Dyck to explore the material world behind them. Household accounts and inventories reveal the richness of the queen's clothing and possessions, offering details paintings cant convey. It is a reminder that royal portraits were carefully constructed representations, not straightforward records of everyday appearance.

The chapters exploring Somerset House were especially interesting. The palace was more than a royal residence; it was a reflection of Henrietta Maria's taste, ambitions and determination to establish a court of her own. Erin Griffey shows how interiors, furnishings and the work of artists and craftsmen contributed to the presentation of royal authority.

For me, one of the more poignant aspects of the book is the contrast between the magnificence of her early years in England and the hardships that followed the Civil Wars and Charles I's execution. Henrietta Maria lost the world she had helped create, yet her determination to preserve her dignity and influence endured through years of exile. Her later involvement with Somerset House after the Restoration adds a particularly interesting final chapter to that story.

This is an academic study, and the detailed examination of inventories and individual objects occasionally makes for demanding reading. However, the wealth of documentary evidence and the illustrations make this a valuable resource for anyone wanting to understand the queen more fully.

I recommend ^ to readers interested in Henrietta Maria, Charles I and the Stuart court. It offers a fresh perspective on a remarkable woman and has certainly deepened my appreciation of how she used art, architecture and material possessions to express her identity and maintain her position. For anyone writing about this period, there is much here to discover.

Tony Riches

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About the Author

Professor Erin Griffey is an art historian and Head of Art History at the University of Auckland. Her work on Queen Henrietta Maria has been instrumental in shaping the field by contributing new knowledge of her strategic engagement with and patronage of visual and material culture for political, social, religious, and dynastic ends. Aspects of adornment – including dress, jewelry and cosmetics – have been central to this discussion. Follow Erin on Bluesky @eringriffey.bsky.social

Special Guest Post by Elizabeth St.John, Author of The Queen's Tears: A Novel of Choices, Courage, and the Cost of Love

2026-10-23T05:21:39.304+00:00

Available from Amazon UK and Amazon US

A stolen crown jewel and an enigmatic portrait force two women to confront the devastating choices they made for love—and summon the courage to live with the truth.

Launching The Queen’s Tears the old-fashioned way

Before anything else, I want to say thank you to book bloggers, because I don’t think people fully realise how important you are. You give up hours of your own time to read our books, which is no small thing when there are so many of them and so few hours to spend, and then you give up more of it to write about them and share them with readers who might never have found them otherwise. You do it for the love of reading, and a launch simply wouldn’t be the same without you, so thank you, from the bottom of my heart, for everything you do and for taking the time to look at this book.

I published my first book ten years ago, in a very different world. It’s really come home to me these last few months as I pulled out my “marketing stuff to do” spreadsheet and worked with my beta readers, cover designer, and editor to get The Queen’s Tears into shape. So far, all familiar territory, albeit still stressful. But then, approaching the marketing, and already realising that the 90% drop in sales I’d experienced in the past three years was never going to recover in an over-saturated marketplace, I decided that more conversations and less conversions would be the theme for this launch. Let’s get back to basics.

Don’t get me wrong. There’s nothing wrong with marketing, advertising, PR, blog tours, promotions, social media, book talks, book tours, book clubs, book…aaargh! But selectively, purposefully, with intent. Yes, I invested in a great cover designer - Dee Dee Book Covers - and my wonderful editor, Jenny Quinlan, is worth her weight in gold. The fabulous bibliophiles at Coffee Pot Book Club are helping spread the word when the book launches. And that’s before I get to the bloggers like you, who give a book like this its very first readers.

The rest is about conversations. A talk at the library surrounded by countless volumes begging to be read. A friend’s book club where we chat long into the evening about amplifying the voices of lost women. An afternoon tea at my local senior centre, where everyone has a story to tell. And connecting with readers and other authors over coffee and online, wherever there is a conversation to be had. Those are the times I’ve always enjoyed.

I can’t tell you how grateful I am to the local libraries, community centres, senior centres and book clubs that have opened their doors to me. They are happy to have me come along and talk about The Queen’s Tears, and just as happy, which matters even more to me, to let me meet their readers and writers and hear what they have to say in return. Those invitations mean far more than any sales dashboard, because they come from people who love stories and are willing to spend an afternoon with a real person talking about them.

My daughter got married a couple of weeks ago, and a beautiful thing about one of the happiest weeks of my life was the “no cell phone” rule on her wedding day. We had a wonderful photographer, Katie, who was everywhere at every moment with us. But everyone else, friends and family, were simply present, meeting for the first time, reminiscing about past get-togethers, talking, laughing, and bringing such a condensed joy to the day that it was palpable. There were no distractions, no posing, no uploading, no sharing, no forwarding nor posting nor AI improving. It was completely and utterly all about the reason we were together. Love.

It made me think about how bewildering the world has become, with a plethora of AI generated content and images filling every screen, and algorithms that have no idea who is writing the words or who is reading them. I find that rather sad, and I’m firmly resolved that this book will be different. I want The Queen’s Tears to be a living piece of art that connects a community, and not simply a product sold by Amazon.

So, for this book launch, you will see the odd social media post. I’ll share some excerpts here. I’ll announce the publication with a promotional flourish, and I’ll certainly share the highs and lows of tackling my first dual-timeline novel and fun research breakthroughs.

But as for the rest, let’s talk about the power of books to inspire, instil joy and take us to other worlds. Let’s make this a salon of people and voices, not an anonymous announcement of “buy my book”. Because honestly, it’s more fun writing and talking about books than being pinned to sales dashboards.

Amazon’s A+ content is a good way to promote the feel of the book. Public domain art always lends a great deal of atmosphere.

So, if you’ve read this far, The Queen’s Tears launched on October 15th. I really enjoyed writing it (except when I didn’t), and I hope that people enjoy reading it, because I would like to write another.

Elizabeth St.John

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About the Author

Elizabeth St.John’s critically acclaimed historical fiction novels tell the stories of her ancestors: extraordinary women whose intriguing kinship with England's kings and queens brings an intimately unique perspective to Medieval, Tudor, and Stuart times. Inspired by family archives and residences from Lydiard Park to the Tower of London, Elizabeth spends much of her time exploring ancestral portraits, diaries, and lost gardens. And encountering the occasional ghost. But that’s another story. Living between California, England, and the past, Elizabeth is the International Ambassador for The Friends of Lydiard Park, an English charity dedicated to conserving and enhancing this beautiful centuries-old country house and park. As a curator for The Lydiard Archives, she is constantly looking for an undiscovered treasure to inspire her next novel. Find out more at Elizabeth's website http://www.elizabethjstjohn.com/ and follow her on Facebook, Twitter @ElizStJohn and Bluesky @elizabethstjohn.bsky.social‬

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Historical Fiction Spotlight: A Knightly Betrayal: 2 (A Sheriff Simon de Hale Mystery) by Jill Bray

2026-10-22T05:59:46.701+00:00

Available from Amazon UK and Amazon US

October 1224. Simon de Hale, Sheriff of Yorkshire, is travelling to his manor to celebrate the birth of his first grandchild. Awaiting his arrival is an unexpected guest, Lady Cecily Chalcombe, a beguiling acquaintance from his days at the royal court. Recently widowed in scandalous circumstances, Lady Cecily throws herself upon his mercy and seeks his protection from the people threatening her.

Guests arrive for a celebration feast, including Lady Cecily’s brother Nicholas and the distinguished Earl Warenne. But upon retiring, Simon finds Lady Cecily standing over the dead body of her maid, hands bloodied.

Simon cannot believe she has killed her maid, but if she hasn’t then who was it. Was the death meant as a warning to Lady Cecily?

With the help of his daughter Katherine, Simon starts to investigate the murder and uncovers a web of gambling, deceit and betrayal. But will he be able to find the killer before Lady Cecily becomes the next victim.

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About the author

Jill Bray lives on the beautiful island of Guernsey, Channel Islands. Originally from West Yorkshire, she has had an interest in the medieval history of the county for over 40 years. ' A Brotherly Devotion' is her first novel. You can find Jill on Twitter/X at @JillBray67 and Bluesky @jillbray.bsky.social

Book Review – When the Stones Held by David E. Owen

2026-10-21T05:12:51.249+00:00

Available from Amazon UK and Amazon US

Born into poverty in the remote valleys of South Wales, William grows up in a world shaped by hard labour, dangerous rivers, and communities struggling to survive. Education is rare. Opportunity is rarer still. Yet from childhood, William becomes fascinated by stone, by balance, and by the dream of building something that will outlive him.

David E. Owen’s When the Stones Held is a thoughtful novel about endurance and the forces that connect people across time. The stones of the title become more than part of the setting. One of the novel’s most compelling ideas is the metaphor of building bridges.

David Owen uses it to explore the possibility of connection where there has previously been distance or division. A bridge depends upon foundations, patience and careful construction. The image becomes a natural reflection of the characters’ attempts to understand one another and come to terms with the past.

What makes this effective is avoiding turning reconciliation into a sentimental process. The emotional foundations must to be laid first, and the consequences of earlier choices remain present. The novel recognises is often something painstakingly constructed rather than suddenly discovered.

David Owen’s writing is engaging when these themes emerge through the story, rather than being explained. There is a tangible sense of place, and the landscape becomes bound to memory and identity. The result is a novel that feels grounded while still reaching towards larger questions about loss, belonging and the possibility of renewal.

Tony Riches

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About the Author

David E. Owen spent decades teaching around the world—from the UK to the Caribbean, Africa, and the Middle East. Now retired, he divides his time between writing, photography, and keeping fit. Find out more at David's website: https://davideowen.uk/ and find him on Instagram, Facebook, Twitter/X and Bluesky: @dai-owen.bsky.social

Secret Numbers and Royal Betrayal: Queen Henrietta Maria’s Coded Letters to King Charles I in 1642

2026-10-20T09:05:31.121+00:00

How a queen’s secret correspondence helped sustain the Royalist cause as England descended into civil war.

One of the challenges in writing about the English Civil War is the number of ‘rabbit holes’ to distract me. One example is exploring the wealth of secret correspondence between the king and queen.

In the summer of 1642, England faced catastrophe. King Charles I and Parliament reached an impasse, armies gathered, and Queen Henrietta Maria was in The Hague, working to raise money and secure the weapons her husband desperately needed. The problem was a letter could be intercepted, its contents exposed, and the information used against the Crown.

Henrietta Maria and Charles relied on secret codes or ‘ciphers’. Their letters were more than messages between husband and wife. They were full of information about money, military supplies, diplomatic negotiations and people whose loyalties might determine the outcome of the coming war.

As part of my research into this I bought a copy of the original letters from Queen Henrietta Maria to Charles I, including correspondence written in ciphers. These letters provide a fascinating glimpse into a secret world, hidden behind an apparently meaningless string of numbers.

A secret language of numbers

One historical account describes the introduction of a new cipher in a letter written shortly before King Charles I raised his royal standard at Nottingham on 22 August 1642. The explanation is remarkably precise:

It consists of figures only. The system was more sophisticated than a simple substitution cipher, in which each letter is replaced by a number. According to the description, numbers up to 77 represented the letters of the alphabet, while higher numbers, extending to 379, stood for the names of people and a selection of frequently used words.

These included terms such as money, peace, treaty and rebels. This was a practical solution to a serious problem. A letter discussing a loan, a proposed treaty or a named political ally could be dangerous even if its individual sentences appeared harmless.

Queen Henrietta Maria's cipher example

By assigning frequently used names and politically sensitive words their own numerical codes, the correspondents could make their messages harder to interpret. The cipher also contained a secondary system in which a letter combined with a number represented short, common words such as will, be, of and from. Such devices reduced the need to spell out every word individually and made the code more efficient to use.

To an enemy who intercepted the letter without the key, the page looked like little a jumble of figures. To its intended recipient, it could convey a message about the survival of the monarchy.

Why Henrietta Maria needed secrecy

Henrietta Maria was not a queen who could safely leave political affairs to her husband. In 1642, she was in the Dutch Republic, ostensibly to hand over her ten-year-old daughter Mary to her new ‘husband’, William of Orange.

Her real plan was buy arms and ammunition for the Royalist cause, using - by trying to sell and obtain loans against several of the Crown jewels, as well as the best of her own jewels, smuggled out of England.

She needed to keep Charles informed of her progress, while receiving news from England and coordinating decisions with him. A letter had to travel through several hands before reaching its destination. Couriers could be questioned, ships delayed or searched, and correspondence seized by political opponents.

The secret cipher offered protection, although no system was entirely secure. The more important the information, the greater the incentive for an adversary to break the code.

Cracking the royal cipher

The remarkable feature of the numerical system is that the key used to decipher the queen's letters helped unlock passages in Charles I's correspondence. The historical account explains that some of the king's letters, previously printed in contemporary pamphlets without their coded passages being understood, could be deciphered using the queen's key.

This is an important clue to how the system worked. The two correspondents needed compatible methods of encoding and decoding their messages. Once a complete key had been recovered, it could reveal more than one letter and sometimes more than one correspondent's contribution to the exchange.

A cipher key was a valuable political document, and King Charles carried his with him in his pocket. In the wrong hands, it could expose the meaning of letters that had been considered secure.

On 22 August 1642, Charles raised his royal standard at Nottingham, formally committing himself to military resistance against Parliament. The king's decision followed months of escalating confrontation.

King Charles I Raising His Standard at Nottingham Castle, 1642

(Wikimedia Commons)

The raising of the standard was a public declaration of royal authority. Henrietta Maria's coded letters belonged to the secret struggle behind it: the effort to obtain the money, arms and foreign support needed to sustain the king's cause.

The contrast is striking. While Charles made his intentions visible before the people gathered at Nottingham, his queen was engaged in a clandestine campaign of negotiation and procurement, communicating through letters whose most important passages were hidden in numbers.

The human cost behind the numbers

There is something poignant about a letter reduced to figures. Behind every encoded name or reference to money lay a human relationship and a political calculation. A trusted messenger had to carry the paper. Someone had to copy the numbers accurately. The recipient needed the right key, and both correspondents had to hope that no one else had acquired it.

Henrietta Maria's numerical cipher shows a queen working actively to defend her husband's cause, and a royal couple attempting to maintain their partnership when ordinary communication had become perilous. The figures on the page may look cold and impersonal. Their purpose was anything but. They carried the hopes of a monarchy under siege, at the moment when England's political crisis was becoming a civil war.

Tony Riches

Special Guest Post by Brenda K. Thompson: The Child Who Was Stolen: Writing A Feed Sack Dress for Sadie

2026-10-17T05:03:43.324+00:00

Available from Amazon UK and Amazon US

Sadie Lockhart grew up on the Lockhart farm, where silence was expected and usefulness passed for affection. Hidden deep in the hills, she was raised far from the world, and the Lockharts made certain no one knew she existed.

Some characters begin with a face. Some with a place. Sadie began with a story my mother carried home from her work with hospice. After my father died, my mother volunteered with hospice. One of the women she cared for had an old black-and-white photograph on her mantel. It showed a barefoot little girl wearing what looked like a feed sack, crudely cut with openings for her head and arms.
The woman told my mother the little girl in the photograph was her.
She said she’d been stolen as a child.

The people who took her dressed her that way, and she grew up never knowing where she’d come from or who her real family was. I never forgot that story. But I kept thinking about the child. What would it mean to remember being taken? What happens to a child when the adults around her give her another name, another family, another version of who she is? And what happens when that child grows up?

Those questions became the beginning of A Feed Sack Dress for Sadie.
Sadie Lockhart is fictional. Her life is not the life of the woman in my mother's care. But once I began writing, Sadie became her own person, with her own childhood, her own choices, and her own way of moving through the world.

In the novel, Sadie is stolen and kept on an isolated farm in rural Appalachia. She grows up in a place where silence and usefulness pass for affection. Her world is small, but Sadie remembers enough to know that once her life was different, better.

Sadie hadn’t forgotten everything. Something inside her remained her own. A memory. A question. The knowledge that before she was Sadie Lockhart, she’d belonged somewhere else. The story is set in the Appalachian world of The Glens, the fictional mountain range where several of my novels take place.

In Sadie’s world, readers walk the roads with her, enter the houses, sit at the tables, and feel how easily a person could disappear into a place where families lived miles apart and much of life remained private. That world also has to belong to its time.

I researched the world around Sadie closely: the work people did, the clothes they wore, the distance between farms and towns, the way news travelled, and the things a family could buy or had to make for themselves. By the time those details reach the page, they are no longer research. They are simply part of Sadie’s life.

The feed sack dress came from the photograph my mother described, and eventually it gave the novel its title. But the dress was never the story. The child wearing it was. As Sadie grows older, the question becomes larger than what was done to her.

If a child’s family, name, and history are taken from her, what remains that is still her own? Sadie survives much of her childhood by being useful. Later, that same instinct becomes part of the woman she grows into. She sees what needs doing. She helps before someone has to ask. People come to know her through the things she does, without knowing the truth of how her life began.

The reader carries that truth. Sadie’s past is always there, even when no one around her can see it. What was done to her shapes her life, but it doesn’t become the whole of who she is.
That’s one of the things I return to often in my writing. People live through circumstances they didn't choose. Families give us names. Communities give us places. Other people may decide what they think we are.

Still, somewhere inside all of that is the person who has to live the life. When I write, I don’t stand outside my characters and watch them. I step inside them. It’s much like an actor taking on a role. While I’m writing, their world becomes the one I live in.

I see what they see. I hear what they hear. I can feel the roughness of wood beneath a hand, the bumps in a road, the cold in a room. The story follows me long after I’ve stopped writing for the day. I lie awake thinking about the character, the place, what’s happened and what comes next. I stay there until the world feels real to me. I cry with them. I cry for them.

That was especially true with Sadie. The stolen child could never remain simply an idea at the beginning of a story. She had to become a whole person whose life I could enter and live beside. The farther I went with Sadie, the question became less about where she’d come from and more about who she would become. What happened to her began the story. It didn’t have to define the rest of her life.

A Feed Sack Dress for Sadie is part of Stories from The Glens, my growing collection of standalone Appalachian novels. Alice Anyway, Ivaleena, and Child H belong to that same imagined world, although each book tells a separate story.

I was grateful when A Feed Sack Dress for Sadie recently received an Honorable Mention in the 34th Annual Writer's Digest Self-Published Book Awards in Mainstream/Literary Fiction.
Awards are wonderful things for an author to receive. But they aren’t where a story begins.

Sadie began with a stolen child and a question I couldn’t put away. What happens to someone when so much of who she was has been taken from her? I followed that question until Sadie became more than the child who was stolen. She became Sadie.

Brenda K. Thompson

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About the Author

Brenda K. Thompson is an award-winning author of historical and literary fiction. Through plain language and the small details of ordinary life, she brings her characters’ worlds close enough for readers to step inside them and remember the people they meet there. Her Appalachian novels are part of Stories from The Glens, a growing collection of standalone books set in an imagined mountain world. Her debut novel, Alice Anyway, received the 2026 Next Generation Indie Book Awards Grand Prize for Fiction and won the First Novel category. Brenda and her husband, Jim, live on the North Carolina coast. Learn more at brendakthompson.com.

Book Launch Spotlight: The Queen's Tears: A Novel of Choices, Courage, and the Cost of Love by Elizabeth St.John

2026-10-15T05:41:39.581+00:00

Available from Amazon UK and Amazon US

A stolen crown jewel and an enigmatic portrait force two women to confront the devastating choices they made for love—and summon the courage to live with the truth.

1619: Barbara, Lady Villiers, at the bidding of her brother-in-law, the Duke of Buckingham, has stolen the dying Queen Anna’s jewels—and kept the greatest prize for herself. The Queen’s Tears, a brooch of extraordinary value, torments her: too dangerous to sell, too priceless to discard, and possibly her only means of securing her children’s future. When the family fortunes are shattered, Barbara faces an impossible choice: remain loyal to Buckingham—or betray him by confessing the theft to King Charles.

Present Day: Julia Darke opens her Cotswolds bookshop to start life over peacefully. Instead, a Van Dyck portrait of Barbara’s daughter, with tantalising signs of the missing Queen’s Tears hidden in plain sight, brings her face-to-face with Oliver Villiers, the Oxford art conservator she once loved and walked away from.

Reluctantly drawn together to uncover Barbara’s secret, Julia and Oliver follow the trail of the Queen’s Tears—and the closer Julia comes to Barbara’s truth, the harder it becomes to hide from her own.

Inspired by the true stories of Queen Anna of Denmark’s stolen jewels and a missing Van Dyck painting, The Queen’s Tears weaves history, fiction, and family research across the centuries. Readers of The Lydiard Chronicles will find old favourites—and a new heroine following in their footsteps.

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About the Author

Special Guest Post by Rosemary Griggs, Author of Queen Elizabeth I's Governess: The Real Kat Ashley

2026-10-10T05:18:50.765+00:00

Available from Amazon UK and Amazon US

The name ‘Kat Ashley’, Queen Elizabeth’s ‘Governess’, is well-known to fans of Tudor history. Katherine Champernowne, later John Astley’s wife, joined Elizabeth’s household before the future queen turned three. Later she became Elizabeth’s ‘governess’, trusted with the upbringing of the King’s younger daughter. Formidably well-educated for a woman of her time, reports suggest Katherine did an excellent job. When Elizabeth came to the throne, one of her first actions was to name Katherine as Chief Gentlewoman of the Privy Chamber, a highly influential position within the court of a female monarch.

Although they served at the court of Henry VIII, the Champernowne family are not well known to those who study Tudor history. However, anyone interested in the early life of Elizabeth I will have come across Katherine Champernowne, later the wife of John Astley. She is widely known as Elizabeth’s childhood governess, Kat Ashley. I prefer to call her Kate, partly because the evidence that Elizabeth actually used the short form ‘Kat’ is not overwhelming, but also to reinforce that I have found a woman who differs from the Kat of popular culture.

Kate appears briefly in many learned biographies of Henry VIII’s younger daughter. It’s often been supposed she came from a minor gentry family. Writers and filmmakers often portray her in fiction and on screen as a rather foolish, gossipy nanny figure, a minor supporting character in the fascinating drama of Elizabeth’s fraught early years. My research tells a different story.

Far from being from a rural gentry background, Kate was close to people at the heart of the Tudor Court. By the early 16th century, the Champernownes of Devon had expanded their lands well beyond the west country, into Gloucestershire and Oxfordshire. Over many generations, through dynastic marriages, they forged alliances with powerful families, including Poyntz, Carew, and, most notably, Courtenay.

Like many women of her time, the historical record remains stubbornly silent about Kate’s early life. She first comes to notice when appointed to the household of three-year-old Elizabeth in 1536. Exploring her family connections and the people she was close to places that appointment in context.

Kate was the eldest daughter of Sir Philip Champernowne, a close relative of Henry Courtenay, Marquess of Exeter, first cousin and companion of the young Henry VIII. The Marquess’s father was Sir Philip’s first cousin. Sir Philip served as squire of the body to the king for a time, mixing with other well-known courtiers, before he retired to the west country, where he often deputised for the Marquess. Kate may have gained her formidable education among her powerful Courtenay relatives.

Through her maternal grandmother, Kate also had connections to the Poyntz family, who held prominent positions in Catherine of Aragon’s household. Kate’s great aunt married Sir Anthony Poyntz. She is likely the Elizabeth Poyntz who had care of Henry VIII’s short-lived son, Henry Duke of Cornwall. Also on the maternal side, Kate’s uncle, Sir Gawen Carew married Charles Brandon, Duke of Suffolk’s sister.

Brandon was a close friend of the king and married Mary Tudor, the king’s sister, after the death of her first husband, the King of France. Sir Gawen became a prominent courtier, soldier and diplomat. Sir George Carew, ill-fated captain of the Mary Rose, and his brother Sir Peter, were Kate’s cousins.

Kate’s sister, Joan, was one of Catherine Parr’s ladies and shared her interest in the reformed religion. Joan married Sir Anthony Denny, a man so close to King Henry VIII that he was the only one brave enough to tell the dying king that his end was near. Kate’s brother, John, also had a place at court. According to Sir Richard Carew of Anthony, writing in the early years of the seventeenth century, John was popular with King Henry ‘for his pleasant conceits’. So Kate moved in circles close to the royal court. She also knew many Cambridge-educated intellectuals.

Not long after Anne Boleyn’s execution, Kate was one of a group of serving gentlewomen appointed to serve Anne’s three-year-old daughter. Their role was to keep company with the little girl, to entertain her, and at all times to model the behaviour and manners expected of a noblewoman in the sixteenth century. Soon after this appointment, Kate made her first known appearance in the historical record with an extraordinarily bold letter to Thomas Cromwell. That letter, dated 5 October 1536, made me stop and think about the way historians and writers have traditionally portrayed Kate’s character.

To paraphrase the letter — there’s a full transcript in my book — Kate thanks Cromwell for recommending her to the king for her new post. She then asks him if he could speak to the king about payment for her services. Unfortunately, we only have half of this fascinating correspondence. Many of Thomas Cromwell’s papers were destroyed at the time of his downfall, and his response has not survived. In 1536, Cromwell was the most powerful man in the land, after the king. He was not a man who acted without a purpose.

Political considerations influenced his every decision, including Kate’s appointment. I found it very hard to reconcile the author of that letter to the great man with the foolish character traditionally given to Kate. Would a girl, however well educated, from a minor gentry family, really have dared to write to him in those terms? And would Cromwell have even considered appointing someone so lacking in judgement?

n 1536, Lady Margaret Bryan was Elizabeth’s Lady Mistress, having overall oversight of the child’s upbringing and early years education. Lady Troy, working with Lady Bryan, was Elizabeth’s governess, and likely introduced the child to her letters using a hornbook. At that time, no one expected Elizabeth would become queen. Rather, as the king’s daughter, even though declared illegitimate, she was a valuable commodity in the marriage market. In her early years, she must gain all the attributes that would make her attractive as a bride.

Sometime after Lady Bryan took charge of the nursery of Edward VI in 1537, and Lady Troy became Lady Mistress to Elizabeth, Kate was promoted to Elizabeth’s governess. More than ten years later, in a letter to Protector Edward Seymour, dated 31 January 1549, Sir Robert Tyrwhitt, who was questioning Elizabeth about her involvement with Thomas Seymour, confirmed that it was King Henry VIII himself who promoted Kate to be Elizabeth’s Lady Mistress. That means she became Lady Mistress before King Henry died in 1547. It also tells us that Kate not only had the support and trust of Cromwell but also of Elizabeth’s father.

Many assumptions and myths have grown up about Kate Astley, repeated so often that people consider them facts. She’s been called jolly and kind, with unconventional teaching methods, and given credit for single-handedly introducing the little girl to a long list of subjects. These statements are not confirmed in primary sources. As a royal governess, her remit was much broader than that of a Jane Eyre-style Victorian governess. Kate also had to be a mentor, adviser, and protector. She did not deliver all the academic lessons herself but had oversight of input from a range of tutors, music masters, dance teachers, riding instructors and a chaplain, who covered a wide-ranging curriculum.

From nineteenth-century scholars to more recent historians, the focus has been on the events of 1548-49 when Elizabeth was under the roof of her stepmother, the Dowager Queen, Catherine Parr, and her new husband, Thomas Seymour. Kate’s deposition, taken in the Tower of London in January 1549, gives all the salacious details of Seymour’s behaviour towards the fourteen-year-old girl, which appear to modern eyes beyond inappropriate. As a result, Kate has been declared negligent, a gossip, and even considered to have herself been infatuated with the dashing Admiral.

These assessments do not seem to fit with the view of Elizabeth’s tutors, William Grindal and Roger Ascham, who both praised Kate for her care of the young princess. In my book, I explore an alternative scenario, placing Kate’s testimony in a different light as part of a strategy designed to protect the young princess. Interpretations of that difficult period have largely defined what people think about Kate Astley, while her later years have often been overlooked. Closer study reveals Kate as a political actor, staunchly loyal to Elizabeth.

In 1554, after the Wyatt rebellion against Queen Mary’s Spanish marriage, Kate suffered a long period of house arrest. She was suspected because her cousin, Sir Peter Carew, was a prime mover in the failed plot. Mary eventually allowed Kate to rejoin her mistress briefly, but clearly considered Kate a dangerous influence on Elizabeth and a threat. Only a few months later she held Kate in the Fleet Prison on suspicion of involvement in another plot and then banished her from Elizabeth’s service.

After Elizabeth came to the throne, she made Kate her Chief Gentlewoman of the Privy Chamber, a pivotal role with unique, intimate access to the queen. Kate was Elizabeth’s eyes and ears, listening out for damaging gossip and keeping Elizabeth in touch with how her policies were being received at court and beyond. Anyone who wanted to approach Elizabeth talked to Kate. She gave advice on what sort of gifts might be welcome at New Year. An Italian news sheet described her as ‘Patroness of all England’ in 1562. A year after Kate’s death, Hugh Fitzwilliam wrote to the queen saying, ‘Now that Mrs Ashley is gone he has no friend to make his moan to.’

Kate acted as a highly political female courtier at the court of a female monarch. Her death in 1565 left the queen devastated. The two women shared a close bond of mutual love and respect for nearly 30 years. Kate Astley arguably had more influence on the young Elizabeth I than anyone else. She deserves our further consideration.

I hope that Queen Elizabeth’s Governess: The Real Kat Ashley will encourage further debate about a remarkable woman.

Rosemary Griggs

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About the Author

Author and speaker Rosemary Griggs has been researching Devon's sixteenth-century history for years. She has discovered a cast of fascinating characters and an intriguing network of families whose influence stretched far beyond the West Country. She loves telling the stories of the forgotten women of history — the women beyond the royal court; wives, sisters, daughters and mothers who played their part during those tumultuous Tudor years: the Daughters of Devon. Her novel A Woman of Noble Wit tells the story of Katherine Champernowne, Sir Walter Raleigh’s mother, and features many of the county’s well-loved places. The Dartington Bride, published March 2024, is the extraordinary tale of Lady Gabrielle Roberda Montgomery who travelled from France to Elizabethan England to marry into the prominent and well-connected Champernowne family. Rosemary creates and wears sixteenth-century clothing, a passion which complements her love for bringing the past to life through a unique blend of theatre, history and re-enactment. Her appearances and talks for museums and community groups all over the West Country draw on her extensive research into sixteenth-century Devon, Tudor life and Tudor dress, particularly Elizabethan. Out of costume, Rosemary leads heritage tours of the gardens at Dartington Hall, a fourteenth-century manor house and now a a historic visitor destination, events venue and thriving community of businesses, colleges and more. You can find out more on Rosemary’s website: https://rosemarygriggs.co.uk/ and follow her on Bluesky and Twitter @RAGriggsauthor

Prince Henry Stuart: The Best King We Never Had?

2026-10-09T08:09:38.950+00:00

One of the most intriguing characters in my new book, Queen Anna, was the story of her eldest son, Prince Henry Stuart, heir to the crown of three kingdoms. Brave, ambitious and a devout Protestant, Prince Henry Stuart seemed destined to become one of Britain's most remarkable kings. His sudden death at eighteen left a grieving nation wondering what might have been.

Imagine a different beginning to the seventeenth century. Instead of Charles I inheriting the English throne in 1625, it should have been his elder brother Henry who became king. A confident young ruler, devoted to Protestantism, fascinated by military affairs and eager to strengthen the navy, might have taken Britain down a very different path.

It is an intriguing possibility. Henry Frederick Stuart, Prince of Wales, was more than the heir who died too young. During his short life, he became a symbol of national ambition, Protestant hopes and the promise of a new generation of Stuart rule. His death in November 1612, aged just eighteen, deprived his father, James I, of his eldest son and left the future of the monarchy in the hands of a very different young prince.

Henry was born at Stirling Castle in Scotland on 19 February 1594, the eldest surviving son of James VI of Scotland and Anne of Denmark. His birth was celebrated as a moment of great importance for the Stuart dynasty. James had no guarantee that his Scottish crown would pass smoothly to his descendants, and a healthy male heir offered the prospect of continuity.

When Elizabeth I died in March 1603, Henry's father inherited the English throne, becoming James I of England while remaining James VI of Scotland. For the first time, the crowns of England and Scotland rested on the same head. Henry was now heir to a monarchy whose future would eventually encompass both kingdoms, although they remained separate states with their own laws and institutions.

The new royal family attracted enormous interest. Henry represented the future: a young prince who might inherit his father's kingdoms and provide the strong, stable Protestant succession many people desired. His younger brother Charles, born in 1600, stood behind him in the line of succession, with little reason to expect that he would one day become king.

Portrait of Prince Henry Frederick Stuart (the eldest son of King James VI of Scotland and Anne of Denmark) painted around 1596 when he was about two years old,

Henry's childhood was not spent entirely in the company of his parents. He was brought up under the care of tutors and household officers, first in Scotland and later in England. One important figure in his life was Adam Newton, his tutor, who supervised an education intended to prepare him for the responsibilities of kingship.

Henry's education was designed to prepare him for power. He studied Latin, French and Italian, alongside history, geography and the practical knowledge required of a Renaissance prince. He was particularly interested in military matters and seems to have responded more enthusiastically as his lessons became relevant to his future responsibilities.

He was athletic, enjoying tennis, hunting, hawking and other sports. Unlike the rather reserved reputation that later attached to his brother Charles, Henry cultivated an image of energy, discipline and action. His interest in military exercises and elaborate armour helped establish him as a prince who could lead his subjects rather than merely inherit their obedience.

In 1610, aged sixteen, Henry was formally created Prince of Wales in a magnificent ceremony. The occasion confirmed his position as heir to the English throne and provided an opportunity to present him as the embodiment of chivalric virtue.

Portrait miniature of Henry Frederick, Prince of Wales,

painted around 1610–1612 by Isaac Oliver

Yet Henry's public image was not simply the result of court propaganda. He demonstrated a genuine appetite for learning and a remarkable interest in the world beyond his father's court. His contemporaries saw in him a young man with the potential to become an unusually active and capable monarch.

One of the most interesting aspects of Henry's life was the breadth of his ambitions. He was fascinated by the sea, exploration, military strength and the position of Protestant powers in Europe.

Henry supported the development of England's navy and took an interest in navigation and maritime technology. The celebrated shipwright Phineas Pett built a magnificent vessel known as the Prince Royal, launched in 1610. It was among the most ambitious royal naval projects of the period and reflected the prince's enthusiasm for maritime power.

Henry also supported exploration, including an expedition intended to find the Northwest Passage, the hoped-for sea route connecting the Atlantic and Pacific oceans. His name was associated with English colonial ambitions in Virginia, where the settlement of Henricus was named in his honour. He often visited Sir Walter Raleigh in the Tower of London to share ideas on exploration and ship design. These interests were connected. A stronger navy could defend the realm, protect trade, challenge rival powers and support England's expanding overseas ambitions. Henry appeared to understand that England's future would depend partly on its ability to project power beyond its shores.

His religious convictions also shaped his political outlook. Henry was an ardent Protestant, and his views were considerably more hostile towards Catholicism than those of many who favoured religious compromise. In an age when European politics were deeply entangled with religious conflict, this mattered enormously. A future King Henry might have pursued a more assertive Protestant foreign policy, although we cannot know how far his practical decisions would have matched the expectations placed upon him.

For all his military interests, Henry was no narrow-minded soldier. He was an enthusiastic collector, a patron of artists and architects, and an important figure in the cultural life of the Jacobean court. His library contained more than a thousand volumes added to an already impressive collection. He commissioned architectural and garden projects, including a new library and riding school at St James's Palace and ambitious gardens at Richmond Palace. These projects reflected the intellectual curiosity and cultivated tastes expected of a European Renaissance prince.

Court entertainment was another important part of his public identity. In January 1610, Prince Henry's Barriers combined a masque with an elaborate tournament. The performances celebrated princely virtue through allegory, music, dance and spectacular costumes. The architect and designer Inigo Jones helped establish the visual splendour for which Stuart court entertainments became famous.

In the autumn of 1612, the Stuart court was preparing for a major royal celebration. Henry's younger sister, Princess Elizabeth, was to marry Frederick V, Elector Palatine, a prominent German Protestant prince. Their marriage, which took place in February 1613, promised to strengthen Protestant alliances across Europe. Frederick arrived in England in October 1612, and Henry spent time with his future brother-in-law. The atmosphere at court should have been one of excitement and anticipation. Instead, the celebrations were overtaken by a sudden and devastating illness.

Henry had apparently been suffering from periods of lassitude and headaches before becoming seriously ill in October. He continued to take part in physical activities, including tennis, despite his deteriorating health. Contemporary accounts describe fever and the increasingly desperate attempts of his physicians to treat him.

A later account associates his illness with swimming in the Thames after playing tennis, although the precise circumstances and significance of the swim remain less certain than some popular retellings suggest. What is clear is that his condition worsened rapidly, despite the efforts of the royal doctors.

On 6 November 1612, Henry died at St James's Palace. He was only eighteen. The loss was almost impossible to comprehend. The prince who had seemed to embody the future of the Stuart monarchy was gone, leaving his family and country to confront a future nobody had expected to arrive so soon.

The sudden death of a popular heir naturally provoked suspicion. Rumours circulated that Henry had been poisoned, and speculation later attached itself to rivalries at court and to his father's relationship with his heir. There was no evidence that he was murdered. A post-mortem examination was ordered, in part to address fears and rumours surrounding his death. The surviving medical accounts have led historians to regard typhoid fever as the most likely explanation. The diagnosis is not based on modern laboratory testing, of course, but on the recorded symptoms and the historical evidence.

The poisoning stories reveal something important about Henry's place in the public imagination. His death was so unexpected, and his promise so widely celebrated, that many people struggled to accept an ordinary illness as the explanation. For a nation that had invested so much hope in him, it was easier to imagine that the future had been stolen than to accept that it had simply ended.

The grief following Henry's death was extraordinary. His body lay in state at St James's Palace before his funeral at Westminster Abbey on 7 December 1612. The funeral procession was a magnificent and solemn affair, with around two thousand official mourners and crowds lining the streets.

The ceremony reflected not only the importance of the heir to the throne but also the emotional investment people had made in him. Poetry, sermons and music commemorated his life, while writers struggled to express the scale of the loss.

King James was devastated. Accounts of his grief suggest that the death remained a painful preoccupation, even when the king was occupied with affairs of state. Queen Anne of Denmark also lost a son whose position within the dynasty had made him central to the family's future.

Henry's younger brother Charles was now the heir apparent. He had to assume a position for which he had not been expected to prepare so soon, and the shadow of his elder brother's reputation would follow him for the rest of his life.

Henry was buried in the vault of his grandmother, Mary, Queen of Scots, in Henry VII's Chapel at Westminster Abbey. His funeral effigy, once richly dressed, has survived in fragmentary form, a poignant reminder of how the physical traces of even the grandest royal lives can gradually disappear.

It is tempting to imagine Henry ascending the throne in 1625, when James I died. He would have been thirty-one: an experienced prince, familiar with government, military affairs and international politics, with a reputation for energy and strong Protestant convictions.

Would he have avoided the conflicts that engulfed his brother Charles I? Would he have worked more successfully with Parliament? Might he have strengthened the navy, pursued a more forceful Protestant policy in Europe or approached the relationship between Crown and country differently?

Henry had not yet ruled a kingdom. We can't know how he would have responded to financial pressures, religious divisions, parliamentary resistance or the competing demands of his subjects. His apparent confidence as a prince does not prove that he would have been a successful king. Nevertheless, his death changed the course of the Stuart dynasty. Charles inherited the crown in 1625 and eventually faced the crisis that led to the English Civil Wars and his execution in 1649. Henry's life ended before he could encounter any of these challenges.

The contrast between the brothers is striking. Henry was remembered as a vigorous, idealised young prince, while Charles became associated with the bitter divisions of his reign. It is possible that Henry would have faced many of the same problems. It is equally possible that his personality, priorities and political choices might have produced a different outcome.

What matters is that the possibilities disappeared with him. Prince Henry Stuart lived for only eighteen years, yet he left a considerable mark on the culture and politics of his age. He supported the arts, took a serious interest in maritime power, embraced a strongly Protestant identity and inspired hopes that he would become an exceptional king.

His story also reminds us how history can turn on events that seem, at the time, almost unbearably arbitrary. A fever in the autumn of 1612 changed the succession, altered the future of the Stuart family and left the English monarchy to a younger brother whose reign would become one of the most turbulent in British history.

Perhaps that is why Henry continues to fascinate us. He belongs to that small group of historical figures whose lives are inseparable from the future they never lived to shape. We can admire the promise without pretending to know the outcome. We can mourn the loss without turning him into a flawless hero - and we can wonder what might have happened if the young Prince of Wales survived to wear the crown.

Tony Riches

See: Author Anna Belfrage Reviews Queen Anna, Book One of the Stuart Queens Trilogy

Blog Tour Spotlight: The Roll Of the Dice Series: We Who Endure, by J. A. Quarles

2026-10-06T05:29:00.682+00:00

Available from Amazon UK and Amazon US

As the fires of war spread across a divided nation, three brothers from Louisiana are swept into the storm that will decide the fate of the Confederacy-and perhaps the future of America itself.

In the bloody aftermath of Fredericksburg, young Confederate officer Johan Lutze escapes Union captivity through courage, cunning, and sheer determination. Returning to General Robert E. Lee's army just in time for the Battle of Chancellorsville, Johan performs an act of heroism that saves the life of the legendary General Stonewall Jackson and thrusts him into the inner circle of Confederate power.

Now, with Vicksburg under siege and the Confederacy teetering between survival and collapse, Johan's bold strategic ideas begin to influence President Jefferson Davis himself. But in Richmond, ambition and politics can be as deadly as bullets, and not everyone welcomes the rise of the young officer from Louisiana.

While Johan helps shape daring military campaigns alongside Generals Lee, Beauregard, and Johnston, his brothers wage battles of their own. Paul Lutze Jr., maimed at Shiloh and fitted with a prosthetic leg, enters the shadowy world of Confederate espionage, where secrets and sabotage may alter the course of the war. Meanwhile, sixteen-year-old Jacques Lutze marches north with the ferocious Louisiana Tigers, consumed by grief, vengeance, and a burning desire to kill Yankees before they kill him.

From the fields of Pennsylvania to the banks of the Mississippi, from the halls of Richmond to the courts of Europe and the rising empire in Mexico, the war expands into a conflict of global consequence. Armies maneuver. Governments scheme. Brothers bleed.

And as the summer of 1863 approaches its reckoning, the Lutze brothers will stand at the center of history-where triumph and tragedy walk hand in hand.

# # #

About the Author

Born and raised in New Orleans, Justin has always had a passion for storytelling. This writing process has always been important to Justin, a lifelong history nerd, who received a Bachelor’s in History from the University of New Orleans. After he is done with his day job, Justin loves to come home and play with his two wonderful kiddos and watch movies with his wife. Find out more at www.jaquarles.com

Special Guest Post by Anna Belfrage, Author of A Newfound Land (The Graham Saga Book 4)

2026-10-02T06:47:09.663+00:00

Available from Amazon UK and Amazon US

It’s 1672, and Matthew Graham and his family have left Scotland. Having taken the drastic decision to leave their homeland due to religious conflicts, Alexandra and Matthew hope for a simpler, if harsher, life in the wilds of the Colony of Maryland.

The passing of a people – the consequences of colonisation

It would have been very difficult to write A Newfound Land, set in 17th century Maryland, without considering the impact of European colonisation on the native peoples. I’d argue that the single biggest tragedy to befall the native population of the Americas was the arrival of Columbus upon their shores. Over the course of a couple of centuries, a deadly cocktail consisting of slavery, disease and warfare was to reduce the native population with 40-80% (it varies substantially from area to area) and what had been thriving civilizations were reduced to memories and ruins.

In 1607, The Virginia Company of London established its first bridgehead into its charter territories. Jamestown was founded on a marshy island in present day Virginia, and a couple of boatloads of settlers were deposited in the wilds to make a new life for themselves. Things did not go as planned, and the first few years of its existence, the colony teetered on the brink of extinction more than once. Fortunately, the colony had a capable leader in John Smith, adventurer extraordinaire, and this gentleman spent quite some time exploring the Chesapeake area and making contacts with the local people.

Many of the tribes John Smith visited no longer exist. One such lost people is the Susquehannock. Disease and warfare – both with their fierce cousins the Iroquois and the white settlers – caused the extinction of a once flourishing nation. In fact, today we have no idea what these Native Americans may have called themselves, because there is no one around who speaks their language anymore. Once a language dies, the culture that flourished with it dies as well, and so we have no idea as to what beliefs, what myths the Susquehannock held dear. It’s almost as they never existed – well, apart from the odd artefacts that are presently displayed in one or other museum.

A Lenape (Delaware) family or group from the mid-17th century, based on a drawing by Swedish engineer and traveler Peter Mårtensson Lindeström from his time in the New Sweden colony

But the Susquehannock did exist, a power to be reckoned with, masters over a large swathe of land that stretched from Delaware, through parts of Pennsylvania and into Maryland. John Smith was very impressed by the Susquehannock, claiming they went around dressed in wolf and bear pelts and were all of them big and strong, fully capable of beating the brains out of a man. Despite these ferocious qualities, for the first few decades of their co-existence both the Susquehannock and the Maryland colonists prospered – a win-win situation for both.

Things were not quite as peachy-pie in Virginia. The colonists repeatedly broke the treaties they had signed with the Powhatan Confederacy, and when the angered natives retaliated, the colonists screamed ‘murder’ and demanded that the natives be subdued once and for all.

In the 1670’s, the constant skirmishes between the Powhatan and the Virginia colonists escalated into open warfare, and through a series of unfortunate events, the Susquehannock were dragged into the conflict. A decade later, the once so mighty Susquehannock had more or less disappeared. Their wooden forts had been razed to the ground, their men had been slain, their women enslaved, and what few remnants remained had fled due north-west, seeking the protection of the Iroquois, their former enemies.

Some Susquehannock made it over to Pennsylvania and founded a community there, Conestoga Town. There they eeked out a living far removed from their former life, hiring themselves as labourers to adjoining farms. But in 1763, the last three dozen or so of true-blooded Susquehannock were massacred by the Paxton Boys, a militant group of white bad boys that killed whatever Native Americans they could get their hands on in retaliation for the recent French-Indian war. Less than two centuries after their first contact with the European settlers, the Susquehannock had ceased to exist.

The Susquehannock play an important and recurring role in my series The Graham Saga. My male protagonist, Matthew Graham, is a devout Presbyterian, a veteran of the Commonwealth armies and a man who initially at least tends to see the world as black or white. Which is why I gifted him with Alex Lind, an opinionated modern woman who had the misfortune (or not) of being in the wrong place at the wrong time, thereby being dragged three centuries back in time to land concussed and badly singed at an astounded Matthew’s feet.

Due to Matthew’s religious persuasions, the Graham family is forced to leave their homeland behind and immigrate to the Colony of Maryland where they establish cordial relationships with the nearby Susquehannock tribe. But as the tension between colonists and Indians increase, the fragile friendship between Matthew and Qaachow, a Susquehannock chief, is put under severe pressure.

The below excerpt is from A Newfound Land, the fourth book in The Graham Saga, which is when Qaachow first enters Matthew’s and Alex’s lives.

Alex didn’t see him until she had sat down on her normal perch, a fallen log just to the east of the clearing. Qaachow was sitting in absolute stillness a bit further on, his eyes locked on what Alex supposed had been the main house of the settlement but that now reminded her of an elongated tomb. She shivered at the thought; after all, to some extent it was.
“I’m sorry.” She stood up. “I didn’t mean to intrude.”
Qaachow tilted his head to show he’d heard her but otherwise remained where he was.
“You come to think of your daughter,” he said, gesturing at the ‘RACHEL’ she had carved on a nearby tree. “Those thoughts do not intrude on mine.”
Alex sat back down again. Not that there was any possibility of her thinking about Rachel now, with this slim, half-naked Indian some yards away, but it would be rude to walk away and disturb his meditation again. He was gaunter than last time she’d seen him, more careworn. He shifted on his perch and the breechcloth rustled, releasing a fragrance of crushed pine needles.
“I sit here at times and remember the life that was. Before…” His low voice cut through the silence.
“Before we came,” she filled in, following the dancing beams of afternoon sunlight that fell in from the west to pattern the ground with eerily lifelike shades of that long gone existence.
“Yes, before John Smith brought the white man over.” He looked away through the screen of trees towards the river, barely visible from here. “He came to our village once.”
“He did? What was he like?”
“I’m not that old.” He smiled. “I never met him in person, but my grandfather did. We should never have let you land,” he added in a darker voice. “We should have listened to our wary brethren of the north and pushed you back into the sea.”
Alex quietly agreed. Soon nothing would be left of the Indian way of life.
“We still could, we still might.”
“Too late,” Alex said. “We’ll never let this go. Not now.”
Qaachow gave her a look of grim amusement. “We could steal in like shadows in the night, and none of you would notice until you lay dying in your blood.”
Alex huddled together with physical pain at the thought. “But you won’t, will you? You won’t kill my babies.”
“No, my people will not. We owe you lives.”
“Your people? Are there any other Indians we need to worry about?”
Qaachow shrugged. “This is our land. They will not touch you. But, elsewhere, white women and children will be slain, and their men will be killed slowly and in agony. The coming years will be bad, Mrs Graham, very bad.”
Alex nodded and bent to pick up a pine cone from where it lay on the shimmering green of the moss.
“I know. That’s why Matthew’s been called down to Providence.”
Qaachow looked away, saying something in his own language that sounded very sad. For some time he sat sunk in thoughts, eyes lost in the dappled shadow of the surrounding woods.
“I’ve never thanked you or your husband for what you did for my people, in particular for my wife.” Qaachow stood up in one fluid movement. He was an attractive man, Alex reflected, his hairless torso outlined with muscles without becoming too excessive. Long, beautiful hands, and a mouth that, when relaxed, was soft and tender – kissable. Their eyes met. For a couple of heartbeats he held her eyes, the shadow of a smile playing round his mouth.
Alex cleared her throat. “Your wife?”
“Thistledown-in-the-wind; it was her sister that died.”
“She’s very pretty,” Alex said, thinking of the young Indian woman with the thick braids – young enough to be his daughter, but apparently his wife. He seemed to see what she was thinking and smiled crookedly.
“I loved my first wife very much, and it took many moons before I wanted to look at another woman.” He stared off into the distance. “Morning Dream – always first in my heart.”
“Morning Dream, what a beautiful name.”
“As was she.” With a courteous nod in her direction, Qaachow blended into the surrounding trees.

Anna Belfrage

# # #

About the Author

Had Anna been allowed to choose, she’d have become a time-traveller. As this was impossible, she became a financial professional with two absorbing interests: history and writing. Anna has authored the acclaimed time travelling series The Graham Saga, set in 17th century Scotland and Maryland, as well as the equally acclaimed medieval series The King’s Greatest Enemy which is set in 14th century England. Her Castilian Heart is the third in her “Castilian” series, a stand-alone sequel to her September 2020 release, His Castilian Hawk. Set against the complications of Edward I’s invasion of Wales, His Castilian Hawk is a story of loyalty, integrity—and love. In the second instalment, The Castilian Pomegranate, we travel with the protagonists to the complex political world of medieval Spain. This latest release finds our protagonists back in England—not necessarily any safer than the wilds of Spain! Anna has also authored The Whirlpools of Time in which she returns to the world of time travel. Join Duncan and the somewhat reluctant time-traveller Erin on their adventures through the Scottish Highlands just as the first Jacobite rebellion is about to explode! All of Anna’s books have been awarded the IndieBRAG Medallion, she has several Historical Novel Society Editor’s Choices, and one of her books won the HNS Indie Award in 2015. She is also the proud recipient of various Reader’s Favorite medals as well as having won various Gold, Silver and Bronze Coffee Pot Book Club awards. Find out more about Anna, her books and enjoy her eclectic historical blog on her website, www.annabelfrage.com and find her on Facebook, Twitter @abelfrageauthor and Bluesky @abelfrageauthor.bsky.social

Special Guest Post: A Deadly Fall, by Jon Neal

2026-10-01T08:18:00.612+00:00

Available from Amazon UK and Amazon US

What lengths would you go to in order to keep a secret? When private investigator Stanley Messina is called to a secluded Sussex manor house to re-examine an unexplained death, he hopes it might be a straightforward job - a few interviews, a tidy conclusion, and a chance

to catch his breath.

A Deadly Fall: Psychology, Secrets and a Sussex Manor

When a private investigator is called to a secluded Sussex manor house to re-examine an unexplained death, he hopes it might be a straightforward job. Behind the estate’s idyllic façade, however, lies a tangled web of strained loyalties, festering resentments and carefully curated lives. Every inhabitant has something to protect, and every story comes with a shadow…

A Deadly Fall is the third novel in my Stanley Messina Investigates series. Set in a grand house tucked away in the Sussex countryside, it is a mystery driven as much by the psychology and relationships of its characters as by the tragic event at its centre. Readers have described the series as intriguing, and this atmospheric instalment continues that tradition while remaining fully readable as a standalone.

As with my earlier books, the investigation into what happened at Lanthorn Manor provides the spine of the story, complete with clues, suspects and motives. Yet my primary interest as a writer has always been what makes people tick—the quiet tensions, hidden histories and shifting loyalties that shape how they behave under pressure. Along the way, readers also learn a little more about Stanley Messina himself, whose own backstory continues to unfold across the series.

I publish as an independent author exclusively through Amazon Kindle Direct Publishing. The greatest advantage of this is complete creative freedom and control over every aspect of the creative and business processes. I promote the books through social media and will soon launch a website and regular e-newsletter so readers can stay more closely connected.

The publishing landscape has changed markedly in the last five years. While greater opportunities for writers also mean more competition, I remain convinced there is still ample space to build an engaged audience for authentic stories.

I’m always grateful to readers who take the time to leave a rating or review on Amazon. These not only provide real encouragement but also help future readers decide whether a book might be one they would enjoy too.

Jon Neal

# # #

About the Author

Jon Neal is a British author. His first book, A Twin Room, was published in 2022 and reached number 1 in its Amazon category, selling copies around the globe. The Other Path introduced private investigator Stanley Messina and began the series of page-turning mysteries that continues with A Deadly Fall. Jon completed a Master of Arts in Writing while living in Australia and holds a Music & Media Studies degree from the University of Sussex. He was runner-up in the 2010 Sydney Mardi Gras short story competition, has been shortlisted for other prizes, and has had poems published in numerous anthologies. He grew up in Kent and now lives with his partner in East Sussex. To keep up to date with Jon’s news, follow his author page on Facebook and Twitter/X

Blog Tour Interview with Marilee Aufdenkamp, Author of Sparrow’s Song

2026-10-01T05:19:47.796+00:00

Available from Amazon UK and Amazon US

Sparrow’s Song is a sweeping, intimate novel about resilience and belonging, rooted in the real history of wartime federal nursing education and the evolving landscape of modern American nursing. At its heart is a young immigrant woman pushing herself toward the advantages she’s convinced education will unlock, even as that drive pulls her away from the people and heritage she loves.

I'm pleased to welcome author Marilee Aufdenkamp to The Writing Desk:

Tell us about your latest book

Sparrow’s Song spans two world wars and follows one woman’s search for equal advantage in a country that doesn’t always welcome her. Rooted in the early twentieth century German from Russia immigrant experience and set against the federal nursing education programs of World War I and World War II, the novel explores resilience, belonging, and the cost of ambition.

In 1917 Nebraska, Kathryn Scheibel wants what every young woman hopes for: a fair chance at a future. As a German from Russia immigrant, she believes education is the only path to opportunity for herself and her family. When she reaches beyond the cigar making floor, her ambitions unsettle those closest to her. To Kathryn, her hopes are simply the means of gaining the same advantages native born families enjoy.

Joining the Army School of Nursing brings her closer to the life she imagines and farther from the family she loves. At Walter Reed, she faces open hostility from classmates who target her social status and her ancestry. As the years pass, Kathryn must decide whether she gave up too much in her quest to gain equal advantage and what it might take to reclaim the parts she never meant to lose.

What is your preferred writing routine?

I wrote Sparrow’s Song while I was still teaching undergraduate nursing students at a mid sized Midwestern Jesuit university. Evenings were often spent grading papers or preparing lectures, so I wrote when I could, mostly on weekends. I have been retired for the past two years, and now most of my days are devoted to writing and writing adjacent activities.

What advice do you have for aspiring writers?

I learned so much about the writing craft, first by reading craft books. This was well before the internet. By the time the internet was commonplace I started taking advantage of mostly free online webinars as well.

I’ve attended every Historical Novel Society biennial convention since 2015, either in person or virtually. If you can afford it, I recommend attending at least one conference each year. Early in your career, a craft heavy conference that focuses on your genre can be especially helpful.

Critique groups can be valuable if you find the right one, and thanks to the internet, networking with other writers is easier than ever and also recommended.

What have you found to be the best way to raise awareness of your books?

I’ve been doing as much speaking as possible. My protagonist was inspired by members of the community of Germans from Russia who immigrated to Hastings, Nebraska, early in the twentieth century. I’ve been a nurse since 1985 but I first worked as a nurse’s aide in our local hospital beginning in 1979 and cared for some of these individuals as they neared the ends of their lives. My nursing work and my protagonist’s background have influenced my speaking opportunities.

I presented about our local community of Germans from Russia at our county historical society’s annual meeting to an audience of more than one hundred people and tied their story to my novel. I also gave a presentation at our local library during Nurses Week, sharing how Sparrow’s Song highlights important nursing reforms of the early twentieth century. I recently spoke to the class of 1986 at the former hospital affiliated diploma nursing program that operated in our community from 1915 to 1988. And on October 1, I’ll present a program titled “Beyond Florence: The Value of Knowing Our History and How Fiction Can Help” for the Nebraska Nurses Association’s annual convention.

Tell us something unexpected you discovered during your research

Because I’m a nurse, I’m especially drawn to medical and nursing history. Part of my novel takes place in 1943, when my protagonist is teaching in a hospital affiliated school of nursing participating in the Cadet Nurse Corps. At that time, penicillin was beginning to be used by the U.S. military to treat venereal disease, especially syphilis.

Aqueous penicillin has a short duration of action and had to be injected every four hours, which was not practical in wartime. To prolong its effect, it was suspended in peanut oil and beeswax. Because beeswax is solid at room temperature, the mixture had to be heated before injection. I found a detailed description of how this was done and intended to use it in my story, but a computer crash erased my source. I couldn’t relocate it, and I no longer remembered whether the heating was done in a warm water bath or in some type of incubator or warming oven. My memory leaned toward a warm water bath, so in my author note I explained that this was one of the few historical details I wasn’t entirely certain about, but I didn’t want to exclude it because it was too interesting.

What was the hardest scene you remember writing?

No single scene stands out as harder than the others, but I write lean, and reaching standard word count expectations for my genre was difficult.

What are you planning to write next?

My next story, my work in progress, is about ninety seven percent ready to send to my publisher. It’s set in 1927 Omaha. My main character is a young Irish immigrant who came to Nebraska with his parents a few years earlier and now works under the direction of the real jazz musician who led the Boys Town traveling band, Daniel Desdunes. He repairs and maintains the band’s uniforms and brass instruments, and I’ve learned a great deal about dent repair, soldering, and brass instrument maintenance.

To earn extra money and help his father, who is a down and out homeless alcoholic musician, my main character milks for a young widowed neighbor woman on the adjacent farm. He is beginning to have feelings for her. My work in progress is not a romance, but there are some romantic elements. The central conflict is his responsibility to his father set against his hope for a life of his own, a life he doubts he deserves and isn’t sure he has the strength to sustain alongside his father’s needs.

My debut novel Sparrow’s Song took place between 1917 and 1943, so I had plenty of room to stretch events out. My newest story, working title Leo but likely changing to A Measure of Cream and Flux, occurs over the summer of 1927, and much of the action happens on weekends. I needed to make sure I hadn’t inadvertently placed seven Saturdays in July and that I had room for everything I included. There is also a scene I need to rework, and I have two elderly Jewish immigrant men who serve as mentors to my young Irish protagonist. I need to make sure the scenes involving those two men respect their religious traditions for observing Shabbos.

Marilee Aufdenkamp

# # #

About the Author

Marilee Aufdenkamp is a retired nurse educator who taught undergraduate nursing for twenty six years before turning her full time focus to historical fiction. She writes early to mid twentieth century stories grounded in immigrant experience and working class life. Her debut novel, Sparrow’s Song, was inspired by her early nursing career in Nebraska, where she came to admire the Germans from Russia she cared for at the end of their lives. Originally from Southern California, she has spent her adult life in Nebraska. Find out more at her website: https://marileeaufdenkamp.com and find Marilee on Facebook and Instagram

Rogues, Rakes and Robbers: A True Crime History of Georgian Britain by Angela Muir

2026-09-25T14:01:45.542+00:00

Available from Amazon UK and Amazon US

On October 20th, 1799, at Pensieri in the Isle of Anglesey, a fire breaks out, destroying cart house, corn, haystacks, and timber. A young woman is seen running from the scene―but what secrets drove her to set the fire?

Exploring detailed accounts of historical crime is one of the best ways to catch a glimpse of a society and its culture decades and even centuries later. Of course, stories of crime and deviance are intriguing in their own right, but by understanding the context in which they were committed and how communities and officials responded to them, we can gain incredible insight into life at that time and place.

Rogues, Rakes and Robbers uncovers the tales of real-life murders, manslaughters, assaults, and arson in Georgian Wales and its borders that together give us a window into life for ordinary, common people whose lives would otherwise be lost from the historical record. From courtship rituals to the value of horses and Georgian attitudes on sex work and insanity, each chapter uses documents from Wales’s Court of Great Sessions to illuminate the past.

# # #

About the Author

Angela Muir is a social and cultural historian of Britain in the long 18th century (roughly 1680 to 1830) with a focus on gender, crime, deviance, sex and the body in Wales and England. She has worked at the University of Leicester since 2018, and in 2024 became an Associate Professor. Prior to Leicester Angela held a one-year lectureship and fellowship at Cardiff University after completing her PhD at the University of Exeter. Find out more at https://angelajmuir.wordpress.com/ and find Angela on Instagram and Twitter @muirdershewrote

Lady of the Castle: A Medieval Epic of Love, Loyalty, and Betrayal (The Nicola de la Haye Series Book 2) by Rachel Elwiss Joyce

2026-09-22T06:20:48.877+00:00

Available from Amazon UK and Amazon US

For a woman, holding power in a man's world is dangerous;

holding faith in an intolerant one is deadly.

England, 1185. Nicola de la Haye, constable of Lincoln Castle, commands her fortress with hard-won authority. Determined to protect her family from a kingdom fracturing around her, she discovers the hardest battle is the one inside her own walls.

When the king's chancellor marches an army to her gates and her husband stands accused of treason, Nicola must hold her castle against a siege—and hold her family together against something far harder to fight. As her marriage buckles under the weight of loss, jealousy, and the ghosts of their pasts, Nicola must choose between the walls she has built around herself and the man she has never fully let in.

Miles away, Nicola's Jewish childhood friend Bella has built her world on different foundations: a husband she adores, a strong, vibrant community, and a faith and traditions kept alive despite centuries of persecution. When crusading fervour sweeps the nation, Bella's family is stripped of its fortune and forced to flee to York—only to find themselves trapped in a castle tower by a mob demanding baptism or death.

As King Richard the Lionheart departs for the Holy Land, leaving England to turn on itself, both women face the same impossible question: what do you love enough to sacrifice everything for?

# # #

About the Author

After a rewarding career in the sciences, Rachel returned to her first love—history and the art of storytelling. Fascinated by the women history neglected, or tried to forget, she creates meticulously researched, emotionally resonant fiction that brings her characters’ stories vividly to life. Her fascination with the past began early. At six years old, she was already inventing tales about medieval women in castles, inspired by her treasured Ladybird books and other picture-rich stories that transported her to another time. By the time she discovered Katherine by Anya Seton as a teenager, she knew the joy and escape that only great historical fiction can bring. Rachel’s two grown-up children still tease her (fondly) about childhoods spent being “dragged” around castles, archaeological sites, and historical re-enactments. For Rachel, history and imagination have always gone hand in hand.There was, however, a long gap between the stories of her childhood and her decision to write her own novel. The spark came when she discovered the remarkable true story of Nicola de la Haye—the first female sheriff of England, who defended Lincoln Castle against a French invasion and became known as “the woman who saved England.” Rachel knew she had found her heroine, and a story she was destined to tell. Rachel lives in the UK, where she continues to explore the lives of women who shaped history but were left out of its pages. Lady of Lincoln is her debut novel, the first book in her Nicola de la Haye Series, with sequels to follow. Find out more at www.rachelelwissjoyce.com and find Rachel on Facebook and

X/ Twitter: @RachelElwJoyce

Audiobook Narrator and Actor Ruth Urquhart on Narrating ‘Queen Anna’, Book One of the Stuart Queen Trilogy

2026-09-17T04:44:29.201+00:00

Available from Amazon UK and Amazon US

A crown won in the eye of a storm. A queen who refuses to be broken... Princess Anna of Denmark sails for Scotland to marry King James VI, but storms ravage her fleet, igniting a deadly obsession with witchcraft in her new home. Arriving in a strange and paranoid court, Anna finds her new husband’s bed is a treacherous place.

I chose Ruth Urquhart as the perfect narrator while still in the early stages of researching the first book of the Stuart Queens trilogy, so she had quite a wait until I’d written Queen Anna – including delays with my editor. Now the audiobook is released, here are a few thoughts from Ruth:

Tell us a little of your background and how you decided to go into audiobook narration?

My background is as an actor and after many years touring in small scale theatre, my kids came along and it seemed a natural progression to go into voice acting as something I could do from home and still spend time with my family. When I did I was amazed at the scope of work available and I've loved it ever since!

How much did you know about Anna of Denmark before you began the narration?

Very little. I have previously narrated a non-fiction book called 'Scottish Queens' by Rosalind K Marshall which had a section dedicated to Queen Anna. But that was the extent of my knowledge. Tony's book has made it much more personal and made me realise that so little is focused on the queens and consorts of the past

What most surprised you about Anna’s life?

I suppose her resilience even from such a young age, dealing so well with being shipped off to another country and then the seemingly never-ending pregnancies with so much heartache and loss. She also has a surprising amount of agency with James and when he proved disappointing, she carved her own way to benefit both her children and to a lesser degree herself. I admire her greatly.

How did you approach preparing for the narration process?

The first thing I do as with any book is read it cover to cover. Then I go through and make notes. Of course there were lots of tricky Danish pronunciations to unpick as well as the accents of various foreign nobles. I also watched the documentary 'Queen James' although that of course focuses more on James than Anna.

There are plenty of Danish phrases in the book, so how did you deal with them?

With this I had my Danish Sister-ln Law (another Anne) on speed dial! It is quite a tricky language to pronounce for non-natives but I was very lucky to have this resource at hand.

Ruth Urquhart

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About the Narrator

Ruth Urquhart is an award winning, Scottish female voice over artist and character voice actor. Professionally trained as an actor with over 10 years experience as a voiceover artist, she is the voice of multiple characters in global animations, cartoons and video games. Ruth has provided voiceovers for TV commercials, global brands and corporate films as well as e-learning and online courses, medical narration, video explainers, and radio adverts. She has dubbed worldwide cinema released movies and animations as well as providing narration for documentaries and over 200 audiobooks. Ruth says, ‘My sister-in-law Anne is Danish and I have always been picking her brain over the years regarding various jobs that have required a Danish accent!’ Find oiut more at ruthurquhart.com/ and find Ruth on Instagram @tartanchameleon

Dressed to Impress: Queen Elizabeth I and the Art of Fashioning Power by Sylvia Barbara Soberton

2026-09-16T05:23:53.586+00:00

Available from Amazon UK and Amazon US

For Elizabeth I, fashion was never simply about looking beautiful—it was a language of power.

From dazzling jewels and pearls to elaborate gowns, ruffs, and sumptuous fabrics, every detail of the Queen’s appearance helped shape the image she presented to her subjects, courtiers, and foreign ambassadors. Dressed to Impress explores how Elizabeth used clothing, jewellery, and portraiture to communicate authority, wealth, femininity, chastity, and majesty.

Discover the woman behind the spectacular costumes—and the remarkable ways in which England’s Virgin Queen transformed fashion into one of the most powerful tools of her reign.

Elizabeth I did not simply wear fashion. She fashioned power.

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About the Author

Sylvia Barbara Soberton is a writer and researcher specialising in the history of the Tudors. She is best known for The Forgotten Tudor Women book series, which concentrates on shifting the perspective from famous figures like Henry VIII’s six wives to the lesser-known, but no less influential, women of the Tudor court. Sylvia has written ten books to date, and her newest titles include The Forgotten Years of Anne Boleyn: The Habsburg & Valois Courts, Ladies-in-Waiting: Women Who Served Anne Boleyn and Medical Downfall of the Tudors: Sex, Reproduction & Succession. Her ground-breaking paper on Anne Boleyn and the accusation of witchcraft was published in the Royal Studies Journal in 2023. You can find Sylvia on Facebook, Goodreads, Twitter @SylviaBSo and Bluesky @sylviabso.bsky.social

Inigo Jones and the Celestial Costume of Queen Henrietta Maria

2026-09-15T14:29:45.285+00:00

There is something otherworldly about this delicate drawing of Queen Henrietta Maria. At first glance, it appears to be a fanciful court dress: a richly decorated gown, enormous sleeves, a jewelled headdress and a sweeping feather. Yet the design was intended for something far more theatrical.

Inigo Jones

The queen's costume was created by architect and stage designer Inigo Jones for her appearance as 'Divine Beauty' in Tempe Restored, the spectacular court masque performed at the Banqueting House, Whitehall, on 14 February 1632.

Jones’s surviving costume design, now in the Devonshire Collection at Chatsworth, reveals just how carefully the queen’s appearance was conceived. This was not simply fashionable court dress. Every element had to work under theatrical lighting and contribute to the allegorical world of the masque.

The costume was described by a contemporary observer as being made of “watchet satin” – a pale blue – embroidered with silver stars that appeared to rise from the surface of the fabric. On her head was a crown of stars mixed with small falls of white feathers.

The drawing shows how Inigo Jones transformed those ideas into a costume that would catch the light. The bodice is covered with star-like ornaments, while the enormously rounded sleeves give Henrietta Maria a deliberately impressive silhouette.

The full skirt spreads outward from the waist, creating an almost celestial radiance around the Queen. At the throat, a high, pleated collar frames her face, while the elaborate headdress rises above her head like a constellation. (See Historic Royal Palaces video below.)

For Inigo Jones, costume was inseparable from stagecraft. He understood that the audience at Whitehall would not experience the masque as they might an ordinary play. Music, movement, painted scenery, machinery, lighting, costume and architecture were intended to become one extraordinary spectacle. His designs were particularly concerned with the way materials reflected and caught light, turning embroidered stars and jewels into points of brilliance.

The symbolism was unmistakable. Beauty, embodied by the queen, becomes a force capable of restoring order to the enchanted world of Tempe. The masque therefore made Henrietta Maria herself part of its argument: her physical beauty was presented as a reflection of an inner, moral and almost divine beauty.

It is also worth remembering that Tempe Restored was deeply personal to Henrietta Maria. The masque was dedicated to her, and she was closely involved in its creation and performance. It had originally been planned for an earlier date but was postponed because she was suffering from an eye ailment.

Today, Inigo Jones’s fragile pencil design gives us an extraordinary glimpse behind the spectacle. The surviving drawing is quiet and almost unfinished in appearance. Yet from these few lines emerged one of the most dazzling images of Stuart court culture: a young queen transformed, through silk, silver, feathers, stars and theatrical illusion, into Divine Beauty.

Tony Riches

Silks, Crowns & Fairies: Dressing a 17th Century Queen

Historic Royal Palaces