Guest post from Helen Hollick, author of SEA WITCH

I'm honored to welcome Helen Hollick as part of her 2011 tour for the re-release of her exciting SEA WITCH series. I've been a fan of Helen's work since her debut Arthurian-themed novel, The Kingmaking; her pirate books featuring the rakish, sexy, unpredictable Captain Jesamiah offer a galleon-load of adventure, danger, and fun, and are now available in brand-new beautiful editions from Silverwood Books.

Please join me in welcoming Helen Hollick.

The setting sail of my Sea Witch series of pirate-based historical adventure fantasy books has not been all calm seas and fair winds. But it has been fun and immensely exciting! When historical fiction was foundering on the rocks of unpopularity a few years ago, my (ex) agent suggested I write something more “sellable”. “What about Harry Potter?” she said.
“Well I don’t really write teenage or fantasy do I?”I grimaced back. This was the Bespectacled Wizard period – prior to the Twinkly Vampire phase. It was also the opening manoeuvres of Johnny Depp’s Jack Sparrow, though. And a pirate novel appealed…Enjoying the first Pirates of the Caribbean movie, The Curse of the Black Pearl, I had become intrigued by the facts of the Golden Age of Piracy – a short-lived period in history, from the late 17th – early 18th Century.
Soon after my dispiriting chat with my agent, the entire plot and most of the characters came to me one afternoon in late October, while on vacation in Dorset, England. I remember the afternoon well.

It was drizzling with rain and I had the entire beach to myself. I looked out at the grey English Channel and saw instead the sparkling blue of the Caribbean (proves I have a fertile imagination!) I started writing as soon as I got back to the hotel, and didn’t stop for the next three months, except for Christmas Day when I took pity on my family who had almost forgotten what I looked like. My agent hated the result. “This isn’t for boys!” she exclaimed.
Er, no. I don’t write for children. I write adult fiction. I specifically wrote Sea Witch for the many adults (especially us swooning ladies) who enjoyed the movie, loved Jack Sparrow even more, and were desperate for similar pirate-based fiction to read.

There are plenty of nautical fiction books around; Hornblower, Patrick O’Brian – the fabulous Frenchman’s Creek… but nothing that came even remotely close to the excitement, humour, fantasy - and sex-appeal, of Captain Sparrow. As a writer the solution had seemed simple and obvious. Write the book I wanted to read. My agent did not believe me when I told her adults wanted to read pirate adventures, and historical adventure fantasy. She told me to write it for teenage boys. I stuck to my 9lb pirate guns and refused. I knew I had a good story. I knew my main character - Jesamiah Acorne - had the potential to, one day, become a winner.
So my agent and I parted company, and I was simultaneously informed that my UK publisher had decided to not re-publish my back list.

It looked like my writing career was finished. I sobbed for two weeks, then pulled myself together and found a small independent UK company who offered to take me on with their even smaller mainstream imprint. There were a few hiccups, and the books were not as well produced as I would have liked – but at least Sea Witch, and my backlist - having regained the rights, were in print. I went on to write two more Jesamiah stories and Sourcebooks Inc in the US picked up my serious historical fiction – the Pendragon’s Banner Trilogy, Forever Queen (entitled A Hollow Crown here in the UK) and I am the Chosen King (Harold the King in the UK) I was back in business again – plus I am co-scriptwriter for a planned movie 1066. Everything was looking good. Fate has a habit of bursting your bubble doesn’t it?

In early spring, my UK publisher hit financial problems and I found myself, once again, on the verge of being out of print here in the UK. I was not going to let that happen. I adore my characters and value my readers too much, so using a small legacy inherited from my Mum, I took my books to a UK assisted publishing house – SilverWood Books. Not having my files I have undertaken a mammoth re-edit of all my books. The Arthurian Trilogy is to be completed but Harold the King, Sea Witch, Pirate Code and Bring It Close are in print here in the UK, with the Sea Witch Voyages out very soon via Amazon.com (and hopefully in bookstores, although it is hard for UK writers to get books into US stores, even if I am officially a Bestselling Author with Forever Queen!)

I have faith in my charmer of a rogue pirate, so as soon as Amazon manages to list the books Jesamiah will be making full sail with all guns cleared for action! I describe him as Sharpe, Hornblower, Indiana Jones and Jack Sparrow all rolled into one; and the books as a “sailors yarn”. They are based on historical fact – although I do bend accuracy a little (liberties are clarified in my author’s note.) My nautical scenes are as accurate as I can get them, thanks to editing by US maritime author James L. Nelson, and the fantasy elements are more akin to the Star Wars Force, not Harry Potter wizardry, for all that Jesamiah’s woman, Tiola Oldstagh, is a white witch!

There are storms at sea, pirate chases; fighting, humour and romance – the goddess of the sea, who wants Jesamiah for herself and Jesamiah’s ghost of a father - everything expected in an adventure series! As Elizabeth Chadwick kindly endorses (she loves the books, I am delighted to say): "A wonderful swash-buckler of a novel. Fans of Pirates of the Caribbean will love this to pieces of eight! Prepare to be abducted by a devil-may-care pirate and enchanted by a white witch. Helen Hollick has written a fabulous historical adventure that will have you reading into the small hours!" I hope so!

To learn more about Helen and her work, please visit her website
or visit the Sea Witch page

Guest post from Colin Falconer, author of WHEN WE WERE GODS

I'm delighted and honored to welcome Colin Falconer, acclaimed author of several historical novels, including the sumptuous The Sultan's Harem and one of my favorites on the infamous Cleopatra, WHEN WE WERE GODS. Years ago, before I was published and I was slogging through the submission/rejection/nervous breakdown cycle, Colin was one of my inspirations - a male historical fiction author who wrote gorgeous novels from both male, and female, points of view. In celebration of the recent release of When We Were Gods on Kindle, for a whole new generation of readers to enjoy, Colin has offered this marvelous guest post on the story behind his evocation of Egypt's last pharaoh.

Please join me in welcoming Colin Falconer!

I recently re-released a new edition of WHEN WE WERE GODS, my novel about Cleopatra, on Kindle. In revising and tightening the manuscript I was struck again by two things: first, what a fantastic story it is. If it wasn’t all true, it would be hard to believe: thirty years before Jesus, an eighteen year old princess tries to take over the world? Outrageous. Cleopatra was a woman with real cojones. She took on Roman military and political power at the apogee of its power. If she had succeeded – and she very nearly did – we can only speculate what the world would be like today. Because, contrary to popular belief, she didn’t spend all her time bathing in asses' milk, cozying up to Richard Burton and having her hair bobbed. The real Cleopatra was a consummate political animal, with extraordinary ambition, a rare talent for what we would today call spin and the instincts of a street fighter.

The other thing that struck me – yet again - was what a tricky thing it is writing history. Like most historical fiction authors I have copped some criticism over the years for ‘getting it all wrong.’ From time to time a reviewer has criticised my research when in fact what they are criticising is my choice. Anyone who has done any sort of reading of the past will have found that most historians can never agree on anything. (It only takes one classical scholar in an empty room to start an argument.) What authors often have to do is make a best guess between two conflicting sets of theories. For example: for all her notoriety, we do not even know what Cleopatra really looked like.But surely, you say – she looked like Elizabeth Taylor?Well, no.

Some historians even speculate that Cleopatra may have been blonde. As she was part Macedonian, there's a fair chance, so to speak. I toyed with the idea of having Cleopatra as a blonde in WHEN WE WERE GODS, to show that I had done my research and to distance myself from the movie. (Also so that Scarlett Johanssen could play the role in my film. Or, at least, in my fantasies.) But my publisher said to me: you can't do that. (Have a blonde Cleopatra, not have fantasies about Scarlett Johanssen.) They said: Cleopatra is now far too deeply ingrained in our consciousness as Elizabeth Taylor in a bob, it will jar in a reader's imagination. A strange point, but a valid one. Cleopatra is now forever a brunette in the same way that Richard the Third will always be hunchbacked, thanks to Shakespeare.

Let’s look at the evidence, ladies and gentlemen of the jury. Exhibit A: there are few existing likenesses of the lady extant. A coin from the period shows her in profile, and it’s a pretty terrifying image too, not unlike Mike Tyson. Exhibit B: two extremely ambiguous accounts from her contemporaries; Plutarch was at pains to describe her 'pleasing personality'. Only Cassius Dio said she was beautiful; but did he say that because he had to?So the evidence either way is sketchy, at best.

So I have imagined her in the book as she may have looked; her mother, after all, could have been a Syrian princess (we don't know that for sure either) and Syrian women were, and are, noted for exceptional beauty. But I didn’t play on it; in the context of the story, as in history, it was her spirit not her looks that really mattered. The woman had wit, fire and ambition to burn. She also ruled Egypt. If you were Caesar or Mark Antony, what’s not to like?But one thing even minimal research can do is quickly dispense with some of the more outrageous myths about her. She was not the sexual virago of legend; she did not copulate with crocodiles, (it's dangerous) or with her slaves (beneath her dignity). In fact, it seems she only slept with two men all her life, and both of them were husbands. Well, not her husbands, admittedly - but in all fairness, she did marry them later.

Dying by an asp bite to the breast? For those of you are contemplating it, suicide by this means is not advised. The breast is basically fatty tissue. It would be best to find a vein – the wrist, for example - which she may well have done - although other forms of poison cannot be ruled out. And finally let me assure you - and the scholars are pretty much one hundred per cent on this one - that she did not have a bob and a beauty spot; and Mark Antony did not talk with a Welsh accent and have a drinking problem. The truth - as far that can ever be ascertained - is far more interesting, no matter how you read it. And choosing how to write it - that's the joy of being a writer.WHEN WE WERE GODS, is now available on Kindle at $5.99.

Thank you, Colin! To learn more about Colin Falconer and his work, please visit his website and his blog at http://www.colinfalconer.net/the-man-with-the-past.html

Guest post from Sarah Bryant, author of SERENDIPITY

I'm delighted to welcome Sarah Bryant, author of SERENDIPITY. I had the incredible good fortune to read and review Sarah's past novels Sand Daughter and The Other Eden; she's an amazing, diverse writer who doesn't stick to conventions, and her post will be of great interest to those who both write and read eclectically.

Please join me in welcoming Sarah Bryant!

“Where do you get your ideas?” is the most common question people ask me when I tell them that I’m a writer, and it’s the most difficult to answer. It’s not so much that I don’t know (although flash-in-the-pan inspiration is always a factor) but that the origins of my books are usually so distant, so mundane, or so apparently unrelated to the finished product, that people either don’t believe me, or are disillusioned by the banality of the truth.

Serendipity is no exception. Its point of origin is seventeen years ago, my second year of university, when I was a competitive dinghy sailor. I woke up one morning from a dream about an old white wooden sailboat wanting to write about it, about sailing’s addictive quality and (being a rose-tinted twenty year old) about love. The result was an abysmal short story about a girl who loved sailboats, and a boy who loved her, which languished in my “stories” folder until the following year, when my first real relationship broke up.

Among other fallout, I quit sailing. I had to, if I didn’t want to see the boy in question every day. I missed it at least as much as I missed him, but there was no question of going back to either one. So what to do with the sudden, gaping hole in my life? Write about it, of course! I dusted off the sailboat story, trashed most of it, but kept the two characters. Then I started listening. The guy was silent. But the girl, Meredith, had a lot to say about love and loss and disillusionment. I started writing. It wasn’t until the following summer that Meredith’s pages of rumination began to take shape as a novel. But it had nothing at all to do with Meredith, or even sailboats. I was working that summer on a small teaching farm – a nineteenth century holdover, marooned in the Massachusetts suburbs. Before I knew it, an imaginary world was forming around that farm, and out of it, unexpectedly, the silent man began to speak.

He was intelligent and wry and somehow damaged. I put Meredith aside, and started writing Silence. The more I wrote, though, the more I worried. There seemed to be no middle ground between the heartbroken sailing prodigy and the disillusioned farmer. The answer came out of left field, as writing answers so often seem to. My friend Adam, a fellow farm-worker, informed me one morning, “My new favourite word is ‘serendipity’. Serendipity explains everything.” I said, “Right, whatever,” but I found the word knocking around my head over the next few days as I demonstrated the joys of cow milking and composting to a lot of hot, bored suburban children. And then Adam took me to see his family’s farm – another fabulous bit of anachronistic Americana. It had a huge old red barn, bigger even than the house, and intriguingly empty. It was big enough to hold a boat. And that was it, the flash in the pan: Silence was building a boat in his barn! And sooner or later he was going to need help: enter Meredith. Serendipity, indeed.

I’d like to say it all went smoothly from there, but novels never do. I took Serendipity with me onto a masters program, where the tutor hated it, and did her level best to fail me. A year later, I was lucky enough to find an agent who loved it, and I thought I was sorted. Wrong again: the agent couldn’t sell it, and ultimately gave up on it. So did I.

I wrote other books, found publishers for them, realized that historical was my thing. Then something strange happened. I was bogged down writing what should have been my fourth novel, with two small children and too little time to do the research it required. As I slogged away at 19th century Edinburgh, though, two familiar voices started speaking to me. And they were saying, “When are you ever going to figure it out? Our story belongs here!”
So I took Serendipity back out, re-set the first section in the 1890s, re-read it. At long last, it all made perfect sense. I emailed my editor: “Um, about that book you’re expecting…is it okay if I write a completely different one?”

The rest, so to speak, is history.

Thank you, Sarah! We wish you much success! To find out more about Sarah and her work, please visit her website.

Historical Novel Society Conference 2011

Yesterday, at 7:34 p.m., I staggered home after a whirlwind weekend at the Historical Novel Society's 4th USA Conference, held in beautiful San Diego. What an event! For readers, writers, bloggers and anyone else who loves historical fiction, this was the place to be - two overstuffed days of panels, banquets, late-night sex scene readings, fight reenactments, and more chatter than a switchboard on meth.

I've attended two of the previous HNS conferences - Salt Lake City and Schaumburg - first as a self-published author seeking to sell my next manuscript and second as a first-time traditionally published novelist seeking to network. This time, I went as a speaker and as a writer, first and foremost, as well as to support my agent, Jennifer Weltz of the Jean V Naggar Literary Agency, and my St Martin's Press editor, Charlie Spicer. It's always great to socialize with people who work in publishing; unlike other jobs I've had, those in publishing by and large like to party. So, evidently, do historical fiction writers and aficionados. In between panels on everything from Fact vs Fiction to Are Marquee Names Necessary? the hotel facing the sparkling harbor crackled with energy and wine as writers exchanged ideas, business cards, advice, and stories. I would have had to stay five days to meet and talk to everyone I wanted to.

There were many memorable moments - Diana Gabaldon joyously reading a gay sex scene from her upcoming novel; C.C. Humphreys in blue velvet acting the role of the earl of Rochester in a risque enactment from Gillian Bagwell's Darling Strumpet; the generous advice and caution doled out by the editors during their panel; Kate Quinn's red leather stilettos; the lovely reader who brought me a postcard with a picture of a Catherine de Medici lily; gossiping with Allie of Hist-Fic Chick and Heather of Maiden's Court; Karleen Koen explaining how she gets around "inconvenient" facts - but it was Jennifer Weltz's rousing, all-encompassing keynote speech on building community that symbolized the entire nature of the occasion.

Community is what the Historical Novel Society is truly all about. There were no "stars" at this conference; rather, everyone was a star. From the unpublished writer pitching for the first time to an agent or editor; to the impossibly young and enthusiastic blogger to the veteran author with numerous titles under her belt, everyone was there to help, support, and encourage one another; to rally around a genre that in the past has suffered more than its share of denigration, and to rejoice in its current explosive popularity. Not that there weren't stars - oh, no! The roster was peppered with the brightest names in the business, jaw-droppingly so; but unlike other organizations, HNS has never been about celebrity or exclusiveness.

On the contrary. It's all about celebration.

The Historical Novel Society's next conference will be held in 2012 in London. I hope to see you there!

Guest Post from Evan Ostryzniuk, author of OF FAITH AND FIDELITY

OF FAITH AND FIDELITY: Geoffrey Hotspur and the War for St. Peter’s Throne is the first book in the English Free Company series set in the late Middle Ages, by Evan Ostryzniuk. The English Free Company is led by Geoffrey Hotspur, an orphan-squire and ward of the mighty Duke of Lancaster, whose driving ambition is to become a knight and serve a great lord. Of Faith and Fidelity takes place in 1394, at the height of the key to winning the throne of St. Peter was control of the Patrimonschism of the Western Church when the throne of St. Peter was contested by rival claimants in Rome and Avignon. Unable to settle the dispute peacefully, both sides resorted to war, and the y, a band of territory stretching the breadth of Italy that owes fealty to whichever pope who can rule it. Before Henry V won his miraculous victory at Agincourt, before the Borgias had done their infamous deeds, there was Geoffrey Hotspur, a man as tall as Charlemagne and armed with a sword that rivals Excalibur. Thrown off the established path to knighthood, the ambitious and hot-tempered Geoffrey finds himself caught up in the war between the two popes, where he must adapt his beliefs and apply his training as a squire in order to survive.

Please join me in welcoming Evan Ostryzniuk!

Imagining the setting one step at a time
by Evan Ostryzniuk
One of the most difficult tasks for the writer of historical novels is reconciling the fictional setting between what it looks like today, what you want it to be, and how contemporaries saw it. This acquires greater importance when spatial relations have to make key contributions to the plot. Because Of Faith and Fidelity features a number of castles, cities and battlefields, I had to make sure that I understood the physical relationships of urban and rural topographies if I was to offer a convincing portrayal of the challenges my characters face when negotiating them. If I can’t run up a set of stone steps to reach a parapet without huffing and puffing, then I cannot in good conscience have my man-at-arms, weighted down with a sword and armor, probably suffering from some sort of chronic ailment, racing aloft and confronting his opponent in full readiness, no matter how much his medieval adrenalin is pumping. Finding the logical range of action for a (non-superheroic) character is the duty of every historical fiction author.

Wandering around a medieval castle today can be a sullen experience because of how thoroughly so many of them have been hollowed out, leaving the author with a negative impression of castle life. At the northern Italian city of Marostica, which is famous for its chessboard main square, the medieval curtain walls and gatehouses survive intact, although they are worn and barren but for a small museum. At first glance, the fortifications look dull, and they are practically isolated from the town proper, as though today’s residents are embarrassed by them. If I were to transpose these initial impressions to the fictional page, I would be misrepresenting their true relationship with the objects of its protection. On close examination I found that the main gatehouse was full of holes – not from the impact of cannon fire, but rather from the insertion of timber. Studying how these mysterious apertures were aligned, I discovered that the beams that were once there must have supported extensive terraces of several levels that projected well into the city. These terraces, I assume, were rented by merchants, patrolled by sentries, and used by the town fathers for important announcements. Building on this knowledge, I imagined canopies, balconies, curtains, and all sorts of decoration that eventually adorned the naked walls with rich and dynamic structures. The fortifications not only protected Marostica – they were well integrated into the life of the great city.

All authors need to imagine their settings in great detail, of course, but the physical presence of him or her at these locations, regardless of changing uses and structural alterations, can do wonders for building that fictional environment, supporting its veracity, and offering opportunities for discoveries that deepen the narrative. It’s the little things that matter, and more to the point, the things that are left out by contemporaries. Cities are a major challenge in this regard. We live in an age of the metropolis, where everything – simply put – is bigger. On my tour of medieval Italy I was astounded by just how compact and isolated even the great cities were. Their former citizens must have felt this. Siena, for example, is a marvel of form and function, with an enormous cathedral, magnificent main square (which is round) and enough houses for the city to be divided into competing districts. It was one of the centers of banking and a stop along the great pilgrim route, yet at a casual pace I crossed the breadth of Siena in an hour! Even considering Siena’s modest urban sprawl, I can’t help but be convinced that the average medieval citizen felt dwarfed and isolated from the endless forests and fields that would have surrounded his or her city. As a writer of historical fiction, I feel compelled to emphasize this essential distance, for it affected contemporaries’ worldview, and from that how they interacted with city and country.

The author of historical fiction has to take especial care when reimagining battlefields because he or she has to consider so many factors and conditions. Few medieval battlefields are preserved in any meaningful sense, and contemporary chroniclers tended to focus on the deeds of great knights, unless the conditions had a critical impact on the battle, like the mud at Agincourt or the heat at Hattin. Every reader wonders what it must have been like to be laden with armor, packed in dense ranks and brandish a heavy weapon in the face of an enemy. I know what fascinates me is the intensity of the combat experience. Understanding strategy is fine, but what I want to know is how much did the men-at-arms sweat as he stood for hours on an open field, what kind of traction did he have, or how difficult it was for him to move in full harness. When I walked around the fields of Anghiari, I tested the resilience of the ground, hazarded the distance to the surrounding hills and the town itself, and I tried to create for myself the perspective of a Florentine foot soldier who might have stood in 1440 where I was standing in 2010, awaiting the charge of the Milanese on that fateful June day.

Evan Ostryzniuk was born and raised in western Canada, where he attended the University of Saskatchewan. After graduating with a B.A. in History and Modern Languages and an M.A. in Modern History, Evan did post-graduate work at the University of Cambridge, concluding five years of research with a doctoral thesis on the Russian Revolution. He eventually found his way to eastern Europe, where he took up positions as a magazine editor, university lecturer and analyst in the financial services sector before finally settling on writing as a career. He currently resides in Kyiv, Ukraine. Of Faith and Fidelity: Geoffrey Hotspur and the War for St. Peter’s Throne is his first novel.

TUDOR SECRET debuts in the UK and blogger giveaway

THE TUDOR SECRET debuts today in mass market paperback in the UK! The UK's mass-market is a larger-sized paperback than our US mass market editions, and it looks lovely. The book is also discounted at Waterstones and WH Smith. To all my UK readers, I hope you enjoy it and thank you for your support!

In honor of the book's release, I'm offering TWO free copies to UK-based bloggers for review. If you are a UK-based blogger and would like to review The Tudor Secret on your blog, please leave me a comment below. Giveaway ends June 20.

For the love of a feral cat

Yesterday evening, my partner and I lost our oldest cat, Rosie, unexpectedly. She'd been sitting on the low wood fence between our house and our neighbor's, as she did almost every night after dinner. We had checked on her earlier in the evening from our living room window before settling down for a movie, and she eyed us with her usual nonchalance. Half way through the film, we heard a loud scuffle; our dog Paris started barking in agitation and throwing herself at the door. We ran outside. A pitbull-mix dog that lived a few doors down and we always worried about had evidently gotten loose and came upon her. Rosie was half-blind in one eye and her hearing had diminished significantly; she had sat on that fence every night for years and either didn't see the dog or didn't think it posed a danger, until it was too late. Though we ran out and fought it off, stopping it from mauling her to death, her back leg had sustained severe injuries. It would have required amputation and difficult follow-up. So, at 1:45 a.m., in the emergency hospital, as we petted her and murmured our love, she was euthanized. She'd already been heavily sedated, and she left us quietly, without further pain.

It was the first time in 11 years we had touched her.

Like our other five cats, who depend on us for food, care, and shelter in our garden and in our garage, where we've designed a cat-friendly environment, Rosie was feral. We think she was probably 11 or 12 years old; but we were never sure. She came to us as a young cat, hungry, thin, and wary, as so many cats born outside do. Together with our next door neighbors, both of whom love cats, we gained her trust and respected the boundaries she determined for interaction. In time, she was caught and spayed, but she was never tamed. Still, she stayed. She dwelled in our and our neighbors' gardens and accepted the other ferals who drifted into our lives over the years and were likewise neutered or spayed, and released; she and they even developed a hierarchy. When feeding time came and Rosie was there, the other cats always deferred to her. She ate first. Same when it came to the wheelbarrow in the garden; it was her special daytime sleeping spot and woe was any other cat who tried to take it from her. She even developed a relationship of sorts with Paris; our dog didn't chase her and she deigned to tolerate Paris sharing the garden on occasion.

Rosie was a wanderer, at first. We fretted over her days-long disappearances, only for her to suddenly show up at our kitchen door, face pressed to the glass, wanting food. As she aged, she stopped leaving. In the last 8 years, she never went far. She ate every day in the morning and evening (and, as her chewing abilities decreased, had her own special dish of wet food); took her morning groom on our deck, her afternoon nap in the wheelbarrow, and at night . . . well, she went onto the fence, to watch the traffic or bask in the moonlight and whatever other allure the night holds for cats.

Her loss - both for how it happened and that it happened to her - has left us bereft. However when I mentioned to a well-meaning friend that we'd decided to have her privately cremated and her ashes returned to us, this friend said, "But why? I mean, it's not as if she was your pet. She was just a wild cat you fed." This got me to thinking about the complex, sometimes intangible bond we can develop with animals, particularly feral cats. People who don't care for them cannot understand that while we may not touch these cats, curl up with them in our beds or play with them, they are still an integral part of our family. We saw Rosie every day for all those years; we watched over her, ensured she would be as safe and comfortable as possible, and always respected she was not, and would never be, a fully domesticated cat. This doesn't mean we didn't love her or she didn't love us. I saw it in her eyes, sometimes, when I paused to whisper silly things at her as I set down her food or went to clean her box in the garage. She would tilt her head, regarding me with those big amber eyes, and she would narrow her gaze, as if to tell me, she understood. She understood and she appreciated it. She thanked us.

We already miss Rosie terribly. We find ourselves looking out the window for her, toward the now-empty wheelbarrow which for today at least, none of the other cats have claimed. Tonight, when we went down into the garden to feed them, all five were sitting there, waiting. They rarely show up like that, all at once; they tend to feed in shifts. Yet as my partner and I gazed upon their solemn faces, they returned our look and I could have sworn, they knew. They realized Rosie was gone and we were grieving for her.

And in their silent way, they thanked us.

CONFESSIONS OF CATHERINE DE MEDICI in trade paperback!

The trade paperback edition of THE CONFESSIONS OF CATHERINE DE MEDICI is in stores tomorrow, with a gorgeous new cover and bonus reader material!

I'll be on tour most of June. My first tour with Historical Fiction Virtual Tours starts tomorrow and ends June 6; you can follow my schedule here.

My second tour with Pump Up Your Book Promotion starts on June 13 and ends on June 24; the schedule is here.

In addition, I'll be appearing at the Historical Novel Society Conference in San Diego, June 17 - 19. To find out more about this one-of-a-kind gathering of the tribe, click here.

For my UK-based readers, the mass market paperback edition of THE TUDOR SECRET, hits stores on June 9. The new edition is beautiful, with a slightly re-designed cover. I'm excited about it and hope my UK readers enjoy the book!

As you can see, I'm going to be busy, so this blog may be quiet for a while. In the past, I've posted my daily tour appearances here, as they happen, but this time, they'll be posted on my Facebook page instead, so as to not clutter up this blog's feed. If you want to follow along, please do so at Facebook.

Thanks for all your support, as always. I hope to be back soon with more exciting author interviews, giveaways, and news!

Blogger Review Opportunity for CONFESSIONS OF CATHERINE DE MEDICI

THE CONFESSIONS OF CATHERINE DE MEDICI releases on May 24 in trade paperback in the U.S. (Random House Readers Circle edition). I currently have two virtual tours scheduled, the first one with Historical Fiction Virtual Tours on May 24 through June 4 and then with Pump Up Your Book Promotion on June 13 through June 24. As always, I'll be offering guest posts and giveaways.

I have a few extra copies for US-only bloggers who would like to feature and review the book. If you have not signed for one of my tours and are interested in reviewing the book on your blog, please send an e-mail at cwgortner [at] earthlink.net and I'll do my best to accomodate your request. Thank you in advance for all your support!

Guest post from Paul Elwork, author of THE GIRL WHO WOULD SPEAK FOR THE DEAD

I'm delighted to welcome Paul Elwork, author of THE GIRL WHO WOULD SPEAK FOR THE DEAD, a debut novel set in 1925 and based on the powerful spiritualist revival of that era. Thirteen year old Emily Stewart and her brother Michael gather the neighborhood children to fool them with “spirit knockings.” But soon their game of contacting the dead creeps into a world of adults still reeling from the after effects of World War I. When the twins find themselves dabbling in the uncertain territory of human grief and family secrets, their game spins wildly out of control. A layered, multigenerational story, The Girl Who Would Speak for the Dead is a novel about our desperate need to contact the departed, and what we ultimately will do for forgiveness.

Please join me in welcoming Paul Elwork!

Historical Accuracy and the Make-Believe of Fiction
Historical reality is a funny thing in fiction. To begin with, being fiction, it’s not supposed to faithfully replicate reality, but to reinvent, recombine, and recast it. Fiction writers should try to infuse their make-believe stories (whether set in realistic, familiar settings or in places where dragons fly) with larger truth as they best understand it. Truth about the experience of being human, about what it means to exist in the divided and complicated consciousness of an entity we call a person, conducted through all of the filters and personal history of a writer typing or scribbling away. But of course we’re playing with the materials to serve our stories, and I fail to see why we can’t play with history if it’s considered proper for us to make up people who were never born.

Okay, as far as that goes, but how much playing with historical reality is acceptable in fiction? And just for a second, let’s consider the whole notion of “historical fiction.” When we use this term, are we referring strictly to a genre with an internal logic and expectations imposed by both writers and readers? My novel, The Girl Who Would Speak for the Dead (Amy Einhorn Books/Penguin Group), is set in the 1920s, but I wouldn’t place it in any specific genre, including historical fiction. I think genre labels have a limited value for broad sorting purposes, but that as readers we should ditch them when approaching any piece of fiction and its performance on the page. This is not anti-genre snobbery; it’s anti-anti-genre snobbery. I say rejoice when we find literary value, whatever the style or setting.

Obviously, the questions above invoke all sorts of eye-of-the-beholder responses, and I have no interest in arguing for any specific metrics on the matter. Just like any other aspect of a novel, adherence to historical accuracy or lack of it is something for each reader to take or leave, to buy into or set aside. Still, I’m sort of fascinated by the kind of reader who demands a strict fidelity to historical facts in works of fiction. (A further complication is that such facts are often not as set in stone as the word implies, but never mind that.) They seem to treat any departure from historical accuracy as a kind of writer offense, something like the questions about truthfulness that seem to follow the megasuccess of memoirs in publishing just now. All of this is not to say that I don’t respect writers who do endless research to best capture moments and places in time. Even though my novel isn’t a slice of life taken from urban Philadelphia in the 1920s, even though the action takes place on the outskirts and in a much more insular place, I still did careful research to set my characters on a stage corresponding with history as best I could—except for one omission, as I explain below.

When my novel was released in an earlier edition by a small press a few years ago, I had an encounter with a strict-history reader on the night of my first public appearance as a writer, at a branch of the Free Library of Philadelphia. The book—in its old form and new, expanded version—is about a twin brother and sister who pretend to contact the dead during the summer of 1925. Emily Stewart, the sister in this set of twins, makes a cracking noise with her ankle that she and her brother Michael convince others are the sounds of the departed knocking from the other side. The book takes place in 1925 and draws much of its thematic energy from being in the shadow of World War I, but it plays with history in borrowing the true story of the Fox sisters of upstate New York, who did the same thing, with a different scope and outcomes, in the mid-nineteenth century. There’s even an author’s note in the beginning of the book acknowledging all of this: Anyone familiar with the birth of the Spiritualist movement in the mid-nineteenth century will recognize the story of the Fox sisters as the inspiration of this novel. And anyone who recognizes the Fox sisters floating behind the narrative will also see the flaw in the novel’s attempt to mimic historical reality (such as it is)—namely, that the occult-minded people in this book, who would certainly be familiar with the sisters from upstate New York, treat the Stewart twins as a new and exciting phenomenon. For this indiscretion, I ask the reader’s forgiveness and a suspension of disbelief. History suggested the novel’s basis and theme; its specific events and characters are the responsibility of my own imagination.

At my first public reading, the person determined to depants me on this point was a former editor of a well-known magazine of fantasy and horror fiction. He raised his hand and proceeded, like a lawyer for the prosecution, to scornfully outline his problem with my novel’s premise. I acknowledged that he was right about the chronological rearrangement, mentioned the author’s note, but he wasn’t impressed. He had raised his hand to expose me as an ignorant charlatan and he wasn’t going to hit the brakes at that point.

I could have said so many withering things, but I didn’t. A voice in my head said I shouldn’t eviscerate this guy at my first public appearance, even if most of the attendees were the students of a friend’s high-school class. It still tickles me that a man who had invested himself for years as an editor and writer in fantasy and science fiction would take such an unflinching, orthodox stance on historical accuracy. I tried to move on, having let him have his say and answered him. He wasn’t going to let go. He started making suggestions that I should have set the story before the advent of radio, to make it plausible that this little neighborhood had no knowledge of such stuff, because in the 1920s they would have heard about Harry Houdini running around debunking the early-twentieth-century inheritors of the Fox sisters’ act.
The editor’s wife tried to be helpful. She asked—with a hopeful note in her voice—if the book was a work of alternative history. I told her I don’t think in terms of genre when I write. She really was trying to be nice, and I still appreciate it.

By this point, I was responding to her husband in somewhat condescending tones. I’m only human. I explained that I wasn’t trying to mince around the Fox sisters as a historical issue in my novel. I was simply removing them from the equation, something I thought wouldn’t be such a big deal, considering that most people aren’t familiar with the first Spiritualists, anyway. And even at that, I felt it was worth mentioning in a note before the story begins, to acknowledge the inspirational source of the novel and free me to fictionalize at will. I would have been less comfortable writing a story set in the 1920s that removed World War I from the equation, so I guess my personal line lies somewhere between the historical displacement of removing the Fox sisters and removing the first full-scale industrial war of the modern age. Is that line stark, for me? Would I stand up before a writer who crossed it to huff and puff like the editor I’m having fun with here, even if that writer did so knowingly to serve his or her purposes as a storyteller?
No. I’d be bound by my own answer for the editor in the crowd, who protested me saying I had written about a world that had never known the Fox sisters. He said, “You can’t do that.”
I said, “Of course I can. I can do anything I want. It’s a novel.”
He raised his eyebrows and suddenly, finally, dropped it. I think that little line got more traction with him than my author’s note ever could.

Thank you, Paul. We wish you the best of luck with the novel! Paul lives in Philadelphia and is the father of two sons. His work has appeared in a variety of journals, including Philadelphia Stories, Short Story America, SmokeLong Quarterly, and Word Riot. His novel The Girl Who Would Speak for the Dead (Amy Einhorn Books/Penguin Group) is available online and in bookstores everywhere. For more information, please visit his website.

Happily Ever After?

Once in a while an event comes around that unites us— sometimes, unfortunately, it is an epic tragedy, such as the recent devastation in Japan; other times, it is a royal wedding, like the recent union of Prince William and Kate Middleton.

In the weeks leading up to the most anticipated royal event in decades, there’s been a lot of bombastic media gushing, with everything from Ms Middleton’s semi-nude catwalk to the prince’s previous dalliances touted out for our consumption. There has also been some rather vitriolic condemnation of our societal fascination with an institution that no longer seems relevant, much less in-touch, with today’s culture, and with a group of people who dwell in a rarified glass bubble of privilege that never reflects anything but the fantasies we cast upon it.

All of which is, to a certain extent, true. Monarchies have by and large become relics clinging to the crumbling edifice of past glory, even as the real world speeds up to pass them by. And past hyped-up royal marriages that ended up being personal and public calamities have certainly plagued the House of Windsor, with the celebrated marriage of Prince Charles and the late Princess Diana being the most sobering example.

Nevertheless, this wedding seemed different right from the start. Oh, the bells and extravagance were all there; so were all the over-the-top hats and dowdy rituals and botoxed famous guests. And so were the inevitable comparisons to the union of Diana and Charles. But none of this managed to overshadow the actual sight of two radiant young people, who have had their own ups and downs in their journey to the altar, taking the first steps into marriage.

For those of us who watched Diana’s wedding and painful transformation from shy prey to suave cover model and crusader for the less fortunate, even as she weathered the blinding glare of her own celebrity and devastation wrought by it and the collapse of her marriage to Charles, there are marked differences to be noted. Diana entered the cathedral in an armorial frock garnished by enough tulle to conceal her very person— a symbolic representation of the life that awaited her as royal prisoner. She had to literally claw her way out of that gown to uncover, all too briefly, the stunning flesh-and-blood woman underneath who demanded the right to her own life.

In contrast, the new duchess of Cambridge glided over her red carpet in breathtaking elegance, sheathed in confidence and arm-hugging lace, unable to contain her smile, proof that no matter what the future may hold, she will be no princess-in-peril. And her groom, stalwart and blushing in his military order, gazed upon her with genuine awe, so that all that pomp surrounding them faded to insignificance. Unlike Charles and Diana, who even while standing on the palace balcony appeared to be strangers, this was a couple in love, celebrating their union before the world— and it showed.

Weddings are by their very nature ephemeral. After months of frenetic planning and dieting and expense, they burst upon us and for a few hours rivet our attention with their glamour and endless possibilities, only to be captured as if in amber through videos and photographs, while the couple itself embarks on the challenging road of daily togetherness. As evidenced by Diana's experience, royal marriage can turn catastrophic, much like ordinary marriages all over the world. In essence, there is therefore nothing different between her wedding and her eldest son’s –swathed in gigantic expectations and witnessed by millions, there is still no guarantee of success.

Except for the hope that this time, William and Kate have found the elusive happily ever-after.

M.J. Rose's THE HYPNOTIST now in trade paperback!

M.J. Rose's elegant and mysterious THE HYPNOTIST is now out in trade paperback! This was one of my favorite novels of last year, and in celebration of its new release, I'm re-posting my review of the book. If you like thrilling, literary suspense, you're going to love this novel!

A priceless sculpture that hides an ancient secret; an FBI investigator haunted by the past; and a terrorist plot involving the theft of magnificent works of art all combine to create THE HYPNOTIST, the unputdownable thriller and third entry in M.J.Rose's superb Reincarnationist series (The Reincarnationist and The Memorist).

No author currently writing in the suspense/thriller category does quite what M.J. Rose does; underpinning her novels is the haunting premise that all of us have past lives that connect us to the present, and within this framework she's conjured a high-stakes world of treacherous business dealings, international intrigue, and the often lethal search for the elusive Memory Tools - objects that can assist people to access their pasts and which, if found and harnessed, could provide their owner with unimaginable power. At the center of this web is Dr Malachi Samuels of the Phoenix Foundation, a gifted yet amoral reincarnation expert who allegedly will stop at nothing to possess the Memory Tools.

These entwined themes are spun throughout the series; however, each novel can be enjoyed on its own merits and The Hypnotist is no exception. When Lucian Glass, FBI criminal art investigator, is called in by the Metropolitan Museum in New York City to investigate the horrific mutilation of a stolen painting, he is plunged into a search for the man who, years ago, destroyed his youth and aspiring career as an artist. His investigation leads him back into the elegant, dangerous milieu of the Phoenix Foundation, where a young girl is being treated for nightmarish visions, and the presence of a mysterious woman who might hold the key to his quest. As Lucian begins to uncover a plot centered around a millennial-old sculpture that has surfaced after years of neglect, he finds himself caught up in an intricately linked conspiracy of art smuggling, terrorism, and the race to claim a coveted Memory Tool.

The Hypnotist stands out from the other entries in the series for its lyricism and the timely question: Who truly owns art? In this novel, which is replete with Ms Rose's trademark moments of breathtaking suspense and secrets-within-secrets, Rose has gone deeper into her mythology, detailing the subtle ways in which senseless tragedy shifts and defines us, and the hallowed effect that art exerts on our beings. While her previous novels have all featured lost souls seeking redemption, in The Hypnotist something of Rose's own complex soul comes into display, and it is a fascinating glimpse into a writer who, with this novel, has both matured and exceeded the very high expectations she has set for herself and her readers.

M.J. Rose is the international bestselling author of over nine novels, including the acclaimed Reincarnationist series. Her new novel, THE BOOK OF LOST FRAGRANCES, will be published in 2012. To learn more about her and her work, please visit her website.

Guest post by Laurel Corona, author of FINDING EMILIE

Laurel Corona (THE FOUR SEASONS, PENELOPE'S DAUGHTER) has become well-recognized for her vivid fiction about women and the forgotten or undervalued roles they played in their societies; in her new novel FINDING EMILIE, released on April 12, she offers us the evocative and poignant story of Lili du Chatelet, daughter of the free-thinking Emilie du Chatelet, who liveds in the crumbling world of pre-revolutionary France. Abandoned as a baby, Lili seeks to uncover the startling legacy of her mother, as life in aristocratic society constricts around her like the excruciating corsets she is forced to wear. But she is soon compelled to discover much more than where she comes from and gain the courage to fashion her on life as the world around her undergoes cataclysmic upheaval.

In celebration of FINDING EMILIE's release, Laurel has offered us this guest post. Please join me in welcoming Laurel Corona. Voltaire: Bad Boy of the Enlightenmentby Laurel Corona "The ungodly arch-villain has died like a dog,” Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart is reputed to have said upon hearing of Voltaire’s death in Paris in 1778. Undoubtedly, similar sentiments were expressed over much of France at the news. Voltaire’s death was consistent with his life. Toothless and bald, the octogenarian hypochondriac had finally caught a real illness, and he used his little remaining strength to turn his back on a priest who had come to hear his confession and give him communion. “Just let me die in peace,” he growled. Those were his last words. Peace was not something Voltaire had offered the church in return--or any of the entrenched institutions in France.

With his passionate convictions about intellectual and political honesty and social justice, Voltaire’s acid wit cut a wide swath, sparing no one he considered a hypocrite or liar. Poet, historian, playwright, philosopher, essayist, and satirist, Voltaire used his prodigious talent to combat what he called “l’infame”--the infamy of using a position of authority to take advantage of others. The church lied and abused power to instill fear, the state to foster obedience. No one, it seemed, in Voltaire’s words, “dared to think.” Think for yourself. That’s all Voltaire asked, but whenever he thought for himself he could count on trouble.

He was imprisoned a number of times for problems with the censors, was banished to England, and later was sequestered for fifteen years under loose house arrest at the home of the Marquis du Châtelet, Voltaire’s lover Emilie du Châtelet’s tolerant husband. Throughout his life numerous lettres de cachet, arrest warrants granted as royal favors, were taken out against him by powerful individuals with a grudge. With what amounted to a bull’s eye painted on his back and arrows in the hands of most of the powerful forces in France, after Emilie’s death he lived out his life as a landed gentleman in Ferney, close enough to the Swiss border to escape on horseback at a moment’s notice. He was on that horse more than once. His books were routinely published abroad and smuggled into France, while Voltaire threw up his hands as if this were beyond his control. It was his popularity with a restive public that brought the books to France, not he himself--or so he would have it. Those books include his Philosophical Dictionary, an alphabetized collection of essays skewering one or another pretension. Church teachings were his primary target, but he also took aim at the monarchy and government, and at common people who ought to know better than to believe anything authorities say.

My favorite entry is the one on Adam, where Voltaire pretends not to understand how Adam could be the father of all humankind and yet no one in China seems to have heard of him. Not heard of their original forefather? Voltaire suggests that it must have been a very effective campaign indeed to have so thoroughly destroyed all the monuments that must once have been erected to him, and all the writings other than the Bible that told the same story. Fellow philosophers did not escape his pen, the most notable being Leibniz, whose philosophy of optimism is dismantled by the adventures of Voltaire’s most famous character, Candide. Anecdotes about Voltaire reveal that he practiced in his life the same disdain for authority and illogic.

Stories abound, such as the one Voltaire recounts to my protagonist, Lili, in Finding Emilie. He tells her he once told a police officer searching his room for contraband writing, that he threw the materials down the privy. The officer probed the excrement-filled privy with such enthusiasm that sewage ended up spraying the tavern downstairs when a pipe burst. Voltaire never discarded any papers at all. He just wanted a fit punishment for someone who did not dare to think, and who made his living enforcing censorship laws. Voltaire was rich, having gotten his initial wealth from a successful strategy to manipulate a glitch in the French lottery and win the grand prize.

By the time he needed a new retreat near the Swiss border, he had enough money to purchase not just the chateau at Ferney but the entire town. The tiny town’s church spoiled the view from the chateau, so Voltaire tore it down without church permission, intending to build another in a new location. The church went on the attack, demanding he rebuild on the hallowed ground where it once stood. Voltaire had no choice but to go along. A Deist, he believed that God created and ran the universe through natural law, and that the church distorted that reality through ludicrous doctrines and stories. Above the new church door Voltaire had a different kind of dedication carved: Deo Erexit Voltaire, “Voltaire erected this church to God.” The church in his town would not be named for a saint, based on the foolish notion that some heavenly being would intercede for the people of Ferney. It would honor the God of the Deists, and nothing further. The inscription and the pyramid-shaped tomb he had built to be his final resting place, half in and half out of the church, can be seen by visitors to the Chateau at Ferney today. The town itself was renamed Ferney-Voltaire in his honor. Voltaire is actually entombed in the Pantheon in Paris, but like all the great men honored there, he had painful shortcomings. Many of his writing are painfully anti-Semitic, and he took credit that really belonged to Emilie du Châtelet for scientific work they undertook together. His plays and poetry, for which he was best known at the time, are so dated they are hardly ever read. Still, there is no question Voltaire led one of the great lives of his, or any era, and that he is indeed the undisputed bad boy of the Enlightenment.

Thank you, Laurel. We wish you the best of success with FINDING EMILIE! To find out more about Laurel and her work, please visit her website.

Guest post from Nan Hawthorne, author of BELOVED PILGRIM

I'm delighted to welcome Nan Hawthorne, author of AN INVOLUNTARY KING and her latest novel, BELOVED PILGRIM. Set during the disastrous Crusade of 1101, this is the tale of a discontented Bavarian noblewoman who dons her late twin brother's armor and identity and sets out to forge a new life for herself. In midst of adventure and tragedy she discovers honor is not always where one expects it and that true love can come in the form of another woman. Nan has graciously offered us this guest post celebrating her new book's release.

Please join me in welcoming Nan Hawthorne!

Women Fighters in the Crusades
By Nan Hawthorne

One of the challenges an author has in writing historically accurate novels about the Middle Ages is whether sources from that time can be trusted. A combination of alternate sources, archeological evidence, and just plain common sense over and over has put what clerical chroniclers set down as fact in doubt. Perhaps one of the most notable examples of this fact is writing about the Crusades. Another is any writing at all about women. If you take what the Church writers record as the sole evidence, there were no women at the Crusades. They were certainly discouraged from going, though in fact as the mass of pilgrims were not military, coupled with the fact that both soldiers and other pilgrims brought their families, it is clear that in fact plenty of women were present. There are, of course, famous examples of noble women who went to the Crusades, most notably Eleanor of Aquitaine when she traveled with her first husband, the King of France. But for all her play-acting at being an Amazon warrior, she did not in fact fight.

What constitutes fighting? We have a tendency to interpret the fighter as the knight, or at least, a man at arms. There were documented female knights, but they were not necessarily fighters. More likely a woman knight would be the mistress of lands under fealty to an overlord, obligated to provide armed men for his use. But the mounted knight and even the man at arms is not the whole picture of a Crusader. Women could and did use bows and could participate in many aspects of siege warfare, part and parcel of the Crusades. It is a sort of classism and sexism that makes us see the woman’s involvement as lesser and therefore not credit it as fighting.

Recent consideration of Moslem sources and points of view offers alternate evidence of women in battle. The role of women in a siege is a perfect example. At Acre Moslem chroniclers describe in detail the women’s remains found afterward on the battlefield, women who wore some armor and carried weapons. The Church chroniclers do not admit to this, but the Moslem writers dispassionately acknowledge that Christian women fought alongside their husbands and brothers. The fact is that the question is not whether women fought but whether their participation in fighting was recorded. Christians were just one side of the conflict. Islam has numerous female warriors in its tradition. Though not specifically involved in the Crusades Nusaybah Bint k’ab Al Maziniyyah was a female fighter who fought at the Battle of Uhud with the army of Muhammad. Sharifa Fatima was a Zaydi chief in 15th century Yemen, and conquered San'a.

Looking at other conflicts in history one finds instances of women fighting along with men. Even in the Middle Ages there are numerous examples of women who fought, not only Joan of Arc, but also Aethelflaed, Lady of the Mercians and other warrior queens. Of the common soldier there is ample evidence of women fighting in, for example, the American Civil War. In that conflict women not only fought, but they joined the army and passed as men in order to do so. There are dozens of such accounts, revealing that it is not impossible for a woman to get away with passing as a man. They not only could, they did. If this happened in earlier wars, they simply would not have been counted as women fighters but included among the men.

When I was first working on Beloved Pilgrim someone asserted to me that swords were huge and heavy and no woman’s wrist was strong enough to wield one. Then how does one account for the many women who did in fact wield swords? As author Brandy Purdy quipped, “Joan of Arc did not go into battle wielding an embroidery needle.” There are strong men and weak men, and there are strong women and weak women. With the right physique and training a woman most certainly can wield any number of weapons. This is clearly not evidence none did.

It is a novelist’s job to speculate, for instance, what it would take for a woman to be accepted as a knight in order to construct a credible story. My heroine, Elisabeth, grows up training alongside her brother. She is the essential tomboy, and she is not a pretty little slip of a thing but tall, squarely built, and strong. If female Civil War soldiers could be accepted as men, then, I reasoned, so could she. Her motivation for this is complex, a mix of not wanting the role she is expected to fulfill of the passive wife of a baron, plus a positive wish to live with the freedom of a man in her social class and time. As a character, she fulfills a revelatory role. Being female she was not brought up with the values her brother was expected to adopt, making her a more objective observer of life as part of a crusading army, so I was able to illustrate the journey more fully with her unique point of view.

Did women fight in the Crusades? The answer is yes, but it is also “Why not?” I firmly believe women have always been part of armies and fought alongside men, and I believe as well that I created a character who fits what such a woman must be.
For the sake of brevity I have not listed my references here, but I will be happy to supply them on request to hawthorne@nanhawthorne.com.

Thank you, Nan. BELOVED PILGRIM is now available in print at Amazon.com and as an ebook on Smashwords.com. To learn more about Nan and her work please visit her at her at www,nanhawthrone.com

Winner of Margaret George's ELIZABETH I

According to random number generator, Colleen Turner is the winner of ELIZABETH I!
Congratulations, Colleen. Thank you to everyone who entered the contest; Margaret and I wish we had more copies to giveaway.

Guest post by Kate Quinn, author of DAUGHTERS OF ROME

I must admit, I'm a sucker for almost anything set in ancient Rome. The tumult, the marble, the breastplates, the decadence - it all fascinates me. And when I started reading Kate Quinn's DAUGHTERS OF ROME, I expected to be drawn right in; after all, it doesn't take much for me. But I did not expect to be as enthralled as I am; not only does Ms Quinn's second novel (her first is the bestselling MISTRESS OF ROME) brim with witty dialogue and marvelous descriptions, but her four women protagonists - cousins, all, and each immersed in the deadly struggles of the epoch known as the Year of the Four Emperors - are vivid, true to their time, yet very much identifiable to us. It's sexy, transporting, addictive fiction and I'm thrilled that Ms Quinn has accepted my invitation to visit with this guest post.

Please join me in welcoming Kate Quinn!

The Woman Behind The Throne

by Kate Quinn

I was already thrilled when C.W. Gortner invited me to be a guest on his blog, but I was even more thrilled when he suggested “women in power” as a topic. Powerful women in historical settings have long been a fascination of mine – and I suspect for Christopher too, considering his splendid book on Catherine de'Medici (which I adored, by the way).

The idea of the woman behind the throne has existed as long as there have been men to sit on thrones in the first place. The beautiful woman whispering into the ear of a powerful man – whether the image makes you envious or just profoundly uneasy, it's irresistible. Of course, some women managed to sit on thrones in their own right, usually through some combination of birth, brains, and luck. But a great many more women had to wield power covertly: wives or mistresses who acted as advisors and sometimes puppet-masters for kings. These are the women I find especially interesting. It's one thing to issue directives from a throne – but a woman who is coming up with the directives and pulling the strings of the man who gets to do the issuing? What a tiring job. They deserve credit, if nothing else, for pulling double duty.

Ancient Rome never had an independent empress, but it was supplied with many influential emperors' wives. Augustus's wife Livia is probably the most famous powerful empress – everyone remembers her from the “I, Claudius” miniseries; wheeling, dealing, blithely murdering family members right and left to see her husband promoted and her son chosen to succeed him. Who knows if the historical Livia was really that ruthless, but certainly Augustus relied heavily on her advice and respected her opinions. No matter what kind of power she wielded behind the scenes, Livia was smart enough to present herself publicly as a simple Roman matron; Augustus was constantly bragging that his wife wasn't too proud to weave his tunics with her own hands, Empress or no. (I always picture Livia getting up from her desk full of official dispatches when she heard guests coming, weaving exactly two bands of cloth until they went away again, and then going right back to work while the servants finish the weaving.)

Livia was the first empress to work actively for the throne, but certainly not the last – a quartet of later Empresses known as “the four Julias” were so influential that no one bothered with the emperors themselves but simply went straight to the Mrs.

Other empresses were less influential. Sometimes this was by choice, but sometimes not – because it's no use trying to pull the strings of a powerful man unless he lets you pull them. Emperors like Augustus were happy to listen to their wives. Others like Nero were content to take orders from them. But others declined to take either orders or advice from their wives, and a woman might find herself trapped in a paradox: the most powerful and elevated woman in the empire, with no control over anything but the daily shopping list.

My novel Daughters of Rome is about the Year of Four Emperors, and thus presents a variety of men who wear the crown – along with my heroine Marcella, who has a talent for dropping the right word in the Imperial ear to produce the desired result. Emperor Galba was cranky but easy to lead around; just tell him it would save money and he was all yours. Charming Emperor Otho who succeeded him was much smarter, but he liked amusing women – present your advice well wrapped in witticisms over a good wine, and he'd be sold. Third Emperor Vitellius didn't care about much beyond his dinner and the chariot races; as long as you caught him in a good mood after his beloved Blues team won, he'd sign anything. But what happens when another emperor comes along whom Marcella can't manipulate? What's a smart girl to do then – keep trying, or give up and resign herself to weaving her husband's tunics?

That's why I love empresses. These crowned women standing behind their Imperial husbands and smiling, much like modern political wives – who's to tell what category they fell into? Did they whisper diplomacy over the pillow or keep their mouths shut when asked for political advice? Did they receive petitioners and sign Imperial documents on behalf of their husbands, or fume and rant as they were firmly shut out of the halls of power? You never know, looking at them. They all look so serene, just like their marble busts which survived them by a few millennia and reside in museums today. I like standing in front of those busts, looking at these women behind the throne and wondering, “What really went on in your head?”

None of them have given me an answer yet. But it doesn't stop me asking.

Thank you, Kate, and we wish all the best of success! To learn more about Kate and her work, please visit her website.

Winner of BLOODWORK!

The winner of BLOODWORK by Holly Tucker is Amy!! Please contact me at cwgortner [at] earthlink.net with your mailing address so I can alert the publicist.

Thank you to everyone who entered the contest. I wish we'd had more copies to giveaway but I hope you'll go ahead and buy one, as it's a fascinating read!

Q&A with Margaret George, author of ELIZABETH I

Today is the publication day for Margaret George's epic new novel, ELIZABETH I. Margaret graciously agreed to this interview, and in celebration of her book Historical Boys is offering a signed first edition of ELIZABETH I. See below the interview for entry details. Please join me in welcoming Margaret George again! HB: Congratulations on the publication of ELIZABETH I. It's an honor to have you with us. This is a vivid and compelling novel detailing the later years of Elizabeth I's reign and her long, often tumultuous relationship with Lettice Knollys. Elizabeth I is such an iconic figure, and she exerts endless fascination. What inspired you to write about this portion of her life, as opposed to, say, her younger years?
MG:I identified more with Elizabeth at the height of her power than with the ‘princess in peril’ of her youth. Also, I wanted to explore a time that is strangely neglected by writers---the years following the Armada. In many ways those were the most interesting, and certainly the most “Elizabethan”, since many of the big names come into their own then, such as Shakespeare, Marlowe, Raleigh, Donne, Francis Bacon, and Robert Cecil. At the same time Elizabeth was grappling with her own issues of mortality and what would become of England after her death. This rich period is looked back on as the golden age of England.

HB: Lettice Knollys is often treated as either the ambitious lady who snagged Robert Dudley from under Elizabeth's unsuspecting nose or as the hapless object of the queen's ruthless jealousy. What interesting facts did you discover about Lettice? How is she different or similar to the myths surrounding her? Why do you think she presents such an intriguing counterfoil to the queen’s voice?
MG: Lettice was in many ways Elizabeth’s doppelganger. They shared similar coloring, intelligence, and personality, as well as being cousins. It must have been difficult for Lettice to see someone so like herself be given so much, while she, Lettice, had to fight for everything, and face setback after setback. It was almost a Cain and Abel story. On the other hand, Elizabeth could envy Lettice’s freedom. Just before I started writing, new evidence about Lettice’s age came to light in a family record, revealing Lettice as younger than previously thought---almost a decade younger than Elizabeth. Also, her time abroad in Basel as a young girl, when her staunch Puritan father had to flee England from “Bloody Mary”, must have stamped her in ways that Elizabeth had never experienced. Lettice knew what it was to be exiled, and to be a foreigner. If that taught her to be grasping, greedy, and calculating, still, I found her a sympathetic character. She reminded me of Scarlett O’Hara, vowing to never be hungry again, and with good reason.

HG: You are well known for your biographical novels of historical figures, from Henry VIII to Cleopatra to Mary Magdalene. What advantages or disadvantages did you find in terms of researching this particular novel? What decisions and/or compromises did you find yourself making as a writer when it came to telling Elizabeth’s story?
MG: Although Elizabeth is a familiar icon, and the nearest to our own time of anyone I’ve written about, she was a great mystery. She has a shell, a public persona that we all know and can see (there are more portraits of her than any other English monarch, but they may not really look like her at all, as she managed her image so carefully), and an inner self that is utterly guarded. We feel that she is hiding a secret of some sort, but we can’t guess what it is. She left no diary, no memoirs (in spite of many novelists writing them for her), very few personal letters. The poetry attributed to her is doubtful, and the anecdotes---usually illustrating her wit---are also of questionable authenticity. So I had to read between the lines and make educated guesses about what went on in her head. Since she didn’t want people to know what she was thinking, this was a challenge. A French ambassador said, “ She is a princess who knows how to transform herself as suits her best.” By limiting myself to one period of her life, I was able to cut down on the number of different facets I had to deal with. In the end I had to construct motivations that seemed the most likely to me, but as with everything connected with Elizabeth, I was taking a leap of faith---in my own ability to decipher her secret code.

HB: Elizabeth’s relationship with Essex was complex and is often misunderstood. What do you think motivated Essex to act as he did?
MG: Essex is a fascinating character but not a mysterious one like Elizabeth. He was a man born out of his time---he belonged in an earlier era when chivalry was in full flower, not in the cynical age he actually lived in. His gestures--- duels to settle matters of honor, his need for extravagant adventure and derring-do, and harking to military glory as a way to power---all point to that. He had outsized charm and much talent, and Elizabeth was drawn to that. She probably thought she could ‘tame’ him as she had his stepfather, Robert Dudley, and make him into a useful courtier. But, besides the Miniver Cheevy-like aspects of his personality, Essex seems to have suffered from a bipolar disorder that made him increasingly cut off from reality. It is dangerous to make a medical diagnosis on a historical character but his behavior---mood swings and grandiosity alternating with collapses and remorseful asceticism, point in that direction. That meant that sooner or later, since he was given huge public responsibilities he could not retire from, he was going to come to doom. Perhaps he just saw no way out and this was his way of ending it.

HB: Please tell us about methods that you employ to give your characters authenticity.
MG: I start by trying to find out everything about them---an ambitious undertaking! I feel that the more I know of hard facts, the more I will be able to connect the dots for the areas that are more shadowy. You know how they use sonar to make a grid on the ocean floor when looking for objects; that’s what I try to do with the facts. I record each month of a character’s life on one page of a spiral notebook, and every time I get a firm date for something I write it down, the big and the little alike. So, for May 1936 in Henry VIII’s life, I might write on the 19th: Anne Boleyn executed. On May 26th, I might record, “Henry is measured for a new green cape.” It becomes a sort of live-streaming video of his life. That gives me a feeling that I was really there and I know what happened. (Even if this is most likely not so as there were plenty of things he did in May 1536 that obviously weren’t recorded.)

I also, whenever I can, try to find someone I know, or know of, who may share traits with that character, so I can ‘see’ them in action. Often the historical character is a composite of real people I use for reference. Essex reminded me a bit of Jim Morrison---not that I actually ever met Jim Morrison. Of course Morrison’s personality and behavior was fueled by drugs and alcohol, whereas Essex’s was natural. Both were handsome, young, and self-destructive.

HB: How do you think this novel speaks to today’s reader or how do the events you evoke resonate for today’s world?
MG: I was struck by the similarities between Obama and Elizabeth. “No drama Obama” has an echo in Elizabeth, who was profoundly grounded in Realpolitik and was a cautious, clear-sighted realist. Knowing that a cool head was the best way to survive a crisis, she always kept steady on course. In some ways she seems very modern to us, and the problems she faced are still ones we face. How to maintain command of a situation? What does it take to be a successful world leader? She didn’t sponsor any great building programs, sign any significant laws such as the Magna Carta, or conquer any territory---all the standard things a successful ruler should do. Yet she gave her name to an age. What she gave her people was what everyone still wants, and now demand of their world leaders: stability, peace, and pride in themselves and their country.

HB: If you can, please tell us about your next project.
MG: I’d like to do a novel about the conflict between Boudica, the warrior queen of Britain, and the emperor Nero, her ultimate adversary. With her enormous ‘people’s army’ and wheeled chariots, Boudica took the occupying Romans by surprise and destroyed Colchester, St Albans, and London itself. This all happened during the time in Nero’s rule when he had just finished getting rid of his bothersome mother and was turning into the Nero of legend. What outsized personalities, and what an interesting corner of history! I will probably do it as alternating first person accounts.

To enter to win a copy of ELIZABETH I, please leave a comment below telling us which of Margaret's previous novels is your favorite. You must be a follower of this blog; unfortunately, this contest is open to US residents only due to publisher territory restrictions. Contest ends on April 15..