I’d intended to use my recent on-line interview about my dogs to segue into a discussion of the contrast between our attitudes toward animals and those of the medievals.  I still think that will be a good topic for a blog, but I am going to have to put it on hold.  I didn’t have a good week, have been ill again, and I thought I ought to alert you that I still have health “issues,” which might occasionally interfere with my blogs or e-mail responses.  It is frustrating without a doubt, and I am still learning how to live with a chronic illness—actually several of them.  But as soon as I start researching medieval medicine, that quickly cures any inclination to have a “pity party.”   My latest research has been on peritonitis, as I’ve picked that as my disease de jour, a plausible cause of death for one of my characters in Lionheart, and the result is a heightened appreciation for modern medicine!

        Anticipating questions about this, I thought I ought to talk about causes of death.  It is very rare when we actually know what killed a historical figure.  Usually the most we can hope for is the date of death.  If chroniclers mention a lingering illness, that would indicate a disease like cancer.   But when the death was sudden or quick, then writers have to rely upon our imaginations.  

          We know that Hal, Henry’s son, died of the “bloody flux,” or dysentery, which was one of the great killers of the MA; Hal would actually have died of dehydration caused by dysentery, and those are the symptoms I describe in his death scene.  Henry himself most likely died of septicemia, based upon comments he made to William Marshal in the Histoire.  Henry was also suffering from other ailments, including what one chronicler described as “an abscess in his groin,”  and a recurring leg injury that dated back to his being kicked by a horse in 1174.  After researching head injuries at length, I concluded that Geoffrey probably died of an epidural hematoma.  Henry and Eleanor’s daughter Matilda, the Duchess of Saxony, Tilda in DB, died suddenly in June of 1189, and we haven’t a clue as to what caused her death; she was only thirty-three.   At least Henry was spared this grief, for he died without knowing it.  Eleanor was not as fortunate; she gave birth to ten children and outlived all but two of them, her daughter Leonora in Castile and John. 

       With respect to the poor soul who is going to die of peritonitis in Lionheart, we know nothing whatsoever about his fatal illness, only that it was sudden and unexpected and does not appear to have been an accident.   In cases like this, I look for those ailments known to have had a high mortality rate in the MA.   Of course even a minor mishap could prove fatal to medievals, stepping on a nail, for example.   Basically, fictional deaths involve a degree of detective work.   For those of you who share my morbid curiosity about such matters, feel free to ask for all the gory details about the deaths of various characters in my novels.  I’ll be happy to explain why I concluded that Edward IV died of pneumonia or why I chose to let Llewelyn and Joanna’s daughter Elen die of a miscarriage.  At least with my mysteries, it is more straight-forward.  If a character dies, it is of my choosing, and I also get to select the method of demise, usually a bloody one, of course.

        This coming Wednesday, the 19^th of November, I will be in Scottsdale, Arizona  at my favorite bookstore, the Poisoned Pen, making a joint appearance with Diana Gabaldon and Dana Stabenow, and I ought to have some interesting stories to tell upon my return.  Meanwhile, thank you all for the feedback about Author’s Notes.  I am very glad that you find them as valuable as I do.  And thanks, too, Gabrielle, for the wonderful links.  More after Scottsdale.

November 17, 2008

     I am delighted to announce that Danielle Campisi, my brilliant webmaster (webmistress?) has put up a slide-show of the castles featured in Devil’s Brood, complete with haunting background music.  Much of the credit for this new feature must go to Susan Flantzer, who first posted the photos on one of my favorite websites, the Historical Fiction On-line forum.  As soon as I saw the photos, I knew readers of Devil’s Brood had to see them, too.  Be warned, though—they will make you want to head for the airport and catch the next plane for France!  I am now going to add castles for my other books, too.  It will be easy to find castles for my Welsh trilogy; the magnificent Castles of Wales website makes for one-stop shopping.  If any of you have requests for castle photos relating to Sunne or Saints or Time and Chance, do feel free to pass them on, and we’ll do our best.

     We have also added new links to Sharon’s Favorites.  And for those readers who’ve asked me when Devil’s Brood will be available in the Kindle format, just cruise on over to the Amazon mother ship.  You can also get Sunne and Prince of Darkness in Kindle, and we hope that St Martin’s new editions of Here Be Dragons and Falls the Shadow will soon join the list.  I confess that I am not a Kindle fan myself.  I need the tangible feel of the book, need to be able to hold it and read it in bed or even the bath.  But then I’ve been called a Luddite by some of my Kindle-loving friends, so I defer to their judgment.

     Thank you all for continuing to share your author recommendations with us.  I am looking forward to adding these new writers to my To Read List.   I thought I’d return the favor by recommending several books sure to interest my readers, especially those of you who chose Saints as your favorite of my novels.  Elizabeth Chadwick has written a fascinating novel about William Marshal’s controversial father, John Marshal, titled A Place Beyond Courage.  You will find it to be a visit to a familiar neighborhood, with people you already know from Saints:  Stephen, Maude, Robert of Gloucester, Brien Fitz Count, the young Henry.  It is like my favorite line from Casablanca, “Round up the usual subjects.”

     Elizabeth has also written two novels about everyone’s favorite knight, William Marshal, The Greatest Knight and The Scarlet Lion, which I haven’t read as yet, not wanting to be influenced, even subconsciously, by her portrayal of Will until I’d finished Devil’s Brood and now Lionheart.  But I can recommend them without hesitation, based upon the pleasure I am having as I read A Place Beyond Courage.   Her William Marshal novels have been published in both the US and the UK, and while A Place Beyond Courage won’t be published in the States until next year, the English edition can still be purchased on Amazon.  

      When it came to the depiction of the major characters who appear in both Saints and Courage, Elizabeth and I were on the same page, which is not surprising; these were well known historical figures, so we were drawing upon the same sources.  We both feel that we owe it to our readers to adhere to the established historical facts, and if we detour from the beaten path, we believe writers should explain these detours in their Author’s Notes—as when I did a revisionist history of a certain Yorkist king not kindly treated by Shakespeare!

     I’ve always gotten very positive feedback about my Author’s Notes, but I’d still like to throw this open to general discussion.  How do you feel about them?  Do you feel cheated if a historical novel doesn’t include one?  Or do you consider them to be icing on the cake, nice but not essential?    And do you think I should keep fighting my natural instinct to write ANs almost as long as my books themselves or should I just go with the flow?   Of course then I’d need advice on how to get my editor on-board with an AN that might fairly be called a novella!

      I have posted a new interview in my Press Room, one I did with Susanne Saville about my dogs: Cody, the Johnny Depp of Dogdom, and Chelsea, his neurotic little sidekick.  I’d intended initially to devote this blog to a discussion of pets and the vast differences between the medieval attitude toward animals and ours.  But I’ve already spent so much time talking about books that it would probably be best to save the Pet Blog for the next one.   If, in the meantime, you’d like to brag about your own remarkable pets or books you’ve enjoyed about pets (I assume everyone has read Marley and Me!) I’d love to hear from you. 

PS  I’d hoped to add my first photos to this blog, but naturally I ran into a snag.  I will sort it out and add them to the next one.

November 11, 2008

HI, everyone.
     I suspected that Here Be Dragons would win the contest, and it did, with Sunne in Splendour coming in second.  These two are the books most mentioned when readers write to me.  Now, confession time.  Here Be Dragons has always been my own favorite of my books.  In part because, after Sunne, there were actually characters left alive at the end!  And Dragons began my love affair with Wales.  I’d initially meant it to be the story of John and his daughter Joanna. I’d wondered how a woman would react if she discovered that the father she’d adored since childhood was capable of chilling cruelties.  I knew, of course, that Joanna had wed “a Welsh prince,” but he was still a shadowy figure when I moved to Wales in 1982 to research Dragons.  It only took a fortnight, though, for Llewelyn to steal the book right from under John’s nose.  And best of all, Dragons led the way to Falls the Shadow and The Reckoning.  Writers always worry that the well will go dry and we will run out of ideas for future books.  Thanks to Dragons, I was free of these worries for nearly a decade.
     So many of the authors you recommended are favorites of mine, too.  I think Anya Seton’s Katherine and The Winthrop Woman are gems; Green Darkness is another of her books I can recommend.  LIke you, Carrie, I love Lindsay Davis’s Falco series and Laurie King’s clever series about Mary Russell, who just happens to be wed to Sherlock Holmes.  I think Bernard Cornwell’s Richard Sharpe series is brilliant; he does about the best battle scenes I’ve ever read.  I agree with you Julie, about Edith Pargeter.  I read all of her Brother Cadfael books, written under the name Ellis Peters.  The only books of hers that I have not read are the four novels about the Welsh princes.  By the time I’d done my own Welsh trilogy, I was feeling so possessive of “my” princes that I didn’t want to read about them in another writer’s books.  And the fact that she wrote her books about thirty years before I did was utterly irrelevant!
     Kelly, I have good news for you.  P.F. Chisholm is writing another of her spectacular Elizabethan mysteries.  For those of you not yet familiar with this series, I can’t recommend it highly enough.  I am going to be doing an event at the Poisoned Pen in Scottsdale, Arizona next month, and Barbara Peters, the owner of the bookshop, is also the publisher of the Chisholm books.  So once I find out when we can expect the next one, I will let you all know.  And Sharon, by now Devil’s Brood should be in Australian bookshops; Penguin published a paperback edition for Australia and New Zealand, although their hardback edition will not be published in the U.K. until February 5th.  And Dave, I do intend to write about Owain Glyndwr in the future.  How could I resist a history like his?
     I will be adding to my Recommended Reading section, suggesting research books for those readers who’d like to learn more about the Angevins in particular and the MA in general.  Obviously I cannot list all of the books I consult while researching a novel.  Those on the list will be some of the histories I found most useful or reliable or just fun to read.  If I don’t mention a biographer, that is usually because I have reservations about the work in question.  So feel free to ask me privately about any omissions that have aroused your curiosity.
     I think I will also add a Lionheart section to the Recommended Reading List since Richard’s story is already well-known and there is no danger of “spoilers.”  The volume of crusader histories is truly astonishing.  I have had to fight some memorable battles in the course of my books, but never as many as will be looming ahead in Lionheart.  I’ve dealt with gifted battle commanders before–Simon de Montfort and Edward I come at once to mind–but Richard’s exploits in the Holy Land were truly the stuff of legend.
     I hope we can continue discussing books we like; this is a wonderful way to find new authors to read.  And if there are any subjects you’d like me to address in one of my blogs, I am always open to suggestions.  If there are any literary websites you’d like to recommend, please share those, too.  I think Elizabeth Chadwick’s website is one of the best for people interest in the MA; do check it out for yourselves.
      Lastly, I want to thank  you for the wonderful, supportive e-mails about my on-going health problems, for your patience when Devil’s Brood kept falling off the radar screen, and for offering such heartening proof that reading is not a dying art and history still matters, now more than ever.
November 3, 2008