Hi, everyone.  I am sorry there was such a lapse since my last blog, but like most of you, I got caught up in the pre-Christmas craziness.  And of course I have Richard Coeur de Lion’s hot breath on the back of my neck, as he is very impatient to launch his crusade.   If I thought Henry and Eleanor were prima donnas, I suspect Richard is going to make them seem positively saintly.   I decided this would be a good time to respond to the questions and comments that have been posted about my past blogs.   And I thought, too, that it would be fun to stage a Christmas giveaway.   So….starting from when this blog is posted until Epiphany, January 6^th, 2009, any one who posts a comment about this blog will be entered in a drawing.   Once Epiphany is past, I will pick one name at random from the lot, and that person gets an autographed copy of Devil’s Brood.

     Now I’ll start with my last blog, The Poisoned Pen.  Michelle, I loved your observation that Ranulf is an onion and Hywel is a mushroom.    And Suzanne, you are absolutely correct that Maud, the Countess of Chester, is a mushroom.  I’d never intended for her to have such a large role in Saints, much less Time and Chance and Devil’s Brood.  But from her first appearance, she seized center stage and that was that.   Soon she was facilitating Ranulf’s adulterous affair, dealing deftly with her unstable, dangerous husband, and showing quite a taste for the spotlight.   Before I knew it, she’d become a close friend and confidante of Eleanor, too, thus ensuring her appearance in the rest of the series—clever lady.  We don’t know if they really had such a friendship, but both women had so much in common that it made sense to me.   I am really going to miss Maud in Lionheart, for she died in August of 1189.

      Jenna, I agree with you about Mary Tudor.   I do feel sorry for her, notwithstanding all the blood on her hands.  She was obviously emotionally damaged by her dreadful childhood and girlhood and by the cruel way her father treated her mother.  There is something pathetic about Mary: her desperate need to be loved, her unhappy marriage, and her phantom pregnancy.  That doesn’t mean I would have wanted to live during her reign, though! 

       Jeremy, you are so right about the Tattered Cover.  Next to the Poisoned Pen, it is my favorite independent bookstore.   And I laughed at your comment about the Angevins “sucking me back in,” for that made me think of the line from one of the Godfather films, where Michael Corleone complains that just when he thinks he has gotten out (of the Mafia), they pull him back in.       Sara, I liked your observation that the world begins with Eleanor and Henry, ends temporarily after Richard III’s death, and resumes with the Stuarts, for that is my view of English history, too.   Lastly, I want to thank Britta for recommending John Julius Norwich’s trilogy about the Byzantine Empire.  I am such a fan of his writing, love the two books he wrote about the Norman kingdom of Sicily, The Normans in the South and The Kingdom in the Sun.   I am making great use of the latter book in my research for Lionheart; you may remember that Henry and Eleanor’s daughter Joanna was sent off at age eleven to wed the King of Sicily.   I’ve become so intrigued by Norman Sicily that I am giving serious consideration to writing about it; more on that at a later date. 

       Brief detour here.   Do you want authors to stay within a certain time frame?  For example, Margaret George has written books set in 16^th century England (Henry VIII and Mary, Queen of Scots) the Biblical era (Mary Magdalene) and ancient Greece (Helen of Troy.)  Colleen McCullough is another writer who feels free to follow her own impulses. Would you prefer that a writer “specialize,” if you will, or time travel back and forth across the centuries?  

     I am guessing that if I had an inexplicable urge to write a novel set in 21^st century California, a lot of you would bail on me, right?   But what if I continued to write historical novels, just not medieval historicals?   For a brief time, I played around with the idea of writing about the ancient Roman Republic, for I’d always been interested in the Gracchi brothers.   And then I found myself wanting to write a novel about the American Revolution, approaching it as our first civil war.   In that, I have support from John Adams, who estimated that a quarter of his countrymen were rebels, a quarter were Tories, and the rest were sitting on the fence.    In all honesty, it isn’t likely I’ll get to indulge these impulses, not unless I can live to be 110, for it would be incredibly time-consuming to research and plough virgin territory.   And then I’d have to convince my publishers on both sides of the Atlantic that I hadn’t lost my mind!  I guess it is lucky for me that I feel so at home in the MA.

       But assume for a moment that I could find a way to make it work.  Would you be willing to follow me to 18^th century America or ancient Rome?    Or would you prefer that I continue to focus upon the medieval world?   And what if I strayed from my usual turf, England, France, and Wales?   Would a novel set in 12^th century Sicily or 12^th century Outremer (the Holy Land) attract your attention if you came upon it in a bookstore?   And yes, those are not idle questions, since I am seriously tempted to write of Constance, the daughter of King Roger II of Sicily, wife of the Holy Roman Emperor Heinrich (a nasty piece of work if ever there was one) and mother of Frederick II.   And I am drawn, too, to Balian of Ibelin, the real man, not Orlando Bloom’s improbable fictional blacksmith in Kingdom of Heaven, a film that—like Braveheart—had me muttering into my popcorn and upsetting other movie viewers. 

       I’d planned to go on and answer some more questions from past blogs, but I am already on page three, so I’ll save that for another time.   I want to thank you all for the eloquent comments about the importance of Author’s Notes; it was wonderful to get such validation.  My Welsh princes would have wished you Nadolig Llawen and Henry and Eleanor a Joyeux Noel, but I’ll settle for Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays..   And don’t forget, any comments about this blog automatically enter you in the Devil’s Brood drawing.     See you next year.

December 24, 2008

     My Scottsdale sojourn was great fun.  Visits to the Poisoned Pen always go well; if you believe, as I do, that independent bookstores need to be supported by readers, check out their website at www.poisonedpen.com.     The  PP customers are invariably enthusiastic and receptive, people who love books, and what greater compliment can there be than that?     Diana Gabaldon and Dana Stabenow kindly lent their star-power to my event, and we discussed books with one another and the audience, with Barbara Peters gently nudging the conversation in the right direction from time to time.   The Poisoned Pen began life as a mystery book store, but Barbara has inclusive instincts and she always found room for my historical sagas, just as she did for Diana’s Outlander series; now the Poisoned Pen has branched out into “good fiction, history, books on dogs and cats—whatever the staff likes.”    Barbara’s husband, Rob, is a superb cook, and so I was very well fed during my stay, although I had to miss his culinary triumph, the TurDucken that he was planning to cook for Thanksgiving—a turkey stuffed with duck, stuffed with chicken, and how much more medieval can you get than that?   To see Rob’s  TurDucken, click onto this link.  http://tinyurl.com/599k2q     

          Of course turkeys were not known in the Old World, but the medievals did love exotic recipes like that.   One such was a “cockentrice,” an odd concoction in which the front half of a chicken was sewn to the back half of a pig, and vice versa.   Another strange delicacy was a “glazed pilgrim,” a pike that was boiled at the head, fried in the middle, and roasted at the end, accompanied by roast lampreys to serve as the pilgrim’s staff.    But as alien as some of the medieval dishes sound to us, I think that the Romans’ enjoyment of roasted mice is far more bizarre!  

         I got sidetracked by my yearning to sample Rob’s TurDucken, sorry.  Back to the book news I learned at the Poisoned Pen.  Diana’s new Outlander novel, ECHO IN THE BONE, will be published in October of 2009, and the Poisoned Pen is already taking orders for signed copies.   Dana’s next book in her Kate Shugak series, WHISPER TO THE BLOOD, will be published in February of next year; I am already starting to count the days for that one.   If you’ve attended any of my book signings, you’re sure to have heard me rave about Dana’s Alaskan mysteries; Kate Shugak is one of the most compelling and vivid characters I’ve encountered in print.   I can also recommend Dana’s latest book, PREPARED FOR RAGE, a gripping account of a terrorist’s plot to strike at an American icon; to research it, she actually spent two months aboard the US Coast Guard cutter Munro.   You might also want to check out Dana’s website at www.stabenow.com, for she has posted a video that offers a tongue-in-cheek summary of all fifteen of the Kate Shugak books to date; it is faster than the proverbial speeding bullet and a lot funnier.  I hadn’t visited her website for a while and was interested to find a listing for all the reviews she’s posted on Amazon.com.  Naturally I had to check this out—I’ll go to great lengths to avoid doing my own work.  I was delighted to discover that Dana also loves one of my favorite books, Farley Mowat’s THE BOAT WHO WOULDN’T FLOAT, a hysterical account of his obsession with a schooner that seemed bound and determined to commit suicide and take him down with it.  While I’m at it, I might as well recommend two other Mowat books that I love: THE DOG WHO WOULDN’T BE and NEVER CRY WOLF.  And Dana also likes my own favorite of Ellis Peters’s Brother Cadfael series, THE VIRGIN IN THE ICE.  I bought this many years ago when I stopped in a Shrewsbury bookshop on my way into Wales, and I was  so taken with it that I actually drove back to Shrewsbury to buy as many other Brother Cadfael books as I could find.   But I still think THE VIRGIN IN THE ICE is the best of the lot, and am glad that Dana agrees with me.   Any other Brother Cadfael fans out there besides me and Julie?

           I was delighted to learn from Barbara that Lindsey Davis has a new Falco mystery coming out next May, earlier in the UK for you lucky British readers; the title is ALEXANDRIA.   And good news for Carrie–Laurie King will be bringing out a new Mary Russell mystery in May, which should be of interest to Sherlock Holmes fans, too.   I also have great news for fans of P.F. Chisholm’s wonderful Elizabethan mysteries.  After a long hiatus, she is working on another one.   So there is time for those of you who haven’t read her other novels to catch up; the titles are A FAMINE OF HORSES, A SEASON OF KNIVES, A SURFEIT OF GUNS, and A PLAGUE OF ANGELS.  She also writes historical novels under the name Patricia Finney, set in Elizabethan times.   Elizabeth is the only interesting Tudor in my admittedly biased opinion; you think I’ve forgiven Henry Tudor for Bosworth Field?     So I can recommend Patricia’s Elizabethan novels with a clear conscience.   I can’t resist throwing out this query for discussion, though.  Have many of you read Philippa Gregory’s novels about the Tudors?  And what do you think of them?

        I was given a surprise treat by Barbara; she allowed me to read the manuscript of Priscilla Royal’s new mystery, CHAMBERS OF THE DOOMED, which will be published next year.  I am happy to assure Priscilla’s fans that this is her best book yet; she just keeps getting better and better.   Her characters are so firmly grounded in the thirteenth century that reading one of her books is like a form of time travel.    That matters a great deal to me.  No matter how well written a book may be, I cannot enjoy it if the characters seem like anachronisms to me.    I’ve often wondered if others feel as strongly about this as I do.   How much leeway will you allow an author?   Does it matter to you if medieval characters display an enlightenment that was centuries removed from their era?  

         Sometimes I do think that historical novelists are obsessive-compulsive about our writing and researching, and we can occasionally lose touch with the real world.  I was chatting with Patrick, the Poisoned Pen’s Customer Services Manager, when a customer came up to buy some books.   After he left, Patrick asked me if I’d recognized him, and when I confessed I hadn’t, he identified the customer as Luke Wilson.  I’m sorry to say it took a moment for the synapses of my brain to make the connection.   Wilson?  Actor?   Owen Wilson’s brother?     In my defense, though, I am sure I’d have recognized George Clooney.  

         I can’t end this without giving credit to Diana Gabaldon for her marvelous theory about fictional characters.  She divides them into three categories: onions, mushrooms, and acorns.  Onions reveal themselves slowly to the reader, have to be peeled back, layer by layer.  Mushrooms pop up suddenly, without warning, and in full bloom.  And then there are the hard nuts to crack.    I asked if her Lord John was a mushroom, and she agreed that he was.  One of my mushrooms was Davydd ap Gruffydd, brother of Llewelyn ap Gruffydd in FALLS THE SHADOW and THE RECKONING.   He was never supposed to have so much time on center stage, but from his first appearance, he proved to be a born scene-stealer.    I am enjoying the Sebastian St Cyr mysteries by C.S. Harris, and I think her female character, Hero Jarvis, is a perfect example of an onion, revealing a little more of herself in each succeeding book.   In my mysteries, I think Durand de Curzon is a mushroom, albeit a dark mushroom, another character who somehow muscled his way into the storyline before I realized what he was up to.    What do you think of this theory?  Can you think of any other onions, mushrooms, or acorns in my books?       

         The trip would have been perfect if only I could have ended it by saying, “Beam me up, Scotty.”  Unfortunately I had to rely upon US AIR, not the Starship Enterprise, and the return flight was wretched in every sense of the word.  I’ll spare you all the dreary details, but if any of you have your own travel horror stories to share, feel free to vent here!    I hope you all were blessed with a special thanksgiving.  See you next week.

PS  I see there are some additional questions posted, so I will go over them as soon as I can and either answer you privately or in my next blog.

December 1, 2008