Sharon Kay Penman

       I apologize for taking so long to get a new blog up; naturally I am going to blame Coeur de Lion, who doesn’t want his scribe doing anything but catering to his royal whims.  (Typical Angevin)  But I am making it up to you with a particularly interesting and entertaining interview with Nan Hawthorne, author of An Involuntary King: A Tale of Anglo Saxon England.   Nan is also one of my favorite bloggers; in fact, you can find the links to her blogs under Author on my regular website page.  I can’t add the link again here because I have to copy and paste her interview and Melusine, my evil-minded computer, can’t do two tasks at once; at least that is what she claims.   So here is Nan’s interview, and I will add the link to her blog in the comments section, for your convenience.    Enjoy!

Interview with Author Nan Hawthorne

 

SKP:  I met you, Nan, when you posted something wonderfully funny on one of my blog posts.  Are you always this funny?

 

NH:  Yes, except in battle scenes.  Spilling guts are rarely humorous.

 

SKP:  There, that’s what I mean.  So tell me about your novel, An Involuntary King: A Tale of Anglo Saxon England.

 

NH:  Ah, my favorite subject.  When a friend and I were no more than eleven and twelve, we met at a week long summer camp and started acting out a story.  It began as Indian Princess Sunshine and an Indian brave whose name I don’t call.  I always played the male characters in Pretend.    When we decided to change the story to a sort of generic medieval romance adventure, I got to be a king, namely “King Lawrence” named after our mutual favorite movie, Lawrence of Arabia.  Since we did not live in the same town, my friend and I started writing letters between Lawrence and Sunshine.  We took pity on the royal couple and started writing stories so they could actually be in the same room together and not forced to write letters.  Thus the stories began that years later I would turn into a novel.

 

SKP:    You said “generic medieval” but your novel is set in a fictional kingdom in eighth century Anglo Saxon England.  How did you decide that time period?

 

NH:  Not long after we started writing actual stories, I decided I wanted a set time frame.  I was under the impression, mind you I was fourteen then, that “Dark Ages” meant absolutely nothing was known until Charlemagne became Holy Roman Emperor in 800.  I thought it would be safe to put our stories before that as no one could say “That didn’t happen!”  Of course, plenty is known about that era, but since I don’t pretend Críslicland ever really existed, I left it in the eighth century, roughly Lincolnshire.

 

SKP:  How did you happen to decide to write the stories as a novel?

 

NH:  I started a Yahoogroup about fifteen years ago called Ghostletters.  On it you can post stories or letters as fictional or historical characters.  I decided to use my old characters, started rewriting some of the stories and discovered I really enjoyed it and was a much better writer after 35 years.  For one thing, my obsession with sex in my adolescence meant uninformed love scenes.. and now since I have had sex, I could really write about it!  As I rewrote I began to see a novel developing, and the rest is, to coin a phrase, historical fiction.

 

SKP:  You obviously set about learning about Anglo Saxon England when writing An Involuntary King.

 

NH:  Not at first.  I have castles and knights and all sorts of anachronisms in the first rewrites, but as I wrote I learned, soaking up everything I could find.  I fell in love with the era in the process.  So now instead of castles and knights I have timber fortresses and shield walls.

 

SKP:  Now I understand that you are blind.  How did you do the research?

 

NH:  I have no central vision.  As Steven Wright said, I’m a “peripheral visionary”.  I can’t just pick up a book and read, which, to get deathly serious on you for a moment, is the great regret of my book crazy life.  You can imagine that the books produced “for the blind” don’t focus heavily on the areas in which I am interested.  The Internet is a marvel, turning much of the professional world into a level playing field.  I found material on line and discovered pretty quickly that most experts are only too happy to answer questions from people sincerely interested in their arcanity.  I found people, some of which became friends, with knowledge of the era, most  notably Jack Graham who is a brilliant battle scene choreographer.    I owe a lot to Jack, and I continue to rack up that particular debt.

 

SKP:  Why “involuntary” in the title?

 

NH:  You are asking what the novel is about.  In a nutshell, a younger son of an Anglo Saxon king finds himself on the throne, having to prove himself.  The novel takes the story from that point through his marriage, the challenges to his authority, his wife’s tendency to attract admirers like the “tragi-nasty” villain of the piece, a Breton  mercenary, a couple different usurpings, how the royal couple’s friends chip in to save the day, and how it all turns out in the end.

 

SKP:  Is this really historical fiction per se?

 

NH:  “Period fiction” may be a more accurate term.  It’s not fantasy.  There is no supernatural element.  Period fiction seems to be applied more often to romance novels, and strictly speaking, my novel is not a romance.  Yes, Críslicland never existed, and there were never a King Lawrence or the similarly anachronistically named Queen Josephine, but other than those tributes to the old stories from my adolescence, I did everything I could to make the novel historical.  It’s just in a class by itself, I guess.

 

SKP:  Where can people find An Involuntary King?

 

NH:  It’s on Amazon.com including on Kindle, and as an ebook on Smashwords.com.  Since the paperback is not available outside North America, I recommend  the Smashwords ebook which is considerably less dear as well.

 

SKP:  Do you have any future novels planned?

 

NH:  Tons.  Right now I am working on a novel set around the time of the disastrous Crusade of 1101 which features a woman who goes to the crusade disguised as her late twin brother.  Finally a female character I can relate to!  That is precisely why I am writing it.  It’s also fun to write vulgar dialogue for historical figures like Raymond of Toulouse and Stephen of Blois.

 

SKP:  You are involved in an awful lot of projects.  Do you ever sleep?

 

NH:  <laughs> Oh, yes, I am a recreational sleeper.  I just have a hard time saying no to myself.  I have a blog of all the stories that went into An Involuntary King, one of reviews called That’s All She Read that also covers the topic of accessible reading.  I just got a song I wrote about characters in my novel recorded by Celtic musician Druidsong.  Oh heck, it would take less time and space just to invite your readers to my web site, www.nanhawthorne.com .

 

SKP:  Anything you would like to add, Nan?

 

NH:  Yes!  I adore your novels.  The Welsh trilogy especially.  Cried my eyes out, which I love to do.

 

SKP:  Thanks for talking with me!

 

NH:  Thank you for asking.  It’s an honor and privilege that you even know who I am.  I’m not worthy, I’m not worthy!  Picture me bowing and scraping.

 

July 31, 2010

I have some important news about Lionheart.   Some of you may have wondered how I was going to finish the book by year’s end since Richard is still bogged down in the Holy Land, fighting Saladin.   I wondered about that, too.  Actually, I often felt haunted by that approaching deadline and I became more and more uneasy as the months slipped by.  

      How did I get into such a predicament?  Well, in the past I’d always had three years to do one of my historical “sagas,” but for Lionheart, my contract only allotted two years.  Then I lost several months when I became unexpectedly ill in 2008 and had to cancel my book tour for Devil’s Brood.   It was also Richard’s fault.  If he’d stayed at home where he belonged, I wouldn’t have been faced with such daunting research challenges.  But instead he compiled more medieval frequent flyer miles than Marco Polo—France, Italy, Sicily, Crete, Rhodes, Cyprus, the Holy Land, Austria, and Germany, although in fairness to him, those last two countries were not on his original itinerary.  

        So the research alone could easily have taken two years—and it didn’t help that I am so obsessive-compulsive about research or that the research was so fascinating in its own right.  How could I resist intriguing nuggets of information like these—that the official languages of Sicily were Greek, Arabic, and Latin, that the Kings of Sicily kept harems, that medieval men called the Mediterranean the “Greek Sea,” that Cyprus had no walled towns or navigable rivers, that residents of the Holy Land called bananas “apples of paradise,” enjoyed a dessert of syrup mixed with snow, and adopted the eastern custom of dining on cushions.

        And then there are the amazing chronicles at my disposal, especially two written by men who accompanied Richard on crusade and two by men who were members of Saladin’s inner circle, truly a surfeit of riches.  They often read like battlefield dispatches, offering detailed accounts of the same fight as seen by the crusaders and the Saracens.  They provided me with the names of men slain in a particular battle, with personal quotes from Richard and Saladin, and allowed me to see these two legendary historical figures through the eyes of men who actually knew them.  They described Richard’s mood on his wedding day, Saladin’s bouts with colic, Richard’s love for a Cypriot stallion named Fauvel, Saladin’s kindness to a Christian woman whose child had been stolen by thieves.   So it has been a very enjoyable experience—tracking the Lionheart from Marseille to Messina to Famagusta to Acre—but there was always that accursed deadline looming on the horizon.

         I needed a knight in shining armor to ride to my rescue, and they are in short supply in the 21^st century.  Fortunately, I had something better than a knight errant, a dear friend who shares my love of history in general and the MA in particular.  Valerie LaMont is the sister I’d always wanted to have.  My Facebook friends know that her husband Lowell exorcises my computer’s demons.  Well, Valerie has exorcised my deadline demons by coming up with an idea that was so simple and yet so brilliant.  Why not tell Richard’s story in two parts?

        I don’t know why this hadn’t occurred to me.  After all, it is the modus operandi I’ve used in the past for my Welsh trilogy and the Angevin trilogy.  And Richard’s life lends itself admirably to such an approach.  Happily, my publisher thinks so, too.   This is my news then—that I will be writing two more books about the Angevins.   Lionheart will deal with the Richard of legend, Coeur de Lion, ending as he departs the Holy Land and sails for home in October of 1192.  He leaves with reluctance and regret, for he sees the crusade as a failure since they were unable to recapture Jerusalem; he even denies himself the chance to visit the Holy City with his fellow crusaders and promises the new King of Jerusalem that he will be back.  Of course he has no idea what lies ahead—an unlikely encounter with pirates, shipwreck, capture, imprisonment, ransom, and betrayal.  Lionheart will be published by Putnam’s next year, probably in the autumn, and I expect the British publication will also be in 2011.  The second book, A King’s Ransom, will focus upon the man behind the myth, covering those improbable adventures on Richard’s homeward journey and the remaining years of his reign; we hope to publish it in 2012.  Yes, I will actually have two books coming out in consecutive years!

         This is one of those rare win-win situations.  It saves my sanity.  It keeps me from missing a deadline by a year or more, never a good thing.  I am spared the danger of having to race through the last part of the story in a mad rush to finish the book on time.  Now I will be able to spare more time for the remarkable ensemble cast in A King’s Ransom.  Richard’s devious, damaged brother John, flawed enough to be fascinating. His mother, the incomparable Eleanor of Aquitaine.  His favorite sister, Joanna, who was the daughter most like Eleanor.  His half-brother Geoff, whose career as Archbishop of York was almost as stormy as Thomas Becket’s.   Everyone’s favorite knight, William Marshal.  Richard’s mortal enemy, the French king.  Heinrich von Hohenstaufen, the Holy Roman Emperor, who may be the most unsympathetic character I’ve ever written about—and considering the rogue’s galley that has infiltrated my books, that is saying a lot. The prideful Duke of Austria; Richard’s greatest mistake may have been offending Leopold at the siege of Acre.   Richard’s sinister second-in-command, the mercenary captain, Mercadier.  Ranulf’s son Morgan; I had to have at least one Welsh character in the book!   Constance of Brittany, still grieving for her first husband, Geoffrey.  And of course Richard’s queen, Berengaria, a woman who was dealt a bad hand and played it as best and bravely as she could.  

      As you can tell, I am very happy about this development.  I hope you all will be, too, and I am looking forward to your responses.  Lastly, I have not had a chance yet to respond to some of your queries in comments posted for the last blog, Really Random Thoughts, but I will do so on that blog. 

 

July 2, 2010