So many people have asked me how Shadow is doing that I’ve decided to respond in a blog.   I’ve had him for four months now and I am happy to report that his health problems seem to have been resolved; the vet initially suspected food allergies and then Irritable Bowel Syndrome, and he has responded well to treatment for the latter condition.  Cody had a delicate digestive system, too, despite looking as delicate as a tank.  I’ve been told that shepherds are prone to these problems, another sad case of over-breeding.  Humans have a lot to answer for in our treatment of our fellow planet dwellers, and the way we’ve undermined the health of purebred dogs is surely one of our sins.  Any one who has ever seen the slanting spine of a shepherd in a dog show can easily see why this breed is so susceptible to hip dysplasia.   Bull dogs, pugs, and all the “squashed snout” breeds are vulnerable to heat prostration; dachshunds have spinal disc problems; spaniels are more likely to develop cataracts; Dalmatians are at risk for congenital deafness.  It is a sad list, one that goes on and on.  And dogs are not the only victims.  Look what we’ve done to thoroughbred horses, breeding them for speed at the expense of stamina.    I think cats have been luckier than dogs in this respect—at least so far. 

        Sorry for the digression.  But one of the fun things about blogs is that we get to wander off the paved road into the fields from time to time.   Back to Shadow.   This is a dog who had no reason to trust human beings; he now comes eagerly up to strangers for petting and praise.   He was clearly an outside dog, for he was not housebroken, but it took him no time at all to realize furniture was much more comfortable than the floor.  He has two dog beds, but likes to sleep on the bed in my spare bedroom when I’m working at the computer; that enables him to keep an eye on me in case I get up to go toward the kitchen.  He was initially afraid of leashes, but now zooms to the door as soon as I mention the word “walk.”   Best of all, this dog who used to cringe if any one raised a hand near his head now loves to plant his head in my lap so I can rub his ears, and if I accidentally step on one of his big paws (easy to do since he is the ultimate Velcro Dog), he gives a little yelp, but shows no fear whatsoever, sure that the hurt was unintentional.  And now that he has put on some weight, he looks like a sleek white wolf—assuming that wolves like to take stuffed squeaky toys to bed with them at night.

       The Shadow-Bambi allusion comes from his first encounter with deer in our county park, 1700 acres of wooded trails.  He stopped in his tracks to stare at them, eyes wide.      But because shepherds are not bred to be hunters, he reacted with curiosity, not blood lust.  Whereas my Norwegian elkhound (the model for Loth in Saints) would go totally bonkers whenever we’d run into deer, for she knew in her bones that these creatures were meant to be her quarry.  

       I feel blessed to have found Shadow and what is so nice is that it is reciprocal.  It is true about rescue dogs—they really do seem to understand that they’ve gotten a second chance and are very grateful for it.  Dogs are remarkably forgiving.  I am reading a very compelling true account now about a Royal Marine who found himself trying to rescue fighting dogs and strays during his tour of duty in Afghanistan.  The Title is ONE DOG AT A TIME by Pen Farthing.  Be warned, though, that it is not for the faint of heart; his graphic descriptions of the sad plight of these dogs do not make easy reading.  For that matter, I found it disturbing to read about the stressful living conditions of his troop of young marines; nor is there much hope for the Afghan people, still being terrorized by the Taliban.  But it is a powerful story, one which shows human nature at its best and its worst and once again reveals the unique bond between people and dogs.  No one had ever shown these Afghan dogs even a scrap of kindness, yet they were willing to trust Pen despite a lifetime of experiences telling them that man was not their friend.   

           I had an experience of my own last week in which I saw the best and the worst of human nature, all in the course of a single day.  I’d taken my dogs for a morning walk in that county park I’d mentioned.  It has a two mile paved road in addition to all those wooded trails, and we were walking along the road when I caught movement from the corner of my eye.  A small cat popped out of the bushes and at sight of me, began to mew piteously.  To my amazement, she then started to approach us—a total stranger with two dogs!   She was obviously some one’s pet, not a feral cat, but there is not a house around for miles, so it was hard not to conclude the poor little thing had been dumped there.   She would come only so close because of my dogs, but she kept crying, as if begging for help.  I did not know what to do.  Since she wouldn’t come any closer and I had a doctor’s appointment that morning, I continued on, telling myself that she was in a heavily traveled part of the park and surely someone would come to her aid.   But she preyed on my mind for the rest of the day and that evening, I found myself piling the dogs in the car and driving to the park.

      I am not sure what I intended to do; I just felt that I had to come back.   There was no sign of her, though, so we continued on our walk.  But on our way back, there she was again, only this time she was with a middle-aged woman and a young couple.   I stopped, of course; they agreed with me that she had to have been abandoned and they were as troubled as I was about her fate.   My dogs were getting too interested in her so we went on.  I couldn’t just drive off, though, so once we got to the car, I drove back—and found them walking along the road, the little cat cradled in the older woman’s arms.   They told me that they could not leave her out in the woods and the young couple was going to adopt her.   See what I mean—the best and the worst.    What was amazing to me was that the cat was so utterly relaxed in the arms of a stranger, as if she knew she was safe now.   The saddest aspect of this is that she was probably hanging around the spot where she’d been dumped, waiting for her owners to come back for her.   Cats, too, can be forgiving, far more forgiving than I am.

         This is a first for me, no mention of medieval matters.  But the people of the MA did not view animals as so many of us do in the 21^st century.  Yes, they loved their horses, their hunting dogs, their lap dogs, their falcons and tame birds; cats seem to have infiltrated the nunneries, although in general, they were not viewed as pets.  But medievals saw animals through a religious prism—the belief that man was given dominion over the earth and all upon it.  They’d have laughed at the very idea of animal rights, as I elaborated upon in an earlier blog, SHADOW, KEIKO, AND FAUVEL.   Another reason for the difference in attitude is rooted in living conditions then and now.  We have the luxury of considering pets to be family members because life is so much easier for us than it was for people in the MA–or is for those living in Third World countries.    

       Not everyone cherishes pets as so many of us do, of course; some people seem both mystified and vexed by our concern for non-human life forms.  But I think my readers share my belief that all animals deserve to be treated without cruelty.  So this blog is for those of you who have pets as loved as Cody and Shadow, and I hope you’ll share some of their stories with the rest of us.

PS  I’d hoped to upload a photo of Shadow, but my computer, Melusine, seems bound and determined today to live up to her evil namesake, the Demon Countess of Anjou, and refused to do it, giving me lots of computer doubletalk. 

September 7, 2010    

         I’m sorry it has taken me so long to do a new blog.  My usual version of “The dog ate my homework” excuse was “Henry and Eleanor are running roughshod over their lowly scribe again” or with LIONHEART, “Richard is being a typical bloody-minded Angevin.”  But this time I can’t blame Coeur de Lion; he has actually been cooperating lately since we’re drawing near to one of his most celebrated exploits—the rescue of Jaffa.  The delay was caused by my chronic back problems, which flared up while my chiropractor was out of town; the next time he goes on vacation, I am stowing away in the trunk of his car.   But he has returned and I no longer have to severely limit my time at the computer.  So before I plunge into Chapter 34, I am going to do a blog about a subject dear to all our hearts—books.

        I have a new batch of books to recommend, which makes the “bankruptcy” reference self-explanatory.   Many of you have probably seen that bumper sticker, “So many books, so little time.”   Well, a variation of that ought to be “So many books, so little money,” for a number of temptations are coming our way.   Let’s start with the good news from Sourcebooks, which is reprinting some novels beloved by readers of historical fiction. 

1)   LEGACY, by Susan Kay, out now; this is, IMHO, the best novel written about Elizabeth Tudor.

2)   GREAT MARIA, by Cecilia Holland, my favorite Holland novel, out now.

3)   FOR THE KING’S FAVOR, by Elizabeth Chadwick, September 1^st; this was published in the UK as THE TIME OF SINGING.  Sourcebooks has already published Elizabeth’s excellent TO DEFY A KING, set in King John’s reign, and her acclaimed novels about William Marshal, THE GREATEST KNIGHT and THE SCARLET LION.

4)   HAWK OF MAY, by Gillian Bradshaw, the first book in her Arthurian trilogy, September.

5)   DESIREE, by Annemarie Selinko, October 1^st; I read this as a teenager and developed a huge crush on Napoleon, of all men!

6)   ELIZABETH, CAPTIVE PRINCESS, by Margaret Irwin, October 1^st, the second in her trilogy about Elizabeth Tudor.

7)   FOREVER QUEEN, by Helen Hollick, November 1^st; this is her novel about Queen Emma with a new title, and I can recommend it highly.

8)  A BLOODY FIELD BY SHREWSBURY, by Edith Pargeter, November 1^st; this is my favorite Pargeter novel, considered a classic by many.

9)  CHILD OF THE NORTHERN SPRING, by Persia Woolley; this is the first in her wonderful trilogy about Guinevere.

10)  LADY OF HAY by Barbara Erskine, October 1^st; I haven’t read it, but I know many readers loved it. 

        The above books are reprints.  Sourcebooks is also publishing Susan Higginbotham’s new novel about Margaret of Anjou, titled QUEEN OF LAST HOPES, in January, 2011.  And here’s a novel about Richard III that is already out, THIS TIME, by Joan Szechtman.  As many of you know, I usually do not read other writers’ novels about “my” characters; after living with them for so long, I tend to get rather possessive!  But Joan’s novel is near the top of my TBR pile, which is almost scraping the ceiling by now, for it has a very clever premise–Richard is transported from Bosworth Field and into our time.  It has gotten enthusiastic reviews from people whose opinions I respect, including Brian Wainwright, author of the excellent WITHIN THE FETTER-LOCK, a novel of Constance of York, and the fiendishly clever Ricardian spoof, THE ADVENTURES OF ALIANORE AUDLEY.    I’m looking forward to reading it as soon as I complete LIONHEART, and I am happy to report that Joan is busy at work on a sequel.    Another Ricardian novel on the horizon is Anne Easter Smith’s QUEEN BY RIGHT, about Cecily Neville, to be published in May of 2011; Anne, of course, is the author of three other historical novels, A ROSE FOR THE CROWN, about Richard III, DAUGHTER OF YORK, about his sister Margaret, Duchess of Burgundy, and THE KING’S GRACE, about Perkin Warbeck. 

        Detouring into the twelfth century, it has been a busy year for Eleanor of Aquitaine.  Cecilia Holland has a new novel out about her, titled THE SECRET ELEANOR.   In the spring, Christy English’s THE QUEEN’S PAWN, came out.   And Elizabeth Chadwick intends to write about Eleanor after her novel about the Empress Maude/Matilda, LADY OF THE ENGLISH, is published.     

       I am not done doing damage to your bank accounts.  Margaret George will have a new novel out next April, ELIZABETH I.  And in February a novel is coming out that I really loved.  It is called EXIT THE ACTRESS by Priya Parmar, and is a delightful account of the love affair between Charles II and the most famous and appealing of his mistresses, Nell Gwyn.   And since I proclaimed LEGACY to be the best novel I’ve read about Elizabeth Tudor to date, I might as well do the same for Norah Lofts’s THE CONCUBINE, for I think it is the best novel written about Anne Boleyn.  I also have news about three of my favorite mystery writers.  Lindsey Davis has a new Falco mystery coming out at the end of August, NEMESIS; it is already published in the UK.  Priscilla Royal’s latest, VALLEY OF DRY BONES, comes out on November 2^nd, and we have another Margaret Frazer to look forward to, A PLAY OF PIETY, which will be published on December 7^th.

        In previous blogs, I’ve often mentioned the various chronicles that I’ve been using for LIONHEART, and I’ve been asked for additional information about them.   I highly recommend them, for they offer an amazingly intimate glimpse into the medieval world.  THE CHRONICLE OF THE THIRD CRUSADE is a translation by Helen J. Nicholson of The Itinerarium Peregrinorum et Gesta Regis Ricardi.  I was able to get two translations of Ambroise’s Estoire de la Guerre Sainte, but I would suggest going with the most recent one, THE HISTORY OF THE HOLY WAR, translated by Marianne Ailes.  The other side is represented by THE RARE AND EXCELLENT HISTORY OF SALADIN, written by Baha al-Din ibn Shaddad, a member of Saladin’s inner circle, translated by D. S. Richards, and by THE CHRONICLE OF IBN AL-ATHIR FOR THE CRUSADING PERIOD,THE YEARS 541-589/1146-1193: THE AGE OF NUR AL-DIN AND SALADIN, also translated by D. S. Richards.  For those who read French, there is CONQUETE DE LA SYRIE ET DE LA PALESTINE PAR SALADIN, written by another of the sultan’s intimates, Imad al-Din al-Isfahani, translated by Henri Masse.   There are a number of other chronicles, too, of course—Roger de Hoveden and William of Newburgh and the snarky Richard of Devizes, who sniped that Berengaria was “probably” still a virgin when she and Richard left Sicily for the Holy Land.  When I compose a reading list of the books I consulted for Lionheart, I will put it up on my website, but I am holding off until the novel is done. 

          For those who’d like to read about Richard’s reign before Lionheart is published next year, John Gillingham remains the gold-standard for biographies of Richard I; his primary biography was published in 1999, and he has also written numerous articles about Richard, many of which are included in RICHARD COEUR DE LION, KINGSHIP, CHIVALRY, AND WAR IN THE TWELFTH CENTURY.  Frank McLynn has also written a biography of Richard and John; in the US, it is titled RICHARD AND JOHN, KINGS AT WAR, and in the UK, LIONHEART AND LACKLAND.  I have not read the half of the book pertaining to John, so I can’t comment upon it, but I have found very few errors in the half devoted to Richard.  A much older biography of Richard by Kate Norgate has stood the test of time surprisingly well.  And I highly recommend the biography of Eleanor of Aquitaine by the British historian Ralph Turner. 

      There are so many books written about the Crusades, although oddly, not specifically about the Third Crusade.  The best that I’ve read so far is Thomas Asbridge’s THE CRUSADES: THE AUTHORITATIVE HISTORY OF THE WAR FOR THE HOLY LAND.  I may not always agree with his conclusions, but his research is very compre-hensive and if you want to read only one book about the crusades, this is the book.   The definitive account of the crusades from Saladin’s point of view remains Malcolm Cameron Lyons and D.E. P Jackson’s SALADIN, THE POLITICS OF THE HOLY WAR.  I also recommend Carole Hillenbrand’s THE CRUSADES, ISLAMIC PER-SPECTIVES, and David Nicolle’s CRUSADER WARFARE, VOLUME II, MUSLIMS, MONGOLS, AND THE STRUGGLE AGAINST THE CRUSADES.  Before this list gets totally out of hand for a blog entry, I will confine myself to mentioning just a few others, books that focus upon the brutality of medieval warfare:  Sean McClynn’s BY SWORD AND FIRE, Yvonne Friedman’s ENCOUNTERS BETWEEN ENEMIES, and NOBLE IDEALS AND BLOODY REALITIES, edited by Niall Christie and Maya Yazigi. 

        Sadly, many of the above books are rather expensive, but thank God for libraries.  I was recently horrified to hear that Camden, New Jersey was going to close all of its libraries by year’s end as a drastic budget-cutting measure; Camden is one of the poorest cities in the country and this would be a devastating loss for its citizens.  Fortunately, it now looks as if something may be worked out.  I cannot imagine a city without a library, nor would I want to; just as an aside, my favorite Founding Father, Ben Franklin, is often given credit for establishing the first public lending library in the United States.  And by pure serendipity, Stacy Schiff, the author of a wonderful book about Ben Franklin, titled A GREAT IMPROVISATION: FRANKLIN, FRANCE, AND THE BIRTH OF AMERICA, is also the author of a new biography coming out in November likely to be of interest to many of my readers, titled CLEOPATRA, A LIFE     Obviously I have not read all of the fiction I’ve mentioned in this blog, but they are all books that I thought worthy of bringing to your attention. 

      Lastly, I have a favor to ask.  We are seeking to make all of my books available in the e-book format, no easy task at times, for the writer has no say in the matter.   This is particularly important for WHEN CHRIST AND HIS SAINTS SLEPT since it is the first book in my trilogy about Henry II and Eleanor of Aquitaine.  I would be very grateful if you could stop by Amazon.com,  http://www.amazon.com/When-Christ-His-Saints-Slept/dp/0345396685/ref=sr_1_3?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1282358719&sr=1-3, and click onto that feature that says “Tell the publisher you’d like to see this book as a Kindle.”  St Martins is currently trying to get HERE BE DRAGONS restored as a Kindle, after being dropped for reasons none of us understand, so maybe you could also do the same on the DRAGONS page.   I certainly will thank you and probably Llywelyn and Joanna would, too, if they were magically transported from the 12^th century and somehow comprehended that the books laboriously copied out by monks can now be downloaded to computers in the blink of an eye.   I wonder how Joan Szechtman’s Richard copes with such modern marvels in THIS TIME?

August 21, 2010                                                              

       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      

         I’m sorry for the delay in posting a new blog, but life in Outremer has gotten very busy lately.   Richard did something rather remarkable about two weeks ago.  Well, my Richard did; the real Richard did it in October of 1191.  After the battle of Arsuf, he sent the ineffectual King of Jerusalem, Guy de Lusignan (yes, one of those de Lusignans) back to Acre to collect their truant soldiers, who’d preferred to loiter in that sinful port city’s taverns and brothels rather than take part in a grueling 80 mile march under constant harassment by Saladin’s men.   Guy, not surprisingly, failed; the chronicler Ambroise says they “responded with indifference.”   So Richard went storming back to Acre to corral the miscreants himself, and not surprisingly, he succeeded.  That wasn’t the remarkable part; Richard was like a force of nature in one of his Angevin tempers.  But when he returned to Jaffa, he brought his queen and his sister with him.

         Now Saladin had destroyed Jaffa rather than let it fall intact into Richard’s hands.  So this meant Berengaria and Joanna and their ladies were trading life in the royal palace at Acre for a tent in an army encampment.  Clearly Acre was both safer and more comfortable for them.  But Richard wanted them with him, which indicates that he and Beregaria were getting along well, at least in the honeymoon stage of their marriage.

      When I posted this on Facebook, a few readers seemed unhappy with this conclusion, although they could not come up with another plausible reason for his action.   I am finding it quite interesting that Coeur de Lion stirs such passions so many centuries after his death.  From some of the feedback I’ve been getting, I’ve concluded that there are readers who have made up their minds about Richard and they don’t seem comfortable  having their views challenged.  As I’ve said before, my research about Richard was something of a revelation to me, for the Richard I discovered was often at odds with the Richard of myth.  The “Richard of myth” was the Richard who makes a brief appearance in Here Be Dragons, for I did not do substantial research about him for that book, in part because he was only a “bit player” and in part because I was not quite as obsessive-compulsive about such things back then; sadly, now I feel obligated to drag out the books even for characters with walk-on roles.   

         By the time I was writing Devil’s Brood, I had a different view of Richard, and the king in Lionheart is not substantially different from the rebellious younger son in DB.  He gets much more time on center stage, of course, and I will be focusing upon aspects of his personality that were neglected in DB.  For example, his sense of humor; he was so caught up in the family feuding in DB that he was usually in a hostile frame of mind.  Now that he is king, he has more time to indulge the Angevin flair for irony and sarcasm, which Henry seems to have passed on to all his sons.   I found it very interesting that Saladin’s chronicler, Baha al-Din, reported that in their talks with Richard, he had a bantering style of speaking, half-serious, half-in-jest.   I feel truly blessed to have such rich resources to draw upon for this book, no less than three Saracen chronicles and half a dozen from Richard’s side.   For a writer to be able to get first-person accounts of a medieval battle is amazing in and of itself; to be able to read both Saracen and crusader accounts of that same battle is as good as it gets for a historical novelist!  

         So Berengaria and Joanna and the Damsel of Cyprus have joined Richard at Jaffa.  Their ladies in waiting are not as happy about this adventure, but then they didn’t get a vote; I have one of them grumbling about queens having to live like camp followers.  I’ve certainly spilled enough fictional blood in the course of my books, but this is the first time that I’ve had women actually on the front lines.  Joanna and Berengaria were witnesses to Richard’s first battle on Cyprus, and I enjoyed being able to describe events from a female perspective for once.   I can still sympathize with their ladies, though, having to give up the comforts of Acre for a more Spartan life in an army camp.  But Richard’s success in rounding up his fugitive soldiers was fleeting.   It wasn’t long before ships began turning up at Jaffa, filled with Acre prostitutes following their customers.  

        That is the latest dispatch from Outremer.   Now I want to remind readers that the new P.F. Chisholm mystery, A Murder of Crows, was published by the Poisoned Pen Press on June 1st, and they are having what is sure to be a very lively convention on June 24-25, attended by P.F. Chisholm, who also writes historical novels as Patricia Finney, and an impressive galley of authors, including two of my own favorite writers, Diana Gabaldon and Dana Stabenow.  Here is their website with information about the conference; I am so sorry that I will not be able to be there.   But book lovers within driving distance of Scottsdale, Arizona should mark these dates on the calendar.   Oh, and it’s free, too!    http://www.poisonedpenblog.com/2010/04/poisoned-pen-conference-so-far.html   A Murder of Crows is the fifth mystery about Robert Carey, Elizabeth Tudor’s real-life cousin; his father was the love child of Henry VIII and Mary Boleyn.   (Is it just me or does anyone else think it was really tacky of Henry to bed sisters?)    The mysteries are always well plotted and readers really do feel as if they are walking the streets of Elizabethan London with Robert Carey, his dour Sergeant Dodd, and a balding young poet named Will Shakespeare who may or may not be a spy himself.   

       I’d also like to recommend a few websites that I’ve already mentioned on my various Facebook pages.  I know some of you are leery of Facebook (I once was, too), but it is worth joining just to have access to the spectacular photos that readers have been posting on my Facebook Fan Club page of Wales and other places that were featured in my books.     Here is the website for my favorite Welsh photographer, Dave O’Shea; Dave is a good friend who took several of the jacket photos for my books, including my favorite shot at Dolwyddelan Castle, which we used for When Christ and His Saints Slept.    Dave captures the soul of Wales better than any photographer I’ve ever seen, and deserves some credit for my Welsh trilogy, as my house is decorated with his photos and I draw upon them for inspiration whenever I write about Wales. And yes, he does ship overseas!        http://www.artistik.co.uk/

        This next recommendation has nothing to do with the MA or books, but it is a remarkable glimpse of history, and when I posted it on Facebook, I got a huge, enthusiastic response, so I wanted to share it with my blogging buddies, too.   It is a three minute video of VJ Day in Honolulu, Hawaii, August 14, 1945.  It is very moving to see the joy of these young soldiers and sailors as they celebrate the end of the war.   http://vimeo.com/5645171

        I’d also like to recommend one of my favorite blogs, written by Nan Hawthorne, author of An Involuntary King, a Tale of Anglo-Saxon England.    Nan’s blog tells us what happened on any given date in the MA; always useful to know, right?   And as a bonus, she has a delightfully snarky sense of humor; for example, she notes on May 18, 1152 that Henry wed “a French divorcee.”   http://todayinmedievalhistory.blogspot.com/

        And Online Classes sent me an interesting article they posted on their website, in which they selected the 100 best historical fiction novels.   Here is the link.  http://www.onlineclasses.org/2010/06/01/100-all-time-best-historical-fiction-books/     A list like this is always a good way to get a discussion and/or argument going.  I found many of my favorites there, some that surprised me, and one shocking omission—To Kill a Mockingbird.    Anyone who loves books and history—and that includes every last one of us—will want to check out the list.   And yes, one of mine made the cut, but you’ll have to see for yourselves which one!

        Lastly, I am happy to report that Shadow, the new addition to my family, is thriving.  I thought I knew all about Velcro dogs, having had three poodles, but Shadow makes them seem like aloof, canine Greta Garbos; I call him the love-sponge.   He has made amazing progress in just six weeks, proving what I’ve always suspected—that the world would be a better place if people shared the dog’s gift for forgiving. 

         I just realized that I neglected to ask any questions in this blog.  So feel free to pitch in with any random thoughts of your own, be they about the Angevins, the new Robin Hood film, your favorite and not so favorite books, that sickening oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, rescued dogs like Shadow, the World Cup and why Americans are the only people in the world to call it soccer, the ending of Lost, why the Tudors have managed to get such a stranglehold on the public imagination….Well, you can see I am casting a wide net here.

June 13, 2010

     So many of my readers have told me how much they enjoyed C.W. Gortner’s The Last Queen.  I am very happy to report that he has a new novel out, The Confessions of Catherine de Medici, one of history’s most controversial and little-known queens.   I was fortunate enough to read this book in galley form and I am sure that fans of The Last Queen will find it as compelling and surprising as I did.  But before reading the new book, which will be published on May 25th, you’ll want to read the following interview.   

Why did you write THE CONFESSIONS OF CATHERINE DE MEDICI? 

I’ve always been fascinated by Catherine de Medici. Initially, I was attracted to her because of her legend. I figured, if she has such a bad reputation there must be more to her story. I wanted to know more about who she was, to search beyond the lurid hyperbole for the person she may have been. Of Italian birth, Catherine was the last scion of her legitimate Medici blood; she dominated France in the latter half of the 16^th century, a contemporary of Elizabeth I and mother-in-law to Mary, Queen of Scots. Left a widow with small children and confronted by one of the most savage conflicts of the time, she fought to save France and her bloodline from destruction. As I researched her, I realized that, as with most dark legends, there was far more to her than popular history tells us. I thought how interesting it would be if Catherine herself could tell the story of her life. If she had the chance to explain herself, what would she say? I believe that all stories have two sides and Catherine de Medici’s is no exception.

What are some interesting facts you discovered about Catherine that is not widely known?

I found it amazing to discover how much she loved animals. In a time when bear baiting by dogs was a common entertainment, when hunting was a bloody pastime enjoyed by both genders and people rarely kept pets, Catherine was known for caring deeply about the welfare of her own animals and those at court. For example, she had the lion cages at Amboise completely restored, after she discovered how run-down they were; she also insisted that her bears not be used for any baiting and hired special attendants to look after them. When Catherine traveled about France, her bears were often seen lumbering behind her carriage! She also kept a menagerie of parrots, monkeys, and other exotic creatures; this was a time of plunder in Africa, New Guinea, and the Americas, with explorers capturing breeds which were often traumatized and ill equipped to survive transplant from their native habitats. Catherine tried her best to ensure those animals presented to her were treated well, not abused, exploited or killed for their parts – a very common practice in those days. The little dog she has in the book – Muet – is fictional, but represents this little-known aspect of her personality. In reality, Catherine had several lapdogs, in addition to the animals already mentioned.

I was also surprised to find out how religiously tolerant she was, particularly for an era of such savage intolerance and for someone of her fearsome reputation, who allegedly orchestrated a massacre to wipe out her Protestant subjects. This was a time when Catholics and Protestants were engaged in a very brutal conflict that spanned generations and divided families; popular history tends to bundle it under the titles of ‘Reformation’ and ‘Counter Reformation’ but the truth is, thousands of people lost their lives or fled their homes over the issue of faith. Catherine was the product of an ultra-Catholic upbringing; her family was intricately linked to the Vatican and her relative Clement VIII was a pope. She had every reason to fear and even despise Protestants, much as Mary Tudor did; however, Catherine showed a pragmatism toward doctrinal digressions that was actually very enlightened for her times. I do not believe she was a fanatic; I believe she honestly thought that there was a peaceful solution to the conflict tearing her son’s kingdom apart. It was her misfortune that so few around her shared her belief.

What kind of research did you do? Did you take any special trips?

I spent several years on this book to get it into its current form. I had written the original manuscript many years before that and it went through several re-writes before it was sold. Besides the over 40 biographies I read on Catherine and the important people in her life, as well as many other books on her era, I also read contemporary eye-witness accounts of the events that transpired under her reign, some written by her intimates. I don’t read French well and most of these accounts are not translated, so I had to enlist the help of friends who do speak the language. Catherine’s letters, too, provided invaluable insight into her thoughts; while many of these letters are formal in tone, as befits the time, a careful scrutiny of them does offer startling emotional information, such as the time when she wrote: “It is a great suffering to always be fearful.”

I traveled to France several times to see extant places associated with Catherine and to get a sense of the landscape. Though much has changed between now and then, I strongly believe the physical places where our characters lived offer unmatched glimpses into the past that can spark momentous changes in our work and during my first trip to Chenonceau, the chateau that Catherine embellished and loved, it happened to me. I was having trouble getting into Catherine’s “skin”, so to speak. Over half the book was written and I still felt she eluded me; there was something intrinsic missing. While touring this magnificent palace that sits on the river Cher, with its intricate gardens and honey-comb galleries, I understood what eluded me: I had made the mistake that so many of her detractors did: because she was so firmly entrenched in politics, I’d forgotten she was also a woman with a keen appreciation for beauty, a Medici to her fingertips, with all the passion that family had shown for centuries for the arts. This realization helped me immensely to re-cast her in my book, to find that flesh-and-blood person she might have been.

When combining fact with fiction, how do you balance history with story?

Very delicately! I think that as historical fiction novelists, we often walk a fine line between the facts and the fiction, in that we must adhere to the latter while staying true to the former. I always tell readers in my author’s afterword where I’ve altered or re-shaped events to fit the narrative flow; unfortunately, history can be inconvenient for a novelist, in that certain events do not match our story’s timeline and we finds ourselves confronted with editorial constraints, such as word counts, maintaining a manageable cast of characters, keeping up the pace of the story, etc. My golden rule is to never deliberately alter something if I can avoid it, and if I do alter it, make note of it so readers can know.

Do you think issues Catherine faced in her era still resonate today?

Absolutely. Religious divisiveness was a brutal part of life in Catherine’s world, with Catholics and Protestants willing to martyr themselves for their cause. This is something that many of us, much like Catherine, may find difficult to comprehend. Yet that very type of extreme righteousness remains very much a part of our modern landscape, as evidenced by acts of terrorism and genocide in several parts of the world. While we are in many ways a more enlightened society, we still carry vestiges of the past with us, and leaders throughout the world grapple with many of the issues that Catherine did, in terms of placating anger and restoring harmony among people whose lives have been devastated by conflict. 

What is one of the secrets that Catherine “confesses” in this novel?

The truth about her relationship with the Protestant leader, Coligny. I find it intriguing that so few of Catherine’s biographers have looked more closely at their enigmatic association. Coligny was at court when Catherine first arrived from Italy as a teenage bride; he was the nephew of the Constable of France, a very important man, and she and Coligny must have met long before they assumed their individual political roles. They were close to each other in age; they probably witnessed to a certain extent each other’s trials and triumphs, before circumstances arose for them to join forces. Coligny and Catherine could not have been more different, both in upbringing and outlook, yet they shared for a time a united response to the upheaval in France and a mutual desire for accord. In my novel, Catherine tells us what brought them together, and what eventually led to the definitive tragedy between them. 

Thank you so much for inviting me to your blog, Sharon, and thanks to all your readers for spending this time with me. To find out more about my work, please visit: www.cwgortner.com

Thank you, C.W., for agreeing to do this interview.  I am sure that anyone who enjoys well-written historical fiction is going to be facinated by “your” Catherine de Medici.  

May 18, 2010

     I would like to start with the good news; this past weekend, I adopted a shepherd from the Burlington County Animal Alliance.  Shadow is a beautiful boy, looks like a white wolf, but he has a very sad history of abuse; he came into the shelter half-starved and terrified.  Susan, his foster “mom,” told me that there were strong indications he’d been kicked as well as beaten, and he wasn’t housebroken even though he is about three years old; that means he was an outside dog, chained up in a yard somewhere, a cruelty in itself for social pack animals like dogs.   Shadow blossomed in his foster home, probably the first time in his young life that he’d been treated with kindness.  I have great admiration for people who work in rescue, for it is demanding and emotionally draining.  And those who volunteer to foster dogs or cats are the unsung heroes, for they take in frightened, damaged animals, transform them into family pets, and then give them up so they can continue to help other creatures in need. 

       I found Shadow by chance when I checked out Petfinder.com on impulse; I didn’t think I was ready yet to bring another dog into my house and heart.  But then I saw Shadow’s photo and felt a connection.  When Susan told me his dreadful history and that he got along very well with her small dogs and cats (an important consideration since I have a poodle who was Cody’s best pal and partner-in-crime), I had to go see him.  Well, it was love at first sight and he is now a full-fledged member of the Penman pack.  I am in awe of his sweet nature and his willingness to trust; had I suffered the abuse he did, it would likely have turned me into a serial killer.   But Susan and her family showed him that all humans are not cruel or evil and he is making remarkable progress.  This dog who was starving takes treats from my hand with a touch as delicate as a feather.  It was only a few weeks ago that he learned the housebreaking “rules,” but he has yet to have an accident inside.   He and Chelsea chase each other around like whirling dervishes.  He likes nothing better than to sit beside me while I’m working on the computer and put his head on my knee so I can rub his ears; Cody loved that, too—must be a shepherd thing J    Every now and then something scares him—a sudden noise, a memory—and he starts to shiver.   But this gentle boy is remarkably resilient and he soon relaxes again, remembering that the bad times are behind him.   We cannot erase his wretched past, but I can make sure that his future will be filled with love.

        It is true what people say about rescue dogs; they do seem so grateful to be given a second chance at life.   I realize adoption is not for everyone.    While pure-bred dogs are available through rescue groups and shelters, it is harder to find the “less popular” breeds, and if you’re set upon a puppy, that can entail a much longer wait.  But if you adopt a dog (or cat) from a shelter, you are quite literally saving a life; when I adopted Cody, I was told by a shelter worker that they have trouble placing the big dogs and I never forgot how easily that wonderful dog could have slipped through the cracks.     And by adopting through a rescue group, you will benefit from their evaluation and know in advance what sort of dog you will be getting, whether he is timid or cocky, whether he wants to be an “only child” or would be happier with other dog roommates, etc.    Rescue groups are very conscientious, too, about placing the right dog or cat with the right family, heading off “mismatches” from the get-go.   And we are fortunate in having such a wonderful resource in Petfinder.com, begun some years ago by a young couple seeking to combine their computer expertise with their love of animals; virtually every shelter and rescue group in the country list their adoptable pets on this site.   Based on my own experience, I would wholeheartedly recommend adoption for those seeking to add a pet to their family.  Adoption gave me my beloved Cody, and now the sweet Shadow, so I feel twice-blessed.

          So now you know who Shadow is, but what of Keiko and Fauvel?   Keiko is, of course, the famous killer whale and star of the Free Willy films who was rescued from a miserable captivity and eventually returned to the wild after his story attracted world-wide sympathy.  His time as a free whale was sadly much too short, but I have no doubts that this highly intelligent animal would rather have had a year of freedom than another decade of the miserable existence he’d endured prior to the Free Willy film.   And Fauvel?   He was a magnificent bay stallion, first owned by a Cypriot despot and then by an English king, better known as Lionheart.   Fauvel not only caught Richard’s eye, he bedazzled the two chroniclers who’d accompanied the king on the Third Crusade; they described him as “fleet as a deer” and “the best horse from here to Ypres.” 

             But what is the connection between a killer whale and a stallion who lived eight centuries ago?   I think they epitomize the change in attitudes toward animals over the years.  Like us, people in the MA were capable of caring deeply for their horses, dogs, hawks.  Occasionally one is mentioned in the chronicles, like the famous Fauvel.  We know that King John fed chicken to his favorite falcon.  The names of cherished horses echo throughout the chansons de geste.   Giraldus Cambrensus, a.k.a. Gerald the Welshman, related a touching story of a greyhound’s loyalty to his slain master.  While cats were not usually regarded as pets, they seem to have found good homes in many convents, as nuns were often scolded for their devotion to cats and small dogs.    But the medievals would not have been able to understand our concern for Keiko, much less the global attention paid to three  grey whales trapped under arctic ice about twenty years ago; two were eventually saved by a joint American-Russian effort with a Russian icebreaker flying the flags of both countries (surely a first!)    

          In the Middle Ages, people believed that man had dominion over the earth and all upon it.  The concept of “animal rights” would have been even more alien to them than the idea of “women’s rights.”    Obviously there are places on the planet today where the medieval attitude toward animals still prevails; understandably, people struggling to survive have different priorities than citizens of more affluent nations.  But in many countries there has been a remarkable, almost revolutionary shift in public opinion, as evidenced by laws to combat animal abuse, no-kill shelters, the rescue movement itself, and compassion toward wildlife as well as family pets, etc.  

           Of course many of our most cherished beliefs would not have taken root in medieval soil.  Religious tolerance was not viewed as a virtue since Christians and Muslims and Jews alike were sure that theirs was the only true faith.   Equality of the sexes?   Not likely in a world in which the Church itself taught that women were daughters of Eve, and “A woman who is not under the headship of the husband violates the condition of nature, the mandate of the Apostle, and the law of Scripture:  ‘The head of the woman is the man.’  She is created from him and she is subject to his power.’” (Letter from Routrou, Archbishop of Rouen, to Eleanor of Aquitaine, urging her to return to her husband, “whom you have promised to obey.”)    As an aside, marriage vows routinely required a wife to promise to obey her husband until relatively recently; when my parents were wed in 1942, they deleted this provision, but then they were rebels before their time!   Nor would medieval people have agreed with the American Declaration of Independence and its bold statement that all men are created equal.  Even in the eighteenth century, that was far from a “self-evident” truth; in the MA, it would have been incomprehensible.  

       It is not surprising, then, that medievals were much more unsentimental than we are in their interactions with animals.  I have tried to reflect that in my novels.  In my first medieval mystery, Justin de Quincy rescues a dog that was pitched off a bridge with a bag of rocks tied to his neck. Most of the bystanders are indifferent to the dog’s plight, aside from Justin and a five year old boy, and even Justin is somewhat embarrassed that he is going to so much trouble for a dog that is not his.   In Prince of Darkness, there is a scene involving an angry carter, a wagon mired in mud, and the scrawny horse who is the object of his owner’s wrath.  A man beating a horse (or dog) in public today would stir outrage; there was far less indignation in medieval Shrewsbury.

          So as much as I love writing about the MA, I would not have wanted to live in those turbulent times.   Now time-travel would be an irresistible temptation—provided that I had a return ticket.   Query to readers—have any of you imagined living in a bygone age?  If so, when?  More to the point, why?

         Lastly, Coeur de Lion’s army is still bogged down by the River Rochetaille, six miles from his objective, the coastal town of Arsuf.   I divided the chapter into two parts, a common occurrence for my chapters seem to self-replicate like amoeba.  So the two armies have been camped on opposite sides of the river for days now,   But a friend, apparently channeling Richard, informed me that he said I should “stop mucking around with that damned dog and let him get back to slaying Saracens.”   And so I shall.  

May 5, 2010   

PS  Here are some rescue websites.

www.petfinder.com

Burlington County animal Alliance (BCAA)  at www.bcaaofnj.org   (handles all breeds of dogs and cats)  Read their story about Buddy, an eight month old retriever in desperate need of surgery; his owners brought him to the shelter to have him euthanized because they could not afford the medical costs.  But he was so young and exuberant that the rescue is trying to give him a chance at a normal life.

     I am very pleased to welcome Mary Sharratt.  Mary is an American writer now living in Lancashire, England, the author of three acclaimed novels, including The Vanishing Point.  Her new novel, Daughters of the Witching Hill, is a dramatic, compelling, true story of the Pendle Witches, nine villagers accused of witchcraft in 1612 Lancashire.  

How did you come to write a novel about the Pendle Witches of 1612?

In 2002, I moved to the Pendle region of Lancashire, England—the rugged Pennine landscape that borders the West Yorkshire Dales. My study window looks out on Pendle Hill, famous throughout the world as the place where George Fox received the ecstatic vision that moved him to found the Quaker religion in 1652.

But Pendle Hill is also steeped in its legends of the Lancashire Witches. Everywhere you go in the surrounding countryside, you see images of witches: on buses, pubs signs, road signs, bumperstickers. Visiting American friends found this all quite unnerving. “Mary, why are there witches everywhere?” they’d ask me.

In the beginning, I made the mistake of thinking that these witches belonged to the realm of fairy tale and folklore, but no. They were real people. The stark truth, when I took the time to learn it, would change me forever. 

So who were these Pendle Witches?

In 1612, in one of the most meticulously documented trials in English history, seven women and two men from Pendle Forest were hanged as witches, condemned on “evidence” provided by a nine-year-old girl and her brother, who appeared to suffer from learning difficulties. The trial itself might never have happened had it not been for King James I’s obsession with the occult. His book Daemonologie—required reading for local magistrates—warned of a vast conspiracy of satanic witches threatening to undermine the nation.  

Out of the twelve accused Pendle Witches, why did you specifically choose Mother Demdike and her granddaughter Alizon Device as your heroines?

Mother Demdike, called Bess in my novel, had the most infamous reputation. According to the primary sources, she was the ringleader, the one who initiated the others into witchcraft. Demdike was so frightening to her foes because she was a woman who embraced her powers wholeheartedly. This is how Court Clerk Thomas Potts describes her in The Wonderfull Discoverie of Witches in the Countie of Lancaster, his account of the 1612 trials:

She was a very old woman, about the age of Foure-score yeares, and had

been a Witch for fiftie yeares. Shee dwelt in the Forrest of Pendle, a vast

place, fitte for her profession: What shee committed in her time, no man

knowes. . . . Shee was a generall agent for the Devill in all these partes: no

man escaped her, or her Furies.

Not bad for an eighty-year-old lady! What intrigued me is that although she died in prison before she could come to trial, Potts pays a great deal of attention to her, going out of his way to convince his readers that she was a dangerous witch of long-standing repute. Reading the trial transcripts against the grain, I was amazed at how Bess’s strength of character blazed forth in the document written expressly to vilify her.

Bess freely admitted to being a healer and a cunning woman. Her neighbours called on her to cure their children and their cattle. What fascinated me was not that Bess was arrested and imprisoned but that the authorities only turned on her near the end of her long, productive life. She practiced her craft for decades before anybody dared to interfere with her.

In contrast her granddaughter Alizon, who appeared to be a teenager at the time of her trial, seemed to view her own powers with a mixture of bewilderment and terror. Her misadventures in struggling to come to terms with this troubling birthright unleashed the tragedy which led to her arrest and the downfall of her entire family. Although the first to be accused of witchcraft, Alizon was the last to be tried at Lancaster. Her final recorded words on the day before she was hanged were a passionate vindication of her grandmother’s legacy as a healer. 

Why was it so important to write this novel in the first person?

Many other books have been written about the Pendle Witches—both fiction and nonfiction, nuanced and lurid. But even some of the better books, such as Robert O’Neill’s delightful novel Mist Over Pendle, tend to portray Mother Demdike and her family as sad, pathetic, ignorant misfits.

The whole purpose of my novel was to retell the Pendle Witch tragedy from the accused witch’s point of view. I yearned to give Bess and Alizon what their world denied them—their own voice.  

The landscape plays such a strong role in the novel. Why is that?

It meant a great deal to me to inhabit the same landscape as my characters. Bess and Alizon’s lives unfolded almost literally in my backyard. Researching this book wasn’t a mere exercise of reading books, then typing sentences into my computer. To do justice to the story, I had to go out into the land—literally walk in my characters’ footsteps. Using the Ordinance Survey Map, I located the site of Malkin Tower, once home to Bess and her family. Now only the foundations remain. I board my horse (who makes a cameo appearance in the novel as Alice Nutter’s horse) near Read Hall, once home to Roger Nowell, the witchfinder and prosecuting magistrate responsible for sending the Pendle Witches to their deaths. Every weekend, I walked or rode my chestnut mare down the tracks of Pendle Forest. Quietening myself, I learned to listen, to allow my heroines’ voices to well up from the land. Their passion, their tale enveloped me.

You say Bess was a cunning woman. Who were the historical cunning folk? 

Our ancestors believed that magic was real. Not only the poor and ignorant believed in witchcraft and the spirit world—rich and educated people believed in spellcraft just as strongly. Cunning folk were men and women who used charms and herbal cures to heal, foretell the future, and find the location of stolen property. What they did was technically illegal, but most of them didn’t get arrested for it. The need for the services they provided was too great. Doctors were so expensive that only the very rich could afford them and the “physick” of this era involved bleeding patients with lancets and using dangerous medicines such as mercury—your local village healer with her herbal charms was far less likely to kill you.

Those who used their magic for good were called cunning folk or charmers or blessers or wisemen and wisewomen. Those who were perceived by others as using their magic to curse and harm were called witches. But here it gets complicated. A cunning woman who performs a spell to discover the location of stolen goods would say that she is working for good. However, the person who claims to have been falsely accused of harbouring those stolen goods could turn around and accuse her of sorcery and slander. At the end of the day, the difference between cunning folk and witches lay in the eye of the beholder. If your neighbours turned against you and decided you were a witch, you were doomed.  

How do your Pendle Witches of 1612 differ from the more familiar Salem Witches of 1692?

While 17^th century Salem was a fairly homogenous Puritan society, Lancashire was anything but. Despite Henry VIII’s sacking of Whalley Abbey and the laws of religious conformity passed by his daughter Elizabeth I, the Reformation was slow to take root here. Many influential families of the gentry remained stubbornly Catholic in the face of persecution and death. Moreover, in the viewpoint of many Protestants, witchcraft and Catholicism were conflated. “No part of England hath so many witches,” Edward Fleetwood states in his 1645 pamphlet describing Lancashire, “none fuller of Papists.” Even Reginald Scot, one of the most enlightened men of the English Renaissance, thought the act of transubstantiation, the point in the Catholic mass where it is believed that the host becomes the body and blood of Christ, was an act of sorcery.

Mother Demdike’s family’s charms recorded in the trial transcripts mirror the ecclesiastical language of the pre-Reformation Church. Her incantation to cure a bewitched person, quoted by the prosecution as evidence of diabolical magic, is a moving and poetic depiction of the passion of Christ as witnessed by the Virgin Mary. This text is very similar to the White Pater Noster, an Elizabethan prayer charm Eamon Duffy discusses in his landmark book, The Stripping of the Altars: Traditional Religion in England: 1400-1580.

It appears that Mother Demdike, born in Henry VIII’s reign, at the cusp of the Reformation, was a practitioner of the kind of quasi-Catholic folk magic that would have been fairly common in earlier generations. The Old Church embraced many practices that seemed magical and mystical. People believed in miracles. They used holy water and communion bread for healing. Candles blessed at the Feast of Candlemas warded the faithful from demons and disease. People left offerings at holy wells and invoked the saints in their folk charms. Some rituals such as the blessing of wells and fields may have Pagan origins. Indeed, looking at pre-Reformation folk magic, it seems difficult to untangle the strands of Catholicism from the remnants of Pagan belief which had become so tightly interwoven. Keith Thomas’s social history Religion and the Decline of Magic is an excellent study on how the Reformation literally took the magic out of Christianity.

So are you saying that Mother Demdike and her family at Malkin Tower were merely misunderstood practitioners of Catholic folk magic?   

Alas, the truth seems more complicated than that. Although her charms drew on the mystical imagery of the pre-Reformation Church, Bess and her sometimes-friend, sometimes-rival Anne Whittle, aka Chattox, accused each other of using clay figures to curse their enemies. Both women freely confessed, even bragged about their familiar spirits who appeared to them in the guise of beautiful young men. Bess’s description of her decades-long partnership with Tibb seems to reveal something much older than Christianity.

So who was Tibb? The devil?

No. The devil, as such, played a very minor role in English witchcraft. Instead the familiar spirit took centre stage: this was the cunning person’s otherworldly spirit helper who could shapeshift between human and animal form. Bess described how Tibb could appear as a golden-haired young man, a hare, or a brown dog. In traditional English folk magic, it seemed that no cunning man or cunning woman could work magic without the aid of their familiar spirit—they needed this otherworldly ally to make things happen.

What’s next? Do you have a new novel in progress?

My current novel-in-progress Know the Ways will reveal the life of Hildegard von Bingen (1098-1179), Benedictine abbess. She was an incredible character, a polymath who composed an entire corpus of music and wrote books on subjects as diverse as natural science, medicine and human sexuality—she’s credited as the first person to describe the female orgasm in depth. A mystic and visionary, her prophecies earned her the title Sybil of the Rhine.

Her story arc is amazing. Born in an age of deep-seated misogyny, her parents offered her as a tithe to the Church at the age of seven, yet she triumphed to become one of the greatest voices of her age. And she’s not so far removed from my historical witches as one might think. She healed with herbs, crystals and gemstones and was guided by visions. I suspect that if she had been born a few centuries later, she might well have been burned as a witch.

     Thank you, Mary.  I was fortunate enough to read Daughters of the Witching Hill before it was published and I thought it was a very powerful story.

April 6, 2010

     His name was Dakota, but we always called him Cody.  Because I’d adopted him from a Jersey shelter, his past remained shrouded in mystery.  We knew the people who dumped him had gotten him at the Philadelphia SPCA, so he’d already been abandoned twice in his young life.  I use a harsh word—dumped—to describe their action because they had not done right by Cody.  They’d kept him chained up in their yard 24-7 by their own admission, and then took him to the shelter because they “could not control him.”   He was fifteen pounds underweight and suffering from Lyme Disease and chronic diarrhea, but neglect and loss had not soured his sweet nature.  Because of his size and breed, the shelter offered him to the local police department.  He flunked their test, though; they wanted their dogs to have more of an “edge.”   As soon as I heard that, I knew he was the dog for us. 

      My dad was living with me then, and when we drove to the shelter to get him, he jumped into my car as if he’d been waiting for us to take him home.   “Home” was a house with a large, fenced-in back yard and two other dogs, Caitlin, my elderly poodle, and Randy, who I called my G.K. dog, for God Knows what her ancestry was.  She was a neighbor’s dog with a sad history of abuse and neglect that I’d taken in on a “temporary” basis that would last for twelve and a half years.   Cody always liked the ladies, even though he had to settle for platonic friendships, and seemed pleased to have two female roommates.   He had lunch, explored the house and yard, and soon afterward, we heard an odd noise coming from the living room.  We discovered Cody rolling around on his back, waving his big feet in the air, and moaning like a water buffalo in rut.  We would soon learn that this was how he expressed happiness.  I know I may be ascribing human emotions to a dog, but I’ve always been convinced he suddenly realized that this home was going to be different, that he’d be welcome in the house instead of being banished to the back yard, that he’d have other dogs to play with, and enough to eat at long last, and he was overcome with joy at this remarkable turn in his fortunes. He did something else that night that I’ve never forgotten.  I’d given him the choice of sleeping upstairs with me or downstairs on the bed which my Norwegian elkhound had once used, and he’d chosen to stay downstairs.  But I awoke in the middle of the night with the sensation that I was being watched.  I opened my eyes to find Cody standing by the bed, looking down at me.  He reached out then, very gently nuzzled my cheek, and then turned and padded back downstairs to sleep.

     I did not fall totally under his spell, though, for another two weeks, not until the day we discovered he could open doors; we would later learn that he could turn the latch on the back door with his nose or hit it at the bottom so it would pop open and he would be kind enough to teach the other dogs his new skill.   But on this day, my nephew had come over to show us his puppy.  My dad and I walked out to his car to say goodbye.  Suddenly the storm door swung open and Cody and Randy burst out, racing for the woods across the street.  I should mention here that Randy was an escape artist par excellence; I’d once caught her climbing into a tree to stage a jail break.  Fortunately she was never gone long—it was the challenge that seemed to motivate her—and because she looked like a Disney dog, I didn’t worry about her frightening anyone.  Cody was another story.  German shepherds are very beautiful dogs, but they do not look warm and cuddly, especially one as big as Cody.  And so when they came flying past us, I was horrified, worrying how people might react to a huge shepherd running loose and not sure if he’d be able to find his way home like Randy could.  Just as they disappeared into the woods, I called them.  Randy, of course, ignored me and continued on her great adventure, but Cody put on the brakes, practically leaving skid marks in the grass, and then headed right back to me.   Visions of Casablanca flashed through my mind, Bogie and Claude Rains walking off into the fog together, saying “This could be the start of a beautiful friendship.”

     When I’ve told people about Cody’s sad past, they’ve often talked about how “lucky” he was, and that is true.   But I was lucky, too, for he came into my life at a very difficult time.  My dad lived with me for the last six years of his life when he was suffering from Alzheimer’s, surely the cruelest of all ailments; it broke my heart a dozen times a day to see this wonderful man slowly fading away.  Cody proved to be a blessing for us both.  My dad adored him, and he gave me comfort when I most needed it.   I honestly am not sure I could have gotten through some of those dark, despairing moments if not for Cody.

         Not that he was a candidate for canine sainthood; there was no halo hovering over those oversized ears.  Cody could counter-surf with the best of them and was known to root in the trash from time to time.  I remember coming into the living room one day to find my dad napping in his recliner, with a tray on his lap, and Cody standing beside him, with his nose in my dad’s soup bowl, slurping for all he was worth.  He had the grace to look sheepish at being caught out, and yes, I know I am anthropomorphizing  him, but so what?  He was always very gentle with my dad, but he also was sharp enough to know he could get away with more with my dad, too, for it amused him when Cody would surreptitiously snatch a French fry from his plate.   Cody gave my dad a lot of pleasure during his last years, and I would love him dearly for that alone.  

         The dog rejected for police work turned out to be very protective of “his” people.  I’d have backed him against the Hell’s Angels.  He hated to get wet, would never go into the backyard pool…except once.  My nephew and his girlfriend were fooling around and dove to the bottom.  When they didn’t come up, Cody became very agitated, circling the pool and barking wildly and finally plunging into the water.  Of course he then panicked and my nephew had to “save” him and help shove him back onto dry land, but we were very impressed by his gallant gesture.  I’ve never felt so safe as when I had him by my side.  But he was very well behaved out in the world, both with people and other dogs.  Randy had delusions of grandeur, yearning to be the alpha dog of the Penman pack.  She would deliberately step in front of him as they started outside; he’d merely give the canine equivalent of a shrug.  About once a year, she’d lapse into temporary insanity and force a fight with this dog who was twice her size.  It would always end the same way.  I’d hear an ungodly racket, come running to find Cody holding Randy immobilized by the loose skin at her neck, keeping her from biting him while the drama queen shrieked as if she were being murdered.  As soon as I arrived on the scene, he would release her, confident that I would keep her from launching another kamikaze attack.  She never realized how lucky she was.  I did.  He was so mellow and laid-back that I called him my surfer-dude dog.

         There is no happy ending to this story, though.  Last year he developed severe arthritis in his spine and it weakened his hind legs so that he began to have difficulty walking.  Thanks to my vet’s chiropractic and laser treatments and pain medication, we were able to give him some more good months.   He waged a gallant battle that he was bound to lose, and this past Tuesday came the day I’d been most dreading.  He’d suffered a relapse and this time did not respond to the vet’s treatments, not even an emergency laser treatment on Saturday in the midst of that god-awful Nor’easter.   His vet and I agreed that it was time, for he was too big to use one of those carts, as tall as a Great Dane and weighing over one hundred pounds, most of it pure heart.   I’d always hoped that he would let me know when it was time, and bless him, he did.  The prednisone had given him a ravenous appetite, like a shark in a feeding frenzy, but on Tuesday, he stopped eating.    His passing was peaceful; he went quietly to sleep.   He was about eleven years old, and I’d had him for nine of those years, not nearly long enough.  

          His name was Cody.  He loved to walk in the woods, to race the wind, to have his ears rubbed.  He loved beef jerky and liver and ice cream.   And me.

March 20. 2010