This is a brief holiday blog—to wish you all a Happy New Year.   The new year is getting off to a good start for me with the publication today by Ballantine Books of the American paperback edition of Lionheart and with the publication on Thursday by Macmillan of the British edition of Lionheart.   I will try to include the book covers, though lately my computer has been very uncooperative about agreeing to post photos on my blog, just another of the many ways my computers find to torment me.    This is one of the rare times when I am very happy with all four book covers; that has not always been true in the past.  
I think Here be Dragons was particularly unlucky in this regard.  I was never a fan of the American hardback cover, which showed two figures supposed to be Llywelyn and Joanna in a landscape that looked like the far side of the moon to me, complete with a little flying dragon.  It could have been worse, though.  I was told that when it was first unveiled in the art department, there were murmurs of approval, until a junior editor said, “But in the book, didn’t Llywelyn and Joanna have black hair?”   The artist had made them both flaming redheads.  Since that mistake was caught before I ever saw it, my blood pressure was not affected.    But an early Avon paperback edition of Dragons had Llywelyn looking like Tom Selleck in his Magnum, PI days and Joanna looking like…well, like a wench who had just tumbled out of her lover’s bed, and as the piece de resistance, in the top corner was a depiction of King John, who was a dead ringer for Peter O’Toole in Becket.   Yet that was not the worst.  The first version of the British hardback Dragons was bad enough to give me nightmares, all done in bilious purple and pink, with two hollow-eyed zombies purporting to be Llywelyn and Joanna.  It looked like a medieval version of a poster for Night of the Living Dead.   Fortunately, my British editor had loathed it, too, but had been outvoted by the marketing department, and she was able to get it deep-sixed after the extremely negative reaction from me and both of my agents.   They had to settle hastily for a generic scene of knights on horseback, but that was still such an improvement that I was quite happy to go with bland.  
 I don’t think I have one particular favorite book cover, though I confess to being partial to the hardback edition of Time and Chance because I found that image of a twelfth century lion myself while browsing in the on-line collection of the Cloisters.    Most of them I have liked, although I confess I was not crazy about the hardback edition jacket used by my American publisher for Devil’s Brood.  I was in the minority, and had no real objections to it; it simply did not resonate with me at the time.  But after we visited the chapel in Chinon during my Eleanor tour last year and I got to see the actual twelfth century mural for myself, I found my views changing and now I smile whenever I pick up a copy of Devil’s Brood, for it calls up memories of that very special day.   In terms of my input, I have a lot with Putnam’s and Macmillan has been wonderful, too, about consulting me.  For many years, I had no say in the paperback covers on either side of the Atlantic; I was often not even shown a cover beforehand.    Thankfully that has changed dramatically now with Ballantine, which has been extremely receptive to my ideas, and Macmillan is publishing my books both in hardback and paperback so there is no problem there, either.       
 But I am very happy with Ballantine’s regal lion and Macmillan’s battle-weary king, since I assume he is meant to be Richard, after what was obviously a hard day at the office.       The jacket used by my American publisher, Putnam’s, was taken from a nineteenth century painting depicting Richard and Philippe in the Holy Land, so it is not only visually very compelling, it is historically on-target.   Putnam’s art department deserves much credit for discovering it.    I am already very curious about the book cover for Sunne in Splendour when it gets its rare rebirth in hardback next September in the UK.    Of course I am so pleased that Sunne will be available in hardback after thirty years that they could probably publish it in a brown paper wrapper and I wouldn’t complain—too much.  
 Because of the merciful extension that my publishers have given me for A King’s Ransom, that will mean it will not be published until 2014, as I explained in an earlier Facebook Note.   But I was not going to be able to meet the original deadline, despite my increasingly frantic efforts to do so, so this extension is a blessing for the book and for my peace of mind. 
         So on that happy note, I am signing off, hoping the new year is off to a good start for all of my friends and readers, who happen to be the best readers on the planet.    (You know who you are.)   
January 1, 2013

I am delighted to welcome Margaret Frazer back to my blog. I am a great fan of Margaret’s historical mysteries, as most of you know, and highly recommend her Sister Frevisse series and her newer one, featuring one of my favorite characters, the dashing player and sometimes spy, Joliffe.  But Margaret has temporarily abandoned the fifteenth century.  Her new novel, available now as an e-book, Circle of Witches, is set in nineteenth century Yorkshire.  I was quite intrigued by this switch and so I invited Margaret to stop by so I could find out more.

Sharon: Where did your idea for writing this book come from?

Margaret:  Long, long ago I had unlimited access to a university library and I just plundered the shelves. I wasn’t a student. I was working there. And I had a lovely time just searching the shelves for things that caught my interest.
I got involved in studying megalithic circles and standing stones, which sidelined me into books about paganism and alternative ways of seeing our relationship with nature. I remember reading countless books on these topics. And out of this began to grow the idea that these were all good elements for a story. At the same time, I had a deep love for the Yorkshire dales. So I thought that would be a good place to set a story like this: It wouldn’t be modern, but it wouldn’t be far in the past. It would be some place where the transition was happening: Where the ancient world and ancient beliefs were just about gone and the modern world had not yet arrived.

Sharon:  Is that what led you to pick the 1800s as a time period?

Margaret:  Yes. Because they were well past the point where people were saying things like “burn the witches”, but there was still the possibility in the remote areas that the old ways could continue seriously instead of as folk parties designed for tourists to come to.

Sharon:  Speaking of these ancient religious themes versus modern religious themes, the religious themes in Circle of Witches are very different from those in your Dame Frevisse novels. How do you think your readers are going to react to that?

Margaret:  I hope they’ll be intrigued by the differences. I know that a lot of people reading my other books are convinced that I must be Catholic because I create such believable Benedictine nuns, but I’m not. This is simply – or not so simply – an author researching and using imagination to create what they believe to be a real person. And I’ve met nuns who have said, “She’s so real. And all the nuns are so real.” So I know that it worked.
But it’s true. For those who are convinced that this was my primary expression of faith, they’re going to be very intrigued – and perhaps a little disoriented – when I’m talking about a totally different mindset that I’ve research and imagined and created and made real. So I’m hoping that they’ll appreciate the different, for lack of a better word, ambience of the two approaches.

Sharon:  Was it a deliberate choice? Were you deliberately making it different from what you did before?

Margaret:  No, it wasn’t deliberate. It was simply what the story required. If I was interested in this theme and this was the plot I was working on, then this was the way the story had to go. It wasn’t, “I’m going to be very different in this book.” It was simply what the book demanded.

Sharon: You mention the themes and the historical aspects of the time period you’ve chosen in the 1800s. But why this particular location? Why the Yorkshire dales?

Margaret:  I visited the dales several times and once lived there for six months. It’s beautiful. And in the 1800s – especially the early 1800s – it was still a remote part of England. The railways had not come. So the landscape had so many elements in it that make it perfect for centering this story around.
And there was also a simple desire to write about it as a way to re-experience a place I love and care about deeply. So, in some ways, the book is my song of the Yorkshire dales.

Sharon: I know that this is a novel that you came back to time and time again until it was perfect. How did it change and grow over time for you?

Margaret:  Well, I grew and changed over time, so my perception of characters – of people’s relationships to each other and to themselves and to the world – became more complex and hopefully deeper. So things that had been all right when I was in my thirties I wanted to express more of when I was in my forties and fifties. There was more to be said and more to be done. And once you do that all of a sudden there are possibilities in the plot that hadn’t existed when these people weren’t so involved (both internally and externally).

Sharon: What’s the most important idea in the book for you?

Margaret:  I have to think about that… [long pause, then thoughtfully]That love of place and people should most deeply inform our decisions about life.
 
Sharon:  How have the love of place and people informed your decisions about life?

Margaret: I suppose, when I was in my teens, I fell in love with Shakespeare’s plays. That led to falling in love with England before I ever went there. And it was wonderful when I got there to discover that it was even better than my youthful dreams had envisioned. From there, I fell in love with English history in the 1400s, so that a great deal of my life and my travels have been focused around knowing that time period and knowing that place more intimately.
And my love of people – or, at least, certain people – has given me a deeper understanding of how lives link in order to benefit or harm each other. So I have this love among people and loves of a place and time. And when you love you want to know more. So for decades that’s what’s been informing my life and my work. To explore and to learn.

Sharon:  Do you see parallels between that and the characters in Circle of Witches? Do you see yourself in the character of Damaris?

Margaret:  It’s always been diverting for people to say, “Oh, you see yourself as your main character!” Whoever that might be in the present book. But the truth is, I’m in all of those characters. In order to write believable characters, I have to find some element of myself that I can then explore and enlarge and turn into this person on the page.

So, Damaris? Yes. But also everyone else in the book: The loving ones, the destructive ones, the foolish ones. They all have elements of me. Without that they would be… unliving.
Of course, when it’s someone really nasty sometimes you find things out about yourself you didn’t really want to know! [laughs]

Sharon:  Speaking of that, let’s talk about the villainess of Circle of Witches – the platinum blonde Virna. What do you see of yourself in her?

Margaret:  I have experienced hatred born out of frustration or anger. It’s never led me to try to destroy someone, but it burns and it hurts and it’s terrible. And if you’re lucky, you realize how destructive it is. I did. And I worked at… disposing of the anger in me; turning it into something else and accepting the situation and the people who had given rise to it.
But in Virna’s case, she never does. She hates and that’s all she becomes: Her hatred.
And I can see myself in that: If I had taken that feeling of hatred that I experienced and let it take over my life, that would have been Virna.

Sharon:  But for those of us who love your medieval books, you will be going back there, right?

Margaret:  Most certainly! The two books I’m working on now – the ones roiling in my head – are both back in the 1400s: Not history mysteries, but straight historical fiction.

Sharon:  And for those who have enjoyed your medieval stories, does Circle of Witches have something to offer them?

Margaret:  Oh, yes! It’s an extremely good, exciting story
that you can lose yourself in. Which is, I suppose, what I hope for in everything I write. And what I look for in everything that I read.

Sharon:  Thank you so much for agreeing to this interview, Margaret.   Circle of Witches is available now on Amazon.   And I discovered that you have a new collection of Sister Frevisse stories out in Kindle, too, Sins of the Blood.  Naturally I could not resist getting it, too.  So once again you are playing havoc with my deadline for A King’s Ransom!  Here is the Amazon link to Circle of Witches.  http://www.amazon.com/Circle-of-Witches-ebook/dp/B00AG3KGFK/ref=sr_1_1?s=digital-text&ie=UTF8&qid=1355629529&sr=1-1&keywords=Circle+of+Witches  
 And since I won’t have another blog up until the new year, I would like to wish all of my readers a peaceful and happy holiday, with fervent hope that 2013 will be a better year for us all.
December 15, 2012  
 

I am very pleased to welcome Priscilla Royal to my blog for
a discussion of her newest novel, The Sanctity of Hate.  In the interest of full disclosure, I want to
reveal that Priscilla is a friend of mine. 
She is also a very talented writer. 
She has an impressive understanding of the medieval world; while reading
one of her novels, you never doubt that her characters are men and women of the
thirteenth century.  No Plantagenets in
Pasadena in any of Priscilla’s books! 
Her people are wonderfully three-dimensional, too, with all of the
virtues and flaws of people everywhere.  
Stir this mix with a suspenseful plot line and the result is always a
book almost impossible to put down—at least for those of us who are fascinated
in history, who understand that our past was someone else’s present. (Thank
you, David McCullough, for that)    So….here is Priscilla Royal. 

Tell us about your
newest book.

The Sanctity of Hate
will be out soon, early December, in trade paper, hardcover, audio, and
e-reader formats. Prioress Eleanor and Brother Thomas are back at Tyndal Priory
after the events in A Killing Season.
It is the summer of 1276 and quite bucolic, until the body of an unpopular man
is found floating in the priory mill pond. No one mourns this death, and the
villagers do not want one of their own found guilty. Coincidentally, a Jewish
family is stranded at the inn, refugees under the relocation provisions of
Edward I’s Statute of Jewry signed in late 1275. The wife is about to give
birth and is in obvious distress. Concluding that the rumored crime details
conform to the usual anti-Semitic myths, the villagers decide that a member of
this family is the most likely killer. Prioress Eleanor, Brother Thomas, and
Crowner Ralf are not so easily convinced but must act swiftly to find the true
murderer before the family is simply condemned by popular choice.

Anti-Semitism was
prevalent at the time. How did you deal with this?

Not easily! But I wanted to recreate the complexity of the
moment while respecting the era. To do that, I kept one thing in mind which my
research did support. The farther we are from an historical incident, the more
we tend to simplify it. We forget or lose documentation of so many opinions and
nuances of the time. Some things are never even recorded. As a more current
example, I’ve heard some insist that the internment of Americans with Japanese
ancestry during WW II was necessary, unavoidable, and everyone agreed with it.
Fortunately, we still have documentation proving otherwise. But in five hundred
years, how will we see this event? Will we lose the evidence that many
protested the injustice, or will we forget the unthinking panic that created
the law? No matter what, we will simplify the circumstances and see that event
as more one-sided than it was. Medieval anti-Semitism is similar. Relations
between Christians and Jews were not simple Yes, there was an overriding
prevalence of anti-Semitism, but there were also Christians who tried to
protect Jewish families against mobs, respected their education and skills, and
befriended them. Nor was conversion all one way. There may not be a lot of recorded
instances, but Christians did convert to Judaism, often because of
intermarriage. The most interesting convert was a priest, not of Jewish
ancestry, who was then persuaded to recant, went back to Judaism, and was
finally burned at the stake when he utterly rejected Christianity. 

How did your primary
characters respond to Jacob ben Asher and his family?

I wanted them to show a range of reactions. Prioress Eleanor
had the hardest time. She’s a true believer and grieves that this family cannot
“see the error of their faith”. Brother Thomas, as an outsider and one who
freely argues with his deity, feels a kinship with the family although he, too,
never doubts that Christianity is the right belief system. A difficult birth
tends to bring good women together no matter what their faith. And Crowner Ralf
doesn’t care what anyone claims to believe. He just wants to hang the right
person. In deciding how each of these characters would act, I considered their
psychology, history, and the nature of their faith. It’s also important to
remember that we’ve always found justification for what we want to do or what
we think is right within the tenets of our belief system. During the debates
over slavery in this country, we used Christianity to support the conclusion
that slavery was wrong as well as the argument it was God’s will. Prioress
Eleanor and Brother Thomas find a way, within the logic provided Christians at
the time, to act with the compassion their nature demands.

You have said that
each of your books presents you with a different challenge. What was it in The
Sanctity of Hate?

Writing from a Jewish perspective. Although I did not grow
up in a church-going family, my ancestral heritage is also not Jewish. That
means I probably have blind spots and assumptions, many quite subconscious.
While I was thinking about this book, I read Mitchell J. Kaplan’s historical
novel, By Fire, By Water, which deals
with the expulsion from Spain
in 1492 of Jewish families. In one scene, he describes the refugees on the roads
to the ports that might take some to family members abroad while others had no
idea where they were going. Despite all the WW II films I’ve seen, documentary
and otherwise, and personal stories I have read of survival, near-misses, and
tragedies, I found Kaplan’s description uniquely powerful. Here were people
whose ancestors had suffered so much uprooting and violence for hundreds of
years that the knowledge of it must almost be stamped on the DNA. So I wanted
to create a family in that kind of situation, knowing that they can never
completely trust the world to be safe. And I wanted to do it with the respect
the experience deserves. Hopefully, my fictional family conveys the humor,
courage, creativity, and resilience that such survival requires.

What was the most
enjoyable part of writing this story?

The research required on Jewish history in medieval England was
fascinating. I won’t list the books because they are in the bibliography, but I
still have a stack on my bedside table that I can hardly wait to get into. The
other fun bit of research was medieval beekeeping. I have a friend who is a
local beekeeper, answered all my dumb questions, and loaned me books on the
history of honey harvesting. I learned that the medieval English bee was dark,
hairy, and larger than the black/gold one we are most familiar with. I found
that utterly charming!

What are you working
on next?

I just started putting ideas together for a medieval spy
story. There were spies at the time, but the organized system put together by
Walsingham under Elizabeth
I did not seem to exist. Of course, Brother Thomas has done his stint as a mole
for the Church, but this next story involves secular ones. As I often do, I
came late to the spy genre, but I fell in love with Le Carre’s novels about
Smiley and Alec Guinness in Tinker,
Tailor, Soldier Spy. No title yet, but I am having fun thinking about
possible characters.

How can readers
contact you?

Should anyone have questions about my books, they can reach
me through my website at www.priscillaroyal.com.
And I am one of several mystery writers blogging on The Lady Killers at
www.theladykillers.typepad.com.

Thank you so much, Sharon,
for inviting me to post on your blog. You have taught me so much about
research, and your beautifully written books have long been an inspiration. I
am very grateful.

Thank you, Priscilla, for agreeing to this interview.   It has been a pleasure, as usual.  And I forgive you for causing me to lose
precious sleep this past week.  Until I
finish A King’s Ransom, the only time I have for reading is after I’ve gone to
bed.  I am two-thirds of the way through
The Sanctity of Hate and I’ve found myself reading later and later into the
night, thinking “One more chapter, just one more.”   Of course I pay the price for that the next
morning, but The Sanctity of Hate is worth it. 
 

November 24,  2012

Some of you may remember a few years ago when six-word memoirs became the rage. Supposedly this trend could be traced to an anecdote about Ernest Hemingway. Challenged to write a short story in just six words, he sat down and scribbled: “For sale, baby shoes. Never worn.” Whether that was true or not, many people were inspired to take a shot at it, and at least one book of their split-second memoirs was published. I thought it might be fun to try it for historical figures. But first let me give you some examples from Six-word Memoirs. They are funny, ironic, wry, poignant, tragic, playful, disillusioned, clever — in other words, they run the gambit of human emotions.
Here are some I found sad: “I still make coffee for two.” “I like girls. Girls like boys.” “I hope to outlive my regrets.” “Everyone who loved me is dead.” “Was father. Boys died. Still sad.” “So devastated. No babies for me.” “Coulda, woulda, shoulda. A regretful life.”
Here are some I thought were clever or amusing or thought-provoking. “Verbal hemophilia; why can’t I clot?’ “Woman seeks men; high pain threshold.” “Perpetual work in progress. Need editor.” “Memory was my drug of choice.” “Came, saw, conquered. Had second thoughts.” “Always working on the next chapter.” “Lapsed Catholic. Failed poet. Unpublished prayers.” “Like an angel. The fallen kind.” “Giraffe born to a farm family.” “Tried not believing everything I thought.” “The militant who became a monk.”
Okay, everyone ready to play? How about this one for Henry II, a bit trite but true: “Happier if I’d had only daughters.” Or Richard, musing on his deathbed at Chalus. “Damn! Should have worn my armor.” Eleanor: “Rebellion? Probably not a good idea.” John: “Why do people not trust me?” Hal: “I was king; no one cared.” Geoffrey: “I was always the forgotten son.” Thomas Becket: “A saint now. I win, Henry.” The Empress Maude: “I was cheated of my destiny.” Eleanor and Henry’s daughter, Leonora: “I couldn’t live without my husband.” Berengaria: “If only I’d had a child.” Joanna: “I found love, but too late.” The French king Philippe: “God rot all those accursed Angevins.” His unhappy queen, Ingeborg: “Why did I ever leave Denmark?” King Stephen: “The crown brought me little happiness.” Here’s another one for Henry, which probably crossed his mind during his last days at Chinon: “Betrayed by all whom I loved.” Rosamund Clifford: “Loved by Henry, forgiven by God.” Henry’s illegitimate son Geoff, the Archbishop of York: “I never wanted to take vows!” Richard again, “The Lionheart legend lives on, Philippe!” Eleanor: “A mother shouldn’t outlive her children.” Geoffrey of Anjou, who died within a month after Bernard of Clairvaux prophesied his death: “Don’t get Bernard gloat about this.” Or Maude again, maybe wistfully this time: “I’d have been a good queen.” Her brother Robert, barred by illegitimacy from the throne: “I’d have been a better king.” And I’m going to cheat now and give John the last word, this one from Here Be Dragons: “I always knew I’d die alone.”
Moving on to Llywelyn Fawr: “Poor Wales, so close to England.” Joanna: “I loved him; he forgave me.” William de Braose, who was hanged by Llywelyn for his infidelity with Joanna: “Hellfire, no woman is worth this.” Llywelyn’s son Gruffydd, about to escape from the Tower: “Now if only the sheet holds.” Llywelyn’s grandson, Llywelyn ap Gruffydd: “God help Wales once I’m dead.” His wife, Ellen de Montfort: “But we had so little time together.” Their daughter Gwenllian: “Tell me, please, where is Wales?” Davydd ap Gruffydd: “Could not live with my regrets.” His wife Elizabeth de Ferrers: “My crime? That I loved Davydd.” Their son Owen, imprisoned from the age of three by Edward: “Why am I being held here?”
Edward I: “For me, more was never enough.” Henry III: “Westminster Abbey was my true legacy.” Simon de Montfort: “I died for a just cause.” Also, “My brother-in-law was such a fool.” His wife, Nell: “I’d do it all over again.” Their son Bran: “Never enough wine to drown memories.” Guy de Montfort, who committed suicide in a Sicilian dungeon after Edward I blocked a ransom: “Please God, let me go mad.”
Edward IV: “Burned my candle at both ends.” Richard III: “Please bury me at York Minster.” Anne Neville: “I wanted Middleham, not Westminster Palace.” Elizabeth Woodville: “I should have known-damn Edward!” Edmund, 17 year old Earl of Rutland: “This cannot be happening to me.” Marguerite d’Anjou: “My life? Much grief, few joys.” Cecily Neville: “My life? It lasted too long.” Elizabeth of York: “My life? I did my duty.” Henry Tudor: “Tudors lay claim to Hollywood next.” George of Clarence: “What’s that? A butt of malmsey?”
Okay, how about everyone else giving it a try? You can choose any historical character, though Henry VIII and his wives might be too easy. You can write your own memoirs instead, if you wish. (You may notice that I cravenly ducked that one.) Have fun.
October 21, 2012

Sharon: I’m
delighted to welcome back award-winning author Jeri Westerson to talk about her
upcoming medieval mystery BLOOD LANCE. For those of you unfamiliar with her
work, Jeri takes a different approach to her medieval novels. She employs the
tropes of the hard-boiled detective fiction of a Dashiell Hammett or Raymond
Chandler and re-imagines it in the fourteenth century. What was the idea behind
this for your “medieval noir” series and how exactly does it work?

Jeri: The need to
do something different, I suppose. What was going to make my series stand out above the outstanding series that were already
out there? And when I was developing these novels, I happened to have been
reading a lot of Raymond Chandler and Dashiell Hammett. It just got me to
thinking about why couldn’t I incorporate some of the same tropes that you
might see in a hard-boiled mystery: the hard-drinking, tough-talking detective
with a chip on his shoulder, the dames in trouble, the corruption of officials,
the darker aspects of crime, the PI with his own code of honor. I felt it
translated very well to a detective who was a disgraced knight. Some things are
pretty universal, and the human condition, our greed, poverty, jealousy, lust,
go hand in hand in a murder story whether that story plays out in the 1940s or
1380s. But having said that, it is indeed a medieval story without anachronisms
in speech, motivations, or messing with history. It’s just my “what if?” What
if a man with his skill set found himself adrift on the streets of London? What
could he do to satisfy honor and make a living?          

Sharon: We talked
about your main character before, Crispin Guest. Why do you think this kind of
somewhat hang-dog character appeals to readers?

Jeri: Well, he is
a man of his time but some of his attitudes are also timeless. He should be a
broken man with all that’s happened to him but he isn’t. He stands alone, and
readers, male readers particularly, find this appealing, just as they found the
characters John Wayne portrayed appealing in the same way. He doesn’t take any
crap, he keeps his honor intact even through adversity. Woman find him
appealing because they want to save and redeem him…plus he’s a sexy beast.

Sharon: One would
think that this approach to writing a medieval piece the author would have to
disregard the history aspect.

Jeri: Not at all!
I am well aware that those readers who like history with their mystery demand
authenticity and accuracy when it comes to the history. That’s why they enjoy
reading historical mysteries. I’ve been told time and again—as I’m sure you have—that they like to learn about
the time period when they are reading the fiction. There are political aspects
at play in my books and I try to be as accurate as I can when I include them in
the plots without degenerating into a thesis. I try to keep it lively and
energetic with a clever mystery to keep another ball in the air. But if you aren’t
willing to stick to the history, why write it? 
  

Sharon: BLOOD
LANCE is the fifth book in your series. I’ve noticed that each book seems to
highlight a religious relic. Tell us about that.

Jeri: When I
started to plot out the series and to really figure out how to write a mystery
(since I started out writing historical fiction with no publishing success), I
studied hard-boiled mysteries, and one of the books I literally took apart to
figure out how to write one, was Dashiell Hammett’s wonderful THE MALTESE
FALCON. The falcon in the book is the McGuffin. Alfred Hitchcock coined that
term. It means the thing that the plot turns on, that starts the action. It can
actually be interchangeable with anything, anything at all, because in the long
run of the plot, it really isn’t important. But it nevertheless begins a sort
of chase to get it…before the bad guy does. I felt this added a fun element to
the story. And by making it a religious relic or venerated object, it also
added an ambivalently mystical quality to the twists in the plot. But unlike
the ordinary McGuffin that is not important to the story except as a means of
starting off the action, sometimes my relic is. That keeps it from becoming
formulaic, to my mind.    

Sharon: What is
the relic in BLOOD LANCE? And how do you decide what relic to use? Does the
relic come first, or the plot?

Jeri: The relic
usually comes first, though it depends on how I can wind around the history at
the time of the story. So once I’ve established the relic it presents a plot to
me. The relic in this instance is the Spear of Longinus. This was supposedly
the spear with which the Centurion Longinus pierced the side of Christ while he
hung on the cross. Like most relics from the time period, it has a long and
varied history, which makes it fun—and possible—to have it turn up when I need
them.    

Sharon: Did I
hear mention of jousting in this book?

Jeri: Yes! Being
a big fan of medieval weaponry and of knighthood, I wanted a book with jousting
in it. It’s all very formalized. I am fortunate that I have gotten to know men
who actually do competitive jousting—yes, even today!—and who teach sword
craft. I was afforded the opportunity to wear armor and even sit on a destrier,
a 2,000 pound Percheron, with a lance in my hand to really get the feel of it. I
also got a firsthand lesson on long sword fighting. I do love my hands-on research!

When I was studying about jousting in England, I read that
there had been jousts on London Bridge, so I decided to put that in the book.
In fact, a great deal of the action is set on London Bridge in this novel and
it almost becomes a character in itself. I know most people, when they picture
London Bridge think of a simple stone structure spanning the Thames, but it was
like a little city within a city. It had houses and shops and even a chapel
right there built along its span.

Without giving anything away, the joust becomes the exciting
climax to the story.   

Sharon:  Give us the “elevator pitch” of the novel.

Jeri: Crispin
witnesses a body hurtling from the uppermost reaches of London
Bridge. Whispers on the street claim it’s suicide, but Crispin insists
otherwise. Now he’s caught between rebellious factions in King Richard’s court,
Spanish spies, murderous knights, an old friend’s honor, and the true ownership
of the Holy Spear of Longinus, culminating in a deadly joust on London Bridge.

Sharon: What’s
next for you?

Jeri: Next fall
will see the release of Crispin number six, SHADOW OF THE ALCHEMIST, where Perenelle,
the wife of French alchemist Nicholas Flamel, has been kidnapped, and the
culprit wants Flamel’s most prized creation, the Philosopher’s Stone. There is
more here than a simple abduction. What follows is a chase down the shadowy
streets of London, and a deadly game between men who know the secrets of
poisons and purges, sorcery and forbidden sciences.

Take a look at the awesome Crispin series book trailer, book
discussion guides, my appearance schedule to see if I’ll be in your home town,
and other fun stuff on my website www.JeriWesterson.com;
you can see my blog of history and mystery at www.Getting-Medieval.com; and you
can read Crispin’s blog at www.jeriwesterson.com/crispins-blog.
You can also friend Crispin on his Facebook page or follow me on Twitter.

Sharon: Thank you
for sharing with us, Jeri.  I am looking
forward to reading Blood Lance.

Jeri: Thanks again
for having me, Sharon!

September 29, 2012

A Roman statesman named Cato the Elder is said to have ended
every speech in the Senate with the words “Carthago delenda est,” calling for
the destruction of Carthage, Rome’s ancient enemy.  Well, I may have to begin all future blogs by
issuing a call to Helen, a winner of my last book giveaway.  Helen was one of the two winners, posting on
July 17^th, and she has yet to get in touch with me.  So….Helen, you have a book waiting for
you.  You can contact me at this link on
my website.   http://www.sharonkaypenman.com/contact_penman.htm

            I am
currently bogged down doing research for a critical chapter in Ransom and so I
have had to keep the real world at bay while I struggle out of this swamp.  But I noticed that it is going on three weeks
since I’ve posted a new blog.    What to
do?    I came up with the idea of giving
you all a behind-the-scenes glimpse of the making of a novel—hopefully, it
won’t be as messy as the making of sausage or laws.  Today’s blog is going to be the original
Prologue for Lionheart—the wedding night of William Marshal and the young
heiress, Isabel de Clare.  It ended up on
the cutting room floor because we decided to make two books out of
Lionheart.  Because of this surgery,
William Marshal disappears from the story early on and does not re-appear again
once the action moves to Sicily, Cyprus, and the Holy Land.   So my editor thought it no longer made sense
to begin the book with Will and Isabel and I did a second Prologue.  This left the old Prologue gathering dust,
though—until it occurred to me that some of my readers might like to read it;
who doesn’t like William Marshal, after all?    
So….I now give you the original Prologue for Lionheart. 

*     *    
*     *      *

PROLOGUE

AUGUST 1189                                                              LONDON, ENGLAND

    William Marshal had taken care to make his
bride’s deflowering as easy as possible, and in the afterglow of their
lovemaking, he was pleased, both with his performance and her responsiveness.
“Oh, my,” she’d murmured once she’d gotten her breath back, amusing him then by
pulling aside the bed covers to look for the requisite proof of innocence,
proudly showing him the trickle of blood staining her thighs and the sheet.

     Will had harbored no doubts about her
virginity; few heiresses were given the opportunity to yield to temptation, and
Isabel de Clare was a great heiress indeed. Her father and grandfather had been
earls, her mother the daughter of an Irish king, and she brought to her husband
much more than an impeccable pedigree. She brought him, too, vast estates in England, Normandy,
South Wales, and Ireland.
Even though she was an earl’s daughter, Will did not become an earl himself by
wedding her, for only the king could bestow that title upon him. But he was now
a very wealthy man, influential beyond his wildest dreams, and he owed it all
to the girl-woman who was curled up beside him like a kitten, tickling his
chest with each swish of her long, silky hair.

     “My ladies said I was fortunate that you
are no longer young,” she told him, hers the forthright candor of the indulged
and highborn. “They said young men were keener on their own pleasure, but an
older man would not be so urgent or greedy, would be able to take his time. Is
that why it did not hurt as much as I expected, Will?”

     “Probably,” he agreed gravely, biting back
a smile. “A man of my advanced years
is not as likely to spill his seed too soon, the way a green lad might.”

     Isabel propped herself up on her elbow.
“Just how old are you?” she asked archly, and feigned shock when Will said his
years were forty and two. “I am eighteen. So I am young enough to be your
daughter.”

     She paused for dramatic effect and to see
how he’d react to her teasing. She had been very pleased when the justiciar had
told her she was to be wed to William Marshal, for he was a celebrated knight,
famous for his tournament prowess, envied by other men and favored by kings. It
troubled her not at all that he was more than twenty years her senior, for that
was often the way of their world. And Aine, her down-to-earth childhood nurse,
had pragmatically pointed out that an aging husband could be a boon to an
unhappy wife, as he was likely to die first.

     Isabel did not think she’d need to worry
about that, though. From the moment she’d laid eyes upon Will, she’d marveled
at her luck, for her renowned husband-to-be was also tall and well formed, his
brown hair curling neatly at the base of his neck and the corners of his mouth
hinting at a suppressed smile.

     She’d not had the time to form any
conclusions about his nature, though, for their marriage was done in haste, so eager
was Will to claim her as his. The sheriff of London, Richard Fitz Reiner, had generously
offered his own residence for the wedding, insisting, too, upon taking the
costs upon himself, for although Will had a lord’s expectations, he still had a
knight’s budget. They’d been wed that noon in the stately cathedral a stone’s
throw from the sheriff’s townhouse in Friday Street, and in the morning, they
would depart for Stoke Dabernon in Surrey and the manor of one of Will’s
friends, where they’d spend a few days together before Will must answer the new
king’s summons. So when Isabel and Will exchanged their vows on St Paul’s porch, she’d yet
to be alone with her husband.

     She’d not been nervous, though. Will’s
calm demeanor was reassuring and his de-termination to wed her as soon as
possible was flattering, for she knew she was pretty as well as rich, having
been blessed with the blonde hair, blue eyes, and fair coloring so esteemed by
minstrels and troubadours. She’d studied Will covertly during the Marriage Mass
and at the wedding feast that followed, and by the time they were ushered up to
their bridal chamber for the bedding-down revelries, she’d concluded that her
groom was good humored, proud but not boastful, a man who’d be easy to live
with, yet one who’d fiercely protect what was hers—and now his—and that, too,
was reassuring.

     What she’d not known, though, was how
quick he’d be to laugh, even at himself, and she waited now to find out,
watching intently as Will rolled over onto his side so they were facing each
other, moving somewhat stiffly for he’d lacerated his leg on the voyage from Normandy to England. “I suppose so,” he agreed
amiably. “But this I can tell you for true, lass. The way I feel about you is
not in the least fatherly.”

    The words were no sooner out of his mouth
than his bride was in his arms, her breath warm on his throat. “Oh, Will, thank
Heaven you are not one of those dreadful, dour souls who would not know a jest
from a juniper bush!”

    Will smiled to himself, touched by the
giddiness of youth, for she was very young, this new wife of his. He had never
hoped to be given such a prize, could still remember his astonishment when the
old king had promised her to him, a deathbed reward for years of steadfast
loyalty. He remembered, too, thinking that his bright future was lost when King
Henry drew his last tortured breath at Chinon Castle.
But the new king, Richard, had confirmed Henry’s dying promise, and at that
moment Will had begun to believe in miracles.

     Even before he’d arrived at the Tower of
London to claim her, he’d felt an over-whelming tenderness for Isabel de Clare,
his bridge to a world he’d never expected to enter, for he was just a younger
son of a minor baron, a man whose worth had been measured by the strength and
accuracy of his sword-arm. Deeply grateful to the girl who would make this
transformation possible, he’d vowed to treat her like the treasure she was, to
do whatever he could to make her contented with her fate. His thankfulness had
turned to awe upon finding that she was fair, lively, and not at all loath to
wed him. Cradling Isabel’s warm curves against his body now, he kissed her
gently, then smothered a yawn, thinking drowsily that life with Isabel de Clare
was never going to be dull.

     “Will…Master Reiner told me that you’d
unhorsed Richard during the old king’s flight from Le Mans. Is that true?”

     Will swallowed another yawn, but he could
not resist telling her the story, one that put him in a very favorable light.
“True enough, lass. Richard and the French king had forced their way into the
city. It was already on fire, and we had a devil of a time convincing King
Henry that he had to flee. When he finally agreed to retreat, it was almost too
late. Richard had not taken part in the assault itself, but when he heard that
Henry had escaped, he set out in pursuit, even though he had neither hauberk
nor shield.”

     Isabel was listening, wide-eyed. “What did
Richard mean to do once he overtook Henry?”

    Will’s shoulders twitched in a half-shrug.
“I would guess that he wanted to spare his father the humiliation of being
captured by the French king’s men. I’d remained at the rear to cover Henry’s
flight, and when Richard saw me bearing down upon him, he cried out that he was
unarmed and tried to knock my lance aside. I had no intention of killing him,
of course, but I waited until the last possible moment ere I shifted my lance
and plunged it into his stallion’s chest. I think that may have been the first
time that Richard felt the fear of death like other mortal men.”

      “And did you really curse Richard to the
flames of Eternal Hellfire, Will?”

     “No, I told him that I’d let the Devil be
the one to kill him.” Will’s smile was wry, for that bit of bravado could have
cost him dearly, and for a time he’d thought it would. “I never regretted it,
though,” he said, “for I gained the old king the time he needed to get away.
But it was a brief reprieve. Less than a month later, he was forced to
surrender to Richard and the French king at Colombieres, so ill he could barely
stay in the saddle. We had to take carry him back to Chinon in a horse litter,
and there he learned that his youngest son, John, had betrayed him, too…” 

      “How sad,” Isabel said politely, for
she’d never known the old king. It was Will’s role in this royal drama that
held her interest. “Richard is a very prideful man, is he not?” And when he
nodded, she reached for his hand, entwining her fingers in his. “Yet he forgave
you for publicly shaming him, Will…why?”

      “I did not expect him to be so
magnanimous,” he admitted. “But he said he bore me no grudge, and then he told
me and the other knights who’d stayed faithful to his father that we had
nothing to fear, saying dryly that loyalty to the king was not a trait he’d
want to discourage.”

     “And then he said he’d honor his father’s
promise,” Isabel interrupted, “and you sailed for England
in such haste to wed me that you fell off the gangplank at Dieppe and gashed your leg open.”

     “I see my squire has been telling tales,”
Will said, settling back comfortably against the pillows. The gangplank had
actually given way under the weight of too many men, not because he’d been so
eager to board ship. Isabel looked so pleased with his squire’s version,
though, that he didn’t correct it. It had been a long day and he was drifting
toward sleep when Isabel jarred the bed by sitting up suddenly, wrapping her
arms around her knees.

     Although Isabel’s father had been stricken
with a fatal infection when she was just five, her mother had seen to it that
she received as good an education as her little brother, well aware of the
fragility of young life; and indeed, Isabel’s brother died before his tenth
birthday, leaving her as the sole heiress to the vast de Clare holdings. She
enjoyed reading, and her favorite books were a French translation of Geoffrey
of Monmouth’s history of ancient Britain and Chretien de Troyes Lancelot, the Knight of the Cart.
Intrigued as she was by these tales of the fabled King Arthur, his beautiful
Queen Guinevere, his evil nephew Mordred, and the most famous of his knights,
Sir Lancelot du Lac, Isabel thought that Henry Fitz Empress and his
controversial queen, the strong-willed Eleanor of Aquitaine, were just as fascinating.

     She knew the outlines of their story. The
son of the Count of Anjou and the Empress Maude, Henry had done what his mother
could not–claimed her father’s crown. By twenty-one, he was King of England,
wed to a woman as mythical as Guinevere, a great heiress who was a great
beauty, too, former wife of the King of France. The French king had rejected
Eleanor for her failure to give him a male heir; she gave Henry five, four of
whom survived to manhood. But just as Arthur and Guinevere’s marriage had been
shattered by treachery, so had Henry and Eleanor’s union been doomed by
betrayal.

     Guinevere had taken Arthur’s friend
Lancelot as her lover. Many felt that Eleanor’s sin was even greater, for she’d
joined her teenage sons in a rebellion against her own husband, king, and liege
lord. Isabel had heard a number of reasons offered for Eleanor’s treachery.
Most people seemed to believe that she was a jealous wife, outraged by Henry’s
love affair with a Marcher lord’s daughter. Others wondered if she’d been
bewitched or that she came from doomed and damned stock. But Isabel’s mother,
Aife, had laughed at these conjectures, for the daughter of a king understood
better than most the dynamics of power. The queen had resented Henry’s meddling
in her duchy, she’d told Isabel, for Eleanor had always seen herself, first and
foremost, as Duchess of Aquitaine, not as Henry’s consort. And Aife had
insisted that his inability to share that power even with his sons had been his
fatal weakness.

     Isabel did not know if her mother was
right about Eleanor’s motivations. She could say with certainty only that
Eleanor had rebelled and was held in comfortable confinement for the next
sixteen years as her sons were forgiven, then rebelled again and again. She had
high hopes, though, that Will would be able to answer many of her questions,
for he’d been the mentor of Henry’s eldest son, Hal, and had joined the royal
household after Hal’s sudden death in the midst of yet another senseless war.

     “I do not understand how a son could take
up arms against his own sire,” she confided. “And yet all of King Henry’s sons
turned against him, even John, his favorite. I’ve heard men call them the
Devil’s Brood. You knew them all, Will. Tell me how it really was. Tell me the truth,
not the legends or rumors or romance.”

     Will sighed, for his body was yearning for
sleep. But he did not want to disappoint his bride upon their wedding night,
and he did his best, giving her a concise account of the Great Rebellion in
1173 that had cost Eleanor her freedom and Henry his peace of mind.

     “He could forgive his sons, but not his
wife; that was too deep a wound to heal. He tried to mend fences with the lads,
to no avail. They were bitter that he continued to hold their mother prisoner,
Richard most of all, and infuriated that he continued to refuse to delegate
authority to them. And because he could no longer trust them, he tried to bribe
or coerce them into staying loyal. It was an utter failure. Hal died in
rebellion, repenting when it was too late, when he was on his deathbed. Hal’s
death broke his father’s heart,” Will said huskily, for he, too, had loved Hal,
so beguiling and good-hearted and utterly irresponsible.

     “What of the other brothers?” Isabel
prompted. “After Hal died, why did the king favor John? Most men pay little
heed to younger sons. Why did Henry risk so much for John Lackland’s sake?”

     “John Lackland….that was part of the
problem, lass. Hal was to be king. Richard was to inherit his mother Eleanor’s
duchy of Aquitaine,
and Geoffrey was betrothed as a lad to Constance, the Duchess of Brittany. When
John was born, there was little left for him, hence his father’s joking title,
Lackland. But Henry was bound and determined to provide for John, too. So when
Hal died and Richard became the heir-apparent, Henry wanted him to yield up Aquitaine to John, reasoning that Richard no longer
needed the duchy now that he was to inherit an empire: England, Normandy,
and Anjou.
Richard did not see it that way, though,” Will said, smiling grimly at the vast
understatement.

     Isabel was still listening raptly and he
stifled another yawn before resuming. “Henry made the same mistake with
Geoffrey, withholding a large portion of his wife’s Breton inheritance as
leverage for Geoffrey’s good behavior. He only succeeded in driving Geoffrey
into rebellion, too, and he’d allied himself with the French king when he was
killed in a tournament outside Paris.

     “That left Richard and John, and because
Henry stubbornly refused to publicly pro-claim Richard as his heir, Richard
began to suspect that his father meant to bypass him in favor of John, a
flickering flame that the French king was all too eager to fan into a roaring
fire. It eventually came to war. By then Henry was ailing and did not want to
fight his own son. But Richard no longer believed in his peace overtures, and
the result was that shaming surrender at Columbieres. But the worst was still
to come. Seeing that his father was losing, John abandoned him and made a private
peace with Richard and King Philippe.”

     Will fell silent, for so long that Isabel
feared he would not continue. After a few moments, though, he said softly, “It
can be argued that Hal and Geoffrey and Richard all had genuine grievances. But
John….John abandoned his dying father to save his own skin and that was King
Henry’s true death blow.”

     “I wonder if Chretian de Troyes has
thought of writing about the Angevins,” Isabel mused. “Of course he’d have to
change their names, but someone ought to suggest it to him. Do not stop now,
though, Will. Tell me about the queen. I was told you once saved her from
capture when you were a young knight, and when you were captured, she paid your
ransom. What is she like? When she was young, was she as beautiful as men say?
Why did she really rebel against Henry?”

     Before she could say more, Will leaned
over and stopped her words with a kiss. “Not tonight, Isabel. Your aged,
elderly husband is desperate for sleep. I will right gladly satisfy your
curiosity about the royal family. It will have to wait, though.”

     Isabel ducked her head to hide her pout.
She was disappointed that he was bringing this interesting conversation to an
end, but that was of minor moment. Her dismay was due to the fact that she was
wide awake, no more able to sleep than she was able to walk on water. What was
she to do whilst Will slept beside her? She could not very well bring a candle
and book to her wedding bed. The prospect of all those wakeful hours till dawn
was a daunting one, until she had an inspiration.

     “Of course, Will,” she said demurely.
They’d thrown the sheet back for it was a humid August night, and she suddenly
pointed to a white welt of a scar that zigzagged along his inner thigh. “Oh,
what a dreadful wound! What happened, Will?” She was already reaching out,
caressing the path of that old injury, and soon got the response she’d been
hoping for. Admiring her husband’s swelling erection, she thought it was lovely
that men could be so easily aroused, even “aged, elderly” ones, and she glanced
up at him with an impish, triumphant grin. “It seems you are not as tired as
you thought, my lord husband.”

     “No, it seems I am not,” he agreed, and
pulled her down on top of him. He’d have to do penance for this, as the Church
considered any position in which the woman was not under the man to be
unnatural and thus sinful. But he needed to ease his injured leg by letting his
bride do some of the work, an innovation Isabel was quite happy to embrace, and
their wedding night came to a very satisfying end for the Marshal and his young
wife.

*     *    
*     *     *

September 4, 2012

I recently received some very good news from my British
publisher, Macmillan.  They have
expedited their schedule for my British e-books and we now have a tentative
date of July 26^th for the release of The Sunne in Splendour, Here Be
Dragons, Falls the Shadow, and The Reckoning.  
To say I’m over the moon about this is a typical British
understatement.   And yes, I do expect
that When Christ and His Saints Slept and Time and Chance will be available as
e-books, too, before the year’s end. 
Since Macmillan has already published Lionheart in the e-book format and
Penguin released Devil’s Brood as an e-book several years ago, that will mean
that all of my historical sagas will finally be available as e-books to my
readers in the UK and Down Under.  I am
afraid Justin de Quincy and company are still wandering in the wilderness, but
I hope I’ll eventually be able to send out a search party for him.  And now that The Queen’s Man was released as
an e-book in the US this past spring, at least all four mysteries are now
available on this side of the Atlantic.

            I got to
see Macmillan’s jacket for the paperback edition of Lionheart, which will be
published in early January.   I really
like it, and will try to get Melusine to let me add the photo to this
blog.   Ballantine has come up with a
striking jacket for the American paperback edition of Lionheart, too, which
will be out on December 26^th of this year; I wish I could include it
here,  but it was among all the e-mails
that Melusine dispatched to computer limbo last month.  The curious can see it, though, on
Amazon.com, as it is already available for pre-orders.  I am very happy with all four of the book
jackets for Lionheart and I haven’t always been able to say that in the
past.    So to celebrate, I am giving
away a signed copy of one of my books. 
Anyone who posts a comment on this blog will be in the drawing, and the
winner can choose between a hardback copy of Lionheart, Devil’s Brood, Time and
Chance, or The Reckoning.  If you already
have copies of these books, you can always give it away to a friend,
right?    I think giving copies of my
books as gifts would be a wonderful custom to establish and ought to be
encouraged whenever possible.   

            I continue
to spend all of my waking hours (at least it feels that way) working on A
King’s Ransom.   To reassure you that I am exercising due
diligence to meet the deadline, I am going to conclude with a few passages from
A King’s Ransom.   The first one occurs
in Chapter Two, when Richard and his men are caught in a savage winter storm on
their way home from the Holy Land. 

*      *     
*

            The ship
shuddered, like an animal in its death throes. 
Its prow was pointing skyward, so steep was the wave, and the men
desperately braced themselves, knowing the worst was to come.  The galley was engulfed, white water breaking
over both sides, flooding the deck.  And
then it was going down, plunging into the trough, and there was nothing in
their world but seething, surging water. 
Richard heard terrified cries of “Jesu!” and “Holy Mother!”  Beside him, Arne was whimpering in
German.  The bow was completely submerged
and Richard was sure that the Sea-Wolf was doomed, heading for the bottom of
the Adriatic Sea. 

            “Lord God,
I entreat Thee to save us, Thy servants!” 
Richard’s voice rose above the roar of the storm, for he was used to
shouting commands on the battlefield. 
“Let us reach a safe harbor and I pledge one hundred thousand ducats to
build for Thee a church wherever we come ashore!  Do not let men who’ve taken the cross die at
sea and be denied Christian burial!”

*     *     
*

            His prayer
would be answered and for centuries to come, the city-state of Ragusa, today’s
Dubrovnik, would hold the memory of the English king called Lionheart in high
esteem, as the vast amount he pledged was used to rebuild their cathedral. 

            The second
passage occurs in Chapter Eight.   Eleanor
has been living every mother’s worst nightmare for weeks, not knowing her
missing son’s fate.   On this rainy
January night in 1193, she learns from his cousin Andre de Chauvigny that
Richard is still alive but a prisoner of the Holy Roman Emperor.   She takes the news hard, of course.     

*     *    
*

            His mouth
contorting, Andre said bitterly, “That craven swine on the French throne means
to put in his own bid for Richard, and if he does…”

            There was
no need to finish the sentence, for Eleanor understood the consequences fully
as well as he did.   She was sitting up
straight now, no longer slumped back in the chair as if her bones could not
bear her weight, and he saw that color was slowly returning to her cheeks; that
sickly white pallor was gone.  As he
watched, it seemed to him that she was willing her body to recover, finding
strength from some inner source that defied her advancing years, and he felt a
surge of relief.  It had shaken him to
see her looking so fragile, so vulnerable, so old.  She was on her feet now, beginning to pace as
she absorbed the impact of the emperor’s letter, and when she turned to face
Andre, he saw that her hazel eyes had taken on a greenish, cat-like glitter,
reflecting nothing at that moment but a fierce, unforgiving rage.

            “They will
not get away with this,” she said, making that simple sentence a declaration of
war.  “We shall secure my son’s freedom, no
matter what it takes.  And we will
protect his kingdom until he can be restored to us, Andre.” 

*       *     
*

            And of
course she did.  The ransom demanded was
a staggering sum, estimated to be the equivalent of several trillion
dollars.  If not for Eleanor’s steely
determination, men might have been reluctant to defy John, who would be king if
Richard died in a German or French prison, which seemed very likely.   But as I have Richard’s chancellor, Guillaume
Longchamp, thinking later as he watches the queen mother in action, “King
Richard had been blessed by the Almighty in many ways, but above all in the
woman who’d given him life.”    She would
prove to be a match for all of her son’s enemies.    Such a pity that Henry couldn’t have seen
what Richard did and made use of Eleanor’s formidable intelligence and
finely-honed political skills.   If he’d
done so, maybe we could have written a happier ending to their turbulent
marriage.  

            But that is
another one of those fascinating, frustrating What Ifs that we like to
speculate about.   I’ll probably keep this
blog up for a few weeks so that there will be plenty of time to enter the book
drawing.  Now…back to the 12^th
century and Rome, where Joanna and Berengaria have been stranded for fear of
Heinrich.   

July 16, 2012

I am delighted to offer this interview with a rising star of
historical fiction, C. W. Gortner.   I am sure many of you have read his novels The
Last Queen and The Confessions of Catherine de Medici., both of which I enjoyed
very much.  His latest novel is THE
QUEEN’S VOW, about the tumultuous rise to power and early reign of Isabella of
Castile. Born and raised in southern Spain, C.W. has been fascinated since
childhood by the legend, and contradictions, of this legendary queen who sent
Columbus to America. In our Q&A today, we talk about his passion for
powerful women in history, his views on writing historical fiction, and he
shares a special animal rescue story.

1) Tell us about The
Queen’s Vow. How did you get the idea?

As mentioned, I grew
up in southern Spain, in a seaside town near the city of Malaga. There was a
ruined castle that had once belonged to Isabella of Castile near my house,
where I often played. Today, it has been fully restored but in my childhood it
was a ruin— a circle of battlements and towers, open to the sky, one in which I
could let my imagination run free. In school, I learned about Isabella, about how
she conquered Granada and united Spain, and sent Columbus across the sea. But
it wasn’t until years later that I realized how little I actually knew about
Isabella’s early years, about her struggle to become queen and assert her power
in a time when women rarely ruled.

I had depicted
Isabella’s later years and death in my first novel, The Last Queen, about her daughter, Juana. In that book, we meet Isabella upon the fall of Granada:
she is the strong, somber queen, devoted to her realm and, frankly, rather
forbidding. When I decided to write about Isabella in this novel, I wanted to
explore who she was before that momentous achievement; how she became the Isabella we think we know. Her love affair with
her husband Fernando of Aragón, for example, is a historical rarity; he was
forbidden to her, and her decision to marry him sparked a civil war. As with
most legendary figures, there’s far more to Isabella than we’ve been told. She
was both extraordinary and extraordinarily fallible, a product and exception of
her era.

2) Isabella is
strongly associated with the Inquisition. Can you talk about this?

There’s a lot of
controversy surrounding Isabella’s role in the Inquisition. I knew she’d
sanctioned its revival in Spain and used it against her subjects; I was interested
in understanding why she did it, rather than trying to exonerate her. I’m not
that invested in making my characters sympathetic; I do, however, want them to
be understandable, even when we don’t agree with them. There is no excuse for
the Inquisition, but to my surprise I discovered that Isabella’s decisions
surrounding it were more complex than popular history depicts. She wasn’t
innately cruel – in fact, she detested bull fighting, for example, and forbade corridas held in her honor – and the
documentation from the era proves that she delayed implementing the Inquisition
for several years, despite the urging of councilors and her husband.
Nevertheless, that said, Isabella took her faith and any threat to it very
seriously.

It’s tough to be a
writer of historical fiction when faced with issues of religious
intolerance, cruelty to animals, any kind of persecution. I’m a very liberal
man. I can honestly say, I’m glad I was not born in the 16^th century,
which is an era defined as much by its injustice as its glamour. Yet I can’t
write about a Renaissance queen, or indeed a Renaissance person, and ignore
these unsavory traits, because in their world, faith in particular was a
life-and-death issue. They sincerely believed in heresy and the damnation or
salvation of the soul based on how one worshipped. While it was challenging at
times for me to get inside Isabella’s skin and view the world as she did, I
also think that we’re not all that different today. We need only look to
fundamentalist churches that condemn gay people and women’s rights, among other
things, to understand that as much as we may change, much also, sadly, remains
the same.

3) What kind of research did you do to get inside Isabella’s
skin?

As with all my books,
the research began several years before I actually started writing. I read
as many biographies and books about the era as I could, as well as extant
documentation from the era that was available to me. I also took several trips
to Spain, including one in which I followed in Isabella’s footsteps from
Seville to Granada, site of her most famous triumph. The alcazar of Segovia,
though much transformed over the years, carries a strong echo of Isabella’s
early trials; as does the walled city of Avila and several other sites in
Castile. I read her letters and that of her contemporaries, as well as
ambassadorial accounts of her court. Isabella has left very little in her own
hand that reveals her inner thoughts— she was private, not given to public
displays of her feelings—but careful examination of what does exist, together
with the aforementioned documentation and her actions during her lifetime,
offered the framework that I used to create the flesh-and-blood woman she may
have been. 

4) Now, tell us about your new cats, My Boy and Mommy. How
did they come into your life?

My Boy and Mommy are son and mother; I’d been feeding them for over 4 years in the park where I walk
with my dog, Paris. I first spotted Mommy as she streaked past me in the
undergrowth one morning; she was very feral and had just had a litter of
kittens. The kittens were fascinated by Paris, who isn’t aggressive, so I
decided to trap them. I got all of them but Boy, who eluded the trap for
months. The kittens were all adopted through the SPCA; I then turned my
attention to trapping Mommy and Boy, with the help of a lady who feeds more
than 12 feral cats in the area. By the time we ended up getting them, both
Mommy and Boy had bonded with me. At the advice of the feral cat program,
however, after they were spayed / neutered, we re-released them in the park,
with the caveat that we’d continue to care for them.  But in February of this year, Boy showed up
to his daily feeding with an injured paw. He’d either been attacked by a coyote
or dog. Coyotes have been sighted in the park more of late, but people, too,
were very disrespectful about leashing their dogs in the cats’ area: they acted
as if they had the right to let the dogs chase the cats, which of course only
adds to a feral cat’s stress. That day when I arrived with the food, Boy was
limping. He sat at my feet, as if to say he needed help. It was raining, too,
and I knew that if I left him to fend for himself, a dog might get to him. I’d
rigged up shelters under the walkway where the cats ate but between dogs and
raccoons knocking the shelters over, exposure to the elements, and the cats’
bond with me, I was finding it increasingly difficult for me to leave them. I
put Boy in a carrier and took him to the vet. He needed stitches; they told me
we’d have to keep him confined for a week while he healed, so my partner and I
decided to bring him and Mommy home, to see how they’d fare. You never know
with ferals, we were warned: most can’t adjust to being pets.

It’s been almost
four months now, and so far, so good. The cats have settled in; they seem very
happy, with the run of the upstairs spare bedroom. They love belly rubs and
kisses. Paris was a little miffed that she must now share her home but she’s
adjusting, too. She’s gentle, and I’m sure it’ll work out in time.

Thank you so much for having me, Sharon. I’m a great fan of
yours and I sincerely hope your readers enjoy THE QUEEN’S VOW. I’m always
available to chat with book groups via Skype or speaker phone; to learn more
about me and my work, please visit me at: www.cwgortner.com

 Thank you,
Christopher, for this fascinating and insightful interview.  You very eloquently addressed a problem that
historical novelists often face; we live in an age in which many of us consider
tolerance to be a virtue, and I am so glad of that.  But that was not true in the Middle Ages,
where all people of faith were convinced theirs was the only true religion.   Like you, I would not have wanted to live
back then, however much I enjoy writing about the medieval world.   As an opinionated woman and a lapsed
Catholic, I probably would not have fared well. 
  I am looking forward to reading about your
Isabella, for I am sure you do her justice while staying true to the tenor of
her times.   And thank you, too, for rescuing My Boy and
Mommy; it is a story sure to resonate with my readers.   I know Paris is a rescue, too, and I also
know that you began rescuing animals in need back in your boyhood in
Spain.   God’s creatures would have
happier lives if only we could clone people like you!     I believe your next novel is going to be
about the enigmatic Lucrezia Borgia—I hope you’ll come back to talk about her,
too. 

June 27, 2012