I am pleased to announce that the winner of my Lionheart drawing was Johnny Pez.   I’ll do another drawing in coming months, so you’ll all have a chance to win again.  I’d like to thank everyone who entered the drawing for the lovely comments posted about my writing.  Writing is a strange profession in many ways.  It is sadly, a solitary one, and it is subjective, which can be difficult for writers to accept.  We naturally want every living soul on the planet to love our books.   All writers suffer through dry stretches, those barren patches when inspiration has shriveled and confidence has withered and I find myself wondering if I can write a shopping list, much less another five hundred page novel.   But because I am fortunate enough to get such generous and eloquent feedback from my readers on my blog and Facebook pages, I don’t listen to those insidious inner voices, and the holiday season seems a good time to thank you all for that.

For those who haven’t been by my Facebook page recently, I am delighted to report that I adopted a cocker spaniel or spaniel mix last week.  She was listed on Petfinder as a poodle-spaniel cross, although the rescue later told me they thought she is a purebred cocker spaniel.  I have my doubts, for she is much smaller than the spaniels I’ve seen.  She is, however, sweet and loving and playful, and if there were a contest for World’s Cutest Dog, she’d be a shoo-in.   I was looking for a companion dog for Tristan, my shepherd, as he got along very well with my poodle, Chelsea.   But he surprised me by showing some ambivalence toward his new roommate.  Holly would come over and lie down beside him and he’d get up and stalk away like a crotchety old uncle irked at having to babysit.  She did not give up, though, and she is winning him over.   I caught them playing together yesterday, and he has been sharing his toys with her, even his beloved stuffed duck.

I have a number of blogs planned for the coming year.  I’d like to do one for those who’ve read Lionheart, as not even an eleven page AN could cover all that I’d like to share with my readers—more assurances that the most improbable events come from the crusader and Saracen chronicles, information about the fate of some of the minor characters, those who cannot be googled.   I still have three blogs left to do about the Eleanor of Aquitaine Tour in June.   I plan to do one about rescue groups and the remarkable work they do.  I was permitted to select only five books when the National Public Radio asked me to write about the Best Historical Novels of 2011, and there are others worthy of mention, too, so that will be another blog.   I hope to do interviews with writers I admire and to call my readers’ attention to websites sure to appeal to those who love books and history.    I want to do blogs about two remarkable series—George R.R. Martin’s Ice and Fire series and Bernard Cornwell’s Saxon series.   And I also would like to do occasional updates about the progress of A King’s Ransom—or the lack thereof.   So far Coeur de Lion is being unusually cooperative for an Angevin, but in dealing with the Devil’s Brood, I never know how long that will last.

I want to mention, too, that I have updated my website recently, and it now has links to many of the interviews I did for Lionheart; there are also links to reviews of the book, and no, I did not include the one relatively unfavorable one, not being a masochist.  I’ve added new writers and websites to the My Favorites section, as well, and have expanded my Medieval Mishaps section, in which I confess to mistakes that have infiltrated my books, including one so mind-boggling to me that I did a Mea Culpa for it in the Lionheart AN even though the error itself occurred in The Reckoning.    I have not yet added the link to the interview I did for NPR, but here is the link to their website and my piece about the Best Historical Novels of 2011.  http://www.npr.org/2011/12/24/143149380/a-passion-for-the-past-2011s-best-historical-fiction And as my Facebook friends know, I have actually managed to write a short story, proving that the Age of Miracles is not dead. It features Constance de Hauteville, unhappy wife of Richard I’s nemesis, Heinrich von Hohenstaufen, the Holy Roman Emperor who could have taught Colombian drug lords something about abduction and extortion.  Lionheart readers will have met Constance with Eleanor at Lodi, where she performs a kindness for Berengaria.  Her story will appear in the upcoming anthology by George R.R. Martin and Gardner Dozois, Dangerous Women.

I want to close with something that one of my friends posted on my Facebook page. I added it to the comments section of the last blog, but I know not everyone reads through them all, so here it is again:  “If I make it to Heaven, I’m asking Richard III if he knows what happened to his nephews.  If I don’t make it to Heaven, I’ll ask Henry Tudor.”

I haven’t had a chance yet to take some photos of Holly, but I do have a beautiful one of Tristan to share, taken by the photographer for the Atlantic City Press to accompany an interview they did with me about Lionheart.    I think he looks very regal, not at all like the dog that came so close to death in that Florida shelter.  Thanks again to Joan, his savior, and Becky, his foster mom, and all those wonderful Echo volunteers who drove him up the East Coast to his new home and new life, his pilgrimage described so aptly by my friend Glenne as “like the passing of the Olympic Torch.”

All good wishes for a happy and safe New Year’s Eve.  Let’s hope that the New Year will be a better one for us all.

December 28, 2011

As promised, I am holding a drawing for a signed hardback copy of Lionheart.  Any one who leaves a comment on this blog will be eligible to win.  I usually keep the drawing open for two weeks, but this one may run longer as we all get caught up in the holiday hoopla.

First, quick updates.  I have been assured by my publisher that the Lionheart audio book will be available within the coming week.  Here is the link for anyone who’d like to listen to Emily Gray, the woman who’ll be doing the reading. http://www.audiofilemagazine.com/gvpages/a1571.shtml Lionheart will also be available in large print, although I don’t have the date for that yet.  It is now available as a trade paperback Down Under and should be available as an e-book there very soon.  As I’ve mentioned elsewhere, it will be published as a hardback in the U.K. next April.   And I am very happy to report that the American edition is in its third printing.

Okay, now on to other issues.  National Public Radio asked me to do a brief article on the Best Historical Novels of 2011, which ought to be up on their website http://www.npr.org/ in early December.  And I had fun doing a slideshow for the Huffington Post about New Jersey writers.  Here is the link, http://www.huffingtonpost.com/sharon-kay-penman/12-authors-you-didnt-know_b_1108262.html I was surprised that so many renowned writers were born and bred in New Jersey, which is often an object of ridicule for the rest of the country.   I’d originally created seven categories:  Those Fluent in Sarcasm, Trail Blazers, Historical Novelists, Poets, Miscellaneous, Writers We Stole from NYC, and Newark, which unexpectedly emerged as a literary Eden.  The powers-that-be at the Huffington Post asked me to trim it back, and we eventually ended up with twelve slideshows, one for each of the following New Jersey stars:   Norman Mailer, Dorothy Parker, Phillip Roth, Janet Evanovich, George R.R. Martin, Stephen Crane, James Fenimore Cooper, Allen Ginsberg, Judy Blume, Harlan Coben, and two we “borrowed” from NYC, Jon Stewart and Peter Benchley.  I was able to praise the Ice and Fire series, explain that Jaws was actually based upon a horrific series of attacks off the Jersey coast by a Great White shark in 1916, and showcase my favorite Dorothy Parker quote; she was once challenged at a dinner party to use “horticulture” in a sentence, and without pausing for breath, she purred, “You can lead a whore to culture, but you can’t make her think.”   Another Parker response I like is when she was sitting morosely at a bar and when the bartender asked, “What are you having?”, she sighed, “Not much fun.”

But there were a number of other gifted New Jersey writers who didn’t make the final cut simply because the Slideshow space was limited.  I felt badly that I couldn’t even mention them.  Fortunately, I have a blog.

So…in addition to the above-named dazzling dozen, New Jersey can boast the following native-born sons and daughters:

1) Fran Liebowitz–writer, columnist, and social critic, known for her acerbic wit and one of the world’s worst cases of Writer’s Block, as she has been working on one novel for decades.

2) Gay Talese–writer, reporter, essayist, noted for what is often called the New Journalism.

3) Robin Maxwell, novelist, screenwriter, and blogger.  Among her novels are The Secret Diary of Anne Boleyn, and her most recent work, O Juliet, an imaginative retelling of the story of Shakespeare’s doomed lovers; she is currently working on a novel about Tarzan and Jane.

4) C.K. Williams, acclaimed poet and Pulitzer Prize winner.

5) Amiri Baraki—poet, novelist, dramatist, essayist, teacher, often embroiled in controversy, a former Poet Laureate of NJ.

6) Alfred Joyce Kilmer (1886-1918)—journalist, poet, critic, editor, best known today for the poem so many children have memorized as a class assignment, Trees; he died in WWI at the Second Battle of the Marne.

7) William Carlos Williams (1883-1963)—a major American poet, novelist, essayist, and physician, mentor to Allen Ginsberg, Pulitzer Prize winner, and member of the New Jersey Hall of Fame.  (Yes, we have one!)

8) Anne Morrow Lindbergh (1906-2001)—author and aviator, best known for Gift From the Sea, probably better known to the general public as the wife of Charles Lindbergh.

9) John Angus McPhee—author, staff writer for the New Yorker, Princeton professor, Pulitzer Prize winner.

10) Jacqueline Friedrich, a writer who focuses on a subject dear to my heart—wine; check out her blog, The Wine Humanist. http://www.jacquelinefriedrich.com/

11) Albert Payson Terhune (1872-1942)—author of the collies of Sunnybank books; his Lad was almost as beloved in his time as Lassie.  I’d originally put Terhune in the Newark slideshow, although I wasn’t sure he belonged there.  Wikipedia says he was born in Newark, but I couldn’t confirm it.  While I loved his books as a child, when I reread them years later, I was startled by his casual bias against those not of his “class.”  He was a believer in bloodlines—for dogs and people—and scornful of those he considered members of the lower order: immigrants, laborers, people of color, dogs that were not purebred.  So it appealed to me to think of this aristocratic, rather pompous man being born in a gritty, blue-collar city like Newark.  (The other writers able to claim Newark as their hometown are Harlan Coben, Stephen Crane, Allen Ginsberg, Phillip Roth, C.K. Williams, and Amiri Baraki.)

We were having a lively discussion on my Facebook page recently about “celebrity” authors, people who are famous for being famous, and then parlay their notoriety into book deals.  It was triggered by my discovery that a novel written by the Kardashian sisters (Kim, Kloe, and Kourtney), about three high-profile sisters named Kamille, Kassidy, and Kyle, is on the Publishers Weekly bestseller list.  One of my readers then suggested, tongue firmly in cheek, that we add Snookie from Jersey Shore to the list of NJ writers for her novel, It’s a Jersey Thing, in which she becomes a local celebrity after she—according to the book description—nearly burns down her rented bungalow, invents “tan-tags” (don’t even ask) and rescues a shark.  I confess I was almost tempted to read about the shark rescue.  But I decided Snookie didn’t make the cut.  To borrow Voltaire’s comment that the Holy Roman Empire was neither holy nor Roman nor an empire, Snookie is not a writer and I don’t think she is even from New Jersey.

Since this blog began with Lionheart, it seems right to end it with A King’s Ransom.  Some of my readers have asked for reports on its progress—or the lack thereof.   Well, I have just finished a chapter in which Richard was shipwrecked twice, so he is not in the best of moods.   I am putting up photos of the site of his first shipwreck—the island of Lokrum, one-half mile from Dubrovnik; in Richard’s time, they were known as La Croma and Ragusa.  In Lionheart, Eleanor crossed the Alps at Mont Genevre, which is today a posh ski resort, and I wondered what she’d make of that.  Well, the place where Richard came ashore on Lokrum is now a celebrated nudist beach!   The chapter ends with the second shipwreck, where they find themselves in a desolate, barren, deserted marsh, and Richard speaks for them all when he says, “Where in God’s Holy Name are we?”

In case I don’t get another blog up before Christmas, I want to wish everyone the best of holidays.  Let’s hope the New Year is a better one for us all, especially Mother Earth.

December 2, 2011

Yes, it is that time again—when I seek to take as many of you into book bankruptcy with me as I can.  So it may be better for your budgets to give this blog a pass.   It is just that when I find a book I really enjoy, I want to share it with the world.   For some books, I am hard put not to stop strangers on the street.  So, my fellow book-lovers, this is for you. But keep in mind that bookstores are not your only option; most of us live in towns that thankfully have libraries.

One benefit of my Lionheart book tour was that I finally had some time for pleasure reading; what else was I going to do at 30,000 feet?   I’ve already blogged about one of my book tour finds, Alice Hoffman’s The Dovekeepers.   I was also able to plunge into the world of thirteenth century England, courtesy of Priscilla Royal’s new mystery, A Killing Season.   In the interest of full disclosure, Priscilla is a friend.  But I would not recommend her books if I did not enjoy them thoroughly.    I think most writers worry when we are sent a writer friend’s new book, for what do we do if we don’t like it?   Since I wouldn’t want to be publicly critical of a friend’s book, I would have to find a way to dodge the bullet if asked outright.   Luckily, I’ve been spared such awkwardness, for my writer friends are very good at what they do!

A Killing Season is the eighth book in this successful series, set in England during the years after the battle of Evesham.  Edward I is now king, although he has yet to make an appearance in any of the books.  Like the Brother Cadfael mysteries by Ellis Peters and the Dame Frevisse mysteries by Margaret Frazer, Priscilla’s series revolves around a monastery, Tyndal Priory, one of the daughter houses of Fontevrault, set near Norwich.   The highborn and prideful prioress, Eleanor, rules over a community of nuns and monks, and shares star billing in the novels with Brother Thomas, who was compelled to take holy vows in the wake of a scandal that almost destroyed him.  Thomas is a fascinating creation, for it is rare to discuss sexuality in novels set in the Middle Ages.   But what of those men and women who could not conform, whose natural urges ran counter to the teachings of the Holy Church?   How did they cope in a world that showed them neither understanding nor mercy, a world in which they themselves believed they were sinners, most likely doomed to eternal hellfire?      With a deft touch, Priscilla shows us Thomas’s inner anguish of spirit as he struggles to honor the vows he’d not wanted to take and forges a close bond with Eleanor and the others who share his new world.   Oh, yes, and she writes corking good mysteries, too!   Eleanor and Thomas, like Brother Cadfael and Dame Frevisse, keep stumbling over bodies; who knew medieval monasteries were such hotbeds of crime?

In A Killing Season, the action  shifts to a haunted castle, perched at the back of beyond, where the sons of a newly returned crusader are being struck down under bizarre circumstances.  The lord of the castle is a friend of Eleanor’s brother, and responding to his plea for help, they find themselves in a harsh landscape where everything is suspect and nothing is as it seems.  Readers will be caught up in the action from the first pages, when Eleanor and Thomas arrive at the windswept, isolated fortress in time to witness a truly shocking death.   My only complaint with the book was that I had to keep closing it every time my plane landed and then I couldn’t start reading again until I was back in my hotel room much later that evening.

It may be unfair to recommend this next book, for it will not be available to us until next year.  But what I read of it was so spectacular that I have to share my enthusiasm.  My readers know I really liked Mary Sharratt’s novel, The Daughters of Witching Hill,  based upon an actual witchcraft trial in 17^th century England.   Mary’s new novel, Illuminations, takes us back to the 12^th century and introduces us to one of the most remarkable, enigmatic, and famous women of the Middle Ages, the German abbess, writer, composer, visionary, and mystic, Hildegard of Bingen.   It is very challenging to write of someone like Hildegard, one reason why I was never tempted to take on Joan of Arc!   But Mary was up to the challenge, and she has written a book that I think my readers will find as fascinating as I did.

For a total change of pace, I’d like to recommend Until Tuesday, by Luis Carlos Montalvan, a former army captain, who served two tours of duty in Iraq, won two Bronze Stars and the Purple Heart, and came home shattered in body and spirit.   What saved him was a service dog, a golden retriever named Tuesday.   The author writes movingly of the bond that develops between him and his dog, but what I found even more compelling and disturbing was his account of what it is like to deal with an often indifferent world while suffering from PTSD and physical injuries that will never fully heal.  It is a troubling and often infuriating story, for we owe our returning soldiers better than this.  Thank God for programs that provide service dogs like Tuesday; these animals are angels without wings for so many soldiers…and for others with disabilities, too.  Dogs truly are humankind’s best friends, and all they ask is a little love…and some juicy treats like hamburger every now and then.  Captain Montalvan believes that Tuesday was his salvation; read Until Tuesday and I think you’ll agree with him.

Now I have some interesting tour news.  I’ve mentioned before that plans are in the works for Academic Travel (my Eleanor tour company) to do a William Marshal tour with Elizabeth Chadwick and a Tudor tour with Margaret George.   Many of my readers share my appreciation for the novels of C.W. Gortner.  So I am very happy to announce that Academic Travel and Christopher are considering two possible tours, one to Spain, the site of his excellent The Last Queen, or one to France to visit the places associated with the controversial French queen who is the subject of another of Christopher’s books that I recommend, The Confessions of Catherine de Medici.    As Academic did with my tour, they are asking for feedback and input from people who might be interested in going on one of these tours.  You can respond to their survey here.   http://www.zoomerang.com/Survey/WEB22DSXYCVG4A

I was hesitant about mentioning this last item, for I’ve never asked my readers to rally round one of my books, to post reviews on Amazon, etc; I just didn’t feel comfortable doing that.  But Coeur de Lion has no such qualms.   Kings are rarely shrinking violets, after all, especially when we’re dealing with those pushy Angevins.   So I am bowing to his royal will and revealing that Lionheart is one of the semi-finalists in the 2011 Goodreads Choice Award for historical fiction.  It is even harder for me to urge people to vote for Lionheart because there are some wonderful books on the list.  But I am feeling you-know-who’s hot breath on the back of my neck and so here are the details.  The voting started November 1^st and continues until November 30^th.   I feel honored that Goodreads readers have deemed Lionheart worthy of inclusion; Richard takes it as his just due, of course.   Here is the link to the site where readers can vote for the book of their choice.  http://www.goodreads.com/award/choice/2011#56595-Best-Historical-Fiction It is also a good place to find new books to read—just in case you have any money left after being bombarded with my recommendations all year long.

November 16, 2011

First of all, I’d like to announce the winner of the second Devil’s Brood book giveaway that I ran on the Richard and Ragusa blog.  The winner is Karen Johnson, and I will mail it to you, Karen, as soon as I get your address.   I will do a Lionheart book giveaway before the end of the year, so stay tuned.

I have updated my website, although my webmaster has not added the new material yet.  I will have a section for Lionheart interviews and reviews, which I will probably put up as a blog, too, to make it easier to find.  I’ve added to the writers I recommend, to my favorite websites and blogs, research recommendations, and my Medieval Mishaps.

The book tour was wonderful, if tiring, since I was in a different state each night.  I don’t have as much energy as I once had, especially now that I am what the French so delicately call “a woman of a certain age.”  But adrenalin can compensate for sleep, at least in the short run.    What I enjoyed the most was getting to see old friends in several cities and to meet so many of my Facebook friends.

At my first stop, the Chester County Books in Westchester, PA, I was delighted to have a brief reunion with several members of my Eleanor Tour, including Emilie, who flew in from Canada.  I’ve talked about how much I enjoyed that tour, but the best of it was that I came home with so many new friends.  Elizabeth Chadwick is doing a William Marshal tour next September and Margaret George will be doing a Tudor tour for Elizabeth and Henry VIII, and I hope they are half as lucky as I was, for I found 36 kindred spirits, and how rare is that?

From Westchester, I went to Cincinnati, home of one of my all-time favorite interviewers, Mark DeWitt of Cover to Cover, on WRRS-FM; if any of my readers live close enough to catch Mark’s show, I am so envious!   I also got to spend a little time with good friends I hadn’t seen in years, and that evening I had an event at Joseph-Beth Booksellers, which is one of my favorite bookstores.   One of my readers drove all the way from Memphis, over eight hours, and when Michael Link, the manager of the store, heard that, he gallantly presented her with a tee-shirt for her loyalty.   The next day I was at Schuler Books in Lansing, Michigan, and had a very interesting discussion about animal rescue before the reading.  On Friday, October 7^th, I was still in Michigan, but this time in Ann Arbor, home to another bookstore I love, Nicola’s Books.  Here I ran into the only glitch on the trip, when the hotel did not have room service in the afternoon.  Writers depend upon room service to keep us from starving when we are on the road, as meals are never scheduled as part of the itinerary, and it is not that unusual to have nothing to eat all day after an early morning, hurried breakfast.  Fortunately, I was meeting old friends before the reading, and so they swept in like the cavalry and took me off for a hasty, late lunch.  I live in a county that now has no full-service bookstores since Borders closed; we hadn’t had an independent bookstore here for over twenty years.   So when I am doing book tours, I find myself envying readers able to visit bookstores like Nicola’s any time they like; I hope you realize how lucky you are!   Ann Arbor is also where Tristan was given a toy that he loves almost as much as his stuffed duck; photo on Facebook for the curious.

When I said there’d been only one “glitch” on the tour, that wasn’t quite accurate.  There was actually a major snafu, thanks to Facebook.  It began in Philadelphia, when Facebook declared that it did not recognize my netbook, the same one I’d used in France and at home this summer.  I was told I needed to answer security questions to have my account unlocked.  I was willing to do that—until I saw what they were demanding, that I identify five pages of photographs of my Facebook friends.  Since I had close to 2,400 Facebook friends at the time, the vast majority of whom I’ve never met, I couldn’t have met that challenge with some personal help from Merlin.  To add insult to injury, Facebook’s alternative was a snarky comment that if I could not identify the photos, I should log on with a computer they could recognize.  If any of you heard a primal scream of frustration wafting across the country, now you know the source.  For four days, Facebook exiled me to Siberia, and then, suddenly and without explanation, they allowed me to access my account in Texas.  That lasted just one day, for as soon as I crossed into Arizona, I was back in purgatory again.  If you all will indulge a mini-rant, this photo identity idea is beyond stupid.   Many Facebook users “friend” people they have never met, especially for business purposes.  Moreover, I’d wager that some of us would have trouble identifying flesh-and-blood friends since many use photos of their children or pets as their Facebook I.D.   When I got home, I was not happy to discover that apparently there is no way to contact Facebook directly; their Help Center only offers forums, no phone numbers or e-mail addresses. It is like dealing with the C.I.A. M-5, or Mossad.   So short of hiring a plane to sky-write over Mark Zuckerberg’s mansion, I am not sure how to communicate my complaint.  Suggestions welcome.

Murder by the Book in Houston is a wonderful bookstore; I love to come there.  We had a good turnout, I got to meet several of my Facebook friends, and learned how Texans pronounce Palestine.  (I’ve always been interested in regional flavors; when I lived in the French Quarter years ago, my apartment was on Burgundy Street, which they pronounced with the accent on the second syllable.)   I can recommend a nice restaurant, too, that is not far from the bookstore, the Raven Grill, where I was able to have dinner with friends afterward; this free time was a rare treat, made possible by the fact that the reading was an afternoon event.

Returning to the Poisoned Pen in Scottsdale, Arizona is always like a homecoming.  While I was very sorry to miss seeing Barbara and Rob, the owners, who were out of the country, I was grateful to Diana Gabaldon for offering to host the event in their absence.  We had another long-distance reader for this signing, who flew in from Atlanta, saying that Diana and I were her two favorite authors and she wasn’t going to miss it.   I got to meet quite a few Facebook friends here, and because it was an afternoon signing, too, I had more time to chat with people afterward, which meant a lot to me.   Sadly, the reality of an ungodly early flight the next morning kept me for being able to have dinner with a friend; maybe next time, Christy?   But I was able to extract some information from Diana about her new book, The Scottish Prisoner, due out next month.  This is one in which Lord John will share star billing with Jamie, as it takes place in 1760.   For anyone who has not read Diana’s Outlander series, you’ve been missing a lot.  But on the other hand, you’ve been spared the interminable wait between her books, just as by coming so late to George R.R. Martin’s Ice and Fire party, I missed fuming and fidgeting for five years as his readers yearned for A Dance with Dragons to be published.    It is such a lovely feeling to discover a writer, become smitten, and then find out that this new love is a prolific one, with many backlist books waiting to be read.

The next day, I was in St Louis for a reading sponsored by Left Bank Books and the St Louis County Library.  Another very good turnout, and—drum roll here—new readers, people who confided to me afterward that they’d never read one of my books but were going to remedy that with Lionheart.  I also got to chat with several of my Facebook friends, which made the evening special for me. This was my first visit to St Louis, and of course I never got to see any of the city, but at least I got a glimpse of their famous arch and my hotel offered a dramatic view of the Mississippi.

I then got to come home for several days, and on Saturday, the 15^th of October, the tour ended at one of Barnes and Noble’s flagships in Princeton, NJ.  This is a remarkable store, so well stocked and well organized.   Because it was an afternoon event and I arrived early, I had more time than usual to chat with the audience, so it was a perfect way to end the tour.  Again, I was taken aback by the distances some of my readers had come: a couple from Rhode Island, Facebook friends from Long Island and Staten Island, and one man all the way from Washington, DC.   That is such a huge compliment, and reassuring proof that there are still so many people who love to read, love books, and find history as fascinating as I do.

October 30, 2011.

During my book tour for Lionheart, we had a discussion of one of the saddest episodes in English history—the tragedy at York in March, 1190. So often anti-Semitic outbursts followed when a crusade was preached; there were bloody pogroms in Germany at the time of the Second Crusade and England was the site of some ugly occurrences in 1190. After the London rioting at the time of his coronation, Richard had sent writs to the major cities of his realm, warning that the Jews were not to be molested, and peace held—until he sailed for Normandy after Christmas. But like a virulent virus, anti-Semitism soon broke out again in East Anglia, spreading to Bury St Edmunds, Stamford, and Lincoln. Mobs rampaged through the Jewish quarters in these towns, forcing the Jews to flee to the royal castles for protection.

Eventually the madness reached York. But the rioting there differed from the violence in the other English cities; in York, the mob was urged on by men of rank, men who owed money to Jewish money-lenders. As in other towns, the Jews took refuge in the royal castle, but apparently they did not trust the castellan, for as soon as he left the castle, they overpowered the garrison and refused to allow him back in.

The castellan panicked and summoned the sheriff of Yorkshire, who happened to be the brother of the celebrated William Marshal. He foolishly decided to assault the castle, and the mob was only too happy to join in, egged on by a demented hermit who assured them they were doing God’s Work. By the time the sheriff and castellan realized their mistake and tried to call it off, it was too late; the mob was in control. The Jews held out for two days, but when siege engines were brought out, they knew they were doomed. Rather than be murdered by the mob, drunk on wine, ale, and blood lust, they chose to commit mass suicide. It is thought that about one hundred fifty men, women, and children died in Clifford’s Tower on the Eve of Palm Sunday. There were a small number who did not kill themselves and sought mercy from the mob, offering to convert to Christianity, and they were promised that their lives would be spared. Instead, they were brutally slain as soon as they emerged. The leaders of the mob then forced their way into York Minster, where the Jewish money lenders kept their debt bonds, and compelled the monks to turn them over. They then burned the bonds right there in the nave of the church.

Richard was in Normandy, making preparations for the crusade, when he heard what had happened. He at once sent his chancellor, Longchamp, back to England, and the latter led an army north. But the citizens of York swore they’d played no part in this atrocity, claiming it had been done by strangers and soldiers who’d taken the cross. Longchamp did what he could, dismissing the sheriff and castellan and imposing such steep fines upon the city that there would be no further outbreaks of violence in England, but the killers escaped the punishment they deserved.

I’ve often discussed medieval anti-Semitism in my books and my blogs, the ugly underside of life in the Middle Ages. It was a bias people breathed in from birth, and the vast majority were infected by it to some degree. But there was something particularly horrifying about the slaughter in York; it haunted me for years and I welcomed the chance to help publicize it in Lionheart. In my discussion with readers on my book tour, I told them how shocked I was when I first learned about it, after moving to York to research The Sunne in Splendour, and said that it has often been called a medieval Masada.

Not all of them were familiar with the story of Masada, and I had to explain that in the first century, nearly a thousand Jewish Zealots had taken refuge upon the mountain fortress at Masada after the fall of Jerusalem. Masada was thought to be impregnable, but the Romans were as skilled as they were ruthless when it came to waging war, and after a siege of several months by the Tenth Legion, the trapped Jews realized defeat was inevitable. Rather than surrender, knowing that meant a brutal death for many and slavery for those who survived, they chose to commit suicide. When the Romans finally entered Masada, they encountered a city of the dead, the bodies of 960 men, women, and children lying in streets dark with blood. Israeli soldiers today take an oath that Masada will not fall again, and it was said that one of the most heroic rebellions of World War II, the uprising in the Warsaw ghetto, was inspired in part by an epic poem about the tragedy of Masada.

When I discussed the medieval Masada with my readers on the tour, I had not yet read The Dovekeepers, a powerful, compelling account of the events in that mountain citadel in the Judean Desert. The author is one I’ve long admired, Alice Hoffman, but this was a departure from her usual work. It is obvious that she did extensive research, but it is her unique talent that brings Masada and its people alive for us. For a story so shadowed by tragedy, it is a remarkably lyrical novel. Alice Hoffman can send words soaring like swallows; her phrases are so vivid, so evocative, that you can feel the scorching desert heat, see the bleached-bone white of the sky over their heads, hear the soft cooing of the birds in their dovecotes. Her characters seem as real as the arid, unforgiving land around them. And therein lies the problem. I came to care about them, and knowing the horror that awaited them, my reading slowed. It took me days to read the last fifty pages, just as it took me three weeks to get Richard III out of his tent and onto the field at Bosworth when I was writing Sunne. But Alice Hoffman was up to the challenge, one of the greatest a writer can face. She manages to make the final tragedy bearable while still staying true to the history of Masada,

Is this a book for everyone? Probably not. A dear friend told me that she did not want to embrace so much pain, however brilliantly it was depicted. I can understand that. But I am glad I was willing to take this journey, to go back in time with these doomed women and their men and share their world for five hundred haunting pages. It is always hard to choose a “favorite,” be it a book, a film, a flower, or even a color. I inevitably want more choices. But when I am asked to name books that have lingered in my imagination years after reading them, books that I need to reread and to remember, I round up “the usual suspects,” to borrow one of my favorite lines from one of my favorite films, Casablanca. To Kill a Mockingbird usually tops the list. I also include Mila 18, Lonesome Dove, Jane Eyre, Angel in the Whirlwind, And No Birds Sang, A Thousand Splendid Suns, and Schindler’s List. Now I will add The Dovekeepers.

October 16, 2011

I hit the road today for the Lionheart book tour, am looking forward to meeting some of you during the course of it.  Meanwhile, I thought it might be of interest to give a preview of my Author’s Note.  The final version sets a record even for me–11 pages.  This is the beginning, with several spoilers deleted so as not to give away plot twists for readers not familiar with the events of the Third Crusade who prefer to learn about it by reading the book.
AUTHOR’S NOTE

Richard I was never one of my favorite kings, although my knowledge of him was admittedly superficial. I saw him as one-dimensional, drunk on blood and glory, arrogant, ruthless, a brilliant battle commander, but an ungrateful son and a careless king, and that is the Richard who made a brief appearance in Here in Dragons. I saw no reason not to accept the infamous verdict of the nineteenth century historian, William Stubbs, that he was “a bad son, a bad husband, a bad king.”

So I was not expecting the Richard that I found when I began to research Devil’s Brood. I would eventually do a blog called “The Surprising Lionheart,” for after years of writing about real historical figures, I’d never before discovered such a disconnect between the man and the myth—at least not since I’d launched my writing career by telling the story of another king called Richard.

The more I learned about this Richard, the less I agreed with Dr Stubbs. I think Richard can fairly be acquitted of two of those three damning charges. I loved writing about Henry II. He was a great king—but a flawed father, and bears much of the blame for his estrangement from his sons. Certainly both Richard and Geoffrey had legitimate grievances, and it can be argued that they were driven to rebellion by Henry’s monu-mental mistakes; see Devil’s Brood. I bled for Henry, dying betrayed and brokenhearted at Chinon, but he brought so much of that grief upon himself.

Nor was Richard a bad king. Historians today give him higher marks than the Victorians did. Yes, he spent little time in England, but it was not the center of the uni-verse, was only part of the Angevin empire. After his return from his crusade and captivity in Germany, he found himself embroiled in a bitter war with the French king, and spent the last five years of his life defending his domains from Philippe Capet. The irony is that he has been criticized in our time for the very actions—his crusading and his military campaigns—that won him acclaim in his own world. By medieval standards, he was a successful king and historians now take that into consideration in passing judgment upon him.

He was, however, a bad husband, his infidelities notorious enough to warrant a lecture from the Bishop of Lincoln. Note that I say he was taken to task for adultery, not sodomy. I discussed the question of Richard’s sexuality at some length in the Author’s Note for Devil’s Brood, will not repeat it here since this Author’s Note is already going to rival a novella in length. Very briefly, the first suggestion that Richard preferred men to women as bedmates was not made until 1948, when it took root with surprising speed; I myself helped to perpetuate it in Here be Dragons, for I’d seen no need to do in-depth research for what was basically a walk-on role. But the actual “evidence” for this claim is very slight, indeed. I’ll address this issue again in A King’s Ransom, for that is where Richard will have his famous encounter with the hermit. The research I did for Devil’s Brood inclined me to be skeptical, and I am even more so after finishing Lionheart, for I had not realized the intensity of the hatred between Richard and Philippe. The French chroniclers accused Richard of arranging the murder of Conrad of Montferrat, of poison-ing the Duke of Burgundy, of plotting to kill Philippe by sending Assassins to Paris, of being bribed by the “godless infidels” and betraying Christendom by allying himself with Saladin. So why would they not have accused him of sodomy, a mortal sin in the Middle Ages, and a charge that would have stained his honor and imperiled his soul? If they’d had such a lethal weapon at hand, we can be sure they’d have made use of it.

Berengaria has remained in history’s shadows, a sad ghost, a neglected wife. She has not received the respect she deserves because her courage was the quiet kind; she was not a royal rebel like her formidable mother-in-law. She has been called a barren queen, unfairly blamed for the breakdown of her marriage. Since I knew of her unhappy marital history, I was somewhat surprised to discover that the marriage seems to have gotten off to a promising start. Because Richard shunned her company after he recovered his free-dom, I’d assumed this was true in the Holy Land, too. But Richard actually went to some trouble to have her with him when he could. It would have been easier and certainly safer to have had her stay in Acre instead of bringing her to Jaffa and, then, Latrun. We cannot be sure what caused their later estrangement, but I have some ideas; as a novelist, I have to, don’t I? I think we can safely say, though, that the greater blame was Richard’s.

What surprised me the most about Richard the man as opposed to Richard the myth? I already knew he was almost insanely reckless with his own safety, so it came as some-thing of a shock to learn that he was a cautious battle commander, that he took such care with the lives of his men. It is a fascinating paradox, and one which goes far toward explaining why he was loved by his soldiers, who seemed willing “to wade in blood to the pillars of Hercules if he so desired,” in the words of the chronicler Richard of Devizes.

It also surprised me to learn that his health was not robust, that he was often ill, for that makes his battlefield exploits all the more remarkable. The Richard of legend smolders like a torch, glowering, dour, and dangerous. But the Richard who comes alive in the chronicles had a sardonic sense of humor, could be playful and unpredictable; Baha al-Din reported that he habitually employed a bantering conversational style, so it wasn’t always easy to tell if he were serious or joking. And while I’d known he was well educated, able to jest in Latin and write poetry in two languages, I admit to being impressed when I discovered him quoting from Horace. Even his harshest critics acknowledge his military genius; he hasn’t always been given enough credit, though, for his intelligence. The mythical Richard is usually portrayed as a gung-ho warrior who cared only for blood, battles, and what he could win at the point of a sword, but the real Richard was no stranger to diplomatic strategy; he was capable of subtlety, too, and could be just as devious as his wily sire.

But I was most amazed by his behavior in the Holy Land, by his willingness to deal with the Saracens as he would have dealt with Christian foes, via negotiations and even a marital alliance. As tragic as the massacre of the Acre garrison was, it was done for what he considered valid military reasons, not because of religious bias, as I’d once thought. He was not the religious zealot I’d expected. The man who was the first prince to take the cross refused to lay siege to Jerusalem, alarmed his own allies by his cordial relations with the Saracens, and although he believed they were infidels, denied God’s Grace, he respected their courage. According to Baha al-Din, he formed friendships with some of Saladin’s elite Mamluks and emirs, even knighting several of them. That was the last thing I’d have imagined—knighting his infidel enemies in the midst of a holy war?

I don’t expect Lionheart to change the public perception of Richard I, any more than The Sunne in Splendour could compete with the Richard III of Shakespeare. But I do hope that my readers will agree with me that this Richard is much more complex and, therefore, more interesting, than the storied soldier-king. Perhaps I shouldn’t have been so surprised by what my research revealed. As an Australian friend, Glenne Gilbert, once observed astutely, “There had to be reasons why he was Eleanor’s favorite son.”

October 4, 2011

Henry and Eleanor’s fourth son was born on September 23rd in 1158. He was christened Geoffrey, after his grandfather, and from an early age, was destined to rule over Brittany through his marriage to the heiress, Constance. He is the forgotten son, ignored by historians and novelists alike, probably because he was the only one of the Devil’s Brood never to wear a crown. Readers of my books and blogs know that Geoffrey is my personal favorite of the brothers, and I was very gratified when so many people felt that Geoffey was the most intriguing character in Devil’s Brood. I’ve often recommended Judith Everard’s book, Brittany and the Angevins, for anyone interested in learning more about Geoffrey, Constance, and Brittany; I honestly do not think I could have written Devil’s Brood without it. Or if I did, it would have been a different book and a different Geoffrey, for she brought his Breton career into focus, showing us why he did what he did and totally repudiating the ridiculous notion that he acted from “mindless malice,” as one reputable historian once claimed.

Geoffrey seems to have thrived on challenges. Wedding a woman hostile to the Angevins, he managed to win Constance over, and they had a good marriage. How do we know? For one thing, they were usually together; she was frequently at Geoffrey’s side, both within and outside the duchy, convincing evidence that they enjoyed each other’s company. And Geoffrey shrewdly involved Constance in the governance of Brittany, thus avoiding what I see as one of Henry’s greatest marital mistakes, failing to make use of Eleanor’s keen political skills or to recognize that Aquitaine was as dear to her heart as Anjou was to his. Constance’s biographer in the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography describes her forced marriage to the Earl of Chester after Geoffrey’s death as follows: “In contrast to her first marriage, this appears to have been an unhappy and loveless affair.” Geoffrey was equally successful in gaining the support of the suspicious Breton barons, no easy feat, and during his five year reign of the duchy, he showed himself to be a worthy if flawed son of two very gifted, flawed parents.

What were Geoffrey’s flaws? I don’t fault him for his rebellions against his father. He was only fifteen at the time of the Great Rebellion, and I think his age exonerates him under the circumstances. And he did not ally himself with the French king until Henry’s mind games had pushed him to that point; it is hard to blame him for resenting the way his father withheld two-thirds of Constance’s rightful inheritance as a means of keeping Geoffrey on a tight leash.

So what do I fault Geoffrey for? The answer is one that would have surprised me fifteen years ago. When I began to do serious research for Devil’s Brood, the last thing I expected to find was that Richard would prove to be the brother most sinned against. Given his reputation for aggression, I’d assumed that he’d been to blame for his constant strife with his brothers. But I was wrong. It was Hal who connived with the lords of Poitou to usurp Richard’s duchy, and Geoffrey threw in with him. If Henry hadn’t come to Richard’s rescue, they might have succeeded, too. Several years later, when Henry had an inexplicable “Becket moment” and foolishly told seventeen year old John that Aquitaine was his if he could take it from Richard, it was Geoffrey who provided the money and the men-at-arms for John’s ill-fated invasion. Richard defended himself, but did not strike back at Geoffrey until Henry had refused to punish the culprits. And the pattern held in Richard’s relationship with his youngest brother, John. He seems to have blamed Geoffrey more than John, and once he was king, he provided generously for John. With wonderful perversity, he scorned the men who’d deserted Henry in his last desperate months and rewarded those who’d stayed loyal to the bitter end—with one exception—John. John paid no price for betraying his father, instead got the wealthy heiress Henry had promised but never delivered, and an income of four thousand pounds a year. John, of course, repaid his brother by doing all in his power to make sure Richard rotted in a German dungeon.

I’ve sometimes joked that writing of the Angevins is like watching one of those horror films in which the foolish teenagers insist upon going down alone into the cellar even as the audience is screaming, “No! Don’t go!” I was constantly trying to nudge my characters back onto the straight and narrow. Is this rebellion really a good idea, Eleanor? Are you sure you want to crown Hal in your lifetime, Henry? Why can’t you see that Geoffrey and Richard are very different from Hal and that the only thing worse from not learning from your mistakes is learning the wrong lessons? Richard, can’t you cut your father a little slack? Geoffrey, why must you go out of your way to poison your relationship with your brother Richard? Hal…where to begin with Hal? Or John, for that matter.

Above all, I wish I could have sat Henry and Eleanor down and showed them that parental mistakes can be forgiven, parental sins cannot—and they were guilty of two very serious sins. They had obvious favorites; with Eleanor, it seems to have been Richard, and with Henry, it was Hal and then John, with Geoffrey as neglected by his parents as he would later be by historians. And they failed to instill a sense of family solidarity, to teach their sons to care for one another. I find it very sad. Her brothers rallied around her when their sister Tilda followed her husband into exile, and Richard raised holy hell on Joanna’s behalf when she found herself in dire straits after her husband’s sudden death. But I suspect that if one of their brothers were drowning, the others would have thrown him an anchor as a lifeline. And it is hard not to blame Henry and Eleanor for that. I was recently discussing the Marriage from Hell that Henry’s parents had endured, pointing out that it had gotten off to such a rocky start that the union was probably doomed, and as much as I sympathized with Maude—forced into a marriage she never wanted—I can’t absolve her of blame, for when they wed, Geoffrey was fifteen and she was twenty-six. In other words, she was the adult. So were Henry and Eleanor.

One last thought about this dramatically dysfunctional family. I’ve always dismissed that theory espoused by the French historian, Philip Aries, that medieval parents did not allow themselves to become emotionally invested in their children, supposedly because the child mortality rate was so high. I think that is ridiculous, for the sources are filled with heartrending examples of parental love or grief. It is true that Edward I and his queen seem to have been more devoted to each other than to their children. But I do not believe they were typical of their times. Henry’s love for his children was raw and real and there is no reason to doubt Eleanor when she told Pope Celestine that not a day passed that she did not mourn Hal and Geoffrey. And her grieving for Richard bleeds through the formal language of the charters she issued after his death. Whatever their failings as parents, they loved their children. Sadly, it was not enough.

Lastly, there is still time to enter the second Devil’s Brood book giveaway; just post a comment on the blog titled “Richard and Ragusa,” and when I return from the book tour, I’ll send a signed copy to the winner of the drawing.

September 28, 2011

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I have always been interested in the Croatian coastal city of Dubrovnik. I am not sure why, for I knew little of its history. It may have been the sheer beauty of the locale—the white medieval walls, the red tile roofs, the turquoise of the Adriatic Sea, the mountains rising up in the distance. Whatever the reason, for as long as I can remember, Dubrovnik has been on my Bucket List of places to visit before I die. In all honesty, I never truly expected to make it, though. But that may be changing, thanks to a man dead more than eight hundred years.

When he was attempting to make his way back to England after the end of the Third Crusade, Richard Lionheart ran into more drama in the span of weeks than most people do in the course of a lifetime—storms at sea, an encounter with pirates, two shipwrecks, a mad dash through enemy territory with just twenty men, and then betrayal and capture, an imprisonment that blatantly violated Church law. His first shipwreck was on the island of Lokrum, just outside the harbor of Ragusa. I was both surprised and intrigued to discover that Richard’s Ragusa was my Dubrovnik.

Ragusa was a fiercely independent republic, nominally under the suzerainty of what we today call the Byzantine Empire, known in Richard’s time as the Empire of the Greeks. It had an old and proud history that dated back to the seventh century, and during its Golden Age in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, it rivaled the much larger cities of Venice and Genoa. It was an oligarchy, ruled by a small elite of patricians—all male, of course. They served by turns on the great council and elected one of their own to serve as rector, limited to very brief terms. The office of rector was not formed until the fourteenth century, though; Richard would have met the Count of Ragusa. But the government structure was the same.

Richard would have found a prosperous, peaceful city. The streets were cleaner than those he’d have been accustomed to in Europe, and medical care was probably better, for the Ragusans imported physicians from the celebrated medical school at Salerno. Public order was an important aspect of life in the republic, and women could walk the streets in greater safety than in the other cities of Christendom, for any man who molested a woman was swiftly punished, even if she was a serving maid and he of high birth. But this protection was not extended to the home. While a female servant could not be accosted in public, she was fair game for her employer. The Ragusans were not concerned with protecting their women, but rather with the protection of children. The rationale was that a man would assume no responsibility for a child born of a street rape, but a child sired by a servant girl’s master would be taken care of by the household. This system worked so well that there was no orphanage established in Ragusa until the end of the fifteenth century. Nor was this medieval city-state a democracy in the sense that we would use that term. It was true that the benefits enjoyed by the patrician inner circle spilled over to the rest of the citizens. But it was also a city of slaves, 90% of them women; in fact, household slaves trained in Ragusa were highly valued in the Italian slave trade.

Ragusa must have seemed like the Tower of Babel to Richard and his men, for four languages would have been heard on the city streets. The local people spoke Slavic and an Italian dialect and what was known as “Old Ragusan.” Fortunately for the English king, Latin was still the official language, so he could communicate with the count and the great council. Even more fortunately for him, Ragusa was one of the few sites on the Adriatic coast where he would be given a friendly welcome. We do not know how long he stayed in Ragusa, but when he sailed away, he left behind a legacy that is remembered there even today.

As his ship was driven toward the rocky coast of Lokrum, Richard had made a desperate vow, promising God that if He spared them, he would pledge the vast sum of one hundred thousand ducats to build a church wherever he landed. English chronicles and Ragusan records say that Richard wanted to erect his church on Lokrum, but the townspeople convinced him to build it within the city. Richard agreed on condition that the Pope would approve this change to a holy vow and that some of the money would be used to rebuild the Benedictine monastery church on Lokrum. And so an English king became the patron of Ragusa’s great cathedral of St Mary. In appreciation for consenting to this change, the Lokrum abbot was permitted to don the archbishop’s mitre and preach a mass each Candlemas in the cathedral; there is a letter to the Pope from the town council in 1598 which explains the origin of this highly unusual custom. The cathedral was destroyed in the earthquake of 1667, but Richard’s memory burned brightly over the centuries in Ragusa. In 1916, a Serbian official publicly sought England’s aid, reminding the British that “Richard received our hospitality and built for us a beautiful church on the spot where our ancestors saved him from shipwreck on his way back from the Crusade.”

While researching Richard’s time in Ragusa, I stumbled onto another remarkable story, that of the Archbishop of Ragusa. We know very little of this enigmatic man. His name was Bernard and he is believed to have been of Italian or Dalmatian origin. In 1189, he was consecrated as the republic’s new archbishop and there is reason to believe he gave Richard a warm welcome. Two years later, though, his relationship with his flock was so fractured that he fled the city and steadfastly refused to return, claiming his life was at risk. He somehow found his way to Richard’s domains, where the English king repaid the hospitality he’d been given in Ragusa. By 1198, Bernard was in England, and after Richard’s death, he rose in the favor of the new king, Richard’s brother John. He would end his days as the Bishop of Carlisle, far from Ragusa.

I would love to know more about the mysterious Bernard, but that is so often the case with these historical snippets of information. We are told just enough to awaken our curiosity, not enough to satisfy it. But now when I think of the beautiful city of Dubrovonik and my Bucket List, I will also think of Coeur de Lion, a medieval cathedral, and an exiled archbishop who died far from home.

I’d promised that I would do another book giveaway for Devil’s Brood before the October publication date for Lionheart. So again—anyone who posts a comment on this blog will be eligible for the drawing. I probably won’t be able to tend to it until the conclusion of the Lionheart book tour, but upon my return home, I will send a signed copy of Devil’s Brood to the winner. Of course, by then I hope you all will be happily engrossed in reading Lionheart!

PS For those interested in learning more about the Republic of Ragusa, I recommend Susan Mosher Stuard’s A State of Deference: Ragusa/Dubrovnik in the Medieval Centuries. And we ought to remember, too, that Dubrovnik—like Sarajevo—suffered through a siege by the Serbian army in 1991-1992, its unfortunate citizens never dreaming that their medieval walls would one day help them to stave off an enemy invasion. I was writing When Christ and His Saints Slept during the siege of Sarajevo and I was chilled that civilians in our time could be enduring the same danger and deprivations that the siege of Winchester brought to the townspeople in 1141.

September 21, 2011

I am delighted to announce that we have two winners of the Devil’s Brood Book Giveaway, as both their name tags stuck together when I drew them out, and I didn’t see a fair way to choose between them. I’ve e-mailed you both already, but Kyung and Sherri, you are the winners. I am sorry I don’t have enough copies for you all, but I will do another giveaway for Devil’s Brood in September.

I thought it might be a good idea to post the book tour itinerary again as I’d posted it before in the comments section and not everyone reads through all of them. So here it is.

Author Appearances for

LIONHEART

By Sharon Kay Penman

TUESDAY, OCTOBER 4 – PHILADELPHIA

Event: CHESTER COUNTY BOOKS

975 Paoli Pike

West Goshen Center

West Chester, PA 19380

610-696-1661 TEL

www.ccbmc.com

Time: 7:00 PM

WEDNESDAY, OCTOBER 5 – CINCINNATI

Event: JOSEPH-BETH BOOKSELLERS

2692 Madison Road

Rookwood Pavilion

Cincinnati, OH 45208

513-396-8960 TEL

http://www.josephbeth.com/Landing.aspx

Time: 7:00 PM

THURSDAY, OCTOBER 6 – lansing, MI

Event: SCHULER BOOKS & MUSIC

2820 Towne Center Blvd
Lansing, MI 48912
517-316-7495 TEL

http://www.schulerbooks.com/

Time: 7:00 PM

FRIDAY, OCTOBER 7 – ANN ARBOR, MI

Event: NICOLA’S BOOKS

2513 Jackson Rd.

Westgate Shopping Center

Ann Arbor, MI 48103
734-662-0600 TEL

http://www.nicolasbooks.com

Time: 7:00 PM

SATURDAY, OCTOBER 8 – HOUSTON

Event: MURDER BY THE BOOK

2342 Bissonnet St

Houston, TX 77005

713-524-8597 TEL

http://www.murderbooks.com/

Time: 4:30 PM

SUNDAY, OCTOBER 9 – SCOTTSDALE, AZ

Event: POISONED PEN

4014 N Goldwater Blvd

Ste 101

Scottsdale, AZ 85251

480-947-2974 TEL

http://www.poisonedpen.com/products/hfiction/9780399157851/

Event
http://www.poisonedpen.com/event-calendar/penman-sharon-kay-with-diana-gabaldon/

Time: 2:00 PM

MONDAY, OCTOBER 10 – ST. LOUIS

Event: LEFT BANK BOOKS

at THE St. Louis County Library Headquarters

1640 S. Lindbergh

St. Louis, MO

314-367-6731 TEL (Left Bank Books)

http://www.left-bank.com

Time: 7:00 PM

SATURDAY, OCTOBER 15 – PRINCETON, NJ

Event: BARNES & NOBLE

3535 US Route 1

Princeton, NJ 05840

609-897-9250 TEL

http://store-locator.barnesandnoble.com/store/2646

Time: 3:00 PM

August 22, 2011

DEVIL’S BROOD BOOK GIVEAWAY

      As I mentioned earlier, I am going to do a book giveaway for Devil’s Brood this month and next, to pave the way for Lionheart.  The rules are simple; anyone who posts a comment to this blog is eligible for the drawing.  I will, of course, post it on Facebook, too, but you will have to make your comments on the blog itself so that I can keep track of the participants.  I’ve used this system in the past for book giveaways and it seems to work well.  The winner can choose either the American or the British edition, both in hardback.   And I will probably do a book giveaway for Lionheart after my book tour in October.     I know the Goodreads website has already had at least one drawing for Lionheart; I assume it is an ARC (advance reading copy, which is the uncorrected ms in bound form, the one that gets sent out for reviewers, etc.)  Lionheart picks up where Devil’s Brood ended, with all of the major characters except Henry, the Countess Maud of Chester, and Henry and Eleanor’s daughter Tilda, the Duchess of Saxony, as they had the misfortune to die in the summer of 1189.  I missed Henry very much, for he’d been hanging around the house since the early 1990’s, and Maud was great fun to write about, too, a scene stealer par excellence who took a relatively minor role and parlayed it into numerous appearances in three books. 

      Dog update—Milo is out of the kill shelter, thanks to Joan, and is being treated for heartworm.  He is a sad boy, half-starved for he was clearly on his own for a long time, and he is understandably very subdued and nervous. Joan has renamed him Oliver, since she says he seems like such a vulnerable little orphan, and she has found a foster home for him while he undergoes treatment for heartworm; he has to be kept quiet for six weeks.  But given half a chance, dogs like Milo/Oliver can blossom, and if the vet can heal him, I don’t see why he can’t respond the way Shadow and Tristan did.   The puppy, named Pebbles, is luckier, for she was adopted. 

       I’ll close with a Lady of the English comment.   Maude and Geoffrey have turned their marriage into a battle zone, and while it must have been hellish for them, Elizabeth Chadwick makes it all seem so vivid and real that the readers feel as if they are the proverbial flies on the wall as the unhappy duo go at it.    Maude’s father, he of the ice in his veins, a.k.a Henri I, is still alive, not having had that ill-advised encounter with a lamprey pie.  Eels did in Stephen’s loathsome son Eustace, too; after that, you’d think they’d have kept them off the royal menu.   (It is my understanding that lampreys and eels are very similar.)  And I believe the lamprey pie story did not surface until some years after Henry’s death.  But it is always problematic when we try to determine the actual cause of death for a medieval figure, unless they were unlucky enough to be shot with a crossbow, (Richard) were trampled in a tournament (Geoffrey) died in childbirth (Ellen de Montfort) or their fatal illness was described in such lurid detail by chroniclers that it is easy to make a diagnosis (The young king, Hal in my novels, who died of what they called the bloody flux and we call dysentery.)  

     Lastly, I have not abandoned the Eleanor of Aquitaine tour, plan to resume blogging about it, but I’ve had to give it a lower priority for now.  I still have to do entries about Fontervrault, Chinon, Angers, and Chartres.   And for those who may not have heard, it looks as if Elizabeth Chadwick will be doing a William Marshal tour next year for Academic Travel.  So what could be better than to close with a marvelous quote from The Scarlet Lion, Elizabeth’s second book about the Marshal, in which he says to King John, “Until the day she died, I carried a torch for your mother, but it never once lit my way to her bed.”

August 10, 2011