The Sunne in Splendour
I was a college student when I happened upon the story of Richard III, and the more I learned, the more convinced I became that he’d been the victim of a great injustice, transformed by the Tudors into a soulless monster in order to justify Henry Tudor’s dubious claim to the throne. Angered by this blatant distortion of history, I began telling my friends how unfairly Richard had been maligned. I soon realized that they did not share my indignation about the wrongs done to this long-dead medieval king. They’d mumble “Richard who?”, then their eyes would glaze over and they’d find excuses to disappear. Realizing I needed another outlet for my outrage, I decided to write a novel about Richard. I had no idea how dramatically that decision would transform my life, setting me upon a twelve-year odyssey that would eventually lead to the publication of The Sunne in Splendour. In pursuit of Richard’s ghost, I very happily stopped practicing law, moved to England to research the book, and then was fortunate enough to find publishers on both sides of the Atlantic who were willing to take on a novice writer and a thousand page manuscript about that “long-dead medieval king.”
Sunne was published almost four decades ago, and it means so much to me that it continues to find new readers, that Richard’s story resonates as strongly with them as it did with me. And I am very grateful to my British publisher, Macmillan, for deciding to issue a special commemorative hardcover edition of Sunne in 2013. This enabled me to correct some copy-editing errors and a few of my own mistakes that came to light after Sunne’s original publication; see time-traveling grey squirrel in My Medieval Mishaps. I was also able to write a second Author’s Note in which I discussed the amazing discovery in 2012 of Richard’s lost grave. An abbreviated version of the AN appears in the 2013 edition of Sunne, but the full version can be found in both the American and British e-book editions and on my website under The Penman Chronicles. In the Chronicles, you can also find a brief article I wrote about the spectacular success of the hunt for Richard’s grave, The King in the Car Park.
Dangerous Women Anthology
When I was first asked to write a short story for the anthology planned by George R.R. Martin and Gardner Dozois, I confess that I laughed. I am the woman, after all, who writes eight-hundred page books and always feels that I left material on the cutting room floor. But I was intrigued by the challenge and by the opportunity to write about a medieval queen I’ve long admired, Constance de Hauteville, Queen of Sicily in her own right and the unhappy wife of the Holy Roman Emperor, Heinrich von Hohenstaufen. Somewhat to my surprise, I managed to do it, although this is surely one of the very few short stories that includes an Author’s Note! The anthology is a treasure-trove of talent, with stories by authors like George R.R. Martin, Diana Gabaldon, Jim Butcher, and many more. My entry is A Queen in Exile.
