I really don’t know precisely when their friendship began. It was sometime after she’d published The Sunne in Splendour. Sharon told me the story once, though she told me so many fascinating stories about her life over the course of our friendship, it’s hard to keep them all accessible in my memory. Her fan base won’t recognize her name, because she was a quiet, gentle soul who loved her privacy. And for this reason, I won’t use her real name, will only call her Vivian.
At some point, Vivian reached out to Sharon in the form of a fan letter after Sunne was published. The very notion of having “fans” was brand new to Sharon, because everything about being a published author was brand new. Vivian gave Sharon what most authors consider priceless treasure: detailed feedback. As a result, Vivian and Sharon went on to exchange frequent letters. And very quickly after that, Sharon began to rely on Vivian as a writing partner.
We call them alpha and beta readers now– indispensable critique partners who serve as sounding boards for new books. And in Vivian’s case, for every chapter, one at a time. Vivian became Sharon’s rock as she navigated the drafting and editing process, using Vivian’s opinons and good sense as her support. Along with her brilliant editor, Marian Wood, much of Sharon’s writing success can arguably be credited to dear Vivian.
And she would need a rock, for immediately after writing Sunne, she began work on her Welsh trilogy. As her fans know all too well, Sharon would soon find herself embroiled in an emotional rollercoaster as she unfolded the tragic story of her beloved Wales.
The following are portions of a letter Sharon wrote to Vivian in September, 1990, as she neared the final chapters of The Reckoning:
The letter goes on to explain to Vivian how she plans to break down the next events in Davydd’s life (or what remained of it) for the book to end. And as a result, she goes on to explore the idea of endings in general.
And because Sharon knew how hard these scenes were for her to write, she worried that they might just be too much for her readers too.
I think she carried that pain with her for the rest of her life, because she always referred back to Davydd’s death scene as being the hardest thing she’d ever had to contend with.
“I’ve never experienced anything like this,” she said. And I don’t think she ever did again. Henry, Eleanor, and their brood certainly had plenty of dramatic moments for her to record, but nothing ever really seemed to touch her quite so tragically again as the story of Wales.
Last April, I was asked by Sharon’s agent and publisher to host a Facebook Live event celebrating Sharon’s life and career. A portion of what I presented included something I said I would someday use as a blog post.
As promised, here is a selection of entries from Sharon’s personal journal from which I picked significant entries highlighting her writing life and various items of inspiration for her books.
Last week, I was able to help out Sharon’s lovely family: her brother Bill, her sister-in-law Nancylee, and her nephew Billy, by traveling out to her home in New Jersey to help them sort through Sharon’s legacy. In the process of sorting rooms full of books, boxes of files, and lots and lots of original manuscripts, my helper, Mary Glassman, came across a significant old journal. It sparsely covers the years 1969-1973. I poured over it and found some very interesting tidbits which I thought would be interesting to those of us who loved her and her books. I want to read a selection to you now.
In 1969, Sharon was 23 and a college student at the University of Texas in Austin. On January 14, 1969 an entry from her journal reads: “There are several emotional currents that have the power to move me deeply – my consuming interest in Richard III, my attachment to New Orleans, the unhealed sorrow of last June. I feel all of these emotions with a sharp, swift intensity. I also have a strong desire to travel.”
In the summer of 1969, she fulfilled a lifelong dream to live in Hawaii. Her June 29, 1969 entry reads: “I made a mistake tonight. I took out my white notebook and I reread some of what I’ve written in the past 2 years. It reassured me that I can write, and I needed that reassurance.”
Come December of that year, she has left Hawaii and has also spent time in San Francisco and Los Angeles. Now she is in Arizona.
December 27, 1969: “And now it is a brief moment until the decade will end. 1970 – I have a good feeling about it, instinct or wishful thinking. I’m not sure which. ……… I still want to travel and to write, and with luck and determination I might do both.”
Two years later, in December 1971, she finds herself back in New Jersey attending law school at Rutgers. On the 20th of December she writes: “When I was 10, I created a world more to my liking – the civilization was of my making and I was God. Now I do the same in my writing – and as I conjure up real beings, endow them with life, I blur reality, perhaps even reject it.”
Her journal is very sparse, and there are many large jumps in time between entries. She journals about this tendency often, chiding herself for not being consistent. Six days later she writes this:“Last Monday I felt the urge to write – for the first time in 2 years. I wrote and then I folded the paper and put it away. ….. I went back into the past not very far – just as far as 1968. Back to New Orleans… and those first exciting ventures into the life of a man dead nearly 500 years. ……. I wrote often that summer. …….. And then nothing (she means no journaling) for 2 years. Nothing. Months in Honolulu, San Francisco, Los Angeles. Months in Atlantic City – so many quiet hours of thought, returning to the nest, to the sea, the writing. Two years of frustration and pleasure and polishing, learning to cut words like diamonds. All my energy, all my ambition, all went into my book – yes, I call it that now; it may never be finished, may never see the light of day, but after 3 ½ years I’ve earned the right – it definitely is a book! So much of me went into writing of another sort those two years. Richard, always Richard. More than a “Magnificent Obsession,” my lifelong companion! I doubt if I’ll ever finish that tale. The historical and psychological implications alone are staggering. It’s my life work.
………………………………. And my passions, what are they? First and above all, Richard Plantagenet and his world. History. Travel. New Orleans. California. Hawaii. And always England – the Yorkshire of the Bronte’s, and the ghostly shadows of Middleham. Cornwall. Ireland, emerald green and high drama. ….. Good writing – even if it isn’t mine! The law, almost as much as it frightens me. Cats. ………. All the places I’ve yet to see. …….. March, when the swallows come back to Capistrano….. The Old Testament. Mark Twain. The fun of dramatizing in brilliant, splashing colors. Greensleeves, a haunting echo across four centuries, once heard and remembered for always. Those so-sweet moments when words come easily to me and in the right order, with the right meaning. Flashes of hope, when I truly believe we might learn to live together in some semblance of harmony. And tomorrow. Always tomorrow.
It’s now almost a full year after the last entry I read. Sharon is still attending law school in New Jersey. But something horrendous has happened. Someone broke into her car parked outside her apartment, thinking probably only to steal the beautiful leather satchel in the backseat. But what the thief didn’t know was that inside the satchel was a manuscript. A completed manuscript over 1,000 pages long. Hand-typed and ready for submission. We all know that manuscript now as the book The Sunne in Splendour. But to the young woman who came out to her car the next day to discover the theft, her life work was gone.
It’s now November 12, 1972, a month after the theft, and you can hear traces of her bitterness, anger… and that wry wit we’ve all come to know and love: “All life is sleeping now – while I try vainly to turn off my mind, and Mei-Ling (her black cat) stalks the apartment in eerie unsettling pursuit of an unseen enemy, for all the world like the murdered ghost of Hamlet’s father. Or am I reaching for that one?
It’s amazing (or amusing?) how profound one becomes as the dark drags on. Basic immutable truth number one: Never, NEVER read Dorothy Parker except in the glare of the noonday sun and with the high spirits of a lottery winner. Basic Truth Number Two: The harder you try not to think of whatever vulture happens to be currently hovering at your shoulder, the more conscious you are of the flapping in the air, the presence of its evil. Basic Truth Number Three: Whatever is written at Fitzgerald’s three o-clock forever should be shredded as soon as the ink dries; though of course it won’t – the egotism of the writer survives all else and unlike virtue, emerges triumphant once more.
Sharon and Mei-Ling in Hawaii
Mei-Ling is still seeking her private prey, for all the world like one of the Imps of Hell. There is something at once sinister and fascinating about a black cat on the prowl – little wonder earlier ages burned them as Satan’s collaborators. Perhaps Is hould make use of her. After all, I have a frightening image of the cat as evil incarnate on my wall, a demon-red light to spill over onto the floor, a chant to murmur in the dark and my own medium to act as guide. What more could I need? What should I ask from the high priests of satanism?
The return of my manuscript? In all honesty, there’s precious little I wouldn’t do to have it back, or failing that to cause pain to the one who took it.
Or perhaps my desires are much simpler and basic on a Sunday morning. Perhaps I’m not able to deal with griefs or guilts or with anything more complex or elemental than a simple need to sleep – is that too much to ask, Satan? A long night’s sleep, dreamless and dark.
Another dark month passes in New Jersey, and matters are still unbearable for her. And the weather matches her mood, dark and gloomy. December 12, 1972: “I still grieve for a lost book. It was so much a part of me and now the emptiness is nigh-well unbearable. I can’t bring myself to think of it, to try to pick up the scattered pieces; yet I do dwell on it despite myself.”
But five months later, some hope has returned. On May 13, 1973 she writes:“And it was in March that I began to write again – it took 5 full months before I was able to try to rescue what I could, a remembered sentence, a studied phrase, a random thought. Today it is 7 months since the loss of the book – 7 months I wouldn’t, couldn’t relive, at any price. ….. Time is not always the healer. It can be the illuminator as well. What might have been… I can’t believe there are four words so painful, so unbearable, in any language.”
Of course, we all know she would rewrite the novel. And it’s also likely that the rewriting made it a better novel than it could have been the first time. It was published in 1982 and, one could argue, changed the way we see Richard III, whether we want to or not.
She of course went on to write her popular Welsh trilogy, 6 novels about her beloved Henry II and Eleanor and their so-called Devil’s Brood, and then last but not least, her four Justin de Quincy mysteries, attaining best-seller status for several of them.
“grief exists in a timeless void and memories endure forever.”
– Sharon’s journal, June 29, 1969
Lisa Adair, a friend of Sharon’s prepared a photo book of some of her best memories of Sharon. At the end of the book, she used this quote, and I thought it was very fitting as an ending:
“She was burning with fever, but she welcomed it, eager to shed the body that had become her enemy. It would be soon now, for she was slipping her moorings, one by one, tethered by gossamer threads that trembled with each labored breath she drew. Gradually she became aware that she was no longer alone. She opened her eyes, but she saw only swirling shadows, candles that glimmered like distant stars in the dark. ‘God’s bones, woman, how much longer are you going to make us wait?'”
— The death of Eleanor of Aquitaine, from A King’s Ransom
A special thank you goes out to Jenny Quinlan and Vanitha Sankaran of the Historical Novel Society North America branch for arranging and producing this tribute to Sharon shown at their meeting in June, 2021.
For information about the Historical Novel Society’s North American branch, visit their website. For information on the Historical Novel Society as a whole, visit their website.
Decades after having been written, Sunne in Splendour remains one of Sharon’s most beloved novels. When it came time to sort through Sharon’s files, we encountered many gems.
Here are some pages from one of the earliest drafts of that book. See if you can spot any differences between these pages and the published work!
Join author Stephanie Churchill as she hosts a Facebook Live celebration of her dear friend and fellow author Sharon Kay Penman. We’ll celebrate the literary heritage Sharon left behind as we weave together memories of her life and work along with a time for questions.
SKP: I have to confess that I began to read War Lord with some degree of trepidation. I have loved your Saxon series about Uhtred of Bebbanburg and I was not sure I was ready to see his story end. I was also nervous that you might kill off a character I’d come to care about, for while we know that Uhtred himself survived, I could not be sure my other favorites would be as lucky. I need not have worried. You have done right by Uhtred—spectacularly so–bringing his last book to a highly satisfactory conclusion. Writers know how challenging it is to end a series beloved by fans. Fictional graveyards are filled with the bones of books and television shows that failed to meet the expectations of readers and viewers; we need only think of the controversy swirling around the finales of Game of Thrones, The Sopranos, Seinfeld and Lost. (For the record, I only had problems with the ending of Lost.) So, I am happy to be able to assure readers that War Lord will not disappoint. It contains all of the elements we’ve come to value in an Uhtred novel—plot twists, suspense, lots of gallows humor, and a compelling depiction of Uhtred’s world. War Lord is a very fitting way to bring Uhtred’s history to a close, leaving him to live on in the memories of millions of readers.
Anne Easter Smith is the award-winning author of The King’s Grace and the best-selling A Rose for the Crown, Daughter of York, Queen By Right, and Royal Mistress. She is an expert on Richard III, having studied the king and his times for five decades. Her sixth book, This Son of York, will be published soon. She grew up in England, Germany and Egypt, and has been a resident/citizen of the US since 1968. Anne was the Features Editor at a daily newpaper in northern New York State for ten years, and her writing has been published in several national magazines. She lives in Newburyport, MA with her husband, Scott.
Sharon: This Son of York is the sixth book in your series about the York family during the Wars of the Roses, Anne. I thought A Rose for the Crown was your Richard III book. Why have you chosen to write another about him?
Anne: As a matter of fact, Sharon, I thought Rose was my Richard book, too! I thought I had nicely tied up the series with Royal Mistress, and in fact had embarked upon a totally new project—a Portuguese prince and his lady-in-waiting lover—when Richard’s grave was uncovered in the car park in Leicester in 2012. It was then that my “first reader/editor” reminded me that Rose was Kate Haute’s book, not Richard’s and that this was the moment to retell Richard’s story. “But Sharon Kay Penman wrote the definitive Richard book, Sunne in Splendour,” I protested. She pointed out that with the discovery of Richard’s bones, surely there was now more to add to Richard’s story that Sharon couldn’t possibly have known in 1983. I knew she was right. And so poor Pedro was put aside, and I plunged back into the period I know better than my own in some ways. When I talked to you at the Denver Historical Novel Conference, Sharon, and you convinced me I was the right person to retell Richard’s story, it rekindled my passion for writing about this much maligned king.
SKP: I am so pleased to have this opportunity to interview one of my favorite authors, Bernard Cornwell—and to thank him for making my annual Christmas shopping so easy. As soon as I get word that he has a new book out in his superb Saxon series, I know exactly what family and friends are getting, for they love his novels as much as I do.
SKP:Bernard, thank you so much for agreeing to discuss Sword of Kings, your twelfth novel about Uhtred of Bebbanburg, who is surely one of historical fiction’s most memorable characters.I’d like to begin with your Australian interview in which you confided that there is probably only one more book in the Saxon series.This really is your game plan?I do understand your reasoning; time is the one foe that even Uhtred cannot defeat.But if I may speak for your legions of fans, we are not ready to let Uhtred go.Have you given any thought to writing flashbacks of his earlier life, as you did with Sharpe’s adventures in India?Between your imagination and Uhtred’s penchant for finding trouble wherever he goes, I am sure you’d not lack for ideas or plot lines!
I am happy to announce the winners of Stephanie Churchill’s book giveaway, which we held on my blog when I interviewed her for her latest book, The King’s Furies. She generously offered to give the first two books in her trilogy to the winners, The Scribe’s Daughter and The King’s Daughter. I enjoyed all three of the novels very much and I am sure the lucky winners will enjoy them, too. Drum roll…..the winners are Lin Heiberger, Nancy F Lambert, and Eric Pratt. You can contact me via my website or on Facebook or Stephanie on Facebook to provide your contact information.
The guest on my blog today is my friend, Judith Starkston, who writes fiction set in the ancient world of the Greeks and Hittites. I met Judith several years ago at the Tucson Festival of Books. We talked books and writing over a long dinner, but today’s conversation had to happen online with only virtual company, so, unfortunately, no good food could be shared. Judith is, however, offering a book giveaway and to be eligible, readers need only post a comment on this blog. Two winners will each receive a free copy of Priestess of Ishana. The books will be in e-book format and the contest is global, not limited to American readers.
Yes, this is actually a new blog by me; will wonders never cease? But the good thing about being in Writer Limbo—between books—is that I actually have time to do some things I enjoy, and one of them is focusing attention upon books I think my readers will like. The King’s Furies is such a book, with the added bonus that its author, Stephanie Churchill, is a friend as well as a fellow writer, so it is always fun to hang around with her. Besides, Holly, my spaniel, may not worship Stephanie, but she is overly fond of the ground upon which she walks.
I can enthusiastically recommend The King’s Furies, the final book in Stephanie’s trilogy, The Crowns of Destiny. Like me, I am sure that readers of the trilogy have come to care about the characters, and I think they will be pleased by the resolution of the series. Casmir is a very appealing character in his own right, and it is interesting to get his perspective after seeing their world through the eyes of the sisters, Kassia and Irisa.
