Blood, Love, and War in the Reign of Charlemagne: An Interview with Historical Fiction Author Kim Rendfeld

1) Please tell us about The Cross and the Dragon. 

The Cross and the Dragon is a tale of love amid the wars and blood feuds of Charlemagne’s reign. Here is the blurb:

Francia, 778: Alda has never forgotten Ganelon’s vow of vengeance when she married his rival, Hruodland. Yet the jilted suitor’s malice is nothing compared to Alda’s premonition of disaster for her beloved, battle-scarred husband.

Although the army invading Hispania is the largest ever and King Charles has never lost a war, Alda cannot shake her anxiety. Determined to keep Hruodland from harm, even if it exposes her to danger, Alda gives him a charmed dragon amulet.

Is its magic enough to keep Alda’s worst fears from coming true—and protect her from Ganelon?

2) What inspired this book? 

The inspiration came to me during a family vacation in Germany, when we encountered the legend behind the Rhineland ruins of Rolandsbogen. What follows is a spoiler and readers who would like to avoid it should skip to the next paragraph. The legend is that Roland (Hruodland in The Cross and the Dragon) built a castle for his bride and went off to war in Spain. His bride received false news that he was killed, took a vow of chastity, and joined the convent on Nonnenwerth, a nearly island in the Rhine. Roland returned too late and spent the rest of his days at his window, just trying to catch a glimpse of her as she went to and from prayers. I found out later that the legend was not true and that the historic Roland died in the ambush at the Pass of Roncevaux in the Pyrenees in 778.

However, the legend of Rolandsbogen refused to leave me alone. It followed me home on the plane and would not rest until I sat down at my computer and began to type, even though I knew little about the Middle Ages, let alone the Carolingians.

3) Please tell us a bit more about your main characters. 
There is a lot to like about my heroine, Alda, a young Frankish noblewoman. She’s strong-willed, intelligent, wise, and compassionate, but what I admire most about her is her courage. Her love for Hruodland is so strong that she is willing to make herself vulnerable to physical danger. Giving him her most precious possession, the dragon amulet mentioned in the blurb, is just one example. Later, she will take a great risk for her husband’s sake.

Hruodland loves Alda’s strong will and cleverness, even though he’s been taught the ideal wife is submissive. But he is also a medieval man, and medieval men did not completely trust their wives, which is why is he is subject to bouts of jealousy. Still, he will defend Alda against any enemy and is even willing to die in the attempt.

Hruodland and Ganelon, my villain, already dislike each other at the start of the novel, but the fact they both want Alda as a wife deepens their animosity. Ganelon is a good-looking guy. Unfortunately, his looks are the only thing to like about him. Reviewers have rightly pointed out how loathsome he is. Alda describes his heart as black and twisted as a piece of burnt wood.

4) Please tell us how you approached the balance of fact and fiction, especially given that your basis is a historical legend that in of itself has some fictionalized details of the events and people it is about. 
Any portrayal of Roland is going to be fictitious. All we know about the man is where and when he died and that he governed the March of Brittany.

The Cross and the Dragon borrows from the story of Rolandsbogen and the Old French epic The Song of Roland, both light on historical and heavy on fiction, yet historical events are woven into its narrative. The wars in my novel are real, and I’ve done my best to stay true to Frankish politics, culture, and customs. For example, I’d never have a girl refuse to marry a guy because she was apathetic to him.

As much as I cherish accuracy—to point of researching whether bishops wore miters then—the story must come first. The key word in historical fiction is “fiction”; I am a novelist, not a scholar. But I include historical notes at the end of my novels where I confess to the liberties I’ve taken. I owe it to the readers.

5) The period your book covers seems less popular than later, and for that matter, earlier periods of European history. Why do you think that is?

This is pure speculation, but I wonder if the answer lies in the fact that this period is little known to a general audience, at least here in the States. When I started writing this novel, I’d heard of Charlemagne and knew it meant Charles the Great, but that was about it. I don’t think I’m alone in that assessment, and that’s a pity. There is so much more to this era than that.

The family drama alone could rival a soap opera, and it led to a war and an attempted coup. There is not enough space here to discuss everything, but let me give you a little taste. At the start of my story in 773, Charles is in his mid-20s, twice divorced, married to wife No. 3, and about to go to war with his ex-father-in-law who is threatening Rome. This is all true. As a storyteller, how can I resist?

6) Do you see historical fiction as an educational tool or merely an entertainment tool? If the former, what advantages do you think it has in that regard? 

My first responsibility as a novelist is to keep readers interested all the way to the end, but if I’ve done my job right, the reader will learn something new about the history. As an educational tool, historical fiction can show that the past was populated by people, not cardboard cutouts. Too often, we’re taught history as a list of events, who did what where, an approach that turns off many students. In historical fiction, we can understand people of the past saw the world differently, but they worried, grieved, loved, and felt great anger and great joy as we do today.

7) Are there any other early medieval period legends you are interested in revisiting?
My muse instead decided to bring me the heroine of The Ashes of Heaven’s Pillar, Leova, a peasant Saxon mother determined to protect her children. Charlemagne fought bitter wars against the pagan Saxon peoples on and off for more than 30 years, something I could only touch on in The Cross and the Dragon. The Saxons, who did not have a written language as we know it, are history’s losers, and I wanted to give them a voice, even a small one.

Legends and folk tales still play a part, though. I used folk tales as one way to imagine what the Continental Saxons might be believed—their religion is mostly lost to us. And I’ve included a story about Saxon leader Widukind, a historical character, having different colored eyes.

8) Where can reads find out more about you? 

You can find out more about me on my website www.kimrendfeld.com and my blog www.kimrendfeld.wordpress.com. If you’re into social media, you can also connect with me on Facebook (www.facebook.com/authorkimrendfeld), Goodreads (www.goodreads.com/Kim_Rendfeld), or Twitter (@kimrendfeld)

9) Where can readers find your book? 

The Cross and the Dragon is available in e-book and print from many outlets including:

Amazon U.S.
Amazon Canada
Amazon U.K.
Barnes and Noble
Kobo

You can find readers’ reviews and even more vendor links at The Cross and the Dragon’s Goodreads page. 

Scotland, Colonial Virginia, and a Modern Woman: An interview with historical fiction author Anna Belfrage

1) Please tell us about Like Chaff In the Wind. 

Like Chaff in the Wind is the story of a man who is abducted and carried overseas to the Colony of Virginia, where he is sold as indentured labour. Fortunately, Matthew has a formidable wife who sets off on a perilous quest to find him and bring him home. The underlying theme is the love between Alex and Matthew, a love so strong it carries Matthew through his unbearable existence in Virginia, a love so powerful Alex never hesitates to set off in search of her husband, no matter how hazardous this might be. Not that she has any choice; life without Matthew is the equivalent of a living death. As the novel progresses it offers insights into the life of indentured servants in Virginia, it highlights the constant enmity between Catholics and Protestants, and it gives the reader a glimpse of Sir William Berkeley, Governor of Virginia (a real person, however fictitious his acquaintance with Alex).

2) Please tell us about your main characters.

How long do I have? I could probably write a book just about them. However, in a somewhat briefer format here goes:

Matthew is a devout Presbyterian who spent the formative years of his youth fighting in the Commonwealth armies. An intuitive horseman, he quickly became an excellent swordsman – no choice, had he not learnt to wield the blade he’d have been dead well before his twentieth birthday – and is quite the marksman as well. Due to the treacherous actions of his brother and first wife, Matthew has also spent a number of years in gaol, emerging a stronger but scarred man. In many ways, Alex is a godsend to him. This strange, half-heathen woman makes him laugh again, and never has he felt as cherished as when she holds him in her arms.

Alex is a modern woman raised on scientific thinking and rational thought. Until that very unexpected – and initially most unwelcome – plunge through time, she has at most been an agnostic, but she quickly realises expressing any doubts regarding the existence of God is a major no-no in her new life. Alex has scars of her own, and in many ways being transported three centuries backwards in time gives her the opportunity to start life anew – with Matthew. While Alex has days when she longs for the comforts of her previous life, there is no doubt in her mind that she belongs with him, her man, no matter what fate might throw in their way.

3) Why did you choose to write a time slip story instead of a more straight-forward historical narrative? In what ways did this complicate the narrative? In what ways did it enhance the narrative?

I’m not sure there was any choice. I’d had this idea of a woman falling back in time for years, mainly because I was fascinated by the concept of time travelling as such. To have a modern protagonist allows you a certain freedom of speech so to say, as Alex can react to those aspects of her new life most modern people would find confusing. Ultimately, Alex has no choice but to adapt, but throughout the series she retains the capacity to comment rather wryly on the more incomprehensible characteristics of her seventeenth century existence.

As to complicating the narrative, I found the inherent conflict between “modern woman meets old-fashioned man” inspiring rather than complicating. The challenge was rather to describe the time travelling aspects in such a way as to make them logical (!) and not entirely unfeasible. One of my male readers, an engineer who regards life through very sceptical eyes, told me I must have done quite a good job, as not once did he question the fact that Alex (and others) had been yanked out of time.

4) This is the second book in the Graham saga. How accessible is it to readers who have yet to read the first?
I have attempted to give enough back story in book 2 so as to make it stand alone. From some of the reviews I’ve gotten, it seems I’ve done a fairly good job of this. Does reading book one enhance book 2? Probably yes. Do you need to read book one to enjoy book two? Probably no.

5) A Rip in the Veil had your action primarily taking place in Scotland, whereas this book moves to the ocean and colonial America. Was the setting transition difficult in terms of writing at all?

No, not at all. I have a fascination with colonial life – and a deep admiration for the colonists who set off from all over the world to build new lives in the Americas, Australia, New Zealand or wherever they ended up. The history of Virginia is a colourful one that has always drawn my attention, starting with the Roanoke debacle. In Like Chaff in the Wind, we see a more established Virginia, a colony where tobacco is a cash crop and the people owning plantations are fast becoming very, very rich. As yet, white indentured labour hasn’t been replaced by African slaves, but in a decade or so most of the backs bent over the endless rows of tobacco will be black, not white, and so the Virginia plantation owners will enrich themselves even further.

6) Was there any aspect of the time period that you found particularly difficult to pin down or explore during your research?

I get stuck on the ridiculous details; had the fork made it down to the common people by the 1660’s? How realistic is it that Alex could get hold of tea? By studying paintings and reading tons, I’ve concluded that while the fork was a known eating utensil in southern Europe by the 15th century (the educated well-off traveller would bring his own fork and knife with him), it did not make it down to the common classes until late 17th century. As to tea, the Portuguese had been trading it and drinking it for some decades, so I decided to put Alex into contact with a man who’d lived in Portugal. I must say I find this part of the research very rewarding, even if it ends up somewhere very different to where I started out. (You know; I begin by researching forks and end up reading a fascinating article about pewter tableware in the 18th century…I guess as a fellow writer you recognise that, don’t you?)

7) Do you have links to any excerpts you'd like to share?

My website offers extracts and bonus material. One rather descriptive passage is called “A day in Matthew’s life” and can be found here.

8) Please tell us about some of your other projects.

At present, I’m very much stuck in the Graham Saga – there are a number of books to come, detailing Alex’ and Matthew’s rather exciting lives. (“Too exciting,” Alex mutters, “how about giving us a nice quiet life by the beach somewhere?”)

Further to this I am presently researching for my new project which at present has the working title “All is not gold that glitters”. Set in 17th century Sweden – and England – it tells the story of Sofia Carolina, raised with Queen Christina, and Jonathan Darrow, disinherited royalist who is living in exile. Accused of stealing a fortune in jewels (which she has done), Sofia Carolina is forced to flee the country. In England she is accused of being a witch, and things look quite dark for a while… I’ve written close to 10,000 words already, but need continuity and peace and quiet to really sink my teeth into it.

And then I have a little trilogy with a strong fantasy element that I now and then bring out and tweak. Not sure if I’ll even attempt publishing it – at least not in its present form – but the storyline is quite good, combining reincarnation, magically gifted people, an action packed story set in today’s England and Turkey, and a final scene on an ancient hilltop just outside of Trabzon by the Black Sea. Boy have I had fun researching those books, let me tell you! 

Voodoo, the KKK, time travel, and redemption: An interview with historical fiction/paranormal author Lane Heymont

1) Please tell us about your book.

 

The Freedman and the Pharaoh’s Staff set in Reconstruction-era Louisiana, and blends the boundaries between science fiction, fantasy, and as you can imagine, American history.

In 1871, the United States government has nearly eradicated the Ku Klux Klan, afraid their fanaticism will inspire other Southern whites to rise up against the Union. A very real threat.

The Klan’s remaining forces have retreated to Louisiana – as Deep South as you can get – in order to escape justice and regroup.

Jeb, a former slave, rescues his brother-in-law Crispus from the Ku Klux Klan, pulling him into a world of Creole Voodoo, hatred, time travel, and redemption. The two brothers-in-law set out to stop Verdiss and his Klan followers from using the Pharaoh’s Staff, a magical artifact from ancient Egypt. Soon, Jeb and Crispus learn Verdiss’ diabolical plan and discover that he serves an evil far more insidious than himself. In the end, Jeb and Crispus must stop an entire people from eradication and each find redemption for his own past sins.

2) What inspired this book?


It originally began as a short story I wrote for an African-American literature class I took in undergrad. During the class, I fell in love with the slave narratives, so I expanded the short story. Ironically, I ended up switching the two main protagonists’ roles.

About the same time I was reading about Nazi occultism, in particular, Hitler and the Occult by Ken Anderson. It detailed Hitler’s bizarre obsession with the supernatural. He was convinced he could conquer the world by possessing all these magical/religious items. The Spear of Longinus, the Holy Grail, and spent considerable resources on discovering time travel, super soldiers, Atlantis, and Norse runes.

The two ideas – slave narratives and Hitler’s twisted desires – blended together and The Freedman and the Pharaoh’s Staff was born.


3) Tell us about your main characters.


There are several main characters – I like stories where you experience the same events through a wide spectrum of perspectives.

Jebidiah Johnson, a former slave and now freedman, is a hardened soldier who fought during the Civil War. He’s haunted by the horrific violence he witnessed, and is determined to live a life with his family. He’s the perfect soldier, but doesn’t want to cause any trouble, or get dragged into any.

Crispus Moorfield, Jeb’s brother-in-law, is as opposite as they come. A naïve activist, he has never truly experienced any horrors that come with racism. This has led to a complete lack of fear of repercussions for his actions. He’s reckless, and more dangerous to his beliefs than he thinks.

There are two other main characters: Verdiss, and Fallon, but their journeys change who they are, so I’ll leave that for reader to discover.


4) What primary themes does your book explore?



The power of unity, the depth of damage racism can cause, and redemption.

5) Though your story touches on some very powerful and real
 historical injustices, you have a heavy fantasy/paranormal component.
How does the use of such elements enhance historical narratives? Did
it even make the process of writing the book and the thematic work
more difficult?



Great question. I think using fantasy elements in historical settings is such a great experience, both to write and read. If we stop to think – at most points in history various cultures already considered what we call fantasy facts of life. Humankind pursued witches, mythical sea beasts, and up until Europeans fully explored Africa, gorillas were considered mythical creatures – half man, half monkey.

Weaving fantasy and science fiction elements into The Freedman and the Pharaoh’s Staff, a story set in Reconstruction Louisiana, had its difficult moments. I really had to follow a set of laws governing what fantasy elements I would allow, what science fiction would be entertained, and how normal people of the time would react to those events.

Voodoo was, and is, still very much alive in Louisiana. Especially in the bayous. So, that flowed smoothly through the story. Also, I did not want fireballs and lightning bolts shooting through the skies like some Lord of the Rings movie. Voodoo magic is subdued, as magic goes, and having real practices to base mine on, proved that much easier.

What I found most difficult it was intertwining the science fiction aspects of the story in a way that felt believable. We don’t ever see a time machine or hear science jargon or even learn the logic behind it. The focus is on how our modern, aka 1870’s, characters would respond to any technology they witness.

6) Your academic background is partially in history. Were the eras of
your books eras you've previously spent a lot of time studying?



Yes and no. I was always more of a medieval, poetry/philosophy person. Being Jewish, I have a deep and painful connection to World War II. Also, my grandfather oversaw the largest Jewish DP camp in Europe after the war – horror stories…and photos frequented my youth.

I did have an interest in the Civil War, because it was, and still is, such a powerful moment in our history. Almost a domestic holocaust. Just as World War II was a conflict for the soul of us as a race, the Civil War was a battle for the soul of our country. It defined who we are as Americans – would we choose tyranny over freedom? Righteousness over sadism?

If either war had been lost to evil…humanity would have fallen.

7) Please tell us about your general research process and resources.



At the time I was writing The Freedman and the Pharaoh’s Staff I was in school full-time for my undergraduate degree. I spent every minute in between classes at the school library, doing research. There, I used a lot of online resources – the most difficult part was sifting through crummy information sites and finding the real, great ones.

Researching Voodoo was a lot of fun. Several of my friends are from Haiti, or their parents are, so I got to interview them. Besides having great conversations with great people, the subtle nuance in the information they gave was amazing.

At home, stacks of books surrounded my computer. There’s too many to count, but some included:

· Remembering Slavery: African Americans Talk About Their Personal Experiences of Slavery and Freedom
· Hitler’s Occult War by Michael Fitzgerald
· Reconstruction: America's Unfinished Revolution, 1863-1877 by Eric Foner
· Slavery by Another Name: The Re-Enslavement of Black Americans from the Civil War to World War II by Douglas A. Blackmon
· Degrees of Freedom: Louisiana and Cuba after Slavery by Rebecca J. Scott

8) What other projects do you have planned for the future?



Right now I’m working on a screenplay with my writing partner Michael Klein of The MAK Company out in L.A., which is exciting! I also have a few books on the side burner. So, stay tuned!

9) Where can readers find out more about you?

You can find me on Twitter (@LaneHeymont), on Facebook, Goodreads, and on my website http://laneheymont.com.

-----

Thanks, Lane.

The Freedman and the Pharaoh’s Staff is available in paperback and for the Nook and Kindle.

Your Horse Doesn't Love You: An interview with historical fiction author Sue Millard

1) Please tell us about Coachman. 

Good-looking and ambitious George Davenport travels to London with his bride Lucy, determined to make the most of his skill in driving a four-in-hand of horses. It’s 1838. Queen Victoria is crowned, and England is at peace, but it isn't a good year to be a coachman.

George finds employment with William Chaplin, the “Napoleon of coaching”, but railways are about to open across the country and kill off the coaching trade. George loves both his work and his wife, so he has a lot to come to terms with… even before the boss’s daughter starts to stalk him.

2) What was your inspiration for this book?

In 1994 a friend showed me a letter written by William Chaplin, which a bookseller had bought at auction and brought to show her. Neither of them could read his writing. I could… so I got the job of transcribing it. That sparked my curiosity about Chaplin. I knew, hazily, some of the background of my subject. I’d read of him before as “the Napoleon of coaching” in the 1820s and 30s. I was already knowledgeable about horses and had been driving my Fells for a good many years. I owned a lot of books about driving and I’d read accounts of stage coach rides by De Quincey, Dickens and Thomas Hood. However it was my own experience, plus the discovery that coach travel had been replaced very rapidly by rail travel, which gave me the interesting combination of facts and a story that hadn’t been told before.

3) Please tell us a bit about your main characters.

George Davenport is a young English coachman, born and bred to the trade, whose skills are at their height during the “Golden Age of Coaching” in the 1830s. He’s moved about the country to gain experience and better himself and at the beginning of Coachman, he is on his way from Carlisle to London hoping for a share of the lucrative trade in and out of the capital. For the first time in his life, though, he’s got someone else to consider – his landlady’s daughter Lucy Hennessy, to whom he has proposed marriage. Lucy has a rough background – how rough, George doesn’t find out until much later. The tensions in their relationship, and others’, are about the conflicts of work and money versus love and responsibility.

4) Due to the lead character's profession, you spend a lot of time on horse-related content. What sort of things do people often get wrong about horses in books?

One assumption is that your horse loves you. That may be quite wide of the mark. He likes you to be his herd leader, to lead him to food or to provide it, and to reassure him that you know what you are doing and will keep him safe. Given the choice, he wouldn’t put a saddle on his back or a bit between his jaws, pull a carriage for miles along a road or gallop at top speed across country: He does those things to please you because he accepts your leadership and because your society reassures him. Doglike devotion and cute behaviour are foreign to him.

In both books and movies, in battle or suspense situations we are shown horses screaming with fear. However, horses’ fear, unlike humans’ and primates’, doesn’t translate into vocalisation. The noise you would actually hear is that of hooves running rapidly away.

For that reason, your characters driving a carriage can NOT abandon it at the roadside like a car, unless you want to plot a horrendous accident. The “engine” is never out of gear until you unhitch the horses from the carriage. You always need someone to take charge of them.

Finally there’s the assumption that you can give your hero or heroine extra machismo if they ride a stallion. It may work for the reader by association of ideas, but in horse society the mare is the boss! Unless you can also write about how the hero manages his stallion in the company of strange mares… he’s better off riding a gelding.

5) Please tell us a bit about your research process and resources.

I only started to write historical books when I found material that hadn't been dealt with before – the letter from William Chaplin that attracted my attention to the road coaching trade. Coaching figures in many books about the history of driving  – so I started reading what was on my bookshelves – and re-reading. “Write what you know” however had to be supported by a lot of delving. I started with the Dictionary of National Biography, plus his family tree from his great-grand-daughter, my neighbour. I realised that there had been a big change – a national shift in habits – from travelling the roads by horsepower to travelling on rails, by steam.

I knew that the most interesting way to deal with national events was to write fictional characters into them. So I had to invent someone whose life would touch Chaplin’s; make my hero cross paths with him to find the heart of my story; and perhaps weave in a few anecdotes that are known about Chaplin.

No novel has ever taken me so long to write! What I couldn’t find, back in 1994, were the first-hand accounts on which to base this character’s life. They were all in expensive out of print books. So the story stalled until the advent of the World Wide Web and the digitization of books by Project Gutenberg and the Internet Archive. It was only then that I began to find the personal accounts, the primary sources that showed the attitudes and habits of former coachmen, and the visual evidence of contemporary prints and paintings. I also used the Old Bailey records on-line to find contemporary rulings on crimes, and some were so closely tied to my time period and location that they were woven in and became pivotal events and characters in the narrative.

The British Postal Museum and Archive – again online – provided photocopied original material for other essential scenes in the book.

Historical directories by Pigot and Mannix have been invaluable for character names, place names, typical businesses, inns and coaching routes. I reconstructed coach timetables from such directory entries, though I also relied heavily on the collected data in the Directory of Stage Coach Services 1836 by Alan Bates.

I indulged myself by giving my hero the name of my great-grandfather who had been a “domestic coachman” in a slightly later era.

I really loved the research I did for Coachman, so trimming information out to focus on the story was very hard work.

6) Do you have a link to any excerpts you'd like to share?

The Kindle edition on Amazon has the opening passage in which George is on his way to London seeking work, and has to take over the reins of a stage because the designated coachman is too drunk!

UK: http://www.amazon.co.uk/Coachman-ebook/dp/B009DORFOI/ref=sr_1_1?s=digital-text&ie=UTF8&qid=1348161105&sr=1-1

USA: http://www.amazon.com/Coachman-ebook/dp/B009DORFOI/ref=sr_1_1?s=digital-text&ie=UTF8&qid=1348161105&sr=1-1

7) Please tell us briefly about your other work.

My poetry pamphlet “Ash Tree” is coming out in late summer 2013, and so I expect to be working with the editor of Prole Books (http://www.prolebooks.co.uk/) in April and May to make sure it’s exactly right for publication. I’ve currently stalled in the middle of a sequel to my horseracing novel Against the Odds, but once I’ve got “Ash Tree” perfected, that’s what I’ll be going back to.

8) Where can readers find out more about you?

The easiest way is to look at my web site, http://www.jackdawebooks.co.uk and my blog at http://suemillard.blogspot.co.uk/ I’m also on Facebook – Sue Millard – and Twitter – @jackdawebooks.

What Made The Bard of Avon Tick: An interview with historical fiction author Pauline Montagna

1) Please tell us about Not Wisely but Too Well.

Briefly, Not Wisely but Too Well is the first book in The Stuff of Dreams series about William Shakespeare and the experiences and relationships that make him the great writer he became. This volume takes Will's story to 1593.

2) Why did you decide to write the story of one of the most famous authors in the world? Did his reputation ever intimidate you? 

I am not sure I decided to write this book as much as it decided I should write it.

I had no particular interest in Shakespeare until I picked up a book called Who Wrote Shakespeare? which introduced me to the whole, fascinating, Authorship debate. A couple of years later I saw the documentary Much Ado about Something, which put the Marlovian case. It started me thinking what the relationship between Marlowe and Shakespeare might have been.

You ask whether I felt intimidated. Very much so. So much so that I put the whole project aside at one point and decided to work on something else. But it wouldn't let me go, especially after I visited England and saw Stratford, and Cambridge and Shakespeare's Globe. In the end I had to put aside my other project and get back to it.

3) What historical resources did you draw on in your research?

There is an endless number of books about Shakespeare, Marlowe and the Elizabethan theatre. I spent a blissful summer in our State Library just flitting between one book and another following threads right back to where they began, getting as close to original documents as one can from far away Melbourne, Australia.

My favourite books were the Arden Shakespeare collection, especially the old series that dates back to the 1960s and 70s. They delve deeply into how the plays were written and revised over time. Sometimes a footnote would open a whole new line of enquiry. It was a footnote in the Arden edition of King John that led me to James Burbage, Richard Burbage's father, and his building of The Theatre, London's first purpose built playhouse.

Another favourite was Andrew Gurr's The Shakespearean Playing Companies in which he has gathered every detail about all of the Elizabethan playing companies, their personnel and their plays. He even traces not only where the companies went on tour, but how much they were paid.

And then, of course, you have the most famous original document of all, Henslowe's Diary. Now that is a treasure trove especially for the fate of a couple of Shakespeare's earliest plays. As a transcript of it can be found online. I have it at my fingertips.

One of the historians who has had a large influence on my book is Marlovian biographer, A. D. (Dolly) Wraight. It was she who revealed to me that Robert Greene was not referring to Shakespeare at all in his deathbed tirade against 'the upstart crow'. Another Marlovian whose work has influenced me is Peter Farey whose website is another mine of information.

While I don't necessarily subscribe to their theory, the journal of the Shakespeare-Oxford Society, The Oxfordian,  does publish some well researched scholarly articles, which I have also found useful.

The most useful reference books and websites I came across can be found on my blog The Stuff of Dreams.  Go to the bottom of the page.

4) There will always be fiction included in the tale of a historical personage because we don't have a total transcript of their lives. Writing about an obscure historical figure runs less chance of having people complain about perceived liberties taken with the figure. How did you approach the fiction/history balance?

Well known historical personages do come with a great deal of baggage. Most readers who pick up Not Wisely but Too Well will already have read biographies and novels about William Shakespeare and Christopher Marlowe and feel that they know them and their life stories well.

However, both novelists and biographers of Shakespeare and Marlowe have the same problem. Not only do we lack a coherent and definitive narrative of their lives, but all we have to go on are a few loosely connected documents which illuminate moments, but which we still have to approach with some caution. Anyone attempting to construct their biographies has to examine those documents carefully, bringing to them their own imagination, knowledge and experience.

However, as many of us have found, we historical novelists seem much better qualified to construct a plausible biography than most literary biographers. I am afraid many of them are prone to making assertions about what their subject did, thought and felt that are based on little more than wishful thinking, and are sometimes not only psychologically implausible but downright laughable. If anyone should be accused of taking liberties with the known facts it is they.

As for myself, I am a stickler for historical accuracy. Although my basic premise about the relationship between William Shakespeare and Christopher Marlowe is fictional, I have made sure that there is nothing in my story that contradicts the known facts. Wherever I could I have consulted transcripts of original documents. Although I have consulted many secondary sources, I have always approached them critically and delved into how they have come to their conclusions. Nor have I restricted myself to orthodox biographers, but, coming to the subject as I did from the anti-Strafordian direction, I have also taken into consideration the research done by supporters of the alternative candidates.

So while, as I have said, I have kept to the known facts, my interpretation of them is entirely my own. However, I am ready to wager that my narrative may well be closer to the truth than many a supposedly non-fictional biography.

5) I am a firm Stratfordian, but the existence of such a recent and relatively high-profile movie (which cost $30 million dollars) such as Emmerich's Anonymous shows that the anti-Stratfordian position is still going strong. Why do you think some people are so obsessed with the idea that William Shakespeare was not the author of his famous works?

Oh, please, don't get me started on Anonymous. That film was a travesty that did the Oxfordian cause more harm than good and will soon sink into the oblivion it deserves (See my analysis of the film Demolishing Anonymous).

I would say that the Shakespearean Authorship debate is fed by a profound mystery. Because of his fame, every archive in England has been combed for records of Shakespeare and his family, yet for all that research nothing has been turned up which throws any light on how Will Shakspere of Stratford-upon-Avon became one of the greatest writers in the English language.

We have a great deal of evidence of Will Shakspere in Stratford and about his family and their business dealings. We have evidence of a William Shakespeare living in London who was a sharer in The Globe and the Chamberlain's Men. However, the only connections between these two men are tenuous at best and rather suspect. (The Stratford Monument, perhaps the most famous artefact that identifies Will Shakspere as William Shakespeare is far from proof positive See my article The Mystery of the Stratford Monument.)

Further, except for his name in the front of the book, there is no evidence that even the London-based Shakespeare was the author of the plays. There are no surviving manuscripts, nor documentary evidence of him as a writer. Even the surviving literary references to Shakespeare are mostly obscure and sometimes cast more doubt than certainty. Such a vacuum demands alternative theories to fill it.

But I think at the bottom of it all is that, for the English, Shakespeare is like a god to whom they feel a profound spiritual attachment. They need absolute certainty about who he is. There is no room for doubt. So where there is doubt about Will Shakspere of Stratford-upon-Avon it must be countered with certainty about an alternative candidate.

6) Do you have any links to any excerpts you'd like to share?

You can find an excerpt from Not Wisely but Too Well on my website at or sample it on Smashwords.

If you are interested in the research behind the novel go to my blog The Stuff of Dreams, or you might enjoy my short story "In Search of Shakespeare".

7) Please tell us about your other works.

Not Wisely but Too Well is the third book I have published. I have also published another historical romance, The Slave, set in Medieval Italy and Suburban Terrors, a collection of short stories, as well as several short stories and novelettes.

All are available on my website. The short stories can also be found on Goodreads, while the novelettes can be downloaded as free ebooks from Smashwords.

8) Where can people find out more about you?

You can find out all about me from my home page, Pauline Montagna, Writer and Publisher. All my books are available there to purchase as ebooks and PODs. There you will also find a collection of novelettes to download as free ebooks as well as my short stories.

From there you can also connect to my blogs, The Stuff of Dreams , a compendium of my research for Not Wisely but too Well, Ms Montagna's Miscellany, a collection of my reviews and articles, and The Writer/Publisher, an introduction to self-publishing based on my own experience and research.

A World Frighteningly Like Our Own and a Message Woven into Rare Cloth: An interview with historical fantasy author Prue Batten

1) Please tell us about The Shifu Cloth.

If I might begin with the blurb:

In a world where Others play with mortal lives, in a hidden province that survives on the backs of abducted slaves, Isabella, one of those stolen folk, sends a message woven into rare cloth made of paper and silk, in the vain hope that her cousin will find it, decipher it and rescue her.

For cousin Nicholas, with whose life the Fates have been playing, only time will tell if he shall find her and whether what makes a curse does indeed break a curse.

The story had its genesis in a piece I read in an art magazine about the historic art of shifu. It’s an ancient Japanese skill where sheets of mulberry paper are marked and cut into strips. Shaken to separate the strands, they are then dampened, then flipped and rolled, separating and softening the fibres. The ends of each strip are joined to make a long filament that is then spindle spun. The resulting ‘yarn’ is woven on the weft with silk yarn on the warp to make the fine, very strong and unique fabric that is shifu. History tells us that the samurai used shifu cloth to send secret messages across war-torn country, the messages inscribed on the paper before it was woven into shifu and then made into garments.

Thus The Shifu Cloth was born.

2) Tell us about your main characters.

Isabella: a beautiful, capable mortal woman. Arrogant, self-obsessed, and kidnapped into slavery in the mysterious Han province of Eirie.

Nicholas: a dark young man filled with self-doubt and guilt brought on by Cousin Isabella’s kidnapping and by the fact that he is half-Other.

Poli: Nicholas’s plain-speaking mortal friend. The kind of companion ones needs at one’s back when fighting unknown enemies in a strange and unknown country.

Ming Xao: Imperial heir to the Han and an enigma.

Chi Nü: Celestial weaving maid in the Han. A gentle, kind but afflicted spirit.

Kitsune: Celestial Fox Spirit. Vengeful at her treatment by the Han emperors.

The Moonlady: Celestial Eirish spirit filled with wisdom.

3) Please tell us about the Others. What sort of storytelling goals were involved in their creation?

They needed to be totally credible, no matter who/what they were. It’s very easy to research the spirits from myth and legend, wonderful reading that filled, and continues to fill my hours. The hard part is investing them with a character that readers might care about. I wanted readers to hate and/or love those characters with intensity. ‘Others’ are the balance in my world, the balance in my stories. The goal for me was not shifting the scales too much one way or the other.

4) Please tell us about the world you created. It's not quite Earth, yet there are strong parallels at the same time. What were the influences on your world-building process?

What you say is true. In fact I remember a reviewer once saying the Eirish world was frighteningly similar to our own which is exactly what I wanted. Especially with emphasis on the ‘frightening’ side because almost all Others are dangerous, perhaps even life-threatening – especially the Færan.

Because the creation of Eirie was heavily influenced by the myth and legend of our own world, there was never a doubt that it would closely approximate our own in topography etc as well. I also loved the idea that in fact the Other world is accessed as easily as walking through a veil or through the ymp-tree orchard. And that there is never a doubt in the characters’ minds that immortals exist alongside them in almost everything they do. I never intended to introduce wars, politics or theology because I wanted it to be about the grass roots of Everyman. It could be you or me there, with a life-changing event rocketing out of daily life and hitting us square in the eyes, propelled by the Fates. Unlike many fantasies, politics and wars have no place in my plots.

5) This is the fourth book in the Chronicles of Eirie. Can a person enter the series at this point, or must they start from the beginning?

In actual fact, Books Three and Four are stand-alones and can be read without having read Books One and Two. But Books One and Two are a matched pair. Readers might be interested in the fact that A Thousand Glass Flowers (Book Four) won the silver medal for fantasy in the 2012 Readers’ Favorites Book Awards.

6) What inspired this series?

Each book is inspired by an inanimate object. Seventeenth century embroidery in Books One and Two. A Venetian paperweight in Book Three. A piece of Japanese fabric woven from paper and silk in Book Four. I began The Stumpwork Robe (Book One) with an idea that I would just write it and The Last Stitch. But the world that developed became something more, and the generations that I wrote about became very loud in their demand to be heard. So if anything propelled the journey further, it has been each successive generation needing to resolve the terrible events emerging in their lives.

7) Do you have any links to any excerpts you'd like to share?

http://amzn.to/100dj2c

8) Where can readers find out more about you and where can they purchase your book?

You can find out more about me on:

Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/Prue.Batten.writer

My blog: http://www.pruebatten.wordpress.com

Amazon.com: http://amzn.to/zRLHyc

Amazon.co.uk: http://amzn.to/XX2ier

Smashwords: http://bit.ly/15uPfaA

If I could just add – I am also a historical fiction writer. Along with historical fantasy, it’s my favourite genre to read. I wrote Book One of The Gisborne Saga a year ago and it was quite readily received. I’m currently writing the second book in the saga as we speak and am neck-deep in the twelfth century as I have a total fascination for the Middle Ages and the later timeframe of the Renaissance. In fact my graduate degree was in history and I feel content when I am surrounded by history texts. Interestingly much of the basic research has as much relevance in hist.fantasy as it does in hist.fict., so it’s a comfortable crossover.

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Thanks, Prue

A Murder Across Two Centuries: An interview with historical fiction author Barbara Gaskell Denvil

1) Please tell us about your book.


FAIR WEATHER is a historical thriller which covers several genres. It is also an adventure/romance, and a crime mystery. The plot is based around a time switch, so that action takes place both in 13th century England, and in modern day England. These switches are integral to the plot. The romance also interweaves through time – and in an unusual sense, time is an actual character within the story.

2) Why did you decide to combine historical fiction with modern paranormal suspense?

My inspiration for the whole plot came from dreams. I used these dreams and wove my characters through the ideas and visions which came to me. Fair Weather was therefore crafted very much as a labour of love, and not created in any logical or practical sense.

3) In modern times, in most countries, women have fairly easy freedom of movement. Given that you go so far back, the interaction of women with their society was considerably changed, even compared to other later English historical eras. Did this present any difficulties in plotting?

Surprisingly, no. My heroine is a beggar girl, and few restrictions have ever been put on the abjectly poor as long as they can escape the jurisdiction of the law. It is invariably the noblewomen who are watched and limited by society’s conventions. The poor go where they will. Also, in the 13th century, society was less conventional in many ways and women were not quite so tethered as is sometimes imagined. Female subjugation actually got far worse from the 16th century onwards.

4) Given the ignorance that afflicted the distant path, do you think it's easier or more difficult to maintain tension in murder plots. The lack of forensics, systematic investigation, et cetera, for instance, makes it easier for guilty folk to reasonably evade the authorities in the past, but, in modern times, access to technology by criminals and improved education provide their own opportunities for mischief.

Yes, I do agree. And nowadays the author herself must do some thorough research on national standards of justice, police procedures and the latest forensic science. But my murders come under the label of black magic, so it was different again. I did a great deal of research – but not at all the sort a modern crime-writer might have to do.

5) With all of English history (or history for that matter) to choose from what made you pick the particular period you chose?

Although the Church was very powerful during the 13th century, there were still pockets and aspects of religion that echoed back very strongly to the old pagan beliefs. Many priests got away with being married, country rituals and celebrations could be more pagan than Christian, and there was still considerable acceptance of fairies and spells. Witchcraft was not illegal – (no one was burned for it in spite of many modern film depictions) and the ‘wise women’ were respected and sought out. Since my book is wrapped around pagan magic, this was the ideal time in history to base it. It’s also a period I already knew a good deal about in the more general sense – the costumes, the way of life, the architecture and the details of Old London. I adore this era for its atmosphere and the fascinating colours of the period, so very, very different from our own.

6) Please tell us something interesting you found out about this period during your research?

I became very interested in the character of King John. We usually hear about him only as the wicked brother who tried to usurp good King Richard’s throne. That’s all from the Robin Hood sagas, and of course, we know Robin Hood was not entirely true at all. Apart from the fact that I dislike the sound of “good King Richard”, I was struck by how difficult it is to judge history and historical personalities through the extremely limited documentation that remains to us, and most especially because of the bias shown by those who wrote it. I did not grow to love King John, but I do admit we have very little right to think we know him at all.

7) What other projects are you currently working on?

My big early Tudor mystery adventure/romance (SUMERFORD’S AUTUMN) is due out in hard copy this coming June. The plot is once again somewhat multi-layered, but largely concerns the so called pretender “Perkin Warbeck”. Then I have another book in the works – BELSSOP’S WIFE – and yes – it’s a historical mystery/romance, but set a little earlier this time during the first tumultuous year of Richard III’s reign. I have a passion for this period in history – and after researching the times of King John, I moved on to the late medieval and Richard III. So I have two books waiting for publication, but neither of these has a black magic or time switch element to the plot.

Now, naturally, I am writing yet another. Well, if I didn’t write all the time, what on earth would I do?

8) Where can readers find more out about you?

I have a blog, www.bgdenvil.com which gives information on my books – and of course,

 I sell both FAIR WEATHER and my other historical crime adventure SATIN CINNABAR on Amazon U.K. and U.S.A., where I also have an author’s page. And once my next book is on the market mid year – there’ll be more I hope! 

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Thanks, Barbara.

I also previously interviewed Barbara about SUMERFORD'S AUTUMN. Please check it out.

Opposing the First Emperor of China with Magic: An interview with historical fantasy author Troy Jackson

1) Please tell us about your book.

My novel, The Elementals, finds actual events that occurred some 2200 years ago in ancient China colliding with a supernatural twist. The First Emperor of China, Qin Shí Huangdi (pronounced CHIN-SHHR-HWANG-DEE) has united a region of the world that has not known peace for many hundreds of years. Some viewed him as a savior, but many saw him as a tyrant bent on furthering his own power. Upon the backs of those he conquered he began numerous projects, including the first Great Wall, the Linqu Canal, a standardized system of writing and money, and a highway system of roads. Overtaxed and overburdened, the citizens were powerless to stand up to the Emperor. However, a handful of brave men and women rose up in an effort to overthrow him. One such group is the Dragon’s Spite who must gather their strength before confronting what they view as the forces of pure evil. But first they must locate three young teenagers who hold vast supernatural powers that could bring balance to the region. Can they do so before the agents of the Emperor capture them, thus ensuring total victory?

2) Please tell us a bit about your main characters.

Unfortunately I cannot tell you much more than what I have below, or I may give away too much!

Protagonists:

Cai – a young orphan who has bounced from town to town most of her life
Shí Lin – eldest daughter of a prominent merchant
Jiao Ai – the third teenage girl who travels around with her reckless, uncaring parents
Li Jun – co-leader of the Dragon’s Spite tasked to find the three anomalies and keep them away from the Emperor

Antagonists:

Qin Shí Huangdi – the First Emperor of China who views himself as the Son of Heaven and righteous ruler of all
Li Si – the Emperor’s Prime Minister; the force behind the strict code of Legalism and many of the efforts to standardize everything in life
The Triad – three brothers, Meng Na, Meng Fei, and Meng Wen, who have declared their allegiance to the Emperor and will defend him to the death

3) What got you interested in writing a centered around China in the time of Qin Shi Huang?

I have always enjoyed history, even as a child. So it was no surprise that I latched on to it in college and received a degree in it. I have read many books and watched numerous movies and shows regarding various periods in history. But I always found myself engrossed in Chinese history. It is one of the oldest and most fascinating cultures that have ever existed on this Earth. I remember hearing about the First Emperor during a class in college and I never forgot about him. When the idea first popped in my head years ago about writing a book I thought back to a period of history that it would fit well in. Not to give too much away, but during the reign of the First Emperor, he and his Prime Minister (Li Si) hated and feared free-thinking, believing that it could lead citizens to rise up against the Qin Empire. And so they mercilessly cracked down on those they viewed as a threat, including Confucian scholars. They also burned nearly all texts that existed during that time period, and is why there is very little actually in print about the reign of the First Emperor. As a writer, it gave me a lot of “wiggle room” to implement my own twist to the story.

4) Many of the elements that Western people associate with China, even ancient China, are associated with somewhat later eras in Chinese history such as the Tang and Qing Eras. Did you have any concerns about setting accessibility when developing this title?

It is true that when most people think of ancient times, they think of the Egyptians, Romans, and Greeks, and generally not the Chinese. Throughout writing The Elementals I viewed it as a way of introducing Chinese history to the readership. Very little is actually known about them except maybe in the last 1,000 years, and I found it as a unique challenge to not only better educate people but to do so in an entertaining fashion.

5) What sort of research did you do when writing this book? Is your formal history background in ancient Chinese history? Was there anything particular fascinating you learned that challenged your preconceptions about this era?

In preparing to write this novel (and the subsequent novels that will hopefully be out in the next couple of years) I did a great deal of research. I’d conservatively say I put in 100-150 hours of research, including midnight shows on the History channel, seeking any website I could find on the time period, and reading several novels (including Records of the Grand Historian by Sima Qian, Tales of Emperor Qin Shihuang by Yuan Yang and Xiao Ding, and The First Emperor of China: The Greatest Archeological Find Of Our Time by Arthur Cotterell).

I received a Bachelor’s Degree in History, but there was no specific time period that I focused on. That is typically done for higher degrees in History.

As I read more and more about the First Emperor and events during that time it read to me like a TV mini-series. It had everything that today’s shows include and what audiences demand, from political intrigue to betrayals to a grand sense of good versus evil.

6) Do you have any links to any excerpts you'd like to share?

If by excerpts you mean from my book, I would direct anyone to Amazon or Barnes and Noble, where they can view the first eight chapters of The Elementals to get a taste and feel for it.

7) Please tell us about your other projects.

Currently I am plodding along in writing book two of The Elementals. It progresses the story and sets things up for the climatic conclusion set for the third and final book. I am hoping to have book two out by the end of 2013 or early 2014, and book three by the end of 2014 or early 2015.

I am also getting the word out on The Elementals. As a new author I am starting from the very beginning and having to really work to get my name and my work out there for people to see. Hopefully enough will enjoy it and spread the word. After seeing reviews on it I can say, “So far, so good!”

Finally, I am busily working on my website, Tempest Works (http://www.tempestworks.com), which is meant to not only introduce people to The Elementals, but all of my future works, and also keep readers in tune with the publishing world. Since I first launched it last year I have posted a great many interviews on my blog for people to check out.

Thank you for your time!

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The Elementals can be purchased at Amazon and Barnes and Noble.

The Great War and the Homeland: An interview with historical fiction author Diana Jackson

1) Please tell us about your book, Ancasta: Guide me Swiftly Home. 

In Ancasta we live with our family from Riduna my first novel, in Woolston, Southampton from 1910 and through the Great War, but it’s an unusual story. We witness first-hand the early flight of flying boats which changed the lives and economy of the local people, but it is the women whose lives are altered forever. Ancasta means 'The Swift One,' and is allegedly the Anglo Roman Goddess of the River Itchen. There is a sense of prayer through the ages as my characters, like the Roman's before them, looked out towards Southampton Water and pray for with swift and safe return of their loved ones.

2) Please tell us a bit about your characters. 

Harriet the recently widowed matriarch of the story has an energy for life and enthusiasm. In the war she turns her guest house into a convalescence home for recovering wounded. She is still the one who calmly holds the family together through crisis and loss. Sarah her daughter is more headstrong. She relishes her new freedoms and changing status as she begins to work at the new flying boat works, Supermarine, but there is a price to pay.

Two of Harriet's sons led me, not to the muddy fields of France, but to India and Turkey. Happy go luck Jack is full of adventure and joined the newly formed RNAS whereas Tom is dismayed to find himself journeying so far from home. The third son Ernest continues as a foreman of Supermarine throughout the war, taking on the responsibility of the father role within the family as well as looking after his own young family. One character whose presence is ever felt but rarely present is Edward, Harriet's sweetheart from the island of Riduna where she was born.

3) Three important centenaries of events involved in your book are coming up. Please tell us a bit about those. 

The RNAS Calshot was first opened in March 1913 and Jack volunteered to work there as a civilian engineer before joining up at the start of the war.

The first Schneider Trophy Contest, a speed flight competition of amphibian aircraft was in April 1913. Although not directly part of my novel, Supermarine went on to win the competition outright in 1931 and the earlier event of 1919 in Bournemouth was discussed by Ernest and Harry Harper, the air correspondent of The Daily Mail who is staying in Harriet's guest house.

The Supermarine Works were opened in October 1913, better known, of course, for RJ Mitchel's development of the Spitfire for WW2.

4) What inspired you to write about this time period? 

My first novel was set between 1966 and 1910. Ancasta is a sequel to Riduna although it is written to stand alone but my own family lived in Woolston at that time and my Great Grandmother did have a guest house at the time of the Schneider Trophy. This formidable lady inspired my writing.

5) Please tell us a bit about your research process and tools.

Whereas with Riduna I researched from books in libraries and museums, for Ancasta I continued to do the same, but I also reached out to experts in their fields. It is their support an enthusiasm which has made the experience so enjoyable and many have checked chapters for accuracy in the historical content. I wanted the novel to be believable, for the author to live life at the times through the eyes of my fictional characters, who led me on many merry paths I had not imagined when the novel was conceived. I tried not to rely on the internet but to find a primary source where I could.

6) Is there anything surprising you learned about this period when doing research?

Lots. I expected Tom to go to the Western Front as a cyclist messenger - he worked in a bicycle shop before the war you see, but discovered that The Ninth Hampshire Cyclist's Regiment went to India. I had already drafted the chapter so that meant a total rewrite. Also, if someone had told me ten years ago that I would be spending days researching about flying boats I would have laughed. Of course, only a small part of research actually ends in the novel but I was hooked. To learn that many in England expected Flying Boats to be the mainstay in Civil Aviation because, as an island passengers felt safer if they could land on sea, was a bit of an eye opener too!

7) Please tell us briefly about your other works.

While researching the third in the Riduna Series set between 1020 and the early thirties, I have two projects on the go. I've recently finished compiling the memoirs of a 103 yr old. Norman shared the story of his life on Video. Watch this space!

I'm also two-thirds into completing a murder mystery set locally here in Bedfordshire, but there's a bit of history in it too. It's been a challenge to write, keeping all the threads going, but the research has been less intensive.

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Thanks, Diana.

If you'd like to learn more Diana, please visit http://www.dianamaryjackson.co.uk/.

Diana's books are available for sale at Amazon.

Facing Evil Cloaked in Righteousness: An Interview with Historical Fiction Author Anne Sweazy Kulju

Today, I'm talking with Anne Sweazy Kulju about her historical tale of perseverance in the face of a very personal form of evil, The Thing With Feathers.

She's also doing a giveaway for a Nook Book Glowlight e-reader, so please make sure to click on the link after the interview and enter.

1) Tell us about your book.

The Thing With Feathers  a tightly paced story about a young girl in big trouble, in 1927 Oregon. Blair lives on a sparsely-populated area of the coast, she is just sixteen, and she’s pregnant. Life would have been scary enough, but her father is also the town’s fire-and-brimstone Baptist preacher…and he’s Blair’s rapist.

When the youngest son of a wealthy dairy farmer helps Blair, the preacher turns out to be pretty unforgiving, and he spends the better part of three decades reigning hell down upon the farmer’s family, their friends, and anyone else who might oppose him.

As with all tragic heroes, Blair must ultimately save herself. The story has its humorous moments, its heart-ripping times, and several bitter-sweet love relationships. It was written with a design to remind folks there is always hope, even when things seem in their darkest hour, or “in the chillest lands.”

2) What inspired this book?

A vintage photo of a young girl, found during restoration of my 1906 Victorian farmhouse (which is also the setting for the story).

3) When dealing with historical settings, there certainly are a lot to choose from. What was it about turn-of-the-century Cloverdale, Oregon that attracted you?

It seemed to be the time-period when the photo was taken, but it was also the time when Clyde Hudson, a famous Oregon photographer, the man credited with bringing radio to the coast, and from all accounts a wonderful human being, was in his prime. I modeled my hero, Sean Marshall, after him. The fact that I lived in his house made it pretty easy to nail the setting.

4) What primary themes does this book explore?

While there’s breath, there’s hope.

Practice forgiveness.

God expects us to fight for our lives, fight for survival.

Universal-Justice--a belief that when man’s justice fails, which it often does, one should trust God to right the wrongs. *There’s a warning that His justice might take a bit longer than we hope. We should be patient with that.

I hope I succeeded in conveying plenty of Christian themes throughout. I wanted my good characters to be genuinely good people, and I believe they are. At the same time, they had to be realistic--so, my goodness, they’re not Saints; who among us, is?

5) You've described this book at times as a saga. What does that mean to you, and how did it affect the writing of this book?

A saga is merely an epic constructed of prose instead of poetry. Both are written about famous or heroic men and women. The Thing with Feathers is a saga, because it’s prose which follows the trials and tribulations of the same group of heroic men and women, over a period of decades.

I’m not sure the genre distinction did affect the writing of the book, at all. The double-duty genre wasn’t really something I was conscious of while writing. Once I have covered the research well enough for me to “live in my story,” I concentrate on the characters and their respective genuineness, almost to exclusion, because they move my story forward.

6) Do you have an excerpt you'd like to share?

Sure. I really love my Preacher Bowman character. Boy, he’s evil! I set out to create a real bad guy, and I believe I succeeded; Bowman seems to possess not a single, saving, Grace. Here’s one of his scenes:

He’d done this once already this week. He knew it was dangerous. He wasn’t rattlebrained; he might be reckless… But he’d weighed the chance he’d be recognized against the incredible number of firefighting men who came from all over the south, west and further, and swarmed the town of Tillamook. He then considered the propitious number of whores who had descended upon the town in response to all those men. Finally, the squalid room he’d rented was on the opposite side of town, about as far as one could be from the downtown strip, and Bowman was satisfied he would remain unnoticed. Not even Welby knew where he was at the moment. Get a radio so I can contact you whenever I need to. Let the boy keep his pa’s gifts, or plan to replace ’em yourself. Don’t go celebratin’ without my permission…(chug) you ain’t respectable, you ain’t worth a box a‘ hair to me…” he wagged his head from side to side as he silently mimicked Otis Welby in a most unflattering way. A slow smile stretched feline-like across his narrow-lipped maw. He took a good long pull on his brown jug, looked sideways and saw the whore was watching him. Then he took another long chug, that time splashing a little on his mushrooming midsection. He hated Otis Welby. The man had been ordering him around--intimidating him--ever since the Tjaden wedding. Four years of extortion, that’s what it was.

He looked her way again and the whore quickly averted her eyes. But he’d seen enough to know the woman was a little fearful of him. Bowman liked that. It made everything so much more exciting. Tied with her hands to the iron headboard, face down, Bowman had promised her she would not be hurt, but he could see she did not entirely believe him. Yes, there was that fear, that trepidation…my God, how he’d missed that… “Have you ever heard of the Marquis de Sade, my dear?” he asked.

           

7) Please tell us a bit about your writing background.

A bit is about all that I can tell you about my writing background. I started writing by the seat of my pants following an auto accident that left me with serious injuries. I don’t have an MFA--I don’t even have a B.A., in English. So, I can’t claim any educational background.

As for practical experience, I never worked at a newspaper or magazine. I did a little writing, of newsletters, correspondences, that sort of thing, for a small utility company in California. It’s where I learned to proofread and edit my work. I found it amazing how quickly one could ascend the proverbial corporate ladder, when one could write well. Apparently, I could write well. But, I never wrote anything creative until I was well into my thirties.

I wrote three novels while recovering from injuries, surgeries, and what-not. The first two novels were pretty darned good, I thought, considering neither had received an even cursory edit-job. But, the third was atrocious. I wanted to make darned sure it never saw the light of day as a work ascribed to me, at some future time when I just knew I would be an accomplished author of literary fiction…so I burned it in my woodstove. There was no internet. There were no copies. I saved only a single chapter, which I reworked into a short story of horror fiction called “Not Quite Dead.” That story and another one, “The Party Favor” were included in the anthology Agony in Black. Besides those two short stories, I recently took Honorable Mention in The Source Annual Fall Fiction Contest for my humorous short-short story, “The Dog Sniffer-er.” I also self-published a recipe and local history book for my Bed & Breakfast Inn, but that was decades ago.  So, to be completely candid, I had zero creative writing education, and not a whisper of professional writing in my background--in fact, I never even wrote so much as a short story, before I wrote three novels--two of ‘em good!

I know some authors would hide (or pad) a writing background as thin as mine. But I’m hoping the truth inspires other would-be authors, who I know are out there, to go after a publishing contract. There are so many folks who know in their hearts they can write, but they shrink from going after a writing career because they have no professional standing. I’ll admit, it’s intimidating; I don’t know that I would have done it, if Fate, or whomever, hadn’t interfered and taken my life in a new direction. The truth is, if you can write and you are willing to put in the hard (marketing) work that ALL publishers expect from their unknown authors, you can do it. Whip those ever-important (one-page!) query letters into shape and start submitting your best work to publishers who accept online submissions. A simple internet search can tell you top ones in the country, and a query placed at a professional platform, like LinkedIn, will tell you the ones to stay away from.

8) Please tell us about your other work.

Thank you for asking about my current works. My final edit for Bodie went back to the publisher several weeks early; it took only ten days to incorporate minor changes, additions and the ever-important deletions, which gave my manuscript a nice polish. I have written the promotional copy (back cover trailer), and I would appreciate hearing what you think of it (plus, it will tell you about the book):

“Bad Whiskey, Bad Weather, Bad Men…” BODIE, in the California

desert, was the deadliest town in America’s history.

Lara and Lainy survived foster care and all its horrors, but the experience left them incomplete in that they had no knowledge of the people they came from. Unknowingly, until now, each of them has had a reoccurring dream for more years than they can remember—the same dream. When the girls are regressed by a therapist anxious to publish their story, they learn shocking details about themselves, an unsolved murder in Bodie, California, and a massive cover-up. They want to investigate--but a mining executive can’t allow the “Dream Sisters” to go poking around Bodie, anymore than he could allow the therapist to go public and threaten his thirty-five million dollar deal. Are the “Bad Men from Bodie” really dead? Join Lainy and Lara as they dig up shocking secrets in Bodie. This book is based on a true story--the authors own!

As for my WIP (work-in-progress), Grog Wars, I have to admit, the other manuscript’s final edit has taken precedence. But with only the final type-setting read-through to go on Bodie, I am looking forward to getting back to my protagonists, Burke and Lily. This one is Historical Fiction/Adventure about the first German lager-brewers to come to the Pacific Northwest. It’s a journey which sweeps across three continents, by traveling barely-seaworthy vessels or the savage-infested Oregon Trail, during the four years from 1848 to 1852--a most dangerous time to be a Portlander. I have a short broadcast promotional copy I can leave you with--I hope it piques your interest:

Before there was a Civil War….

They called them Brew Wars, in Milwaukee;  they were the feared River Wars, in Chicago. But in Portland, Oregon, Shanghai Capital of the World, they were the notorious Grog Wars. Brewing here can be murder…

Thank you so much for the interview. I had fun with your questions; I hope your readers enjoy learning some things about me and my books!

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Thanks, Anne.

If you'd like to see more from Anne, you can visit her at her website, www.AnneSweazyKulju.com / www.Historical-Horse-Feathers.com or find her at any of the following places:

Website | Facebook | Twitter | Goodreads | Scribd | Linkedin | RedRoom |

Smashwords | Amazon | Library Things

On January 4th, she'll be guest blogging at the Wise Words Book Blog.

The thing with feathers can be purchased at Amazon.

If you're interested in entering the giveaway for the Nook Book Glowlight, please click here:

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