tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-378314052024-03-13T08:30:18.841-04:00Unusual HistoricalsA handful of historical authors brave the wilds of unusual settings, times, and characters to create distinctive, exciting novels just outside of the mainstream. Join us as we chronicle the trials and rewards of our quest - from research and writing to publication and establishing lasting careers.Heatherhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11573707165019266775noreply@blogger.comBlogger2343125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-37831405.post-34673680114083354742017-12-03T14:52:00.001-05:002018-01-01T09:42:48.059-05:00Unusual Historicals is closed<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #505050; font-family: "georgia" , "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">After more than 10 years, the Unusual Historicals blog has been closed. Thank you to all guests, contributors, and readers. We hope you have enjoyed our posts and found them informative. No future content will be posted to the blog </span><span style="background-color: white; color: #505050; font-family: "georgia" , "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">and the comments feature is disabled. Posts will remain available and searchable on the site. </span><span style="background-color: white; color: #505050; font-family: "georgia" , "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">Please use the SEARCH function on the left to find our past articles.</span></span></div>
Lisa J Yardehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05111498397731973454noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-37831405.post-3278442449695470522017-09-03T10:35:00.005-04:002017-09-03T10:37:37.550-04:00Author Interview: Xina Marie Uhl on WHITER PASTURES<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;">This week, we're pleased to welcome author <a href="http://eepurl.com/DoEz5" target="_blank">Xina Marie Uhl</a> with her latest release, <b><i>WHITER PASTURES</i></b> (Icebound series). Here's the blurb about the novelette.</span></div>
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<i><span style="color: #222222; font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;">A romantic novelette in the Icebound series, an ongoing collection of polar delights.</span></i></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;"><i><span style="color: #222222;">Behold dogsleds and penguins. Howling winds and cold, pitiless wastes. This is Antarctica, where the intrepid inhabitants of the frozen ends of the earth battle the terrain, and each other, to find love—in a past much like that of the early 1900s. </span></i><span style="color: #222222;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="color: #222222; font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;">Reluctant spinster Florance Barton fled to the British Antarctic base to escape a scandalous love affair. Amidst the handful of other women there, Florance is the perfect chambermaid, meek, mild, and forgettable. No one has a clue that she’s also a novice spy. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #222222; font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;">When handsome young Handy McHanagan arrives at the base, he sets everyone agog. He’s charming, artistic, and ... an accomplished gardener. His arrival may be a mistake on the part of naval command. Or is it something more sinister?<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #222222; font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;">Killer seals and subzero ice storms and aren’t the only danger in Antarctica: a enemy spy is on the loose. Florance has been ordered to choose between queen and country and her heart. Because penguin is off the menu now<i>—</i>and murder is its replacement.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 25.68px;"><br /></span><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 25.68px;">Get your copy:</span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 25.68px;"><br /></span><span style="font-size: large; line-height: 25.68px;">Ebook (<a href="http://amzn.to/2tl6ory">Amazon</a>: Kindle Unlimited or $1.49 purchase price)<br /><a href="http://xcpublishing.net/whiter-pastures/">XC Publishing</a> / ISBN-13: 978-1-930805-91-0 / 41 pages<br /><a href="http://xuwriter.wordpress.com/">Author website</a> / <a href="http://amzn.to/2tzvK1D">Amazon book page</a> / <a href="http://bit.ly/2tkywN7">Goodreads book page</a></span></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;"><b>**Q&A with Xina Marie Uhl<i>**</i></b></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;"><i><span style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; line-height: 115%;"><span style="color: #990000;">Before we get started, I have a matter of confusion to clear up. What’s with your name? Did you make it up, or were your parents just weird?</span> </span></i><span style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; line-height: 115%;"><b> </b> <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;">No, I did not make it up, although you are not the first person to ask me that question. My name is pronounced Zeena, though it is spelled X-I-N-A. When I was growing up, I would always know when the teacher got to my name due to the pause and stumbling pronouncement. After <i>Xena: Warrior Princess</i> came out people began to say my name correctly for the most part. I have met a few Zinas - who spell their names with a Z. Also a few people have admitted that their dogs were named Zina. Since I love dogs I find that a compliment. <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<i><span style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;"><span style="color: #990000;">Your latest release, Whiter Pastures, revolves around a maid in Antarctica who must overcome her timidity to carry out a distressing mission from faraway England. Dashing young Handy McHanagan is the object of attention and it’s unclear whether he’s a good guy or a bad guy until the resolution. In the course of the adventure, there are many unusual elements such as spinsters, bribery, drunkenness, explosions, panic attacks, hysteria, art exhibits, and special varieties of snuff. How on earth did you combine all these? </span><o:p></o:p></span></span></i></div>
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<span style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;">The question might better be asked: <i>why </i>did I combine all these? Alas, the answer is unknowable. I have one of those restless minds that is forever googling faraway places and reading explorers’ log books and, when I’m tired of that, watching dark comedies. Somehow that all meshed into one strange, but I hope diverting and amusing tale. <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<i><span style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;"><span style="color: #990000;">Don’t worry about that, Xina--I can safely say that the answer is yes. Tallyho, then! I can’t recall ever seeing a historical romance set in Antarctica before. When does the story take place and what caused you to set it there?</span><o:p></o:p></span></span></i></div>
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<span style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;">The story takes place in 1900, which is just prior to Robert Falcon Scott’s first Antarctic expedition, the <i>Discovery</i>, in 1901. The idea is that the British Antarctic Base at Hope Bay exists to support the explorers who come later as well as conducting their own scientific and military endeavors. <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;">As for why I set the story there, I’ve long been curious about the frozen reaches of the earth, probably because I was raised in the desert and have never lived anywhere that falls below 32 degrees Fahrenheit in winter. I’m an avid traveler and I love to read about explorers as well. It took such grit and determination and sheer physical strength to scale mountains, ride rapids, and sail iceberg-choked seas, alone and in fear for one’s life. As a soft hearted landlubber I marvel at such deeds. <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;">I can trace my fascination with Antarctica to an official beginning when I read <i>Endurance</i> by Alfred Lansing, the true story of Ernest Shackleton’s incredible voyage for the South Pole in 1914. When he and his crew became stranded the real adventure began. The book is full of more twists, turns, and excitement than any fictional thriller, and it is all the more mind-blowing because Shackleton and his men braved the most difficult circumstances to triumph in the end. Since then, I’ve done a lot of reading about Antarctica, and I’m first in line to see documentaries like the recent <i>A Year on the Ice</i>, which shows some stunning photography of the Antarctic winter, the first time that’s been done in a movie. <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<i><span style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;"><span style="color: #990000;">The story includes a few women who live and work on the British Antarctic Base in Hope Bay. How historically accurate is it? </span><o:p></o:p></span></span></i></div>
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<span style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;">Women weren’t part of the Antarctic bases. In fact, the British Antarctic Base wasn’t built until 1945. However, the Swedes discovered the area in 1902 and built a stone hut in 1903 which still stands in part today. The Norwegian Polar Institute has a great map of Antarctica to orient readers below, with the Hope Bay station located at the very tip of the Antarctic Peninsula near Deception Island.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;">Because the British base wasn’t actually established until 1945, I took liberties with that detail. I also took liberties with setting women there. I did give them roles that women would likely perform such as cooks, maids, and secretaries. The protagonist, Florance, is a maid. When she’s not spying for certain Scandinavians, that is. As you can probably tell, the story has a decidedly quirky bent, but besides that, and the liberties I took with characters, the story is accurate, but most decidedly fiction. In addition to writing historical fiction, I write historical nonfiction as a freelancer, and I have two degrees in history. So I’m a mean researcher. But good history does not always translate into good fiction so the narrative must always come first. Still, it was loads of fun researching Antarctic expeditions, and my favorite form of procrastination when I should have been writing. I even consulted supply lists to make sure that I was mentioning the correct foods. Can’t forget mockturtle soup and laxative vegetables, you know!<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<i><span style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;"><span style="color: #990000;">The main character’s name, Florance, is spelled in an unusual manner. There are also unusual names throughout the story - Handy, Gorge, and Electa. Is that intentional?</span><o:p></o:p></span></span></i></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;"><span style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; line-height: 115%;">Yes, definitely. I happened upon </span><span style="line-height: 115%;"><a href="http://mentalfloss.com/article/53301/least-popular-american-baby-names-according-early-records"><span style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; color: #1155cc;">this article</span></a><span style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial;"> on the Mental Floss website about the least popular American baby names from 1880 through 1930, according to Social Security records. The names are, by turns, cringe-worthy and hilarious. It’s fascinating to see the diversity and the bad spellings, though really not terribly surprising, I suppose. We have some strangely spelled names today, too. Anyhow, a perfect storm formed in my mind - the explorer mania, Antarctic interest, bizarre names, and my silly sense of humor collided. I decided to write a series of stories called Icebound, which would focus on relationships at the frozen ends of the earth, and I would use names from this list. There are plenty to choose from and they should lead to lots and lots of stories.<o:p></o:p></span></span></span></div>
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<i><span style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;"><span style="color: #990000;">The story is a mix of genres - historical, humor, romance, action. What does that mix say about your writing in general?</span><o:p></o:p></span></span></i></div>
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<span style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;">That I don’t like to color inside the lines, I suppose. I have fiction that is fantasy, humor, cat-related, romantic, and a mixture of all of the above. I want readers to be fully entertained and engaged by my work and to me, that means operating on a number of different levels, genre-wise. The heart and soul of the Icebound stories is relationships, though. That’s why I say they are romances with historical and humorous elements. <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;"><i><span style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; line-height: 115%;"><span style="color: #990000;">Last question: what’s next after </span></span></i><span style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; line-height: 115%;"><span style="color: #990000;">Whiter Pastures</span><i><span style="color: #990000;">? </span><o:p></o:p></i></span></span></div>
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<span style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;">That would be a novella in the Icebound series called <i>All Mouth and No Trousers</i>. It will be debuting soon - at the end of August. It’s a standalone story, but it takes place with the same characters--in different degrees of importance--as <i>Whiter Pastures</i>.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;"><span style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; line-height: 115%;">Thanks so much for having me here! I hope you’ll check out </span><span style="line-height: 115%;"><a href="https://www.amazon.com/Whiter-Pastures-Sweet-Historical-Icebound-ebook/dp/B073R1FK4F/"><i><span style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; color: #1155cc;">Whiter Pastures</span></i></a><i><span style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial;"> </span></i><span style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial;">for yourself. I think you’ll agree that it earns its place here on Unusual Historicals!<o:p></o:p></span></span></span></div>
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<b><span style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span></span></b></div>
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<b><span style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;">About the Author<o:p></o:p></span></span></b></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;"><span style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; line-height: 115%;">Xina Marie Uhl spends her days laboring in obscurity as a freelance writer for educational projects and dreaming of ways to scrounge up enough cash to: 1. travel the world, and 2. add to her increasing menagerie of dogs, cats, and other creatures. The rest of the time she writes fantasy, romance, historical fiction, and humor. She is the author of fantasy novel</span><span style="line-height: 115%;"><a href="http://xcpublishing.net/necropolis-by-xina-marie-uhl/"><span style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; color: windowtext; text-decoration-line: none;"> </span></a><a href="http://xcpublishing.net/necropolis-by-xina-marie-uhl/"><i><span style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; color: #1155cc;">Necropolis</span></i></a><i><span style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial;">, </span></i><span style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial;">a collection of fantasy short stories called</span><a href="http://xcpublishing.net/the-ruling-elite-and-other-stories-xina-marie-uhl-janet-loftis/"><span style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; color: windowtext; text-decoration-line: none;"> </span></a><a href="http://xcpublishing.net/the-ruling-elite-and-other-stories-xina-marie-uhl-janet-loftis/"><i><span style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; color: #1155cc;">The Ruling Elite and Other Stories</span></i></a><i><span style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial;"> </span></i><span style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial;">(with Janet Loftis),</span><a href="http://xcpublishing.net/a-fairy-tail-and-out-of-the-bag/"><span style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; color: windowtext; text-decoration-line: none;"> </span></a><a href="http://xcpublishing.net/a-fairy-tail-and-out-of-the-bag/"><i><span style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; color: #1155cc;">A Fairy Tail and Out of the Bag</span></i></a><span style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial;">, a collection of humorous fantasy stories, and finally</span><a href="http://xcpublishing.net/the-cats-guide-to-human-behavior/"><span style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; color: windowtext; text-decoration-line: none;"> </span></a><a href="http://xcpublishing.net/the-cats-guide-to-human-behavior/"><i><span style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; color: #1155cc;">The Cat’s Guide to Human Behavior</span></i></a><span style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial;">, a humorous self-help manual for cats struggling to understand their humans.<o:p></o:p></span></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;"><span style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; line-height: 115%;">You can find her on</span><span style="line-height: 115%;"><a href="http://eepurl.com/DoEz5"><span style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; color: windowtext; text-decoration-line: none;"> </span></a><a href="http://eepurl.com/DoEz5"><span style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; color: #1155cc;">Facebook</span></a><span style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial;">,</span><a href="https://twitter.com/xuwriter"><span style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; color: windowtext; text-decoration-line: none;"> </span></a><a href="https://twitter.com/xuwriter"><span style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; color: #1155cc;">Twitter</span></a><span style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial;">, and</span><a href="https://xuwriter.wordpress.com/"><span style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; color: windowtext; text-decoration-line: none;"> </span></a><a href="https://xuwriter.wordpress.com/"><span style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; color: #1155cc;">WordPress</span></a><span style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial;">, where she writes about historical research, writing, and whatever strikes her fancy. Join her occasional </span><a href="http://eepurl.com/DoEz5"><span style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; color: #1155cc;">newsletter</span></a><span style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial;"> for character artwork, exclusive fiction, and up-to-date news on the release of her fantasy novel, <i>The King’s Champion</i>, and other projects.<o:p></o:p></span></span></span></div>
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Lisa J Yardehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05111498397731973454noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-37831405.post-70798878682148116922017-08-17T14:33:00.000-04:002017-09-03T10:37:46.073-04:00Excerpt Thursday: WHITER PASTURES by Xina Marie Uhl<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: medium;">This week, we're pleased to welcome author </span><a href="http://eepurl.com/DoEz5" target="_blank">Xina Marie Uhl</a> with her latest release, <b><i>WHITER PASTURES</i></b> (Icebound series). Join us again on Sunday for an author interview, with more details about the story. Here's the blurb about the novelette.</span></div>
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<a href="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-PKm7dFziwD0/WZXeTUsGV9I/AAAAAAAATVQ/ST0bxvNDGa8aFCgaHxn8UYkxvQ6TdEmfACLcBGAs/s1600/Icebound.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;"><img border="0" data-original-height="972" data-original-width="648" height="640" src="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-PKm7dFziwD0/WZXeTUsGV9I/AAAAAAAATVQ/ST0bxvNDGa8aFCgaHxn8UYkxvQ6TdEmfACLcBGAs/s640/Icebound.jpg" width="426" /></span></a></div>
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<i><span style="color: #222222; font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;">A romantic novelette in the Icebound series, an ongoing collection of polar delights.</span></i></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;"><i><span style="color: #222222;">Behold dogsleds and penguins. Howling winds and cold, pitiless wastes. This is Antarctica, where the intrepid inhabitants of the frozen ends of the earth battle the terrain, and each other, to find love—in a past much like that of the early 1900s. </span></i><span style="color: #222222;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="color: #222222; font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;">Reluctant spinster Florance Barton fled to the British Antarctic base to escape a scandalous love affair. Amidst the handful of other women there, Florance is the perfect chambermaid, meek, mild, and forgettable. No one has a clue that she’s also a novice spy. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #222222; font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;">When handsome young Handy McHanagan arrives at the base, he sets everyone agog. He’s charming, artistic, and ... an accomplished gardener. His arrival may be a mistake on the part of naval command. Or is it something more sinister?<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #222222; font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;">Killer seals and subzero ice storms and aren’t the only danger in Antarctica: a enemy spy is on the loose. Florance has been ordered to choose between queen and country and her heart. Because penguin is off the menu now<i>—</i>and murder is its replacement.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;"><span style="line-height: 107%;"><br /></span> <span style="line-height: 107%;">Get your copy:</span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;"><span style="line-height: 107%;"><br /></span> <span style="line-height: 107%;">Ebook (<a href="http://amzn.to/2tl6ory">Amazon</a>: Kindle Unlimited or $1.49 purchase price)<br />
<a href="http://xcpublishing.net/whiter-pastures/">XC Publishing</a> / ISBN-13: 978-1-930805-91-0 / 41 pages<br />
<a href="http://xuwriter.wordpress.com/">Author website</a> / <a href="http://amzn.to/2tzvK1D">Amazon book page</a> / <a href="http://bit.ly/2tkywN7">Goodreads book page</a></span></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;"><b>**An Excerpt from <i>WHITER PASTURES**</i></b></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;">A Novelette<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<i><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;">Hope Bay, Antarctica, 1900<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;">The coal pan in the bottom of the heater had jammed again. Florance had tried all of her usual fixes—shoving it in further and yanking it out quickly, shimmying it from side to side, and wedging the metal handle of her favorite scrub brush in it to pry it open—but nothing would work.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;">"Must you make such a racket, girl?" Electa's voice somehow managed to communicate boredom, disdain, and irritation all at once. She didn't bother looking up from her typewriter but continued to pluck the keys one by one, hunting and pecking for each as if she were a particularly choosy hen searching for the perfect piece of corn. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;">Florance gritted her teeth. Electa knew her name—Florance had informed her of it on at least three separate occasions—but she couldn't be bothered to call her anything other than <i>girl</i>. When she deigned to speak to her at all, that is.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;">It vexed Florance that people insisted upon referring to her as a girl when eternal spinsterhood was drawing ever nearer at twenty-nine years of age. Florance knew the reason for it, though. She was a rather quiet person, not a stupid one. The help always had to scurry hither and thither, seen but not heard, while the decent people carried on with the important work. The ability to be invisible was the very thing that had brought her to this frozen base to begin with, after all.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;">With a discordant screech, the coal pan slid free, unbalancing Florance so that she landed squarely on her bustle. Coal dust puffed up in a cloud around her. She sneezed. Electa rolled her kohl-lined, brilliantly blue eyes in exasperation.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;">"Sorry, Mum," Florance mumbled before she could stop herself. She was trying not to mewl so much. It's just that her mouth sometimes functioned apart from her intentions. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;">Florance patted coal dust off her once-white apron, tucked that frizzy errant piece of hair back into her bun, and slipped on her trusty leather gloves before hurrying outside to the coal bin. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;">A gale had ended late last night, and this morning was clear and eye-wateringly bright, as usual. The atmosphere down here seemed thinner and drier than back in dreary old England, and she had never quite gotten used to it. Workmen hauled cordage and secured lines while scientists checked the weather station for readings and polished and oiled the delicate motors, instruments, and generators that had to be maintained at all cost. At the coal bin, she swept aside the powdery white snow covering it with a few abrupt motions. Thank heavens it came easily, unlike in the dead of winter when it was often necessary to bring a sharp iron stake and a hammer to remove the solid glistening mass.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;">As she scooped coal out of the bin and into the pail, a bitch trotted by, three half-grown pups following in single file. Dunderwaffle must have left the kennel doors open again. This summation was supported by the sight of two male dogs snarling at one another mere yards away, hackles raised and eyes alight with malice. She had been in the line of fire of fighting mongrels once before and had suffered a nasty ankle bite as a result. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;">"Get!" she shouted. She lobbed several good-sized chunks of coal at them. The smaller of the two danced off, ears flattened against his skull. The other, a black husky with unsettling yellow eyes, stood his ground, looking directly at her with teeth bared. Refusing to give in to the impulse to shrink back, she shouted louder and stepped toward him. "Go away!"<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;">His canines shone white and fierce in the sunlight, but he slunk back before turning and trotting away as if that had been his intention all along.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;">"Menace," she accused under her breath. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;">With an awkward swing, she hefted the heavy pail of coal and made her way back to the Commandant's office to finish loading the heater.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;">She had gone no more than a dozen yards when suddenly, the weight of the pail vanished.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;">"Let me help you with that, miss," said a warm, strong male voice.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;">"Oh!" Florance squeaked. "Why, thank you, sir."<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;">A flash of white teeth and a cheerful grin. Lively brown eyes met hers.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;">"My pleasure, you can be sure." He gave a slight bow. "Handy McHanagan at your service."<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;">Did she detect a bit of a brogue? Heavens alive! Her heart fluttered like a bird caught in a trap.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;">She nodded. "Miss Florance Barton. So pleased to make your acquaintance." <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;">As they walked, she stole glances at him. Younger than her, most probably. A foot taller, at least. Thick, dark hair neatly combed back around a zigzagging side part, and underneath, a face that she found utterly, completely, transformatively gorgeous in all ways, amen. She tried to control her burgeoning excitement. He must have arrived on this morning's ship. Certainly, she would have recognized him otherwise.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;">On the steps of the administration building, he paused, looking out at the post as men scurried about hatless and in shirtsleeves. At twenty-three degrees Fahrenheit, she was practically sweating herself.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;">A vaguely troubled expression flattened his lips. "I was sure it would be different here."<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;">"In what way, sir?"<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;">His eyes flickered to hers, and he gave a rueful smile. "Greener."<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;">She didn't understand for a moment. Out here, green was for tinned vegetables and putrefying wounds, nothing else. Then she realized what he meant.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;">"Goodness, not another one! No one told you that you were headed to Hope Bay and not Hope Cay?"<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;">He expelled air from his nostrils as he shook his head.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;">"And that Hope Bay lay in Antarctica?"</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;">"Australia . . . Antarctica. They sound a bit alike."<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;"><i>No, love,</i> she thought, <i>they most certainly don't.</i><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;">"If it's any consolation, you're not the first to have made that same mistake."<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;">"I'm afraid I need a bit more than consolation right now." He looked rather crestfallen about the whole situation.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: medium;">Well, he certainly wouldn't find that inside the administrative building. Quite the opposite, instead. But she kept her opinions to herself. </span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif;"><o:p></o:p></span></span><br />
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<b><span style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;">About the Author<o:p></o:p></span></span></b></div>
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<a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/--TSxK7KpXwk/WawRiXYaHTI/AAAAAAAATXQ/8_hMQL8E2H4yVVdTJW52E_kFLQgg5bANACLcBGAs/s1600/Xina%2BUhl.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="186" data-original-width="203" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/--TSxK7KpXwk/WawRiXYaHTI/AAAAAAAATXQ/8_hMQL8E2H4yVVdTJW52E_kFLQgg5bANACLcBGAs/s1600/Xina%2BUhl.jpg" /></a></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;"><span style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; line-height: 115%;">Xina Marie Uhl spends her days laboring in obscurity as a freelance writer for educational projects and dreaming of ways to scrounge up enough cash to: 1. travel the world, and 2. add to her increasing menagerie of dogs, cats, and other creatures. The rest of the time she writes fantasy, romance, historical fiction, and humor. She is the author of fantasy novel</span><span style="line-height: 115%;"><a href="http://xcpublishing.net/necropolis-by-xina-marie-uhl/"><span style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; color: windowtext; text-decoration-line: none;"> </span></a><a href="http://xcpublishing.net/necropolis-by-xina-marie-uhl/"><i><span style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; color: #1155cc;">Necropolis</span></i></a><i><span style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial;">, </span></i><span style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial;">a collection of fantasy short stories called</span><a href="http://xcpublishing.net/the-ruling-elite-and-other-stories-xina-marie-uhl-janet-loftis/"><span style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; color: windowtext; text-decoration-line: none;"> </span></a><a href="http://xcpublishing.net/the-ruling-elite-and-other-stories-xina-marie-uhl-janet-loftis/"><i><span style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; color: #1155cc;">The Ruling Elite and Other Stories</span></i></a><i><span style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial;"> </span></i><span style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial;">(with Janet Loftis),</span><a href="http://xcpublishing.net/a-fairy-tail-and-out-of-the-bag/"><span style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; color: windowtext; text-decoration-line: none;"> </span></a><a href="http://xcpublishing.net/a-fairy-tail-and-out-of-the-bag/"><i><span style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; color: #1155cc;">A Fairy Tail and Out of the Bag</span></i></a><span style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial;">, a collection of humorous fantasy stories, and finally</span><a href="http://xcpublishing.net/the-cats-guide-to-human-behavior/"><span style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; color: windowtext; text-decoration-line: none;"> </span></a><a href="http://xcpublishing.net/the-cats-guide-to-human-behavior/"><i><span style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; color: #1155cc;">The Cat’s Guide to Human Behavior</span></i></a><span style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial;">, a humorous self-help manual for cats struggling to understand their humans.<o:p></o:p></span></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;"><span style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; line-height: 115%;">You can find her on</span><span style="line-height: 115%;"><a href="http://eepurl.com/DoEz5"><span style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; color: windowtext; text-decoration-line: none;"> </span></a><a href="http://eepurl.com/DoEz5"><span style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; color: #1155cc;">Facebook</span></a><span style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial;">,</span><a href="https://twitter.com/xuwriter"><span style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; color: windowtext; text-decoration-line: none;"> </span></a><a href="https://twitter.com/xuwriter"><span style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; color: #1155cc;">Twitter</span></a><span style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial;">, and</span><a href="https://xuwriter.wordpress.com/"><span style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; color: windowtext; text-decoration-line: none;"> </span></a><a href="https://xuwriter.wordpress.com/"><span style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; color: #1155cc;">WordPress</span></a><span style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial;">, where she writes about historical research, writing, and whatever strikes her fancy. Join her occasional </span><a href="http://eepurl.com/DoEz5"><span style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; color: #1155cc;">newsletter</span></a><span style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial;"> for character artwork, exclusive fiction, and up-to-date news on the release of her fantasy novel, <i>The King’s Champion</i>, and other projects.<o:p></o:p></span></span></span></div>
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Lisa J Yardehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05111498397731973454noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-37831405.post-39858183458527067392017-08-06T12:30:00.000-04:002017-08-06T12:30:15.666-04:00Author Interview: Susan Wittig Albert on THE GENERAL'S WOMEN<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">This week, in partnership with <a href="http://hfvirtualbooktours.com/" target="_blank">Historical Fiction Virtual Book Tours</a>, we're pleased to welcome author <a href="http://www.susanalbert.com/"><b>SUSAN WITTIG ALBERT</b></a> with her latest release, <b><i>THE GENERAL'S WOMEN</i></b>. Here's the blurb about the novel.</span></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><a href="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-vEiRYxeR0i4/WYc_e-4pubI/AAAAAAAATTA/ZEoIgWLB3b4zuNlPT_YTbyCnSwaarlu9wCLcBGAs/s1600/02_The%2BGeneral%2527s%2BWomen.jpg" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="400" src="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-vEiRYxeR0i4/WYc_e-4pubI/AAAAAAAATTA/ZEoIgWLB3b4zuNlPT_YTbyCnSwaarlu9wCLcBGAs/s400/02_The%2BGeneral%2527s%2BWomen.jpg" width="262" /></a></span></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">A
compelling story of love, betrayal, and ambition by New York Times
bestselling author Susan Wittig Albert, The General’s Women tells the
story of two women--Kay Summersby and Mamie Eisenhower—in love with the
same man: General Dwight Eisenhower.
Set during the chaotic years of World War II, The General’s Women tells
the story of the conflicted relationship between General Dwight
Eisenhower and Kay Summersby, his Irish driver/aide, and the impact of
that relationship on Mamie Eisenhower and her life in Washington during
the war. Told from three alternating points of view (Kay’s, Ike’s, and
Mamie’s), the novel charts the deepening of the relationship as Ike and
Kay move from England (1942) to North Africa (1942-43) to England,
France, and Germany before and after the Normandy landing (1944-45). At
the end of the war, Ike is faced with the heart-wrenching choice between
marrying Kay and a political future.
The story continues into the post-war years, as Ike (returning to Mamie)
becomes Army Chief of Staff, president of Columbia University, Supreme
Commander of NATO, and president of the United States. Kay, meanwhile,
struggles to create a life and work of her own, writing two memoirs: the
first (Eisenhower Was My Boss, 1948) about her war work with Ike; the
second (Past Forgetting, 1976) about their love affair. An author’s note
deals with the complicated question of the truth of Kay’s story, as it
finally appears in the posthumously-published Past Forgetting. </span></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><a href="http://amzn.to/2shGar6" rel="noopener">Amazon</a> | <a href="https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/the-generals-women-susan-wittig-albert/1125369721?ean=9780989203593" rel="noopener">Barnes & Noble</a> | <a href="https://www.chapters.indigo.ca/en-ca/books/the-generals-women/9780996904001-item.html" rel="noopener">Chapters </a>| <a href="https://www.indiebound.org/book/9780989203586" rel="noopener">IndieBound</a> | <a href="https://itunes.apple.com/us/book/the-generals-women/id1207046547" rel="noopener">iTunes</a> | <a href="https://www.kobo.com/us/en/ebook/the-general-s-women" rel="noopener">Kobo</a></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><b>Praise for The General's Women</b></span></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">"The
General's Women is an engrossing and humanizing account of a love that
blossomed during wartime and scandalized a nation... A historical novel
that is sympathetic, satisfying, and heartbreaking." —Foreword Reviews </span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><br /></span></span>
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">"A
mature, gripping emotional drama... The arc of this multifaceted novel
follows the three main characters [Ike, Kay, and Mamie] and a host of
secondary ones through the war and back into civilian life. At every
point Albert smoothly incorporates an obviously vast amount of research
into a tale of raw emotional conflict that can make for some wonderfully
uncomfortable reading." —Kirkus Reviews </span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><br /></span></span>
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">"A
brilliant work of biographical fiction that will fascinate WW2 history
fans. It tells the remarkable true story of General Dwight D Eisenhower
and his relationship with his Irish-born driver and secretary, Kay
Summersby, and with his longtime wife Mamie. It faithfully shines a
light on the hidden relationship of the man behind the D-Day landings
and what he got up to while 3,000 miles from his wife. A must read!"
—Kieron Wood, author of <i>Ike's Irish Lover: The Echo of A Sigh</i>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><b>**Q&A with Susan Wittig Albert**</b></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">We'd like to thank Susan for being a guest this week
at Unusual Historicals as she shares details about her latest novel, <i>The General’s Women</i>.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><b><span style="color: #990000;"><i>What was the inspiration behind this novel?</i></span></b><b> </b></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">Years ago, I happened on Kay
Summersby’s memoir, <i>Past Forgetting. </i>Not
long after, I saw the TV mini-series, <i>Ike:
The War Years, </i>which starred Lee Remick as Kay. I loved her for her bravery.
I wanted to know more about her than either the memoir or the film could tell
me. I especially wanted to understand her relationship to Eisenhower and know
more about what happened after the war. Did Ike really intend to divorce Mamie
and marry Kay, as President Truman insisted? If that was his intention, why
didn’t he follow through? What compelled her—and him—to do what they did?</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">I had a lot of questions that needed
answers—and for me, the best way to answer a question, always, is to tell a
story about it. This story just begged to be told. </span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><b><span style="color: #990000;"><i>How long did the
research take and when did you know you had compiled enough to finish this
novel?</i></span></b></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">The story I wanted to tell is a true story about real people, so I
felt I needed to know what happened, in as detailed a way as possible. I spent
five or six months reading the basic source material, as background. I started
with Kay’s two memoirs, one written right after the war (<i>Eisenhower Was My Boss</i>), the other (<i>Past Forgetting</i>) published posthumously in 1976; for her postwar
life, I used newspaper archives. </span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">For the war itself, I read the dramatic and detailed <i>Liberation Trilogy</i>, by Rick Atkinson.
For what went on in Eisenhower’s command, I relied heavily on the chatty,
gossipy contemporaneous diary kept by Harry Butcher, Ike’s naval aide (<i>My Three Years with Eisenhower)</i>—fascinating
reading. For Eisenhower, Jean Edward Smith’s <i>Eisenhower in Peace and War</i> seemed to tell the most coherent
story—and to portray Ike’s flaws as clearly as his strengths. For Mamie, I read
her granddaughter Susan’s biography, <i>Mrs.
Ike</i>, plus contemporaneous newspaper reports. My sources are documented in
the book’s notes.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">Once I finished studying the background material, I knew enough to
write the first page. For me, that’s when the serious research begins, because
the writing forces me to confront what I don’t know. When I’m writing, I go
from the page to the sources and back again, adding detail, fact-checking,
adding more detail. And all the time, of course, I discover new sources by
reading footnotes and bibliographies. In that sense, the research is never
finished until the novel is finished. </span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><b><span style="color: #990000;"><i>Did you discover
any surprises during your research?</i></span></b></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">I was nearly done with the book when I accidentally discovered a
recently published biography of Kay, published in Ireland and written by Kieron
Wood, an Irish lawyer who lives not far from Kay’s family home in County Cork.
Kieron and I became email friends and he shared several enlightening insights
into Kay’s life—things he had learned from his Irish sources. I was glad to
have his information in time to incorporate it into the story itself. And glad
that he agreed with the way I told Kay’s story.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">Another surprise grew on me as I worked through the book and began
to realize the enormous efforts made by Ike’s postwar staff and his family to
cover up his relationship with Kay. They tried—pretty successfully, as it
turned out—to erase Kay from his life and to discredit her account of their
affair. For instance, I learned that the affair threatened to become an issue
in the presidential campaign of 1952 and there was some interesting
behind-the-scenes maneuvering to keep it quiet. I guess I shouldn’t have been surprised at
that, given the cover-ups we’ve seen in politics over the years. But I was.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><b><i><span style="color: #990000;">What makes your
major characters most compelling?</span></i></b></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><br /></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">Wartime love affairs are probably a dime a dozen. Men and women
are away from home and seeking comfort wherever they can find it under the
urgent threats of war. But Eisenhower was not just any soldier: he was the top
military commander in both the North African and European theaters of war. He
had an unequalled reputation for integrity and square-dealing, and when he went
to the White House his approval ratings would be higher than any other
president. Mamie Eisenhower was widely admired for her staunch support of Ike
during the war and an irreproachable icon of middle-class values during her
eight years in the White House.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">Brave, beautiful, and intelligent Kay Summersby was the quintessential
Other Woman. During the war she was a threat to Mamie. After the war, she was a
threat to Ike’s presidential ambitions. </span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">As a love triangle, this is classic—and pretty darn compelling.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><br /></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><i><span style="color: #990000;"><b>Who is your
favorite author and why?</b></span></i></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">One of my favorite writers of biographical/historical fiction is
Tom Mallon—and my favorite work of his is <i>Watergate:
The Novel. </i>We all know the Watergate story: there is no longer any mystery
about the plot. There’s Dick Nixon, of course, on his way to total collapse by
the end of the book. And Pat Nixon, who is having a (fictional) affair that
steadies her enough to survive the holocaust of her husband’s second term. But there’s
also Howard Hunt and Rose Mary Woods, Elliot Richardson, Fred LaRue, and (my
absolute favorite) Alice Roosevelt Longworth, an iron-willed old broad who will
steal your heart. We know the plot, of course. But it turns out that we don’t
know <i>any </i>of these characters until
Mallon gives them to us, in all their many contradictory dimensions. I reread <i>Watergate </i>regularly, just to remind
myself that such books can be written.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><br /></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="color: #990000;"><i><b>What advice would
you offer other authors of fiction?</b></i></span></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">It’s the same advice I have for anyone who wants to write
anything. Find a story, stay with it until you know it better than anyone else
in the world, then write it. Do that again. And again. As many times as it
takes.</span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><br /></span></span>
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><b>ABOUT THE AUTHOR</b></span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><br /></span></span>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-OFRMYeaAb7A/WYdCt6FRARI/AAAAAAAATTM/Ki7WI46iUOELZKVerYiRG9ndorEjeCwBACLcBGAs/s1600/03_Susan%2BWittig%2BAlbert.jpg" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-OFRMYeaAb7A/WYdCt6FRARI/AAAAAAAATTM/Ki7WI46iUOELZKVerYiRG9ndorEjeCwBACLcBGAs/s1600/03_Susan%2BWittig%2BAlbert.jpg" /></a></span></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">A NYT bestselling author, Susan's books include biographical fiction (<i>A Wilder Rose</i> 2013, currently under film option; <i>Loving Eleanor</i> 2016; and <i>The General's Women</i> 2017). Her mystery fiction includes the bestselling <i>China Bayles</i> mysteries; <i>The Darling Dahlias; the Cottage Tales of Beatrix Potter</i>; and the <i>Robin Paige</i>
Victorian/Edwardian mysteries written with her husband, Bill Albert.
Working together, the Alberts have also written over 60 young adult
novels.
Susan's most recent nonfiction work includes two memoirs: <i>An Extraordinary Year of Ordinary Days</i> and <i>Together, Alone: A Memoir of Marriage and Place</i>. Her earlier nonfiction work includes <i>Work of Her Own</i>, a study of women who left their careers, and <i>Writing From Life: Telling Your Soul's Story</i>,
a guidebook for women memoirists. That book led to the founding of the
Story Circle Network in 1997. She has edited two anthologies for the
Story Circle Network: <i>With Courage and Common Sense</i> (2004) and <i>What Wildness Is This: Women Write about the Southwest</i> (2007). She currently serves as editor of StoryCircleBookReviews and co-coordinator of SCN's Sarton Women's Book Awards.
She and Bill live in the Texas Hill Country, where she writes, gardens, and tends a varying assortment of barnyard creatures.
For more information, please visit Susan Wittig Albert's <a href="http://www.susanalbert.com/" rel="noopener">website</a>. You can also find her on <a href="https://www.facebook.com/susan.w.albert.author/" rel="noopener">Facebook</a>, <a href="https://twitter.com/SusanWAlbert" rel="noopener">Twitter</a>, <a href="https://www.pinterest.com/susanwalbert/" rel="noopener">Pinterest</a>, <a href="https://plus.google.com/+SusanWittigAlbert01" rel="noopener">Google+</a>, <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/20828.Susan_Wittig_Albert" rel="noopener">Goodreads</a>, <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Susan-Wittig-Albert/e/B000AP700S/ref=ntt_dp_epwbk_0" rel="noopener">Amazon</a>, and <a href="https://www.bookbub.com/authors/susan-wittig-albert" rel="noopener">BookBub</a>.
<b> </b> </span></span></div>
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Lisa J Yardehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05111498397731973454noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-37831405.post-27852729292202098322017-06-16T10:30:00.006-04:002017-06-16T10:30:46.038-04:00New & Noteworthy: June 16<i>Happy summer to our northern-hemisphere readers!</i><br />
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<a href="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-npTPPHfEmcE/WIIYZ5XtOaI/AAAAAAAAAv4/aO_gAkZP_f8ezU4jh627RWG1SykmfSpeQCPcBGAYYCw/s1600/unnamed.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="960" data-original-width="607" height="200" src="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-npTPPHfEmcE/WIIYZ5XtOaI/AAAAAAAAAv4/aO_gAkZP_f8ezU4jh627RWG1SykmfSpeQCPcBGAYYCw/s200/unnamed.jpg" width="126" /></a></div>
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<b>Blythe Gifford</b> will be at the Romance Writers of America "Readers for Life" Literacy Autographing on Saturday, July 29, 3:00 – 5:00 p.m. ET, signing copies of her novel RUMORS AT COURT. More than 300 authors will participate. The event will be held at the Walt Disney World Dolphin Resort in the Pacifica Hall. All proceeds go to literacy organizations. For more information, visit:
<a href="https://www.rwa.org/p/cm/ld/fid=564" target="_blank">https://www.rwa.org/p/cm/ld/fid=564</a></div>
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<b style="font-weight: bold;">M.J. Neary</b> announces the release of her newest title, SIRENS OVER THE HUDSON! Though the novel is set 10 years ago and may not technically be historical fiction, it deals with the 2008 financial crisis and taps into various historical issues surrounding Wall Street and the culture of New York society. <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Sirens-Over-Hudson-M-Neary-ebook/dp/B071S9FYYR" target="_blank">Learn more at the book's Amazon page here</a>.</div>
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June brings <b>Michelle Styles </b>a bumper crop of publishing news from around the globe:</div>
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<li>SOLD TO THE VIKING WARRIOR is now available in large print in the UK and Australia </li>
<li>RETURN OF THE VIKING WARRIOR is now available in Portugal </li>
<li>SAVED BY THE VIKING is out in France as <i>Un Guerrier aux Yeux Clairs</i> (The Warrior with the Clear Eyes)</li>
<li>TAMING HIS VIKING WOMAN is out in Germany as <i>Die Wilde Braut de Wikingers</i> (The Viking's Wild Bride)</li>
<li>SUMMER OF THE VIKING is out in Italy as <i>L'uomo Venuto Dal Mare</i> (The Man Who Came from the Sea)</li>
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<a href="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-46ZnZEPUwUI/WUPpLabfGRI/AAAAAAAAA3U/NouP6WGrsOATvMjclQKULOUyFHkHK54kQCLcBGAs/s1600/9782280369824.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1248" data-original-width="750" height="200" src="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-46ZnZEPUwUI/WUPpLabfGRI/AAAAAAAAA3U/NouP6WGrsOATvMjclQKULOUyFHkHK54kQCLcBGAs/s200/9782280369824.jpg" width="120" /></a><a href="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-E8_Bk5baZk0/WUPpLCqFexI/AAAAAAAAA3Q/s4YCbH2PbDE9Os39FtavCEE-M2OgiH7pgCLcBGAs/s1600/Taminghisvikingwomangerman.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="display: inline !important; margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: center;"><img border="0" data-original-height="500" data-original-width="342" height="200" src="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-E8_Bk5baZk0/WUPpLCqFexI/AAAAAAAAA3Q/s4YCbH2PbDE9Os39FtavCEE-M2OgiH7pgCLcBGAs/s200/Taminghisvikingwomangerman.jpg" width="136" /></a></div>
Heatherhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11573707165019266775noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-37831405.post-79544190196608432932017-06-11T13:00:00.000-04:002017-06-11T13:00:17.660-04:00Author Interview & Book Giveaway: Jeffrey K. Walker on NONE OF US THE SAME<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">This week, we're pleased to welcome author <a href="http://jeffreykwalker.com/"><b>JEFFREY K. WALKER</b></a> with his latest release, <b><i>NONE OF US THE SAME</i></b> (Sweet Wine of Youth, Volume 1). One lucky winner will receive a copy of the novel in Kindle format. Here's the blurb about the novel.</span></div>
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<a href="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-GCAsojgvIIw/WTmq642dQvI/AAAAAAAAS4c/wGJp-K5hEZsslhWxLTDSOP44EdkorMMlgCLcB/s1600/NOUTS_medium.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1280" data-original-width="800" height="400" src="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-GCAsojgvIIw/WTmq642dQvI/AAAAAAAAS4c/wGJp-K5hEZsslhWxLTDSOP44EdkorMMlgCLcB/s400/NOUTS_medium.jpg" width="250" /></span></a><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Fiery Deirdre Brannigan had opinions on everything. She certainly hated the very idea of war in 1914. Childhood pals Jack Oakley and Will Parsons thought it a grand adventure with their friends. But the crushing weight of her guilty conscience pushes Deirdre to leave Ireland and land directly in the fray. Meanwhile the five friends from Newfoundland blithely enlist. After all, the war couldn’t possibly last very long… </span></div>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br />They learn quickly how wrong they are and each is torn apart by the carnage in France.<br /><br />What began with enthusiastic dreams of parades and dances with handsome young soldiers turned into long days and nights in the hospital wards desperately trying to save lives. And for the good and decent young men in fine new uniforms aching to prove themselves worthy on the field of battle, the horrors of war quickly descended.<br /><br />But it is also the war which brings them together. Deirdre’s path crosses with Jack and Will when they’re brought to her field hospital the first day of the slaughter on the Somme. Their lives part, their journeys forward fraught with physical and emotional scars tossing them through unexpected and often painful twists and turns. But somehow, a sliver of hope, love and redemption emerges. And their paths cross again in St. John’s.<br /><br />When the guns finally fall silent, can Deirdre overcome her secret demons through a new life with battered Jack? Can shell-shocked Will confront his despotic father’s expectations to become the man his young family deserves?</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">**<b>Q&A with Jeffrey K. Walker</b>**</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="background: white; color: #222222;">So let's find out more about the story behind the novel...</span><span style="background: white; color: #222222;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="background: white; color: #990000;"><b><i>Why and how did you become a writer?</i></b></span><span style="background: white; color: #222222;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="background: white; color: #222222;">I’m a latecomer to fiction, having started this first novel at age 56. However, as an attorney and consultant and professor, I’ve written for a living most of my adult life—most of what lawyers do involves complex research and writing. So I came to fiction with a full tool box for doing the mechanics. It’s the world-building and storytelling that’s new and challenging for me, so <i>None of Us the Same</i> taught me a lot of the craft of writing.</span><!--[if gte vml 1]><v:shapetype
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><b><i><span style="color: #990000;"><span style="background: white;">None of Us the Same </span><span style="background: white;">is set during and after the First World War. How did you come to that time period for this historical novel?</span></span></i></b><span style="background: white; color: #222222;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="background: white; color: #222222;">Two reasons. First, I’ve always been fascinated by this period in history, much more so than the Second World War. That might seem odd for an American. I spent a lot of my legal career in public international law—treaties and law of war, that kind of thing—and the period before and after the First World War was the golden age of international law. World War II was really the final act, the denouement of the First World War—the international order was fractured by the conflict and not very effectively put back together, leaving space and oxygen for fascism, Nazism, Stalinism.</span></span><br />
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<a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-iK90sy7CHzE/WT1oGPF62lI/AAAAAAAAS5g/tVxbMkh56j8SsWNKrSdJypLbrVgb_naZQCLcB/s1600/Jeff%2BWalker%2B2.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; display: inline !important; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em; text-align: center;"><img border="0" data-original-height="278" data-original-width="364" height="152" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-iK90sy7CHzE/WT1oGPF62lI/AAAAAAAAS5g/tVxbMkh56j8SsWNKrSdJypLbrVgb_naZQCLcB/s200/Jeff%2BWalker%2B2.jpg" width="200" /></a><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="background: white; color: #222222;">Second, I set out to write a book about the terrible damage war does to the young men and women drawn into it and how they struggle with putting their lives back together after the war. Initially, I assumed I’d set the book present day, using Afghanistan or Iraq. As I dug into the project, I couldn’t shake the feeling I was appropriating the stories of young men and women struggling real time. To a guy like me who spent 20 years in uniform, it felt a little wrong. So the First World War offered a compelling alternative setting, yet with many of the same problems that young veterans face today. I guess you can say I was a bit of a coward and that landed me in 1914 rather than 2014.</span><span style="background: white; color: #222222;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="background: white; color: #990000;"><b><i>How did you approach researching the book? </i></b></span><span style="background: white; color: #222222;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="background: white; color: #222222;">I’ve been a big historical fiction fan since I was 11 or 12 and read one of my parents’ completely age-inappropriate Book of the Month Club selections</span><!--[if gte vml 1]><v:shape
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</v:shape><![endif]--><!--[if !vml]--><!--[endif]--><span style="background: white; color: #222222;">. It was something by James Michener. I can’t exactly remember which one, maybe <i>Hawaii</i>. Ever since, perhaps because Michener was such a meticulous researcher, I don’t like books with a lot of historical groaners in them—and my wife will attest that I actually groan out loud when I read inaccuracies—so I was a little neurotic about research for <i>None of Us the Same</i>. Among other things, this included a research trip to Newfoundland during iceberg season and you'll see its gems in the book. (Everyone should put Newfoundland on their Bucket List. Beautiful land with genuinely friendly people.)</span><span style="background: white; color: #222222;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="background: white; color: #222222;">I’m really drawn to social and intellectual history, so spent a lot of time reading ‘Lost Generation’ poets, novels written by veterans of the War, newspapers and magazines of the period, as well as a mountain of more traditional historical sources. Memoirs and letters were very important to me so I could get period-appropriate voices in my head. I also visited some amazing museums, like the Imperial War Museum in London and the Royal Newfoundland Regiment Museum in St. John’s. I hope it was all worth it, but I’ll leave it to readers to check their own level of groaning.</span><!--[if gte vml 1]><v:shape id="officeArt_x0020_object"
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="background: white; color: #990000;"><b><i>Did you rely on actual historical persons or are your characters 100% fictional?</i></b></span><span style="background: white; color: #222222;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="background: white; color: #222222; font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;">As 100% fictional as any character can be, I suppose. I’ve never been a big fan of “fictional biographies” in general because so few authors do them really well. I mean, there’s Hilary Mantel and then there’s the rest of us mere mortals, isn’t there? So I went to some effort to avoid using real persons. For example, my two male main characters are from Newfoundland and join that Dominion’s regiment in 1914. The First World War was a traumatic and emotional right of passage for the Newfoundlanders—they sustained huge losses for a very small place and the regiment is highly revered to this day. To not offend anyone, there is no one named in the book above the rank of captain nor above the position of platoon commander. I pulled last names for characters from the regimental roster and from old St. John’s city directories, but that’s as far as I went. My</span><span style="background: white; color: #222222; font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;"> female main character, an Irish nurse you met in the excerpt, is completely fictional albeit her hospital did exist, as did her casualty clearing station on the Somme. So I wove my fictionalized characters between the seams of real people, places, and events.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="background: white; color: #222222;">That said, the second volume in my trilogy does incorporate a historical person or two because I really needed them for narrative purposes.</span><span style="background: white; color: #222222;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="background: white; color: #990000;"><b><i>So None of Us the Same is the first volume of a trilogy? Was that a challenge your first time out—three books all at once?</i></b></span><span style="background: white; color: #222222;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;">Yeah, a little crazy wasn’t it? I wanted to approach the theme of “war changes everyone and everything” on three different levels: individual, social/cultural and political. That </span>lended<span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;"> itself quite naturally to a trilogy. All three are—or will be—heavily character-driven, but the overarching themes track these three aspects of change. </span><i style="color: #222222; font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;">None of Us the Same</i><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;"> focuses on the wide range of individual traumas and struggles. The second book—</span><i style="color: #222222; font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;">Truly Are the Free</i><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;">, should be out in the Fall. It looks at the enormous social upheavals and change caused by the War and is partly set in post-War Harlem and Paris. (It features </span>a main<span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;"> character from the storied 369th U.S. Infantry Regiment—the “Harlem Hellfighters.”) The third book, </span><i style="color: #222222; font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;">No Hero’s Welcome</i><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;">, will look at the violent political upheavals in Ireland in the wake of the British Empire’s widespread exhaustion caused by the War.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="background: white; color: #222222;">The alternative to a trilogy would have been a Michener-esque doorstopper of a saga, 800 pages long. I had serious misgivings about anyone giving a new fiction writer that much benefit of the doubt. </span><span style="background: white; color: #222222;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="background: white; color: #222222;"><b>About the Author</b></span><!--[if gte vml 1]><v:shape id="_x0000_s1026"
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="background: white; color: #222222;">JEFFREY K. WALKER has worked as a stock broker, bomber navigator, criminal lawyer, international consultant, and law professor. He’s lived in ten states and three foreign countries. Although <i>None of Us the Same</i> is his first novel, he’s written his entire life, including undergraduate sports coverage, an opinion column in his law school newspaper, hundreds of trial motions, a losing Supreme Court <i>amicus</i> brief, and several scholarly chapters and articles. He dotes on his family and has never been beaten at Whack-a-Mole.</span><span style="background: white; color: #222222;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><i><span style="background: white; color: #222222;">Connect with Jeff</span></i><span style="background: white; color: #222222;"> <i>on his author page and blog at </i></span><span style="background: white; color: #222222;"><a href="http://jeffreykwalker.com/%C2%A0" style="text-align: justify;" target="_blank">http://jeffreykwalker.com/ </a> or:</span><span style="background: white; color: #222222;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="background: white; color: #222222;"><o:p> </o:p></span><span style="background: white; color: #222222;"> </span><i><span style="background: white; color: #222222;">On </span></i><i><span lang="DA" style="background: white; color: #222222;">Instagram</span></i><i><span style="background: white; color: #222222;"> at</span></i><span style="background: white; color: #222222;"> </span><a href="https://instagram.com/jkwalker.author" style="text-align: justify;" target="_blank">https://instagram.com/jkwalker.author </a></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="background: white; color: #222222;"><o:p> </o:p></span><span style="background: white; color: #222222;"> </span><i><span style="background: white; color: #222222;">On Facebook at</span></i><span style="background: white; color: #222222;"> </span><a href="https://www.facebook.com/jeffreykwalker" style="text-align: justify;">https://www.facebook.com/jeffreykwalker</a><span style="text-align: justify;"> </span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="background: white; color: #222222;"><o:p> </o:p></span><span style="background: white; color: #222222;"> </span><i><span style="background: white; color: #222222;">On Twitter at</span></i><span style="background: white; color: #222222;"> </span><a href="https://twitter.com/jkwalkerauthor?lang=en" style="text-align: justify;" target="_blank">@jkwalkerAuthor</a></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="background: white; color: #222222;"><o:p> </o:p></span><span style="background: white; color: #222222;"> </span><i><span style="background: white; color: #222222;">Or Email him at</span></i><span style="background: white; color: #222222;"> </span><span class="Hyperlink1"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;"><a href="mailto:jeff@jeffreykwalker.com"><span style="background: white; color: #222222;">jeff at jeffreykwalker dot com</span></a></span></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><i><span style="background: white; color: #222222;"><b>None of Us the Same</b> </span></i><span style="background: white; color: #222222;">is available at the following:</span><span style="background: white; color: #222222;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="background: white; color: #222222;"><o:p> </o:p></span><span class="Link"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;"><span style="color: black;"><a href="http://www.amzn.to/2qvJSJm">www.amzn.to/2qvJSJm</a></span></span></span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12pt;"> (Amazon)</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;"> </span><span class="Link"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;"><span style="color: black;"><a href="http://bit.ly/2qxoMd3">http://bit.ly/2qxoMd3</a></span></span></span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12pt;"> (Barnes& Noble)</span></span></div>
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Lisa J Yardehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05111498397731973454noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-37831405.post-43779698121996634072017-06-08T16:00:00.001-04:002017-06-11T11:43:32.038-04:00Excerpt Thursday: NONE OF US THE SAME by Jeffrey K. Walker<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">This week, we're pleased to welcome author <a href="http://jeffreykwalker.com/"><b>JEFFREY K. WALKER</b></a> with his latest release, <b><i>NONE OF US THE SAME</i></b> (Sweet Wine of Youth, Volume 1). One lucky winner will receive a copy of the novel in Kindle format. Join us again on Sunday for an author interview, with more details about the story behind the series. Here's the blurb about the novel.</span></div>
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<a href="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-GCAsojgvIIw/WTmq642dQvI/AAAAAAAAS4c/wGJp-K5hEZsslhWxLTDSOP44EdkorMMlgCLcB/s1600/NOUTS_medium.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1280" data-original-width="800" height="400" src="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-GCAsojgvIIw/WTmq642dQvI/AAAAAAAAS4c/wGJp-K5hEZsslhWxLTDSOP44EdkorMMlgCLcB/s400/NOUTS_medium.jpg" width="250" /></span></a><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Fiery Deirdre Brannigan had opinions on everything. She certainly hated the very idea of war in 1914. Childhood pals Jack Oakley and Will Parsons thought it a grand adventure with their friends. But the crushing weight of her guilty conscience pushes Deirdre to leave Ireland and land directly in the fray. Meanwhile the five friends from Newfoundland blithely enlist. After all, the war couldn’t possibly last very long… </span></div>
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br />They learn quickly how wrong they are and each is torn apart by the carnage in France.<br /><br />What began with enthusiastic dreams of parades and dances with handsome young soldiers turned into long days and nights in the hospital wards desperately trying to save lives. And for the good and decent young men in fine new uniforms aching to prove themselves worthy on the field of battle, the horrors of war quickly descended.<br /><br />But it is also the war which brings them together. Deirdre’s path crosses with Jack and Will when they’re brought to her field hospital the first day of the slaughter on the Somme. Their lives part, their journeys forward fraught with physical and emotional scars tossing them through unexpected and often painful twists and turns. But somehow, a sliver of hope, love and redemption emerges. And their paths cross again in St. John’s.<br /><br />When the guns finally fall silent, can Deirdre overcome her secret demons through a new life with battered Jack? Can shell-shocked Will confront his despotic father’s expectations to become the man his young family deserves?</span><br />
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<b><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">**An Excerpt from <i>NONE OF US THE SAME</i>**</span></b></div>
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<b><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Chapter One — Deirdre</span></b></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">The old one in the last bed had riled them again. One of the trainees, impossibly young in a stiff white pinafore, stood pleading and wide-eyed. "I can't bathe Mr. Duffy again, Sister! He…he…<i><span lang="FR">touches </span></i>his…his…<i>nether parts </i>when he sees me comin' with the towel and basin," said the girl, struggling out her careful words in unconcealed mortification. Only the good Lord Himself knew what the Daughters of Charity would make of this poor girl's conundrum. But Deirdre Brannigan was a lay nurse, not that it eased the suffering of the trainee standing before her burning with embarrassment.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">"Fetch a friend or two who can hold his arms while you bathe him. 'Tis hard enough keeping everyone and everything clean without your delicate sensibilities aggravating the situation," Deirdre said with mild scolding, calm in the fretting storm.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">“I've… I've tried that," the trainee said, two others vouching the truth of her timid protest with vigorous nods. "His… <i>manhood </i>still becomes… <span lang="ES-TRAD">quite</span>… <i>tall…</i> anyways. And he likewise leers at me in a most distressin' manner." An unsettling murmur rippled across the clustered trainees, tinged with an edge of mutiny. Deirdre knew she must nip this.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">"Ladies," she began with deliberate sternness, as if she were not just a few years clear of training herself, "let us be mindful this is a charity hospital with a mission to care for the least fortunate of our Lord's children with kindness and understanding." She sucked at her cheeks a little, checking a smile that rose from her unintentional imitation of Sister Mary Evangeline. Deirdre soldiered on, channeling the formidable matron. "If our Blessed Mother could bear the pain and sorrow of kneeling by the cross of her precious Son, I would hope and pray you can muster the strength to endure the sight of an addled old man's… <i>nether part</i>. Regardless of its height." She stared down each trainee, ending with the complainant, who burst into loud sobs.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">"Bridget, you're made of sterner stuff. Dry your eyes and blow your nose now." She handed her an immaculate handkerchief, speaking quietly and taking the poor girl aside. "Come along. I’d a few tricks from the sisters when I was a trainee myself. I'll entrust them to you, for use with present and future Mr. Duffys." She turned and gave a backward nod and scowl, signaling the stricken girl should follow and stop her sniffling.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">As the two women approached Mr. Duffy's bedside, he was gleaming with lurid anticipation. Running a purple tongue over cracked lips, he reached under the bedclothes and rubbed himself with surprising vigor given his decrepitude. Deirdre, terse and businesslike, pulled his arms over the blanket. "These will remain in plain sight, Mr. Duffy, or I'll have the porters bathe you with lye and the dandy brush from the horses." He fell into an offended silence, shocked by her unexpected <span lang="DE">bluntness</span>. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">After pulling the nightshirt over his head, Deirdre commenced bathing the spent old man, his mind half gone from decades of drink, running a soapy sponge over the yellowed skin of his sunken chest and spindle arms. She handed over the sponge to Bridget for washing his other side. Half done, they pulled the sheet back over his chest, then folded it back from his lower body, leaving him exposed upon the bed. A crooked grin crept across the old man's toothless gob, his withered penis rising from the greasy grey pubic hair. Bridget gave a short gasp and began a turn that Deirdre froze with an icy glance. Drawing a wooden tongue depressor from the pocket of her apron, Deirdre bent it back and thwacked the old man's withered scrotum.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">"Aggghhh! Y’are a right demon bitch, y'are! Damn ya to hell, woman!" the old man yelped. He curled on his side, both arms shoved between his legs. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Deirdre turned to Bridget and said, clear and even, "You can finish bathing Mr. Duffy now. He'll be giving no more trouble this day." Not taking her eyes from the old man, she handed the tongue depressor with dignified ceremony to Bridget and said, "I recommend liberal use until such time as he learns to act proper at bath time."<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Bridget would share her secret with the others before the hour was out, so Deirdre hoped. She walked back down the double line of beds filled by broken men with a litany of illnesses. Some would soon be back to their poverty and filth. Others would pass to their reward here—perhaps tonight, maybe in a week or a month.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">As she reached the day room, the door flew open and trainees flushed out in their identical uniforms, like schoolgirls off to summer holiday. Deirdre halted one by the arm and asked, "What's all the caterwaulin' here? You'll disturb the patients with your silliness."<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">"'Tis war! Have you not heard, Sister? We're to fight the Germans!" The girl's eyes were wide and <span lang="NL">wild</span> with anticipation of parades and dances and handsome young soldiers in fine uniforms. She knew the girl had every reason to be thrilled, young as she was. She released her, the girl scampering down the corridor to join with her friends in their jubilation.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">In the now deserted room, Deirdre could hear the bells of Dublin—Catholic, Protestant, no matter—commencing to sound. First just the one, probably St. Patrick’s, this side of the Liffey, a few blocks away. Then another, more distant than the first. Likely the Pro Cathedral off Sackville Street, the Catholics joining from the other side. Soon enough, every church in the city added its peal. Above the din, she could make out cheering, a crowd already gathering on St. Stephen's Green. Deirdre stared down from her window, scowling at the burgeoning celebration on the Green below. Speaking to no one, maybe everyone, she muttered into the antiseptic air, under the crescendo of bells.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">"Those stupid, stupid old men. What have they gone and done to us now?”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br />Buy <i><b>None of Us the Same</b></i> at: <a href="http://amzn.to/2qvJSJm">http://amzn.to/2qvJSJm</a></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><b>Learn more about author Jeffrey K. Walker</b></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Website: <a href="http://jeffreykwalker.com/%C2%A0" target="_blank">http://jeffreykwalker.com/ </a></span><br />
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Lisa J Yardehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05111498397731973454noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-37831405.post-29963713623101187432017-05-21T11:30:00.000-04:002017-05-21T11:30:34.081-04:00Author Interview & Book Giveaway: J Tullos Hennig on SUMMERWODE<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="background-color: white; text-align: justify; text-indent: 0in;">This week, we're pleased to welcome author <b><a href="http://www.jtulloshennig.net/" target="_blank">J TULLOS HENNIG</a></b></span><span style="background-color: white; text-align: justify; text-indent: 0in;"> </span><span style="background-color: white; text-align: justify; text-indent: 0in;">with <i><b>SUMMERWODE</b></i>, from the Books of the Wode series</span><span style="background-color: white; font-style: italic; text-align: justify; text-indent: 0in;">. </span><span style="background-color: white; text-align: justify; text-indent: 0in;">One lucky winner will receive a copy of the novel in e-book format.<i> </i></span><span style="background-color: white; text-align: justify; text-indent: 0in;">Here's the blurb about the novel.</span></span><br />
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<i><span lang="EN-CA"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">The Summer King has come to the Wode...</span></span></i></div>
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<i><span lang="EN-CA"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Yet to which oath, head or heart, shall he hold?<o:p></o:p></span></span></i></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><span lang="EN-CA">Once known as the Templar assassin Guy de Gisbourne, dispossessed noble Gamelyn Boundys has come to Sherwood Forest with conflicted oaths. One is of duty: demanding he tame the forest’s druidic secrets and bring them back to his Templar Masters. The other oath is of heat and heart: given to the outlaw Robyn Hood, avatar of the Horned Lord, and the Maiden Marion, embodiment of the Lady Huntress. </span>The three of them—Summerlord, Winter King, and Maiden of the Spring—are bound by yet another promise, that of fate: to wield the covenant of the Shire Wode and the power of the <i>Ceugant</i>, the magical trine of all worlds. In this last, also, is Gamelyn conflicted; spectres of sacrifice and death haunt him.</span></div>
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<span lang="EN-CA"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Uneasy oaths begin a collision course when not only Gamelyn, but Robyn and Marion are summoned to the siege of Nottingham by the Queen. Her promise is that Gamelyn will regain his noble family’s honour of Tickhill, and the outlaws of the Shire Wode will have a royal pardon.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-CA"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">But King Richard has returned to England, and the price of his mercy might well be more than any of them can afford...</span></span><br />
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<span lang="EN-CA"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><b>**Q&A with J Tullos Henning**</b></span></span></div>
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<b><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="color: #990000;">What are you currently working on?</span><o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">The fifth novel, <i>Wyldingwode</i>, to complete the Books of the Wode. I'm also working on several new speculative fiction short stories, and researching a new historical novel.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<b><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="color: #990000;">Speaking of the Wode Books, when will the next one be out? And how many books are planned?</span><o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">The 4th book,<span style="color: red;"> </span><i>Summerwode, </i>releases 16 May, 2017. It's on <a href="https://www.dsppublications.com/books/summerwode-by-j-tullos-hennig-377-b"><span style="color: windowtext;">preorder now</span></a>!<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">There are five novels planned in the story cycle. The duology of <i>Shirewode </i>and its prequel <i>Greenwode </i>are available began it all. A trilogy that begins with <i>Winterwode<span style="color: red;"> </span></i>will continue with <i>Summerwode</i>, and will end with <i>Wyldingwode (#amwriting).</i><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<b><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="color: #990000;">Why the LBGTQ slant on Robin Hood?</span><o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Why not?<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Don't just take my word for it, though; several scholars have explored the possibility. There are many excellent essays and non-fiction studies of Robin’s role as a cultural--and changeable--icon. <u>The Robin Hood Project</u> at The Library of Rochester is an excellent place to begin an acquaintance with the ever-morphing facets of the Robin Hood/Robyn Hode mythos.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">But I think it really <span lang="EN-CA">comes down to this: respect. Whenever you take an old warhorse of a legend, you owe it to the Story to respect its legacy, but its purpose in existence. Which means you question it, turn it over and inside out and re-imagine it, shape it to the best of your ability into a vital <i>continuation</i> of its Story. To just rehash a tired trope is disrespectful to not only the power of legend, but your own talents.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<b><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="color: #990000;">Why Robin Hood (okay, Robyn Hode) as a Druid? Why the fantasy element?</span><o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Again, why not?<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">There are so many reasons to explore Robin/Robyn as Green Man of the Forest. Legend and Myth cling to him, and rightfully so. And myth has its own truths, sometimes stronger than what is considered “fact”. <span lang="EN-CA">All too often the term fantasy is used to dismiss someone else’s belief systems. No question, I’m a great whopping history geek, but also, I’m hyper-aware (no doubt due to my Choctaw heritage) that history is suspect. Speculative, even.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><span lang="EN-CA">Not to mention, I adore speculative fiction, and am a SF/Fantasy fan from waaaay back. Eons before it was considered cool.</span><span lang="EN-CA"><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<b><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="color: #990000;">Do you do a lot of research?</span><o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Yes, indeed. I love research; have done and still do, ever on. It's not just about long hours in closed stacks, but even more the hands-on trial/error and life experience which, I hope, shall continue for some time. Most of that research never ends up as prose, granted... but it shouldn't. Having knowledge and authority speak through the storytelling is sooo much better than overwhelming an audience with "see what I know?" (Not to mention that for me, Story often trumps Fact. Because Facts can be so... chancy.)<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<b><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="color: #990000;">When did you start writing, and what are some major influences on your writing?</span><o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">I’ve been writing and drawing my own worlds for a very long time; basically since I could hold a pencil. I had an abortive writing career in the 80s, but it’s all part of the process. The books I’m writing now are much better, anyway. *grin*<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Influences...On the subtextual level, it's all about the myths, folklore, ancient stories, cultures, and possibilities. Listening to the elders share stories, and to the ideas children express before some of the less palatable aspects of culture start trying to shut them down.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">As to specific works/writers: I hail the 3 Marys: Mary Renault, Mary Stewart, and Mary O'Hara. Parke Godwin, Louise Erdrich, Ray Bradbury, Paula Gunn Allen, Starhawk, Leslie Marmon Silko, Albert Payson Terhune, Colleen McCulloch, Taylor Caldwell, Marion Zimmer Bradley, Robert Heinlein, Virginia Woolf. There are others, but these come soonest to mind. No one should regret reading any of these author's works.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">THANK YOU!<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<b><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">BUY LINKS:<o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
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<span lang="EN"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><a href="https://www.dsppublications.com/books/summerwode-by-j-tullos-hennig-377-b" target="_blank">DSP Publications</a> <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span lang="EN"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><a href="http://www.kobo.com/us/en/ebook/summerwode" target="_blank">Kobo</a> <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span lang="EN"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><a href="http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/summerwode-j-tullos-hennig/1126200669" target="_blank">Barnes & Noble</a> <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span lang="EN"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><a href="https://www.amazon.com/Summerwode-Wode-Book-Tullos-Hennig-ebook" target="_blank">Amazon</a> <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span lang="EN"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">E-books 1 & 2 in the series are currently on sale through most retailers until the 16 May release: GREENWODE is free, and SHIREWODE is $2.95!<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<b><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">About the Author</span></b></div>
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<span lang="EN-CA"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><b><a href="http://www.jtulloshennig.net/" target="_blank">J Tullos Hennig</a></b> has always possessed inveterate fascination in the myths and histories of other worlds and times. Despite having maintained a few professions in<span class="apple-converted-space"> </span><i>this</i><span class="apple-converted-space"> </span>world—equestrian, dancer, teacher, artist—Jen has never successfully managed to not be a writer. Ever.<span class="apple-converted-space"><o:p></o:p></span></span></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-CA"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Her most recent work is a darkly magical & award-winning historical fantasy series re-imagining the legends of Robin Hood, in which both pagan and queer viewpoints are given respectful voice.</span></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><span lang="EN"><a href="http://musings.jtulloshennig.net/" target="_blank">Musings blog</a> </span>(You can subscribe to my newsletter at either the Musing blog or main site—you’ll receive the first and earliest notification on all updates and news, plus a gift: several short stories seldom seen in the wild.)</span></div>
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<span lang="EN"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><a href="http://www.bookbub.com/authors/j-tullos-hennig" target="_blank">Bookbub</a><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<a href="http://www.goodreads.com/author/show/5827280.J_Tullos_Hennig" target="_blank"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Goodreads</span></a></div>
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<a href="http://www.facebook.com/TheWodeBooks/" target="_blank"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">The Wode FacebookPage</span></a></div>
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<a href="http://www.facebook.com/jtullos.hennig/" target="_blank"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">JTH’s profile onFacebook</span></a></div>
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Lisa J Yardehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05111498397731973454noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-37831405.post-66081876297905621682017-05-19T15:17:00.000-04:002017-05-19T15:17:06.730-04:00New & Noteworthy: May 19• <b>M.J. Neary</b> announces the publication of her newest novel SIRENS OVER THE HUDSON, set in Recession-era Tarrytown. The book will be released by Crossroad Press in Summer 2017. Congrats M.J.!<br />
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<b>And if you'll be at the <a href="http://hns-conference.org/" target="_blank">HNS Conference</a> in Portland, stop by and see our contributors:</b></div>
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• <b>Kim Rendfeld</b> will moderate a panel entitled "How Am I Supposed to Write about This When They’ve Destroyed All the Evidence?”, in which the panelists will discuss navigating around research dead-ends.<br />
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• <b>Judith Starkston</b> will serve on a panel entitled “Mythic Tradition and Legend vs. the Historical Record”, which will discuss shifting the stereotyped expectations of readers to make room for more diverse mythic fiction.<br />
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• <b>J.K. Knauss</b> will be at the book signing on Saturday, June 24, signing copies of her work.
Heatherhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11573707165019266775noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-37831405.post-22741321688802178092017-05-18T11:30:00.000-04:002017-05-21T11:19:30.139-04:00Excerpt Thursday: SUMMERWODE by J Tullos Hennig <div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="background-color: white; text-align: justify; text-indent: 0in;">This week, we're pleased to welcome author <b><a href="http://www.jtulloshennig.net/" target="_blank">J TULLOS HENNIG</a></b></span><span style="background-color: white; text-align: justify; text-indent: 0in;"> </span><span style="background-color: white; text-align: justify; text-indent: 0in;">with <i><b>SUMMERWODE</b></i>, from the Books of the Wode series</span><span style="background-color: white; font-style: italic; text-align: justify; text-indent: 0in;">. </span><span style="background-color: white; text-align: justify; text-indent: 0in;">One lucky winner will receive a copy of the novel in e-book format.</span><span style="background-color: white; font-style: italic; text-align: justify; text-indent: 0in;"> </span><span style="background-color: white; text-align: justify; text-indent: 0in;">Join us again on Sunday for an author interview, with more details about the story behind the series. Here's the blurb about the novel.</span></span><br />
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<i><span lang="EN-CA"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">The Summer King has come to the Wode...</span></span></i></div>
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<i><span lang="EN-CA"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Yet to which oath, head or heart, shall he hold?<o:p></o:p></span></span></i></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><span lang="EN-CA">Once known as the Templar assassin Guy de Gisbourne, dispossessed noble Gamelyn Boundys has come to Sherwood Forest with conflicted oaths. One is of duty: demanding he tame the forest’s druidic secrets and bring them back to his Templar Masters. The other oath is of heat and heart: given to the outlaw Robyn Hood, avatar of the Horned Lord, and the Maiden Marion, embodiment of the Lady Huntress. </span>The three of them—Summerlord, Winter King, and Maiden of the Spring—are bound by yet another promise, that of fate: to wield the covenant of the Shire Wode and the power of the <i>Ceugant</i>, the magical trine of all worlds. In this last, also, is Gamelyn conflicted; spectres of sacrifice and death haunt him.</span></div>
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<span lang="EN-CA"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Uneasy oaths begin a collision course when not only Gamelyn, but Robyn and Marion are summoned to the siege of Nottingham by the Queen. Her promise is that Gamelyn will regain his noble family’s honour of Tickhill, and the outlaws of the Shire Wode will have a royal pardon.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-CA"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">But King Richard has returned to England, and the price of his mercy might well be more than any of them can afford...<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<b style="text-indent: 0in;"><span lang="EN-CA"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">**An Excerpt from <i>SUMMERWODE**</i></span></span></b></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Someone shouldered hard into him, nearly sending him sprawling. Quick as a ferret, Robyn recovered and danced sideways, hand to knife and a ready snarl upon his lips.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">He faced a small brace of soldiers. The one who’d nearly plowed him over hadn’t so much as stopped, but his two companions recognized a threat when they saw it. Hands on sword hilts, one with yellow chevrons emblazoned on his tunic raised a mailed fist and a voice tinged of the shire as Robyn’s own. “Gerrout, bloody fool—!”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">“Is there some problem?” Gamelyn appeared at Robyn’s right, voice soft, nearly too reasonable. Deceptive as always, were one not paying attention to the steel beneath the velvet—and most didn’t.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Robyn fingered his dagger into a better position.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">These soldiers, however, eyed the red sigil upon Gamelyn’s gray cloak. “Your pardon, Brother Templar,” the one in yellow offered, with a conciliatory spread of hands. His companions muttered like apologies, ducking their heads: hounds threatened with the whip. One even crossed himself as they retreated.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Robyn watched them go rather stupidly, ears still heated, heart pounding. A hand snatched his sleeve and pulled him out of the main path, close by the roar and clang of a smith’s furnace; for a half breath Robyn almost went for Gamelyn, too, stifled it just in time.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">The flame was at forging heat, and they were closer than was comfortable; that and the <i>clang-ti-tink-clang<span style="color: red;"> </span></i>of the smith’s hammer against iron and anvil struck Robyn back into his senses. Both hands were gripping his arms, now, and hard enough to make him wince. Robyn tossed the forelock from his eyes and let a smile curve his mouth, jerking his chin at Gamelyn’s tabard. “I keep forgettin’ how handy yon sign bides in a tussle.”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">The disquiet knit upon those gilt brows melted. One arched, familiar vexation. “I can’t take you <span style="color: red;"> </span><i>anywhere, </i>you daft pillock.”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">“And here I thought I were taking you.”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">“Hardly.” Gamelyn gave him a tiny shake, an unspoken <i>You’re all </i><i>right, then?<span style="color: red;"> </span></i>and at Robyn’s shrug, released him. “We’ve too long been in the forest.”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><i>Nay, hardly long enough by my reckoning.<span style="color: red;"> </span></i>But Robyn followed, gritted teeth and muscles against the beckon and lure of sensation.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Gamelyn was right; what made up the purest of survival instincts in the forest could prove ruinous in this teeming, dangerous place. Even the silent, careful pace of a forest dweller would be nowt to the likes of these but the cant of a hesitant villein… easy prey to the road-filthy men who were still arriving, marking territory with swagger and weaponry.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">It was a lesson hard-learned in boyhood, long since shucked away in his own place. But this now, here?<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Aye, here. What villeins bided in the camp were blending into the scenery, busy at the drudge work. Not walking the muddy, main paths as broad-shouldered and accoutered—entitled—as nobleman in whose wake Robyn ambled. No question Gamelyn had the way of it; not just because of the cloak he wore, but the manner of his wearing it. People unconsciously gave way… and twisted a curious brow at the lanky fellow keeping pace with the Templar Knight: a proper wild man dressed in furs and leathers with a monster of a longbow strapped to his back.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">One foot faltered and skittered sideways in a particularly wet patch; Robyn heaved his balance back and nearly ran into another soldier stinking of mud, blood, and balls. Again, Gamelyn had to yank him out of the way.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Bloody damn, but it was a sad case when he couldn’t even walk straight, and him proper sober!<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">“Robyn?”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">And bloody<span style="color: red;"> </span><i>damn<span style="color: red;"> </span></i>but Gamelyn was sounding as <i>Shall we wrap you in a wool basket, pet?<span style="color: red;"> </span></i>as Will Scathelock! “Aye, but ’m fair enough to skelp you one, see if I waint.”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">“Fine.” Gamelyn’s nose took a decided noble’s tilt. “I’ll just let the bastards knock you sideways next time, shall I?”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">“You’re saying that like I’m all up for letting<i> </i>’em knock me si—!” It rattled up into a yip as Gamelyn grabbed his arm and dragged him between two hobbled sumpters.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">“I’m saying we’ve no room for pride!”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">“Lessen it’s yours, <span style="color: red;"> </span><i>milord</i>?”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">“<span style="color: red;"> </span><i>Putain de</i><i>…</i><i>!</i>”<span style="color: red;"> </span>It was a barely stoppered growl between bared teeth, those green eyes gone to gilt… and bloody sodding<i> </i>damn but it stood every bit Robyn had to attention when Gamelyn transformed into dangerous, knife-edge Templar.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">With the added mercy of blocking every other sensation, at that.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Abrupt exasperation filled Gamelyn’s gaze. Robyn’s lip twitched sideways, and he leaned in, head cocked. “So that’s the secret to doin’ battle, then. Haver away t’ noise by having a proper rod in your pouch and no way to ease it?”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Another Frank curse; even fouler, Robyn would warrant, the way it burst from between curled lips and gritted teeth. “In case you’ve forgotten, you’ve a price on your head to make any man here wealthy.”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">“Ah, but your Master would see me safe.”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">“Safe.” A snort. “That depends on which Master you mean.”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Robyn snorted back. “You and Marion both, thinkin’ that bloody Temple sorcerer more’n he is.” Robyn leaned closer. “I never forget what I am, even here. ’Tis you as ent believing in what you are—“”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">“My lord <i>Confanonier</i>?”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Gamelyn lurched back as if he’d been caught with his hand down Robyn’s breeks. No such luck, Robyn mourned.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">“Ah,” Gamelyn said, prim. “Stephen.”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">“Commander sent me to find you.” Young Stephen was fair-haired, flushed, and rather buggy-eyed at finding his superior surrounded by a pair of horse’s arses.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">And no doubt, given the look Gamelyn flicked his way, Robyn was being considered as a matched third of the pair.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">But Stephen’s attention was fastened, not on Gamelyn, but Robyn. The lad tried to speak several times, then finally stammered out, “M-my lord, is that <i>him</i>? Robyn Hood?”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Gamelyn rolled his eyes, and Robyn started to laugh.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<b><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">BUY LINKS:<o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
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<span lang="EN"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><a href="https://www.dsppublications.com/books/summerwode-by-j-tullos-hennig-377-b" target="_blank">DSP Publications</a> <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span lang="EN"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><a href="http://www.kobo.com/us/en/ebook/summerwode" target="_blank">Kobo</a> <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span lang="EN"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><a href="http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/summerwode-j-tullos-hennig/1126200669" target="_blank">Barnes & Noble</a> <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span lang="EN"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><a href="https://www.amazon.com/Summerwode-Wode-Book-Tullos-Hennig-ebook" target="_blank">Amazon</a> <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span lang="EN"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">E-books 1 & 2 in the series are currently on sale through most retailers until the 16 May release: GREENWODE is free, and SHIREWODE is $2.95!<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<b><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">About the Author</span></b></div>
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<a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-rdjBx-fpoZo/WR23kCm3PwI/AAAAAAAASw4/NazwJVp8p5A2h5NphjtRx1_76Te8Ec5OwCLcB/s1600/JenPic4x4.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><img border="0" height="199" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-rdjBx-fpoZo/WR23kCm3PwI/AAAAAAAASw4/NazwJVp8p5A2h5NphjtRx1_76Te8Ec5OwCLcB/s200/JenPic4x4.jpg" width="200" /></span></a></div>
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<span lang="EN-CA"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><b><a href="http://www.jtulloshennig.net/" target="_blank">J Tullos Hennig</a></b> has always possessed inveterate fascination in the myths and histories of other worlds and times. Despite having maintained a few professions in<span class="apple-converted-space"> </span><i>this</i><span class="apple-converted-space"> </span>world—equestrian, dancer, teacher, artist—Jen has never successfully managed to not be a writer. Ever.<span class="apple-converted-space"><o:p></o:p></span></span></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-CA"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Her most recent work is a darkly magical & award-winning historical fantasy series re-imagining the legends of Robin Hood, in which both pagan and queer viewpoints are given respectful voice.</span></span><br />
<br />
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<span lang="EN"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><a href="http://musings.jtulloshennig.net/" target="_blank">Musings blog</a> </span></span><span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;">(You can subscribe to my newsletter at either the Musing
blog or main site—you’ll receive the first and earliest notification on all
updates and news, plus a gift: several short stories seldom seen in the wild.)</span></div>
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<span lang="EN"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><a href="http://www.bookbub.com/authors/j-tullos-hennig" target="_blank">Bookbub</a><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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Lisa J Yardehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05111498397731973454noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-37831405.post-54213185291954844372017-05-14T06:00:00.000-04:002017-05-14T06:00:23.216-04:00Author Interview: Blythe Gifford on RUMORS AT COURT<!--[if gte mso 9]><xml>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">Today, we welcome Blythe Gifford, a long time contributor to
the Unusual Historicals blog.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Her twelfth
novel, RUMORS AT COURT from the Harlequin Historical line, has just been
published and an excerpt was published here <a href="https://unusualhistoricals.blogspot.com/2017/05/excerpt-thursday-rumors-at-court-by.html" target="_blank">https://unusualhistoricals.blogspot.com/2017/05/excerpt-thursday-rumors-at-court-by.html</a> on Thursday.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>She’s offering a free print copy to one randomly
chosen commenter, so leave a comment at the end of the interview with your
email address before next Sunday, May 21, for a chance to win.</span><br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;"><a href="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-flLUzeP8P14/WHvnikU7EUI/AAAAAAAAAaA/ouVfH8nCi1Y5l33L0OtM7pXnG8Dl3xghwCPcB/s1600/9780373299300.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-flLUzeP8P14/WHvnikU7EUI/AAAAAAAAAaA/ouVfH8nCi1Y5l33L0OtM7pXnG8Dl3xghwCPcB/s320/9780373299300.jpg" width="201" /></a></span></div>
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">First, here’s a bit about the book.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It is the third book in the Royal Wedding
Series, and is set in England, late in the Fourteenth Century. At this time,
England’s earlier success against France in the Hundred Years War has slipped
away and the once extensive English holdings on the continent are in danger.
There is unease in the country and rumors abound about the royal family and the
intentions of the enemy. <br />
<br />
The story includes a number of real historical figures, as has been the case
with the other two Royal Wedding Stories and today’s interview revolves around
the joys and challenges of putting real people into historical fiction.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">You have had real
historical figures in nearly every book.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Why?</span></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">I’m drawn to stories about real historical events and often,
a story is sparked from wondering how a specific event would affect someone
caught up in it.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>To answer that
question, my characters need to interact with the real people who were part of
it.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>After all, this collection of events
we call “history,” is not dates and facts and battles.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It is what people caused to happen and/or how
they reacted to what happened to them.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">What do you like
about having real people in the book?</span></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">To me, my characters are just as “real” as the historically
documented ones.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And I think <table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right; margin-left: 1em; text-align: right;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-xbF1VXNxUaA/WRdEzMfwtZI/AAAAAAAAAag/ItGD0ztNO5wxgiKMaIV8zt3y1tuUu6pAACLcB/s1600/Johnofgaunt.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-xbF1VXNxUaA/WRdEzMfwtZI/AAAAAAAAAag/ItGD0ztNO5wxgiKMaIV8zt3y1tuUu6pAACLcB/s320/Johnofgaunt.jpg" width="250" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Portrait of John of Gaunt, painted more than 100 years after his death</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
they, or
people like them, might have actually existed, if we could just peek behind the
curtain that hides the past from us.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>So
to make the situation real, it has to be as close to real people and events as
I can imagine.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And I have discovered
that when I am forced to understand a character in order to make that person live on
the page, it helps bring the period to life.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>This can be particularly true of recognized historical figures, who, too
often, have been turned into stick figures by the history books.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">What are the
drawbacks and challenges of including historical figures?</span></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">When a character, a king, for example, is well known, there
is a certain perspective of the kind of person he was and it is difficult to
violate that.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Since I write primarily in
the medieval time period, details of temperament are scarce.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Even contemporaneous portraits for this
period are nearly impossible to find.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>This
is particularly true of women, for whom, often, it is hard to pinpoint such
basic information as dates of birth and death.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>I’ve included many well-known (at least, to medievalists) women in my
books:<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Alice Perrers and Joan of Kent,
for example.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>For most of these women, not
a single full-length, scholarly biography has ever been written.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-IAjZME94hk4/VYbRa0VVvPI/AAAAAAAAAWA/Py_8wwxokh4Kei8R04pQeuH44d4BeMutgCPcB/s1600/Constan%25C3%25A7a_de_Castela%252C_Duquesa_de_Lencastre_-_The_Portuguese_Genealogy_%2528Genealogia_dos_Reis_de_Portugal%2529.png" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-IAjZME94hk4/VYbRa0VVvPI/AAAAAAAAAWA/Py_8wwxokh4Kei8R04pQeuH44d4BeMutgCPcB/s320/Constan%25C3%25A7a_de_Castela%252C_Duquesa_de_Lencastre_-_The_Portuguese_Genealogy_%2528Genealogia_dos_Reis_de_Portugal%2529.png" width="212" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Ostensible portrait of Constanza (Constance) of Castile</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">That is certainly true of Constanza of Castile, who appears
in RUMORS AT COURT.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Most of what we know
of her must be inferred from meagre references in other sources, particularly
biographies of her husband, John of Gaunt.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Katherine Swynford, Gaunt’s mistress and also a character in the book,
has been slightly better covered, primarily because of Anya Seton’s novel KATHERINE.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>For me, for this story, that was a particular
challenge because I have known, and loved, Katherine’s story for most of my
life.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>From that point of view, which was
Katherine’s as a heroine, Constanza was little more than Gaunt’s means to the
throne and <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>a vessel for his child.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Constanza was portrayed as an unpleasant,
overly religious woman who kept to herself and hated England.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Suddenly, in my book, I had to understand and
portray both women, in a way that made sense for the story.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It made me much more sympathetic.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">And do you ever fudge
the facts?</span></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">In order to tell a story, you inevitably have to streamline,
leave things out, tell the essentials that affect this story, but may not tell
the whole story.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>For example, Geoffrey
Chaucer, <table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-EQjW_CN0r4g/T0Fg4ZhJ5rI/AAAAAAAAAJQ/sZ-MOTAZJAonVPylduV6GTsc2w6_qphSgCPcB/s1600/Katherine%2BSwynford.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-EQjW_CN0r4g/T0Fg4ZhJ5rI/AAAAAAAAAJQ/sZ-MOTAZJAonVPylduV6GTsc2w6_qphSgCPcB/s1600/Katherine%2BSwynford.jpg" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Possible portrait of Katherine Swynford</td></tr>
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English poet and author of “The Canterbury Tales,” was part of Gaunt’s
household and married to Katherine’s sister.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>It’s a wonderful historical tidbit, but I could not find a way to drop
it into the story without making it feel gratuitous.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I did include a reference to love such as “the
poet” wrote of.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And my editor, who knows
the period well, recognized the poet as Chaucer and the allusion to his “Book
of The Duchess.”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But you do not have to
know that background to understand the story. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">My books are historical romance, not non-fiction, but I try
not to violate the reader’s trust.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>If a
reader goes on to explore more books about the period, and I always hope she
does, my goal is that she will never feel betrayed by my choices.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>All my books except for the first contain an
author’s afterward, in which I can explain where I took liberties with the
facts and a little of what came after the book ends.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">You always use real
historical figures as secondary characters.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Have you ever thought of writing a fictionalized biography?</span></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">No! That would create too many constraints.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I like having my own characters, and drawing
on my own imagination to see their stories develop.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I don’t think I could rationalize even the
minor historical license I do take if I were telling the story of a real person.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">So now a question for commenters:<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>How do you
feel about real historical figures in fiction?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Any examples of books in which it has worked particularly well? Or, have you ever learned something about history from a work of fiction? Leave a comment before May 21 for a chance to win a copy of RUMORS AT COURT.</span></b><br />
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<div style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto;">
<span style="color: black; font-family: "baskerville old face" , "serif"; mso-bidi-font-family: "Courier New"; mso-themecolor: text1;"><span style="font-size: xx-small;"><span lang="EN" style="color: black; font-family: "georgia" , "serif"; font-size: 12pt;">About the author: </span></span></span></div>
<span style="color: black; font-family: "baskerville old face" , "serif"; mso-bidi-font-family: "Courier New"; mso-themecolor: text1;"><span style="font-size: xx-small;"><div class="separator" style="border-image: none; clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-vkScJlsXY-A/Sp1QEjA7CbI/AAAAAAAAACc/tQG2vp6O-W4fnDzXxpr203hIKEk-lCILwCPcB/s1600/Blythe%2BGifford%2BHeadshot.JPG" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="200" src="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-vkScJlsXY-A/Sp1QEjA7CbI/AAAAAAAAACc/tQG2vp6O-W4fnDzXxpr203hIKEk-lCILwCPcB/s200/Blythe%2BGifford%2BHeadshot.JPG" width="181" /></a></div>
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<span lang="EN" style="color: black; font-family: "georgia" , "serif"; font-size: 12pt;">After many years in public relations, advertising and
marketing, Blythe Gifford started writing seriously after a corporate layoff.
Ten years and one layoff later, she became an overnight success when she sold
her first book to the Harlequin Historical line.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Since then, she has published ten books,
primarily set in England and on the Scottish Borders, most revolving around
real historical figures and events.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>For
more information, visit </span><a href="http://www.blythegifford.com/"><span lang="EN" style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif"; font-size: 12pt;"><span style="color: black;">her webpage: www.blythegifford.com</span></span></a><span lang="EN" style="color: black; font-family: "georgia" , "serif"; font-size: 12pt;">, </span><span lang="EN" style="color: black; font-family: "georgia" , "serif"; font-size: 12pt;">find her on </span></div>
<div style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto;">
<span lang="EN" style="color: black; font-family: "georgia" , "serif"; font-size: 12pt;">Facebook: </span><span lang="EN" style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif"; font-size: 12pt;"><span style="color: black;"><a href="http://www.facebook.com/BlytheGifford" target="_blank">www.facebook.com/BlytheGifford</a></span></span><span lang="EN" style="color: black; font-family: "georgia" , "serif"; font-size: 12pt;"> </span></div>
<div style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto;">
<span lang="EN" style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif"; font-size: 12pt;"><span style="color: black;">Instagram: <a href="http://www.instagram.com/blythegifford">www.instagram.com/blythegifford</a></span></span><span lang="EN" style="color: black; font-family: "georgia" , "serif"; font-size: 12pt;"> </span></div>
<div style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto;">
<span lang="EN" style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif"; font-size: 12pt;"><span style="color: black;">Pinterest: <a href="http://www.pinterest.com/blythegifford">www.pinterest.com/blythegifford</a></span></span></div>
<div style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto;">
<span lang="EN" style="color: black; font-family: "georgia" , "serif"; font-size: 12pt;">Twitter </span><a href="http://www.twitter.com/BlytheGifford" target=""><span lang="EN" style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif"; font-size: 12pt;"><span style="color: black;">www.twitter.com/BlytheGifford</span></span></a></div>
</span></span><span lang="EN" style="color: black; font-family: "georgia" , "serif"; font-size: 12pt;"></span><span style="color: black; font-family: "baskerville old face" , "serif"; mso-bidi-font-family: "Courier New"; mso-themecolor: text1;"><span style="font-size: xx-small;"><div style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto;">
<span lang="EN" style="color: black; font-family: "georgia" , "serif"; font-size: 12pt;">Or Goodreads: </span><a href="http://www.goodreads.com/author/show/672889.Blythe_Gifford" target="_blank"><span lang="EN" style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif"; font-size: 12pt;"><span style="color: black;">www.goodreads.com/author/show/672889.Blythe_Gifford</span></span></a><span lang="EN" style="color: black; font-family: "georgia" , "serif"; font-size: 12pt;"> </span></div>
<span style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: small;">
</span><br />
<div style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto;">
<span lang="EN" style="color: black; font-family: "georgia" , "serif"; mso-ansi-language: EN; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Author photo Jennifer Girard - Other illustrations in Public Domain </span></div>
</span></span><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;"> </span></b><strong><span class="style11"><strong><span class="style11"><span style="color: black; font-family: Times New Roman; font-size: xx-small;"><span style="font-size: 7.5pt;">Cover Art used by
arrangement with Harlequin Enterprises Limited. All
rights reserved. ®and T are trademarks of Harlequin
Enterprises Limited and/or its affiliated companies,
used under license. Copyright 2017</span></span></span></strong></span></strong></div>
Blythe Giffordhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12935846960877972760noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-37831405.post-88461534243200728532017-05-11T06:00:00.000-04:002017-05-11T06:00:17.911-04:00Excerpt Thursday: RUMORS AT COURT by Blythe Gifford
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<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;">Today,
we have a peek at the newest release from long-time Unusual Historicals
contributor Blythe Gifford, RUMORS AT COURT, out now from the Harlequin
Historical line.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Blythe will be back on
Sunday for an interview about the book.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>She’ll
be focusing on the joys and challenges of using real historical figures in
fiction, so this excerpt includes a scene featuring several of the real people
who are part of the story.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;"> </span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;">RUMORS
AT COURT is the third Royal Wedding story.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>All three are set in the 14<sup>th</sup> century English court of Edward
III.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>This time, while the royal wedding
in the book is that of Edward’s son Edmund to Isabella of Castile, the royal
marriage at the center of the book is that of Constanza of Castile, Isabella’s
older sister, to John of Gaunt, Edward’s third son.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Through marriage to Constanza, Gaunt assumed
the title of King of Castile. Also a character in the book is Katherine
Swynford, who became Gaunt’s mistress.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>(Blythe wrote about her <a href="https://unusualhistoricals.blogspot.com/2017/02/mistresses-katherine-swynford-later.html" target="_blank">here</a>.)</span></div>
<br />
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<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;"> </span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;">But the
center of the story is the romance between two fictional characters, who serve
John and Constanza.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Here’s a recap: </span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;"> </span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin-left: 0.5in;">
<b><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Wed by
royal command! </i></b></div>
<br />
<div style="margin-left: 0.5in;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Widow Valerie
of Florham wants nothing more than to forget her abusive marriage and live
peacefully at the mercy of no man. She'd never have dreamed of a liaison with
handsome Sir Gil Wolford, but then comes a royal decree—they must wed! </i></div>
<br />
<div style="margin-left: 0.5in;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Gil craves
military conquest in Castile, far from his haunted past. Marriage to Lady
Valerie is the last thing he should want, yet both have truths to hide from the
rumormongers at court. They have no choice…and, once wed, the marriage bed
changes everything!</i></div>
<div style="margin-left: 0.5in;">
<em><br /></em></div>
<br />
<div style="line-height: normal; margin: 0in 0in 6pt;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><u><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt;">RTBookreviews</span></u></i><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt;"> gave it a 4-Star review, writing
“delights on every level, from the sumptuous settings to the whispered…rumors
spinning through the royal court.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>…Gifford’s characters are always well developed and…deeply resistant to
a new passion…until, of course, love gets its way…”</span></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-flLUzeP8P14/WHvnikU7EUI/AAAAAAAAAaA/ouVfH8nCi1Y5l33L0OtM7pXnG8Dl3xghwCPcB/s1600/9780373299300.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="400" src="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-flLUzeP8P14/WHvnikU7EUI/AAAAAAAAAaA/ouVfH8nCi1Y5l33L0OtM7pXnG8Dl3xghwCPcB/s400/9780373299300.jpg" width="252" /></a></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt;"><br /></span></div>
<br />
<div style="line-height: 150%; margin: 0in 0in 10pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Baskerville Old Face","serif"; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 150%;"> </span></div>
<br />
<div style="line-height: 150%; margin: 0in 0in 10pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Baskerville Old Face","serif"; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 150%;">From Chapter One
of RUMORS AT COURT:</span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0in 0in 12pt;">
<span lang="EN-GB" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-GB;"><em>The Savoy Palace,
London—February 9<sup><span style="font-size: x-small;">th</span></sup>, 1372</em></span></div>
<br />
<div style="line-height: 150%; margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<span lang="EN-GB" style="color: black; font-family: "Baskerville Old Face","serif"; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-themecolor: text1;"> </span></div>
<br />
<div style="line-height: 150%; margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<span style="color: black; font-family: "Baskerville Old Face","serif"; mso-themecolor: text1;">The English
and Castilian ladies were shepherded into the palace and then to the Hall side
by side, close enough for Valerie to hear the foreign chatter. She could not
follow all the words, but the lilt of the language, the faint scent of
Castilian soap, seemed familiar.</span></div>
<br />
<div style="line-height: 150%; margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<span style="color: black; font-family: "Baskerville Old Face","serif"; mso-themecolor: text1;">Perhaps her
blood remembered these things. Blood that had come from another Castilian woman
exiled to England, generations ago. Like Constanza, Queen of Castile, she, too,
had been taken from her home and sent to a distant place.</span></div>
<br />
<div style="line-height: 150%; margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<span style="color: black; font-family: "Baskerville Old Face","serif"; mso-themecolor: text1;">Valerie
touched the brooch of copper and enamel on her gown, a reminder of her
long-dead relative. She must hold her head high amidst the unfamiliar trappings
of court. Soon enough, she would be allowed to return to the earth of her home
and her garden, slumbering now in winter.</span></div>
<br />
<div style="line-height: 150%; margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<span style="color: black; font-family: "Baskerville Old Face","serif"; mso-themecolor: text1;">The Queen
reached the front of the Hall and turned to face the room. Valerie squinted,
trying to see her clearly. She was fair, even sallow. Were her eyes blue? Too
far to see, but her nose looked longish for the fashion, her figure tall and
sturdy.</span></div>
<br />
<div style="line-height: 150%; margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<span style="color: black; font-family: "Baskerville Old Face","serif"; mso-themecolor: text1;">Her looks, in
truth, were unimportant. Her gift to her husband was her country, not her
beauty. And a woman, even a royal one, had no more choices than any other
woman. She must marry for reasons of state, no matter what her heart. And if
she wanted to be Queen in fact instead of just in name, this woman needed a man
both willing and wealthy enough to fight for her kingdom.</span></div>
<br />
<div style="line-height: 150%; margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<span style="color: black; font-family: "Baskerville Old Face","serif"; mso-themecolor: text1;">Suddenly, the
Queen touched a hand to her belly and the curtain of women around her closed
tightly.</span></div>
<br />
<div style="line-height: 150%; margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<span style="color: black; font-family: "Baskerville Old Face","serif"; mso-themecolor: text1;">Were the
rumours true? The Queen had arrived in England months ago, but had stayed in
the country, some said because of the early ills of being with child.</span></div>
<br />
<div style="line-height: 150%; margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<span style="color: black; font-family: "Baskerville Old Face","serif"; mso-themecolor: text1;">The
Duke—Valerie could still not think of him as a king—would have wasted no time
getting an heir on her. They both needed to prove they could produce another
generation to sit on Castile’s throne, so that might be the reason the woman
did not look her best. All would be forgiven if she bore a son.</span></div>
<br />
<div style="line-height: 150%; margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<span style="color: black; font-family: "Baskerville Old Face","serif"; mso-themecolor: text1;">Something
Valerie had failed to do.</span></div>
<br />
<div style="line-height: 150%; margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<span style="color: black; font-family: "Baskerville Old Face","serif"; mso-themecolor: text1;">‘She looks so
young,’ Lady Katherine, next to her, whispered.</span></div>
<br />
<div style="line-height: 150%; margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<span style="color: black; font-family: "Baskerville Old Face","serif"; mso-themecolor: text1;">Valerie
murmured something that might be mistaken for assent. The Queen was nearly
Valerie’s own age and only a few years younger than Lady Katherine. Katherine,
too, was newly widowed and had three children of her own. She might be feeling
the length of her life.</span></div>
<br />
<div style="line-height: 150%; margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="color: black; font-family: "Baskerville Old Face","serif"; mso-themecolor: text1;">Though she mourns her husband no more than I do mine.</span></i></div>
<br />
<div style="line-height: 150%; margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<span style="color: black; font-family: "Baskerville Old Face","serif"; mso-themecolor: text1;">She could not
say how she knew. They had met only recently and never spoken of it, but
Valerie felt certain that they both recited the requisite prayers for the loss
of a husband while secretly revelling in their new freedom.</span></div>
<br />
<div style="line-height: 150%; margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<span style="color: black; font-family: "Baskerville Old Face","serif"; mso-themecolor: text1;">The line of
ladies shielding the Queen parted. The Queen had settled into a chair at the
front of the hall beside the Duke. Her sister came to stand beside her and the
procession of lords and ladies shuffled into line to be presented.</span></div>
<br />
<div style="line-height: 150%; margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<span style="color: black; font-family: "Baskerville Old Face","serif"; mso-themecolor: text1;">Valerie,
following Katherine, was surprised and honoured that she had been invited to
this ceremony. Her husband had been a knight, but a lowly one. Lady Katherine’s
husband had been the same, but she was here because she took care of the Duke’s
children by his first wife. Now, she would move into his second wife’s
household, a strong link to what the Queen needed to know about England and,
perhaps, even about her husband.</span></div>
<br />
<div style="line-height: 150%; margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<span style="color: black; font-family: "Baskerville Old Face","serif"; mso-themecolor: text1;">As Valerie was
presented to at least a dozen of the Queen’s ladies, she was called upon to do
little beyond nod politely. The Queen’s people smiled, silent, not attempting
the unfamiliar tongue.</span></div>
<br />
<div style="line-height: 150%; margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<span style="color: black; font-family: "Baskerville Old Face","serif"; mso-themecolor: text1;">Even the Queen
remained impassive in the face of all the introductions. Surely the poor woman
had absorbed nothing about the strangers paraded before her.</span></div>
<br />
<div style="line-height: 150%; margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<span style="color: black; font-family: "Baskerville Old Face","serif"; mso-themecolor: text1;">Then, Valerie
heard her name called and knelt before the Queen. A flurry of conversation, the
Duke, speaking to the interpreter, who then spoke to the Queen.</span></div>
<br />
<div style="line-height: 150%; margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="color: black; font-family: "Baskerville Old Face","serif"; mso-themecolor: text1;">Descended from one who came to England with Eleanor of
Castile, wife of the first Edward</span></i><span style="color: black; font-family: "Baskerville Old Face","serif"; mso-themecolor: text1;">.</span></div>
<br />
<div style="line-height: 150%; margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<span style="color: black; font-family: "Baskerville Old Face","serif"; mso-themecolor: text1;">Ah, it was her
ancestor who had brought her here, the woman who had served that other foreign
Queen nearly a hundred years ago.</span></div>
<br />
<div style="line-height: 150%; margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<span style="color: black; font-family: "Baskerville Old Face","serif"; mso-themecolor: text1;">Finally, the
Queen understood and nodded. </span><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span lang="ES-TRAD" style="color: black; font-family: "Baskerville Old Face","serif"; mso-ansi-language: ES-TRAD; mso-themecolor: text1;">‘Habla la lengua de sus
antepasados?’</span></i></div>
<br />
<div style="line-height: 150%; margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<span style="color: black; font-family: "Baskerville Old Face","serif"; mso-themecolor: text1;">Now she was
the one who struggled to understand. Speak? Did she speak…?</span></div>
<br />
<div style="line-height: 150%; margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<span style="color: black; font-family: "Baskerville Old Face","serif"; mso-themecolor: text1;">She was a
widow now. She could speak aloud, even to a queen, without looking over her
shoulder for her husband’s permission. And yet, the language of Castile was as
foreign to her as hers was to the Queen.</span></div>
<br />
<div style="line-height: 150%; margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<span style="color: black; font-family: "Baskerville Old Face","serif"; mso-themecolor: text1;">She shook her
head. ‘Only enough to say <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Bienvenida.' </i>That
meant welcome. At least, she thought it did.</span></div>
<br />
<div style="line-height: 150%; margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<span style="color: black; font-family: "Baskerville Old Face","serif"; mso-themecolor: text1;">It was enough
to make the Queen smile. <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">‘Gracias.’</i> She
stretched out a hand, touching the brooch with reverent fingers, then spoke to
her interpreter.</span></div>
<br />
<div style="line-height: 150%; margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<span style="color: black; font-family: "Baskerville Old Face","serif"; mso-themecolor: text1;">‘La Reina
wishes to know, is the brooch you wear hers?’</span></div>
<br />
<div style="line-height: 150%; margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<span style="color: black; font-family: "Baskerville Old Face","serif"; mso-themecolor: text1;">Valerie
smiled. ‘Yes, Your Grace. It, too, came from Castile.’ The Queen, the story
went, had been generous to her ladies.</span></div>
<br />
<div style="line-height: 150%; margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<span style="color: black; font-family: "Baskerville Old Face","serif"; mso-themecolor: text1;">Nodding, this
Queen cleared her throat and spoke, each word careful and distinct. ‘We to meet
again.’</span></div>
<br />
<div style="line-height: 150%; margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<span style="color: black; font-family: "Baskerville Old Face","serif"; mso-themecolor: text1;">The words
touched her like a benediction. ‘I hope so, Your Grace.’</span></div>
<br />
<div style="line-height: 150%; margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<span style="color: black; font-family: "Baskerville Old Face","serif"; mso-themecolor: text1;">Valerie paused
to kneel before the Duke—no, the King—barely looking at him as she hugged the
Queen’s words close to her heart.</span></div>
<br />
<div style="line-height: 150%; margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<span style="color: black; font-family: "Baskerville Old Face","serif"; mso-themecolor: text1;">When she rose,
still smiling, and turned away, it was to come face to face with the knight she
had seen earlier at the Duke’s right hand. Dark, ragged brows shielded pale
blue eyes. His nose and cheeks were sharply carved. He looked to be a man, like
her husband, more at home in battle than in the Hall.</span></div>
<br />
<div style="line-height: 150%; margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<span style="color: black; font-family: "Baskerville Old Face","serif"; mso-themecolor: text1;">She nodded,
courteous. Waiting.</span></div>
<br />
<div style="line-height: 150%; margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<span style="color: black; font-family: "Baskerville Old Face","serif"; mso-themecolor: text1;">‘Lady Valerie,
I am Sir Gilbert Wolford.’</span></div>
<br />
<div style="line-height: 150%; margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<span style="color: black; font-family: "Baskerville Old Face","serif"; mso-themecolor: text1;">Her momentary
glow faded. ‘The man they call The Wolf.’</span></div>
<br />
<div style="line-height: 150%; margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<span style="color: black; font-family: "Baskerville Old Face","serif"; mso-themecolor: text1;">The one who had
commanded her husband to his death.</span></div>
<br />
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<span style="color: black; font-family: "Baskerville Old Face","serif"; mso-themecolor: text1;"> </span><span style="color: black; font-family: "Baskerville Old Face","serif"; mso-themecolor: text1;"> </span></div>
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Blythe Giffordhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12935846960877972760noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-37831405.post-72030090164060575782017-05-10T10:45:00.000-04:002017-05-10T10:45:37.790-04:00Mad Mothers: Frankish Queen Gerberga<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: small;">By </span><b style="font-family: georgia, "times new roman", serif; font-size: medium; line-height: normal; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; line-height: normal;"><a href="https://kimrendfeld.wordpress.com/" style="line-height: normal;" target="_blank">Kim Rendfeld</a></span></b></span><br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Empress costume from <br /><i>The Costumes
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">When brother-in-law King Charles (Charlemagne) seized her late husband’s lands, Gerberga decided to fight for her two sons’ inheritance and her own power as queen mother and regent.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">After Frankish King Carloman died at age 20 in December 771, Charles moved swiftly to seize the kingdom. Was it determination or desperation that made Gerberga flee with two little boys and an entourage to Lombardy?<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">We don’t know how she reached the realm of Charles’s ex-father-in-law. She would have either had to cross the Alps or go by sea. The slow travel, in general, posed the danger of brigands, but add winter weather and at least one child too young to ride, and this journey becomes especially risky.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">We don’t know much about Gerberga, except that she was a Frankish noblewoman selected by father-in-law Pepin to marry Carloman, but we can make a few guesses. Women typically were teenagers when they married, often at age 13. Men could marry at age 16. The most Gerberga and Carloman could have been married was four years, and their elder son was no more than 3 years old, barely old enough to start riding.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">That this queen mother, perhaps as young as 17, made a dangerous journey to Lombardy with these two small children tells us something about her character. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">Seeking aid from Desiderius, king of the Lombards, was not the safest thing to do, either, but she had no other choice. Desiderius had seized power in a coup in the 750s and clashed violently with Rome before. His retaliation, blinding an enemy, was brutal and typically medieval. However, he was the powerful ally she needed—and he had his own grudge against Charles. The Frankish monarch had repudiated Desiderius’s daughter to free himself to marry into the powerful Agilolfing clan, an alliance to help him claim his late brother’s lands.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Desiderius' court, from <br />the tragedy
Adelchi (published 1845)</td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">Desiderius saw Gerberga’s sons as a way to get back at Charles for the insult to his daughter and restore his alliance with Francia. He tried to get the pope to anoint the little boys as kings, even seizing papal lands to pressure him. The pope refused and eventually asked Charles to fulfill his vow as protector of Rome and come to his aid.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">When Charles invaded in 773, Desiderius retreated to Pavia, and Gerberga and her sons lit out for Verona, along with Lombard Prince Adalgis and a Frankish nobleman named Autchar. Adalgis escaped Verona and headed toward the Byzantine empire.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">Charles, learning of Adalgis’s flight, went to Verona with a contingent of Franks, while most of the army held siege in Pavia. Gerberga surrendered voluntarily when Charles arrived.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">The sources don’t say why she surrendered. Perhaps she realized she was deserted, knew there was no way she could win, and wished to avoid further bloodshed or the starvation and disease that accompanies a siege. Perhaps, she thought if she surrendered now, she and her sons would be sent to the cloister rather than be executed.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">The sources are silent about her fate, but having Gerberga and her sons in the cloister is plausible. They would have been among other troublesome relatives Charles sent to the monastery such as Desiderius and later on Charles’s first cousin Bavarian Duke Tassilo and even his own eldest son, Pepin (often called Pepin the Hunchback—medieval folk were a tad insensitive).<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">Gerberga did not win her battle against her brother-in-law, but her story illustrates that medieval women were not damsels in distress waiting for a hero to rescue them. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">My characters see Gerberga as the strong-willed young woman she is. My aristocratic Franks don’t have much sympathy for her, though, as you will see in this excerpt </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;"><b>**From <i>The Cross and the Dragon**</i></b><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">“It’s God’s will.” Theodelinda laid her hand over Alda’s. “I will have our priest dedicate tomorrow’s prime Mass to the princess. The rest of the royal family, are they well?”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">“Yes, Countess. Did you know Gerberga and her sons surrendered in Verona?” he asked excitedly.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">With wide eyes, Alda and Theodelinda shook their heads. “I thought our army was holding siege at Pavia, where Desiderius is hiding like the rat he is,” Alda said.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">“This is the first we’ve heard about the king’s sister-by-marriage,” Theodelinda added, leaning forward. “Please, have some more wine.”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">“Lady Alda, you are correct.” The merchant took a drink. “Our army has had an enormous camp outside Pavia’s walls since autumn, but Gerberga and her sons fled to Verona with Desiderius’s son. Our king and some of his men gave chase. The Lombard prince escaped, but Gerberga did not resist.”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">“Where are they now?” Alda asked.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">“I know not.”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">“And Desiderius is still in Pavia?” Theodelinda asked.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">“Yes. Our king even spent the Feast of the Resurrection in Rome and prayed for the Lord’s aid. Yet the siege continues, and the Lombard king refuses to surrender.”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">“Damned Lombards!” Alda said. “The queen mother was right. They are strong, stubborn sons of whores.”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<b><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">Sources<o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
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<i><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">Charlemagne: Translated Sources</span></i><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">, P.D. King<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<i><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">Carolingian Chronicles: Royal Frankish Annals and Nithard’s Histories</span></i><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">, translated by Bernhard Walters Scholz with Barbara Rogers<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">“Pavia and Rome: The Lombard Monarchy and the Papacy in the Eighth Century,” Jan T. Hallenbeck, published in 1982 by <i>Transactions of the American Philosophical Society</i><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<i><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">The Life of Charlemagne</span></i><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">, Einhard, translated by Evelyn Scherabon Firchow and Edwin H. Zeydel<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<a href="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-LTDZ7pJjGUQ/WIeRecpE3vI/AAAAAAAASb8/uL65bEmgb5g6GLnRqj3OkC063megN-bwgCLcB/s1600/KimBookPhotoSmaller.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-LTDZ7pJjGUQ/WIeRecpE3vI/AAAAAAAASb8/uL65bEmgb5g6GLnRqj3OkC063megN-bwgCLcB/s200/KimBookPhotoSmaller.jpg" /></a><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">Kim Rendfeld is the author of two novels set in 8th century Francia: <i>The Cross and the Dragon</i>, about a young noblewoman contending with a vengeful jilted suitor and the anxiety of losing her husband in battle, and <i>The Ashes of Heaven’s Pillar</i>, about a peasant going to great lengths to protect her children. Her work in progress, <i>Queen of the Darkest Hour</i>, features Fastrada, Charlemagne’s influential fourth wife. Connect with Kim on her website (kimrendfeld.com), her blog (kimrendfeld.wordpress.com), Facebook (facebook.com/authorkimrendfeld), and Twitter (@kimrendfeld).<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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Lisa J Yardehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05111498397731973454noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-37831405.post-36487222073826362352017-05-07T02:00:00.000-04:002017-05-07T02:00:02.114-04:00Author Interview & Book Giveaway: ALISON MORTON on RETALIO – Book 6 of the Roma Nova seriesThis week, we're pleased to welcome our own Unusual Historicals contributor ALISON MORTON with the final novel of her second trilogy within the Roma Nova series. The trilogy started with <a href="http://unusualhistoricals.blogspot.fr/2015/05/author-interview-book-giveaway-alison.html" target="_blank">AURELIA</a> which was followed by <a href="http://unusualhistoricals.blogspot.fr/2016/05/author-interview-book-giveaway-alison.html" target="_blank">INSURRECTIO</a>. And now RETALIO brings us the end game...<br />
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One lucky winner will receive an ebook in the format of their choice, which Alison has kindly provided. Here's what RETALIO is about...<br />
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<i>Early 1980s Vienna. Recovering from a near fatal shooting, Aurelia Mitela, ex-Praetorian and former foreign minister of Roma Nova, chafes at her enforced exile. She barely escaped from her nemesis, the charming and amoral Caius Tellus who grabbed power in Roma Nova, the only part of the Roman Empire to survive into the twentieth century.</i><br />
<i><br /></i><i>Aurelia’s duty and passion fire her determination to take back her homeland and liberate its people. But Caius’s manipulations have isolated her from her fellow exiles, leaving her ostracised, powerless and vulnerable. But without their trust and support Aurelia knows she will never see Roma Nova again.</i><br />
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“A classic tale of resistance and resilience – the only regret is when the action stops.” – Douglas Jackson, author of Gaius Valerius Verrens series<br />
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"An international thriller, full of intrigue and espionage, set against an imaginative retelling of a history that feels authentic and real. ...what an entertaining ride it is!" – Matthew Harffy, author of The Bernicia Chronicles<br />
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<b>**Q&A with Alison Morton**</b></div>
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So let's find out more about the story behind the series...<br />
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<b>Why and how did you become a writer?</b><br />
I’ve written all my life one way or another since I scribbled my first play at age seven. More seriously, I’ve been a career translator, editor, civil servant writing policy papers, local magazine editor and blogger, as well as student slaving away over academic dissertations. So I’ve fiddled with words for a long time.<br />
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The trigger for novel writing was a bad film: the photography was accomplished, but to this voracious reader the plot continuity was dreadful and the dialogue corny. I whispered to my husband, “I could do better than this!” He replied, “Well, why don’t you?” Ninety days later, I had 90,000 words typed. Of course it was rubbish as all newbie first drafts are, but inside was the kernel that grew into the Roma Nova series.<br />
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<b>Tell us about your books</b><br />
Imagine an alternative timeline where a remnant of the Roman Empire called Roma Nova survived into the modern age. Founded in AD 395 by four hundred city Romans persecuted by Christian emperor Theodosius, they stayed faithful to the traditional gods, left Rome and settled in mountains to the north. Grit, adherence to Roman values and silver in the hills of their new home helped them survive. As there were so few of them, young women had to fight alongside their fathers and brothers to defend their new homeland. Older women managed the families, worked the fields and traded tot keep their colonia alive. Roma Nova became egalitarian out of necessity. You can read t<a href="http://alison-morton.com/roma-nova/roma-nova-history/" target="_blank">he whole story here</a>.<br />
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Fast forward to 21st century Roma Nova; prospering, but staying tough and proud of its Roman roots. The first three stories – INCEPTIO, PERFIDITAS and SUCCESSIO – feature Carina Mitela, a Praetorian officer who battles killers, betrayal and a particularly nasty nemesis. The second trilogy – AURELIA, INSURRECTIO and RETALIO – feature Carina’s grandmother as a young woman. When writing the first trilogy, I became intrigued by the older Aurelia. I had to go back to write her story. However, it turned into a second trilogy!<br />
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Writing Roman-set stories with women leading the action, not being adjuncts of the male protagonists meant taking them into the 20th and 21st centuries, hence alternative history. <a href="http://alison-morton.com/2016/06/28/how-to-build-an-alternative-roman-story/" target="_blank">More about alternative history here</a>.<br />
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I’ve been lucky to have the support of fellow authors, both indie and mainstream, such as Conn Iggulden, Simon Scarrow, Sue Cook, Elizabeth Chadwick and Helen Hollick. RETALIO has the backing of Douglas Jackson, Matthew Harfffy, JJ Marsh and L J Trafford.<br />
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<b>Why were you drawn to the Romans?</b><br />
I confess to being a ‘Roman nut’ since the age of eleven where I was fascinated by my first mosaic in Spain. In the interim, I’ve read Roman fiction (starting with Rosemary Sutcliff’s <i>The Eagle of the Ninth</i>) and non-fiction ad nauseam.<br />
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Rome lasted 1229 years; just to give a bit of context, this would take us back to AD 788 from today. Over that time, Rome went from being a tribal village to conquering the known world, introducing complex systems of government, production and trade, heights of art, engineering, and organisation, along with prosperity, corruption and debauchery. And it all ended in a rump, kneeling in the dust to barbarians. It’s breathtaking! <br />
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<b>What research did you do? How long did it take to create Roma Nova?</b><br />
Roma Nova had been bubbling away in my head for many years. I’ve been a keen student of the Roman world and clambered over its ruins for years. My MA is in history, and during my studies I acquired research tools and methodology that were invaluable.<br />
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The Roman world at its dusk is fascinating; why did it dissolve in the fifth century? What happened to the Romans themselves? For my books I took life, society and culture of the end of the 4th century as my jumping off point. Hence 21st century Roma Novans use solidi as their currency rather than sestertii. Afterwards, it was a case of applying historical logic to the next 1600 years! <br />
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A working knowledge of European history gave me background enough to know where I had research gaps to fill. The geography I pinched from Slovenia. The key to world building is to make it real for your characters. Walk them down a typical street at different times of the day. What do they see and hear? What sounds and smells are in the air?<br />
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<b>And now the second trilogy,is complete, what's the future for Roma Nova?</b><br />
Oh, we're not finished yet! I'm writing a companion novella to the first trilogy, then I have some ideas for a set of short stories and after that plunging into research for a historical project not unconnected with Roma Nova...<br />
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RETALIO is available from:
<a href="http://mybook.to/RETALIO" style="text-align: center;" target="_blank">Amazon</a><span style="text-align: center;"> </span><a href="https://itunes.apple.com/gb/book/retalio/id1228815573" rel="nofollow" style="text-align: center;" target="_blank">iBooks</a><span style="text-align: center;"> </span><a href="https://www.kobo.com/ebook/retalio" rel="nofollow" style="text-align: center;" target="_blank">Kobo</a><span style="text-align: center;"> </span></div>
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<b>Watch the RETALIO trailer</b></div>
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<b><br /></b><b>About the author</b></div>
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Alison Morton, writes the acclaimed Roma Nova thriller series featuring modern Praetorian heroines. She blends her deep love of Roman history with six years’ military service and a life of reading crime, adventure and thriller fiction.<br />
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The first five books have been awarded the BRAG Medallion. SUCCESSIO, AURELIA and INSURRECTIO were selected as Historical Novel Society’s Indie Editor’s Choices. AURELIA was a finalist in the 2016 HNS Indie Award. The sixth, RETALIO, is now out.<br />
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A ‘Roman nut’ since age 11, Alison has misspent decades clambering over Roman sites throughout Europe. She holds a MA History, blogs about Romans and writing. Now she continues to write, cultivates a Roman herb garden and drinks wine in France with her husband of 30 years.<br />
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<span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Tahoma;">Connect with Alison on her Roma Nova site: <a href="http://alison-morton.com/">http://alison-morton.com</a><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Tahoma;">Facebook author page: <a href="https://www.facebook.com/AlisonMortonAuthor">https://www.facebook.com/AlisonMortonAuthor</a><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Tahoma;">Twitter: <a href="https://twitter.com/alison_morton">https://twitter.com/alison_morton</a> @alison_morton<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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Goodreads:<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><a href="https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/5783095.Alison_Morton">https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/5783095.Alison_Morton</a><br />
Alison’s Amazon page: <span lang="EN-US" style="color: black; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-font-family: Verdana;"><a href="http://author.to/AlisonMortonAmazon">http://Author.to/AlisonMortonAmazon</a><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">Buying link</b> for RETALIO (multiple retailers/formats):<o:p></o:p></div>
<a href="http://alison-morton.com/books-2/retalio/where-to-buy-retalio/">http://alison-morton.com/books-2/retalio/where-to-buy-retalio/</a><o:p></o:p><br />
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Alison Mortonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12638794898163576730noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-37831405.post-6490655229389908412017-05-05T19:55:00.003-04:002017-05-05T19:58:01.670-04:00Mad Mothers: Sultana Aisha of Moorish Granada<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<b style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="line-height: 17.12px;">By </span><span style="line-height: 17.12px;"><a href="http://www.lisajyarde.com/" style="line-height: 17.12px;">Lisa J. Yarde</a></span></span></b><br />
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br /></span> <span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">On January 2, 1492, when the Moors of Granada under Sultan Muhammad XI (commonly known as Boabdil) left their home of two centuries past at Alhambra Palace, legend has it that the monarch's mother Aisha upbraided him. "Do not weep like a woman for what you could not defend as a man." The place where this chastisement supposedly occurred in the Sierra Nevada mountains is called <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Puerto_del_Suspiro_del_Moro" target="_blank"><i>Puerto del Suspiro del Moro</i></a>, the Pass of the Moor's Sigh.</span></span><br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-_LEVFZEFYkk/WQ0QccjMPsI/AAAAAAAASuY/deyp1ZtotPsJ_t07QZXy3ARkqnJ1EptHgCLcB/s1600/sigh_moor.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="245" src="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-_LEVFZEFYkk/WQ0QccjMPsI/AAAAAAAASuY/deyp1ZtotPsJ_t07QZXy3ARkqnJ1EptHgCLcB/s400/sigh_moor.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">El ultimo suspiro del Moro by Francisco Pradilla y Ortiz (1892) - Public domain</td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br /></span> <span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Over twenty years of research into Granada's last Muslim dynasty has revealed how much unreliable myth and anecdote tainted the available history. As with many personal interactions of the past, it's difficult to prove the event did nor did not occur. Of those who traveled with Muhammad and his mother into eventual exile in Fez, none included any chroniclers from the court of the Catholic monarchs, King Fernando and Queen Isabella. No Moors in the company who left Granada could have relayed the occurrence. Also, given Aisha's actions during her husband and son's reigns, it's hard to believe she considered women weak -- after all, she knew exactly what a woman with purpose could do. Through her influence, she had secured the throne for her son in a rebellion against his father. Perhaps disappointment over the loss of her heritage left her furious with her child, a mad mother.</span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br /></span> <span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Aisha's life began in turmoil as the daughter of Sultan Muhammad IX and an unnamed paternal cousin, one of three known children of the sovereign, who had no sons. He had lost and regained the kingdom of Granada no less than four times in clashes with his cousins over their legacy. Without a natural heir, he wed Aisha's elder half-sister to his paternal second cousin and successor Muhammad X, whose father had once been among the rivals for the throne. The marriage cannot have lasted because later Aisha found herself betrothed to Muhammad X. Fate denied them a future together when yet another cousin, Abu Nasr Saad invaded Granada. His son the future Sultan Abu'l-Hasan Ali (commonly known as Muley Hacen) killed Muhammad X along with his two young heirs and took Aisha for a wife. Abu'l-Hasan Ali likely regretted the choice for the rest of his life. Vengeance motivated Aisha's subsequent behavior.</span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br /></span> <span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Before she gained retribution, Aisha performed her duty and bore two sons for Abu'l-Hasan Ali, the eventual Muhammad XI, and Yusuf, as well as a daughter who shared Aisha's name. The Moorish queen bided her time while her husband refused to submit to demands for tribute from Fernando and Isabella. Aisha even endured the presence of her husband's beloved second wife, a former Christian slaved named Isabella de Solis, who converted to Islam and took the name Soraya. </span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br /></span> <span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">In the summer of 1482, Aisha's eldest son rebelled against Abu'l-Hasan Ali, who went into exile in Malaga and formed an alliance with the Catholic monarchs against Aisha and their child. The family Abencerrage supported the coup and Aisha. The clan had long reviled Abu'l-Hasan Ali after he and his father murdered many of their chieftains within Alhambra Palace. When young Muhammad became a prisoner of Fernando and Isabella after an ill-advised attack on the frontier during April 1483, Aisha helped negotiate the eventual release of Muhammad. As the enemy took city after city in a bid to destroy Moorish Spain forever, Aisha wanted even the women and children to fight in the defense of their homeland. But could she have also been desperate, maddened by the failures that bedeviled the kingdom? No one can know. </span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br /></span> <span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">History has relegated her to the role of a vengeful wife, a scheming mother, and a cunning rival for her husband's second wife. But for me, Aisha remains a </span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">true patriot of Moorish Granada.</span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"> </span></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><i style="text-align: center;"><b>** </b></i><b style="text-align: center;">An Excerpt from </b><i style="text-align: center;"><b>Sultana: The White Mountains**</b></i></span></span></div>
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<u><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Chapter 2<o:p></o:p></span></u></div>
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<i><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Uprising<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Prince Muhammad<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Gharnatah, Al-Andalus or Granada, Andalusia<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">8 Rajab 887 AH / Friday, August 23, AD 1482</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">An unbearable, dry heat hung over the <i>vega</i> of Gharnatah in the late afternoon. Despite the warmth, several dozen courtiers and a handful of advisors from the <i>Diwan al-Insha</i> gathered outside the courtyard of the council chamber. Ibn Kumasha stood among them, but not Abu’l-Hasan Ali’s secretary, Ibn Bannigash. With Abdul Wahid at his side, Muhammad stood apart from the ministers, wearied of the silent questions emanating from their intent gazes. They desired the answer to one inquiry. How could he respond?<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Yusuf and his men mounted their horses and departed through the <i>Bab al-Sharia</i>. The gate remained open afterward. The Sarraj chieftains and their men waited along the wooded slopes of the Sabika hill.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">The lone woman amid the crowd lowered her small hand and rested it on Muhammad’s forearm. Her fingernails, sharp and curved like the talons of a hunting hawk, pressed against the silk. She had remained at his side with her faithful eunuch Al-Siddiq since Yusuf gave his formal farewell, knelt at Muhammad’s feet, and kissed their mother’s hands. A fine display for the courtiers, some semblance of unity within their fractured family, and a son’s reverence for his honored mother. Lies but Muhammad would have none of them. His stare traveled up the length of her limb until at last, he saw the mirror of himself in her eyes. He blinked twice and turned away.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Her nails dug deeper. “You cannot relent now.”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">“Unlike you, I don’t withdraw my pledges once given.”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">She reached for his cheek and turned his face to hers. “You despise me now, so you speak petty cruelties. You will perceive the truth when your anger has faded. This is the correct choice for our futures and for Gharnatah.”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">“Eight years ago, you would have plunged the <i>khanjar</i> of our illustrious ancestor, my namesake, into Father’s heart. For your folly with the dagger, he imprisoned you.”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">When she would have withdrawn her touch, his hand covered hers. Although she gasped and pulled away, his hold tightened on her thin wrist. Bones so fragile he might have snapped them if he wished.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">“After your release six months later, you made a promise. Do you remember, <i>Ummi</i>?”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">“Muhammad, this time is different. Back then, your father had wronged me and taken the lives of two trusted companions. I struck out at him for vengeance’s sake, but today, I look to the future. Your destiny.”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">“Lie to yourself if you wish. But your falsehoods will not sway me. I know you, likely better than my father did. Eight years past, I warned you not to make us, your children by Abu’l-Hasan Ali, choose between our parents. Now you have forced the decision on me. I will never forgive you. Keep far from me and my family. I forbid your presence wherever I am or may reside. Furthermore—”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Her fingers shook. “Muhammad, don’t….”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">“You will not see my wife for any reason. You shall never hold my son again. You’ve deceived more than my father. You’ve betrayed every principle of family and love, which you taught my brother, sister and me in our childhood.”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Tears spilled down her cheeks. “My son, don’t hate me. Please.”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br /></span> <span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">As they drew apart, he caught the intent scrutiny of several courtiers and the ministers. He smiled and caressed Aisha's damp cheeks. “These tears. Beautiful. Purposeful. Those who observe would think you a loving mother, comforted by one dutiful son in the absence of another. The deception is complete. Well done, <i>Ummi</i>.” </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="text-align: justify;"><a href="http://www.lisajyarde.com/" target="_blank"><b><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Lisa J. Yarde</span></b></a><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"> writes fiction inspired by the Middle Ages in Europe. She is the author of two historical novels set in medieval England and Normandy, </span><i><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">The Burning Candle</span></i><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">, based on the life of one of the first countesses of Leicester and Surrey, Isabel de Vermandois, and </span><i><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">On Falcon's Wings</span></i><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">, chronicling the star-crossed romance between Norman and Saxon lovers before the Battle of Hastings. Lisa has also completed a six-part series set in Moorish Spain, </span><i><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Sultana, Sultana’s Legacy, Sultana: Two Sisters</span></i><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">, </span><i><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Sultana: The Bride Price,</span></i><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"> </span><i><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Sultana: The Pomegranate Tree</span></i><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">, and </span></span><i style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Sultana: The White Mountains, </span></i><span style="text-align: justify;">where rivalries and ambitions threaten the fragile bonds between members of a powerful family. Her short story, </span><i style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">The Legend Rises</span></i><span style="text-align: justify;">, which chronicles the Welsh princess Gwenllian of Gwynedd’s valiant fight against English invaders, is also available.</span> </span><br />
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br /></span> <span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"> </span></div>
Lisa J Yardehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05111498397731973454noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-37831405.post-11698993602470352772017-05-04T02:00:00.000-04:002017-05-18T11:06:11.098-04:00Excerpt Thursday: RETALIO (Roma Nova thriller series) by Alison Morton<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
This week, we're pleased to welcome our own Unusual Historicals contributor ALISON MORTON with the final novel of her second trilogy within the Roma Nova series. The trilogy started with <a href="http://unusualhistoricals.blogspot.fr/2015/05/author-interview-book-giveaway-alison.html" target="_blank">AURELIA</a> which was followed by <a href="http://unusualhistoricals.blogspot.fr/2016/05/author-interview-book-giveaway-alison.html" target="_blank">INSURRECTIO</a>. And now RETALIO brings us the end game...<br />
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One lucky winner will receive an ebook in the format of their choice, which Alison has kindly provided. Join us again on Sunday for an interview with her to find out more about the story behind the series. Here's what RETALIO is about...
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<i>Early 1980s Vienna. Recovering from a near fatal shooting, Aurelia Mitela, ex-Praetorian and former foreign minister of Roma Nova, chafes at her enforced exile. She barely escaped from her nemesis, the charming and amoral Caius Tellus who grabbed power in Roma Nova, the only part of the Roman Empire to survive into the twentieth century.</i><br />
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<i>Aurelia’s duty and passion fire her determination to take back her homeland and liberate its people. But Caius’s manipulations have isolated her from her fellow exiles, leaving her ostracised, powerless and vulnerable. But without their trust and support Aurelia knows she will never see Roma Nova again.</i><br />
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“A classic tale of resistance and resilience – the only regret is when the action stops.” – Douglas Jackson, author of Gaius Valerius Verrens series<br />
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"An international thriller, full of intrigue and espionage, set against an imaginative retelling of a history that feels authentic and real. ...what an entertaining ride it is!" – Matthew Harffy, author of The Bernicia Chronicles<br />
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Available from: <a href="http://mybook.to/RETALIO" target="_blank">Amazon</a> <a href="https://itunes.apple.com/gb/book/retalio/id1228815573" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">iBooks</a> <a href="https://www.kobo.com/ebook/retalio" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Kobo</a> </div>
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<b>**Excerpt from RETALIO - the third part of the AURELIA trilogy**</b></div>
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'Betrayal and collaboration used to lead automatically to a death sentence. You should be grateful this is the 1980s.’ She refused to look at me and instead jabbed her spoon into the coffee cup, almost scraping the glaze off as she rattled it round the tiny amount of liquid at the bottom.</div>
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‘Is that what you really think I’ve done, Maia Quirinia?’<br />
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‘I’m an accountant, Aurelia, used to looking at facts and figures. And the evidence against you adds up, if you’ll forgive the pun.’<br />
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This was my childhood friend, my fellow minister, one of the inner circle I had trusted with my secrets, my failures as well as my successes. The person who’d comforted me when I was nearly raped as a fifteen-year-old, whose common sense gave me balance and whose life I’d saved on the dreadful night of fires.
She looked tired; her hair was neat, but she obviously hadn’t had it cut and shaped for weeks.<br />
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She’d draped her coat, pressed wool from a chain store, over the back of the chair and kept the acrylic scarf round her neck. That and the knitted gloves she would once have been embarrassed to give to a charity shop told me how hard things were for her. And it was probably the same for the rest of them.
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She glanced at the wall clock. Ten past eight on a freezing December morning in a Vienna backstreet. She wriggled on the hard wooden chair. The workman’s café, warm from the fug of cigarette smoke, wasn’t the most comfortable place to start the day. It was full of people arguing about the previous evening’s football and how much everything cost, and the whirr and clatter of the coffee machines and the snappy retorts of the server trying to get to all twelve tables at once; crowded enough to drown our words.<br />
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‘I have a job interview in twenty minutes.’ She stood up. ‘I’m sorry, more than you can imagine, but this is goodbye. If any of the others find out I’ve been meeting you, I’ll be proscribed as well.’<br />
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She’d said it. That terrible word. Proscribed. Not that it meant much coming from a group of exiles stripped of authority, living on the edge of financial ruin, but it stung all the same.
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<b>About the author</b></div>
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Alison Morton, writes the acclaimed Roma Nova thriller series featuring modern Praetorian heroines. She blends her deep love of Roman history with six years’ military service and a life of reading crime, adventure and thriller fiction.<br />
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The first five books have been awarded the BRAG Medallion. SUCCESSIO, AURELIA and INSURRECTIO were selected as Historical Novel Society’s Indie Editor’s Choices. AURELIA was a finalist in the 2016 HNS Indie Award. The sixth, RETALIO, is now out.<br />
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A ‘Roman nut’ since age 11, Alison has misspent decades clambering over Roman sites throughout Europe. She holds a MA History, blogs about Romans and writing.
Now she continues to write, cultivates a Roman herb garden and drinks wine in France with her husband of 30 years.
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<span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Tahoma;">Connect with
Alison on her Roma Nova site: <a href="http://alison-morton.com/">http://alison-morton.com</a><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Tahoma;">Facebook author
page: <a href="https://www.facebook.com/AlisonMortonAuthor">https://www.facebook.com/AlisonMortonAuthor</a>
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<span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Tahoma;">Twitter: <a href="https://twitter.com/alison_morton">https://twitter.com/alison_morton</a>
@alison_morton<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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Goodreads:<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><a href="https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/5783095.Alison_Morton">https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/5783095.Alison_Morton</a><br />
Alison’s Amazon page: <span lang="EN-US" style="color: black; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-font-family: Verdana;"><a href="http://author.to/AlisonMortonAmazon">http://Author.to/AlisonMortonAmazon</a><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">Buying link</b> for RETALIO
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<a href="http://alison-morton.com/books-2/retalio/where-to-buy-retalio/">http://alison-morton.com/books-2/retalio/where-to-buy-retalio/</a><o:p></o:p>
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Alison Mortonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12638794898163576730noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-37831405.post-66383689421406007862017-04-21T10:35:00.000-04:002017-04-21T10:35:05.529-04:00New & Noteworthy: April 21<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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If you feel the need for some thrills and chills with your spring thaw, check out <a href="https://www.createspace.com/7069885" target="_blank">Dark Gothic Resurrected Magazine's April issue</a>. <b>J. K. Knauss</b> has a short story, "The Lake," set during the youth of Edgar Allan Poe. There's something for everyone in this issue! J. K. is also preparing for two exciting in-person events for her novel SEVEN NOBLE NIGHTS. On April 29, she will read a brief chapter and sign books at the library in Saint Helens, Oregon, as part of its Spring into Art event. May 3 will find her in Cambridge, Massachusetts, reading, doing Q&A, and <a href="http://www.harvard.com/event/grub_street_launch_lab2/" target="_blank">signing at the Harvard Book Store</a>. Please stop by and say hi if you're near either one of these bi-coastal events.</div>
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RUMORS AT COURT, <b>Blythe Gifford</b>’s third Royal Wedding story, is a May release from Harlequin Historical in the US and the UK. The print copy is available now. The e-version will be ready May 1. RTBookreviews gave it a 4-Star review, writing “delights on every level, from the sumptuous settings to the whispered…rumors spinning through the royal court.” The story is set in the 14th century, in the court of Edward III of England. </div>
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The first two Royal Wedding stories are SECRETS AT COURT, which was a finalist for the National Readers Choice Award, and WHISPERS AT COURT, which placed first in the Historical/Regency category of the Book Buyers Best contest and finalled in the Gayle Wilson Award of Excellence Historical category. For more information, visit <a href="http://blythegifford.com/">blythegifford.com</a></div>
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<a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-6AsDI0-Thy4/WPoXUmgco0I/AAAAAAAAA2c/cCIqF41HBZoy4ULp2C2Zu3NnHtpXYwlJgCLcB/s1600/RETALIO_Rev1.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="200" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-6AsDI0-Thy4/WPoXUmgco0I/AAAAAAAAA2c/cCIqF41HBZoy4ULp2C2Zu3NnHtpXYwlJgCLcB/s200/RETALIO_Rev1.jpg" width="130" /></a>RETALIO, the latest in <b>Alison Morton</b>'s Roma Nova thriller series, <a href="http://mybook.to/RETALIO" target="_blank">is out on 27 April</a>. The sixth in series, it concludes the trilogy started with AURELIA and INSURRECTIO. </div>
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<i>Early 1980s Vienna. Recovering from a near fatal shooting, Aurelia Mitela, ex-Praetorian and former foreign minister of Roma Nova, chafes at her enforced exile. She barely escaped from her nemesis, the charming and amoral Caius Tellus who grabbed power in Roma Nova, the only part of the Roman Empire to survive into the twentieth century.
Aurelia’s duty and passion fire her determination to take back her homeland and liberate its people. But Caius’s manipulations have isolated her from her fellow exiles, leaving her ostracised, powerless and vulnerable. Without their trust and support Aurelia knows she will never see Roma Nova again.
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Look out for an excerpt on Alison's blog on 4 May, and an interview on 7 May. You can also <a href="https://youtu.be/Mql2Mm3ytJc" target="_blank">watch the book trailer here</a>.</div>
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<a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-oNFMGE3cszw/WIIaQjdbgNI/AAAAAAAAAv0/8AMytHuSuRYchqLgbpxhDTGmgPYuCJAJwCPcB/s1600/9780373369379.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="200" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-oNFMGE3cszw/WIIaQjdbgNI/AAAAAAAAAv0/8AMytHuSuRYchqLgbpxhDTGmgPYuCJAJwCPcB/s200/9780373369379.jpg" width="126" /></a><b>Michelle Styles</b> is taking part in the <a href="http://www.oliviamorgangaines.com/conquer-me-viking/" target="_blank">Conquer Me Instafreebie Giveaway</a>, which features 12 Viking-themed adult romances. Her offering is a chapter from her novel SOLD TO THE VIKING WARRIOR.</div>
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In addition, her novel SAVED BY THE VIKING WARRIOR has just been published in Italian this month as <i>Fra Le Braccia Del Guerriero. </i>Congrats Michelle!</div>
Heatherhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11573707165019266775noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-37831405.post-30846862119767052472017-04-09T11:42:00.005-04:002017-04-09T11:42:53.109-04:00Author Interview & Book Giveaway: TONY RICHES on HENRY – Book Three of The Tudor Trilogy<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="background-color: white; text-align: justify;">This week, we're pleased to welcome author </span><span style="background-color: white; text-align: justify;"><b><a href="https://www.tonyriches.com/" target="_blank">TONY RICHES</a></b></span><span style="background-color: white; text-align: justify;"> again </span><span style="background-color: white; text-align: justify;">with the final novel of his three-part Tudor Era series, <b><i>Henry</i></b></span><span style="background-color: white; font-style: italic; text-align: justify;">. </span><span style="background-color: white; text-align: justify;">One lucky winner will receive the novels in the series in Kindle format, which the author has kindly provided.</span><span style="background-color: white; text-align: justify;"> Here's the blurb about the novel.</span></span><br />
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<a href="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-DeZfP4U5TH0/WOZeS5boEAI/AAAAAAAASsE/uhrwawX44ZI7s1q2346c2Afx2yium3rhACLcB/s1600/Henry%2BBook%2BThree%2Bof%2Bthe%2BTudor%2BTrilogy.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; display: inline !important; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-DeZfP4U5TH0/WOZeS5boEAI/AAAAAAAASsE/uhrwawX44ZI7s1q2346c2Afx2yium3rhACLcB/s320/Henry%2BBook%2BThree%2Bof%2Bthe%2BTudor%2BTrilogy.jpg" width="211" /></span></a><span lang="EN-GB"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">The final book in the best-selling historical fiction Tudor Trilogy, this is the story, based on actual events, of Henry Tudor, who changes the history of England forever.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><b><span lang="EN-GB">Bosworth 1485</span></b><span lang="EN-GB">: After victory against King Richard III, Henry Tudor becomes King of England. Rebels and pretenders plot to seize his throne. The barons resent his plans to curb their power and he wonders who he can trust. He hopes to unite Lancaster and York through marriage to the beautiful Elizabeth of York.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-GB"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">With help from his mother, Lady Margaret Beaufort, he learns to keep a fragile peace. He chooses a Spanish Princess, Catherine of Aragon, as a wife for his son Prince Arthur. His daughters will marry the King of Scotland and the son of the Emperor of Rome. It seems his prayers are answered, then disaster strikes and Henry must ensure the future of the Tudors.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<b><span lang="EN-GB"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">**Q&A with Tony Riches<i>**<o:p></o:p></i></span></span></b><br />
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<span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: Georgia, serif;">Our guest today is Tudor specialist Tony Riches, author of the best-selling Tudor Trilogy.<i><o:p></o:p></i></span></div>
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<i><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "Georgia",serif; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;"><span style="color: #990000;">Where did the idea for writing the Tudor trilogy come from? </span><o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "Georgia",serif; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;">I began looking into the life of Owen Tudor, the Welsh servant who married a queen, and was surprised to discover his amazing story. As my research progressed I began to collect fascinating details of the lives of Owen’s sons, Edmund and Jasper. I realised that if I planned it as a trilogy, Henry Tudor would be born in the first book, come of age in the second and become King of England in the final book.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<i><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "Georgia",serif; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;"><span style="color: #990000;">Why do you think this is the first full-length novel about Henry Tudor?</span><o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "Georgia",serif; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;">Everyone from Shakespeare to Alison Weir has written about Henry, but this trilogy is the first time his full story has been told through historical fiction. Even at the Bosworth re-enactment you would hardly believe Henry was victorious, as ‘Ricardians’ outnumber Tudor supporters by more than ten to one. Schools and TV historians can’t wait to get on to Henry VIII and his six wives, and Henry has too often been dismissed as the ‘miserly’ king. The truth is, as so often the case, far more complex and his story deserves to be told.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<i><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "Georgia",serif; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;"><span style="color: #990000;">What surprised you about the ‘real’ Henry Tudor?</span><o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "Georgia",serif; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;">Far from being ‘miserly’ I found Henry loved gambling with cards and dice and lost huge sums more often than he won. He also kept detailed records of who he’d played against (which included his wife, Elizabeth of York) and how much he’d lost. As well as lions and other dangerous animals, which he kept at the Tower of London, he kept a pet monkey, thought to be a marmoset, in his private chambers. (One day he discovered it had torn up his detailed diary, so there is a gap in his meticulous records.) I’m certain he loved Elizabeth of York but when the pretender Perkin Warbeck was finally captured, Henry was so enamoured of Warbeck’s wife, Lady Katheryn Gordon, he kept them both in his household – but wouldn’t let them sleep together. He also bought Lady Katheryn expensive dresses and she became a close companion and confidante, even after Henry had her husband executed!<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<i><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "Georgia",serif; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;"><span style="color: #990000;">What did you find most difficult about the research for this book?</span><o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "Georgia",serif; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;">Henry escaped to exile in Brittany at the age of fourteen and remained there until he sailed to take the throne with his invasion fleet at the age of twenty-eight. I struggled to understand how he spent those formative years (often described as ‘uneventful’) so decided to follow in his footsteps, all the way from Pembroke Castle to the remote Forteresse de Largoët, deep in the forest outside the town of Elven in Brittany. </span><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "Georgia",serif; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<i><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "Georgia",serif; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;">The Forteresse de Largoët</span></i></div>
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<span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "Georgia",serif; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;">Amazingly, I was able to climb the Dungeon Tower through a dark high stairway lit only by small window openings. Henry Tudor’s rooms were full of cobwebs and signs in French warned of a danger of falling masonry, but this first-hand research really helped me understand what Henry’s life there might have been like. Although it was called the ‘dungeon tower’, in subsequent research I discovered intriguing details at the National Library of Wales which suggest Henry Tudor enjoyed more freedom at this time than is generally imagined. The papers claim that, ‘by a Breton lady’, Henry Tudor fathered a son, Roland Velville, whom he knighted after coming to the throne.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<i><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "Georgia",serif; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;"><span style="color: #990000;">What will you write next, now you’ve completed the Tudor trilogy?</span><o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "Georgia",serif; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;">I’ve moved on one generation of Tudors for each of the past three years, so thought it would be interesting to write about the life of Henry’s daughter Mary Tudor. Reputed to be a great beauty, Mary was only eighteen when she became Queen of France, married off by her brother Henry VIII to the fifty-two-year-old King Louis XII. I’m also looking forward to writing about her womanising second husband, one of the last true Tudor knights and Henry VIII’s lifelong friend, Charles Brandon. The Tudor trilogy may be completed – but the story of the Tudors continues!</span><span style="font-family: Georgia, serif;"> </span></div>
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<b><span lang="EN-GB"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">About the Author</span></span></b></div>
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<v:shape id="Picture_x0020_2" o:spid="_x0000_s1026" style="height: 145.05pt; margin-left: 331.55pt; margin-top: .6pt; mso-height-percent: 0; mso-height-percent: 0; mso-height-relative: page; mso-position-horizontal-relative: text; mso-position-horizontal: absolute; mso-position-vertical-relative: text; mso-position-vertical: absolute; mso-width-percent: 0; mso-width-percent: 0; mso-width-relative: page; mso-wrap-distance-bottom: 0; mso-wrap-distance-left: 9pt; mso-wrap-distance-right: 9pt; mso-wrap-distance-top: 0; mso-wrap-style: square; position: absolute; visibility: visible; width: 129.05pt; z-index: 251661312;" type="#_x0000_t75"><v:imagedata o:title="" src="file:///C:/Users/lisa/AppData/Local/Temp/msohtmlclip1/01/clip_image002.jpg"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><w:wrap type="square"></w:wrap></span></v:imagedata></v:shape><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span lang="EN-GB">Tony Riches is a full time author of best-selling historical fiction. He lives in Pembrokeshire, West Wales and is a specialist in the fifteenth century, with a particular interest in the Wars of the Roses and the lives of the early Tudors. For more information about Tony’s other books please visit his website </span><span lang="EN-GB"><a href="https://www.tonyriches.com/">tonyriches.com</a></span><span lang="EN-GB"> and his popular blog, </span><span lang="EN-GB"><a href="http://tonyriches.blogspot.co.uk/">The Writing Desk</a></span><span lang="EN-GB"> and find him on </span><span lang="EN-GB"><a href="https://www.facebook.com/tonyriches.author">Facebook</a></span><span lang="EN-GB"> and Twitter </span><span lang="EN-GB"><a href="https://twitter.com/tonyriches">@tonyriches</a></span><span lang="EN-GB">.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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Lisa J Yardehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05111498397731973454noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-37831405.post-22512252063149029822017-04-07T16:41:00.002-04:002017-04-07T16:41:27.028-04:00Strange Discoveries: Greek Fire<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><b style="font-family: georgia, 'times new roman', serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="line-height: 17.12px; text-align: justify;">By </span><a href="http://www.lisajyarde.com/" style="line-height: 17.12px; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Lisa J. Yarde</span></a></span></b></span></span><br />
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">In
the ninth century Emperor Leo of Constantinople wrote of Greek fire,
“Such a weapon is fire prepared for siphons from which it is hurled
with thunderous noise and smoke, burning down ships at which we
direct it....” We know of Greek fire today because of its
terrifying reputation among those who experienced the power of this
incendiary weapon. The term developed during after the first Crusade
in the twelfth century. The Byzantine Empire called the dangerous
combustible substance 'liquid fire' or 'sea fire' because of the
first usage in naval battles, where it burned on all surfaces, even
water. </span></span>
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">Credit
for the invention has gone to a Jewish refugee fleeing Arab invaders,
called Callinicus from Heliopolis of Syria, which is the region known
today as Baalbek in Lebanon. Callinicus meant “bright victor” and
is not likely to have been a personal name. At the start of Emperor
Constantine IV's reign over Constantinople in 668, conflict began
with an expanding Arab empire under Caliph Muawiya. When his son
Yazid attacked Constantinople from the harbor in April 674, the
Byzantines first used Greek fire against their enemies, the viscous
liquid delivered from siphons mounted on the foredecks of fire ships.
The Arabs must have been horrified at how rapidly flames spread,
especially with exposure to water. After four years of repeated
attacks, the caliph and emperor reached a truce.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">Decades
before, the Arabs had deployed their own combustion weapons as early
as 630 with the use of red-hot clay balls like grenades that exploded
on impact. Naphtha, or thick petroleum was known as highly flammable
among the Persians whom the Arabs encountered. What made Greek fire
such a potent weapon against them that they sued for peace with the
Byzantines? The exact composition of chemicals in Greek fire
remained a state secret within Constantinople such that any enemy who
captured caches could not recreate the formula. Some sources say
the“mixture was petroleum, sulfur, resin, and other components,
which might include quicklime, were added to the former as
thickeners.” Others believe saltpeter was the main component, the
main cause for the explosive dispersal of squirting flames, and to
the saltpeter, a mixture of sulfur, resin, and oil were added.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"> In
the centuries that followed, the devastation caused by Greek fire
became legendary. The fleet of Igor, the prince of Kiev suffered
its effects in 941. “...Stormy weather had changed to calm and the
Greeks were able to throw fire. Stepping into the middle, they hurled
fire all around them. Seeing this, the Russians began throwing
themselves into the water, preferring drowning to being burned alive.
Some of them, donned in heavy armor and carrying their shields, swam
to the shore, but many sank to the bottom while swimming, and none of
them had saved themselves except those who had reached the shore ….”
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">The
Arabs adapted their own form of Greek fire, which they used in the
Crusades, particularly at Godfrey of Bouillon's two year siege of
Arsuf and King Baldwin I's blockade of Tyre. They also hurled it by
hand from clay pots as in earlier periods, which shattered on impact.
Their versions also varied; from naphtha mixed with olive oil and
lime or tar, resin, sulfur and animal fat. The consequences remained
the same. Battering rams and wooden siege towers went up in
“...Unquenchable flames, surrounded on all sides and burnt with a
great and unquenchable fire, along with a great part of the men, who
had tried to shake off and put out the fire and were completely
unable to escape.” </span></span>
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">If
water could not contain the flames of Greek fore, how did medieval
armies counteract its devastation? From the Byzantine period, the
Arabs learned how depriving a fire of oxygen could reduce the flames.
The use of sand and stale urine reduced the violent strength of Greek
fire. Arab doctors also knew the benefits of treating burns and
preventing the occurrence of blisters with vinegar, which also became
an effective tool against Greek fire. Its use as a weapon subsided
with the development of powerful artillery, such as cannon, which led
to the fall of Constantinople in 1453.</span></span></div>
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<iframe width="320" height="266" class="YOUTUBE-iframe-video" data-thumbnail-src="https://i.ytimg.com/vi/9VNP50Cdkqs/0.jpg" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/9VNP50Cdkqs?feature=player_embedded" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">Sources:
<i>Ancient and Medieval Siege Weapons</i> by Konstantin Nossov (The
Lyons Press – 2005), Creations of Fire by Cathy Cobb and Harold
Goldwhite (Perseus Publishing - 1995) and <i>Medicine in the Crusades
by Piers D. Mitchell </i>(Cambridge University Press – 2004)</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">Pictures are public domain, taken from Wikipedia. Video is from t<span style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; background-color: white; color: #333333; display: inline ! important; float: none; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; text-align: start; text-decoration-color: initial; text-decoration-style: initial; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;">he <span style="color: black;">History Channel's documentary series "Ancient Discoveries" in Episode 25 entitled Ancient Death Machines, available on YouTube.</span></span></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-tKlA8Ji1cDs/Unm7iFRJRLI/AAAAAAAAG18/VvFKupjnr0o/s1600/Author%2BPhoto%2B2012.jpg" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><img border="0" height="200" src="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-tKlA8Ji1cDs/Unm7iFRJRLI/AAAAAAAAG18/VvFKupjnr0o/s1600/Author%2BPhoto%2B2012.jpg" style="cursor: move;" width="129" /></span></a></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><a href="http://www.lisajyarde.com/" target="_blank"><b><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Lisa J. Yarde</span></b></a><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"> writes
fiction inspired by the Middle Ages in Europe. She is the author of two
historical novels set in medieval England and Normandy, </span><i><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">The Burning Candle</span></i><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">, based on the life of one of the first countesses of Leicester and Surrey, Isabel de Vermandois, and </span><i><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">On Falcon's Wings</span></i><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">,
chronicling the star-crossed romance between Norman and Saxon lovers
before the Battle of Hastings. Lisa has also completed a six-part series
set in Moorish Spain, </span><i><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Sultana, Sultana’s Legacy, Sultana: Two Sisters</span></i><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">, </span><i><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Sultana: The Bride Price,</span></i><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"> </span><i><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Sultana: The Pomegranate Tree</span></i><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">, and </span></span><i style="font-family: georgia, "times new roman", serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Sultana: The White Mountains, </span></i><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">where rivalries and ambitions threaten the fragile bonds between members of a powerful family. Her short story, </span><i style="font-family: georgia, "times new roman", serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">The Legend Rises</span></i><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">, which chronicles the Welsh princess Gwenllian of Gwynedd’s valiant fight against English invaders, is also available.</span></span></span></span></div>
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Lisa J Yardehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05111498397731973454noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-37831405.post-29428058890927361932017-04-06T11:26:00.002-04:002017-04-09T11:32:20.154-04:00Excerpt Thursday: HENRY – Book Three of The Tudor Trilogy by TONY RICHES<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="background-color: white; text-align: justify;">This week, we're pleased to welcome author </span><span style="background-color: white; text-align: justify;"><b><a href="https://www.tonyriches.com/" target="_blank">TONY RICHES</a></b></span><span style="background-color: white; text-align: justify;"> again </span><span style="background-color: white; text-align: justify;">with the final novel of his three-part Tudor Era series, <b><i>Henry</i></b></span><span style="background-color: white; font-style: italic; text-align: justify;">. </span><span style="background-color: white; text-align: justify;">One lucky winner will receive the novels in the series in Kindle format, which the author has kindly provided.</span><span style="background-color: white; font-style: italic; text-align: justify;"> </span><span style="background-color: white; text-align: justify;">Join us again on Sunday for an author interview, with more details about the story behind the series. Here's the blurb about the novel.</span></span><br />
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<a href="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-DeZfP4U5TH0/WOZeS5boEAI/AAAAAAAASsE/uhrwawX44ZI7s1q2346c2Afx2yium3rhACLcB/s1600/Henry%2BBook%2BThree%2Bof%2Bthe%2BTudor%2BTrilogy.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; display: inline !important; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-DeZfP4U5TH0/WOZeS5boEAI/AAAAAAAASsE/uhrwawX44ZI7s1q2346c2Afx2yium3rhACLcB/s320/Henry%2BBook%2BThree%2Bof%2Bthe%2BTudor%2BTrilogy.jpg" width="211" /></span></a><span lang="EN-GB"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">The final book in the best-selling historical fiction Tudor Trilogy, this is the story, based on actual events, of Henry Tudor, who changes the history of England forever.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><b><span lang="EN-GB">Bosworth 1485</span></b><span lang="EN-GB">: After victory against King Richard III, Henry Tudor becomes King of England. Rebels and pretenders plot to seize his throne. The barons resent his plans to curb their power and he wonders who he can trust. He hopes to unite Lancaster and York through marriage to the beautiful Elizabeth of York.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-GB"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">With help from his mother, Lady Margaret Beaufort, he learns to keep a fragile peace. He chooses a Spanish Princess, Catherine of Aragon, as a wife for his son Prince Arthur. His daughters will marry the King of Scotland and the son of the Emperor of Rome. It seems his prayers are answered, then disaster strikes and Henry must ensure the future of the Tudors.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<b><span lang="EN-GB"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">**Excerpt from HENRY – Book Three of <i>The Tudor Trilogy**<o:p></o:p></i></span></span></b></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><b><span lang="EN-GB">New <strong><span style="background: white; border: none 1.0pt; color: #656565; padding: 0in;">on</span></strong><span class="apple-converted-space"><span style="background: white; border: none 1.0pt; color: #656565; padding: 0in;"> </span></span></span></b><span lang="EN-GB"><a href="https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B06XQK1R6S" target="_blank"><b><span style="background: white; border: 1pt none; color: #3498db; padding: 0in;">Amazon UK</span></b></a></span><strong><span lang="EN-GB" style="background: white; border: none 1.0pt; color: #656565; padding: 0in;"> </span></strong><span lang="EN-GB"><a href="https://www.amazon.com/dp/B06XQK1R6S" target="_blank"><b><span style="background: white; border: 1pt none; color: #3498db; padding: 0in;">Amazon US</span></b></a></span><strong><span lang="EN-GB" style="background: white; border: none 1.0pt; color: #656565; padding: 0in;"> and</span></strong><span class="apple-converted-space"><b><span lang="EN-GB" style="background: white; border: 1pt none; color: #656565; padding: 0in;"> </span></b></span><span lang="EN-GB"><a href="https://www.amazon.com.au/dp/B06XQK1R6S" target="_blank"><b><span style="background: white; border: 1pt none; color: #3498db; padding: 0in;">Amazon AU</span></b></a></span><b><span lang="EN-GB"><o:p></o:p></span></b></span></div>
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<b><span lang="EN-GB"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">April 1489<o:p></o:p></span></span></b></div>
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<span lang="EN-GB"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Reaching out with slender fingers, the latest gift from the King of Spain munched at the succulent grape as if it were an apple. Less than a foot high, with a long, thick tail, the monkey had brown fur except for a cap of black. It fixed Henry with a pleading stare and held out a hand for more.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-GB"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">He offered another grape, which it took and began to suck at the sweet juice. ‘Do you think it has too-knowing eyes?’ Henry smiled. ‘I feel it can read our thoughts.’<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-GB"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Elizabeth spoke in a hushed tone, as if frightened of alarming it. ‘Does it have a name?’<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-GB"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">‘I thought to call him Rodrigo,’ Henry laughed at her surprised expression, ‘after our esteemed ambassador. I wonder if this little monkey has also been sent to spy on us?’<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-GB"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">‘Will the ambassador not be... offended?’<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-GB"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">‘He should take it as a compliment that I consider his name worthy for my new pet.’ Henry gave her a grin. ‘Others have given us presents of lions, yet I received a monkey as a gift from his master.’<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-GB"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">‘You plan to keep it in our private apartments?’ Elizabeth frowned with concern as she watched Henry feed the creature another ripe grape.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-GB"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">‘It amuses me.’ He grinned at her discomfort.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-GB"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Elizabeth studied the thin gold chain which ran from a leather collar around the monkey’s tiny neck to prevent it escaping. ‘It has sharp little teeth...’<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-GB"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">‘I think Rodrigo is clever enough not to bite the hand that feeds him.’<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-GB"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">‘The ambassador...’ Elizabeth lowered her voice so the ever-present servants could not overhear. ‘Has he made progress with his negotiations?’<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-GB"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Henry nodded. ‘It seems we’ve found a suitable princess for our son. I expect a considerable dowry—and if de Puebla’s word is to be relied on, Princess Catalina is a pretty girl and bright for her age.’<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-GB"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">‘It must be difficult to be certain.’ Elizabeth looked doubtful. ‘I understand the princess is only four years old...’<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-GB"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">‘Arthur is only two years old, yet you agree he’s as handsome as his father—and as quick-witted as his mother?’<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-GB"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Elizabeth smiled at the thought. ‘Of course, but then as you often remind me, he is a Tudor.’<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-GB"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">‘Half Tudor, half prince of the House of York.’<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-GB"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">‘And soon there might be another...’<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-GB"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Henry embraced her. ‘Elizabeth!’ He stared into her amber eyes. ‘You are with child again?’<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-GB"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">‘God willing.’ She failed to prevent a giggle at his enthusiasm for the news.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-GB"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">‘I prayed for God’s blessing upon us yet it seemed to be tempting fate to ask for another child.’ His face became serious. ‘I haven’t forgotten the toll Arthur’s birth took on you.’<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-GB"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">‘It is a small enough price to pay.’ A fleeting shadow drifted over her face, the fear of all parents, then the moment passed. <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-GB"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">‘I will pray for your good health and that this time it goes easier for you. Now we must celebrate our growing family!’<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-rT5qY1DmWss/WOZd22yShRI/AAAAAAAASr8/O47qUcG9uFwdVbUCRQFMkRw34GKM5rciQCLcB/s1600/Tony%2BRiches%2BAuthor.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><img border="0" height="200" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-rT5qY1DmWss/WOZd22yShRI/AAAAAAAASr8/O47qUcG9uFwdVbUCRQFMkRw34GKM5rciQCLcB/s200/Tony%2BRiches%2BAuthor.jpg" width="186" /></span></a></div>
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<b><span lang="EN-GB"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">About the Author</span></span></b></div>
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<v:shape id="Picture_x0020_2" o:spid="_x0000_s1026" style="height: 145.05pt; margin-left: 331.55pt; margin-top: .6pt; mso-height-percent: 0; mso-height-percent: 0; mso-height-relative: page; mso-position-horizontal-relative: text; mso-position-horizontal: absolute; mso-position-vertical-relative: text; mso-position-vertical: absolute; mso-width-percent: 0; mso-width-percent: 0; mso-width-relative: page; mso-wrap-distance-bottom: 0; mso-wrap-distance-left: 9pt; mso-wrap-distance-right: 9pt; mso-wrap-distance-top: 0; mso-wrap-style: square; position: absolute; visibility: visible; width: 129.05pt; z-index: 251661312;" type="#_x0000_t75"> <v:imagedata o:title="" src="file:///C:/Users/lisa/AppData/Local/Temp/msohtmlclip1/01/clip_image002.jpg"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"> <w:wrap type="square"> </w:wrap></span></v:imagedata></v:shape><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span lang="EN-GB">Tony Riches is a full time author of best-selling historical fiction. He lives in Pembrokeshire, West Wales and is a specialist in the fifteenth century, with a particular interest in the Wars of the Roses and the lives of the early Tudors. For more information about Tony’s other books please visit his website </span><span lang="EN-GB"><a href="https://www.tonyriches.com/">tonyriches.com</a></span><span lang="EN-GB"> and his popular blog, </span><span lang="EN-GB"><a href="http://tonyriches.blogspot.co.uk/">The Writing Desk</a></span><span lang="EN-GB"> and find him on </span><span lang="EN-GB"><a href="https://www.facebook.com/tonyriches.author">Facebook</a></span><span lang="EN-GB"> and Twitter </span><span lang="EN-GB"><a href="https://twitter.com/tonyriches">@tonyriches</a></span><span lang="EN-GB">.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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Lisa J Yardehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05111498397731973454noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-37831405.post-63596356522853699872017-03-31T03:42:00.000-04:002017-03-31T06:55:26.971-04:00Herstory: Brittany and the Vendée – Secrets and Horrors of the French Revolution<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><b>By</b> <a href="http://teranga-and-sun.blogspot.com/" target="_blank">Laura Rahme</a></span><br />
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<a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-b_TpsFl5Y3k/WNuMp8C9dQI/AAAAAAAAA7Q/Z1EoAF_ZbVwqzQc9AxQV_u1WgxSUNUUwQCLcB/s1600/Noyades_Nantes.jpg" imageanchor="1"><img border="0" height="303" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-b_TpsFl5Y3k/WNuMp8C9dQI/AAAAAAAAA7Q/Z1EoAF_ZbVwqzQc9AxQV_u1WgxSUNUUwQCLcB/s320/Noyades_Nantes.jpg" width="400" /></a></div>
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Drownings of Nantes in 1793, Joseph Aubert (1882)</div>
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<span style="color: #666666;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">“We must exterminate all men who have taken arms against </span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">the Republic </span></span></div>
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<span style="color: #666666;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">and strike down their fathers, </span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">their wives, their sisters and their children. </span></span></div>
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<span style="color: #666666; font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">The Vendée must become a national cemetery.” </span></div>
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<span style="color: #666666; font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"> – General Turreau</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">The French Revolution is generally accepted as covering the period 1789 to 1799, ending with Napoleon’s coup d’état and the dissolution of the Directory. Prior to the formation of the Directory government, France was ruled by the National Convention, headed by Robespierre. This period, aptly known as the Terror, lasted from September 1793 to July 1794. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">For Western France, in the region of the Vendée, the Terror was accompanied by bloody and religious civil war, including a period of mass killings that some French historians have recently come to denounce as a genocide, and which led to the decimation of a third of the inhabitants in the Vendée. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">In the Western town of Nantes, the representative of the National Convention, Jean-Baptiste Carrier, was responsible for atrocities and massacres that defy imagination. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">In my latest novel, <i>Julien’s Terror</i> (July 2017), I was interested in portraying a female perspective for this turbulent period.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">It is a misconception that aside from aristocrats and nobles, all French people were in favor of the beheading of their king and queen. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">The inhabitants of Brittany and of the newly named region of Vendée (comprising parts of Brittany, Poitou and Anjou regions) were never in favor of the guillotining of their king, Louis XVI, on 21 January 1793. They were staunch royalists and deeply Catholic. The execution of King Louis was not well received. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">To compound the people’s outrage, the new Republic had not only nationalized church property, but it also outlawed all priests who refused to forsake their oath on the Holy Bible. According to these new laws, priests now had to swear upon the Constitution. Those who resisted were labelled ‘refractory’ and banished from preaching. There were persecutions involving both priests and nuns. In worst cases, such priests were hunted to death or murdered en masse, as happened in Nantes in December 1793, when hundreds of refractory priests were tied up, locked into a barge and drowned in the Loire River. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">Already unsettled, the Vendée peasants rose in arms against the Republic when in February 1793, the National Convention made a call for the conscription of 300000 unmarried men, from the age of 18 to 40 years. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">The people of the Vendée had already witnessed great injustices toward their beloved priests, whom they hid, but this new conscription law was the tipping point because it would have left thousands of peasants unable to fend for their families. Meanwhile they would be forced to enlist in support of a Republic they had come to see as tyrannical.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">Determine to oppose the Republic, these men, often illiterate and attached to their land, elected nobles and landlords—local men whom they held in high esteem—to lead and train them in battle. The Great Vendéan Army was born. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">Initially this Great Army won many victories against the soldiers of the Republic but later from December 1793, its luck began to turn: from January to July 1794, Paris sent a giant army to sweep across the Vendée. Its orders were clear—annihilation with no quarters. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif; font-size: small;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif; font-size: large;">The Infernal Columns</span></h3>
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">Children, women, the aged, even the sick and farm livestock were not spared from massacres. The Republican army practiced scorched-earth and sought to obey decrees from Paris aimed at starving or exterminating the population. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">The army possessed twenty columns, led by several Republican generals, some like those commanded by General Grignon, were crueller than others. These columns became known as the ‘infernal columns’ for the very hell they spawned. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">The living defend their dead. War of the Vendée. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">Georges Clairin, 19th century</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">The words pronounced by General François Joseph Westermann are powerful illustrations of the atrocities that followed: </span><br />
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<span style="color: #666666; font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">“There is no more Vendée. I have trampled the children to death with our horses, I have massacred the women, and they are no longer able to give birth to any brigands. I am not guilty of taking a single prisoner, I have exterminated them all… The roads are covered with corpses. There are so many of them at several places they form pyramids. The firing squads work incessantly… Brigands arrive who pretend that they will surrender as prisoners… but we are not taking any. One would be forced to feed them with the bread of liberty, but compassion is not a revolutionary virtue.” </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif; font-size: small;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif; font-size: large;">Her story</span></h3>
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">In <i>Julien’s Terror</i>, my desire was to convey what might have been the experience of a young girl in these violent times. The journey begins when she is a spoilt child, daughter a well-to-do merchant, living on the prestigious Île Feydeau in the middle of Nantes, and it ends just after the Terror, when she is a spirited but destitute orphan. What she sees and lives in-between, and the aftermath of her horrendous psychological journey provide both drama and mystery, but more importantly, it casts a light on the hardships faced by many French women in this period.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">My female character is barely nine when she loses her parents to Carrier’s butchery. She is reunited with relatives in war-torn Vendée, staying with them first in Montaigu, La Guyonnière and then later in Les Epesses—all communes that were swept by the infernal columns.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif; font-size: large;">The Underground and the Hidden Places of the Vendée</span></h3>
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">Less well-known about the conflict in Western France is how much the peasants’ knowledge of their natural surroundings supplied them with advantages for surviving the Republican army. Like the Viet Cong of Vietnam, the people of Brittany and Vendée crawled in secret undergrounds. They also waged a guerrilla war long before the word ‘guerilla’ officially surfaced, when Napoleonic French troops encountered fierce resistance in Spain.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">As François Pagès describes in <i>Secret History of the French revolution</i>—the soldiers of the Catholic royalist army ceaselessly disappeared and then re-appeared to fight. The underground, the woods, the stones and the marshes in the West would conceal and then suddenly release hordes of former valets, brigands, priests, ex-nobles, and peasants. They were everywhere and yet they remained unseen. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">In his last novel, <i>Quatre-Vingt Treize</i>, Victor Hugo wrote of his father’s experience in the war against Breton royalists. He too mentions the forests that sheltered thousands of peasants in Brittany: </span><br />
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<span style="color: #666666; font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">“The peasant had two points on which he leaned: the field which nourished him, the wood which concealed him.”</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">“There were wells, round and narrow, masked by coverings of stones and branches, the interior at first vertical, then horizontal, spreading out underground like funnels, and ending in dark chambers. [ ] The caves of Egypt held dead men, the caves of Brittany were filled with the living.”</span></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">“The subsoil of every forest was a sort of mad repose, pierced and traversed in all directions by a secret highway of minds, cells, and galleries. Each one of these blind cells could shelter five or six men.”</span></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">In Les Epesses, my female character follows her great-uncle, a giant Breton man who walks everywhere with his large wooden staff, and seems to know all the secrets of the underground. He hides his family in an underground cavern where they remain for months. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">As the infernal columns advance in the Vendée countryside, my character witnesses horrors beyond her years. Later she will hide in the secret Gralas forest, south of Nantes, and meet one of the most courageous men to lead the Vendée rebellion – General François Athanase de Charette de la Contrie (Charette). In Gralas, she will also discover the strong, independent women who fought to death alongside Charette, and one of these women will change her life forever.</span><br />
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"Liberty, Equality, Fraternity or Death" </div>
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- the original motto of the French Republic</div>
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><u>Further Reading:</u></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">1.<span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>Histoire secrète de la Révolution française depuis la convocation des notables jusqu' a la </span><br />
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">prise de l'ile de Malthe..., François Pagès, 1798.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">2.<span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>Quatrevingt-treize, Victor Hugo, 1874.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">3.<span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>Souterrains de Vendée, Laurent et Jérôme Triolet, Editions Ouest-France, 2013.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">4.<span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span><a href="https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colonnes_infernales" target="_blank">Colonnes Infernales</a> - Wikipedia </span><br />
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">5.<span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>A French Genocide: The Vendée, Reynald Secher, University of Notre Dame Press, 2003.</span><br />
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Laura Rahme is an Australian-French writer based in Sydney. She was born in Dakar, Senegal where she spent her early childhood. Her first novel, THE MING STORYTELLERS (2012), is a historical saga set in China's Early Ming Dynasty. THE MASCHERARI (2014), is a historical mystery with supernatural themes set in late medieval Venice. Her third novel, JULIEN'S TERROR (July 2017) is set during and after the French Revolution and pays homage to her Breton roots.</div>
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Laurahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06513072322652301317noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-37831405.post-53291774978930668452017-03-27T23:05:00.001-04:002017-03-29T01:00:56.003-04:00Herstory: Isabella of Castile - the queen at war<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<b style="font-family: georgia, 'times new roman', serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="line-height: 17.12px; text-align: justify;">By </span><a href="http://www.lisajyarde.com/" style="line-height: 17.12px; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Lisa J. Yarde</span></a></span></b></div>
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"></span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"></span><br></span>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">...For me, Isabella of Castile will always remain a cruel villain. She couched the quest for Spain’s trade domination across the Mediterranean Sea and control of the kingdom of Granada’s gold supply from Africa as a religious crusade. She ensured the aid of the Catholic Church for her dynastic aims and brought about the ruin of Moorish Granada; ultimately, the end of Muslim Spain. </span></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"></span><br></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Civil war among the Moors allowed Isabella to take advantage of an already worsening situation. Through guile and ruthless calculation, she exploited the divisions between the last Nasrid rulers Abu’l-Hasan Ali, his brother Muhammad al-Zaghal and their rival Muhammad, respectively a son and nephew to both men. </span></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"></span></span></span><br><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="margin: 0px;"></span></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Within a few years of Muhammad’s departure from his homeland, she had violated each of the terms offered on behalf of his people in the Capitulations of 1491, specifically the stipulation allowing the Moors to “…live in their own religion,” and “…not permit that their mosques be taken from them….” She unleashed the Inquisition on conquered southern Spain and bore responsibility for thousands of fiery deaths among innocents of the Muslim, Jewish and even Christian faiths. - From the author's note of </span><i><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Sultana: The White Mountains</span></i><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">.</span></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: small;">Isabella's portrait - a picture taken while</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: small;">visiting Segovia Castle</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Historians have often portrayed the Catholic monarch Isabella, the queen at war </span></span>as a shining example of female courage in the struggle between Moors and Christians from 1482 to 1492. The sight of her on the edge of a battlefield or at a lengthy siege could boost morale and lead to victory. Against all odds, including difficult terrain and a determined enemy who could strike hard and fast against the Spanish Christians before disappearing through the mountain passes, Isabella and her husband secured the official surrender of Moorish Spain on January 2, 1492. </span><br>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Isabella may have never anticipated a future as queen of Castile. In the line of succession, two elder brothers Enrique and Alfonso preceded her. She might not have imagined a union with Ferdinand of Aragon or how their marriage would lay the groundwork for a future Spanish dynasty. Like her ancestors, she could have idled and watched the Moors of southern Spain destroy each other in foolish civil war. Instead, she pursued a ten-year campaign against them and sought the hegemony of Spain under Christian rule.</span><br>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">The campaign against the Moors didn't begin at the direction of Isabella or her husband. For centuries beforehand, Isabella's ancestors had struggled against the kingdom of Granada, which encompassed most of modern-day Andalusia, in a series of intermittent border raids and sieges. When they were not fighting. the Castilian sovereigns accepted payments of tribute from the Moorish rulers, whom they considered their vassals. It's clear the Moors did not always accept this subordinate role because several Sultans refused to submit the gold coins. Last among them was Abu'l-Hasan Ali, known among the Spanish as Muley Hacén. </span><br>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">His soldiers seized the city of Zahara in December 1481, provoking the response of </span>Rodrigo Ponce de León, <span style="background: white;">Marqués</span> of Cádiz, who then attacked and claimed Alhama. Isabella and the <span style="background: white;">Marqués</span> did not always enjoy good relations; at the death of her elder brother Enrique, Rodrigo Ponce de León first supported the rival claim of the princess Juana, Enrique's daughter and Isabella's niece. The propaganda of Isabella's supporters made the supposed heir of Castile the illegitimate child of another man. Juana eventually resigned herself to a convent. Although Isabella and Ferdinand had not ordered the reprisal at Alhama, they planned to use it as a base for future conquests. Ferdinand came south to attack Loja, but the forces of Abu'l-Hasan Ali turned his quest into a resounding defeat. </span><br>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">What happened to the momentum after the victory at Alhama? At Loja, Isabella's husband became aware of the difficulties their campaign would face in every Moorish territory. The cities of Andalusia were not only defended by stout walls and cannon, but the terrain itself made the movement of massive armies and siege weapons a struggle. Men and artillery required money the monarchs did not have. So, the king and queen sent a delegation to the Pope Sixtus IV seeking a papal bull. </span><br>
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br></span></span>
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">The words, "We have not been moved to this war by any desire to enlarge our realms...but our desire to serve God, and our zeal for His Holy Catholic faith, made us put all other interests aside...." had the intended effect and the Pope granted the bull. It turned centuries-long warfare between the kingdoms into a religious crusade. The indulgences the Church gave to those who fought against the Moors, including absolution for any violence committed, bolstered the numbers in the army and brought the funds the king and queen required. To secure future victories and avoid the embarrassment at Loja, they employed the services of </span></span>Francisco Ramírez de Madrid, Master of Artillery.</span><br>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Internal divisions within Granada also buoyed their efforts. Abu'l-Hasan Ali's eldest son Muhammad then claimed the throne in the summer of 1482, relegating his father to the area around Malaga, which was then the governorship of Muhammad Al-Zaghal, brother of Abu'l-Hasan Ali. During April 1483 in an attempt to raid the Castilian border, the new Sultan fell into the hands of Isabella and Ferdinand. They gave him an ultimatum; he would gain release if he fought against his father and turned his toddler son and younger brother over as hostages. In the interim, the Castilian forces kept up the attacks on Abu'l-Hasan Ali. They also built up the Castilian navy's presence in the Mediterranean Sea and interrupted the centuries-long supply of Muslim troops from Morocco in defense of Granada, as well as gold from the mines of Africa.</span><br>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Isabella and Ferdinand released the young Sultan in exchange for his son, whom they kept at their court until 1492. Then they began the campaign in earnest with the siege weapons the master of artillery had developed. Faced with merciless bombardment under heavy mortar and cannon, city after city fell into their hands. Ronda surrendered in 1485, as did Marbella. Then Malaga in 1487, Vera in 1488, Guadix, Almeria and Baza in 1489, and finally Granada in 1492. At almost every siege, which sometimes occurred during Isabella's numerous pregnancies, she joined her husband, even with their children as at Los Ojos de Huescar where an eight-month siege culminated in June 1491.</span></div>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: small;"><i>The Capitulations</i>, Pradilla - from Wiki Commons</span></td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Despite the ravages of the campaign and the abandonment of the treaty terms between the Catholic monarchs and the last Muslim ruler of Spain, <span style="text-align: center;">Isabella is largely responsible for the preservation of the fragile beauty of Muhammad’s Alhambra palace as we see it today. She lies buried at Granada, the city she claimed through determined efforts, accomplishing in ten years what none of her ancestors had done in centuries past.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="text-align: center;"><br></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="text-align: center;">--Images are mine or derived from Wiki Commons. Sources include:</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><i>Ferdinand
and Isabella – Profiles in Power</i> by John Edwards (Routledge – 2013), <i style="text-indent: 0in;">Granada
1492: The twilight of Moorish Spain</i><span style="text-indent: 0in;"> by David Nicolle, illustrated by Angus McBride (Osprey Publishing
-1998), </span><i style="text-indent: 0in;">Isabel
the Queen: Life and Times </i><span style="text-indent: 0in;">by
Peggy K. Liss (University of Pennsylvania Press – 2004) </span></span><o:p style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif; text-indent: 0in;">and </o:p><i style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif; text-indent: 0in;">The
Military Orders and the War of Granada (1350-1492) </i><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; text-indent: 0in;">by </span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; text-indent: 0in;">Enrique Rodríguez-Picavea, <i>Mediterranean
Studies, </i>Vol. 19 (2010), pp. 14-42 </span><a href="http://www.jstor.org/stable/41167026" style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif; text-indent: 0in;"><span style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial;">http://www.jstor.org/stable/41167026</span></a><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; text-indent: 0in;"> (published by Penn State
University Press - 2010</span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; text-indent: 0in;">)</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="margin: 0px;"><span style="color: black; font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><i><b>** </b></i><b>An Excerpt from </b><i><b>Sultana: The White Mountains**</b></i></span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"></span></span></span></span></div>
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-weight: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="color: black; font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br></span></span></span> <span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-weight: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="color: black; font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Chapter 25</span></span><br>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Losses</span></i></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"> <span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Sultana Moraima</span><br>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Gharnatah, Al-Andalus or Granada, Andalusia</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">15 Ramadan 896 AH / Friday, July 22, AD 1491</span></span><br>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">“Welcome to Santa Fe.”</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Moraima and Aisha whirled as the queen of Castilla-León entered the enormous tent from some adjoining quarter concealed behind a gap in the diamond-patterned fabric. She had not arrived alone, without protections. Plate armor contrasted with vibrant green silk, trimmed in black lace and shimmery pearls. So much fabric, for the sovereign had thickened since they last saw her at the bridge over the Guadalquivir River. The white material atop her head evoked the odd combination of a Moorish veil and a Jewish skullcap, except for two flaps draped on either side of her sallow, puffy cheeks.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">The burly officer </span><span style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Gonzalo Fernández de Córdoba followed his queen. The one who had aided Muhammad against his uncle and concealed his awareness of the Berber tongues. Moraima shuddered at the memory of his cruel touch. Muhammad should have known the truth. As his beloved, she could have exposed the Castillan.</span></span></span></div>
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<span style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">His mistress strolled to the twin thrones at the opposite end of the tent and sat. Although other chairs lined the space, she offered no comfort. Córdoba joined her, hovering at her right. His palm rested atop the pommel of the sword girded at his stout waist. His black gaze, like the portent of a terrible storm, roved over Moraima and Aisha. Did he recall the threat once brandished against them? Would he kill them now if given another chance?</span></span></div>
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<span style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Aisha matched his fury. “This region is called Atqa! Still a part of the kingdom of Granada.”</span></span></div>
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<span style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Queen Isabella settled back against the plush cushion behind her. “I have claimed this territory for the kingdom of Castilla-León. You should be accustomed to the conquests of my husband by now, Sultana.”</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">“I'm aware of his actions, </span><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">la reina</span></i><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">. The enslavement of Moors. The brutal deaths of </span><i><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">renegados</span></i><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"> who had embraced the true faith, burnt as apostates by your inquisitors. You </span></span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Trastámaras</span><span style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"> have a long history of violence and theft. You’ve always murdered and stolen for your gains. Even for a crown.”</span></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">As the Christian monarch stiffened, Moraima cautioned her mother-in-law with a tug of her long sleeve. “</span><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Ummi</span></i><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">, please! We didn’t come to argue but to recover my son. You promised me before we arrived. Ahmad must be the focus of our negotiations. If you love your grandson….”</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">“You do not have to ask. Forgive me, dear daughter.” Aisha leaned closer. “Ours is an ancient hatred. Nasrids have despised the Trastámaras and their descendants since their murder of the legitimate king of Castilla-León, Pedro, half-brother of the </span><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Conde</span></i><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"> de Trastámara, Enrique. My noble ancestor Muhammad </span><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">al-Ghani bi-llah</span></i><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">, may Allah sustain his memory, shared a strong bond with Pedro. Then the </span><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Conde</span></i><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"> Enrique killed his brother like a coward and ushered in a new dynasty bent upon our annihilation. This queen of war descends from such evil. But she forgets who we are. Nasrids. Our memories are long. Our vengeance is unyielding. Although more than a century has passed, we have never forgotten our allies. We also do not forgive enemies, theirs or ours.”</span></span><br>
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<a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-tKlA8Ji1cDs/Unm7iFRJRLI/AAAAAAAAG18/VvFKupjnr0o/s1600/Author%2BPhoto%2B2012.jpg" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><img border="0" height="200" src="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-tKlA8Ji1cDs/Unm7iFRJRLI/AAAAAAAAG18/VvFKupjnr0o/s1600/Author%2BPhoto%2B2012.jpg" style="cursor: move;" width="129"></span></a></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><a href="http://www.lisajyarde.com/" target="_blank"><b><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Lisa J. Yarde</span></b></a><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"> writes fiction inspired by the Middle Ages in Europe. She is the author of two historical novels set in medieval England and Normandy, </span><i><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">The Burning Candle</span></i><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">, based on the life of one of the first countesses of Leicester and Surrey, Isabel de Vermandois, and </span><i><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">On Falcon's Wings</span></i><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">, chronicling the star-crossed romance between Norman and Saxon lovers before the Battle of Hastings. Lisa has also completed a six-part series set in Moorish Spain, </span><i><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Sultana, Sultana’s Legacy, Sultana: Two Sisters</span></i><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">, </span><i><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Sultana: The Bride Price,</span></i><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"> </span><i><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Sultana: The Pomegranate Tree</span></i><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">, and </span></span><i style="font-family: georgia, "times new roman", serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Sultana: The White Mountains, </span></i><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">where rivalries and ambitions threaten the fragile bonds between members of a powerful family. Her short story, </span><i style="font-family: georgia, "times new roman", serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">The Legend Rises</span></i><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">, which chronicles the Welsh princess Gwenllian of Gwynedd’s valiant fight against English invaders, is also available.</span></span></div>
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Lisa J Yardehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05111498397731973454noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-37831405.post-21802571470144829532017-03-26T11:04:00.000-04:002017-03-26T11:04:16.658-04:00Author Interview & Book Giveaway: P.L. PARKER on RILEY'S JOURNEY TRILOGY <div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">This week, we're pleased to welcome author<span class="apple-converted-space"> </span><b><a href="https://www.plparker.com/" target="_blank">P.L PARKER</a></b> with her three-part historical time-travel series, the Riley’s Journey Trilogy: <b><i>Riley’s Journey, Into the Savage Dawn<span class="apple-converted-space"> </span></i></b>and<span class="apple-converted-space"><b><i> </i></b></span><b style="font-style: italic;">Beyond Tomorrow. </b>One lucky winner will receive the novels in the series, format to be determined by the author.<b style="font-style: italic;"> </b>Here's the blurb about the series.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">The research project was only supposed to be for an "extended period." No one said anything about forever! </span><span style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; color: #333333; font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Sent back 40,000 years to the ends of the last great Ice Age, the time travelers embark on a journey of survival and discovery. The brutal and cannibalistic Cro-Magnons discover the small band and attack. Forced to flee from their high mountain encampment, the tribe heads into the dawn, towards the Pacific Ocean and their dream of ultimately reaching North America. Survival of the fittest - that is the law of primordial earth.</span></div>
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<span style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; color: #333333;"><o:p><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br /></span></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px; text-align: center;">
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia",serif; margin: 0px;">**Q&A
with P.L. Parker**</span></b></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="color: #990000;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="margin: 0px; text-align: justify;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia",serif; margin: 0px;"><span style="color: #990000;">What inspired
you to write time travel novels?</span></span></i></div>
<div style="margin: 0px; text-align: justify;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia",serif; margin: 0px;"><span style="color: #990000;"><br /></span></span></i></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
</div>
<div style="margin: 0px; text-align: justify; text-indent: 0.5in;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia",serif; margin: 0px;">I’ve always been a fan of time travel.<span style="margin: 0px;"> </span>One of my favorite old movies was <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Time Machine</i> with Rod Taylor and
Yvette Mimieux.<span style="margin: 0px;"> </span>My preference is the
older version as opposed to the newer one.<span style="margin: 0px;">
</span>I grew up imagining myself stepping through a portal (consciously or
accidentally) and ending up somewhere vastly different from the world today! </span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin: 0px; text-align: justify;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia",serif; margin: 0px;"><span style="color: #990000;">How did the idea
for the Riley’s Journey Trilogy originate?</span></span></i></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="color: #990000;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="margin: 0px; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia",serif; margin: 0px;"><span style="margin: 0px;"> </span>A</span><span style="font-family: "Georgia",serif; margin: 0px;">ncient history, not the ancient
history of the Romans or Greeks, but the less “civilized” groups—the Tartars of
Russian Steppes, the Celts, the Vikings, etc., is a favorite subject of mine and
nothing catches my attention more than some small bit of unusual historical
data unearthed and brought to life.</span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia",serif; margin: 0px;"><span style="margin: 0px;"> </span>After a particularly engrossing
chapter of the Discovery Channel about the discovery of the Oetzi, the frozen
mummified body in the <st1:place w:st="on">Alps</st1:place>, <span style="margin: 0px;"> </span><a href="http://dsc.discovery.com/news/2008/08/22/oetzi-iceman.html"><span style="color: blue;">http://dsc.discovery.com/news/2008/08/22/oetzi-iceman.html</span></a>,
the idea for my time travel trilogy came into being.<span style="margin: 0px;"> </span>I was captivated by the trials and
tribulations this ancient man must have endured before his eventual death.<span style="margin: 0px;"> </span>Why was he in that place, frozen for all
time?<span style="margin: 0px;"> </span></span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
</div>
<div style="margin: 5pt 0.5in; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia",serif; margin: 0px;">The
Iceman was shot with an arrow--the head of which remained lodged in his
shoulder -- that fatally severed his left subclavian artery. He also suffered a
traumatic cerebral lesion, the consequence of a trauma from a blow or a fall
onto the rocks. </span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin: 0px; text-align: justify;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia",serif; margin: 0px;"><span style="color: #990000;">What would modern
man require to survive 40,000 years ago?</span></span></i></div>
<div style="margin: 0px; text-align: justify;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia",serif; margin: 0px;"><span style="color: #990000;"><br /></span></span></i></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
</div>
<div style="margin: 0px; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia",serif; margin: 0px;"><span style="margin: 0px;"> </span>My creative juices
flowed.<span style="margin: 0px;"> </span>How would modern man measure up
under the same circumstances?<span style="margin: 0px;"> </span>Would he
fare better?<span style="margin: 0px;"> </span>Worse?<span style="margin: 0px;"> </span><span style="margin: 0px;"> </span>Without
modern conveniences, would he even survive?<span style="margin: 0px;">
</span>My personal opinion was…perhaps.<span style="margin: 0px;"> </span>But
it would have to be individuals skilled in living off the land, comfortable
with crafting and using ancient weaponry, and the daring to go forth and
multiply.<span style="margin: 0px;"> </span>A lone person might survive
(Nathan in <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Riley’s Journey, </i>Geena in <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Into the Savage Dawn</i>), but without human
society, would he or she have the will to continue?<span style="margin: 0px;"> </span>Okay, so perhaps a band of time travelers,
each with skills essential to begin life in a prehistoric setting would be a
better fit under the circumstances.</span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin: 0px; text-align: justify;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia",serif; margin: 0px;"><span style="color: #990000;">Why did you pick
the time period you did for the Trilogy?</span></span></i><span style="font-family: "Georgia",serif; margin: 0px;"><span style="margin: 0px;">
</span></span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin: 0px; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia",serif; margin: 0px;"><span style="margin: 0px;"> </span>In the beginning, I
contemplated the trilogy taking place at about the same time period as the Oetzi
mummy.<span style="margin: 0px;"> </span>Ultimately, I went back even
farther, to 40,000 years ago during the last great Ice Age when Cro-Magnon and
Neanderthals both inhabited the earth.<span style="margin: 0px;"> </span></span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin: 0px; text-align: justify;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia",serif; margin: 0px;"><span style="color: #990000;">What about
location, why did you select the location that you did?</span></span></i></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin: 0px; text-align: justify; text-indent: 0.5in;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia",serif; margin: 0px;">I needed to set up the location where the time
travelers would ultimately end.<span style="margin: 0px;"> </span>Early
man is thought to have migrated from <st1:place w:st="on">Africa</st1:place>
and spread out.<span style="margin: 0px;"> </span><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><u>See, for example, </u></i><u><span style="font-variant: small-caps; margin: 0px;">The
Real Eve</span>, Modern Man’s Journey Out of <st1:place w:st="on">Africa</st1:place>
by Stephen Oppenheimer</u>.<span style="margin: 0px;"> </span>Research into
the nearby land masses led me to decide on an area of the Far East, in what
would eventually be the southern areas of <st1:country-region w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">China</st1:place></st1:country-region>.<span style="margin: 0px;"> </span>This area’s climatology 40,000 years ago would
support the basic needs of life in primordial Earth.<span style="margin: 0px;"> </span>(<st1:place w:st="on"><st1:state w:st="on"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Id.</i></st1:state></st1:place><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">) </i></span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia",serif; margin: 0px;"><span style="margin: 0px;"> </span>Early humans were
hunter/gatherers. <span style="margin: 0px;"> </span>What animals existed
in that time and place and which were predators and which were prey?<span style="margin: 0px;"> </span>In <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Riley’s
Journey</i>, the antagonists were the aggressive Cro-Magnon and their influx
into the primitive Neanderthals’ territory.<span style="margin: 0px;">
</span>In the sequel to <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Riley’s Journey</i>,
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Into the Savage Dawn</i>, the antagonists
are still the Cro-Magnon but with the added twist of a giant cave bear who
stalks Geena and Seth (hero and heroine) after they involuntarily intrude on
his territory.<span style="margin: 0px;"> </span>In the third of the
trilogy, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Beyond Tomorrow</i>, once again
the antagonists are the savage Cro-Magnon who kidnap Rachel, much to the
half-breed Hawk’s dismay.</span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="color: #990000;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia",serif; margin: 0px;"><span style="color: #990000;">What fascinates
you about this time period?</span></span></i></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin: 0px; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia",serif; margin: 0px;"><span style="margin: 0px;"> </span>Research into
primordial Earth is fascinating.<span style="margin: 0px;"> </span>Cave
bears, saber-toothed cats and giant sloths were just a few of the many
creatures who have suffered from the effects of evolution along with the giant <span style="color: black; margin: 0px;">megaloceros</span> (elk), the wooly mammoths and the wooly
rhinoceros.</span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin: 0px; text-align: justify;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia",serif; margin: 0px;"><span style="color: #990000;">Are any more
books planned in this series?</span></span></i></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin: 0px; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia",serif; margin: 0px;"><span style="margin: 0px;"> </span>Not at the moment, but
you can never tell!<span style="margin: 0px;"> </span>I’ve had a lot of
requests for the series to continue and I’ve played around with a few ideas for
another book.<span style="margin: 0px;"> </span>We shall see.</span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
</div>
<div style="margin: 0px; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia",serif; margin: 0px;">For more information, the following sites are good reading for all ages:</span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
</div>
<div style="margin: 0px; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia",serif; margin: 0px;"><a href="http://www.enchantedlearning.com/subjects/mammals/Iceagemammals.shtml"><span style="color: blue;">http://www.enchantedlearning.com/subjects/mammals/Iceagemammals.shtml</span></a></span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia",serif; margin: 0px;"><a href="http://www.prehistory.com/"><span style="color: blue;">http://www.prehistory.com/</span></a></span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia",serif; margin: 0px;"><a href="http://www.kidzworld.com/article/7309-animals-of-the-ice-age"><span style="color: blue;">http://www.kidzworld.com/article/7309-animals-of-the-ice-age</span></a></span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
</div>
</span></div>
<span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; line-height: 18.4px;"><br /></span></span> <span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><b>About the Author</b></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><b><br /></b></span> <span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Learn more about P.L. Parker:</span><br />
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Lisa J Yardehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05111498397731973454noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-37831405.post-61030582657281175252017-03-24T01:00:00.000-04:002017-03-27T22:17:48.642-04:00Herstory: Beyond Baby-Making - The Role of Carolingian Queens<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;">By </span><b style="font-family: georgia, "times new roman", serif; line-height: normal; text-align: justify;"><a href="https://kimrendfeld.wordpress.com/" style="line-height: normal;" target="_blank"><span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;">Kim Rendfeld</span></a></b></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;">Although seldom mentioned in annals, queens in Carolingian era (eighth and ninth century Francia) had a much more important role than a casual 21st-century observer might think.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;">If the king did not already have heirs, the queen’s primary role was to produce healthy sons to inherit the realm, and some kings tried to divorce wives unable to bear children. My main characters’ inability to conceive becomes a point of contention in my first novel, </span><i><span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;">The Cross and the Dragon</span></i><span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;">. </span></span><span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;">(Paradoxically, a Carolingian king would not want too many sons born in wedlock because each one of them would expect kingdom when his father died, and the realm would not pass to the next generation intact.)</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;">Yet a queen’s responsibilities went beyond baby-making, and if the question of heirs was already settled, she could have tremendous influence.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;">The ninth-century treatise </span><i><span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;">The Government of the Palace</span></i><span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;"> says the queen’s role is “to release the king from all domestic and palace cares, leaving him free to turn his mind to the state of his realm.”</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;">This does not mean the queen is relegated to the role of housewife. In the Middle Ages, the personal and political were intertwined. The queen was the guardian of the treasury, and she controlled access to her husband. The courtier and scholar Alcuin wrote to the queen to find out where Charlemagne was spending the winter.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;">When houseguests were foreign dignitaries, royal hospitality was key to international relations. Hospitality was more than just showing good manners. Frankish royalty would want their guests to report to their own rulers that the palace was beautiful and sturdy, the baths were hot, the table was laden, the host well dressed, and the guards and servants well cared for. All signs of power, important to project even to one’s own allies whose support could shift.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;">Of course, this time period was hardly ideal for women. Girls as young as 12 or 13 were considered marriageable and their families chose their husbands. Among aristocrats, marriage was most often for political reasons. Canon law gave women the right to consent to a marriage at age 15 or 16, but that could be beaten or starved out of them.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;">However, the reason for Women’s History Month and for posts like these is that too often women are portrayed </span><i><span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;">only </span></i><span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;">as victims and not as full human beings who could influence events around them and contribute to their societies. Carolingian queens certainly did both.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;"><i><span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;">Illustrations are from</span></i><span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;"> Costumes of All Nations </span><i><span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;">(1882).</span></i></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;"><b>Sources</b></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;"><i><span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;">Women at the Court of Charlemagne</span></i><span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;">, Janet Nelson</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;"><i><span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;">Daily Life in the World of Charlemagne</span></i><span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;">, Pierre Riché (translated by Jo Ann McNamara)</span></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;"><b>**An Excerpt from</b> <i><b>The Ashes of Heaven's Pillar**</b></i></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;">"What are the furs the girl is holding?" Hildegard asked.</span><u></u><u></u></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;">"Rabbit, my queen."</span><u></u><u></u></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;">"Child, bring them to me. Oh, she holds them up without being asked. She is a good servant, Ragenard, and will fetch a good price should you want to sell her."</span><u></u><u></u></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;">Sunwynn stood rigid and trembling. Leova swayed and steadied herself. She turned and fixed her gazed on Ragenard's face. For a moment, they locked eyes.</span><u></u><u></u></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;">"Thank you, my lady queen," he said, "the girl is a good servant, and if you run your hand over the rabbit furs she is holding, you will find they are of the finest quality."</span><u></u><u></u></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;">Fury rose from Leova's gorge, causing her hands to shake under the furs. Her child could be lost to her because of a Frank's whim!</span><u></u><u></u></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;">Stroking the rabbit furs, Hildegard gazed at her husband across the room, smiled, and nodded as if to herself. "I want the rabbit furs, some leather, and the bolts of linen and wool. I'll pay two hundred dernier."</span><u></u><u></u></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;">"My lady queen, they are worth more than that. Let the linen flow between your fingers; feel the fine texture of the wool. They are worth two hundred fifty dernier."</span><u></u><u></u></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;">"I must be a good wife and spend my husband's treasure wisely. Two hundred twenty-five."</span><u></u><u></u></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;">"You are a good wife and a good queen. Two hundred twenty-five it is." He bowed.</span><u></u><u></u></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;">Relief washed through Leova. She barely noticed the clerk scribbling on the wax tablet. Sunwynn would stay with her—for now.</span></div>
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<span style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><a href="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-LTDZ7pJjGUQ/WIeRecpE3vI/AAAAAAAASb8/uL65bEmgb5g6GLnRqj3OkC063megN-bwgCLcB/s1600/KimBookPhotoSmaller.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;"><img border="0" height="200" src="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-LTDZ7pJjGUQ/WIeRecpE3vI/AAAAAAAASb8/uL65bEmgb5g6GLnRqj3OkC063megN-bwgCLcB/s200/KimBookPhotoSmaller.jpg" width="187" /></span></a><span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;"> Kim Rendfeld is the author of two novels set in 8th century Francia: </span><i><span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;">The Cross and the Dragon</span></i><span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;">, a tale of love set amid wars and blood feuds, and </span><i><span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;">The Ashes of Heaven’s Pillar</span></i><span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;">, about a peasant going to great lengths to protect her children. Her work in progress, </span><i><span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;">Queen of the Darkest Hour</span></i><span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;">, features Fastrada, Charlemagne’s influential fourth wife. Connect with Kim on her website (kimrendfeld.com), her blog (kimrendfeld.wordpress.com), Facebook (facebook.com/authorkimrendfeld), and Twitter (@kimrendfeld).</span></span><span style="font-family: inherit;"></span></div>
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Lisa J Yardehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05111498397731973454noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-37831405.post-8675700170022049822017-03-23T12:40:00.002-04:002017-03-23T12:40:23.322-04:00Excerpt Thursday: RILEY'S JOURNEY TRILOGY by P.L. PARKER<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">This week, we're pleased to welcome author<span class="apple-converted-space"> </span><b><a href="https://www.plparker.com/" target="_blank">P.L PARKER</a></b> with her three-part historical time-travel series, the Riley’s Journey Trilogy: <b><i>Riley’s Journey, Into the Savage Dawn<span class="apple-converted-space"> </span></i></b>and<span class="apple-converted-space"><b><i> </i></b></span><b style="font-style: italic;">Beyond Tomorrow. </b>One lucky winner will receive the novels in the series, format to be determined by the author.<b style="font-style: italic;"> </b>Join us again on Sunday for an author interview, with more details about the story behind the series. Here's the blurb about the series.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">The research project was only supposed to be for an "extended period." No one said anything about forever! </span><span style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; color: #333333; font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Sent back 40,000 years to the ends of the last great Ice Age, the time travelers embark on a journey of survival and discovery. The brutal and cannibalistic Cro-Magnons discover the small band and attack. Forced to flee from their high mountain encampment, the tribe heads into the dawn, towards the Pacific Ocean and their dream of ultimately reaching North America. Survival of the fittest - that is the law of primordial earth.</span></div>
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<b><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">**An Excerpt from Riley’s Journey – Book 1**<o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">The nightmare began in earnest at midnight. Screams echoed through the campsite. Confused team members ran wildly in every direction, attempting to locate the source of the attack. Firelight flickered across faces distorted by fear. Only the Black Ops members retained their composure, hurriedly forming a semi-circle near Jonas and bracing for battle. Another scream rent the air! <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Frozen for a moment, the team gaped in horror as an unidentified woman staggered into view, blood dripping from a scalp torn halfway off and partially obscuring her ravaged face. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">“There! Over there!” Jonas whirled in response, his bowels contracting at the sheer size of the massive bear stalking the mutilated woman, his hate-filled yellow eyes gleaming wickedly in the light of the campfire.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">“<i>Jesus H. Christ!</i>” Geena gasped, backpedaling in an effort to gain some maneuverability.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">The woman, weak from loss of blood, stumbled and fell as the great beast raked her with a giant claw. Steel jaws seized the woman’s nape, bones cracking audibly as the behemoth ground the neck bones to mush, mercifully ending her suffering. Roaring in rage, the bear began pulling the decimated woman from the campsite, aggressively defending his kill as the team rushed in. Spears shoved deep into the animal’s sides only served to further enrage the beast. Dropping his prize, the bear advanced on his attackers, his elongated canines dripping blood from jaws forged in the fires of hell. Bellowing his defiance, the rotten-flesh stench of his hot breath permeating the pristine air, vicious claws raking and lashing out, he was a creature from some demented fantasy.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Micah wrenched a burning brand from the fire pit, shoving it hard into the monster’s face, singeing fur and charring the fiend’s tender snout. Howling in pain and fury, the bear gave ground, backing off and retreating to the edge of the clearing.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">“Behind us! There’s another one!” Allie’s shrill voice pierced the turmoil. From the corner of his eye, Jonas perceived movement. Another bear lumbered into view, fully as huge and terrifying as the first!<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">“And another one!” The team now faced not one, but three of the ferocious carnivores! Unless they did something quick, there would be no escape!<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">“Into the trees!” Jonas screamed. “Into the trees!” <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; line-height: 18.4px;"><br /></span></span> <span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><b>About the Author</b></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Learn more about P.L. Parker:</span><br />
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