Author Interview & Book Giveaway: Lucille Turner on THE SULTAN, THE VAMPYR AND THE SOOTHSAYER

This week, we're pleased to welcome author LUCILLE TURNER with her latest release,  THE SULTAN, THE VAMPYR AND THE SOOTHSAYER.. Be sure to leave your email address in the comments of today's Sunday's author interview for a chance to win a FREE copy of the novel - open internationally. Winner(s) are contacted privately by email. Here's the blurb.

1442: The Ottoman Turks are advancing through the Balkans with Vienna in their sights and Constantinople, the Orthodox Greek capital, within their grasp. Dracul, ruler of Wallachia (present-day Romania), will pay almost any price to save his country, but he will not surrender to the blackmail of the cardinals of Rome; he will not betray the Greeks.

When Vlad, his middle son, begins to show signs of the ancestral sickness, Dracul vows to deliver him into safety. But time is running short. To some, Vlad Dracula is a strigoi, the worst of all evils; to others, he is the son of a righteous man. Confrontational, charismatic and manipulative, he tests family and enemy alike. Surely he is destined for power, but of what kind?

The Sultan, the Vampyr and the Soothsayer weaves a web of intrigue in a world that will divide forever. As Eastern Europe struggles against the tide of a Muslim advance it cannot counter, Western Christendom needs only one prize to overthrow its enemies – the ancient scrolls of the library of Constantinople.

**Q&A with Lucille Turner**

 Is this a ‘vampire book’?

No, the vampire element in this book takes the form of an inner struggle, which the real vampire myth actually represents. That is not to say that there are not other references to the vampire persona, because there are, except that these ‘vampire’ elements do not involve fangs and blood. They are subtler than that, and based on the folklore of Romania and Transylvania rather than on the sensationalistic elements that have developed over the last century or so. This is historical fiction, but with an element of the supernatural running through it in the form of myth and legend. The Ottoman side of the story also has its own superstitions, its own fears, and when Vlad Dracula bursts upon the scene, things do not become any simpler.

How much of this story is true?

True to the genre of historical fiction, the historical facts about the life of Vlad Dracula, his family and that of the Ottoman dynasty have been preserved in this book as far as they are known. Vlad Dracula and his younger brother Radu spent a number of years at the palace of the Ottoman Sultan Murad II, where they encountered the Sultan’s notorious son Mehmet. The unsustainable politics that forced the Dracul family into such a tight corner were certainly responsible for the tragedies the family as a whole was forced to endure. As for the parts of the book that touch upon the myth of the vampire, or strigoi, in Romania, these are based on documented evidence from the region itself, which has a cult of the dead on a par with Ancient Egypt. I drew on this folklore when I wrote the book, as well as on the stories of the Goths, and their close cousins the Getae, of Gets, who populated the Black Sea regions in ancient times. There I found a link to the vampire myth in the legend of the wolf-men of the Goths and the ‘twice-born’ of the Gets. It was these legends and myths, together with the local customs and traditions based around the locally undisputed existence of the Romanian strigoi that helped me re-imagine the connection between the Dracul family and their ‘vampire’ future.

What was the inspiration for the book?

The initial inspiration for The Sultan, the Vampyr and the Soothsayer came after I visited Istanbul in 2012. What fascinated me about the Topkapı palace at Istanbul was the harem, which was a real labyrinth of courtyards and rooms. It struck me as a prison, which is effectively what it was, even though many historians stress the power that certain women had at one point in the seraglio of the Ottoman court. Nevertheless, it was a kind of female prison, and the female characters in my book, on the Ottoman side, are forced to battle against not only their keepers, the men, but also against their fellow inmates, the women — none of which makes for an easy life.

The second element of the book, the Romanian or Rumani one, was suggested by a book on Romanian folklore, discovered in a French library. The book is out of print now; if that book was not the last copy in circulation, it was certainly one of the last. It was a documented exploration of the myth of the Romanian vampire, complete with bibliography. It presented the vampire in a totally new light, and inspired me to view the vampire myth differently.

What is the book really about?

The principal theme of the book is the struggle between good and evil. There is also the clash of two civilisations and two faiths, Christian and Muslim. That is not to say that one is good and the other bad — not at all. On each side both fathers have sons who were not meant to rule but who end up on the throne. Both fathers have dreams for their country, but their sons have other plans. It has to end badly, and it does. But still, the real enemy is not on the battlefields of the Balkans or even at the walls of Constantinople, it is the enemy within, the darker side in all of us that pushes us to take what we want, regardless of the cost.

Learn more about author Lucille Turner

Author’s website: http://www.lucilleturner.com/
 
Amazon UK: https://www.amazon.co.uk/Sultan-Vampyr-Soothsayer-Lucille-Turner/dp/1527202062/
 
Amazon US: https://www.amazon.com/Sultan-Vampyr-Soothsayer-Lucille-Turner/dp/1527202062/
 
Twitter: https://twitter.com/LucilleETurner
 
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/LucilleETurner/
 
Goodreads: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/32313477-the-sultan-the-vampyr-and-the-soothsayer

Excerpt Thursday: THE SULTAN, THE VAMPYR AND THE SOOTHSAYER by Lucille Turner

This week, we're pleased to welcome author LUCILLE TURNER with her latest release,  THE SULTAN, THE VAMPYR AND THE SOOTHSAYER. Join us again on Sunday for an author interview, with more details about the story behind the story. Be sure to leave your email address in the comments of today's post or Sunday's author interview for a chance to win a FREE copy of the novel - open internationally. Winner(s) are contacted privately by email. Here's the blurb.

1442: The Ottoman Turks are advancing through the Balkans with Vienna in their sights and Constantinople, the Orthodox Greek capital, within their grasp. Dracul, ruler of Wallachia (present-day Romania), will pay almost any price to save his country, but he will not surrender to the blackmail of the cardinals of Rome; he will not betray the Greeks.

When Vlad, his middle son, begins to show signs of the ancestral sickness, Dracul vows to deliver him into safety. But time is running short. To some, Vlad Dracula is a strigoi, the worst of all evils; to others, he is the son of a righteous man. Confrontational, charismatic and manipulative, he tests family and enemy alike. Surely he is destined for power, but of what kind?

The Sultan, the Vampyr and the Soothsayer weaves a web of intrigue in a world that will divide forever. As Eastern Europe struggles against the tide of a Muslim advance it cannot counter, Western Christendom needs only one prize to overthrow its enemies – the ancient scrolls of the library of Constantinople.

**An Excerpt from THE SULTAN, THE VAMPYR AND THE SOOTHSAYER**

‘I don’t understand.’ Vlad lowered his sword. ‘You want me to stop because I’m good?’

‘No, said his father. ‘I want you to stop because you are good enough.’

‘But Cazan wants me to train. He says…’

‘I will tell Cazan myself. You needn’t worry.’

‘And Mircea, must he stop too?’

‘Mircea can use a sword adequately; that is good enough, as it is good enough for you. As for Radu, he is too young. Does that satisfy you?’

A venomous thought invaded Vlad’s mind. ‘And what about the other son? Have you forbidden him too?’

His face a bedrock of stone, his father opened his mouth to speak, then closed it again.

There was a difficult silence. Vlad was about to sheathe his sword and take his leave, when his father finally broke it. ‘You do have a half-brother. I did not bring him to court because the child was unwell and needed care I could not give him. If I have not spoken about it before, it was because I felt that it was not important. But since you have brought the matter up, so be it.’

Vlad stared at the ground, suddenly ashamed. His father touched his arm. His father’s fingers were long and white, like a woman’s. At the feel of them he softened.

‘Where is Mircea?’

‘In the music room.’

His father put an arm around his shoulders. ‘Come with me.’

He lifted a torch from the wall and they took the palace stairs down to where the living quarters ended and the cellars began. The cellars ran underneath the palace grounds as far as the arena where they trained. As they walked through what was almost a tunnel of stone, Vlad tried hard not to think about the training sessions with Mircea, now forbidden. On the right was the entrance to the storerooms. They turned left and his father pushed open a heavy door into a large stone room, dry as dust and filled with books and parchment. The door breathed out an odour of wood and hide. There was no window, but the light was coming from somewhere. Vlad noticed a stone vent at eye level. So this was his father’s private room; this was where he disappeared when he did not want to talk, to this place of books and dust. There was a long wooden table in the middle of the room with benches around it. The wall was lined with ledges of wood and these were filled with rolls of parchment, and papyrus sheets. He felt a pang of disappointment.

‘I think you have enjoyed Aristotle. That is good. It pleases me.’ His father pushed a seat towards him and began to search through a pile of parchment. He pulled out a roll and opened it on the table.

‘Do you know what this is?’

Vlad looked at the drawing before him, a stretch of parchment full of shapes that wound between each other in snaking trajectories of ink; there were place names he recognised marked upon it in script, and distances were written in figures in between. ‘Is it a drawing for a Roman cursus publicus?’

‘In a manner of speaking, but it’s more than just one area; it’s a mappa mundi, a record of distance and place. It was drawn by a man called Claudius Ptolemy of Alexandria.’

Vlad leaned over it and put his finger in the centre, a little to the right. Constantinopolis.

‘Yes, our patriarchate is on it, so is Antioch, and Rome is marked there.’

Vlad looked into the deepest corners of the basement room. On a far ledge was a more interesting shape, an old leather scabbard on a ledge. His father saw him looking; he rose from his chair and picked it up. It was a sword. He laid it on the table without unsheathing it.

‘But I didn’t think…’

‘That I owned one,’ finished his father, quickly. ‘As you can see, I do.’

‘But you don’t use it?’

‘I chose not to, long ago.’

Vlad shook his head. ‘Not even against the Turks?’

‘I have my reasons. One of them is that it is better to talk than to fight. And while I still have a tongue to speak with I would rather use that than take a risk that could prove irreversible.’ His father looked down at the parchment on the table, his brow furrowed. ‘I brought you down here to show you the mappa mundi, the cursus publicus as you called it, but it does not surprise me that the sword found you first.’ He unsheathed it and ran a finger over the blade. A thin line of red appeared on the tip and he smoothed it away with his hand.

‘The Romans are our cousins; we are family now. They conquered us; we conquered them. That was how it was in those days, but without the knowledge of Ptolemy they would have stayed what they always were.’

‘Fishermen?’

‘No, farmers,’ said his father, distracted by the sword. ‘There was a time, long ago, when a farmer could change the world, but now the world is changing by itself and I hope it will be for the better. There are new ideas abroad, wonderful ideas that will transform everything. One day we will no longer need scribes. Their work will be over. Christendom will enter a new age and I want Wallachia to be at the head of it. I want the Rumani to be great again. What I am trying to say,’ his father said, putting down the sword, ‘is that if you have to choose one day between the knowledge and the sword, you would do better to take the knowledge.’

Vlad looked from his father’s mappa mundi on the table to the shining blade beside it. ‘And if I can take both?’

His father almost smiled. ‘Then you will either be a tyrant or a deliverer,’ he said softly. ‘Only first you must deliver yourself.’ 

Learn more about author Lucille Turner

Author’s website: http://www.lucilleturner.com/
 
Amazon UK: https://www.amazon.co.uk/Sultan-Vampyr-Soothsayer-Lucille-Turner/dp/1527202062/
 
Amazon US: https://www.amazon.com/Sultan-Vampyr-Soothsayer-Lucille-Turner/dp/1527202062/
 
Twitter: https://twitter.com/LucilleETurner
 
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/LucilleETurner/
 
Goodreads: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/32313477-the-sultan-the-vampyr-and-the-soothsayer

Myth & Folklore: The vampire Count Dracula

By Lisa J. Yarde

Bela Lugosi as the vampire Count Dracula

Strigoi. Nosferatu. Vampire. In such terms, a reference to the undead, corpses mysteriously kept alive by the blood of the living. Tales of them have existed since the time of the ancient Persians, then popularized in later centuries. None more famous than the blood-drinker Count Dracula immortalized in Bram Stoker’s novel and brought to life on the screen by actors from Bela Lugosi in 1931 to as recently as Luke Evans in 2014 , the legend of this particular vampire is rooted in facts. Dracula was real, not a count, but a prince of Wallachia in the 15^th century. To many of his enemies and contemporaries, his deeds epitomized extreme cruelty and bloodlust that only a demonic creature like a vampire would relish.

The real-life Prince Dracula III
of Wallachia

Born Vlad Dracula in the winter of 1431, the basis of the most popular vampire myth entered the world at a dangerous time for his people. The Ottoman Turks had invaded Eastern Europe bent on conquest. When Vlad was five, his father became the voivode or prince of Wallachia. A bitter struggle to hold power ended with Turkish support, but the cost proved high for Vlad’s father. He surrendered his two youngest sons, including Vlad’s brother Radu, as hostages. From the age of 13, Vlad endured a bitter existence among his captors. While he learned their language and religion, he also faced threats to his livelihood for his insubordination and witnessed the cruelty the Ottomans practiced against enemies of the states. If they expected the experience had subdued Vlad, they soon learned otherwise. Whereas poor Radu became the plaything of Sultan Mehmed II, the conqueror of Constantinople, upon release Vlad set about freeing Wallachia from Turkish domination. As Prince Vlad III of Wallachia, he started by refusing to pay tribute and nailed the hats of Mehmed’s ambassadors to their heads. His favorite method of punishment, impalement on wooden stakes, created gruesome forests of death across the landscape. His Turkish enemies soon gave him the epithet, Kazikli Bey or the Impaler Lord. He lost power over Wallachia twice and upon a third reign that lasted only two months, he died. So how did a freedom fighter become associated with the vampire legend?

A German woodcut showing Prince Dracula eating
among the bodies of impaled victims

The Irish author Bram Stoker had spent several years researching European folklore about vampires prior to publishing his novel in 1897. A copy of William Wilkinson’s Account of the Principalities of Wallachia and Moldavia with Political Observations Relative to Them introduced the Dracula family to Stoker, beginning with Prince Vlad II of Wallachia, the father of Stoker’s future antagonist. Stoker would have learned how the prince’s aristocratic relatives took the name Dracula originally after he became a knight in the Order of the Dragon in 1431, defending the country against Turkish invasions. In the modernized Romanian language, the name Dracul means devil, but in the medieval period, it meant dragon. At the time of the novel’s release, Victorian society was already aware of the vampire myth through poems and penny dreadful serials. It isn’t clear why Stoker chose the final name for the novel; earlier drafts were titled The Undead with Count Wampyr as the villain’s name. If Stoker learned anything of the real-life figure of Vlad Dracula, he found inspiration for his blood-sucking vampire in the brutal acts of a bloodthirsty man, who was not only cruel to his enemies, but people under his domain who he often punished for even minor infractions with impalement. The real Dracula may have been as terrible as the vampire later portrayed by Stoker. 

Sources: Radu R. Florescu & Raymond T. McNalley, Dracula - Prince of Many Faces, Bram Stoker - Dracula. All images in the public domain from Wikipedia.

Lisa J. Yarde writes fiction inspired by the Middle Ages in Europe. She is the author of two historical novels set in medieval England and Normandy, The Burning Candle, based on the life of one of the first countesses of Leicester and Surrey, Isabel de Vermandois, and On Falcon's Wings, chronicling the star-crossed romance between Norman and Saxon lovers before the Battle of Hastings. Lisa has also written five novels in a six-part series set in Moorish Spain, Sultana, Sultana’s Legacy, Sultana: Two Sisters, Sultana: The Bride Price and Sultana: The Pomegranate Tree, where rivalries and ambitions threaten the fragile bonds between members of a powerful family. Her short story, The Legend Rises, which chronicles the Welsh princess Gwenllian of Gwynedd’s valiant fight against English invaders, is also available.   

Villains: Prince Vlad III of Wallachia

By Lisa J. Yarde

Vlad III of Wallachia

Also known as Dracula (son of the Dragon or devil) and Vlad Tepes (the Impaler), the legendary life of this fifteenth century Wallachian prince is filled with accounts of his excessive cruelty. He also inspired the Gothic nightmares of Bram Stoker's Dracula, about an undead count who preys upon the innocent to sustain his life. Dracula wasn't the first vampire in fiction of the Victorian era, but he's arguably the most popular. The mysteries behind the real history of Vlad III of Wallachia have made it possible to mire the past in fantastical imaginings of him as an enduring vampire. 

Who was the real man behind the legend? A murderous villain who impaled his enemies and innocents alike by the thousands, worthy of the vampire stories associated with his legend? A fighter, like his father, who protected his land from the invading Turks? Or, perhaps the truth lies in between; he might have been a pragmatic man, born into a violent time, who used brutal tactics to ensure his country’s survival.

Vlad Dracul

Vlad III was born in 1431, in what is now modern-day Romania. His father Vlad Dracul became Prince of Wallachia and a member of the Catholic military Order of the Dragon, dedicated to fighting the Turkish invasion from the east. His mother’s identity is uncertain, but she may have been his father’s second wife, Cneajna, daughter of Prince Alexandru of Moldavia. Vlad III had brothers; Vlad the Monk (illegitimate; born around 1425), Mircea II (born 1428) and Radu the Handsome (born 1435).  Vlad Dracul ruled a vast territory where hundreds of nobles or boyars vied for power in a state weakened by the persistence of the Turks.

Two momentous events in the youth of Vlad III might have inspired his enduring hatred of the Turks. In 1437, his father signed an agreement with the Sultan Murad II, betraying the tenets of the Order of the Dragon. Five years later, when Vlad III was eleven, Murad II seized him and his brother Radu for their father’s half-support of the Turkish invasion of Wallachia. Radu would live with the Turks until 1468, but Vlad III stayed from 1442-1448. When his brother Mircea II revolted against the Turks, the family risked the lives of the two young boys. They were never harmed, but young Radu had to bear the sexual advances of Prince Mehmed II. During his confinement, Vlad III learned much from his Turkish captors about the fickle nature of politics, and more about cruelty and vice.

Radu the Handsome

In 1447, Vlad Dracul died, assassinated while escaping from disloyal boyars. The nobles captured his son Mircea II, blinded him with a red-hot poker and buried him alive.  A year later at the age of seventeen, the Turks released Vlad III, who later seized the vacant principality of Wallachia. He only held it for two months. He bided his time in Moldavia until 1456, when a council of boyars supported his new reign. They would soon regret their actions.

In the spring of 1457, after having dug up his brother’s remains and seeing the proof of his terrible demise, Vlad III invited two hundred boyars from the city of Tirgoviste and their families to a feast. The elder noblemen and their wives were impaled on sharpened, wooden stakes. The young and able-bodied were marched along the Arges River to the site of the future Castle Dracula. Vlad III also roamed the countryside in disguise and inquired after the condition of his poorest people. Yet, he could be cruel to them – he once invited all the beggars to a banquet in Tirgoviste, where his men locked the doors and burned the occupants alive. As Vlad said, “These men live off the sweat of others, so they are useless to humanity.” Clearly, the Prince of Wallachia wasn’t interested in social reform.

Mehmed II

However, Vlad III reserved his greatest cruelty for the Turks. In 1459, when Sultan Mehmed II sent his emissaries to collect the poll tax and tributes of Wallachian boys into the Janissary order, Vlad nailed the ambassadors’ hats to their heads. When the Turks later attacked, Vlad’s men ambushed them and impaled their leader on the highest stake, based on his rank. Since he spoke Turkish, Vlad was also able to infiltrate Turkish ranks and destroy their camps.

The Venetians and Genoese lauded Vlad’s efforts, but hostility toward the Prince of Wallachia at home and the betrayal of his younger brother Radu placed his rule in jeopardy. King Matthias Corvinus, Vlad’s suzerain, imprisoned him for ten years. The Turks placed Radu the Handsome on the Wallachian throne, where he reigned as Radu III. Upon his release, Vlad married the cousin of Matthias Corvinus, by whom he had two sons. His first wife had committed suicide by jumping into the Arges River, rather than surrendering to the Turks.  In 1476 after Radu’s death, Vlad tried to regain Wallachia, but he was assassinated two months later.

Historians believe that tales of Vlad’s extreme cruelty can be attributed to propaganda by Matthias Corvinus, who was less than helpful in Vlad’s fight against the Turks. Romanian patriots have portrayed Vlad as a patriot, but it is hard to deny the evidence of his villainy toward his own people. 

Lisa J. Yarde writes fiction inspired by real-life events. She is the author of On Falcon's Wings, a medieval novel chronicling the star-crossed romance between Norman and Saxon lovers. She has also written the medieval novels Sultana and Sultana’s Legacy, both set during a turbulent period of thirteenth century Spain.