Sharon Kay Penman's Blog, page 149

INTERVIEW WITH MARGARET FRAZER

     I have a special Christmas gift for my readers, an interview with Margaret Frazer, author of two outstanding medieval mystery series set in 15th century England.  The Sister Frevisse mysteries feature a remarkable protagonist, a nun who is not at all saintly.  She does not suffer fools gladly, but she struggles constantly to subdue her pride, to adhere to the strict rules of her Order even as the tranquility of their nunnery is disrupted by the unwelcome intrusions of the real world—mayhem and murder.  Margaret's second series showcases the talents of Joliffe, dashing player in a traveling troupe of actors and sometime spy for the powerful and dangerous Bishop of Winchester, one of the crafty Beaufort clan.  Joliffe appeared occasionally in Sister Frevisse's books and readers found him so appealing that they urged Margaret to give Joliffe his own series.  Joliffe is a wonderful creation—clever, observant, and resourceful, with an ironic eye and a laid-back charm that I, for one, find quite irresistible.  

      In the interest of full disclosure, Margaret and I have been good friends for a number of years—as you'll be able to tell by the tone of our exchanges.  But I was her fan before I became her friend.  She is serious about her craft, serious about her research, even more serious than me, and we all know I'm obsessive-compulsive!  The result is a form of literary time-travel. Readers never doubt for a moment that her characters are men and women of 15th century England.  And because she is realistic in her approach to her plots (a.k.a ruthless), the suspense level is ratcheted up to alarming levels.  We never know if she is going to kill off a character we really like, (And yes, Margaret, I am still holding a grudge for The Servant's Tale.) or reveal that character to be the killer.  Her newest book is A Play of Piety.  I was delighted when I learned it was coming out in December, seeing it as my reward for finishing Lionheart.  And now, let the interview begin. 

A PLAY OF PIETY is the sixth book in your medieval mystery series featuring Joliffe the Player, a traveling actor in England in the 1400s, but you also have seventeen other medieval mysteries centered on Dame Frevisse, a Benedictine nun, set in the same time period.  Do you ever get asked, "Don't you get tired of writing the same book over and over again?"

 

I've indeed been asked that, more than once.  I suppose it's a reasonable question, given all twenty-three books are mysteries and set in the same time period and general place and, yes, I suppose I would get bored writing the same book over and over again.  So I don't write the same book over and over again. (Subtext: Do I look like a fool?)  With Frevisse, every story is told from two viewpoints: hers and that of the title character.  Since those title characters are drawn from all aspects of medieval English society – for instance from a reeve running a small village to an independent businesswoman in London to the bastard son of a royal duke – I get to look at medieval life from wide variety of viewpoints and levels.  I can't get bored if I have to move into the minds of people as far apart as a crowner's very humble clerk and a high-born bishop, an outlaw and a well-off widow of the gentry.  And for me, moving into the minds of people not me is what it's all about.

The same goes for Joliffe's books.  They're only told from his viewpoint, which is extremely low in society and that of an outsider for good measure.  But he's a man with a craft he enjoys – acting – and because his company of players travel and perform in a wide variety of places, he encounters all sorts of different societal situations.  And of course for him I've upped the ante as the series goes on by him taking service as a spy for someone powerful in the government, which serves to take him to France and into a high noble's household in A PLAY OF TREACHERY at a very dangerous time in the Hundred Years War.  In A PLAY OF PIETY, by wide contrast, he's working in a medieval hospital among very ordinary people.  For me, recreating such complex but widely divergent settings and the people to inhabit them is a sure way never to never be "writing the same book over and over again".  It's people who write the same clichés over and over again who risk getting bored.

 

From things I've heard you say other times, I know you have really deep seated issues with clichés in books about the Middle Ages.

 

Oh, yes.  I can get very verbal, shall we say, about the clichés used by writers.  So much of what we're taught to think of as "medieval" – such as streets deep in filth and garbage hurled out of windows and nobody bathing (apparently from the Fall of Rome to the Renaissance)—actually date from Tudor times and later.  And then there are the old standbys of "medieval" life: plague every time you turn around; lawless (and usually lascivious) lords by the bushel-basket full; violence so endemic it's a wonder anyone dared go out of doors; and women dying in childbirth.  Please – no more books wallowing in the Black Death!  Find a different theme, for pity's sake! The Black Death has been done (dare I say it) to death.  I won't even try to refute the notion that all through the late medieval England, year in and year out, violent lords and outlaw bands were romping at will up and down and around the countryside.  Violence happened and there are idiots in every society (for which mystery writers are thankful, of course), and the Wars of the Roses did make for outbreaks of ugliness in the latter half of the 1400s, but I deliberately have my two series set in some decades when English life was going along very nicely, thank you, in order to contrast the shock of a crime against the reasonable tenor of most people's everyday lives.  A bit more challenging than going for the down and dirty and obvious, but I like the challenge

              The trouble is that so many novelists read general study books of "medieval life" and a simplistic biography or two and let it go at that. Additionally, even if they've read a little deeper, they still transpose their own sensibilities into the story and present a distorted view of the times and people.  This is the "Mary Jane Visits the Castle" syndrome.  Or "Cathy Meets the Cathars".  Or "Brian Braves the Bad Baron".  There are plenty of chronicles, government documents,literature, and letters (besides those of the obnoxious, overly ubiquitous Pastons) of the time available in print and online, and modern scholarly articles likewise that could help writers move into the medieval mindset, rather than turn their novels into fantasy costume pieces erroneously called "medieval".

             As for the grotesqueries and stupidities perpetrated in movies – don't get me started.

 

Hm.  Yes.  Don't hold back.  Tell us how you really feel.  Cliches in books set in medieval times really bother you, then?

 

Really.  Of course an author is free to tell whatever story they want to tell, and that's fine.  We all have every right to do that, and if an author and some readers are content with clichés, that's fine for them.  If I don't like a book, I don't have to read it.  But I do object to books that claim to be set in medieval times that then make a farce of that claim by doing the most egregiously wrong things.  We all make mistakes, but some things are SO wrong as to reduce the book from historical fiction to what I call "medieval fantasy fiction".  Worse, personally speaking, is that then a book that strives for greater accuracy of time and place is seen as "wrong" because it doesn't match the clichés.  Ask me about the editor of a short story collection in which I had a story, who said in his introductory essay that of course my supposedly medieval detective was actually very modern.

 

All right.  What about the editor of short story collection who said in his introductory essay that your supposedly medieval detective was very modern?

 

I'm so glad you brought that up.  The detective in question is Reynold Pecock.  He's an actual historical personage.  The short story was set at a time when he was master of a college of priests and an almshouse in London .  He later became a bishop, and appears in THE BASTARD'S TALE and my short stories "The Simple Logic of It" (presently available electronically from Amazon.com; this is an unpaid advertisement thereunto), "Heretical Murder" and "Lowly Death" (not yet available online).  As an actual churchman of the 1400s, Pecock had the idea that the best way to bring heretics back into the Church was to persuade them by reason to give up their heresy, and to that end he wrote a number of books in, gasp, English, laying out in step-by-step logic why heretics should change their minds.  Some of these books are extent and in print.  If you have an urge to read medieval theology in Middle English, you can.  I did (which explains a lot about me, including why I have so little social life: " Hi. Want to discuss the theological and political ramifications in Bishop Pecock's BOOK OF FAITH?"), and I found him a delightful,kindly, occasionally droll man, with a mind devoted to intense logic and perfectly suited to be a detective.  The methods he uses in the stories to untangle crimes is absolutely medieval.  But the editor did not think so, and so in the anthology where that particular story appears, my detective is labeled as anachronistic when he very much is not.       

            Along that same line is a reviewer of THE SQUIRE'S TALE who observed that it seemed the only way a woman could avoid dying in childbirth in the Middle Ages was to never get married.  This was a singularly gratuitous observation because, although there was a pregnant woman in the book, she did not die in childbirth.  But the cliché is so strong that readers apparently see it even when it isn't there!

 

On another tack altogether, some of us find Joliffe a very attractive man.  Why doesn't he have more romantic encounters in his books?

 

You mean what doesn't he get more sex?

 

Yes.

 

How about: The publishers impose a contractual word-limit on each book, and I have to use so many words creating the time and place believably, there aren't enough left for sexual encounters, too.

            - or -

Mostly the plots just haven't had room for plays, politics, murders, detection, and sex, without bending the stories illogically out of shape, just to get Joliffe into bed with someone. 

            - or -

I'm selfish and keeping him for myself.

            - or -

He's actually getting far more action than it appears, but it all happens between the novels.

 

I've suspected as much.  Tell us more about him.

 

You remember that Joliffe first appeared in the Frevisse series, back in THE SERVANT'S TALE, and later shows up in THE PRIORESS' TALE and THE BASTARD'S TALE and then as the title character in THE TRAITOR'S TALE.  His first appearance was supposed to be a one-off but I like him so well that I brought him back in that second and third time but couldn't interest my agent in trying to sell him in a series of his own.  "The Frevisse series is going well.  Don't shoot yourself in the foot," was the way I remember she put it.  So I wrote A PLAY OF ISAAC just to show I could do two series at once.  It sold and Joliffe was on his way.

 Now if you remember his last exchange with Frevisse at the end of TRAITOR'S, you know somewhere along the way true love comes into his life.  Exactly when and how and with whom – I'm not telling.

 

But that must mean that you know, doesn't it?  That you have an idea of where the series is going in a long arc, rather than just winging it from book to book.

 

Yes.  And that's all you're getting out of me.  But you may be amused to know that, with Frevisse's series, someone lately got their master's degree in English with the thesis that the novels are effectively separate chapters of a single long, multi-volume novel, based on the fact that the main character grows and changes over the course of the series into a deeper and more complex being than at its beginning.  If you'd like to read it, the whole thesis can be accessed from my website (if the link is working properly; let me know if it's misbehaving again).

 

But the books can be read individually, as stand-alones, too, can't they?

 

Certainly.  I intended them that way and give away as little as possible about past books in later books.  Of course if someone is alive in Book 15, you can suppose they aren't murdered in an earlier book, but aside from that, they can be read separately and out of order.  One of the best compliments I've had comes from people who've told me they read the series out of order and enjoyed it so much they went back and read it in order.  That Frevisse, like Joliffe, grows and changes as the series goes on is part of my not-being-bored with writing these books.   

 

Yet you've said you have no plans for more novels about Frevisse.

 

When I realized my publisher was letting my backlist die, indicating they were losing interest in the series, I decided to bring the story to the end I wanted, rather than leave it to the publisher to chop it at some random point.  That said, I'm working on a brand-new Frevisse short story to put up for e-sale on Amazon.com fairly soon.  And work is afoot to make some of the long out-of-print books available there for Kindle, hopefully one at least before this year is out.  THE BISHOP'S TALE, as things stand now.

 

That's good news, anyway.  What about Joliffe?

 

I'm just finishing A PLAY OF HERESY.  That's the second book on my current two-book contract.  What the publisher decides then is up to the publisher and whatever arcane formulas the bean-counters come up with to determine life or death for midlist authors.  I will be the last to know.  Given how well e-books seem to be selling – and the fact that I have a son who understands how to turn books and stories into e-versions – that may be where I end up, writing and marketing my own work exclusively online. 

            Hey!  Maybe, with no limit on word-count, Joliffe could end up having more romantic encounters!

 

     That would work well for me.  As you know from my constant nagging, I'm very much in favor of Joliffe's having more "romantic encounters."   Thank you, Margaret, for stopping by.  On your next visit, maybe you can tell us about your intention to put aside your medieval mysteries temporarily to write a novel about Elizabeth of York.   

 

December 18, 2010 

 

 

 

 

 

     

INTERVIEW WITH PERSIA WOOLLEY

    I have a very special guest today, Persia Woolley, author of the acclaimed trilogy about the fabled Guinevere, among others.  Welcome, Persia.  I've wanted to interview you for a long time, and I'm delighted that we were finally able to get together.   So…let's get started.
  
Your Guinevere books were originally published in 1987, '90 and 91.  How is it that they are being re-issued now?


It seems that as the big traditional houses focus more and more on blockbuster and celebrity books, some savvy publishers are buying 'back-list' titles–good works by mid-list authors the big companies are no longer interested in. Sourcebooks is one such publisher; they read my Guinevere Trilogy and set out to find me.  At first I wasn't much interested, but a few phone calls to friends inside the industry confirmed that Sourcebooks are a very progressive firm, geared to 21st Century challenges and highly respected for it.  The result is that Child of the Northern Spring came out in November of 2010 and both Queen of the Summer Stars and Guinevere–the Legend in Autumn will be issued in 2011.


How does it feel to see them out in the world again?


Wonderful.  Back in the '80's and '90's they were overshadowed by Mists of Avalon so even though I tried to make it clear that I don't write fantasy or woman's romance, the original publisher marketed them that way and the mainstream audience wasn't even alerted to their presence.  Sourcebooks is touting them as Historical Fiction  so they're reaching the audience they were intended for. 

They were originally all three Book of the Month Club alternates and were translated into seven languages.  Sometimes I get posts from strangers on FaceBook telling me how much they loved them back 20 years ago, often saying they read and re-read them over and over until they fell apart in their hands.  That sort of contact out of the blue is immensely gratifying.


You became a journalist in 1970 and had two non-fiction books published by 1980.  What was it that drew you to historical fiction at that point and why Guinevere?  Were the Arthurian stories favorites from childhood?


No, not at all. I was an only child born to a brilliant booklover who wasn't much interested in motherhood.  She tried hard to teach me to read from the age of four on, but I refused to comply, preferring to tell myself stories that I made up on my own.  Later, when Mom became a librarian, she'd push different works at me, and I always pushed them back.  As a result, I didn't have a child's take on the Arthurian stories at all, and was in my 20's when the musical Camelot brought them to my attention.

After that I read the standards–White's Once and Future King, Sutcliff's Sword at Sunset and Mary Stewart's Merlin Trilogy.  In the mid '70's my husband and I went to Britain for a month and on a whim decided to look up various Arthurian sites. I have always believed a novelist should have something new to say, either in content or viewpoint or structure. But while I thought it would be fun to do something with the Camelot story, I couldn't see how to catch hold of it.  And I was still in 'non-fiction mode,' so to speak.

Then after the divorce, it was clearly time to try my hand on a novel–and that's when it dawned on me that no one (at that time) had told the tales from Guinevere's point of view.  Once 'the penny dropped' I lived, ate, slept and  dreamt The Matter of Britain, taking a half-time job so as to have mornings and evenings free for research and writing.  I even stopped the newspaper, didn't watch TV, said no to all coffee dates and socializing, and managed to save enough money to get myself to Britain twice on research trips. I was 45 at the time and I think it was equal parts of desperation and determination that drove me on, plus a growing love for the characters. 
 

You have said you are proud to be a euhemerist. Can you explain that for us?


A euhemerist believes that legends, no matter how fanciful, are actually rooted in reality–that real people, living in real time, did things that were real and reasonable for their circumstances which have been embroidered over the centuries into fanciful myths. Among novelists Mary Renault was the first one that I ran across, and I still admire her Theseus books, The King Must Die and The Bull from the Sea.  The blend of disciplined historical accuracy and the story-teller's imagination appeals strongly to me, and was the approach I decided to use.

The first step was to determine when and where the legend started.  Scholars agree that the prototype of Arthur would have lived sometime between 450 A.D. when memory of the Roman Empire was fading away and 550 A.D. when the Saxon invaders succeeded in driving the surviving Romano-Celts into the mountains of what we now call Wales.  This fits with the tradition that the Saxons were Arthur's great enemy and that he represented the last flicker of civilization–a golden moment of good governance–trying to fend off the onslaught of the barbarians and ensuing Dark Ages.

It also meant no knights in gleaming armor or settings in fancy castles.  Gwen's people would have been living in Roman relics and Celtic roundhouses, mud huts and stone brocks; Mediterranean villas and floating crannogs.  And since I vastly prefer the triumph of the human spirit to the veils of fantasy that so often attach themselves to this story, I was going to have to find the humor, gallantry, courage, sorrow and perseverance within the characters to bring this  shining story to life in such a potentially dreary setting.  



What kind of research was involved?


Lots! All told the research and writing of the three books involved a total of eleven years and four research trips to Britain.  Remember, this was before the Net, so my main sources were books, articles, a few documentaries and various meetings with Arthurian scholars.  When in Britain I stayed in hostels and carried everything on my back except for the hundreds of books and pamphlets I bought and immediately sent home.  I crawled all over Celtic and  Roman ruins and prowled through numerous small, local museums exploring all the sites I used in the books.  Some were traditional, such as Tintagel and Winchester, while others were locales that I found on my own which fit within the needs of my story.  


You certainly broke with tradition when you made Guinevere a homely  northern pagan girl.  Why was that?


Approaching the story as real history means bringing your own common sense to it.  In the legend she is said to be a convent-raised daughter of the south.  But the newly crowned King was having trouble with his northern barons, most of whom had not been as Romanized as their southern counterparts.  So the first thing young Arthur has to do is put down a civil war and tame those northerners–and any historian will point out that you marry a bride from your most recently vanquished enemy to solidify your power.

I made her think of herself as homely so that she wouldn't be spoiled by the arrogance most great beauties have.  And I killed off her mother at an early age so Gwen would have years of unsupervised  freedom in which to develop her horsemanship, bravery and political understanding from her father.

Also, I wanted her to be an outsider. As such she encounters  Arthur's world with fresh eyes–everything from new foods to two wheeled carriages, strange architecture and the potential use of stirrups catch her attention, broadening her horizons and helping to create a whole world for the reader.  

Plus making her a northerner brings in early encounters with Gawain and family, as well as the remnants of the druids.  And what more logical place for the Lady of the Lake's stronghold to be in than the Lake District, both for it's name connection and the fact that historically it was easily defended and often used as a place to hide from the world's scrutiny.  By placing the Academy there, both  Vivian and Morgan would have been known to Gwen long before she'd even heard of Arthur.


How much trouble did you have weaving historical facts into the mythic story?


Actually, not much at all. I think my journalism background helped in that I love ferreting out facts and side-issues and I tend to remember tons of trivia.  Setting the story in 500 A.D. gave me a chance to explore the different cultures involved; the archaeology, history and religion of the Celts, the Romano-Britons and the Saxons, and see how they interacted. And since Gwen would have been co-ruler, she'd have been involved in the question of laws and military developments as well being friend and mother-confessor to the Companions of the Round Table itself.  So I kept all of those things in mind during my research.  I also promised myself I wouldn't fudge on my accuracy; if my investigation proved some idea I had wouldn't have been possible, I'd find a new idea.

For instance, Arthur and his men are always portrayed as mounted warriors, but stirrups hadn't been brought to the West yet, so I had to figure out how I could logically introduce them in a manner that wouldn't contradict the archaeological record–metal stirrups have never been found that early in Britain. 

There is, however, a town named Ribchester which grew up not far from Hadrian's Wall where retired Legionnaires went to live–most already had wives and families in such settlements, and it meant they stayed in touch with friends and comrades from their military service.  Those early vets in Ribchester had mostly come from Sarmatia, a Roman Province which is depicted as having been conquered by Trajan in the early second century.  And among the carvings on Trajan's Column are a contingent of Sarmatian soldiers riding horses and carrying long lances. So it is plausible that the descendants of those Sarmatian Legionnaires would have kept up their practice of horsemanship, with or without stirrups. (It is not totally clear on the Column if any of them are using stirrups, but lances would be awfully hard to control without having stirrups in which to brace your feet.)

Ribchester was on Gwen's way south to be married, so I knew we'd be stopping over and she'd see up-close what horsemanship could become with the use of stirrups.  I made them of leather and rope, both because they would be easier to construct than iron stirrups would be, and because they would have disintegrated by the time modern archaeologists would be looking for them.

Then I encountered an archaeological report of a Greek optometrist who had died in the north of England, and it was quite possible that he had brought with him a young Arab boy as a slave.  Here was a chance to introduce Palomides who is always portrayed in the legend as a foreigner–in the Middle Ages he is specifically a Muslim, no doubt included as an example of how ecumenical Arthur's court was.  So all I needed for my story was to get him to Ribchester, where the kids were already accomplished horsemen at an early age.

Those particular things came together gradually–I didn't begin writing Child until I was 3 1/2 years into my research.  And some touches didn't drop into place until I was actually typing out the story and they appeared on the screen.  (I sometimes feel like a reporter chronicling what my characters are doing as I know where they are at the beginning of a scene and where they need to be at the end, but how they get there is up to them…I just keep watching and listening, and writing it down.)


What touched you most in the Guinevere story and what are your dreams for the Trilogy, now that it's being re-issued?


I was so tired of seeing Arthur's queen presented as a two-dimensional caricature–the beautiful but faithless wife, the spoiled twit who ruins the Round Table because she can't make up her mind between two men–when in the structure of the legends she is clearly Arthur's co-equal, respected and even loved by the people and most of the courtiers.  In the fourteenth century she was known as Guinevere the Gay, when 'gay' denoted joyousness, full of good cheer and the bounty of springtime.

But with the French introduction of Lancelot and the Christianizing of the legend the church fathers had to find appropriate punishments for powerful women, so they turned Morgan into a witch and Guinevere into a sniveling sinner who repents heavily at the end. All of which  made her an easy mark for the Victorians who found in her a handy scapegoat on whom to blame the demise of Camelot.

Yet when you look at what she experiences–married into one of the most conflicted families in literature, kidnapped, raped, unable to have children, becoming  step-mother to Arthur's son and understanding both man and child, yet being unable to bridge the gulf between them–these are things that many modern women deal with today, in varying degrees.  Add to that loving (and being loved by) two heroic men and you've got the portrait of a most remarkable woman.  Obviously I felt there was much to be said for her, and was more than happy to give her a voice.

As to the future, the very fact that Child is now available as an e-book broadens the audience.  And I'm in the process of compiling an annotated edition as I would like to see The Guinevere Trilogy  included in the recommended reading for Arthurian literature studies in colleges.  The fact that I stayed true to the cannon at the same time presenting reasonable psychological portraits of these archetypical figures is something I'm very proud of, and hope it gets recognized in the future.


Do you foresee writing more books in the Arthurian mode?


No, much as I love it, I've turned my attention to the other great iconic tale that shaped our culture, the Trojan War.  I'm about six years into my research on that, though I took out a couple of years to write "Ophelia's Tale" which is presently looking for an agent.  As with Guinevere, I did a great deal of research and stayed absolutely within the frame of Shakespeare's play, but you'll never look at Hamlet the same way again.

In retrospect I've achieved what I wanted to with Guinevere; found a  career which satisfies my reporter's love of research and honed my skill as a story teller, at the same time I've helped to restore the much vilified queen to the stature she used to have and I think fully deserves.  All told, that feels pretty good.
      Persia, this was a wonderful interview.  Thank you so much for sharing your thoughts with us.  I am already eager to see what you'll do with the legend of Troy.  Please come back anytime to talk about it–or any other subject that comes to your mind.
December 9, 2010

INTERVIEW WITH PRISCILLA ROYAL

     Now that Lionheart has been dispatched (via e-mail yet; ah, brave new world) to my editor, I am able to rejoin the world again and I am delighted to be able to share an interview with one of my favorite mystery writers, Priscilla Royal.  In the interest of full disclosure, I should say that Priscilla is a friend, but I became a fan before we met at the Poisoned Pen in Scottsdale.  I was struck by how well she seemed to understand the medieval mind; her characters are always firmly rooted in the 13th century, very much men and women of their times.  They are also sympathetic, yet very human; much of the action may revolve around an abbey, but there are no saints there!   Valley of Dry Bones is her seventh entry in the Eleanor-Thomas mysteries, and it kept me up into the early hours of the morning.  High suspense and a strong medieval ambience–who could ask for more?   But now I'll let Priscilla speak for herself.

What attracted you to medieval history?

My fascination probably began during my childhood in Canada, but chance has encouraged it. A high school teacher gave me a paperback copy of The Canterbury Tales because I liked Chaucer. At San Francisco State University, I accidentally signed up for a class taught by John Gardner, a controversial medieval scholar but one who vividly brought to life both the times and the literature. I became quite hooked. Much damage has been done to our understanding of medieval life, especially by the Victorians who viewed the era as either terribly romantic or awfully barbaric. To my mind, the Middle Ages are complex and rich, yet subtle, without the flashing opulence of the Renaissance. In any case, the medieval era is not just the commonly assumed centuries of lock-step religion, primitive art, suppression of women, appalling ignorance, superstition, and filth. All eras possess unspeakable brutality, as well as enlightenment, a pattern that has varied little throughout history. In the 12th century, there was creative intellectual debate while the 14th was a cruel time for the thoughtful dissenter. But in modern times, Stalin came after the progressive Alexander II, and the McCarthy years were followed by improved civil rights in the 1960s. History teaches that enlightenment and compassion are not modern inventions and that we must never assume they will be permanent features in any society.

 

What author first inspired you to write medieval mysteries?

Ellis Peters, the consummate storyteller who respected research while integrating it so well the flow of the mystery was never hampered. In Brother Cadfael, she created the perfect sleuth: the outsider who could see what others, blinded by familiarity and assumptions, missed. Since her detective lived in an anarchic era, he could explore the meaning of justice in any given situation because there was no rule of law. Although no reasonable person wants vigilantism, we also recognize that laws can be unjust or badly interpreted. Defining justice is always interesting to the mystery reader because we want a fair resolution of a crime within the spirit of law. As far as Ellis Peters' influence on my work, I only hope that I have learned enough from her to create entertaining variations.

 

Did you intend to write a series? If so, why?

I love series so planned a long one. One favorite author early on was Anthony Trollope, a writer who created an entire county and demonstrated that a series could remain vital as long as it was carefully paced and there were enough interesting characters for variety. As a reader, I love settling in with a world and its inhabitants, watching the evolution of both, and eagerly awaiting the next book. How will the author entertain, surprise, and inform me next? As a writer, I discovered the joy of slow character development, balancing humor and tension, as well as craft experimentation so the books do not become boring. And with historicals, I could add the fun of research and learning more about my chosen era. A series is like a marriage. To be successful, it needs work, trust, and dedication.

 

Tell us about your characters, how they developed, and what roles they play.

Eleanor arrived first: a small woman, determined and a bit fierce. I thought she'd make a good 21st century CEO or head of a social justice group. Imagine my surprise when she announced she was a 13th century English prioress. As my jaw dropped, she suggested I study the Order of Fontevraud to discover what clever young women (albeit high-born) could do in the Middle Ages. She also said that she might have a sincere vocation but she would have struggles with pride and a strong sexuality. Brother Thomas revealed himself more slowly. I did not want a Dr. Watson type. He had to be a powerful character in his own right or frankly both Eleanor and I would get bored with him. Unfortunately, he started evolving into good husband material for her. I wasn't interested in a series with romps in the monastic hayloft, but I couldn't imagine them as sexless characters either. They are both of an age when biology demands mating. Luckily, Thomas solved part of the problem by admitting he was gay. This gave him some rather profound issues to resolve. Although he must behave differently in the 13th century than he would in the 21st, I promised him that he would not fall into some easy solution that would insult his integrity. As a gay man, he is, and shall remain, a real mensch. His announcement also allowed me to investigate a lesser known, and often avoided, aspect of medieval society and to explore the complex nature of love as he and Eleanor evolve in the series. The main secondary characters arrived quickly, generously allowing themselves to reveal aspects of medieval life. Sister Anne illustrates a woman's choices when her husband decides to take religious vows. Ralf may be rebellious, but he is still the youngest son of minor nobility and family interests demand his loyalty. Gytha, the prioress' maid, comes from a family of pre-Conquest Saxon thegns. Now the conquered people, they struggle to achieve merchant class.

 

Why choose monastic sleuths rather than secular ones?

The answer partially lies in the monastic leader's authority as well as an element of Christian belief. An abbot/abbess or prior/prioress was the representative of religious law on Church property and for their monastics. As such, they had the right to investigate and often try any of their religious who committed felonies. So a presumed amateur like Eleanor has the right to get involved in crimes. Added to this was the belief that a religious might be a flawed mortal, incapable of perfection, but he/she was still obliged to strive toward God's perfection. If God was perfect, so was His justice. Thus Eleanor may rationalize her attempts to find a more perfect justice than that found in secular society—and sometimes the religious one. And, finally, the Church and the State were in constant war with each other over power and wealth. This adds tension and plot possibilities for my religious sleuths, liegemen of the Church, when they must deal with secular authority.

 

Why did you pick the late 13th century/early 14th?

I suffer the curse of once being a comparative literature major so sought a period with historical events that might resonate with us today. The late 1200s/early 1300s were perfect. I'm not trying to force comparisons between that era and today, but I do see hints of similarities—like an image in a pond when a breeze ruffles the surface. History rarely duplicates itself, but the past often illustrates the dangers of taking certain paths and the consequences of decisions made. And I thought it would be fun to play with the issue of transitioning generations: if people grew up learning the values of one era, what would they do when faced with changing ideals, practices, prospects? Whether deemed good, bad, or indifferent, Henry III's reign lasted fifty-six years. That was longer than the average lifespan in the 13th century. Then his son, Edward I, arrived, a man who tried to be his father's opposite. Relative peace exploded into many wars. Lax legal practices were reined in. Stricter laws enforced compliance. Bled dry by taxes and fees, all Jews were expelled from England. The Church rejected debate and experimentation, growing rigid and choosing violence to silence dissent. The causes of change were complex but included a global chilling which severely affected health and the economy. My characters will face interesting dilemmas as the series progresses!

 

Tell us about your newest book.

Valley of Dry Bones is now out in traditional print, audio, and e-reader versions. Although I try not to favor any amongst the series brood, this book was especially fun to write, in part because I could finally include liturgical dramas. In 2003, I saw The Play of Daniel, presented by Aurora Theater and the Pacific Mozart Ensemble in Berkeley CA, a work that may be 12th-13th century but reminded me of early opera with all the drama but fewer stage mechanics. It also had roaring lions, the perfect backdrop to murder. My excitement must have been contagious because many characters showed up for inclusion in Valley. I rejected several, bribing some with appearances in future books. Crowner Ralf's brother, the sheriff, did make final casting, and Eleanor's nemesis, the man in black, who is Thomas' spymaster. Although I once assumed this latter fellow, now named Father Eliduc, was a villain, I discovered he possessed interesting shades of gray. Since Edward I is now king, I also wanted to hint at coming events. Ralf and his brother see the advent of a new legal system: less overt corruption but fewer options for individualized justice. Father Eliduc foresees the evolution in the Church/State power struggle and recognizes the need to recruit men possessed of more zeal but probably fewer scruples. The future interaction between Eleanor and Eliduc promises to be exciting.

 

Thank you, Sharon, for inviting me to your blog. Your books have given me much pleasure over the years and are an ongoing source of inspiration as well as a major reason the medieval era continues to intrigue. Should any of your readers have questions about my series, my website (www.priscillaroyal.com) provides a link to my email. And if they are interested in blogs, I am one of the mystery writers at the Lady Killers (www.theladykillers.typepad.com

Thank you, Priscilla!  I know you're hard at work on another medieval mystery, so I appreciate your taking the time away from your writing and researching to pay us a visit.  

November 18, 2010

IN THE FOOTSTEPS OF ELEANOR OF AQUITAINE

     I have recently been approached about conducting a tour of Eleanor of Aquitaine's France in 2011.   I am working out the details of this project with Academic Travel Aboard, a professional tour operator in Washington, DC that has sixty years of experience in the educational travel field.  We plan to delve into twelfth century life during this 10-12 day tour of Paris, Poitiers, and other sites closely associated with Eleanor's life and times.  Naturally we are considering Fontevrault Abbey and Chinon Castle.  We would like to get feedback from my readers and Facebook and my blog offer a unique opportunity to do this.  If you click onto the link below, you can participate in a very brief poll; your answers will help us to shape the program.   And of course I'd be very interested in any comments and suggestions you care to make.  There are some truly spectacular places associated with Eleanor, Henry, and their Devil's Brood, including Mont St Michel and Carcassonne.  I've often mentioned the spell that Fontevrault casts and I'd love to share that experience with some of my readers.  So please do take the poll and let me know your thoughts.   Thanks!

 http://www.zoomerang.com/Survey/WEB22BD52FCKZ8  

October 23, 2010

INTERVIEW WITH LAUREL CORONA

     I am delighted to be able to interview an author I've long admired, Laurel Corona.  Laurel has a very interesting background; she was a professor of English and the humanities at San Diego City College and is the author of a number of Young Adult books written for school libraries.  She is also the author of Until The Last Breath: A Holocaust Story of Love and Partisan Resistance, and The Four Seasons, a novel about Antonio Vivaldi's Venice.  And she has perfectly expressed the responsibilities of the historical novelist in what I think should be our Eleventh Commandment–Do not defame the dead.   Today is the publication date for Laurel's new novel, Penelope's Daughter.  This has been at the top of my TBE list as soon as I heard about it, and I plan to treat myself as soon as Lionheart goes off to my editor.  But I will let you learn about Penelope's Daughter and its fascinating premise in Laurel's own words.

How did you come up with the idea for PENELOPE'S DAUGHTER?

 

I guess you could say I gave birth to Xanthe, the main character in PENELOPE'S DAUGHTER, over the dinner table one night. (That's a weird image isn't it–giving birth to someone else's child among the dinner plates and wine glasses?

 

My partner Jim and I had recently returned from a midwinter trip to Venice, where I was researching a few final details for THE FOUR SEASONS before it went to press.  We were reminiscing about how much fun we'd had, and Jim wondered aloud what might be an equally fun location for my second novel.

 

At the time I was already in the very early planning stages for what I thought I was going to write next, but out of curiosity, I asked him where he wanted to go. Jim is a great lover of the classics, so I wasn't surprised when he said Greece, but it was news to me that, as widely traveled as he is, he had never been there.

 

"Okay," I said, "we have to go. Now all I need to figure out is what the novel will be about."  I don't remember which one of us suggested Homer, but I will never forget Jim's reaction when I said, "How about if, when Odysseus goes off to the Trojan War, he doesn't know Penelope is pregnant with a daughter?"

 

"You can't mess with Homer!" Jim insisted.  And of course, once he said that, I had to write PENELOPE'S DAUGHTER just to prove him wrong!

 

 

 

 

How does putting a daughter in the story change it?

 

The ODYSSEY has two narrative strands, Odysseus' adventures and the "meanwhile, back at the ranch" story about the suitors trying to steal Odysseus' wife and kingdom.  Odysseus' adventures aren't part of my book at all, but once I thought about the impact of a daughter on the story of the women left behind–whom, quite frankly, Homer shows very little interest in–the whole epic broke open as a far more fascinating tale than the one Homer wrote down.

 

Homer's Penelope is a male fantasy, a woman stubbornly faithful to–and helpless without–her man.  Odysseus is gone nearly twenty years, but what's that to a good wife?  There was no way I could base a novel around someone who does nothing but weep and moan about her situation and pray for her husband's return.

What is there between the lines in Homer's story, however, is that Penelope is a teenaged bride, a pampered princess taken from her luxurious childhood home to a rocky, poor, island kingdom. She lives with her new husband, a rough-hewn local warlord, only long enough for their first child to reach his first birthday. She is probably at most seventeen when he leaves her alone, without the support of friends or family, for twenty years.  That's an interesting starting point for a story about a girl who must rise to the occasion and become a strong woman, mother, and queen.

 

The other immediately obvious thing was that the suitors would have no interest in Penelope if she had a daughter. That daughter, not Penelope, would be Odysseus' heir if Telemachus, her older brother, were to die–which, Homer tells us, the suitors have in mind. My story revolves around the fact that in this violent and predatory environment, the victorious suitor would be the one who impregnated Xanthe, forced a marriage, and produced an heir. Penelope, therefore, must figure out how to keep her son from being murdered and her daughter from being raped.  All this becomes part of the plot of my novel.

 

The third revelation was Helen.  We know from other sources that Helen was married at twelve and had an eight-year-old daughter when she went off to Troy.  That means she had to be at least twenty-one at the time the Trojan War started and thirty-one when it was finally over.  Helen and Penelope are cousins fairly close in age, so when Penelope sends thirteen-year-old Xanthe to Sparta to keep her safe in Helen's care, the Helen whom Xanthe lives with is middle aged by the standards of the time. Being ravishingly beautiful is enough to make her important in Homer's story, but an older woman had better be interesting in her own right.  I wondered what someone like Helen would be like at that age, after all she has seen and done, and it was really a joy to give her substance in my story.

 

 

What have you learned about yourself from writing fiction? How is your own personality reflected in your novels?

 

I have to agree about the autobiographical underpinnings of all fiction, but I think this means something different from what many people think. It doesn't necessarily mean that our characters are aspects of ourselves, or that our plots connect to events in our lives. What is autobiographical is that the outlook on life that is the product of an author's genes, environment, and experiences is going to show up in the way he or she chooses a subject for a novel and then goes about formulating the plot, characters, and settings. 

 

I am blessed with what some people call the "happy gene."  Even at the lowest points of my life I have been optimistic, and I tend to see others in a positive light. I am most comfortable telling stories about healthy, functional people who manage to thrive where they are, and have the courage to act to change what they can.  Tension and conflict in my novels are far more a result of historical events, and the societal limitations put on women (and men too, but women are my focus) than they are brought on by nasty or villainous characters–although I have a few of those too.

 

The message I have for readers is the same one I have for myself every day, that life is manageable regardless of our circumstances, that people have the strength and character to rise to whatever the situation demands, and that tomorrow is always worth sticking around for. My novels have helped me to clarify and affirm those beliefs for myself and I hope readers hear those themes loud and clear in all my books.

 

 

What can readers expect next from Laurel Corona?

 

Novel number three, FINDING EMILIE will be released by Simon and Schuster/Gallery Books in May 2011.  This, by the way, was the idea I was mulling over when that dinner table "birth" changed my plans.  It is based on the story of real-life mathematician and physicist, Emilie du Châtelet, a Parisian noblewoman who lived during the Enlightenment.  Most who know of her recall that she was Voltaire's lover for many years, but she should be far better known for her scientific work, which include a translation and commentary on Newton's Principia.  She was a free-spirited and flamboyant character, whose life was cut short at age 43 by complications of childbirth after an unexpected pregnancy from her affair with a dashing young soldier/poet. 

 

The story follows the daughter she gave birth to six days before her death. Through vignettes about Emilie, readers learn more about the mother than the daughter herself knows, and the story revolves around the daughter's quest to figure out who she is and what she wants, and to shape her own destiny by discovering the facts about the remarkable woman whom, unknown to her, she so resembles.

 

There's a lot more about FINDING EMILIE and PENELOPE'S DAUGHTER on my website, www.laurelcorona.com, as well as a peek at my work in progress, THE SHAPE OF THE WORLD.  Also, as a way of delivering on my dedication of PENELOPE'S DAUGHTER to "all the children left behind when fathers and mothers go off to war," I maintain a blog, "Xanthe's World," on issues affecting military children at www.pensdaughter.blogspot.com.

 

Thank you, Laurel, for stopping by.  If I was eager to read Penelope's Daughter before, now I am downright impatient!

 

 

 

 

 

INTERVIEW WITH JERI WESTERSON

I am delighted to welcome Jeri Westerson, the author of the popular Crispin Guest mysteries.  Jeri's newest, The Demon's Parchment, will soon be published, and so I invited her to stop by and talk about it. 

Sharon: While other authors writing medieval mysteries have opted for a gentle tone, frequently with a monk or nun protagonist, you have chosen to write "Medieval Noir," with a former knight as the detective, a sub-genre you seem to have invented. How did you come up with this approach?

Jer...

SHADOW AND BAMBI

So many people have asked me how Shadow is doing that I've decided to respond in a blog.   I've had him for four months now and I am happy to report that his health problems seem to have been resolved; the vet initially suspected food allergies and then Irritable Bowel Syndrome, and he has responded well to treatment for the latter condition.  Cody had a delicate digestive system, too, despite looking as delicate as a tank.  I've been told that shepherds are prone to these problems, another...

BOOKS AND BANKRUPTCY

         I'm sorry it has taken me so long to do a new blog.  My usual version of "The dog ate my homework" excuse was "Henry and Eleanor are running roughshod over their lowly scribe again" or with LIONHEART, "Richard is being a typical bloody-minded Angevin."  But this time I can't blame Coeur de Lion; he has actually been cooperating lately since we're drawing near to one of his most celebrated exploits—the rescue of Jaffa.  The delay was caused by my chronic back problems, which flared...

INTERVIEW WITH NAN HAWTHORNE

       I apologize for taking so long to get a new blog up; naturally I am going to blame Coeur de Lion, who doesn't want his scribe doing anything but catering to his royal whims.  (Typical Angevin)  But I am making it up to you with a particularly interesting and entertaining interview with Nan Hawthorne, author of An Involuntary King: A Tale of Anglo Saxon England.   Nan is also one of my favorite bloggers; in fact, you can find the links to her blogs under Author on my regular website...

Lionheart–Breaking News!

I have some important news about Lionheart.   Some of you may have wondered how I was going to finish the book by year's end since Richard is still bogged down in the Holy Land, fighting Saladin.   I wondered about that, too.  Actually, I often felt haunted by that approaching deadline and I became more and more uneasy as the months slipped by.  

      How did I get into such a predicament?  Well, in the past I'd always had three years to do one of my historical "sagas," but for Lionheart...