Sharon Kay Penman's Blog, page 152

Ballantine Book Tour

        Hi, everybody.   The second part of the book tour went well, too.  We had a smaller turnout at Books and Company in Dayton, but the bad weather earlier may have been a factor; we were hit by the same storm that flooded Louisville.  The weather was much better the next day in Ann Arbor, and we had eighty-seven people there, which is very good for me since I'm neither famous nor infamous!    The best part of the tour, though, was getting to meet some of my new friends from the blog and Fac

The Falcons of Montabard–Again

     Koby, you were right; my answering comments as they are  posted instead of saving them all for the next blog is more efficient—and gives me a fighting chance to keep the blogs shorter than Sunne.   I want to begin by thanking all of you who bravely followed me to Facebook; we solved the glitch and I no longer have an invisibility cloak.  I even managed to put up my book covers, including the gorgeous new one for the British paperback edition of Devil's Brood.   I have also added a section f

Computer Meltdown

I knew Merlin, my misnamed computer, had crossed over to the dark side, but I hadn't realized he'd pitched a tent there.  I just wrote a new blog entry, but when I tried to publish it, it disappeared in a puff of smoke.  I will try to get this sorted out and re-post it ASAP.  Now let's see if this one goes out okay.

July 24,2009

The Falcons of Montabard

 

 

 

 

medieval marriages

       I'd hoped to have a new blog posted this past week, but I was entangled with the Angevins.   At least it was productive, for I was able to finish a key chapter for Lionheart, in which Richard had confrontations with the King of Sicily and then the King of France.  Richard didn't always play well with others, although it is hard to fault him for his feuding with Philippe Auguste, who could have taught Iago about treachery and betrayal.

       Richard also got to meet Berengaria at long last

The blog that became a novella

Before we get to your questions—my favorite part of the blogs—I want to give you a brief report of the Historical Novel Society convention.  There was an unexpected eleventh-hour development.   I’d signed up so late that I wasn’t on any panels and so I was looking forward to being a social butterfly, flitting about visiting old friends and meeting new ones.   But then I had a call from Jane Kessler at HNS.  Edward Rutherfurd was to have been one of the two keynote speakers, but a sudden family i

The Blog Without End

     I am going to begin with a confession—I’d have been horrified if you had picked High Drama over Historical Accuracy.   Ideally, a book should be able to provide both.   But I apply a rather stringent standard, and even a well-written book can be ruined for me if the research is sloppy.  I don’t mean occasional errors, which are inevitable, but fundamental misconceptions about the medieval world, what I think of as “The Plantagenets in Pasadena” syndrome, where highborn young women expect to

About mistakes, a book tour, and a new biography

      I’d like to start with an Alert Message.  I am hoping that most of the people who e-mail me via my website also read my blogs, for I had a computer meltdown recently, and all of the e-mails in my In Box since August of 2007 were instantly erased.  Fortunately I do back up onto my flash drive, but I’d been lazy and so I lost at least two weeks of e-mails, including a number from readers.  I get so much mail that I cannot respond to every one, but I do try to answer specific questions or req

Ranulf vs Richard

Wow!   This was a fascinating discussion about the use of purely fictional characters in books like mine.   Without doubt, I have remarkably perceptive and eloquent readers! It is gratifying, too, to find that my readers can intuitively sense what I am attempting to do with characters like Ranulf and Rhiannon; you were absolutely right, Michele, in concluding that I’d inserted Rhiannon into the story line to shed light upon the treatment of people with disabilities in the MA.    In Saints, I had

The Reckoning and fictional characters

      I’d like to thank those of you who submitted questions for The Reckoning’s Book Club.  I passed them on to St Martin’s and they were delighted.  They made some minor editing changes, but used most of them, as well as several I’d provided.   You can read them at http://www.readinggroupgold.com/product/product.aspx?isbn=0312382472 ; click onto the Reading Group Guide to find The Reckoning.    A few of you offered questions after St Martin’s had posted them on-line, but I submitted them anywa