Sharon Kay Penman's Blog, page 94

Tragedy in the wake of tornadoes

Sorry I have still been off the radar again, but I suspect my post-pneumonia hangover is going to be in the running for making the Guinness Book of World Records. I’ll stop by when I can, and console myself that little steps toward recovery are still better than no steps at all.
Meanwhile, the stories coming out of the states ravaged by these tornadoes and flooding are truly heartbreaking. The resiliency of the human spirit is awe-inspiring, as is the way people rally around their stricken neighbors. So much tragedy that I thought you might like to read one story that offers some hope. Here is the link to the story of a woman in Alabama who managed to coax 80 people into taking refuge in a tornado shelter. Three people whom she could not convince died, and the homes of the 80 people who did heed her were either destroyed or badly damaged. I have never understood why there are not more tornado shelters in that section of the US called Tornado Alley, but that is another discussion for another time. I learned something chilling today, though—that the US spawns more tornadoes than anywhere else on earth
http://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/a...

A King's Ransom Book tour

I finally have a new blog up. Here is the link.
http://sharonkaypenman.com/blog/?p=446

A King’s Ransom Book Tour

The pneumonia dragon is still out on the porch, sulking, but my current strategy is to ignore him and try to get a new blog done between naps.   I am finally on the mend, but I’ve been warned there will be a lot of sleeping and self-pity and nightmares about deadlines and more sleeping ahead of me.    I’m trying to look at it as my post-pneumonia hangover.

Unfortunately, my doctor and I (at least the common sense part of my brain) concluded that it would not be wise to attempt two very demanding tours with just a few months in be-tween.  He doesn’t really need to remind me that I have “a compromised immune system,” but he does it anyway.   There is a dramatic difference between a book tour or travel tour and one in which I get to make the travel arrangements myself.   I can make sure that I will not be getting up at three or four in the morning to catch obscenely early flights or ride the whirlwind from dawn till dark and if I feel that I am about to crash and burn, I can always go back to my hotel and take a nap.

As I mentioned on Facebook earlier, we have had to cancel the Richard III tour scheduled for September, and I am so sorry that I’ve had to disappoint those who had signed up for it and the people at Academic Travel, too, who have been a delight to work with.     But there is another choice for readers who would like to take a medieval tour this autumn.   There are still some spots open on Elizabeth Chadwick’s William Marshal Tour.   Several of my friends took the last one and had a wonderful time.  As I said on that earlier Facebook post, Elizabeth probably knows more about William Marshal’s life than he himself did!    Here is the link to her website, which contains all the information needed about the tour, which is scheduled for October.

http://elizabethchadwick.com/

I’d originally planned to write at some length about the book tour, but the pneumonia dragon had his own ideas about that and in a clash of wills, the one who breathes fire usually wins.   So here is my brief blog, long overdue.

I had a wonderful time.  I have the world’s best readers and it is always exciting to meet them in person.  I feel as if I know so many of you from our Facebook interactions, so it was great fun to have so many of you show up at the readings.    I was awed, too, by the great distances some of you traveled to get to them.   A librarian drove from Maryland to Princeton.  I was also given champagne at the Princeton reading by a Facebook friend I’ve been hoping to meet for years.

The Poisoned Pen in Scottsdale is my favorite bookstore so I was very happy to get back there; it didn’t hurt that it was 80 degrees, either.  Here is the link to the webcast of my talk there.   http://new.livestream.com/poisonedpen/kings-ransom Houston’s Murder by the Book is another bookshop that I love, and visits there are always a highlight of my tours.  I’ve been to Nicola’s Books in Ann Arbor several times and I am always very pleased to find it on one of my tour itineraries.  Back to snow and ice again there, but I had a delightful surprise and got to meet a cousin I’d never met before; she drove all the way from South Bend, Indiana, too.  The reason I have cousins I haven’t met is that my mother came from a family of fourteen, and her brothers and sisters all had large families, too; so I am probably related to half of Kentucky, where they all put down roots, except for the South Bend contingent and my mother, who ended up on the East Coast.

In Seattle, I did a reading at Third Place Books in Lake Forest, and had a wonderful evening.   I was amazed that one of my readers flew in from Juneau, Alaska, and another one drove in from Vancouver, Canada.  I’d been alerted beforehand, so we bought them cupcakes, but they really deserved medals of some sort.

I’d done readings in the past at the famous Powell’s Book Store in downtown Portland, but this time it was held at Powell’s Books at Cedar Hills Crossing.   I really enjoyed it and was stunned afterward to learn that one of my readers had come all the way from Montana to Oregon.  She was so matter-of-fact about it too, explaining that she’d concluded that Putman’s was never going to send me to Montana, so she had to come to me.   And I have to mention my remarkable hotel in Portland.  All my hotels were very nice, but the Heathman Hotel was unique, for they have their own library.  Whenever a writer stays there, they ask the writer to sign a copy of his or her new book and it then joins the library, which is available to hotel guests.   They have thousands of books, and Ransom will be in very good company, for some very talented writers have stayed there over the years.  I loved the letter from the hotel librarian, too, politely asking me to return their copy of Ransom to the front desk if I declined to participate!   I tried to think of a reason why any writer would not want to take part in this, and concluded that the only explanation—assuming it ever happened—would be temporary insanity.

I had two days in the Bay Area, and was so happy to be back in San Francisco, my favorite American city.   I did my first reading at Book Passage in the city.  In the past, I’d gone to their mother ship in Corte Madera and fell in love with it, but their San Francisco store was one I’d gladly return to time and time again.  I left with beautiful roses (white, of course) and some very special memories.

The next evening, I did a reading at Books, Inc. in Palo Alto.  Another wonderful audience and a fellow writer flew in from San Diego for the reading, bringing me plantagenesta, the plant that was the origin of the Plantagenet dynasty’s name.   He has written several novels about Eleanor of Aquitaine, too.  As many of you know, I do not read other novels about those historical characters who are closest to my heart.  No Richard III novels by other writers.  None about the Welsh princes, even though I am a great admirer of Edith Pargeter, AKA Ellis Peters, and she wrote her novels about the princes thirty years before I did!   And after having the Angevins as roommates for the past 20 years, I had to deny myself the pleasure of reading Elizabeth Chadwick’s The Summer Queen, the first of her trilogy about Eleanor.   So I am not able to read Mark Richard Beaulieu’s series about Eleanor, either, but you can learn more about them by looking them up on Amazon.

I concluded the tour in Tucson, a city I’d taken to heart many years ago, for I attended the University of Arizona during my first year of law school, and I’ve long hoped to go back.  Of course I never get to see any of the cities on a book tour, but at least I get to breath their air.  The Tucson Festival of Books  was the best possible way to end the tour.  I was so impressed by the Festival and I highly recommend it to other writers and to anyone who loves books.   I had so much fun!  Unfortunately my schedule was so tight that I wasn’t able to attend the panels I wanted to see; I did get to briefly meet Spencer Quinn, though, whose Chet and Bernie mysteries are high up on my favorites list  I know most of you are animal lovers like me, so be sure to check out Spencer’s books on Amazon; Chet is unlike any dog we’ll ever meet, but utterly irresistible, a word that also applies to the books, too.

There were a few bumps in the road.  The worst was a boulder-sized one when I almost missed my flight from Houston to Detroit, thanks to the airline’s bungling.  I was already not a happy camper because I’d had to get up at 5 AM for a 7:15 AM flight, and you may have guessed by now that I am not a lark  My heart doesn’t even start beating before 8 AM,  so these early flights took their toll.   To add to the fun, when I realized I was likely to miss the Detroit flight, I tried to call my publicist, only to discover that my cell phone was missing.  So if any of you remember hearing a muffled primal scream echoing on the wind early in the morning of March 8th, now you know that was me.   I was able to replace the phone in Seattle, but until I actually held it in my hand, I felt truly bereft, which may be a sad commentary upon our need for constant connections.  But I don’t care; I just wanted my phone!    And then the car company that was to pick me up at my Seattle hotel and take me to the airport never showed up, but the hotel came to the rescue and I was able to make the flight to San Francisco thanks to the car they kept on call; their driver was a very interesting  man who’d been here for 14 years, having fled the bloodshed in his homeland, Ethiopia, where two of his brothers had been slain.  He told me he wakes up grateful every day that he is an American now.   So if the car company had shown up, I’d have missed a fascinating conversation with someone I’ll long remember.   Sadly, when I got to the airport, we learned San Francisco was fogged in, and by the time we finally got off the ground, I missed a scheduled radio interview.

But all in all, I think the tour went quite smoothly, thanks to my publicist’s deft way of dealing with unexpected problems.   I was able to meet a few writers at the Tucson Festival, to meet many of my Facebook friends, and to see friends of long standing in several of the cities.   It seemed like an appropriate way to bid farewell to the Angevins, who are now part of my past.   I will miss them very much, for they’ve been an important part of my life for several decades—or as Barbara Peters put it when she introduced me at the Poisoned Pen reading, “A King’s Ransom completes Sharon’s five book trilogy about the Angevins.”

And since I am really not ready to walk away from one of history’s more dysfunctional families, I feel very motivated now to resurrect Justin de Quincy, for if he gets off life support and once again becomes the queen’s man, I’ll be able to keep writing about Eleanor and Richard and John; who knows, I might even let Eleanor send Justin to Sicily so I could bring Joanna into the plot.   Sadly, Henry has to stay dead, although that did not stop me from giving him two scenes in Ransom!

Well, for what was supposed to be a brief blog, I’ve now spun off 4 pages.  Clearly, I do not do “brief” very well.   Thanks to all of you who came to my readings, and thanks, too, to all who’ve been generous enough to post on Facebook or write to me to say how much you’ve enjoyed Ransom.   Reader feedback like that means more than I could ever say, and as anyone who has read my books knows, I am not often at a loss for words.

April 28, 2014

Horrific storms and Game of Thrones

So many people in the path of this latest round of savage storms are in need of our good wishes, sympathy, and prayers. I hope all of my friends and readers got through it okay, although more trouble is looming on the horizon After finally surviving the Winter from Hell, it seems so unfair that Spring is following in its accursed footsteps.
I am feeling better and I hope to have a new blog up today about my book tour. In the meantime, here is another delightfully snarky review of last night’s episode of Game of Thrones. Click onto this link at your peril if you have not seen that episode yet. I liked it very much myself, aside from a few scenes not for the faint of heart. Has anyone else noticed that Westeros seems to have more than its share of sadists and psychopaths?
http://tvrecaps.ew.com/recap/game-of-...

Another snarky, fun review of Game of Thrones

Not much to report. Sleeping a lot. Keeping an eye on the pneumonia dragon, who is not ready to concede unconditional surrender. I finally shoved him out the door, but he continues to lurk on the porch, awaiting his chance to sneak back in. More sleeping. Feed the Florence Nightingale of the dog world. Yawning…can another nap be coming on? Ah, if people only knew the glamorous jet-set lives that writers lead.
On a much more interesting subject, here is another of those wonderfully snarky EW reviews for Game of Thrones, last week’s episode. So don’t click onto the link if you haven’t seen it and want to avoid spoilers, though I suspect the only way to really avoid spoilers is to hide in a cave.
http://tvrecaps.ew.com/recap/game-of-...

William Marshal Tour

Holly has been so sweet and helpful during my bout with pneumonia that I’ve begun calling her the spaniel poultice. I’ll try to start posting again, though they are likely to be short for a while. I did have two things to report that are likely to be of interest to my readers. The new paperback edition of Sunne in Splendour has its pub date today; it is, of course, an exact copy of the revised hardback edition of Sunne that Macmillan brought out last September. And for my British readers, my fourth mystery, Prince of Darkness, was published as an e-book in the UK in Earl April, and it will come out for the first time in paperback and hardcover in October.
I was so sorry to disappoint those who’d signed up for my Richard III tour in September, but my doctor and I both felt it was too much for me to attempt after the exhausting book tour and my ongoing bout with pneumonia. But I have good news for my fellow medieval geeks. There are still spaces left on Elizabeth Chadwick’s second William Marshal tour this coming September. Several of my friends went on the last one and had a wonderful time and I highly recommend it. Not surprising since Elizabeth probably knows more about William Marshal’s life than he himself did! Here is the link to her website which gives the information about the tour. Even if you won’t be able to consider the tour at this time, I strongly urge everyone to visit her website, for I think it is one of the most informative and entertaining on the web.
http://elizabethchadwick.com/

The dragons of Westeros and the Jersey Pinelands

I am so sorry I have been silent for so long, but for 4 ½ weeks I have been battling the pneumonia dragon, which is even more aggressive and troublesome than those blasted deadline dragons. But my doctor and I think that I finally can see the road to Recovery glimmering on the horizon. Of course I have about as much energy as a wet noodle and am sleeping as much as a sloth. I’d been warned that with pneumonia, there is a long convalescence, so I am trying to see this as my post-pneumonia hangover

I won’t be able to make regular visits for a while yet, but I can start tonight with this link to a very funny review of the Purple Wedding in Game of Thrones. If I had any words of warning for people about to cross the borders into Westeros, it would be, “For God’s sake, don’t ever accept a wedding invitation!” Don’t read it if you haven’t seen the episode yet and are vainly trying to avoid spoilers.

http://tvrecaps.ew.com/recap/game-of-...

Dragons--mine and George RR Martin's

I am sorry to report that the pneumonia dragon is proving to be as hard to chase off as the deadline dragon. I had to face the latter alone, but at least my doctor is helping me confront the pneumonia dragon. But it is likely my Facebook postings will be sporadic until said dragon finally unfolds its wings and flies off to friendlier climes.
I have a message for my British readers. My fourth mystery, Prince of Darkness, is now available in the e-book format. And my British publisher is running a promotion on Lionheart to coincide with Ransom’s publication; it is available for now on Amazon.UK at the bargain price of ninety-nine pence.
And before I start my dragon-fighting for the day, here is a link to a funny review of Sunday’s Game of Thrones premiere. Don’t read it, though, unless you’ve already seen the show or don’t care about spoilers. Not only did Thrones crash HBO-GO Sunday night, it drew its biggest audience yet and is their most popular series since The Sopranos. Oh, and they just renewed it for two more seasons. No pressure, though, George. http://tvrecaps.ew.com/recap/game-of-...

A king's death, a mother's grief

I am sorry for the long silence, but I have had a relapse of sorts, turning out to be sicker than we first thought. All I’ve been able to do this week is sleep and watch Game of Thrones in preparation for the new season tonight. There is something about watching all those heads and limbs lopped off that put my own medical woes into perspective!
April 6th 1199 was surely one of the most dreadful days of Eleanor of Aquitaine’s long life. It was not a good day for Richard, either, but few sorrows can be worse than watching your child die. A King’s Ransom, page 592
* * *
The man ushered into the chamber soon afterward was one Eleanor knew and liked—one of Richard’s household knights—but her smile splintered at her first glimpse of his stricken face.
“Madame, your son…” He sank to one knee before her, holding out the letter with a hand that shook. “He has been grievously wounded, and he…he bids you come to him at Chalus”
There were horrified gasps from the other women, but for Eleanor, there was no surprise, only an eerie sense of familiarity about this moment. It was as if she’d always known she would one day be standing here like this, listening to someone tell her that her son was dying. She swayed slightly and the prioress and Amaria moved quickly to offer support, but she shook their hands off. “Is there…” She swallowed convulsively. “Is there no hope?”
He did not know what was cruelest—to offer false hope or to strip away every last shred of hope. “He….he is in a bad way, my lady.”
Eleanor closed her eyes for a moment and then she raised her head, straightening the shoulders that felt too frail to bear this latest burden. “I will be ready to ride within the hour.”
* * *
One hundred forty miles stretched between Fontevrault Abbey and Chalus-Chabral and Eleanor was then in her 75th year, but she pushed her aging body to the utmost and reached her dying son in time to bid him farewell. He died at 7 PM on April 6th, 1199, with Eleanor at his side.
I will post again when I am finally on the mend Meanwhile, do not forget Season Four of Game of Thrones starts tonight.

Eleanor of Aquitaine

I am sorry for the long absence, but I crashed and burned not long after getting back from the book tour. Yesterday we finally identified the primary suspect. It seems I have contracted bacterial pneumonia, what is sometimes called walking pneumonia. I am taking anti-biotics now and hope to be on the mend soon.
Meanwhile, today is, of course, the date in 1204 when Eleanor of Aquitaine drew her last mortal breath. She’d died in Here be Dragons, but it was done off-stage. Since she has played a role in ten of my thirteen books, I felt that she deserved a death scene of her own, and those reading it in Ransom will find it in the Epilogue. It has been a privilege and a pleasure to write about this remarkable woman.