Deborah Swift's Blog, page 43

Author Debra Brown is Castaway on a Desert Island

 Debra Brown is a romantic and a lover of history. 
She is the organiser of English Historical Fiction Authors well-respected blog, and the facebook group associated with it. Debra works tirelessly to promote historical fiction in all its genres. If you go there today you will see she is hosting a Giveaway of THE GILDED LILY. I am also at Tanzanite's Castle today.
Debra loves to read books and watch films where 'We can enter a world of wearing beautiful gowns each night to the dinner table and be served by butlers and dashing footmen. A world of polite conversation at balls and of gentlemen who do not turn their backs to a lady until he has excused himself from a conversation.'

It seems a shame to consign this woman of  indefatigable energy to my Desert Island, but sorry Debra, I've taken the boat.
Here are Debra Brown's Desert Island choices.

A Tale of Two Cities ~ I have actually never read it yet, and it is the bestseller in historical fiction.

For her second book, Debra asked me, "Does it have to be a novel? Because I am really hooked on The Schwarzbein Principle and The Schwarzbein Principle II right now and would love it if others had some exposure to it. If that is ok, here is why I like it."

It's a Desert Island, right. I thought I should be generous and allow Debra her choice. Go ahead Debra...

 We've all had so many different diets to try for health and weight issues, but we still struggle with weight and aging illnesses like Type II Diabetes and many others. These books, written by a diabetes doctor, start with how the diet and medication normally prescribed by doctors was making people fatter, sicker and more miserable. Her patients were asking for something different, something that would help.

She started working with them, asking them to try writing down everything they ate and medications, as well as their responses to such. She then asked them to cut back to smaller portions of balanced meals, five times a day. The books describe how that affects the body's insulin- which in turn affects the other hormones and neurotransmitters, etc.

As her patients applied what she had learned, she saw them become healthier and more youthful looking, including weight loss or gain as needed, while eating an abundance of good food throughout the day. One interesting point that has brightened my diet is that fats do not put weight on a person. To store fat, insulin is required- a person must have an insulin response and that can come only from eating carbohydrates. So  the key is to balance the proportions of the foods- enough carbs to make some insulin, but not too much, and always with vegetable fiber, fats and protein.

My first personal experience with results is a funny story. As an author, my vision is of great importance (as for everyone). I got new prescription glasses in June, but my vision seemed to get worse and worse, on and off, quickly. One evening I picked up my Schwartzbein book and could barely read it. I thought I must be going blind. I knew, though, on the Schwartzbein diet, that it was time for me to eat. I ate my small balanced meal and sat back down to read- lo and behold, my vision was clear. Since then, I have kept my vision pretty clear by eating on time.

I'm sure the Desert Island will be filled with nutritious fruits and then there will always be fish! 
Here is Debra's  Victorian novel, The Companion of Lady Holmeshire which I hope makes her a nice companion during her stay.
Thanks for looking after my Island for the day, Debra. 
Debra's blog is at www.authordebrabrown.blogspot.com
 

Woman Friday, Desert Island Castaway - Anita Seymour

Today I'm at Peeking Between the Pages Blog where Darlene is reviewing The Gilded Lily.
Whilst I am off on my blog tour my Desert Island Guest for today is Anita Seymour, historical novelist and another fan of the 17th century.


Anita says on her website:
"The realities of everyday habits shape the actions of my characters, but although restricting, these are the details I find fascinating – for instance how long it took to travel between London and Exeter in a box coach without suspension, and where accidents were frequent on ill-made up roads that in parts became knee deep in mud during winter rain. In fact I find the research is the most exciting part and less arduous than actually writing the story. If I cannot obtain a definitive answer from more than one source, I leave it out. This can sometimes constrain my plot choices, but it’s all part of the challenge of writing a credible as well as an exciting story.

Getting inside my character’s heads is also vital. In the 17th Century, attitudes were very different to today. Education was not available to everyone, and we now disapprove of prejudice, chauvinism and religious fanaticism, but in the 1640’s, views were very different. My characters have to be true to their own time, I have to allow them to hold views we would dismiss now. Maybe they are bigoted, politically backwards and administer whippings to their misbehaving children – even their wife! I cannot pass judgment on them, or apologize for their beliefs. Not everyone was a free thinker ahead of their time.

Writing historical fiction is complicated and challenging, but my spirit lives in the past and I cannot imagine myself writing anything else."


Here are Anita's choices: 
"The Classic has got to be Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice - it's the best romantic love story ever written and can stand being read repeatedly with no loss of interest.

The Contemporary: The Distant Hours by Kate Morton - her narrative is so detailed, I enjoyed it the first time, but also sure I will find more in it on a second, third and fourth reading

The Non-Fiction: Courtiers: The Secret History of the Georgian Court by Lucy Worsley - so by the time I am rescued I will be an expert on the early Georgian court and thus writing my next biographic novel will be easy. 


Royalist Rebel looks wonderful and is coming soon from Pen and Sword. For details of her other books, check out Anita's Blog: http://thedisorganisedauthor.blogspot.com

Anita also writes as Anita Davison, Trencarrow Secret and her other books can be found here

Desert Island Books - Castaway Ann Weisgarber

I'm going off to tour the blogosphere and while I'm away I've invited a few other authors to my Deserted Blog. Whilst they are here they'll share their Desert Island Books.Needless to say I'm a big fan of the Radio 4 show, Desert Island Discs.

Ann Weisgarber is my Castaway today. 
Ann was born and raised in Kettering, Ohio, a suburb of Dayton. After graduating from Wright State University with a Bachelor of Arts in Social Work, she was a social worker in a psychiatric hospital. She moved to Houston and attended the University of Houston where she earned a Masters of Arts in Sociology. She taught sociology at several community colleges in the Houston area.
In addition to Ohio and Texas, Ann has lived in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and in Des Moines, Iowa. She now splits her time between Sugar Land, Texas, and Galveston, Texas. She and her husband, Rob, are admirers of America's national parks and try to visit a park each year. Ann's next novel, The Promise, will be released in England, March 2013. It is the story of a marriage during the 1900 Galveston, Texas, hurricane.
Here is Ann's selection of a classic, a contemporary and a non-fiction book for her stay on my island.
Robinson Crusoe by Daniel Defoe. Since I'm on a deserted island, I'll need every survivor tip imaginable. This classic is a good place to begin.
First Edition cover
Charlotte's Web by E.B. White. This is a children's book but is my favorite novel. It's not all that contemporary but keeping in mind the deserted island issue, I'll need this story about a spider who saves the day.  


  
Ultimate Visual Dictionary edited by DK Publishing. The illustrations range from how to tie a knot to the Coliseum in Rome. The pictures are so beautiful and detailed that I'll be entertained for years.


And Ann's new book The Promise is out soon, meanwhile she can enjoy re-reading her own The Personal History of Rachel DuPree, recipient of the Langum Prize for American Historical Fiction for 2010.

It is 1917 in the South Dakota Badlands, and summer has been hard. Fourteen years have passed since Rachel and Isaac DuPree left Chicago to stake a claim in this unforgiving land. Isaac, a former Buffalo Soldier, is fiercely proud: black families are rare in the West, and black ranchers even rarer. But it hasn't rained in months, the cattle bellow with thirst, and supplies are dwindling. Pregnant, and struggling to feed her family, Rachel is isolated by more than just geography.She is determined to give her surviving children the life they deserve, but she knows that her husband will never leave his ranch: land means a measure of equality with the white man, and Isaac DuPree is not about to give it up just because times are hard. Somehow Rachel must find the strength to do what is right - for her children, for her husband, and for herself. Moving and majestic, "The Personal History of Rachel DuPree" is an unforgettable novel about love and loyalty, homeland and belonging. Above all, it is the story of one woman's courage in the face of the most punishing adversity.

Desert Island Books - Castaway Deborah Swift

I'm going off to tour the blogosphere and while I'm away I've invited a few other authors to my Deserted Blog. Whilst they are here they'll share their Desert Island Books.Needless to say I'm a big fan of the Radio 4 show, Desert Island Discs.

Each author has chosen one classic, one modern and one non-fiction book to take to their Desert Island, along with one of their own books, just to remind them how clever they are!

Before I go off tomorrow, here is my selection:

Here's my classic. Why? Because it's long - very long, and I might not be rescued for a very long time! It also has lots of  fantasy and material for daydreaming. I might even want to edit it and re-write sections. I can never resist a bit of editing! Also I figured that the landscape of Middle Earth is about as far as I could get from the desert island.


I loved Wolf Hall, but I'm daunted by another the size of this. On my island I'd have plenty of time to really savour Mantel's magnificent writing style.
I don't know if I'd have painting things on my island, but I'd certainly want to meditate on nature and my surroundings, and if not I could enjoy the change of view this book would give me.




And of course I would take a large stack of paper to keep writing until someone rescues me! (possibly of course the only thing I might write is SOS in large letters!)

Tomorrow my Desert Island Castaway is Orange-nominated and Langum Prize winner Ann Weisgarber, and I will be at Bippity Boppety Book and Lit Addicted Brit

The Art of Moving Pictures - The Gilded Lily

Just last week the french film The Artist came to the Heron Theatre Beetham, and we went down to watch it. A lovely little auditorium, and an intimate space. I know I'm a bit behind the times, way up here in Lancashire, as most people saw it last year, but I loved it. It was so clever and well put-together - a pastiche of silent movies that still managed to be an excellent example of one itself.
And it showed just how powerful a black and white film could be.

So I'm glad that I chose to use only sepia in the book trailer for The Gilded Lily. The trailer was made by my daughter and her friends who are all animation graduates of Staffordshire University. They provided the actors, the voices and the imagery and put it together for me. Unfortunately they didn't have the mega-budget of The Artist, but I still love it and think it reflects the book wonderfully.

The Gilded Lily Book Trailer - Hope you enjoy.




And The Gilded Lily is out on 13th September and available for pre-order in the UK and the US

Bippity Boppety Blog Hop - Researching The Lady's Slipper

In honour of the Bippity Boppety Blog Hop, I am offering two copies of The Lady's Slipper worldwide, just leave a comment about my post to enter. Here is the US edition of the book, on sale next to Gulliver's Travels, sadly I am no relation to the famous Jonathan Swift.














Research and Historical Fiction   Many people have asked me about how I do my research and how much time it takes to write a historical novel. So in this post I will take a little about my process, and also tell you about some of the some of the books I found invaluable in my research for The Lady’s Slipper.
My approach was not to try to know everything, but to read some general books on the 17th Century to get a broad picture, and then to start to write the book, filling in the gaps in my knowledge later. I keep a large notebook which is full of questions, for example, “How much was a loaf of bread in 1660?” “In a small village would there have been a bakery, or did people bake at home?” “What sort of bread? Millet? Wheat? Rye?” The answer to the last question was that in Westmorland where the book is set bread was called “clapbread” and was a flat cake made of oats, and it would keep for nearly a month! They had special oak cupboards built into their cottages to keep it in over winter –  frequently the answers are not what you expect but even more interesting. 
So after getting the overview I write my story, but I am left with a bulging and quite daunting note book full of questions. I take a deep breath, start at the beginning again and find out the answers and facts and decide if they help or hinder the story. I think I enjoy the “detective” element of finding out the answers to obscure questions! I read a lot of non-fiction and I am eternally grateful to the “real” historians who supply me with the answers. Books such as The Weaker Vessel by Antonia Fraser which gives a record of women’s lives in the Civil War in their own voices, and Restoration London by Liza Picard which was indispensable for information about daily life. Another favourite was Birth, Marriage and Deathby David Cressy, which was always on my desk.

When I began writing The Lady’s Slipper I had no idea that my characters were going to end up on a ship, and of course I knew nothing at all about sailing ships, not even modern ones. No matter how many books I had read on the 17th century beforehand, it was unlikely I would have found out what I needed to know about Dutch Flute sailing ships without doing some very specific research. So I forced myself to read Patrick O’Brian’s books which are all set at sea, and what he doesn’t know about tall ships would probably fit on a postage stamp. They are the sort of historical fiction I would never normally pick up, but they are excellent. I also found out by emailing The Maritime Museum that the cow was stabled “aft”, and that foodstuffs were often sealed in dried mud to keep them fresh on board. Wonderful Levens Hall, near where I live, on which I based Fisk Manor
To write about people’s homes I spent time at a number of old houses including Levens Hall, which helped me to create Fisk Manor, the home of Geoffrey Fisk in the novel. There is nothing like walking down a 17thcentury staircase and feeling the polished wooden banisters and seeing the light pour in through mullioned windows. At Swarthmoor Hall I sat and wrote a scene at a gnarled and polished oak table where George Fox the Quaker leader may have sat when he lived there with Margaret Fell. After such an immersion in the past it feels very strange then to get in my car and zoom away!
The botanical facts about the orchid I researched through interviewing members of the Cypripedium Committee, a sort of plant mafia set up to protect the Lady’s Slipper. They meet behind closed doors and the location of the last remaining plant in Britainis a closely guarded secret even today. The single-minded enthusiasm of these men, and their dedication to preserving the plant for future generations gave me confidence in my heroine, Alice Ibbetson’s obsession with it. But I also read novels such as The Orchid Thiefand Tulip Fever, which treat similar themes. 
Being a costume designer I could not resist the Northampton Shoe Museum where there are many shoes on display. In The Lady’s Slipper Ella the maid is envious of her mistress’s slippers.Ella's story is told in The Gilded Lily, out in a few weeks time.
Often the research throws up new plotlines and then I will re-write scenes or chunks of the book to incorporate little-known or exciting research. I think to write historical fiction you have to enjoy this aspect of it because you are going to do an awful lot of it. When people ask me how long it takes to research the novel they are thinking in terms of a finite time, but actually I am researching all the time, my living room always has a pile of ten or twelve “current” books I am dipping into, not to mention photocopies and print-outs such as bits of the diaries of Pepys and George Fox and other helpful 17thcentury scribblers. Did I forget to mention the internet? The phone rings, and I half expect my husband to say, “Hang on, she’s googling.”
This post first appeared on Amy Bruno's site Passages to the Past. Thank you Amy. Amy is organising 
my Blog Tour for The Gilded Lily, find out more at http://www.hfvirtualbooktours.com/

Look to the right to grab the button for this blog hop!
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Buying from a Bookshop with Style

Last week I had the pleasure of visiting Winchester as part of my holidays. Just across the road from the Cathedral we came across this lovely bookshop, which to my mind is just what a bookshop should be. Each section had a hand-painted illustration above it.You can see the hand-painted signs above the shelves, including the spitfire for WWII, just under the bunting.



Of course we couldn't resist buying something and "The Story of English in 100 Words" by David Crystal seemed to be just the right sort of little hardback to get from this shop. I always enjoy books on etymology and words. He tells you a little more about the book in this article in The Telegraph



The book itself is fascinating.
The word so far that has caught my imagination is 'bone-house', a 10th century word-painting to describe a person by describing the body. This sort of description is called a 'kenning', from the old icelandic verb kenna - to know, where two words are put together to make a picture, as in a traveller being an 'earth-walker' or a ship being a 'wave-floater'. Further reading about the first word in the book can be found  is  here in a post on English Historical Fiction Authors by Richard Denning.

I could describe myself as a letter-tapper, a word-spewer, a coffee-gurgler, and a biscuit-muncher during my mornings at the keyboard, as well as a history-picker.

How would you describe yourself in a kenning?

Men's Wars written by Women - Historical Fiction Reviews

Three of my favourite books this year feature male protagonists at war and a mostly male cast of characters - and interestingly all written by women. I'd recommend all three books to men and women, whatever you might think of their covers.

The first is "The Return of Captain John Emmett" by Elizabeth Speller. 
This novel tells the story of an execution during the Great War. Laurence Bartram, himself consumed by grief at the loss of his wife and young son, is approached by a friend's wife to unravel the mystery of why he committed suicide. His investigations lead to the gradual piecing-together of an incident in the war. Similar to a detective mystery, most of the action is told by reports from characters who were at the scene, very much like examining the scene of a crime. In the novel references are made to Agatha Christie and Poirot, and this book has all the intricate plotting of a who-dunnit, except better, and with a much more moving revelation of the true conditions of war. As a historical fiction writer I enjoyed the fact that long parts of the book were reportage - how often are we told to show not tell? But these re-tellings in the characters own voices were gripping, and show that the author had really done her research. The horrors of trench warfare and the subsequent abandonment of trauma casualties post-war were brought chillingly to life. In the afterword she tells us that she used the papers of W.H.R Rivers who treated psychiatric casualties of the war and Jonathan Shay's Achilles in Vietnam as sources.

Which brings me neatly to the second of my favourites - Madeline Miller's "Song of Achilles".
Of course this has won the Orange Prize for Fiction, but I was three-quarters through it when the prize was announced, so it did not influence my impressions of the book. Madeline Miller's version of the story of Achilles relies on building up an intimate picture of Achilles and Patroclus before the War at Troy actually starts. What I loved about this book from a writer's perspective was that the use of language was so lyrical. In a modern book it would be impossible to use terms such as 'the rosy gleam of his lip, the fevered green of his eyes' without it sounding ridiculous, yet in Miller's hands such language feels right. She has managed to make the book epic and Homerian. If the book has a weakness it is that the actual conflict (which in reality lasts ten years) takes a little too long to get going, but once it does the action is unputdownable. The early lyricism works just as well applied to battle, and the fact that some of the story is told from a dead man's point of view only increases its mystical effect.In this book we believe in the Gods, and in the terror of the Gods, and the power of human love.

The third of my favourites is "Honour and the Sword" by AL Berridge.

Of the three, this is the most swashbuckling of my choices. It is written as a series of  interviews or memoirs from  France during the time of the 30 years war and so includes a number of different voices put together by a fictional professor - Edward Morton. Sounds complicated? Perhaps, but it works brilliantly. Like a patchwork this method gradually builds up the picture of events from all the partisan points of view. Told in the first person present tense, some of it is written in very modern-sounding English but this has the effect of drawing the reader in. Mostly told from the point of view of Jacques the stable lad, and his erstwhile employer's son, an aristocrat called Andre de Roland, the slow development of the relationship between these two boys is what glues the book together. We watch them through the highs and lows of warfare, through heroism and despair as Andre de Roland seeks to avenge his parents death at the hands of the Spanish. This book has some excellent set-piece action scenes, with gripping sword fights, pistols and cannon.At the climax the action zips from person to person in a few lines - and this filmic technique like cutting from shot to shot, was breathtaking.


Three great pieces of historical fiction, I recommend them all.
You can read an interview with AL Berridge here about why she enjoys to write books more normally associated with a male readership.

Tracing the Tudors - Jenny Barden Talks at the RNA Conference

Apologies to Jenny for the slightly blurry photograph, caused by my over excitement at seeing a real pistol! I was lucky enough to hear Jenny Barden talk about how she researched her new Tudor novel, Mistress of the Sea at the Romantic Novelists Association Conference in Penrith.

Jenny's book features Sir Francis Drake, and she told us how his illustrious career actually began with a disaster at San Juan de Ulua, and that he spent years seeking revenge, "Vengeance is always a good theme," she said.
In tracing the real events for the sinking of Drake's ship at sea she showed us how she traced the story from modern historians colourful accounts, back to the almost contemporary reports, and from there even further back to the original source. Often the amount of material can be overwhelming for a novelist embarking on this sort of research, but as Jenny said, "Fear not and relax. The only things that matter are the primary sources." She then explained that the original account from the ship had been burnt in a later fire and that the account had been reconstructed from the fragments. This was demonstrated by slides on the screen.
Original sources can disagree about events, depending on which side they are on, but Jenny said she enjoys building a story around the parts where sources disagree. 
Visits to real places are a large part of Jenny's research, such as visiting tall-ships to see how cramped the spaces are on board ship, and visits to the islands where Drake sailed. In Mistress of the Sea the character of Drake is drawn by the opinions of those around him, and Jenny told us that the evidence showed he could be both compassionate and ruthless - for example he was outraged at the treatment of a black servant, but hung some franciscan friars in a dispute.
Jenny treated us to slides from her research visits, showing us the mule tracks and mangrove swamps where Drake would have walked.  Her talk included showing us the  pistol (see the picture) along with a ruff and a boned bodice of the time, which Henri Gyland dutifully put on - sorry,  I forgot to take a picture. We were also treated to the waft of rosemary, the sound of Thomas Tallis's music, and were allowed to handle a 16th century key - all to give us a flavour of the past. These little touches - to feel, smell, hear the past, brought the period more vividly to life.
Questions from the floor enabled Jenny to talk more about her cross-dressing heroine, Ellyn, who stows away on Drake's ship the Swan. For those interested in more nautical tales of cross-dressing heroines you might like to check out Linda Collison's blog.
For an hour's  talk Jenny managed to cram an awful lot in, and I thoroughly enjoyed it. I've always been a sucker for the romance of the sea, so I'm really looking forward to the book, which will be published by Ebury Press in September 2012. More about Jenny Barden and her research process can be found here
More about the Romantic Novelist's Association here
Jenny is organising the Historical Novel Society Conference in London in September, more about that here.

Mistress of the Sea Plymouth 1570; Ellyn Cooksley fears for her elderly father's health when he declares his intention to sail with Drake on an expedition he has been backing. Already yearning for escape from the loveless marriage planned for her, Ellyn boards the expedition ship as a stowaway. 

Also aboard the Swan is Will Doonan, Ellyn's charming but socially inferior neighbour. Will has courted Ellyn playfully without any real hope of winning her, but when she is discovered aboard ship, dressed in the garb of a cabin boy, he is furious. 

To Will's mind, Drake's secret plot to attack the Spanish bullion supply in the New World is a means to the kind of wealth with which he might win a girl like Ellyn, but first and foremost it is an opportunity to avenge his brother Kit, taken hostage and likely tortured to death by the Spanish. For the sake of the mission he supports Drake's plan to abandon Ellyn and her father on an island in the Caribbean until their mission is completed. But will love prove more important than revenge or gold?

The Eleanor Crosses - More Miniature Gothic Cathedrals

Waltham Cross by Greig 1803I was doing some research into market crosses for a novel I am working on, when I came across these - the so-called Eleanor Crosses, in their  time probably the most elaborate wayside crosses in England.

In 1290 Queen Eleanor of Castile, to whom Edward I was devoted, died at Harby in Nottinghamshire. The king directed that crosses should be set up at every station at which the funeral procession would stop on the way to Westminster.


At Westminster she was buried at the feet of her father-in-law Henry III. Although some of her internal organs had been removed for burial at Lincoln during the enbalming process, her heart travelled with her and was buried in the abbey church at Blackfriars, London.


Geddington CrossThe processional route went through Lincoln, Grantham, Stamford, Geddington, Northampton, Stony Stratford, Woburn, Dunstable, St Albans,Waltham and London (St Paul's) before Charing village and Westminster - twelve stations in all. At every halt, the office for the dead was celebrated.

Of the twelve crosses, only three remain today - the ones at Geddington, Northampton and Waltham. All are three-storied with tall spires and gothic tracery. On the second level is a a niche, occupied by a statue of Eleanor. Geddington Cross is triangular and almost forty feet high, whereas Northampton's Cross is octagonal.


Northampton Cross has four statues of Queen Eleanor, and this cross commemorates Eleanor's resting at nearby Delapre Abbey. King Edward I stayed at Northampton Castle nearby. The cross was begun in 1291 by John of Battle; he worked with William of Ireland to carve the statues; William was paid five marks (£3 6s. 8d. or £3.33 in old English money) per figure.

The cross is set on steps, which are not original. The cross is built in three tiers and originally had something on top - probably a cross.

Daniel Defoe refers to it where he reports on the Great Fire of Northampton in 1675:
"... a townsman being at Queen's Cross upon a hill on the south side of the town, about two miles off, saw the fire at one end of the town then newly begun, and that before he could get to the town it was burning at the remotest end, opposite where he first saw it."

Its bottom tier features open books. These probably included painted inscriptions of Eleanor's biography and of prayers for her soul to be said by viewers, which are now lost.
Cheapside Cross
As for the vanished crosses, Cheapside Cross probably has the most colourful and telling history. It featured in the pageant held  to celebrate the birth of Edward III, where a tent was set before it where anyone who passed might drink from a tun of wine. It was rebuilt in 1486 with the statues of the Queen replaced with statues of the Saints and the Virgin Mary, but in 1600 with the advent of anti-Catholic feeling,  Mary was replaced by a statue of a half-naked Diana. Later in May 1643 John Evelyn records in his diary how he saw a furious Puritan mob destroy this cross altogether.

The Puritan destruction of the market crosses is what made me first interested in them, as they seem to be sites of significance to so many. My other article about Market Crosses can be found at www.englishhistoryauthors.blogspot.com

Find out more:
Wikipedia article.
Thanks to www.webhistoryofengland.com
Nicolas Pevsner