Jessica Knauss's Blog, page 47

SSS: Medieval Sleeping Arrangements and Derangements

Last week, we experienced the layout of the crowded hall and got rid of the spiders so we could sleep on our straw pallets. It's not going to be a night of uninterrupted sleep for doña Lambra.

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Her eyes snapped open into profound blackness. She heard the normal sounds of people breathing around the perimeter of the hall and shifting on top of their crackling straw ticks. A bead of sweat ran over her ear. She felt as if the fireplace she lay next to contained a roaring blaze even though the flame must have died hours before. She threw a blanket off to her side and her nostrils were assaulted with her own scent as she felt where the wispy chainse was stuck to her wet skin.           Then she heard it: the rhythmic soft moaning of a man and woman. 

* * *
Uh-oh, I don't think the new lady of the manor is going to like that!

Thanks for stopping by! I appreciate your comments so very much and always respond in kind. Check out all the great clips at sixsunday.com.

The Abencerraje 99 Cents... for now

The promotion for The Abencerraje was a roaring success. It outsold everything I've ever published before and earned the distinction of being an Amazon top seller in literary fiction. Free copies at the .com (American) site were given away at ten times the rate of the UK site and about fifty times the rate of the other European sites.

Since the free promotion ended, its price has been the modest, impulse-buy, Walmart model, 99 cents. However, it does cost money to publish ebooks, and in order to recoup those costs, I'm faced with having to raise the price. Consider yourself warned: this weekend the price will go up drastically, so if you still don't have this enchanting, authentic historical look at friendship across battle lines, now is the time to buy!

A paperback version will be coming out soon. Look for the Amazon reviews on the back cover. That's right! Give me a well-written phrase and I might put it on the back cover of this book I love so much!

Amazon Prime members can still borrow this book for free! Please do so! It would mean so much to me!

American Dreams

Happy Fourth of July, everyone!

I thought I'd take this chance to share a couple of graphics I've seen on Facebook recently. As you're pondering how you'd like to be patriotic this year, please consider supporting homegrown writers who are struggling in this brave new publishing world.

Not to mention, two minutes to gobble versus a potential lifetime of enjoyment!


So hooray for the USA and hooray for the artists and writers who represent what we gained with our fight for independence!

New Release and Interview from Marie Danielle Frankson

More than a year ago, I interviewed "up and coming" author Marie Danielle Frankson. She has indeed accomplished much in just this past year, with a new novel in a totally new genre. Here's the amazing way the story got started.


Seeking Utopia is my third novel and my first attempt at writing a sci-fi/post-apocalyptic novel. It centers around three main characters -- Emily, Ryan, and Silas -- who are facing the end of the world together. The entire story takes place over the course of about a month and we see how each character grows and each tells the story from their own point of view. I based the characters of Ryan and Emily off of my fiance and I and I tried to make the characters as flesh-and-blood true to life as possible in the hopes that people can relate to them. Also, it's important to note that there are themes in this book that may not be appropriate for people under the age of 17. This book, with the editing and publishing process included, took me about a year and a half to complete. Normally it doesn't take me that long and I can crank out a book in a couple of months, but I worked really hard on this one, did a lot of research, and talked to some friends of mine who are published sci-fi writers for advice.At the risk of sounding crazy, I got the idea for this book from a UFO sighting. Back in October 2010, my dad and I were on our way home from a trip to our local Wal-Mart store to get some groceries and we stopped off at a gas station for coffee. On the 2.5 mile or so drive back home, we saw something football-shaped and glowing orange in the sky hovering over downtown. Neither of us could tell what it was and we were both curious, so we drove in the direction of downtown with the orange glowing football-shaped thing in our sights the entire time. Suddenly, as we turned onto a side street, we heard helicopters fly overhead and the orange glowing thing just vanished. That summer, the History Channel came out with a documentary called "I Know What I Saw" about UFO sightings. My dad and I were watching a part of it together and we saw someone being interviewed who said they were in an airplane about to land at the Albany International Airport (which, living in Albany, NY, isn't too far from us) when they saw something football-shaped and glowing orange out of the window. That person described exactly what we had seen! Right then, I knew I wasn't crazy and started writing down the information and description of the UFO that my dad and I saw. I was always a skeptic when it came to UFOs, but after seeing what I saw, I know we can't possibly be alone in the universe.Since our last interview, I have been busy with school. I finished my junior year at college and will be starting my senior year on August 27th. I was involved with something called Sponsor-A-Scholar, which is basically tutoring with a twist--instead of just helping the students with their homework, I was in a group with two other young women and we worked together to come up with fun social studies lessons for the kids. Also, I became a volunteer at the New York State Museum, a history blogger, and an Examiner for examiner.com writing about Albany, NY and New York State history. Now that I'm done with school for the summer, I've been looking for jobs, researching and writing for my history blog and Examiner articles, and my dad and I have been working on developing a history-based webshow which I hope to start filming soon. I want to send a copy of the show to our local PBS station in hopes of getting my own TV show, although my ultimate goal is getting a show on the History Channel. Also, I recently got engaged to my boyfriend of four years (he actually proposed on our four year anniversary) and I've been working on my fourth book, Somewhere In Between, which is a continuation of my second novel, Balancing Act. Because of a hectic school schedule this coming academic year, I do not know when it will be finished and published. My hope is to have it finished and on the market by March of 2013.
Get the Seeking Utopia paperback here and wherever fine paperbacks are sold. Check back for the ebooks soon!
The Transfer of Age is available in Kindle, Nook, Kobo and paperback.
Balancing Act is also available in Kindle, Nook, Kobo and paperback.

SSS: Medieval Sleeping Arrangements

It wasn't all four-poster beds and brocade curtains in the tenth century. This segment from The Seven Noble Knights of Lara, which comes shortly after last week's, shows that a thousand years ago, people had never heard of "comfort."

* * * 

“I don’t think I’ve ever hosted this many people before,” explained Ermenegildo Antolínez.After a supper of stew with onions, leeks, and carrots, the landholder and the seven brothers moved the table against the wall in order to make more room for two long rows of bodies to sleep side by side. Lambra claimed the spot nearest the fireplace and set Justa’s bedding next to her for insulation from everyone else. Lambra was glad that Justa knew to direct that the sexes be segregated just like they were in Bureba, with women all in Lambra’s row and all the men in the other across a cleared aisle, although Ermenegildo Antolínez’s wife quietly took her place next to her husband, directly across from Lambra. Toward the end of the hall where they’d placed the chamber pot, it was found that there weren’t enough bed pallets, so Little Page and Lambra’s other male servants followed Ermenegildo Antolínez to the barns to get more hay. Once every last person had a straw tick of some sort to lie atop, and all the spiders that ran out of the straw had been stepped on, swatted, burned, or drowned, travelers and hosts could finally rest.

* * *
Thanks so much for stepping into my historical Spanish world for a moment. I appreciate your comments so much! I return the favor in kind. The official Six Sentence Sunday site is here. Can't wait to see all the great snippets next week!

Last Day for Free EBook

It's the last day to pick up your free copy of The Abencerraje for any Kindle platform you desire: ereader, PC, Mac, iPhone, Android, and any other technology imagined and unimaginable. Get it here while you still can! Remember, this book is endorsed by two extremely good judges, Stan Coombs and Seymour Hamilton. Add your opinion to theirs when you've read it.

Amazon Prime members can (pretty please!) still borrow it for free and make me the happiest publisher on the planet until August 22. Thank you!

As you know, this free book is in celebration of an astounding two decades having passed since I first went to Spain. It was 1992, The Year of Spain: the 500th anniversary of Columbus's voyage, the Olympics in Barcelona, and the World Expo in Sevilla. Sixteen years had already passed since the death of Franco. It was a great time to be in Spain. I wandered the streets of Granada, dipped my toes in the Mediterranean, and felt the awe of the Alhambra palace, which is on the front cover of The Abencerraje. I took the cover picture myself when I was visiting with my dear mother in 2005. So yes, it's a real place. I didn't make up all that beauty. This is non-fiction, folks. Whether or not you think the events in The Abencerraje could really have happened, I know in my heart that the beauty of the place makes them completely possible.

Free EBook, Endorsed by One of the Great Writers of Our Time

The Abencerraje is still free on Kindle -- but not for long -- in commemoration of my having set foot in Spain 20 years ago. Sometime before 5 pm on the first day and all the way to after 3 pm on the second day, it ranked in the top 20 downloads on Amazon in Literary Fiction! I'm awed that my name appeared on the same page as some of the most venerable titles today: The Language of Flowers, The Paris Wife, Water for Elephants, Bring Up The Bodies, The Help, and War Brides. This is definitely my nearest brush with fame so far.

In addition, The Abencerraje is now endorsed by not only Independent Judge of Niceness Stan Coombs, but also a writer I truly admire, Seymour Hamilton. Get it for free, or Amazon Prime members, please borrow it for free (thank you!) here.



What Seymour Hamilton has to say makes me incredibly happy:

  Knauss' Abencerraje a delight  June 19, 2012By colophonAmazon Verified PurchaseAbencerraje was written in Spanish in 1565 about events that may or may not have happened in the 1480s, when, as translator Jessica Knauss puts it in her introduction: "...Ferdinand and Isabella had retaken the most of the towns on the Iberian peninsula [as part of their policy of] making Spain a Christian country.... Needless to say, the Muslims, whose forebears had arrived nearly 800 years previously, did not consider themselves temporary occupants of the lands under dispute."

Abencerraje is the story of the friendship between two men separated by race, religion, culture and politics, but united by their respect for honour, courage, chivalry and love. The one, Rodrigo, was a Christian, Spanish knight; the other, Abinddarráez, was a Spanish Moor and a follower of Islam.

I was transported into a heroic medieval past that may or may not have existed, but surely should have. It is a tale that recalls the stories in the Arthurian cycle in which bold and true knights defending their honour and lady-loves.

I know no Spanish beyond the ability to ask for more beer, but it seems to me that Jessica Knauss has captured the flavour of the language and the time in her translation, without resorting to pseudo-medievalisms -- such as "quoth" , "doth" and "forsooth" -- that mar so many historical novels. She gives us the story, "straight up" in the voice of the anonymous Spanish narrator, with no modern asides or explanations save for a few useful footnotes that do not impede the flow.

A cursory examination on the web reveals that Abencerraje is heavily documented by scholars. Some question its authenticity; most are self-consciously scholarly. However, once it is shorn of obscure academic debate, Abencerraje is a good story that deserves the fresh translation Knauss offers.

Seymour Hamilton
Astreyatrilogy.com

Twenty Years Ago This Week...

As I was going through some old files after the move, my husband helped me realize that this week marks the twentieth anniversary since I first set foot in Spain, making real and beginning the maturation process for a love that I do not remember ever being without. My first entrée into that land I adore was on an AFS summer program in Granada, where I lived with a sweet host family who was sending their daughter to Montana in the fall. There, I first tasted tortilla de patata and arroz cubano, went to Catholic mass, admired the works of Fernando and Isabel, absorbed the quiet grandeur of the Alhambra, and fell head over heels for ruffles and polka dots.


In honor of this astounding milestone, this week my English translation of The Abencerraje is free - gratis - no charge - in Amazon Kindle format, today, June 26 through Friday, June 29. Get it here! It's all about peace, love and Granada!


Amazon Prime members, please borrow this endearing Kindle book. It's free to you and helps support all my publishing ventures in intricate ways no one will ever fully comprehend. Thank you. Seriously, I appreciate it.

Interview with Mark Tierno, author of epic fantasy Maldene

Mark Tierno is a man with a story to tell. Just how much of a story sets him apart. 
MT: Maldene spans 13 novels, 5.2 million words, some 250 characters, about a hundred main plot lines, and stretches across several thousand years of time.  It is a story that redefines the concept of "epic."
JK: It may not be easy, but can you condense the story for my readers?
MT: Maldene is the name of the world where it all takes place, and starting around the second novel elements of Science Fiction start to work their way in as well, leading to a unique mixed genre blend, which is what I prefer to write in. It is a story for anyone who likes magic, wizards, epic plots, drama, and the fantastic. It is the passion of my soul.


Maldene is a world of fantasy and science, a world of fantastic creatures, characters that range from the crazy to the wise, and home to many astounding secrets. It is also home to the most villainous evil known: Miro (pronounced MY-RO). It is said that even the gods fear Miro, though they aren't saying why, and stories of this evil wizard go back many thousands of years. As powerful as Miro is, it is his cunning and patient planning that are to be far more greatly feared.
The Maldene series spans several continents of this giant Earth-swallowing world, crosses to other dimensions, and later on in the series other worlds and even far distant periods in its history. But it all begins in the first book (currently published as Volume I and Volume II), in which we follow Sabu, Eldar, Sindar and their companions on a search for secrets, destiny, and discovery of what really goes on in the world. Three different continents, journey to a second world, the Sea of A Thousand Islands, Tedelnosho (The Great Whirlpool), the mysterious King who is the only one willing to stand up to Miro's forces, over a dozen main characters, several alien races (from the sea-going Thirdocians to the avian-evolved Kÿecians), and this is just the first book, as but the first chapter in a story that spans several books.

Preview of the new cover of Volume OneThis first book in my Maldene series is currently undergoing a renewal: new cover and soon a new release. More information about Maldene, the world, its characters, and updates on the forthcoming new release, as well as live phone interviews with other authors and a few things to download, can be found at my blog.

JK: Tell us a little about where you grew up and what you do/have done besides writing.
MT:  I grew up, and still live in, Monrovia California.  Never really had a chance to move out and get a life of my own, since my Dad got Parkinson's Disease when I was in High School so I ended up being the one to help out my mom for a couple decades, then after he passed away it was my Mom's turn, and...  well, you get the idea.
I have degrees in Physics and Math, which does figure into my writing from time to time.  
JK: When and why did you get started writing? What characteristics from your first efforts survive today?
MT: Thinking back, I wonder if I was just born to it.  I always hated the physical effort of handwriting, so a good wordprocessor was essential to get me started, but I always had a phenomenal imagination-- the kind most people lose with childhood-- but I kept mine around.
As far as what survives today, there are some ideas I came up with back as far as 12 years old that I since fleshed out and pulled together into what are now different components of the Maldene mythology. 
I'd had a few story ideas in the back of my head since about seventh grade but never put them to paper until two things happened. First, I'd finally gotten a computer with word processor: me little Amiga 500.  I knew that an old typewriter and liquid paper just wouldn't do for the extensive story I had in mind, so a computer was just the thing. Then the Eaton Canyon fire of 1994 burned down my grandpa's old house (he'd been long dead), giving the house some money and me a bit more free time.  So, while simultaneously helping out with my Dad, I started writing. This also brought some much needed joy back into the household.
JK:  What made you decide to publish? What was the journey to publication like for you?
MT: With a story like that, the desire for publication is inevitable.
My road to publication was, to say the least, torturous.  Agents do not like taking in new authors, and as it turns out SF and Fantasy is considered a specialty that most do not want to take in either. So put "new guy" and "Fantasy" in the same sentence and it's like death on wheels. I contacted about 150 agents and the only nibbles I got were one guy who didn't know what he was doing and hadn't gotten anything published for about five years at the time, another author-turned-agent who was more concerned with his own career and suspicious contracts, and a last that, while they did steer me to getting a professional critique, then just put me into a database unless I would pay them for their "active agent" program. Never pay an agent anything other than a percentage.
When I finally got a publisher, I soon discovered that was the equivalent of the light at the end of the tunnel suddenly disappearing.  They did nothing to promote and tried to get me to pay all sorts of fees for the least little thing (like taking my book to a book fair to show off with the others).  As such, I am currently formulating other plans, starting with a brand new (and very spectacular) book cover even now being finished up.
JK: How does real life affect your fiction?
MT: I write in fictional worlds, but they must seem to the reader as real as the one we live in.  As such, I will have a lot of background details, and even more about the world recorded in my notebook, details that don't always make it specifically into the novel but whose presence affects the way I will write certain things. It may be a world of wizards, but it must contain enough detail and self-consistency to make the reader believe in its reality.
But not just the world itself, but of course the characters. They must be drawn with enough detail, from how they act to how they speak, to be real enough to leap off the page. In fact, I keep a database with all the details of my characters, from eye color to personality quirks; more info than I might use, but all ready at hand.
To give you an idea of the amount of detail and background stuff I use, each Maldene novel has some appendices: an alphabet, dictionary, and a changing array of others depending on which novel it is,  from the local zodiac to Maldene tarot cards.
JK: What is your favorite book? What other things influence your work?
MT: You want me to pick just ONE favorite book?  Impossible.  
JK: That's the right answer, of course.
MT: I was one of those kids that when the school had its monthly Tab or Lucky book order, while everyone else ordered maybe one or two, I always came out with an armload.  everything from Isaac Asimov to A. E. van Vogt (author of Slan).  everything I have read, seen, and heard influences my works, including the music I play while I write.
JK: Do you use language to differentiate your fantastic characters?
MT: Everyone has its own way of speaking. Some speak more formally than others, some with different verbal affectations. I have an ogre than has yet to string more than 4 words together at a time, another than never uses contractions, and in a different story of mine I had one guy with a lisp where I replaced every "S" with an "SH." The spell checker on my word processor was going nuts with that last one!
JK: What inspires you?
MT: My inspiration? My imagination never quits. The Maldene project was pieced together in my head over 15 years time before I started actually writing. Another series of stories got its start when I was talking to a friend. He was trying to start up a fanzine with a shared universe for the stories, and from a comment he made about the Middle East getting nuked into a parking lot I got a strange idea that became my first Inspector Flaatphut story, Project Looking Glass (currently viewable on www.libboo.com).
If you locked me away in a hole in the ground, cut off from everyone and everything in the world, then maybe I might stop finding inspirations, but I doubt it.
JK: What is your work area like? Do you have any methods that might seem unusual or inspiring toother writers?
MT: My work area is me and my desk, and a stereo.  I put on a stack of movie sound track CDs and that gets me started; things like the soundtracks from Star Wars, Chronicles of Riddick, Sleepy Hollow, Lord of the Rings, and a whole lot more.
A new chapter is about a three-day process. Day one I start at about 7:30 in the morning and go until around 5 pm or so. I do around 12,000 to 13,000 words during this time, then break for a trip to the health club, and edit what I wrote later that night. Day two I finish up the rest of that chapter, which usually around 3000 to 5000 words; done by lunch, then of course edit what I wrote that night. Day three is my "chapter edit" day: I go over the entire chapter to make sure things flow together, any more typos, then run the spell checker. This usually takes about two hours. Then I outline the next chapter so I'll be ready the next morning to start the whole process all over again. At the end of a section (my books typically have three sections each) I skim through the entire section to make ceertain things flow from one chapter to the next and that I haven't missed anything, then at the end of a book I give the entire thing a last once-over.
As far as other tools, I run two databases while I write.  One for characters, and in the case of Maldene, one with the local dictionary so I can look up some native word that might be appropriate for a scene (like local cuss words, for example).
JK: What kind of feedback do you get? Do you have a definable fan base? Are your family and friends supportive?
MT: My favorite tag line for the book-- and the one which I have now started using-- came from my yoga teacher after she read the first book and posted a reader review...  "A world beyond time... adventure beyond imagination."
Feedback has been generally very good. From one person comparing my first Maldene book with the first Harry Potter book and saying that it makes the Potter book seem boring in comparison (note:  I myself have great respect for Rowling and her creations), to comparisons with Lord of the Rings, to my favorite reader review from a retired copy editor turned author. He pointed out my typos (since corrected) but went on to say how much he loved it and how amazing he found the whole thing.
I'm working on that "definable fan base" thing.
My parents were very supportive. My Dad kept wanting to show my stuff off to relatives (as it turned out, he'd wanted to become a writer himself in his younger days, but he never told me this), and my mom would keep sneaking in to take a peek from three to four feet over my shoulder.  I miss them both.
JK: Where can we get your books?
MT: The site has more info on the book, a sample chapter, an audio of me reading out the sample chapter, and updated links on where my book might be found (just hit Amazon or Barnes & Noble).

SSS: Arriving to Play in the Fountain

Imagine this big enough for seven guys to splash in.
I only meant to be away for a month, and now that I'm finally back I find the official Six Sentence Sunday has announced that it will come to an end. I've not only got all my stuff but moved across the country, and I will try my hardest to participate until SSS is over.

This segment picks up a bit after the last one. The travelers have come to Barbadillo and Lambra is meeting the head of the estate, Ermenegildo Antolínez:

* * *

He kissed her hand deferentially. “You have my fealty, doña Lambra.” “Thank you, don Ermenegildo. We’ve come all the way from Burgos. Would you be so kind as to show us where we will be eating and sleeping?”Before she had finished her last sentence, the seven brothers had abandoned all solemnity and darted to the fountain, where, like dogs, they washed the dust from their faces and drank out of their cupped hands, then splashed each other and made such a noise that the hunting hounds emerged from the hills, barking and howling. “You would never know that the oldest of them is a score and five years old,” Ermenegildo Antolínez said, waving the rest of the travelers toward the farmhouse. 

* * *
Not to spoil anything, but this is the calm before the storm.
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