Nancy Bilyeau's Blog, page 36
March 4, 2012
Tune into My Radio Interview on Monday, March 5th
Literary New England, a wonderful show on blogtalkradio, interviews me on Monday, March 5th, at 7 pm. Other authors on the show: Taylor Polites on The Rebel Wife and Howard Frank Mosher on The Great Northern Express. And there will be fun chat about Dr. Seuss as well.
I'm on the show because I once lived in New England--Connecticut, to be exact--but anyone can listen by clicking on this link below. And there will be giveaways!
http://www.blogtalkradio.com/literary...
I'm on the show because I once lived in New England--Connecticut, to be exact--but anyone can listen by clicking on this link below. And there will be giveaways!
http://www.blogtalkradio.com/literary...
March 3, 2012
"This Rough Magic"
Just about two months ago, my first novel, "The Crown," went out into the world. One of the questions I'm always asked is ... why Tudor England? People want to know why a newspaper reporter turned magazine editor, born in Chicago and raised in Michigan, a wife and a mother of two children, would be drawn to another time and another country.
I can tell you that it began when I watched "The Six Wives of Henry VIII" on television with my parents when I was perhaps 11 years old. But why did I stay interested? And I'm not just interested--transfixed, really, with the 16th century for my entire life. There is no simple answer. Yes it's the drama of the royals, the fearsome Henry VIII, his jostling wives, his devious courtiers, and his courageous daughters. It's the vividness of the Holbein portraits and the beauty of the writers and poets, from Erasmus to Sir Thomas More to Sir Philip Sidney.
But I do believe it's a line from the greatest 16th century-born writer of them all, William Shakespeare, who captured what I love the most about the time of the Tudors: "This rough magic," says Prospero in "The Tempest."
And it's this 1560 painting, of Robert Dudley, the earl of Leicester, that illustrates the rough magic. Dudley the man Elizabeth I loved, makes no appearance in my novels (yet!). "The Crown" takes place in the late 1530s, Dudley firmly belongs to the reign of Elizabeth. But when I look at this portrait, I think about how he embodies so well the fascinating contrasts of the 16th century. A Venetian ambassador said of Dudley: "A man of tall personage, a manly countenance, somewhat brown of visage, strongly featured, and thereto comely proportioned in all lineaments of body." Dudley was well educated and cultured--and a hell of a dancer. But he was also mistrusted, loathed and even feared. When his first wife, Amy Robsart, ended up dead at the bottom of a very shallow staircase, he was widely suspected of having killed her to "make room" for the queen. In this portrait, completed the same year that his wife mysteriously died, you can soak in his confident, almost swaggering pose. Note his well trimmed mustache and his lavish doublet. He's a man of potent, if not deadly, charisma. He financed private companies of actors and musicians; he collected art; he invested in exploration and London businesses and gave to the poor. Yet he was also considered greedy, violent, utterly ruthless, and quite contemptible by rival courtiers. Robert Dudley was, I think, all these things. He was the embodiment of the 16th century man.
Prospero's complete line is: "This rough magic I here abjure." But I could not say goodbye to the 16th century even if I never wrote another novel. The spell of this rough magic lasts for life.
I can tell you that it began when I watched "The Six Wives of Henry VIII" on television with my parents when I was perhaps 11 years old. But why did I stay interested? And I'm not just interested--transfixed, really, with the 16th century for my entire life. There is no simple answer. Yes it's the drama of the royals, the fearsome Henry VIII, his jostling wives, his devious courtiers, and his courageous daughters. It's the vividness of the Holbein portraits and the beauty of the writers and poets, from Erasmus to Sir Thomas More to Sir Philip Sidney.
But I do believe it's a line from the greatest 16th century-born writer of them all, William Shakespeare, who captured what I love the most about the time of the Tudors: "This rough magic," says Prospero in "The Tempest."
And it's this 1560 painting, of Robert Dudley, the earl of Leicester, that illustrates the rough magic. Dudley the man Elizabeth I loved, makes no appearance in my novels (yet!). "The Crown" takes place in the late 1530s, Dudley firmly belongs to the reign of Elizabeth. But when I look at this portrait, I think about how he embodies so well the fascinating contrasts of the 16th century. A Venetian ambassador said of Dudley: "A man of tall personage, a manly countenance, somewhat brown of visage, strongly featured, and thereto comely proportioned in all lineaments of body." Dudley was well educated and cultured--and a hell of a dancer. But he was also mistrusted, loathed and even feared. When his first wife, Amy Robsart, ended up dead at the bottom of a very shallow staircase, he was widely suspected of having killed her to "make room" for the queen. In this portrait, completed the same year that his wife mysteriously died, you can soak in his confident, almost swaggering pose. Note his well trimmed mustache and his lavish doublet. He's a man of potent, if not deadly, charisma. He financed private companies of actors and musicians; he collected art; he invested in exploration and London businesses and gave to the poor. Yet he was also considered greedy, violent, utterly ruthless, and quite contemptible by rival courtiers. Robert Dudley was, I think, all these things. He was the embodiment of the 16th century man.
Prospero's complete line is: "This rough magic I here abjure." But I could not say goodbye to the 16th century even if I never wrote another novel. The spell of this rough magic lasts for life.
February 14, 2012
Writing the Catholic Side of the Reformation
Most historical fiction set in the Tudor age is sympathetic to the Reformer views of Thomas Cromwell and the Boleyns.
My thriller, The Crown, is written from the point of view of a Dominican novice. The more I researched the lives of the nuns and friars and monks, the more intrigued I became.
I talk about these views in my interview with Tea at Trianon:
http://teaattrianon.blogspot.com/2012...
My thriller, The Crown, is written from the point of view of a Dominican novice. The more I researched the lives of the nuns and friars and monks, the more intrigued I became.
I talk about these views in my interview with Tea at Trianon:
http://teaattrianon.blogspot.com/2012...
February 5, 2012
Sex, Lies and Obesity--the Myths of the Death of Henry VIII
I always find it fascinating to look at some of the stories that swirl around the Tudor kings and queens and try to trace them back to the beginning. I feel like a detective!
Because it was this time of year that Henry the Eighth died and was buried, I bore down on the some of the strange legends attached to his demise.
1.) Did he call out "Monks, monks, monks"? on his deathbed?
2.) Did Henry cry for third wife Jane Seymour at the end?
3.) As the coffin was being transported to Windsor, did it leak in Syon Abbey and a ghoulish legend come true?
I try to come up with answers in my article for English Historical Fiction Authors: http://englishhistoryauthors.blogspot...
Because it was this time of year that Henry the Eighth died and was buried, I bore down on the some of the strange legends attached to his demise.
1.) Did he call out "Monks, monks, monks"? on his deathbed?
2.) Did Henry cry for third wife Jane Seymour at the end?
3.) As the coffin was being transported to Windsor, did it leak in Syon Abbey and a ghoulish legend come true?
I try to come up with answers in my article for English Historical Fiction Authors: http://englishhistoryauthors.blogspot...
January 19, 2012
Why I Love Writing About Tudor England
This interview appeared on the blog "J.A. Beard's Unnecessary Musings: Musings on History, Magic, Reading, and Writing (But Probably Not Arithmetic)
Today, I am talking with Nancy Bilyeau. Nancy is a long-time writer and editor who has worked at a number of magazines including InStyle, Rolling Stone, and Entertainment Weekly. Her debut novel, The Crown, has her tacking mystery under the backdrop of religious transition in Tudor England.
-----
J.A. Beard: Tell us about your book.
Nancy Bilyeau: The Crown is a historical thriller set in 1537-1538 about a half-English, half-Spanish Dominican novice named Joanna Stafford who gets caught up in a conspiracy and quest to locate a hidden object of mystical importance.
J.A. Beard: English history is filled with fascinating chapters and episodes. What caught your interest about the period covered in your novel?
Nancy Bilyeau: Ever since I was 11 years old, I loved the 16th century, I suppose for the high drama of the personalities. More recently, I’ve wondered if our fascination with the Tudors goes beyond the obviousness of “Divorced/Beheaded/Died/Divorced/Beheaded/Survived.” Thanks to Holbein’s portraits and the chroniclers of the age—among them some wonderfully snarky ambassadors--the central cast of characters leap out at us. They feel close in. Much more so than the Plantagenets earlier. And as time went on, and Parliament became more important and governmental movements and issuances, the royal family was not quite as directly responsible for what happened to ordinary people every day. Henry VIII, while flailing about trying to divorce Catherine of Aragon for Anne Boleyn’s flashing dark eyes, would ride out and people occasionally shouted, “Back to your wife!” Even now, we feel as if we have a front row seat to the show and people feel emboldened to shout at Henry or Mary or Elizabeth. They have some sort of stake in it all. Also, there is something intoxicating about the mix of the time—the medieval world shading into the early modern age. I love the writers of the time: not just Shakespeare but Erasmus and More and Henry Howard.
J.A. Beard: The overall Tudor period, particularly in recent years, has been a popular period for fiction, but a lot of this fiction has primarily focused on key royal figures and those closely associated with them. Although there are a few famous faces in your book, your protagonist is a Dominican novice, someone pretty far from the hallowed halls of power. What went into your decision to focus on this sort of protagonist?
Nancy Bilyeau: I felt that the royals of the 16th century had been quite well covered. I’ve always been curious about the more “ordinary” people of history. I wanted to write a story that thrust a character into the heart of the most compelling conflicts of the time. Because religious conflict fascinates me, I thought a person who had taken vows to follow a monastic life would inevitably be part of the turmoil. I wanted to write a female main character, and so I came up with a novice in a Dominican order. The order existed: Dartford Priory, in Kent.
J.A. Beard: Though this book is set during a time of great religious transition, it is, at its heart, a suspense-filled mystery focused on a lost artifact. Did you find it difficult to balance the mystery elements and the historical elements?
Nancy Bilyeau: No, I loved it. I found that the history of the time lent itself to mystery and suspense without much effort on my part. I’m writing a thriller set in Tudor England, rather than a historical story that happens to have a mystery in the plot.
J.A. Beard: What was the most surprising thing you learned in doing research for this book?
Nancy Bilyeau: The audacity of the manipulations that allowed the government to dismantle the monasteries. It was done ostensibly for reform, yet there was no reform. The abbeys and priories were closed, the people living inside ejected. And then these beautiful buildings were often stripped down to the lead. All that remains of the Dominican “Blackfriars” monastery in London, a complex of magnificent buildings that stretched between the Thames and Ludgate Hill, is a four-foot-long piece of stone wall. I’ve seen it. No, this was a financial initiative, no question. At various junctures, resistance would be met with incredible savagery. Monks were starved, tortured, beheaded. Abbots were executed and pieces of their bodies were displayed in public. This did a lot to deter others from resisting! Yet there was a popular uprising—the Pilgrimage of Grace—in large part to the common people’s outrage. Of course nothing stopped it in the end.
J.A. Beard: This period is filled with countless fascinating figures. Is there anyone in particular that you found particularly compelling?
Nancy Bilyeau: Bishop Stephen Gardiner, my antagonist, was such a complex man. He was one of the legal minds behind the divorce from Catherine of Aragon—he was brilliant, everyone agrees. Yet as the country moved more and more toward Protestantism, he tried to halt that. Such irony in his struggle.
J.A. Beard: Arguably, the primary appeal of historical fiction is letting a reader experience, in some small way, a past they will otherwise never know. At the same time, people still are interested in fundamental storytelling aspects such as plot and pacing. How did you balance the detail necessary to turn your novel into a time machine without overwhelming the reader?
Nancy Bilyeau: I tried as much as possible to weave in the historical detail as part of the action. I don’t like it when writers come full stop to describe a ceiling—gosh, having said that, I hope I didn’t do it. I find writing in first person helps in this regard—everything is through the eyes of Sister Joanna Stafford. By the way, what I’ve done in writing a first-person thriller set in the 16th century is not common. There are murder mysteries written this way. But thrillers are often split it into two time tracks—modern and the past, with the two plots intertangling. I broke ranks, so to speak, because I just felt this was the way for me to tell a story.
J.A. Beard: HF authors are knowingly creating stories and details they know may not have existed, but they can't risk deviating too much from the known history without risking losing the very appeal of their subject matter. At the same time, some aspects of the past can be so alien to modern readers that they are difficult to communicate well in novel. Did such thoughts influence your choices concerning what historical details to emphasize or include?
Nancy Bilyeau: I revel in details and behavior that may seem alien today! I tried as much as possible NOT to force modern perceptions and standards onto my characters. I think when someone selects a book such as this to read, that person wants to explore a different mindset. But I don’t use dialogue that is accurate to Tudor England, people would find it heavy lifting. Here is an excerpt from Mouzell for Melastomus (do you like that title?), which was written by Rachel Speght, the first printed defence of women, in the early 1600s: “Thus if men would remember the duties they are to performe in being heads, fome would not ftand a tip-toe as they doe, thinking themlfelues Lords & Rulers, and account every omiffion of performing whatfoeuer they command, whether lawfull or not, to be matter of gret difparagement, and indignity done them.” I think you’ll agree with me it’s best to find a middle ground.
J.A. Beard's blog can be found at http://riftwatcher.blogspot.com/2012/...
Today, I am talking with Nancy Bilyeau. Nancy is a long-time writer and editor who has worked at a number of magazines including InStyle, Rolling Stone, and Entertainment Weekly. Her debut novel, The Crown, has her tacking mystery under the backdrop of religious transition in Tudor England.
-----
J.A. Beard: Tell us about your book.
Nancy Bilyeau: The Crown is a historical thriller set in 1537-1538 about a half-English, half-Spanish Dominican novice named Joanna Stafford who gets caught up in a conspiracy and quest to locate a hidden object of mystical importance.
J.A. Beard: English history is filled with fascinating chapters and episodes. What caught your interest about the period covered in your novel?
Nancy Bilyeau: Ever since I was 11 years old, I loved the 16th century, I suppose for the high drama of the personalities. More recently, I’ve wondered if our fascination with the Tudors goes beyond the obviousness of “Divorced/Beheaded/Died/Divorced/Beheaded/Survived.” Thanks to Holbein’s portraits and the chroniclers of the age—among them some wonderfully snarky ambassadors--the central cast of characters leap out at us. They feel close in. Much more so than the Plantagenets earlier. And as time went on, and Parliament became more important and governmental movements and issuances, the royal family was not quite as directly responsible for what happened to ordinary people every day. Henry VIII, while flailing about trying to divorce Catherine of Aragon for Anne Boleyn’s flashing dark eyes, would ride out and people occasionally shouted, “Back to your wife!” Even now, we feel as if we have a front row seat to the show and people feel emboldened to shout at Henry or Mary or Elizabeth. They have some sort of stake in it all. Also, there is something intoxicating about the mix of the time—the medieval world shading into the early modern age. I love the writers of the time: not just Shakespeare but Erasmus and More and Henry Howard.
J.A. Beard: The overall Tudor period, particularly in recent years, has been a popular period for fiction, but a lot of this fiction has primarily focused on key royal figures and those closely associated with them. Although there are a few famous faces in your book, your protagonist is a Dominican novice, someone pretty far from the hallowed halls of power. What went into your decision to focus on this sort of protagonist?
Nancy Bilyeau: I felt that the royals of the 16th century had been quite well covered. I’ve always been curious about the more “ordinary” people of history. I wanted to write a story that thrust a character into the heart of the most compelling conflicts of the time. Because religious conflict fascinates me, I thought a person who had taken vows to follow a monastic life would inevitably be part of the turmoil. I wanted to write a female main character, and so I came up with a novice in a Dominican order. The order existed: Dartford Priory, in Kent.
J.A. Beard: Though this book is set during a time of great religious transition, it is, at its heart, a suspense-filled mystery focused on a lost artifact. Did you find it difficult to balance the mystery elements and the historical elements?
Nancy Bilyeau: No, I loved it. I found that the history of the time lent itself to mystery and suspense without much effort on my part. I’m writing a thriller set in Tudor England, rather than a historical story that happens to have a mystery in the plot.
J.A. Beard: What was the most surprising thing you learned in doing research for this book?
Nancy Bilyeau: The audacity of the manipulations that allowed the government to dismantle the monasteries. It was done ostensibly for reform, yet there was no reform. The abbeys and priories were closed, the people living inside ejected. And then these beautiful buildings were often stripped down to the lead. All that remains of the Dominican “Blackfriars” monastery in London, a complex of magnificent buildings that stretched between the Thames and Ludgate Hill, is a four-foot-long piece of stone wall. I’ve seen it. No, this was a financial initiative, no question. At various junctures, resistance would be met with incredible savagery. Monks were starved, tortured, beheaded. Abbots were executed and pieces of their bodies were displayed in public. This did a lot to deter others from resisting! Yet there was a popular uprising—the Pilgrimage of Grace—in large part to the common people’s outrage. Of course nothing stopped it in the end.
J.A. Beard: This period is filled with countless fascinating figures. Is there anyone in particular that you found particularly compelling?
Nancy Bilyeau: Bishop Stephen Gardiner, my antagonist, was such a complex man. He was one of the legal minds behind the divorce from Catherine of Aragon—he was brilliant, everyone agrees. Yet as the country moved more and more toward Protestantism, he tried to halt that. Such irony in his struggle.
J.A. Beard: Arguably, the primary appeal of historical fiction is letting a reader experience, in some small way, a past they will otherwise never know. At the same time, people still are interested in fundamental storytelling aspects such as plot and pacing. How did you balance the detail necessary to turn your novel into a time machine without overwhelming the reader?
Nancy Bilyeau: I tried as much as possible to weave in the historical detail as part of the action. I don’t like it when writers come full stop to describe a ceiling—gosh, having said that, I hope I didn’t do it. I find writing in first person helps in this regard—everything is through the eyes of Sister Joanna Stafford. By the way, what I’ve done in writing a first-person thriller set in the 16th century is not common. There are murder mysteries written this way. But thrillers are often split it into two time tracks—modern and the past, with the two plots intertangling. I broke ranks, so to speak, because I just felt this was the way for me to tell a story.
J.A. Beard: HF authors are knowingly creating stories and details they know may not have existed, but they can't risk deviating too much from the known history without risking losing the very appeal of their subject matter. At the same time, some aspects of the past can be so alien to modern readers that they are difficult to communicate well in novel. Did such thoughts influence your choices concerning what historical details to emphasize or include?
Nancy Bilyeau: I revel in details and behavior that may seem alien today! I tried as much as possible NOT to force modern perceptions and standards onto my characters. I think when someone selects a book such as this to read, that person wants to explore a different mindset. But I don’t use dialogue that is accurate to Tudor England, people would find it heavy lifting. Here is an excerpt from Mouzell for Melastomus (do you like that title?), which was written by Rachel Speght, the first printed defence of women, in the early 1600s: “Thus if men would remember the duties they are to performe in being heads, fome would not ftand a tip-toe as they doe, thinking themlfelues Lords & Rulers, and account every omiffion of performing whatfoeuer they command, whether lawfull or not, to be matter of gret difparagement, and indignity done them.” I think you’ll agree with me it’s best to find a middle ground.
J.A. Beard's blog can be found at http://riftwatcher.blogspot.com/2012/...
January 15, 2012
The Story of the Last Nun
My first novel, "The Crown," tells the story of a fictional nun, Sister Joanna Stafford, who struggles to protect her way of life. The year is 1537--Henry VIII's break with Rome means the destruction of the monasteries.
While my protagonist is from my imagination, the priory she tries to save is not. Dartford Priory existed for 180 years. It was the only Order of Dominican nuns in England. I went to the site of the priory in Kent to research my book, and I read as much as I could find about the fate of the nuns who were turned out of their home with small pensions by the king's order.
This article, posted in English Historical Fiction Authors, reveals what I learned:
http://englishhistoryauthors.blogspot...
While my protagonist is from my imagination, the priory she tries to save is not. Dartford Priory existed for 180 years. It was the only Order of Dominican nuns in England. I went to the site of the priory in Kent to research my book, and I read as much as I could find about the fate of the nuns who were turned out of their home with small pensions by the king's order.
This article, posted in English Historical Fiction Authors, reveals what I learned:
http://englishhistoryauthors.blogspot...
January 1, 2012
When January 1st Wasn't the First Day of the Year
By Nancy Bilyeau
Today is January 1st and it is the first day of 2012. Time to hang your freshly bought calendars and write a new year on your checks.
But strange as it may seem, January 1st did not always signal the beginning of a new calendar year. Until 1752, the two were separate things in England and its colonies. Until that point, people began each calendar year on March 25, which was Annunciation Day—or Lady Day. This was the day the Angel Gabriel appeared to the Virgin Mary to deliver the news that she had conceived and would give birth to Jesus in nine months.
It took an 18th century act of Parliament for England to officially begin each new calendar year on January 1st. The centuries of discrepancy cause lots of headaches for historians and genealogists. There’s no question that it’s strange, not least because England lagged behind much of the rest of Western Europe. Why did this Protestant nation cling to Annunciation Day—by its very definition a day revolving around the Virgin—as the time to change the calendar when most Catholic countries had already shifted to January 1st in the 16th century or 17th century?
The reason for the January 1st controversy has a lot to do with England’s refusal to take orders from a pope after Henry VIII’s break from Rome in the 1530s. It was Pope Gregory XIII who replaced Julius Caesar’s calendar, devised in 45 BC, with a new one in 1582—and it’s the Gregorian calendar we all use today. Reform was unquestionably needed. There were too many days in the year; the equinoxes were out of whack; the Julian calendar had strayed 10 days from the solar calendar.
Among other things, the pope’s new calendar established that each calendar year begin on January 1st. Once it was issued, Italy, Spain and Portugal instantly adopted the Gregorian calendar, followed by France and the other Catholic countries of Europe. But England, Germany and the Netherlands refused. So for centuries, there were two calendars in Western Europe.
The first step to understanding this furor is to realize that Pope Gregory XIII was not simply someone who cared about calendars. Born in Bologna as Ugo Buoncompagno, he was a transitional pope. Certainly not as venal and corrupt as the Borgias a century earlier, he was a gifted teacher and administrative talent who nonetheless had an illegitimate son before marrying and really liked to spend money. Once he became Gregory XIII, he spent huge sums on not only Catholic colleges but also displays such as the Gregorian Chapel in St. Peter’s. To pay for all this, he resorted to papal confiscation.
Most relevant to our story, he supported the overthrow of Henry VIII’s Protestant daughter, Elizabeth I. Gregory’s predecessor, Pope Pius V, had already excommunicated Elizabeth and declared her a usurper in 1570. During his papal office, Gregory put intense pressure on the Spanish king, Philip II, to invade and dethrone England’s queen. Gregory personally financed an armed force of 800 men to land in Ireland to join a Catholic rebellion against Elizabeth (it fizzled). Moreover, a Jesuit led the papal commission to devise the Gregorian calendar—and the Jesuits were the religious order specifically created to fight the Protestant Reformation. This all fueled Elizabethan England’s refusal to accept anything that originated in the Vatican.
The fierce clashes between Catholic and Protestant in the 16th century are the tumultuous background of my historical thrillers. The heroine of my debut novel, The Crown--which is being published on January 10, 2012—is a novice in the Dominican Order at Dartford Priory, outside London. But it’s not just the Christian splintering in early modern Europe that fascinates me. I also love studying what came long before the Renaissance.
This October, as Halloween approached, I researched the roots of the holiday’s celebration in Tudor England and made some discoveries. I learned that the roots of Halloween reach back to the Dark Ages Celtic festival of Samhain (“summer’s end”), when people lit bonfires and put on costumes to scare away the spirits of the unfriendly dead. All-Hallows-Even, which was shortened to “Halloween” in the 16th century, was a complex blend of Celtic and Catholic customs. After all, the holiday was the run-up to All Saints’ Day on November 1st, an occasion to venerate all the Catholic martyrs. Not surprisingly, the Protestant Reformers took a dim view of Halloween, but its popularity was so great that they were unable to stamp it out.
My Oct. 27, 2011, blog post on Halloween (http://englishhistoryauthors.blogspot...) stirred up so much attention that it made me want to keep reading about the distant and complex roots of what we celebrate today.
I began thinking about the origins of Christmas and New Year’s Day the morning of December 20th, when I stood outside my apartment building with my son, waiting for his school bus to arrive. Although it was 7:15 a.m., dawn had barely broken; the Christmas lights that the superintendent had strung over the bushes glowed yellow in the purplish-gray light. A hazy fullness hung in the air—and it seemed to carry a strange potency. Almost like something magical. I had no idea as I stood there that what I sensed would connect to January 1st and the fascinating furor over when to begin the calendar year.
I snapped a photo and posted it on my Facebook page, along with sharing a description of the strange feeling all around me. A high school friend, D.K. Carlson, offered an explanation: “The solstice is almost here.” It made me shiver to think it was the power of the winter solstice that touched me that morning: the approach of the shortest day of the year, the moment when the earth is in a point of its orbit farthest away from the sun. I find it very interesting that Julius Caesar established December 25th as the date of the winter solstice. It was—you guessed it—Pope Gregory XIII who made the adjustment to December 21st.
Long before the time of Julius Caesar, man honored the solstice. Bronze Age archaeologists have uncovered symbols and signs that reveal awareness of the shortest day of the year. The monuments of Stonehenge and Newgrange in Ireland are believed to have solstice alignments. In 2000 BC, people may have gathered at Stonehenge in mid-December to pray for the sun to return again, the source of all life.
Again and again, in many societies and religions, the solstice has great meaning. For the Druids, it was Alban Arthuan, the Light of Winter. As part of the celebration, priests cut the mistletoe that grew on winter oaks and blessed it. Germanic pagans launched the tradition of burning the Yule log and decorating a home with clippings of evergreen trees.
In Rome, not surprisingly, the celebrations became more debauched. Saturnalia, which took place in mid-December, ran the gamut from heavy drinking to gambling to reversing society norms, with masters waiting on slaves. Lighting candles was very important. So was the tradition of children going house to house, offering small gifts, such as wrapped fruit, in exchange for other tokens.
Saturnalia was so popular that not even the Fall of Rome could kill it. It morphed into the Feast of Fools, celebrated from the Fifth Century until the Renaissance in much of Western Europe on January 1st. The servants became the masters, with a lower-echelon “Lord of Misrule” chosen to preside over all drunken festivities beginning in late December and concluding on the first of January.
Not surprisingly, the early Catholic Church did not look kindly on the parties--stimulated by the winter solstice--that marked January 1st. The church leaders didn’t want something as important as beginning a new year to take place on that same day. In 567 AD, a Council of Tours decreed that the first of January was abolished and the blameless Annunciation Day was chosen. It took a while for this to be accepted, but by medieval times, people in England looked on March 25th as the beginning of the year. And this tradition stuck through the Plantagenets, the Tudors, the Stuarts, and into the time of the Hanoverians.
Until finally, in 1752, in the reign of George II, England—and its colonies in the Americas—made the change, and January 1st was officially deemed the beginning of the year.
Today is January 1st and it is the first day of 2012. Time to hang your freshly bought calendars and write a new year on your checks.
But strange as it may seem, January 1st did not always signal the beginning of a new calendar year. Until 1752, the two were separate things in England and its colonies. Until that point, people began each calendar year on March 25, which was Annunciation Day—or Lady Day. This was the day the Angel Gabriel appeared to the Virgin Mary to deliver the news that she had conceived and would give birth to Jesus in nine months.
It took an 18th century act of Parliament for England to officially begin each new calendar year on January 1st. The centuries of discrepancy cause lots of headaches for historians and genealogists. There’s no question that it’s strange, not least because England lagged behind much of the rest of Western Europe. Why did this Protestant nation cling to Annunciation Day—by its very definition a day revolving around the Virgin—as the time to change the calendar when most Catholic countries had already shifted to January 1st in the 16th century or 17th century?
The reason for the January 1st controversy has a lot to do with England’s refusal to take orders from a pope after Henry VIII’s break from Rome in the 1530s. It was Pope Gregory XIII who replaced Julius Caesar’s calendar, devised in 45 BC, with a new one in 1582—and it’s the Gregorian calendar we all use today. Reform was unquestionably needed. There were too many days in the year; the equinoxes were out of whack; the Julian calendar had strayed 10 days from the solar calendar.
Among other things, the pope’s new calendar established that each calendar year begin on January 1st. Once it was issued, Italy, Spain and Portugal instantly adopted the Gregorian calendar, followed by France and the other Catholic countries of Europe. But England, Germany and the Netherlands refused. So for centuries, there were two calendars in Western Europe.
The first step to understanding this furor is to realize that Pope Gregory XIII was not simply someone who cared about calendars. Born in Bologna as Ugo Buoncompagno, he was a transitional pope. Certainly not as venal and corrupt as the Borgias a century earlier, he was a gifted teacher and administrative talent who nonetheless had an illegitimate son before marrying and really liked to spend money. Once he became Gregory XIII, he spent huge sums on not only Catholic colleges but also displays such as the Gregorian Chapel in St. Peter’s. To pay for all this, he resorted to papal confiscation.
Most relevant to our story, he supported the overthrow of Henry VIII’s Protestant daughter, Elizabeth I. Gregory’s predecessor, Pope Pius V, had already excommunicated Elizabeth and declared her a usurper in 1570. During his papal office, Gregory put intense pressure on the Spanish king, Philip II, to invade and dethrone England’s queen. Gregory personally financed an armed force of 800 men to land in Ireland to join a Catholic rebellion against Elizabeth (it fizzled). Moreover, a Jesuit led the papal commission to devise the Gregorian calendar—and the Jesuits were the religious order specifically created to fight the Protestant Reformation. This all fueled Elizabethan England’s refusal to accept anything that originated in the Vatican.
The fierce clashes between Catholic and Protestant in the 16th century are the tumultuous background of my historical thrillers. The heroine of my debut novel, The Crown--which is being published on January 10, 2012—is a novice in the Dominican Order at Dartford Priory, outside London. But it’s not just the Christian splintering in early modern Europe that fascinates me. I also love studying what came long before the Renaissance.
This October, as Halloween approached, I researched the roots of the holiday’s celebration in Tudor England and made some discoveries. I learned that the roots of Halloween reach back to the Dark Ages Celtic festival of Samhain (“summer’s end”), when people lit bonfires and put on costumes to scare away the spirits of the unfriendly dead. All-Hallows-Even, which was shortened to “Halloween” in the 16th century, was a complex blend of Celtic and Catholic customs. After all, the holiday was the run-up to All Saints’ Day on November 1st, an occasion to venerate all the Catholic martyrs. Not surprisingly, the Protestant Reformers took a dim view of Halloween, but its popularity was so great that they were unable to stamp it out.
My Oct. 27, 2011, blog post on Halloween (http://englishhistoryauthors.blogspot...) stirred up so much attention that it made me want to keep reading about the distant and complex roots of what we celebrate today.
I began thinking about the origins of Christmas and New Year’s Day the morning of December 20th, when I stood outside my apartment building with my son, waiting for his school bus to arrive. Although it was 7:15 a.m., dawn had barely broken; the Christmas lights that the superintendent had strung over the bushes glowed yellow in the purplish-gray light. A hazy fullness hung in the air—and it seemed to carry a strange potency. Almost like something magical. I had no idea as I stood there that what I sensed would connect to January 1st and the fascinating furor over when to begin the calendar year.
I snapped a photo and posted it on my Facebook page, along with sharing a description of the strange feeling all around me. A high school friend, D.K. Carlson, offered an explanation: “The solstice is almost here.” It made me shiver to think it was the power of the winter solstice that touched me that morning: the approach of the shortest day of the year, the moment when the earth is in a point of its orbit farthest away from the sun. I find it very interesting that Julius Caesar established December 25th as the date of the winter solstice. It was—you guessed it—Pope Gregory XIII who made the adjustment to December 21st.
Long before the time of Julius Caesar, man honored the solstice. Bronze Age archaeologists have uncovered symbols and signs that reveal awareness of the shortest day of the year. The monuments of Stonehenge and Newgrange in Ireland are believed to have solstice alignments. In 2000 BC, people may have gathered at Stonehenge in mid-December to pray for the sun to return again, the source of all life.
Again and again, in many societies and religions, the solstice has great meaning. For the Druids, it was Alban Arthuan, the Light of Winter. As part of the celebration, priests cut the mistletoe that grew on winter oaks and blessed it. Germanic pagans launched the tradition of burning the Yule log and decorating a home with clippings of evergreen trees.
In Rome, not surprisingly, the celebrations became more debauched. Saturnalia, which took place in mid-December, ran the gamut from heavy drinking to gambling to reversing society norms, with masters waiting on slaves. Lighting candles was very important. So was the tradition of children going house to house, offering small gifts, such as wrapped fruit, in exchange for other tokens.
Saturnalia was so popular that not even the Fall of Rome could kill it. It morphed into the Feast of Fools, celebrated from the Fifth Century until the Renaissance in much of Western Europe on January 1st. The servants became the masters, with a lower-echelon “Lord of Misrule” chosen to preside over all drunken festivities beginning in late December and concluding on the first of January.
Not surprisingly, the early Catholic Church did not look kindly on the parties--stimulated by the winter solstice--that marked January 1st. The church leaders didn’t want something as important as beginning a new year to take place on that same day. In 567 AD, a Council of Tours decreed that the first of January was abolished and the blameless Annunciation Day was chosen. It took a while for this to be accepted, but by medieval times, people in England looked on March 25th as the beginning of the year. And this tradition stuck through the Plantagenets, the Tudors, the Stuarts, and into the time of the Hanoverians.
Until finally, in 1752, in the reign of George II, England—and its colonies in the Americas—made the change, and January 1st was officially deemed the beginning of the year.
International Thriller Writers Interview with Nancy Bilyeau
Oprah Magazine named Nancy Bilyeau's THE CROWN (January 2012, Simon & Schuster) one of the "16 Books to Watch for in January 2012," because "the real draw of this suspenseful novel was its juicy blend of lust, murder, conspiracy, and betrayal."When Joanna Stafford, a young novice, Dominican nun, learns her cousin is about to be burned at the stake for rebelling against King Henry VIII, she makes a decision that will change not only her life, but quite possibly the fate of a nation. Charged with a mission to find a hidden relic believed to possess a mystical power that has slain three Englishmen of royal blood in the last 300 years, Joanna and a troubled young friar, Brother Edmund, must seek answers across England. Once she learns the true secret of her quest, Joanna must finally determine who to trust, and how far she's willing to go to protect her life, her family and everything she holds dear.
I recently chatted with Nancy about her debut novel, THE CROWN.Q: You have an extensive professional writing background. Why write a novel now? A: Yes, I've worked as an editor and writer at a series of newsstand magazines—INSTYLE, GOOD HOUSEKEEPING, ROLLING STONE, ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY. But I felt this craving to create my own characters. I wanted to tell a story. For me, that's magical. To invent a world and then beckon readers to join me, as if I were a magician.Q: Why this novel? Why did you believe this story was the one to launch your novel career?A: I didn't know if it would launch anything—although I hoped it would, of course. I had no agent, no editor waiting to read. It was just what I wanted to write more than anything else—a historical thriller from the point of view of a woman living in my favorite time period: Tudor England.Q: Tell us the genesis story of Johanna Stafford?A: I knew I wanted to set my book in the reign of King Henry VIII. But I wasn't as sure of my main character. I wanted to write a woman but I didn't want to depict a queen or princess or lady in waiting. I just felt that many writers had already done that. I pondered what kind of woman would lead an interesting life of some independence—or as much as would be possible in that time—in the middle of conflict, of turbulence. I came up with a Catholic novice during the Dissolution of the Monasteries. I decided to place her in a real family, and after some research I selected the Staffords: an aristocratic family with a history of spectacular self-destruction. Both the second and third Stafford dukes of Buckingham were executed for treason.Q: What is the most interesting thing you discovered about King Henry VIII, while writing this story?A; I had not realized the extent of the violence and terror the king inflicted on the Catholic monastics who resisted his break from Rome. The sense we have now—certainly the sense you get in the film, TV series and most historical fiction—is of a country moving away from the corrupt and exhausted Catholic faith and toward Protestantism. But the number of martyrs is troubling, and I'm not talking about famous ones like Sir Thomas More. The Carthusian monks of the Charterhouse were hanged, drawn and quartered for refusing to obey the king over the pope. Near the end of the Dissolution, the prior of Glastonbury Abbey, an old and sick man, was executed and literally chopped into pieces for resisting the king. There are many examples of people executed and persecuted for their beliefs.Q: What did you learn about yourself as a novelist?A; That I benefit from patience with myself. When I first started writing my book I was frustrated because what was on the page was not what I envisioned in my mind. I learned that I could use my comfort with revision—that is what we are always doing as magazine editors—to know that if a fictional passage isn't working in the first draft, I can come back to it, I can brainstorm, I can be inspired to improve it.Q: What myth about novel writing was debunked once you became published?A: "Write what you know." I wrote a novel set five centuries ago, in a country I don't live in, about a religion I don't practice.Q: Why are you a historical thriller writer?A: I love both thrillers and historical fiction—I couldn't think of anything more fun than to fuse them.Q: Give me a comparative of two books that are similar to THE CROWN? Why are they also different?A: My book has been compared to ANGELOLOGY, a wonderful novel by Danielle Trussoni, because both have nuns in the center struggling to solve a mystery with mystical elements. But ANGELOLOGY runs on two time tracks—modern day New York and World War II-era Europe—and THE CROWN'S plot exists only in the 1530s. Also my book is populated only by humans! Umberto Eco's classic THE NAME OF THE ROSE tells a story of mysterious murders in a 14th century abbey. But Eco's novel dwells in a community of men; mine is a community of women (though I have strong male characters too). And learning the identity of a murderer is just one element of the plot of THE CROWN—there is also a search for something of enormous importance. My entire plot takes place in a time when the priories and abbeys were literally disintegrating in England; THE NAME OF THE ROSE is set during a time of Catholic preeminence.Q: What do you hope readers will experience while reading THE CROWN?A; I hope they will be absorbed, entertained, enlightened. I have a number of big twists and turns in the plot—I really hope readers enjoy them.Q: Why are relics and Christian iconography so important in 16th Century Europe? Why is it important to the story?A: Religion was woven through everyday life in the early 16th century on a level that is hard to comprehend today. The liturgy, the Mass, the saints' days, the feast days—they provided structure and meaning and comfort too in a time of rampant disease and poverty and early death. People were enthralled by the saints—they thought if they could get closer to the saints, they were closer to an understanding of God. Relics of those saints were a tangible way to do that. I am fascinated by the multiple meanings of many Christian symbols during this time, and I decided to make decoding these meanings part of the story. There are symbols embedded in the very stones of Dartford Priory—and my characters struggle to understanding the symbols to reach their goals.Q: What makes this story a thriller?A: It is a story of heightened suspense in which a main character has to reach an objective—overcoming many, many obstacles—or else something terrible with happen within a finite amount of time.*****
Nancy Bilyeau is a magazine editor who has worked on the staffs of INSTYLE, ROLLING STONE, and ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY. She was born in Chicago and grew up in Michigan, attending University of Michigan-Ann Arbor. Her screenplays have reached finalist stage in national competitions—she was a semi-finalist in the Nicholl Competition. She lives in New York City with her husband and two children.
December 30, 2011
Fun New List of Favorite Female Thriller Writers
I started a list on Goodreads of Best Thrillers Written By Women. Please stop by, add your own favorites, and vote!
http://www.goodreads.com/list/show/15...
http://www.goodreads.com/list/show/15...
December 19, 2011
Confessions of a Genre Writer
In 2006, in my first online fiction workshop, I submitted two chapters from the historical thriller I’d begun writing. My fellow students critiqued my work; I critiqued theirs. The instructor, “T,” weighed in as well.
At the very end of the workshop, “T” sent me this email: “I'd love to see you produce some more material that seems a little ‘closer’ to you personally, closer to the bone. I mean, you're writing crime thrillers and historical novels, but how about trying to write a story that was closer in spirit to your own time, your own place, your own experience? I'm just saying, Please don't be afraid to write your fiction out of your own sense of character and personal concerns: these genres feel a little uncomfortable to me, and perhaps you haven't really discovered what your subject matter as a fiction writer is. All Best, T.”
This is not the sort of email a budding novelist wants to get.
I kept working on my historical thriller. This was what I wanted to do. I took more classes, determined to improve my craft. “T” had made genre sound like a dirty word but if I belonged in the genre sandbox, so be it. I enrolled in the mystery-writing workshop run by Gotham Writer’s Workshop and taught by a terrific guy named Gregory Fallis. Greg had been a medic in the military, a counselor in a women’s prison, and a private detective. Yes, the man had lived. To my tremendous relief, he didn’t look down on my Tudor England mystery thriller, set mostly in a Dominican priory outside London. In fact, he liked it. A lot. I worked on my chapters and read Greg’s assignments, novelists ranging from Dorothy Sayers to Walter Mosley.
I was working fulltime as a magazine editor and raising two young children, and when things got particularly crazy for a stretch my novel went into the proverbial drawer. Home sick with a fever in the autumn of 2009, I was seized by a sudden desire to go back to my thriller, only half written. Perhaps it was the 102-degree temperature talking, but I staggered to the computer and enrolled in the very next Gotham Writer’s Workshop course. It was “Advanced Fiction,” taught by a man named Russell Rowland. After I’d put through payment, I looked him up—Russell had a MA in creative writing and had written two highly respected modern novels, In Open Spaces and The Watershed Years.
“Oh, no,” I moaned, my head sinking into clammy hands. “He’s going to hate me.”
He didn’t. Russell was a supportive teacher from the start: astute and no-nonsense but never, ever patronizing. What’s more, in this class I found a group of fellow writers who gave me valuable feedback. This was when my book truly came together. I pushed through the middle and then, exhilarated, raced to the end. I finished the novel on my birthday, June 16th, 2010, and signed with a literary agent the July 4th weekend. My debut novel was sold in an auction at the end of the month to Touchstone/Simon&Schuster. The Crown will be officially published on January 10, 2012 in North America, and seven foreign countries through the rest of the year.
And yet yesterday I thought of “T” once more.
The memory was triggered by a Wall Street Journal article written by screenwriter and novelist Derek Haas, who has crafted the scripts for “2 Fast 2 Furious,” “Wanted,” and “3:10 to Yuma.”
The article began this way: “I'm sometimes asked to speak to a class of film or literature students at a university. Inevitably, a 22-year-old hipster with designer-chic black glasses and a permanent pout will raise his hand and ask, ‘What does it feel like to sell out?’ I smile. I tell the students, ‘Sell out? Are you kidding me? I sold in!’ "
Haas’s story resonated with me—of always wanting to write thrillers but facing “an upturned nose and haughty eye,” as he put it. “Write what you know,” he was told over and over. Come up with stories of “deep, dark emotional conflict.”
What my teacher—and the “write what you know” proponents Derek Haas faced—could never accept is that crafting a thriller is not a default mechanism for those of stunted gifts. Some of us want to write those sorts of books and scripts. I have always been enthralled by works of psychological suspense: Henry James’ The Innocents, Daphne du Maurier’s Rebecca, Patricia Highsmith’s The Talented Mr. Ripley. One of the oddest aspects of “T’s” criticism was that only in modern stories could I infuse my work with “personal concerns.” I think Robert Graves, Mary Renault, Margaret Atwood, Caleb Carr, Ken Follett, and Patrick O’Brian have found ways to create complex and relatable characters—people churning with concerns--in historical settings!
Last week I opened a large padded envelope and pulled out my hardcover novel. My editor sent me the one fresh from the printer. I caressed the beautiful deep-gold and burgundy cover, and ruffled my 400 pages. It was a moment of unadulterated pride.
You know what, “T”? This writer has found her subject matter.
At the very end of the workshop, “T” sent me this email: “I'd love to see you produce some more material that seems a little ‘closer’ to you personally, closer to the bone. I mean, you're writing crime thrillers and historical novels, but how about trying to write a story that was closer in spirit to your own time, your own place, your own experience? I'm just saying, Please don't be afraid to write your fiction out of your own sense of character and personal concerns: these genres feel a little uncomfortable to me, and perhaps you haven't really discovered what your subject matter as a fiction writer is. All Best, T.”
This is not the sort of email a budding novelist wants to get.
I kept working on my historical thriller. This was what I wanted to do. I took more classes, determined to improve my craft. “T” had made genre sound like a dirty word but if I belonged in the genre sandbox, so be it. I enrolled in the mystery-writing workshop run by Gotham Writer’s Workshop and taught by a terrific guy named Gregory Fallis. Greg had been a medic in the military, a counselor in a women’s prison, and a private detective. Yes, the man had lived. To my tremendous relief, he didn’t look down on my Tudor England mystery thriller, set mostly in a Dominican priory outside London. In fact, he liked it. A lot. I worked on my chapters and read Greg’s assignments, novelists ranging from Dorothy Sayers to Walter Mosley.
I was working fulltime as a magazine editor and raising two young children, and when things got particularly crazy for a stretch my novel went into the proverbial drawer. Home sick with a fever in the autumn of 2009, I was seized by a sudden desire to go back to my thriller, only half written. Perhaps it was the 102-degree temperature talking, but I staggered to the computer and enrolled in the very next Gotham Writer’s Workshop course. It was “Advanced Fiction,” taught by a man named Russell Rowland. After I’d put through payment, I looked him up—Russell had a MA in creative writing and had written two highly respected modern novels, In Open Spaces and The Watershed Years.
“Oh, no,” I moaned, my head sinking into clammy hands. “He’s going to hate me.”
He didn’t. Russell was a supportive teacher from the start: astute and no-nonsense but never, ever patronizing. What’s more, in this class I found a group of fellow writers who gave me valuable feedback. This was when my book truly came together. I pushed through the middle and then, exhilarated, raced to the end. I finished the novel on my birthday, June 16th, 2010, and signed with a literary agent the July 4th weekend. My debut novel was sold in an auction at the end of the month to Touchstone/Simon&Schuster. The Crown will be officially published on January 10, 2012 in North America, and seven foreign countries through the rest of the year.
And yet yesterday I thought of “T” once more.
The memory was triggered by a Wall Street Journal article written by screenwriter and novelist Derek Haas, who has crafted the scripts for “2 Fast 2 Furious,” “Wanted,” and “3:10 to Yuma.”
The article began this way: “I'm sometimes asked to speak to a class of film or literature students at a university. Inevitably, a 22-year-old hipster with designer-chic black glasses and a permanent pout will raise his hand and ask, ‘What does it feel like to sell out?’ I smile. I tell the students, ‘Sell out? Are you kidding me? I sold in!’ "
Haas’s story resonated with me—of always wanting to write thrillers but facing “an upturned nose and haughty eye,” as he put it. “Write what you know,” he was told over and over. Come up with stories of “deep, dark emotional conflict.”
What my teacher—and the “write what you know” proponents Derek Haas faced—could never accept is that crafting a thriller is not a default mechanism for those of stunted gifts. Some of us want to write those sorts of books and scripts. I have always been enthralled by works of psychological suspense: Henry James’ The Innocents, Daphne du Maurier’s Rebecca, Patricia Highsmith’s The Talented Mr. Ripley. One of the oddest aspects of “T’s” criticism was that only in modern stories could I infuse my work with “personal concerns.” I think Robert Graves, Mary Renault, Margaret Atwood, Caleb Carr, Ken Follett, and Patrick O’Brian have found ways to create complex and relatable characters—people churning with concerns--in historical settings!
Last week I opened a large padded envelope and pulled out my hardcover novel. My editor sent me the one fresh from the printer. I caressed the beautiful deep-gold and burgundy cover, and ruffled my 400 pages. It was a moment of unadulterated pride.
You know what, “T”? This writer has found her subject matter.
