Nancy Bilyeau's Blog, page 37
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.
December 9, 2011
Review of "The Crown" in January 2012 issue of "Oprah" magazine
I'm very excited that "O" has reviewed "The Crown"!
Review as follows:
A NUN'S STORY
Devotion and Intrigue in the Renaissance
The spirited young nun at the center of Nancy Bilyeau's expansive novel of political treachery, THE CROWN (Touchstone), is the very definition of an accidental heroine. In 16th century London, with Rome at war with the Church of England, Sister Joanna lives happily cloistered in a Dominican priory, "insulated from the selfishness and vanity, the mindless pomp of the world." But when her beloved cousin is sentenced to burn for treason, Joanna bravely slips away from the priory--risking excommunication--to provide comfort at the execution. Soon she is arrested and coerced into a Da Vinci Code-like scheme; refusal to cooperate could mean her father's brutal death. Bilyeau deftly weaves extensive historical detail throughout, but the real draw of this suspenseful novel is its juicy blend of lust, murder, conspiracy, and betrayal. --K.H.
Review as follows:
A NUN'S STORY
Devotion and Intrigue in the Renaissance
The spirited young nun at the center of Nancy Bilyeau's expansive novel of political treachery, THE CROWN (Touchstone), is the very definition of an accidental heroine. In 16th century London, with Rome at war with the Church of England, Sister Joanna lives happily cloistered in a Dominican priory, "insulated from the selfishness and vanity, the mindless pomp of the world." But when her beloved cousin is sentenced to burn for treason, Joanna bravely slips away from the priory--risking excommunication--to provide comfort at the execution. Soon she is arrested and coerced into a Da Vinci Code-like scheme; refusal to cooperate could mean her father's brutal death. Bilyeau deftly weaves extensive historical detail throughout, but the real draw of this suspenseful novel is its juicy blend of lust, murder, conspiracy, and betrayal. --K.H.
October 27, 2011
The Truth About Halloween and Tudor England
I have a passion for 16th century England. My friends and family, not to mention my agent and editors, are accustomed to my obsession with the Tudorverse. Namely, that for me, all roads lead back to the family that ruled England from 1485 to 1603. Could it be possible that Halloween, one of my favorite days of the year, is also linked to the Tudors?
Yes, it turns out, it could.
The first recorded use of the word "Halloween" was in mid-16th century England. It is a shortened version of "All-Hallows-Even" ("evening"), the night before All Hallows Day, another name for the Christian feast that honors saints on the first of November.
But it's not just a literal connection. To me, there's a certain spirit of Halloween that harkens back to the Tudor era as well. Not the jack o' lanterns, apple-bobs and haunted houses (and not the wonderful Christopher Lee "Dracula" movies that I watch on TCM network every October, two in a row if I can). It's that mood, frightening and mysterious and exciting too, of ghosts flitting through the trees; of charms that just might bring you your heart's desire; of a distant bonfire spotted in the forest; of a crone's chilling prophecy.
In pre-Reformation England, the Catholic Church co-existed with belief in astrology and magic. It was quite common to attend Mass regularly and to consult astrologers. "The medieval church appeared as a vast reservoir of magical power," writes Keith Thomas in his brilliant 1971 book Religion and the Decline of Magic. Faithful Catholics tolerated the traditions of the centuries-old Celtic festival of Samhain ("summer's end"), when people lit bonfires and put on costumes to scare away the spirits of the unfriendly dead. In fact, an Eighth Century pope named November 1st as the day to honor all Catholic saints and martyrs with an eye toward Samhain.
Nothing shows the merger of Celtic and Christian beliefs better than "soul cakes." These small, round cakes, filled with nutmeg or cinnamon or currants, were made for All Saints’ Day on November 1st. The cakes were offered as a way to say prayers for the departed (you can picture the village priest nodding in approval) but they were also given away to protect people on the day of the year that the wall was thinnest between the living and the dead, a Celtic if not Druid belief. I am fascinated by soul cakes, and I worked them into my first novel, The Crown, a thriller set in 1537-1538 England. Soul cakes even end up being a clue!
In the early 16th century, Halloween on October 31st, All Saints’ Day (or All Hallows Day) on November 1st and All Souls’ Day on November 2nd were a complex grouping of traditions and observances. Life revolved around the regular worship, the holidays and the feast days that constituted the liturgy. As the great Eamon Duffy wrote: "For within that great seasonal cycle of fast and festival, of ritual observance and symbolic gesture, lay Christians found the paradigms and the stories which shaped their perception of the world and their place in it."
Henry VIII changed the perceptions of the kingdom forever when he broke from Rome. A guiding force in his reformation of the Catholic Church was the destruction of what he and his chief minister Thomas Cromwell scorned as "superstition." Saints' statues were removed; murals telling mystical stories were painted over; shrines were pillaged; the number of feast days was sharply reduced so that more work could be done during the growing season. "The Protestant reformers rejected the magical powers and supernatural sanctions which had been so plentifully invoked by the medieval church," writes Keith Thomas. The story in The Crown is told from the perspective of a young Catholic novice who struggles to cope with these radical changes.
Yet somehow Halloween, the day before All Saints’ Day, survived the government's anti-superstition movement, to grow and survive long after the Tudors were followed by the Stuarts. It’s now a secular holiday that children adore (including mine, who are trying on costumes four days early). As for me, I relish the candy handouts, costumes and scary movies—and I also cherish our society’s stubborn fondness for bonfires and charms and ghosts and sweet cakes, for in them can be found echoes of life in the age of the Tudors.
Yes, it turns out, it could.
The first recorded use of the word "Halloween" was in mid-16th century England. It is a shortened version of "All-Hallows-Even" ("evening"), the night before All Hallows Day, another name for the Christian feast that honors saints on the first of November.
But it's not just a literal connection. To me, there's a certain spirit of Halloween that harkens back to the Tudor era as well. Not the jack o' lanterns, apple-bobs and haunted houses (and not the wonderful Christopher Lee "Dracula" movies that I watch on TCM network every October, two in a row if I can). It's that mood, frightening and mysterious and exciting too, of ghosts flitting through the trees; of charms that just might bring you your heart's desire; of a distant bonfire spotted in the forest; of a crone's chilling prophecy.
In pre-Reformation England, the Catholic Church co-existed with belief in astrology and magic. It was quite common to attend Mass regularly and to consult astrologers. "The medieval church appeared as a vast reservoir of magical power," writes Keith Thomas in his brilliant 1971 book Religion and the Decline of Magic. Faithful Catholics tolerated the traditions of the centuries-old Celtic festival of Samhain ("summer's end"), when people lit bonfires and put on costumes to scare away the spirits of the unfriendly dead. In fact, an Eighth Century pope named November 1st as the day to honor all Catholic saints and martyrs with an eye toward Samhain.
Nothing shows the merger of Celtic and Christian beliefs better than "soul cakes." These small, round cakes, filled with nutmeg or cinnamon or currants, were made for All Saints’ Day on November 1st. The cakes were offered as a way to say prayers for the departed (you can picture the village priest nodding in approval) but they were also given away to protect people on the day of the year that the wall was thinnest between the living and the dead, a Celtic if not Druid belief. I am fascinated by soul cakes, and I worked them into my first novel, The Crown, a thriller set in 1537-1538 England. Soul cakes even end up being a clue!
In the early 16th century, Halloween on October 31st, All Saints’ Day (or All Hallows Day) on November 1st and All Souls’ Day on November 2nd were a complex grouping of traditions and observances. Life revolved around the regular worship, the holidays and the feast days that constituted the liturgy. As the great Eamon Duffy wrote: "For within that great seasonal cycle of fast and festival, of ritual observance and symbolic gesture, lay Christians found the paradigms and the stories which shaped their perception of the world and their place in it."
Henry VIII changed the perceptions of the kingdom forever when he broke from Rome. A guiding force in his reformation of the Catholic Church was the destruction of what he and his chief minister Thomas Cromwell scorned as "superstition." Saints' statues were removed; murals telling mystical stories were painted over; shrines were pillaged; the number of feast days was sharply reduced so that more work could be done during the growing season. "The Protestant reformers rejected the magical powers and supernatural sanctions which had been so plentifully invoked by the medieval church," writes Keith Thomas. The story in The Crown is told from the perspective of a young Catholic novice who struggles to cope with these radical changes.
Yet somehow Halloween, the day before All Saints’ Day, survived the government's anti-superstition movement, to grow and survive long after the Tudors were followed by the Stuarts. It’s now a secular holiday that children adore (including mine, who are trying on costumes four days early). As for me, I relish the candy handouts, costumes and scary movies—and I also cherish our society’s stubborn fondness for bonfires and charms and ghosts and sweet cakes, for in them can be found echoes of life in the age of the Tudors.
July 31, 2011
An Interview from the "On the Tudor Trail" blog
I was recently approached for an interview for this wonderful blog maintained by fellow Tudorphile Natalie Grueninger. I've reprinted it below, and you can read the full post at "On the Tudor" here. Enjoy! And thank you, Natalie, for the interview.
Q & A with Nancy Bilyeau
Welcome to On the Tudor Trail, Nancy! Could you share with us a little about yourself and your background?
I am a magazine editor and writer, living with my husband and our two children in New York City. I've worked for Parade, Rolling Stone, Entertainment Weekly, Ladies' Home Journal and other publications. My last staff job was deputy editor of InStyle magazine. So my entire career has been in nonfiction. But about six years ago, I started feeling a hunger to tell my own stories. The Crown is my first novel.
Why do we have such an appetite for the Tudors?
With me it's almost a lifelong obsession. I'm a member of a facebook group called "I Was Interested in the Tudors Before They Were Cool." Ha! I saw the television series "The Six Wives of Henry VIII" and "Elizabeth R" as a child and fell in love with the 16th century. I read everything I could. I remember when I was 12 years old, at the public library in suburban Michigan, trying to check out a book about the divorce of Katherine of Aragon and Henry VIII, and the librarian wouldn't let me have it because it had the word "divorce" in the title and I was too young! Luckily that didn't stop me from building my own library over the years. Every time I entered a bookstore, I'd swing by "European History—England" and "Biography." If something tempted me, I'd walk up to the cash register with the book under my arm–say a biography about Anne Boleyn–and my husband would exclaim, "How can you buy another one? What more can you learn?" And I'd just put it down on the counter, saying, "There are always new interpretations."
Why are any of us so excited about the Tudors?
The dynasty has everything: love, death, war, betrayal, greed, sacrifice, beauty. So many dramatic stories—look at Lady Jane Grey as just one example. A scholarly 16-year-old girl tries to take the throne after the death of her cousin Edward VI, propelled by a manipulative father-in-law, and reigns for nine days before being deposed by Edward's older sister, who'd raised an army of followers. When told Queen Mary is the rightful monarch, Jane says, "Can we not go home now?" Game of Thrones couldn't come up with anything better.
But English history is full of amazing stories. Why do the Tudors enthrall more people than the Plantaganets of the Wars of the Roses, a hundred years earlier? I think there are several reasons. The writing in Tudor times is more accessible to us, from the works of Erasmus and Sir Thomas More and John Knox to the poetry of Sir Thomas Wyatt, Edmund Spencer and Sir Philip Sidney. The Tudors also draw us in because we can "see" them. Contrast the lifelike portraiture of Hans Holbein the Younger with the paintings done in late medieval times. Huge difference. You know, the Fricke Collection in New York City has the Holbein paintings of Sir Thomas More and Thomas Cromwell. You get such a vivid impression of character looking at each. Occasionally when I am stumped over my books, I jump on a subway and go to the Fricke for fresh inspiration. They are hung in the same beautiful room—I'm not sure how they'd like that, actually.
I discuss the Tudor fascination with friends, and one of them, Bean Chan, points out that the cult of individualism rose in the early Renaissance, from Rome to London. This was a new development in history and something we recognize today "because it is so rife in our own culture, for better or for worse," as Bean says. And the Tudors are less obscured by bureaucracies, parliamentary movements and industrial democracies than later European dynasties. They are a family, front and center.
Who is your favourite Tudor personality and why?
That is such a hard question! I am fascinated with so many of them. But if you push me against the wall, I'd have to say Elizabeth I. I admire her determination to survive before she took the throne and her dedication to her country afterward. She was funny and lively and loyal and furiously intelligent: "If I were turned out of my realm in my petticoat, I would prosper anywhere in Christendom."
What do you think was Henry VIII's greatest achievement?
If you mean "greatest" in the sense of most lasting impact, it would have to be breaking from the Catholic Church. But if you take away his marital misadventures and his political brutality—and that's taking away a lot!—his personal accomplishments were still staggering. He was a fanatical builder of homes and ships; he wrote music, collected gorgeous tapestries, set trends in fashion.
There are many public misconceptions about Henry VIII and his Queens. In your opinion, what is one of the worst?
Well, all of the six wives seem to share the spotlight rather equally. In the television series, each one gets her own episode. In the rhymes, songs and some of the books, the attention given to each of the six is roughly equal. But Henry's first wife, Katherine of Aragon, was married to him for far, far longer than any of the others: twenty-three years. She was a good wife, too. And a dedicated queen. I'm as captivated by Anne Boleyn as anyone else, but when you sit down and really contemplate it, that was a breathtakingly horrible way to treat a woman you'd been married to for decades, who was pregnant with your children. Katherine of Aragon should be the founding member of the first wives club!
Your debut novel, The Crown, will be released in January 2012. Please share with us a little about your novel and the inspiration behind it.
My book is a historical thriller that takes place in 1537 and early 1538, set amid the Dissolution of the Monasteries. My main character, a Catholic novice, is fictional, but she is a member of a real family—the Staffords—and she wants to take final vows and become a nun at a place that really existed: the Dominican Priory of Dartford, in Kent. In The Crown, Joanna loves Dartford but she leaves without permission to witness the execution at Smithfield of her beloved cousin, a rebel in the Pilgrimage of Grace. That fateful decision sets loose a series of escalating events. She gets arrested and imprisoned in the Tower of London, and must go on a very dangerous quest in order to protect people she loves, and to try to save a way of life that is disintegrating all around her.
Tell us about the process you followed when researching your novel. Do you have any rituals that you follow when writing?
My process was pretty crazy. I wrote the book while working full-time in the magazine business and raising two young children. I wrote during vacations instead of traveling. I wrote on subways. I wrote in Starbucks on weekend mornings, hoping desperately I'd get a table and an electrical outlet as I toted my computer over. During the home stretch, I woke up at 5 a.m. and wrote until my children woke up at 7 a.m.
The debate about how factual historical fiction should be is one that often surfaces. What is your opinion?
I think it is vitally important to do your research but you must also bring these people to life. So you must use your imagination and creative powers within the context of historical realities.
Are there any authors that have proved particularly inspiring to you in your career?
The most influential one would have to be Norah Lofts. I just reread The Concubine—it's sensational. She tells the story of Anne Boleyn in a series of richly detailed and psychologically powerful anecdotes. Each one is a gem.
Are you planning to write more novels set in Tudor England?
Yes! I am writing the second book now. It follows Joanna on to even more dangerous missions. As bad as things get for her in The Crown, they get far, far worse in the next book.
I enjoy hearing from people of the past in their own words. Letters reveal so much about the writer and the time in which they lived. Do you have a favourite historical quote?
I do. It is Sir Thomas More's, from A Dialogue Concerning Heresies, in 1529. "If any good thing shall go forward, something must be adventured."
Q & A with Nancy Bilyeau
Welcome to On the Tudor Trail, Nancy! Could you share with us a little about yourself and your background?
I am a magazine editor and writer, living with my husband and our two children in New York City. I've worked for Parade, Rolling Stone, Entertainment Weekly, Ladies' Home Journal and other publications. My last staff job was deputy editor of InStyle magazine. So my entire career has been in nonfiction. But about six years ago, I started feeling a hunger to tell my own stories. The Crown is my first novel.
Why do we have such an appetite for the Tudors?
With me it's almost a lifelong obsession. I'm a member of a facebook group called "I Was Interested in the Tudors Before They Were Cool." Ha! I saw the television series "The Six Wives of Henry VIII" and "Elizabeth R" as a child and fell in love with the 16th century. I read everything I could. I remember when I was 12 years old, at the public library in suburban Michigan, trying to check out a book about the divorce of Katherine of Aragon and Henry VIII, and the librarian wouldn't let me have it because it had the word "divorce" in the title and I was too young! Luckily that didn't stop me from building my own library over the years. Every time I entered a bookstore, I'd swing by "European History—England" and "Biography." If something tempted me, I'd walk up to the cash register with the book under my arm–say a biography about Anne Boleyn–and my husband would exclaim, "How can you buy another one? What more can you learn?" And I'd just put it down on the counter, saying, "There are always new interpretations."
Why are any of us so excited about the Tudors?
The dynasty has everything: love, death, war, betrayal, greed, sacrifice, beauty. So many dramatic stories—look at Lady Jane Grey as just one example. A scholarly 16-year-old girl tries to take the throne after the death of her cousin Edward VI, propelled by a manipulative father-in-law, and reigns for nine days before being deposed by Edward's older sister, who'd raised an army of followers. When told Queen Mary is the rightful monarch, Jane says, "Can we not go home now?" Game of Thrones couldn't come up with anything better.
But English history is full of amazing stories. Why do the Tudors enthrall more people than the Plantaganets of the Wars of the Roses, a hundred years earlier? I think there are several reasons. The writing in Tudor times is more accessible to us, from the works of Erasmus and Sir Thomas More and John Knox to the poetry of Sir Thomas Wyatt, Edmund Spencer and Sir Philip Sidney. The Tudors also draw us in because we can "see" them. Contrast the lifelike portraiture of Hans Holbein the Younger with the paintings done in late medieval times. Huge difference. You know, the Fricke Collection in New York City has the Holbein paintings of Sir Thomas More and Thomas Cromwell. You get such a vivid impression of character looking at each. Occasionally when I am stumped over my books, I jump on a subway and go to the Fricke for fresh inspiration. They are hung in the same beautiful room—I'm not sure how they'd like that, actually.
I discuss the Tudor fascination with friends, and one of them, Bean Chan, points out that the cult of individualism rose in the early Renaissance, from Rome to London. This was a new development in history and something we recognize today "because it is so rife in our own culture, for better or for worse," as Bean says. And the Tudors are less obscured by bureaucracies, parliamentary movements and industrial democracies than later European dynasties. They are a family, front and center.
Who is your favourite Tudor personality and why?
That is such a hard question! I am fascinated with so many of them. But if you push me against the wall, I'd have to say Elizabeth I. I admire her determination to survive before she took the throne and her dedication to her country afterward. She was funny and lively and loyal and furiously intelligent: "If I were turned out of my realm in my petticoat, I would prosper anywhere in Christendom."
What do you think was Henry VIII's greatest achievement?
If you mean "greatest" in the sense of most lasting impact, it would have to be breaking from the Catholic Church. But if you take away his marital misadventures and his political brutality—and that's taking away a lot!—his personal accomplishments were still staggering. He was a fanatical builder of homes and ships; he wrote music, collected gorgeous tapestries, set trends in fashion.
There are many public misconceptions about Henry VIII and his Queens. In your opinion, what is one of the worst?
Well, all of the six wives seem to share the spotlight rather equally. In the television series, each one gets her own episode. In the rhymes, songs and some of the books, the attention given to each of the six is roughly equal. But Henry's first wife, Katherine of Aragon, was married to him for far, far longer than any of the others: twenty-three years. She was a good wife, too. And a dedicated queen. I'm as captivated by Anne Boleyn as anyone else, but when you sit down and really contemplate it, that was a breathtakingly horrible way to treat a woman you'd been married to for decades, who was pregnant with your children. Katherine of Aragon should be the founding member of the first wives club!
Your debut novel, The Crown, will be released in January 2012. Please share with us a little about your novel and the inspiration behind it.
My book is a historical thriller that takes place in 1537 and early 1538, set amid the Dissolution of the Monasteries. My main character, a Catholic novice, is fictional, but she is a member of a real family—the Staffords—and she wants to take final vows and become a nun at a place that really existed: the Dominican Priory of Dartford, in Kent. In The Crown, Joanna loves Dartford but she leaves without permission to witness the execution at Smithfield of her beloved cousin, a rebel in the Pilgrimage of Grace. That fateful decision sets loose a series of escalating events. She gets arrested and imprisoned in the Tower of London, and must go on a very dangerous quest in order to protect people she loves, and to try to save a way of life that is disintegrating all around her.
Tell us about the process you followed when researching your novel. Do you have any rituals that you follow when writing?
My process was pretty crazy. I wrote the book while working full-time in the magazine business and raising two young children. I wrote during vacations instead of traveling. I wrote on subways. I wrote in Starbucks on weekend mornings, hoping desperately I'd get a table and an electrical outlet as I toted my computer over. During the home stretch, I woke up at 5 a.m. and wrote until my children woke up at 7 a.m.
The debate about how factual historical fiction should be is one that often surfaces. What is your opinion?
I think it is vitally important to do your research but you must also bring these people to life. So you must use your imagination and creative powers within the context of historical realities.
Are there any authors that have proved particularly inspiring to you in your career?
The most influential one would have to be Norah Lofts. I just reread The Concubine—it's sensational. She tells the story of Anne Boleyn in a series of richly detailed and psychologically powerful anecdotes. Each one is a gem.
Are you planning to write more novels set in Tudor England?
Yes! I am writing the second book now. It follows Joanna on to even more dangerous missions. As bad as things get for her in The Crown, they get far, far worse in the next book.
I enjoy hearing from people of the past in their own words. Letters reveal so much about the writer and the time in which they lived. Do you have a favourite historical quote?
I do. It is Sir Thomas More's, from A Dialogue Concerning Heresies, in 1529. "If any good thing shall go forward, something must be adventured."
April 2, 2011
Welcome to my new website
Thanks for visiting my new site. It's one of the many things we've been working on to prepare for the release of my historical thriller, The Crown.
This novel was a labor of love and many years in the making, and I can't wait to share with you, the reader. Please check back regularly and subscribe to this blog for updates. And thank you for granting me the privilege of your time as one of my readers.
Best,
Nancy
This novel was a labor of love and many years in the making, and I can't wait to share with you, the reader. Please check back regularly and subscribe to this blog for updates. And thank you for granting me the privilege of your time as one of my readers.
Best,
Nancy
