Liza Perrat's Blog, page 9

#FrenchRevolution #novel #onsale for Limited Time Only

 

Extract from Spirit of Lost Angels ... special price for a limited time. Only 99c/p at the following retailers:

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... fire was the most frightening thing of all; worse than the sickness that ate your face away, or the one that made you cough blood. Lightning fires had destroyed whole villages. Outside, the trees moaned as the wind whistled through the woods, but the rain had slowed. The twins were bored with the praying and scampered over to pet the sheep.My father frowned, and stroked his chin; my mother fiddled with her cap.Wood cracked, and splintered. Maman and Papa glanced at each other. ‘Leave the sheep, Félicité, Félix,’ Maman said. ‘Come here to me.’ I could tell she was worried but my little brother and sister didn’t listen to her, and kept tugging on the wool. A great roar and a rush of air made my ears pop, as the oak tree crashedthrough the roof, right on top of the sheep and chickens. Maman screamed and threw herself at the fallen tree. The living hell of La Salpêtrière Asylum in Paris‘Run, children, go!’ Papa said. Through the noise and the mess, I tried to reach my mother. ‘Maman, Maman!’ I wanted to hold her hand but Papa was pushing me away. ‘Go!’ he said. ‘Go, now!’ Terrified, I stumbled outside with Grégoire. Flames spurted from the roof like great orange fingers reaching for the sky, and inside, my father was still shouting at Maman.‘Mathilde, we must get out now!’Papa staggered from the burning cottage, dragging Maman behind him. My mother’s head whipped around as she pulled against him. ‘No, let me go. The twins!’ She dug her nails into Papa’s arm. ‘My babies … must … save my babies!’ Papa pushed her to me but Maman was heavy, and we both fell to the ground. My father ran back inside. Grégoire was brave too, tearing in after Papa, even though smoke was puffing out of the doorway, and from the hole in the roof.‘No, Grégoire, come back.’ Maman’s voice was faint against the whooshing flames. ‘Emile, are you all right? Have you got the twins?’ she kept saying. The villagers came running down the slope, shrieking against the noise of the fire––all talking at once so I couldn’t understand what any one of them was saying. ‘… fire start … lightning?’ ‘Is everyone out …?’ ‘Quick, get water … river!’ ‘The will of God … a terrible thing.’ Jeanne de Valois... brilliant conwoman infamous for "The Necklace Affair" I covered my ears, Père Joffroy’s voice roaring inside my head. ‘Water and fire––embrace those symbols of purification!’ I did not understand how we could embrace a thing that was destroying our home.Papa and Grégoire staggered outside, clutching their throats and gasping. My father lurched towards Maman, tears rolling down his face. I had never seen him cry, and it frightened me. Papa was shaking his head and falling into Maman’s arms, but she couldn’t hold him up and he collapsed on the ground. The rain stopped. The storm was over, but it was hot, so burning hot that the villagers had to drag Papa further and further from the dragon fire that was feasting on our home.Very quickly, there was nothing left, only the fireplace standing in a mess of black wood, stones and branches. The ground was a carpet of twigs, leaves and small birds, their necks bent, their eyes wide open. I took my mother’s hand. It was floppy and cold. ‘Where’s Félicité? And Félix?’Maman did not answer me, and her fingers closed around the talisman she wore on a strip of leather around her neck––a little bone angel carving. 

Skype Virtual #bookclubs for #readers #amreading

Some of the most rewarding, not to mention GREAT FUN, book-related events for me have been visiting bookclubs, both physical and, more recently, virtual (via Skype).


The experiences have been interesting, fascinating and humbling, with readers’ questions, interpretations and insights into my stories: interested to learn their differing opinions of my novels, humbled by their praise and encouragement and fascinated by their depth of perception of story-line, characters and their motivations.











I always come away feeling I’ve learned more about my novel and its characters; things I was sometimes not even aware existed!


Readers’ suggestions about sequels, characters they want to know more about, and settings they’d like to return to, have spurred me on to write more stories.

Needless to say, I welcome any opportunity to engage more with book clubs. If your book club is interested in a Skype meeting, just send me an email (liza.perrat@gmail.com) or FB message (Liza Perrat) and I will arrange for a group discount of whichever of my books you choose to read.

Currently, the first novel, Spirit of Lost Angels , of my France-based historical The Bone Angel trilogy, is on sale for 99c/p for a LIMITED TIME only!

e-Book available at all Amazon stores, Kobo, Barnes & Noble and Smashwords.


Cheers, happy bookclubbing and I hope to "meet" you soon!

International #Author-themed Twitter #SELFeChat

Very pleased to have been invited to join @Porter_Anderson, and fellow international authors, Roz Morris and Diana Stevan on 21st April, 3pm EST (that's 8pm in the UK, and 9pm for me in France!).

 Please feel free to join the chat ... the more the merrier! Click here for more information.

Rural #France, #LaSalpêtrière Asylum, #Bastille storming. #histfic novel on sale 99c/p

Extract from Spirit of Lost Angels ... special price. Limited Time. Only 99c/p at the following retailers:



Amazon
Kobo 

Barnes & Noble
Smashwords






 ... ‘Where am I? Where are you taking me?’ My words came out in hoarse, sharp whispers. ‘Where’s Grégoire? Find Léon, he’ll know what to do.’

‘Welcome to paradise, my lovely.’ The man’s breath was foul on my cheek.

He pushed me down into a chair. Why was he binding my limbs to the chair legs? Something moved across my head. I glanced at the floor––at the spatter of cinnamon waves covering the grimy tiles. My head felt different. I shook it and found it light, unburdened.

I hadn’t the strength to struggle as the man removed my clothes and shoved me into a wooden tub, nor when he fastened something cold and heavy about my neck.

La Salpêtrière Asylum, Paris.‘If you move a muscle, that iron ring will break your creamy neck,’ he said. I dared not move and I breathed so slightly I could barely inhale enough air. ‘Have a nice bath, my lovely.’

The shock of icy water hitting my face was so great I did not even cry out. It gushed into my eyes, my nose and my mouth. I tried to breathe, coughing and spluttering. The cold water came again, and again.

‘Stop, no! Please!’ Still the water hit me.

It stopped, the man unchained my neck and the next thing I knew, a woman was standing over me, holding a chemise and an ash-grey dress.

‘Put these on. Hurry, girl. Time to go and meet your fellow lunatics.’ She laughed, but I had no idea what was funny.

The man was back, and leading me across a deserted yard entombed in high walls. He hurried me down steps slick with moss, and nodded beyond the wall. ‘Shame your room got no river view. Nothing to remind you of home, n’est-ce pas, my lovely?’

I didn’t know what he meant but I flinched, as we’d reached a deep place where only the thinnest, grey rope of light penetrated. I quivered with the fear, the unknown. Where was the bright sky and those leaves the colour of fire? I was sure I would feel better; understand it all, if only I could get back to the sky and the leaves.

Cries began to beat against my eardrums––sounds so raw with despair I was certain I must be dead, and I had reached some vast hall of Hell.

I was still too terrified to struggle as the man thrust me into a damp room, and a smudgy blot of women with shaven heads. Some were clothed as I was, others stood naked, and thinner than scarecrows.

‘Where am I?’ I looked about wildly, trying to run from the swarming women towards the only light that came from a barred grid in the door.

‘No, no, I can’t stay here!’

There was nowhere to go; no way to get out. I backed into a corner, cowering behind my arms across my face.

‘Don’t take my Rubie … cold in her basket. Stealing Madeleine’s milk.’

La Salpêtrière Mental Asylum, Paris.I clutched at my breasts, but I held only withered knobs, and I felt again the fierce suckling of the rich, robust infants, sapping my energy and leaving me too exhausted to stand.

‘Plus de pain. No more bread.’

The women’s words mewed softly from some distant labyrinth of my mind I could not reach. I think I moaned.

The man was quickly upon me again, fastening chains about my wrists and ankles, and I could move from the wall only as far as the chains allowed. I caught snatches of his words that meant nothing.

‘… mad … incurable … drowned … river … Insane Quarter.’

‘What river?’ I gazed about me. There was no river running into this sea of filth.

‘No point clawing at the walls, imbecile,’ a woman said. ‘Nobody will help you in here.’

I stopped. I fought no more, so weak that I slumped to the ground and rested my head on ragged straw, which squeaked with the bustle of small creatures. I didn’t know what else to do, so I covered my ears to block out the dipping, mournful cries pulsing from the women’s lips––sounds like birds that had lost the nest. ...

If you would like more information on La Salpêtrière Asylum, and how I used it in my research form Spirit of Lost Angels, please refer to this blog post.

Interested in #France pre and during #FrenchRevolution? Spirit of Lost Angels #ebook special price 99p/c

Extract from Spirit of Lost Angels ... special price. Limited Time. Only 99c/p at the following retailers:

Amazon
Kobo 

Barnes & Noble
Smashwords





Even before any of us spoke, I think Maman sensed something was very wrong. She said nothing though, as Monsieur Bruyère told her of the accident. Her face a milk-white mask, her green eyes wide and staring somewhere beyond, her fingers groped about her neck for her angel pendant. She rubbed the old bone between her thumb and forefinger. Ancien Règime‘Death came instantly, Madame Charpentier,’ Monsieur Bruyère said. ‘Emile did not suffer.’Still Maman did not flinch; the only movement was the angel pendant rising and falling with her shallow breaths. My mother’s tears came only when Grégoire told her the noble didn’t even stop; he hadn’t descended from his decorated carriage to check on the commoner he’d run down. Women marching to VersaillesMy tears came too, burning my cheeks, and I wept long and hard for my father; for the fascinating stories he conjured up to entertain me––tales of werewolves, of flying snakes with boils for eyes, and of green men who looked frightening but were harmless. I sobbed for his stories from the far-off coast––of mermen who broke fishermen’s nets and of horned men who stole young girls, because there were no horned women. I cried for the touch of his tender hand, which seasons of carpentry and knife-grinding had roughened and calloused.

#France #histfic #novel on sale. 99p/c Limited Time Only

Extract from Spirit of Lost Angels ... special price for a limited time. Only 99c/p at the following retailers:

Amazon
Kobo 

Barnes & Noble
Smashwords




'Robespierre is dead, by the #guillotine!


All of #Paris is frolicking on the streets, over the death of that bloodthirsty dictator ' ....
Marie Antoinette

'Cheering as when they guillotined fat Louis and his Austrian whore!'

#TriskeleBooks mentorship #competition for #authors: The Big Five Competition!

Calling all writers and authors! Don't miss your chance to win a year's mentoring from Triskele Books. From manuscript to publication - worth over £5000!


Read about the competition here.


Enter our Big5 competition here.

#FranceLit: #writers, translations, language, setting and much more!

For our Triskele Tweetchat on Tuesday 26 January, the Triskele team tackled #FranceLit. French writers, translations, setting, language, films, theatre and poetry. Some of the fascinating recommendations below.
Betty Blue – Philippe Dijan (recommended by @agnieszkasshoes) Perfume – Patrick Süskind (recommended by @LizaPerrat) Pure – Andrew Miller (recommended by several)
The Chase – Lorna Fergusson (recommended by @JJMarsh1) Delirium – The Rimbaud Delusion - by Barbara Scott-Emmett (recommended by @TriskeleBooks) Five Quarters of an Orange – Joanne Harris (recommended by @LizaPerrat) All the Light We Cannot See, by Anthony Doerr (recommended by several) Love in Provence series by Patricia Sands (recommended by @TriskeleBooks) The Three Musketeers, by Alexandre Dumas (recommended by @JDSmith_Design) Blood Rose Angel, by Liza Perrat (recommended by @DrCarolCooper) Join us on Twitter every other Tuesday for a chat about books, authors and inspiring ideas. #triskeletuesday

Who Knows of a Better Rock Pool?

Here comes the sun ....




Favourite rock pool at North Wollongong Beach



Continental Swimming Pool, Wollongong Harbour


 


I'm taking a well-earned break from work and writing tomorrow, flying home to Australia for all the great things that country has to offer: best beaches and rock pools in the world, sun, surf and cappuccinos with friends at the harbour.











And since I'll be in the air all day tomorrow: Happy Sainte Héloïse day for Thursday, 11th February.

Héloïse was the Middle Ages saint on which the heroine of the third book in The Bone Angel series, Blood Rose Angel, was based.




Happy Holidays to moi, and here's a short extract from Blood Rose Angel :



The outlaw looked on the birth scene with obvious surprise. A scowl darkened his grimy, sweat-slick face. ‘Christ drowning in merde. What the …?’ He stepped inside, a stench of smoked fish and old ale filling the room, the horsewhip he brandished in one shovel-like hand making unearthly cracks. Despite the fearsome display, and the sword in his scabbard, a reckless courage flared inside me. ‘Get out,’ I ordered, jabbing a finger at the door. ‘Can’t you see this is a birthing room … a sacred place for women only?’ The outlaw glowered down at me. ‘Bit bold for a woman, aren’t you? Who might you be?’‘I’m the midwife, and I order you out of this cot now!’ A drop of sweat rolled down my nose.The room remained silent, save the outlaw’s bellows-like panting, and the ragged breaths of the women and Nica’s boys. The man’s gaze flickered sideways, locked on the newborn. He stepped towards Alix and her baby. ‘What’s wrong with its head?’ ‘Nothing,’ I said. ‘He’s a perfect child.’‘Yes, perfect,’ Poppa affirmed.‘Looks like the head of the Devil itself.’ The outlaw laid his whip over the baby’s brow, stroking the tender skin with the tip, as if caressing a kitten. ‘Such a monstrous thing don’t deserve to live.’ His scarred face puckered into a grin that could have melted stone. The new mother shrank away, whimpering and clutching her son to her breast. ‘Don’t hurt that newborn,’ I said, ‘or God will see you straight to Hell.’The outlaw turned his crooked stare on me. In a movement more deft than a slaughterer’s knife, he wrenched the babe from Alix’s grasp. Jerking the newborn free of his swaddling, he held the bawling child upside down by the ankles. As the infant screamed, writhing like a trout snagged fresh from the Vionne, the outlaw eyed the cot wall beside him. My insides seized with sudden terror.Oh Lord no! Blessed Virgin save him. ‘Stop,’ I said. ‘Give me that child.’ I began rocking my angel pendant back and forth before the brigand, stepping towards him until I was level with the black hairs unfurling from his tunic. His eyes widened, fixed on the talisman’s glowing blue and green ones.I knew the newborn’s life––probably all our lives––depended on not showing him fear. As a woman who’d lived without a man at her hearth for almost two years, I’d learned that terror only fuelled such lawless beasts.With the soft, low voice I’d used to sing my daughter to sleep, I said, ‘If you don’t hand me the baby, and leave this cottage right now, a pack of wolves will pounce on you as you sit around the fire with your friends, boasting the spoils of Lucie. They’ll rip out your black heart and feed it to the Devil.’Still gripping the bawling child, the outlaw’s eyes didn’t flicker from the swinging pendant. ‘Give me the child,’ I went on, in my lullaby voice. ‘Pass him to me now.’ The pendant swung back and forth, back and forth.Still not taking his gaze from the talisman, the outlaw handed me the baby.As he backed out of the cottage step by step, his eyes still on my pendant, everyone remained still and silent as if staked to that earthen floor. Even the baby, cradled in my arms, was quiet.Outside, I heard the outlaw curse, remounting his horse. As he cantered away, I let out a long, relieved breath and the women struck up a babble.From the doorway, Poppa shouted after him: ‘You’re the Devil’s now. By his hairy arse, may you choke to death and go to him soon!’‘And a cloak of serpents wrap about your neck and strangle the life from you!’ Alix’s mother added. I swaddled the baby again and as I placed him in Alix’s arms I noticed the gossips had turned their gazes on me, straying to the angel pendant, then––as if they dared not look at it for too long––back to my face.‘Oh there’s no need to be afraid of it,’ I said, my tone glib. ‘Neither my talisman nor I have the power to curse that man … or anyone else. I only made up the wolf story to scare him off.’Nobody spoke. No one moved. They can’t be as stupid as that thug … surely they believe me?‘It was all lies, don’t you see?’ I let out a nervous half-laugh. ‘To stop him murdering Alix’s beautiful boy.’ ‘But he believed you.’ Poppa’s face crinkled into a hesitant smile. ‘And by the Virgin’s milk, truth or not, that’s what counts, doesn’t it? A brave heroine is our Midwife Héloïse!’ Gnarly fist raised, she looked around at the women, as if inciting them to agree with her; to show their comradeship.‘Hear, hear,’ the old mother said, a bit half-heartedly. ‘Thank you for saving my boy,’ Alix said.‘But how can we be sure it weren’t no lie?’ Nica’s eyes narrowed, glittery with distrust. ‘You know what they say … the better the witch, the better the midwife.’
Where to Buy Blood Rose Angel:AmazonSmashwordsB & NKobo  

Did #Nostradamus find a cure for #Black Plague?

The rose-petal tonic that Héloïse, my heroine of Blood Rose Angel (novel about the 14th century Black Plague in France) concocts to try and stop the plague spread is based on that of Michel de Nostradame, two centuries after the first outbreak.

Better known by his pseudonym, Nostradamus was one of the most fascinating personalities of 16th century France.


On completion of his medical studies at the University of Montpellier, Nostradamus took to the countryside with his medical and astrological books and assisted in the care of Bubonic Plague victims. He prescribed fresh, unpolluted air and water and clean bedding, removal of the corpses and orders to clean the streets. Each morning before sunrise, he oversaw the harvest of rose petals which he then dried and crushed into fine powder, and made his “rose pills”. Patients were advised to keep under their tongues at all times without swallowing them.


Nostradamus believed the plague was spread by contaminated air and that clean air protected people, but perhaps his success lay in the fact that fleas, which transmit the disease from rats to humans, were repelled by the rose pills’ strong smell, so at least the healthy didn’t catch it. 

Whatever the reasons, Nostradamus was reputed to have saved thousands from plague in Narbonne, Carcassonne, Toulouse and Bordeaux. 

Nostradamus' Rose-pill Recipe... (good luck finding all these ingredients in your local store, ha!)

Take one ounce of the sawdust or shavings of cypress-wood, as green as you can find, six ounces of Florentine violet-root, three ounces of cloves, three drams of sweet calamus, and six drams of aloes-wood.

Reduce the whole to powder before it spoils.

Next, take three or four hundred in-folded red roses, fresh and perfectly clean, and gathered before dewfall.

Pound them vigorously in a marble mortar with a wooden pestle.

When you are half through pounding them, add to them the above mentioned powder and immediately pound it all vigorously, while sprinkling on it a little rose-juice.

When everything is well mixed together, form it into little flat lozenges, as you would pills, and let them dry in the shade, for they will smell good…

And in order to make the mixture even more excellent, add as much musk and ambergris as you either can or wish.

If these two are added I do not doubt that you will produce a superbly pleasant perfume.

Pulverise the said musk and ambergris, dissolving it with rose-juice, then mix it in and dry in the shade.

Quite apart from the goodness and scent that this mixture lends to the items and mixtures mentioned above, you only have to keep it in the mouth a little to make your breath smell wonderful all day…


EXTRACT from Blood Rose Angel (third in The Bone Angel Trilogy: 3 standalone stories exploring different generations of a French village family against backdrops of the 1348 Black Plague, the French Revolution and WW2 Nazi-occupied France).



'The pestilence has taken many others in the ten days you’ve been gone. Everyone is afraid it’ll get as bad as in the south. They say that in Bordeaux, bodies are piling in the streets, and in Avignon four hundred are dying daily, the graveyards so full they’re throwing corpses into the Rhône River. At the monastery, all the monks are dead.’ She let out a crazy kind of cackle. ‘Perhaps this truly is the end of the world.’‘The end of the world … could that really be?’ I kept shaking my head at that impossible thought. ‘No, Isa, after all this suffering, we can’t let it end here! I’ve had idle time to think about what we spoke of before––treating the pestilence as a garden weed––and I hope I’ve found a way to stop it spreading.’‘Stop the pestilence spreading? You must be mad, Héloïse. You know there’s no cure and––’‘Not a cure … listen to me. When I think about the people who’ve died in Lucie, none have been silverhairs like you. Why is that, do you think?’‘Because the old ones, such as Poppa and me, must be good fighters of sickness; experienced soldiers in the battle against disease. Or we’d already be in the ground.’‘So I say we arm the children and the young … give them weapons to fight off sickness,’ I said. ‘What if we mixed strength-building rose petals with other such plants into a fortifying tonic?’ I took a quick breath. ‘We know that where there’s more filth and vermin the pestilence flourishes, so we should also insist on frequent scrubbing with the farmers’ sheep-washing soap. People should wash their hands in rose-water, or vinegar, and we must tell them all to wear masks not only when treating the sick but always while this pestilence rages.’  

Blood Rose Angel print and e-book is available at the following retailers:

Amazon paperback
Amazon Ebook 
Smashwords 
Barnes & Noble/Nook 
Kobo