Category: Guest Post

Discover the Dark Ages with John Broughton

John Broughton posting me a letter

John Broughton spends a great deal of his time stuck in the Dark Ages. As a historian, John is happy to become immersed in the gruesome eighth century.  He is not afraid to walk beside kings, noblemen and monks who inhabit a world where it is ‘kill or be killed’.  John’s novels are praised for the historical accuracy and take you into the heart of the bloody battles. Though a little afraid, I asked John to explain what inspired him to write his third novel Saints and Sinners. John sent me a letter via a gallant messenger.

John Broughton Saints and Sinners

My third published novel, Saints and Sinners, was inspired by a love of my county, Lincolnshire, and of the Anglo-Saxon period in general. Putting the two together leads one to the Kingdom of Lindsey, the least-known of the Dark-Age kingdoms. Starting from the apparently simple desire to write a novel about this kingdom, I soon realised that our knowledge of Lindsey is very limited, being almost exclusively dependent on archaeological revelations.

The names we have for Lindsey are from a debatable list of kings, who were anyway, sub-kings to the powerful neighbouring Kings of Northumberland or Mercia. One name, however, kept recurring in my research – that of Guthlac: the hermit saint who founded the monastery of Crowland. His life was recorded in a hagiographic work by a monk, Felix, crucially within a generation of his living.

Saint Guthlac takes a boat in the Fens to Crowland

What a character was Guthlac! Setting aside the monastic praise, isn’t it interesting how a red-blooded Saxon nobleman left a life of military adventuring, ale-guzzling and wenching to become an ascetic in the wilderness of the Fens? This apart, his best friend was a certain Aethelbald, another Mercian noble, devoted to the former lifestyle of Guthlac. This sinful nobleman was considered a dangerous pretender to the throne of Mercia: so much so that he was exiled and fled into the Fens where his old friend sheltered him for a while.

A fragment of a cross shaft from Repton includes on one face a carved image of a mounted man which, it has been suggested, may be a memorial to Aethelbald.

What makes Aethelbald even more intriguing is that from being a hunted exile he became one of the greatest of Mercian kings. My idea of a novel about Lindsey transformed into one about Mercia too. By the way, Aethelbald was condemned in a letter from Boniface for seducing nuns. The novel is truly about saints and sinners!

Guthlac’s life is still commemorated. Apart from the ruins of the Crowland monastery – still with the tallest bell tower in the land – his name lingers on in the Saint Guthlac School in Crowland, and even in street names in places as far away as Hereford. Of course, we must not forget St Guthlac’s Church in Market Deeping and another in the fenlands at Fishtoft is dedicated to him.

St Guthlac, tormented by demons, is handed a scourge by St Bartholomew, Guthlac Roll, 1210, British Library

As for Aethelbald, well, he’s remembered in the sequel to Saints and Sinners, entitled Mixed Blessings, scheduled for publication on January 25 2019, dealing wholly with the vicissitudes of his long and successful reign. A fragment of a cross shaft from Repton includes on one face a carved image of a mounted man which may be a memorial to Æthelbald. The figure is of a man wearing mail armour and brandishing a sword and shield, with a diadem bound around his head. If this is Æthelbald, it’s the earliest large-scale pictorial representation of an English monarch.

John posted his letter in Italy, but I received the letter via a messenger on horseback.  The messenger arrived on Offa’s Dyke at Tintern. He told me he was from a dark and treacherous land and couldn’t be sure who had followed him.  He was required on the battlefield, so I bid him farewell, and watched as he rode his horse through the landscape. We will have to read John Broughton’s books to solve the mystery of where the messenger returned to.

John Broughton Mixed Blessings

You can read Saint and Sinners and the sequel Mixed Blessings.  You are warned ‘Saxon times are not called the Dark Ages for nothing. It is a violent, unrecognisable world of kill or be killed …’

In all of John Broughton’s stories you will find:

‘All the classic elements of an adventure story, danger, heroism, cunning and treachery. The author knows his period well but wears his history lightly’ – Rosemary Noble 

John Broughton was born in Cleethorpes, Lincolnshire, and studied Medieval and Modern History at the University of Nottingham. He also studied Archaeology, distinguishing himself with a Roman find on a dig at Ancaster. He taught History and English for a decade, becoming Head of Department of History in a Manchester grammar school. A restless period saw him experiment with writing children’s stories while working in a variety of jobs before moving in Italy to teach EFL at a southern university. Teaching and work as a translator of books kept him busy until he retired in January 2014. Since then he has taken up fiction writing once more – returning to his great love, the Anglo-Saxon period. His debut historical novel was The Purple Thread followed by Wyrd of the Wolf.

You can also meet John at:

https://jessiecahalin.com/history-tour-chat-anglo-saxonist/

Slipping back to 499 AD with Julia Ibbotson

Julia posting her guest post to Books in Handbag Blog

Julia Ibbotson contacted me and offered me the opportunity to slip into 499AD and meet the characters of her latest novel. Lady Vivianne is from 499AD and Dr Viv DuLac living in the present day. In A Shape on the Air, the worlds of these two women collide to create a fascinating narrative.  Fascinated by the concept, I asked Julia to explain more about her novel.

Dear Jessie,

My latest novel, A Shape on the Air, is about two women, divided by centuries, united by a quest for truth. Dr Viv DuLac, a medievalist, is devastated when her partner Pete walks out (and with her best friend too) and it seems that she is about to lose everything. Drunk and desperate, her world quite literally turns upside down when she finds herself in the body of the fifth century Lady Vivianne. Lady V has her own traumas; she is struggling with the shifting values of the Dark Ages and her forced betrothal to the brutish Sir Pelleas, who is implicated in the death of her parents.  Little does Viv realise that both their lives across the centuries will become so completely intertwined. Haunted by both Lady Vivianne in 499 AD and by Viv’s own parents’ death and legacy, can Viv unlock the mystery that surrounds and connects their two lives, 1500 years apart, and bring peace to them both?

Meet Lady Vivianne

As with all authors, my characters’ voices ring around my head as I write. So I’ll imagine the women speaking for themselves and this is how they might have introduced themselves to you …

Meet Lady Vivianne …

It is the year of Our Lord 499, I am fifteen and I have a problem.  I am betrothed, against my will, to the odious Sir Pelleas, yet I am not unaware of the glances of my childhood friend, Sir Roland. It was my late father, kind as he was, who took in the tattered cast-out Saxon child Pelleas, thinking him to be a potential successor as chieftain of our settlement in the midlands of England.  Back then, it was not so usual for a woman to succeed to the chieftaincy, and anyway I was not expected, my dear mother being cursed to be childless. But she had used her pagan rituals to try to conceive, and I was the result. They named me Lady Vivianne.

I will never forget the day that my parents died, burned in the fire that destroyed our sacred hall. Sir Pelleas said that it was the tallows on the altar. But yet I knew that was not so.  And as I grew towards my sixteenth year and Pelleas had already persuaded the council in the mead hall with his military prowess to confirm him as chieftain, he was appointed my ‘protector’ and my suitor.

I hate him. I hate his brutish ways and his raucous drunken friends as they feast and carouse and stink in my father’s hall that used to display rich tapestries and religious icons, a backdrop to the travelling scōps with their beautiful poetry.

I will do anything, anything at all that is in my power, to rid myself of Pelleas and this terrible betrothal. And I have powers, like my mother, Lady Nymue, the lady of the lake, believe me …

The inspiration for Dr Viv

Meet medievalist Dr Viv DuLac …

… I get home to my apartment a couple of nights ago, totally unaware of what that night would bring. I’d had a hard day at the university where I teach medieval studies. Maybe it’s tiredness but I think I hear my dead mother’s voice in my pounding head and the name ‘Lady Vivianne’.  But my mind is full of my partner Pete’s treachery. I still cannot believe that he would stoop so low. Going off with one of my best friends and then having the gall to try to sell the apartment from under me. I’d like to hate him, but it’s not so easy to dismiss those years, is it? Are there no decent men left? I’d do anything, anything at all, to keep my beloved home and to be safe. But instead I drink far too much red wine and make for the lake where something is drawing me …

A Shape on the Air

As their lives become intertwined, the quest for truth intensifies. How is Lady Vivianne connected to Dr Viv’s parents’ death and the centuries-old mystery they tried to uncover?  By the way, Jessie, my WIP (The Dragon Tree) is the sequel to A Shape on the Air, and will be published later in 2020.

With love,

Julia

Website/blog   https://www.juliaibbotsonauthor.com
Facebook          https://www.facebook.com/JuliaIbbotsonauthor
Twitter              @JuliaIbbotson
Pinterest           http://www.pinterest.co.uk/juliai1

About Dr Julia Ibbotson

Acclaimed, award-winning author Julia Ibbotson is fascinated by the medieval world and concepts of time travel. She read English at Keele University, England (after a turbulent but exciting gap year in Ghana, West Africa) specialising in medieval language, literature and history, and has a PhD in socio-linguistics. She wrote her first novel at 10 years of age, but became a school teacher, then an academic as a senior university lecturer and researcher. As well as medieval time-slip, she has published a number of books, including memoir/history of food (The Old Rectory), children’s medieval fantasy (S.C.A.R.S), a trilogy opening in 1960s Ghana (Drumbeats), and many academic works. Apart from insatiable reading, she loves travelling the world, singing in choirs, swimming, yoga and walking in the countryside in England and Madeira where she and her husband divide their time.

Inspiration for a Tuscan Girl

I am honoured that Angela wrote a letter to explain the inspiration behind Tuscan Girl. Sit back and enjoy a writer’s tour of Italy.

Bestselling author, Angela Petch, released ‘Tuscan Girl’ last week.  I started to read the novel on a stormy Saturday night and awoke at dawn to finish the book.  Lost stories of war, hidden treasure and buried memories gripped me. As a writer, I wanted to learn how this talented author manages to weave such captivating stories. I am honoured Angela wrote a letter to explain the inspiration behind Tuscan Girl.  Sit back and enjoy a writer’s tour of Italy.

In the Tuscan Apennines, where I spend six months of every year, I can step out of our front door straight into wild countryside. Our area is less populated after post war exodus, when people left for work abroad and in big cities and so I come across many ruined houses along the mule tracks that crisscross our hills and valleys.

Each abandoned dwelling holds a potential story and my imagination goes into overdrive, trying to guess what might have gone on within these walls, now strangled with weeds.

Many of the old houses are being eaten up by old man’s beard

When I was seven years old, my father accepted a job in Rome as deputy head of the Commonwealth War Graves Commission. They were formative years and I picked up Italian like a little sponge. I’ve wheedled out stories behind these houses by chatting to elderly friends and through my research. We are lucky to have the national archive of diaries in nearby Pieve Santo Stefano and I’ve spent hours poring over handwritten resources.

Bruno sitting outside the house owned by his son, who had just returned from collecting wild mushrooms.

One of my friends is Bruno Vergni, one hundred years old last January 13th. I met him seven years ago on one of my hikes. I stopped to chat as he pruned an apple tree and, to my huge surprise, he responded in English. He explained that he had been a POW in Nottingham, having been captured in Libya early in the war.

I researched more about Bruno’s war and he is now one of the main characters in “The Tuscan Girl” (albeit tweaked with my own ideas). He now lives with his son, but in my story I have placed him in one of the semi-deserted hamlets called Tramarecchia.

Pieve Santo Stefano holds Italy’s collection of diaries – a wonderful resource

A favourite walk is up to the beautiful Alp of the Moon, (1,400 metres). We stopped to picnic by a pile of stones and read a sign posted by the local partisan association.  Up here, in the summer of 1944, a group of young men planned their resistance missions. After researching and meeting a local historian, Alvaro Tacchini, more ideas for my book were gleaned.

An abandoned chapel, two houses on the outskirts of the village, empty because of a brothers’ squabble, the outline of a Medici fortress… all ruins waiting to be written about in future books.

Angela’s explanation connected me to Alba who treks around the remote Tuscan villages and rebuilds the ruins in her paintings.  She discovers ‘The paths…like arteries leading to the heart of new stories.’  I enjoyed treading these paths with Alba and look forward to more stories.

 

 

A Writer’s Jukebox in my Handbag with Jo Lambert

Which songs did Jo enter into her writer’s jukebox to evoke the emotions and inspire the tension in A Cornish Affair, her debut novel with Ruby Fiction?

Author, Jo Lambert, celebrates music in her regular blog feature Life Playlists.  Music is an inspiration for Jo, and during the writing process music helps Jo to tease out the emotions in her romance novels.  I imagine a vintage jukebox playing in the corner of her writing room.  Which songs did Jo enter into her writer’s jukebox to evoke the emotions and inspire the tension in A Cornish Affair, her debut novel with Ruby Fiction?

At its heart A Cornish Affair is romantic fiction but it’s also wrapped around a modern day saga.  Alongside the ‘will they-won’t they’ going on between Cat and Luke there’s a host of other things – murder and a cantankerous great aunt to mention just two.  But this book could never have been written without the music.  Like Jessie music has always been a huge part of my life and it’s played an important role in all my writing. With two exceptions, all my books have had their titles taken from songs.  And to help the writing process, I create a playlist of tracks; a musical backdrop to writing different scenes.

But Carrenporth is about to experience far bigger scandals than the return of Luke Carrack – and the secrets unearthed in the process will shake the sleepy seaside town to its core …

So this is in Jessie’s words a ‘Books in my Handbag Jukebox’ post.   A taster of the music I used for this particular novel.

TITLE TRACK

The Boys of Summer – Don Henley.   As this was the working title of the book, the song was a ‘must have’

ROMANTIC TRACKS

Emotional – Whitney Houston

Stay with Me Till Dawn – Judy Tzuke

CAT AND LUKE’S  BREAK UP

 Johnny Hates Jazz – Shattered Dreams

Hall and Oates – She’s Gone    

Jo’s playlist offers a clear insight into the narrative and the emotion. I wanted to discover more about this author.

 

In June 2018 Jo signed to Choc Lit. Her debut A Cornish Affair, set on the North Cornish coast, was published in June under their Ruby imprint.

Jo Lambert lives on the eastern edge of the city of Bath. In 2008 she published her first novel When Tomorrow Comes. This was the first of five books which became known as the Little Court series, following the lives and loves of four girls growing up in the 1960/70s in the West Country. In 2015 she published Summer Moved On, a contemporary romance set in South Devon. A sequel, Watercolours in the Rain followed in 2017.

In June 2018 Jo signed to Choc Lit.  Her debut A Cornish Affair, set on the North Cornish coast, was published in June under their Ruby imprint. She is currently working on her next coastal romance.
When Jo isn’t writing she reads and reviews. She also has an active blog – A Writer’s Journey.  She loves travel, red wine and rock music and takes the odd photograph or two. Jo is a member of the Romantic Novelists Association and the Society of Authors

More about A Cornish Affair.

In the close-knit community of Carrenporth in Cornwall everyone knows everyone else’s business. Luke Carrack is only too aware of this. He’s been away for two years but nothing has changed – from the town gossips who can’t see past the scandal of his childhood, to the cold way he is treated by some of his so-called family.
The only person who seems to understand is local hotelier’s daughter Cat Trevelyan, although even Luke’s new friendship with her could set tongues wagging.
But Carrenporth is about to experience far bigger scandals than the return of Luke Carrack – and the secrets unearthed in the process will shake the sleepy seaside town to its core …

Social Media Links –
Website: http://jolambertbooks.com
Blog: http://jolambertwriter.blog
Twitter: @jolambertwriter
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/jolambert185
Linkedin: https://uk.linkedin.com/in/jo-lambert-6 4644530
Instagram: jolambertwriter185

 

 

People Watching with Joanne Nicholson

Joanne posting the mail

Turning my back on the white Welsh hills, I shovelled snow from my never ending drive.  Longing to escape the cold, I dreamed of a tropical destination. Once inside, drinking my tea, I would plan a holiday.  The postman parked his van across the drive and handed me some mail.  My eyes focused on a postcard from the South Pacific. It was as if someone was reminding me to book that holiday.  Author, Joanne Nicholson had sent me a postcard from her cruise.  Later that week, Joanne emailed her reflections on the cruise.

Dear Jessie,

I dreamed of a tropical destination

I’ve just arrived back from a cruise of the South Pacific, where I lazed around as we floated above a crystal clear azure sea. My favourite pastime was people watching, and whilst sneakily gazing at the crowds I made these key observations:

  1. People love books. There was barely a sun lounge that wasn’t taken by someone engrossed in a book. It’s so great to see fellow bibliophiles.

    People want to love and be loved
  2. People want to love and be loved. There were lots of events for singles to mingle aboard the ship. They were all looking for the person that would rock their world, with whom they could sail off into the sunset.
  3. People love kids. There were over 1,000 kids on board and they had relatives swooning all over them. They looked so cute posing for a photo with Shrek, spontaneously dancing in the corridors or wearing their ice cream all down the front of their shirts.
Joanne Nicholson Positive

These reflections reminded me of my latest novel ‘Positive’ where Ruth is single and desperate to settle down and have a child. When she launches herself into online dating without success she decides it’s time to take matters into her hands and try to have a child on her own. She has the support of great friends that help her cope with her rollercoaster ride of emotions.

As an Australian author of contemporary women’s fiction, my novels are a light easy read (perfect for your handbag). They all focus around the dynamics of relationships, not necessarily with partners but with other important people in their lives.

In my novel ‘In Another Life’, Lily does a past life regression to see if she is connected with her late mother only to find she was male and her Dad was her brother. She then researches her regression and finds that her little sister from a previous life is now an old lady. She can’t help but meet her to see if they share a connection across lives.

Joanne Nicholson Intuition

In ‘Intuition’, Chloe learns she has the skill to read minds. What starts out as a lark, where she no longer has to take people on face value, turns her life upside down when she discovers her husband fantasizes about other women and her best friend has a crush on her husband.

Cheers from down under,

Joanne

About the Author

Warm, sunny greetings from Joanne

Joanne Nicholson is an Australian author who juggles parenting four kids with trying to exercise, socialise, manage sporting teams, complete mundane chores and write. She loves boating, reading, pilates, listening and playing music, playing basketball and spending quality time with family and friends. She has published two women’s fiction novels, ‘Intuition’ and ‘In Another Life’; a YA novel ‘Music Score’ and short stories, ‘Horrorscopes’ and ‘Spirits’.

Joanne’s novels deal with dynamics of relationships, but reviewers say the novels are lighthearted.  The novels look thought-provoking and tempting.  I have no idea how this author manages to write and juggle her life – she must be very dedicated to her writing. 

Contacts:

Social media: Facebook https://www.facebook.com/joanne.nicholson.372
Twitter @jolnicholson
Instagram joannenicholsonauthor
Website joannenicholsonauthor.com