Anthony Anglorus' The Prince of Prigs - Guest Post

Anyone who believes that they are too knowledgeable to learn more and improve is both a fool and a failure-in-waiting. There is always something you can improve. In my case, whilst I was ploughing through and writing, I was also posting regularly on critique sites and listening to what others had to say.

Yes, there were a few times that I rejected suggestions - but usually, that would be because I had also received suggestions from others which I preferred. However, using a critique site to improve your work is the first tip I would offer. Your family and friends are simply not able to view your work objectively. Nor can you.

Another important point arose fairly early on; how many words should I write? All the advice seemed to point to 70,000 words, and I stuck to this target. Subsequently, I have learned that once a book passes 80,000 words, this creates a manufacturing problem which escalates the cost. As all publishers are looking solely at the question of whether they can make money from your book, something which makes it more expensive to produce is obviously highly disadvantageous.

My next valuable tip came during the submissions process. One agent rejected my work with a comment, which was “I don’t like books in first person; they limit the breadth of the storyline too much.” It hurt, but she was right; writing in first person forces you to keep the focus totally on one character and what he knows and learns. You can’t build any sort of conspiracy, can’t explain the motivation of others. Third person gives you the flexibility to build a complex tale.

Whilst writing “The Prince of Prigs”, I hit a problem; I have no experience or knowledge of battle, and did not feel competent to write about it. Yet my story had brought me to the cusp of my hero joining an army in Ireland - a country I have never really visited. For seven long months, the story sat growing electronic dust until one day, I met author Ben Kane during his epic walk along Hadrian’s wall with a couple of other authors. “Well,” he said in that appealing Irish brogue of his, “I was a vet before turning to writing, and I’ve never been to war. It never stopped me writing about it, you should just go with it. I got away with it, why shouldn’t you?”

I did go with it, but I put it off until later, deciding first to insert more about what was happening in England at the time. Then I thought it would be good to insert another highwayman, one of his contemporaries. Finally, I wove in a friendship with a leading member of the parliamentarians. Now I was ready to write about war - but wait, I’d almost used up my allocation of words! But then I spotted that if I got him to do that, then he would hate him and seek revenge. Then he could take his revenge that way but him could do that if that man spotted he. So I was able to follow my instincts and avoid writing about war.

Finally, some advice directly from me myself personally. After a lot of rejections, it became clear that the selected opening events were not sufficiently tickling anyone’s fancy. So I made the radical decision to ignore all advice and swap two events. I was opposed on this, but stuck to my guns. Once it was cleaned up, I submitted it to two small publishers. Both liked the opening. Both asked for the full document. One offered me a contract, which I liked and so had to tell the other publisher that the book was no longer available.

I know that this last advice completely contradicts everything else. But in essence, what it says is that in the final resort, your heart knows best.

The Prince of Prigs by Anthony Anglorus

Publication Date: July 6, 2015 

Bygone Era Books 

Formats: eBook and Paperback 

Genre: Historical Fiction 

The union of England and Scotland under one crown is not even a half century old, and the Parliamentarians already threaten the very fabric of the nation. These are the adventures of highwayman Capt. James Hind who, in Robin Hood fashion, steals from the Roundheads to help fund the royalist cause. When Cromwell comes to power, James, the Prince of Prigs, must be careful whom among his treacherous “friends” he trusts.

AMAZON US | AMAZON UK | BARNES and NOBLE | CHAPTERS | KOBO

Praise

"Any who view historical fiction as dry or plodding should pick up The Prince of Prigs: it wraps courtroom drama, social issues, flamboyant personalities and British politics under one cover and represents a rollicking good read even for audiences who normally eschew the genre. As for those who know how compelling it can be - The Prince of Prigs is ample evidence of the powers of historical fiction." - D. Donovan, Midwest Book Review

About the Author

After a lifetime of balancing books, Anthony turned his hand to writing them in 2009. His first book, The Other Robin Hood, is available as an ebook. An Englishman still living in England, he married a Russian doctor in 1999 and will be moving to rural France after reaching retirement age — but the writing will continue. He is already working on the sequel to The Prince of Prigs, tentatively titled Dark Days, Dark Deeds.

WEBSITE | TWITTER | GOODREADS

Stephanie Thornton's The Conqueror's Wife - Guest Post and {Giveaway}

Love in Ancient Greece

Let’s get one thing straight: The Greeks were the original, free-loving hippies of the ancient world.

Compare the likes of Sappho, Socrates, and Alexander the Great, to say, the Puritans who founded North America, and you couldn’t have two more disparate notions about who people can, and should, love.

To the ancient Greeks, with few exceptions, it didn’t matter much who you loved. And the Greeks had a few customs that by today’s Puritanical standards might seem akin to a late-night Borgia-era orgiastic revel.

First, there was pederasty, in which an older man taught a younger man about, well, the finer points of love. (You can use your imaginations.) It’s commonly assumed that Socrates himself took part in this custom, and the upper classes looked upon this as an accepted aspect of a young man’s education. (Something I doubt would fly in the modern school system.) After all, most aristocrats didn’t marry until they were older and women were secluded in the gynaceum, so pederasty was the Greek solution to a whole lot of lonely young men. And in Sparta, soldiers were also encouraged and perhaps expected to have relationships with each other in order to strengthen morale.

This, of course, leads to the finer points of homosexuality in ancient Greece. While younger men were expected to leave behind their first pederastic relationship in favor of marriage and procreation, it’s likely that some, including Alexander the Great with his childhood friend Hephaestion, forged lifelong bonds with their partner. Aristotle even went so far as to claim that those two men shared “one soul between two bodies.”

And lest we think that women were left out of the picture, we have the case of Sappho of Lesbos (from whence the terms sapphic and lesbian derive) who has left reams of stunning poetry about all manner of love, including that between women.

I have not had one word from her 

Frankly I wish I were dead
When she left, she wept 

a great deal; she said to me, "This parting must be
endured, Sappho. I go unwillingly." 

I said, "Go, and be happy
but remember (you know
well) whom you leave shackled by love.”

And after all, it was Plato who claimed, “The madness of love is the greatest of heaven’s blessings.” So, love who you love, and know that no matter what, you’re in for a wild ride.

About the book
The Conqueror's Wife: A Novel of Alexander the Great by Stephanie Thornton
Publication Date: December 1, 2015
NAL/Penguin Group LLC.
eBook, Paperback; 496 Pages
Genre: Historical Fiction



A novel from the acclaimed author of The Tiger Queens, for readers looking for “strong and determined female protagonists” (Historical Novel Society) and “a sprawling historical saga” (Renee Rosen)...

We are the women who loved Alexander the Great. We were lovers and murderers, innocents and soldiers.

And without us, Alexander would have been only a man.

Instead he was a god.

330s, B.C.E., Greece: Alexander, a handsome young warrior of Macedon, begins his quest to conquer the ancient world. But he cannot ascend to power, and keep it, without the women who help to shape his destiny.

His spirited younger half-sister, Thessalonike, yearns to join her brother and see the world. Instead, it is Alexander's boyhood companion who rides with him into war while Thessalonike remains behind. Far away, crafty princess Drypetis will not stand idly by as Alexander topples her father from Persia's throne. And after Alexander conquers her tiny kingdom, Roxana, the beautiful and cunning daughter of a minor noble, wins Alexander’s heart…and will commit any crime to secure her place at his side.

Within a few short years, Alexander controls an empire more vast than the civilized world has ever known. But his victories are tarnished by losses on the battlefield and treachery among his inner circle. And long after Alexander is gone, the women who are his champions, wives, and enemies will fight to claim his legacy…

AMAZON (KINDLE) | AMAZON (PAPERBACK) | BARNES & NOBLE | BOOK DEPOSITORY | INDIEBOUND

About the Author

Stephanie Thornton is a writer and history teacher who has been obsessed with infamous women from ancient history since she was twelve. She lives with her husband and daughter in Alaska, where she is at work on her next novel.

"The Secret History: A Novel of Empress Theodora," "Daughter of the Gods: A Novel of Ancient Egypt," and "The Tiger Queens: The Women of Genghis Khan" are available now. "The Conqueror's Wife: A Novel of Alexander the Great" will hit the shelves in December 2015.

For more information please visit Stephanie Thornton’s website. You can also find her on Facebook, Twitter, and Goodreads.

Tour Schedule: http://hfvirtualbooktours.com/theconquerorswifeblogtour/
Hashtags: #TheConquerorsWifeBlogTour #AlexandertheGreat #Historical #HistFic #HFVBTBlogTour
Twitter Tags: @hfvbt @penguinusa @StephMThornton

Giveaway

The giveaway is for one paperback copy, and open to US residents only. Comment below for your chance to win. Please leave your email address so I can contact the winner. (Any entry without email address will be disqualified). Giveaway ends Friday, December 18 at 11:59pm CST.

Rules

– Must be 18 or older to enter.
– Giveaway is open to US only.
– Only one entry per household.
– All giveaway entrants agree to be honest and not cheat the systems; any suspect of fraud is decided upon byblog/site owner and the sponsor, and entrants may be disqualified at our discretion.

Jeanbill's Almost A Millenium - Guest Post

My inspiration for writing Almost a Millennium, why I chose the medieval period, and what is unique about this book:

I wanted to write about two men, one who believed in God and one who did not. Both would be the protagonists and both would have some kind of contact with one another. The good guy would try to convince the bad guy that he was wrong about God. Who is the good guy and who is the bad guy? I am not an atheist; therefore, I made the good guy to be the one who believes in God. 

In the early years of planning this book, the year 2000 would soon be here—the word “millennium” began appearing in the media. That word seemed to have penetrated my subconscious brain, provoking the thought in my consciousness that I could separate the two protagonists by geography and time, another land and one thousand years. How in the world are they going to make contact? I did not have the slightest idea. At that time, I was reading about cryptography and while we were in Switzerland and England, we decided to visit several monasteries. Then, it all seemed to come together. I would have the atheist be an American physician, whom I knew something about, and make the believer in God a monk in England. When? One thousand years ago in England, William, the Duke of Normandy, decided to invade and conquer England. From that data, I began to write all my thoughts about it, realizing I had to hit the books about that period in English history. But, how in the world are the two protagonists going to have contact?

Our monk has to have a personal experience with God, and be aware of the Pope’s decision to foster a crusade to Jerusalem that resulted in the killing of many Jewish people of which the monk highly criticized. Since he was a scribe he decided to write about the two events, but an acting abbot squelched his writing. Later on, he learned about cryptography, giving him the idea to cipher his writing. This is the only way that the monk could have contact with the atheist. Of course, the atheist’s contact was his cryptanalysis of the writings of the monk.

My book is unique in that it is divided into three parts. Every third chapter deals with the American physician, the same for the monk, and the other third deals with the history of the medieval period relating to the two fictional stories. I never thought I would have a chapter referring to Mohammed, but I had to in order to tell about the Arabs contribution to history and education in the 800s. Another unique aspect of the book is the introduction of new characters at the beginning of the chapters, dealing with the fictional stories. 

One of the most difficult challenges was to have the monk be at certain locations at a certain time where and when historical events happened: the killing of monks at Glastonbury Abbey, the Jewish killings in Mainz, and the early period of Llanthony Abbey in Wales.  

About the book
Almost a Millennium, by Jeanbill, was published in January 2015 and is available for sale on Amazon. Genres: Historical / Fiction / Medieval / Religion / Theism

Almost a Millennium is an eclectic novel about the unlikely connection between an English monk and an American physician that lived nearly 1,000 years apart, one of today and one in the medieval period. It begins at their birth, traveling through time to their adulthood.

Using cryptography, Paul, a monk at Llanthony Abbey in Wales, writes a four-page document about his life and a harsh critique of the crusades. He places his writings in safekeeping in the hope that it will survive the crusades and eventually land in the hands of someone who can decipher his secrets. When Fred unexpectedly comes across Paul’s book and ciphers Paul’s cryptic message, he has no idea that four pages of millennial history will challenge him to rethink Christianity.

“Almost a Millennium by Jeanbill is a deeply compelling historical fiction novel. Although a work of fiction, the story is a depiction of England's history and the power dynamics at the time. It is a richly detailed story and many times I found myself forgetting that I was reading a work of fiction as the historical events described felt very authentic. The setting of the story and the character development were simply amazing as we dived into Paul and Fred's compelling background stories. Paul and Fred were two people so different and yet so alike. The pace of the story was set from the beginning and this held true to the very last page. Jeanbill used a unique and very captivating style in developing this story.” - Reviewed by Faridah Nassozi for Readers’ Favorite


About the Author
Jeanbill has been associated with medicine for more than 50 years, practicing as a general practitioner. He studied many hours in the medieval library of University of Notre Dame, researched and wrote over a period of 20 years in his spare time.

His debut novel Almost a Millennium was published in January 2015 and is available for sale on Amazon. Genres: Historical / Fiction / Medieval / Religion / Theism

Jeanbill resides in Lynden, WA. Married to his other half for 57 years until cancer separated them, he has four children and 14 grandchildren.

Readers can connect with him on Goodreads, Facebook, and Twitter.

Oliver Sparrow's Dark Sun, Bright Moon - Guest Post

Dark Sun, Bright Moon.
The book is set a thousand years ago in Peru. It reflects the strange views that the isolated Quechua people had formed during their ten thousand years of isolation. I myself first encountered this outlook in 1980, when Peru was a rough country engaged in the early stages of a brutal civil war.

I met my first shaman in Oxapampa, a remote town hanging in mist over the jungle proper. It had been founded by German emigres a hundred years earlier, and red faced blond men held donkeys in the main square, bargaining in accented Spanish.

Even getting there was a major exercise. In 1980, barely any of the principal roads were asphalted, and none of the lesser track. After you have ground your way up from the desert coast to 15,700 feet at the Ticlio pass, therefore, you wander through open, sere landscape that is dotted with llamas and alpacas. A sudden drop takes you to the pretty Tarma valley with its fields of gladioli and arums. On my first visit, this was still a red-tiled village with a single-track road that, a few miles later, fell down the walls of the vast cañon that opened to the tropical Chanchamayo valley. Fragrant with coffee and mangos, enshrouded in red dust, enormous trucks confronted you on this road and necessitated reversing for long distances to let them pass. The river was a little thread below, the road between a rock wall and a sheer fall At night, festooned with Christmas tree lights and covered with tinsel, these sudden apparitions could give way to nobody, even if they were minded to do so.

In twelve hours, therefore, you had gone from frigid desert to alpine extremes and then, in perhaps three of those hours, dropped down into the humid tropics. Clothing changed three times, and both customs and accents more times than that. Seagulls and pelicans are replaced by macaws and parrots. Chanchamayo was then an armed camp, as groups struggled to control the coffee trade, and it was a relief to climb into the Oxapampa valley. This was and remains a place of jungle dwellers and dripping, orchid-filled cloud forest. That ascent took a further six hours on disastrously terrible roads, but today all of this is demystified by tarmac and satnav.

The then-military government had imposed strict controls on vehicle imports, As a result, the company had only a thirty year old Land Rover which, on arriving in a coffee cooperative short of Oxoapampa, shuddered, grunted and passed its mortal bounds. The cooperative was celebrating a Saint’s day and everyone was mostly naked and sweaty drunk, gathering in a ring around the vehicle with their machetes just kissing the ground. The only light came from a bonfire, the houses were palm thatch and wood and any thought of a telephone would have been an anachronism.

Years earlier, I had damaged my back in another set of great mountains, and the gruelling journey had worsened this. I needed a pole just to get out of the car. We all stood and stared at each other until the head of the cooperative came forward, offered us a drink and suggested the services of the curandera, the healer. This was how I first met Esmeralda.

His Spanish was not good and I understood this to mean the village mechanic. I was therefore surprised by an elderly woman with sharp eyes who, without a word, she started pulling at my clothing. I have to say that I thought that this was the local mad woman, and was working out how to solve an awkward situation when the headman stopped me, saying that she, this person, was the curandera. She quickly had me shirtless and with my pants around my ankles, prodding at my back. Still without speaking, she grunted and turned away into the dark. “Esperate ahi”, wait here, said the headman, so I did, more or less naked in front of an audience of thirty rowdy drunks. Eventually, she returned with a pot of sweet-smelling paste. After she has sat me on a coffee sack and put my head between my knees she kneaded this into my back. This seemed to signify acceptance – or anyway the end of the fun - and the crowd dispersed, drinks were thrust on us and by one means or another, the pain faded away as well.

The next day, watched by men cradling hangovers, we identified the problem as being a dead fuel pump. There was no prospect of replacing this. However, Land Rovers have their spare wheel mounted in front, and removing this gives access to the engine. A plastic pipe came off the air horn to give us a fuel feed line, and a funnel bought from the cooperative provided a way to drip fuel into it. My minder Archie was to drive, whilst I was to sit on the bonnet and drip petrol into the funnel.

Before we left, Esmeralda let it be known that she wanted to travel to Lima with us, and so it was that we set out on a journey of three patient days. I learned quickly how perform as a human carburettor, dripping the fuel and clearing dust out of the ball-of-wool filer, I froze at Ticlio, and was happy to get into the cabin as we freewheeled down the face of the Andes to the first workshop we found on the outskirts of Lima.

Esmeralda vanished in the crowd without adding to the few word that she has spoken throughout. She had my address, however, and she made contact through the medium of dolls made from tied scraps of cloth and left on the doorstep overnight.

One evening, just as I was planning to return and complete the business that had had been aborted by the death of the Land River, she turned up in person. This began a friendship that took me into the strange arenas that Dark Sun, Bright Moon explores: the parallel continua that create our little world, the role of the shaman, the yachaq', to belief in a propitiation of the apus that guard and manage individual communities, to the saqras who may manifest themselves to favoured individuals.

Later, I learned that hers was a thin, distorted version of the original rich worldview. Five hundred years of repression had all but extinguished anything but a folk version of what had been a high metaphysic. Despite this, the essence of this view – of the individual as an expression of a community, of the danger to the community from disharmony amongst individuals – remains a vital element in today’s Andean communities, wound into Catholicism through syncretic beliefs. The local apu is now called San Pedro (St Peter) but they still go up the mountain to dance for him and feed him beer, or sacrifice a guinea pig or, for serious matters, a llama. Dark Sun, Bright Moon is an attempt to reconstruct this very different way of seeing the world. I hope that readers think that it succeeds. You can see feedback of their views at www.DarkSunBrightMoon.com

About the book

Dark Sun, Bright Moon, by Oliver Sparrow, was published in July 2014 and is available for sale on Amazon in both paperback and ebook.

“Dark Sun, Bright Moon describes people isolated in the Andes, without the least notion of outsiders. They evolve an understanding of the universe that is complementary to our own but a great deal wider. The book explores events of a thousand years ago, events which fit with what we know of the region's history,” says Sparrow.

In the Andes of a thousand years ago, the Huari empire is sick. Its communities are being eaten from within by a plague, a contagion that is not of the body but of something far deeper, a plague that has taken their collective spirit. Rooting out this parasite is a task that is laid upon Q’ilyasisa, a young woman from an obscure little village on the forgotten borders of the Huari empire.

This impossible mission is imposed on her by a vast mind, a sentience that has ambitions to shape all human life. Her response to this entails confrontations on sacrificial pyramids, long journeys through the Amazonian jungle and the establishment of not just one but two new empires. Her legacy shapes future Andean civilization for the next four hundred years, until the arrival of the Spanish.

Dark Sun, Bright Moon takes the reader on a fascinating adventure that includes human sacrifice, communities eaten from within, a vast mind blazing under the mud of Lake Titicaca, and the rise and fall of empires cruel and kind.

About the Author
Oliver Sparrow was born in the Bahamas, raised in Africa and educated at Oxford to post-doctorate level, as a biologist with a strong line in computer science. He spent the majority of his working life with Shell, the oil company, which took him into the Peruvian jungle for the first time. He was a director at the Royal Institute for International Affairs, Chatham House for five years. He has started numerous companies, one of them in Peru, which mines for gold. This organisation funded a program of photographing the more accessible parts of Peru, and the results can be seen at http://www.all-peru.info. Oliver knows modern Peru very well, and has visited all of the physical sites that are described in his book Dark Sun, Bright Moon.

To learn more, go to http://www.darksunbrightmoon.com/

Goodreads 

Charlotte Brentwood's The Vagabond Vicar - Guest Post and {Giveaway}

A Matter of Life and Death: Women in the Regency Period

As a modern woman in this frantic world of ours, it’s easy to romanticise the past and wish we were one of the regency ladies we love to read about. We imagine a glittering life of balls and horse-drawn carriages, grand estates and seaside excursions.

Those carriage rides could be very bumpy and uncomfortable, with distances between towns taking many hours. And the horses… let’s just say they don’t clean up after themselves. Even the people would have been quite, er, fragrant. But the economic realities of genteel Regency women are perhaps the greatest reason for us to be grateful we live in modern times.

It was extremely rare for a woman to inherit her family’s fortune. Even a generous dowry would go to her husband on marriage. A gentlewoman had no way of providing for herself. If she was not fortunate enough to marry, she would need to rely on her family for sustenance. On the death of her parents, a brother would need to agree to take her in. If circumstances didn’t work out, she would quickly drop down the social strata, with a governess being the best position she could hope for, and at worst she would need to go to London and find some manual labour to undertake. In extreme cases securing a husband could be a matter of life and death.

Once married, our gentlewoman wasn’t assured a happily-ever-after. Many marriages were purely an economic arrangement without much love or fidelity. Childbirth carried a high risk of complications or death, and of course with no contraception this would be endured many times. As a wife she was her husband’s property and he was in charge of her fate including where she lived and what she could spend. Although many women could do charity work to contribute to society, long years of “morning visits” and embroidery must have gotten quite tedious for intelligent minds.

It’s because of these circumstances that I love finding my heroines men who will not only secure their material happiness, but also love and contentment. It is and was a rare thing, and thankfully we can escape into stories where, despite the inevitable challenges, love prevails.

About the book
William Brook is an idealistic young cleric, desperate to escape dreary England for a mission adventure in exotic lands. It's his worst nightmare come true when he is posted to a parish in a small backwater village, populated with small-minded people and husband-hunting mamas. He’s determined not to form any ties and to escape the country as an independent single man.

A free spirit, Cecilia Grant is perfectly content to remain in her family home in Amberley village - when she's not wandering the countryside at all hours painting. Marriage options are few, but that won't stop her mother from engineering a match with one of the ruling family's sons. Cecilia attempts to win the man, but what is it about the new vicar and his brooding ways that is so appealing? Could he be the only one who has ever really understood her, and can she discover what he is running away from?

As William struggles not to fall in love with the lady's intoxicating beauty and mysterious eccentricity, he finds himself drawn into the lives of the villagers, despite their best efforts to alienate the newcomer. When he makes it clear he's not sticking around, Cecilia strives to restrain her blossoming feelings for him. Just when it seems love may triumph, dark secrets are revealed in Amberley and a scandal from William’s past may see the end of not only his career, but his chance at finding an everlasting love.

The Vagabond Vicar is an unashamedly romantic historical novel you'll fall in love with. If you love Jane Austen and Georgette Heyer, can't get enough of Downton Abbey or Cranford, or just prefer old-fashioned boy-meets-girl stories, try reading Charlotte Brentwood.

Sensuality level: sweet (only kissing)
Please note, although there is some mention of religious subject matter due to the hero's occupation, this is not an "inspirational" novel.

Photo from Goodreads

About the author

Charlotte developed serious crushes on a series of men from age fifteen: Darcy, Knightley, Wentworth and Brandon. A bookworm and scribbler for as long as she can remember, Charlotte always dreamed of sharing her stories with the world.

Earning a degree in communication studies, she was seduced by the emerging digital world and has since worked with the web and in marketing. She lives in beautiful Auckland, New Zealand.

When she's not toiling at her day job, writing or procrastinating on the Internet, Charlotte can be found snuggling with her cat Sophie, warbling at the piano, sipping a hot chocolate or enjoying the great outdoors.

Author's website: http://www.charlottebrentwood.com

Giveaway

Follow the instructions on the GLEAM form to enter for an eBook copy of The Vagabond Vicar. Open internationally!

The Vagabond Vicar Giveaway

Florence Ratwatte's The Doppelganger - Guest Post

When I first had this urge to write a novel, the only thing I was sure of was its location. While quite young and impressionable, I spent a long vacation on a mist-hung tea plantation, surrounded by mountain chains, nearly 2,000 m. above sea level, in Sri Lanka’s central highlands. It was an incredibly beautiful place of tropical sunshine and frosty nights and I knew I’d have to stretch all the creativity I had with the plot and characters, to match the setting. 

As I wanted to publish in Britain, I thought a novel with a tea plantation backdrop set in the British colonial period (mine is a late 1930s – mid 1940s time-warp ), would appeal in this nation of dedicated Ceylon tea drinkers. And of course, Ceylon tea which became the undisputed global quality brand very quickly, was purely and very creditably, a British achievement. (The tea industry still uses Sri Lanka’s colonial name, Ceylon, as its world-renowned brand name.)

I had of course to build my story on hard facts, because make no mistake, despite the stunning enchantment of its production location, tea production is hard commerce. It has been so, come 2017, for 150 years, its superlative quality achieved with sweat and toil and relentless commitment. Under the gift-wrapping of beautiful scenery and gracious life-style of the tea planters, is the hard, round-the year routine of tea production. Growing and harvesting the tea leaf, then processing and packing it, goes on round the year, often round the clock in Sri Lanka’s tea plantations, to achieve the impeccable quality of Ceylon tea. Manned by driven men the Ceylon tea industry rose within 50 years, on the ashes of its coffee plantations devastated by a plant pest, to become the main supplier of premium teas to the world’s leading tea market, London’s Mincing Lane. 

Writing a novel with a Ceylon tea background, I had therefore to supplement my early experience of tea plantation life, with first-hand research and reading. My free-lance writing assignments sometimes took me to the tea country, and while working at the Sri Lanka Tourist Board I also had opportunities to visit tea estates (as tea plantations are always called in Sri Lanka), to get insights into a unique British country life transplanted in a sub-tropical location. I am also indebted to D.M. Forrest’s excellent ‘A Hundred Years of Ceylon Tea – 1867 – 1967’ (Chatto & Windus, London), commissioned by the Ceylon Tea Propaganda Board, to mark the centenary of the first commercial planting of tea in Ceylon on Loolecandura Estate , Hewaheta, in 1867.

Writing The Doppelganger was thus not merely fulfilling but also enlightening and enjoyable and at every turn, new and delightful experiences rewarded my labour, which I hope I share with my readers.

About the book

On the borders of the misty High Forest tea plantation in Ceylon, Rachel Varuni, the daughter of a Scottish tea planter and a Ceylonese village girl, lives alone with her mother. Simple, frugal and hard, their life has a quality of unspoilt happiness, even if Rachel is sometimes haunted by her mixed parentage. She sees herself as a doppelgänger, belonging nowhere, and to no one.

Her dream of re-claiming her Scottish identity comes true when a letter from a lawyers' firm informs her of a bequest from an unnamed benefactor for Rachel to be educated at Ceylon's most exclusive boarding school.

Whilst the expensive education transforms Rachel unrecognisably, terror, the crushing hurdles of racism, spite and colonial injustice threaten to overwhelm her new life.

About the author

A sociology major of the University of Ceylon, Florence Ratwatte worked in the Sri Lanka Tourist Board until she took up free-lance writing. She lives deep in the beautiful ‘Ceylon tea' country, the backdrop of her first novel, The Doppelganger.

Publisher’s Website: www.austinmacauley.com  

Sales pages and book preview on Amazon: http://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/1849633584

Lee Ness's Hoplite: Olympian - Guest Post and {Giveaway}

It all started with a conversation over a cup of tea. A few of us at work read a lot of books and we all have a preference for historical fiction. The conversation was around which periods had not really been covered by the big hitters, like Scarrow, Cornwell and Iggulden. We couldn’t really think of any. It was an interesting conversation, but didn’t amount to anything. At the time I was writing a non-fiction book called The Sports Motivation Master Plan.

A year or so later, the Master Plan was off with the editor and I was at a loose end. I was still maintaining the same routine, up at 5am sat in front of the computer, but doing nothing productive. On the way to a competition with a mini-bus full of athletes, a 5 hour round trip on the motorway of mind-numbing frustration in a bus that was restricted to 56mph, I started to think about writing a novel, but what about?

There I was, with a bus full of athletes…….

And then, there it was. Ancient Olympics. (The idea of writing a contemporary novel about the Olympics came to mind, but it didn’t even interest me, never mind a reader!) I thought back to that conversation and tried to think of a major series of books set in Ancient Greece, and I couldn’t. Brilliant. I was sure there was, but the fact that none sprung to mind was good enough. By the time the bus journey finished I had the plot, not just for one book, but for a whole series.

I love Greece, and I’ve been there many times. I even plan to retire there when the time comes. Perfect. Except I knew scant amount about the history, only tourist levels of knowledge. Time to research. I read an excellent book called The Naked Olympics, by Tony Perrottet which gave me some great ideas and helped me decide the exact period I wanted to set it in. The aim wasn’t to write about specific historical events, only to use them as a backdrop. The aim was for the characters and the plot to carry the day.

During my research though, I found such a rich vein of content that if I’d simply picked Ancient Greece and dropped a pin in the timeline, I could have been content to write a book on where it landed. For example, I use a real character in my book called Pericles, the Polemarchos of Athens and his activities are on the fringe of the story. He comes into the story properly towards the end. But, if you read Pericles’ Wikipedia page, you could write a whole series of novels just from that! The period is absolutely fascinating.

As a final example, when I came to the end of Act 2 in the book, I wasn’t sure how to climax it. I knew the whole plot of Act 3, and I had got to a point where I wasn’t quite happy with how to get there. I got stuck for a week or so and went back to the research. I started with the setting. The story is set on the Island of Samos during the Siege in 440BC. I had a look at background on Samos and there it was. In the 6th century BC, a 1036m tunnel was excavated from both ends under Mount Kastro by a Greek Engineer called Eupalinos. The incredible accuracy was a feat for the first tunnel in known history to be dug using geometry and the second to be dug from both ends. The tunnel supplied the capital city with water and was of defensive importance in a siege as it was hidden. There it was, dropped in my lap on the first time of asking. And so the story continued…..

I finished the novel at the end of 2013, but as it was my first, I knew it wasn’t ready. It’s been edited innumerable times, the first 10 chapters have been removed and I’ve now rewritten it. I am a better writer now, more skilled and it is ready. I’m releasing it on e-book in parts over the course of this year, with the full book and paperback released at the end of November. The first three parts have the covers you can see at the top of this post (I design the covers myself and I’m quite proud of them).

The first draft of the second book in the series The Academy: Olympian Book 2 has just been finished. This one sees my protagonist, Alexander, meet up with some sworn enemies at a military academy and faces a battle of survival when all the odds are stacked against him. I will put it aside for a few months now while I write my next novel, the follow up to my technical contemporary thriller D.E.M. _ Deus Ex Machina, before I give it a good old editing. My aim is to release it early next year, followed by the third book set at an Olympic Academy and the fourth set at the Olympics over the course of the year. This is all to tie in with the 2016 Olympics of course.

About the book

Alexander decided that there was no-one around and started to move from under the ramp but, before he could make his escape, he felt the ship rock as loud tramping came from the gangplank. He froze in position while he tried to work out what this new sound meant. Whatever it was, the ship was noisier somehow. After listening for a short time, he realised that the troops were boarding the ship. He needed to get away, so he dragged himself fully our and from his hiding place and made his way to the ramp. Maybe he could just run past them all before they realised he was there. Then, to his horror, the ramp down into the hold started shaking and the tramping came closer as the soldiers started coming down it into the hold to shelter from the sun. He was trapped!

In 440BC, all the young Alexander wants to be is an Olympian. But while trying to follow his hoplite father, Alexander becomes trapped aboard a troop ship. His life spins out of control when making port, the seemingly benign state of Samos overthrows the mighty Athenian army and tragedy strikes. He soon realises that the foes in his own camp are more dangerous than the Samian rebels. When one of his only friends and allies on the island goes missing, Alexander has to further endanger his own life to try and find him but by doing so he puts his friend's life, and his mother back in Athens, in danger.

Excerpt from Chapter 3

The Samians continued to wait as the phalanx approached, and were in no hurry to come out to meet the Athenians. Alexander held his breath in anticipation of the crash of shields. He knew he shouldn’t look forward to it but he couldn’t help himself. People were going to die and he felt ashamed of himself when he realised with disappointment that this was not going to be the case here. The Samians wore light armour and the spears were short, not long like the ones protruding from the phalanx approaching them. Some did not even have spears. 

Alexander waited for the Samians to break and run, but they continued to wait, not particularly still, but neither were they making any effort to protect themselves. As the Athenians continued to close on them he became confused. He tried to spot how they were going to fight against the approaching phalanx or whether they were about to surrender. The Athenian phalanx accelerated forward covering the short distance remaining until the two armies met and he couldn’t understand why the Samians still made no move to advance or retreat. He couldn’t see their faces from this distance, but they were not moving and didn’t look like they were doing anything. 

When the Athenians came into range, a huge black cloud rose up from behind the siege wall, to the confusion of the watching Alexander. He struggled to process the scene unfolding before him. The Samians were moving now, the waiting over and commands from the Samian lines reached the ridge where he waited, the sound delayed by the distance. As he watched the Samians start to move, his mind caught up with the action unfolding before him. He returned his attention to the black cloud, which had now changed from an indistinct mass into thousands of arrows that climbed high into the blue sky, a faint hiss following them. They reached their zenith and then hovered suspended for a moment, caught above the phalanx. Alexander held his breath as he watched them riveted by the sight, the movements below forgotten. As if remembering their path, the arrows started on their new journey downward in a lethal rain. Alexander’s eyes widened and he sucked in a sharp breath. He clapped his hands to his face, riveted by the path of the arrows. 

In a moment of sudden and terrible clarity, he realised the magnitude of what he had done by coming here. His mother was alone back in Agryl and, because she was a Thracian, her status as a citizen came from his father and him, and they were both here. If his father perished and he wasn’t there either, she would lose everything, her husband, her home and her means of support. He didn’t know where she would go, if he would ever find her again. He had to do something, his panicked thoughts tumbled through his mind. He couldn’t get home now until the next transport returned. He had to try and protect his father somehow instead. The twelve year old boy protecting the seasoned veteran. It sounded ridiculous to his own mind, but he reasoned that there must be something he could do to help, with the rain of death descending on the phalanx below. He would work it out as he went along. With the decision made, he set off down the ridge at a run towards the imminent battle below.

About the author

I’m a Programme Manager by day, an athletics coach by night and get up with the lark to be a writer. Sometimes, I spend time with my wife, two kids and my dog as well. I used to write articles for stack.com, speedendurance.com and Athletics Weekly before the fiction bug took over my life. Now that’s all I write.

Giveaway

First Place winner will receive eBook editions of ...

Hoplite: Book One, Olympian (3 books total)

Part 1: Lysander

Part 2: The General

Part 3: Training 

and

a copy of D.E.M. - Deus Ex Machina (the author's contemporary technical thriller)

Five remaining winners will receive an eBook edition of Hoplite: Book One, Olympian, Part 1: 

Lysander

Follow the instructions on the GLEAM form below to enter. Good luck!

Hoplite Giveaway

Sheila Myers' Imaginary Brightness - Guest Post

One of the challenges of writing historical fiction, I have come to realize, is the fear that what I write may construed as the truth. 

I am trying my best to stick to generally known facts about the family of Dr. Thomas C. Durant. Dr. Durant was one of the masterminds behind the transcontinental railroad and there is currently an AMC t.v. series about him and the railroad days called Hell on Wheels. 

But while he was busy building the railroad across the U.S., his family was sequestered abroad living it up on all the money he stole from taxpayers. My novel focuses on the time period after the railroad was constructed and his next venture developing the Adirondack wilderness where he owned ½ million acres. 

And it focuses especially his son, William West Durant. When it comes to writing this novel William has been an enigma to me. There are some things I just can't make up - like the date of his birth, or when he lived where. The fact that he divorced, was under financial duress, was sued by his sister - these are facts. 

What we may never really know however is what was going on in his mind while he was living his life. What was he thinking when he built that $200,000 yacht while sending his sister a paltry $200/month allowance to live on in England? There is the court testimony from his sister's lawsuit (Heloise Durant Rose vs. William West Durant, 1903) that sheds some light on the actual scandal. But it doesn't answer the question: where was William's chivalry?

And why did he divorce his wife after ten years of marriage and three children? The divorce case papers are sealed - I only have a few news articles written in 1898 to go by - will we ever really know what went on between William and Janet behind bedroom doors? I have to let my imagination wander.

William West Durant is famous because of the great camps he built in the Adirondacks, forging a unique style of rustic architecture. But what was he thinking when he built the Great Camp Uncas or Sagamore in the Adirondacks? What was he trying to prove? What was his motivation? Surely it could not be all for show and tell, yet he lost money on each venture. 

I know once I present my own fictional version of what might have motivated the man there will be those that will disagree with my interpretation. Let them. 

I am not writing this story to try to break new ground on the historian's account of his life. I am writing it to elucidate for the general public, a story of a man that embodies a lot of the human frailties and greatness that we all have within us. 

Along the way though I have discovered a few errors in William's biography. What to do with them while I write is another story in itself. To learn more about my research journey visit my blog at Tracking William West Durant

Watch the book trailer

https://vimeo.com/122172532

Available May 31th, 2015 in print and eBook:

To order the ebook in the U.S. link here http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00UPFBCWU

For U.K. visitors link here: http://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B00UPFBCWU

About the author 

This is the second novel for Sheila Myers, a professor at a regional community college in Upstate New York where she lives with her husband and three children. Her first foray into writing, Ephemeral Summer, was a novel that explored her own passion for the environment in the beloved Finger Lakes region. With this new novel, Imaginary Brightness: a Durant family Saga, Myers tackles the complicated history of the development of the Adirondack Wilderness and the pioneers that pursued their vision of what some called ‘A Central Park for the World.’ “ She has kept a blog about her research journey as well as fastidious notes on her sources for historic characters portrayed in her novel. “Blogging about where I have gone, what libraries and museum archives I have visited, as well as the people that I have been researching has been the most interesting part about writing this novel on the Durant family and their connections.” She can be reached at lifeofwwd@gmail.com.

Caddy Rowland - Making History, Bohemian Style (Part 15)

Please welcome back historical fiction author and artist, Caddy Rowland, our (now) quarterly contributor here at Historical Fiction Connection.

Cabaret de l'Enfer

Entrance to Cabaret de l'Enfer

I posted last time about a cabaret in Montmartre where death was the theme. Well, this cabaret took it a step further. It was named Cabaret de l’Enfer (The Cabaret of the Inferno) and was satanically themed. Cabaret de l’Enfer was in the red light district of Montmartre (Pigalle), not far from Moulin Rouge. From the late nineteenth century to the mid-twentieth, patrons could come and drink in hell. This cabaret is very hard to gather much information about, unfortunately. I will tell you what I know. It seemed to have operated for over fifty years, and was located on the Boulevard de Clichy.

The entrance was a large, horrible, fanged open mouth in a gigantic face with eyes blazing crimson. “Enter and be damned. The Evil One awaits you!” was the warning people heard as they entered the hellish nightclub. The chorus of rough voices was enough to make even the bravest man reconsider.

Once inside there were crevices in the walls with molten silver and gold, flames would shoot out of rock clefts, and thick smoke came from smoldering fires in various caverns, smelling of sulfur. Thunder rumbled throughout.

One cauldron over a “fire” had musicians playing various instruments, and if they didn’t play correctly they were prodded by imps holding “red hot” irons. In fact, all servers were red imps. Many carried boiling and smoking beverages to the thirsty, damned patrons.

Most patrons sat at red tables which glowed, then dimmed, only to glow again and again. All orders were screamed out, changing them to frightening ingredients and side-effects. More imps sat on fires or turned somersaults across the floor.

One could even witness a snake transforming into a devil. Of course, Satan was there, heckling all who dared to stay once they had entered. He walked the club in a scarlet robe, adorned with glowing jewels. His sword blazed with fire. He had a black mustache that curled up into sharp points and a sneering grin. His shrieking laugh bounced off the walls, making the place even more leery. He’d accuse women of sending men to hell with their “ways” and condemn others to eternal damnation.

Next door was another cabaret with the theme of Heaven, complete with angels, harps, and clouds. It wasn’t nearly as popular as hell. I wish I had more information to share with you about these two places, as they sound like fun places to visit. Even though the information is sparse, I hope you enjoyed what I was able to share. 

If anyone has more information about either of these two places, I would love to hear from you at caddyauthor@gmail.com.

Historical Fiction by Caddy Rowland: 

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Author Email: caddyauthor@gmail.com
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Stephen Clegg's The Fire of Mars - Guest Post

My name is Stephen F Clegg, I am retired, and I have never been busier!

I have always had an active and fertile imagination, and I have told my children and grandchildren stories all of their lives; indeed, to this day I have never been allowed to read anything to them, I’ve always had to make up stories on the spot. And it was this situation that prompted me to leave adult tales for them to read when I am no longer here, allied to a hope that they will recall those endless, happy days with my loving wife Jay, and me.

My first published novel was named Maria’s Papers, and it was based upon true events that happened to my great great Aunt Maria Clegg in the 1800’s.

She had been a diminutive, single, lady with limited means, tasked by her father to reclaim what they believed was a family-owned estate at the end of a long tenure, from a wealthy and ruthless family who insisted that they’d purchased it, and not leased it. But her tiny stature utterly belied her grit and steely determination. She fought a battle of attrition with them for seventeen years, until in 1870; she was incarcerated in a lunatic asylum for having ‘Delusions of Exaltation’.

I have never seen anything as ambiguous and open for translation as that outrageous charge, and after obtaining her pitiful and scandalous medical records in 2010, I, like others in my family, believe that somebody had paid to have her locked-up.

In recording these events in a fictional tale, I had to have an authentic feel of the 1800’s. It was necessary to carry out abundant amounts of historical research, and I grew to love it. It was fascinating, instructive, and I soon realised that it was rich in all sorts of story-telling possibilities.

My enjoyment in penning the first, led me to writing subsequent novels, all containing the same central protagonists in a series of stand-alone thrillers. My second outing was named The Matthew Chance Legacy; that was followed by The Emergence of Malaterre, and then my latest, The Fire of Mars. It was released in January 2015, and is a split-storyline historical fiction set in Charleston, South Carolina. It is centred on the real-life events of the SS Georgiana which sank off The Bay of Palms near Charleston Harbour, containing confederate gold, during the American Civil War.

I have been lucky enough to have three prize nominations for my work, and I’m proud to say that I was a finalist in The People’s Book Prize 2014.

I am now at the editing and proof-reading stage of my fifth novel, The Hallenbeck Echo, and I’m sixty-thousand words into writing my sixth, The Monkshead Conspiracy. They are all split-storylines, and all involving historical fact, and/or, fiction.

It is a genre I find irresistible. Not only does it afford me the opportunity to let my mind run riot with events of the past, it also gives me a real insight into how life was back then, and it makes me realise how lucky and privileged I am to be living in these times.

If you’d like to learn more about me or my novels, or if I can, in any small way, help anybody else interested in historical fiction, please feel free to contact me via my website www.stephenfclegg.com and I’ll do whatever I can.

Thank you for reading my post. 

About the book

At the latter end of 2006, a well-respected, married, church Deacon discovers the possible hiding place of a huge and valuable ruby named ‘The Fire of Mars'. He becomes obsessed by it, and dreams about finding it to be able to fund a new and exciting life with his secret lover. But when he becomes involved in a hit and run scam, everything changes - he needs it to escape his dilemma. Thereafter his life and his actions begin to spiral down to depths he never thought possible.

In November of the same year, historic researcher Naomi Wilkes and her husband Carlton, arrive at St Andrew's church in Charleston, South Carolina, in pursuit of the same stone. And none of them have any idea of the scale of horrors they will unearth...

“The Fire of Mars” ISBN 9781784551889 by Stephen F. Clegg is available to buy from Amazon and all good booksellers from 30/01/2015.

Publisher's Website

Amazon

About the author

Stephen Clegg was born in Stockport in 1947. He is retired and happily living on the south coast of England with his wife, children and grandchildren. In 2012 his first novel ‘Maria's Papers' was released. His second, ‘The Matthew Chance Legacy' became a finalist in ‘The People's Book Prize 2013/14', and his third ‘The Emergence of Malaterre' was released in April 2014. This is his fourth outing, with more to follow.

Alison McMahan's The Saffron Crocus - Guest Post and {Giveaway}

PORTRAIT OF A WOMAN COMPOSER

Guest blog by Alison McMahan

The paintings of Bernardo Strozzi greatly inspired me when it came to creating the characters in my book, The Saffron Crocus. Strozzi was a painter who fled Genoa because he no longer wanted to live as a Capuchin monk. He ended up in Venice where he produced many portraits, including one of Claudio Monteverdi, until his death in 1644.

In addition to his portraits he painted many allegorical paintings, images of saints, and scenes of daily life. He painted pictures of St. Cecilia several times, images such as this one:

St. Cecilia's had several traditional features: the transported expression, the musical instrument, the modest dress among them. 

Then Strozzi painted the image of "Woman with a Viola da Gamba." 

The painting has some of the elements that match it to a St. Cecilia: the musical instrument, the pose of a young woman visible to the waist. But there all resemblance to a picture of saint ends. This young woman is not transported, she looks at the viewer directly, with a worldly and somewhat bored gaze. She is not modest at all; in fact, her cleavage is so low that one breast is completely bared. 

The bared breast and the fact that there is a violin in the image, along with her viola da gamba, and the music is for a duet suggests that she is waiting for a partner to come and "make music" with her. In other words, that she is a courtesan. 

I referred to this image in The Saffron Crocus, and the heroine's discovery of it marks a key turning point in her understanding of the world. At the time I wrote the book I accepted the traditional interpretation of the painting, that the pose and the décolletage indicated that the sitter was a courtesan. Since then I've learned a few things which are much more interesting than the traditional interpretation.

For example, some have argued that the portrait is an allegorical image, of Flora, similar to Titian's:

Courtesans in Venice did bare their breasts, as a way of marketing their goods, and tinted their nipples red. Or they stood on their roofs, bleaching their hair to achieve a blond color, wearing nothing but a shimmery shift that also revealed their breasts to any passerby. 

But it's hard to say that the bare breast in this image indicates the woman is a courtesan. Strozzi used bare-breasted women in many images, usually allegorical ones, such as his allegory of the arts:

Scholars David Rosand and Ellen Rosand have argued that the picture of the viola da gamba player picture is actually a portrait of Barbara Strozzi (no relation to Bernardo). They have various reasons for this attribution, mainly, that events we know about her life match the depiction in the image. Specifically, they refer to the fact that Barbara Strozzi was the "mistress of ceremonies" of the Accademia degli Unisoni, a salon for philosophical and artistic discussion organized by her adoptive (her perhaps natural) father, Giulio Strozzi. The Rosands mention a particular event that might have led to the pose and costume in the portrait in which Barbara sang and handed out flowers as prizes to the one who wrote the most impressive argument on whether tears or song was the most potent weapon in love. 

As I read about this attribution I became eager to know more about Barbara Strozzi. Not whether she was a courtesan (there is evidence that she partnered with one man most of her life, as she had three children with him) but as a musician. 

She wasn't the first musician to have her music published. That honor goes to Maddalena Cassulana whose first work, a collection of four madrigals, was published in Florence in 1566. But Strozzi published voluminously, more than any other composer of her time. She is credited with creating the cantata. And she did all this without the patronage of a noble or the church. She spent her life trying to find such patronage and did not succeed. 

She did have her father's support, though. At least one scholar claims Giulio Strozzi created the Accademia degli Unisoni to encourage her work. Though her association with the Unisoni is also what led to outsiders claiming she had sold her virtue. 

It seems sad to me that what most people might know about Strozzi is these allegations that she was a courtesan. That bared breast is all we see when we look at that image. I encourage my readers to listen to her music instead. Here's a lovely performance of her aria "Che si può fare":

About the book

Publication Date: December 13, 2014
Black Opal Books
eBook; 306p
Genre: Young Adult/Historical Mystery/Romance

Winner of the 2014 Rosemary Award for Best Historical for Young Adults.
Venice, 1643. Isabella, fifteen, longs to sing in Monteverdi’s Choir, but only boys (and castrati) can do that. Her singing teacher, Margherita, introduces her to a new wonder: opera! Then Isabella finds Margherita murdered. Now people keep trying to kill Margherita’s handsome rogue of a son, Rafaele.

Was Margherita killed so someone could steal her saffron business? Or was it a disgruntled lover, as Margherita—unbeknownst to Isabella—was one of Venice’s wealthiest courtesans?

Or will Isabella and Rafaele find the answer deep in Margherita’s past, buried in the Jewish Ghetto?

Isabella has to solve the mystery of the Saffron Crocus before Rafaele hangs for a murder he didn’t commit, though she fears the truth will drive her and the man she loves irrevocably apart.

Excerpt

Who knew a singing career would be this much trouble?

“Rafaele!” She flew into the garret. “Piero, it was so wonderful, wait until I tell you!”

The stool next to the bed was knocked over. The tray with the genepy bottle was on the floor, one of the cups broken. The fat candle that had been burning next to Rafaele’s bed had been flung to the other side of the room.. Canvases were strewn all over the floor, some of them slashed, and many of Master Strozzi’s jars of paint elements were broken.

Did Piero and Rafaele have a fight? She quickly suppressed the thought. Who would get into a fight with a man who was already injured?

Something else must have happened.

She walked across the garret. “Piero? Rafaele, are you here?”

Rafaele was not in the bed. The sheets and blankets she had piled on top of him were strewn everywher. Blood-stained sheets spilled over the edge of the pallet. There was a pile of clothes on the floor.

She walked around to get a closer look.

Not clothes. It was Piero. Face down, one arm stretched out before him, as if in supplication.

A puddle of blood under him.

Dead.

Praise for The Saffron Crocus

“I adored this beautifully written, passionate book. The Saffron Crocus is a glittering, thrilling opera of a novel that plucked my heartstrings and kept me reading at fever pitch. Brava, Alison McMahan! Encore!” -Nancy Holder, New York Times Bestselling Author of the Wicked Saga

Buy the eBook

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About the Author

Alison McMahan chased footage for her documentaries through jungles in Honduras and Cambodia, favelas in Brazil and racetracks in the U.S. She brings the same sense of adventure to her award-winning books of historical mystery and romantic adventure for teens and adults. Her latest publication is The Saffron Crocus, a historical mystery for young. Murder, Mystery & Music in 17th Century Venice.

She loves hearing from readers!

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