{Giveaway!} Elves, Myths and Irish Legend: Article from author J.S. Dunn

It was then they made the sun stand still

to the end of nine months—strange the tale—

warming the noble ether

in the roof of the perfect firmament.

From: Metrical Dindshenchas

Thank you to Historical Fiction Connection for the opportunity to comment on what inspired Bending The Boyne, set at 2200 BCE . This new novel reworks a bit of Irish legend, the oldest literature of western Europe.

Myth has endless possibility for interpretation and re-telling. The Isles’ myths were transcribed in a much later millennium from the native tongues (old Irish, and old Welsh) by devout but cold, hungry, physically cloistered monks. How much authentic oral history or fact the written version contains from a time prior to any Celts or to Christianity, is hotly debated.

What inspired Bending The Boyne specifically was a passage of medieval text that describes the huge and intricately engineered Boyne mounds as “elfmounds.” Wow, that’s some piece of propaganda! Newgrange at the river Boyne has over half of Europe’s prehistoric rock art and is a UN World Heritage site. How did these impressive mounds come to be later dismissed as the home of elves and fairies? As it happens, the Boyne mounds and the ancient Kerry copper mine are among the few places in the Isles where early “Beaker” pottery has been found. That Beaker presence implies a new culture, new belief systems. By our era around the year 2000, academics began to see a pattern of the megaliths having been abandoned or even proactively destroyed along the north Atlantic coasts of what is now Spain, Brittany, and the Isles. The common factor appears to be metals and the Beaker influx at around 2500-2200 BCE. The plot for the novel plays with the concept of hidden gold on Eire, that the invaders cannot find the real gold right under their noses any more than they understand the natives’ golden knowledge.

A story of drastic change and cultural conflict developed, from what I saw traveling in Spain, Brittany, and Ireland, and also read in extensive research; a conflict between the native astronomers and the incoming metal-seekers. There is also a Who’s Your Daddy? twist to Boann’s legend and the mysterious birth of her son Aengus that highlights the differences between natives and the newcomers. “...they made the sun stand still to the end of nine months / strange the tale...” : from the Dindshenchas.

Astronomy plays a major part since it is clear that the ancients built the mound landscape to connect with the skies. The magic in this novel relies on the old adage that truth is stranger than fiction! This tale is probably not for readers looking for mysticism or stories of druids, cauldrons, and clashing sword battles—and anyway those are anachronisms to the early Bronze Age. This is fiction in the vein of Jean Auel set in prehistoric Europe, or the Gears’ works set in ancient North America.

Historical fiction can bring science to life in a way that nonfiction or academic works usually cannot. I hope Bending The Boyne accomplished that. It’s one thing to read about the count of various animal bones per square meter in the excavation report from Newgrange mound; it’s another thing to realize that the horse bones are from Ireland’s first horses, visualize how the horses came to the Boyne and the foreigners, warriors with long knives, who brought them and how that impacted the natives; and put all that into a story line in a meaningful way.

For readers who want an adult fairy tale this novel would not be their best choice. For those willing to look deeper for symbolism in a new spin on the myths, it is a great choice. This is the first novel that brings to the public the new approach taken by eminent scholars like Barry Cunliffe at Oxford and linguist John Koch, to what “Celtic” means and where the north Atlantic shared culture probably began: not in central Europe with the Iron Age.

As Ireland’s centennial of the Rising approaches in 2016, it is also hoped this novel contributes toward understanding of the past and the Troubles, and the reunification of all Ireland “for all eternity” as the mythical Aengus had it.

Bending The Boyne (March 2011)

Circa 2200 BCE: Changes rocking the Continent reach Eire with the dawning Bronze Age. Well before any Celts, marauders invade the island seeking copper and gold. The young astronomer Boann and the enigmatic Cian need all their wits and courage to save their people and their great Boyne mounds, when long bronze knives challenge the peaceful native starwatchers. Banished to far coasts, Cian discovers how to outwit the invaders at their own game. Tensions on Eire between new and old cultures and between Boann, Elcmar, and her son Aengus, ultimately explode. What emerges from the rubble of battle are the legends of Ireland's beginnings in a totally new light.

Bending The Boyne draws on 21st century archaeology to show the lasting impact when early metal mining and trade take hold along north Atlantic coasts. Carved megaliths and stunning gold artifacts, from the Pyrenees up to the Boyne, come to life in this researched historical fiction.

The author resided in Ireland during the past decade to research Bending The Boyne. J.S. Dunn can be found on: http://www.jsdunnbooks.com/ or http://www.seriouslygoodbooks.net/.  The author has a second novel underway, set later in the Atlantic Bronze Age during another period of great change.
~~~~~~~~~~~~

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Giveaway of Signed copies of Eromenos by Melanie McDonald!

Eromenos

Eromenos by Melanie McDonald

This coming-of-age novel recounts the brief, tumultuous life of Antinous of Bithynia, a Greek youth who becomes the lover of the Roman Emperor Hadrian at age twelve, after he is plucked from the obscurity of his home in Asia Minor following an earthquake; shipped overseas to Rome; enrolled in the Imperial School, and asked to serve at court, along with a cadre of fellow students all handpicked for their beauty, intelligence and athletic prowess, in order to please the emperor.

Antinous soon captures the attention of Hadrian, fourteenth ruler of the Roman Empire, and joins him as a hunting companion on a boar hunt in the Arcadian forest, where Hadrian takes the boy as his beloved (eromenos), a practice he and other Roman aristocrats follow in emulation of the ancient Greek bond between man and boy.

Afterward, Antinous becomes Hadrian's acknowledged "favorite," a position that complicates his relationships with friends and nemeses at court, even as his intimacy with the emperor deepens and he matures toward manhood. Antinous witnesses the wonders and horrors of the Empire at its zenith; meets the eminent philosophers, writers, architects and scientists of the imperial courts in Rome and Athens; and undergoes initiation into religious mysteries within the cults of Demeter and of Mithras.

On a lion hunt during a sojourn to Egypt and Africa, Antinous is subjected to a test of skill during a lion hunt which almost proves disastrous. Afterward, while the imperial flotilla navigates the Nile, Antinous, now almost nineteen, grapples with questions of love, power, honor, manhood and selfhood which have arisen from seven years of intimacy with Hadrian, and makes a decision to undergo an act of ritual devotion, the consequences of which reverberated throughout the world of antiquity.

In a style similar to Memoirs of Hadrian by Marguerite Yourcenar, EROMENOS gives voice to a character who captivated an Emperor both in life and after death—Hadrian commissioned hundreds of works to immortalize his beloved youth, many of which still may be seen in museums today—and who achieved apotheosis as a pagan god of late antiquity, one whose cult of adoration lasted hundreds of years after his death at age nineteen in 130CE (and far outlasted the cult of Hadrian himself); this account of the affair between the emperor and his beloved ephebe vindicates a beautiful, brilliant young man whose story often outraged early Christian church fathers and historians such as St. Athanasius, who vilified Antinous as a "shameless and scandalous boy," the "sordid and loathsome instrument of his master's lust."

In Eromenos, Antinous, long silenced and scorned by history, speaks at last.

Melanie McDonald received an MFA in fiction from the University of Arkansas, where she also taught World Literature and Honors World Literature, and received the Claude Faulkner Award, the Fulbright College Baum Award, and the University Graduate Teaching Award for teaching excellence. Her work has appeared in Fugue, New York Stories, Indigenous Fiction and other literary magazines. She has received a fellowship for a residency with the Hawthornden International Writers Program in Scotland in November 2008; she also received a fellowship toward a residency at Vermont Studio Center in 2002. She attended the international summer writing program at NUI, Galway, in 2005, and has participated in various writing workshops in New York City, Squaw Valley, Napa Valley, and in Paris, where she studied with C. Michael Curtis, the senior fiction editor for The Atlantic Monthly. Eromenos, her debut novel, has just been released by Seriously Good Books, a new small press for historical fiction.


Thank you to Melanie for providing us with all of this background on Eromenos.
For those readers interested in Ancient Rome and want to read Eromenos, today is your lucky day! If you enjoy Kate Quinn's bools or Michelle Moran's, I bet you would enjoy Eromenos also.

Melanie is generously offering two lucky followers of HF-Connection each an autographed copy of her book Eromenos!

To enter, just simply comment here with your email address! Open to USA, and giveaway ends 5/13.

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{GIVEAWAY!} Finding Emilie: Guest Post by Laurel Corona

The following is an article written by author Laurel Corona, who has recently published her newest novel, Finding Emilie (4/12/2011). This article has been republished with permission from the author.
I reviewed this novel for The Burton Book Review and loved it so much that I am reposting this guest post and offering you a chance to snag your own copy.. see below for giveaway details!!!

Emilie sounds like such a magnificent lady-- charming, scientific, exhibitionist, Voltaire's lover... read a review here.



Finding Emilie, by Laurel Corona



Emilie du Châtelet: Physicist and Party Girl

The Marquise du Chatelet’s parlor at her husband’s ancestral home in Cirey looked in many respects like that of any other aristocrat. The banquettes were plush, the chairs ornately carved, the tea and liqueurs beautifully arrayed in Sevres porcelain cups and tinted crystal glasses, the cakes and pastries freshly baked by the servants in the basement kitchen.

Only one thing was unique: in the center of the parlor, with chairs arrayed around, was a bathtub--a bathtub with Emilie in it, happily chatting away with her guests while clothed only in a diamond necklace and a silk chemise, transparent when wet. When her water cooled, a manservant recalled in his memoir, he would bring hot water and pour it between her parted knees, which revealed, in his words, “all her nature.”

Well, why not? Emilie du Chatelet was brilliant at everything, but was best at two things: knowing what she wanted, and getting it. From the age of ten she used her prodigious mathematical intelligence to beat adults at cards at the salons, then taught herself math and science from the books she bought with her winnings. As a young wife and mother, she occasionally cross-dressed to go to scientific meetings forbidden to women. When she wanted to learn to sing, she hired one of the voice teachers at the Comedie Italienne as her private tutor, learning whole lead soprano roles by heart even if she would never sing on stage.

Vivacious, irrepressible, charming, and daring, Emilie blazed through the world of Louis XV’s France, but her corset, wig, and panniers hid the most incredible thing about her: her first-rate scientific mind. Emilie du Chatelet used her privileged life to become one of the most important women of science not just in her era but in any. The fact that she is not a household word has far more to say about others than it does about her.

Believing until her thirties that her studies were just for curiosity and that she would never amount to anything as a scientist, she spent years helping her lover, Voltaire, conduct scientific experiments and write a work on Newton which he claimed as his own work. Voltaire had no particular aptitude for such work, but he wanted a seat in the French Academy of Science as a complement to his fame as France’s preeminent man of letters. He never got close. Today, it’s commonly believed that any solid, original thinking in Voltaire’s scientific works is attributable to Emilie.

A prize offered by the Academy of Sciences for the best paper on the nature of fire caused Emilie to break away scientifically from Voltaire and submit her own paper anonymously. She did not win, but received an honorable mention and the unusual acclaim of having her paper published alongside the winner--an indication that the only reason she had not won was because the Academy was unprepared to give the prize to a woman.

She continued a dual life of courtly obligations and scientific work into her early forties, when at the unheard-of age of forty-three, she got pregnant by a dashing young soldier- poet, with whom she had a passionate affair.

Premonitions of death in childbirth caused Emilie to work at a breakneck pace on her most important work, a translation of Newton’s Principia Mathematica. But hers was no mere translation. Few could comprehend Newton’s work, so Emilie rewrote it in French that scientists could understand. She also wrote commentaries to explain and expand upon Newton’s points, and in places where Newton had not presented adequate mathematical proof, Emilie figured out what those proofs would be and supplied the equations. Her translation of Newton’s Principia is still, 250 years later, the standard one used in France.

Unfortunately, Emilie’s premonitions turned out to be true. After an uneventful labor and delivery, she died six days after the birth of a daughter, Stanislas-Adelaide, probably of an embolism.

My novel is about finding Emilie on many levels. First, I “found” her and wanted to tell her story. But the book is less about her than her daughter. Effectively orphaned, Lili (as the girl is known) grows up, at least in my imagination, as unusual and independent of mind as the scandalous woman who bore her. Reaching her teens, Lili’s world closes around her as an impending loveless marriage threatens to take away her independence of spirit and dreams for her future. Believing that learning about her mother may point the way for her own life, she sets out to find Emilie for herself. Last, readers will find Emilie through the real-life scenes that appear between the chapters.

Welcome to 2011, Madame la Marquise! A more appreciative world awaits.
 
~~
Thanks to Laurel Corona for providing her with this piece! Her books can be found at online retailers at the following links:
Amazon
Barnes and Noble
Book Depository
Borders

GIVEAWAY!!!
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{Free Download!} Guest Post: Phyllis Zimbler Miller, author of Mrs. Lieutenant

Please welcome author Phyllis Zimbler Miller to Historical Fiction Connection. She is the author of the novel Mrs. Lieutenant.




Free download!



Becoming a New Mrs. Lieutenant During the Vietnam War

Almost 41 years ago, in May of 1970, I drove with my husband from Elgin, Illinois, to Ft. Knox, Kentucky. My ROTC husband was about to go on active duty with the U.S. Army during the Vietnam War.

Phyllis Zimbler and Mitchell Miller at the Coronation Ball at Michigan State University on Saturday, November 18, 1967, sponsored by the Cadet Officers Club and the Arnold Air Society.

Those nine weeks that my husband attended Armor Officers Basic were an amazing experience for me. I came to know people whom I never would have met otherwise.

To begin with, my husband arranged to carpool with an officer from the South. His wife and I thus also had to carpool if we didn’t want to sit in our hot apartments every day.

She and her husband had never met Jews before, plus they were not so happy that we were Northerners. At times this was an uneasy alliance, especially as it was only six years since the passage of the Civil Rights Act.

Next, although the army had not said wives could come and no on-post housing was provided, it turned out there was a training course to teach us new officers’ wives how to be good officers’ wives.

I saved all of my original documents from these nine weeks. I felt even then, right at the start of the women’s liberation movement, that this experience was an important slice of women’s social history.

click to enlarge

About 20 years later two film producers optioned the story for a movie, then they told me I had to first write a book. By the time I had the draft of a novel written, they had moved on.

I worked on the novel for another 20 years, including hiring an editorial consultant to figure out the one thing “missing” from the story, and of course I collected numerous rejection slips.

Once print-on-demand became an option I decided to self-publish. (I didn’t want stacks of self-published books sitting in my garage.)

Why a novel? Because I wanted to create characters who represented the people I met without being the real people. Thus the characters in the novel are a combination of several people.

At the same time I set about self-publishing, I entered the novel in the 2008 Amazon Breakthrough Novel Award, and “Mrs. Lieutenant” was chosen a semi-finalist. Amazon gave each of us semi-finalists a page, and one semi-finalist had something I didn’t have – a blog.

From that day on I never looked back. I threw myself into learning all about online marketing.

In the beginning I made numerous mistakes (for one, my blog www.mrslieutenant.blogspot.com is not a self-hosted blog) and was continually frustrated at how to do even “simple” online tasks, such as uploading a photo. Eventually I got better – and also learned to accept frustration with any new social media tool.

And when I got better, I formed a company with my younger daughter Yael K. Miller to help others not have to reinvent the wheel as I had done.

Back to my social history novel.

A few years later I would become a feminist and would understand even better the restrictions placed on officers’ wives. But I would also understand that these restrictions helped women from all different backgrounds (and, yes, prejudices) come together.

Today, besides being a social media marketer, I do a lot of online activity to support our troops. I even have one website to showcase documentaries and films about our troops in the past and now – http://www.insupportofourtroops.com/

My main online support focus is helping to get out the word about PTSD – Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (the site above has information on the symptoms).

While there is no draft now, in 1970 there was a draft. The Vietnam War was very unpopular, especially because of the draft.

A couple of years ago a Vietnam War veteran described his feelings to me about his return from Vietnam. “They called me a baby killer,” he said. Then he went on to say that at least today most people in the U.S. support the troops rather than revile them.

And I suspect that many young people today know almost nothing about the Vietnam War period of U.S. history.

Because of this lack of knowledge, the entire novel of “Mrs. Lieutenant” is available online for free. The links to read the novel at BookBuzzr or Authonomy are at http://www.mrslieutenant.com/

At the time in 1970 I was very upset that my life was disrupted while my husband served on active duty. Today, from the vantage point of 2011, I am glad to have had the opportunity to personally experience life in the U.S. military.

Yes, I was also in the U.S. military. As I quote in “Mrs. Lieutenant” from a booklet instructing us what to do:

“It has been said that when a man acquires a commission, the government has gained not one, but two – the officer and his wife.”

Phyllis Zimbler Miller has an M.B.A from The Wharton School and is the co-founder of the social media marketing company Miller Mosaic. Besides being the author of “Mrs. Lieutenant,” she is the co-author of the Jewish holiday book “Seasons for Celebration” and the co-author of “Four Comedy Screenplays.” Her Amazon author page is at http://budurl.com/PZMAmazonpage, and a recent article was published regarding getting a job afer military life which readers may find useful as well.

{Giveaway!} Daughters of Rome - prequel to Kate Quinn's unforgettable debut, a Guest Post

Please welcome Kate Quinn to Historical Fiction Connection, and see below to enter for your chance to win a copy of her newest release, Daughters of Rome.

Sex and the City (of Rome)

By Kate Quinn, author of Daughters of Rome

I'll admit to a certain guilty pleasure of mine right off the bat: Sex and the City. Oh, I mocked it, but I still swooned over the clothes, the humor, the girltalk. And I've had a chance to catch up on SATC now that my second historical fiction novel Daughters of Rome is released. Which is why I've started to think of Daughters of Rome, set during the Year of Four Emperors, as “Sex and the City of Rome.” I have to admit, it didn't strike me at the time when I was writing it, but there are certain similarities . . .


The Setup

“Sex and the City” gives us four girls sticking together through love affairs, marriages, heartache, and brunch. Daughters of Rome gives us four girls sticking together through love affairs, marriages, heartache, and civil war. (Not that those SATC brunches didn't have a certain amount of civil war lobbied over the Bloody Marys from time to time.)

The Heroine

SATC had Carrie Bradshaw to narrate the chaos, a writer with a nice line in cynical voiceovers and an enormous appetite for stilettos (the higher the better). For DoR there is Marcella, a historian with a nice line in cynical one-liners and an enormous appetite for politics (the bloodier the better).


The Heroine's Posse

Carrie's three best gal-pals include a very proper brunette, a very sexy blond, and a very tomboyish redhead. Marcella has an older sister and two cousins: a very proper brunette, a very sexy redhead, and a very tomboyish blonde.

The Style

SATC popularized “Carrie” necklaces, Prada gowns, and Manolo Blahnik stilettos. DoR might end up popularizing ruby necklaces, goddess gowns, and gladiator sandals. (For women who are not a size zero! Roman fashion went for a curvier, softer silhouette, which frankly the skinny gals of SATC could have used. I adore Sarah Jessica Parker, but the woman needs a few cheeseburgers.)

The Romantic Escapades

Carrie and the girls managed, over many seasons and two movies, to rack up four marriages, one divorce, three children, and countless lovers. I'm sorry, but Marcella and her posse have them beat with eleven marriages, six divorces, eight children, and countless lovers. Those racy Romans . . .

The Men

SATC had one cute guy after another: suave Mr. Big, nice-guy Steve, sweetheart Harry, sexy Smith . . . to name but a few. DoR offers one Emperor after another: cranky Emperor Galba, metrosexual Emperor Otho, sports-fan Emperor Galba, nice-guy Emperor Vespasian . . . to name but a few.

The Obstacles

Carrie & Co. collectively faced pregnancy, divorce, abortion, adultery, and cancer. Plus trying to afford Louboutins during a recession. Marcella & Co. face pregnancy, divorce, abortion, adultery, and widowhood. Plus trying to stay alive when your political leaders are massacring each other literally on your doorstep every three months or so. Warring emperors aside, I guess the problems women face haven't changed so much over the millennia.

Perhaps that is the real reason Daughters of Rome is reminiscent of “Sex and the City,” all jokes aside. In the end, women face many of the same problems whether they happen to live in modern day New York or first century Rome. A girl who has gone through a divorce feels just as lousy about it whether the process involved a team of expensive lawyers (modern day), or just moving out of the house (ancient Rome). Both Roman women and modern women faced the agonizing choice of “adoption, abortion, or single motherhood?” when faced with an unwanted pregnancy. A passionate affair with the wrong man is just as confusing and heartbreaking whether the man in question is a married stockbroker with commitment issues, or (gasp) a slave.

What I'd love to see is Carrie and her friends meet up for brunch with Marcella and hers. Let's assume the English-to-Latin translation is seamless, and plenty of drinks are provided. After a certain awkward period where the Roman girls splutter over their very first taste of a Cosmopolitan, and the modern girls are introduced to Roman wine so strong it can be lit on fire with a match, I see this discussion going well. Marcella would be fascinated by Carrie's columnist gig - “Women get paid for writing here? I'm never going back!” Charlotte and her Roman counterpart Cornelia would bond instantly over the years they both spent yearning for babies; Charlotte pats Cornelia's hand a lot and assures her that it will happen someday, just you wait. Miranda and her tomboy equivalent Diana will both be talking at once, Miranda trying to explain baseball and Diana trying to explain chariot racing. And Roman party girl Lollia will be swapping hair-raising sex stories with Samantha: “A pearl thong? That's nothing; I wore sapphire nipple caps once. Never again, you wouldn't believe the chafing. Now tell me more about these things called vibrators . . .”

“Sex and the City of Rome” - now that would be a show worth seeing. HBO, if you're out there, Daughters of Rome has not yet been optioned for film . . .

Thanks for having me to the Historical Fiction Connection! It’s been a pleasure.



Daughters of Rome, April 5, 2011

A.D. 69. The Roman Empire is up for the taking. The Year of Four Emperors will change everything-especially the lives of two sisters with a very personal stake in the outcome. Elegant and ambitious, Cornelia embodies the essence of the perfect Roman wife. She lives to one day see her loyal husband as Emperor. Her sister Marcella is more aloof, content to witness history rather than make it. But when a bloody coup turns their world upside-down, both women must maneuver carefully just to stay alive. As Cornelia tries to pick up the pieces of her shattered dreams, Marcella discovers a hidden talent for influencing the most powerful men in Rome. In the end, though, there can only be one Emperor...and one Empress. 

Kate Quinn is a native of southern California. A lifelong history buff, she first got hooked on ancient Rome while watching I, Claudius at the age of seven. Still in elementary school when she saw the movie Spartacus, she resolved to someday write a book about a gladiator. That ambition turned into Mistress of Rome, written when she was a freshman in college.


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