Anna Belfrage's The Graham Saga - Book Blast and {Giveaway}

Join Anna Belfrage as her beloved time-slip series, The Graham Saga, is featured around the blogosphere from July 28-August 15 with HF Virtual Book Tours and enter to win your own set of Books 1-6!

About The Graham Saga

This is the story of Alex and Matthew, two people who should never have met - not when she was born three hundred years after him. It all began the day Alex Lind got caught in a thunderstorm. Not your ordinary storm, no this was the mother of all storms, causing a most unusual rift in the fabric of time. Alex was dragged three centuries backwards in time, landing more or less at the feet of a very surprised Matthew Graham. In a series of books we follow the life and adventures of the expanding Graham family, both in Scotland and in the New World - and let me tell you it is quite an exciting life, at times excessively so in Alex' opinion. Sometimes people ask me why Alex had to be born in the twentieth century, why not make her a woman born and bred in the seventeenth century where the story is set? The answer to that is I have no idea. Alex Lind is an insistent, vibrant character that sprung into my head one morning and simply wouldn't let go. Seductively she whispered about terrible thunderstorms, about a gorgeous man with magic, hazel eyes, about loss and sorrow, about love - always this love, for her man and her children, for the people she lives with. With a throaty chuckle she shared insights into a life very far removed from mine, now and then stopping to shake her head and tell me that it probably hadn't been easy for Matthew, to have such an outspoken, strange and independent woman at his side. At this point Matthew groaned into life. Nay, he sighed, this woman of his was at times far too obstinate, with no notion of how a wife should be, meek and dutiful. But, he added with a laugh, he wouldn't want her any different, for all that she was half heathen and a right hand-full. No, he said, stretching to his full length, if truth be told not a day went by without him offering fervent thanks for his marvelous wife, a gift from God no less, how else to explain the propitious circumstances that had her landing at his feet that long gone August day? Still, dear reader, it isn't always easy. At times Alex thinks he's an overbearing bastard, at others he's sorely tempted to belt her. But the moment their fingertips graze against each other, the moment their eyes meet, the electrical current that always buzzes between them peaks and surges, it rushes through their veins, it makes their breathing hitch and ... She is his woman, he is her man. That's how it is, that's how it always will be.

Graham Saga Titles

Book One: A Rip in the Veil Book Two: Like Chaff in the Wind Book Three: The Prodigal Son Book Four: A Newfound Land Book Five: Serpents in the Garden Book Six: Revenge & Retribution Book Seven: Whither Thou Goest (November 2014) Book Eight: To Catch a Falling Star (March 2015)

About the Author

Anna was raised abroad, on a pungent mix of Latin American culture, English history and Swedish traditions. As a result she's multilingual and most of her reading is historical- both non-fiction and fiction. Possessed of a lively imagination, she has drawers full of potential stories, all of them set in the past. She was always going to be a writer - or a historian, preferably both. Ideally, Anna aspired to becoming a pioneer time traveller, but science has as yet not advanced to the point of making that possible. Instead she ended up with a degree in Business and Finance, with very little time to spare for her most favourite pursuit. Still, one does as one must, and in between juggling a challenging career Anna raised her four children on a potent combination of invented stories, historical debates and masses of good food and homemade cakes. They seem to thrive? For years she combined a challenging career with four children and the odd snatched moment of writing. Nowadays Anna spends most of her spare time at her writing desk. The children are half grown, the house is at times eerily silent and she slips away into her imaginary world, with her imaginary characters. Every now and then the one and only man in her life pops his head in to ensure she's still there. For additional information regarding Anna, her characters, extra scenes, and teasers for her next books, have a look at Anna's website at: www.annabelfrage.com. You can also find her on Facebook or follow her on Twitter.

Book Blast Schedule

Monday, July 28
Broken Teepee
Kincavel Korner
bookworm2bookworm's Blog
Tuesday, July 29
So Many Books, So Little Time
Wednesday, July 30
A Bibliotaph's Reviews
Thursday, July 31
Book Drunkard
Friday, August 1
The Lit Bitch
Saturday, August 2
Book Nerd
Sunday, August 3
Literary Chanteuse
Just One More Chapter
Monday, August 4
A Bookish Girl
Historical Tapestry
To Read, Or Not to Read
Tuesday, August 5
CelticLady's Reviews
Wednesday, August 6
The True Book Addict
Thursday, August 7
Impressions in Ink
Friday, August 8
A Bookish Affair
The Mad Reviewer
Saturday, August 9
Historical Fiction Connection
Monday, August 11
Gobs and Gobs of Books
Tuesday, August 12
Pages of Comfort
Wednesday, August 13
History Undressed
Thursday, August 14
Passages to the Past
Friday, August 15
Mina's Bookshelf

Giveaway

To win a set of Anna Belfrage's Graham Saga (Books 1-6) please complete the Rafflecopter giveaway form below. Two winners will be chosen. Giveaway is open internationally!
Giveaway ends at 11:59pm on August 15th. You must be 18 or older to enter. Winners will be chosen via Rafflecopter on August 16th and notified via email. Winners have 48 hours to claim prize or new winner is chosen.

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R.L. Bartram's Dance the Moon Down - Guest Post

Dance The Moon Down - The reason behind the book.

As August approaches we are reminded that this year is the centenary of the First World War. On August 4th 1914 Britain declared war on Germany and set in motion one of the darkest episodes of English history. In the June of that year the author John Galsworthy wrote a critique of the younger generation in which he remarked that “they had been born to dance the moon down to ragtime”, and we all know what happened next.

It was the very irony of Galsworthy’s statement that inspired me to write my debut novel “Dance the Moon Down” From the outset the biggest challenge I faced was to produce something different on one of the most written about subjects in the world. Neither did I have any intention of adding yet another WW1 story to the mountainous pile that already exists. So I left the mud and trenches of Flanders behind and began to search nearer home. It was there that I discovered the women of Britain.

Extensive research revealed to me that this, incredibly, was an area which had been left relatively untouched. Based on this I decided to make my central character a civilian woman. Thus, “Victoria” was born. An upper-middle class girl, privileged, highly educated (something of an anomaly for those days) whose naive perception of the harsh realities unfolding around her are mirrored by the nation.

I had always intended that my novel should cater not only for those readers with some grasp of WW1 but also for those who have none. To that end I created, what I choose to call, a “docu -drama” This is a medium by which the reader can assimilate the necessary facts and understand why the story unfolds as it does, with myself, the author, acting as an omniscient narrator offering a counterpoint of modern hindsight. It has been said “never let a fact get in the way of a good story.” I do, and they don’t.

Essentially “Dance the Moon Down” is Victoria’s story, a tale of one young woman’s courage and faith against almost overwhelming odds. Through her the reader will experience, first hand, a hitherto untold version of the First World War.

If you were to ask me what kind of a novel I think “Dance the Moon Down” is, I would have to say that first and foremost, I hope, it’s a rattling good read, but it’s also something of a chimera. It’s a non-war war story, it’s a romance with virtually only one participant, it’s an adventure without weapons and a story from a woman’s prospective, written by a man, generally classified as “Historical Drama”.

Throughout this year you will doubtless hear the phrase “Lest we forget”. Agreed, we haven’t forgotten the mud, the trenches, the poppies and the men they represent, but that’s only part of the story. To my mind what we , tragically, always overlook is that the men and, most particularly, the women who lived through those times are not mere images from history, but ordinary flesh and blood people who, like ourselves, treasured their lives as much as we do now. And that is what Dance the Moon Down is truly about.

www.goodreads.com/author/show/5858365.R_L_Bartram/blog

http://www.amazon.co.uk/-/e/B00A4E7JGA

About the book

In 1910, no one believed there would ever be a war with Germany. Safe in her affluent middle-class life, the rumours held no significance for Victoria either. It was her father’s decision to enrol her at university that began to change all that. There she befriends the rebellious and outspoken Beryl Whittaker, an emergent suffragette, but it is her love for Gerald Avery, a talented young poet from a neighbouring university that sets the seal on her future.

After a clandestine romance, they marry in January 1914, but with the outbreak of the First World War, Gerald volunteers and within months has gone missing in France. Convinced that he is still alive, Victoria’s initial attempts to discover what has become of him, implicate her in a murderous assault on Lord Kitchener resulting in her being interrogated as a spy, and later tempted to adultery.

Now virtually destitute, Victoria is reduced to finding work as a common labourer on a run down farm, where she discovers a world of unimaginable ignorance and poverty. It is only her conviction that Gerald will some day return that sustains her through the dark days of hardship and privation as her life becomes a battle of faith against adversity.

Susan Spann's Blade of the Samurai - Guest Post and {Giveaway}

The Rope and the Sword: Justice in Medieval Japan

Prisons existed in medieval Japan, but mostly as holding areas for commoners accused of crimes. Unlike modern prisons, which house convicted criminals for the duration of their sentences, medieval Japanese prisons were not designed or intended for long-term incarcerations.

The medieval Japanese justice system was actually a pair of parallel systems: one for commoners, and the other for samurai.
By the 16th century—the era when I set my Shinobi Mysteries—Japan had a highly developed system of courts and law enforcement. Magistrates presided over courts in every major city (and many towns had magistrates as well). Magistrates acted like modern judges, resolving disputes and conducting trials when commoners were accused of crimes. Although the magistrates themselves were members of the noble (samurai) class, but their actions and jurisdiction generally focused on commoners.

Beneath the magistrates, a group of “assistant magistrates” (called yoriki) acted as supervisors for the “beat cops” (known as dōshin) who patrolled the cities and arrested those accused of crimes. Like the magistrates, yoriki and dōshin were always members of the samurai class. However, policemen were usually low-ranked samurai, where the magistrates came from “better” families.

Although the police force was composed entirely of nobles, samurai rarely used the police or the justice system to resolve their own disputes. By law, samurai had the right to address legal matters privately—by violence if necessary. Samurai families generally tried to resolve minor issues through negotiation, but where that failed, samurai justice was delivered on the edge of a sword.

Like the justice system, punishments meted out to criminals often depended on the social class or rank of the convicted (or condemned). 

As the highest-ranking social group, samurai had special privileges where punishment was concerned. For serious crimes, a samurai often had the right to commit seppuku– a form of ritual suicide in which a samurai sliced his own belly with a dagger, spilling his intestines (and ensuring himself a slow and painful death). The samurai was usually allowed a “second,” called the kaishakunin, who stood behind the “self-determining”
samurai with a sword, and ended the samurai’s life with a merciful strike to the neck after the fatal stomach cut was completed.

In medieval Japan, ritual suicide by seppuku restored a samurai’s honor, and that of his family, preventing the need for a feud between the wrongdoer’s clan and the clan of his victim. However, only samurai were allowed the option of seppuku—and the “honor” was not extended to every samurai who committed a crime.

Among commoners, the sentence for serious crimes was generally death by hanging. Unlike seppuku, which restored a condemned man’s honor, hanging was a degrading and defiling form of death. It shamed the convict and also his (or her) family. Hangings generally took place in public, and were sometimes followed by decapitation and display of the criminal’s head as a warning to the rest of the population.

In an ironically “modern” twist, the Japanese justice system treated women as equal to men, at least where punishment was concerned. Female criminals went to the gallows alongside their male counterparts.

Medieval Japanese justice plays a major role in my mystery series, which looks at crimes among commoners as well as among the samurai. The newest Shinobi Mystery, Blade of the Samurai, involves the murder of the shogun’s cousin. Magistrates play less of a role in this novel than they did in the first Shinobi Mystery, Claws of the Cat, but in exchange, readers get a glimpse inside the walls of the shogun’s palace.

The next book in the series, Flask of the Drunken Master (Minotaur, July 2015), involves the murder of a brewer. Since brewers were commoners, Flask involves the other side of Japanese justice ... and execution.

For people living in medieval Japan, crime and punishment were inseparable from the larger ideals of honor, respect, and social class. Serious crimes were an unforgivable disrespect for the law and the social order. A major crime created a debt that could only be “repaid” with the criminal’s life—a truth that transcended even the sharp class lines that pervaded every aspect of medieval Japanese culture.

About the book

Publication Date: July 15, 2014

Minotaur Books

Formats: eBook, Hardcover

Series: Shinobi Mystery

Genre: Historical Mystery

READ AN EXCERPT.

June, 1565: Master ninja Hiro Hattori receives a pre-dawn visit from Kazu, a fellow shinobi working undercover at the shogunate. Hours before, the Shogun’s cousin, Saburo, was stabbed to death in the Shogun’s palace. The murder weapon: Kazu’s personal dagger. Kazu says he’s innocent, and begs for Hiro’s help, but his story gives Hiro reason to doubt the young shinobi’s claims.

When the Shogun summons Hiro and Father Mateo, the Jesuit priest under Hiro’s protection, to find the killer, Hiro finds himself forced to choose between friendship and personal honor.

The investigation reveals a plot to assassinate the Shogun and overthrow the ruling Ashikaga clan. With Lord Oda’s enemy forces approaching Kyoto, and the murderer poised to strike again, Hiro must use his assassin’s skills to reveal the killer’s identity and protect the Shogun at any cost. Kazu, now trapped in the city, still refuses to explain his whereabouts at the time of the murder. But a suspicious shogunate maid, Saburo’s wife, and the Shogun’s stable master also had reasons to want Saburo dead. With the Shogun demanding the murderer’s head before Lord Oda reaches the city, Hiro and Father Mateo must produce the killer in time … or die in his place.

Blade of the Samurai is a complex mystery that will transport readers to a thrilling and unforgettable adventure in 16th century Japan.

Book One of the Shinobi Mysteries series, Claws of the Cat, was released in 2013.

Praise for Blast of the Samurai

“The second Hiro Hattori mystery (after 2013’s Claws of the Cat) finds the sixteenth-century ninja—and unofficial investigator—presented with an interesting problem…A strong second entry in a very promising series.”—Booklist

“Hiro and Father Mateo’s second adventure (Claws of the Cat, 2013) combines enlightenment on 16th-century Japanese life with a sharp and well-integrated mystery.”—Kirkus Reveiws

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About the Author

Susan Spann acquired her love of books and reading during her preschool days in Santa Monica, California. As a child she read everything from National Geographic to Agatha Christie. In high school, she once turned a short-story assignment into a full-length fantasy novel (which, fortunately, will never see the light of day).

A yearning to experience different cultures sent Susan to Tufts University in Boston, where she immersed herself in the history and culture of China and Japan. After earning an undergraduate degree in Asian Studies, Susan diverted to law school. She returned to California to practice law, where her continuing love of books has led her to specialize in intellectual property, business and publishing contracts.

Susan’s interest in Japanese history, martial arts, and mystery inspired her to write the Shinobi Mystery series featuring Hiro Hattori, a sixteenth-century ninja who brings murderers to justice with the help of Father Mateo, a Portuguese Jesuit priest. When not writing or representing clients, Susan enjoys traditional archery, martial arts, horseback riding, online gaming, and raising seahorses and rare corals in her highly distracting marine aquarium. Susan lives in Sacramento with her husband, son, three cats, one bird, and a multitude of assorted aquatic creatures.

For more information please visit Susan Spann’s website and blog. You can also find her on Facebook and Twitter.

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Read my review of Blade of the Samurai

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Caddy Rowland - Making History, Bohemian Style (Part 7)

Please welcome back historical fiction author and artist, Caddy Rowland, our monthly contributor here at Historical Fiction Connection.

Au Lapin Agile

Last month I blogged about one of the two most popular places for artists to hang out during the whole bohemian era. The other was a notorious, raucous cabaret named Au Lapin Agile. Au Lapin Agile had been in existence since around 1850. People often gathered there for sing-alongs. Bawdy, graphic songs about bawdy, graphic subjects sometimes were the songs chosen. Inflammatory political songs were also popular. Other times French chansons (love songs) ruled the night.

The Au Lapin Agile had a variety of clientele. Wagoneers with their knives stuck in the table tops as they drank, local villagers, artists, writers, pimps, down and outers and anarchists all gathered there. The name of the place was Cabaret Das Assassins for awhile because a band of assassins broke in and killed the owner’s son. For most of the nineteenth century, it was a rough place to hang out.

In 1875 an artist named Andre Gill painted a sign that hung outside the building. A rabbit in a chef hat jumping out of a saucepan was the theme; a tribute to one of the dishes served there. Le Lapin a Gill, which meant "Gill's Rabbit”, was soon what most people called the cabaret. The name evolved into Cabaret Au Lapin Agile (The Nimble Rabbit Cabaret). Most simply called it Au Lapin Agile or Lapin Agile. It became even more popular with artists, but still also drew the same questionable crowd in addition to those slumming it for an evening of daring fun.

Andre Gill’s Artwork for the Cabaret

There is conflicting information on who owned this cabaret during most of its history. Some information shows a woman owned it for awhile (during the time the sign was painted). She had been a singer at another venue. Other references say the artist who painted the sign (Andre Gill) owned it for a time. Whoever owned it did little to discourage nefarious sorts from frequenting the place, but they were also very generous to artists.

Paintings could be exchanged for a meal. At the end of the night any artist who had no money to eat would be given soup. Artists were allowed to become as drunk as they wished, fight, and eventually pass out at one of the tables. They were not to be disturbed. Police weren’t called. The artists would find their way out in the morning.

Painters, writers, comedians, sculptors, poets, musicians and singers all hung out at Au Lapin Agile toward the end of the nineteenth century and into the twentieth. Ownership had changed and a man named Frédé ran it. A previous cabaret owner, he also used to push a wagon of goods around town. Therefore, he owned a donkey. The donkey was allowed to roam around the various tables in front of the cabaret, as was a flea bitten dog. Frédé would play his guitar or cello most nights. Patrons once again sang along.

Frédé playing his guitar

In the early 1900's Picasso also made Au Lapin Agile a favorite haunt. He did a painting titled Au Lapin Agile in which he was represented as a harlequin. Frédé is shown playing the guitar. It belonged to the cabaret and Frédé sold the painting in 1912 for $20! In 1989 it was auctioned for $40.7 MILLION dollars.

Au Lapin Agile by Pablo Picasso

Forty million would buy quite a few rounds of drinks—and perhaps feed a donkey and dog as well.

*Au Lapin Agile still exists today. They put on evening shows in the old French style.

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Author Email: caddyauthor@gmail.com
Twitter: @caddyorpims

M.J. Neary's Never Be At Peace - Guest Post

A pugnacious orphan from a bleak Dublin suburb, Helena Molony dreams of liberating Ireland. Her fantasies take shape when the indomitable Maud Gonne informally adopts her and sets her on a path to theatrical stardom - and political martyrdom. Swept up in the Gaelic Revival, Helena succumbs to the romantic advances of Bulmer Hobson, an egotistical Fenian leader with a talent for turning friends into enemies. After their affair ends in a bitter ideological rift, she turns to Sean Connolly, a married fellow-actor from the Abbey Theatre, a man idolised in the nationalist circles. As Ireland prepares to strike against the British rule on Easter Monday, Helena and her comrades find themselves caught in a whirlwind of deceit, violence, broken alliances and questionable sacrifices. In the words of Patrick Pearse, "Ireland unfree shall never be at peace". For the survivors of the Rising, the battle will continue for decades after the last shot had been fired.

"You cannot march into a battle with one hand tied behind your back!" With those words the legendary Maud Gonne (1866 – 1953), W.B. Yeats' muse, advocated for women's participation in the nationalistic movement in Ireland. Given that Maud had spent her childhood at a boarding school in France, it is not surprising that her traditional Anglo-Irish father had little influence over her. Contrary to popular assumptions, you do not learn obedience and conformity in boarding schools. You learn independence and elusiveness. It is no wonder that Maud defied the expectations of the Anglo-Irish ascendancy class into which she was born by embracing social activism, feminism and nationalism, the three concepts she believed went hand in hand. In 1900 women were excluded from political organizations and even cultural societies. When she approached the National Land League, she was told that ladies were not admitted. Interestingly enough, even though women were taught that ultimate fulfillment could only be achieved through marriage and motherhood, fifty percent of women in Ireland remained unmarried, fending for themselves in a rather inhospitable job market that favored men. Unhindered by the restrictions of the day, Maud went on to create her own organization called Daughters of Erin. It was the first step towards the integration of women into Ireland's nationalistic movement.

It was Maud Gonne's habit of having intimate relationships only with those men who shared her political ideals. In her 20s she had carried on with Lucien Millevoye, a married French politician. To him Maud had born two children, a boy who had died in infancy and a girl Iseult who had gone to become a noted beauty. Splitting her time between France and Ireland, Maud engaged in a turbulent emotional romance with W.B. Yeats and starred in his play Cathleen Ní Houlihan. She had rejected Yeats' marriage proposals at least three times, because he was not sufficiently patriotic. She went on to marry Major John MacBride, an Irish nationalist a few years her junior. Their marriage ended up falling apart due to allegations of domestic violence. MacBride was later executed for his part in the 1916 Easter Rising. Yeats, who hated MacBride for obvious reasons, briefly mentioned him in his poem "Easter, 1916" as "a drunken, vain-glorious lout."

I did not make Maud Gonne the focal figure in my latest novel Never Be at Peace (Fireship Press, 2014). She is already an iconic figure and does not need any more exposure. Rather, I chose to focus on the underrated heroine Maud had informally adopted and groomed to be her . This earnest and ferocious Irishwoman was Helena Molony (1884-1967). A quintessential lower-middle class Dublin girl with frizzy auburn hair, freckles and a button nose, Helena was earnest and idealistic. Orphaned at a young age, she had no blood relatives except for her older brother Frank, who already was involved in nationalistic politics. On Frank's urging, she attended a Daughters of Erin meeting hosted at Maud's house. When Helena arrived, the house was being raided by the police. When questioned by the constable whether or not she was a member, the girl boldly stated that indeed she was. Moved by the young girl's audacity, Maud took her under her wing and made her the secretary of the new organization. That day Helena's fate was sealed. There was no turning back. Peaceful, boring life was not an option. Helena continued to cultivate her acting talent and went to become an actress at the Abbey Theatre co-founded by Yeats and Lady Gregory.

One of Helena's responsibilities was editing the organization's literary journal, to which many literary voices of the era contributed. Through her activism she met many fellow-nationalists who came from various walks of life. Contrary to popular assumptions, not all Irish nationalists were Irish, Catholic and economically disadvantaged. One of Helena's comrades, her future lover-turn-adversary, was Bulmer Hobson, a charismatic Ulsterman of from a liberal Quaker family of predominantly English blood. The members of Bulmer's immediate circle did not understand his interest in Irish nationalism, given that he did not have strong genetic links to that culture. Nevertheless, he was one of Ulster's most prominent nationalists who greatly contributed to the revival of the Irish Republican Brotherhood in the north. One of the sources of friction between Helena and Bulmer was that she championed the labor cause, he did not fully understand her concern for the poor. Unlike Helena, Bulmer had the support of a solid, prosperous family. His father was a successful businessman. His mother was a feminist writer and freelance archeologist. And his older sister was Ireland's first female architect. Although not grossly privileged, Bulmer did not have firsthand experience with addiction, destitution and abuse. In his social strata, unemployment did not necessarily mean starvation. Bulmer spent long periods of time "searching for himself". Holding down a job was not a priority for him. A few times he got fired for putting his nationalistic activities first. Apparently, his parents did not pressure him too aggressively into gainful employment. Authenticity and staying true to one's self rank pretty highly on the list of priorities for Quakers. Bulmer could go for years without a steady income, and his parents would always give him money for food and clothes. Even though he and Helena shared a vision for a liberated Ireland, Bulmer could not help rolling his eyes whenever Helena mentioned the interests of the working class. In my novel I took this opportunity to elaborate on the socioeconomic disparity between the two lovers.

James Connolly's Death

by  Alissa Mendenhall

The final ideological rift between Helena and Bulmer happened over the idea of an armed rising. Helena fully supported a rebellion, especially in light of England's involvement in World War I, especially since Germany promised to help the Irish. It did not matter to her that the chances of a military success were non-existent. Like Patrick Pearse, she believed in the symbolic power of bloodshed and martyrdom. Bulmer, on another hand, felt that a premature rising would be a waste of human life. A romantic in every other respect, he showed strange pragmatism. He went as far as trying to stop the ill-fated rising. This act of defiance had nearly cost him his life. He was kidnapped and held at gunpoint until the rising was well underway, while his former love Helena was on the roof of the City Hall with her comrades-at-arms.

When it came time to choose which military organization to join, Helena Molony chose the Irish Citizen Army (ICA) over Cumann na mBan (translated as Women's League), because in the ICA women were allowed to join on the same level as men, where as Cuman naBhan was a medical adjacent unit to the Irish Volunteers. She objected to the idea that women were only good for bandaging the wounds of their male comrades'. Irish girls were also damn good at making gunshot holes in their enemies. Helena's combat experience was short-lived. On Easter Tuesday, she was captured along with the surviving contingent of the Irish Citizen Army. The girls were separated from their male comrades and locked up in a filthy store where they waited out the rest of the uprising.

Even though Maud Gonne did not participate in the hostilities of 1916, she monitored the events closely and even hired an attorney to defend her former protegee - an act of compassion that Helena proudly declined. For her it was an honor to be imprisoned for what she believed in. Interestingly, Maud admitted to hating violence and regarded an armed rebellion a necessary evil. "I have always hated war and am by nature and philosophy a pacifist, but it is the English who are forcing war on us, and the first principle of war is to kill the enemy." It's questionable whether or not Helena shared the same distaste for violence. It could be that she actually derived some pleasure out of physical hostilities. In 1911 during the royal visit protests, Helena was arrested for throwing rocks at the king's portrait. While serving her time in jail, she actually worried that Maud might find her behavior childish and embarrassing. Imagine Helena's delight when she received a telegram from Maud stating "Well done!" For Helena, being congratulated on an act of juvenile hooliganism was the highest form of validation. In spite of all the hardship she had witnessed, she still retained that pugnacious tomboy side. In my novel, I wanted to explore the psychological complexity of a rebel's psyche. The fine line between heroism and hooliganism is very fine. A martyr is just one step away from becoming a traitor. That's what makes it interesting for a writer to explore the events of that era. It's not just black and white - or in Ireland's case, green and orange.

About the author

Marina Julia Neary is an award-winning historical essayist, multilingual arts & entertainment journalist, novelist, dramatist and poet.Her areas of expertise include British steampunk, French Romanticism and Irish nationalism.

Her latest novel, Never Be At Peace, is garnering rave reviews from prominent authors, historians and critics. Her novel Wynfield’s Kingdom(Fireship Press, 2009) was featured in the March 2010 edition of First Edition Magazine in the UK, followed by the sequel Wynfield’s War in 2010. She is also the author of two historical plays, Hugo in London (licensing available through Heuer Press), and the sequel Lady with a Lamp: The Untold Story of Florence Nightingale (illustrated edition available through Fireship Press).

Her poems have been organized in a collection Bipolar Express (Flutter Press, 2010).Her sci-fi novelette, My Salieiri Complex is available as an e-book through Gypsy Shadow Press. Neary currently serves as an editorial reviewer and steady contributor for Bewildering Stories magazine.