GIVEAWAY!! The Amazing Untold Real-Life Adventure of Jane Lane, article by Gillian Bagwell

Please welcome author Gillian Bagwell, who is stopping by HF-Connection during her blog tour for The September Queen (read to the end for giveaway details!):

The September Queen, available November 1, 2011

The Amazing Untold Real-Life Adventure of Jane Lane
By Gillian Bagwell

During the course of my research for The Darling Strumpet, my novel about Nell Gwynn, I read Derek Wilson’s book All the King’s Women, about the numerous women important to Charles II. As all of us who know anything about Charles II are aware, he liked women. His mistresses were many and famous, whether loved like Nell Gwynn was or hated like Louis De Keroualle.

So I was intrigued to read Wilson’s account of Jane Lane, an ordinary Staffordshire girl who played a starring role in an extraordinary part of Charles’s life – his six-week odyssey after the Battle of Worcester trying to escape to safety in France.

On September 3, 1651, Charles and his ragged and outnumbered army were defeated by Cromwell’s forces, ending the hopes of the Royalist cause. Charles barely escaped the battlefield and legendarily dashed out the back door of his lodgings as the enemy was entering at the front, slipping out the last unguarded city gate. From that disastrous night until he finally sailed from Shoreham near Brighton on October 15, he was on the run, sheltered and aided by dozens of people – mostly simple country folks and very minor gentry – who not only could have earned the enormous reward of £1000 offered for his capture, but risked their lives to help the fugitive king, who had been proclaimed a traitor.

One of Charles’s companions during his flight from Worcester on September 3 was the Earl of Derby, who had recently been sheltered at a house called Boscobel in Shropshire. He suggested that the king might hide there until he could find a way out of England.

Jane Lane, a young woman of about 25 years old, lived at Bentley Hall in Staffordshire, not far from Boscobel. She became involved in the king’s flight because she had a pass allowing her and a manservant to travel the hundred miles to visit a friend near Bristol – a major port where the king might board a ship. Her brother, Colonel John Lane, had served under Charles’s companion Lord Wilmot, who was with him and trying desperately to get him to safety.

In a story that sounds like something out of fiction, the 21-year-old king disguised himself as Jane’s servant, and Jane rode pillion (sitting sidesaddle behind him while he rode astride) along roads traveled by cavalry patrols searching for Charles, through villages where the proclamation describing him and offering a reward for his capture was posted, and among hundreds of people who, if they recognized him, had every reason to turn him in and none – but loyalty to the outlawed monarchy – to help him.

It was an improbable scheme. Charles was six feet two inches tall and very dark complexioned, not at all common looking for an Englishman of that time. And yet time after time he rode right under the noses of Roundhead soldiers without being recognized. He narrowly eluded discovery and capture so many times that the whole event eventually became known as the Royal Miracle.

I was enthralled when I read Derek Wilson’s account of Jane’s travels with Charles, and was convinced by the evidence he presented for his belief that they became lovers when they were in each other’s company, in close physical contact, and in perilous circumstances from September 9 to September 18, 1651. Without giving away the whole story, I’ll just say that Jane’s part in Charles’s escape was discovered, she had to flee for her life, she remained in contact with Charles until he was restored to the throne in 1660. Then Jane became famous, and Charles rewarded her richly. His escape was an enormously formative experience, he told the story for the rest of his life, and Jane was clearly someone who he regarded with respect and affection until his death.

I was surprised and delighted to learn that no one had previously told Jane’s story in fiction, and titled my book The September Queen because it is the passionate love story between the young king and the girl who risked her own life to save him – and might possibly have been his queen, had he been free to choose where his heart led him.





Gillian Bagwell, author

Gillian Bagwell’s novel The September Queen will be released on November 1, 2011. Please visit her website, http://www.gillianbagwell.com/, to read more about her books and read her blog Jane Lane and the Royal Miracle http://www.theroyalmiracle.blogspot.com/ which recounts her research adventures and the daily episodes in Charles’s escape after Worcester.




Gillian's publisher at Berkeley was kind enough to offer one copy of her book for giveaway!
To enter for the book giveaway, please leave a comment with your email address, and be sure to remember to follow HF-Connection! Open to followers in US/Canada. Ends November 4, 2011.

Plus one entry if you follow/like HF Connection on facebook
Plus one entry if you share a link to this post on facebook
Plus one entry if you tweet this post on Twitter
Good Luck!

{GIVEAWAY!!}} MURDERESS! A Guest Post from Rebecca Johns, author of THE COUNTESS

Please see the end of this post for details on the book giveaway of THE COUNTESS!

Courtesy of Crown Publishing Group: In January 1611, one of the highest-born members of the Hungarian nobility, Countess Erzsébet Báthory, was walled inside her castle tower and imprisoned for the rest of her life. Her crime—the brutal torture and murder of at least thirty-five women and girls, mostly servants in the countess’s employ. Nicknamed the “Blood Countess,” Báthory is the first and one of the most prolific female serial killers in history. While her story is horrific, her legend has nevertheless persisted in the popular imagination—inspiring a well-established cult following intrigued by her strange gothic legacy. The real-life countess was one of Bram Stoker’s two inspirations for Dracula, and her character has appeared in film, video games, and classic and contemporary literature. She was even referenced on a recent episode of True Blood.

The Countess: A Novel (Broadway Paperbacks, September 27, 2011) by Rebecca Johns:

Please welcome the author, Rebecca Johns, as she tells us her following story:

The Female Perspective

I’d like to thank Marie for inviting me to write this guest post. Taking over someone’s blog, even for a single post, is a little like taking over someone’s life for a day—not unlike the ways in which historical fiction takes over someone’s life, usually in its entirety. You’d better get it right, or at least make it interesting.

In the dim, distant past, all the way back in the winter of 2008 when I first heard of the mass murderer named Elizabeth Báthory and decided to write her story in a new (dare I say “feminist”) perspective, I knew I was taking on perhaps the biggest challenge of my writing life. Even Edgar Allan Poe knew you couldn’t keep a reader in the mind of a psychopathic killer for 300 pages, which is why “The Tell-Tale Heart” is so short. And yet I couldn’t resist. Báthory’s story had everything I was hoping for in a first-person narrator: a cool, calculating mind; a sense of righteous indignation; a massive ego; an ability to lie, even to herself. The more research I did, the more I discovered that the elements of her story that are the most well-known to the public (the 600+ virgins she supposedly sacrificed to bathe in their blood to preserve her beauty) were myths perpetrated by Victorian-era men as a warning against female vanity. The story got better and better. Where was the real Báthory, I wondered, and could I breathe some life back into her story? Find the “psych” in “psychopath”?

Even when my editor urged me to turn the novel into a third-person book (which certainly would have been a lot easier on everyone, me especially) I just knew I had to let Báthory speak for herself. For the past hundred years men have been telling Báthory’s story from the outside looking in. How much more terrifying, for me and for the reader, perhaps, to be her for the duration of the book, to look into ourselves and ask what kind of a monster lives there, in each of us?

If you’re going to revisit a subject so familiar to the public, so reviled and yet so fascinating, you’d better have something new to say, or at least a new way of saying it. John Gardner knew it when he wrote Grendel. Jean Rhys knew it when she wrote Wide Sargasso Sea. Letting Báthory tell her own story, tell us what the world looks like from her tower, seemed to me (and still seems to me) the most dangerous way of approaching a familiar tale. What could be more interesting than that?


Thank you to Rebecca for visiting us! And now dear readers, do you think you could sympathize with the Countess? Do you want to read her story first?

Would you like to win a copy of THE COUNTESS? Please leave a comment with your email address, and you are entered!

THREE WINNERS!!
Plus one entry for each facebook and tweeted link to this post! Good Luck! Giveaway ends 10/22/11, open to USA only.

Book Review: Eromenos by Melanie McDonald

Cross post--originally posted at The True Book Addict


My thoughts:
Eromenos is a perfect example of why historical fiction is important.  Having never heard of Antinous, even in my self-induced and dedicated study of all things historical, I learned of an intimate aspect of the reign of the Roman emperor Hadrian.  And so the crucial aspect of historical fiction is fulfilled.  Attracting lay persons (although I wouldn't consider myself a lay person by any means) to history and historical subjects.  Not only was the very fact of Antinous's existence in history brought to my attention, but also the ritual of the October Horse and the study of lycanthropy, the former of which I had heard in passing and the latter, of which I had no idea its study extended as far back as antiquity.  This, in my opinion, is the unique responsibility of historical fiction.  To interest the reader in the further investigation of a time, place, and persons in history.

Not only do we get the fulfillment mentioned above in Eromenos, but we also get an idea of the culture of ancient Rome.  Homosexuality was known and accepted, although it seemed tolerated among the patricians, yet frowned upon among the lower classes.  I refer to Antinous's passing encounter with a farm boy who seems to judge Antinous's lifestyle disdainfully with one knowing glance.  What I found most interesting in the story of Antinous was the fact that, despite his high status as Hadrian's 'favorite', he always had to keep in the back of his mind that one day he would be put aside for someone new, someone younger.  Quite sad was that, upon losing his inheritance, he knew he would have no options in society after his favored status was lost.  He did not believe truly that Hadrian loved him and, in truth had very ambiguous feelings toward Hadrian himself.  A sad realization for us to find out that Hadrian would mourn him so fervently after his death.  Perhaps Hadrian would not have put him aside, if we look at his grief as evidence of his true love for Antinous.

Eromenos gives us the tragic story of a boy who was not given much choice in life.  We see the fact that once the Emperor sets his favor upon a person, then he must obey, as this royal favor is considered an honor and the knowledge of this is taught early on.  A refusal would bring dishonor to the person's family and this was unacceptable in Roman society.  In the end, Antinous takes control of his destiny.  The result leaves a feeling of sadness and yet, elation for his triumph.  In this short book, Ms. McDonald has succeeded in telling us an engaging story while whetting the appetite for historical investigation.

Book Description:
Eros and Thanatos converge in the story of a glorious youth, an untimely death, and an imperial love affair that gives rise to the last pagan god of antiquity. In this coming-of-age novel set in the second century AD, Antinous of Bithynia, a Greek youth from Asia Minor, recounts his seven-year affair with Hadrian, fourteenth emperor of Rome. In a partnership more intimate than Hadrian's sanctioned political marriage to Sabina, Antinous captivates the most powerful ruler on earth both in life and after death.

This version of the affair between the emperor and his beloved ephebe vindicates the youth scorned by early Christian church fathers as a "shameless and scandalous boy" and "sordid and loathsome instrument of his master's lust." EROMENOS envisions the personal history of the young man who achieved apotheosis as a pagan god of antiquity, whose cult of worship lasted for hundreds of years—far longer than the cult of the emperor Hadrian.

In EROMENOS, the young man Antinous, whose beautiful image still may be found in works of art in museums around the world, finds a voice of his own at last. (from Goodreads)


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Giveaway! Scimitar by Robin Raybould

THE STORY

The date is 1439 and Eduardo Ferrucci, a young Italian working in a bookshop in Florence, is unwittingly trapped in a conspiracy by agents of foreign powers. He is banished to Constantinople by the Florentine authorities and forced to spy on the Greeks. The Turkish forces have surrounded the city and are on the verge of invading Europe. SCIMITAR follows the life and loves of Ferrucci in the dangerous world during the last days of the Eastern Roman Empire, his eventual betrayal, his part in the great siege of the city by the Turks in 1453, his subsequent role as ambassador for the Turkish Sultan back in Florence and his final revenge on those who had betrayed him many years earlier. But Ferrucci’s first love was always books and during his exile in Constantinople he makes time to search for the remains of a secret text, part of which he had found in a Greek codex in Florence. Finally, after many years, he discovers and deciphers the whole text and is able to locate documents which have a decisive influence on the history of Renaissance culture. This edition includes an introduction by the translator describing the discovery of the original manuscript of this story as well as a transcription of one of the documents found by Ferrucci.

REVIEWS

"Robin Raybould has a certain unmatched dedication to historical accuracy."Scimitar" is a fine addition to general fiction and is very highly recommended." (Midwest Book Reviews)

"Compelling...fascinating and awe-inspiring...I suspect this was Raybould's ultimate aim-to inspire his readers into reveling in antique literature and philosophy, and expanding their minds exponentially.  If so, he has achieved his aim." (The Compulsive Reader)

SCIMITAR

Release: Available on Amazon and Kindle April 1^st 2011

Author: Robin Raybould

Category: Historical Fiction

Publisher: Tetrabiblion Books/CreateSpace

40 East 94^th St., Suite 16B, New York, NY 10128

212 410 6154

Pages: 372; paperback; no illustrations

Website: www.scimitarthebook.com

ISBN: 978-0-61-543316-5

Amazon Price: $18.95 Kindle Price: $6.99

For further information contact Robin Raybould at rraybould@camrax.com or at Camrax Inc: 212 410 6154.  Visit www.scimitarthebook.com and jump on the carousel!

Robin was kind enough to offer one copy of his book for giveaway!


To enter for the book giveaway, please leave a comment with your email address, and be sure to remember to follow HF-Connection! Open to followers in US/Canada. Ends September 20, 2011.


Good luck!

Tudors & Boleyns, Oh my! Fall Non-Fiction releases

A certain buzz has already been created about the collaborative effort of the upcoming Philippa Gregory non-fiction work, The Women of the Cousin's War, featuring scholars David Baldwin and Michael Jones. This book will take a look at Jaquetta of Luxembourg, her daughter Queen Elizabeth Woodville (mother of the lost princes) and Margaret Beaufort (mother to Henry VII). The book features family trees and other illustrations.

Also upcoming is Bessie Blount: The Story of Henry VIII's Longtime Mistress, which features one of the main characters in Henry VIII's young life, as Bessie gave Henry a longed-for son, however illegitimate. Author Elizabeth Norton will try to shed some light on Bessie, who was rumored to have been quite beautiful and perhaps Henry's first love.

And not to be forgotten, those once powerful and always scheming Boleyns: The Boleyn’s: The Rise and Fall of a Tudor Family by David Loades will tell us some of the story of the trio of siblings George, Mary and Anne, the treachery and haters who helped bring them down.. while Mary Boleyn enjoys some more attention this fall with a new biography penned by Alison Weir.

I wouldn't mind reading each one of these titles, though one has to wonder how long can the allure of the Tudors and Boleyns last?