Rebecca Hazell's The Grip of God--Guest Post and {Giveaway}

Please welcome today, Rebecca Hazell, author of The Grip of God.

The Magic and Mystery of Writing Historical Fiction

What happens when a plot grips a writer and won't let go? This happened to me many years ago, but it took many more to give in and write the novel--in my case three! Meanwhile, among other things, I wrote and illustrated educational materials and award winning nonfiction books for young readers. Little did I realize that I was honing the skills I'd need to write an epic saga set in a vanished time, covering about ten different conflicting cultures. It took seventeen years just to do the research, but what an adventure!

The first mystery is why I waited so long to get going, because writing these novels, The Grip of God, Solomon's Bride, and Consolamentum, was such a magical experience.

I loved my young heroine, for one thing. Despite living seven hundred years ago, she is much like you or me but for the fact that she is swept along in the the Mongol invasion of Europe, flees at last to what she thinks will be safety, falls into the hands of the Assassins, is thrust into the conflicts between Crusader and Muslim, falls in love--and lots more.

Back to magic and mystery, what also happened was that I would put in a made-up detail and then discover it was true. Here are a few examples. As a child, I had imaginary friends, a tiny old man and woman, though the old woman had a bird bill instead of a mouth. I put them into the story as a way of linking my heroine with another character who appears much later. But then, researching my story, I discovered that there actually is a Slavic house spirit from ancient times, an old woman with a bird bill for a mouth!

Another example: I put a blue vial of rose water into the story as a nice detail, then traveled to Paris and found that exact vial in a museum I had never visited before.

Even taking our children to Disney World was magical and mysterious: it was hosting a huge traveling exhibit about traditional Mongol culture, including attire, saddles, weapons, and personal items like chopsticks and hankies, all of which went straight into my story.

Perhaps the biggest element of magic was discovering that I am related to my heroine. Technically this is impossible, since I made her up. Or did I? In researching my family tree, I traced my ancestry all the way back to medieval Kiev, and when I visited it a couple of years ago, it felt like coming home. Several new friends even commented on how I could easily be Ukrainian. So who knows? Maybe she really did exist, and maybe ...

So in writing this trilogy, I learned just how magical and mysterious our world really is as I sought to recreate a lost era and make it real to you, dear reader.

About the book

Duncan, BC Canada: Award Winning Writer Rebecca Hazell Releases First Book in Trilogy of Historical Fiction Novels

Rebecca Hazell has just released The Grip of God, the first novel in an epic historical trilogy. It is available on amazon.com and its affiliates and by special order through your local bookstore. The saga’s heroine, Sofia, is a young princess of Kievan Rus. Clear eyed and intelligent, she recounts her capture in battle and life of slavery to a young army captain in the Mongol hordes that are flooding Europe. Not only is her life shattered, it is haunted by a prophecy that catalyzes bitter rivalries in her new master's powerful family. She must learn to survive in a world of total war, always seeking the love she once took for granted.

Sofia's story is based on actual historical events that determine her destiny. Readers will delight in this very personal and engaging tale from a time that set the stage for many of the conflicts of today's world.

Praise for the trilogy 

“How deftly and compellingly Hazell takes the reader with her into that mysterious and exotic world, and makes it all seem so very close to hand!” – Peter Conradi, Fellow of Britain's Royal Society of Literature and author of Iris Murdoch: A Life, and of A Very English Hero.

"I enjoyed watching her morph from a spoiled sheltered princess with slaves of her own, into a tough, savvy survivor, with a new awareness of social injustice. The book is action packed. I couldn't put it down." -- from a review on Amazon.com.

"I got completely caught up in the characters and story and always looked forward to getting back to them. What a fully fleshed and fascinating world you developed and it was wondrous to learn so much about that time and the Mongol culture. Your gifts come out in your lush descriptions of place and objects. All very vivid and colorful." --author Dede Crane Gaston

The novel is available both in paperback and Kindle versions and through your local bookstore by special order. The subsequent two novels in the trilogy are scheduled for publication later this year.

About the author

Rebecca Hazell is a an award winning artist, author and educator. She has written, illustrated and published four non-fiction children’s books, created best selling educational filmstrips, designed educational craft kits for children and even created award winning needlepoint canvases.

She is a senior teacher in the Shambhala Buddhist lineage, and she holds an honours BA from the University of California at Santa Cruz in Russian and Chinese history.

Rebecca lived for many years in the San Francisco Bay Area. In 1988 she and her family moved to Halifax, Nova Scotia, and in 2006 she and her husband moved to Vancouver Island. They live near their two adult children in the beautiful Cowichan Valley.

Visit Rebecca:

Website | Goodreads | Facebook

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Colin Falconer's Isabella: Braveheart of France--Guest Post and {Giveaway}

Please welcome Colin Falconer in celebration of the release of his new novel, Isabella: Braveheart of France. 

It’s a thin line between love and hate

The story of Edward and Isabella

Colin Falconer

There’s a song originally recorded by The Persuaders in 1971 and covered many times since, most famously by Annie Lennox. It’s called ‘There’s a thin line between love and hate.’

It kept going round in my head when I first read the story of Edward and Isabella.

Isabella was the queen of Edward II of England. Their marriage had been arranged when she was just three years old to try and cement the truce between France and England over disputed territories in Gascony. 

Edward was a fine strapping fellow, by all accounts. She was only twelve years old when she married him but was destined to grow into a beautiful young woman. They were the glamour couple of the early fourteenth century, a Brangelina in the making. 

Edabella.

But two things stood in the way of their happiness and future success; Edward didn’t particularly want to be king of England and wasn’t really suited to the job; and he had fallen in love at first sight. 

But not with her.

The love of Edward’s life was a former squire named Piers Gaveston. Gaveston was murdered by some of Edward’s disaffected barons when she was seventeen and just growing into woman hood, so it may be that she thought that afterwards their marriage had a chance.

And it seemed that way for a short while. Edward performed his conjugal duties by England if not by her; they had four children over the course of the next decade. 

But it seems she never really won his love. She was replaced in his trust, if not his bed, by another of his court favourites, Hugh Despenser, and after the birth of her last child she became an increasingly lonely figure. He sent away her French retainers, separated her from her children and spent little time with her.

But finally, with the aid of her lover, Mortimer, she deposed him and he died at the hands of his captors in Berkeley Castle. Did she know about the planned murder beforehand? That we cannot know.

Did she come to hate him that much? It is an intriguing question.

More intriguingly - did she love him in the first place?

Isabella was an enigma. After Edward’s funeral at Gloucester Cathedral, she was given his heart in a silver casket. She had never had it in life; she owned it in death. When she herself died in 1358 she was buried, at her own insistence, in her wedding dress, holding the casket to her breast.

Edward’s cell at Berkeley castle
Photograph: David Stowell

How do we interpret such gestures? 

Did she wish him dead for spurning her, and when it was done did it trouble her conscience for the rest of her life?

Or was she, as history has painted her, a she-wolf, cold as the alabaster of her tomb, and everything done all for show.

It’s a thin line between love and hate. The heart in the casket. The wedding dress.

What did it mean? 

If it was all done for love, it would make their story one of the most poignant in English history.

If it was hate, it was the perfect revenge.

But we can never know, we can only guess. And historical novelists love to guess ...

About the book

ISABELLA, Braveheart of France, available now from Amazon US

And also available as POD from Cool Gus publishing.

"She was taught to obey. But will she learn to rebel?

Princess Isabella of France arrives at the English court to find her husband the king.
She is just 12 years old.
He is one of Europe's most handsome princes, tall young, athletic.
And deeply in love with another.
... another man.
She fights to win her husband's love as his reign descends into crisis after crisis.
To finally create her own destiny she must defy all England.
She must even defy God.
Will she do it?
And what will be the cost?"

About the author
Colin Falconer was born in North London, and spent most of his formative years at school playing football or looking out of the window wishing he was somewhere else.

After failing to make the grade as a professional football player, he spent much of his early years traveling, hitch-hiking around Europe and North Africa and then heading to Asia.

His experiences in Bangkok and India later inspired his thriller VENOM, and his adventures in the jungles of the Golden Triangle of Burma and Laos were also filed away for later, the basis of his OPIUM series about the underworld drug trade.

He later moved to Australia and worked in advertising, before moving to Sydney where he freelanced for most of Australia’s leading newspapers and magazines, as well as working in radio and television.

He started publishing in 1984, mostly humor and young adult fiction, but with the publication of VENOM in 1990, he became a full time novelist.

He has published over 40 books in print. HAREM was an enormous bestseller in Germany and THE NAKED HUSBAND was ranked #9 in Australia on its release.AZTEC stayed on the bestseller lists in Mexico for four months. He is a bestseller in Europe and his work has sold into translation in 23 countries: Brazil, Belgium, Bulgaria, the Czech republic, Croatia, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Italy, Indonesia, Korea, Macedonia, Montenegro, Mexico, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Serbia, Slovakia, Slovenia, Spain and Turkey.

He lived for many years in the beautiful Margaret River region in WA, and helped raise two beautiful daughters with his late wife, Helen. While writing, he also worked in the volunteer ambulance service for over 13 years His marriage ended in tragic circumstances, a story he has told in ‘The Naked Husband,’ and its non-fiction sequel, ‘The Year We Seized the Day,’ written with a writing partner, Elizabeth Best.

He travels regularly to research his novels and his quest for authenticity has led him to run with the bulls in Pamplona, pursue tornadoes across Oklahoma and black witches across Mexico, go cage shark diving in South Africa and get tear gassed in a riot in La Paz. He also completed a nine hundred kilometre walk of the camino in Spain.

He did not write for over five years but returned to publishing in 2010 with the release of SILK ROAD, and then STIGMATA the following year. ISABELLA is due to be published in 2013.

His likens his fiction most closely to Ken Follett – books with romance and high adventure, drawn from many periods of history.

Visit Colin at his WEBSITE.

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Key to Lawrence by Linda and Gary Cargill

Key to Lawrence by Linda and Gary Cargill

via Linda Cargill:

Next year, 2014, will be the one hundredth anniversary of the start of World War I, which contemporaries called the Great War. Two years from now on May 7, 2015 will be the centennial of the sinking of the luxury liner Lusitania. Key to Lawrence, an historical thriller by Linda and Gary Cargill, commemorates this anniversary. The authors start out the novel with the last voyage of the Cunard ocean liner from May 1, 1915 to May 7, 1915 when the vessel sank in the Irish Sea six miles from land.

Many mysteries remain about the sinking of the famous ship. The greatest is the mysterious second explosion which took place within minutes after the German torpedo hit the liner at exactly 2:10 PM British time. It seemed to have no cause and hastened the demise of the Lusitania which sank and disappeared beneath the waves in only eighteen minutes. By 2:30 PM it was history.

Robert D. Ballard in his book, Exploring the Lusitania: Probing the Mysteries of the Sinking That Changed History, postulates that vapor pockets from the coal-fired engines caused the big explosion. But it's only a theory, and no one really knows. If Captain Turner knew he was kept quiet by Cunard and the British government for the rest of his life. They even appeared at the inquest and pulled him out of it the day after the sinking.

The British government remains the only entity who might actually know the true fate of the ship. They are the only ones who would know what was actually being carried in the hold other than a fortune in famous paintings for Sir Hugh Lane. Were there guns? Ammunition? Something else that might attract German attention?

The Lusitania is as elusive today as it was one hundred years ago. When Miss Dora Benley boards the Cunard ocean liner in New York on May 1 she trembles at the sight of a stranger eying the birthday package she is carrying. She is already being enmeshed in the ship's mysteries. If she doesn't figure out what's going on soon, she will die in the Irish Sea along with half the passengers.

Key to Lawrence by Linda and Gary Cargill will be available October 1, 2013 through your favorite retailer.

Guest Post: Mingmei Yip's The Nine Fold Heaven

On Love – it must last until death
“If you ask me what is love, I believe it must last till death.” This is by the Chinese poet Yuan Haowen (1190-1257).

One day when Yuan was on his trip to take the imperial examination, he saw a hunter shooting at a pair of geese. One fell to the ground and died, the other one, instead of flying away, landed next to its partner, crying and hitting its head on the ground till it also bled to death. Deeply moved by the love suicide, Yuan wrote the above line which is known to many millions of Chinese. He also buried the two geese together and their grave became the famous “Geese Grave.”

Another line with a similar sentiment is from the three thousand year old Book of Poetry: “I’ll hold your hand and grow old with you.”

Yet another poem says, “In life, if our love is always like the first time we met, there will be no lover abandoned like an Autumn fan.” At the beginning love is sweet and passion deep. However, love that cannot stand the trial of time is only shallow infatuation. That is why the poem next says, “When in an instant love is gone, we just blame fickleness of the heart!”

In my new novel The Nine Fold Heaven, I tried to portray undying love, both between man and woman and between mother and child. Camilla, a spy assigned to assassinate a powerful gangster head – disastrously falls in love with her target’s son. Though she is told that their baby was stillborn, he appears in her dreams and she vows to find him, even though it means “going inside the tiger’s mouth.”

Excerpt:

That night I flip-flopped in the hotel bed, thinking of the strange workings of fate. Then as if on cue, my little Jinjin came into my dream.

“Mama, I’ve been doing vey well, so don’t you worry about me.”

“Son, what have you been doing?”

“Eating, sleeping, playing, and learning.”

“What have you learnt?’

“Some words.”

“Can you tell me what they are?”

“Love and karma. Mama, I am not sure you know what love means, but probably you know what karma is. I know what love means, because when I think of you and Baba I feel warmth in my heart. So, can you tell me about karma?”

I didn’t want to answer his question, but I also didn’t want him to be unhappy.

“Jinjin, karma is because we all do good and bad things.”

“But Mama, I hear you only do bad things.”

“Where do you hear this?”

“You know, what you read in the newspapers.”

“It’s not all true. Maybe before, but not anymore. I miss you and your father terribly. Recently I also saved your Uncle Gao’s life.... Jinjin, I hear you’re still alive so stop teasing your mother! I can’t take this anymore!”

My baby retorted. “Sometimes I can’t take you anymore!”

“Jinjin, stop it!”

“Mama, you stop it! Or, I won’t come back to see you in your dreams anymore. And I’ll stay with Mama Lewinsky!” Then his voice softened. “Remember Mama, I’m your son, whether in hell, heaven, or the Red Dust.”

And with this, he vanished.

About THE NINE FOLD HEAVEN
Publication Date: June 25, 2013
Kensington Publishing
Paperback; 320p
ISBN-10: 0758273541

In this mesmerizing new novel, Mingmei Yip draw readers deeper into the exotic world of 1930s Shanghai first explored in Skeleton Women, and into the lives of the unforgettable Camilla, Shadow, and Rainbow Chang.

When Shadow, a gifted, ambitious magician, competed with the beautiful singer spy Camilla for the affections of organized crime leader Master Lung, she almost lost everything. Hiding out in Hong Kong, performing in a run-down circus, Shadow has no idea that Camilla, too, is on the run with her lover, Jinying – Lung’s son.

Yet while Camilla and Shadow were once enemies, now their only hope of freedom lies in joining forces to eliminate the ruthless gangster Big Brother Wang. Despite the danger, Shadow, Camilla, and Jinying return to Shanghai. Camilla also has her own secret agenda – she has heard a rumor that her baby son is alive. And in a city teeming with spies and rivals – including the vengeful gossip columnist Rainbow Chang – each battles for a future in a country on the verge of monumental change.

Book Trailer: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F2g6Ggga4a0

Praise for The Nine Fold Heaven

A guilty pleasure....enjoy the exotic location and characters.... This is a large, luscious box of chocolates. Go on. You know you want to." -RTBook 4 star Review, June 2012

Entertaining diversion is (a strength of this book) -Publisher's Weekly

Poignant and often heartbreaking story captivatin mix of worldly and ethereal, mystery and drama kept me interested and kept me reading with her journal cum memoir style that few authors pull off. I loved how she incorporated in her narrative Chinese customs, legends, myths and beliefs and especially how she quoted from long ago texts on war and strategies, it was her characters that dominated the pages. -Bookclub.BarnesandNoble.com, June 1, 2012

What a phenomenal novel!! The characters are well-developed and the storyline is amazing and reads fast. So much is going on you won't be able to put the book down and you'll be turning the last page before you know it. I would highly recommend this novel to anyone. Great job Mingmei!!! -Bookbag Lady, June 13, 2012

Buy Links

Amazon
Barnes & Noble
Books-a-Million
IndieBound 
Kensington

About the Author

When she was a child, Mingmei Yip made up stories like “how the moon reached to slap the sun” and “how the dim sum on my plate suddenly got up to tango.” At fifteen, she was thrilled that not only her article got published but she was paid ten dollars for it. Now Mingmei is a best selling novelist and children’s book writer and illustrator.

Mingmei believes that one should, besides being entertained, also get something out of reading a novel. She has now twelve books to her credit, including five novels by Kensington Books: The Nine Fold Heaven, Skeleton Women, Song of the Silk Road, Petals from the Sky, and Peach Blossom Pavilion. Book Examiner praises her novels as “A unique and enthralling style…flawless.” Her two children’s books are Chinese Children’s Favorite Stories and Grandma Panda’s China Storybook, both by Tuttle Publishing.

Mingmei is accomplished in many other fields. A professional player of the Guqin, Chinese zither, for over thirty years, she was recently invited by Carnegie Hall to perform in “A Festival celebrating Chinese Culture” in the same program with cellist Yo Yo Ma and pianist Lang Lang. She had her solo Goddess exhibition at the New York Open Center Gallery to great acclaim, gave calligraphy workshop at New York’s Metropolitain Museum of Art, and Taichi at the International Women’s Writing Guild.

For more information please visit Mingmei’s website. You can also follow her on Facebook, Twitter,Goodreads and Amazon.

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Guest Post: Susan McDuffie's The Study of Murder

Please welcome Susan McDuffie as part of the virtual tour for her novel, The Study of Murder.

The Voynich Manuscript and the Study of Murder

In 1912 Wilfred Voynich purchased an unusual quarto, bringing an enigma to light that has confounded experts for the last 100 years, and inspired my latest mystery, THE STUDY OF MURDER.

The Voynich Manuscript, residing in Yale University’s Beinecke Library, consists of several sections; one a sort of herbal, another filled with strange cosmological drawings, a third, filled with strange drawings of nude nymphs frolicking in vaguely botanical vessels. The text, written in cypher, has baffled numerous cryptographers, including noted World War II code-breakers.

Theories about the strange manuscript range widely. Original speculation attributed it to Roger Bacon, the “Doctor Mirabilis” of 1200s Oxford. Others believe it an Elizabethan fake, perhaps the work of John Dee. The manuscript surfaced at the court of Emperor Rudolf II of Bohemia in the 1580s and was purchased by Voynich from a Jesuit college in Italy. A recent article in the New Yorker discussed new findings: the encrypted words vary section to section, as would be expected if the sections referred to different topics. But no one to date has cracked the code; the Voynich remains unread.

This tantalizing manuscript lies at the heart of THE STUDY OF MURDER, the third Muirteach MacPhee mystery. In 1374 Muirteach and his wife Mariota travel to Oxford, chaperoning the Lord of the Isles’ thirteen-year-old son Donald. Donald shows more interest in playing the lute and drinking than study, but some mysterious parchments intrigue him. An Oxford master is murdered, a beautiful tavern maid disappears, and Muirteach tracks an elusive and wily killer through a twisted labyrinth of deceit.

I hope you’ll enter Muirteach’s world and enjoy his adventures. You can find out more about all three Muirteach MacPhee mysteries on my website www.SusanMcDuffie.net or at www.facebook.com/SusanMcDuffieAuthor

About the book

Publication Date: September 18, 2013
Five Star Publishing
Hardcover; 264p
ISBN-10: 1432827200

The Study of Murder pits Scottish sleuth Muirteach MacPhee against a mysterious adversary in the medieval town of Oxford in 1374.At the command of the Lord of the Isles, Muirteach and his wife Mariota accompany Donald, the lord's surly thirteen-year-old son, to Oxford where Donald is to enroll in university. Shortly after their arrival a winsome tavern maid disappears. At his charge's insistence, Muirteach attempts to help Undersheriff Grymbaud with the investigation, as well as keep Donald at his studies and out of the taverns. He has little success with either venture, although the discovery of some bizarre and suggestive drawings on old parchments piques the curiosity of Donald and his peers. Meanwhile, Mariota thirsts to attend medical lectures at the schools, which are closed to women, and seeks a way to gain admittance to them. When an Oxford master is found brutally bludgeoned to death, Grymbaud asks Muirteach to investigate the slaying. The eventual arrest of an aged servant at the college stirs the ever-simmering discord between townsfolk and university students. The unrest culminates in riots and another senseless killing occurs, endangering Mariota. Gleaning clues from a cryptic manuscript and desperate to save his wife, a determined Muirteach tracks a wily killer through a dark and twisted labyrinth of deceit.

Praise for The Study of Murder

"THE STUDY OF MURDER is a worthy addition to Susan McDuffie's 14th century Hebridean mystery series. Muirteach and Mariota may be in an alien world, when they accompany the son of the Lord of the Isles to Oxford, but neither town nor gown can match their clever wits in solving crime. This book is a treat for those of us eager for a fresh era, well-integrated history, and a host of interesting characters." - Priscilla Royal, author of the Prioress Eleanor/Brother Thomas Mysteries

About the Author

Susan McDuffie has been a fan of historical fiction since childhood. As a child, Susan spent such vast amounts of time reading historical fiction that she wondered if she was mistakenly born in the wrong century. As an adult her discovery that Clorox was not marketed prior to 1922 reconciled her to life in this era. Susan’s first published works were two Regency short stories in Regency Press anthologies.

Susan’s childhood interest in Scotland was fueled by stories of the McDuffie clan’s ancestral lands on Colonsay and their traditional role as “Keeper of the Records” for the Lord of the Isles. On her first visit to Scotland she hitchhiked her way through the Hebrides and the seeds for the medieval Muirteach MacPhee mysteries were planted.

The Muirteach mysteries include A MASS FOR THE DEAD (2006), THE FAERIE HILLS (2011), and THE STUDY OF MURDER (September 2013). The New Mexico Book Awards named THE FAERIE HILLS “Best Historical Novel” of 2011. Currently plotting Muirteach’s next adventure, Susan shares her life with a Native American artist and four unruly cats, and enjoys taking flamenco dance classes in her spare time. She loves to hear from readers and her website is www.SusanMcDuffie.net.

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