(Giveaway) Was Elizabeth I a Woman Hater? by Sandra Byrd

We welcome Sandra Byrd to HF-Connection with covetous delight as we swoon over the bling being given away! Thank you to Sandra for offering the prizes to go with the following article on our beloved Queen Elizabeth:

Was Elizabeth I a Woman Hater? 

Sandra Byrd

There has long been an “urban rumor” that Elizabeth Tudor hated other women. It’s true that she was a female monarch in a time which greatly preferred sovereign men. {Note the extent to which her father, Henry VIII, extended himself to get a male heir, as well as the contents of John Knox’s much-circulated pamphlet, “The First Blast of the Trumpet Against the Monstrous Regiment of Women,” which railed against sitting queens and regents of the era.} Elizabeth didn't forestall imprisoning women for long periods of time, such as her Grey cousins and Mary Queen of Scots, when she felt they threatened her throne, which admittedly may have seemed unfeminine and harsh.

Because of her ruling position, Queen Elizabeth was never really able to be an equal companion with anyone. William Cecil, 1st Baron Burghley, who dedicated his life to her service, once said the queen was “more than a man and, in truth, something less than a woman.” And yet, perhaps that was a man's perspective, or one man's perspective of a woman with power. Elizabeth knew how to dress like a woman, flirt like a woman, fall in love like a woman, and there were certainly women who were in every sense her lifelong friends.

Take for example, Katherine Carey Knollys, daughter of Mary Boleyn. Shortly after Elizabeth became queen, she installed this cousin as Chief Lady of the Bedchamber and kept her close at hand, perhaps to the detriment of Knollys family, till the day Lady Knollys died.

Katherine “Kat” Ashley and Blanche Parry stayed with Elizabeth from her childhood until each woman died. Because Elizabeth was deprived of her own mother as a young girl, Ashley and Parry became surrogate mothers to her. Ashley spoke bluntly to Elizabeth when no one else dared, and Parry continued on in Elizabeth’s household in positions of honor and affection long past her abilities warranted them.

Anne Russell Dudley married Lord Ambrose Dudley, the brother of Elizabeth’s longtime love, Robert, and became the Countess of Warwick. But even before then, Anne served Elizabeth as a maid of honor. They became great friends, and Anne stayed by her mistress’ side until Elizabeth died in 1603.

Catherine Carey, the Countess of Nottingham, was the eldest daughter of Henry Carey, 1st Baron Hunsdon, Mary Boleyn’s son and therefore a cousin to Elizabeth; she died shortly before Elizabeth did, and it was said that her death was the loss Elizabeth was unable to bear, eventually leading to the queen's lack of will to live.

And then in 1566, Elin von Snakenborg came from Sweden to England. The queen intervened, unusually, with another monarch in order to allow Elin to remain in England. Elizabeth, as famous for counting her pennies as her grandfather Henry VII, atypically awarded rooms, a servant, and a horse to Elin (later Helena) within months of her arrival. Throughout her service, Helena was known as someone who couldn’t be bribed. She became a great friend of the queen and the highest ranking woman in England after Elizabeth, though that friendship was tested perhaps more than many of the queen's confidantes.

But what about all those women Elizabeth is supposed to have precluded from getting married, insisting that they remain virgins like herself? There is no doubt that from time to time Elizabeth expressed, sometimes forcefully, her preference that her ladies not marry. Anne Somerset, in her biography, Elizabeth I, states, “The Queen's opposition to her ladies marrying stemmed from more than mere jealousy that they should attain contentment of a sort that she would never know. Although she occasionally lamented her spinsterhood, simultaneously she entertained an altogether contradictory conviction that matrimony was an undesirable condition for women, a view not altogether surprising when one recalls that her father had executed her mother and stepmother, and the marriage of her sister had been a fiasco. It may well have been her early experience that instilled in her that instinctive aversion to the married state.”

While the Queen clearly enjoyed her power, she perhaps also keenly felt the loss of the kind of social and emotional intimacy that all people, and especially women, desire in a family. And yet she had no mother or father, no siblings, no husband, no children and her (Tudor) cousins all had claim to her throne. Historian and author Antonia Fraser said, “Her [Elizabeth’s] household resembled a large family, often on the move between residences, and as a family it had its feuds when factions formed around strong personalities. It was not out of malice that Elizabeth opposed her maids of honors’ plans to marry, but because marriages broke up her own family circle.”

The queen did, sometimes, help them to marry and marry well. Somerset says, “She (Elizabeth) could point out in the course of her reign no less than 13 of her maids of honor contracted prestigious marriages within the peerage, and this might seem to justify her claim that it was only unsuitable matches of which she disapproved.” The trick, of course, is that one never knew if the queen would approve or not. The consequences of the latter could be severe and long lasting.

On the whole, though, it certainly cannot be proved that Elizabeth Tudor hated women; in fact, the handful of long term, devoted friendships we know about prove otherwise. She gifted those women with rents, properties, perquisites, trust, affection, gowns and jewels, and emotional intimacy. Oxford University historian Susan Doran states in her book, Queen Elizabeth I, “It should also not be forgotten how loyal and gracious she could be to her intimates and that the turnover of her household was very low. The majority of women served until death or severe illness intervened.”

GIVEAWAY!!

April 9, 2013

Elizabeth Tudor bling!

Giveaway of beautiful Elizabeth I necklace!


Roses Have Thorns by Sandra Byrd (book 3 in Ladies In Waiting)

In 1565, seventeen-year-old Elin von Snakenborg leaves Sweden on a treacherous journey to England. Her fiance has fallen in love with her sister and her dowry money has been gambled away, but ahead of her lies an adventure that will take her to the dizzying heights of Tudor power. Transformed through marriage into Helena, the Marchioness of Northampton, she becomes the highest-ranking woman in Elizabeth’s circle. But in a court that is surrounded by Catholic enemies who plot the queen’s downfall, Helena is forced to choose between an unyielding monarch and the husband she’s not sure she can trust—a choice that will provoke catastrophic consequences.

Vividly conjuring the years leading up to the beheading of Mary Queen of Scots, Roses Have Thorns is a brilliant exploration of treason, both to the realm and to the heart.

One lucky follower of HF-Connection will receive a copy of Sandra Byrd's Roses Have Thorns AND the necklace shown above featured a favorite Tudor icon of Elizabeth I. Please enter via the Rafflecopter form and follow the prompts. Offer valid to USA only.


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{Giveaway} Interview with Rosalie Turner, author of March With Me

Interview with Rosalie Turner, Author of

March With Me

HFC: Tell us about MARCH WITH ME. What is the story about?

RT: MARCH WITH ME is the story of two girls, one white and one black who are teenagers during the time of the Civil Rights Movement in Birmingham, Alabama in the 1960’s. The book shows what life was like for both races during that turbulent time. Ultimately, the lives of these two girls, Letitia and Martha Ann, impact each other.

HFC: Why did you write this book?

RT: I had several motivations for writing MARCH WITH ME. The first began years ago when I realized the importance of the Children’s March and I wanted to tell that story. The second was when dialogue at meetings of both blacks and whites indicated the older generation’s frustration that the younger generation didn’t realize what life was really like for them. I wanted to make that time come alive for all generations. The third motivation was to introduce the idea of the importance of reconciliation.

HFC: Tell us about the Children’s March.

RT: When Martin Luther King Jr. came down to B’ham in 1963 he hoped to get a lot of marchers & demonstrators against the Jim Crow laws. He wanted to fill the jails and get national attention. That didn’t happen because the adults were too afraid to march. He called in a young leader of SCLC who got the kids all fired up to march, although King didn’t want them to. There were all kinds of code words and secret messages sent through the black DJ’s and so on May 2nd, thousands of black kids left schools in and around B’ham, converged on 16th St. Baptist Church & went out in groups of fifty. The first day hundreds of kids, some as young as 8, were arrested. The 2nd day was when Bull Connor turned the fire hoses & dogs on them. Those are the pictures you always see of Birmingham.

HFC: What effect do you think the Children’s March had on the civil rights movement?

RT: I think it was absolutely pivotal, along with the March on Washington in Aug of ’63 and the bombing of the 16th Street Baptist Church in Sept. Those three event captured the attention of the media and thus of government. The result was the Civil Rights Act that Johnson signed in 1964.

HFC: Did the Civil Rights Act change things, especially in the south?

RT: I would have to say yes and no. If you were an individual living in the south you probably wouldn’t have noticed too many differences. Of course, there were positive changes – the “white only” & “colored” signs went away, blacks could be served in restaurants, go to the public library, etc. but in day to day living, life didn’t change much. However, that legislation was needed before changes could really begin to happen. There had to be laws to back up the changes.

HFC: Were you personally involved in any demonstrations?

RT: No, I was a young wife of a Marine stationed in California. We were just starting our family, and although I certainly heard about events, I was not involved with them. When I had been in college in Virginia and sit ins and such were starting, I had thought that if there was a sit in at the Woolworth’s counter in the college town I would go down and support it, but there never was one while I was there.

HFC: Don’t you think that if there hadn’t been Rosa Parks, Dr. King, the Children’s March, the freedom riders, all of that – that eventually we would have had desegregation and equal rights?

RT: No, I really don’t think so. If there hadn’t been those things, the status quo would have simply continued. We had to have the civil rights movement.

HFC: Why do you think Birmingham, Alabama became such a focal point for the movement?

RT: When you look at the history of Birmingham, it’s easy to see that it became the perfect set up for such a movement. It was a city founded on steel mills and coal mining. The geography itself with the valley and mountains (they’re called mountains, but they’re really hills) formed natural barriers to separate ethnic groups. The Depression hit B’ham very hard. When the mining and mills started to go away, that left a large number of unemployed in Birmingham proper. White flight began to take root out to the suburbs around. So, in B’ham, we had a long history of separation between the races and added to that became economic and job insecurities and fears. 

HFC: Your black protagonist, Letitia, is in first person, yet you are white. Why did you do that?

RT: I believe that writers can use any POV because they get into the heads of their characters, and the characters do the speaking. I needed to have Letitia have the strongest voice to help us all understand what it felt like to live through that time.

HFC: MARCH WITH ME deals with the concept of reconciliation. Do you believe that reconciliation can ever really take place between the races?

RT: I definitely do. In the face of news about hate crimes, etc. I still see reconciliation take place on many fronts. Former MS Gov. William Winter and his Institute for Racial Reconciliation make constant strides in places you would least expect it – Philadelphia, MS for example. The Southern Poverty Law Center’s Teaching Tolerance program works with schools on all levels of eliminating hatred and mistrust of each other. So many YMCAs & YWCAs across the country have wonderful programs to eliminate racism. The important thing, I believe, is that when peoples of different backgrounds – any difference such as white, Hispanic, Muslim, black, whatever – whenever we get together we must share our stories. We must recognize each other as simply people.

HFC: You use a tornado in your story both literally and figuratively. Tell us about that.

RT: Tornadoes are a very real part of life in the south. You may remember the horrific one in 2010 that took over 200 lives. When I considered the definition of a tornado – a tempest distinguished by a rapid swirling and a slow progressive movement – I couldn’t help but think how that could be a definition of the civil rights movement, so I thought using a tornado in the book was a natural.

About March With Me:
Like a tornado, the civil rights movement struck Birmingham in the spring of ’63. In this coming of age novel we are swept into the separate cultures of the south.

Two girls, one black and one white, endure the pain and prejudice of segregation. The girls mature and pursue the same profession until one fateful day when a force of nature sweeps in and rearranges their lives.

About the author:
Rosalie Turner is the author of five books. Her novel, Sisters of Valor, recently received the Military Writers Society of America Bronze Award for Fiction.

While living in Jacksonville, FL, she was awarded the JC Penney Award for establishing an inner city reading program.

Rosalie divides her time between New Mexico and Alabama.

www.rosalieturner.com

Giveaway is for one copy of March With Me. Open internationally. Winner's choice of print copy or eBook. However, if international winner is chosen, they will receive the eBook. To enter, leave a comment about Rosalie's interview or tell us who you admire most in the Civil Rights Movement. Last day to enter is Tuesday, April 23 at 11:59pm CST. Good luck!

(Giveaway) Beverly Swerling, author of Bristol House | Armageddon, Facts Behind the Fiction

Please welcome the author of Bristol House to HF-Connection!
See the end of the post for Giveaway information!

April 4th 2013 by Viking Adult

Synopsis:

In the tradition of Kate Mosse, a swiftly-paced mystery that stretches from modern London to Tudor England

In modern-day London, architectural historian and recovering alcoholic Annie Kendall hopes to turn her life around and restart her career by locating several long-missing pieces of ancient Judaica. Geoff Harris, an investigative reporter, is soon drawn into her quest, both by romantic interest and suspicions about the head of the Shalom Foundation, the organization sponsoring her work. He’s also a dead ringer for the ghost of a monk Annie believes she has seen at the flat she is subletting in Bristol House.

In 1535, Tudor London is a very different city, one in which monks are being executed by Henry VIII and Jews are banished. In this treacherous environment of religious persecution, Dom Justin, a Carthusian monk, and a goldsmith known as the Jew of Holborn must navigate a shadowy world of intrigue involving Thomas Cromwell, Jewish treasure, and sexual secrets. Their struggles shed light on the mysteries Annie and Geoff aim to puzzle out—at their own peril.

This riveting dual-period narrative seamlessly blends a haunting supernatural thriller with vivid historical fiction. Beverly Swerling, widely acclaimed for her City of Dreams series, delivers a bewitching and epic story of a historian and a monk, half a millennium apart, whose destinies are on a collision course.

BRISTOL HOUSE.10 Armageddon

The thing about writing a thriller – whether historical or contemporary – is that there is never any shortage of material. There are, unfortunately, endless numbers of people willing to slaughter any number of other people to bring about their particular version of the future.

BRISTOL HOUSE riffs on two such power plays. One occurs when Henry VIII wanted to divorce his wife and marry Anne Boleyn. For that to happen the Pope had to annul Henry's first marriage. Because the pope of the time was a political disaster (and there is no record of any papal discussion of the religious merits of Henry's claim) things went from bad to worse. Eventually Henry not only married Anne, he broke with Rome and established himself as head of the Christian church in England.

That drastic alteration to the English way of life was not achieved without a struggle, but the king held all the cards. The Smithfield fires filled London with the smell of bubbling human fat and slowly roasting flesh. While at Tyburn (today the busy junction of Oxford Street and Bayswater Road), those who objected to Henry's claim were first hung, then cut down while still alive. Next the victim's stomach was slit open and the guts extracted. Finally the heart was cut out, the head hacked off, and the body cut into four parts and briefly boiled so it wouldn't rot too quickly. The head was displayed on the city walls, while the quarters of the body were tacked up in places chosen to deliver a message: No one defies Henry and lives.

If you were very lucky, and Henry wanted you dead but not necessarily to suffer, you were beheaded. Usually on the grounds of the Tower of London. Frequently, however, the job was botched and the executioner just kept hacking away and the victim died slowly and torturously. So sometimes, as a real act of mercy, the king went out of his way to be sure the executioner was able to do the job in one stroke. In the case of wife number two, Anne Boleyn, Henry just wanted to be rid of her – no male heir, and besides someone else had taken his fancy. They sent to France for a particularly adept executioner. (Incidentally the daughter Anne produced for him would go on to be Queen Elizabeth I, one of the strongest monarchs England has ever had, but hey, Henry couldn't know that. And what do you think he'd have thought if someone had been able to tell him what science now knows, that it's the father who determines gender… )

Fast forward to the 21st century, to the Middle East, where death and destruction have been the norm since long before Henry VIII. In Jerusalem there are thirty-five acres on the top of a man-made hill for which men have been willing to die for over three thousand years. Jews and Christians call that precious real estate the Temple Mount, the place where ancient Jews offered sacrifice to the one God, and where later Jesus Christ went to worship. Half a millennium after that it was claimed by Muslims, for whom it's also a supremely holy site known as the Haram al-Sharif.

There's nothing ecumenical about this three-way patrimony. It's been a recipe for disaster for centuries.

In the novel, which takes place in both contemporary and Tudor London, Si Cohen, an English rabbi, tells Annie Kendall, an American historian, that there are crazy people on either side of the argument. There's the likes of Ahmadinejad, president of Iran, who claims there never was any Jewish temple, first or second, built on the site. (There may never have been any kingdom of Israel or Jews in Jerusalem in Ahmadinejad's version of history.) Then there are the Jewish rebuild-the-temple-at-any-cost-in-blood-or-treasure fanatics. Busy breeding the proper kinds of cattle for sacrifice (it must be a pure red heifer), and growing special kinds of flax from heirloom seed so they can weave the correct linen for the priests of their Third Temple.

In the 90's, in his efforts to broker a peace both sides could live with, Bill Clinton came up with an idea for an elevated walkway of some sort (God knows what it would have cost us to build it) that would give people in the newly created Palestinian state access to their holy places, while allowing the Israelis to claim the undivided city of Jerusalem as their capital. Even that enormous stretch didn't work, but simply talking about a two-state solution was apparently enough to tip some Israeli radicals over the edge.

In 1995 Yitzhak Rabin, the Israeli prime minister who said he had to talk peace with his enemies because there was no need to discuss it with his friends, was shot to death by an Orthodox Jew, a young man who despised the notion of a Palestinian state. Which event occurred during a rally to support the peace process.

It later came out that one high profile right winger whom everyone thought they knew all about was in reality a Shin Bet undercover operative. The agent was tried for having failed to prevent Rabin's assassination, but the court decided he'd known nothing about it.

Bring it on, says the thriller writer.

Personally, I think we write about such things as a kind of charm against them happening.

Beverly will also be guest blogging for:
Cheryl’s Book Nook, Cheryl Koch
Booksie’s Blog, Sandie Kirkland
The Novel Life, Stacey Millican
2 Read or Not 2 Read, Marcie Turner
Maurice On Books, Jean Lewis
Book Matters, Teri Harman
Giraffe Days, Shannon Badcock 
Devourer of Books, Jen Karsbaek
Thoughts in Progress, Pamela Purcell

GIVEAWAY INFORMATION:

To enter for your chance to win a copy of Bristol House, please leave a comment for the author with your email address so that we may contact the winner.

Plus 1 entry for each daily Facebook or Twitter share, please leave the link to it!

Open to USA followers of HF-Connection, no P.O. Boxes. 

{Giveaway} Like Chaff in the Wind by Anna Belfrage

Publication Date: March 1, 2013 | Matador (Self-Published) | 376p

Matthew Graham committed the mistake of his life when he cut off his brother’s nose. In revenge, Luke Graham has Matthew abducted and transported to the Colony of Virginia, there to be sold as indentured labour – a death sentence more or less.

Matthew arrives in Virginia in May of 1661, and any hope he had of finding someone willing to listen to his tale of unlawful abduction is quickly extinguished. If anything Matthew’s insistence that he is an innocent man leads to him being singled out for the heaviest tasks.

Insufficient food, grueling days and the humid heat combine to wear Matthew down. With a sinking feeling he realises no one has ever survived the seven years of service – not on the plantation Suffolk Rose, not under the tender care of the overseer Dominic Jones.

Fortunately for Matthew, he has a remarkable wife, a God’s gift who has no intention of letting her husband suffer and die, and so Alex Graham sets off on a perilous journey to bring her husband home.

Alex is plagued by nightmares in which her Matthew is reduced to a wheezing wreck by his tormentors. She sits in the prow of the ship and prays for a miracle to carry her swiftly to his side, to let her hold him and heal him before it’s too late. God, however, has other things to do and what should have been a two month crossing becomes a yearlong adventure from one side of the Atlantic to the other.

Will she find him in time? And if she does, will she be capable of paying the price required to buy him free?


First of all, thanks to Michelle and Marie for hosting my blog tour and allowing me to post on their blog. For my previous posts on this blog tour, please visit Bippity Boppity Book , Oh, for the Hook of a Book! and Flashlight Commentary.

Inspiration is a fickle thing. It’s not as if you can sit down at your computer, crack your knuckles and say, “right; it’s 19:00 p.m. Time for some serious inspiration.” Generally, my brain will blank out entirely when faced with an expectation to be creative. “Nope,” it will say, shrinking away to sulk in a corner, “I don’t feel like it.”

Instead, my brain tends to go into overdrive in the most unsuitable situations. Like at work; there I am in an intense discussion about Accounting Standards when the female auditor breaks off to fiddle with her hair bun, and just like that I know this is exactly the posture Alex would be sitting in when Matthew enters their little bedroom, and then … Phew! It’s an effort to revert to the intricacies of warranty accounting when your whole head is ablaze with images of Matthew and Alex, snatches of their dialogue flying through the air.

Like many writers, I’m also afflicted by “night inspiration”. I should be sleeping, but suddenly Alex is whispering things in my ear, her voice urgent, and I jerk awake, grope for the pad I always keep by my bed and write as she dictates. I’ve become very good at writing in the dark, as my husband protests loudly should I turn on my bedside lamp to see my scribbles.

Nowadays I trust myself to be able to carry on from where I left off the following evening, confident that at some point the creative juices will flow as needed. It didn’t use to be that way, with me so scared that the half-baked idea in my head would vanish if I didn’t commit it to paper immediately. This lead to a lot of disrupted nights, to marathon stints at my computer that had my family grumbling it was a very LONG time since I cooked them a meal.

When writing historical fiction, inspiration must be bolstered by researched facts. No matter how inspiring that scene with the fork is, you have to cut it if your book is set in any period prior to the late seventeenth century (except if you’re in Italy) as the fork was simply not invented then. And yes, Mr Gorgeous and Ms Feisty look absolutely wonderful together on the Chesterfield – but there were no such sofas in those times when men wore hose and codpieces, so either his costume or the interior will have to go. As an avid reader of historical fiction – as well as a writer – I know just how irritating I find those little anachronisms, and so I try really hard to ensure they don’t appear in my books. Having said that, I’m sure there will be a knowledgeable reader out there who will have the kindness to inform me that beeches didn’t exist in Scotland in the seventeenth century (HA! Caught that one myself) or that … whatever.

Writers that get the inspiration and the research to match can at times create awe-inspiring, magical novels that transport the reader to this other time, other place with the minimum of effort. That is what all writers want to achieve, we want to take our readers by the hand and submerge them in a bubble of imagined reality that will allow them to share in our characters’ adventures and woes. Some excel at it, like Sarah Dunant, Sharon Penman and Elizabeth Chadwick to name a few. (This is why their books are the most dog-eared, most worn, of all the books on my bookshelves.)

Inspiration for the Matthew and Alex books come from various sources. I’ve had a hang-up on the seventeenth century since years back (I know; somewhat strange, but there you are). I have always wanted to time travel, which is why Alex gets to do it on my behalf. Not that she is always adequately grateful at having had this opportunity – well, unless I threaten to whisk her back to the here and now, leaving Matthew behind. Most of all, inspiration comes from Matthew and Alex themselves.

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 handful. 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.

About the Author

I was raised abroad, on a pungent mix of Latin American culture, English history and Swedish traditions. As a result I’m multilingual and most of my reading is historical - both non-fiction and fiction.

I was always going to be a writer - or a historian, preferably both. Instead I ended up with a degree in Business and Finance, with very little time to spare for my most favourite pursuit. Still, one does as one must, and in between juggling a challenging career I raised my four children on a potent combination of invented stories, historical debates and masses of good food and homemade cakes. They seem to thrive … Nowadays I spend most of my spare time at my writing desk. The children are half grown, the house is at times eerily silent and I slip away into my imaginary world, with my imaginary characters. Every now and then the one and only man in my life pops his head in to ensure I’m still there. I like that – just as I like how he makes me laugh so often I’ll probably live to well over a hundred. 

I was always going to be a writer. Now I am - I have achieved my dream.

www.annabelfrage.com

Giveaway:  One paperback copy. Open internationally. To enter, leave a comment below with your contact info. Spread the word via Twitter or Facebook and you will get one extra entry. Just be sure to share the link to where you shared in your comment (or a separate comment is okay too). Last day to enter is Friday, April 12. Good luck!

Elizabeth Chadwick's Shadows and Strongholds (giveaway)

Please welcome author Elizabeth Chadwick! She is on book tour for the US reissue of Shadows and Strongholds

 Available March 5th 2013 by Sourcebooks Landmark

A medieval tale of pride and strife, of coming-of-age in a world where chivalry is a luxury seldom afforded, especially by men of power.

England, 1148---ten-year-old Brunin FitzWarin is an awkward misfit in his own family. A quiet child, he is tormented by his brothers and loathed by his powerful and autocratic grandmother. In an attempt to encourage Brunin’s development, his father sends him to be fostered in the household of Joscelin de Dinan, Lord of Ludlow. Here Brunin will learn knightly arts, but before he can succeed, he must overcome the deep-seated doubts that hold him back.

Hawise, the youngest daughter of Lord Joscelin, soon forms a strong friendship with Brunin. Family loyalties mean that her father, with the young Brunin as his squire, must aid Prince Henry of Anjou in his battle with King Stephen for the English crown. Meanwhile, Ludlow itself comes under threat from Joscelin’s rival, Gilbert de Lacy. As the war for the crown rages, and de Lacy becomes more assertive in his claims for Ludlow, Brunin and Hawise are drawn into each other’s arms.

Now Brunin must defeat the shadows of his childhood and put to use all that he has learned. As the pressure on Ludlow intensifies and a new Welsh threat emerges against his own family’s lands, Brunin must confront the future head on, or fail on all counts....

I’d like to thank you for inviting me onto your blog to talk about an aspect of my research for Shadows and Strongholds.


One of the joys of writing historical fiction is doing the research because it leads me to discover all manner of fun and fascinating facts about my characters and their life and times. I thought today I’d talk a bit about names and hair colour in the novel.

In Shadows and Strongholds, the hero’s official name is Fulke FitzWarin. It was a name that was passed down father to son from the early 12th century through to the early 15th when the line died out in male tail. Being as there were several Fulke FitzWarins in the story, I had to find a different tag for my hero, and luckily one was waiting in the wings. The Fulke of Shadows and Strongholds had the nick-name as an adult of Fulke le Brun or ‘The Brown.’ This is suggestive of him having dark hair and eyes and an olive complexion – which is how I have depicted him in the novel. He starts out as a boy who is having a difficult time at home and is sent away to become a squire in the household of his father’s friend Joscelin de Dinan, lord of Ludlow. Needing a childhood name for Fulke le Brun, I turned to a good friend, who, among other things happens to be a cultural historian of the 12th and 13th centuries and knows about such things. She told me that in childhood Le Brun might have been called Brunet, Bruno, or Brunin. (it’s where we get the word ‘brunette’ from for a dark haired person these days). I didn’t want to call him the first because it so closely reflected our modern word for the hair colour. With the second I kept thinking of a teddy bear which wasn’t quite what I had in my mind’s eye, so Brunin he became!


At the outset of becoming a squire to lord Joscelin, Brunin acquires a new mount - black pony called Morel. I didn’t just pluck the name out of thin air though. In the middle ages, horses were very frequently named according to their colour and a Morel horse or pony would have been either glossy black or a very, very dark brown or bay. We still have a survival in the name of the sweet dark red almost black morello cherries. A golden chestnut horse would have been called ‘Sorel’ and a bay horse ‘Bai.’ When I was writing another novel, The Greatest Knight about William Marshal, I came across the detail that one of the horses he had as a young knight was called Blancart, which meant that it was white, from the French word for white – ‘Blanc.’

Thank you to Elizabeth Chadwick for sharing snippets of her research process for Shadows!

GIVEAWAY!! 

Open to USA and Canada readers

One new paperback of Shadows and Strongholds by Elizabeth Chadwick
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