Author: J.G. Harlond

Secret agents, skulduggery, crime with a touch of humour and romance. Award-winning author J.G. Harlond (Jane) writes page-turning historical crime fiction and fantasy. 'The Chosen Man Trilogy' features wily rogue Ludo da Portovenere, one-time pirate and occasional secret agent, who becomes involved in royal and political intrigues in 17th century Europe and beyond. Each story is based on real events. 'Bob Robbins Home Front Mysteries' feature dumpy, grumpy, DS Bob Robbins, brought out of retirement during the Second World War. Cosy crime with a sinister twist set in Devon and Cornwall. Each story includes real events. After travelling widely, Jane is now settled in Málaga, southern Spain. She has a large family living in various parts of Europe, North America and Scandinavia. Jane has visted or lived in most of the places featured in her books.

An interview with Ludo da Portovenere in 1640.

Historical background to Ludo da Portovenere’s business matters:

In this first third of the seventeenth century (now coming into 1640), Europe and Great Britain are experiencing significant changes in international politics and domestic life in general. Spain and the Holy Roman Empire are still fighting to keep the Netherlands; the Portuguese are conspiring to regain their monarchy; the French at at war with Spain and conspiring with the Vatican on all manner of issues; in England there will be a civil war that could change people’s lives forever if the king does not act to avert it. The bourgeoisie in northern Europe, however, flourish; in Holland they are already calling it ‘the golden age’. But we are surrounded by the plague and the winters continue colder and longer than they should. Continue reading “An interview with Ludo da Portovenere in 1640.”

The Last Royal Rebel

by Anna Keay (Bloomsbury, 2016)

During the horrific, botched execution of James, Duke of Monmouth, in 1685, the crowd remained silent and ‘many cried’, until, incensed by the ‘barbarous usage’ of the duke, they surged forward and would have torn the executioner to pieces had soldiers not prevented it. Yet the label on Monmouth’s portrait in the National Gallery reads: ‘charming, ambitious, unprincipled’. In The Last Royal Rebel, the Life and Death of James, Duke of Monmouth, Anna Keay shows us a complex, often contradictory man: a frivolous, pampered royal bastard with an astute political mind; a gambling spendthrift who becomes a war hero; a much-maligned man brought low by his sense of what was right and fair, and his need to be loved by his father. Continue reading “The Last Royal Rebel”

Plague and Tulips: gambling in a time of pestilence.

The first recorded economic bubble, ‘tulipomania’, occurred in the Dutch United Provinces between 1635 and 1637. The 1630s were a period of intense political and religious intrigue, when Pope Urban VIII appeared to be supporting Spain’s attempt to reclaim her lost territories in the Netherlands, but was actually conspiring to limit the size and power of the Habsburg Empire, Continue reading “Plague and Tulips: gambling in a time of pestilence.”

Uninvited Characters.

. . . members of a reading club had been asking me about my characters. Where, they wanted to know, did my characters come from?

Well, the truth is I see things: that is I see people doing things. The other truth is I didn’t know this wasn’t normal: I grew up knowing my great-grandmother was ‘fey’; Continue reading “Uninvited Characters.”

Suspect Women

If my great-grandmother had lived in the 17th Century there’s a good chance she would have been named a ‘wise woman’. Great-grandmother Margaret was ‘fey’: she knew things. Take for instance the time she and her husband, who was a forester, took a few precious days holiday in a remote area of the Mountains of Mourne. Continue reading “Suspect Women”

My ‘PORRIDGE & CREAM’

Sandra Danby asked various people about their ‘comfort reads’ – which books do they always go back to? Here is my response.

My ‘Porridge & Cream’ novels are in the House of Níccolò series by the late Scots author Dorothy Dunnett. I became hooked on her sixteenth century Game of Kings series featuring the exquisite Francis Crawford of Lymond in the 1970s. Continue reading “My ‘PORRIDGE & CREAM’”

Secondary characters in historical fiction

Secondary characters are used to develop the main character(s) and/or further the plot in any fiction genre, but in historical fiction the author also has to ensure what they say and do is appropriate to the epoch of the novel.

Whether or not the protagonist was a real person, secondary characters are frequently fictional constructs and in the story to serve a purpose. Continue reading “Secondary characters in historical fiction”

The Great Game.

Roller-skating in the Hindu Kush.

(Background research for The Empress Emerald)

‘Horrible looking hills loomed nearer and nearer and then you saw some sort of crack going up through the hills – and this was the Khyber Pass; great slabs of rock towering up on either side of you.’ (Ed Brown, Royal Warwickshire Regiment, 1930s)

‘I set the defaulters to work with pick axes Continue reading “The Great Game.”

Confessions of a reluctant show-off

In response to an article on how the real slog and sadness in an author’s life can begin on publication, I’d like to raise the issue of so-called ‘celebrity status’, and the silent worlds most comfortably-dressed, disconnected, happily-individual writers inhabit.

In what now seems like a previous existence, I studied dance and drama. It was drummed into us that we must never be seen off-stage Continue reading “Confessions of a reluctant show-off”

The Act of Writing Historical Fiction.

Fiction writers are essentially liars. Historical fiction writers are thieves as well.

Readers of fiction enter a deal whereby they knowingly suspend disbelief, and believe what they are told. Readers of historical fiction do not have to suspend disbelief, but they knowingly accept stolen goods – unless the tale has been legitimately inherited as in Karen Charlton’s Catching the Eagle. Continue reading “The Act of Writing Historical Fiction.”