Category: The Writer’s Craft

Writing The Doomsong Saga

Most readers of any fiction genre are happy to suspend disbelief and accept a story as ‘real’ for the duration of the novel. Readers of historical fiction also trust the author to tell stories about real people and events, and accept the fictional element required to create scenes and relationships between the characters. Reading historical fantasy – such as the excellent novels by Guy Gavriel Kay, or Game of Thrones, which both include elements of real history, involves a slightly different transaction between the author and reader. Here, we have to imagine the setting and epoch in our mind’s eye, and then describe in everyday words. And that is not always easy.

I have come to writing historical fantasy fairly late in my career. I have always enjoyed classic epic fantasy of the Lord of the Rings kind, but I began reading books by Guy Gavriel Kay a few years ago, and that introduced me to another sort of fictional world.

Kay’s stories involve very real people one can relate to in an alternative version of our world. They also contain a lot of history. The Lions of Al-Rassan, for example, is one of the best books on Spanish history I’ve ever read. Kay conveys the power politics, racial and religious struggles so well I lived every page, sensing that this is what it must have been like. This, for me, is where historical fiction and fantasy come together, offering a clearer insight or meaning to the past.

 

Writing my new series, The Doomsong Saga, involves much the same process as my historical crime fiction. I do a lot of background reading, follow up curious events or details and make reams of notes, which are then consciously, or otherwise, modified for my story. Compelling content is vital, but the devil is in the small details required to make strange happenings believable.
The saga begins in an imaginary early-medieval setting then moves on to include elements of real history and events documented in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle. Book 1, The Doomsong Sword, began as a re-telling of part of the ancient Norse Volsung saga with a fictional reluctant hero, Davor, who comes to possess the sword named Gram (Anger), Doomsong and Truthteller. Sometime later, I reviewed the Scandinavian history Children of Ash and Elm by Neil Price (Basic Books, 2020) and saw the storyline for another book. I then became immersed in what’s now called the Viking Age partly because I spend time in Sweden each year – and partly because I grew up on a Viking battlefield.
Book 2, The Doomsong Voyage, begins with the threat of a recently documented climate catastrophe caused by the eruption of a volcano. I tweaked the dates a little but the ash cloud did make life for Scandinavians even more difficult than it already was, bringing in the fabled Fimbulwinter – a never-ending winter – that forced people to seek new homes on fertile land. As a result of this (in my story), a young tale-maker named Finn sets sail on a Baltic trading knarr to find a pirate named Ice-Heart in the Middle Sea. The pirate is a clan leader, who has the knowledge and personality required to persuade his people to leave all they know and cross the ocean to find a better life. The pirate is not called Ice-Heart without reason, however.  To say more would be a spoiler.
Having lived on the Mediterranean coast of Italy and then Spain for more than half my life, I was familiar with how the Vikings sailed and raided as far as the Levant; how they established camps and then settled in Frankia and Hispania. My fictional Voyage also includes a version of Moorish Al-Andalus, Barbalus. The independent state of Barbalus came from staying in the hill-top town of Vejer de la Frontera.
As I was writing, more and more documented history crept into the story. But there is good deal of magic in it, too. People firmly believed in magic, shape-shifting, enchantments, and the inexplicable power of gods such as Odin/Woden, Thor and Freya in the so-called Dark Ages.

The Doomsong Voyage developed and grew, and once it was finished, I could see how it would make a series. Fortunately, so could my publisher. And, I’m very pleased to say, the book has received some excellent reviews and endorsements by professional historians.

I’ve now completed the third book in the saga, The Doomsong Legend. This has taken me back home to North Devon in the British West Country, where I grew up – on a Viking battlefield. Historians dispute who fought whom and when, but there is little doubt there were at least two major battles on the stretch of land between Northam and Appledore on the River Torridge. Whether Hubba (Ubbe / Hudd) really did lead 23 dragonships into the estuary as stated in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle I do not know, but it makes for a good story.

J.G. Harlond
Málaga, January, 2026

Find more about my books on: www.jgharlond.com
The Doomsong Sword: https://mybook.to/DoomsongSaga1
The Doomsong Voyage: https://mybook.to/DoomsongSaga2

 

Medieval Luxury

If you have been watching the ‘King and Conqueror’ tv series about King Harold and William of Normandy, you may assume that life in those days was a matter of mud and guts, of dark interiors, elementary furnishing and minimal, dingy decoration. That was probably the case for the peasantry, not so for the nobility. In the following article, author Malve von Hassell shows life was a lot more colourful and sophisticated than you may think. JGH

The private chamber of Adela of England, Countess de Blois

Adela of England and Normandy (c. 1067—1137), daughter of William the Conqueror, and wife of Henry-Stephen de Blois, most likely enjoyed all the comforts available at the time even if there wasn’t much to be done about the cold damp winters and the drafts in a stone castle.

Baudri, Abbot of Bourgueil, wrote Adela an effusive missive in which he described her chamber as he imagined it.  Even by the standards of the time, his tone was wordy, laced with blatant flattery and an openly stated desire for an elegant cope he hoped Adela would present to him.

Baudri addresses Adele as “hail countess, worthy rather of the name of queen.”

The walls are covered with tapestries, woven according to her design, and all seem alive: on one wall, creation, the fall and fratricide, the flood with fish on mountain tops and lions in the sea; sacred history from Noah through Abraham, Jacob, Joseph, the glory of Moses, and David to Solomon on a second wall; the Greek gods and myths, Phaethon, Ganymede, Cadmus, Pyramis and Thisbe, Hermaphroditus, Orpheus, Troy, and Roman kings on a third; around her bed the conquest of England, William’s claims to the throne as Edward’s chosen successor, the comet, the Norman council and preparations, the fleet, the battle of Hastings with the feigned flight of the Normans and the real one of the English, and the death of Harold.

He goes on at great length, also mentioning the ceiling and the bed hangings as referencing not only all of nature, but all the sciences, liberal arts, and philosophy, as well as rhetoric and medicine, a none too subtle way to flatter Adela for her piety, her political position, the breadth of her education, and her wide-ranging interests.

Over the top, to be sure, but from Baudri’s writing we can deduce with some certainty that Adela had a private space known as a “solar.”

Such a solar was a chamber on an upper floor of the castle, equipped with large windows to let in the sunlight. A lord or lady could enjoy a modicum of privacy for sleeping, reading, needlework, and receiving friends or vassals. A solar was by no means standard. In medieval times, there was little privacy; people slept in shared spaces, often even in shared beds, if beds were available. The great hall of a castle served as a place for eating, entertaining, working with retainers, cooking, and sleeping.

So, what would Adela’s solar have contained? The pride of place was the bed. A wooden bed box or a four-poster bed with a wooden frame supported a straw mattress on ropes strung from one end to the other. This was topped by multiple layers of wool, a feather or down mattress, and linen sheets and blankets. A large, long bolster was stretched across the bed, accompanied by several smaller feather pillows for comfort. Heavy curtains of velvet or silk, richly embroidered, kept out the drafts and protected the sleeper from curious looks.

Tapestries on the walls made the room cozy, and rugs and cushions added to the comfort of the room. In addition to large chests for her clothing and other items, Adela would have had a few chairs and benches for herself and for visitors, and space on a table for manuscripts. As a wealthy and devout Christian, Adela presumably owned a psalter and would have kept it close to hand. A table served for displaying her cosmetics, jewelry, and needlework, all symbols of her wealth and status. The fireplace warmed the room, and candles inside wall indentations and candelabra provided light.

For her daily ablutions, Adela had a ewer and a basin. Women used linen cloths and powders made of herbs to clean their teeth. For a full bath, a wooden tub was brought into the chamber and filled with hot water. As a wealthy woman, Adela would have had expensive soaps available. And herbs, flowers, and scented oils helped to dispel any unpleasant smells in the space.

Lesser nobility generally had to make do with the multifunctional great hall. With any luck, the sleeping areas were set apart by curtains to create some privacy.

And moving down the ladder of the strict medieval social order, peasants slept on the floor in a single room, the bedding consisting of a sack or canvas bag filled with straw or hay.

Of course, rank didn’t necessarily result in sumptuous private quarters. Adela’s brother, the Duke of Normandy, also known as Robert Curthose, at one point in his checkered career was forced to spend days under the covers because he had run out of funds and didn’t have adequate clothing to venture outside. The bedding may well have offered the only source of warmth in the chilly medieval quarters where he was staying.

It’s hardly that different from our time—money and status still determine what sort of personal comfort you are able to draw on.

I once lived in a railroad apartment in New York City with a bathtub on cast-iron feet in the kitchen. The cover over the bathtub served as a buffet table when I had guests, and when friends took a bath, I turned on the radio for their enjoyment. Perhaps for Adela bathing in a wooden tub that would be brought to her room by attendants had a similar charm. Nonetheless, my heart goes out to the attendants who got to sleep on the floor, rolled in a blanket, and inching closer to the warmth of the fireplace, while the lady slept in her curtained sanctuary.

Malve von Hassell (October, 2025)

Source: A letter from Baudri, abbot of Bourgueil and archbishop of Dol (c.1107) to Adela of England, Countess of Blois. https://epistolae.ctl.columbia.edu/letter/94.html

Bio: Malve von Hassell is a freelance writer, researcher, and translator. Her publications include three historical fiction novels for young adult readers, The Falconer’s Apprentice (namelos, 2015), Alina: A Song for the Telling (BHC Press, 2020), and The Amber Crane (Odyssey Press, 2021) as well as the biography of a woman coming age in Nazi Germany, Tapestry of My Mother’s Life: Stories, Fragments, and Silences (Next Chapter Publishing, 2021). Her most recent book is The Price of Loyalty: Serving Adela of Blois (Historium Press, 2025).

Webpage: https://www.malvevonhassell.com

Blog: https://www.malvevonhassell.com/blog/

Universal sales link: https://books2read.com/u/bpo2vg

Publisher: https://www.historiumpress.com/

© Image : Medieval solar, Blois, Loire Valley – ID: 2123959943 – Shutterstock

 

Finding Roma Nova with Alison Morton

The setting for Roma Nova

by Alison Morton

Imagining Roma Nova – Or is it real?

Ever since I read Violet Needham’s Stormy Petrel series as a child I’ve been caught by the idea of imaginary countries in Central Europe.  Needham’s books for children invoke a romantic ‘otherwhere’, making it familiar, with a subtle, understated magical tone. Possibly seeming old-fashioned now, she’s very much the unsung, and sadly unknown, mother of modern fantasy with a mix of heroism, sacrifice and honour. At first her books were deemed by (grown-up) publishers to be too complex for children, but the story goes that one of the children of a family director at William Collins publishers loved the story, so it was accepted for publication. Talk about serendipity!

A little older, I was entranced by The Prisoner of Zenda and its sequel Rupert of Hentzau – classic examples of ‘Central Europe’. I thirsted after everything I could find about this amorphous region with no defined boundaries but a definite idea of itself. The Austro-Hungarian Empire seemed to be a concrete representation, but it wasn’t quite. When I learnt German, I found many ideas and writings about Mitteleuropa as a concept. As an adult, I found The Radetzky March by Joseph Roth to be a sweeping history of heroism and duty, desire and compromise, tragedy and heartbreak, a story over generations that lasts until the eve of the First World War. But that empire was vast, diverse and autocratic. Like the Ancient Roman Empire, it collapsed under its own weight and the pressure of people’s desire for their own homeland and self-governance, whether by conquest or democracy.

With all that in mind, my even greater obsession with all 1,229 years of Ancient Rome and a reasonably good knowledge of the alpine regions, I dreamt about an ideal place for the setting for my Romans seeking a new home.  But it would be a small colonia, not an empire! It had to be fertile enough to sustain people, defendable and off the beaten track. So I started researching…

Imagine my delight when I found in real history that at the dusk of the Western Roman Empire people had actually established safe places in the mountains called Fliehburgen. A number of these successfully protected their population during the barbarian invasions, sometimes developing into permanent settlements for decades in the most dangerous periods. And for the Roma Novans, this became necessary in the years after the story in EXSILIUM.

Over their history, the Roma Novans, cultivated their land, built their cities, suffered invasion, rebuilt their cities, extended their holdings, negotiated treaties and managed to survive into the 21st century when the first modern Roma Nova adventure takes place in INCEPTIO.

What does Roma Nova look like in the 21st century?
It’s an alpine country with lower lying valleys a few small towns (Castra Lucilla to the south of the main city, Brancadorum at the east, Aquae Caesaris to the west) and a river city full of columns, a forum, Senate house and temples. High mountains and hills to three sides, although very useful for defence in past ages, keep the 21st century pilots from Air Roma Nova (and most international airlines) on their toes when landing their passenger aircraft after a long haul flight!

Sadly, you can’t use Google Maps to view Roma Nova’s geography from space nor load a Wikipedia page for its history. But inventing a country doesn’t mean you can throw any old facts into your book. They have to hang together. Geography is very important as you need to know what crops they can grow – spelt, oats, olives in sheltered areas, vines, vegetables and fruit – and what animals they raise – cows, sheep, horses, pigs, poultry, etc.

To look back to when those first Roman dissidents left Italy in AD 395 and trekked north to found Roma Nova, I also needed to deepen my specific knowledge about Roman life and culture at that time: their mindset, their customs, their concerns, their ways of doing things. As a reference, the first chapters of Christopher Wickham’s book The Inheritance of Rome draws a clear and detailed picture.

With the Roma Nova books, I’ve used terms that people might already know like the Roman sword, gladius, greeting such as salve, solidi as money, ranks like legate and centurion. But I’ve made the gladius carbon steel, the solidi have currency notes, debit cards and apps as well as coins, and I’ve mixed in other European military ranks such as captain in with traditional Roman ranks. It gives a sense of history that’s gone forward and adapted to the modern age.

Ancient Romans were fabulous engineers and technologists, organised and determined to apply practical solutions to the needs of their complex and demanding civilisation, so I’ve positioned them in the 21st century at the forefront of the communications and digital revolutions.

The silver mines in Roma Nova’s mountains and the resulting processing industry that underpinned Roma Nova’s early economy, and still play an extremely important role in 21st century Roma Nova, are another allusion to ancient Rome. Silver was a big reason the Romans wanted Britannia.  Dacia (Romania) and Noricum (Austria) in central Europe were also of special significance to ancient Rome, as they were very rich in high quality deposits of silver, as well as iron ore, some gold and rare earths. Giving Roma Nova extensive silver deposits provides a strong, plausible reason for its economic survival through the ages.

I also wanted my imaginary country to be near Italy and Austria for international connections.  So it had to be in south central Europe. In the end, I pinched Carinthia in southern Austria, and northern Slovenia as my models. And in summer 2023, I went to the old Noricum capital of Virunum, near Klagenfurt in Austria and was thrilled to visit breathe in the air of ‘Roma Nova’.

Alison Morton © March, 2024

Alison’s social media links: 

Connect with Alison on her thriller site: https://alison-morton.com

Facebook author page: https://www.facebook.com/AlisonMortonAuthor

X/Twitter: https://twitter.com/alison_morton     @alison_morton

Alison’s writing blog: https://alisonmortonauthor.com

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/alisonmortonauthor/

Goodreads:  https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/5783095.Alison_Morton
Threads: https://www.threads.net/@alisonmortonauthor

Alison’s Amazon page: https://Author.to/AlisonMortonAmazon

Newsletter sign-up: https://www.alison-morton.com/newsletter/

PENDRAGON’S BANNER

 

Three of my very favourite historical novels – The Pendragon’s Banner Trilogy – were written by the talented Helen Hollick. In this post, Helen tells us how she became an author, and why she started writing about a legendary king many say never existed. JGH

WHY KING ARTHUR FOR HISTORICAL FICTION? 

HE’S ONLY A MYTH, ISN’T HE?

By Helen Hollick

A long while ago, in a public library far, far away . . . (The library was in a north-east London suburb, and it must have been the mid-1970s, so yes, a long time ago.) I’d started work as a library assistant, straight from leaving school aged 16. I’d told my school career interviewer that I wanted to be a journalist – I didn’t, I wanted to be an author, but I thought that authors were clever people who went to college and university, so I plumped for journalist. My education was somewhat poor and sketchy. This was in the days when the intelligent kids went to grammar school the rest of us were passed on to secondary level, with us girls expected to become shop assistants, hairdressers and housewives. We didn’t even do science until my second year, and even that was quite basic.  I did, however, have a very good English teacher, who must have seen some sort of potential in me because she often gave me extra help and advice with my essays. This careers talk was useless. “A journalist? Don’t be silly Helen, you can’t type!”

Nothing about whether my English was good enough, nothing about the fact that I was so shy I’d have made a hopeless journalist – and for the record, all these years later and about 20 books published, I still only use two fingers on a keyboard.

A job in the local library was suggested, thus, on 4th August, 1969, I found myself in South Chingford Library. I rather enjoyed it because of the access to all those books. I had been an outcast at school because I was always either reading or writing. I’d started scribbling stories when I was about twelve, pony stories because I desperately wanted a pony, so made up a fictional one.

By the time I was 18 I was attempting to write fantasy and science fiction, then one day I picked up a book called The Crystal Cave by Mary Stewart, about Merlin and the young King Arthur. Set in post-Roman Britain it is fantasy, but with a huge dose of believable reality. A cracking good story, but what inspired me was Ms Stewart’s author’s note where she explained that if Arthur had existed (I stress the if!) he would have been a war lord in the late 400s to early 500s, between the going of the Romans and the coming of the Anglo-Saxons, a period of upheaval and chaos. If Arthur had been real, she went on to say, he would not have lived during the 12th-13th centuries, post-Norman Conquest Medieval knights in armour period, because if he had, there would be indisputable evidence to prove it. Nothing has ever been discovered.

This concept of a post-Roman setting intrigued me. Working in the library meant I had access to unlimited research books. I started studying 5th and 6th century Britain – and the matter of Arthur.

One thing I already knew: I had no liking whatsoever for the common Arthurian legends, all that galivanting off in search of the Holy Grail, Lancelot and Guinevere’s unfaithfulness. I realise, now, that I didn’t like these stories because they had no fact behind them, no link to historical reality. Whereas setting Arthur in the earlier period and cutting out all the Norman myth and propaganda left a possibility for something that verged on the plausible.

I searched for other Arthurian fiction: the rest of Mary Stewart’s Crystal Cave/Hollow Hills series for a start, then Rosemary Sutcliff’s wonderful Roman-based novels. (Oh, if only I could write like Rosemary Sutcliff!)

I found The Mists of Avalon. The author Marion Zimmer Bradley has now been discredited for child abuse, which, in hindsight, might explain some of the uncomfortable content of her novel, but even so, this is the only book I have given up reading in utter exasperation. Her Guinevere was such a useless wimp. I threw the book across the room, exclaiming about her character: “Pull yourself together, you silly woman!”

Guinevere, I was certain should be a strong, feisty character, so I decided to abandon my attempts to write a science fiction novel and try something about Arthur and Gwenhwyfar, as I called her – the Welsh spelling.

I researched more of post-Roman Britian and the early history of the Anglo-Saxon/Jute migrations. I emersed myself in the non-fiction books by Geoffrey Ashe and in the end took ten years to write what eventually turned out to be the first two books of my trilogy. The Kingmaking and Pendragon’s Banner were accepted for publication by William Heinemann (now Random House UK) in April 1993, one week after my 40th birthday.

The Trilogy is historical fiction, I cannot claim fact, for a start it is unlikely that ‘Arthur’ ever existed, but I’ve drawn on plausible possibility. There might have been someone who was the idea behind the later, Norman Arthurian stories of courtly romance and the compulsion to join the religious Crusades. Geoffrey Ashe suggested a real chap – well documented – called Riothamus, which is a title meaning something like ‘Kingmost’, not a name. He left Greater Britain (‘England’) to fight in Less Britain (Brittany) and fell in battle somewhere near a Burgundian Roman settlement  – Avallon.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Avallon.

Sound familiar?

I made my Arthur a British warlord, with several human-frailty faults, and a determination to fight hard to gain his rightful kingdom – and as hard to keep it.

The love of his life is Gwenhwyfar, the only daughter of Prince Cunedda of Gwynedd. She is everything that Marian Bradley’s Guinevere was not. Her relationship with Arthur is not always plain sailing, as with any strong-minded couple they have their quarrels, but they live for each other and have three sons – mentioned in the Welsh legends. Despite Arthur being unfaithful, she does not  have an affair with Lancelot, in fact he does not appear in my Trilogy. Nor any of the knights, apart from Cei and Bedwyr (who are also in the early Welsh legends).

I have no Holy Grail, no turreted castle of Camelot, no magic, no Merlin . . . Instead, I have told my version of the Arthurian legend as a story about  a boy who became a man, who became a king, who became the legend.

Find all Helen’s books on her Amazon Author Page or order from any good bookstore:

https://viewauthor.at/HelenHollick (universal link)

 

THE PENDRAGON’S BANNER TRILOGY

1) THE KINGMAKING new edition awarded a bronze medal by the Coffee Pot Book Club annual awards 2023

Amazon UK: https://mybook.to/TheKingmaking_Book1

Amazon USA/Canada: https://tinyurl.com/ys44vh49

2) PENDRAGON’S BANNER

3) SHADOW OF THE KING

ABOUT HELEN HOLLICK:

First accepted for traditional publication in 1993, Helen became a USA Today Bestseller with her historical novel, The Forever Queen (titled A Hollow Crown in the UK) with the sequel, Harold the King (US: I Am the Chosen King) being novels that explore the events that led to the Battle of Hastings in 1066. Her Pendragon’s Banner Trilogy is a fifth-century version of the Arthurian legend, and she writes a nautical adventure/fantasy series, The Sea Witch Voyages. She has also branched out into the quick read novella, Cosy Mystery genre with her Jan Christopher Murder Mysteries, set in the 1970s, with the first in the series, A Mirror Murder incorporating her, often hilarious, memories of working as a library assistant.

Her non-fiction books are Pirates: Truth and Tales and Life of a Smuggler. She is currently writing about the ghosts of North Devon for Amberley Press.

Helen lives with her family in an eighteenth-century farmhouse in North Devon with three dogs and two cats, while on the farm there are four showjumper horses, three fat Exmoor ponies, an old Welsh pony, geese, ducks and  hens. And a few resident ghosts.

Website: https://helenhollick.net/

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/helen.hollick

Blog: promoting good authors & good reads: https://ofhistoryandkings.blogspot.com/

Monthly newsletter: Thoughts from a Devonshire Farmhouse subscribe@helenhollick.co.uk 

 

Historical Stories of Exile

An Author in Exile

As many of my readers know, after travelling widely we finally settled down in southern Spain. Without knowing it beforehand, we moved into a locally renowned area for breeders of Pura Raza Español horses (known in UK and USA as Andalusians, I think). It was an ideal spot for me, but after the death of the last of our horses (at the ripe old age of 27), we decided the time had come to move nearer family and urban conveniences such as shops.

For my husband, this has been a return to his home province of Andalucía. For me, this (possibly) final-final move means accepting my voluntary exile as a ‘foreign wife’ is a permanent situation. My lifestyle has been more Latin than British for a long time now, but I still think of North Devon as home. Although to be honest I’m an exile in England these days as well: people do things differently there.

In my experience, being a voluntary exile is a combination of exciting new challenges, learning a language, buying new types of food etc, mixed with occasional bouts of irritation, annoyance and nostalgia. For a writer, however, it has certain advantages. Seeing one’s surroundings with an objective eye leads to a deeper awareness of both culture and the natural environment, which in Spain are closely connected. In the province of Madrid summers are very hot and winters are bitterly cold. As in many other provinces, there is barely a day of springtime or autumn as the year moves from one extreme to the other. So it is with many people: warm, close friendships, or the literally cold shoulder.

From the kitchen window of our new home, I can see the mauve-shaded Sierra de Málaga, where the Moors of Al-Ándalus harvested snow to keep medicines cool. On the other side of the house, beyond a set of hills, lies the now densely crowded Costa del Sol. A coastline once prey to the Barbary corsairs featured in The Chosen Man Trilogy and my current work-in-progress, The Doomsong Voyage. Away from tourist hot-spots, though, it is easy to drift into time travel: pretend there’s no road nearby or enter a small pueblo bar serving local wine or cider and it could be any century at all.

Before coming to Spain, I was living on the Ligurian coast of Italy – hence Ludo da Portovenere (the charismatic rogue of The Chosen Man Trilogy). The Genoese coastline creeps into Ludo’s narrative when, as an involuntary exile, he reminisces about his childhood.

On occasions I had to curb Ludo’s nostalgia to prevent his story becoming a travel brochure: Portovenere, or Porto Venere, is very picturesque. Once the site of a Roman temple to Venus, it was the perfect location to conclude Ludo’s wicked adventures in By Force of Circumstance. I know this because I wasn’t just visiting: I was living there, buying groceries, taking children to school, being part of Italian daily life. Unconsciously, or sub-consciously I was stashing away sights, sounds and anecdotes for future historical crime novels. Authors in exile notice how people behave and interact. We tuck away special moments and the kernels of raw stories like squirrels in autumn. This is how my contribution to the new anthology Historical Stories of Exile came about.

Many years ago, a dear friend told me how her Polish parents met and married in post-war London. Her grandmother had walked from Warsaw to the Bosphorus with two daughters, found a passage to Spain, then to London. It took them two whole years to find a safety – in a city being bombed every night. I thought at the time it merited a full-length novel, but as I have never been to Poland and lack even a basic grasp of the language I didn’t feel up to the task. Nonetheless, the family’s experience stayed in my mind and eventually formed the background to my Victory in Exile short story (details below). The narrative itself links into my WWII Bob Robbins Home Front Mysteries series. It also includes elements told me by my Dutch neighbour when we were living in the Hague back in the ’90s. Ultimately, however, Victory in Exile reflects the current tragedy of innocent refugees trying to find a safe haven in a world at war.

I have never accepted the idea that a work of fiction can be reduced to its author’s life, but autobiographical moments do creep in, especially those related to the emotions. Here’s a scene from my first historical crime novel The Empress Emerald as an example. In the extract, a newly married, naïve Cornish girl arrives at her new family home in Jerez. It is 1920 in the story, what happens is a fictionalised version of my own arrival in Puerto Santa Maria in the 1980s.

The driver stopped the car outside two vast doors, blackened with age and reinforced with iron. They reminded Davina of an illustration in one of her big picture books: Bluebeard’s castle. As if by some sinister magic, a door swung open. Alfonso ushered her into a fern-infested patio. It smelt dank and uninviting. She looked up and around her. The patio was open to the sky, but on all four sides above there were windows. She sensed watching eyes and lowered her gaze.

The autobiographical element ends there. But my experience of being a voluntary exile obviously informs my writing. I know what it is like not to speak the language, not to share commonly acknowledged values; what it is like to be gaped at because your appearance or style doesn’t fit with the locals. I’ve been living in Spain, on and off, for years but people still ask me where I am from. I try not to bristle, and can’t help thinking about what being an involuntary exile must be like for those who can never go home.

 J.G. Harlond

Find the new short story anthology Historical Stories of Exile at: https://mybook.to/StoriesOfExile

If you enjoy action-adventure travel stories and historical fiction here are a couple recommendations for a thumping good read:

You can read about how my wicked hero Ludo da Portovenere creates mayhem in 17th Century Europe in three novels starting with The Chosen Man.

 

Each story is based on some surprising and lesser-known real events involving the Vatican and crowned heads of Europe during the Thirty Years War and the English Civil War. http://getbook.at/TheChosenMan

The Empress Emerald is available on:  https://mybook.to/p6ZMzs

 

 

Inspired by Location

Beyond the Fields We Know

‘Whatever I write, I start with the setting . . . ‘
How and why a writer can be inspired by a landscape or location by Marian L Thorpe, author of the Empire’s Legacy Trilogy.

One of my favourite walks is along part of a long-distance path that follows the route of a Roman road that probably follows an even older track. At its North Sea end, wooden henges stood. On either side of the section I walk most frequently, Bronze Age barrows rise from the fields. The ruins of Roman villas lie under the soil not far from it; the moot hill of the Saxon hundred it crosses is believed to be by its side. In The King of Elfland’s Daughter, Lord Dunsany described fairyland as lying ‘beyond the fields we know.’  I don’t write about fairyland, but I do write about a world that lies lightly on a palimpsest of our real, historic world.

Whatever I write, I start with the setting. Stories emerge from landscapes for me, and even when they are complete fiction their settings are strongly based on a real place. Whether it’s verse—the first work I had accepted for publication as an adult—or my short stories, or my novels, they are all rooted in and inseparable from the physical world in which they are set.

I had a rural childhood of the sort almost unimaginable today. I grew up over 50 years ago, roaming fields and woods and lanes on foot or on my bike, often alone. I watched the progression of wildflowers over the summer; I watched planting and harvest.

 

I learned to identify trees and birds and wildlife, and understand to some extent the landscape in which I lived and the forces, human and natural, that had shaped it. The theme of the first novel I ever began, at seventeen, is the relationship between a man and the land, the deep, hard-fought and hard-won connection between the two—and that’s still a theme in my Empire’s Legacy series.

The books I loved to read as a child were books that were firmly placed in their landscapes. Ransome’s Swallows and Amazons series; The Wind in the Willows. Puck of Pook’s Hill. Rosemary Sutcliffe, and many, many more. Books where landscape is a character, in a way. I also grew up in a family where history was important. It was discussed, my interest encouraged. My father’s love was Tudor/Plantagenet history; mine evolved into late classical/early medieval.

In my twenties and thirties my husband and I travelled as extensively as we could, not to cities but to the footpaths and trails of almost every country and county of the UK and throughout North America. I soaked up landscape, I soaked up history, and I fell deeply in love with the concept of landscape history. (Thanks, Time Team!) So when I began to write Empire’s Daughter, the first book in the Empire’s Legacy series, I started with a landscape: the coast of Anglesey. I saw it, and then I began to populate it with characters and a society.

The series isn’t set in the real world, but neither is it truly a fantasy world. There are no variations from the laws of physics or nature, only (barely) a fantasy geography. There are no fae or otherworldly creatures, only the flora and fauna of northern and central Europe.

Every place in the entire series has a real-life inspiration, and I’ve been to most of them. (If I haven’t, I’ve substituted a place I have been, in a similar ecological/geographic niche.)

The reasons for this are many, and varied. As someone who was, for a chunk of her life, a biological scientist, and has been for all her life an amateur field naturalist, I am annoyed beyond words with unreal worlds whose ecologies don’t work. So that’s one reason, but not the major one. The books are set in an analogue world, but it’s one that for many people will be both recognizable and familiar—and that was done on purpose. Because my books explore questions of societal and socio-sexual structures and expectations, because they are more concerned with questions of philosophy and morality and politics than battles, I didn’t want to add another layer of worldbuilding to the mix. It would have been a distraction, another thing for the reader to have to think about and absorb.

In the first two books my main character Lena never leaves the known world, one based entirely on the UK both geographically and historically. There’s a Wall, there’s a country north of the Wall, and these two countries are long-term enemies. The country north of the Wall has a province that sometimes belongs to them, and sometimes to the seafaring people from even further north. Even the battles are based on real ones: Stanford Bridge, the Battle of Maldon. For me, and for anyone who learned British history in any detail, this all should feel familiar – and that’s what I wanted: to place, in a familiar setting, a story that challenges a number of societal structures.

The third reason for the settings of my books is simple: I draw heavily on my own experiences in the descriptions of my characters’ interactions with their environments. I’ve been pelted by hailstones on a mountainside. I’ve slipped on scree; I’ve walked on dusty, arid plains, climbed up waterfalls (not quite as terrifying as the one Lena does), camped in the cold and wet and lived (albeit briefly) in primitive wooden huts.  It’s easier to write about real experiences than it is to make them up.

Mix the idea of a world that lies beyond the fields we know, add the discovered and undiscovered history that lies beneath the fields we know, throw in a strong seasoning of love for landscape and nature, a dash of the belief that we are shaped by the places we love, and bake that all in the mind of a writer—and you have the genesis of the world I created in Empire’s Legacy. © Marian L Thorpe 2023

Find out more about Marian L Thorpe’s books on: marianlthorpe.com

Many generations past, the great empire from the east left Lena’s country to its own defences. Now invasion threatens…and to save their land, women must learn the skills of war.

But in a world reminiscent of Britain after the fall of Rome, only men fight; women farm and fish. Lena’s choice to answer her leader’s call to arms separates her from her lover Maya, beginning her journey of exploration: a journey of body, mind and heart.

Read my review of Empire’s Daughter on Goodreads: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/54687565-empire-s-daughter

Find Marian’s books on: https://books2read.com/marianlthorpe

 

 

Location, Location, Location – a library

 

A guest post by author Helen Hollick on using familiar and unfamiar settings in fiction

Setting in A Mistake of Murder 

The third Jan Christopher Cosy Mystery by Helen Hollick

They say ‘write what you know about’, which is all well and good, but as a writer of historical fiction and nautical adventure, I don’t know any Romano-British people, anyone who actually fought at the Battle of Hastings, nor any early eighteenth-century pirates.

Chingford Library, North London

I did, however, work in a North London suburb public library during the 1970s, so I chose this era and location as a background setting for my venture into the Cosy Mystery Genre.

A familiar location – the ‘where’ – is, in fact, probably more practical for a writer in the ‘what you know about’ stakes. Buildings, roads and such can change through the centuries, after a long while perhaps rivers too, but the general ‘lie of the land’ stays pretty much the same.

When writing my Arthurian Trilogy (back in the 1980s!) I went up to the top of Glastonbury Tor to study the view. The tower atop the Tor would not have been there in the fifth/sixth centuries, nor the roads or houses spread all around below, but the shape of the Tor itself – and the trudge up it – would not have altered that much. Nor would the apparent flatness of the Somerset levels or the distant surrounding hills. I could smell the grass, hear and feel the wind as it brushed my left cheek… all that was enough to give me the atmosphere I needed to bring those particular scenes alive.

The same with the sea. OK so I’ve never sailed on a pirate ship. In truth, I’ve never been aboard a moving tall ship. The largest sailboat I’ve been in was a small pleasure craft Mirror Dinghy. But I have been aboard a cruise liner, I have crossed various seas on modern ferries. The smell, sound and general feel of the sea really doesn’t change that much.

For the location of my library in Chingford, North London, I decided to use many of the real places and buildings that are either still there, or were, back in the ‘70s. The library itself is still there in Hall Lane, but alas, it is now offices, not a library. (The Council, shame on them, closed the library due to lack of money.) So the Old Church atop Chingford Mount features, as does the Odeon cinema – no longer there. The blue police telephone box was in Albert Crescent where the buses terminated. Those police boxes, so familiar to us all back then, which is why one was chosen as Dr Who’s TARDIS – even the early scriptwriters could not envision those police boxes would be superseded by mobile phones!

Another decision I made, however, was to change the names of any roads or locations where a murder would take place, (although the names I use instead are fairly similar to the real thing.) I made this choice because I didn’t want to offend or upset anyone living there today. To write about a fictional murder in XXXX Avenue, only to discover there really had been a murder there, I thought, could be a little insensitive.

Fiction is fiction, stories made up with the imaginative bits mixed in with the factual research detail. Using your knowledge of locations can bring that novel to vivid life.

Helen Hollick’s crime fiction (so far):

Jan Christopher #1 A Mirror Murder

Jan Christopher #2 A Mystery of Murder

Jan Christopher #3 A Mistake of Murder

In Book 3 There are a series of burglaries, and an elderly person is murdered. Can library assistant Jan Christopher help discover whether murder was a deliberate deed – or a tragic mistake?

 

January 1972. The Christmas and New Year holiday is over and it is time to go back to work. Newly engaged to Detective Sergeant Lawrence Walker, library assistant Jan Christopher is eager to show everyone her diamond ring, and goes off on her scheduled round to deliver library books to the housebound – some of whom she likes; some, she doesn’t. She encounters a cat in a cupboard, drinks several cups of tea… and loses her ring.

When two murders are committed, can Jan help her policeman uncle, DCI Toby Christopher and her fiancé, Laurie, discover whether murder was a deliberate deed – or a tragic mistake?

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

First accepted for traditional publication in 1993, Helen became a USA Today Bestseller with her historical novel, The Forever Queen (titled A Hollow Crown in the UK) with the sequel, Harold the King (US: I Am The Chosen King) being novels that explore the events that led to the Battle of Hastings in 1066.

Pendragon’s Banner Trilogy is a fifth-century version of the Arthurian legend, and Helen also writes a nautical adventure/fantasy series, The Sea Witch Voyages.

In recent years, Helen has also branched out into the quick read ‘Cozy Mystery’ genre with her Jan Christopher Murder Mysteries, set in the 1970s. The first in the series, A Mirror Murder, includes some of her, often hilarious, memories of working as a library assistant.

Helen’s non-fiction: Pirates: Truth and Tales and Life of A Smuggler.

She lives with her family in an eighteenth-century farmhouse in North Devon where she occasionally gets time to write.

A Mistake of Murder by Helen Hollick available on Amazon or order from any bookstore. Paperback and e-book available.

https://mybook.to/MISTAKEofMURDER

 Helen’s Amazon author page: https://viewauthor.at/HelenHollick

Helen’s Website: https://helenhollick.net/

Subscribe to Helen’s Newsletter: https://tinyletter.com/HelenHollick

 

 

For debut historical crime writers

Secondary and Minor Characters in Historical Crime Fictional

Secondary and minor characters help to establish the main character’s personality and develop the storyline in any fiction genre. In historical crime fiction they are also a useful means of conveying information about the epoch and location. This means no matter how lowly your minor characters need to be more than walk-on players in costume. To achieve this, ensure they have identifiable personalities, strengths, foibles or flaws that readers can relate to, so what they say and do is more meaningful.

If you are using a secondary character to provide a motive for a crime or to show what happens to your protagonist(s), that person’s agenda needs to be evident. This means creating a biography or backstory for all your characters at the planning stage, and ensuring they reflect the lifestyle, morals or zeitgeist of the period. Fiction requires readers to suspend disbelief, to engage in another world, to fear for, empathise or sympathise with the protagonist, and this is where your supporting cast play an important role. They not only demonstrate what life was like then, they show what was considered right and wrong, and therefore why your hero is special and the villain so reprehensible.

Golden age crime writers often included the victim’s ill-treatment of relatives and servants to show what may have led to their death, and why there is more than one suspect. This required creating backstories for all the suspects and using those details to feed in clues but without deviating too far from the main thrust of the story. Readers want to know why someone turns a blind eye to the crime; why someone refuse to help the authorities; or why a neighbour, for example, fabricates evidence.

As to the villain – a crime story or thriller becomes a lot deeper when the kindness of strangers highlights the vicious nature of the baddie. Readers turn pages to in crime stories to see how the wicked get caught; they turn them faster in thrillers if they not only fear for the main character but also for the little people caught up in the drama. Very few people in real life are wholly good or bad, though. A fact skilful authors exploit to the maximum. Each suspect, be it cozy crime or a blood bath, should be capable of committing the crime given enough reason.

Whatever the epoch, minor characters’ upbringing and moral codes inform their actions, which can be included in well-chosen cameo scenes. The gentler side of the wrong-doer or the darker side of the victim or detective can be demonstrated by showing how they interact in these situations. Whether you use these scenes as red herrings to mislead readers or to emphasise clues as to who-dunnit, secondary characters should be interesting and complex, and minor characters there in the story for a specific reason. To be sure of this, create mini-biographies at the planning stage. Whether you actually use these backstories (very sparingly) or not, the fact that you have thought about why Milly won’t tell, why Old Tom is digging the master’s garden at eighty, or why a senior officer overlooks a terrible error of judgment, will enrich your tale and leaven the plot.

Here are two examples of how I have used a secondary and minor characters to establish a seventeenth-century anti-hero’s complex identity and to provide information on the setting and location of a twentieth century wartime murder mystery. Each scene is directly relevant to the plot and includes details on the historic background.

The first extract is from Book 1 of The Chosen Man Trilogy. It is 1635, charismatic Genoese merchant Ludovico da Portovenere (Ludo) is engaged in a conspiracy to inflate the tulip market in what became known as tulip fever. At this stage, readers are not sure whether Ludo is to be trusted, whether he’s a goodie or a baddie. How he handles his young Spanish servant Marcos here suggests he exploits people for his own ends. The dialogue also carries vital details about ‘tulipmania’.

Ludo’s lodgings, Amsterdam, 1635

Marcos rubbed at the heel of the shoe (he was cleaning) and without looking up, said, “Is it this selling that’s made you rich?”

“This selling? What selling? What are you saying boy?”

“It’s that I don’t exactly understand what you’re doing, sir.”

“And why do you need to understand? It’s none of your damned business. You only latched onto me as a means of finding your long-lost father, who you seem to have forgotten in the most unfilial manner.”

“That’s not true!” Marcos replied, hurt by the Italian’s tone. “It’s just that I want to learn and go back home with more than I came with – if I can’t find my father – and if what they say in the streets and taverns is true, that’s probably what’s going to happen. I want to go home rich.” He paused, regretting his words, “Richer than when I came,” he held up the shoe and turned it in the air for inspection, “so I was sort of wondering if perhaps you could let me have a loan, and I could buy some of what you have and sell it.”

“At a profit?”

“Oh, yes, that’s what I want to do – make a profit, like they talk about with these flowers. There’s hundreds of profit, they say, buying and selling your flowers.”

“‘Hundreds of profit’. Interesting concept. Are you going to embalm that piece of footwear or get my breakfast?”

“Oh, yes, sorry. There’s some bread from yesterday and some ham and some beer. Do you want some of that tea stuff?”

“That ‘tea stuff ’ is very expensive merchandise, show some respect.”

“Sorry. Do you?”

“Tea? No!”

Marcos busied himself in the kitchen area and picked up on the conversation he wanted to continue. “So, what I was thinking was ...”

“You want me to give you some bulbs so you can sell them and make hundreds of profit. And what will you give me in return?”

Marcos put a plate and a tankard down in front of the merchant and looked him in the eye, confused, “I don’t understand? What do I have to give you in return?”

Ludo sighed, looked at the warm, flat beer and settled back in his chair. “I think we had better begin with the basics of commerce. Cut me some of that bread and ham – but wash your hands first.”

(. . .) Marcos listened intently then said, “But why are these Dutchies buying things they’ve never seen and don’t need with money they haven’t got.”

“Explain,” said Ludo.

“Well, last night I was in the Red Cockerel and a lot of odd bods were sneaking into a room at the back, so I sneaked in too. They were having some sort of sale, but there were only a few of those plant things you’ve got in your case. The rest were signing bits of paper for flowers that didn’t exist. Least ways I didn’t see them, I s’pose they might be in people’s gardens.”

Ludo raised an eyebrow, “Well done. And how exactly did you follow these transactions? You said you had no Dutch.”

Marcos lifted one of his master boots and started to shine it with the linen towel. “Numbers are numbers, not difficult to guess. These are the softest boots I’ve ever touched.”

“And these men, who would you say they were?”

“Oh, that’s easy, butchers and bakers, they still had their aprons on. Some toffs as well. I followed one in like his servant. He didn’t notice. There were a couple of gents like the one you were with a few days ago. The man that owns the Cockerel was running the show. They have a special code for when they go into the room – they go ‘cock-a-doodle-do’. Sounds really stupid. I bet if you want to do business in the Golden Lion you have to go ‘grrrrr’.”

Ludo sat and stared at the boy for a moment then said, “The answer is ‘yes’. I will let you have a loan and some goods at rock bottom prices – and you are going to make us hundreds of profit with a cock-a-doodle-do.” Then he got up and went into his room to wash, saying, “And in the meantime I’m going to make thousands of profit with numbers on bits of paper.”

There is a hint here that Ludo is not all bad; he is trying to help Marcos improve his status or at least educate him. From this point on, I wanted readers to have personal opinions on what Ludo is doing and why, for them to be more actively engaged in his wrong-doing and, later, fear for him when he tries to escape his evil antagonist. I was also using a secondary character to show how and why ordinary men and women traded tulip bulbs at outrageous prices, and how some (including the feisty heroine of the story) fell victim to Ludo’s wicked charm, and suffered for it.

The second scene comes from my new Bob Robbins Home Front Mystery, Courting Danger (to be released March, 2021 – this is the working cover only). Here, I am using two minor characters to tell readers about two suspects in a murder enquiry, and show how the wartime restrictions were affecting ordinary people.

Cornwall, England, 1943.

Shem Placket and his wife Violet were obliged to vacate their farmhouse home when the local landowner Charles Kittoe and his sophisticated wife moved to Cornwall during the blitz. The Kittoes have now left. Shem and Violet are discussing how this affects them, and whether the Kittoes are involved in the death of a local young doctor.

“They expect too much of you.” Mrs Placket tipped fluffy white potatoes into a dish and slapped on bright yellow butter.

“It works to our favour, my dear. Gives us more peace than most farm managers get.”

“Do you think we ought to say something?” Mrs Placket asked, removing her pinny before they sat down to eat.

“Say something about what? This smells good, Violet, where’s the meat?”

“Seek and ye shall find.” Violet ladled gravy over three types of root vegetable. “What I’m saying is, should we tell that police detective what we know?”

“If he comes asking, I might mention something. We don’t want to risk our place here, though, do we? Not at our age. You’ll have that fancy big kitchen to cook in again now.”

“Nothing wrong with the old range. Got to learn all new-fangled gas timings and settings and Lor’ knows what.”

Shem Placket looked at his wife: she had been pretty, once upon a time. “No point rockin’ the boat. They might let us have this cottage when I retire. No, if the police come knocking, I’ll tell what needs to be said. If they ask. Nothing more.”

Violet Placket met her husband’s eye, “But you know what’s happenin’ up in that cave.”

“I don’t for sure, Violet. Not for certain. But you know me: I speak when spoken to, and not before.”

“They could be taking pills or magic potions and acting out old rituals then lying spark out in the dark like they said they did when we were young’uns.”

“Far as I know it wasn’t breaking the law then, and if that’s still going on – well, it b’aint killed anyone yet.”

“It might have killed that young doctor. Why didn’t you tell me it was him in the pool?”

“Didn’t know it was. Don’t know as I’ve ever met the boy face to face. And we don’t know he was up to no good in that ol’ cave neither.”

“He spent enough time with Mrs Kittoe . . .”

Shem raised a calloused, warning hand. “That is enough, wife. If they ask . . .” he removed a woody stalk from between his front teeth, “you can tell them about Mrs K and her carryings on, but keep Mr Kittoe out of it or we’ll be looking for a shed to live in. If anyone’s been up to no good it’s her, in my opinion.” Despite his need to protect his family, Shem had a very Wesleyan attitude to life. “You understand what I’m saying?”
The trick in historical crime writing is to maximise the use of secondary and minor characters to provide information on the epoch and details on the crime(s).

Whether you are at the planning stage or into your first draft, write out a cast list and make a note next to each name to say what that character brings to the story.

 

Remember, in e.books it is harder to turn back to remind yourself who’s who, so make sure each person in your story is memorable and there for a reason.

Enjoy your writing! JGH

 

Writing ‘Private Lives’

As my readers know, I write fiction set in the 17th Century and World War Two. I enjoy the hard work that goes into writing about both epochs, but my new story set in 1942 has been something of a challenge. Finding the right tone, the right wording for sinister content with a touch of humour and moments of genuine sadness has required multiple drafts.

On the surface, writing a (relatively) cosy crime should have been easier than writing about a wily Genoese secret agent in The Chosen Man Trilogy, for example, but it wasn’t. Ludo da Portovenere’s skulduggery in Europe and India during the 1600s is all based on documented history. Each book includes researched data, plus a few lesser known historical details such as what happened to some of the most valuable Crown Jewels during the English Civil War. But this happened centuries ago, which gives me a degree of poetic licence. Give Ludo an inch and he takes a mile.

What happens to Bob Robbins in Devon and Cornwall during the nineteen-forties, however, is much closer to home and draws on personal memory, which muddies the waters. Not that I lived through the Second World War: I’m not that old! The background to Local Resistance and Private Lives, though, rests to an extent on my parents’ and grand-parents’ anecdotes and life-style.

In my mind’s eye, while I am writing, I can see what is happening in those days: the hand-knitted cardigans and walnut-laminated wireless sets, wooden draining boards and rolled newspapers fanning flames out of a few bits of coal. I was a post-war baby, born while the war and food rationing were a recent memory. Little was said in my hearing about the war itself, but the Home Front was much discussed. Tales about how goods fell off the back of a lorry, reminders to wear something white at night (to avoid getting run over in the black-out), to make do and mend; anecdotes about fire-watch duties and local dances . . .  These must have settled into the back of my mind unbidden the way Abba song lyrics do.

Nobody belittled the difficulties they endured; life was dangerous and unpredictable even in rural areas, where a random bomber might dump unused bombs on the way back to base. This happened. I remember distinctly being told about a primary school where the only child to survive had been at home in bed with a sore throat.

People were stoic, but not passé, although a survey conducted in London in November 1940 revealed only 40% of the population went into air-raid shelters on a regular basis. Most Londoners preferred to risk sudden death in their own beds – until bombing was so intense underground Tube stations became the only place of safety. Down in the south west of England, the inhabitants of Plymouth, an important naval base, pushed blankets and thermos flasks into babies’ prams or garden wheel-barrows and trekked out of the city to sleep under the stars on Dartmoor. It must have been exhausting.

In Britain and Ireland, there was the added, critical risk of imminent invasion. It had happened in Poland and the Channel Islands, it could happen in Britain. The detail about the German U-boat surfacing off the Cornish coast to take on fresh water in Local Resistance was taken from a German sailor’s account. I didn’t invent that.

My fiction, as I said earlier, relies a good deal on stories overheard as a child. It is also influenced by my M.A. dissertation on Social and Political Thought during World War Two, focusing on the implicit propaganda in popular films and wireless programmes such as the mad-cap comedy ITMA, which made fun of just about everything and everyone. The Ministry of Information turned ‘ordinary people’ into heroes and role models, and with good reason – they were.

All this, family anecdotes, academic research, and a particularly English brand of humour has slipped into my Home Front mysteries.

How a Cornish fishing village uses its ancient smuggling tradition to evade rationing while preparing to defend their country when ‘Jerry’ landed forms the background to Local Resistance; how people as diverse as Land Army girls and cosmopolitan actors coped three years into the war underlies the shenanigans and criminal activities in Private Lives.  

Being in action on ‘the Front’ was obviously perilous, but how life went on in unoccupied Britain, how people coped in the face of incessant difficulties and dangers required its own form of bravery, which deserves to be celebrated.

©J.G. Harlond

Read the opening chapter of Private Lives here.

Private Lives is available on Amazon.

Read about ‘Churchill’s Secret Army’ in Local Resistance: http://getbook.at/LocalResistance

Find out more about my books on: www.jgharlond.com

 

A Place in History – Fiesole, Italy

Fiesole as Setting for The Contessa’s Easel

by Mary Donnarumma Sharnick

The late novelist Henry James once wrote, “It takes a great deal of history to produce a little literature.” How insightful his words have been and are for writers who bring their imagined characters to life in geographical settings replete with recorded histories, both societal and individual.

Fiesole, Italy, a picturesque, much-visited, and perpetually-storied Tuscan hill town five kilometers northeast of Florence, offers authors records, artifacts, ruins, architecture, gardens, and artworks prolific enough to ensure careers-long historical contexts. Giovanni Boccaccio set The Decameron here, E. M. Forster A Room with a View. Michael Ondaatje’s The English Patient, Hermann Hesse’s Peter Camenzind, and James’ own Italian Hours feature the evocative location in their pages.

When I first visited Fiesole with my husband during the summer of 2002, I was smitten. With its ancient Etruscan walls, Roman baths and amphitheater, fourteenth-century town hall, the Monastery of San Francesco, several churches, the novice home of Fra Angelico in San Domenico, the town offered historical narratives at every turn. Villa Le Balze (Georgetown University’s study-abroad campus), Villa Sparta (former residence of the Greek royal family), and numerous other distinguished domiciles each offered detailed accounts about their inhabitants, visitors, interlopers, intimates, and detractors. Living in and near the town for periods of time over the course of the nineteenth- and twentieth-centuries have been: French writer Marcel Proust, American art historian Bernard Berenson, German painter Paul Klee, Gertrude Stein and Alice B. Toklas, and American architect Frank Lloyd Wright. The town is known as the most affluent suburb of Florence.

Since our initial visit, my husband and I have returned to Fiesole often, sometimes as a couple, other times with student groups we have sponsored. Our most recent trip, in July of 2018, was to conduct research for my fifth novel, its working title The Contessa’s Easel, the anticipated third in a quartet of the Orla Paints Series. While Orla’s Canvas (Penmore Press, 2015), the first novel in the series, and Painting Mercy (Penmore Press, 2018), the second, make frequent and direct references to Fiesole and the fictional Contessa Beatrice D’Annunzio’s villa-turned-orphanage during World War II, The Contessa’s Easel will call Fiesole home, with the main action of the novel taking place there.

Plenty of history contextualizes and informs the narrative, as the action alternates between the novel’s present, the summer of 1989, and its past, the summer of 1944. The raison d’etre for the conflation of the two historical periods is Fiesole’s forty-fifth-anniversary celebration of its liberation from the Nazis (who had seized and occupied Villa Le Balze because of its comprehensive view of Florence below). Among the celebratory events is protagonist and recognized American painter Orla Castleberry’s art exhibition, featuring portraits of Fiesolani in the novel’s present. The same locals had been photographed during the Nazi occupation of the town. The photographs, made available by the Contessa to Orla’s lifelong confidant, attorney and history aficionado Tad Charbonneau, become the primary sources for Tad’s debut history book, The Orphans of Fiesole. In turn, the photographs inspire Orla to seek out Fiesolani who, almost a half-century since World War II interrupted and altered their lives, still live locally. While the 1944 photographs tell their subjects’ stories in medias res, as it were, Orla’s paintings render their personal histories via their faces and bodies interpreted by a painter’s brush. My research in Fiesole revealed a number of actual archived photographs that afforded me the opportunity to inform my own fiction.

In the layering of one historical period over another that occurs through time, 1989 Fiesole found itself responding to the global AIDS crisis. Although AIDS arrived in Italy during the early 1980s, the Ministry of Health, led by Carlo Donat-Cattin, had refused to initiate public education programs even as late as 1988. Not until mid-1989, with the arrival of Donat-Cattin’s successor, Francesco DeLorenzo, did informative television commercials and public education initiatives take hold. Just as Boccaccio’s fourteenth-century pilgrims had fled Florence and the plague for the hills and fresh air of Fiesole, some afflicted and dying of the more recent “plague” also find their way to the Contessa’s villa. Orphanage transforms to hospice. Past function is re-purposed by present need. Several German and Italian and American characters meet, brought together by an epidemic threatening all. Former alliances and misalliances are re-introduced and re-construed in yet another historical context fraught with fear, uncertainty, and imminent mortality.

Also illustrative of historical layering is the Hotel Villa Aurora, just steps from the bus stop in Piazza Mino. Recently closed, the hotel was still in 2018 housing visitors to Fiesole.

Its garden terrace, its contemporary basement bar, and its convenience to Fiesole’s sites made it a stopping place for many. Even as I researched at the hotel last July, I was hard-pressed to imagine the barroom as the prison it had once been for the ragazzi, young men rounded up by the Nazis and doomed to die unless and until the three police officers, the carabinieri, who came to be known and honored as “the martyrs of Fiesole”, came out of hiding in the ruins. The three, a trio of partisans amidst a region of fellow partisans, had carried out acts of resistance for months. Hearing of their fellow Fiesolani’s peril, they did emerge from the shadows. They were shot on the terrace the evening of August 12, 1944 (ironically, after the Allied Forces had already liberated Florence on August 11). Today visitors can honor them on a self-guided walking tour in Fiesole. They are: Vittorio Marandola, Alberto LaRocca, and Fulvio Sbarretti. All were in their twenties.

Just as past merges into present with the historical martyrs’ lives and the monument to those lives, several past relationships in The Contessa’s Easel also develop into present ones. Those relationships, too, are altered by the unrelenting passage of time, vast political changes, as well as town, family, and individual secrets exposed and contradicted. No character is exempt from surprises–some painful, some joyous, all revelatory.  Every character must re-assess and re-consider what they knew or thought they knew in 1944, what they know or think they know in 1989. The inevitable and irrefutable corollary, of course, follows as a question: What is the relationship between the historical record and a human being’s experienced life? This is the question The Contessa’s Easel explores.

The late American novelist, E. L. Doctorow once wrote, “The historian will tell you what happened. The novelist will tell you what it felt like.”

My goal in The Contessa’s Easel is to invite readers to feel vicariously in a brick and mortar context, a context verifiable by the historical record; to explore the “blur,” the moment when a character’s particular life intersects with social history; and to vivify and render kinetic an imagined place that becomes—at least for the time readers visit it—as real as any historical one. In this case, as real as Fiesole.

About the author

Mary Donnarumma Sharnick is the author of the National Federation of Press women prize-winning novels, Orla’s Canvas and Painting Mercy, both published by Penmore Press. Her previous two novels, Thirst and Plagued, both set in Renaissance Venice, were published by Fireship Press. Thirst is being adapted for the operatic stage by composer Gerard Chiusano and librettists Robert Cutrofello and Mary Chiusano. Mary teaches at FlexSchool, New Haven, Connecticut, and offers a range of writing services to individuals, groups, and schools. She and her husband lead custom-designed tours to Italy, the country Mary considers her second home.

You can find out more about Mary on:

www.marysharnick.com

www.penmorepress.com

Twitter: @marysharnick

Facebook:@authormarydonnarummasharnick

Verified by MonsterInsights