Strategos - Rise of the Golden Heart by Gordon Doherty

After leaving Apion in a very, very dark place at the end of Strategos: Born in the Borderlands, I often wondered not where I would take him next, but where I would find him when I returned to the story to write this second volume. The cliff-hanger ending to the first volume was a tempting place to pick up again, but I quickly realised that Apion's story demanded something different.

 

Indeed, having read David Gemmell's classic 'Midnight Falcon', I marvelled at how the author had effortlessly stepped several years ahead from where the previous volume, 'Sword in the Storm', left off. Much had happened in the intervening years. Richly painted and seemingly iron-willed characters had been demoted to mere background figures. The world had changed. But had the author made that choice, or had Connovar and Bane chosen for him?

 

I knew that Apion had to be closer to the tumultuous event around which the trilogy pivots: Manzikert. When, on the first day of my research into this period, I saw the announcement that Michael Attaleiates' History - an eyewitness account of Manzikert and the campaigns of the preceding years - had been translated into English, I sensed the hand of fate on my shoulder. I devoured Attaleiates' History in days, reading of the rise of an emperor who many thought could restore Byzantium to greatness, and of his perilous campaigns into Seljuk Syria. So it was, then, that Apion's destiny was to become entwined in this brutal and treacherous period . . . "

More about the book: http://www.gordondoherty.co.uk/writeblog/strategosriseofthegoldenheart

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Future Fans of Gordon's books, or those interested in the history of the Britons, the Rigante, The Macedonians or the Trojans might also be interested in these posts on this blog: 

Legionary and Strategos: Viper of the North

The Quaker Trilogy by Ann Turnbull

Some stories take a long time to grow. For a few years in the 1980s I attended Quaker meetings, and it was from the books in the local meeting’s library that I first learned about the origins of the Quakers in the 17th century. Those early Quakers insisted that people had no need of “hireling priests”, and their meetings were held in silence which could be broken by anyone, male or female, who felt moved to speak. They refused to pay church tithes, used the informal “thee” and “thou” to everyone, and would not doff their hats, even to those in authority. They were considered such a threat to church and state that they were subjected to relentless persecution. I was amazed to learn of their courage and the turmoil created by their radical beliefs.

No Shame, No Fear grew out of this reading and my personal involvement with Quakers, but it was nearly twenty years before I began writing the book. Until then, I had always written for children, but this was to be a young adult novel - a love story. Fifteen-year-old Susanna, the eldest child of a Quaker weaver in rural Shropshire, goes to live and work in town. There she meets Will, the son of a wealthy wool merchant – a scholarly, thoughtful youth, brought up an Anglican but drawn to the Quakers. As the repression of Quaker meetings grows worse, Susanna and Will struggle to uphold their beliefs and stay together.

I started writing without knowing exactly how the story would unfold, or what decisions Will and Susanna would make. When I reached the end I knew I had to write a sequel.

Forged in the Fire starts with Will and Susanna’s attempts to reunite and marry, and continues with the horrors of the plague and Newgate prison, and then the Great Fire of London and its aftermath. No Shame, No Fear had been a difficult book to write as I struggled to find my characters and story. Forged in the Fire was easier. I knew what I had to do; I knew and loved my characters; and I had the bonus of great and terrifying events for them to live through. It was a wonderfully exciting book to write.

Seeking Eden was written much later. A third book – in which Will and Susanna and their children would emigrate to Philadelphia – had always nudged at me, wanting to be written. By the 1680s the suffering of Quakers had increased. William Penn, a wealthy and inspirational Quaker, acquired a large tract of land in America and founded the colony of Pennsylvania as a “holy experiment”, based on Quaker philosophy. This seemed a likely time for Will and Susanna to go. And yet I hesitated. These two dearly loved characters would now be in the background; Josiah, their son, would be the main character. And I was not familiar with America and its colonial history. Could I pull it off?

But the idea would not go away, and at last I gave in and began to read more on the subject. I discovered that there were already Quakers living in the American colonies – quite large numbers of them in Maryland and Barbados. It was a time when the slave trade with Africa was growing fast – and I was astonished to discover that many Quakers kept slaves. I knew then that I had found my story. Seeking Eden takes Josiah from London to an apprenticeship with a merchant in the New World – and face to face with the evil of slavery.

All three books can be read as stand-alone novels, and adults enjoy them as much as teenagers. New paperback editions were published in 2012, and e-book editions will be coming out this summer.

"I felt that I had entered the Garden of Eden and found the serpent coiled at its heart." 

For up-to-date news on my books visit
www.facebook.com/pages/Ann-Turnbull/253624231370262

or my website: www.annturnbull.com

To the Fair Land by Lucienne Boyce

I sometimes wonder how I managed to combine all the elements of To The Fair Land – Grub Street, Captain Cook’s voyages, murder, fantasy, elopement, the search for the Great Southern Continent... It’s always hard to trace the beginning of something but I would say that the initial spark that eventually brought together these apparently disconnected themes came from Frances Burney, who is one of my literary heroines.

That initial glimmer was my fascination with the secrecy surrounding the publication of Frances Burney’s first novel, Evelina. The book was published anonymously to preserve the author’s modesty. Although there were many fine women novelists in the eighteenth century, attitudes towards them were often hostile and misogynistic. Women who wrote attracted criticism and notoriety which had more to do with their gender than their work, and no respectable woman would seek such attention.

It has also been suggested that the reason for Frances’s secrecy was that the Burneys wished to avoid attracting undue attention to themselves because of certain shocking family secrets. Two of Frances’s step-sisters eloped, and her brother Charles was sent down from Cambridge University for theft. Later, scandal surrounded her elder brother James and half-sister, Sarah, who was also a novelist. I’m not convinced by this argument: these dreadful family secrets were no barrier to her father continuing to write and publish his work – with the unpaid help of Frances as his secretary.

Be that as it may, it was the secrecy about the authorship of Evelina which intrigued me. I began to wonder what would happen if a book was published with more at stake than a reputation. I started to imagine the possibility of a publication that meant real danger to people connected with it. But what could be so important? Again, I found the clues in Frances Burney’s novels and diaries. Her brother James served in the Resolution on Captain Cook’s second voyage; Frances herself met the Tahitian Omai who was brought back to England by the explorers.

Then there was the lure of the Great Southern Continent. I’ve always been fascinated by mythical lands – the island of Shakespeare’s The Tempest, Richard Brome’s The Antipodes, Charlotte Perkin Gilman’s Herland, Arthur Conan Doyle’s The Lost World, William Morris’s Wondrous Isles, C S Lewis’s Narnia, El Dorado, Camelot...all the dystopias and utopias and lands of fabulous wealth that mankind has dreamed of for centuries. (Now we put them on other planets!)

Since the time of Pythagoras, people had believed in the existence of the Great Southern Continent – or Great South Land – which they thought lay in the southern hemisphere. Many navigators went in search of it: Marco Polo, Amerigo Vespucci and Magellan; Dampier and Wallis of England; Bougainville of France. In 1765 Admiral Byron thought he glimpsed this “continent of great extent never yet explored”.

What could be more exciting? The quest for new lands – perilous voyages – scandalous secrets – it was all there! At stake are lives, fortunes, even the fate of a nation…so Ben Dearlove, the hero of To The Fair Land, faces violence, murder and imprisonment because of his obsession with a book about a voyage to the Great Southern Continent. The heroine, Sarah Edgcumbe, is a homeless wanderer who has to conceal the truth about her past. She’s also named, by the way, after Sarah Burney and like her namesake is a writer.

The last great navigator to set sail in search of the Great Southern Continent was Captain James Cook. On both his first and second voyages he was instructed by the Admiralty to search for it, and it was he who demonstrated, once and for all, that it did not exist. But in 1772 his second voyage had only just begun and it was still possible to believe that the Continent existed. So it was at this point in history that I set the events at the heart of To The Fair Land.

To The Fair Land is available in paperback and also as an ebook for Kindle and non Kindle users.

Read an extract at http://www.lucienneboyce.com/fiction.html

Barbados Bound by Linda Collison

It all started with a ship. On April 14,1999, I saw in the newspaper a startlingly anachronistic colour photograph of a three-masted wooden ship under sail. It looked like it had just sailed out ofthe eighteenth century. Below it, an intriguing advertisement:

Help wanted: Deckhands to man floating museum…a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to sail as crew on Endeavour, the replica of Capt.James Cook’s ship that will visit Hawaii in November. Crewmembers sleep in hammocks slung together on the lower deck. They must be prepared to go aloftand work the sails at any time of day in any weather, not suffer from chronicseasickness or fear of heights, and be physically fit. Sailing experience is not essential…

     Six months later my husband and I were at the dock in Vancouver, signing ship's articles.
     We are sailors, my husband Bob and I. We have a sailboat of our own and quite a few nautical miles under our belts, but we knew essentially nothing about sailing an 18th century,three-masted tallship.  
     The crew promised to teach the recruits everything we needed to know, and so we leaped at the opportunity. It sounded like a great adventure, and indeed it was. In fact, it changed my life and gave me a new passion: Maritime history. I actually went back to college to study history, having majored in Nursing, the first time around.

     Bob and I spent three weeks aboard the Endeavour, as part of the foremast watch, crossing the Northern Pacific Ocean. We learned the names and functions of the hundreds of lines, sails and spars that power the ship; we learned to climb aloft on the ratlines, stepping out on the foot ropes under the yards to make and furl sail. We took turns steering the ship and were responsible for cleaning and maintaining her in eighteenth-century fashion. We slept in hammocks we strung from the deckhead every evening. The voyage crew,as we green-but-willing sailors were called, bonded quickly, for we were all init together and we all felt the same swing of emotions -- anxiety, fear,fatigue, exhaustion, sea-sickness, hunger, occasionally resentment – but most of all, exhilaration and awe. For me, those weeks on the Endeavour were nothing short of a time machine.

     When Bob and I disembarked in Kona, Hawaii, I carried with me the seeds for a novel. It would not be about Captain Cook or his extraordinary voyages, but it would begin in the mid-eighteenth century, aboard a vessel quite like the one I had sailed on. I wanted to explore what it might have been like to have been a woman aboard a ship; not a passive passenger but a woman who takes an active part, who is part of the crew. My research proved there were many women aboard ships in the age of sail.  At least thirty and quite likey more, who dressed and worked as men.Their stories, when told, have typically been romanticized and somewhat discredited. I wanted to bring out the gritty reality. Working aboard the Endeavour helped me experience that. My experience as a registered nurse, specializing in Emergency and Critical Care, also came into play.

     My first historical novel was five years in the researching and writing. It wasoriginally published as Star-Crossed by Knopf/Random House, and chosenby the New York Public Library to be among the Books for the Teen Age --2007. Yet I hadn't really written it for teens, but from a teenaged girl's perspective.  
     I was so caught up with the characters and the historical background that I wrote a sequel, Surgeon's Mate, which Knopf turned down. They weren't interested in a series. But Fireship Press was. PublisherTom Grundner offered me a contract for Surgeon's Mate, and offered to publish Star-Crossed under a different title as soon as he could acquire it. As soon as Star-Crossed was out of print I obtained a reversion of rights, rewrote the manuscript and signed a contract with Fireship Press.  Barbados Bound was published in July, 2012.   The story is essentially the same as Star-Crossed, but I was able to correct a few anachronisms, introduce a minor characterwho appears in the sequel -- and add back a little salty language taken out of the first edition.  At last both books are under the same publisher, or aboard the same ship:  Fireship Press.

     It all started with a ship and an adventure -- and the adventure continues.  Bob and I just returned from a four-day sail on Topaz, our 36-foot sloop.  Sailing inspires me because the sea is aforce to be reckoned with. The sea connects us, it covers most of the earth, it is a portal to the past. It provides a rich backdrop for a novel because of its power and its historical importance. The sea offeres both freedom and imprisonment, it nurtures and destroys.  I both love the sea and fear it, and I hope that conflict is apparent in my novels.  Conflict, external and internal, is what drives my writing.

Linda Collison

www.lindacollison.com

Sea of Words; charting a course from imagination to publication 

Patricia MacPherson Nautical Adventures

The Gilded Lily by Deborah Swift

I was inspired to write The Gilded Lily by three things. First, the power of the stories we hear as children. Second, the Frost Fairs on the frozen Thames in the 1660's. And third, but not least, the contrasting characters of Ella and Sadie Appleby.

As a child I devoured books and stories of all types. One of my earliest memories is of my parents telling me fairy tales about Little Red Riding Hood and The Billy Goats Gruff, and hiding under the bed from the Big Bad Wolf. I had several dilapidated old books from my mother called "The Golden Wonder Books" which included tales of the Brothers Grimm, Tales from Shakespeare, Aesop and Homer, and poetry, all gorgeously illustrated by artists such as Arthur Rackham. From these stories I learnt about Knights and Princesses, about high morals and good behaviour. When I grew up I think I subconsciously looked for a Knight to sweep me off my feet, and it took me quite a few relationships and a divorce to realise that it wasn't going to be quite that easy! The values of the stories that we read seep in to us, but not just the stories we read, the stories other people tell us about ourselves. Ella Appleby has always been "the pretty one," and Sadie her sister "the skilful one" (and by implication, not pretty.) How does this affect them when they have to start their lives again from scratch, and must make their way in society? Ella tells stories all the time, but what is the difference between a story and a lie?

In the 1660's England was gripped by The Little Ice Age. Temperatures in the City of London dropped so low that the Thames iced over and the life-blood of the city froze in its veins. But London was just recovering from years of Puritan repression where all sorts of entertainment had been banned. The bears in the bear-baiting pits had been shot, not because bear-baiting was inhumane, but because the Puritans thought it was just too entertaining. So when Charles came back to the throne people were ready to celebrate and the frozen Thames provided another excuse for entertainment. The Frost Fairs had tented booths with alehouses and coffee shops; there was skating and ice bowls, jugglers and musicians. The King even paraded his horse guards over the ice. The combination of extreme weather, where birds froze in flight, and the determination of the people to nevertheless enjoy it, was a fascinating one.

After finishing The Lady's Slipper I had still more story to tell about Ella Appleby the maid. In The Lady's Slipper from Alice's point of view Ella is manipulative and lacking in morals. I wondered how she saw herself, and why she behaved the way she did, and gave her a book to herself to find out. (Though The Gilded Lily stands alone and you do not need to read the other book to understand the story.) Ella's saving grace is in her close relationship with her younger sister Sadie. The Gilded Lily explores the contrasting characters between the sisters as they struggle with their new lives and living with each other. One of the things I loved about writing them was that they were not the moneyed intellectuals who usually populate historical fiction. These were country girls, struggling to move upwards in society. I had to find a whole new language for them, a whole different set of moral values and aspirations. For them, perhaps stealing could be right, in some circumstances.

Once I started researching a whole supporting cast came along to help me tell Ella and Sadie's story - the handsome pawnbroker's son, the astrologer, the hard-nosed wigmaker, and the lovely lad with a love of stories.

‘There is no greater compliment than "give me more!" A delight’ Susanna Gregory

‘A beautifully-written blend of fast pace and atmospheric historical detail.' Gabrielle Kimm 
'Superbly written dialogue makes the characters absolutely real' Charlotte Betts
‘Beautifully written and meticulously researched, the novel drew me straight into the teeming streets of Restoration London. An addictive, page-turning read’ Mary Sharratt

www.deborahswift.co.uk
www.deborahswift.blogspot.com
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Mistress of the Sea by Jenny Barden

I'm invariably fascinated by the answers authors give to the 'What made you choose to write about that?' question, and now it's being put to me I find myself wanting to give two responses - the short and the more complex! The short answer is that as soon as I delved into the early life of Sir Francis Drake and unearthed the bare bones of his first great enterprise: the attack on the Spanish 'Silver Train' carrying bullion across the isthmus of Panama, I thought it would make a cracking good backdrop for a novel. This true story has all the ingredients of a rip-roaring adventure. It begins with Drake the little-known sea captain, smarting from the humiliation of having been forced to flee from the rout of John Hawkins' fleet in the Gulf of Mexico, determined upon vengeance for what he saw as Spanish treachery, and it ends with Drake the national hero who returned from his raid on the Spanish bullion supply in triumph, having masterminded an ambush that netted a fortune for himself and the Queen, cocked a snook at the Spanish, and proved that the might of King Philip II's empire was not invulnerable. In the run up to achieving this victory, Drake had endured a series of setbacks and reverses, the loss of over a third of his crew to disease, the death of two of his younger brothers (one killed in a skirmish and the other most likely a victim of yellow fever), the failure of two earlier attempts to capture Spanish treasure (the first of which resulted in his own serious injury), and the disaffection of some of his men which caused Drake to scuttle one of his two ships in order to prevent their desertion. It was only Drake's tenacity that kept the enterprise going. Then, in the end, an alliance with black runaway slaves (the Cimaroons) and French privateers (the Huguenots led by Guillaume Le Testu) gave Drake the manpower he needed in order to snatch victory from the jaws of defeat. This was a story in which a few individuals managed to achieve an act of singular significance. No more than 31 men returned to England out of Drake's original crew of 73, but they had severed the artery carrying Spain's life blood in bullion from Peru to fund her wars in Europe, and they had helped Drake set the course for the rise of England as a great maritime power.

As I unravelled what had actually happened, I began to imagine myself in this story, and to ask: 'What if a woman had been there?' and so the idea for Mistress of the Sea was born as an epic romantic adventure based on this real episode in history. Then a trip to Panama gave the concept even more impetus. I walked along parts of the Camino Real, sections of the original route for the Silver Train that have survived the passage of time and the flooding of the Panama Canal, and I saw the places where the hooves of pack mules over the centuries had worn hollows in the stones as they trailed over the rainforest clad mountains between the old city of Panama and Nombre de Dios. I walked through forest so thick that it was impossible to see even a glimpse of the sky, close to a hundred per cent humidity, plagued by flies and mosquitoes, and I felt I was drawing close to understanding what it must have been like. I had been down the mines of Cerro Rico: the 'Rich Mountain' of Postosí which was the principal source of the silver from Peru in the sixteenth century, and I had followed in the path of the conquistadors to many other places, so by travelling along the 'Royal Road' in Panama, and envisaging Drake's spectacular raid on the bullion in transit, I had a sense of the the pieces of a much broader picture slotting satisfyingly into place. That's the short answer.

The more complex explanation goes back to the roots of my writing before I ever imagined I might one day be a published author. I sometimes say that I became interested in history after an encounter with a suit of armour at Tamworth Castle, and it's true that I was fascinated with knights and the legends of King Arthur from a very early age, and that armour had a special attraction for me (perhaps because it had the potential to hide the wearer!). As a young girl, I wanted to do brave deeds, brandish a sword like Excalibur, and rescue maidens (or little boys!). I had an alter ego called Geni who would do spectacular things such as appear and disappear at will, run like the wind, and climb right to the top of very tall trees. And when everyone else had gone to bed, I'd be up, gazing out of my bedroom window in my home town of Burton on Trent, watching the town twinkling in the darkness beside the floodplain, and I'd imagine fabulous castles room by room, from the dungeons upward. No sooner was one properly envisaged in minute detail, from the stones to the heraldic shields, the trapdoors and secret passageways, than I'd move onto thinking about the next. I realise now that this was an ideal preparation for conceptualising and planning out a novel. 

After proving to be a horror in infancy and getting into all manner of scrapes (probably because I wanted to chase dragons rather than dress dollies), I turned out to have some ability to pass exams and blessed with a natural talent for drawing (for which I have my mother to thank). So I left school to study fine art, then switched to law to earn a living and became a solicitor in the city of London, until the birth of four children necessitated a change in direction. Then it was back to painting, something which only came to a close after I saw the self-portrait by Carel Fabritius that hangs in the National Gallery. This picture so entranced me that it set me on a quest to find out more about the artist's short life (Fabritius died young in the explosion of the Dutch gunpowder arsenal at Delft in 1654). Such academic biographies as there were only fuelled my desire to tell his story as it came bounding into life in my mind. That was how my writing began: in secret and quiet inadvertently, since I had no particular desire to write a book and did not even think I could do so. I wrote a fictionalised account of the life of Fabritius and found an agent on the strength of it. The interest of publishers in that book led me to refine and hone and try again. I wrote about another artist a few generations earlier: an invented character based loosely on Juan Sánchez Cotán who was a conquistador in my story as well as being an illuminator and a monk. Thus my interest in the Age of Discovery was reawakened and then nourished by travels in South America. Gradually the threads of the passions which have run through my life came together: the love of art and a fascination with the ideals of chivalry; adventure and legend, and the romance of exploration. That second book came even closer to publication, but after being turned down at acquisition meeting because it did not involve English characters, I thought I would write next about my own countrymen (I include women in that!). And who was active in the New World at the time, foremost among the early English seafarers to come into conflict with the Spanish? Francis Drake. It was a natural next step for me to write about Drake's first great Caribbean adventure, and to want to add a compelling love story - the result was Mistress of the Sea.

I hope that many of you will enjoy the adventure, and I thank you for the interest you have shown in reading this. Especial thanks to Deborah Swift for her generosity in hosting this wonderful site.

Mistress of the Sea will be released in hardback by Ebury Press, Random House, on 30 August 2012 with the paperback to follow

Jenny's website can be found here: http://www.jennybarden.com/
She's also on Twitter @jennywilldoit and facebook: https://www.facebook.com/jennybardenauthor
and goodreads: http://www.goodreads.com/author/show/6438523.Jenny_Barden

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Into the Valley of Death by A.L.Berridge

My father had no sons. What he did have were four daughters – and just across the road, eight hundred and fifty boys. He was Headmaster of Christ’s Hospital, the first and oldest Bluecoat School in the UK.

That’s where it all began for me. I grew up round boys who weren’t my brothers, and was able to get an unusual view of what men are like when women aren’t around. I learned about their insecurities, their courage, their constant need to prove themselves. I saw their easy physicality with each other, the fights and embraces, the competitive friendships that were curiously like love.

I probably understood none of it, but the old fascination bubbled quickly to the fore when I became a writer. My novels are all set in the traditionally male world of war, but although they’re full of action it’s always been the characters and relationships that interest me most. It was the characters that led me into the Crimea, and the ‘Valley of Death’ where the Light Brigade charged.

It started when I watched a repeat of the 1968 film, ‘The Charge of the Light Brigade’. David Hemmings made Captain Nolan every bit as gorgeous as I remembered him, but the film itself never engaged me. It was witty and satirical, it made all the right political points about the nationalistic stupidity of the war  – but for me it had no heart. I didn’t even cry at the end. I wanted to scream at the screen ‘What about the people? Shouldn’t we care?’

So of course I had to write it – or rather my own story set in that situation. My hero had been brooding in my mind for some years already (and boy, can that man brood!) but with the Crimea I knew I’d finally found his setting. He’s young and bitter, a junior officer compelled by his father’s disgrace and suicide to serve as a humble ranker, and what better place to put him than in a war famous for the incompetence of its commanders and the heroism of its soldiers? Harry Ryder landed in the Crimea as if he was born to be there – which in a way, of course, he was.

The others were already there, and each in their way grew out of the setting. Ryder was always going to attract women, and history had placed them on the spot in the person of the soldier’s wives who accompanied their men to the Crimea. There was nothing fragile about the women who survived those hardships, and I knew from the start that Sally would prove at least as brave as my men. I found her in a Roger Fenton photograph taken at one of the camps in 1855, and it was the same source that gave me my other principals. The smart Grenadier Guards, destined to be reduced to desperate and ragged brigands, gave me the character of Dennis Woodall, pompous, self-obsessed, and unutterably lonely. The savage Highlanders gave me Niall Mackenzie, the gentle stalker from Strathcarron who turns out to have the fighting spirit of a berserker Viking. The young cavalrymen who charged without question to what looked like certain death gave me Charlie ‘Polly’ Oliver, the idealistic schoolboy desperate to ‘do his bit’. I knew ‘Polly’ better than any of them, because his roots were in my past. The school he went to was Christ’s Hospital.

I still needed a plot, but that landed on my desk on the very first day. I’d ordered a first batch of books and expected to face many months of trawling before I got the seed of an idea, but while I was waiting I had a quick skim through Wikipedia to remind myself of the overview. I started with the Battle of the Alma, and there it was, staring me in the face: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Alma . This is a basic account, of doubtful accuracy in some details, but there’s something on that page that would get the antennae of any writer twitching. I’m not saying what it is, but I’d bet that any other writer reading this will spot it immediately. Something there is very odd indeed…

And it turned out to be true. The more I researched, the more I found that mysteriously repeated incident at the Alma was only the tip of a very large iceberg. There was a story there all right – and one that had never been told. So I told it, Penguin liked it, and ‘Into the Valley of Death’ came out on 10^th of May.

But the trouble with inspiration is that it just doesn’t know where to stop. I’m in the middle of my next novel right now – and that too is set in the Crimea, with a young and brooding hero called Harry Ryder…

To buy ‘Into the Valley of Death’ on Amazon: 

Louise's website: http://www.louiseberridge.com

Sea Witch by Helen Hollick

The agent sat in her office puffing at her cigarette. "What you need to do, darling, is write a fantasy novel."

"But I don't do fantasy, do I? I write historical fiction."

"Yes but Harry Potter is all the rage. Why not write something for teenagers?"

The author trudged down four flights of stairs and out into the London rain wondering if she could afford tea at the Ritz. She really didn't want to write fantasy. Nor for teenagers. She liked writing historical fiction, she liked character interaction, the what motivates people, what makes them tick. She liked writing about rugged heroes that were the sort of men you wouldn't want to get into a drinking contest with, but who would, all the same, be there to fix the fuse, and know where the torch was!

*

A Holiday. A wet, windy October afternoon. The rain had poured all morning, but by early afternoon an apologetic sun was squinting from behind a barricade of grey cloud. The author decided to walk the dogs on the beach.

All week she had been researching her latest interest; the truth behind pirates. Now the film she had seen was all very well, but it was not historically accurate was it? Tortuga, for instance, was cleared of pirates in the late 1600's; Port Royal was just a naval base. Pirates did not turn into skeletons. But they did wear bright ribbons, wave cutlasses about, get drunk and have an awful lot of fun.

As she was walking down the steep cliff-path, minding the bunny-burrows and reminding one of the dogs that it was not a good idea to get stuck down one again, she wondered; "What would happen if a charming rogue, such as Jack Sparrow, met up with a white witch? Not someone like Hermione in Harry P.,  someone more like Obi Wan Kenobi in Star Wars? A good witch, who had the Craft. She can't do magic, has no wand or spells, but she can summon a wind, or talk to her lover via telepathy.

At the bottom of the cliff, the author crossed the stream and stepped onto the beach. Immediately, she was almost knocked over by a blast from the wind, and the dogs went haring off after those two seagulls that had been bugging them all week.

The tide was ebbing, the breakers all white foam and rolling excitement. She walked along listening to the soundtrack of Pirates of the Caribbean, cursing because the earpiece kept falling out of her ear.

Sitting on a rock, she gazed out at the ocean. It was the English Channel really, but an author has a vivid imagination. It was not too difficult to picture the hot Caribbean sun; waving palm trees; the rich turquoise blue of the sea. It rained again. Quickly, she switched to a different scene. The Florida reefs, 1715. Eleven Spanish galleons went down laden with treasure.

What if... her mind was racing, her heart beginning to thud with excitement. What if there was a 12th ship? A pirate ship? A ship that a young, handsome rogue had just commandeered? His first captaincy... he survived the storm, would want to get another ship as soon as possible.... he had a brother, a half-brother, who had bullied him as a child. A brother who had burnt his only possession, a boat called.... Acorn! The author was getting really excited now! The boy fled the Virginia tobacco plantation and became a pirate. He had a few adventures, got rich on plunder, but was, underneath all the swagger and pretence, lonely. It was alright having crumpets and strumpets, but there was also the horror of the hangman's noose dangling over him. Then one day he meets a girl. He was in deep do-do, wounded and being chased by East India Company agents and this girl... no, not a girl... the white witch... rescues him. They fall in love, but he misses the sea. Because of er, because of (the author decided to think of a because of later) because of dah-di-dah happening, there is a mix up. The pirate assumed the girl didn't love him anymore. And the girl, who was really a white witch, thought the pirate didn't love her anymore. So they were both miserable for a few months. The pirate found solace in a rum bottle (as pirates do) and the girl gave in and married the rich creep who had been pestering her all this time. Then the pirate's brother caught up with him (very annoyed because the pirate had stolen his ship)

The author's backside was getting a bit numb, so she walked on up the beach.

The annoyed bully-brother is in league with the creep who married the girl... Tiola! the author thought, her name is Tiola. (Say it as ‘Teeola’, not ‘Tee…Oh…La’)Tiola what? Tiola is all that is good - a.l.l.t.h.a.t.i.s.g.o.o.d. An anagram! Of... furious muttering... an anagram of Tiola Oldstagh!

The author walked on, she was nearing the far side of the bay now and the tumble of rocks that were full of fossils and things. Or so the guide books said. She had never found one.

OK, so the annoyed bully-brother is in league with the creep. The two men are plotting to capture the pirate and have him hanged - Captain Woodes Rogers, a real figure in history, has just become Governor of Nassau and is offering a pardon to all pirates. The two creeps arrange to meet at Nassau, guessing that the pirate will turn up looking for amnesty. Which he does - but the bully-brother nabs him and  chains him up in the bilge of a ship and heads off back to Virginia. He wants to have his fun first and punish the pirate for stealing his ship.

Tiola loves her pirate. She tells her husband to go jump in a lake and boarding the pirate's ship (which he has called Sea Witch) sets off in pursuit of her true love - having to conjure up a wind to do so. Meanwhile, the author could see a small sub-plot coming here… something about Tethys, goddess of the sea who wanted the pirate for herself?

The author was quite pleased. Lots of action, adventure and character interaction. The chance to get to know these two young lovers, the tried and trusted boy meets girl, boy falls in love, boy loses girl then finds her again plot.

So all she needed was her pirate.

The wide sweep of the beach was deserted. She looked at the wet sand where the tide was scurrying in with lace-edged patterns of foam. Saw a man standing there, twenty yards away. He was tall, rugged. Had an untidy chaos of curled, dark hair with a few blue ribbons fluttering in the wind tied into it. He wore knee high boots, a faded coat and a three cornered hat. He was looking out to sea but he turned, grinned at her, showing the flash of two gold teeth. With his right hand he gave the author a small, acknowledging salute. An earring dangled from one ear. An earring shaped like an acorn.

"Hello Jesamiah Acorne," the author said.

And the author swears that every word is true.

Helen Hollick 

www.helenhollick.net

Facebook: www.facebook.com/helen.hollick

Twitter: http://twitter.com/HelenHollick
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Conquest by Julian Stockwin

Once upon a time, not so very long ago, I was a software designer. I’d just signed off on my biggest and most fraught project. As I sank exhausted into an armchair, my wife thrust a large tumbler of whisky into my hand and looked me straight in the eyes. ‘Sweetheart,’ she said, ‘get a life!’ Her suggestion: that I write. And about the sea...

Once I’d overcome the initial shock and decided to give it a go, I realised there was a lot of sense in what she said. As far back as I can remember, I’ve been bewitched by the sea. Going to a decent grammar school was wasted on me; on the school bus I’d gaze out across the Channel at the low, grey shapes slipping away over the horizon on voyages to who knows where, taking my imagination with them. As a young boy I remember the thrilling drama of the Flying Enterprise, when Captain Kurt Carlsen refused to leave his sinking ship and, with First Mate Dancy of the ocean salvage tug Turmoil, heroically fought to bring her within sight of port before she tragically sank. Then, too, London Pool was packed with ships flying the red ensign, and it was also the time of the very last of the square riggers: theoretically, you could still sign up outward-bound on a commercial voyage.

The only member of my family to have any connection with the sea was a distant relative we called Uncle Tom. A gentle, quietly spoken old man, he’d been around the Horn in square sail, and whenever I could I would sit spellbound and listen to him talk about life before the mast on the seven seas.

My father thought he’d knock all this sea nonsense out of me, and sent me to a tough sea-training school at the tender age of 14. It didn’t work; there was no contest – Latin and algebra or splicing and boat-handling! So at age 15, I joined the Royal Navy, eventually becoming a petty officer and later a lieutenant commander. And 40 years later, I sat down to write about the sea.

I’m ‘Old Navy’ with a deep respect and admiration for the service, so it had to be the Navy I’d write about. I chose Nelson’s time, the great climax of the age of sail and a magnificent canvas for sea tales. This was an era when the sea was respected and wooed by men who didn’t confront the sea with steam engines and brute force. I also wanted to bring the sea itself into a more prominent role, but was, as yet, unsure how to achieve this.

I soon realised that there were things from my time in the Navy that I wanted to bring to my writing; small things, but so evocative – a shimmering moonpath glittering on the water, the sound of voices from invisible night watchkeepers, the startling rich stink of the land after months at sea, the comfort of a still hammock when the ship rolls about it, the unreal beauty of an uninhabited tropical island in the South Seas.

There were the darker memories, too. Savage storms at sea when you feel the presence of nature like a wild beast out of a cage; close inshore in a gale when you wonder if a mistake at the helm will end with those black rocks suddenly bursting in. I was duty watch in the carrier Melbourne that night when we collided with and sank Voyager – there from the seaboat I saw men’s courage at work while 80 sailors drowned.

To achieve that more prominent role for the sea, it seemed logical to take the perspective of the men who actually did the job out there on the yardarm, serving the great cannon or crowding aboard an enemy deck, rather than of those shouting orders from behind. So the lower deck it was – and then I came across some amazing statistics. In the bitter French wars at the end of the 18^th century, there were, out of the several hundred thousand seamen in the Navy over that time, only around 200, who by their own courage, resolution and brute tenacity made the awe inspiring journey from the fo’c’sle as common seaman to King’s officer on the quarterdeck. This meant of course that they changed from common folk to the gentry; they became – gentlemen. And that was no mean thing in the 18^th century.

And of those 200, a total of possibly 16 became captains of their own ship – and a miraculous half dozen to Admiral! Yet not one left any kind of record of their odyssey, how they must have felt, what impelled them to the top – and so there I had my story! They would be the basis for my central character; I’d write the story of how he endured from the level of press‑gang victim to hoisting his own flag as Admiral.

I’d deliberately take the perspective of the common seaman as my point of view, instead of the more usual officer shouting orders from behind on the quarterdeck. This would mean I could pit my hero first hand against the reality of the sea, and let him taste the salt spray in his teeth, the fear of serving one of the great cannons on the gundeck, the courage needed to work aloft on madly flogging canvas.

In fact I soon realised my book would be a series.

My initial conception of the length of the series, eleven books, (which at the time seemed almost impossibly daunting) has now been revised considerably, upwards. The more I delved into the historical record the more I found to inspire the creative juices! My twelfth book CONQUEST is just out and I am working on book 13 to be published next June. A further eight are planned.

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