Legionary by Gordon Doherty

It was a characteristically bleak autumn afternoon in Northumberland as I sauntered along the tumbled ruins of Hadrian’s Wall. After an obligatory imagining of myself kitted out in legionary armour, barking out orders to my cohort, I sat down to take in the landscape. I tried to envisage the rolling hills in the age when the auxiliaries of Britannia would have lined this ominous frontier and garrisoned the forts, milecastles and watchtowers. I imagined a firm and seemingly eternal signpost shouting out to all and sundry ‘This is Rome and she’s here to stay!’ Yet now I could see only the squat remains of foundations and surrounding rubble and the Romans were long gone. A question entered my thoughts, demanding to be answered: how had the greatness of Rome faded from the invincibility of the pax romana to this?

Fast forward a few years: I was strolling along the inner tier battlements of the Theodosian Walls of Constantinople/Istanbul (or more accurately I was tentatively inching along them and trying not to look down – they’re pretty high up and a bit crumbly) around the Golden Gate area. The structure extended north into the smog of the city, sentinel-like towers standing empty but eerily defiant after fifteen hundred years. The place was electric, the air crackling with history and I felt that hunger for an answer again: how could the Roman and Byzantine grip on Europe, Western Asia and Africa have dwindled to nothing, leaving behind a behemoth-like architectural carcass like this?

Having done my reading I now know the textbook answers to the two questions above, but have been left with something far more valuable: a sustained intrigue, nay obsession, over the decline from the pax romana to the post-Roman world and the real answers to these questions.

While the order, prosperity and pristine legions of the high principate are a fascinating blend, I find it somewhat too perfect. What really fires my imagination is the 3rd century AD and onwards, an age which sees Rome’s forts and cities decaying, her pagan ideals being swept into history by Christianity, her economy stagnating and her legions thin, scattered and all-too-mortal. What events could have occurred in this era that have since been lost to the ghosts of the past, echoing along the battlements of these walls and fortifications? What of the people of these times, they would have had to live with the reality that greatness was slipping away from them while they still clung to the ideals of their recent ancestors. And then there were the ‘barbarians’; with the Goths, Vandals, Franks, Alans, Parthians and Huns just a selection of the powerful and now militarily equal peoples pressing relentlessly on the empire’s borders, fiery conflict and desperate and heartfelt emotion must have been rife.

So all this has me jilting the perfection of invincible Rome and falling for the complexity of her flawed descendant and that’s why I sat down to write Legionary. Perhaps it is my admiration for the spirit of the underdog that nudges me this way and I feel that one day a psychiatrist might confirm that. Whatever the reason I’m just grateful for what has turned out to be a perpetual fuel for my writing.

And even now when I visit the ruins, I’m still seeking true answers to those questions that demand to be answered.

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To Take Her Pride by Anne Brear

The story of To Take Her Pride came to me quite easily. It flowed very well and was a joy to write.

I am always intrigued by the idea of what happens when a character’s life is turned upside down and all that they knew becomes foreign, their private world they thought was safe and secure suddenly becomes alien and fragile.

In To Take Her Pride, Aurora lives a privilege life that she has taken for granted as the wealthy do, but one event destroys all she knows and she is soon leading a very different life she never expected.

I found it interesting that Aurora becomes a much stronger character as the book continues. She starts off at the beginning as an ordinary young women, but in a short space of time, she becomes an extraordinary strong women fighting to survive in a strange and frightening new life.

The era the book is set in is late Victorian just as the strict confines of the old Victorian ways are starting to loosen up as women become more interested in the world outside of their own kitchen. England becomes embroiled in the Boer War, which also touches Aurora’s life, but as the world advances to more modern ideas as a new century dawns, the working class are still struggling to rise above the ever present threat of poverty, disease and death. All these things Aurora experiences first hand as she is torn from her comfortable life and thrust into a much different existence.

To Take Her Pride is set in Yorkshire, like most of my books, and largely in the city of York.

I find York a fascinating city, full of history, where each street and lane has a story to tell. Grand old buildings, the castle walls, and the River Ouse all have their own fascinating history and provides a great back drop for the story. Again Aurora finds contrasts as she leaves the country is and swallowed up within the slums of York’s poorest areas.   

With all the twists and turns Aurora endures, I found writing her journey totally absorbing. As always, the character became dear to me, a friend, and it’s exciting to see when readers enjoy her story too.

Anne Brear’s website: http://annebrear.blogspot.com

To Take Her Pride can be bought in paperback or ebook formats.

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The Woman Who Loved Jesse James by Cindi Myers

Zee James, wife of Jesse James, is one of those figures who hasn’t gotten much attention from historians. She’s overshadowed by her famous, flamboyant husband. Jesse is the man who made history with his daring robberies. Zee was the woman who worried and waited for him to come home. In writing The Woman Who Loved Jesse James, I tried to bring Zee to life, and to share her remarkable story with others.

As a history buff, I can get lost in research. I love reading old newspapers and letters, as well as biographies and historical nonfiction. I’m particularly fascinated by some of the larger-than-life characters in the American west – Buffalo Bill, Wyatt Earp, Jesse James.  Mention Jesse James in any crowd and almost everyone will have something to say about him. (A surprising number of people will mention that he is a distant relative.) Everyone knows – or thinks she knows – about Jesse James.

One of the interesting aspects of Jesse – to me – is how much of a family man he was. Most people know he spent a lot of time running from the law, but many don’t know his family ran with him. They were always right there, living under assumed names, too.

They say behind every great man is an even greater woman. I started thinking about the kind of woman who would be so devoted to a man like Jesse that she’d follow him away from her home, change her name and keep his secrets. Was it love that kept Jesse’s wife loyal, or something else?

Thus began my research into the life of Zee James, Jesse’s wife. The story I found fascinated me – she was Jesse’s first cousin. They fell in love while she nursed him back to health. She waited for him through a nine-year engagement. She kept their family together through some amazingly tense and trying circumstances. Here was a woman who’d been a part of history but had lived in the shadows. I realized I’d uncovered one of the great, though tragic, love stories of our time.  

Unfortunately, no letters in Zee’s own words, or diary of her experiences exist. What I learned about her I had to piece together from mentions in newspapers, family stories and legend. Zee rates only a few paragraphs in even the best biographies of Jesse. If I was going to tell Zee’s story, I would have to do it through fiction.  

The Zee I portray in The Woman Who Loved Jesse James may not be like the real woman – we’ll never know. But she is true to the woman I imagined, a woman who longed for adventure, who loved her husband in spite of, and even because of, his faults, and who longed for a life she was never really able to have. 

http://www.cindimyers.com/

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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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Crestmont by Holly Weiss

Perhaps you have heard the saying, “Barn burned down, now I can see the moon.”  I hated it when I first read it. Why? I was immersed in a barn burning in my own life. Post-polio syndrome, a condition that effects people infected with polio virus as children, often returns when polio survivors reach the age of fifty. The poliovirus infected me in 1952. Well-meaning doctors encouraged polio survivors to push past the muscle weakness and paralysis. I became an expert overcomer. I received degrees from college and graduate school and went on to a successful three-decade singing career. When unrelenting back pain presented itself after every concert five years ago, I had to retire. In addition, to conserve what little energy the post-polio syndrome left me with, I was forced to cut in half other activities in my life. I grieved for years because my voice, my primary means of creative expression, had been silenced.

Then, bing! On a lark, my husband and I stayed overnight at The Crestmont Inn in the Pennsylvania Allegheny Mountains. Our room was a luxury suite converted from a staff dormitory built in 1926. I envisioned what life must have been like for young people working a summer job at a bustling inn. Then I recalled this quote:

“Another opportunity is given you as a favor—and as a burden.

The question is not:

Why did it happen this way? or

Where is it going to lead you? or

What is the price you will have to pay?

It is simply:

How are you going to make use of it?”

…Dag Hammarskjöld.

We can be so entrenched in our idea of we want for our journey that we ignore God’s guidance in the turning of corners. He had to hit me over the head with a two-by-four to show me to leave my singing behind, write a book about The Crestmont Inn, and make use of what life handed me. One voice led to another.

Although I had never written a book before, a wonderful experience opened before me. I set the novel in 1920s Eagles Mere, Pennsylvania. Researching the history of the real Crestmont Inn enriched me. My music inspired me to imbue Crestmont’s main character, Gracie with the desire to sing. A Native American legend says that the Great Spirit flooded Eagles Mere Lake out of anger. I gave that a different twist, wanting to set the tone of grace around which Crestmont is built. In my novel, he cried tears of forgiveness. The eagles joined their tears with his, both mingling together to gently fill the lake called Eagles Tears or Eagles Mere.

Because grace had moved me past a sad impasse in my life, I wanted to emphasize its concept in the novel.  Crestmont main character, Gracie (purposefully named) is a courageous young woman who knows she needs to leave home to find herself. She’s not sure how she will work it all out. Allowing herself the opportunity to fulfill her desire to sing is uppermost in her mind. She says, “A dream, after all, needn’t be fueled by particulars, only desire.” Did Gracie become a famous cabaret singer? You’ll have to read Crestmont to find out. One thing I can promise you is that she found a spirit of acceptance and grace at The Crestmont Inn.

Writing was a natural progression from singing for me. Every song requires a different persona—a unique character the singer develops to make the song real. Inventing characters for Crestmont was an adventure I was well prepared for after thirty years of creating them in song. Violinist Itzhak Perlman said “Sometimes it is the artist’s task to find out how much music you can still make with what you have left.”

I am thankful that one voice led to another—the voice of a singer to that of an author. I loved every minute of the writing. The characters of Crestmont revealed their stories to me in imaginative ways and I thank them.

Several years ago my barn burned down, but magically, now I can see the moon.

Holly's Website : http://www.hollyweiss.com/

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All Different Kinds of Free by Jessica McCann

The story was inspired by actual events, specifically the U.S. Supreme Court case Prigg v. Pennsylvania, 1842. I first learned about it when I was doing freelance copyediting for a book about Supreme Court justices. The case appealed the conviction of a bounty hunter from Maryland  (Edward Prigg) charged with kidnapping Margaret Morgan, a free woman of color living in Pennsylvania who was alleged to be an escaped slave. The court case focused on state's rights, and the ruling represented the first time a major branch of the U.S. government made a proslavery stand. But I was most interested in Margaret and what became of her.

My original goal was to write a biography, and I spent about three years researching her life -- or, at least, attempting to research her life. The sad truth is that Margaret and her fate were irrelevant at the time. The issue for most people in the mid-1800s was much bigger than one woman's fight for freedom. Yet, to me, it was all about Margaret. When I realized I didn't have enough facts to write a biography, I was devastated and grudgingly packed away my research.

Then my mother-in-law loaned me a book, a fictional biography about George Washington, by Mary Higgins Clark. It was an entertaining read, and it gave me the idea that a fictional biography might be the only way I could tell Margaret's story and really do it justice.

That's how my novel was born. Tons of secondary research went into the book. I devoured reference books, diaries, slave testimonials, newspaper archives -- anything I could get my hands on to help me better understand what the average person experienced on any given day in that era. That research provided the factual framework of the novel, and I filled in the blanks based on what my mind, my heart and my gut were telling me as each scene unfolded.

What really happed to Margaret Morgan? No one knows. What I do know is that she suffered a great injustice. And it was a similar injustice suffered by thousands of other women just like her -- wives, mothers, daughters -- during that dark period in U.S. history. That fact is what propelled the fictional story I ultimately wrote.

The history books will have you believe the story of Prigg v. Pennsylvania is important because it ended in controversy and fanned the early embers of the Civil War. This book will have you believe the story is important because it began with Margaret.

All Different Kinds of Free is available in trade paperback and e-book from Bell Bridge Books. Learn more at the official website http://www.AllDifferentKindsOfFree.com

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Asenath by Anna Patricio

My debut novel Asenath is about the little-known wife of Joseph of the multicoloured coat fame. Hardly anyone knows who she is, and that is most likely due to the fact that the Book of Genesis mentions her only in passing. In fact, whenever I tell people I have written about her, the reaction I get most of the time is, "I didn't know Joseph had a wife!"

So why write about this obscure Biblical character? Well, the mere fact that barely anything is known about her provides great opportunity for fiction. I am thus at ease to stretch my imagination as far as I please.

That is just the surface though. My deeper reason for writing about Asenath stems from my interest in the Biblical account of Joseph.I adore that story. It is a powerful tale of strength, hope and perseverance. I had known about it all my life, but it was later on that I realised how moving it is. I admire how Joseph maintained his integrity even after all he had been through: losing his mother during his childhood, being sold into slavery by his brothers, and being imprisoned for a crime he did not commit. He survived it all and emerged as a very seasoned man.

My newfound interest then drove me to delve deeper into the story. I read everything I could get my hands on. First I began with Biblical commentaries, then later discovered other interesting accounts, such as Jewish folktales and Persian epic poems.

Along the way, I grew curious about his wife Asenath. I wanted to know what sort of a woman married so admirable a person as Joseph. All the Bible tells us is that she was given to him as a wife after he successfully interpreted Pharaoh’s dreams.I wanted to see if there was more info on her. Alas, when I looked her up, I found barely anything on her.I found a few ancient tales such as the Greek 'Joseph and Asenath' which has as its theme Asenath's conversion to Judaism. But other than that, nothing. Nothing to tell me of her childhood, her marriage to Joseph, her family life with Joseph etc.

In the contemporary fiction of Joseph that I read, I was not too satisfied with the portrayals of Asenath, especially because she wasn’t given much attention. I wanted someone to expand on her life with Joseph, albeit fictionally. But when I did not find what I wanted to read, I then thought to write such a story myself.

In addition, I have always loved fiction set in Ancient Egypt, and thought it might be an adventure to contribute to the Egyptian fiction offerings. I knew though that it would also entail a lot of research, to try and stay as faithful as possible to the atmosphere of that era, and that would be a lot of hard work. However, it all turned out very fulfilling in the end.

Hence, Asenath.

http://www.annapatricio.blogspot.com

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