An Indie’s Prayer, by M. Edward McNally

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From my friend Ed, reposted with his permission from:  http://www.indiesunlimited.com/2012/04/20/eds-casual-friday-an-indie-prayer/ Dearest Digital Gawd, now available as gif, jpeg, or bit map, Give me this day a couple uninterrupted hours, As I swore to myself I would have this chapter done Tuesday, and now it is Thursday. No wait, it’s Friday. How did I lose a whole day and this thing still isn’t done? Grant me the serenity to just let that idiotic comment on facebook pass by, Lo, though it is the stupidest thing anyone has ever said, ever, and it vexes me sorely, And though I have typed a long, witty rejoinder that no one with half a brain could possibly argue, Just let me hit delete instead of post this one time, and return to my labors. Cyber Gawd, grant me the courage to write with honesty, Even though technically I’m Read more…


The Quest for Welsh Independence

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When the Romans conquered Britain, the people they defeated were the Britons, the ancestors of the Welsh, a Celtic people who themselves had come to the island hundreds of years before. After the Romans marched away in 410 AD, the Saxon invaders overwhelmed the British in successive waves, pushing them west and resulting in a Saxon England and British Wales. When the next conquerors—the Normans—came in 1066 AD, they conquered England but they did not conquer Wales. Not yet. For the next two hundred years, power in Wales ebbed and flowed, split among Welsh kings and princes, Marcher barons (Norman lords who carved out mini-kingdoms for themselves on the border between England and Wales), and the English kings. Through it all, the Welsh maintained their right to independence—to be governed by their own laws and their own kings. The ending came on Read more…


Crops in Medieval Wales

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Wales has always been known as a pastoral society, in that farming was a less common occupation than herding.  Crops were grown, however, and new archaeological studies are shedding light on the nature of that form of agriculture.  “In about 4,000 BC farming was introduced into Wales, although the people still used stone tools.”   http://www.localhistories.org/wales.html http://www.ruralia.cz/119-123.pdf “The discovery of corn-dryers with early medieval radiocarbon dates has contributed to the growing number of early medieval examples excavated in Wales which can throw valuable light on the crops grown, their ratio to each other and how they were processed. South Hook (Herbranston) is a particularly important site since several corn-dryers were excavated together with rotary quern-stones and a significant assemblage of charred grain samples. Two types of oats (bristle oats and common oats) as well as hulled six-row barley grains were the Read more…


Medieval Coinage

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When Edward I hanged Jewish merchants for coin clipping in 1277, confiscating their goods and disinheriting their children, he was making a comment not only on the state of his own treasury, but on the economics of medieval life. Over the previous centuries, coinage–having been scarce once the Romans left Britain–had become more and more important in trade throughout England. Edward the Elder (c. 902-925 AD) ordered: “there be one money over all the king’s dominion, and that no man mint except within port. And if the moneyer be guilty, let the hand be struck off with which he wrought that odense, and be set up on the money-smithy; but if it be an accusation, and he is willing to clear himself, then let him go to the hotiron, and clear the hand therewith with which he is charged to Read more…


Traveling on Medieval Roads

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Traveling on medieval roads meant traveling on surfaces as varied as stone, gravel, grass, and dirt. There have been roads across Britain for as long as people and animals have traversed the landscape. The original roads were tracks, created by years, decades, and millennia of people and wheeled vehicles, wearing a passage through forests, fields, and mountainous terrain. One of the first videos we produced was about Bwlch y Ddeufaen, an ancient road across north Wales marked by two standing stones, dating back thousands of years. Because of the difficult terrain, rather than build a new road entirely, the old one was improved by the Romans and then was in continuous use up until the modern era when a new road along the coast line was blasted through the mountains. One of the most lasting effects of the Roman occupation Read more…


Crossroads in Time released! No foolin’ :)

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I am so excited to share with everyone my new book, Crossroads in Time, the third book in the After Cilmeri series.  Four and a half years in the making, I began it soon after I finished Prince of Time.  Life intervened in the writing process, however, and I only returned to it in 2011.  And had to delete everything I’d written up until then and start over 🙂 As a side note, I have only realized as I type this that I began this book again just a few weeks after the death of my father at the far too young age of 68.  And maybe that’s why Crossroads in Time is a story so close to my heart.  It’s meant to be FUN.  A fun, romantic read, following the adventures of David and Anna and their family and Read more…


I’ve written a book … now what?

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Since I guest posted on David Gaughran’s blog here and here, I’ve been getting mail from other indie authors, asking for some advice regarding getting their own ball rolling, so to speak. A year and a bit ago, I got some excellent advice from indie author, N. Gemini Sasson, which I took, and perhaps I can pay that forward now. I have some overall suggestions, and then some specific tips.  Nothing that’s going to work overnight, I’m afraid … but it’s what I’ve done. Publishing in general can be overwhelming.  I honestly don’t know that indie publishing is any different from traditional publishing in that regard, it’s just that you, individually, have to take care of so many things yourself.  Not that traditional publishers have been wonderful in this respect, but at least there’s the illusion that you are more taken Read more…


Guinevere (in Welsh Gwenhwyfar)

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Guinevere was King Arthur’s wife.  Everyone knows that.  But the role she plays has been embellished and augmented to the point that it’s actually not clear if she ever existed at all (assuming King Arthur existed at all, the exploration of which could fill a library). “In the ancient Welsh Mabinogion (called Culhwch and Olwen), Guinevere is called ‘Gwenhwyfar’ or ‘Gwenhwyvar’. Her name may mean The White Phantom. Guinevere was the daughter of Gogrfan or Gogrvan or Ocvran. She is the wife of King Arthur. The tale also mentions that Guinevere had a sister, named Gwenhwyach. The Mabinogion says that King Arthur had three sons: Gwydre, Llacheu, and Amhar. But there is nothing in the legend to indicate that they were Guinevere’s sons, too. Either King Arthur had another wife or partner, or, more likely, we can probably assume that Read more…


Slavery and Wales

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The title says Slavery ‘and’ Wales because the degree to which slavery existed in Wales is difficult to determine.  Without a doubt, many Welsh were forced into slavery–evidence points to Welsh captives on the continent of Europe as well as in Anglo-Saxon England.  St Patrick himself was Briton/Welsh (born 387 AD) and was captured by the Irish and made a slave.  The Celts were well-known slave-keepers, as were the Romans after them.  But were the Welsh themselves, after the Romans left?  Hard to imagine they weren’t when their neighbors all around were enslaving them.  But in all of the 767 pages of John Davies The History of Wales, he doesn’t mention slavery once. However, Ron Wilcox writes in his book Between Romans and Normans:  “Living alongside the bondsmen were the slaves who worked as agricultural labourers or artisans. Most were born into slavery but Read more…


Population in Wales

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The population estimate for Wales in the early Middle Ages, at the Norman Conquest in 1066, is 150,000. This is squarely in the ‘medieval warming period’ which began around 950 AD, in which Wales experienced a warmer climate than between the 13th and 19th centuries. This site indicates that the population doubled by 1350 to 300,000, but then was cut by 1/3 with the Black Death. It didn’t reach that total again until the 16th century. As of 2008, the population of Wales was roughly 3 million, creeping slowly up from 2.8 million in 1991.  Cardiff, the capital, is by far the biggest city, with slightly fewer than 300,000 people.   http://www.citypopulation.de/UK-Wales.html.  In the Middle Ages, Cardiff’s population was between 1500 and 2000 people–and was one of the few, and certainly one of the largest–towns in Wales.  http://www.localhistories.org/Cardiff.html This population is spread over Read more…


Could Time Travel Happen?

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We are all time travelers of course–we travel through time every millisecond of our lives.  It’s just we only move in one direction, into the future. Conceptually, time travel into the future and into the past are two distinct concepts.  Traveling into the future could happen merely by slowing down your own time, rather than popping in and out of the future like in Primeval. “If you want to advance through the years a little faster than the next person, you’ll need to exploit space-time. Global positioning satellites pull this off every day, accruing an extra third-of-a-billionth of a second daily. Time passes faster in orbit, because satellites are farther away from the mass of the Earth. Down here on the surface, the planet’s mass drags on time and slows it down in small measures. We call this effect gravitational time dilation. According to Read more…


Ebook Sale! 26 Authors: 30 Books

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David Gaughran is advertising an ebook sale of 30 books at 99 cents, including my own, The Last Pendragon!  Find links to all the books here:  http://davidgaughran.wordpress.com/2012/03/16/st-patricks-day-blowout-30-great-books-by-26-authors-reduced-to-99c –Sarah Woodbury weaves a tale of Myth and Magic in The Last Pendragon … I could not put this book down –Darkiss Reads (darkissreads.com) He is a king, a warrior, the last hope of his people–and the chosen one of the sidhe . . . Set in 7th century Wales, The Last Pendragon is the story of Arthur’s heir, Cadwaladr ap Cadwallon (Cade), and his love, Rhiann, the daughter of the man who killed Cade’s father and usurped his throne. Born to rule, yet without a kingdom, Cade must grasp the reins of his own destiny to become both Christian king and pagan hero.  And Rhiann must decide how much she is willing to risk to follow her heart.The Last Pendragon is a 98,000 Read more…