J. R. Tomlin . . . A Kingdom’s Cost: A Novel of Scotland

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Welcome to today’s Inspiration Award winner, J. R. Tomlin, who writes historical fiction set in fourteenth century Scotland.  Thanks so much for stopping by! ________________ Someone recently asked me what I would write if I were to write the book of my heart. I said I had written it.  It was A Kingdom’s Cost. Why?  There is a very old story in Scotland about a man named Sir James, Lord of Douglas. When the great king, Robert the Bruce, lay dying, he called his faithful friend and lieutenant Sir James Douglas to him. ‘Good Sir James’ the Scots called him. The English called him ‘the Black Douglas’. The king bade him to remove his heart from his body and to carry it on crusade, in penance for the king’s sins. In Spain, the Douglas and his men, fighting the Moors Read more…


The Kingdom of Mercia

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After 500 AD, the Kingdom of Mercia became one of largest and strongest Saxon kingdoms in England, and only faded with the transcendency of the Kingdom of Wessex under Alfred the Great (ruled 871-899). The first Mercian king to truly dominate England was Penda, ruling from 626-655 AD.  Both Bede and Nennius describe the swath he cut across Britain, sometimes in alliance with others (Cadwallon and Cadfael of Gwynedd to name two) and sometime on his own reconnaissance. His paganism was a particular sore point:  “In his Historia Ecclesiastica Gentis Anglorum, written in the early eighth century, Bede of Jarrow describes him as ‘a barbarian more savage than any pagan’ with ‘no respect for the newly established religion of Christ’” and “In the ninth-century Historia Brittonum, Nennius describes Penda as ‘victorious through the arts of the Devil, for he was not baptised, and never believed in Read more…


The Roman Fort of Caerleon (and King Arthur’s Camelot?)

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According to Geoffrey of Monmouth, Caerleon, a word derived from the Welsh ‘fortress of the legion’, was the seat from which King Arthur ruled Britain.   He wrote:  http://www.caerleon.net/history/arthur/page7.htm “When the feast of Whitsuntide began to draw near, Arthur, who was quite overjoyed by his great success, made up his mind to hold a plenary court at that season and place the crown of the kingdom on his head. He decided too, to summon to this feast the leaders who owed him homage, so that he could celebrate Whitsun with greater reverence and renew the closest pacts of peace with his chieftains. He explained to the members of his court what he was proposing to do and accepted their advice that he should carry out his plan in The City Of The Legions. Situated as it is in Morgannwg (Glamorgan), on Read more…


Gemini Sasson: The Crown in the Heather

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This week’s inspiration award goes to Gemini Sasson who writes about medieval Scotland.  Welcome Gemini! __________________ For years I’ve been a fan of Celtic music.  Nothing stirs my soul more than the skirl of bagpipes.  I also have Scottish ancestry on my mother’s side.  The first time I went to Scotland, I felt like I’d come home, even though I’d never been there before.  It was a very surreal feeling. After seeing the movie Braveheart (yes, I know it’s full of inaccuracies, but it was great storytelling), I was inspired to write something epic.  My curiosity about the rest of the story, beyond William Wallace, had been piqued and so I began to read, and read, and read . . . Four years later I had three books about Robert the Bruce written, although they’ve since undergone many revisions.  In Read more…


Anna Elliott: Georgiana Darcy’s Diary

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Today’s Inspiration Award goes to Anna Elliott!  Anna is the author of the Twilight of Avalon Trilogy (book three comes out this September), and she has recently gone the indie route with the publication of her new book Georgiana Darcy’s Diary.   Welcome Anna! _______________________ I’ve read Pride and Prejudice many, many times, and seen the various movie adaptations more times than I can even begin to count.  (Colin Firth is my favorite Mr. Darcy!).  I love Elizabeth and Darcy’s love story, of course–it’s a testament to Jane Austen’s genius that it truly stands the test of time and feels as compelling now as it did 200 years ago.  And yet, strangely, it’s always been Georgiana Darcy’s character that stays with me the longest, each time I read the book or watch one of the films.              Georgiana’s character is almost Read more…


Things Fall Apart–the End of an Independent Wales

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Things Fall Apart is the name of an excellent book written in 1958 by Nigerian author Chinua Achebe, describing his main character’s fall from grace where he loses his power, his family, and ultimately his life (he hangs himself).   It is an equally apt phrase for defining what happened in Wales immediately after the death of Llywelyn ap Gruffydd.  J. Beverley Smith writes:  “By the beginning of 1283, but not very long before, Llanrwst and Betws became bases for English operations in the upper Conwy valley, and it seems that a crossing of the river had been forced by then.  The Welsh forces faced an advance made in two directions.  One army moved upstream along the Conwy and Lledr valleys to Dolwyddelan, a key position in the defensive preparations of the princes.  By 18 January the castle was in the king’s Read more…


The Poetic Tradition

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Tonight the hall of my lord is dark, With neither fire nor bed. I will weep a while, then still myself to silence. Tonight the hall of my lord is dark, With neither fire nor candle. Who will give me peace? Tonight the hall of my lord is dark, With neither fire nor light. Grief for you overtakes me. Darkness descends on the hall of my lord The blessed assembly has departed, praying That good comes to those of us who remain. This poem (interpreted for my own purposes from the original:  http://faculty.arts.ubc.ca/sechard/492llyw.htm) is from the Welsh poem Canu Heledd.   The poem tells a story of  Cynddylan, or Cynddylan ap Cyndrwyn, a seventh century ruler  of a sub-kingdom of Gwynedd.  His father allied with Penda of Mercia, but died before 642: “In the aftermath of victory Penda and Cynddylan seem Read more…


Writing and re-writing: A Novel of King Arthur

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I normally blog about dark age and medieval Wales, and just touch on the writing that has preoccupied my life for the last five years. But I’ve just put up my new novel, Cold My Heart:  A Novel of King Arthur, and I thought I’d talk about the process that created it, particularly for my long time readers and followers who will have seen a blurb to this book in another form not long ago. The most important thing I’ve learned in writing fiction over the years is, of course, never give up.  The second most important thing is that no book is ever set in stone.  It’s really hard to see that when you’re in the process of writing it, but every single one of my books has gone through a transformative process from when I first began writing Read more…


Links to Interviews, Guest Blogs, and Posts :)

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A couple of links that came up this week: Interview over at Kindle Authors on Thursday, talking about The Last Pendragon:  http://kindle-author.blogspot.com/2011/04/kindle-author-interview-sarah-woodbury.html Interview over at The Inner Bean on Friday, talking about writing Historical Fiction: http://jennybeans.net/2011/04/08/guest-blog-sarah-woodbury-on-writing-historical-fiction/ Interview over at Katie Klein Writes on Friday about Footsteps in Time:  http://katiekleinwrites.blogspot.com/2011/04/ya-indie-spotlight-sarah-woodbury.html  Daughter of Time listed on the Indie 500 booklist:  http://thebookorbust.blogspot.com/2011/04/apr-4-new-this-week-on-indie-500.html Interview with me about writing (4/11) over at Parlez-moi blog:  http://parlezmoiblog.blogspot.com/2011/04/forfrom-indie-authors-sarah-woodbury.html


Welsh Independence (part . . . 227?)

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A reader of this blog, Joe, asked me a question the other day.  He said:  “I was recently listening to the audio version of “The Economist” and heard an article about the Welsh vote on devolution. One of the article’s lead sentences was (I’m paraphrasing) : “On a cold day in Cardiff, it’s hard to catch any talk of devolution, and even harder to find anyone who cares much about it”. Do you agree with this assessment? And if so, do you think there’s a historical or cultural aspect to why some people in Wales feel they way they do? (I’m curious because, if I lived in Wales, I think I would be very likely to have a strong opinion on the matter.) —————– I think that the perspective on Welsh devolution varies according to where an individual lives (including Read more…


Women In Ancient Rome–Guest Post by Suzanne Tyrpak

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Today I have a guest post by author, Suzanne Tyrpak.  Welcome, Suzanne! ________________      About seven years ago (before my divorce, when I had some expendable income) I traveled to Rome with a group of writers. I fell in love with Italy, Rome in particular. A travel book I read contained a short blurb about vestal virgins; it mentioned they were sworn to thirty years of chastity and, if that vow were broken, they would be entombed alive. That got me going! Plus, on a tour of the Coliseum, a guide pointed out the seats designated to the vestal virgins—the six priestess of Vesta were educated, and therefore powerful, at a time when most women weren’t even taught to read. Vestals were in charge of legal documents. They not only wrote these documents, in triplicate, but kept them secure within Read more…