Book Trailer for "Beloved Pilgrim"

BlazinTrailers.com did a superb job on this trailer!

Just note that the book is now available as an ebook from Smashwords.com, but the print and Kindle copies have a nother few weeks to go.

A Very Useful Sign

Ebook Giveaway!

Win a free copy of Beloved Pilgrim by Nan Hawthorne!

Just leave a comment here to be eligible for a drawing for a copy of Beloved Pilgrim -- see yesterday's post -- which will be announced next Friday, March 25.

See Smashwords for available formats.

They're Here! They're There! They're Everywhere! So Beware!

Sadly, in time of crisis, slime oozes out and tries to take advantage of our good hearts.  Here are just a few things to look out for while on the Internet, everyday or when we are the most susceptible.

1.  Don't pass on videos you did not seek out yourself.  There are several Japan earthquake videos out there, including one showing a whale thrown up on the land, that are fakes.  They get you to pass them on, then when the recipient clicks through they get pop-upps asking seemingly innocent survey questions.  They are in fact gathering data or worse.

2.  Never give money to an email address or site that writes to you to ask for it unless you specifically signed up to get notices.  Chances are the ask is a scam.  If you want your money to do Good, then go find where it will do so.

3.  In general, don't send people links with no explanation as to what it is for.  Not even ecards.  Either make the subject line very descriptive and individual or write to the person first to let them know what you are about to send them is legit.

4.  Even if something looks like it came from a trusted friend, make sure before you open a link.  I have gotten bad links from people who would never have sent them but were just being used by a scam artist.

The basic rules of thumb are that you never give money or information to someone who contacts you directly, and you should never put someone else in the position of deciding whether they can trust something from you.

As the phony friar said to the traveling chapman, "If you'll buy that, I have two left hands of St. Jerome I can sell you."

Trust, yes, but don't get taken for a fool.

Normans and Dante and Cash, Oh MY! Latest from Oxford University Press

From the Norman Conquest to the Black Death
An Anthology of Writings from England

Edited by Douglas Gray

This anthology makes available to the modern reader a range of texts produced in the often overlooked period between the Norman Conquest and the Black Death. A wide variety of texts - chronicle, history, legends, plays, lyrics, debates, romances, and stories of all shapes and kinds - are included in translation or helpfully glossed form.

Hardback
616 pages

£85.00
24 February 2011
978-0-19-812353-8



The Divine Comedy of Dante Alighieri
Volume 3: Paradiso

Edited and Translated by Robert Durling and Introduction and Notes by Ronald Martinez

Pardiso is the third of three volumes of a new edition and translation of Dantes's masterpiece, The Divine Comedy. Similar to volumes I Inferno and II Purgatorio, this translation will be into English prose, emphasizing the literal-vs-phonetic. A newly edited version of the Italian text will be on facing pages and includes fully comprehensive notes with the latest in contemporary scholarship.

Hardback
704 pages

£27.50
3 February 2011
978-0-19-508742-0

ALSO FROM OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS

Online Resources

Oxford Scholarship Online

The very best scholarly books from Oxford now available online.

Rreprinted at request of Oxford University Press.
http://www.oxfordscholarship.com/

[Book Review] A Dead Man In Deptford, by Anthony Burgess

A Dead Man in Deptford

Anthony Burgess

Of course I knew about Christopher Marlowe. I was Outstanding Senior of the Year at Northern Michigan University's English Department, you know. Poet, playwright, Elizabethan. Sometimes joined with Sir Francis Bacon in authoring Shakespeare's works. More recently I heard about his more notorious side: homosexual and spy. He came off as a rake to me: clever, devious, daring.

That is not what I found in Anthony Burgess' A Dead Man in Deptford. Yes, he's a homosexual. Yes, he's a spy, though he is more of a covert messenger than a spy. Rather than coming off as a cocky and iconoclastic daredevilil, Burgess' Marlowe is rather earnestly pathetic, or perhaps pathetically earnest. While studying theology at Cambridge a friend recruits him for Sir Francis Walsingham's Elizabethan version of MI-5. From the start he begs to be reassured he can quit any time, and from the start he is told, "Nope. You are in this for life." On one of his first assignments he is partially responsible for the hanging, drawing and quartering of some Catholic supporters of Mary Queen of Scots. Forced to watch the execution he is sickened physically and emotionally. His only recompense is that Thomas Walsingham, the spymaster's kin, is also a spy and also gay and rather into Kit Marlowe for a time.

Marlowe's career from poet to playwright and controversial philosopher runs rather contrary to what appear to be Elizabethan norms and values. This is the Elizabeth of her infatuation or dalliance or flirtation, you choose, with Walter Raleigh and then with the Earl of Essex. She is in her fifties and even less amused than her queenly successor in the 19th century. The Church of England and the Privy Council have teamed up, ostensibly to rid the realm of everyone pernicious to the state church, including Catholics, atheists, witches, other Protestants and even unorthodox C of E. Marlowe is an atheist, though he keeps this as close to his chest as he can, given his obsession to write plays with atheistic and otherwise controversial characterers like Tamburlane.

You know from the title and from history that Marlowe was murdered. You have quite a buffet of suspects supplied to you. There are people who would only be too happy to do the knifing, but there are also many others who would pay them to do the knifing. It could be Walsingham's successor, Cecil or one or more of his operatives. It could be marlowe's sometime lover, Thomas Walsinggham or, indeed, his devoted servant. It could be Essex. It could even be Raleigh who had invited Marlowe to attend meetings of his free thinking intellectual club. Pretty much from the start you know Marlowe is flinging himself towards disaster. His conflict is primarily how to avoid bringing those he cares about with him.

Now I have heard the appellation "Bloody Mary" use to describe Mary I and her supporters and their rapacious burnings of Protestants for the sake of the realm. What I did not know is that we could and probably should refer to her little sister as "Bloody Bess." Paranoia about Catholic plots, not without foundation, resulted in gory executions too, lots of them, and not just Catholics, but any religious deviant or simple inexpedient enemy of one of the Big Boys and Gal. The French Huguenots, fleeing French religious intolerance, found themselves first the target of rioters and then of the Church and politicians. You could call Marlowe "The Man Who Knew Too Much" and whose knowledge could have messed things up in the constant power struggle and personal greed and ambition.

Burgess, of course, does a superb job of the writing. It is in a sort of Elizabethan patois, handled well, sometimes thick, but wen necessary laid on thinly. Anyone wating to write Elizabethan dialogue should read this book. Burgess's doctoral dissertation was on Marlowe, and it is clear that the histotircal details are authoritative.

I found myself feeling sorry for Marllowe. I know what it is like to push the envelope because one's convictions won't melt into the background when writing, not that I claim Marlowe-like talent. In his author's note Burgess points out that for all the hopelessness Marlowe may have felt, he is still read and discussed today and enlightens our understanding not only his time but of universal thought.

I purchased this novel on Amazon as a download to my Kindle 3. I thank the publisher and author for allowing the text to speech feature to be enabled so I could read what I cannot in print.

Tools For 21st Century Authors

Someone on a Yahoogroup I am on pointed out that many of the authors who complain about poor sales of their books do little or nothing to promote them.  I tend to think she is correct, but the other part of this is that people are often remarkably unresourceful.  They say self-disempowering things like "I am not computer literate" and leave it at that.  As far as I am concerned, they have no one to blame for their poor sales but themselves.

The fact is that there is a ton of help out there, one of the beauties of the Internet is just how much and how easily garnered.  I just had this book delivered wirelessly to my Kindle 3.  Thanks to its being text-to-speech enabled, the publisher's/author's choice, I will be able to read it.  And I plan to get good and useful information out of it.  If I have to be open to and ready to learn something new, then so much the better.  Maybe this is why my first novel, published independently, has sold many times the average number of self-published copies?

The book is SOCIAL MEDIA FOR AUTHORS SERIES: FACEBOOK PAGES, written by best-selling author Jon F. Merz.  It set me back a huge dollar and ninety-nine cents.  I will read and report back here, but my point in this post is that there are so many resources like this one.  Whether anyone will buy your book as a result of your Facebook page for it I don't really know, but since the essence of marketing is giving people every opportunity to hear about it, it seems like a cheap opportunity. 

There is a saying in marketing "You are always marketing."  I converted this to "You are always recrioting volunteers" when I wrote and trained on nonprofit issues, after hearing one volunteer resources manager complain that they A. couldn't get any volunteers, and B. had no time for recruiting them.  When I managed the volunteer resources of one organization, it was common to find me standing in line at the supermarket where I would strike up conversations with people, mentioning what I did.  Since the most common reason people give for not bolunteering is "Nobody asked me" I, in essence, asked, or at least presented the option in the most attrractive manner.  Yes, I got volunteers as a result.  Before I left I had trippled the size of the program.

Why would that not apply to my novels?  Why would an author not use every means to acquaint readers with their existence and do it efficiently and in the best light?  I am convinced most advertising does little more than acquaint potential customers with a product, perhaps reminding them if they already knew.  The ad people think they are tricking us into buying a new car.  maybe they are.  But it's the consumer's decision.. once they know about a product, they can decide to buy it.  That goes for books, and how can we expect people to want to buy if they have never heard of the book?

So go to Amazon, whether .com or .co.uk or elsewhere,  and look at this book, then look around on the page to see others in a similar vein.  Everyone knows my rule.. never say you can't or don't know how to do something without adding the word "yet" to the end of the statement.  I don't know how to do a Facebook page for my novel -- yet!  But this book will help me learn.

OK All You Crown-Heads - William & Kate Paper Dolls!

My husband will roll his eyes at this, but I know you guys... all you crown-heads sucking up every bit of Kate and William you can get.  But can you play with them or see them in their underwear?  Now you can.  Graphics specialists Dover Publications has come out with William and Kate Middleton Paper Dolls.

That's the Amazon link, but if you go straight to Dover you can send free ecards to your crown-head friends and make their toes tingle with delight.

http://www.doverpublications.com/sampler/0304

Even the honeymoon will be over by the time of the mid-July HNS Conference, but I will expect to see you playing with your Kate and Wills paper dolls anyway.  'Nuff said.

Prince William in his underwear.

Dover, as you know, does those fabulous art sampler books, with editions to please every history obsessed author and reader.  It is highly likely that I will use some of their work in Alehouse Tales.  They were among the first to supply CD-ROMs  to make one's artistic life easier.  But since I have been getting their regular freebie sample emails I have discovered that they not only have books of clip art of a superior quality, they also do books, music, games, puzzles, and more.  Like paper dolls.

So go take a look.. crown-head or no, you will find something you like!

http://www.doverpublications.com/

Latest on "Beloved Pilgrim"

Richard Warren Field, author of The Swords of Faith, just wrote this for the back cover of Beloved Pilgrim:

"Nan Hawthorne remains absolutely loyal to the known historical facts while her characters bring fresh and exotic angles to the events. Elisabeth is a self-willed young woman, trapped in a role not compatible with her feisty independence. Her struggles against difficult odds, before and during the crusade, will keep readers enthralled."

And privately he called the book "gutsy", a word I can definitely live with.  Why "gutsy"?  two reasons.. because I deal with the character's being gay in their world and also because the crusade was an utter and ignominious  disaster.

I also have a logo now for Shield-wall Books (my publisher, and I mean my,) though not a decision on the hyphen...

It is by David Graham, who also did the cover of the book... see http://www.nanhawthorne.com/ .

It won't be long now...

False Colors, by Alex Beecroft

False Colors: An M/M Romance


Alex Beecroft

There is something about the Age of Sail in historical fiction that is highly conducive to M/M romance. Perhaps it sets the stage (or should I say "deck"?) for inevitable personal contact with quite immediate and fatal circumstances. Unlike two men in love in the landlubber world, there is little chance to hide the relationship, and however hard one might try to avoid the other, there is no way to do it. Further, since part of the theme of the genre and even part of its poignant appeal is the constant threat of exposure, you are going to find lots of room for gay relationships in the work of such authors as Alex Beecroft with this novel and Captain's Surrender and M. Kei's Pirates Of The Narrow Seas series.

In False Colors Alfie is attracted to his superior officer John, presently captain of a ship set up for failure. For his part, the strictly brought up John is puzzled by Alfie's unusual friendliness and relaxed behavior around him. They become friends, but it is not until Alfie so caringly looks after John when he is severely wounded that Alfie has an opportunity to show his affection, something John firmly rejects. When Alfie's old captain, Farrant,  arrives and John learns of his notorious life as a sodomite he confronts Alfie, is horrified by his candor about his sexuality, and rejects him once and for all. Alfie takes off and signs on with his former captain. John and Alfie meet again in Jamaica. John has come to grips with his own sexuality by now, but Alfie is on trial for sodomy. Unbeknownst to him, John goes to bat for him and exposes the plaintiffs at the cost of a captaincy of his own again. They sign on with the same mission to the Arctic where they try hard to avoid each other, but it's no use. A tense and ill fated encounter in John's cabin makes matters worse. It is not until they are back in Jamaica that there is any chance for a rapprochement.

It sounds like a simple story, but there are many facets to the fractious romance. The former captain, Farrant, is terrified of falling in love and acts recklessly, almost suicidally. Farrant's wife has been convinced by her husband's doctor that he is ill and that a cure can be found, a suggestion still made in these more enlightened times. John's childhood with a philandering father and religious zealot of a mother contrast with Alfie's antiquarian parents' utter rejection of their homosexual son. The impact of torture on each man, under different circumstances, stands as both a bond and a barrier between them. The seamier life of "sodomites" in the era comes up to shake John's growing acceptance that he and others like him are "made this way by God".

This is a well told story with really only one flaw. Beecroft's handling of scene changes and time passing can be abrupt. We lose some of the character development that could have taken place. This is the earlier of the two novels, so it cannot be faulted for the fact that Captain's Surrender bears a strong resemblance to it. I hope Beecroft gets out of this mold for any further books, which I fondly hope she writes.

What I liked about this novel, and I liked it a lot, is that unlike many M/M romances, it is not afraid to show struggle and self reproach as would be the case in such an era. Beecroft told me wshe has gotten grief for the more "real" aspects of her writing, things like rotten teeth, scurvy, and other "unromantic" parts of the scene. Personally I think the book was much the better for it, but then I am not what you would call a romance fan. I read books like this as literary historical fiction, and Beecroft satisfies the need for more than just a love relationship with its fits and starts. She gets into the times, not only the events but also the cultural impact constant even hysterical condemnation has on people who are simply in love. She handles John's religious self questioning and Alfie's hopelessness about finding love. He thinks to himself at one point that all he wants is to have someone in whose arms he can awake. To me that is the quintessence of love and, for lack of a better word, marriage. That anyone, including a god, can seek to deny anyone that homely comfort appals me. I thank Beecroft for making that point so strongly in this gutsy novel.

I bought this novel for use on my Kindle 3. As always, I thank the author and publisher for allowing text to speech to be enabled so I could read it.