Offer for UK Readers

I recently checked the price that Amazon.co.uk charges for my novel, An Involuntary King: A Tale of Anglo Saxon ENgland. I was appalled. Of course, it's a combination of the fact that the book costs too much anyway and that postage to ship from my printer to your green and sceptred-isle is likewise.

So I am making this offer to those to live in the land where my novel takes place, namely England. If you purchase the ebook version on Smashwords, I will give you a coupon for 100% off the cover price there. That is, I am giving you the book.

You will need to contact me to get the coupon code first.

hawthorne@nanhawthorne.com

You can check out the book's page on Smashwords for more information on the book itself.

To qualify you just have to tell me the name of the town and county you live in and the name of your favorite king or queen of England. That lpart is just to humour me.

Don't dilly dally... there's an expiration date for the coupon. It's not for a while, but still...

Nan Hawthorne

Introducing The Book Maven!

You remember a book or maybe just have heard of it, but you can't remember the title or the author. You really want to read it, but how can you if you don't know where or how to find it? Or perhaps you have a yen to read about a historical event or a famous person, and you wonder if anyone has written a novbel about it or him/her. Perhaps you even want to write the book yourself but want to be the first or only one?

Whatever your situation, you know this has happened to you. You can almost see the book in your hot little hands. You wish there was someone, a book maven you suppose, who knew all about books, in particular historical novels, and would know the title and author and could even find it for you.

There is. This week we launched a new feature on That's All She Read called, fortuitously enough called, well, Book Maven!

Everyone knows that Brandy Purdy can write one hell of a great historical novel. She's done it twice already, with The Confession of Piers Gaveston and The Boleyn Wife (originally published as Vendeance Is Mine.) (More on all three at http://www.brandypurdy.com.)

But did you know that she is also a talented bloodhound? No, I don't mean canis sleuthus criminallis floppus earae literally. For years she has been a professional book maven. People ask her to find books and she does. Even obscure or rare ones, if it is possible.

Now she is going to share part of that talent with us on That's All She Read. For instance, check out "Introducing Book Maven". You will get to see our bloodhound in action and how to get your own questions about historical novels answered.

Thanks, O redoubtable sleuth, for sharing your talent with our readers!

Ask the Book Maven a question.

Let the Pens Begin! National Novel Writing Month 2009

It is just over four hours until the start of National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo) here in the Pacific Time Zone. My friend Jack Graham started hours and hours ago, since he is in Sasebo, Japan. I know what he is going to write for NaNoWriMo this year, but I ain't gonna tell you... that's a good rule. What I will tell you is that Jack, who is a high school geometry teacher, has set up a local NaNoWriMo group composed of teachers and students from E. J. King High which is located on an army base. I will look forward to watching their pages pile up!

But, you ask, Nan, you are an established author! You don't need to prove to yourself you can write a novel. I blush, clear my throat, shuffle my feet and thank you for your generous assessment - and cast a baleful eye at the rest of you who giggled and rolled your eyes. But I answer your implied question, why am I doing NaNoWriMo? That's easy. Once I had my magnum opus finished and published, and it took me three years, not one friggin' month, all my drive seems to have wandered. I keep getting plotbunnies. That's not the problem, as most authors can attest. I just need to focus. The first novel had been brewing in me for decades. Now I had to see if I could start from scratch. I have started three novels since last fall, but while one, my NaNoWriMo from 2008, is nearly done, I have never finished it. I keep going back and forth between my mystery and a book of short pieces, fictionalized accounts of life in Anglo Saxon England. Coincidentally November happened again in 2009.. and I thought, hey, this could be just the thing!

What I hope to accomplish for NaNoWriMo 2009 is to get back into the habit of writing on a daily basis again. No wait, I do that now, but it's not books. I write blog entries, lots of them. I write little bits of fluff like this, book reviews, biographies of women in history, occasional fun pieces for Ghostletters. Other stuff. I want to get back into that magical addictive mindset of writing a single story. I want to get involved in people I am just now meeting, my characters. I want that state of mind where I am lost somewhere and sometime else. And I want that if at all possible to become my permanent state... Once one story is done, I start the next. They say it takes 21 days to develop a habit. NaNoWriMo is plenty long enough. To make the 50,000 words in 30 days I will have to write an average 1,667 words a day. I plan to do more, since I might actually want to come up for air on Thanksgivbing Day at least. I think I can write for as many as four hours at a stretch.. we'll see.

I also want a second novel (third book, fifth if you count my volunteer resource management training manuals) written and shopped to publishers. Do I know what I want to write? Boy howdy! It was just a cute little baby plotbunnty until about a month ago. I wanted to do a woman/woman love story with one a the women a crusader knight. Yeah, I now, there weren't any women knights. Well I am here to tell you that the research I have done in the past month puts that absolute statement of truth into doubt. And besides, historical fiction has a speculative aspect. What if? And I have come up with a plausible set of circumstances for how this phenomenon might come to pass. Don't worry, there will be an author's note giving my evidence and apolligies and resisting the temptation to tell people who don't like it to relax and enjoy the story.

I will set my story during the Crusade of 1101, one of the lesser known Crusades that was basically a farce - a tragic farce, but a farce all the same. It is also called the Crusade of the Faint-hearted because it was peopled by those who didn't quite actually, you see, I mean, I tried to go, but.. there was this.. um.. thing.. I had to do. Oh and others who did go but ran away. It was such a disaster it made all the subsequent Crusades harder to do. It gave rise to the power of the Italian merchant city-states because it lost the safe route so only ships could get to the Holy Land. I should restate that. The Crusade was an unqualified success. For the Turks. Into this flopping about and cowardly behavior on the part of the leaders of the crusade I am dropping my ear lest Elisabeth, a Herman novlewoman who takes her late twin brother's armor, weapons and squire and heads off to free .. well.. something from someone. or something. She will meet a Turkish woman, fall in love, and various hijinks will ensue. Will it end tragically or happily? I don't know for sure yet. My characters will tell me as the writing goes along.

If you would like to track my progress, the little widget in the upper right of this blog will theoretically keep up with that, though it isn't working yet and I can't get an answer from the folks at NaNo as to what to do about that. You can also check my author page on their site.

nicol_harrity's Novel Writing Page

... yes, I know.. that's not my name. Actually it is. That's my pen name for erotic novels, which is what I wrote last year, an erotic romance set in Oxfordshire right after Waterloo. My novel this year is not an erotic novel per se, but it was just easier to keep the same account.

Wish me luck, be patient with me, and I look forward to reporting on December 1 how it all went. As the road signs say, if you write to me, "expect delays".

Columbus Discovered North America? I Don't Think So!

Few people still believe that Christopher Columbus was the first European to discover America. Besides the legends of the Irish St. Brendan and the Welsh explorer Madoc, the journeys to Vinland the Good are backed up by Viking structures found in Newfoundland.

Apologists for Columbus claim that while they will admit that Leif Erickson got here earlier that the Norse failed to alert the rest of Europe, making their discovery essentially moot.

Not so! And I can prove it.

In 1112 AD Pope Paschell II appointed the first bishop of America. Of course, it wasn't called that yet, Amerigo Bespucci not having been born no less made the map and affixing his name. But he did call it by its Norse name, Vinland. He appointed Iceland born cleric Erik Gnupsson bishop of Greenland and Vinland. Gnupsson, also called Bishop Henricus, lived in the Greenland town of . He traveled to Vinland, it is reported, at least once to minister to the spiritual needs of the Norse settlers there.

So... if no one knew that the Norse had started to settle Binland, why would the Pope have appointed a bishop?

And why, if the Church knew about it, no one went to look?

So go ahead and celebrate October 12. If it makes you happy, who am I to point ouot it is the celebration of an also-ran, hmmm?

The Shakespeare Quote Generator

Give thy porcupine no tongue.

Which work of Shakespeare was the original quote from?

Get your own quotes:

See more like this at surrealist.com .

How Sea Witch Began – or How I Met Captain Jesamiah Acorne, by Helen Hollick

A bit of magic has been going on of late between Helen Hollick in England and me in Washingto n State. Not only are we both passionate devotees of Harold Godwinson, the last Saxon king of England, but we have discovered that certain of our characters are more real to us than many factual people we know. She sent me this marvellous story about how she met the protagonist of her Sea Witch series. Ass my own protagonist shares an office with me, I understood completely. Here Helen recounts how she came to know one Captain Jessemiah Acorne.

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

"But I don't really do fantasy, do I? I spent ten years writing my Arthurian trilogy without any fantasy whatsoever because I wanted to remove Arthur from the myth and magic."

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

The author trudged down the four flights of stairs and out into the London rain. She crossed the road opposite the Ritz, wondering if she could afford tea there. Checking her purse, she toddled into the less expensive Joe's Cafe instead.

She wasn’t sure about writing fantasy. Nor for teenagers anyway. She liked writing historical fiction, she liked character interaction, the what motivates people, the invention of characters and 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 is!
A Holiday. Dorset. England. A wet, windy October afternoon. The rain had poured all morning, but by early afternoon a weak, apologetic sun was squinting from behind a barricade of grey cloud. The author decided to walk the dogs on the beach. She armed herself with weapons against the weather. A hat, a coat, wellies and her ipod.

All week she had been researching her latest interest; the truth behind pirates. Now the film she had seen (and the character she had fallen hook-line-and-sinker in love with) was all very well, but it was not historically accurate. Tortuga, for instance, was cleared of pirates in the 1600's, Port Royal was no longer a town, 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, as he had yesterday and the day before, she wondered, "What would happen if a charming rogue, such as Jack Sparrow, met up with a white witch? Not someone like Hermione in the Harry Potty books, someone more like Yoda in Star Wars – but prettier? 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 - if he is not blocking her thoughts.

The author crossed the stream at the bottom of the cliff, that smelt suspiciously of things that were not fishy (or were fishy, in the dodgy sense of the word) 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 the wet sand, listening to the soundtrack of Pirates of the Caribbean, cursing because the earpiece kept falling out of her ear.

She had the beach to herself, even the seagulls had gone, although one of the dogs did find a dead crab.

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

What if... what if.... her mind was racing, her heart beginning to thud with excitement. What if there was a 12th ship that went down? 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 ...... called..... Acorn! Yes, boats were made from oak ... yes, Acorn! The Author was getting REALLY excited now! The boy - for he was only a boy then ... 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 whores crumpets and strumpets, but there was also the horror of the hangman's noose dangling over him. Then one day ... one day he meets a girl. He was in deep trouble, 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 any more. And the girl, who was really a white witch, thought the pirate didn't love HER anymore. So they were both very 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 - one that happened to be full of tobacco to be taken to England to be sold)

The author's backside was getting a bit numb, so she moved to a softer rock, but found that the cushioning sea weed was wet, so walked on up the beach instead.

The annoyed bully brother is in league with the creep who married the girl... Tiola! the author thought, her name is Tiola. Tiola what? The author kicked at a piece of drift wood, cursed in true pirate fashion. There was a rock behind the piece of wood that she hadn't seen. Tiola is a good witch, she is all that is good... a.l.l. t.h.a.t. i.s. g.o.o.d ... an anagram! An anagram of ... furious muttering .. an anagram of Tiola Oldstagh. Yes! Only it will be pronounced Tee-la not Te-OH-la.

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 was blowed if she could find one.

The annoyed bully brother is in league with the creep who married the girl Tiola. 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 bad men arrange to meet at Nassau, guessing that the pirate will turn up, looking for amnesty. Which he does - but the bully brother nabs him & chains him up in the bilge of a ship & heads off back to Virginia where he has promised the other man that he will hang ... only the bully brother has no intention of hanging the pirate, he wants to have his fun first and punish the pirate for stealing his ship.
Tiola is a witch and she loves her pirate. She tells the baddie who is her (forced) 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 because the witch is a witch and because the ship is special, the girl and the ship sort of become one and .... and the author could see a small fantasy sub-plot coming here, something about Tethys, the goddess, the Spirit of the Sea who wanted the pirate for herself ....

The author was quite pleased, it seemed a good basic plot. Lots of character interaction, the chance to get to know these two young lovers, the boy meets girl, boy falls in love, boy loses girl then finds her again plot, but if Shakespeare could use it over and over ... not that the author was anywhere as good as Shakespeare, but she had five other books published and loads of people seemed to enjoy her writing style and the way she brought life into her characters and made them real ... and her fans particularly said she was good at creating loveable rogues.

So all she needed was her pirate.
She couldn't use Jack Sparrow (as much as she would like to use him!) ... she had reached the rocks, turned around. The wide sweep of the beach was deserted. The rain had washed away everyone who normally came to the beach of an afternoon. She looked at the wet sand where the tide was scurrying in with lace-edged patterns of foam. Saw a man standing there, twenty or thirty 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 left hand, he took off his hat and with his right, gave the author a small, acknowledging salute.

An earring dangled from one ear... an earring shaped like an acorn.
"Hello Jesamiah Acorne," said the author.
(and I swear that is all true!)

The Books

Sea Witch: Being the First Voyage of Capt. Jessemiah Aciorne (Sea Witch Chronicles #1) / Amazon UK

Pirate Code: Sea Witch Series (Sea Witch Chronicles) / Amazon UK

Bring It Close: Being the Third Voyage of Capt. Jessemiah Acorne and the Ship, Sea Witch / Amazon UK

More from Helen Hollick

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Stuff and Nonsense: Three Web Previews

Book Giveaway!


Brandy Purdy's The Boleyn Wife won't be released untilJanuary 2010, but you can get a free, autographed book right away by visiting That's All She Read by the end of this week.

Check out the look of my new web site!


To see it live, just go to Nan Hawthorne, Historical Novelist

Facebook Fan Pahe for An Involuntary King


Visit the fan page and check out the stellar names you will find in the members list!

While you are there, click on the link to see a short slideshow illustrating the progress of the War in Affynshire, now being chronicled at An Involuntary Kintg: The Stories.