Making It Up

At Falmouth University Thursday 22 March 11.30-13.00 giving the keynote presentation in the Research Students Symposium. How do we make something from nothing? How do we get from the blank page to the book or the artwork? I will focus on the development of my future fiction, Meanda, set on a water planet. The symposium is…

Experiencing Suspense

Can I get through treacherous snow and howling winds in the UK today to reach the Gers in south-west France for a weekend workshop with a group of delightful writers? If I make it, we plan to consider narrators, voice, tense, creating characters, creating suspense, settings, and constructing fictional worlds. That should be enough to…

Images from the medieval world

I am running a series of daily image trailers on Twitter prior to an illustrated talk that I am giving at Downham Market Library on Monday 11 December, 2-3pm. A lot of the research I undertake for my historical fiction involves images, objects, places and maps. To celebrate the publication of my latest novel, The…

Palaces and bishops

Thank you to Pembroke Dock Library for such an enjoyable event last week when I presented my new novel, The Drowned Court, and talked with the audience about medieval life and the process of writing historical fiction. And thanks too, to Bob, my ‘muse’, for driving me around Pembrokeshire again, so that we were able…

Hnefatafl -Viking boardgame

Since characters in Dublin who appear in my novel trilogy, Conquest, play the Viking boardgame, hnefatafl, I was excited to see a 9th century set of glass pieces from the game in a fabulous exhibition of medieval glass at the Cluny Museum in Paris this week. I am giving illustrated talks on the Conquest novels…

History Questions

My new historical novel, The Drowned Court, is published next week and a guest post by me on writing the novel is up today on Tony Riches’ blog, The Writing Desk. ‘I approach writing all my novels by asking questions that I have, after researching the historical evidence.’ The questions that drove my writing in…

Book Reviews Request

‘I could not put this book down from the moment I started it. I practically inhaled the content.’ Poppy Coburn on Daughter of the Last King To those of you who have already read one or more of my historical novels: I would be grateful if you get the time to post a brief review…

As the drawbridge came down, I ventured in

      Publication Day for my new historical novel, The Drowned Court, is approaching. The novel continues the story of Nest ferch Rhys and King Henry I in 12th century Wales, England and Normandy.         A review of the first book in the trilogy, Daughter of the Last King: ‘As the…

A Norman feminist?

King Henry I was the third Norman king of England, after his father, William the Conqueror, and his older brother, William II. Henry reigned in England and most of Wales for 35 years, keeping a peace there, but he struggled with frequent outbreaks of rebellion in Normandy, where he was Duke from 1106. It is…

Flying Far and Wide Through Words

‘I had looked out upon the wide kingdoms of the Earth as if I were caught up in ecstasy, flying far and wide through words …. Now, however, I will return exhausted to my black-clad life,’ declared the monk historian, Orderic Vitalis, who lived and worked in a Norman monastery in the 12th century. The…