Tobias…
Tobias is finally available.
After 12 months of learning about Byzantium, about trade and icons and the venality of man – my beloved Tobias is ready to sing his great chanson de geste…
Dorothy Dunnett has been my icon for many years – to any who have followed me on my blog or on my professional Facebook page, they will know that I consider her the doyen of historical fiction, surpassed by no one.
I first discovered her one lazy September about twenty years ago. My children were on school holidays at the time and we were staying at House on the coast and I needed reading matter. Our village has a super little state government-funded library and our family haunted it through the school holidays. It always supplied what we needed, from toddlers right through YA to the adult years…
Last week I was invited to take part in a Meet my Character Blog Hop by the most excellent writer, Anna Belfrage.
Read on to find out about my most recent main character…
I often wonder how I got myself so deeply entrenched in the twelfth century. If one takes the TV or movie image of that era, it’s represented by mud, damp and ell upon ell of brown or taupe cloth which has been hastily cut and roughly sewn together to make tunics.
In between writing Tobias, I’m in the throes of making chutney from the largesse from our orchard. We’ve already frozen stacks of nectarines and apricots for all things jammy, desserty and cakey. (That word – cakey. Reminds me so much of the late M.m. Bennetts – writer of the most extraordinarily good historical fiction set in the Napoleonic Wars. Cakey was definitely her thing.)
I was fortunate enough to have been sent an ARC of Posie Graeme Evans’ new book, Wild Wood, over the summer and sat in my little coastal eyrie having one of those experiences that I love with reading. You know the one – where you can’t wait to go to bed at night to read the next chapter and the next?…
In writing Tobias, I’ve had to read such a lot of information about so many aspects of life for my characters…
It’s Valentine’s Day and it’s raining outside.
What to do after one has exchanged chocolates with the love of one’s life?
(Note: this post contains spoilers of The Gisborne Saga.)
Most of my reviews are excellent, between 4.5 and 5 stars, but recently a reviewer remarked of Gisborne: Book of Kings that the ending was twee. She still gave me a high star ranking for which I am very grateful, but I’m guessing she didn’t like the way in which the story was resolved…