Published: Aquila!
Aquila – Can Silvanus Escape That God? is a work of historical fiction, set on the Isle of Elba in the 6th century.
How much does it cost to research, write and self-publish a novel?
I was a total greenhorn when I started writing my first novel in May 2012. The trigger was that I simply couldn’t find a historical novel about the Isle of Elba (except relating to Napoleon’s brief exile there) while enjoying a fascinating hiking tour. Seeing the cave where the exiled hermit San Cerbone lived became…
The French Peasantry in the Seventeenth Century by Pierre Goubert
This book contains a wealth of otherwise hard-to-find facts about the often poverty-stricken and mostly unnoticed country folk in the diverse provinces and regions we now know as France. Everything warrants a chapter: food, clothing and housing; birth, marriage and death; farming and poaching practices; relationships between peasants, seigneurs, unwelcome soldiers, haughty priests and the revenue-hungry…
True to Her Faith by Harriet Gabourel
The subtitle of this book – A Story of France in the Time of the Huguenots – caught my attention, as some of my ancestors in Jersey were forced to flee France during the persecution after the revocation of the Edict of Nantes in 1685. The book is beautifully and vividly written, both as regards descriptions of…
Virna’s attempted rape – a reading
I’ve tried something new – a reading from my WIP, in which the runaway slave girl Virna tells Silvanus how she came by those ominous lashes. If you watch to the end, you’ll even see what she looks like… Here’s the video. I’ve done this in aid of a Philippine project to make books available…
Make the Reader Work!
One of my grossest errors when I first started writing fiction was to tell the reader exactly what was going on, why, and what the characters thought about it. How boring is this? Another pastime of mine was to observe snakes. There was something mystical about snakes. Some people thought they represented an evil power, but…
Different Types of Fiction
For a change, I’m including a guest post. Thanks, Lucy Adams, for an interesting and thought-provoking article. Why do people read books? What are the reasons that they are among the most important inventions of human civilization? You know the answer, although you may not be aware of it. Today I want to talk about…
Translating English into English
I’m afraid she did exactly what I feared. Much to my grief, the good lady editor said my book was unworthy. And she begged me not to take steps toward self-publishing, like finding someone to design a cover for it. ‘It’s far too long. The plot is all over the place. Most of the action happens off stage. It…
Re-Vision
It’s one thing to say I have completed the first draft of Aquila – all 34½ chapters – but quite another to say my book is finished. I’ve benefitted greatly from the constructive and critical feedback I’ve received over more than two years through kindly colleagues in the Ubergroup on Scribophile and through less tolerant friends at…
My new office
Snow-covered Alps in the distance, a red kite complaining about having been chased from its realm by angry crows, a waxing moon and last rays of sunshine at 4 pm on the 17th of December! Having completed the first draft of my book, much revision is called for. One approach I’ve discovered is to read it out aloud, chapter…