New Books in Historical Fiction Interview

Many thanks to C.P Lesley of New Books in Historical Fiction for interviewing me. If you are interested in hearing about the writing of Blood Rose Angel, listen here.


For a chance to win one of five copies of Blood Rose Angel, enter the current Goodreads giveaway here.

Sign up to my Newsletter for the FREE short story that inspired The Bone Angel series: Ill-fated Rose.

#Beaujolais Nouveau Day #France

Thursday 19th November, 2015

Beaujolais Nouveau Day is marked in France on the third Thursday in November. Every year, millions of bottles of fresh, fruity Beaujolais wine are uncorked to celebrate the new vintage.

Under French law, the wine is released at 12:01 a.m., just weeks after the grapes have been harvested. Parties are held all over the country, and even abroad, to celebrate the first wine of the new season.

Banners across France proclaim “Le Beaujolais Nouveau est arrivé!”

French villages in the region, restaurants, bars and cellars get into the spirit of things with tastings, fireworks, music and festivals. And after the tragic events in Paris recently, any fête seems especially poignant.

Where will you be celebrating tonight?

If you happen to be in the area, some places to party: http://www.loisirs-beaujolais.fr/Beaujolais-Nouveau-2015-Fetes-et

Spirit of Lost Angels on Sale

An exciting weekend for me, as Book 3 in The Bone Angel trilogy, Blood Rose Angel, was finally released. To celebrate the occasion book 1, Spirit of Lost Angel, is reduced to 99p/99c HERE at all e-retailers.

Click to Tweet: Spirit of Lost Angels, French #histfic is on sale for only 99c/p! Don’t miss out –

myBook.to/SpiriteBook #atimeandaplace #triskelebooks

Has the #14thcentury #BlackDeath returned?

With the recent release of my latest novel, Blood Rose Angel, I was quite shocked to learn that a teenage girl in Oregon has been infected by bubonic plague from a flea bite during a hunting trip.

Bubonic plague is thought to be the cause of the 14th century "Black Death" that killed an estimated 50 million people. Most of us think of it as a disease of the past, but although rare, it is apparently still very much present, particularly in wildlife.




A plague extract from Blood Rose Angel...

... Morgane and I set off along the woodland road, the grass in the fields so parched there was barely anything for the beasts to graze on, and those that hadn’t perished from the pestilence were little more than skin and bone. The farmers must be counting down the days till they could drive their stock to the hay meadows.

But as we rode past the crop fields, there wasn’t a single farmer or labourer in sight. How sad not to see the usual rows of men and women moving their scythes across the golden grain-field strips. How unsettling not to hear their banter and shouts. How terrible to see the plentiful harvest lying wasted.

‘Why aren’t they harvesting the winter corn?’ Morgane asked.

All I could do was shake my head as we rode on through that dank, airless heat, the silence broken by the caw of a crow, the bark of a dog, the lonely bray of a donkey. In one pasture, all the cows and sheep lay dead. I gasped at the shock and the stench; at the dark cloud of vultures gorging––uncurbed and fearless––on the corpses. Both of us gagged as we skirted the maggot-riddled body of an ox.

‘Oh, Maman it’s awful.’

‘Yes, poppet, all too awful.’

Beyond the corpse, we came across a group of farmers drinking ale in the shade of an oak tree. ‘Why aren’t you harvesting your grain?’ I asked, halting Merlinette.

‘What’s the point?’ one said. ‘We could all be dead tomorrow … or today. Or in an hour.’

‘But we’ll never survive this winter, with no harvest.’

‘We might all be dead by this winter,’ he said, ‘so why waste time and energy on the harvest?’

 

Goodreads Giveaway of Wolfsangel

Fancy winning a copy of Wolfsangel: 2nd in The Bone Angel series, set during WW2 Nazi-occupied France? Enter the Goodreads giveaway here

#Medieval #histfic #Blood Rose Angel Longlisted for #msLexia Novel Competition

 

Very pleased to announce that the third book in my French historical The Bone Angel series, Blood Rose Angel, has been longlisted in the MsLexia Women's Novel Competition 2015. A short extract...

… Ava woke moaning and clawing at her temples. I started rubbing lavender and rose-oil across her brow, then her eyes rolled back till all I could see was the whites … no colour. Just all white.’

‘How horrible.’

‘Worse than horrible, Héloïse. By that time I was screaming … begging the Blessed Virgin to spare my twin––as close to me as my own soul. I’d always thought we’d go together, you see … I couldn’t imagine living if Ava was gone.’ She exhaled a long breath and looked down at the river; at the mountains standing upside down in the water.

‘The Devil crept inside Ava,’ Isa said, ‘and started up a shaking as an earthquake might splinter the earth when Dieu was in a fury. My mind was spinning. What physick could stop the brain spasms? A potion of dandelion roots? Saint John’s Wort seeds eaten for forty days? I didn’t have forty days, Héloïse. Not forty seconds! All I could do was kneel beside her and watch the falling sickness snatch my sister to the dark side.’

I didn’t know what to say, so I just curled my hand over hers.

‘There wasn’t a second to grieve,’ Isa said. ‘I had to free the unborn and baptise it before it died too, or owls would devour its soul. I didn’t ponder … knew I’d lose my nerve if I did. So I swiped a wine-soaked cloth over her belly, made the sign of the cross and sliced an arc clear across Ava’s womb. Then I unfurled the tiniest baby from the gaping red darkness.

‘At first I couldn’t look at that limp, underbaked non-born,’ she said, ‘dragged into the world against every force of nature. But then I couldn’t resist, and you know what? That little girl seemed too lovely to be doomed: pale wisps of hair, eyelids veined like a butterfly’s wing, fingers curling like flower petals at witch-light.’

I gave Isa a small smile as the sun sank onto the rim of the hills in a brilliant orange rind.

‘I laid her between her mother’s legs,’ Isa said, ‘and thought I glimpsed a movement … an eyelid blinking, a fluttering so slight I could’ve imagined it....

The Good, the Strange and the Inexplicable #Lyon's #ModernArt Biennial Exhibition

13th Biennale de Lyon

La Vie Moderne (Modern Life)


Place: La Sucrière, 47/49 Quai Rambaud – La Confluence – Lyon 2e

Interesting and informative guided tour, but only an hour, so just time to skim the surface:










1. (1st level): Mohamed Bourouissa: "The Hood". Photos on car hoods, during his time in Philadelphia.

(1st level): Mike Nelson: "A7, Route de Soleil". Anything but sunny. Burnt out, torn and smashed-up tyres. A bit depressing.

3. (2nd level): Magdi Mostafa: "The Surface of Spectral Scattering" : Cairo represented in lights.

4. (2nd level): Michel Blazy: "Pull Over Time": displayed on x 2 balconies  and "Running Al Fresco"

5. (Ground floor): Andreas Lolis: "Permanent Residence". 50 Marble elements put together to resemble a garden shed. Cardboard and polystyrene aspect.

6. (Ground floor): Anna Ostoya: "Yellow, Red, Blue"