Schemes, Mice and Men.

 

 

 

In 1785, Robert Burns wrote one of his most famous poems, “To A Mouse”. It contains the lines:

 

The best laid schemes o’ Mice an’ Men

Gang aft agley,

An’ lea’e us nought but grief an’ pain,

For promis’d joy!

 

Which, for those of us who do not speak the language can be translated as:

The best laid schemes of Mice and Men

Go oft awry,

And leave us only grief and pain,

For Promised joy!

 

And so it proved with the publication of Crime and Punishment in Tudor England: From Alchemists to Zealots, which should have been published on 30th August. A glitch at the printers, which nobody knew about – or if they did, kept it to themselves – meant that all the preparations to promote the book suddenly screeched to a halt. I managed to stop all the blogs etc. save one from going out. And that, naturally, was my blog!

A friend, a more sanguine writer than I, said these things happen. Let’s just say it wasn’t one of my better days, since I spent most of it fulminating against everything, although readers will be happy to learn I didn’t kick the dog, only the filing cabinet.

However, as the late, much-missed Claire Rayner said This, too, will pass. And so, 21 days later than scheduled, the book is out in the world and available for purchase. Hurrah!

 

To precis the blog that went out by accident, and so you don’t have to look it up, this is what it said:

 

Crime and Punishment in Tudor England: from Alchemists to Zealots 

is is not an academic book, but for the Everyman reader or those who will find it a source for more in-depth research should they so wish.

The book reviews the law as it developed from Roman law through the Vikings and King Alfred. The latter spent time in Rome soaking up the legal system and was familiar with it. He brought some of its tenets into English law when he became king. 

Then follows a look at policing—dire, unpaid, and dangerous, prisons, equally appalling, and the effect of population movement on law & order in Tudor England. How agricultural and other rural practices affected the movement of people from the country to the towns in an effort to find work. This, of course, had an ongoing effect on vagrancy and begging. And, of course, beggars, as they are sometimes perceived in our 21st-century, were viewed with hostility, suspicion, and violence. 

I must warn readers of a delicate constitution, there is a gory section, which details the punishments and exactly what happens to the body when those punishments are inflicted upon it. If you want to know what happens when you are decapitated, burned, boiled or hanged, this section is for you. However, I do give you a warning that some might find it too upsetting to read. I will leave you to imagine what it was like to research and write, but I felt it would be cowardly to leave that section out.

The first part of the book sets the scene for specific Case Studies, where you will find the weird, the wonderful, and the far from wonderful. You will meet arch con-man Gregory Wisdom and find out that stupidity is not a 21^st century attribute, nor limited to the poor; John Daniell, who tried to blackmail the puissant Robert Devereux, Earl of Essex, favourite of Queen Elizabeth I; why so many women accused of witchcraft confessed to things nobody today would believe; where Charles Dickens found his ideas for Oliver Twist; the different levels of treason, and many more.

Crime and Punishment in Tudor England: from Alchemists to Zealots is out now.

You can find it here: https://bit.ly/3PLEM93 and here: https://mybook.to/Bt34P5 

You can read more about April Taylor here:

 Twitter  Amazon UK  Amazon USA Facebook

 

 

 

  

How did a writer of historical crime fantasy come to write a non-fiction book on Crime and Punishment in Tudor England?

 About 15 years ago, I was on a cruise ship going around the Caribbean islands for a month. It was not a pleasure cruise; I was responsible for forming and teaching the passengers who had joined the cruise choir. Some of them hadn’t sung since they were at school, but they had to learn enough music to sing two concerts given in front of all the other passengers. It was fun. 

But as I stared out at the port of Antigua, singing was the last thing on my mind. A phrase—Henry’s black-eyed boy—kept running through my head. I wanted to write a book about what might have happened had Anne Boleyn given Henry VIII the strong, healthy, male heir he so desperately wanted. Which meant, of course, changing history. 

Well, that was a problem, because pedantic is my middle name and I didn’t want to change the history. So how could I change the history but only tweak it a bit? I couldn’t, so, in the end, I decided to not only change history but play into the beliefs and fears of magic and witchcraft so prevalent in the Middle Ages. The Tudor Enigma, featuring my apothecary at Hampton Court Palace was born, and the books were accepted and published by Harlequin.

Fast forward 8 years, and suddenly, an email from Pen and Sword Publishing popped into my inbox. The editor loved The Tudor Enigma books and how did I feel about writing a proper non-fiction book on crime and punishment in Tudor England?

How did I feel? Panicked, yes; enormously complimented, yes; terrified, yes. I said yes. Two years later, Crime and Punishment in Tudor England: From Alchemists to Zealots has just hit the bookshops. I won’t lie, it was sometimes a soul-searing experience. The depth of man’s inhumanity to man, not just in how the punishments were allocated, but how some were refined to extend the victims’ agony, led me to some very dark places.  

Crime and Punishment in Tudor England: from Alchemy to Zealots, is not written for an academic audience, but for the Everyman reader. In other words, for those people who know a bit, or even, perhaps, very little about ordinary life in Tudor England and would like to know more; but in an accessible way and with some low-key humour thrown in.

The book begins with a review of how things were before that momentous day on 22nd August 1485 when Richard III was killed on Bosworth battlefield. Richard had worn his crown into battle but lost it while he was being hacked to death. It was found in a nearby bush, and Henry Tudor’s supporters lost no time in placing it on his head. 

The book reviews the law as it developed from Roman law through the Vikings and King Alfred. The latter spent time in Rome soaking up the legal system and was familiar with it. He brought some of its tenets into English law when he became king. And, of course, it is to Roman law that we owe many of our current legal Latin terms.

The book then reviews the state of policing—dire, unpaid, and dangerous, prisons, equally appalling, and the effect of population movement on law & order in Tudor England. How agricultural and other rural practices affected the movement of people from the country to the towns in an effort to find work. This, of course, had an ongoing effect on vagrancy and begging. And, of course, beggars, as they are sometimes perceived in the 21st-century, were viewed with hostility, suspicion, and violence. 

I have to warn you there is a gory section, which details the punishments and exactly what happens to the body when those punishments are inflicted upon it. If you want to know what happens when you are decapitated, burned, boiled or hanged, this section is for you.  

The foregoing sets the scene for Case Studies, where you will find the weird and the wonderful, and the far from wonderful. You will meet arch con-man Gregory Wisdom and find out that stupidity is not a 21^st century attribute, nor limited to the poor; John Daniell, who tried to blackmail the puissant Robert Devereux, Earl of Essex, favourite of Queen Elizabeth I; why many women accused of witchcraft confessed to things nobody today would believe; where Charles Dickens found his ideas for Oliver Twist; the different levels of treason, and many more.

 

"Crime and Punishment in Tudor England: From Alchemists to Zealots". 

Here is the link:
 https://t.co/LuiSW5trex

 

Workers’ playtime ain’t what it used to be: The work/life balance

Reams have been written about the work-life balance. How vital it is for our wellbeing and mental health to make sure that life is not all about work. That we remain human beings and not human doings.

 

So one wonders why some countries – and although I am highlighting the USA here, I know other countries are just the same - still have a mindset that if workers take the holiday they are due, they are somehow slackers, not committed to their job; that if they are not on call 24/7, they are not pulling their weight; that they must never go anywhere without their phone in their hand. They are conditioned to be driven, otherwise they are sub-standard. In the USA, some people have been fired for taking time off because they are ill. If you’re not here, I will find someone who can be. The people who inhabit the land of the free have so little holiday time they have to fit a lifetime of experiences into two weeks or fewer.  That’s relaxing…not.  This is a lifestyle being promulgated by industry slowly but surely.

 

 That leads on to what these driven people do in the few hours they are not at their desk. Do they sit back, kick off the shoes and look at the ocean? Seemingly not. Millions of them have a work hard, play hard mindset; they conquer the world at their desk and then go and kill somebody on the squash court. I cannot help but think this will end up with their brains like engines on maximum revs 24/7, leading to breakdowns and burnouts.

 

 It is well documented and has been for years that people need downtime from work in order to make their work life mindset function at a higher level. All work and no play doesn’t just make Jack a dull boy, it makes him a sick boy. Here are a few studies you might find interesting:

https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10902-012-9345-3

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6617405/

https://hbr.org/2004/10/presenteeism-at-work-but-out-of-it 

 

Writers are no different. We, too, need a work/life balance, but even those of us who are lucky enough not to need a day job and who work from home, don’t always find it easy to live a balanced life. Because if we are not writing, we are usually working out plot twists or what happens next, or what aspect of research we are going to tackle tomorrow. 

 

I have, in the past, managed to work out the details of a complicated plot twist whilst cross-stitching an entire row of stitches in the wrong colour. More than once. If I am walking the dog, I am likely to be dictating the next bit of the story or muttering bits of dialogue to myself. Or, when accompanied by my (human) dog-walking companion, explaining abstruse bits of history to her, or talking through why my main character has to do what he/she is about to do. Why on earth she would be interested in me pondering the reason William of Ypres retreated at the Battle of Lincoln in 1141, with his contingent of troops, in the least bit interesting is debatable. (Especially when contemporary chroniclers accused him of cowardice in leaving King Stephen to be captured by the Empress Matilda’s forces. My opinion is that he obeyed the instructions of Sun Tsu in The Art of War, and there is every reason to think that William, educated as he was, and experienced, hardened battle commander as he was, had read Sun Tsu’s advice.) See, I’m at it again! 

 

What I am trying to say is that, we writers need to leave the words behind for a few hours every day and concentrate on something completely different that requires total concentration, in order to be fresh enough to come back to the words the next day with renewed enthusiasm. By which I mean something complicated but different. For me that is dressmaking, painting, and singing. You can’t sing properly if half your brain is thinking about your latest magnum opus, and you certainly can’t sew properly if you aren’t concentrating on putting on that facing so it fits perfectly. If you don’t, you are likely to sew it on the wrong side of the garment; (been there, done that).

 

I am learning – slowly – that my relaxation is just as important as my work time. That if I am not at my desk all the time, that is good. And that if I don’t take the downtime, the writing I do produce will be not my best work.

 

  Dangers of Destiny: Book 1 in the Luke Ballard Chronicles

https://mybook.to/aEYs

   

Crime and Punishment in Tudor England: From Alchemists to Zealots

Published by Pen and Sword on 30th August 2023

https://mybook.to/eDdY9

 

You can find out more about me here:

Twitter  Amazon UK  Amazon USA 

Can you make a fantasy world believable?

I am pedantic and I do not mind admitting it. Pedantic with a deep love of British history from the Normans to the Tudors. So, when I wanted to create the Luke Ballard Chronicles in my fantasy Tudor world, a world where Anne Boleyn was Henry VIII’s second and last wife and still his Sweet Nan, I knew it would only work for me if I kept the history as authentic as possible.

 

It was only about five years ago I realised my original inspiration was the Lord Darcy books by Randall Garrett, which I read almost half a century ago. I loved the world he built, where the Plantagenets were still monarchs aided by magicians, who used traditional paraphernalia of sorcery. As I write this, have decided I will now find the books and re-read them.

 However, back to the plot! My decision was that everything that had happened in the Tudor era up to 1536 should remain true, but the world I built after that, would still have people we know about, like Jane Seymour and Thomas Cromwell. Their roles in my books would be a little different. In order to write this kind of book and make it believable, the writer must have a sound knowledge of the period in which the books are set. And, since Pen & Sword Publishing commissioned me to write Crime and Punishment in Tudor England: from Alchemists to Zealots, I like to think I have achieved that.

 My principal problem was making my apothecary from the Outer Green of Hampton Court Palace a magician. Especially in an era when the slightest whiff of anything that smacked of sorcery was a quick road to being burned alive—in other words, without the executioner strangling the victim first.

Balance and the order of the universe were principal beliefs at that time. When Shakespeare makes Northumberland, upon hearing that his son, Hotspur has been killed in battle say:

Let heaven kiss earth! Now let not Natures hand

Keep the wild flood confined. Let order die…

that is Shakespeare’s shorthand conveying the father’s utter desolation at the death of his son. And everyone in the audience would have recognised it as such.

To be believable, my world had to have strict boundaries. I decided my apothecary would have limited powers; he would be an elemancer, casting his spells by calling on the power of the elements, but only ever working in the light and love of God. But my elemancer would need assistance. I invented helpmeet dogs, greysprings, springing spaniels (their medieval name) crossed with greyhounds, to produce a dog with the scent skills of the spaniel, but the sight abilities of the greyhound. And, to maintain the order and balance of the universe, elemancers would have mortal enemies, sunderers, whose only ambition was to cause chaos and strife, and thus gain power and riches. In a parody of their foe, sunderers also had nasty, ugly, vicious dogs called umbrans who helped them.

When I first had the idea, my intention was to begin after Henry VIII’s death, with his son by Anne Boleyn now Henry IX. And that was the first book I wrote. Harlequin liked it, sent me a contract, and I wrote two more. For various reasons, I decided that would be it for Luke Ballard. And, under the terms of the contract, I could not write about him for 7 years. So, I turned elsewhere and wrote other things. But Luke remained, stubbornly fixed, in the back of my head. I wanted to tell the story of how he came to be an elemancer, and how he came to work for the monarch. Thus was Dangers of Destiny born.
The books originally published by Harlequin will be rewritten and re-issued as sequels. And there are plots for further three after those. 

In all the books, I have referred to events that actually happened, but changing just a few details so that they set the storylines firmly in their time, detailing real events. What I really wanted was for my readers to wonder if, in some parallel universe, these things could actually have happened. 

 

You can find Dangers of Destiny here:  https://mybook.to/aEYs

 

Crime and Punishment in Tudor England: from Alchemists to Zealots will be published by Pen and Sword on 30^th August 2023. You can pre-order it here: https://bit.ly/43f0jeB   

You can read more about April Taylor here:

 Twitter  Amazon UK  Amazon USA YouTube

 

Introducing Luke Ballard. Apothecary at Henry VIII’s Hampton Court Palace. Oh, and he is a magician, too…

 When I first conceived the basis of the Luke Ballard stories, I was in the middle of the Atlantic, on a cruise ship, responsible for turning passengers, many of whom hadn’t sung since they were at school, into a choir and teaching them to sing as a united entity. And giving two concerts to the rest of the passengers to prove I had. And not making a fool of myself.

Instead of worrying about the tenor line in Elgar’s As Torrents in Summer, I was listening to a voice in my head telling me to write about Henry’s black-eyed boy. When I finally had time to sit and think it all out, and play what-if?, Henry’s black-eyed boy turned out to be Henry VIII’s son by Anne Boleyn.

In real life, Anne miscarried him. In my thesis, I decided he had lived, that Anne had overthrown all conspiracies aimed at ousting her, and she was still Henry VIII’s Sweet Nan. All of which meant I had to change history to what might have happened in a parallel universe. And, since the universe was mine to build, I would add in magic. 

It took a while to find Luke Ballard, my protagonist. He would be an elemancer - a magician who casts his magic in the light and love of God and always works for justice. His magic was to be based around elements and, in the interests of maintaining the balance of the universe, he had to have enemies. Sunderers, in fact, whose only ambition is to gain power and wealth, preferably by demonic means. 

I wrote 3 books, originally published by Harlequin, but I wanted to tell the story of what happened before Henry VIII died; how Luke came into his own. Which led directly to Dangers of Destiny. This is the new prequel to the series formerly known as The Tudor Enigma, but which will now be called The Luke Ballard Chronicles.

In Dangers of Destiny, Luke Ballard is a raw apprentice elemancer, sent into Hampton Court Palace to identify the sunderer who has put King Henry VIII into a deep trance. If Henry dies, England will descend into chaos, allowing the Catholic European powers to gain control. Time is short. The King grows weaker by the day. But in the midst of the many intrigues and conspiracies whirling around the palace, how can Luke tell friend from foe? Who can he trust? 

Can Luke, thrown into the maelstrom of the Tudor court, identify and destroy the enemy while remaining undetected, and save the King’s life? The stakes are high. And highest for Luke if he fails.

The original three books will be revised and re-issued in due course.  

Dangers of Destiny is free on Kindle Unllimited or £3.99 from Amazon.

You can find it here: https://mybook.to/aEYs

You can read more about April Taylor here:

 Twitter  Amazon UK  Amazon USA YouTube

Why are some authors like harp seals?

Hurrah! Who Wants To Live Forever is out in the world. Yay! This will be—allegedly—Georgia Pattison's last case. 

And, as is always the case, the most enjoyable part of writing any book is…the writing. So, where do harp seals come into this, I hear you ask. Because it is the bit after the birth of the book that is a complete pain in the neck. Let me explain.

Did you know snakes have no maternal instincts? At all. They lay eggs and don’t bother to hang about to see if they hatch or if the snakelets manage to fight off predators. Female harp seals are little better. They are glued to their pups for about 2 weeks, during which, mum doesn’t eat anything. After that, she abandons her offspring—presumably to nip up to the local fish shop. 

Some authors, of whom I am one, are a bit like that. 

We get the “great idea”, play “What-if?” for a while to see if it has legs, and jot down a few notes or create a detailed plot line. We “see” our characters, imagine them in different scenarios. Then, we sit and write that first draft, which for this author, is a white-hot, full-pelt, romp through about 90,000 words, not bothering to agonise as to whether any particular word is the right one, simply getting the story on the page. Finishing that first draft is a mixed blessing. The story is there, in black and white, but it is never the spectacular, perfect entity that I imagined. And how could it be? But it has been fu

In the case of Who Wants To Live Forever, the what-if? spark was What if someone was murdered at a wedding and then it transpired the victim was..... And off I went.

Then begins the sojourn in the Editing Cave. Some authors love editing. I have grown to quite like it. This is the time when I can agonise over making sure I have the right word in the right place. First of all, does the structure of the book hold together? Are there any plot holes, anywhere where your reader is going to say How did she know that? Have the clues been seeded carefully enough? One of my readers paid me the enormous compliment of saying I went back and the clue was there and I still didn’t see it.

And, as with snakes and harp seals, it is time for the fledgling to leave the nest—or be kicked out of it. I always do promo for a couple of weeks, but then, just like the snakelets and harp seal cubs, it has to fend for itself. My books don’t so much get launched, as slide in through the back door. Why? Because the joy is in the writing, not in the promotion. And, allied to that, I cannot force anyone to buy my books and neither would I want to. But mostly, because I am usually in the process of trying to produce the next book, which will be perfect.

So for the next two weeks Who Wants To Live Forever will be looked after, shown to the world, and nurtured in the hope that a few people buy it, yes, but that they also enjoy it. And after that, it will fend for itself, except when I get a spare few minutes to think about tweeting it or Facebooking it. 

If you would like to read Who Wants to Live Forever, you can find it here: https://mybook.to/RRGsWE

But until January, I shall give the keyboard—and myself— a rest. 

A Very Merry Christmas and a Happy and Prosperous 2023 to you all!

And if you want to know more about me:

You can find me on Facebook, Twitter Amazon UK 

Wading through treacle - the adventures of a writer.

  Confucius, the Chinese philosopher is alleged to have said "May you live in interesting times". I think he meant it as a curse. John Lennon was equally eloquent when he said, "Life is what happens to you when you're busy making other plans."

I think this is accurate for most of us at some point(s) in our lives. Certainly, here in the UK, everything seems to be in a state of flux. Our monarch of 70 years died suddenly - well suddenly to us - and we have had 2 prime ministers in the course of 6 weeks. It is unsettling. When that spills over into your working and private life, it can prove very difficult. A series of family illnesses, including a couple of "end of life" situations certainly puts a strain on every aspect of your daily routine. But the best thing to do is to stick to that routine if you possibly can. To keep all the balls in the air or, for those of us who remember the variety hall act, to keep all the plates spinning on top of the sticks.

My writing plan, after finishing the Tudor Crime and Punishment book for Pen and Sword and the edits, was to concentrate on picking up a book I began in 2013 as a prequel to the Tudor Enigma series published by Harlequin, and which features Luke Ballard, the apothecary in the Outer Green of Hampton Court Palace. The setting is an alternate Tudor universe that, had Anne Boleyn carried her boy baby to full term in 1534, could well have been true.

However, things didn't work out that way, either for poor Anne or for me. Harlequin decided to keep the series to three books, so the fledgling The Danger of Destiny became an unfinished manuscript. However, having had my rights to those books returned, I decided to finish the prequel. Everything started well. I managed to write the final two chapters. And then came the formidable task of filling in the gap.

All writers are aware of a pitfall called the soggy middle. That is what confronts me now. And for me to get through it, I must employ a couple of disciplines. Focus. Concentration. For writers, that manifests as sitting down at the keyboard and doing the job. It has a name. Bum Glue. The fact that I am sitting here, surrounded by notes of what has to happen in the gap between 55k words and 90k words and I am writing this blog instead, is indicative of my current butterfly brain. However, the instant I have written this, I promise I shall crack on.

So, the prequel to the Luke Ballard books. Haven't quite decided on a new title for the series yet. Luke Ballard is an elemancer - a magician governed by strict rules. Elemancers work for the good of all in the grace of God. They have - well, this is me - a helpmeet, a dog called a greyspring. In the interests of the balance of nature, if the elemancer is male, his greyspring will be female and vice-verse. 

Luke's greyspring is called Joss. She is there to protect him when he goes into trances and help when he encounters the mortal enemies of elemancers - sunderers, whose only aim is to sow discord and hatred. They also have helpmeets - little black dogs called umbrans.

The year is 1546 and Henry VIII lies ill at Hampton Court, stricken by a mystery illness. Luke Ballard, who has only recently discovered his elemancer talent, is taxed with investigating what ails the King. Young girls have been found murdered with evil signs cut into their bodies. Then another girl goes missing and one of the kitchen scullions is found drowned in the palace soup vat. It quickly becomes clear sunderers are doing their utmost to destabilise England, but just who are they and who is their master? More importantly, can Luke hide his talent enough to ensure the sunderers are unaware of him?

With luck and a following wind, I should have this first draft finished before Christmas. Wish me luck.