Lynn Bryant writes stories of war and love in the Napoleonic
era. One day I may make her hero, Paul Van Daan meet my James Burke just as,
with a sort of inevitability, Lynn and I met up at various conferences about
Napoleonic military history.
Lynn has written several stories about Van Daan’s adventures
in the Peninsular War, but she has now branched out into another series
featuring the exploits of Captain Hugh Kelly, one of the stalwart sailors who
kept Britain safe from Boney. It should be an interesting series. It’s
important to remember that, at the time, the Navy was much more highly regarded
than the army and the war in the peninsula was seen as a bit of a sideshow. The
real land fighting was being done by other countries further north in Europe while
the Navy was engaging French vessels on a regular basis. In fact, our land
offensive in Spain was possible only because of British control of the western
coast of Iberia, maintaining our lines of supply and, in the early days of the
war at least, constantly harassing French positions near the coast.
An Unwilling Alliance
is set in the year before the start of the Peninsular War and centres on the
British attack on Copenhagen in 1807. This is one of those military engagements
that the British prefer to forget all about. British ships bombarded the Danish
capital when Denmark was a neutral country. The aim of the exercise was to make
the Danish fleet unavailable to Napoleon if, as expected, he invaded Denmark.
However, there were inevitably considerable civilian casualties and nowadays
the attack would almost certainly be seen as a war crime. Even at the time (as
reflected in Lynn’s book) there was considerable disquiet about the action.
Unlike me, Lynn is a “proper historian”
(shortlisted for the first Society for Army Historical Research fiction award,
no less) and she provides more military detail than I do, with a lot of very
precise factual information about the deployment of particular regiments and
brigades. I remember reading her fictional account of an action in the
Peninsular War and then later coming across a contemporary description of it in
my own research and realising how well I understood the situation from Lynn’s
story. She really is very good and weaves the detail into her fictional
narrative. But An UnwillingAlliance is not just a convincing war
story. It is also a romance. In fact the opening chapters are almost entirely
devoted to Hugh Kelly’s pursuit of the girl who is clearly destined to become
the love of his life, Roseen Crellin.
I can get very irritated by Georgian romances. A
particularly annoying example was the recent TV adaptation of Sanditon. Young ladies meet unsuitable
men in the peculiar absence of chaperones. Introductions are sloppily informal.
Any real Georgian woman behaving in this way would promptly be labelled a tramp
and unfit for decent society. So I could easily have given up by the end of Chapter
1 as Roseen Crellin wanders unescorted across the hills of the Isle of Man in
contravention of every rule of decent behaviour. However, Lynn gives Roseen a
convincing back-story to explain her behaviour and, more importantly, the poor
girl is shunned by decent society and
we see the social cost of breaking with convention.
When Roseen’s ill-considered behaviour destroys her budding
romance with Hugh Kelly and threatens to ruin her life, the story catches
something of the reality of the limitations that the world placed on young
women back then. And because the social environment and the character of Roseen
have been so well established, when an even more outrageous breach of decent
behaviour results in a near miraculous reuniting of the lovers, I was perfectly
prepared to accept it. This is, after all, as much a romance as a war story
and, though I won’t give the game away with the details, as soon as Roseen sets
out on a particularly inappropriate venture we all have a pretty clear idea of
where it will end up.
Lynn writes in fluid prose. The exciting bits are exciting,
the romantic bits are romantic and the whole thing has a wonderful sense of
place. Lynn is a proud resident of the Isle of Man and her love of the island
comes through. It made me want to visit, and what better recommendation can you
have for a writer’s descriptive powers?
All in all, I found this a book that is difficult to fault.
If you like Georgian romances, Napoleonic war stories, or just a dashed good
read, I do strongly recommend it.
(Some people will think that I’m only saying this because I know Lynn. Any writer friends who’ve been on the wrong end of a criticism of a book that I didn’t like will be happy to disabuse them.)
It’s that time of year when I blog my annual reminder that
books make ideal Christmas presents.
Amazon has now introduced the option to send Kindle books as
a gift in the UK. (This service has been available in the US for a while.) Look
for the button on the right of the page for the book you are ordering.
That’s a convenient (and cheap!) way to buy gifts right up
to Christmas Eve. I can see the Internet crashing on 24 December.
In the end, though, there is nothing quite like a paper book
as a gift. For many people, including me, the convenience of e-books means that
that’s where we do most of our reading these days, but paper is special. Paper
books can be lent to friends or passed on when they’re finished with. They do,
indeed, furnish a room.
Old textbooks remind us of our student years, an autographed
volume of a special meeting.
There is something personal about gifting a paper book. A
paper book says that you want to share something you have enjoyed, or that you
have thought about the interests and enthusiasms of your friend and sought out
a book that matches them. The transfer of digital data from computer to
computer does not, for some reason, carry the emotional resonance of the gift
of a physical book. Paperback books make excellent Christmas presents and
paperback books from less well known authors suggest you’ve given your gift
more thought than just a quick check on the Best Sellers shelf.
All my historical novels are available in paperback as well
as in e-book format, though Amazon can sometimes hide them away. If the
paperback edition doesn’t show up, try adding “paperback” to your search. If all
else fails, let me know about the problem (try mentioning it in the ‘Comments’
here) and I will track down the link.
My latest, Dark Magic should be available in paperback next week (technical glitches notwithstanding), giving you plenty of opportunity to get it in time for Christmas. It’s a short book, which people often appreciate in a gift, and early reviews suggest that some people, at least, enjoy the rather dark humour of this supernatural thriller.
So there you are: your Christmas gift problems solved and
it’s barely November. Buy a book for yourself and give others to your friends.
And keep a couple spare, for those last-minute gifts. And remember, a
book is for life, not just for Christmas.
It’s been an interesting and eventful week – and not just in
the British Parliament.
Last weekend was the second Malvern Festival of Military History. I wasn’t speaking this year, but there was some interesting stuff on so I decided to drag my long-suffering beloved to go to it anyway.
We combined the weekend with another trip to Wales. The
countryside in October can be particularly magical with incredibly rich
colours.
We were lucky with the weather when we arrived. (The sky really was that blue.) But by Friday morning it was getting seriously misty – though still beautiful.
Soon, though, the rain began to fall … and fall … and fall.
By Saturday morning, when we were to drive toMalvern, the Met Office was warning of
extreme weather and roads were closed by floods. It was, to put it mildly, an
interesting trip. We made it safely in the end (though it really was touch and
go in some narrow lanes that were under several inches of water.)
It was definitely worth it. The Malvern Festival of Military
History attracts some big names and there was a range of fascinating subjects
from the propaganda war against Napoleon to Britain’s war in Iraq. The opportunity
to listen to Cedric Delves and Danny West chatting together about their
experiences with the SAS in the Falklands was a bit special.
We stayed on in Malvern on the Monday to take the opportunity to walk again on the Malvern Hills. It had finally stopped raining, though this photo, showing a considerably swollen River Severn in the distance, gives you some idea of how bad the flooding had been.
The Malvern Hills are a quite spectacular formation. If you
haven’t been and you ever get the chance, I do recommend them. Even on a dull
day, like Monday, the views are impressive.
We had just time before we left to visit the priory. It’s a
very early Norman building where work started in 1085. Its antiquity is clearly
reflected in the massive Norman pillars of the nave.
There’s an unusual amount of mediaeval glass as well. I
nearly said “stained glass” but medieval glass is generally painted
rather than stained and has an entirely different character to the Victorian
windows we are familiar with. The priory church (once attached to a priory that
was a victim of Henry VIII’s Reformation) is architecturally fascinating as
well as very beautiful. In most places, I would expect it to be very crowded
but in Malvern, on a chilly October Monday, we had the place to ourselves.
Back to London, detouring round roads that were still flooded and impassable to traffic, we were home on Monday night. The rest of the week was quiet except for the little matter of my book launch on Halloween. We didn’t have a party or anything (I think there is a convention that novellas don’t rate a party) but Thursday was still a bit special as far as I’m concerned. No Top Ten status, but lots of support and enough sales to make #68 in Amazon’s ‘Humorous Dark Comedy’ listing. (On a side-note, does this mean Amazon has a ‘Not-at-all-funny Dark Comedy’ listing?)
Dark Magic is a bit of a difficult book to classify. It’s about a troupe of magicians who discover that another conjuring troupe are using Black Magic in their act and set out to use their own skills to stop them. I have a rather dark sense of humour, so the results are occasionally funny (or so I’ve been told). It’s not a laugh a minute on account of all the Black Magic and death, but, yes, it does belong in that listing.
Anyway it’s out there on Kindle (mybook.to/DarkMagic if you want to buy it) with a print edition coming soon. So that’s been my week. I’ve had fun. I hope your week was good too.
People keep telling me that an important part of launching a new book is the cover reveal. So here (drum roll!) is the cover for Dark Magic. It was designed by David Slaney, who I think has done an amazing job.
Dark Magic is now available for pre-order on Kindle at mybook.to/DarkMagic. (For some reason this link is giving some people trouble. If it doesn’t work for you, just search Amazon.) It will be published, appropriately enough, on Halloween. A paperback edition will be along shortly.
Dark Magic counts as a novella at just 33,000 words, but I hope you will savour every one of them. It costs £1.99 in the UK and $2.58 in the US.
Dark Magic is a tale of magic, murder and malicious mendacity featuring supernatural goings on and splashes of both blood and dark humour. It is something of a departure for me and I hope you enjoy it.
Baby’s blood… Virgin’s tears… Chainsaws… It’s remarkable what some magicians keep back-stage.
Two magic shows: the Maestros of Magic touring the country, playing provincial theatres; the Carnival of Conjurors successful in the West End. When the Maestros learn that the Conjurors are using real magic – Black Magic – to do their tricks they decide that they must use their own, distinctly unmagical, stage skills to stop them. Soon people are dying on stage – but can the Maestros really beat a team that has the devil on their side?
If you missed the tweets or Facebook posts, I have some news this week. I’ve written another book.
This is a complete change from me. First, it’s a novella – just 33,000 words. I like novellas. They tell the story that they have to tell and then stop. They are convenient in today’s crowded lives because they don’t take that long to read. My apologies to those, like one of my friends who read a draft copy, who want more words because, they said, they enjoyed it so much. None of my other six books are under 75,000 words and some run considerably more than that, so there’s no shortage of words you can read from me if you feel the need for them. I didn’t want to pad this one out, so I tried to make every word count and I hope that the ride is short but exciting.
The second big difference from any of my other books is that this is not historical fiction. It’s very much set in the world of today. It’s about two companies of magicians: the Maestros of Magic touring the country, playing provincial theatres, and the Carnival of Conjurors who are storming to success in the West End. When the Maestros begin to suspect that the Conjurors are using Black Magic to achieve their incredible illusions, things get nasty. Soon “dying on stage” isn’t just a figure of speech.
The book is called Dark Magic and bits of it are very dark indeed, but there are a fair few laughs. It’s nice to have an excuse to give free rein to my twisted sense of humour.
It has being huge fun for me to write. Just as with my
historical novels, I did have to do some research – but the research consisted
of chatting to magicians and watching tricks on YouTube. It made a pleasant
change from days spent reading 19th-century correspondence.
In another break from the way I have done things in the
past, this one is being self-published. Publishers are generally unenthusiastic
about novellas, so this seemed the best way to get it to see the light of day.
If it’s successful, I will probably self-publish more of my historical novels.
The way that publishing works these days, selling to a publisher takes a lot of
time and effort and the benefits aren’t as obvious as they were when publishers
had fewer authors and were in a better position to offer them support.
Self-publishing does mean that I have to do all my own
promotion, including things like sort out the cover. I have a very beautiful
cover, thanks to designer Dave Slaney. I’ll be revealing it on Friday. Look out
for my blog post then.
