Tales of Empire is free on Kindle next week (12 – 16 September). Here’s why you should grab a copy.
Tales of Empire is a book of short stories. There are only four, which is why even when you have to pay for it, it costs only 99p. The four showcase the work of four very different but uniformly excellent historical fiction writers. (Well, three excellent writers plus me.)
The authors were asked to submit a story set anywhere from the end of the Napoleonic Wars to the end of the century. Although they all write conventional historical fiction with no revisionist agenda, all four stories ended up challenging some of the more traditional approaches to Empire.
These are the authors and what they write about.
Antoine Vanner is the author of the Dawlish Chronicles, a series of novels (and the odd short story) about the adventures of Nicholas Dawlish who joins the Royal Navy in the second-half of the 19th century as the Navy is moving from wooden sailing vessels to the modern world of ironclad steamers. The stories show Dawlish developing from a very young man to a seasoned mariner, his own progress mirrored in the development of the ships that he sails in. Vanner is fascinated by the technology of naval warfare and his stories are full of solidly researched detail, but they are adventure stories too with Dawlish caught up in espionage and fighting alongside regular army forces as well as engaging in the sea battles that you would expect of a naval series.
Antoine’s contribution to this collection is a story about the Royal Navy’s attempt to suppress the slave trade and how difficult this could turn out to be in practice.
Jacqueline Reiter is a professional historian whose biography of John Pitt, 2nd Earl of Chatham, The Late Lord, is the definitive work on his life. The Late Lord is a joy to read and Reiter’s affection for, and understanding of, her subject shines through. A fictional account of a real episode in Pitt’s life is her contribution to this collection.
Penny Hampson writes mysteries set during the Regency. A Gentleman’s Promise is the first book in her Regency Gentlemen Series. She also enjoys writing contemporary mysteries with a hint of the paranormal, because where do ghosts come from but the past?
Her story looks at how social and technological change during the Regency led us from the world of the 18th century to the country we live in today.
Tom Williams (that’s me) writes the James Burke stories about a James Bond figure during the wars with France. The Burke stories have an enthusiastic following but the books he is most proud off are the John Williamson Papers which deal with more serious issues at the height of the Age of Empire. The first, The White Rajah is about the real-life James Brooke who became the absolute ruler of a chunk of Borneo in the mid-19th century. The novel looks at how his idealistic approach to government collided with the realities of the day. The short story is about a fictional tiger hunt that shows the kind of person he was and the effect his style of rule had on those around him. It was written after The White Rajah but it could well have been a chapter in that book. I hope it will encourage you to read the novel.
So there you go: four writers showcasing their talents in the hope that you might read more of their work. And free. I do hope you pick up a copy. Here’s a link: mybook.to/TalesofEmpire
I’m working on the next of the Burke books. All of the books in this series have a fight in somewhere. It may be a pitched battle between armies or a one-to-one fight. (I’ve had readers insist that there must always be some violence, That’s surely reasonable for action-adventure books, which these are.) In the latest, one of the fights involves seeing off a group of bad men who are forcing themselves on a beautiful woman. Fans of Lee Child’s ‘Reacher’ series will recognise the situation because Reacher has to deal with it in so many of the books. (There’s an example here: Jack Reacher (2012) – 5 Against 1 Scene (3/10) | Movieclips – YouTube)
I asked a friend if they thought it was too much like a Reacher fight. I used the word ‘derivative’. He replied, “It is very derivative of Lee Child but few people complain if they’re told they look exactly like George Clooney….”
I thought this was quite amusing and very flattering and I posted his response on my social media. A few people seemed to share my views but I got a couple of comments suggesting that being “derivative” was very undesirable and borderline immoral.
This got me thinking. How much do writers borrow from this style of other authors and does it matter?
It’s a real issue for me. Paul Collard (a much more successful historical fiction author than I am) described James Burke as “James Bond in breeches”. It’s a nice description because the Burke series consciously models itself on some aspects of the James Bond franchise. There’s a spymaster very like M, there’s always a girl, there is always a fight (see above) and Burke, like Bond, is sometimes morally ambiguous but will, in the end, do the right thing for his country. There’s a very clear nod to On Her Majesty’s Secret Service in one of the plots too. (I won’t say which one because Spoilers.) Not everyone will pick up the Bond connection but I think those who do will enjoy the books more for that. They are classic action-adventure spy stories, albeit in a carefully researched historical context, and people who enjoy action-adventure often enjoy these tropes. I don’t think I’m about to apologise for them.
The John Williamson papers are very different from the Burke series and poor conflicted John Williamson isn’t like James Bond at all. But a leading publisher described The White Rajah as “reminiscent of William Golding”. He decided to pass on the book in the end but that comment was intended as praise, not criticism.
It’s the Galbraith & Pole fantasy stories that are most awkward on the ‘Are you just ripping off other authors?’ front. The fact is that they are very like Ben Aaranovitch’s excellent Rivers of London series and that is a bit embarrassing. But I only know about this because a reader remarked on it. When I wrote Something Wicked (which introduced my vampire policeman, Chief Inspector Pole) I had never heard of Rivers of London, let alone read it. Anyway, I doubt Ben Aaronovitch is going to get too agitated: in the introduction to one of his Dr Who ‘New Adventures’ books he wrote, “Talent borrows and genius steals, New Adventures writers get it off the back of a lorry, no questions asked.”
Nobody writes in a vacuum. Almost all modern cosy crime mysteries owe something to Agatha Christie and you can’t write about vampires without a nod to Dracula. Everything has been done before by someone, somewhere. All us poor writers can do is try to build something new and interesting on the foundations we have inherited.
I’m away this week taking a bit of a holiday. I did say that I was going to repost old posts on here when I wanted a break and I nearly did that this week but then I thought that I could instead share a rambling stream of consciousness about what I’m doing with my life.
First up, I’m working on the next James Burke book: Burke and the Lines of Torres Vedras. It’s still very much at an early stage — the point where I’ve written the beginning and I have a reasonable idea of the end and one or two key bits in the middle but I still have to stitch them together into something approaching a whole story. I’m looking forward to it, though, because it will remind me of those wonderful days before covid when we just took off to Portugal to see the Lines for ourselves. It was a great experience and I do recommend them to anybody with any interest in the Napoleonic wars or just people who would like a good walk in lovely scenery.
This being after covid, our break is confined to England. Yesterday we were at Avebury stone circle, which is probably my favourite Neolithic site — massively more impressive than Stonehenge. Of course we arrived there just as summer ended and we walked around it on a grey afternoon in the rain. I did make a quick video which I put up on TikTok. You can watch the first bit HERE. The video doesn’t do the place justice. If you get the chance you really should go to see it.
Tomorrow we are planning a day in the Royal Historic Dockyards at Portsmouth. Those of you who were reading my blog last week might think I should have had enough of tall ships to last me for a while, but I love the Royal Historic Dockyards and we are all looking forward to revisiting some old favourites and perhaps exploring something new. I suspect you may be getting photographs of it on here before too long.
In other writing news, I was absolutely thrilled with this review of Eat the Poor: EAT THE POOR (GALBRAITH & POLE BOOK 2). It’s lovely when somebody not only enjoys one of your books but picks up on all the detail that most people might miss.
What else? There’s going to be a FREE promotion of Tales of Empire later is September, so watch out for that (though if you don’t want to wait it’s only 99p on Kindle). Also later in September, Antoine Vanner will be hosting me writing about spies in Napoleonic times and comparing them with spies today on his excellent blog, the Dawlish Chronicles. Otherwise it’s the usual blogging and tweeting and researching. But not for the next couple of days.
August 1 was the anniversary of the Battle of the Nile in 1798. I blogged about this two years ago so rather than blog about it again, I’m linking to the old post. It’s here: The Battle of the Nile
I’ve being blogging here for almost five years and on an earlier ‘Blogger’ site for seven years before that and that’s an awful lot of old posts that, although there is a ‘Search’ function on the site, don’t get looked at that often, so I’m going to recycle more than I have in the past.
Partly this is because I think some of those posts are rather good and I’d like them to get a bigger audience but some of it is simply to spend less time blogging.
Every year I probably write more than 50,000 words on my blog on that’s a considerable chunk of a book. In fact it’s longer than some of my Urban Fantasies. The sad fact is that if I spent less time blogging, I would spend more time writing. I’m working on the next James Burke book now and there are some other projects I would like to spend time on and something has to give and that’s something is going to be fresh blogs every week. I’ve threatened to do this before: in fact I wrote a blog post saying this in October 2020. This time, though, I need to at least make a more serious effort. Those books I’m planning won’t write themselves.
That said, if people have particular things they would like to read about, do let me know and I’ll try to oblige.
There will still be a post (almost) every Friday (I’m allowed the odd holiday): it’s just that more of them will be recycled.
Now back to James Burke and men’s fashions in Portugal in 1810.
I’m not a big one for preparing my Friday blog posts ages in advance. I generally prefer to see what I can think of to write on the day or (as now) the day before.
This week I really wasn’t sure what to talk about. There seemed to be quite a lot going on in the world and posting pretty pictures from a weekend away didn’t seem appropriate. (Not that we’ve had a weekend away as my beloved and I have both been hit with covid.) But anything based on what was going on in the wider world seemed likely to be overtaken by events before Friday. Now our Prime Minister has announced that he is (more or less) on his way out and I feel safe making the odd comment about writing about politics.
There is actually a lot of politics in many of my books but, because they are mostly set a long time ago, I don’t have to worry too much about how things might change from day to day. When Karl Marx pops up in Back Home, I know that he will be around for a while. (I loved working Marx into my plot. The idea that he and his friends used to meet for drinks and political chat in Soho in 1859 – when the book is set – always fascinated me.)
Can’t swear this is the right pub but it’s certainly close
I have written a couple of contemporary stories but they are fantasies featuring deals with the devil and vampires who dance tango. No particular problems with politics there.
But then I had to spoil it all by writing Eat the Poor. In Something Wicked, I introduced the detective odd-couple Galbraith and Pole. Galbraith is a traditional old-school Metropolitan Police detective and Pole is a vampire. The relationship seemed to work, both in terms of their forming a credible double act and allowing room for my sense of humour to tease both of them. People seemed to like them and suggested I write more. I decided not to do vampires again (Pole is enough vampire all by himself) so, after some thought, I came up with a werewolf. But if vampires dance tango (they really do) and spend a lot of time in self-improvement, what do werewolves do? Where would you come across them?
Maybe a good place to look for vampires
I ended up by having my werewolf hold down a day-job as an MP.
Maybe a good place to look for werewolves
Urban Fantasy (which is what fans call this genre) relies on having a realistic contemporary background, so my MP is an ambitious Conservative, anxious to get on in government. And that meant I had to write against the clock. The story would look a bit silly if it came out just as the Conservatives left government. And it rather relied on the party not noticing that they had a werewolf on the backbenches.
I’ve had a complaint that the whole thing is just an attack on the Conservatives, which it clearly isn’t. It’s a very tongue-in-cheek story about tracking down a mythical creature. But it works so much better with a particular approach to government in power at Number Ten. And now it looks as if that approach will be around for a few months yet.
Even once this government is gone, though, it has left a significant gift for Eat The Poor and any books like it. The idea that the House of Commons might be the site of a standoff between supernatural forces of Good and Evil once seemed to stretch the bounds of credibility. After what we’ve seen over the past week, though, nothing in my book seems impossible after all.
NEXT WEEK
Next week is the anniversary of the massacre of women and children at Cawnpore in 1857, so I’ll be writing about that. Plus, for that one day only, my book about 1857, Cawnpore, will be available FREE.
Eat the Poor got its first Amazon review this week, which made me very happy. Sue Bavey enjoys the idea of a werewolf who is a Conservative MP:
“I particularly liked how odious the Conservative MP Christopher Garold was. Anyone following British politics lately will not find the idea of a murderous werewolf that far-fetched when it comes to the dirty little secrets of those in power.”
I feel she is being a little harsh on Christopher Garold. He is, by his lights, a good MP, albeit one who disapproves of those he thinks of as “the undeserving poor”. He works hard for his constituents, takes no bribes, and campaigns on environmental issues. As one of his voters says, “He may be a Tory, but his heart’s in the right place.” And he can hardly help being a werewolf.
I had wanted to write a story about a werewolf since people started asking me for a sequel to Something Wicked. That book had started from the idea that if vampires lived among us, they would probably dance tango. I know so many tango dancers I have never seen in daylight that it seemed entirely credible and from that point the whole story just sort of took off. But where would you find a werewolf? What sort of person could turn into a creature that rips open the throats of innocent people who are foolish enough to be out on the night of a full moon?
The honest answer, of course, is that it could be anybody. But that wasn’t really satisfying. I wanted a job where a ruthless killer instinct and an unerring conviction of your own superiority to others made the idea of being a werewolf a natural match with your personality – and I came up with a Conservative MP.
The political edge was just a way of making the story work. Eat the Poor is an entertainment, not a searing bit of political satire. But while I was writing it, I watched our traditional political system falling apart. The ‘Good Chaps’ theory of government, which underlies our unwritten constitution, has given way to an approach to political power which is much better summed up as the Werewolf theory of government: the powerful take what they want and convince themselves that they are making society a better place while they do it. So there are points where the anger slips through. If you haven’t felt angry about Parliament in the past couple of years, you haven’t been paying attention.
Much more important than any political elements is the growing relationship between the all-too-human Chief Inspector Galbraith, very aware of growing older, and his vampire partner, Pole. Both essentially rather lonely individuals, they grow closer through their rather old-fashioned shared values. They believe in decency and protecting society. And, increasingly, they believe in each other.
More important than either the satire or the relationship, though, is the sheer fun of a hunt for the supernatural in the everyday (or everynight) world of today’s London. Wouldn’t you, deep down, enjoy seeing a werewolf in Parliament? Well now you can.
Eat the Poor is available on Kindle, in paperback or on Kindle Unlimited. You can link to it here: mybook.to/EatThePoor.
