Hampton Court Palace - my favourite place...

... and an endless source of inspiration.

A close friend and I walk our dogs daily around the park or down to the sea. I tend to witter on about what I'm writing, how far I've got, plot difficulties and Hampton Court Palace. So it wasn't surprising that we decided to have a couple of days in London to visit my favourite place and where I feel so at home.

I am fortunate in my friends and even more fortunate that another of them lives 4 miles from the palace so we had a bed for the night and a fabulous dinner waiting for us at the end of the day.

When we walked into the Great Watching Chamber, we discovered "Katherine Parr" debating with her aunt about the marriage proposal she had just received from "Henry VIII". A thought provoking debate on the views of those times about what marriage really meant. Love didn't enter into the equation at all, but what Katherine could do to be a mother to Henry's children and the advancement of her family were very high on the list. At length, Katherine asked the spectators what we thought. Nobody seemed anxious to reply so I jumped in with my opinion that she would be a true helpmeet to the King in his difficult task of running the country. Encouraged by this, the discussion broadened into the personal - how would she put up with Henry's ulcerated leg and what about the wishes of her heart. She agreed to think on it. We began to disperse, but Katherine's aunt button-holed us and said that the King himself wished to consult with us in an hour on the matter.

Meeting Henry, even though I knew he was an actor, was quite scary. He explained that he needed us to talk to Katherine and persuade her that he loved her. I got landed with this bit along with two other ladies, one of whom had to say what a great mother she would make to Henry's children and the second how much he could advance her family. We all entered into this with gusto and I especially loved using the language of the period. Well into my stride, who should interrupt us but "Thomas Seymour" - the man Katherine really loved and who she would marry when Henry died. He was trying to persuade her to marry him instead of Henry. I loved this and immediately got into an argument with him about how he 'had ever been a schemer and spent most evenings in the tavern soused in drink'.

The final scene was when we were summoned to the Council Chamber where Henry asked Katherine to come and speak to him. He explained that he must be sure he had the people on his side in asking her to marry him. Katherine was brilliant and extremely emotional when she said yes. Thomas Seymour was the gentleman in attendance on Henry so he heard her decision and was suitably heartbroken.

I must pay a huge tribute to Hampton Court and Henry, Katherine and Thomas for making our day so memorable and enjoyable. I know my Tudor history quite well and I have always had a flair for the dramatic, so I just went with the flow. One of the other ladies paid me the tremendous compliment of saying that my involvement had helped make the day very special for her.

Needless to say, as we walked round, I pointed out to my friend the places in my Luke Ballard series, shortly to be published by Carina Press. Where my apothecary lives, where the secret passage between the palace and the Royal Mews begins, where the water gate is, the river path Luke often walks when he is troubled. There is a conduit under the palace and there was a water gate, but the rest lives in my imagination and on the page.

In between the scenes with the royal couple, we looked around the rest of the palace including the amazing kitchens and the suite that had been occupied by Cardinal Wolsey when he owned it and the Chapel Royal. I wished, as I always wish when I see this fantastic Tudor building, that we could still visit Henry VIII's apartments. His Great Watching Chamber is still there, but just imagine how incredible it would be to walk through his Presence Chamber and into his Privy Chamber. I would love to see the room where Jane Seymour gave birth to Edward VI. I believe there are around 1000 rooms in the palace and only about 100 of them are open to the public. Alas, most are too fragile to have so many feet tramping through them and, as always, the health and safety of the public cannot be compromised. So I have a Plan B. If the Luke Ballard books take off, I'm going to ask Hampton Court if I can join their re-enactment staff and move south.

Post Draft Blues

It's one of those moments you long for with a passion akin to little else. The moment when you have finished that first breathless headlong, don't stop to judge, romp through the first draft of the book. The moment when you can put 'END'. The only thing that has kept you going has been the mantra that you have to write something to edit it. That and the fact that you have a deadline with your editor.

What then? Then, you promise yourself, you will have a few days off. To catch up with the housework, or fetch out that embroidery you half remember starting, to go and see other humans and confirm that you and the dog are not the only beings on the planet. Anything but sit in front of the screen and sweat blood as you churn out those first all-important but usually rubbish words.

So that was me a week ago. The first draft of "Croaking of Ravens" was done. I determined I would have 7 days of doing precisely what I wanted to do, the things I dreamed of when I was tied to the keyboard in the 30,000-60,000 patch soggy slump. So, what have I done with this wonderful freedom? Nothing. Nada. Zilch. I've had to fight the habit of finishing my breakfast coffee and walking up the stairs to my office. I've read several books, all the time feeling guilty that I wasn't pounding the keyboard. A week is a long time not to write. I've managed 5 rows of the back of the cardigan I started 2 years ago. Tried to listen to some audio books. Been trapped because my other half needed my car for the week. But would I have gone out if it had been available? Probably not.

The truth is I want to start the first edit. I'm bored although I haven't resorted to daytime television - probably because the telly room is in the basement and I would have to decide that I actually wanted to watch telly. Which I don't. Found the cross-stitch but not the threads, which is just as well because at 36 count linen, the light is nowhere enough to see properly. Even the dog has caught my mood and has had his naughty head on for every walk we've not enjoyed this week.

So, what to do about it. Today, I thought, I WILL do something. Until I saw the weather. I may be bored but I'm not stupid enough to get soaked and chilled. What are my choices, I wondered? And then it hit me. The whole thing about this week was that I should do what I wanted. I want to begin editing "Croaking of Ravens". So I will. Here we go again. Wish me luck.

Going in several directions at once!

I know I’ve written in general terms about the Lincolnshire Uprising before, but now I am at the part in “Croaking of Ravens”, Luke Ballard’s third adventure when the nitty-gritty begins to matter.

The whys and wherefores of the plot lie in the 1536 uprising, 18 years before the action of the book. Luke is sent by Anne Boleyn to his home county to recover the kidnapped Prince of Wales, Arthur. Luke does not want to go for several excellent reasons – at least they are excellent in his opinion. He has just encountered the incredibly beautiful Blanche Oliver, who seems equally taken with him. He hasn’t seen his home or his father for seventeen years.

So, what is he going to find when he arrives at the Heneage estate in Hainton, a few miles from Louth where the uprising began in October 1536? The three Heneage brothers each played some part in the action.

Sir Thomas Heneage was Henry VIII’s Groom of the Stool, a position of great importance if one wanted to ask the king a favour.

Thomas’s brother, George was Dean of Lincoln Cathedral, which was chosen by the “commons” (the peasants) and “gentlemen” (the local landowners) to meet and discuss what they were going to do.

Plain Mr John Heneage, the third brother, had the most exciting time, if you can call being pulled from your horse, threatened with death and forced to take an oath of allegiance to the commons exciting. John later escaped the mob and rode to London with a letter and report for the King from the gentlemen. He stayed only long enough to be sent back, but it would be logical to assume that he might have met with his elder brother.

Those are the facts. I’m having a wonderful time playing “what-if?” with them. What-if Luke's father played a hitherto unknown part in the uprising? What-if the nuns/monks of local houses that were closed down are determined on revenge? What-if the prospect of spoils in terms of gaining forfeited lands proved too much for some? And what-if the Lincolnshire uprising has been chosen by sunderers specifically so that they can target Luke and his family?

To find out how the twists and turns play out, you will have to wait a while until the book is published by Carina Press, hopefully in 2015.

Playing pretty

I've been writing at white-hot speed for the past week and added about 10,000 words to "The Danger of Destiny". Today I sat in front of the screen, my mind blank, so I decided to surf - but surf with a purpose.

Last night I read Chapter 8 to my writing group and, despite my reading it aloud earlier in the day, I was horrified at the number of repeated words. White-hot speed has its drawbacks! There had to be software to help with this, I thought. And there is.

Pro Writing Aid is FREE. You copy and paste the text you wish to be analysed into the online box and press the button. Numerous reports are available. Repeated words, pacing, overused words, grammar, writing style, sticky sentences - want to explore that one further, cliches and redundancies, even homonyms. For Windows users, there is a Word add-in and for us Mac users there is the promise of a similar add-in for Word for Mac.

If you want to splash out $35 (£23)/pa, you can 'go premium' with a few added benefits.

So, instead of writing, I've been playing and I've learned a lot about my writing style, some of which is sobering. The big advantage of this is now I know about my particular weaknesses - well some of them - and I can allow my subconscious to give me a nudge while I am writing.

And the pretty? Another feature is the ability to 'Word Cloud' the input text. The analysis highlights the most used words and Word Cloud creates a picture. To show you, here is the Word Cloud of Chapter 20.

See what I mean about pretty?

The added advantage for me this morning has been that the results of the short break from the heat of creativity has motivated me to crack on and write some more.

Better get on with it......

When a picture paints a thousand words

As those of you who read this blog know, I am currently writing the first Luke Ballard Historical Mystery, "The Danger of Destiny".

It has not been an easy process partly because I have had to rethink much of the raison d'être behind the Luke books to ensure that everything is set and understood for the sequels, two of which have already been written. Yes, I know that's the wrong way round, but that's how it is.

The idea for this series came, ready formed into my head, on a car journey. I had an apothecary who had a talent for magic using the elements to help him. He had a helpmeet in a special breed of dog, a greyspring, who had the sight senses of the greyhound and scent senses of the springer spaniel, which in Tudor times was known as the "springing spaniel". I knew my protagonist's name was Luke and that he lived close to Hampton Court Palace. The phrase 'Henry's black-eyed boy' had been winging round my brain for a few years. This referred to the son Anne Boleyn never carried to term in 1534. He would have Henry VIII's wily brain and common touch forged to Anne's sloe-black eyes and quick tongue. Using the power of religious unrest in England in the 1540s an 1550s as a background for the plot, "A Duty of Evil" was born without much trouble. "A Taste for Treason" soon followed. The problem for me as a writer came when I realised I didn't know how Luke had come to be where he was and that led to "The Danger of Destiny" which tells of Luke's first 'case'.

Why should writing this prequel be difficult? Because I've had to decide how far Luke's magic abilities may impinge on the mystery story I am trying to tell. After all, if he is a magician - or in Luke's world, an elemancer - then surely all he needs to do is chant a few spells and the mystery should be laid bare. That would make for a very boring read, especially for this author who loves convoluted plots with unexpected twists and turns. So, I have made the basic tenet of elemancy to be that every powerful incantation/spell causes ripples which may be detected by the enemy sunderers - evil sorcerers - who want nothing more than power and will cause whatever chaos and mayhem they can to achieve it. While Luke may use simple spells, anything stronger can only be used in times of dire need. Therefore he must use his logic and deductive skills to solve the mysteries.

I've also had to rethink the role of Luke's faithful greyspring, Joss, who plays an integral part in his life as an elemancer. She protects him when he goes into trances and warns him of danger. Dogs have a long history of warning their owners of impending disasters, so, after much thought, I've decided to let Joss stay.

Most of all, though I needed to have some idea of what everything looked like. Enter the amazing Karri Klawiter, who in less than 4 days produced the cover for Danger of Destiny. I've put it as the banner for this blog and I hope everyone agrees that Karri is an incredible and talented graphic artist. You can find her at http://artbykarri.com

The joys of research

Research is always much more fun than writing. Always. And some people label it displacement therapy and maintain that you should get it all out of the way before you write a word.

When I ground to a halt with the current WIP – Luke’s first adventure “A Dangerous Destiny”, it never occurred to me that there were solid things I could do to get things moving again. I use Scrivener to write my books, so decided that perhaps I hadn’t remembered the details of earlier chapters and that was what was holding me up. I printed off the ‘index’ cards for each chapter. Then I used Easy Timeline to put the main events of the novel in sequence and yes, they both helped.

It wasn’t until I needed to know how the royal household was run that I hit pay dirt. This book is set in November 1546, two months before the death of Henry VIII. I needed to find out in basic terms, how the royal household worked. My favourite writers for Tudor history are David Starkey and Alison Weir. The former writes narrative storytelling history and the latter is always readable and has an innate sympathy with female figures like Anne Boleyn. In fact, Weir’s is the only account I have ever read about what happens to the body when a person is beheaded. If you want to know the details, read “The Lady in the Tower”.

So I went first to Weir’s ‘Henry VIII: King & Court’ and then Starkey’s ‘Henry: Virtuous Prince’. Starkey maintains that the reason all historical palaces are cold and without atmosphere these days is because they were originally built to be just big white rooms. When the King and court were about to visit, the houses would be cleaned. Then there would be a frenzy of putting up wallhangings and bringing out carpets and then a few hours before his arrival, all the plate would come out of the jewel house. A bit like putting up Christmas decorations. 

I read further and Weir mentions the political shenanigans in the last months of the reign. And suddenly – yes, the adverb that all editors hate – suddenly I realised I had not peopled the court in my book with real people like Somerset, Wriothesley, Cranmer, Gardiner and Surrey. Neither had I appreciated the factions and in-fighting that accompanied Henry VIII’s last weeks. I am currently remedying that and can see all kinds of “what-if” possibilities for the plot. 

Who says research is displacement therapy?

This day in history 1547

Today, 29th January in 1547, momentous events were afoot behind the scenes at Whitehall Palace. Very very few people knew that Henry VIII, Great Harry to those who loved him, Old Coppernose to those who held him in less respect, had been dead for 24 hours.

Not even his heir, the 9 year old Prince Edward knew of his father's death. The Earl of Somerset, Edward's uncle, was hurriedly putting in place those plans that would make him Protector. There was a little jockeying for position, but in the end, when Somerset was confident he was in charge, he called the 13 year old Elizabeth and Prince Edward and told them that their father had died. The children immediately burst into long noisy sobs.

So far all this is well known, but there is a mystery of sorts and one which can never be clarified. In a previous post, I put forward the possibility that Anne Boleyn, executed for adultery in 1536, was always Henry's one great love. The evidence I used was that he kept some of Anne's possessions, large items that took up room and never discarded them.

Henry could not possibly have presented himself as ever being in the wrong, but I would love to know his real feelings on the subject of Anne when he had had time to consider her end. There is one contemporary comment that, on his deathbed, Henry expressed the opinion that Anne had been unfairly executed. Many other contemporary accounts - and here I would point anyone wanting more information to Alison Weir's 'The Lady in the Tower - say that until 2nd April 1536, Henry and Anne were "merry together". So why did Henry allow himself to be railroaded into executing a wife that many people, including me, think was innocent of all the charges against her?

Weir brings up the possibility that Henry and Anne had mismatched blood types and that was why she gave birth to Elizabeth, her first child, but subsequent pregnancies ended in miscarriage. Anne is also known to have been pious even though she did have an issue with her temper and that led to endless rows with her husband.

I think there is little doubt that "something" happened to enable Thomas Cromwell to frame Anne and I believe that Anne struck a bargain with Henry that if he undertook to bring a French swordsman to behead her and promised to look after Elizabeth, then she would go quietly to her death. What that "something" was is gold-dust for a writer who loves playing 'what-if'.

My own opinion is that there is a possibility Thomas Cromwell felt threatened by Anne's hold over her husband. Perhaps in a temper, she said more than was wise and this was used against her, with the charges being exaggerated beyond all recognition simply to paint her as an evil manipulator. There is little doubt that Cromwell, once he set the hare running, was also in danger and Henry warned him of this with a 'you'd better be right or it will be the worse for you' conversation.

In fact, I like to think that in 1540 when Cromwell could find no reason for Henry's divorce from Anne of Cleves, the King allowed Cromwell's enemies to bring him down and did nothing to save his most able councillor purely because he wanted some payback for what had happened to Anne.

We'll never know, but what a story it would make if it were true.