The Future of History

Tuesday 26 February 2013

The Grail

The second chapter of The Grail: Relic of an Ancient Religion is now up on the Moon Books website.

You can read it for free here:

http://moon-books.net/blogs/moonbooks/the-grail-relic-of-an-ancient-religion-chapter-2/

This superb image (left) was created by Lloyd Canning to accompany the second chapter.

So ... I've not been idle(!)  In fact, there have been one or two very interesting developments, although I'll have to keep quiet about some of them until Who Killed William Shakespeare comes out in hardback this summer.

But I will post a proper blog here soon.  I will.  I promise.

Till then, you can always click on the link and have a read of The Grail, Chapter 2.  Comments and feedback are positively encouraged.

Ta-ta for now.

Monday 4 February 2013

Guest Blogging

I sometimes feel that I have a puritanical aversion towards fiction - and as the research for my work-in-progress on the Grail required me recently to wade through a certain well-known book about certain "clues" left by a certain well-known Renaissance artist, I think I know why.

But then, every now and then I do read a work of fiction which turns out to be spellbinding.  One such is The Crown in the Heather, the first part of a trilogy based on Robert the Bruce.  I had come across the first part of N. Gemini Sasson's novel a few years back on the Authonomy website for authors, and I'm proud to say that Gemi and I became friends in an online sort of way.  I started her first Bruce book hoping to enjoy it, and I needn't have worried.  I was gripped from the very first page.

From the Scotland I love so much to the England I know so well ... Gemi's Isabeau, about the French wife and queen of Edward II, featured locations familiar from my Shakespeare research.  If The Crown in the Heather is a rather breathless historical adventure told from a male point-of-view, Isabeau is a colourful historical romance written in a feminine voice.  Both deserve to take their place up there with the best of historical fiction (sadly, I can't say the same for Nigel Tranter's Druid Sacrifice, which I tried to read recently and struggled to enjoy), and I look forward very eagerly indeed to reading Gemi's latest novel, this time about the Welsh national hero, Owain Glyndwr.

Anyway, Gemi has very kindly allowed me to post as a guest on her excellent "My Dog Ate Manuscript" blog, which is well worth a visit; I heartly commend it, along with her novels, to the reader:

http://ngeminisasson.blogspot.com