New Year, New Project

As a jobbing author I have always have to be in front of myself, which can disconcerting and distracting. I traveled on a fantastic emotional journey with William Marshal in The Greatest Knight and The Scarlet Lion. The former came out in paperback in July of 06 and the latter in hardcover in December, with a paperback release of The Scarlet Lion due this summer. To my readers these are fresh and new. To me it's an ongoing part of a process that has lasted at least twelve months and has to share the stage with other projects. Even as the first reviews come in for The Scarlet Lion and Little Brown gear up for the paperback, I have just handed in last year's work in progress to my agent. A Place Beyond Courage, the story of John Marshal, will be published in hardcover in October2007. As from today I am on tenterhooks awaiting that first all important response to what took me all of 2006 to write. However, I also have to focus on the next contracted project for 2008. It's a bit like being a breeding parent all over again. I have to give my attention to the forthcoming paperback (the toddler), the new baby (the hardcover) and the pregnancy (work in progress!) Then of course there are the older children with their various needs (the backlist). I wouldn't swap my job for anything in the world, it's what I've wanted to do all my life, but there's certainly never a dull moment!
Happy New Year to all!
Elizabeth :-)

Season's Greetings

Dropping in briefly to wish everyone compliments of the Season and a happy, peaceful, prosperous New Year. The photo is of one of my support team revelling in last year's cold snap and making doggy snow angels on the back lawn.

California Dreamin'

I have to share a recent amusing moment.
Back in November while visiting a re-enactment fair at Warwick, I ordered a shield. I wanted a mid 12thC kite shield with an early depiction of the Marshal Lion. This is the shield I envisage William Marshal's father John carrying into battle. Same colours as his famous son's but with the green and yellow reversed. The lion figure is based on an early existing manuscript painting.

Anyway, Royal Mail tried to deliver the finished shield today when I was out and left a note. There was a tick beside 'Would not fit in the letterbox.' Ummmm....no, I can understand that. The postman had written at the top of the document 'surf board.' After I'd finished grinning, I thought about my psychic friend's description of John Marshal and his blond good looks. From there I took to imagining him not in a mail shirt, but walking out of the California surf in a wet suit. Phew! It certainly made a frozen, foggy UK day a LOT warmer!

Dark deeds afoot

Although I'm still working on the story of John Marshal - A Place Beyond Courage, I am also looking towards the next project which I'm due to start writing byn March 07. As usual there's no title yet, but I do know it's going to be about Roger Bigod, William Marshal's eldest grandson and will cover much of the reign of Henry III.
I've started preliminary researching and while doing so came across a primary source account of the terrible incident of the death of Roger's uncle, Gilbert Marshal. Roger had five Marshal uncles and all of them died without issue. Foul play is known in the case of the second son, Richard, and highly suspected in Gilbert's. The other three are anyone's guess but I suspect they were helped off the mortal coil since none of them made old bones.
According to Matthew Paris, Gilbert was killed at a tourney near Hertford. He had a new Italian destrier which he was having trouble controlling - he didn't have the equestrian or military skills of his famous father. His first vocation had been as a clergyman and it had been rumoured that he was 'inexperienced and useless as a knight.' His fate was sealed when he attempted to rein the horse in and his bridle leathers snapped off right beside the bit chains. Paris suggests that they had been deliberately cut so that they would snap under pressure. With no means of controlling the horse, it was almost inevitable that he would fall. Unfortunately his foot was caught in the stirrup and he was dragged for some distance, sustaining cuts, bruises and traumatic internal injuries from which he died in agony later that same day. The damaged state of his internal organs was remarked upon when he was eviscerated prior to his body being borne to London for burial in the Temple Church.
Gilbert's effigy bears poignant testimony to his demise - and perhaps something more down the ages. Whereas most knights of this period have their feet couched upon a dog or a lion, Gilbert Marshal's feet reside upon a serpent that is twisted round, chewing at his foot. I am led to wonder if this is a hint from the family that he was murdered as well as being a testimony to the manner of his death. Gilbert had plenty of enemies but I wonder who it was who gave the order to take him down. It's going to be interesting finding out.

Book Signing Date!

I have a piece to write about another visit I made to the Temple Church last week and how it pertains to Gilbert Marshal, it's just a case of getting around to it as Christmas and approaching deadlines, begin to squeeze my time even more than it's usually squeezed.

However, I'm dropping in to say I will be signing copies of The Scarlet Lion, Daughters of the Grail, The Greatest Knight, and my other novels at W. H. Smiths Meadowhall in Sheffield on Wednesday 6th December at 1pm. If you're in the area, do come and say hi if you've got a moment!

Title Deeds

How do you go about choosing a book title? Is it there as a slow burn long before you begin? Does it come to you in a flash at the start of your project? Does it develop as you write? Do you think about titles afterwards?
Long ago, before I was published, I bought Writing Historical Fiction by Rhona Martin. She says: 'It always makes me uneasy when someone reading a story in a workshop says, 'I haven't thought of a title yet.' All too often it turns out that the writer hasn't thought about the theme either, with the consequence that quite soon he or she complains of being 'stuck' with that particular story, having run out of anything further to say.' She says that frequently writers' block comes of losing sight of your theme and that since a title should be a distillation of the theme, if you don't have a title, keeping to your theme is going to be more difficult.
I acknowledge Rhona Martin's point and agree that it might be true in some cases, but I certainly have to disagree where it applies to myself as a writer. I'm now on my sixteenth published novel and just finishing up my seventeenth for delivery sometime before March O7. Some of them have had strong titles from the start. Others have been a last minute scramble as we head to press. I have yet to suffer from writers' block. Looking at the titles of my three most recent novels about the Marshal family - one in print and a bestseller, one about to come out in hardcover and one still in progress - I find that none of them had a title at the outset.

The Greatest Knight had a working title of William Marshal - yeah, I guess that's a distillation of the theme, as is the final, but up until the last minute, The Greatest Knight wasn't carved in stone.

The Scarlet Lion - due out on 6th December was called Marshal II for most of its creation. Again it was a last minute scramble to find something more inspiring. The Red Lion of Pembroke? - Nope, too much like a pub. William and Isabelle? - too much like a drawing room.
The Countess? - no, because it's more about William than his wife, although she does feature strongly. Something, something Regent? No. You could call it a Regency novel, because William was regent of England, but of course everyone thinks of the Regency as existing in the early nineteenth century. Same problem with the word 'Marshal'. People immediately think of westerns. Then there's the problem of having a wide cross section of readers - all ages all genders, so the title needs to welcome all. The Scarlet Lion was the final decision. I like it and it does the job, but it was a tough one.

The work in progress is about William Marshal's father John: the man who told King Stephen to do as he wished with his son because he had the anvils and hammers to beget better sons. The working title has been Hammers and Anvils but the general consensus was that while the title was pertinent to the character and part of a direct quote from the Histoire de Guillaume le Mareschal, it was perhaps a bit too in your face and masculine for the broad scope of the readership. As aforementioned the word 'Marshal' in the title wasn't a goer. We were all out of red lions. I quite liked The Forging, (as I felt it was a pun that covered a lot of ground) but no takers. A long dog walk, the inspiration of a song by Runrig called 'Only The Brave' 1 and a quote from the Histoire de Guillaume le Mareschal 2 finally led me to suggest 'A Place Beyond Courage'. My agent and publisher love it. I'm relieved to have what appears to be a strong title that reflects many of the themes in the story...and in place three months before I'm due to hand it in.
I thought I'd go through all of my titles and try and remember if they came to me at the beginning or the end of the writing process. I'd also be interested to know how other writers who happen by this blog come by their own titles for their work.

The Wild Hunt - last minute scramble
The Running Vixen - Decided from the start, inspired by the above title
The Leopard Unleashed - suggested by a friend half way through the writing
Children of Destiny/Daughters of the Grail - decided on half way through
Shields of Pride - known from the start - one of the easy ones
First Knight - a given by Columbia Pictures
The Conquest - known from the start
The Champion - known from the start
The Love Knot - known from the start
The Marsh King's Daughter - known from the start
Lords of the White Castle - Decided half way through. The Spanish are calling it The Outlaw, which I think is much better actually.
The Winter Mantle - Decided late on. For a long time it was The Briar Garden
The Falcons of Montabard - known from the start
Shadows and Strongholds - a scramble at the last minute

1 The relevant lines being
Not to love is not to live
Not to live is to feel no pain
So unlock this heart of stone
Teach me the ways of mystery
In the places where they say
Only the brave can walk alone

2 The brave and the valiant
are to be sought often between the hooves of horses
for never will cowards fall down there

To Market, To Market additional photo

Here's the dough trough (see post below),
and have somehow managed to post the brooch and wimple pins, although the formatting is still weird!