Meet Sydney Jameson, a Main Character in my Cross-Genre Paranormal Historical Romance, The Green Woman.

(c) Chaoss@ Dreamstime.com (modified by the author)

When preparing my first offering in Debbie Brown's English Epochs 101 blog hop devoted to main characters in  recently completed work or work-in-progress,  I slipped into a lucid dream in which my character Daisy Kirkcaldy was doing battle with a modern woman whose name is  Sydney  and who is a writer of historical fiction.  As usual, when the conflict is between Daisy and a writer, Daisy wins.  But Syd was not entirely defeated.  She was resting. And now she demands and introduction an equal time.  I find it meet and proper that I interview her for you, using Debbie Brown's excellent set of questions.

Linda: Sydney, what is your name and are you fictional or an actual historical character?

Sydney:  My name is Sydney Jameson, at least insofar as I am concerned, although there are other names that some people persist in using to tag me. One of them is The Green Woman, but I am only called that by people who experience my aura and are familiar with the myths surrounding the Green Woman of Ferniehirst.  My Scottish lover Dand Ker calls me Helena because when he was a young man at the Sorbonne he read a book about Helen of Troy and he is fixated. Scottish men are often like that.  I am a historical novelist with three recent novels  being marketed by a small publishing house owned by a man named Simon Dirst. This entire misadventure is entirely Simon's  creation.  He insisted on doing a book launch in the Great Hall at Ferniehirst, a castle on the Borders where my stories take place.  No! that's not fair. My weird adventure on the Borders is wholly mine, not Simon's. No sense giving him credit where none is due. Even if he hadn't wanted to come here so he could golf at Gleneagles with Sir Sean and write it off on his taxes as a business expense, I would have found my way  here anyway.

Linda:  I gather that the novel The Green Woman takes place at the site of the book launch at Ferniehirst Castle near Jedburgh. Is that correct?

Sydney:  Not entirely. It depends on whether you consider Ferniehirst in 2012 and Ferniehirst in 1612 the same place.  You and I both know they are not.  One exists in what Nemesis calls Dand Ker's Now Time and the other is in my Now Time, which I call the Present.

Linda:  That brings us to an extra pair of questions  - Who is Nemesis and have you been venturing dangerously close to microwave towers lately. Oh, and if you've been drinking, where is the still located and is the hooch for sale?

Sydney:   Nemesis is a Goddess from Greek mythology- the Goddess of Retribution. She is a second tier god, a Daemon. She maintains equilibrium and punishes unjust enrichment. Sometimes she assumes the aspect of a Guardian. That is straight out of Wikipedia and the web. And as to whether I have been drinking, Linda, you are the one who wrote me into the pub frequented by the entire Jedburgh Rugby Club, who bought me drinks when they discovered I knew what scrum-half means.

Linda:  Next question:  What should we know about you before we delve into this rather odd story?

Sydney: Come on now, Linda.  You know me better than I know myself.  Why don't you answer the question? 

Linda:  I'll break it down:  Are you mortal?

Sydney:  I am a 100% mortal California divorcee who writes books for a living and who for some reason seems to appear with a green aura  when I visit Ferniehirst in 1612. If some of the characters in my story see me as The Green Woman, that is their problem, not mine. The rest of the time I am like everyone else. There is a possibility that I may be susceptible to the phenomenon  called Lucid Dreaming or perhaps the task of writing has simply driven me mad.  You wrote me.  You solve it.  And if you want to know what Lucid Dreaming is, read some of the books you bought when you were doing your research.

Linda:  So what is the main conflict?  What messes up your life?

Sydney:  Hah! Try falling into an intense relationship with a man who has been dead for more than Three Hundred and Seventy years and thinks you are the one who is not real. And that's before you even get to the part where we try to save King James and rescue the Duke of Rothesay, who grows up to be Charles II, which begs the question of why we bothered.  And of course, it does not help my relationship with Dand that I know what happens in the future and have sworn not to tell.  

Linda: Sworn to Whom?

Sydney:  If I told Dand what was coming he would change it and that would upset the Equilibrium.  You sort it out. And no spoilers.

Linda:  But what does Sydney expect to get out of this?  What's your goal?

Sydney:  It would be nice to say my goal was to save King James VI and I and the Stuart Monarchy  but that would be pure posh.  My goal is to find a life beyond what is written on my Toshiba laptop.  I want to feel life, not just write about it.  Ask Nemesis.  She has a canned speech memorized that covers it.

Linda:  Is there anything you'd like to ask me, Sydney?

Sydney:  I'd like to know if you are seriously going to self-publish a madcap mixed genre lightly erotic tale about a historical novelist who is forever linked to events which happened in 1612, who is deeply connected to a lover who died in 1628,  who identifies  with a Daemon Goddess named Nemesis who may be a construct of her imagination or an alter ego, and who even after the final page is not quite certain what is real and what is not.  

Linda:  Watch me.  I cannot spend all of my time writing heavily factual historical novels centering on the life and time of the Queen of Scots and populated for the most part by real people. And one last question, Sydney.  It seems to have slipped my mind, but where exactly is it that you learned to throw a Jed Axe?

The novel The Green Woman is essentially finished, awaiting two rounds of editing, cover art and illustrations. At present I am engaged in an exhaustive rewrite adjusting inconsistencies in point-of-view. I will be submitting this to beta readers from a group of people who venture into this type of writing. It is substantially shorter than my other novels, weighing in at 75,000 words. My target launch date is the anniversary of Wild Frank Stewart's death in Naples in November of 1612. 

This deviation from my heavily historical novels  was not at all intentional.  Like Nemesis, it more or less hatched  out of a green egg and grew during the madness of the NaNoWriMo competition in November 2013.  The initial draft  was written in 27 days of nearly non-stop writing which explains why it resembles stories written by opium addicts and absinthe drinkers. It is different from my other works, which is why I am publishing it under a pseudonym J.D. Root. Why not?  After all, I am Linda Root, J.D., and this way I will not embarrass my wonderful friends who are serious writers of English Historical fiction, as am I at least 90% of the time.  This book arises during the 10% when I write out of genre and drink a wee  bit of Jameson's Gold Reserve. And no, that is not where Sydney got her name.   The inspiration for her name is a secret known only to aging fans of the Cleveland Indians baseball franchise. Truthfully, there is a good deal of research in the book, not just about  events  surrounding the death of Henry Frederick Stuart, Prince of Wales, and the never ending plotting of Lord Francis Stewart, aka Wild Frank, but about such topics as the archetype in fiction, the life of Alexander Seton and the phenomena of Lucid Dreaming, Out of Body Experiences and the Oz Factor. And yes, there is a sequel.   

If you want a glimpse, the prologue appears below.  It presents no graphic sex but there are sexual  references and erotic innuendos . 

PROLOGUE

Present day Edinburgh

The man did not have a copy of the book, but he had a copy of the book jacket folded in the pocket of his windbreaker.  The windbreaker was blue and white and under it he wore a blue tee with the word NAPOLI embossed in white, and beneath it, the name Emilio Lara and a number.

He did not know why he was wearing either of the items or why he was in Scotland.  He did not understand most of the English spoken by the staff at the hotel, and knew none of the Scots spoken on the streets and in the taverns.  He especially did not like the weather. His last memory was being in Naples sharing a small cup of sweet liqueur with his Master, and even that was vague, as if in a dream.  That was before the headaches came.

Whenever he trolled for answers as to why he was trailing the woman whose picture was on the back cover of the book, he would experience a spiking pain in his head and in his bandaged knee,  and would seek relief from the elixir he carried in a pocket flask.  When people passed him they often stared at his jacket and some of them patted him on the back.  They called him by the name Emilio, but that was not his true name. He did not know why they called him out in such a manner and he did not understand their speech well enough to ask. He smiled back at them and shrugged because it was the easiest way to satisfy them without causing him to lose sight of the woman. 

He did not recognize his image in the shop windows.  The man reflected back at him was sturdier and younger, with dark curly hair like a Sicilian and an Italian way about him manifested in a swagger exacerbated by a limp. He would have liked to stake a permanent claim to the man’s physique. 

He had awakened that morning in a park outside of Edinburgh, dressed in the same unfamiliar clothing he was presently wearing. He made his way to the hotel on a route that had been revealed to him that morning in his waking dream. The papers in the pocket of his jacket included a thin wine-colored booklet called a Passporto with a likeness of the man he saw reflected in the shop windows pasted on its first page. He followed the instructions of his Master with precision and without hesitation or pain-inducing questions: he handed the booklet to a pretty woman at the counter, and he saw that the name printed under the photograph affixed there was indeed Emilio Lara.  She handed him a room key and asked him if he needed help with his luggage.  He did not understand the question and shrugged, and the clerk went to serve the other customers.

He pocketed the key and took a seat in the lobby.

When the woman appeared, he followed her down the High Street to a café where she ordered breakfast while he sat at the counter,  picked on a scone and drank a pot of Breakfast Tea.  When she was finished, he followed her back to the hotel, annoyed that he had been given no opportunity to fulfill his mission. 

He resumed his vigil in the lobby where he could watch for her if she left, and took a swallow of the elixir from the little flask his Master had given him because the pains would return if he did not do so. It had a pleasant taste which the Master attributed to pearl dust.  The drug no longer made him dizzy. Its effect had become less medicinal and more euphoric. His Master told him it was laudanum with something special added.  The man had asked  what could be more exceptional than pearl dust and his master had given him the Evil Eye  after which the man abandoned the inquiry  least he lose his tongue.

The scene in the lobby blurred and as the man had anticipated, he descended into a dream-like trance during which he could hear his Master’s voice. Sometimes in such trances he could fly and in some, he would be borne across the water on the wings of serpents, but not on this occasion. When he awakened from his reverie, it was as if no time had passed. The shadows in the lobby had not changed and the hands on the clock above the desk had barely moved.

 When the woman he was trailing left the hotel he watched a porter assist her with her bags. After the doorman helped her into a motor carriage, the man had no way to follow her. He knew that the woman was not coming back. He relaxed and sipped some of the potion.

In his dream his master appeared to him in the fearsome persona of a giant black swan with a huge red proboscis shaped like a phallus. On the first occasion when his master had visited him in such a form, the man had thought him beautiful, but only until he witnessed the carnage the swan inflicted in its pursuit of sexual release and the voraciousness of its appetite for violence.

Thereafter, the man acknowledged the black swan as the most frightening of his overlord’s various aspects. 

The man knew that in following the instructions he had been given in the dream, he would find himself possessed of the necessary skills to do as he had been ordained and there would be no excuse for failure. He also knew better than to question his master’s methods or his purpose. If he violated the protocol, his Master would use him as if were a street whore and leave him in a simpering heap on the floor. And that was if his overlord was in one of his more benevolent moods. 

In his sparse and heavily accented English he asked the concierge to arrange a rental car. The clerk at the car rental obviously knew the man whose likeness he had assumed.

“A’right, Emilio!  Good tae see ya again.  Ma mates and ah hated tae see ya leave Manchester but ah suppose ya like bein’ close tae home and all. 

“And, too bad about the knee.  It ain’t no fun getting knocked up like that in what looks tae be a winning season.”

The man in the white and blue windbreaker had no idea what this was about, but he thanked the man and took the keys. 

“It’s the SUV at the curb, the one the lad is detailin’ for ya.” 

When the boy finished with the windows, he opened the door for the man to enter, and just as the man had expected, he knew exactly what to do with the key to make the strange motor carriage work.   He did not question how any of this was possible. It neither surprised nor excited him to find himself driving a metal beast called a Land Rover down a highway out of Edinburgh to Jedburgh.

He was doing his Master’s bidding and when the Master’s purpose was achieved, he would become himself again and would remember none of it.  He would be back in Naples in the company of his overlord who would assume his human form and reward him with ecstasies no women could produce.

 He followed the instructions given him  and made his way to Ferniehirst to deal with the woman whose picture was on the jacket of the book. He had a paper in his pocket upon which the Master had written the words La Donna Verde, the Green Woman.

Chapter 1 - 1603: The Queen's Revenge, due out in May 2014.

Photo by Darja Vorontsova, Dreamstime.com

Daisy Kirkcaldy sat in the sumptuous parlor of the Cockie Mansion in Canongate where she had lived for most of her life.  She was sipping a warm cup of light ale. If she had been by herself, she would have been enjoying  a few fingers worth of the golden brown elixir from the stills along the river Spey.

Scottish whisky had surpassed hard ale as the drink of choice in the better public houses.  It was also the preferred offering  served to clients who visited  Daisy Kirkcaldy’s drawing room.  Her frequent foreign  guests had  taken to calling it Scotch.

Unfortunately, her present visitor would have considered a Highland single malt inelegant and sinful. According to the stories she had been told, even Knox had not been quite as rigid as the  woman perched on the edge  of her settee.  

She was entertaining her cousin Elizabeth Melville who was touted as Scotland’s first published female poet by a Calvinist readership which refused to acknowledge  Lady  Mary Maitland’s lesbian love poem XLIX.  Mary Maitland had surreptitiously hidden her poem among the less controversial works  in her poet laureate father  Sir Richard Maitland’s Quattro or it never would have been published. The only hint she was its author was her scribbling in the margin notes. Her family’s efforts to suppress it came too late.

Daisy’s cousin Elizabeth’s verses  suffered no need of censorship by the kirk.  Her  latest poetry would be quoted  from the pulpit at Saint Giles by Parson Craig, and Elizabeth would treat it as her personal  passport into heaven.  That did not mean Daisy would bother reading  it.

Dame  Elizabeth Melville  was Daisy’s second cousin on her father’s side --the oldest daughter of the man Daisy called Uncle Melville. He was the youngest brother of the grandmother long dead before Daisy was born, the redoubtable  Janet Melville, Lady Grange, who  had been the last hostess to entertain  King James V, when he stopped  at Halyards on his way to his hunting lodge in Falkland where he went to die.

Most of what Daisy knew of her family history she had heard from Uncle Melville. She  loved the old man  fiercely but she could not say as much for his daughter.  Even when they were children,  Elizabeth  had treated Daisy with disdain because of her  bastardy, as if it had been her personal choice. Her  unannounced visit that afternoon was as surprising as a visitation  from the dying Elizabeth of England would have been. It also was far less welcome. Daisy had twice met the English queen and had been  more at ease in the presence of Gloriana than she was under Elizabeth Melville’s appraising stare. 

“I must say, Marguerite, considering all of your handicaps, you have made out rather well for yourself.”

Daisy, who rarely answered to the French version of her Christian name, recognized her cousin’s comment as a mean-spirited reference to the circumstances of her birth, made even more exasperating

Darja Vorontsova, Dreamstime

because it had been disguised as a compliment coming from a woman who did not know her well enough to call her by the name used by her friends. It only irritated Daisy all the more.  She had been in the middle of a project when Elizabeth arrived and was anxious to get back to it.

For that reason, she did not bother responding  to Elizabeth’s slight.  The sooner the woman said her piece, the sooner Daisy would be rid of her.  She  had a good idea of why Elizabeth  had come knocking at her door.

“But  Cousin Elizabeth, I am not all that exceptional. There are many widow women in this part of Scotland who have learned tae fend for themselves.”

Daisy knew her widowhood was not the handicap to which Elizabeth had alluded but she had no intention of inviting  the woman to elaborate. She was pleased when her  crisp response shut her cousin’s maw. She had no intention of apologizing for her mother’s common origins  and her own bastardy  or sharing a bed with Will Hepburn before they married.  She had suffered through that diatribe before.  And that was not the sum of it. More than one of her business acquaintances in Canongate had run to her to tattle tales of  her supercilious cousin’s slights,  but rarely had they been so prettily packaged. Obviously Elizabeth was attempting to soften her up before coming the point and had no idea of how insulting she had been.

Daisy was prepared to overlook the stiff-necked woman’s disapproval  because she,  not Elizabeth,  held the upper hand.  The only reason why the Elizabeth Melvilles of Scotland came calling on Canongate’s notorious wadwife was to borrow money.

Daisy refilled the cups.

“You should have a charwoman to do that,” Elizabeth remarked. 

 “When I am unable tae pour ale intae a drinking vessel, Elizabeth, I’ll  stop entertaining my relatives and take tae  my bed.”

The awkward silence which followed suited Daisy just fine.  She wished her cousin would get to the point of her visit and leave her to her endeavors in the gallery where her half-brother Gilbert Cockie ran his shop.   

“I have written a new poem,” Elizabeth proclaimed as if she were announcing the recovery of the Stone of Destiny from the English or the Second Coming of Christ.  Daisy had no interest whatsoever in religious poetry, and did not bother to feign astonishment.

 She spared  the courtesy of a nod and reached for a slice of Irish cheddar.

 Then she sat back and nibbled, waiting for the pitch she knew was coming.

“Mister Charteris wishes to publish it.”

“How lovely, Elizabeth,” Daisy said sweetly.

“He also plans to have it translated into English, and a proper translator does not work for a petty fee. Naturally, he would like me to help bear the costs of printing. ”

“Naturally.”

Now the pig was out of the poke and Daisy saw no reason to chase it around the parlor.

“And ye are here because ye would like me tae underwrite yer project-- How much do ya wish to borrow?”

Elizabeth choked on her biscuit and it took  her a few seconds to recover.

“I was thinking more in terms of a sponsorship, Marguerite.”

Daisy produced her most credible sigh. 

“I think the word which alludes you, Elizabeth, is gift, ” she managed to say without sounding too put out.

Now she understood why Uncle Melville  had exited with such alacrity.  Elizabeth had wanted the money but she had no intention of repaying it. . 

“If I were tae do so, every poet in Scotland woulds be knockin’ at ma door.  But since we are cousins of the second degree, I’ll be waivin’ the  usual collateral, and lowerin’ the rate to seven percent a’ whate’er you choose tae borrow, all out ‘a the love I hold in ma heart for Uncle Melville.”

For him, not ye, ye offensive twit.

She hoped  Elizabeth could read her mind.

Daisy wondered how long it would take Cousin Elizabeth  to close her mouth.  When she finally spoke, she was obviously taken aback, but not enough to refuse the offer.  All of the other moneylenders were charging their parents and their children ten percent.

 “It is called Ane Godlie Dream.  I am dedicating it to Mister Knox.  Shall I have Mister Charteris set aside a copy?”

Daisy thanked her politely.  Any poem dedicated to John Knox would be unlikely to hold her interest, but there was no sense provoking  Elizabeth.   She could put it on display when her brother Gilbert’s Presbyterian friends came to meetings in the gallery.

 She bit her tongue to keep it from wagging on the topic of  the Reformer least  it prompt her overly pious kinswoman to spiel  a sermon  on the seven deadly sins. Elizabeth  had them memorized.

She  had personified each with examples drawn from Edinburgh’s new merchant class. She insisted Greed had been modeled on the late wadwife Janet Fockart, but Daisy suspected  Elizabeth  had used her  own bastard cousin  as her model.  God’s Elbow, but she was anxious to see her cousin’s skirts rustling out the door so she could get back to work.

“Faither says the Episcopalians will hate it,” Elizabeth continued, as if it would enhance her poem’s value.

“Mayhap ye should exercise discretion and forego dedicating it to Knox.  In spite of the behavior of  his disciples, he is quite dead and unless he resurrects,  he will never know the difference. Besides, if what I am hearing is true, this is not a good time to be offending those who follow the Episcopal model. If the rumors which reach my ears serve me, we may all be reading from the English common prayer book soon.”

Thankfully Daisy’s reference to Knox and religion were enough to get Elizabeth back on her feet and headed for the door. When she had cleared the stoop, Daisy quickly closed the door and latched it. She emptied her  mug of ale  into a flower vase and filled it up with whisky from the Meldrum stills. She carried the cup with her and  headed  to the gallery to  finished carving the wax for Queen Anna’s last brooch. The thought of her cousin’s retreating rump improved her mood.

Coming in winter 2014-2015, God Willing
(photo by Darja Vorontsova, Drreamstime.com.)

Meet My Main Character - Daisy Kirkcaldy,

The great friend of English historical fiction writers author Debbie Brown, manager of the Facebook page and blog of the English Historical Fiction Authors,  has inaugurated a chain of posts by historical fiction authors on her personal blog English Epochs 101 http://englishepochs.blogspot.com/2014/04/meet-my-main-character-by-debra-brown.html .  In addition to her own post introducing Evangeline, the protagonist in her novel, she has taged five of us to present  the main character of our work in progress or soon to be published novel.  I am delighted to be chosen, because my protagonist has never been one to shirk the limelight.  Ms. Brown sets out some questions which Daisy insists I answer.

The main character in both my most recently published  book (The Other Daughter: Midwife's Secret II) and the one coming in May (1603: The Queen's Revenge) is Daisy Kirkcaldy, and she is also the star of my current work in progress, In the Shadow of the Gallows. Daisy is the fictional posthumous love child of  Sir William Kirkcaldy,  who held Edinburgh Castle as the last champion of the Queen of Scots.  Her mother named her after the blue daisies (called marguerites in French) that the knight had broadcast on Castle Hill.  There was a previous lass named Daisy living in the castle during the siege  whom the knight  had claimed as his. Hence the title of the previous book, The Other Daughter.  

 There actually was a Marguerite de Kircaldie who was a nun in France, the co-protagonist in my first  of the series The Midwife's Secret : The Mystery of the Hidden Princess.  But there also was another actual child born of a laundress at the castle to whom Kirkcaldy was writing love poems while awaiting his death, a child  about whom nothing else is known.  The Daisy in my novels  is a construct of my imagination.  The other  Marguerite was abbess of Saint Pierre les Dames from 1627 to her death in 1639.

 When and where is the story set?  

 Not surprisingly, the forthcoming  novel 1603: The Queen's Revenge takes place during the months before Elizabeth Tudor's death and concludes with the departure of  James VI to London  to assume the throne that so alluded his mother Marie Stuart, Queen of Scots.  Much of the story takes place in Scotland but the rising action sends Daisy to France and the Spanish Netherlands for the climax.

What should we know about her? 

 Daisy never knew her father, who was executed weeks before her birth, but she is fascinated by his history and identifies with him and with the two formidable women of her youth, Princess Jean Stewart, Countess of Argyll, and Mistress Janet Fockart, a successful entrepreneur and money lender.  Although  she is the child of an executed traitor, because of her mother's great beauty and sweet nature, Daisy matures in relative comfort  as the step-daughter of William Cockie, a Scottish goldsmith favored by the Stuart court.  In her frequent visits to Holyrood Palace,  Daisy hooks up with another bastard of a famous father, William Hepburn, son of the Queen of Scot's flamboyant final husband Lord James Hepburn, Earl of Bothwell.  Their wild adventures and surprising romance is the subject of the novel The Other Daughter.  In the beginning chapters of 1603, Daisy is a well-established  wadwife and importer, still living at the Cockie house with her infant son Peter. Her swashbuckling husband Will Hepburn  has been lost at sea.

4) What is the main conflict? What messes up his/her life?   

Daisy is unable to move her life forward because she refuses to accept Hepburn's death, and her status makes her vulnerable to the advances of her nephew Sir Andrew Ker of Ferniehirst and open  to the romantic overtures of Vice Chancellor William Fowler, her dead mentor Janet Fockart's son.  Just when Daisy is about to put her past behind her she receives information from France  concerning  Hepburn's fate and becomes embroiled in the plot of  Hepburn's  cousin Wild Frank Stewart, the present Earl of Bothwell, who seeks  to replace King James with the mysterious  French nun La Belle Ecossaise, to whom Daisy has personal ties. Her impetuous  nature will not allow her to sit back and let the men in her life handle the threat , a trait  which puts her at odds with the tradtion role of women in the Scottish culture of the day. 

What is the personal goal of the character?  

 Because of her talents and her business acumen,  Daisy can easily settle into a comfortable life as the wife of a member of Edinburgh's rising merchant class or even a baron or  an earl, but  instead, she  struggles to maintain her own identity, even when it places her in conflict with the great loves of her life, interferes with her responsibilities to wee Peter, and throws her into volatile international intrigues placing her and those she loves in personal danger.

5) Is there a working title for this novel, and can we read more about it?

The title is fairly settled as 1603: The Queen's Revenge.  It is the third book in the Midwife's Secret series. You can read the first section below.  It will be followed late in the year by the next of Daisy's adventures, In The Shadow of the Gallows, in which Daisy's  wee Peter  becomes a pawn of those who know of the Gunpowder Plot and seek to exploit it for reasons other than religion.

6) When can we expect the book to be published?   1603 is presently in its final edit. The cover is ready to go. With a few modifications and the addition of some reading aids it should be ready in trade paperback in early May and on Kindle before June 1, 2014. 

Thanks for visiting the post. I have tagged five authors to follow me:  they will post an introduction of  their main characters on the twelfth, hopefully.  Helena Schrader will be posting on the 12th  at her page: http://schradershistoricalfiction.blogspot.com/ I have also received a reply from Katherine Pym, who will be posting on or after the 12th.  I am still waiting for any other RSVPs.  I will be editing this post accordingly.  In  the meantime, here's a taste of 1603.

Sample from:  1603: The Queen's Revenge - Chapter One.

Daisy Kirkcaldy sat in the sumptuous parlor of the Cockie Mansion in Canongate where she had lived for most of her life.  She was sipping a warm cup of light ale. If she had been by herself, she would have been enjoying  a few fingers worth of the golden brown elixir from the stills along the river Spey.

Scottish whisky had surpassed hard ale as the drink of choice in the better public houses.  It was also the preferred offering  served to clients who visited  Daisy Kirkcaldy’s drawing room.  Her frequent foreign  guests had  taken to calling it Scotch.

Unfortunately, her present visitor would have considered a Highland single malt inelegant and sinful. According to the stories she had been told, even Knox had not been quite as rigid as the  woman perched on the edge  of her settee.  

She was entertaining her cousin Elizabeth Melville who was touted as Scotland’s first published female poet by a Calvinist readership which refused to acknowledge  Lady  Mary Maitland’s lesbian love poem XLIX.  Mary Maitland had surreptitiously hidden her poem amongst the less controversial works  in her poet laureate father  Sir Richard Maitland’s Quattro or it never would have been published. The only hint she was its author was her scribbling in the margin notes. Her family’s efforts to suppress it came too late.

Daisy’s cousin Elizabeth’s verses  suffered no need of censorship by the kirk.  Her  latest poetry would be quoted  from the pulpit at Saint Giles by Parson Craig, and Elizabeth would treat it as her personal  passport into heaven.  That did not mean Daisy would bother reading  it.

Dame  Elizabeth Melville  was Daisy’s second cousin on her father’s side --the oldest daughter of the man Daisy called Uncle Melville. He was the youngest brother of the grandmother long dead before Daisy was born, the redoubtable  Janet Melville, Lady Grange, who  had been the last hostess to entertain  King James V, when he stopped  at Halyards on his way to his hunting lodge in Falkland where he went to die.

Most of what Daisy knew of her family history she had heard from Uncle Melville. She  loved the old man  fiercely but she could not say as much for his daughter.  Even when they were children,  Elizabeth  had treated Daisy with distain because of her  bastardy, as if it had been her personal choice. Her  unannounced visit that afternoon was as surprising as a visitation  from the dying Elizabeth of England would have been. It also was far less welcome. Daisy had twice met the English queen and had been  more at ease in the presence of Gloriana than she was under Elizabeth Melville’s appraising stare. 

“I must say, Marguerite, considering all of your handicaps, you have made out rather well for yourself.”

Daisy, who rarely answered to the French version of her Christian name, recognized her cousin’s comment as a mean-spirited reference to the circumstances of her birth, made even more exasperting because it had been disguised as a compliment coming from a woman who did not know her well enough to call her by the name used by her friends. It only irritated Daisy all the more.  She had been in the middle of a project when Elizabeth arrived and was anxious to get back to it.

For that reason, she did not bother responding  to Elizabeth’s slight.  The sooner the woman said her piece, the sooner Daisy would be rid of her.  She  had a good idea of why Elizabeth  had come knocking at her door.

“But  Cousin Elizabeth, I am not all that exceptional. There are many widow women in this part of Scotland who have learned tae fend for themselves.”

Daisy knew her widowhood was not the handicap to which Elizabeth had alluded but she had no intention of inviting  the woman to elaborate. She was pleased when her  crisp response shut her cousin’s maw. She had no intenton of apologizing for her mother’s common origins  and her own bastardy  or sharing a bed with Will Hepburn before they married.  She had suffered through that diatribe before.  And that was not the sum of it. More than one of her business acquaintances in Canongate had run to her to tattle tales of  her supercilious cousin’s slights,  but rarely had they been so prettily packaged. Obviously Elizabeth was attempting to soften her up before coming the point and had no idea of how insulting she had been.

Daisy was prepared to overlook the stiff-necked woman’s disapproval  because she,  not Elizabeth,  held the upper hand.  The only reason why the Elizabeth Melvilles of Scotland came calling on Canongate’s notorious wadwife was to borrow money.

Daisy refilled the cups.

“You should have a charwoman to do that,” Elizabeth remarked. 

 “When I am unable tae pour ale intae a drinking vessel, Elizabeth, I’ll  stop entertaining my relatives and take tae  my bed.”

The awkward silence which followed suited Daisy just fine.  She wished her cousin would get to the point of her visit and leave her to her endeavors in the gallery where her half-brother Gilbert Cockie ran his shop.   

“I have written a new poem,” Elizabeth proclaimed as if she were announcing the recovery of the Stone of Destiny from the English or the Second Coming of Christ.  Daisy had no interest whatsoever in religious poetry, and did not bother to feign astonishment.

 She spared  the courtesy of a nod and reached for a slice of Irish cheddar.

 Then she sat back and nibbled, waiting for the pitch she knew was coming.

“Mister Charteris wishes to publish it.”

“How lovely, Elizabeth,” Daisy said sweetly.

“He also plans to have it translated into English, and a proper translator does not work for a petty fee. Naturally, he would like me to help bear the costs of printing. ”

“Naturally.”

Now the pig was out of the poke and Daisy saw no reason to chase it around the parlor.

“And ye are here because ye would like me tae underwrite yer project-- How much do ya wish to borrow?”

Elizabeth choked on her biscuit and it took  her a few seconds to recover.

“I was thinking more in terms of a sponsorship, Marguerite.”

Daisy produced her most credible sigh. 

“I think the word which alludes you, Elizabeth, is gift, ” she managed to say without sounding too put out.

Now she understood why Uncle Melville  had exited with such alacrity.  Elizabeth had wanted the money but she had no intention of repaying it. . 

“If I were tae do so, every poet in Scotland woulds be knockin’ at ma door.  But since we are cousins of the second degree, I’ll be waivin’ the  usual collateral, and lowerin’ the rate to seven percent a’ whate’er you choose tae borrow, all out ‘a the love I hold in ma heart for Uncle Melville.”

For him, not ye, ye offensive twit.

She hoped  Elizabeth could read her mind.

Daisy wondered how long it would take Cousin Elizabeth  to close her mouth.  When she finally spoke, she was obviously taken aback, but not enough to refuse the offer.  All of the other moneylenders were charging their parents and their children ten percent.

 “It is called Ane Godlie Dream.  I am dedicating it to Mister Knox.  Shall I have Mister Charteris set aside a copy?”

Daisy thanked her politely.  Any poem dedicated to John Knox would be unlikely to hold her interest, but there was no sense provoking  Elizabeth.   She could put it on display when her brother Gilbert’s Presbyterian friends came to meetings in the gallery.

 She bit her tongue to keep it from wagging on the topic of  the Reformer least  it prompt her overly pious kinswoman to spiel  a sermon  on the seven deadly sins. Elizabeth  had them memorized.

She  had personified each with examples drawn from Edinburgh’s new merchant class. She insisted Greed had been modeled on the late wadwife Janet Fockart, but Daisy suspected  Elizabeth  had used her  own bastard cousin  as her model.  God’s Elbow, but she was anxious to see her cousin’s skirts rustling out the door so she could get back to work.

“Faither says the Episcopalians will hate it,” Elizabeth continued, as if it would enhance her poem’s value.

“Mayhap ye should exercise discretion and forego dedicating it tae Knox.  In spite of the behavior of  his disciples, he is quite dead and unless he resurrects  he will never know the difference. Besides, if what I am hearing is true, this is not a good time tae be offending those who follow the Episcopal model. If the rumors which reach my ears serve me, we may all be reading from the English  prayer book soon.”

Thankfully Daisy’s reference to Knox and religion were enough to get Elizabeth back on her feet and headed for the door. When she had cleared the stoop, Daisy quickly closed the door and latched it. She emptied her  mug of ale  into a flower vase and filled it up with whisky from the Meldrum stills. She carried the cup with her and  headed  to the gallery to  finished carving the wax for Queen Anna’s last brooch. The memory of her cousin’s retreating rump improved her mood.

Killing off the Darlings

The rather lovely cover at the left is one that will never grace a book of mine. I had to kill it when I realized it was not my character the midwife Mariel Frasier shown in the picture who was avenged in 1603, but the Queen of Scots, and to a large degree, the dead queen of my novel was avenged through the acts of the same young Scottish woman who has commandeered my computer and reuses to give it back, the redoubtable and fictional  Daisy Kirkcaldy, daughter of the Knight of Grange, who is letting me have my laptop back long enough to write this post, on the condition that I write her out of the mess she has created for herself in my work in progress In the Shadow of the Gallows.  She is giving me to the end of 2014 to do it.

There is a well known saying in the world of publishing and writing, "Kill your darlings."  The saying is generally attributed to William Faulkner, and it suggests that an author excise those little personal anecdotes that creep into his work.  Killing them is painful.  Here is one of mine cut out of my historical mystery fantasy (an awkward  mix of genres), The Green Woman, coming soon to wherever odd books written effortlessly are sold. Daisy is letting me tell you about it since she is by nature curious and has no idea why anyone would eat tomatoes since they are a variety of nightshade introduced to Scotland in 1590 by a barber, thought to be moderately poisonous and only good  for use as table decorations.  Hence, she is allowing me to share what I have cut out of my fantasy -adventure  The Green Woman, which she assures  me is too phantasmagorical to ever make it as a novel, although she rather likes the idea that my protagonist can throw a Jed Axe and hit her target.

When I was his age, eggs came in cardboard egg-crates and milk came in waxed cartons, and the farms were in Pleasanton and their product trucked south by Safeway and Vons,  all except tomatoes.

There was a different dynamic when it came to trucking tomatoes.

  I had discovered from driving up and down the mighty Golden State Highway #5 that all tomatoes grown in the Imperial Valley near the Mexican border were trucked to San Jose, and all of the tomatoes grown in Salinas and the San Joaquin Valley were trucked south to Bakersfield and points south.  I learned that half of the tomatoes trucked north ended up in Pleasanton where they were trucked south to Los Angeles and made into salsa. 

 I looked at my half-uneaten sandwich and inspected something that looked very much like a slice from a California Beefsteak tomato and I asked Willie where the tomatoes in Scotland came from.

“The big farms grow ‘em in greenhouses or poly tunnels but the small farmers grow ‘em outdoors and sell ‘em at stands along the road during the summertime or in the local markets.  The BBC’s very big on growin’ tomatoes.”

Since I was fairly certain that the BBC was not in the business of growing tomatoes, I presumed they had a garden hour when they were not promoting  chauvinistic rants by David Starkey.  

“But the ones  grown near Glasgow-- Do they get shipped to Aberdeen?”

“Why would a body want to do anything as dumb as that?”

Perhaps the legends were all wrong and growing up on the Borders was far less stifling than growing up in the Southern California suburban sprawl.  My study of the migration of the California Roma had yielded naught.  On second thought, perhaps not entirely naught: at least I have a feel for where ketchup comes from.

The inspiration for this  personal insight of mine  came from our trips back and forth to Chico when our son Russ and wife 'Cio were experimenting with going to university.  During tomato season the off-ramps were littered with all kinds of fresh vegetables.  If I happened to be hungry, we would stop.  The Romas were the least likely to be squashed and were easily washed from the roadside grime without bruising their tougher skins.  Every now and then an entire truck of them would dump.  With luck, an occasional onion truck would contribute to the roadside salsa.  It was then that I noticed the phenomena existed on both sides of the road.  Yes, northern tomatoes were headed south.  To find garlic for the salsa, the best bet was to head west at Gilroy where they grow garlic on the shores of Monterey Bay.  You know you are close to your treasure trove when you can smell it before you see it.  But if your preference in vegetables happens to be sugar beets, the Golden State is not the answer. You need to follow the south bound tomato trucks into the Imperial Valley, and before you hit Highway 8, you will find giant sugar beets on the shoulders of both sides of the road.  So now, the reader knows that ketchup started out as road kill, a fascinating bit of trivia but not necessary to my plot line in a novel about a female historical fiction writer who is either hallucinating or has fallen down Alice's legendary rabbit hole and ended up in early 17th century Scotland. 

This is not the only darling I have  killed.  In my mammoth (too mammoth, perhaps) epic The Last Knight and the Queen of Scots, I excised an entire love-and-betrayal relationship between Kirkcaldy and a German servant in Dover Castle named Grethe.  Even then, the book topped at 712 pages.  Sometimes mercy killing is not quite so controversial after all.  But for Grethe, the killing was permanent.  The early versions of Last Knight were victims of a computer crash.  Daisy is delighted I cannot revive her because her father had far too many peccadilloes in his lift without her.  

In the course of my nearly four year effort as a novelist, I have also killed my share of covers.  The green woman at the top of the page is an example. While she is appropriately ferocious, she is not quite as mystical as the one my graphic designer son is producing. Another example of a murdered cover is the alternative cover to my debut, The First Marie and the Queen of Scots, proposed from my submitted art  by the designer at Createspace as an alternative to the Mally Flemyng who appears on the logo to this blog.  I am glad I stuck with the lady behind Door #1. 

There were several alternatives to the cover chosen for The Last Knight.  My favorite is my watercolor entitled Surrender.  However, the survivor, a creation of artist Russ Root is far better suited to the epic, which is the story of Kirkcaldy more than it is of the queen.

The first covers I selected for The Midwife's Secret Series were produced entirely on Cover Creator and would have worked just fine.  However, concepts changed and so did the covers and the titles. The subtitle of The Mystery of La Bella Ecossaise became The Mystery of the Hidden Princess and the Queen's Daughter became 'The Other Daughter' when  the character Daisy Kirkcaldy stole her way into my laptop and took control. 

 I was prepared to go forward with a modification of the above covers  when I discovered the photographs of Darja Vorontsova on Dreamstime, whose work brought my midwife Mariel and her cousin Daisy Kirkcaldy to life.   

 photography by DarjaVorontsova,@ Dreamstime-  cover designed on Cover Creator@ Createspace.com

I sincerely hope Ms. Vorontsova keeps photographing her popular model, who I believe is named Katja, so I can permit Daisy to mature.  Although she is a handful, I am rather partial to her.  She is indeed the  darling I cannot kill.

                                                                                ~*~

Look for Daisy's next exploits late in April in 1603: the Queen's Revenge, in which Daisy proves once again that the knight Kirkcaldy's Other Daughter (http://www.amazon.com/The-Other-Daughter-Midwifes-Secret/dp/148418243X is not a lass to mess with.

Photo by Darja Vorontsova, Dreamstime

Every now and then comes a Trumpet Blast worth Reckoning!

I do not generally review books on my blog.  Usually my in-depth reviews appear on The Review and my casual ones on Amazon and Goodreads.  But this is a book that is underselling its potential because its subject is John Knox. But fear not, potential reader. This is not a tale of Fire and Brimstone. It is more likely to leave you with a wry grin forming than in desperate need of salvation.  And do not be put off with the liberal use of Scottish dialect.  You might learn a phrase or two to use when you stub your toe in the presence of your wee ones.

THE FIRST BLAST OF THE TRUMPET

A novel by Marie MacPherson

~*~

    A review by Linda Root

The  prevailing  view of John Knox is of a towering,  bearded and overbearing personification of the term ‘Fire and Brimstone’ -- an image that both  his disciples and his critics sought to create.In The First Blast of the Trumpet, author Marie MacPherson treats us to a different view.What makes her offering unique is that she does it in a way that is both witty and entertaining.  For those who think that a story centered on Knox  will of necessity lack romance,  intrigue, tongue-in-cheek wit and ribald humor, MacPherson’s book  will be a revelation.

19th century engraving by John Burnet from painting by Sir William Allan, \
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I did not embark upon my review of First Blast of the Trumpet expecting to have fun.  Being a fellow member of the community of historical novelists drawn to the life and times of Marie Stuart’s Scotland, I was no stranger to the author’s wit or her writing style, so I should have been forewarned. My first surprise was discovering  that MacPherson’s first book  in the Knox trilogy is not a novelized biography of the early life of John Knox. It is a feasible if fictional tale of the politics and persons who produced him, especially the Sixteenth Century persons  MacPherson cleverly nominated to serve as his parents. She takes full advantage of the fact that the details of the Reformer’s origin remain vague  and picks a pair of actual characters whose histories would have made them compatible. If  Knox was not their son, he  certainly could have been.

Thus, this  is not  a story about young  Knox,  although he is central to the theme. It is more the  tale of Elizabeth Hepburn,  a sixteenth century Scottish woman  who becomes  a female monastic by accident, not design, and who manages to survive a long list of mishaps with little  help from anyone but herself and a cluster of amazing  women who stand beside her. The plot emphasizes how little control most Reformation era women and many men had over their fates. Through the eyes of  MacPherson’s characters, we acquire insight into the  non-religious circumstances that brought so many men and even more women kicking and screaming into the monastic life. The same holds true of the political considerations that drove ambitious men  into the hierarchy of the Catholic Church.  

In First Blast, David Beaton is an excellent example and he  makes an outstanding and almost sympathetic villain. After all, he too is a victim of the times. While there are exceptions, generally, the men other than martyr  Wishart  do not come out looking quite as heroic as the women in MacPherson’s book.

Cardinal David Beaton from  17th century engraving by S. Freeman,
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Many readers will be surprised to find very little about Knox in the first half of the book. Instead we are  treated to an excursion into pre-Reformation Scotland, getting an ample lesson in the need for clerical reform as we are introduced to the parade of mistresses and bastard children of the leading clerics of the day. This is pure, accurate and compelling Scottish historical fiction spiced with irony, wit and just enough comedy to make us wonder why we expected this to be a somber read. Even the minor characters  advance the story insofar as they reveal not just who Knox was, but in the artful way they demonstrate why Knox was.  One of my favorite scenes illustrates  the rivalry between the king’s favorite mistress Margaret Erskine and Cardinal Beaton’s mistress and mother of his many children Marion Ogilvy. It is much more fun to explore the ecclesiastical excesses of the Sixteenth  Century Catholic Church by looking into Mistress Marion’s mind and life situation than it would be to sit through one of Knox’s sermons on the topic. Also, the cultural color introduced in the pages is not limited to personalities. The rituals and celebrations of the Stewart court enliven the story with little resort to narrative. We see that not all of Sixteenth Century Scotland was somber. There were robust good times offered to those who knew where to look and how to earn a ticket.

The martyrdom of George Wishart, Knox's mentor {{PD-Art}}

 It is also surprising to find a book  with such an auspicious title with such a  generous  helping of romance. Trysts  are not limited to just those between the protagonist and her sometimes lover, who MacPherson writes in and out of the story artfully and with a bit more empathy that he perhaps deserves. Even Cardinal Beaton’s lovelife is explored with a tad more tolerance than his assassins thought to be his due.  MacPherson  presents the romantic entanglements of the protagonist in a light that makes the reader crave a romance novel’s satisfactory  ending while knowing that in the climate of Early  Reformation Scotland, it is unlikely to happen. Overall, it is surprising just how entertaining a well researched historical novel can be. Even though the story involves a historical person many of us see  as a stiff-necked disciplinarian with a propensity for serving up large portions of hell  and damnation in long-winded sermons,  it is hard to finish the last page without glimpsing a very human side to John Knox.

If there is a single  feature that some readers may find troublesome in the early  pages, it is the liberal use of Scottish slang and vernacular speech in especially in the early pages. For those unfamiliar with Scots, after the first two chapters, the Scots will no longer be distracting and will add authenticity and color to the reading adventure. One might even pick up a phrase or two from the character  Betsy.

It is settled fact that the historical Knox had the ability to fill a kirk to overflowing. This  fine book deserves the same large audience. It is brim full of love and hate, bravery and cowardice, hope and disillusionment  and  a large helping of  intrigue.  The visual imagery is superb, from the tender though sparse love scenes between the abbess and her lover to the account of  Knox’s mentor Wishart’s martyrdom or  the descriptive fate of Cardinal David Beaton’s pickled corpse. I take heart that this is part one of a trilogy. There is a Reformation on the horizon and I expect Marie MacPherson to  present it  with the integrity of a historian  and the lusty wit of a balladeer.  

A note:

You can find this book in the US and Kindle editions on Amazon.  I would provide a link but then, the Amazon police would accuse me of being a promoter instead of a voracious reader who knows an exception book when she finds it. I do know Marie MacPherson as a fellow member of the Marie Stuart Society with an educational background in the history of the Scottish Reformation. 

The Story of Marius the Giraffe by Linda Fetterly Root

Marius the Giraffe, R.I.P

When I was a child in Cleveland and a student at Euclid Park Elementary School, I won a book.  I am still winning books. But this week I am putting aside my most recent prize, The Red Priest's  Annina by Sarah Bruce Kelley for one that is haunting me more than anything any fiction author such as myself could ever write.  It is  a book I won in second grade--It was a contest sponsored by the Cleveland Public Library in connection with our on-site school library and our art program.  How the contest worked was each student entered a drawing in which they were given a book and assigned to do a drawing of its cover. I was lucky, because I was tasked to create an artwork from the children's version of Frank Buck's spellbinding book 'Bring'Em Back Alive, a book called Jungle Animals. On several occasions over recent years  I have searched the web for it and found it nowhere.Not only did it have a magnificent black jungle cat  on the cover but wonderful plates.  I specifically recall the composite of the various Birds of Paradise and the Mandrake with its colorful rear end, but most of all, I remembered drawings of the savanna animals in their habitats and of course, the glorious panther. I won the contest and the prize was a copy of the book.  My God, how I wish I had it in my hand. My Dad had my artwork framed and kept it until I went away to college.   But, My God, how I wish he'd kept it!  But it was not just the beauty of the book that I remember.  It was it's message: that animals should not be a hunter's prize. Buck had indeed been a great white hunter in the classic sense, but he later chose to trap instead of kill and deliver his prizes to zoos, where they would be preserved and hopefully thrive.

 And until two days ago, like Pollyanna, I believed that was the mission of a zoo.  But a little guy named Marius changed all that for me.  He was 17 months old and his favorite thing was rye bread. And they murdered him because he had the wrong genetics for their breeding program.  And who is the leader of this band of thugs? Not one of the grinning group of people who go to Africa to kill things from their Range Rovers --not the poachers who want an ivory tusk or an elephant foot for some sycophant's footstool.  Not at all. The zoo manager arranged it, announced it in advance, and justifies it still by calling it culling.  And he is really a nice guy at heart because he arranged for Marius to have a slice of rye bread before an employee shot a bolt into his brain.  Not because Marius was ill and suffering.  Not because he was violent or uncontrollable. But because he did not fit the genetic profile needed in the zoo's breeding program.

And the officials at the Copenhagen zoo excused dissecting him and feeding his body parts to lions while a large group of children watched because of the  educational value of demonstrating to the children what they explain is the natural fate of giraffes living in the wild.  But Marius was not living in the wild. He was never  given the opportunity to drink from that pond in the savanna pictured in Frank Buck's lovely book. And that upsets me.

His survival would not have been an economic burden to the zoo. Two other  zoos had offered to take him, genetics be damned.  A private donor offered hundred of thousands of dollars to save him.  So they killed him to prove a point. And thus, this is not about zoo management at all. Look at the facts.  If they did not want him at the Copenhagen Zoo, there were other places willing to take him.  So,in essence, this is all about power. They murdered Marius because they could.  I find it especially alarming today to read accounts of other zoo keepers defending the killing of Marius but not the manner in which it was accomplished. The defense is that culling of zoo animals is a good thing. What the group in Copenhagen committed was not a needless slaughter of a trusting animal who was their ward, but a colossal P.R. failure.  Have we become so callous that we can accept that?

And yes,I found the book on Ebay.  It was published in 1945, part of the same printing a the book I won.  And I bought it, another purchase of something without a use--like Marius.  But a thing of beauty none the less, and with a message, none the less.

Said Buck in the book's foreword:

 "I have traveled and lived in the jingle countries of the world for more than thirty years. My purpose in this sort of life was to bring back alive specimens of animals, birds and reptiles which inhabit these strange far-off lands so that American boys, girls and adults as well, might see and study them in our fine zoological gardens. In this book I have gathered together information that I have learned at firsthand about many interesting creatures of the jingle and veldt. It is my hope that you, in reading this book and looking at the pictures, will become better acquainted with these exotic species which, however strange to us here in America, are still a definite and breathing part of the world in which we live."

But only if we become proper custodians, Mister Buck!.