Amazon – Page 13 – MJ Porter

Who was the Lady of Mercia, Æthelflæd? #non-fiction #Mercia

Who was Lady Æthelflæd, and what do we know about her from the contemporary sources?

Æthelflæd,^[i] said to be the oldest of the children of King Alfred, and his wife, Lady Eahlswith, was born around 866, the exact details are unknown, although the date of her death is well attested as 12 June 918.^[ii]

She was married to Lord Æthelred of the Mercians at some point during the 880s, although an exact date cannot be given. The first mention of this union occurs in a charter dated to 887,^[iii] although the date may not be reliable. There is also little information about who Lord Æthelred might have been, and his subsequent military successes should not be dismissed, as they often are. Lord Æthelred is assumed to have been a nobleman from Mercia, and one with enough of a reputation to secure the marriage alliance with the Wessex royal family (and it must be assumed, unrelated to her mother’s birth family, and also her father’s family through his sister’s union to Burgred).

Their marriage was a success, and yet there was only one child, a daughter, Ælfwynn, born to the union, perhaps quite soon after the marriage occurred.

During her lifetime, Æthelflæd’s name appears on fifteen surviving charters. These are a real collection, some promulgated by her father, her brother, her husband and then, in her name alone. The earliest to feature her name is S223 dated to 884×9, so between 884 and 889, which survives in two manuscripts, and discussed the building of the burh at Worcester. In her final charters, she’s the sole promulgator, her husband no doubt having already died. It is believed he died in 911. S224 and S225 date to 914 and 915. S225 names Æthelflæd as the ruler of Mercia, something which The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle mirrors in some versions.

In 912, the C text records, ‘Here, on the eve of the Invention of the Holy Cross, Æthelflæd, Lady of the Mercians came to Scergeat and built a stronghold there, and the same year, that at Bridgnorth.’^[xxvii]

In 913, the C text further records, ‘Here, God helping, Æthelflæd, Lady of the Mercians, went with all the Mercians to Tamworth, and then built the stronghold there early in the summer, and afterwards before Lammas that at Stafford.’^[xxviii]

In 917, the C text writes, ‘Here, before Lammas, God helping, Æthelflæd, Lady of the Mercians took possession of the stronghold which is called Derby, together with all that belonged to it.’^[xxxi]

Æthelflæd’s death is recorded in the A and C editions of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle and also in the E version of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, even if only in passing. ‘Here Æthelflæd, Lady of the Mercians, passed away.’^[xxxii]

A text states: ‘and then when he (Edward) was settled in the seat there, his sister Æthelflæd at Tamworth, died 12 days before midsummer … and all the nation of the land of Mercia which was earlier subject to Æthelflæd turned to him.’

The C text of 918 offers:

Here in the early part of this year, with God’s help, she [Æthelflæd] peaceably got in her control the stronghold at Leicester and the most part of the raiding-armies that belonged to it were subjected. And also the York-folk had promised her – and some of them granted so by pledge, some confirmed with oaths – that they would be at her disposition. But very quickly after they had done that, she departed, twelve days before midsummer, inside Tamworth, the eighth year that she held control of Mercia, with rightful lordship; and her body lies inside Gloucester in the east side-chapel of St Peter’s Church.^[xxxiii]

It seems highly probable that Æthelflæd’s death, when it came, was unexpected, occurring in the middle of an advance into the Danelaw and the Five Boroughs (Derby, Nottingham, Lincoln, Stamford, Leicester). It was left to her daughter, and also her brother, to continue her work, and you can read their story in The Lady of Mercia’s Daughter and A Conspiracy of Kings.

Or you can read about the historical women in my non-fiction title, The Royal Women Who Made England.

You can can read all about her daughter, the historical Ælfwynn here.

https://amzn.to/3JnZoDC

^[i] PASE Æthelflæd (4)

^[ii] Swanton, M. ed. and trans. The Anglo-Saxon Chronicles, (Orion Publishing Group, 2000), AD 918

^[iii] S217, surviving in two manuscripts

^[xviii] Baker, N. and Holt, R. ‘The city of Worcester in the tenth century’, in St Oswald of Worcester: Life and InfluenceBrooks, N. and Cubitt, C. ed, (Leicester University Press, 1996), pp.134–5

^[xix] Sawyer, P.H. (ed.), Anglo-Saxon charters: An annotated list and bibliography, rev. Kelly, S.E., Rushforth, R., (2022). http://www.esawyer.org.uk/, S1446

^[xxi] Sawyer, P.H. (ed.), Anglo-Saxon charters: An annotated list and bibliography, rev. Kelly, S.E., Rushforth, R., (2022). http://www.esawyer.org.uk/, S1282

^[xxii] Hart, C.R. The Early Charters of Northern England and the North Midlands (Leicester University Press, 1975), p.102 (100)

^[xxvi] Swanton, M. ed. and trans. The Anglo-Saxon Chronicles, (Orion Publishing Group, 2000) Ibid., p.94

^[xxvii] Ibid., p.96

^[xxviii] Ibid., p.96

^[xxix] Ibid., p.97

^[xxx] Ibid., p.100

^[xxxi] Ibid., p.101

^[xxxii] Ibid., p.103

^[xxxiii] Ibid., p.105

^[xxxv] See Stafford, P. After Alfred. Anglo-Saxon Chronicles and Chroniclers 900–1150, (Oxford University Press, 2020), for a full discussion of the Æthelflæd and Edward Chronicles.

Posts

I’m delighted to be sharing an excerpt from Victoria Atamian Waterman’s new novel, Who She Left Behind. HistoricalFiction #ArmenianFiction #WomensFiction #WhoSheLeftBehind #BlogTour #TheCoffeePotBookClub

I’m delighted to be sharing an excerpt from Victoria Atamian Waterman’s new novel, Who She Left Behind.

“Marta tells me your needlelace is very lovely, and you’re a good teacher.”

“Thank you, Miss Jeppe,” Victoria said.

“It’s important to me that my girls leave here with dignity, knowing their value and confident in their abilities.”

Victoria nodded.

“It’s not enough to churn out girls who can work a loom or stitch a hem, you see. Your people, your culture, they must be preserved even as you scatter into the world. We send girls back to their families when we can. We find them marriages, but most of all we give them the gift of self-sufficiency.”

“It’s a great gift,” Victoria said. “It’s a terrible thing to feel powerless.”

Miss Jeppe dipped her chin in acknowledgment. “Authenticity and quality,” Miss Jeppe continued. “These make your products desirable, they command the best prices in the market. Fine lace and beautiful weavings bring your beautiful history to the eyes of the world and ensure your people aren’t forgotten.”

Victoria nodded again, unsure why she was singled out for this conversation. It was a speech Miss Jeppe and her volunteers made often. “Marta tells me you want to help us with our work.”

“Yes, I do.”

Victoria’s pulse skipped. This was why.

Here’s the blurb

“Who She Left Behind” is a captivating historical fiction novel that spans generations and delves into the emotional lives of its characters. Set in various time periods, from the declining days of the Ottoman Empire in Turkey in 1915 to the Armenian neighborhoods of Rhode Island and Massachusetts in the 1990s, the novel completely immerses its reader in a lesser-known era and the untold stories of the brave and resilient women who became the pillars of reconstructed communities after the Armenian Genocide.

It is a story of survival, motherhood, love, and redemption based on the recounted stories from the author’s own family history. The narrative is framed by a mysterious discovery made almost six decades later of a pair of Armenian dolls left at a gravesite.

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I’m delighted to welcome Rebecca Rosenberg and The Champagne Widows to the blog today ChampagneHistory #FrenchHistory #ChampagneWidows #BlogTour #TheCoffeePotBookClub #CPBC

I’m delighted to welcome Rebecca Rosenberg and The Champagne Widows to the blog today.

Join in on Rebecca Rosenberg’s

TREASURE HUNT!

(or, digging for research nuggets that lead to Gold!)

Did you ever make a treasure hunt or hide eggs for children? I’ve done more hunts than I can possibly remember. But, everyday I find myself digging for treasure when I’m writing a novel. I’ll use examples from my novels to explain.

Add your own examples below in comments! We’ll choose a lucky winner for a paperback of Madame Pommery, Creator of Brut Champagne!

The Chatelaine: Have you seen a Chatelaine in a Museum? A Chatelaine, means “mistress of a castle”, and is a chain holding various and sundry household tools like sand timers, needles, thimbles, scissors, magnifying glass. Madame Pommery received a Châtelaine from her husband for her birthday, much like getting a mop or set of deluxe sponges. What does it say about their relationship and her life?

Each novel has many “props” that speak volumes about a character. It can be a personal item like a locket, or a vanity mirror with a large crack in it, or a wine-tasting cup, like Veuve Clicquot received from her great-grandmother. I also consider transportation, the environment, where the character lives, and what she wears (or doesn’t wear, as in my upcoming novel, SILVER DOLLAR) All of these can be intriguing symbols of the character and her plight.

Curse or Gift? In Champagne Widows, Barbe Nicole-Clicquot is told she has Le Nez, the Nose, an extraordinary sense of smell that makes her a great wine maker. It also makes her particular, persnickety, and difficult. Her parents say Le Nez is a curse. Her grandmother says it is a gift that will change her life by making her an extraordinary wine maker.

Character traits form a character’s personality and also sets a course for her future. An ironic character trait makes for controversial and delectable conflict and soul-searching.

Unrequited Love: I write Biographical Historical Fiction about real women who lived in our past. Inevitably there’s a love that did not work out. These are gold nuggets! Why didn’t they work out? Who was hurt? What are the consequences? Could they ever get together? And if not, how do they feel about it? All of these aspects of unrequited love add such emotion to a story.

In Madame Pommery, Creator of Brut Champagne, she hires a young intern, fifteen years younger than her, and his intelligence and helpfulness make her slowly fall in love with him, though it is quite inappropriate. She cannot marry him, or by law he’d own Pommery Champagne House. Ah, unrequited love.

Family squabbles: Families are usually an unresolved dilemma. Madame Pommery has trouble with her son who wants to run the champagne house without knowing what to do. She has trouble with her daughter because the toddler is always underfoot. Her mother is cold and unloving. Ouch! Family differences make good reading, especially when they create havoc for the protagonist. To research information about these family squabbles, I look at the available facts and extrapolate what they could mean. For example, Madame Pommery’s son is 17 when she starts the winery, and he doesn’t join the business for 5 years. Even then, he was not given an important position. And, when Madame Pommery dies, she makes her assistant the head of Pommery, not her son. Those facts add up to a gold nugget for the story.

Friend or Foe? Who can you trust? Who has an ulterior motive? In research, I look for clues about who were Madame Pommery’s business associates, friends, and foes. Then, I look for ways that their relationships can change during the book. For example, Madame Pommery’s banker helps her when her husband dies, but his ulterior motive is that he wants to be her partner.

Habits and Hobbies. I love to research quirky habits and hobbies characters can have. In Champagne Widows, Barbe-Nicole Clicquot’s father has a secret room that he works on constantly, because he doesn’t have the money to hire it done. Barbe-Nicole’s mother loves outrageous fashion and falls deathly ill from the arsenic dye. Both of these are facts that I researched about those real people!

Trials & Tribulations. What are the events of history that affect the characters? For example, in GOLD DIGGER, the Remarkable Baby Doe Tabor is about the Gold and Silver Rush in the nineteenth century, women’s right to vote, and the politics of the day, the Chinese workers imported to build the railroads and mines, then they were hated and killed. All these aspects add texture and context to the story. To research this information, I use libraries, buy books, internet searches, interview historians.

Location, Location, Location! I visit the towns or area I’m writing about and visit every home, winery, mine and theater in search of clues about the person I am writing about so I can breathe life into them on the page.

Skeletons: Everyone has skeletons in their closets, and if you can’t find them for your character, you didn’t look hard enough. The Skeleton can be a human condition like: mental illness, poverty, alcoholism. Or it can be a horrible wound the character suffered, like rape, or losing a child or an affair gone terribly wrong. Character skeletons need to be found and written on the page to make characters feel, hurt, and heal, or not.

She said What? Since I write about real people, I search for real quotes, letters and stories about them to use in building her character. Madame Pommery’s quote informed the entire book, setting the stage from where she came, what she wanted and why, and what her success would look like.

“Inevitably, I find myself in a predicament where the rules do not apply, or worse, they contradict each other.” ~Jeanne Alexandrine Pommery

~Rebecca Rosenberg, #1 Amazon Best Seller, Madame Pommery, Creator of Brut Champagne

Here’s the blurbs

EDITORS CHOICE HISTORICAL NOVEL SOCIETY

“A-Tour-de-Force” Publisher’s Weekly BookLife Prize

MADAME POMMERY, Creator of Brut Champagne

“A tour-de-force of historical fiction, Madame Pommery is a deeply fascinating work that blends true-to-life details with artfully crafted elements.” –Publishers Weekly BookLife Prize

Madame Pommery is a story of a woman’s indomitable spirit in the face of insurmountable odds. Set in Champagne, France in 1860, Madame Pommery is a forty-year-old widow and etiquette teacher whose husband has passed away. Now she must find a way to support her family. With no experience, she decides to make champagne, but no champagne makers will teach her their craft. Undeterred, Madame Pommery begins to secretly excavate champagne caves under the Reims city dump and faces numerous obstacles to achieve her dream. From the Franco-Prussian war that conscripts her son and crew to the Prussian General Frederick Franz occupying her home, Madame Pommery perseveres. She even must choose between her champagne dreams and a marriage proposal from her former lover, a Scottish Baron. Inspired by a true story, Madame Pommery is a heroic tale of a woman’s strength and determination to create a champagne legacy. If you enjoyed the novel Sarah’s Key, you will enjoy Madame Pommery.

CHAMPAGNE WIDOWS, the First Woman of Champagne

EDITORS CHOICE HISTORICAL NOVEL SOCIETY This engrossing historical novel by Rebecca Rosenberg follows Veuve Clicquot, a strong-minded woman determined to defy the Napoleon Code and become a master champagne maker. In 1800 France, twenty-year-old Barbe-Nicole inherits her great-grandfather’s uncanny sense of smell and uses it to make great champagne, despite the Code prohibiting women from owning a business. When tragedy strikes and she becomes a Veuve (widow), she must grapple with a domineering partner, the complexities of making champagne, and the aftermath of six Napoleon wars. When she falls in love with her sales manager, Louis Bohne, she must choose between losing her winery to her husband to obey the Napoleon Code, or losing Louis. In the ultimate showdown, Veuve Clicquot defies Napoleon himself, risking prison and even death. If you enjoyed books like ‘The Widow of the South’ by Robert Hicks or ‘The Paris Seamstress’ by Natasha Lester, you’ll love ‘Veuve Clicquot’.

Buy Links:

These titles are available to read on #KindleUnlimited.

Madame Pommery:

Champagne Widows:

Champagne Widows Series Links:

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Meet the author

Rebecca Rosenberg is an award-winning novelist, champagne geek, and lavender farmer. Rebecca first fell in love with methode champenoise in Sonoma Valley, California. Over decades of delicious research, she has explored the wine cellars of France, Spain, Italy, and California in search of fine champagne. When Rebecca discovered the real-life stories of the Champagne Widows of France, she knew she’d dedicate years to telling the stories of these remarkable women who made champagne the worldwide phenomenon it is today.

Rebecca is a champagne historian, tour guide, and champagne cocktail expert for Breathless Wines. Other award-winning novels include The Secret Life of Mrs. London and Gold Digger, the Remarkable Baby Doe Tabor.

Connect with the author

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Follow the Champagne Widows blog tour with The Coffee Pot Book Club

Today, I’m delighted to be reviewing Warrior Prince by JC Duncan #blogtour #historicalfiction

Here’s the blurb

Prince. Mercenary. Exile. The lost throne of Norway must be won in foreign lands.

1030 AD

Some men are gifted a crown. Others have to fight to claim it.

Exiled from Norway, Harald Sigurdsson, brother to murdered King Olaf, must battle mercilessly for survival in the lands of the Kievan Rus.

His brother’s legacy gifts him a warband of hardened warriors and entry to the court of Prince Yaroslav the Wise. By his wits, sword and skill in battle, Harald must learn not just to survive but to triumph.

He fights for glory, for fame, and to regain his family’s battle-stolen throne. But his greatest challenge may not come from battlefield foes but from those who stand by his side.

The first instalment in a remarkable story of an exiled boy’s incredible journey to become Harald Hardrada; The Hard Ruler and The Last Viking.

Purchase Link

https://mybook.to/warriorprincesocial

My Review

Harald Sigurdsson, who we know more often as Harald Hardrada, is a historical individual who is ‘on my radar’ as it were for my The Earls of Mercia series. So far, he’s only had the odd mention because I’m still 20 years from the events of 1066 at Stamford Bridge, but never fear, for JC Duncan is telling Harald’s story from the events that see his half-brother, Olaf, later St Olaf, cut down at the Battle of Stiklestad in 1030.

Adopting a narrator style for the book, we see Harald trying to regroup after his brother’s defeat and murder. He seeks somewhere for him and what remains of his brother’s warriors to retreat to, and the tale is told through the eyes of the fictional Eric, who has seen it all and now, as an old man, wants to share his stories of Harald with an appreciative audience back in Norway.

This is very much a story of Harald’s time in the lands of the Rus and the overwhelming odds he often faces in battle as he rises through the ranks to serve Prince Yaraslov. We also see him struggling with the clash of cultures – the more sophisticated and complex ideals of the Rus flummoxing a man more used to seeing warriors have a bloody good fight.

Harald quickly earns himself an enemy, one who bedevils him at various points throughout the story and who I’m sure will continue to do so as the young man tries to discover who he is while learning to command his warriors.

This is an epic tale, with elements burbling away in the background that will continue to develop in later books. Using a narrator enables the tale to skip over some of the more mundane aspects of Harald’s story, ensuring the reader is constantly faced with some new dilemma for Harald to surmount or fail. However, failure is never really an option. After all, he is a Hard-ruler, and many of his decisions may stun the reader as the body count increases.

JC Duncan’s Harald is indeed a hard man, unhappy making mistakes or being embarrassed, determined to build his reputation, even while bidding his time, determined that one day he’ll claim back his brother’s lost kingdom of Norway. He is perhaps too naïve and a little too sure of himself on occasion, and these very real character traits lend themselves to an engaging retelling. However, this isn’t a quick read. There’s much to absorb as you, alongside the character, embark on a very real journey to the land of the Rus and encounter their enemies and allies, the knowledge that our narrator still lives, the only hope for Harald’s success.

An engrossing tale of Harald Hardrada’s early years, brimming with historical detail and brave daring do. This is the story of a man who will become a legend, told lovingly through the eyes of one of his loyal followers and sure to delight readers.

Meet the author

J. C. Duncan is a well-reviewed historical fiction author and amateur bladesmith, with a passion for Vikings.

Connect with JC Duncan

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/JCDuncanAuthor

Twitter: https://twitter.com/JCDuncanauthor

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/j.c.duncan/?hl=enn

Bookbub profile: https://www.bookbub.com/authors/j-c-duncan

I’m delighted to welcome Joan Fallon and her new book, The Winds of Change, to the blog historicalfiction #adventure #Andalusia #SpanishCivilWar #BlogTour #TheCoffeePotBookClub

Here’s the blurb

The Winds of Change is a story of love, loyalty and betrayal on the eve of the Spanish Civil War, when the country is political turmoil with strikes and demonstrations, unemployment is high and the people are starving.

In this complicated love triangle we meet Ramon, a member of the Republican Left, who has accidentally killed a policeman and is on the run from the Guardia Civil and Hugo, the son of the wealthy owner of a local sherry bodega. Both men are in love with Clementina, the beautiful daughter of a well-known gypsy horse trader but there are obstacles in both their paths.

Hugo finds that when he tries to see Clementina again, both his parents and hers do everything they can to stop him.

Meanwhile Ramon’s brother, Pedro, is arrested and imprisoned because he will not reveal his brother’s whereabouts to the Guardia Civil. Now Ramon has to choose between his brother and the woman he loves.

This fast moving historical novel is a story of love, politics, class prejudice, intrigue and betrayal in the year leading up to the Spanish Civil War.

Buy Links:

This title is available to read on #KindleUnlimited.

Universal Link:

Amazon UK: Amazon US: Amazon AU: Amazon CA:

Meet the author

Teacher, management trainer and business woman, the Scottish-born novelist, Joan Fallon moved from the UK to Spain in 1998 and dedicated herself to full-time writing. She is now the self-published author of eighteen books, many of which are historical novels set in southern Spain, and focus on two distinct periods in the country’s history, the Spanish Civil War and Moorish Spain.

More recently she had turned her attention to writing contemporary crime fiction, with a series of novels entitled The Jacaranda Dunne Mysteries but her love of historical fiction has lured her back to writing about Spain in the 20th century in her latest novel The Winds of Change.

Connect with the author

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Follow The Winds of Change by Joan Fallon blog tour with The Coffee Pot Book Club

I’m excited to share my review for Death on Board by Anita Davison, the first book in a new cosy historical mystery series #newrelease

Here’s the blurb

NEW YORK,1900: A captivating cozy crime novel set on-board the maiden voyage of the S.S. Minneapolis, featuring series character Flora Maguire. Perfect for fans of Downton Abbey.

Young governess Flora Maguire is on her way home from America on the maiden voyage of the S.S. Minneapolis with her young charge Eddy, Viscount Trent, when she discovers a dead body.

Unconvinced when the death is pronounced an accident, Flora starts asking questions, but following threats, a near drowning and a second murder, the hunt is on for a killer. Time is running out as the Minneapolis approaches the English coast.

Will Flora be able to protect Eddy, as well as herself?

Is her burgeoning relationship with the handsome Bunny Harrington only a shipboard dalliance, or something more? And what secrets must Flora keep in order to stay safe?

Purchase Link

https://amzn.to/3PMHqui

My Review

Death on Board is a historical mystery set onboard a transatlantic crossing in the year 1900.

Our main character, Flora, is a governess escorting her young charge home to begin school. Unsure of herself, as her employer has purchased her a First Class ticket, Flora avoids meeting many of them until the unexpected death of a member of her table, whose body she’s unfortunate to discover early one morning.

What ensues is a twisted tale of secrets and half-truths as Flora finds herself drawn into the reason behind the man’s death, proclaimed as an accident, but which Flora sees in a very different light. She mingles with all those on board, from the snooty upper-class dam and her companion to the actress seeking a new life in England, as well as the handsome Bunny, and his motorcar, Matilda, as she attempts to get to the bottom of the mystery surrounding the murder.

Death on Board is stuffed with period details, and the mystery itself is well-constructed, with a very satisfying resolution. Fiona is a fantastic creation, as is Bunny, and while I’m not unconvinced they wouldn’t have sunk the ship with the quantity of tea consumed, I thoroughly enjoyed it, and look forward to reading more of the series.

I’m sharing a blog post about Penda, king of the Mercians.

Penda of Mercia

Penda of Mercia is famous for many things, including killing two Northumbrian kings throughout his life. He’s also famous for being a pagan at a time when Roman Christianity was asserting itself from the southern kingdom of Kent. But who was he?

Who was Penda of Mercia?

Penda’s origins are unclear. We don’t know when he was born or where he came from, although it must be assumed he was a member of a family from which the growing kingdom of Mercia might look for its kings. He’s often associated with the subkingdom of the Hwicce, centered around Gloucester. The later source, the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, written at least two hundred and fifty years after his life records,

626 ‘And Penda had the kingdom for 30 years; and he was 50 years old when he succeeded to the kingdom.’ ASC A p24

626 ‘And here Penda succeeded to the kingdom, and ruled 30 years.’ ASC E p25

Knowing, as we do, that he died in 655, this would have made Penda over eighty years old at his death, a fact that is much debated. Was his age just part of the allure of the legend? A mighty pagan warrior, fighting well into his eighties? Sadly, we may never know the truth of that, but it is disputed, and there are intricate problems with the sources that boggle the brain.

Hædfeld, Maserfeld and Winwæd

Suffice it to say, we don’t know Penda’s age or origins clearly, but we do know that he was involved in three very famous battles throughout the middle years of the seventh century, that at Hædfeld in 632/33 fought somewhere close to the River Don, in which King Edwin of Northumbria was killed. That of Maserfeld, in 641/2 in which King Oswald of Northumbria was killed, close to Oswestry, not far from today’s Welsh border. And Penda’s final battle, that of Winwæd in 655 in which he was killed while fighting in the north, perhaps close to Leeds. While these are the battles we know a great deal about, thanks to the writings of Bede and his Ecclesiastical History of the English People, a Northumbrian monk, with an interest in Northumbria’s religious conversion, who completed his work in 731, Penda was a warrior through and through. He fought the kingdoms to the south, the West Saxons, or Wessex as we might know it. He fought in the kingdom of the East Angles. He allied with Welsh kings. He meddled in affairs in Northumbria, and had he not died in 655, it is possible that Northumbria’s Golden Age would have ended much sooner than it did. His son married a Northumbrian princess. His daughter married a Northumbrian prince. Penda was either brokering an alliance with Northumbria or perhaps using marriage as a means of assimilating a kingdom that he was clear to overrun.

Bede

Our narrator of Penda’s reign, is sadly a Christian monk writing up to seventy years after his death. His commentary is biased, and his story is focused on the triumph of religion and Northumbria, probably in that order. And yet, as Bede’s work was coming to its conclusion, even he understood that the Golden Age of Northumbria was coming to an end. A later king, Æthelbald, related not to Penda, but to his brother, Eowa, killed at the battle of Maserfeld, although whether fighting beside his brother or for the enemy is unknown, was the force in Saxon England at the time. How those words must have burned to write when Bede couldn’t skewer the contemporary narrative as he might have liked.

But while Penda’s reign is so closely tied to the words of Bede, our only real source from the period in Saxon England, although there are sources that exist from Wales and Ireland, Penda’s achievements aren’t to be ignored.

Penda’s reputation

Recent historians cast Penda in a complimentary light. D.P. Kirby calls him ‘without question the most powerful Mercian ruler so far to have emerged in the Midlands.’ Frank Stenton has gone further, ‘the most formidable king in England.’ While N J Higham accords him ‘a pre-eminent reputation as a god-protected, warrior king.’ These aren’t hastily given words from men who’ve studied Saxon England to a much greater degree than I have. Penda and his reputation need a thorough reassessment.

After his death, his children ruled after him, but in time, it was to his brother’s side of the family that later kings claimed their descent, both King Æthelbald and King Offa of the eighth-century Mercian supremacy are said to have descended from Eowa.

Check out the Gods and Kings page for more information.

I’m delighted to be sharing an excerpt from Susannah Willey’s new book, War Sonnets HistoricalFiction #WWII #Pacific #BlogTour #CPBC #TheCoffeePotBookClub

I’m delighted to be sharing an excerpt from War Sonnets by Susannah Willey.

ASSAULT FORCE

The sea is calm; upon its boundless deep

Our troopship glides, lost in infinity.

Beneath her decks two thousand soldiers sleep,

Or, waking, wonder what their fate will be.

From my assigned position here on high

I peer ahead, and in the east I see

The dawn’s pale fingers clawing at the sky,

And then, a speck of land. The enemy

Will not be sleeping.

Now the troops are out

And stand in little groups beside each boat.

The gunship’s roar drowns out the sergeant’s shout.

Rope ladders fall, the LCIs, afloat,

Receive two thousand men in war array.

Each boat, full loaded, quickly moves away.

CHAPTER 18

PHILIPPINE SEA—JANUARY 31, 1945

Leo sat against a pile of life rafts, his knees bent to support the letter he was writing. Dooley perched on a pile of rafts next to him with a handful of Aussie sailors. Their ship, the Australian transport Westralia, was part of a large convoy escorted by agile destroyers. …

“I could spend the rest of the war right here.” Dooley patted the life raft. “Whatcha think, Yankee boy?” Ever since they’d left New Guinea, Dooley had acted like his outburst at Leo’s promotion had never happened.

Leo set down his pen and took a moment to stretch his arms. “I think I’d rather be almost anywhere but on a ship.”

Dooley took a last, deep drag on his cigarette. “With our luck,” he said, exhaling smoke through his nostrils, “we’ll get sunk by a submarine before we get to Luzon.” He flicked his cigarette into the water.

“Not funny.” Leo growled.

“More likely some crazy kamikaze,” an Aussie sailor said, “locked into a bomb-loaded plane they call an Okha. But Baka is more like it: a bloody fool.” His fellow seamen snickered.

“Those mates are crazy.” The sailor propped himself up on one elbow. “One of ’em nearly sent us to kingdom come a couple months ago.” He glanced at his fellow Aussies. “Ain’t that right, mates?”

“Yeah, up in Leyte,” said another. “Missed us by a wallaby’s tail.” He held up his thumb and forefinger, an inch apart.

“About eight of them just dropped from the clouds.” The Aussie launched into his story. “Before you could blink, one of them crashed head-on into one of our carriers. Our mates couldn’t do anything but watch.”

Sitting on the open deck, Leo felt exposed. He subconsciously scanned the sky for enemy planes, strained to hear their engines. His brain struggled with an indistinct image of planes impacting with ships—something he’d really rather not imagine.

“Instead of cats and dogs, it was raining planes and bodies, machine-gun fire and bombs. Seemed like those bloody bastards were hell-bent on dying.”

One of his mates picked up the story. “The ship next to us got clobbered. Bloody Baka took out half the crew. Men flyin’ through the air like rag dolls, others stuck with shrapnel. They said the deck was covered with Jap guts and brains, all kinds of body parts and plane wreckage.”

That was something Leo couldn’t begin to imagine, and he was grateful for that. He dang sure didn’t want to get obsessed about being split into pieces by a kamikaze. “Sitting ducks” was a perfect description of their situation out here in the middle of the ocean. Except a duck was a lot harder to hit than a troopship.

The Aussie storyteller looked at Dooley. “You should’ve seen it, Yank. Helluva mess.”

Dooley bristled at that last remark. “Don’t call me a Yank.”

One of the Australian soldiers snickered. “Well, that accent of yours sure ain’t Brit.”

Dooley jumped to the deck, fists clenched at his sides. “You can call Sergeant Baldwin here a Yank cause he’s a northerner. But I’m from Loo-siana, and where I come from, calling a southern boy a Yank is fightin’ words.”

The Aussie held up a hand. “Don’t go getting your civvies wrinkled, mate. It’s just what we call Americans.”

“American’s full of goddamned mongrels, and I ain’t one of them,” Dooley growled. “We got Russkies and Polacks, Wops—and Yankees.” He spat out the word as if it was the sourest bit of vomit. “We got so many Nips they had to build prison camps to keep ’em outta our hair. And that don’t even count the spics and ni—”

Leo had about enough of Dooley’s bragging and bigotry. He held his hand out for Dooley to stop. “Yeah, we get it. You southern boys are some kind of special all right.”

Dooley glared at Leo and started pacing. “All’s I’m sayin’”—his deep southern drawl thickened as he stopped and pointed an accusing finger at the Aussie—”is don’t put me in the same kennel with the mutts.”

The sailor put up his hands in a defensive gesture. “Slow down and speak English, mate. Whatever language you’re talkin’ sounds more like Chinese.”

“Ain’t no goddamned Chink, mate.” Dooley put up his fists, took a step toward the rafts.

The Aussie jumped off the raft, ready to fight. “You ain’t winnin’ this fight, Yank.”

Dooley snarled and lunged toward the Aussie sailor, who raised his fists and took a step toward Dooley.

“Come on, fellas.” Leo didn’t want any part of this fight. Dooley was being a jerk, and it embarrassed Leo. He stepped between the two men, cautiously put a hand on Dooley’s chest. “You’re making this a bigger deal than it oughta be. Step back and cool off a minute.”

Dooley glared, but what Leo noticed was beyond Dooley: a cloud of smoke bursting from a destroyer escort in the near distance. In seconds, the air boomed with the report of multiple firing K-guns.

The harsh tones of the General Quarters alarm sent the men on the life rafts scrambling. As troops en route to the front lines, they weren’t much more than cargo—there was nothing for them to do but hide.

Adrenaline surged through Leo’s body as his brain went to work. K-guns fired depth charges. Depth charges meant enemy subs. Enemy subs meant torpedoes—likely the ones the Japs called kaitens, manned suicide bombs not unlike the kamikaze planes. They were notoriously inaccurate, but how accurate did a danged torpedo have to be? His mind was spinning out of control even as he fought to stay calm.

“Leo!” Dooley shouted from under the pile of life rafts and gestured for Leo to join him.

Dooley’s shout got his attention.

Leo’s instincts took over. He looked across the ship’s deck, crowded with frantic soldiers trying to find their way, being pushed and shoved by the ship’s crew trying to do their jobs.

“Come on, Yank.” Dooley’s voice was strained and insistent. “Get in here.”

Leo scrambled under the life rafts, pushing his way well back into the pile.

All sound was muffled now, the incessant alarm, the boom of exploding missiles, the shouts of men who hadn’t yet found cover. The skirmish sounded deceptively far away.

Leo’s heart pounded. Every breath took effort in the suffocating enclosure created by the life rafts. Was that a plane he’d heard? He struggled to shut out the noise and concentrate. His body tensed, waiting for the explosion that would collapse the deck underneath him. He struggled to breathe.

This was too soon. They weren’t supposed to fight until Luzon.

Leo thought about his future, his belief that hard work and ethics were all it took to be a success. He hadn’t counted on random things like kamikaze and kaiten. He hadn’t faced the fact that life and death didn’t take sides. He wiped the sweat from his forehead, forced himself to slow his breathing.

I’m not ready to die. Not yet.

At last, the battleships went quiet, the General Quarters alarm stilled, and the order came to stand down.

Leo pulled himself from his hiding place, watching as soldiers slowly emerged from where they had taken cover. Many of them had merely lain prone on deck with their hands covering their head.

“Holy shit.” Dooley slipped out from under the life rafts. “What in hell was that?”

Leo’s hands still trembled as he brushed off his fatigues. “Too close is what that was.” He scanned the ships in the convoy. “Doesn’t look like anyone took any damage.”

Dooley stood and turned in a slow circle as he surveyed the ships. Leo noticed that Dooley’s hands trembled almost as much as his own. The sea was quiet now, the sun bright on the water as each ship sailed on its own reflection. Neither Leo nor Dooley felt compelled to disrupt the calm.

At last, Dooley completed his rounds and turned to Leo. “Yankee boy, I think we’re at war.”

Here’s the blurb

1942: In the war-torn jungles of Luzon, two soldiers scout the landscape. Under ordinary circumstances they might be friends, but in the hostile environment of World War II, they are mortal enemies.

Leal Baldwin, a US Army sergeant, writes sonnets. His sights are set on serving his country honorably and returning home in one piece. But the enemy is not always Japanese…Dooley wants Leo’s job, and he’ll do whatever it takes to get it…Leo finds himself fighting for his reputation and freedom.

Lieutenant Tadashi Abukara prefers haiku. He has vowed to serve his emperor honorably, but finds himself fighting a losing battle. Through combat, starvation, and the threat of cannibalism, Tadashi’s only thought is of survival and return to his beloved wife and son. As Leo and Tadashi discover the humanity of the other side and the questionable moral acts committed by their own, they begin to ask themselves why they are here at all. When they at last meet in the jungles of Luzon, only one will survive, but their poetry will live forever.

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Meet the author

Susannah Willey is a baby boomer, mother of four, grandmother of three, and a recovering nerd. To facilitate her healing, she writes novels. In past lives, she has been an office assistant, stay-at-home-mom, Special Education Teaching Assistant, School Technology Coordinator, and Emergency Medical Technician. She holds a Bachelor’s Degree in Instructional Computing from S.U.N.Y. Empire State College, and a Master’s Degree in Instructional Design from Boise State University.

Susannah grew up in the New York boondocks and currently lives in Central New York with her companion, Charlie, their dogs, Magenta and Georgie, and Jelly Bean the cat.

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Follow the War Sonnets blog tour with The Coffee Pot Book Club

It’s cover reveal day for Her Last Summer by Emily Freud #CoverReveal #Thriller

Here’s the blurb

A twenty-year-old cold case unearths dark secrets in the scorching-hot destination thriller from Emily Freud.

Twenty years ago, Mari vanished while backpacking through Thailand with her boyfriend, Luke. He was accused of murder, but has always insisted he’s innocent. Besides, her body was never found.

Now, he’s finally ready to talk. And filmmaker Cassidy Chambers wants to be the one to uncover what really happened, back then, in the dark of the jungle.

But as she delves deeper into the past, Cassidy begins to fear what lies ahead, and the secrets buried along the way.

Publication Date: 11^th April 2024

Pre-order Link – https://amzn.eu/d/jkWr0DQ

Meet the author

Emily Freud is the author of My Best Friend’s Secret and What She Left Behind. She has worked on Emmy and BAFTA award winning television series including Educating Yorkshire and First Dates. Emily lives in North London, with her husband and two children. She is currently working on her next novel.

Connect with Emily

https://twitter.com/MsEmilyFreud

https://www.instagram.com/emilyfreud_

I’m sharing a blog post about what we do and don’t know about warfare in the Saxon era. #GodsAndKingsTrilogy #histfic #PaganKing

Here’s the blurb for Pagan King

Britain. AD641.

The year is AD641, and the great Oswald of Northumbria, bretwalda over England, must battle against an alliance of the old Britons and the Saxons led by Penda of the Hwicce, the victor of Hæ∂feld nine years before, the only Saxon leader seemingly immune to Oswald’s beguiling talk of the new Christianity spreading through England from both the north and the south.

Alliances will be made and broken, and the victory will go to the man most skilled in warcraft and statecraft.

The ebb and flow of battle will once more redraw the lines of the petty kingdoms stretching across the British Isles.

There will be another victor and another bloody loser.

books2read.com/PaganKing

Warfare during the Saxon period. What we know and what we don’t know about the battle of Hædfeld.

Thanks to some spectacular archaeological finds, we can visualise how a Saxon warrior might have looked. The reconstructions of the Sutton Hoo helm, and that found with the Staffordshire Horde (as well as a few others), present us with elaborate helmets crested with dyed-horse hair in a way very reminiscent of the Roman era. They glitter, and they seem to be festooned in gold and silver work, but whether these were actually worn in battle or not is debatable. Firstly, they would have made the kings or noblemen very noticeable to their enemy. Secondly, they were so valuable it’s impossible to consider the loss of one of them should they fall and their goods be taken by their enemy. Bad enough for their king and leader to die in battle, but to also lose such precious wealth as well seems unlikely. That said, of course, the Sutton Hoo helm was buried, and the fragments of the Staffordshire Hoard helmet were buried and lost. An image of the Staffordshire Helmet can be found here: https://www.stokemuseums.org.uk/pmag/collections/archaeology/the-staffordshire-hoard/

The monograph on the Staffordshire Hoard is also available for free download from https://library.oapen.org/handle/20.500.12657/39941

But there is another reason why these helmets might have existed, and that’s because they were for ceremonial purposes. Kings, before the reign of Athelstan (925-937) are not known to have undergone consecration with a crown but rather with a helmet. After all, they were warrior kings. Perhaps then, these survivals are more akin to that worn by a warrior-king when appearing before his people or for ceremonial reasons.

What then might have been the more usual garb for a warrior of the Saxon era, which at nearly six hundred years is bound to offer some variations? Shield, spear, seax, sword and byrnie. We get a feel for these items and how valuable they were from wills that survive from the later Saxon era, hundreds of years after the events of Pagan Warrior. Ealdormen had horses, both saddled and unsaddled, shields, spears, swords, helmets, byrnies, seax, scabbards and spears. The will of Æthelmær, an ealdorman in the later tenth century, records that he’s granting his king, ‘four swords and eight horses, four with trappings and four without, and four helmets and four coats of mail and eight spears and eight shields,’^[1] as part of his heriot, a contentious term for something that some argue was an eleventh-century development, and others argue, is merely reflecting earlier practice on the death of a man.

There would also have been thegns and king thegns, who had their own weapons, as well as the men of the fyrd, the free-men who could be called upon to perform military service each year, as and when required. It’s often assumed they would have been less well-armed, although this begs the question of whether kings and their warrior nobility were prepared to sacrifice those they relied on to provide them with food to gain more wealth. They might have found themselves with the money to pay for food but without the opportunity to do so.

There are very few representations of warriors, but the surviving strands of the Gododdin, a sixth-century lament to the fallen of Catraeth gives an idea of how these warrior men thought of one another. There is much talk of killing many enemies, drinking mead, and being mourned by those they leave behind.

Flickr user “Portable Antiquities Scheme”, CC BY 2.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0>, via Wikimedia Commons

Battle tactics from the period are impossible to determine fully. Before writing my books which are blood-filled and violent, I read a fascinating account, by a military historian, on how he thought the Battle of Hastings might have been won or lost. The overwhelming sense I came away from the book with was that local features, hillocks, streams, field boundaries even perhaps the path of a sheep track might well be the very thing that won or lost a battle for these opposing sides. The land that kings chose to go to war on was incredibly important,

When trying to reconstruct the battlefield for the battle of Hædfeld, which concludes Pagan Warrior, I encountered a problem that will be familiar to writers of the Saxon era. The place where the battle is believed to have taken place, on the south bank of the River Don (although this has been disputed and work continues to discover whether the other location could be the correct one), has been much changed by later developments. It was drained in the 1600s and therefore, it doesn’t look today as it would have done when the battle took place.

I had very little information to work on. The River Don, the River Idle, the River Ouse, the belief that the ground would have been marshy, and that many men fell in the battle. And the words of Bede in his Ecclesiastical History, ‘A great battle being fought in the plain that is called Heathfield.’^[2] Much of the rest is my imagination.

^[1] Dorothy Whitelock, Anglo-Saxon Wills 1930, reprinted edition. Cambridge University Press. p27

^[2] http://legacy.fordham.edu/halsall/basis/bede-book2.asp