Let us Talk of Many Things; of Books and Queens and Pirates, of Mystery and Kings...: April 2016

Friday, 29 April 2016

Z is for... OZgur Sahin's Wrath of Brotherhood

#HNSIndie

Z is for oZgur

Click Here for a list of other A-Zers

Throughout April I invited 26 authorswho had been selected as Editor's Choice
by the Historical Novel Society Indie Reviews to help me out with the 2016 A-Z Blog Challenge...

Except to be a little different interviewed

their leading Character/s...

Today is the Last Character and is from :

HH : Hello! I believe you exist in Ozgur’s novel – what is the title of the book, and

would you like to introduce yourself - who you are, what you do etc?

My name is Coya. I am still learning how to read, but my friend Jan has told me the book is called The Wrath of Brotherhood. I would like to read it so I can understand these strange events more, but I only encountered English for the first time a few years ago when the Englishmen came in their ships to take Jamaica away from the Spanish. I grew up in the jungles and mountains of what the Spanish call New Granada. My people fled the fall of the Incas and the dominance of Spain to the west many generations ago, but the Spanish found us at last and destroyed my village, among others. I was thirteen years old, but I survived in the wild and made my way to the outskirts of Cartagena.

The families in our village all had excellent sight at night, and this helped me to escape and make a living thieving from the Spanish. I hate that I must do this, but I have little mercy for the Spaniards, whose language I had to learn to survive. I was overjoyed when, after stowing away aboard a tall ship bound for Santiago de la Vega, I finally witnessed a Spanish defeat by the wonderful English people when they took the port and renamed it Cagway, or Port Royal. When I met Captain Roy Toppings, he saw my abilities in a way I had never considered, and he invited me to join his crew as a scout.

HH : Where and when are you? Are you a real historical person or did your author create you?

I don't understand the European calendars much, but it is May of the year 1660. I know this because the sailors of Port Royal never cease talking about when someone named Charles‒seemingly the second one, though I've met others named Charles here‒will come to England to rule at the beginning of next month. At least it was the beginning of May when we left Port Royal in Jamaica. Since then I have spent much time in Curaçao and along the coast of New Granada (what you call South America) from Caracas to Coro. I and my village were created from nothing by the author. I am saddened that my village, which I felt such grief for losing, never truly existed.

HH. In a few brief sentences: what is the novel you feature in about?

The motivation for many of us seems to be revenge‒especially for Captain Roy Toppings and for me. But it seems to me now that both of us are mistaken in some part of our revenge. His will lead him to a bad place, if the Spanish invasion we became involved with is any kind of omen, but now I feel mine is perhaps satisfied.

HH : I ‘met’ my pirate, Jesamiah Acorne on a beach in Dorset, England - how did your author meet up with you?

My creator had a need in this world for many different views and experiences among his crew. Mine was a unique view to him, and a unique set of skills. And yet the other Brethren of the Coast ARE my brothers because we are all aboard The Constance to reach beyond mere survival in a world being strangled by Spaniards.

HH : Tell me about one or two of the other characters who feature with you - husband, wife,

family? Who are some of the nice characters and who is the nastiest one?

There is my friend, the surgeon named Jan. He understands my situation somehow, though he has never shared my experiences. Of course Captain Roy Toppings, who saved me from my life alone in the wild. I feel much gratitude and respect for him, but I worry about him also. Ajuban, his first mate, shares much in common with me because he was a slave owned by Spaniards before Roy freed him. I don't know about nasty characters. All Spanish are my enemies...but there was the Dutch merchant captain, Marius Gilbertsen. No one has anything good to say of him, and I feel I have not seen him for the last time. And there is Major Manuel Benito. He is now our prisoner, and he has worked against us, but for some reason, I also respect him, and I do not know how to feel about that. My crewmate, Daniel, he looks at me in a way that I do not like at all. He is the only crewmate I do not feel I would mourn.

HH : What is your favourite scene in the book?

There are many I remember with joy. However, as unpleasant as it was to participate in, I am very proud of the part I played in the final battle. I was in the hold of an enemy ship, and all my information came from what I could hear. I had a vital task to perform, and I succeeded. Now that I think on it, that was the true moment when my vengeance was granted.

HH : What is your least favourite? Maybe a frightening or sad moment that your author

wrote.

Before the scene I just told you about, I didn't know it at the time, but it was revealed why my friend Jan was really part of our crew. He should have no need for the wage‒he was a skilled city surgeon. When William read his notes back to me and I learned Jan's true reason, I was deeply saddened and I didn't want him to read any more.

HH : What are you most proud of about your author?

He made me think about all the things that happened in my life. I had always thought about what had happened to me in one way, thought of Spaniards in one way, thought of my future in one way. He made me really see things differently, and I can feel that it is much better medicine for me than the last seventeen years in the wild, alone with my thoughts.

Cap'n Ozgur Sahin

HH : Has your author written other books about you? If not, about other characters?

He has just finished writing the first version of another book with me in it, but I don't yet know what it will be called. I am almost afraid to read it. I have many worries about Jan and about the Spaniards, but most of all I have worries about Roy. I think he is in a bad place now, and I don't want it to get any worse.

HH : How do you feel about your author going off with someone else!

I think if he can do for other characters what he has done for me, can improve their lives the same way, it will be good for us all. I have had enough good fortune to worry over these things.

HH : As a character if you could travel to a time and place different to your own fictional

setting where and when would you go?

I am still exploring the wonders and terrors of this place! I cannot imagine how to answer such a large question. I would like to see how my ancestors truly lived, and I would like to one day see the museums in Spain where I hear the relics of my people are once again revered by scholars. But I would love to see the future one day, when men have mastered the underworld and the middle world of men, and begin to explore the sky and the world of the gods. And I would like to see magic as my parents once told me of‒just once before I die.

Thank you that was really interesting!

Now where can readers of this A-Z Blog Challenge find out more about you and your author?

website

Goodreads

Facebook

Twitter @OzgurKSahin

Blog

Amazon

Sadly Ozgur finishes the tour and the A-Z Challenge
but here is the wonderful company we kept during April
so do browse and enjoy!
Thank you for your support and interest
it has been much appreciated!

APRIL

A 1^st Friday - Aurelia - Alison Morton

B 2^nd Saturday - Bloodie Bones - Lucienne Boyce

C 4^th Monday - Man in the Canary Waistcoat Susan Grossey

D 5^th Tuesday - Dubh-Linn - James Nelson

E 6^th Wednesday - Evergreen In Red And White - Steven Kay

F 7^th Thursday - Fortune’s Fool- David Blixt

G 8^th Friday - Gift For The Magus - Linda Proud

H 9^th Saturday - The Love Letter of John Henry Holliday) - Mary Fancher

I 11^th Monday - In Liberty’s Wake - Alexandra Norland

J 12^th Tuesday - Jacobites' Apprentice - Dave McCall

K 13^th Wednesday - Khamsin- Inge Borg

L 14^th Thursday - LuckBringer - Nick Brown

M 15^th Friday - Murder at Cirey - Cheryl Sawyer

N 16^th Saturday - A Newfound Land - Anna Belfrage

O 18^th Monday - Out Of Time - Loretta Livingstone

P 19^th Tuesday - Pirate Code - Helen Hollick

Q 20^th Wednesday - To Be A Queen – Annie Whitehead

R 21^st Thursday - The Spirit Room - Marschel Paul

S 22^nd Friday - Sower Of The Seeds Of Dreams - Bill Page

T 23^rd Saturday -Tristan & Iseult - Jane Dixon Smith

U 25^th Monday - A Just And Upright Man - John Lynch

V 26^th Tuesday - Victoria Blake – Far Away

W 27^th Wednesday - When Sorrows Come - Maria Dziedzan

X 28^th Thursday – The FlaX flower – AmandaMaclean

Y 29^th Friday - Young, Josa - Sail upon The Land

Z 30^th Saturday OZgur Sahin The Wrath of Brotherhood

Thank you for joining us
it's been a blast!

Y is for...(Josa) Young's Sail Upon The Land

#HNSIndie

Click Here for a list of other A-Zers

Josa Young

Throughout April I have invited 26 authors who had been selected as Editor's Choice by the Historical Novel Society Indie Reviews

to help me out with the 2016 A-Z Blog Challenge...

Except to be a little different I interviewed

their leading Character/s...

Today's Character is from :

HH : Hello! I believe you exist in Josa Young's novel – what is the title of the book, and would you like to introduce yourself - who you are, what you do etc?

I live and have my being in Sail Upon the Land. My name is Lady Sarah Reeves (nee Bourne) – I never use my title though. I’m plain Mrs Reeves, the doctor’s wife to you. I was brought up in a crumbling Victorian house in Sussex, England, which my parents were running as a sort of disorganised rooming house by the time I was born. My great grandfather’s fortune, made from a coloured raising agent for bread that he had invented, had long since been squandered. My own father looked, smelt and in fact was, a farmer. My mother, who came originally from Penge as a refugee from the Zeppelins, spent most of her time lying on a sofa as something had gone wrong with her 'underneath' from having too many babies. I was the only girl, and had three brothers. It used to make me angry that they were favoured over me, and I longed for freedom and fun. Then the war came, and I was able to avoid being a debutante and instead volunteered as a VAD – well that led to meeting my beloved Arthur, and a very happy marriage. Like all lives, there were great sadnesses as well as happiness, and my daughter Melissa’s death nearly destroyed me. Only the existence of her daughter Damson stopped me from giving up all hope. Life goes on, and family love is the most important thing of all.

HH : Where and when are you? Are you a real historical person or did your author create you?

I was born in 1920, in Sussex. I am not at all a real person, I only exist in Sail Upon the Land. Possibly I represent the kind of resilient woman whose life was profoundly changed by the social shake up of WWII.

HH. In a few brief sentences: what is the novel you feature in about?

Sail Upon the Land is about motherhood. How right and wrong it can go down the generations, and how giving birth opens us up to unimaginable grief and joy. ‘Sail Upon the Land’ is a quotation from Titania’s speech about the mother of her little Indian boy – the catalyst for the plot of Midsummer Night’s Dream - and a visual metaphor for the pregnant tummy swelling like a sail. The novel, which is set in India and England, tries to capture what it means to be a mother, even if you have died or your baby is taken away. It has been described as ‘unveiling the complexities of motherhood and feminine experience, something which is rarely written in such a raw and true way’.

House in Ooty, India

HH : I ‘met’ my pirate, Jesamiah Acorne on a beach in Dorset, England - how did your author meet up with you?

I don’t know. I think I just popped into her head as she thought about mothers.

HH : Tell me about one or two of the other characters who feature with you - husband, wife, family? Who are some of the nice characters and who is the nastiest one?

My husband Arthur Reeves is someone I would never have met without WW2 and the mixing of the classes that it set off. He is a lovely man, an excellent doctor. He welcomed the NHS with open arms after the war, and was well known for being firm with his patients. If he was nice to them, that was when they got frightened. He did try so hard always to be the same, firm and brisk, but he was so compassionate.

My daughter Melissa was always a worry. She was such a moody child. She used to have what we called in the family her ‘glooms’, when she would want to sit on my lap even when she was a teenager. We were sure she would grow out of them, when happily married and settled. She didn’t…

I never knew what to make of my son-in-law Munty. He seemed such a shy man, but he did his best to bring up his daughter Damson on his own. Then he married that awful woman from Nottingham, Margaret. So brassy, rich and bossy. Completely took him over and I worried that she wasn’t nice to Damson, although I would never have said that out loud. She had twin daughters, very beautiful, but rather shallow. Still, life is long and things change.

And Damson, my poor darling grand-daughter, with her terrible secret. She so longed to follow in Arthur’s footsteps as a doctor, but what a price she paid.

HH : What is your favourite scene in the book?

I like the scene where I confront the Nazi officer who tried to commandeer my ambulance during the retreat to Dunkirk. I am afraid to say I was so angry that I slapped him very hard, which was nearly the death of me. But not quite.

HH : What is your least favourite? Maybe a frightening or sad moment that your author wrote.

I can hardly bear to think about it, but it concerns my daughter Melissa and what happened after Damson was born. I still feel so guilty that I was too ill to go and look after her.

Mistress Josa Young

HH : What are you most proud of about your author?

In spite of a very enthusiastic agent, the book didn’t sell to a mainstream publisher even though her first novel One Apple Tasted was published in 2009. So she decided to publish it herself and learned everything there was to know about paperback and ebook publication in a very short time. When the Historical Novel Society long-listed it for their Indie Award 2016, I felt very proud and she felt very justified.

HH : Has your author written other books about you? If not, about other characters?

How do you feel about your author going off with someone else!

Her first novel contains a very different set of characters, but I do have a walk-on role in the sequel to Sail Upon the Land which is coming soon.

HH : As a character if you could travel to a time and place different to your own fictional setting where and when would you go?

I am firmly lodged in my own setting, and so relieved that I lived at a time when women’s lives were expanding out of the usual class norms. I would have hated being a debutante, and loved working at a nurse.

Thank you that was really interesting!

Now where can readers of this A-Z Blog Challenge find out more about you and your author?

Website www.josayoungauthor.com

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

Twitter @JosaYoung

Buy on Amazon

Here is the company we will be keeping on this

A-Z Blog Challenge!

APRIL

A 1^st Friday - Aurelia - Alison Morton

B 2^nd Saturday - Bloodie Bones - Lucienne Boyce

C 4^th Monday - Man in the Canary Waistcoat Susan Grossey

D 5^th Tuesday - Dubh-Linn - James Nelson

E 6^th Wednesday - Evergreen In Red And White - Steven Kay

F 7^th Thursday - Fortune’s Fool- David Blixt

G 8^th Friday - Gift For The Magus - Linda Proud

H 9^th Saturday - The Love Letter of John Henry Holliday - Mary Fancher

I 11^th Monday - In Liberty’s Wake - Alexandra Norland

J 12^th Tuesday - Jacobites' Apprentice - Dave McCall

K 13^th Wednesday - Khamsin- Inge Borg

L 14^th Thursday - Luck Bringer - Nick Brown

M 15^th Friday - Murder at Cirey - Cheryl Sawyer

N 16^th Saturday - A Newfound Land - Anna Belfrage

O 18^th Monday - Out Of Time - Loretta Livingstone

P 19^th Tuesday - Pirate Code - Helen Hollick

Q 20^th Wednesday - To Be A Queen – Annie Whitehead

R 21^st Thursday - The Spirit Room - Marschel Paul

S 22^nd Friday - Sower Of The Seeds Of Dreams - Bill Page

T 23^rd Saturday -Tristan & Iseult - Jane Dixon Smith

U 25^th Monday - A Just And Upright Man - John Lynch

V 26^th Tuesday - Victoria Blake – Far Away

W 27^th Wednesday - When Sorrows Come - Maria Dziedzan

X 28^th Thursday – The FlaX flower – AmandaMaclean

Y 29^th Friday - Young,Josa - Sail upon The Land

Z 30^th Saturday OZgur Sahin The Wrath of Brotherhood

So call back tomorrow

(unless it is Sunday - in which case, see you Monday)

To meet the next - and sadly, the last -
exciting Character!

Thursday, 28 April 2016

X is for... (the) flaX flower

#HNSIndie

Click Here for a list of other A-Zers

The FlaX Flower

Throughout April I have invited 26 authors who had been selected as Editor's Choice by the Historical Novel Society Indie Reviews

to help me out with the 2016 A-Z Blog Challenge...

Except to be a little different I interviewed

their leading Character/s...

Today's Character is from :

HH : Hello! I believe you exist in Amanda MacLean’s novel – what is the title of the book, and would you like to introduce yourself - who you are, what you do etc?

What they call the book is The Flax Flower. I dinna ken why they call it that, but anyway a flax flower is the bonniest flower you can have. It’s gey bonny, but it only lasts the one day.

They call me bonny too. And they’ve called me lots of different names. I was Nan or Nannie as a bairn, but I stopped all that and made them call me by my right given name, that’s Agnes. Agnes Smith. But then Andrew came along and he called me Annie, his bonny Annie.

I live in a fine house wi’ four rooms, no like the cottars’ places that have just the one room, because my father’s the Miller o’ Tifty, and a gentleman. I spin and feed the chooks, and I milk the kye and make butter and cheese, and gather reeds to make into wicks for the cruisie lamps. And I do the shearing at harvest time.

HH : Where and when are you? Are you a real historical person or did your author create you?

Well it says 1673 on my grave, where I lie in Fyvie kirkyard. That’s in Buchan, no far frae Aberdeen.

HH. In a few brief sentences: what is the novel you feature in about?

It’s my story, mine and Andrew’s, and what they did to me. These days they say they do that kind of thing for honour, but I canna see any honour in it.

HH : I ‘met’ my pirate, Jesamiah Acorne on a beach in Dorset, England - how did your author meet up with you?

Ocht, she heard about me the way all folk hear about me, in the old song that bears my name and tells my story. Only she had been told about the song before she heard it, and then she sought it out to hear it, so I think she was maybe looking for me already. Mill o’ Tifty’s Annie it’s called, or sometimes Andrew Lammie, it doesna matter, it’s the same. It’s one of the big old sad story songs that you would call a ballad, that’s been passed down for three hundred years or more.

HH : Tell me about one or two of the other characters who feature with you - husband, wife, family? Who are some of the nice characters and who is the nastiest one?

There’s Andrew,he’s the Laird’s trumpeter, come all the way frae Edinburgh, but I canna talk about him in case my mother and father hear me. They’re stern as anything, and my father has such a temper on him, I can just see the veins standing out on his temples if he got wind of it. There’s my sisters, and my brother Will, I dinna like him much, he hurts me sometimes. And he drinks.

I like to go down to see old Jess in her cott, it’s a broken down old houf with a coo inside, but there is always singing and stories going on. I like to hear her sing, and she teaches me her big story songs.

HH : What is your favourite scene in the book?

Being down in Jess’s cott at Hallowe’en and dooking for apples, and the guisers bursting in. And the dancing at Hogmanay, wild and wild, to see the New Year in. They were all looking at me then! And any time I see Andrew, when it’s just me and him.

HH : What is your least favourite? Maybe a frightening or sad moment that your author wrote.

Well, there was that time in the kirk when Cat Campbell was on the repentance bench. She’d been with her lad and had a bairn in her belly to prove it. And the Minister was rebuking her, oh God you wouldn’t want to be sitting in her place there in front of all the congregation, the shame of it.

There’s other things. Things I canna talk about. I canna bear it. Maybe I should have held my tongue then, too, but I was never one for that.

HH : What are you most proud of about your author?

Jess used to say to me, when she was teaching me a song, “dinna put too much of yourself into it, just let it tell itself.” I like the way she writes direct, tells my story straight and true, and the way she writes it’s like it’s got a rhythm to it, just like the song it comes from.

She did an awful lot of reading, to find out how things were when I lived, and she found my Andrew hidden away in the old archives. No one knew he was there, but she found him all the same.

Mistress Amanda MacLean

HH : Has your author written other books about you? If not, about other characters?

How do you feel about your author going off with someone else!

There isna much more to tell about me, though they’ve been singing about me ever since.

I hear she is writing about two sisters now, that are in some other song, but I dinna mind because she still remembers me whenever she sings my song.

HH : As a character if you could travel to a time and place different to your own fictional setting where and when would you go?

I’d go somewhere a long way away, somewhere I’ve never been, like Aberdeen, or maybe even Edinburgh with its castle on the rock. And I’d go to when you are, when you can choose a man for yourself and naebody can tell you otherwise.

Thank you that was really interesting!

Now where can readers of this A-Z Blog Challenge find out more about you and your author?

If you search for Mill o’ Tifty’s Annie or Andrew Lammie you’ll find all kinds of people singing it, just as good as Jess used to sing. My author sings it too: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VbGYGgSry0E

Or you can find out about me in this old chapbook, though it doesn’t get everything right, but it’s a wee bit like the chapbooks my father used to read to me, so I like it. http://www.yourphotocard.com/Ascanius/Mill_o_Tiftys_Annie.htm

Website http://www.lulu.com/spotlight/amandamaclean

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

Buy on

Amazon UK Print: Kindle:

Amazon.com print kindle

Here is the company we will be keeping on this

A-Z Blog Challenge!

APRIL

A 1^st Friday - Aurelia - Alison Morton

B 2^nd Saturday - Bloodie Bones - Lucienne Boyce

C 4^th Monday - Man in the Canary Waistcoat Susan Grossey

D 5^th Tuesday - Dubh-Linn - James Nelson