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

Tuesday, 8 November 2016

Loyalist Legacy

My Tuesday Talk Guest: Elaine Cougler

When the War of 1812 is finally over William and Catherine Garner flee the desolation of Niagara and find in the wild heart of Upper Canada their two hundred acres straddling the Thames River. On this valuable land, dense forests, wild beasts, disgruntled Natives, and pesky neighbors daily challenge them. The political atmosphere laced with greed and corruption threatens to undermine all of the new settlers’ hopes and plans. William cannot take his family back to Niagara, but he longs to check on his parents from whom he has heard nothing for two years. Leaving Catherine and the children, he hurries along the Governor’s Road toward the turn-off to Fort Erie, hoping to return in time for spring planting.

With realistic insights into the challenging lives of Ontario’s early settlers, Elaine Cougler once again draws readers into the Loyalists’ struggles to build homes, roads, and relationships, and their growing dissension as they move ever closer to another war. The Loyalist Legacy shows us the trials faced by ordinary people who conquer unbelievable hardships and become extraordinary in the process.

“We Want a Say!”

Ordinary People Fight the Family Compact

One of the interesting things about writing historical fiction is the exquisite chance for an author to show attitudes, events and mores of times gone by. Writing about my own country as it was coming into being has allowed me to show how different our world was in the days following the American Revolutionary War and the War of 1812.

Today we enjoy good relations with both our American neighbours to the south and our mother country across the pond. This state of affairs was not always so. Quite a lot of wrangling took place with the Americans in both the Revolutionary War and the War of 1812 and families suffered because of it.

Even the British government during the times of which I write was not always fair to Loyalists and others under its protection:

Many of the Six Nations Indians fought bravely and boldly on the side of the British in the American Revolution only to lose great tracts of land when the British and the Americans finalized their treaty to end that war in 1783.

Richard Beasley’s beautiful and well treed land overlooking Burlington Bay (at present-day Hamilton, Ontario) was seized by the British for its suitability as a troop and supplies depot; Beasley got back a denuded and desolate tract of land he soon lost entirely, because of the chicanery of those in power. You can see that land today where Dundern Castle sits, a tourist mecca built right over the redoubts and battlements on Beasley’s land.

And after the War of 1812 the British system allowed the rise of a group of powerful men disdainfully called the “Family Compact” by those early settlers in Upper and Lower Canada (Ontario and Quebec). These men did as much as anyone to cause the pioneers to move toward democracy so that ordinary people could have a say in their own world.

In the excerpt from the third book of the Loyalist trilogy below, the two Garner brothers are in York (Toronto) arguing with Bishop Strachan, a powerful member of the “Family Compact."

“Now I remember where I heard your names before. Your father is John Garner.”

“Yes.” The brothers answered together.

A tiny smile crossed the bishop’s face, thinning out his lips even more. “And you broke out of jail all those years ago. With your father.”

William’s voice cut in. “We were all wrongfully imprisoned. No charges were brought against any of us.” After a moment he added, “sir.”

A large sense of foreboding in his gut, Robert dared to speak again. “We had to escape. Our father was sick and dying from being in that infernal jail.” He kept his voice low but inside his heart was pounding as he remembered.

“Just one of the illegal acts perpetrated by those in power. For their own ends.” William’s tone was soft. “I ask you, is that any way to start a country?"

“You want me to listen to jail breakers?”

“Who were illegally jailed!” Robert could not abide the sneer on the man’s face.

Suddenly the bishop stood and leaned over the desk right into their shocked faces. “Aha! Now I remember. You.” He pointed his bony finger in Robert’s face. “You’re illegal. You blasted American!” The man ranted all around the room, shouting and shrieking, so that the door crashed open and the beady-eyed clerk came running in.

“Arrest this man!” The bishop pointed at Robert. The clerk grabbed his arm and shouldered him past the shocked William and out of the room.

Excerpt from The Loyalist Legacy

“....absolutely fascinating….Cougler doesn't hold back on the gritty realities of what a couple might have gone through at this time, and gives a unique view of the Revolutionary War that many might never have considered.”

Sharon’s Garden of Book Reviews.

“....an intriguing story”

A Bookish Affair

“I highly recommend this book for any student of history or anyone just looking for a wonderful story.”

Book Lovers Paradise

“Elaine’s storytelling is brave and bold.”

Oh, for the Hook of a Book

Buy on Amazon.com
Buy on Amazon.UK

Oh, for the Hook of a Book

ABOUT ELAINE

Elaine Cougler is the author of historical novels about the lives of settlers in the Thirteen Colonies who remained loyal to Britain during the American Revolution.

Cougler uses the backdrop of the conflict for page-turning fictional tales where the main characters face torn loyalties, danger and personal conflicts. Her Loyalist trilogy: The Loyalist’s Wife, The Loyalist’s Luck and The Loyalist Legacy coming in 2016.

The Inspire! Toronto International Book Fair selected The Loyalist’s Wife as a finalist in its Self-Publishing Awards. The Middlesex County Library selected the book as its choice for book club suggestions. The Writers Community of Durham Region presented Elaine with a Pay-It-Forward Award.

Elaine has led several writing workshops and has been called on to speak about the Loyalists to many groups. She writes the blog, On Becoming a Wordsmith, about the journey to publication and beyond. She lives in Woodstock with her husband. They have two grown children.

Links:

@ElaineCougler Twitter

www.elainecougler.com

Facebook Author Page

BLOG

Book Tour

November 7 Hook of a Book Review of The Loyalist Legacy
November 8 Let us Talk of Many Things… Guest Post
November 9 Meyette’s Musings Interview
November 10 The Book Trail Review of The Loyalist Legacy
November 11 Writer’s Treasure Chest Guest Post
November 14 Kristina Stanley Guest Post
November 15 P.C. Zick Guest Post
November 16 Cryssa Bazos Interview
November 17 A Writer of History Guest Post
November 18 Charlene Jones Soul Sciences site Podcast Interview
November 21 Writer’s Treasure Chest Guest Post
November 22 Hook of a Book Interview (live or taped)
November 23 Annika Perry’s Writing Blog Book Release Post with excerpt
November 24 Sally Moore’s Blog Interview
November 25 Black Friday sale of The Loyalist Legacy on Amazon (link to come)

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Chill With A Book Award
by Pauline Barclay

September saw the launch of a brand new award, Chill with a Book AWARD.

The Award is exclusively for indie authors and authors with small indie publishers. It is designed to promote the best books from indie authors.

Indie authors write some of the best reads in out the market place, but due to a number of constraints their work is not always as visible as authors published with large publishing houses, yet many of these authors deserve as much, if not more, recognition.

For those who know me, understand I am very passionate about supporting indie authors, I am one myself and know from personal experience how tough it is to gain recognition and a large following whilst sitting down and writing the next novel, and that is why I have created Chill with a Book AWARD .

I want Chill with a Book AWARD, not only to gain a reputation for recognising great reads, but for authors to feel proud to receive the accolade. However, the AWARD is not for everyone, it will only be honoured to the best.

How the process works:

Once a title has been accepted for consideration it will be read by a number of Chill’s readers and checked against the following criteria…

Were the characters strong and engaging?

Was the book well written?

Did the plot have you turning the page to find out what happened next?

Was the ending satisfying?

Have you told your friends about it?

Readers have clear instructions on how to arrive at their evaluation.

Authors must understand that a book accepted for consideration for a Chill with a Book AWARD does not guarantee it will receive the AWARD.

Authors of books accepted for consideration will be notified directly whatever the final decision.

Awarded books will be promoted on Chill with a Book’s web site, Chill's Pinterest board, Chill's Facebook page and Twitter

A small fee of £16 is charged for each book accepted for consideration payable via Paypal (the fee is for the purchase of Kindle copies for readers and any balance left used to maintain Chill’s web site)

There are limited places each month for books to be considered and if you are interested in submitting your title, please email Pauline at paulinechill@hotmail.com in the first instance.

Chill with a Book’s decisions to accept or reject a book for consideration is final.

Chill with a Book's decision to award a book or not is final.

It is an exciting time for Chill with a Book and indie authors and I look forward to seeing great, well written reads sporting the coveted Chill with a Book AWARD button on every book shelf.

For more about Pauline and Chill with a Book AWARD click on the following links:

www.paulinebarclay.co.uk

www.chillwithabook.com

Tuesday, 1 November 2016

THE PAST AS A FOREIGN COUNTRY

My Tuesday Talk Guest - Bill Page

“The past is a foreign country: they do things differently there,” the man said. Perhaps he should have added that, the further we go back into the past, the more foreign it tends to become. For a start, the natives don’t even have the decency to speak English.

My chosen fragment of the past is later 4^th century Roman Britain, and I have now written three novels set in those times, the latest being One Summer in Arcadia, centred on Spoonley Wood villa, near Winchcombe, Gloucestershire. And yet I am painfully aware that, as evocations of the people and their world, the novels are essentially fraudulent. For how can I – how can anybody – really be sure of what it was like to be alive in that long-vanished world, and of what hopes and terrors, earthly and unearthly, delighted or troubled those long-dead people?

Museums are stuffed with vast piles of pottery and tiles, and with tens of thousands of coins and brooches and innumerable other artefacts. University library shelves groan beneath the weight of carefully researched and beautifully illustrated publications setting out in minute detail the results of the thousands of excavations carried out over the last century and a half. Yet where, in all this mass of information, are the people themselves?

We have some names – pathetically few, considering the millions of people who lived and died in Britain during the three centuries and more of Roman rule – some carved on stone, others scratched on everything from pottery to lead curses. But often they tell us frustratingly little about the living, breathing people to whom those names once belonged.

Even from a great villa like Chedworth, which flourished for over two centuries and reached its heyday towards the middle of the 4^th century, we have only one solitary name, Censorinus, inscribed on a silver spoon (now lost). And we do not even know whether he was the owner of the villa: all we have is the name.

As to the owners of other Gloucestershire villas, such as Spoonley Wood or even the palatial Woodchester, we do not have so much as a single name for men who must, in their time, have possessed near god-like powers over those who lived on their often vast estates. They are, to borrow from Ecclesiasticus, “perished, as though they had never been.”

We have some skeletons – all, alas, anonymous – from cemeteries located outside the walls of towns like Corinium (Cirencester), and the tales they tell are grim. It seems that life for the humiliores –the underclass of Late Roman society, which formed the overwhelming bulk of the population – was generally short (most people not living past their 40s) and frequently brutally hard. Healed fractures and wear on leg and arm joints indicate hard manual labour (and violent quarrels?) from childhood, leading to arthritis and other painful conditions in later life, if they survived that long.

4^th century belt buckle with dolphins & horses’ heads,
said to have been found in the North Cotswolds

And we know from surviving edicts that humiliores could legally be tortured to obtain evidence of alleged crimes committed by themselves or others, and suffer savage punishments, including execution. For those same crimes, honestiores – the upper classes – would at worst usually only suffer banishment, at least for a first offence.

But was such harsh treatment an everyday reality for the underclass? My guess is that it was. Why? Because, in a curious letter written a century later in Gaul, the aristocrat Sidonius Apollinaris tells us that he had several men beaten, simply because they had inadvertently begun to dig a fresh grave on the spot where his grandfather had been buried, even though, by his own admission, the unmarked grave had been levelled by time and weather so as to be indistinguishable from the surrounding ground. And this by a man considered humane by contemporary standards, who later became a bishop and a saint. So should I make this routine ill-treatment a more prominent feature of my novels? Or would it be wiser to heed T S Eliot’s advice, that “humankind cannot bear very much reality”?

Sidonius Apollinaris

And how far had the struggle between Christianity and paganism progressed by the late 360s? Had the majority – honestiores and humiliores alike – converted to the new religion favoured by most emperors from Constantine the Great onwards, or did they still believe in the multitude of strange gods and goddesses, whose stone images now stare blankly out at us from museum cases? We simply do not know, although it is worth remembering that there is very little surviving evidence of Christianity from the western half of 4^th century Britain. My suspicion – and it is only a suspicion – is that belief in (or fear of) the old deities was still strong, and that to a substantial part of the population they were as real as the hills themselves.

Speaking of which, do we even know what the landscapes of the 4^th century Cotswolds looked like? Certainly the contours of the hills must have been the same then as they are today, but what else was? Did great flocks of sheep and their shepherds roam across what were already open grasslands? And were the places that are woods now, also wooded then? Some probably were, but not all: a great villa like Spoonley would not have stood in the wilderness of trees and undergrowth that it does today.

Spoonley Wood villa,
photo taken in spring 2011,
before the wilderness returned.

So many questions, so few satisfactory answers. In the end all we can do is take the crumbs of information gleaned from the various sources and use them to create an illusion of reality. But that is all it is, an illusion, because we can never experience their world through the senses of those men and women who vanished from the earth so long ago, never know their innermost thoughts. And if we claim otherwise, then perhaps we deceive both ourselves and our readers.

LINKS:

Website: www.billpageauthor.co.uk

AMAZON UK
AMAZON.COM

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Chill With A Book Award
by Pauline Barclay