OK, so it's not a bodice ripper!

I have just read an indignant review of Kathleen's first book, Bride of the Spear. The writer berates the book for being too explicit for teenagers! I want to put the record straight with regard to Moon in Leo, so be warned:
It is not a book for teenagers. It is not a bodice ripper. It is not chick-lit. It is not escapist historical froth. It is not crammed with sensational violence or titillating sex. It is not an academic study of the socio-political and religious background to the Restoration of Charles II. If you read historical fiction to escape from what you see is a nasty modern world, you will be disappointed. Kathleen's past is not soft focus and rosy.
It's a book for grown up, intelligent people. You will understand the political, social and religious issues of the time better, when you have read it. You may even return to your history books- it is a fascinating period! You will have a good mental picture of that area of England's North-West. You may even plan a visit, if you are not lucky enough to live there: it is a place of great beauty. Above all, you will have read a cracking good story, with suspense, romance, tragedy, laughter, horror, beauty, violence, tenderness, loss, compassion, hatred, a heroine and hero who will stay with you long after you put down the book, and a sense of having shared a richness and maturity of vision with Kathleen. I can't wait to share it with you!

We are getting nearer by the day, and will probably e publish as well as produce hard copies through (probably) Lightning Source. That way, Moon in Leo will be available wherever in the world you are!

Colonel Kirkby and the Peacock Room

 Simon has been imprisoned. Rosamund goes to see Colonel Kirkby of Kirkby Hall, her local magistrate.  Rumour has it that Kirkby is a secret Catholic, which in those times was extremely dangerous. In the following passage, Kathleen evokes that sense of extreme danger, as well as giving us a vivid picture of the hall. The pictures in the link show the accuracy of her historical research: she has been there, so she takes us!  Kathleen talks about her research in an interview with Raymond Thompson, already mentioned in my earlier post Deja Vue

She had never seen a room quite like it before. Apart from one carved and cushioned armchair, it certainly did not suggest a private study. It was very large, nearly the whole length of the west wing. There was no ceiling; the heavy black timbers of the roof, supported by a huge king-post, made it look like a barn or a church. The likeness to a church was increased by the writing painted on the wall plaster in red and black letters: the Ten Commandments, the Lord's Prayer, the Creed and quotations from the English Bible, all good Protestant texts. The room might have been a Puritan chapel for a family too strict to approve of the parish church.

But the paintings that blazed out under the texts were not Puritan at all. Pairs of peacocks in all the glory of their spread tails faced each other on either side of trees with their summer foliage. Most visitors would have seen the peacocks as fitting images of Kirkby pride and ambition. Rosamund however, had learned to read pictures for their messages as well as enjoying their colours and shapes. Peacock flesh, according to legend, never decayed. Peacock plumage, renewed every year, was a symbol of resurrection. Pairs of peacocks with a tree between them: Christ and the Virgin, the new Adam and Eve under the Tree of Life in a restored Eden. If you wanted to hide a Catholic chapel, one way of doing so was to pretend that it was a Protestant chapel.

She thought over what she had heard about Colonel Kirkby; his appalling temper, his ruthless harrying of local Baptists and Quakers, the gout that always tortured him. If Colonel Kirkby really were a Catholic, as devoted to his church as his cousin Lucia, yet driven by his energy and ambition to betray it with his lips and outward actions, the results could be expected. They were self-hatred battening on his body; persecuting heretics to soothe his conscience or taste a hidden revenge; practising his true religion furtively, yet flaunting it on his walls, daring ruin and a hideous death if the wrong person read his riddle. Perhaps he even had a dark hope that one day someone would denounce him, so he might die for his faith at last. No wonder he lived in torment.

Balls in the air

Sometimes it's hard trying to keep them all up at the same time, so what's the logical conclusion? Of course- give myself another writing task! (perhaps twirling plates would have been a better metaphor) As Queen of Prevarication, I know only too well that rattling the keys on a new writing blog is a great way to put off doing the things I really need to do.
Anyway, my primary motivation for creating this blog was to create a vehicle for reporting on the progress of Moon in Leo, the book by Kathleen Herbert that Mike and I are trying to get published. My own writings will come in later.
My aim is to inform anyone out there in the ether that Kathleen Herbert, winner of the Georgette Heyer Memorial Prize for Historical Fiction in 1983, has completed a fourth novel- Moon in Leo. Kathleen has had a stroke and has entrusted me with the task of getting it published. Please get in touch with me if you are a fan already/ like historical fiction/ are interested in Restoration England/ are an agent or publisher who might be interested, or know one!
More details about Kathleen and her books, as well as a synposis of and (possibly) some passages from Moon in Leo in further posts.
I will leave you with some words about Queen of the Lightning (the one which won the G H P) from a German fan:
The novel is written with such feeling that I sometimes still have no words.Concepts such as: joy, love, hate, fear, despair, hope, or sadness can find their place here.