Britain After Rome

I am reading Robin Fleming’s Britain after Rome: The Fall and Rise, 400 – 1070 and really enjoying it. Part of this is because it’s full of descriptions of clothing. But most of it is that I am hugely attracted to reading about cobbled-together, makeshift societies, and to the details of trade webs and burial […]

I Get Searches, II

More Google searches that have caused people to find this blog: edward ii Were you looking for this band? Because they are awesome. I am not a reggae folk fusion band myself, though. Sorry. teacher big bust fiction I see how this happened. One of the earlier posts somehow turned into a discussion of games […]

Worldbuilding

The BBC just finished an amazing project called A History Of The World In 100 Objects. I’m still working my way through listening to the podcasts. The idea is that each short programme takes an object from the British Museum’s collection and talks about it in the context of the society that created it, and […]

Ask me questions!

Coming soon: a giveaway of the paperback of The Maker’s Mask. I’ll open the post for that as soon as I’ve, er, opened the post from Lulu and the book’s in my hands. I don’t think there’s likely to be a postal strike or similar, but I just don’t want to be offering to give […]

Clearing out the attics

I can’t edit these books any more. That feels really weird, because since about 2007 when the first draft was finished, they’ve been edited a lot. The scene with Innes and Tzenni at the bath house was written very late, replacing a scene which really wasn’t working at all involving Majed: there used to be […]

Mummy, where do books come from?

This is going to sound ludicrously arrogant, given that I’m white, cisgendered, more or less able-bodied, and from a First World country: but when I look back at why I’ve started writing books, most of the time it’s because I’ve been irritated that the books that were already out there weren’t reflecting me. No, I […]

Family trees!

Cas reminded me that I’d said I would do family trees for the Requite books and put them on the website, so there is now a family trees page. Click on the thumbnails for larger versions. So far, there are trees for the Boccamera and the Kapellans: the Malabranca and the Gentileschi are both a […]

Reasons why you should buy my books

1) If you buy the file downloads, it’s pretty cheap! For the price of a posh coffee and a muffin, you can have something I’ve been working on since 2003. Has someone been working on that coffee and muffin since 2003? I sincerely hope not! 2) If you like my fanfic, it’s a lot like […]

Trailer

We’re getting into single-digit weeks, if not days, until the books are available, so I thought I’d share this, which I wrote ages ago for Frankie after having sat through Elizabeth: The Golden Age. It’s a trailer for the Requite books, if they were a film. IMPOSING MUSIC PLAYS. SHOT OF THE SWARM RISING, FROM […]

Progress!

There is progress being made. Honest. The story so far: I thought I’d order a proof copy of The Maker’s Mask before I got into the whole trying to buy an ISBN thing. The proof copy arrived. I took one look at it and snatched it back from my husband saying ‘You can’t read this […]