Frustrated Falcons

Frustrated Falcons is practically complete, and should be available very shortly. It will come out first in a fancy Blurb version, followed shortly by a cheaper Amazon version which will come in both softback and Kindle variants. Frankly, unless you really, really want a hardback, I should wait for the Amazon version. But the Blurb one will have pretty pictures on the cover. The Amazon one will probably be more 'penny plain'. I can't afford to commission an artist to do a super-duper cover as I don't expect it to sell that many copies.

If anyone gets mixed up between by projects, this one is a factual book about Edmund of Langley's three children, Edward, Constance and Richard. It makes use of some of the research material I put into Within the Fetterlock, although updated with some information I have found more recently.

Next to emerge should be Alianore Audley and the Holy Grail but there is still quite a bit of writing to be done yet. One problem is that I only have a very vague idea of how it will end. Plan? What plan?

Blurb version of Alianore Audley

 
 
 

    The Adventures of Alianore Audley by Brian Wainwright
    |
    Make Your Own Book
 

 

Alianore Audley and latest news

A print version of The Adventures of Alianore Audley should shortly be available through Amazon. This is in addition to the Kindle version, and also to the Blurb version, which remains available for anyone who has won the lottery or owns an oil well.

I am reasonably close to finishing Frustrated Falcons which is my factual book about Edmund of Langley's three children. I have finished the bits about Constance and Richard of Conisbrough, and just have the fifteenth century section on Edward to do. It will be quite a short book (I do not have whatever it is that enables some authors to write long factual books about persons of whom we know little) and I hope to have it out in Kindle and print versions quite quickly. I may also do a de luxe Blurb version which (because it is a short book) should be relatively affordable.

Alianore II aka Alianore Audley and the Holy Grail is now a MS which exceeds 25,000 words. Some way to go yet, but the ideas are flowing much more freely. I am not quite sure - to be honest - whether it will work, as it is a weird book by any standards, moving more towards fantasy than HF. But you, dear reader, will be the eventual judge. I am plugging away at it - it really should be ready in 2014, and unless I get a better offer, it will go down the Amazon print/Kindle route.

And after that? Well, I don't want to raise too many hopes, but I have roughly four potential novels, which have bits already written. I shall likely select one and try to finish it. No promises though at this stage.

The Open Fetterlock

The Open Fetterlock is available free on Kindle from today for five days.

This is a book of extracts from my uncompleted works. It does not contain a story as such.

The Adventures of Alianore Audley

The Adventures of Alianore Audley is now available through Amazon in Kindle format. I am currently checking a proof for a new printed version for the traditionalists among you. This will be a slightly larger format than the former Bewrite edition, and should be available shortly, also through Amazon.

For those of you are millionaires, there is also a de luxe version available through Blurb, including a hardback edition. But cheap it is not! The forthcoming paperback should be a lot more reasonable.

Work continued slowly on Alianore Audley and the Holy Grail. No promises as to when this will be forthcoming, but I will get there. I have put too much effort into it now for it to be abandoned.

Also on the stocks is a small factual work Frustrated Falcons which is about Edmund of Langley's three children. I am looking for my notes on Edward, the 2nd duke, which I need before I complete it. I think I can describe this little book as 'forthcoming'.

Bewrite Books is no more. Which means that The Adventures of Alianore Audley is no longer available, except second-hand. And of course second-hand sales do me no good.

I am exploring options for it to be published elsewhere. Watch this space.

A Guest Post - David Pilling

 

A Bolton, a Bolton! The White Hawk!

 

Brian has kindly allowed me a guest spot to talk about Book One of The White Hawk, my new series of novels set during The Wars of the Roses. This period, with its murderous dynastic feuding between the rival Houses of York and Lancaster, is perhaps the most fascinating of the entire medieval period in England. Having lost the Hundred Years War, the English nobility turned on each other in a bitter struggle for the crown, resulting in a spate of beheadings, battles, murders and Gangland-style politics that lasted some thirty years.

Apart from the savage doings of aristocrats, the wars affected people on the lower rungs of society. One minor gentry family in particular, the Pastons of Norfolk, suffered greatly in their attempts to survive and thrive in the feral environment of the late 15th century. They left an invaluable chronicle in their archive of family correspondence, the famous Paston Letters.

The letters provide us with a snapshot of the trials endured by middle-ranking families like the Pastons, and of the measures they took to defend their property from greedy neighbours. One such extract is a frantic plea from the matriarch of the clan, Margaret Paston, begging her son John to return from London:

"I greet you well, letting you know that your brother and his fellowship stand in great jeopardy at Caister... Daubney and Berney are dead and others badly hurt, and gunpowder and arrows are lacking. The place is badly broken down by the guns of the other party, so that unless they have hasty help, they are likely to lose both their lives and the place, which will be the greatest rebuke to you that ever came to any gentleman. For every man in this country marvels greatly that you suffer them to be for so long in great jeopardy without help or other remedy..."

The Paston Letters, together with my general fascination for the era, were the inspiration for The White Hawk. Planned as a series of three novels, TWH will follow the fortunes of a fictional Staffordshire family, the Boltons, from the beginning to the very end of The Wars of the Roses. Unquenchably loyal to the House of Lancaster, their loyalty will have dire consequences for them as law and order breaks down and the kingdom slides into civil war. The ‘white hawk’ of the title is the sigil of the Boltons, and will fly over many a blood-stained battlefield.

In the following excerpt, one of the protagonists is introduced to his first taste of real combat at the Battle of Northampton:

“The Lancastrians still had their archers, and the unseasonal rain had turned the ground between the two armies into a quagmire. Geoffrey lost a shoe in the soft, sucking mud, and cursed as he was forced to hobble onward with one naked foot.

Then the skies darkened, and the man beside him squealed and went down with an arrow protruding from the eye-piece of his sallet. Geoffrey lowered his head and stumbled on, gagging at the stench of excrement and split gut that filled his nostrils as more arrows strafed Fauconberg’s division, cutting men down and breaking up their carefully ordered ranks.
 
Geoffrey was breathing hard, his limbs seized with weariness as he laboured through the mud. His heart rattled like a drum. The Yorkists were being murdered by the arrows, and still had to cross a deep ditch, defended by a wall of stakes and thousands of determined, well-fed and rested Lancastrian infantry. They would surely be repelled, panic would set in, and men would start to run. Then the Lancastrian knights would mount their destriers, and the real killing would begin as they pursued their beaten foes across miles of open ground.

Geoffrey’s courage and desire for vengeance shriveled inside him. He desperately wanted to turn and run, but the press of men forced him on, towards the bristling line of stakes. He glanced ahead, and saw that March’s division had stormed right up to the barricades on the right flank of the Lancastrian position. These were defended by men wearing badges displaying a black ragged staff. He recognised the livery as that of Lord Grey of Ruthin, a powerful Welsh Marcher lord.

He expected March’s advance to grind to a halt as his men came up against the stakes and Grey’s well-armed infantry, but then something extraordinary happened. The men wearing the badge of the ragged staff laid down their weapons and stood aside, allowing the Yorkists to pass through their lines. Some even stooped to help their supposed enemies over the ditch.

Lord Grey had turned traitor. Geoffrey had no idea why or how it had been arranged, being too unimportant to be made privy to such deals, but his heart sang at the result. That one act of treachery would surely reverse the tide of battle. The Lancastrians were doomed, trapped like rats inside their improvised fortress. More to the point, Geoffrey’s chances of survival had just improved dramatically…”

If all this whets your appetite, then please check out the paperback and Kindle versions of Book One below...

The White Hawk - paperback version

Kindle version