AD 1173: England is on the brink of war. Loyalties are divided across the nation and nobody is safe. Young acolyte, Ralph and his friend, Harold, are thrust into the chaos of the warring factions when they are tasked to deliver a vital message to the Royalist forces. Esmé, a young noblewoman, sets out on a quest to recover her inheritance while escaping the abusive grasp of her betrothed.
Tell us about your latest book
My debut novel, The Guild of Salt and the King’s Messenger, is a story set in the 12th century and centres around the 1173 - 1174 revolt against Henry II initiated by his oldest son. The protagonists are a group of young people who take advantage of the chaos to try and improve their station.
Ralph is a young man of the lower nobility who’s disgraced his family and been consigned to a backwater. Being a second son, he was foisted into the priesthood and now works as an attendant to a parish priest. Nevertheless, he dreams of being more worldly and becoming a celebrated success for his family.
Esmé is a young noblewoman who’s fallen into wardship. She comes to a crisis as the date of her marriage approaches. She has no confidence in her betrothed to manage her family legacy and fears pregnancy as both her mother and grandmother died having their first child.
The chaos of the revolt provides the characters with a chance to escape their situations and perhaps write a new future for themselves. I was heavily influenced by Bernard Cornwell’s books, notably his Sharpe series and C. S. Forester's Hornblower novels. Both feature protagonists striving against their circumstances. I’ve always thought stories like that have universal appeal and wanted to write something similar.
What is your preferred writing routine?
My preferred writing routine would be to get up early and put a solid four hours of writing in every morning, then edit the previous day's work after a break. However, I have a full-time job working as a university librarian and archivist, I have to live with a more spartan approach.
I spend a lot of time outlining and have developed a template to organise my chapters. It’s easy to add a bullet point about the plot or character development using my cellphone between meetings or during transit. I write in the evenings, after work and try to get seven hundred words written each night. With the help of my outline, I usually hit my quota.
What advice do you have for new writers?
Steep yourself in your research. It’s important to know the dates but just as important to know what people would have eaten and when. What would have passed for entertainment? What kinds of news and events would have mattered to them? The more you understand these things, the easier the writing will be because you won’t need to stop and check for a reference about appropriate food for such-and-such a religious festival.
I always encourage people I know who are interested in writing historical fiction to get a community user's library card from their closest university. There are thousands of scholarly papers and journals with excellent, current information that just can’t be accessed via Google.
What have you found to be the best way to raise awareness of your books?
So far, it seems Twitter gets the most results, but it’s early days. I’m trying out different avenues to measure their performance accurately.
Tell us something unexpected you discovered during your research
The fact that 12th Century culture showed a much broader intellectual curiosity than I had anticipated. It’s easy to see that time as one steeped in superstition and religious fanaticism, and naturally, there was plenty of both. Nevertheless, a strong current of rationality permeated people’s thinking. As the Oxford historian Christopher Tyerman points out, even a king — Amalric of Jerusalem — could openly question the lack of verifiable evidence outside of scripture for the resurrection. As Tyerman goes on to say, it’s hard to imagine a modern American President showing the same level of scepticism and keeping his job.
What was the hardest scene you remember writing?
It’s not so much a scene as it is trying to avoid anachronistic expressions. It’s so easy to use modern turns of phrase when writing dialogue, but going back and trying to give the same meaning using something more appropriate for the time can be tough work.
What are you planning to write next?
The Guild of Salt and the The King’s Messenger is the first book in a trilogy and concerns the beginning of the revolt. The next two books will see it to its conclusion. I plan to continue the series if there’s interest.
Robin Isard
Robin Isard is a faculty librarian and archieral arts university in Canada. He studied history at Western University and has worked in both church and military archives. He has lived many years overseas, primarily in West Africa, building IT infrastructure in The Republic of the Gambia, Sierra Leone, Guinea Bissau and Guinea Conakry. He also worked in Ethiopia and Uganda on a telehealth project on behalf of The Hospital for Sick Children in Toronto, Canada. Find out more at Robin's website https://robinisard.com/ and find him on Facebook and Twitter @RobinIsard
What have you found to be the best way to raise awareness of your books?
So far, it seems Twitter gets the most results, but it’s early days. I’m trying out different avenues to measure their performance accurately.
Tell us something unexpected you discovered during your research
The fact that 12th Century culture showed a much broader intellectual curiosity than I had anticipated. It’s easy to see that time as one steeped in superstition and religious fanaticism, and naturally, there was plenty of both. Nevertheless, a strong current of rationality permeated people’s thinking. As the Oxford historian Christopher Tyerman points out, even a king — Amalric of Jerusalem — could openly question the lack of verifiable evidence outside of scripture for the resurrection. As Tyerman goes on to say, it’s hard to imagine a modern American President showing the same level of scepticism and keeping his job.
What was the hardest scene you remember writing?
It’s not so much a scene as it is trying to avoid anachronistic expressions. It’s so easy to use modern turns of phrase when writing dialogue, but going back and trying to give the same meaning using something more appropriate for the time can be tough work.
What are you planning to write next?
The Guild of Salt and the The King’s Messenger is the first book in a trilogy and concerns the beginning of the revolt. The next two books will see it to its conclusion. I plan to continue the series if there’s interest.
Robin Isard
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About the Author
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