Special Guest Post by Elizabeth St.John, Author of The Queen's Tears: A Novel of Choices, Courage, and the Cost of Love

Available from Amazon UK and Amazon US

A stolen crown jewel and an enigmatic portrait force two women to confront the devastating choices they made for love—and summon the courage to live with the truth.

Launching The Queen’s Tears the old-fashioned way

Before anything else, I want to say thank you to book bloggers, because I don’t think people fully realise how important you are. You give up hours of your own time to read our books, which is no small thing when there are so many of them and so few hours to spend, and then you give up more of it to write about them and share them with readers who might never have found them otherwise. You do it for the love of reading, and a launch simply wouldn’t be the same without you, so thank you, from the bottom of my heart, for everything you do and for taking the time to look at this book.

I published my first book ten years ago, in a very different world. It’s really come home to me these last few months as I pulled out my “marketing stuff to do” spreadsheet and worked with my beta readers, cover designer, and editor to get The Queen’s Tears into shape. So far, all familiar territory, albeit still stressful. But then, approaching the marketing, and already realising that the 90% drop in sales I’d experienced in the past three years was never going to recover in an over-saturated marketplace, I decided that more conversations and less conversions would be the theme for this launch. Let’s get back to basics.

Don’t get me wrong. There’s nothing wrong with marketing, advertising, PR, blog tours, promotions, social media, book talks, book tours, book clubs, book…aaargh! But selectively, purposefully, with intent. Yes, I invested in a great cover designer - Dee Dee Book Covers - and my wonderful editor, Jenny Quinlan, is worth her weight in gold. The fabulous bibliophiles at Coffee Pot Book Club are helping spread the word when the book launches. And that’s before I get to the bloggers like you, who give a book like this its very first readers.

The rest is about conversations. A talk at the library surrounded by countless volumes begging to be read. A friend’s book club where we chat long into the evening about amplifying the voices of lost women. An afternoon tea at my local senior centre, where everyone has a story to tell. And connecting with readers and other authors over coffee and online, wherever there is a conversation to be had. Those are the times I’ve always enjoyed.

I can’t tell you how grateful I am to the local libraries, community centres, senior centres and book clubs that have opened their doors to me. They are happy to have me come along and talk about The Queen’s Tears, and just as happy, which matters even more to me, to let me meet their readers and writers and hear what they have to say in return. Those invitations mean far more than any sales dashboard, because they come from people who love stories and are willing to spend an afternoon with a real person talking about them.

My daughter got married a couple of weeks ago, and a beautiful thing about one of the happiest weeks of my life was the “no cell phone” rule on her wedding day. We had a wonderful photographer, Katie, who was everywhere at every moment with us. But everyone else, friends and family, were simply present, meeting for the first time, reminiscing about past get-togethers, talking, laughing, and bringing such a condensed joy to the day that it was palpable. There were no distractions, no posing, no uploading, no sharing, no forwarding nor posting nor AI improving. It was completely and utterly all about the reason we were together. Love.

It made me think about how bewildering the world has become, with a plethora of AI generated content and images filling every screen, and algorithms that have no idea who is writing the words or who is reading them. I find that rather sad, and I’m firmly resolved that this book will be different. I want The Queen’s Tears to be a living piece of art that connects a community, and not simply a product sold by Amazon.

So, for this book launch, you will see the odd social media post. I’ll share some excerpts here. I’ll announce the publication with a promotional flourish, and I’ll certainly share the highs and lows of tackling my first dual-timeline novel and fun research breakthroughs.

But as for the rest, let’s talk about the power of books to inspire, instil joy and take us to other worlds. Let’s make this a salon of people and voices, not an anonymous announcement of “buy my book”. Because honestly, it’s more fun writing and talking about books than being pinned to sales dashboards.

Amazon’s A+ content is a good way to promote the feel of the book. Public domain art always lends a great deal of atmosphere.

So, if you’ve read this far, The Queen’s Tears launched on October 15th. I really enjoyed writing it (except when I didn’t), and I hope that people enjoy reading it, because I would like to write another.

Elizabeth St.John

# # #

About the Author

Elizabeth St.John’s critically acclaimed historical fiction novels tell the stories of her ancestors: extraordinary women whose intriguing kinship with England's kings and queens brings an intimately unique perspective to Medieval, Tudor, and Stuart times. Inspired by family archives and residences from Lydiard Park to the Tower of London, Elizabeth spends much of her time exploring ancestral portraits, diaries, and lost gardens. And encountering the occasional ghost. But that’s another story. Living between California, England, and the past, Elizabeth is the International Ambassador for The Friends of Lydiard Park, an English charity dedicated to conserving and enhancing this beautiful centuries-old country house and park. As a curator for The Lydiard Archives, she is constantly looking for an undiscovered treasure to inspire her next novel. Find out more at Elizabeth's website http://www.elizabethjstjohn.com/ and follow her on Facebook, Twitter @ElizStJohn and Bluesky @elizabethstjohn.bsky.social‬

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Special Guest Post by Brenda K. Thompson: The Child Who Was Stolen: Writing A Feed Sack Dress for Sadie

Available from Amazon UK and Amazon US

Sadie Lockhart grew up on the Lockhart farm, where silence was expected and usefulness passed for affection. Hidden deep in the hills, she was raised far from the world, and the Lockharts made certain no one knew she existed.

 

Some characters begin with a face. Some with a place. Sadie began with a story my mother carried home from her work with hospice. After my father died, my mother volunteered with hospice. One of the women she cared for had an old black-and-white photograph on her mantel. It showed a barefoot little girl wearing what looked like a feed sack, crudely cut with openings for her head and arms.
The woman told my mother the little girl in the photograph was her.
She said she’d been stolen as a child.

The people who took her dressed her that way, and she grew up never knowing where she’d come from or who her real family was. I never forgot that story. But I kept thinking about the child. What would it mean to remember being taken? What happens to a child when the adults around her give her another name, another family, another version of who she is? And what happens when that child grows up?

Those questions became the beginning of A Feed Sack Dress for Sadie.
Sadie Lockhart is fictional. Her life is not the life of the woman in my mother's care. But once I began writing, Sadie became her own person, with her own childhood, her own choices, and her own way of moving through the world.

In the novel, Sadie is stolen and kept on an isolated farm in rural Appalachia. She grows up in a place where silence and usefulness pass for affection. Her world is small, but Sadie remembers enough to know that once her life was different, better.

Sadie hadn’t forgotten everything. Something inside her remained her own. A memory. A question. The knowledge that before she was Sadie Lockhart, she’d belonged somewhere else. The story is set in the Appalachian world of The Glens, the fictional mountain range where several of my novels take place. 

In Sadie’s world, readers walk the roads with her, enter the houses, sit at the tables, and feel how easily a person could disappear into a place where families lived miles apart and much of life remained private. That world also has to belong to its time.

I researched the world around Sadie closely: the work people did, the clothes they wore, the distance between farms and towns, the way news travelled, and the things a family could buy or had to make for themselves. By the time those details reach the page, they are no longer research. They are simply part of Sadie’s life.

The feed sack dress came from the photograph my mother described, and eventually it gave the novel its title. But the dress was never the story. The child wearing it was. As Sadie grows older, the question becomes larger than what was done to her.

If a child’s family, name, and history are taken from her, what remains that is still her own? Sadie survives much of her childhood by being useful. Later, that same instinct becomes part of the woman she grows into. She sees what needs doing. She helps before someone has to ask. People come to know her through the things she does, without knowing the truth of how her life began.

 
The reader carries that truth. Sadie’s past is always there, even when no one around her can see it. What was done to her shapes her life, but it doesn’t become the whole of who she is.
That’s one of the things I return to often in my writing. People live through circumstances they didn't choose. Families give us names. Communities give us places. Other people may decide what they think we are.

Still, somewhere inside all of that is the person who has to live the life. When I write, I don’t stand outside my characters and watch them. I step inside them. It’s much like an actor taking on a role. While I’m writing, their world becomes the one I live in.

 
I see what they see. I hear what they hear. I can feel the roughness of wood beneath a hand, the bumps in a road, the cold in a room. The story follows me long after I’ve stopped writing for the day. I lie awake thinking about the character, the place, what’s happened and what comes next. I stay there until the world feels real to me. I cry with them. I cry for them.

 
That was especially true with Sadie. The stolen child could never remain simply an idea at the beginning of a story. She had to become a whole person whose life I could enter and live beside. The farther I went with Sadie, the question became less about where she’d come from and more about who she would become. What happened to her began the story. It didn’t have to define the rest of her life.

A Feed Sack Dress for Sadie is part of Stories from The Glens, my growing collection of standalone Appalachian novels. Alice Anyway, Ivaleena, and Child H belong to that same imagined world, although each book tells a separate story.

 
I was grateful when A Feed Sack Dress for Sadie recently received an Honorable Mention in the 34th Annual Writer's Digest Self-Published Book Awards in Mainstream/Literary Fiction.
Awards are wonderful things for an author to receive. But they aren’t where a story begins.

Sadie began with a stolen child and a question I couldn’t put away. What happens to someone when so much of who she was has been taken from her? I followed that question until Sadie became more than the child who was stolen. She became Sadie.

Brenda K. Thompson

# # #

About the Author

Brenda K. Thompson is an award-winning author of historical and literary fiction. Through plain language and the small details of ordinary life, she brings her characters’ worlds close enough for readers to step inside them and remember the people they meet there. Her Appalachian novels are part of Stories from The Glens, a growing collection of standalone books set in an imagined mountain world. Her debut novel, Alice Anyway, received the 2026 Next Generation Indie Book Awards Grand Prize for Fiction and won the First Novel category. Brenda and her husband, Jim, live on the North Carolina coast. Learn more at brendakthompson.com.

Special Guest Post by Rosemary Griggs, Author of Queen Elizabeth I's Governess: The Real Kat Ashley

Available from Amazon UK and Amazon US

The name ‘Kat Ashley’, Queen Elizabeth’s ‘Governess’, is well-known to fans of Tudor history. Katherine Champernowne, later John Astley’s wife, joined Elizabeth’s household before the future queen turned three. Later she became Elizabeth’s ‘governess’, trusted with the upbringing of the King’s younger daughter. Formidably well-educated for a woman of her time, reports suggest Katherine did an excellent job. When Elizabeth came to the throne, one of her first actions was to name Katherine as Chief Gentlewoman of the Privy Chamber, a highly influential position within the court of a female monarch.

Although they served at the court of Henry VIII, the Champernowne family are not well known to those who study Tudor history. However, anyone interested in the early life of Elizabeth I will have come across Katherine Champernowne, later the wife of John Astley. She is widely known as Elizabeth’s childhood governess, Kat Ashley. I prefer to call her Kate, partly because the evidence that Elizabeth actually used the short form ‘Kat’ is not overwhelming, but also to reinforce that I have found a woman who differs from the Kat of popular culture.

Kate appears briefly in many learned biographies of Henry VIII’s younger daughter. It’s often been supposed she came from a minor gentry family. Writers and filmmakers often portray her in fiction and on screen as a rather foolish, gossipy nanny figure, a minor supporting character in the fascinating drama of Elizabeth’s fraught early years. My research tells a different story.

Far from being from a rural gentry background, Kate was close to people at the heart of the Tudor Court. By the early 16th century, the Champernownes of Devon had expanded their lands well beyond the west country, into Gloucestershire and Oxfordshire. Over many generations, through dynastic marriages, they forged alliances with powerful families, including Poyntz, Carew, and, most notably, Courtenay.

Like many women of her time, the historical record remains stubbornly silent about Kate’s early life. She first comes to notice when appointed to the household of three-year-old Elizabeth in 1536. Exploring her family connections and the people she was close to places that appointment in context.

Kate was the eldest daughter of Sir Philip Champernowne, a close relative of Henry Courtenay, Marquess of Exeter, first cousin and companion of the young Henry VIII. The Marquess’s father was Sir Philip’s first cousin. Sir Philip served as squire of the body to the king for a time, mixing with other well-known courtiers, before he retired to the west country, where he often deputised for the Marquess. Kate may have gained her formidable education among her powerful Courtenay relatives.

Through her maternal grandmother, Kate also had connections to the Poyntz family, who held prominent positions in Catherine of Aragon’s household. Kate’s great aunt married Sir Anthony Poyntz. She is likely the Elizabeth Poyntz who had care of Henry VIII’s short-lived son, Henry Duke  of Cornwall. Also on the maternal side, Kate’s uncle, Sir Gawen Carew married Charles Brandon, Duke of Suffolk’s sister. 

Brandon was a close friend of the king and married Mary Tudor, the king’s sister, after the death of her first husband, the King of France. Sir Gawen became a prominent courtier, soldier and diplomat. Sir George Carew, ill-fated captain of the Mary Rose, and his brother Sir Peter, were Kate’s cousins. 

Kate’s sister, Joan, was one of Catherine Parr’s ladies and shared her interest in the reformed religion. Joan married Sir Anthony Denny, a man so close to King Henry VIII that he was the only one brave enough to tell the dying king that his end was near. Kate’s brother, John, also had a place at court. According to Sir Richard Carew of Anthony, writing in the early years of the  seventeenth century, John was popular with King Henry ‘for his pleasant conceits’.  So Kate moved in circles close to the royal court. She also knew many Cambridge-educated intellectuals.

Not long after Anne Boleyn’s execution, Kate was one of a group of serving gentlewomen appointed to serve Anne’s three-year-old daughter. Their role was to keep company with the little girl, to entertain her, and at all times to model the behaviour and manners expected of a noblewoman in the sixteenth century.  Soon after this appointment, Kate made her first known appearance in the historical record with an extraordinarily bold letter to Thomas Cromwell. That letter, dated 5 October 1536, made me stop and think about the way historians and writers have traditionally portrayed Kate’s character.

To paraphrase the letter — there’s a full transcript in my book — Kate thanks Cromwell for recommending her to the king for her new post. She then asks him if he could speak to the king about payment for her services. Unfortunately, we only have half of this fascinating correspondence. Many of Thomas Cromwell’s papers were destroyed at the time of his downfall, and his response has not survived. In 1536, Cromwell was the most powerful man in the land, after the king. He was not a man who acted without a purpose.

Political considerations influenced his every decision, including Kate’s appointment.  I found it very hard to reconcile the author of that letter to the great man with the foolish character traditionally given to Kate. Would a girl, however well educated, from a minor gentry family, really have dared to write to him in those terms? And would Cromwell have even considered appointing someone so lacking in judgement?

I

n 1536, Lady Margaret Bryan was Elizabeth’s Lady Mistress, having overall oversight of the child’s upbringing and early years education. Lady Troy, working with Lady Bryan, was Elizabeth’s governess, and likely introduced the child to her letters using a hornbook. At that time, no one expected Elizabeth would become queen. Rather, as the king’s daughter, even though declared illegitimate, she was a valuable commodity in the marriage market. In her early years, she must gain all the attributes that would make her attractive as a bride.

Sometime after Lady Bryan took charge of the nursery of Edward VI in 1537, and Lady Troy became Lady Mistress to Elizabeth, Kate was promoted to Elizabeth’s governess. More than ten years later, in a letter to Protector Edward Seymour, dated 31 January 1549, Sir Robert Tyrwhitt, who was questioning Elizabeth about her involvement with Thomas Seymour, confirmed that it was King Henry VIII himself who promoted Kate to be Elizabeth’s Lady Mistress. That means she became Lady Mistress before King Henry died in 1547.  It also tells us that Kate not only had the support and trust of Cromwell but also of Elizabeth’s father.

Many assumptions and myths have grown up about Kate Astley, repeated so often that people consider them facts. She’s been called jolly and kind, with unconventional teaching methods, and given credit for single-handedly introducing the little girl to a long list of subjects. These statements are not confirmed in primary sources. As a royal governess, her remit was much broader than that of a Jane Eyre-style Victorian governess. Kate also had to be a mentor, adviser, and protector. She did not deliver all the academic lessons herself but had oversight of input from a range of tutors, music masters, dance teachers, riding instructors and a chaplain, who covered a wide-ranging curriculum.

From nineteenth-century scholars to more recent historians, the focus has been on the events of 1548-49 when Elizabeth was under the roof of her stepmother, the Dowager Queen, Catherine Parr, and her new husband, Thomas Seymour. Kate’s deposition, taken in the Tower of London in January 1549, gives all the salacious details of Seymour’s behaviour towards the fourteen-year-old girl, which appear to modern eyes beyond inappropriate. As a result, Kate has been declared negligent, a gossip, and even considered to have herself been infatuated with the dashing Admiral. 

These assessments do not seem to fit with the view of Elizabeth’s tutors, William Grindal and Roger Ascham, who both praised Kate for her care of the young princess. In my book, I explore an alternative scenario, placing Kate’s testimony in a different light as part of a strategy designed to protect the young princess. Interpretations of that difficult period have largely defined what people think about Kate Astley, while her later years have often been overlooked. Closer study reveals Kate as a political actor, staunchly loyal to Elizabeth.

In 1554, after the Wyatt rebellion against Queen Mary’s Spanish marriage, Kate suffered a long period of house arrest. She was suspected because her cousin, Sir Peter Carew, was a prime mover in the failed plot. Mary eventually allowed Kate to rejoin her mistress briefly, but clearly considered Kate a dangerous influence on Elizabeth and a threat. Only a few months later she held Kate in the Fleet Prison on suspicion of involvement in another plot and then banished her from Elizabeth’s service.

After Elizabeth came to the throne, she made Kate her Chief Gentlewoman of the Privy Chamber, a pivotal role with unique, intimate access to the queen. Kate was Elizabeth’s eyes and ears, listening out for damaging gossip and keeping Elizabeth in touch with how her policies were being received at court and beyond. Anyone who wanted to approach Elizabeth talked to Kate. She gave advice on what sort of gifts might be welcome at New Year.  An Italian news sheet described her as ‘Patroness of all England’ in 1562.  A year after Kate’s death, Hugh Fitzwilliam wrote to the queen saying, ‘Now that Mrs Ashley is gone he has no friend to make his moan to.’

Kate acted as a highly political female courtier at the court of a female monarch. Her death in 1565 left the queen devastated. The two women shared a close bond of mutual love and respect for nearly 30 years. Kate Astley arguably had more influence on the young Elizabeth I than anyone else. She deserves our further consideration.

I hope that Queen Elizabeth’s Governess: The Real Kat Ashley will encourage further debate about a remarkable woman.

Rosemary Griggs

# # #

About the Author

Author and speaker Rosemary Griggs has been researching Devon's sixteenth-century history for years. She has discovered a cast of fascinating characters and an intriguing network of families whose influence stretched far beyond the West Country. She loves telling the stories of the forgotten women of history — the women beyond the royal court; wives, sisters, daughters and mothers who played their part during those tumultuous Tudor years: the Daughters of Devon. Her novel A Woman of Noble Wit tells the story of Katherine Champernowne, Sir Walter Raleigh’s mother, and features many of the county’s well-loved places. The Dartington Bride, published March 2024, is the extraordinary tale of Lady Gabrielle Roberda Montgomery who travelled from France to Elizabethan England to marry into the prominent and well-connected Champernowne family. Rosemary creates and wears sixteenth-century clothing, a passion which complements her love for bringing the past to life through a unique blend of theatre, history and re-enactment. Her appearances and talks for museums and community groups all over the West Country draw on her extensive research into sixteenth-century Devon, Tudor life and Tudor dress, particularly Elizabethan. Out of costume, Rosemary leads heritage tours of the gardens at Dartington Hall, a fourteenth-century manor house and now a a historic visitor destination, events venue and thriving community of businesses, colleges and more. You can find out more on Rosemary’s website:  https://rosemarygriggs.co.uk/ and follow her on Bluesky and Twitter @RAGriggsauthor

Special Guest Post by Dr. Eric Jourgensen, Author of The Deadline Plate (The Chronicle Keepers)

Available from Amazon UK and Amazon US

The Deadline Plate is a student journalism time-travel mystery about four young reporters who discover an old printing plate in their school’s anniversary time capsule. When the plate pulls them into 1887 New York, they must work with Nellie Bly as her groundbreaking asylum investigation is threatened by a mysterious force trying to erase the record. To get home, they have to protect sources, preserve evidence, and learn that telling the truth means more than getting the story first.

Why My Time Travelers Carry Notebooks 

When I decided to send four student journalists into 1887 New York, I gave them the obvious modern tools: phones, cameras, audio recorders, and the instinct to document everything. Then I made those tools unreliable.

That choice became one of the engines of The Deadline Plate, the first book in The Chronicle Keepers series.

The novel begins with four students discovering a printing plate buried in their school's time capsule. The plate carries a story about their own disappearance and sends them to New York during Nellie Bly'searly reporting career. 

Someone called the Redactor is changing the historical record. The students cannot simply look up what happened, record a confession, or trust that a digital file will survive. They have to interview witnesses, compare accounts, preserve documents, and decide what they can prove.

In other words, they have to do journalism.

I teach high school journalism, newspaper, broadcast journalism, and yearbook. My students live in a world where nearly every moment can be photographed, recorded, copied, reposted, and misunderstood before the bell rings. Their problem is rarely a lack of information. It is figuring out which information deserves trust.

That made time travel an interesting writing problem. If my characters could carry perfect access to the present into the past, the mystery would collapse. A smartphone can become a shortcut disguised as a prop. Search the name. Photograph the document. Record the witness. Check the date. Done.

But journalism is not supposed to be a shortcut.

So the past pushes back. Batteries fail. Recordings cannot be trusted. Context disappears. The students discover that having a copy of something is not the same as understanding it. A document can be authentic and still incomplete. A witness can tell the truth and still be wrong. A newspaper can print accurate facts and create a false impression through what it leaves out.

That last problem matters to me. My nonfiction work uses a framework called the WATER Check: Wait, Ask, Trace, Examine, Respond. It teaches students to slow down before accepting or sharing something. The framework grew from a classroom deception in which every fact I presented was technically true, but the overall conclusion was designed to mislead.

The same idea sits underneath The Deadline Plate. The villain does not always need to invent a lie. Sometimes changing the record means removing a name, shifting a date, preserving one account, or making another impossible to find.

That is why the notebooks matter.

A notebook is limited. It cannot capture everything. The person holding it must choose what to write down, which quotation is exact, what needs verification, and which detail might matter later. Those choices create responsibility. The notebook also leaves evidence of uncertainty: crossed-out words, arrows, questions in the margin, and a blank where the reporter did not hear clearly enough to pretend.

For young reporters, that can be an important lesson. Technology makes documentation easier, but it does not make judgment automatic.

Nellie Bly was the right historical journalist for the first book because she understood both evidence and access. Her reporting mattered because she entered places powerful institutions preferred to keep closed. She observed, remembered, questioned, and wrote for readers who had not seen what she had seen. 

Her work also creates difficult questions for a modern writer. How do you introduce a real person without turning her into a marble statue? How do you respect what she accomplished while still allowing fictional characters to occupy the same room?

My answer was to make her active, intelligent, impatient, and human. The students do not arrive to teach Nellie Bly how journalism works. They are the ones trying to keep up.

The research moved between biographies, archival newspapers, timelines, maps, and the practical details of a nineteenth-century pressroom. I kept returning to the physical nature of news. Type had

weight. Ink stained hands. A printing plate could preserve a page, but it could also be altered, hidden, or destroyed. That physicality gave the fantasy rules something solid to push against.

It also changed how I thought about the students' modern newsroom. Their digital stories feel temporary until one incomplete version travels farther than the correction. Suddenly, the old problem and the

new problem look remarkably similar. Once a record begins moving, the reporter cannot control every place it goes.

The students carry notebooks because they need tools that still work when the spectacular tools fail. More importantly, they carry notebooks because the series is about the choices made before publication.

What did you see?

Who told you?

What can you verify?

What is missing?

Who pays the price if you get it wrong?

Those questions matter in 1887. They matter in a high school newsroom.They matter anywhere history is still being written.

 Eric Jourgensen 

# # #

About the Author

Eric Jourgensen, Ed.D., is a journalism educator, author, and adviser to student newspaper, broadcast, and yearbook programs in South Florida. He is the creator of the WATER Check media-literacy framework and the author of The Deadline Plate, Book One of The Chronicle Keepers. The young adult series follows student journalists who travel through history to protect stories at risk of being changed or erased.Learn more at https:ericjourgensen.com and find Eric on Instagram, Facebook and Bluesky @drdarthgrader.bsky.social

Special Guest Post by Jacquie Rogers, Author of the Quintus Valerius Roman Mysteries

Available from Amazon UK and Amazon US

224 AD: Imperial Investigator Quintus Valerius is summoned from Rome to Britannia by his old companion-in-arms, Governor Gaius Trebonius. Trebonius wants Quintus to investigate fraud at the silver mines he is overseeing. But on his journey to Somerset in the south-west of the isle, Quintus hears rumours of a Druid uprising. And when he encounters his scorned ex-lover, he suspects she may have something to do with it. When Quintus finally reaches the mines, he finds himself under attack. He realises a dark conspiracy could be behind the fraud. And the stakes are raised when a potential witness is murdered.

Thank you, Tony, for inviting me back to your blog. I was last here in 2023, when I wrote about the history behind my third Roman mystery, The Loyal Centurion. Since then I’ve moved to Sapere Books, who have signed me up with enough relaunches and new books to keep me busy for a long time! Suffice it to say that my Quintus Valerius mysteries are coming out this autumn and winter, with brilliant new covers and add-ons like maps, cast lists (helpful with all those Latin names), place names, glossaries and reader notes. The Governor’s Man is on pre-order now, followed by The Carnelian Phoenix on 20 November. The Loyal Centurion follows in the New Year. 

Since last appearing here, I’ve written a new mystery for Quintus and his fellow sleuths set in Aquae Sulis, the Roman spa resort and religious centre of Bath. The Bath Curse came out of my enduring fascination with the famous lead curse tablets found in the Sacred Spring at Bath. They were dedicated to the British-Roman goddess Sulis Minerva, renowned for her healing, wisdom and help in a just war.

Gilt-bronze head of the goddess Sulis Minerva, 

a monumental artifact from Roman Britain

Anyone wanting justice, or simply with a major grudge, could come here to make a sacrifice to the goddess, and have their particular beef inscribed by a clerk onto a thin lead sheet. The justice sought would take the form of retribution dealt out by the all-powerful Sulis Minerva. The curse tablets were folded or rolled up, and thrown into the steaming sacred spring. 

Roman curse tablet (defixio) discovered at the King's Bath 

in Bath, England (Aquae Sulis).

Poor Docilianus – I doubt he ever got his warm wool coat back, despite his fervent prayers. But Aquae Sulis wasn’t just about healing and worship. By the Severan period (AD 220s, when my books are set), it was a popular spa resort not unlike the Bath of Jane Austen’s day. People came to Bath from all over the western Roman Empire, to holiday, relax, gossip, drink the waters, meet a potential partner, even gamble. If you’ve visited Bath yourself, you’ll know how splendid the Great Bath is. It’s unique in Britain both for its grand size and the natural flow of waters, heated by geothermal forces to a steady 46 degrees C, and pumping out over a million litres a day.

We don’t know much about the visitors who travelled here to take the highly-mineralised waters, but I imagine that the steady influx of wealthy visitors to this tiny city might tempt the unscrupulous – and the downright criminal – to prey on them. A sort of Las Vegas-cum-Monte Carlo, perhaps?

As well as The Bath Curse (to be published in 2027), I’ve begun a new companion series. Same time period as the Quintus Valerius books (early third century), still in Roman Britannia, but the Otto Cornelius series has action centred around the wonderful city of Viroconium Cornoviorum. Nowadays Wroxeter Roman city lies under fields around seven miles south-east of Shrewsbury, where English Heritage care for this fourth-largest of Britain’s Roman cities. It was built as the capital for the Cornovii tribe, whose lands stretched from Staffs to the Mersey, and well into modern Wales. That makes it the most north-westerly of Rome’s cities – and what a city it was! 

We are very fortunate that Viroconium survived in some form or another long after the end of the Roman period. It is thought that a possible plague drove the remaining inhabitants away to a better defended site – hence mediaeval Shrewsbury. The old city remained untouched, under a cover of soil and grass. Eventually Victorian antiquaries took an interest in the astonishing remains of what we now know to be a large gym hall, or baths basilica. Since then, modern techniques of geophysics and aerial photography have revealed in detail the layout of a wealthy, bustling city of some 15 000 people, spread over 73 hectares.

Even this remote city would have had a mix of people from many parts of the Roman empire. I’ve taken advantage of this, to create as my main character a German-Romano-British officer, Prefect Otto Cornelius, pushed into early retirement from the XXth legion in Chester. Needless to say, these also being mystery novels, he soon stumbles across murder and theft. The Silver Mirror and The Amber Goddess are both written, while The Salt Road is under way. All to be published in 2027/2028.

Artist’s impression of the baths complex at Wroxeter

Last year I finally travelled to Pompeii and Herculaneum. I know, it’s shameful being a Roman historical novelist who’s never been to the best-preserved Roman towns of the lot. 

I came, I saw, I was vanquished. It was a very emotional week for me. When I’d finished crying, I wrote my own story of the people found by archaeologists on the beach at Herculaneum, waiting in vain for rescue by Pliny’s navy.  

And now that’s been published too. I’ve situated the story as a prequel to the Quintus Valerius series, an introductory novelette featuring a noble ancestor of Quintus. Tribune Flavius Valerius was definitely in the wrong place, at the wrong time. My homage to those left on the beach at Herculaneum is titled after a quote from the only eye-witness account of the Vesuvian eruption of AD 79: A Night Blacker and Darker. It’s available now, in paperback and for Kindle.

Thank you, Tony. I hope you’ll invite me back to your wonderful blog next year, when I’ll have more Roman history to share. 

Jacquie Rogers

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About the Author

Jacquie Rogers was a child £10 Pom, moving back to the UK nicely in time for the three-day week. She had careers in advertising and university teaching before turning to writing. Since then, she’s written four novels for her Quintus Valerius Roman mysteries, and another two so far in her forthcoming companion series, the Otto Cornelius Roman mysteries, set in and around Wroxeter Roman city. Her short stories have been published in several countries. In 2020 and 2021 she was Runner Up in the Lincoln Book Festival flash fiction competitions. Jacquie lives in Malvern, where she walks the hills with her husband and their dog, Peggy. Jacquie loves travelling Europe by motorbike, and discussing politics, travel and books. She spends a lot of time in cafés and pubs. Find out more at Jacquie’s Substack, Writing Roman Britain, where you can sign up for free to her monthly newsletters. For social media, book links and author events, go to https://linktr.ee/jacquierogers 

Special Guest Post by Anna Belfrage, Author of The Prodigal Son (The Graham Saga Book 3)

Available from Amazon UK and Amazon US

Safely returned from an involuntary stay in Virginia, Matthew Graham finds the Scottish Lowlands torn asunder by religious strife. His Restored Majesty, Charles II, requires all his subjects to swear fealty to him and the Church of England, riding roughshod over any opposition.

A masked pimpernel – of Alexander Peden, devout preacher and religious rebel

One of the joys of writing historical fiction is making the acquaintance of the somewhat lesser known people who once played important roles in the events of the past. One such person is Alexander Peden, the charismatic Scottish Kirk minister who set large parts of Ayrshire ablaze with his determined refusal to abandon his faith. He plays a pivotal role in my book The Prodigal Son and inspires my male hero  Matthew Graham to risk life and limb in his steadfast support of the Covenanter cause. 

This does not endear Alexander Peden to Matthew’s time traveller wife, Alex, who spends far too much time with her heart in her mouth while Matthew is off playing the hero. Should he be caught, they’d likely hang him—or sell the entire Graham family into bondage in the new world. Alex does not understand how anyone can risk so much for religion. Matthew cannot comprehend how she cannot see that some things are worth dying for. Let’s just say the Graham family is at an impasse . . . 

While Matthew is a purely fictional character, anyone familiar with the history of the Covenanters and their persecution in the late 17th century will, at some point or another, have stumbled over Mr Peden.

To me, Sandy Peden – oops, Alexander Peden (Sandy to friends only, and I’m not quite sure I qualify) – came alive the day I stood in the National Museum of Scotland and peered at his mask.  

17th-century disguise mask and wig worn by Alexander Peden, 

a  Scottish religious rebel, on display at the 

National Museum of Scotland 

I realise that the purpose of the mask was to disguise him, thereby leading me to assume he didn’t at all look like it. Still, when studying the mask I had my first clear image of Sandy – a slight man who burned with restless energy, whose eyes glowed with passion when he spoke about God. A brave man, a stubborn man – and a man convinced that his faith and his beliefs were the right ones. 

“Of course they are,” he says, sounding aggravated. 

    “You think?” I snort. “All that stuff about predestination, about the relative unimportance of women…”

    “Pah! Just shows how little you know! Now, I am willing to take on the task of educating you – however much of a Sisyphus task that might be.”

    I ignore the little man. I’m not uneducated, thank you very much. 

    “Aye you are,” he says. “You have studied such varied subjects but how much of your academic efforts have you expended on God? On the Holy Writ?” He sinks those luminous grey eyes of his into mine. “No, I thought as much,” he says before fading away.

 

Alexander Peden was born in 1626 and educated at Glasgow University. In 1662 he was ejected from his parish New Luce—the restored king, Charles II, and his advisors were determined to supplant the Scottish Kirk with the Church of England. Peden spent the rest of his life as a religious rebel, holding secret services out on the moors of Ayrshire to fortify his ever-growing flock of die-hard Presbyterians. 

The powers that were searched high and low for him, but Sandy knew how to blend into the landscape—ably helped by my Matthew—and to further confuse his pursuers he wore the mask mentioned above. It is said that on several occasions he evaded capture by praying to God for deliverance – which God duly supplied through the opportune appearance of a thick fog or clouds to cover the moon. 

“God looks to his own,” Sandy puts in, scratching at his balding head. He smells, his dark coat is frayed around the cuffs and has a long tear down the back. He looks tired and dirty, and he keeps on coughing.     He frowns at my inspection. “It’s not a life of comfort to be constantly on the run.” 

    “So why not give up?” 

    “Give up?” Sandy raises fair, bushy brows. “I’m outlawed. They’d hang me off the first gallows they could find.” 

No matter divine intervention, Sandy’s luck eventually ran out. In 1673 he was captured and spent the coming five years on the Bass Rock. After this, he was to be deported to America and together with 60 others he was set aboard a ship to London where they were to be transferred to another, larger vessel. However, the captain of this vessel was so incensed when Sandy informed him why they were being deported that he released them, leaving them on the London docks. 

“A good man,” Sandy laughs. “He would no more carry me off against my will than he would kill his mother.” He scratches at his chest. “Lice,” he mutters. “Courtesy of His Majesty’s tender care, I reckon.” 

    “Or of living rough.”  

    “That too.” He purses his lips. “Sometimes…” 

    “Sometimes what?” 

    Sandy shakes his head. “Nowt,” he says, smiling ruefully. 

    “Go on; sometimes…” 

    “… I long for a bed – a warm home, a family…” He stares off in the distance. “God has ordained and I must obey.”

After the encounter with the godly captain, Sandy and his companions walked all the way home. For the remaining years of his life, Sandy divided his time between Scotland and Ireland, always on the run, always holding to his faith and preaching the word of God as he knew it. 

Alexander Peden died in 1685 – in a bed, as he’d prophesised. 

“Of course,” Sandy says. “God allowed me one last night of comfortable sleep.” 

    “That was nice of him.” Seems the least he could do, given Sandy’s unstinting service. 

    Sandy wags his finger at me. “You sound like Alexandra Graham. That woman is in serious need of guidance, but that husband of hers is too besotted with her to do as he should.” 

    “He is?” I smile, thinking that if Matthew is besotted with Alex, she definitely returns the favour. 

    “You know he is.” Sandy smiles. “A marvellous woman, for all that she is wild and half-heathen.” 

    “Matthew isn’t too bad either,” I say. 

    Sandy chuckles and gets to his feet. “Well you would say so, wouldn’t you? After all, you’ve made him up.” With that he is gone.

    

Upon hearing Alexander Peden was dead a company of soldiers chose to disinter his body, intending to hang his corpse from the gallows in Cumnock. Loud objections from the people led to Sandy being reburied at the foot of the gallows. In due course, an impressive monument was erected over his final resting place. Not that Sandy ever wanted a monument – all he wanted was the freedom to worship God according to his beliefs.

If the above has inspired you to want to learn more about Alexander Peden and the religious persecution that plagued the Scottish Lowlands in the aftermath of the Restoration, why not read The Prodigal Son ?

Safely returned from an involuntary stay in Virginia, Matthew Graham finds the Scottish Lowlands torn asunder by religious strife. His Restored Majesty, Charles II, requires all his subjects to swear fealty to him and the Church of England, riding roughshod over any opposition. 

In Ayrshire, people close ranks around their evicted Presbyterian ministers. But disobedience comes at a high price, and Alex becomes increasingly nervous as to what her Matthew is risking by his support of the clandestine ministers – foremost amongst them the charismatic Sandy Peden. 

Privately, Alex considers Sandy an enervating fanatic and all this religious fervour is  incomprehensible to her. So when Matthew repeatedly sets his faith and ministers before his own safety, he puts their marriage under severe strain. 

Things are brought to a head when Matthew places all their lives in the balance to save his dear preacher from the dragoons. How much is Matthew willing to risk? How much will he ultimately lose?

Anna Belfrage 

# # #

About the Author

Had Anna been allowed to choose, she’d have become a time-traveller. As this was impossible, she became a financial professional with two absorbing interests: history and writing. Anna has authored the acclaimed time travelling series The Graham Saga, set in 17th century Scotland and Maryland, as well as the equally acclaimed medieval series The King’s Greatest Enemy which is set in 14th century England.  Her Castilian Heart is the third in her “Castilian” series, a stand-alone sequel to her September 2020 release, His Castilian Hawk. Set against the complications of Edward I’s invasion of Wales, His Castilian Hawk is a story of loyalty, integrity—and love. In the second instalment, The Castilian Pomegranate, we travel with the protagonists to the complex political world of medieval Spain. This latest release finds our protagonists back in England—not necessarily any safer than the wilds of Spain! Anna has also authored The Whirlpools of Time in which she returns to the world of time travel. Join Duncan and the somewhat reluctant time-traveller Erin on their adventures through the Scottish Highlands just as the first Jacobite rebellion is about to explode!  All of Anna’s books have been awarded the IndieBRAG Medallion, she has several Historical Novel Society Editor’s Choices, and one of her books won the HNS Indie Award in 2015. She is also the proud recipient of various Reader’s Favorite medals as well as having won various Gold, Silver and Bronze Coffee Pot Book Club awards. Find out more about Anna, her books and enjoy her eclectic historical blog on her website, www.annabelfrage.com and find her on Facebook, Twitter @abelfrageauthor and Bluesky @abelfrageauthor.bsky.social

Special Guest Post By E.L. Ravenheart, Author of The Shadow keeper: Gothic Haunting Tales from Somerset

Available from Amazon UK and Amazon US

In the deep woods of the Great Lakes, skeletal spirits hunt the arrogant. Shapeshifters guard what remains of the wild. Hunger transforms the soul with a single choice. Across the Atlantic, on mist-shrouded moorland where leylines pulse through peat, a barefoot girl walks for two centuries, keeping a covenant her family refused. At standing stones, trickster ravens teach threshold lessons. In dark pools, witnesses become bridges between worlds.

The Inspiration and Research behind the Shadow Keeper

When I moved to North Somerset, I moved into the Old Quarry Master’s house that sits directly across from the old town quarry in Weston-Super-Mare, I remembered standing in the kitchen on that first night, listening to the house settling around me, and thinking that I had never lived somewhere with quite so much silence – and quite so much history pressing in from every direction. I did not know it yet, but that house, and the grounds beneath it, would become the beating heart of The Shadow Keeper.

Inspiration

My mother passed away not long before I began writing this novel, and in the months afterwards, I found myself remembering the stories she used to tell me when I was young. She always seemed to know I was spiritually inclined, and she shared her stories accordingly. My favourties were always the ones about the Bear Walkers – figures she described in a way similar to a grim reaper, shapeshifting presences that moved between worlds. I held onto those stories long after I stopped believing I have ever used them.

Then I had a dream. It was about spirits and generational curses, about the way trauma and legacy can pass silently from one generation to the next, waiting to be acknowledged. When I woke, I knew I wanted to write about the inheritance – and I knew the Bear Walkers needed to be a part of it. But I did not want to simply retell my mothers stories. I wanted to reimagine them, so I decided to give the Bear Walkers a new purpose in The Shadow Keeper. As figures tied to animals and the natural world, rising to honour her stories while making something entirely my own – something inspired by my heritage, rather than a claim to speak for it.

Research and Somerset Discoveries

Once the idea took root, I need to understand the land itself. I spent months visiting museums, haunted tours and libraries, speaking to residents who were generous enough to share their own memories and family lore. That is how I learned that the underground cavern just outside my kitchen was once said to connect to the tunnels leading into the quarry itself- a detail that unsettled and trilled me in equal measures, and once I could not resist weaving into a collection book.

I walked through Weston Woods at dusk more than once, and there’s a particular smell there- iron and damp earth- that I now associate entirely with the mood of this book. I travelled out to Brean Island and Salt bay where the cliffs drop away so steeply that the whole landscape feels like it is holding its breath. I stood on Cheddar Gorge and look toward Glastonbury Tor in the distance, and later returned to watch the sunrise from that same vantage point, the Tor rising through the mist like something out of memory rather than geography.

I visited St. Johns the Baptist church from Frome, wandered through Norton St Philips, and stood at Burrow Mump, thinking about the layers of history resting quietly beneath the grass. I became fascinated with the yew trees found in so many churchyards, with ley lines, with the Moors and marshes that seem to hold their own kind of memory. I went on haunted-history tours, dug through museum archives, and slowly, the land began to feel less like a backdrop and more like a character in its own right.

Turning Research into Fiction

The greatest challenge wan not gathering the history- it was a learning how to let it breathe within the story rather than simply reciting it. St Catherine House in Bath became the model for the fictional house at the centre of the story The Circle of Witham Grange inside the book The Shadow Keeper, I could picture its rooms shifting into something darker, older, and more and more haunted. 

My fictional villages, too, are shaped by real historical periods and unrest, including the later turmoil that followed the execution of King Charles I, a period whose ripple effects are still across Somerset’s landscape and stories. I want to be honest that I am still checking some of the finer historical details before this goes any further, but the emotional truth of the unrest- the sense of a land marked by upheaval- is very much present in the book.

Perhaps the hardest part of writing this novel was bringing together folklore drawn from my own heritage with the folklore and history of England, respectfully and without flattening either. I never wanted to suggest that the Bear Walkers I have written represent all Anishinaabe or Chippewa storytelling- only that they are inspired by the stories passed down to me, reshaped through my own imagination and grief.

An invitation

The Shadow Keeper began as a way to honour my mother, and became something larger: a story about land, memory, and what refuses to stay buried. I hope readers find themselves walking through Somerset’s woods and marshes right along the characters, feeling the same mixture of unease and wonder I felt while researching every page.

Thank you for joining me on this journey.

E.L. Ravenheart

# # #

About the Author

E.L. Ravenheart is a gothic fiction author with roots in the Indigenous Chippewa Nation (USA). Since relocating to the United Kingdom in 2012, Ravenheart has been writing from Weston-Super-Mare, where Somerset haunted landscapes and layered histories intertwine with Indigenous storytelling traditions. Her work blends psychological depth, atmospheric tension, and the supernatural, drawing on cultural inheritance rich in symbolism and reverence for the unseen.  The Shadow Keeper is among her interconnected works exploring liminal spaces where memory, myths, and the past press insistently against the present. Find out more at https://elravenheart.co.uk/ and find the author on Instagram and  Bluesky elravenheart.bsky.social

Special Guest post by Anna Belfrage, Author of Like Chaff in the Wind (The Graham Saga Book Two)

Available from Amazon UK and Amazon US

Matthew Graham committed the mistake of his life when he cut off his brother’s nose. In revenge, Luke Graham has Matthew abducted and transported to the Colony of Virginia, there to be sold as indentured labour – a death sentence more or less.

Indentured servants – the backbone of the colonies 

The first few English attempts to set up a successful colony in the New World failed dismally. In general, people who went to the colonies in search of a better life ended up dead, and for some odd reason this made it difficult to recruit new colonists. 

Without people to work the land and expand the English dominion, the Colony of Virginia was pretty much doomed, so I suspect the directors of the Virginia Company perked up substantially when someone came up with the bright idea to use indentured servants to populate their land.

 

The practise of indenture had been around for centuries. In essence it was a contract whereby one person voluntarily entered the service of another person for a stipulated period of time. In general, any payments for the service were paid out in arrears, which meant an indentured servant who absconded could not claim on his back pay. 

1738 indentured servitude contract between Henry Mayer a

nd Abraham Hestant.The contract bound Mayer to work 

for three years in Bucks County, Pennsylvania, to repay 

Hestant for his passage from Rotterdam.

The system set up in Virginia was somewhat different. Someone had to assume the cost of transporting the servant across the sea, and so rules were set in place whereby landowners in the colony could bring over servants at their own expense and receive up to 50 acres in compensation for their efforts. 

The indentured servant was compelled by contract to work off his debt for transportation and would at the end of his period of service receive some further compensation – plus some land. The problem with this little set up was that the need for indentured labour exceeded the demand – most people were reluctant to cross the sea to an unknown wilderness from which they might never return. 

If people didn’t queue up for the fantastic opportunity of expanding their horizons at no cost but their hard toil, maybe some light coercion would help, and what better way to achieve this than by snatching people off the street and have them set their cross to a document they didn’t understand? Quite a number of people were carried overseas against their will, and once on the other side there was very little they could do but submit to the inevitable and work off their years. 

Whether forced or voluntary, the life of an indentured servant was no walk in the park. For a woman, there was the constant risk of being raped – these were societies with a chronic shortage of women – and should she become pregnant her term of service would be extended. The men ended up in the fields, disposable beasts of burden that were often worked until they dropped. 

A disobedient (or “wilful”) servant was punished – in some cases so severely as to permanently maim the servant.  Trying to run away was a serious offence that could lead to beating so brutal the person in question died, and on top of this the reluctant immigrants had to cope with food shortages and unknown ailments. On average, four out of ten indentured servants died in Virginia during the seventeenth century. No wonder the colony had problems recruiting them! 

In the second instalment of The Graham Saga, Like Chaff in the Wind, my protagonist Matthew Graham is one of the unfortunates who is snatched and sold as an indentured servant to Virginia. The experience, unsurprisingly, leaves him scarred for life. 

Below is an excerpt, giving some insight into Matthew’s experiences in Virginia. Not exactly light reading, but I hope it will make you interested in more!

Five unbearable days, and on the afternoon of the sixth day he was so tired that he accidentally upended the sled, tipping the load of tobacco plants into the dirt. Jones flew at him. 

    “Fool! Look at what you’ve done!” 

    Matthew got to his feet, an effort involving far too many protesting muscles. His shoulders were permanently on fire, the harness had left broad, bleeding sores on his skin, and no matter how he tried to use his worn shirt as padding, the sores deepened and widened, a constant, flaming pain. 

    “I’ll just load them back.” He bent to pick up an armful. His arms were clumsy with weariness, and it took far too long to reload the sled, with Jones an irate, vociferous spectator. Matthew leaned forward into the straps, bunching his thighs. Dear Lord! He couldn’t budge the load, the leather cutting even deeper into his lacerated skin. He tried again, and still the sled wouldn’t move. Matthew looked back across his shoulder to find Jones sitting on the sled. 

    “Go on,” Jones sneered, “get a move on.” 

    “You’re too heavy,” Matthew said, “you can walk.” 

    Jones raised a brow. “Of course I can. But now I want you to pull.” 

    Matthew felt his pulse begin to thud. Wafting curtains of red clouded his vision. 

    “I’m a man, aye? I’ll work as you tell me to, but you can move of your own accord, fat though you may be. I won’t be your yoked beast, I’m a man.” There was absolute silence around him, his companions staring at him with a mixture of admiration and exasperation. 

    Jones stood up and moved towards him. “That’s where you’re wrong, Graham. You’re no man, not here, not now. You’re a slave, a beast to be worked until you’re no use.” He looked at Matthew expectantly, his hand tightening on the handle of his crop. 

    Matthew knew he should back down, grovel and mumble, but inside of him the fire grew, red hot rage at the man in front of him, at his traitorous brother, and the injustice of it all. 

    “I told you. I’ve never done anything wrong. I’m a free man.”

    Jones laughed. “Free? Then why are you still here? Why aren’t you on a ship back home?” 

    “You know why! I have no money.” 

    “And we own you, until you can pay yourself free, we own you.” 

    “Nay, no one owns me. I’m a free man.” 

    “And I tell you you’re but a slave,” Jones hissed. 

    Matthew punched him straight into the face, having the distinct pleasure of hearing the cartilage in Jones’ nose crack. That was really the last thing he observed clearly, then it was all hands and feet, and the sting of the leather crop. He heard Jones call men to him and Matthew had the shirt torn from his back, he was thrown face down onto the ground and then there was the snap of leather that came down time and time again on his bared skin. One of his arms was twisted up behind his back, and in his ear he heard Jones’ heavy breathing. 

    “So, what are you?” 

    “A free man,” Matthew gasped. The pressure on his arm was tearing at his tendons. 

    “What are you?” 

    Bend! Alex shrieked in his head, for God’s sake Matthew, bend. But he didn’t want to, he had to salvage some pride, and the pain in his shoulder increased to the point where he knew it would soon be dislocated. 

    “What are you?” Jones hissed again, throwing his considerable weight against Matthew’s trapped arm. Matthew groaned. Please! Alex cried, please, Matthew, for me. Don’t let him maim you for life, my love, please! In his fuddled state Matthew wasn’t sure if she was here for real, or if it was a hallucination, but the despair in her voice rang through his head. 

    “I’m a slave,” Matthew mumbled, closing his eyes so that he might still see Alex, not the red earth an inch from his nose. 

    “What? I didn’t hear you.” 

    “I’m a slave,” Matthew mumbled again. 

Anna Belfrage

# # #

About the Author

Had Anna been allowed to choose, she’d have become a time-traveller. As this was impossible, she became a financial professional with two absorbing interests: history and writing. Anna has authored the acclaimed time travelling series The Graham Saga, set in 17th century Scotland and Maryland, as well as the equally acclaimed medieval series The King’s Greatest Enemy which is set in 14th century England.  Her Castilian Heart is the third in her “Castilian” series, a stand-alone sequel to her September 2020 release, His Castilian Hawk. Set against the complications of Edward I’s invasion of Wales, His Castilian Hawk is a story of loyalty, integrity—and love. In the second instalment, The Castilian Pomegranate, we travel with the protagonists to the complex political world of medieval Spain. This latest release finds our protagonists back in England—not necessarily any safer than the wilds of Spain! Anna has also authored The Whirlpools of Time in which she returns to the world of time travel. Join Duncan and the somewhat reluctant time-traveller Erin on their adventures through the Scottish Highlands just as the first Jacobite rebellion is about to explode!  All of Anna’s books have been awarded the IndieBRAG Medallion, she has several Historical Novel Society Editor’s Choices, and one of her books won the HNS Indie Award in 2015. She is also the proud recipient of various Reader’s Favorite medals as well as having won various Gold, Silver and Bronze Coffee Pot Book Club awards. Find out more about Anna, her books and enjoy her eclectic historical blog on her website, www.annabelfrage.com and find her on Facebook, Twitter @abelfrageauthor and Bluesky @abelfrageauthor.bsky.social