Whaddaya Luv?

Love the middle ages? The Cymry (Welsh) people? Battle? Reluctant heroes? Spunky heroines? Dastardly Vikings? Twuue Luurve?

If you love any of these things, you may want to check out a book...

PEACEWEAVER releases this Friday (yes! this Friday!) from Desert Breeze Publishing (www.desertbreezepublishing.com). Get ye there and check out the cover awesomeness.

Seriously, I love this story as it came together. It was a joy to write. I hope my readers will enjoy it, too.

Off With Her Head!

Sorry. Not literally. You see, Anmair of north Wales, the heroine of my 973 tale PEACEWEAVER, has gone and gotten herself captured by Vikings.

"What!" you say. "The Vikings raided in England and France, right? Not Wales!"

Au contraire. They did indeed raid in Wales and for a while, were allowed to spend the winters on the island of Anglesey (a.k.a. Mona) off the northwest tip of the country. From this base they could sally forth every spring in their usual Viking hobbies of rape, pillage and destruction. Not nice fellas, these ancestors of mine.

Anyway, Anmair has been taken away to the Viking enclave near Dublin, Ireland, with the leader's intention to sell her and a few others as slaves. Wouldn't ya know it? His minions come down with the measles and the leader is cursing his bad luck. Has Odin turned his face against them all? Anmair rashly promises to help the measly horde and the leader promises that if she can't, if even one of his men dies, he'll offer her in sacrifice to the All Father, Odin. Only that way can he hope to turn his run of bad luck to good.

It's tense, all right. What will Anmair do to keep herself from being served up to Odin? I really have no idea. She has boldly told the leader that only the true God can be of help in dire situations, and she'll prove His power by saving the raiders. Can she do this? I don't know. Measles is no joke in adult patients. Does one of them succumb? Stay tuned -- our dauntless (so far, anyway) heroine is in a Viking longship load of trouble this time.

Action, Reaction, Life...Stuff Like That

Doing mini-edit on PEACEWEAVER. There's a natural lull in the action. My main character is trying, with more or less success, to settle into her new life as lady of the manor. I don't want this next section to lose impetus, so, hmm: what next shall I do?

I'm tempted, strongly, to let her have it: WHAM! How about a nice Viking raid (this is 973 England, after all)? Some pillage? Burn down the family holding? Or maybe the action should be part of the internecine warfare between her family and her family-in-law?

In fiction, I'm told that the surest way to prevent a Sagging Middle (a thing to be avoided at all costs) is to throw catastrophe after catastrophe at your main characters. I've resisted doing this 'cause I don't write action/adventure, I write romance. But in this young lady's case, I think a Major Challenge, and her reaction to it, would be compellingly consistent with the way people lived in 973.

As support for my fictional endeavor, I'm reading a nonfic book set around the year 1000, called BLOODFEUD. It deals with a certain late Saxon family-with-political crisis and the charges, countercharges, treachery, and murder that resulted. It's been a really good insight into the instability of life in the early middle ages.

Life was tenuous. They dreaded winter because late winter and early spring were the hungry times. Had they spared enough animals from fall slaughter to provide for the spring increase? Had they slaughtered enough animals, put up enough non-meat foodstuffs to last through the cold, till the next harvest?

They dreaded summer because that was the time for war. From my readings I've decided there were maybe 6 weeks all year that early medieval countryside folk might, maybe, feel safe.

Such is my characters' world.