The White Hawk flaps to Freedom

Part II of The White Hawk will be available as a FREE download - that's FREE, in block capitals - from tomorrow through to Monday the 5th August. Snaffle it up while you can :)

The White Hawk (II): Rebellion

A hiatus and a preview...

I will be away for the next fortnight or so doing some freelance work on behalf of the National Trust, so this blog will probably be very quiet for a while.

Just to (hopefully) whet a few reading appetites while I'm away, I will sign off with a sneak preview of my next book. It is called "Nowhere Was There Peace" - a quote taken from Walter Bower's 15th century chronicle of the history of the British Isles - and will be published very soon by Fireship Press. Below is the mean and moody cover, which I really like.

Fireship are an up and coming press, dedicated exclusively to publishing historical fiction. They have been fantastic to work with and you can check out their website at the link below:

Fireship Press

And here is the full quote from Bower's text, just to give a flavour of the story...

“Moreover all those who supported Simon in that battle were outlawed and disinherited.  The greater part of the Disinherited infested the roads and streets and became robbers…a deadly struggle broke out between the king and the disinherited, in the course of which villages were burned, towns wrecked, whole stretches of land depopulated, churches pillaged, religious driven from their monasteries, clerics had money extorted from them and the common people were ruined. Nowhere was there peace, nowhere security.” 

Walter Bower, The Scotichronicon, p355 
...and that's it, for now! Be back soon :)

Robyn Hode, part the Third

Part Three of my Robin Hood - or 'Robyn Hode' - series of short novellas is now available on Amazon. Readers of this blog might notice that I use a standard image for the covers, until my good friend and co-writer (as well as talented artist) Martin Bolton designs an individual cover for each installment.

The series has been going great guns so far, and I'm very pleased with the response. I thought I would share a customer review from Amazon, because it is very positive and the reader really 'got' what I am trying to achieve with the series:

"I have been an avid collector of books and films about Robin Hood for close to sixty years and believe that at some point I have probably read every book, fact or fiction about the legendary English hero, including juvenile fiction and some offerings that have been immediately consigned to the waste paper bin.

I bought Mr.Pilling's ROBYN HODE (1) in the belief that it was the first volume of a new series of novels. It is not, it is a short part work consisting of a handful of chapters, which I now understand will build into a full length saga over a period of time. This is my only disapointment with this publication... that I must wait between episodes for the next installment. This part followed on very quickly and I hope that the author will not keep us waiting too long until the next is released.

If the rest of the series in of the same quality or writing and style as this offering then they will build into one of the potentially best medieval fiction novels I have read in a long time, certainly on a par with Angus Donald's OUTLAW series.

The saga is set during the reign of Henry III, the most likely epoch for the source of the Robin Hood legends, and Mr. Pilling has choosen to base his tale not upon the commonly told legends of the Robin Hood ballads but around the snippets of historical records in the county rolls which may have some connection to the elusive outlaw hero; neatly stiched together with real historical characters interwoven to present a completely different vision of how the outlaw legend came to be with characters that are true to life with flaws and a dark side not just traditional villains and heros. This second enstallment fleshes out the characters of Gui of Gisburn, Tuck and the High Sheriff of Yorkshire and establishes Robyn as a denizen of the greenwood.

I now look forward to the next installments and hope that the promise of this developing into a really first class novel is met. My head tells me that I should wait to read the whole work but I know that in truth is shall not be able to resist taking in each part work as it is published. Meanwhile I will need to search out any other works that this author has to offer."

Work in progress

I want to talk a little about my latest book, which I am in the last stages of editing and revising. I posted a short preview of it on here a few weeks ago, and thought it was time for something more meaty.

The working title is "Caesar's Sword: The Red Death" and the story is set outside my usual medieval timeframe. I wanted to stretch my wings a little and try to write something set during the Late Roman era. The Roman Empire is a popular subject in fiction these days, but most writers tend to stick to the 'classical' era of the first and second centuries AD. I thought it worth having a go at writing a tale set during the reign of Justinian I (527-565).

The Ravenna mosaic, showing Emperor Justinian I and his court

Justinian's reign was, to put it mildly, a dramatic one. By this time the Empire had split in half and most of the Western Empire had been conquered by various 'barbaric' peoples. The last Emperor of the West, Romulus Augustus, had been deposed and packed off into exile in 476. However, the Eastern half of the Empire, including Asia Minor and the vital breadbasket of Egypt, was still intact and ruled from Constantinople (modern-day Istanbul). It was threatened by enemies on all sides, and Justinian inherited a realm that was beginning to crumble under the relentless pressure.

Hero-worship is unfashionable these days, especially in the study of history, but it does seem that the Empire was saved, and to some extent restored, by the actions of one man. This was Flavius Belisarius, a brilliant general whom Justinian employed as a sort of firefighter, sending him to one trouble-spot after another. Belisarius was a complex and tragic figure, and a superb character to portray in fiction.

Belisarius begging for alms on the streets of Constantinople

I prefer to keep famous historical characters in supporting roles, because essentially there is nothing unpredictable about their fate: the details of their lives and careers are known, and cannot be changed to any great extent. So Belisarius and Justinian and the rest of the glittering imperial court had to be happy with playing second fiddle to my main character.

This is Coel ap Amhar ap Arthur, grandson of 'King' Arthur, or rather the Dux Bellorum who defeated the Saxons at Mount Badon and protected Britain against barbarian invasions for over twenty-one years. At the beginning of my story Arthur is dead or vanished, his armies smashed at the Battle of Camlann, where the arch-traitor Medrauat was also killed.

Arthur's son and Coel's father, Amhar, is a curious figure mentioned only briefly in Welsh legend:

“There is another wonder in the country called Ergyng. There is a tomb there by a spring, called Llygad Amhar; the name of the man buried in the tomb was Amhar. He was the son of the warrior Arthur, who killed him there and buried him.”
- The Historia Brittonum 

Why Arthur has killed his own son is not explained. I thought there was something delightfully dark and mysterious about Amhar's fate, and decided to provide my own explanation in the novel.

So what does a British warrior-prince and a descendent of Arthur have to do with the later Roman Empire? And what's all this about "Caesar's Sword"?? Stay tuned to find out....

The White Hawk on Goodreads

I have three free paperback copies of Book One of the "The White Hawk" on offer as a free giveaway on Goodreads. The competition starts on March 16th and ends on April 16th: just enter at the link below and a brand new shiny paperback copy of the book could be on its way to you in April! 

The White Hawk on Goodreads