Category: Blog

Delighted to have a blether with author of The Witchfinder’s Well Series, radio presenter, playwright and lyricist, Jonathan Posner, about his books, the setting and writing generally.

Your books are set in the Tudor period. What draws you to that era?

My original idea was to create a time-travel story with a modern-day traveller going back to the Puritan 17^th century and being accused of witchcraft. But my concern was that she would be isolated in such an era, with everyone being too afraid of witchfinders to be on her side. As a story it would be less interesting, as she would have few, if any, allies to help her. So I decided to go back a few more years to Tudor times, where accusations of witchcraft were treated more even-handedly and there were those who were sceptical about such things. This would give my time-traveller potential allies – adding greater interest to the story. The 16^th century was also a more colourful, flamboyant and interesting period than that of the Puritans, and is also when a more recognisably modern society started to emerge out of the medieval past.

Your Witchfinder Series shifts in time between now and the Tudors. How do you go about writing a time slip novel and what are the challenges of this genre?

The time shift is when my heroine Justine falls through a worm-hole caused by an electrical storm. Once she arrives in Tudor England, she soon realises that this is a freak event and will never happen again – and certainly not in reverse. So she has to reconcile herself to the fact that she is stuck in Tudor England with no way back for the rest of her life. The challenge was then to make her transition from a modern-day girl to a fully-functioning Elizabethan believable – showing how she learns to cast-off her modern ways and embrace her position in Elizabethan society.

Another challenge was to make the Elizabethan world itself seem real. This meant a number of things had to work – the language had to seem authentic without being clichéd (or so accurate that it’s impossible to follow); the lifestyles needed to be historically accurate yet still understandable to the reader, and the plot needed to flow from Elizabethan character – such as Hopkirk being driven by the religious fervour of the period, Melrose by the injustice of land enclosure and Lady de Beauvais by the need to marry her son off to the right girl.

What do you enjoy about being a writer and how do you keep yourself motivated?

I love the process of creating a story. I work from a broad outline, then build the early part of the book by opening up a number of possible plotlines. Then I explore which of these I am going to develop further, and follow them through to the climax of the story. I love it when little plot or character devices that I set up in the early part of the book come together and resolve themselves by the end – I find that very satisfying!

I keep motivated by getting feedback – good or bad – as it shows me how people engage with my work. Something I write when sitting on my own seems real to me, but only truly becomes real when other people read it and react to it. I remember once directing a play I had written, and explaining the meaning of a line to a couple of actors. I was amazed when they disagreed with my interpretation! It made me realise that even as the writer, mine is only one possible interpretation of the text – not the exclusively ‘correct’ one.

First in series The Witchfinder Well is on offer until Monday. It’s an exciting read… ‘when a girl in 2015 falls through a time-travelling worm-hole she finds herself in 1565. Accused of being a witch, she has to use her wits, her cunning and her ingenuity to survive. The trilogy then takes her –and readers of all ages –into a dark world of assassins, subterfuge and plots, involving Queen Elizabeth, Francis Walsingham and Mary Queen of Scots.‘

You can find out more about Jonathan at https://jonathanposnerauthor.com and he also produces a regular and fun 5 minute break quick read.

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My good friend Marian is both a great hillwalker and a great lover of books – and manages to combine the two perfectly thanks to audiobooks. Indeed she’s such a big consumer of audio that she rarely reads. During lockdown when her walks were restricted to the local streets she says, ‘having an audiobook made it much less boring’.  

So when I was considering making an audio version of The Castilians and narrating it myself, who better to ask for advice than Marian. I am nothing if not a demanding friend, so I sent her a, fortunately short, recording of me reading a couple of pages.

Marian phoned the next day. 

   ‘I’m not sure it’s a good idea,’ she said. She’s nothing if not an honest friend.
   ‘Why not?’ I asked, trying to control the rising note of indignation in my voice. ‘I’ve listened to loads of podcasts and read lots about how you can record your own audiobook.’
   ‘Your voice is good, your pacing’s good, your Scottish accent is of course excellent but… it’s the dialogue. The listener needs to know which character is speaking when.’
   ‘Ah, I get it,’ I said, indignation fading. ‘It’s probably okay to do-it-yourself if it’s non fiction, like a self-help book.
   ‘Yes,’ she said, ‘that would be okay.’ I could hear the relief in her voice that she didn’t have to devote any more time to soothing ruffled feathers.

So I contacted my friend Beverley who is a fabulous singer and actor – and who was actually available since the pandemic meant that all the work she had lined up was either postponed or cancelled.

Bev, after studying the book, soon told me that there were at least 24 different characters therein who had dialogue to say – clearly some considerably more than others. We spent time discussing the motivation, age and background to the main characters for Bev considered this the lynchpin, and the biggest challenge, to getting the recording right so the story becomes real. 

She says, ‘it helps when you like the book and care about what happens to the characters. I read it aloud several times and marked anything that was a problem such as a change in tone or feeling or emotions. Then I would memorise where those changes were so that it flowed’.

Bev’s advice to anyone narrating for the first time is don’t be afraid, enjoy the experience. And the most important thing is to make sure the writer is happy and be open to suggestions from them – which is something I very much appreciated about Bev’s approach.

My husband, Mike has a home recording setup already, so it was straightforward getting the studio configured for producing the audio tracks. He found lots of advice online including techniques for avoiding pops and clicks when the narrator speaks. Minimising background noise is always a challenge, so care with cabling helps reducing signal noises like mains hum. Perhaps the hardest part of the exercise was meeting the Findaway Voices and ACX specifications for sound loudness and peak levels. His advice to anyone thinking of recording their own book is to go to Findaway and ACX, read the info about preparing audio files to make sure it is something you’ll be comfortable doing – before you begin!

Here’s a short extract for you to listen to and hear the quality of Bev’s work. You can win a free copy by subscribing to my newsletter https://vehmasters.com/newsletter. You can unsubscribe at any time.

It’s been a good work year, despite all the global challenges. Great to get the second book The Conversos out and the audio version of The Castilians.

We managed a wee trip to Yorkshire in October and I was in castle heaven. The most dramatic place we visited was Rievaulx Abbe

I was aware that most churches (and certainly in medieval times) were built in the shape of a cross. But didn’t realise that they were also built with the top of the cross facing Jerusalem and the East – how did I not know that!

The detailing, the work of the stone masons, all done to glorify God is stunning and yet the monks lived a simple life.

The number of monks fell dramatically during the Black Death in the late 1300s. By 1538 King Henry VIII had his beady eye upon the rich pickings to be gleaned from the Catholic Church.

Henry sold the land and the buildings but kept the plate, abbey bells and the lead from the roof for himself. It’s remarkable that these building have been without roofs for nearly five hundred years and yet the immense walls are still standing.

Of course I had to investigate the sanitation…

The monks’ latrines, known as the reredorters, were to be found at the top of a three-storey building conveniently connected to their dormitory – but a very long drop if you were stumbling about in the dark at night.

A line of privies were set over the drain and the monks sat on removable wooden seats. The brethren were permitted to use the toilets whenever necessary but must exercise modesty at all times: they had to cover their faces with their hoods, fold their hands in front of them and ensure that their cowls reached the floor.

Before Matins a check was made that no monk was still in bed or had fallen asleep on the privy.

see The Monastic Constitutions of Lanfranc, ed. and tr. D. Knowles, rev. C. N. L. Brooke (Oxford, 2002), pp. 117-119.]

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I always assumed that the dungeon at St Andrews Castle, carved out of rock and worn smooth by its many occupants, was unique.

Named the bottle dungeon for reasons which are soon obvious to any visitor, it is indeed unique – in shape. But the principle of keeping prisoners in a pit prison was fairly universal.

• 

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There were of course others forms of punishment, often about humiliation more than pain

Cardinal Beaton, who was instrumental in the death of George Wishart was himself held prisoner at Blackness Castle

but, as a rich and powerful man, Cardinal Beaton’s incarceration was quite different from that of general prisoners

Of course Beaton had to pay for his comfortable living, but then any prisoner had to rely on family or friends to provide food, heat, bedding, bribes and a ransom…so if you were poor you were in desperate straits.

The Cardinal did end up in the bottle dungeon a few years later, where the Lairds who murdered him are said to have kept his mutilated body…

‘Leslie wants the Cardinal’s body brought out of the dungeon and laid to rest somewhere more fitting. Will hangs his head over the bottle neck and quickly hauls it out again. The smell is bad: dank, airless and putrid. Surely the Cardinal can’t still be rotting after more than a year pickled in salt.

The men below shout up; they need help. Will sighs, grasps a rope and slides down to join them. No doubt they will soon be imprisoned here themselves, and he would prefer it if the Cardinal was first removed.

They balance awkwardly on the curve of the hollowed-out floor of the dungeon. The coffin slips and crashes to the ground. The ill-fitting lid slides open.

Will looks down upon the tightly packed body and the Cardinal’s face stares up at him. He steps back with a sharp intake of breath, and he’s not the only one. He rubs his eyes hard, God’s blood, he would swear on his life he saw Beaton’s unquiet spirit escape.

They ram the lid back on and get the coffin tied up, and hauled to the surface without any further mishap. He climbs back up the rope and the group, staggering under the weight as they slip and slither in the muck, take it in turns to carry it across the rain-soaked, cannon- blasted courtyard. Will notices that Norman Leslie takes no further part in proceedings.’

The Castilians , currently on the Amazon BEST SELLER List, is on offer until 16 September.

The sequel, The Conversos, will be released on 30 November.

And a final postscript…I love chatting to readers and, if you’d like to join in and receive infrequent updates on research, sneak peeks into what new books I’m working on and the occasional giveaways then please do sign up to my newsletter.

You can unsubscribe at any time and I promise to write out only occasionally and not to clog up your inbox.

When I was plotting The Castilians I had to work out how I was going to sneak its heroine, Bethia, inside St Andrews Castle. The obvious way – through the gate in the curtain wall, and across the drawbridge — wasn’t going to work.

Although around 2500 people lived in St Andrews in the 1500s (there were 60 bakers alone), the chances of Bethia, as the daughter of the well-kent Merchant Seton,  being observed by someone who knew her were high. 

A solution was for her to gain entry by a gate on the seaward side and, in the ruins of the castle, such a gate still exists.…

Problem solved.

But how is she going to get in here? The castle sits perched on a cliff. Last summer I realised I needed to get a good look at the castle from the sea, but this is COVID times and there were no boats going out. Instead I went at low tide and scrambled over the rocks in a most precarious, and undignified, manner.

Wow, the castle is impressive from the seaward side. Shame about the graffiti halfway up, which rather destroys the atmosphere.

It’s also high – how am I going to get Bethia safely in and out of there, especially if the sea is rough?

They reach their destination sooner than she expects, bumping up against smooth rocks which form a jetty below the cliff. Geordie leaps out and offers his hand to steady her. She tips her head back; the crumbling sandstone is soothing to the eye, but the castle wall rising over it is grey and forbidding.  She can see a small gate high above, but she can’t see any way to reach it.

Geordie shouts and after a few moments a face peers through the bars of the yett. Geordie sniffs, ‘They must be thinking God is keeping watch for them, since they’re no bothering.’

‘Bethia Seton, what are you doing here?’

She sees James of Nydie’s blonde head and frowning face looking down.

‘Is there a way up, I need to speak with Will.’

‘There is a ladder but it’s not an easy climb.’

‘I’ll manage,’ she calls, voice quivering.

A rope ladder is unraveled and hangs, swinging in the breeze. Geordie grabs the end and she goes to step on.

‘Wait,’ cries James and the end of a rope comes slithering down. ‘Tie it around you.’

Up she goes, the ladder swaying and banging off the cliff. She keeps her eyes fixed on the uneven rock close to her face, so close in places that her nose and knees bump off it, and her knuckles scrape over it. Her skirts catch around her legs, restricting movement. Her breathing is loud in her ears, fluttering and panicked. She’s grateful to James for the rope, doesn’t think she could have done it otherwise.

‘Ye’d better no be long,’ Geordie shouts, as she’s crawling through the gate. ‘If the tide gets too far out the boat will be stuck till it rises again.’

One day recently I visited Tantallon Castle, near North Berwick. Castles served different purposes and St Andrews Castle is really a wee fortified bishop’s palace. Tantallon is a BIG castle on a GRAND scale.

And there I found the perfect explanation of how goods would be lifted from the deck of a ship a long, long way below and hoisted into the castle.

Perhaps Bethia could have been hauled up this way— but I suspect she’d prefer to stay with the ladder, rather than being swung around in the air in a most unsafe, wind-tossed ascent.

Ps Do note the walkways around Tantallon – all without barriers. Terrifying!!

And a final postscript…I love chatting to readers and, if you’d like to join in and receive infrequent updates on research, sneak peeks into what new books I’m working on and the occasional giveaways then please do sign up to my newsletter.

You can unsubscribe at any time and I promise to write out only occasionally and not to clog up your inbox.

It’s a great moment for a newbie author to have her first guest post and I’m delighted to welcome Mercedes Rochelle who has been kind enough to answer the three short questions I posed. Mercedes has recently published book three of her Plantagenet Series, Usurper King to add to what is a growing list of previously published books, both fiction and non fiction.

Mercedes was born in Missouri but now lives in New Jersey and I was curious as to what drew her to become a writer of medieval historical fiction.

Your novels are all set in England. What got you hooked about English History?

It seems like an accident, but I keep bumping into Shakespeare as inspiration for my novels. The first, HEIR TO A PROPHECY was actually inspired by “the Scottish play”, but most of the action is in England anyway. Could it be because most of us Americans have a soft spot for our ancestors? I feel that I can relate to the English, and the Plantagenets really call to me. My thirty years as a medieval reenactor probably has much to do with it, too.

The characters you write about were often blood-thirsty and cruel. How do you make them appealing to the reader (and to you as the writer)?

I would say that the middle ages were pretty blood-thirsty and cruel in general, though they probably didn’t see themselves that way. Regardless, I’m a firm believer that good fiction thrives on conflict. I also believe that nobody is 100% evil. After all, the villain is the hero of his own story!

So part of the conflict, as I see it, is the innate contradiction between a character’s good and bad side. Does the protagonist always have to be a hero? Trying to see past the actions to the man inside keeps me interested. King Richard II was a prime example. He did so many questionable things! Of course, that’s why he lost his crown.

At the same time, he was very kind to his wives and to children. He wasn’t a bad man—just traumatized by events in his minority. I don’t think he could help himself. I hope that the circumstances surrounding his fall made up for the fact that he wasn’t particularly sympathetic. I didn’t want to whitewash him, so explaining his actions rather than excusing them was my solution.

What’s the biggest challenge in writing about people and events from over 700 years ago, and what’s the most fun part?

In essence, I don’t think people were all that different than today. One of my challenges is the language. Idioms are anathema, and at the same time we often don’t even realize we are using them. I always have an etymological dictionary running in the background and look up words that sound modern to me. If the word was first used in the 17^th century, for example, I’ll find something else. It limits my vocabulary!

The other thing I struggle with is travel time. Often and again I’ll read a history that claims so-and-so traveled in an impossibly short time (Harold Godwineson from London to Stamford Bridge in 1066, for example. I wrote a blog post about it.) Under the best of circumstances, a man probably wouldn’t travel more than 50 miles in a day; the average was more like thirty. How about the second day? Without a relay, the horse would give out. I really don’t think they had relay, or posting stations before the 18^th century (except for the Romans). So I also have a map running in the background so I don’t screw up my distances.

My enjoyment comes from deciphering the events I’m reading about. We almost never learn exactly what, why, or how a person decides to do something. We just learn about the fact. When a character acts “out of character”, it’s quite a challenge trying to sort out a reasonable explanation. Why did Hotspur rebel against the king, when he had so much to lose? Why did his father, the formidable Henry Percy, fail to show up for the Battle of Shrewsbury? Why did King Richard go to Ireland immediately after he took away Henry Bolingbroke’s inheritance? To me, these are the things that make historical fiction rock!!

THE USURPER KING

First, he led his own uprising. Then he captured a forsaken king. Henry had no intention of taking the crown for himself; it was given to him by popular acclaim. Alas, it didn’t take long to realize that that having the kingship was much less rewarding than striving for it. Only three months after his coronation, Henry IV had to face a rebellion led by Richard’s disgruntled favorites.

Repressive measures led to more discontent. His own supporters turned against him, demanding more than he could give. The haughty Percies precipitated the Battle of Shrewsbury which nearly cost him the throne—and his life. To make matters worse, even after Richard II’s funeral, the deposed monarch was rumored to be in Scotland, planning his return. The king just wouldn’t stay down and malcontents wanted him back.

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ps. Mercedes writes a very informative blog, fascinating to any history buff.

pps. Her books are available in Audible too.