Q: You have a new book coming out about Elizabeth I. What can you tell us about it? When will it be available?
A: It will be in stores on April 5, 2011. It concentrates on the last fifteen years of her reign, beginning with the Armada in 1588, the greatest crisis she encountered. Many of the characters associated with ‘the Elizabethan age’—Shakespeare, Drake, Raleigh, Essex—come into their own here. Besides that, I have a second narrator, the queen’s cousin Lettice Knollys, who fulfils in many ways the role of Will Somers in The Autobiography of Henry VIII—unbiased observer of events, with a sharp wit.
Q: What surprising fact did you learn about Elizabeth?
A: That Elizabeth didn’t like eating in public, so every day in the great hall of her palaces her place was ceremonially set, with all sorts of rituals and food-tasters, but Elizabeth had room service in her privy chamber.
Q: Who is the next character you will write about?
A: If I could live a thousand years… I’d do them all. The one at I’m most likely to do in the near future is Boudicca, especially if I do Nero. She lived at the same time and was Rome’s enemy, so there can be a sharp conflict between them. Someone also suggested Lili’uokalani, the last queen of Hawaii, and that might be fun, especially since I’d have to spend a lot of time in Hawaii! I seem to be drawn to characters who make a last stand, or were the last in their line.
Q: Can I get an answer from your guest book?
A: In this upgraded website I won’t be having a guest book like the old one. But, this will offer readers a chance to write emails directly to me. Due to time constraints, I won’t be able to answer each one but I promise that I do read each one, and they mean a great deal to me. In looking back over the guest book, many readers suggested characters they wanted me to write about; Jesus, Queen Victoria, Charlemagne, Nefertiti, Catherine the Great, Hadrian, Caesar, Pocahontas, Ivan the Terrible (I do mention him in Elizabeth I as he was one of her suitors), King Arthur, Peter the Great, Catherine de Medici, King David, Joan of Arc, Hatshepsut, Marie Antoinette, Josephine, Cleopatra’s children, and U.S. Southern matriarchs from antebellum times.
I’d have to live to Methuselah’s age to do all these. And…how about Methuselah himself? Imagine what he witnessed in nine hundred and sixty-nine years!
Q: Which book is your favorite?
A: I don’t have one favorite, but there are different aspects of each one I favor. I wouldn’t ever want to name a favorite, as it would hurt the other books’ feelings—or rather, the characters in the books.
Q: If you won’t name your favorite, then how about something special about each one, or a problem you faced in writing it?
A: Although it might seem from the outside that the books are very much the same, each one had its own challenges.
The Autobiography of Henry VIII: Too many characters! Six wives and three important statesmen made nine major roles, and none could be omitted. Even with the book 930 pages long, that’s only about 150 pages per wife, or 100 pages if you include More, Cromwell, and Wolsey. And I didn’t want to scrimp on them.
Mary Queen of Scotland and the Isles: The twenty years in prison were an obstacle in making the book interesting. Yet I didn’t want to say, “Twenty years later…” because she changed during those years, growing as a person.
The Memoirs of Cleopatra: Cleopatra was so self-assured it was hard to make her sympathetic. She didn’t make mistakes and she didn’t have self-doubts, all necessary to make us identify with a character.
Mary, Called Magdalene: She had to share the stage with Jesus, and nobody can steal a scene from Jesus. It was much easier to write about her after Jesus was no longer with her.
Helen of Troy: Two problems from the same source: mythology. The question of fate and Helen not being free to choose her destiny, and therefore not being apologetic about it, was hard to present to the modern audience. Also, “don’t hate me because I’m beautiful”—that’s hard to bring off.
Elizabeth I: Somewhat the same problem as Cleopatra. She was supremely in control of her world, which made her so competent and accomplished she was the opposite of vulnerable. Unlike Cleopatra, she wasn’t beaten by her foreign opponent but triumphed. Only time and mortality overcame her, but even time has turned her into an icon.
Q: There’s been an explosion of interest in the ancient world lately, in books, movies—Troy, 300, the new Greek and Roman gallery in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the King Tut and the “Lost World of Cleopatra” exhibits, and in the news, with art objects being returned to their countries of origin. How did Helen of Troy fit into this?
A: Increased interest and research will hopefully lead to our discovering more about the historical Helen of Troy and about the Trojans themselves, who are still somewhat of a mystery. Was there a ‘real’ Helen? Archaeologists have recently confirmed that Troy was the size Homer indicated, with a big area outside the citadel. Will we find the tomb of Cleopatra? Zahi Hawass, the Egyptian archaeologist and secretary general of the Supreme Council of Antiquities, thinks he has. What about the scrolls from the Library of Alexandria? Stay tuned.
Q: What do you think of The Tudors miniseries on Showtime TV?
A: I had to revise my opinion (and eat crow) as I ended up getting hooked on it. It was wildly inaccurate and no one ever seemed to age, but it was fun. However, Henry’s mind never really came across. To hear him tell his own story, I’m delighted that the original unabridged audiotapes of my Autobiography of Henry VIII are now available as digital downloads from www.audible.com. And for the old-fashioned, there’s the novel itself, also available in eBook form.
Q: Do you use the Internet for research?
A: Earlier I did not, but now there are so many things available on it. I like to save files as PDFs so I can have them always available. And the ‘image’ search on Google is wonderful, allowing for maps, paintings, statues, coins, and so on.
Q: Mary Magdalene has been so much in the news lately. I saw a big article in TIME magazine in which your book was mentioned. But it also talked about other interpretations of Mary Magdalene, such as that she was Jesus’s wife. What do you think of that idea?
A: The Jesus-and-Mary-Magdalene-were-lovers/married idea is one that pops up every now and then but it has never really had much in favor of the argument, at least not by serious scholars. I think there was some sort of special relationship between them but that it was spiritual; after all he chose her to appear to in the garden on Easter morning.
My old great-aunt, who knew the Bible inside out, had her theory that it was Mary of Bethany whom Jesus was in love with, and if you read the passages where Mary of Bethany is sitting at his feet, I think she’s right—there seem to be more ‘vibes’ there than with Mary Magdalene. Of course with so little material, it’s hard to interpret.
You can read the TIME article in the August 5th (2003) issue. It covers many theories about the mysterious Mary Magdalene. You may purchase the article from their archives here as TIME’s Internet content is only free for two weeks. www.time.com/time/magazinearticle/0,9171,1101030811-472868,00.html
Q: Who are your favorite authors/influences?
A: Ray Bradbury has had enormous influence over me. My father gave me “The Martian Chronicles” to read when I was nine. I must know it by heart by now. With all due respect to Poe and Stephen King, I think Bradbury’s “The Third Expedition” is the scariest story I’ve ever read.
I love Bradbury’s use of language and his ability to convey a sense of being there. In an interview he wrote, “Why all this insistence on the senses? Because in order to convince the reader that he is there, you must assault each of his senses, in turn, with color, sound, taste, and texture. If your reader feels the sun on his flesh, the wind fluttering his shirt sleeves, half your fight is won. The most improbable tales can be made believable, if your reader, through his senses, feels certain that he stands at the middle of events.” I took that to heart and that’s what I try to do.
I also like Oscar Wilde, Edgar Allan Poe, Gore Vidal, F.Scott Fitzgerald, and Thomas Hardy. Hmmm, do you see a pattern here? Very few lighthearted writers in this grouping—only Oscar Wilde and his observations about human nature are funny but dark.
Q: Do you prefer to write by hand or use a computer?
A: I used to write everything out by hand and then copy it into the computer. The Autobiography of Henry VIII was written entirely by hand. But the time factor forced me to switch, halfway through Mary Queen of Scotland and the Isles, to writing directly on the computer.
I still write important or emotional scenes by hand; the connections seem more real that way.
Q: Why have you written about so many women?
A: Just a coincidence, really. I started out with Henry VIII and since then have proposed other men as subjects, such as Judas and Alexander the Great and Nero. Publishers did not share my enthusiasm for these characters!
Q: Do you have any interest in writing about a modern person?
A: I assume by modern you mean since 1900? No; although there are scads of interesting subjects, the sheer amount of documentation available, far from making it easier, makes such a project daunting. In addition, there is the problem of getting permissions and meeting with resistance from friends and family. Ironically you can find out much more about people who died a long time ago—no one is guarding their secrets any longer, everything is in the public domain.
Q: Did you study history?
A: Only informally. My father was very interested in history and we lived in places rich in history while I was growing up; it was a part of our family life to explore Crusader castles or archaeological digs or visit old cemeteries, like other families went camping.
Q: How much of what you write is true and how much your own imagination? What is your rule for historical accuracy?
A: My own rule is that I never go against a known fact (even if that fact is inconvenient for plotting purposes). No dead people live an extra five years because I’d like them to meet someone so it would be a better story, for example. Playwrights and screenwriters have had Queen Elizabeth I and Mary Queen of Scots meet, but in real life the closest they ever came to one another was 44 miles, and so in my book, they do not, and cannot, meet.
However, one of the reasons we read historical novels is that, although we know what did happen, we don’t always know why. The realm of the novel allows me to supply motivation and explanation of the character’s psychology, and go where the straight biographer cannot go. In that arena I am free to use imagination and conjecture.
Q: Do you have writing rituals? A: I can’t write if anyone else is in the house! So I could never do what Jane Austen did, write at the desk and then just shove the paper in the drawer when anyone came into the room. Writers are very peculiar creatures!
I have a rule that I must sit at the writing for at least 2 hours or 5 pages (whichever comes first), and I have a two-hour timer that I start ticking when I sit down. Often I am so involved in the writing that by the time the alarm does go off I hardly hear it, but it’s a good way to prod myself to get started when staring at the dreaded blank white screen.
I can’t work on two projects simultaneously, I’m a very bad multi-tasker. And I think each book is such a complete union between me and the subject that I can’t divide my loyalties. I become so possessive about a subject that I feel I’ve created them and they are all mine. I can tell when a project is really over—my territorial feeling fades away and I don’t feel compelled to ‘protect and defend’ them any longer. I don’t fall all to pieces if a bad movie is made about them!
Q: What fact would a reader be most surprised to learn about you?
A: That as a hobby I’ve studied belly dancing for many years!
Q: Do your work/fantasy world and your real world ever interact?
A: They do in my entertaining. Obviously I like the idea of costumes and being someone else, and I’ve come to find that perfectly normal citizens seem to get a kick out of it, too. I share a birthday with Edgar Allan Poe and have always felt a real connection with him, so every Halloween I host a candlelight Poe-reading party where the guests dress either in black or as a character out of Poe.
I have also given Cleopatra parties where everyone dressed the part, and we’ve even had a snake on hand—not an asp, though. I have a model battleship prop from the miniseries that makes a great centerpiece, even with the oars sticking out, for the dining room table.
I have a collection of reproductions of “Titanic” (the movie) dresses, and I wear them to formal occasions, but always on dry land!
Q: What do you do to relax? For fun?
A: I’m supposed to say something hearty and physical, like Ultra-Marathons, or homey like gardening or quilting, but I’m afraid my favorite thing to do is still to read! Just about anything, really. Even the labels on boxes and instruction manuals. Supermarket tabloids, The Economist, the Bible, Keats, Henning Mankell, if it’s there, I’ll at least start on it and give it a try.
FAQ
Q: You have a new book coming out about Elizabeth I. What can you tell us about it? When will it be available?
A: It will be in stores on April 5, 2011. It concentrates on the last fifteen years of her reign, beginning with the Armada in 1588, the greatest crisis she encountered. Many of the characters associated with ‘the Elizabethan age’—Shakespeare, Drake, Raleigh, Essex—come into their own here. Besides that, I have a second narrator, the queen’s cousin Lettice Knollys, who fulfils in many ways the role of Will Somers in The Autobiography of Henry VIII—unbiased observer of events, with a sharp wit.
Q: What surprising fact did you learn about Elizabeth?
A: That Elizabeth didn’t like eating in public, so every day in the great hall of her palaces her place was ceremonially set, with all sorts of rituals and food-tasters, but Elizabeth had room service in her privy chamber.
Q: Who is the next character you will write about?
A: If I could live a thousand years… I’d do them all. The one at I’m most likely to do in the near future is Boudicca, especially if I do Nero. She lived at the same time and was Rome’s enemy, so there can be a sharp conflict between them. Someone also suggested Lili’uokalani, the last queen of Hawaii, and that might be fun, especially since I’d have to spend a lot of time in Hawaii! I seem to be drawn to characters who make a last stand, or were the last in their line.
Q: Can I get an answer from your guest book?
A: In this upgraded website I won’t be having a guest book like the old one. But, this will offer readers a chance to write emails directly to me. Due to time constraints, I won’t be able to answer each one but I promise that I do read each one, and they mean a great deal to me. In looking back over the guest book, many readers suggested characters they wanted me to write about; Jesus, Queen Victoria, Charlemagne, Nefertiti, Catherine the Great, Hadrian, Caesar, Pocahontas, Ivan the Terrible (I do mention him in Elizabeth I as he was one of her suitors), King Arthur, Peter the Great, Catherine de Medici, King David, Joan of Arc, Hatshepsut, Marie Antoinette, Josephine, Cleopatra’s children, and U.S. Southern matriarchs from antebellum times.
I’d have to live to Methuselah’s age to do all these. And…how about Methuselah himself? Imagine what he witnessed in nine hundred and sixty-nine years!
Q: Which book is your favorite?
A: I don’t have one favorite, but there are different aspects of each one I favor. I wouldn’t ever want to name a favorite, as it would hurt the other books’ feelings—or rather, the characters in the books.
Q: If you won’t name your favorite, then how about something special about each one, or a problem you faced in writing it?
A: Although it might seem from the outside that the books are very much the same, each one had its own challenges.
The Autobiography of Henry VIII: Too many characters! Six wives and three important statesmen made nine major roles, and none could be omitted. Even with the book 930 pages long, that’s only about 150 pages per wife, or 100 pages if you include More, Cromwell, and Wolsey. And I didn’t want to scrimp on them.
Mary Queen of Scotland and the Isles: The twenty years in prison were an obstacle in making the book interesting. Yet I didn’t want to say, “Twenty years later…” because she changed during those years, growing as a person.
The Memoirs of Cleopatra: Cleopatra was so self-assured it was hard to make her sympathetic. She didn’t make mistakes and she didn’t have self-doubts, all necessary to make us identify with a character.
Mary, Called Magdalene: She had to share the stage with Jesus, and nobody can steal a scene from Jesus. It was much easier to write about her after Jesus was no longer with her.
Helen of Troy: Two problems from the same source: mythology. The question of fate and Helen not being free to choose her destiny, and therefore not being apologetic about it, was hard to present to the modern audience. Also, “don’t hate me because I’m beautiful”—that’s hard to bring off.
Elizabeth I: Somewhat the same problem as Cleopatra. She was supremely in control of her world, which made her so competent and accomplished she was the opposite of vulnerable. Unlike Cleopatra, she wasn’t beaten by her foreign opponent but triumphed. Only time and mortality overcame her, but even time has turned her into an icon.
Q: There’s been an explosion of interest in the ancient world lately, in books, movies—Troy, 300, the new Greek and Roman gallery in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the King Tut and the “Lost World of Cleopatra” exhibits, and in the news, with art objects being returned to their countries of origin. How did Helen of Troy fit into this?
A: Increased interest and research will hopefully lead to our discovering more about the historical Helen of Troy and about the Trojans themselves, who are still somewhat of a mystery. Was there a ‘real’ Helen? Archaeologists have recently confirmed that Troy was the size Homer indicated, with a big area outside the citadel. Will we find the tomb of Cleopatra? Zahi Hawass, the Egyptian archaeologist and secretary general of the Supreme Council of Antiquities, thinks he has. What about the scrolls from the Library of Alexandria? Stay tuned.
Q: What do you think of The Tudors miniseries on Showtime TV?
A: I had to revise my opinion (and eat crow) as I ended up getting hooked on it. It was wildly inaccurate and no one ever seemed to age, but it was fun. However, Henry’s mind never really came across. To hear him tell his own story, I’m delighted that the original unabridged audiotapes of my Autobiography of Henry VIII are now available as digital downloads from www.audible.com. And for the old-fashioned, there’s the novel itself, also available in eBook form.
Q: Do you use the Internet for research?
A: Earlier I did not, but now there are so many things available on it. I like to save files as PDFs so I can have them always available. And the ‘image’ search on Google is wonderful, allowing for maps, paintings, statues, coins, and so on.
Q: Mary Magdalene has been so much in the news lately. I saw a big article in TIME magazine in which your book was mentioned. But it also talked about other interpretations of Mary Magdalene, such as that she was Jesus’s wife. What do you think of that idea?
A: The Jesus-and-Mary-Magdalene-were-lovers/married idea is one that pops up every now and then but it has never really had much in favor of the argument, at least not by serious scholars. I think there was some sort of special relationship between them but that it was spiritual; after all he chose her to appear to in the garden on Easter morning.
My old great-aunt, who knew the Bible inside out, had her theory that it was Mary of Bethany whom Jesus was in love with, and if you read the passages where Mary of Bethany is sitting at his feet, I think she’s right—there seem to be more ‘vibes’ there than with Mary Magdalene. Of course with so little material, it’s hard to interpret.
You can read the TIME article in the August 5th (2003) issue. It covers many theories about the mysterious Mary Magdalene. You may purchase the article from their archives here as TIME’s Internet content is only free for two weeks. www.time.com/time/magazinearticle/0,9171,1101030811-472868,00.html
Q: Who are your favorite authors/influences?
A: Ray Bradbury has had enormous influence over me. My father gave me “The Martian Chronicles” to read when I was nine. I must know it by heart by now. With all due respect to Poe and Stephen King, I think Bradbury’s “The Third Expedition” is the scariest story I’ve ever read.
I love Bradbury’s use of language and his ability to convey a sense of being there. In an interview he wrote, “Why all this insistence on the senses? Because in order to convince the reader that he is there, you must assault each of his senses, in turn, with color, sound, taste, and texture. If your reader feels the sun on his flesh, the wind fluttering his shirt sleeves, half your fight is won. The most improbable tales can be made believable, if your reader, through his senses, feels certain that he stands at the middle of events.” I took that to heart and that’s what I try to do.
I also like Oscar Wilde, Edgar Allan Poe, Gore Vidal, F.Scott Fitzgerald, and Thomas Hardy. Hmmm, do you see a pattern here? Very few lighthearted writers in this grouping—only Oscar Wilde and his observations about human nature are funny but dark.
Q: Do you prefer to write by hand or use a computer?
A: I used to write everything out by hand and then copy it into the computer. The Autobiography of Henry VIII was written entirely by hand. But the time factor forced me to switch, halfway through Mary Queen of Scotland and the Isles, to writing directly on the computer.
I still write important or emotional scenes by hand; the connections seem more real that way.
Q: Why have you written about so many women?
A: Just a coincidence, really. I started out with Henry VIII and since then have proposed other men as subjects, such as Judas and Alexander the Great and Nero. Publishers did not share my enthusiasm for these characters!
Q: Do you have any interest in writing about a modern person?
A: I assume by modern you mean since 1900? No; although there are scads of interesting subjects, the sheer amount of documentation available, far from making it easier, makes such a project daunting. In addition, there is the problem of getting permissions and meeting with resistance from friends and family. Ironically you can find out much more about people who died a long time ago—no one is guarding their secrets any longer, everything is in the public domain.
Q: Did you study history?
A: Only informally. My father was very interested in history and we lived in places rich in history while I was growing up; it was a part of our family life to explore Crusader castles or archaeological digs or visit old cemeteries, like other families went camping.
Q: How much of what you write is true and how much your own imagination? What is your rule for historical accuracy?
A: My own rule is that I never go against a known fact (even if that fact is inconvenient for plotting purposes). No dead people live an extra five years because I’d like them to meet someone so it would be a better story, for example. Playwrights and screenwriters have had Queen Elizabeth I and Mary Queen of Scots meet, but in real life the closest they ever came to one another was 44 miles, and so in my book, they do not, and cannot, meet.
However, one of the reasons we read historical novels is that, although we know what did happen, we don’t always know why. The realm of the novel allows me to supply motivation and explanation of the character’s psychology, and go where the straight biographer cannot go. In that arena I am free to use imagination and conjecture.
Q: Do you have writing rituals?
A: I can’t write if anyone else is in the house! So I could never do what Jane Austen did, write at the desk and then just shove the paper in the drawer when anyone came into the room. Writers are very peculiar creatures!
I have a rule that I must sit at the writing for at least 2 hours or 5 pages (whichever comes first), and I have a two-hour timer that I start ticking when I sit down. Often I am so involved in the writing that by the time the alarm does go off I hardly hear it, but it’s a good way to prod myself to get started when staring at the dreaded blank white screen.
I can’t work on two projects simultaneously, I’m a very bad multi-tasker. And I think each book is such a complete union between me and the subject that I can’t divide my loyalties. I become so possessive about a subject that I feel I’ve created them and they are all mine. I can tell when a project is really over—my territorial feeling fades away and I don’t feel compelled to ‘protect and defend’ them any longer. I don’t fall all to pieces if a bad movie is made about them!
Q: What fact would a reader be most surprised to learn about you?
A: That as a hobby I’ve studied belly dancing for many years!
Q: Do your work/fantasy world and your real world ever interact?
A: They do in my entertaining. Obviously I like the idea of costumes and being someone else, and I’ve come to find that perfectly normal citizens seem to get a kick out of it, too. I share a birthday with Edgar Allan Poe and have always felt a real connection with him, so every Halloween I host a candlelight Poe-reading party where the guests dress either in black or as a character out of Poe.
I have also given Cleopatra parties where everyone dressed the part, and we’ve even had a snake on hand—not an asp, though. I have a model battleship prop from the miniseries that makes a great centerpiece, even with the oars sticking out, for the dining room table.
I have a collection of reproductions of “Titanic” (the movie) dresses, and I wear them to formal occasions, but always on dry land!
Q: What do you do to relax? For fun?
A: I’m supposed to say something hearty and physical, like Ultra-Marathons, or homey like gardening or quilting, but I’m afraid my favorite thing to do is still to read! Just about anything, really. Even the labels on boxes and instruction manuals. Supermarket tabloids, The Economist, the Bible, Keats, Henning Mankell, if it’s there, I’ll at least start on it and give it a try.