Melissa tells us about the inspiration for her story in the latest HWF anthology
As soon as I saw Nicolaes Maes’ painting The Lacemaker (1656), I was drawn into the depicted child’s world. As a reenactor and lacemaker I could feel the fabrics, I could hear the sound of the bobbins and I could imagine the smells of a seventeenth-century house, so the world around the child was easy to imagine, but Maes had painted the child with such a strong gaze that I knew I’d found my main character.
I imagined the child as a grown man who is sure they are missing something, looking back through his memories in the hope of finding whatever that is, starting with his earliest memories of being sat in his highchair as his mother made lace. The child in the painting looks so confident and happy at his mother’s side, which led to my questioning what impact the loss of his mother might have on him, so I explore this throughout my story. I also wanted to consider the other people in his life, the ones who aren’t visible in Maes’ work. We, the viewers, did not get to see them and creates a feeling that they were not important parts of the child’s world at that moment, perhaps they were even absent. I took both these ideas and used them to drive parts of the narrative. Respecting the engagement Maes had created between his viewer and the child, I decided to tell the story in the first person. I named him Henry.
I already knew enough about the seventeenth century from my own research, visits to historic sites, and volunteer work, to create a timeline for Henry’s life and story. I wrote out the timeline with fictional events on top and real events on the bottom, to help me keep track as I wrote. I then set to fact-checking and researching some additional aspects (such as language, health, etc.) to ensure I created an authentic world for my readers, as Maes had done for his viewers. I also made use of an etymological dictionary to retain an authenticity in his vocabulary, avoiding modern words such as petal. Researching health in the 17th century is very illuminating and it can lead to new directions within the narrative. In my story, it led to the addition of characters I had not thought of when I began writing, and those characters help the reader to better understand the people in Henry’s life.
From his earliest memories during the English Civil War, through the Cromwell years and the Restoration period to the departure of James II, memories of his mother are woven through his story like the threads in the lace she made. A Shropshire boy whose father fought for Parliament yet saw his mother visited by Cavaliers, it is only by unpicking these threads after his mother’s death that he discovers the truth of his life story.
Author’s Bio
Melissa Speed writes fiction and poetry in addition to her creative non-fiction, personal essays and travel blogging. Much of her work is published on Medium in a variety of publications, including the popular Scribe. Her personal essay I Was Ashamed of My Post-Surgery Body Hair was published in Issue 1 of Aghh! Zine (2022, Brighton, UK). Her historical poem Queen of the Iceni (published in Medium’s Share the Love, June 2020) was adapted into a choral work by the American choir Pantera, and she is the winner of a Kids Poetry Club poetry for children competition. She writes a history-themed disabled travel blog at http://www.accessinghistory.com.
In addition to her writing, Melissa has previously been a beta reader for several historical fiction authors. A volunteer for two heritage trusts, she is also an artist and an avid reader in her spare time.
Today I’m very happy to introduce an excerpt from The Admiral’s Wife which is currently on tour (see schedule banner at the end of the post) with the Coffee Pot Book Club.
“Family secrets and personal ambitions, east and west, collide in this compelling, deeply moving novel.” — Weina Dai Randel, award-winning author of THE LAST ROSE OF SHANGHAI
“Irresistible and absorbing.” Janie Chang, bestselling author of THE LIBRARY OF LEGENDS
Blurb
The lives of two women living in Hong Kong more than a century apart are unexpectedly linked by forbidden love and financial scandal.
In 2016, Patricia Findlay leaves a high-powered career to move to Hong Kong, where she hopes to rekindle the bonds of family and embrace the city of her ancestors. Instead, she is overwhelmed by feelings of displacement and depression. To make matters worse, her father, CEO of the family bank, insists that Patricia’s duty is to produce an heir, even though she has suffered three miscarriages.
In 1912, when Isabel Taylor moves to Hong Kong with her husband, Henry, and their young daughter, she struggles to find her place in such a different world and to meet the demands of being the admiral’s wife. At a reception hosted by the governor of Hong Kong, she meets Li Tao-Kai, an influential member of the Chinese community and a man she met a decade earlier when he was a student at Cambridge.
As the story unfolds, each woman must consider where her loyalties lie and what she is prepared to risk for love.
Excerpt
At 6:00 p.m., Kennedy Road was still crowded along the winding section that cut across Victoria Peak. Hong Kong’s ubiquitous red taxis dodged from lane to lane as they ferried commuters from offices in Sheung Wan, Central, and Wan Chai to apartment buildings that crammed the hillside like an invading army. Patricia stared out the tinted windows of their limousine, idly reading the names mounted on each grand entrance gate: Camelot Heights, Wing Wai Court, Amber Garden, Bamboo Grove.
“You seem moody,” Andrew said.
“Do I?” She turned to look at him. “I’m sorry. I guess I’m still annoyed with my father.”
“Come on, sweetheart. That was more than a week ago. Just ignore him and find a job on your own.” He squeezed her hand. “What’s happened to my strong, capable wife? The woman who could handle tough negotiations with people who had twice as much experience.”
Patricia flashed him a little smile. “You’re right,” she said. “But the whole thing still pisses me off.”
Her husband rubbed the red stubble on his face, a sign that he was weighing his next words. “Should we return to New York?” he asked.
She pushed a strand of long black hair behind one ear. “No, no, no. We can’t go back to the U.S. My father would have a fit. So would my mother. But I’m going nuts with nothing to do.”
During the first three or four months in Hong Kong, Patricia had spent her days organizing their spacious apartment, exploring the city, spending time with her family, and indulging in what she thought of as frivolous pursuits like shopping and weekly pedicures. She had also played tennis, learned mahjong, taken up qigong, and made a few friends. After almost twenty years of working in a demanding career, she’d considered this interlude a well-deserved rest.
Depression had come on unexpectedly. The first sign was difficulty getting out of bed in the morning. General fatigue and irritability had followed, and there were days when she just couldn’t focus. Andrew had encouraged her to go to the doctor. Doctor Leung, her mother’s GP, had prescribed pills but after less than a month Patricia had stopped taking the medication. At the same time, she’d resolved to get back to work.
“I know it’s been difficult,” Andrew said. He took her hand again and ran his thumb across her fingers. “You’ll find something. But please don’t antagonize your father tonight. I’m finally making headway at the bank. I think he’s even beginning to appreciate my skills, which is an improvement over resenting me. If he believes he can trust me, there could be more opportunity here than back home. And more money. I have to think of the kids.”
“I wish we could see them,” she said. Sadness surged across her chest.
“So do I. Very much. But they’ll be here for Christmas.”
Andrew’s ex-wife had primary custody of his two children. When Patricia and Andrew lived in New York, Steven and Emma had spent every other weekend with them, but now that they were in Hong Kong, visits could only be scheduled during summer holidays, spring break, and Christmas, unless business took Andrew to the U.S. After agonizing over the decision, she and Andrew had agreed to restrict their relocation to three years. They both missed his children terribly, a sacrifice made more acute by her inability to carry a baby to term.
Patricia looked at her husband, whose pale blue eyes were bloodshot from a string of late nights. She was being unreasonable but couldn’t help herself. Situations that she would have dismissed as trivial when they lived in New York had become major sources of discontent and angst.
“If I had a job . . .” Her voice trailed off. They’d been round and round the topic all week. Andrew was becoming exasperated.
“Well, given your father’s reaction, you should probably wait a while before raising that topic again.” Andrew withdrew his hand and fingered the crease of his dark gray pants. “What about looking outside banking? You’re a great project manager.”
“Maybe,” Patricia said. “But so far, every possibility I’ve found requires Asian experience and fluency in Cantonese or Mandarin.” She sighed. “Dammit. Why does he always make things so difficult?”
“To tell you the truth, I have no idea. Probably because he can. I admire many of your father’s tactics. But I don’t like the way he treats people, especially you.” Andrew’s voice was gentler than before. “Aren’t you seeing someone about that board position?”
“Mm-hmm. Arthur Chung said it’s mine if I want it.” She linked her fingers with Andrew’s. “We’re meeting Friday afternoon for a briefing on the role he wants me to play. I’m sure he only asked me to get a donation from Ah Ba, but it could be interesting.”
Their driver merged the Mercedes onto Queen’s Road East, past hotels and schools along with a Sikh temple and remnants of air-raid tunnels built during the Second World War. Traffic was at a standstill.
“Well, make the best of it for now,” he said. “I’m sure things will get better.”
Patricia knew her husband was trying to be helpful, but his remark felt patronizing. She hated being patronized. Unlike many of her male colleagues who had underestimated her abilities, Andrew had treated her as an equal from the day they’d met. Had their new circumstances changed his perspective? Was she only his equal when they were both working?
After she’d told him about the conversation with her father, Andrew had asked why she’d allowed her parents to persuade her to live in a place that had never been her home. Patricia hadn’t replied. And ever since, the question had hovered, unsettling in its stark clarity.
She loved her parents, despite their idiosyncrasies and traditional ways. And they loved her. Of that she was certain. Eighteen months earlier, when she and Andrew still lived in New York, her mother had ended a lengthy argument about Patricia’s duty to her family by saying, “We’ll be dead soon and then you’ll be sorry you never came back.”
That conversation had been the tipping point. After much debate, Andrew had agreed to try living in Hong Kong. They’d also agreed that if it didn’t work out, they would return to New York. Ever since, she’d felt displaced, torn between Andrew’s world and the Chinese world of her parents. Her husband expected a modern businesswoman with Western values; her parents expected a dutiful Chinese daughter. The two were irreconcilable.
“I wonder when this place is going to feel like home,” Patricia said.
“You’re the one—”
“Yes, I know,” she said. “I’m the one who wanted to move here. I’m just a little out of sorts. But don’t worry. I’ll make nice with my father. You should know, though, that I’m not going to put up with him telling me what to do any longer.”
Author Bio
M. K. Tod
M.K. (Mary) Tod’s interest in historical fiction began as a teenager immersed in the stories of Rosemary Sutcliff, Jean Plaidy, and Georgette Heyer. In 2004, her husband’s career took them to Hong Kong where, with no job and few prospects, Mary began what became Unravelled, her first novel. The Admiral’s Wife is her fifth novel.
Mary’s award-winning blog, http://www.awriterofhistory.com, focuses on reading and writing his-torical fiction. She’s an active member of the historical fiction community and has conduct-ed five unique reader surveys on topics from readers’ habits and preferences to favorite his-torical fiction authors. Mary is happily married to her high-school sweetheart. They have two adult children and two delightful grandsons.
Hello and welcome one and all to my blog as we forge ahead on the Women of Power in Anglo-Saxon England. If you have missed the previous stops, you will find them on the banner at the end of this post.
I am very please to be able to present to you a review of Ms Whitehead’s latest book. As an Anglo-Saxonist myself, the topic of the book is very dear to me. I can honestly say that my expectations of reading this book was very much lived up to.
First of all, I must introduce the author to those of you who are not familiar with Annie, or her works. Annie is a competent historian and historical fiction writer who has written three novels based on the lives of certain historical characters and another non-fiction, about Mercia. You can find more about Annie’s books on her website here .
So, Women of Power in Anglo-Saxon England.
The beauty of this work is it concisely brings together almost everything that was ever believed about the early medieval period – or the Dark Ages, and turns it on its head in the shape of its females. Annie Whitehead certainly does shine a light on the women of this era, not just a light but a huge great spotlight. Although there are many facts that cannot be possibly known about these ladies in detail, such as their character, what they liked, and who they loved, the author picks through the threads and meticulously gives us enough glimpses of their lives for us to feel some empathy and attachment. For example, Queen Edith who preferred to sit at the feet of her husband, Edward the Confessor, or the noble woman searching on a battlefield for the mutilated corpse of her husband, or the girl and her mother found in bed with a young king on his coronation celebration!
We also hear their stories as told through the chroniclers such as Bede:
We have wild tales even about those revered as pious nuns – of escape from hot ovens and down sewers, of women bringing animals and even themselves back to life, all of which seem fantastic, but were told to serve a purpose.
What I enjoy most about these books about the historical female, and with this one in particular, is the finding out that there is a lot more written about these women than previously I believed, especially by the monks in the earlier Anglo-Saxon period who seem to have been fascinated by them. And the weirder the tale, the more interested they were. A lot more seems to have been available than in the mid to later period when the monks seemed to share a dislike of women in power. Take Æthelflæd, Lady of the Mercians and Alfgred the Great’s daughter, for instance, of whom very little was recorded by the West Saxon version of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicles, but whose achievements are lauded by Anglo-Norman Chroniclers after the conquest and only elements of the Annals of Æthelflæd are incorporated into the other chronicles.
Another pleasant surprise was that for many years I have been trying to find evidence of how the Anglo-Saxon women would have been able to see their reflections, and there on page 7, we find that a pope sends one of our ladies an ivory comb and a silver mirror to aid her personal care. Imagine how excited I was to find this little fact, as it is often believed that such items were not available to the people of this period as there is little evidence that there was. I am sure however it was a high status possession and not open to women of all classes, but nonetheless I am overjoyed at this snippet of information.
Another interesting observation I was able to gleam how much more interested the church seemed to have placed on women of religious orders rather than their secular counterparts, and it was almost as if a woman was only worthy if she had spent most of her life in chastity, for example Ælfthryth, who married King Ecgfrith of Northumbria and managed to remain a virgin, happier founding monasteries than giving her husband heirs, and became a saint because of her piety and unwillingness to give away her virginity. One wonders though, how much of this was true!
For me, as I turned the pages of this outstanding book, I found the content of the book was wholly satisfying. It covers a range of women in the period as early as the 6th century, and ending with the last prominent Anglo-Saxon women before the Norman invasion. I was pleased to see that several of the women featured were from my period of interest, the 11th century, including Emma of Normandy, Aldith, Queen to both a Welsh and an English king, Edith Godwinson, wife of Edward the Confessor, and Eadgifu the fair, handfastened wife of Harold Godwinson – or Edith Swanneck as she is commonly, though wrongly known as. (Her name seemed to change when the writer of the Waltham Chronicle, some time in the 11th century mistakenly referred to her as Edith, which is not a derivative of Eadgifu which are two different names.)
For a fellow Anglo-Saxonist, this is one of the few books written about women in the period, and it is, for me, a newly-acquired treasure. It truly brings these women to the fore and as one reviewing author emphatically states, it puts the women firmly back in the history where they should be, highlighting their true nature of what it meant to be a noble woman in these times. It describes to us of their existence, their roles, both religiously and secularly, in not just the lives of their husbands, fathers, brothers and sisters and children, but the lives of those who praised, castigated, and wrote about them.
It does not seek to prove the high status of them in comparison to the women of post conquest England, nor does it seek to prove that they were far more powerful than their status allowed them to be. Instead, we are treated to a rare glimpse of the opportunities women were, if in the right place at the right time, gifted with, and their importance in the eyes of those they held power over or from, or with. Their stories are endowed upon us within a variety of themes: roles as mothers, wives and consorts; nuns and abbesses. We also see what gave them their power, such as their bloodlines and the changes that the shifting sands of time wrought upon them, bringing them to and then from exultation to women condemned. And if you are anything like me, your imagination will run wild.
Annie Whitehead is an exemplary historian and writer of history who is not afraid to delve into the past head first to bring us such a jewel in this enchanting and immersing panoramic vision of historical women. It is every bit as fascinating, if not more so, as any other historical tome about the female figure of any particular time zone. The language is not laborious and it flows from one subject to the next seamlessly and what I can conclude from this is that the noble Anglo-Saxon woman was fierce and independent when she wanted to be, gentle and pious when society dictated, steadfast and loyal when needed, and as ambitious as any man of any era.
Highly recommended.
About Annie Whitehead
I am an historian and author. As an undergraduate I studied under the eminent Anglo-Saxon historian, Ann Williams, and I’m proud to say that I’ve been accepted as a member of the Royal Historical Society. I’m also a member of the HWA (Historical Writers Association).
My passion is for all things Anglo-Saxon, and Mercian in particular. I’ve written three novels set in Mercia, featuring the lives of Æthelflæd, Lady of the Mercians, King Edgar, and King Penda, as well as contributing a Mercian story to a fiction anthology about 1066. My non-fiction book, Mercia: The Rise and Fall of a Kingdom, was published by Amberley Books in September 2018. My latest non-fiction book, Women of Power in Anglo-Saxon England, was published by Pen & Sword Books in June 2020.
I’m an editor for and contributor to the EHFA (English Historical Fiction Authors) blog, and a member of the HNS (Historical Novel Society) 2018 Short Story Competition judging panel. The winner of the New Writer non-fiction prize in 2012, and the recipient of two Mail on Sunday Novel-Writing awards, I was also the winner of the inaugural HWA Dorothy Dunnett Short Story Competition in 2017.
My first two novels, To Be A Queen and Alvar the Kingmaker, are set in the later (9th & 10th centuries) Anglo-Saxon kingdom of Mercia. My third novel, Cometh the Hour goes back to the seventh century. A follow-up novel is in the planning stages and it’s hoped it will be released sometime in 2021.
In 2016, I collaborated with eight other authors to produce a collection of short stories, re-imagining the event of 1066. 1066 Turned Upside Down is available as an e-book.
And don’t forget you can enjoy all of the other blog stops here below.
Women of Power is published by Pen and Sword Books. Check out their books here
Blog Tour: The Last King: England: The First Viking Age
(Powered by Coffee Pot Blog Tours)
By M J Porter
July 14th – September 15th 2020
Please welcome MJ Porter to my blog as part of her blog tour, to talk about an aspect of her research into The Last King. As a writer of pre-Conquest England myself, her post here resonates with me! Imagining the landscape of England in times gone.
Mapping the 870’s
The Last King is set in Mercia in the Ninth Century, one of the ancient kingdoms of England.
One of the particular challenges of writing about Mercia, or any early English period, is trying to reconstruct the physical landscape. Places that could be assumed to be prominent, were simply not, and vice versa. The most obvious of these is that London was not England’s capital at the time. Equally, river courses may have changed, and bridges may have been built in the modern era, although there are a surprising amount of ancient bridges that might surprise you.
While there are many maps of the time period available, they never (in my experience) actually show everything that you want to know. They don’t tell you where the roads went in great detail, or even what the roads looked like. They don’t always make it clear which side of a river was inhabited, and which side wasn’t. The size of the population is unknown, and even more, the size of the Viking forces is impossible to calculate.
In writing the three books to date in the Ninth Century series, I’ve had a bit of an ace up my sleeve. My father is known as the ‘mapman’ and my ‘mapman’ has hundreds, and hundreds of antique maps of England, Scotland and Wales. And so, rather than spending hours pouring over google maps, I’ve spent my time looking at these antique maps, in conjunction with the maps available from historical non-fiction sources.
For the third book in the series, I wanted to write about both Northampton, and Cambridge. I’ve never visited either place, and more, I don’t know what they might have looked like in the past.
So, to my ‘mapman,’ and his 1610 Speed Maps of both of these places. John Speed (1551/2 – 28 July 1629) was an English cartographer and historian and is one of the best-known English mapmakers of that time period. His maps are highly decorative, and they also show little ‘cut outs’ of the county towns. And so, for Northampton, and Cambridge, I had an idea of what those places looked like in the Seventeenth Century. Still, eight hundred years later, but much closer than visiting those sites today and trying to decipher what might have been there long ago.
Northamptonshire
Northampton
Yet, even here, there was a piece of information waiting to trip me up, because unlike the Cambridge of today, it’s believed that Cambridge in the 870’s was actually on the opposite side of the river.
Finding the landscape of the historical past is difficult, but I’ve found that using antique maps, rather than more modern ones, can be incredibly helpful, especially when they include images of the landscape (trees and hills)!
Author Bio:
M J Porter
I’m an author of fantasy (viking age/dragon themed) and historical fiction (Early English, Vikings and the British Isles as a whole before the Norman Conquest), born in the old Mercian kingdom at some point since AD1066. I write A LOT. You’ve been warned!
Writing for fun when I'm not getting paid, look out for posts on sport & history, probably with a Welsh & medieval twist. Travel writing, reviews of books, movies, food & drink, plus random scribblings all likely to feature
The Road to Hastings and other Stories 