HOYDENS AT LARGE: A Farewell and our news...

The Hoydens are very sad to say farewell to Sandra Gulland. Sandra has been with us since the Hoydens first burst on to the blogging scene but her writing and her life are moving her in different directions. While she remains a 17th century passionista, the lure of the Napoleonic days has captured her and that is where she needs to devote her time and her energies.  

Thank you, Sandra, for your support and your friendship over the last five years. You have graced us with some wonderful articles and will always be welcome back as a guest author should you have a 17th century "moment"!

In the meantime we are waiting with baited breath for the televisation (is that a word?) of your Josephine B. series. I am currently half way through the second book and just loving it.  Mini review here:  Sandra Gulland has chosen the first person voice of Josephine Bonataparte to tell her own story in a diarised format.  The result is a deeply personal account not only of Josephine's own  life but the tumultuous times in which she lived. I can't put it down!

Fear not, dear followers...the Hoydens will continue with our core group of Anita Davison (Anita Seymour), Dee Swift, Kim Murphy and Mary Sharratt, supplemented with our wonderful guests.  We are finding more and more fellow 17th century passionistas...so if you write books set in this period of history, do please email me at alison@alisonstuart.com and ask for a guest spot on the blog. The more people we can share our interest in this period with - the better!

Back to the Hoydens:

MARY SHARRATT:

Mary on a panel at HNS

THE DARK LADY’S MASQUE, the story of Aemilia Bassano Lanier, the first rofessional woman poet in Renaissance England, and her collaboration—and star-crossed love affair—with William Shakespeare, as his Dark Lady, sold to Nicole Angeloro at Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. 

 Conference news: I (Mary) was on three panels at the recent HNS conference: Depicting Religion in Historical Fiction;  Genre vs Literary Historical Fiction ; and The Witchcraft Window: Scrying the Past with Erika Mailman, Kathleen Kent, and Suzy Witten. 



ANITA DAVISON
Writing as Anita Seymour, ROYALIST REBEL, was released in January this year.  The biographical novel of the tumultuous life of Elizabeth Murray who lived through the reigns of Charles I through to William and Mary. The book is gathering some wonderful reviews. 






DEBORAH (DEE) SWIFT
Like Mary, Dee was recently in Florida where she appeared on the Historical fiction bloggers panel. Blogging is alive and well...

Dee Swift on the panel at HNS

Her two wonderful 17th century books THE GILDED LILY and THE LADY'S SLIPPER are out in the world and gathering wonderful reviews. We are all waiting for her next book A DIVIDED INHERITANCE, set in 1609, it moves from London to Seville in Spain...coming soon




KIM MURPHY

Kim reports:  "I'm working on my copy edits for my nonfiction title I HAD RATHER DIE:  RAPE IN THE CIVIL WAR. Release date looks like it will be Jan. 2014."  Kim's study of the American Civil War will be a major contribution to women's history and the fate of women in war time.

ALISON STUART

Alison's September 2012 release, GATHER THE BONES (set post World War One) has gathered some major award nominations this year:  The Australian Romance Readers Awards, the Colorado Romance Writers Award of Excellence, the GDRW Booksellers Best Awards and the InDtale Magazine RONE Awards. 
In April 2013, SECRETS IN TIME was released, an unabashed time travel romance with a time travelling cavalier hero.  Fun to write and a short read.






Alison Stuart
July 7 2013

HOYDENS NEWS

A very happy Hoydens New Year to all our followers.

2012 has been an exciting year for all of us and to bring everyone up to date...

ANITA DAVISON (writing as ANITA SEYMOUR) has a new biographical novel,  coming out on 31st January.  With her feet firmly planted in the seventeenth century, ROYALIST REBEL tells the real life story of Elizabeth Murray.
It will be available from Amazon UK and US and all good book stores in the UK (and hopefully beyond!).





SANDRA GULLAND shared the outstanding news that the TV film rights for her Josephine Bonaparte Trilogy have been optioned with Michael Hirst as screen writer (who scripted THE TUDORS and ELIZABETH) and Kelsey Grammar as producer.






DEBORAH SWIFT's latest book THE GILDED LILY was released in late 2012.
The Gilded Lily was selected as one of the '13 must reads in 2013' by GoodMorning Texas TV programme.

Dee has been invited to appear on two panels ('Making it to Mainstream' about my unusual route to publication, and 'The Virtual Salon' about how blogging can link writers with readers) at the Historical Novel Society Conference in Florida.  Dee says  "If anyone is going to the conference, particularly if you are a fan of Hoydens and Firebrands or the 17th century, please come and say hello. "Or you could rescue my husband who as yet does not know what he is letting himself in for!"

She has just finished working with the copy-edits for her next book 'A Divided Inheritance' and it's scheduled for publication with Macmillan in October 2013.


ALISON STUART'S latest book, a "Downton Abbeyesque" ghost story, GATHER THE BONES, set post World War I, also came out in late 2012. Her next book, a historical time travel SECRETS IN TIME is out in April. It is her first unashamedly romance book with a cavalier hero (of course).
Late breaking news:  GATHER THE BONES has been nominated as a Finalist in the Australian Romance Readers Awards.



KIM MURPHY has finished writing her non fiction book on rape in the American Civil War. A FATE WORSE THAN DEATH will be released either this fall or January 2014. She is currently working on the sequel to THE DREAMING: WALKS THROUGH MIST. The title for the sequel is THE DREAMING: WIND TALKER, which will include more conflict between the colonials and the Powhatan chiefdom in the seventeenth century.







MARY SHARRATT also had a late 2012 release with ILLUMINATIONS: A NOVEL OF HILDEGARD VON BINGEN which has been selected as a Best Book of 2012 by Kirkus, WGBH Greater Boston Public Television, The Examiner, The Reading Frenzy, and She Knows.




We may often write about different periods of history but our hearts belong to the seventeenth century. 

Here's to another successful year for the Hoydens.

A Hoydens New Year!

While the Hoydens all share a burning passion for all things seventeenth century sometimes our writing takes away from our first love and we would like to take this opportunity to recap our 2011 and look forward to 2012 (and beyond) with some exciting new stories coming from these talented writers.


2011 New Releases from the Hoydens:

Anita Davison celebrated the release of two new books in June and September:  Trencarrow Secret and Culloden Spirit:   both Victorian "gothic" novels.


Alison Stuart released a collection of her published short stories:  Tower of Tales

Coming in 2012:


Mary Sharratt's latest book ILLUMINATIONS about the extraordinary nun, Hildegard of Bingen will be released . Mary writes "...My new book ILLUMINATIONS: A NOVEL OF HILDEGARD VON BINGEN will be published in October 2012 to coincide with Hildegard's upcoming canonization and her elevation to a Doctor of the Church. There are only thirty-three Doctors of the Church and only three have been women, so this is a major step forward to recognizing Hildegard's legacy as a great woman of ideas. Hildegard was a 12th century abbess, composer, theologian, scientist, visionary, and healer."

Sandra Gulland will be launching her own e-book imprint, Sandra Gulland Ink. All Sandra's books will be made available in e-format through this new imprint.


And looking further into the future:


In Spring 2013 Sandra Gulland will release a new book, the  (as yet unnamed) true story of a maid, Claude des Oeillets, the daughter of itinerant actors who rose to become the confidential attendant to the most powerful woman in the 17th century French court of the Sun King: Madame de Montespan, mistress of the charismatic King Louis IV. 


In the meantime: 


Kim Murphy has been working on a sequel to The Dreaming  and her first non-fiction title A Fate Worse than Death:  Rape During the Civil War. We have been following her research trips to the archives with interest! 


Alison Stuart is keeping her fingers crossed and hoping that her hard work of 2011(her first year of writing full time) will result in some good news in the new year. 

Wishing all our followers a happy and successful 2012!

Alison, Mary, Anita, Kim and Sandra

Leaving home—17th century style

It's always a pleasure to read the 17th-century memoirs of Saint-Simon: he invariably manages to work in the poignant details researchers—especially novelist-researchers—love. Historians remind us that much of what Saint-Simon reports is hear-say, but it's valuable nonetheless.


I am particularly charmed by his account of convincing his family to allow him to join the army as a teen. It reveals that family dynamics were not all that different in the 17th century.


He begins: 

In 1691 I was studying my philosophy and beginning to learn to ride at an academy at Rochefort, getting mightily tired of masters and books, and anxious to join the army. ... I made up my mind, therefore, to escape from my leading-strings.

(I love that.)

I addressed myself to my mother.  I soon saw that she trifled with me. I had recourse to my father ... . I said nothing of this to my mother, who did not discover my plot until it was just upon the point of execution.

His "plot" was to convince his father that the King had no intention of going to war that year and so no harm would come to him. It was a falsehood, the rascal, which his father believed.

My father took me, therefore, to Versailles ... and begged of the King admission for me into the Musketeers.  It was on the day of St. Simon and St. Jude, at half-past twelve, as his Majesty came out of council. The King did my father the honour of embracing him three times ...

(Again, a charming detail.)

... and then turned towards me. Finding that I was little and of delicate appearance, he said I was still very young; to which my father replied that I should be able in consequence to serve longer.  

Of course, only three months after the boy had became a Musketeer, it was announced that the King planned to go to war.

My joy was extreme; but my father, who had not counted upon this, repented of having believed me .... My mother, after a little vexation and pouting at finding me enrolled by my father against her will, did not fail to bring him to reason and to make him provide me with an equipment of thirty-five horses or mules...

And so the young man gets wish after all, and sets off for war with thirty-five horses! He's not entirely without his leading-strings, however, since he's accompanied by his tutor and his mother's squire.


Links:
Louis de Rouvroy, duc de Saint-Simon
Complete memoirs available for download on Project Gutenberg


Sandra Gulland

*****
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