My new site

I am switching Gemæcca, my previous site, to WordPress—and taking the opportunity to rename it Gemæcce. It will happen gradually. Think of this as a test. As such, I’m just going to repost something from my personal blog.

East Anglian accession dates

According to Bede, when Hild is recruited to the church in 647 CE she is in East Anglia, and has been for a year. I’m trying to work out why.

Happy 1400th anniversary to Hild!

How do you say, fourteen hundreth in Latin? I will cheerfully admit that my Latin is rubbish, but I had a go anyway.

I am coming to the UK at beginning of October

NOTE: This blog relates to 2014. I’m coming to the UK next month, 1—10 October. I’ll be doing a bunch o’ stuff to support Hild. If you’re a reader of this blog I hope you’ll come along and introduce yourself.

Latin for fourteen hundredth anniversary?

This year is the 1400th anniversary of Hild’s birth. According to Bede.* Given that her feast day is mid-November, and in my novel her birthday is mid-October, I’ve decided autumn would be a splendid time to celebrate.

Anglo-Saxon ethnic origin stories

It was a challenge to set aside the most recent hypotheses about the ethnogenesis of the English and write purely from Hild’s experience, her cultural perspective.

HILD out in the UK on Thursday 24th July

Hild will be out in the UK on Thursday July 24. The first UK notices are beginning to appear. I’m particularly proud of two. One from Alex Woolf…the other from Max Adams.

Hild’s first religious foundation

I’m now into <iHild II (working title Menewood) and I’ve started to wonder about the location of Hild’s first religious foundation. Aidan, when he recruited Hild to the Church in AD 647, gave her a single hide of land on which to live for a year. Bede tells us only that this land was “ad septentrionalem plagam Viuri fluminis.”

Getting Medieval on "To the Best of Our Knowledge"

On To the Best of Our Knowledge I’m “Getting Medieval” with fellow writers George R.R. Martin, Karen Joy Fowler, and Bruce Holsinger, weapons expert Kelly DeVries, and more! To coincide with this weekend’s premier of Game of Thrones Season 4, it’s a whole hour of conversation about why we’re so interested in the Middle Ages.However, […]

The UK cover of HILD

Original art by Anna and Elena Balbusso, original design by Charlotte Strick, UK design by Sian Wilson Blackfriars, the UK and Commonwealth publisher of Hild, is a brand new literary imprint of Little, Brown. Hild will be their first ever hardback.

Dragons for Christmas!

Over on my personal blog I’ve followed my annual tradition of filming the destruction of our Christmas tree. However, I thought photon torpedoes might not be the thing for medievalists. So here’s something just for you: Have a wonderful Christmas and a happy New Year.

Some news

Two pieces of news. On Wednesday, the twentieth anniversary of our first (not legal) wedding, Kelley and I got married in the eyes of the US government. Some more nifty blurbs for Hild:

Some advance praise for Hild…

I’ve been posting chunks of early reviews etc. on the Hild page of my main blog but thought I’d include a few snippets here to whet your appetite:

Shoutout to favourite bloggers in an interview about writing Hild

Here’s a long and meaty conversation between me and my editor Sean McDonald (VP and Executive Editor at Farrar, Straus and Giroux) about the making of Hild. I talk about going to Whitby for the first time, years ago, and having the fundamental realisation that shaped my writing career and made Hild inevitable:

Who wants a free reading copy of HILD?

— This is a cross-post from my personal blog, Ask Nicola — My box of Hild ARCs* arrived on Friday. Many of them are already spoken for but I have a handful extra. So who wants one? If you’re a loyal reader, I’ll be doing a random giveaway later just for you, just because. I’m […]