Hild and the 7th century princess

Map adapted from map by Nilfanion, originally created using Ordnance Survey data [CC-BY-SA-3.0 (www.creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0)], via Wikimedia Commons I imagine most people have heard by now that archaeologists from Cambridge’s Newnham College have discovered a previously unknown Anglo-Saxon burial site at Trumpington Meadows (on the southern city limits of Cambridge, see map), with remains dating from […]

Three maps of early 7th century Britain

When a literary agent sends a novel manuscript out to acquiring editors at major publishing houses, s/he likes to send it with everything the editor might need to put the work in context. For Hild, my novel about Hild of Whitby (which of course wasn’t called Whitby then), set in early seventh century Britain (the […]

Hild’s family tree

The new title for my novel about Hild is…Hild. It just makes sense 🙂 My hand-drawn family tree for Hild is now neatly printed and legible. I’m hoping readers of this blog will give me some feedback. click to enlarge As you can see, there are several names missing. For example those Æthelfrithings who died […]

Light of the World

Hild is done (for now). She has a working title: Light of the World. (Subtitle, if novels had such things, might be something like The woman at the heart of war, politics, and religion in seventh century Britain.) The book, volume one of three, is huge: 963 pages, 197,878 words (excluding the title). I’ve sent […]

Britain After Rome, Robin Fleming

(This is a cross-post from my Ask Nicola blog.) Thanks to a generous reader, I now have a copy of Robin Fleming’s Britain After Rome: The Fall and Rise, 400 to 1070. (I talk about why I wanted it so much here.) Yesterday, after lunch, before I went back to working on Hild, I flipped […]

The never-ending mystery of English

One of the big mysteries to me as a novelist (as opposed to professional historian) is the lack of a convincing explanation for the apparent obliteration of Brythonic (the native Celtic language of Britain before the Romans came and muddled everything up) and substitution of Old English, a Germanic language. (My terminology is imprecise; I’m […]

First draft of Hild is finished

I finished the first draft of the first volume of my novel about Hild. It’s huge: 976 pages (more than 200,000 words). I’ll lose a lot of that in the rewrite, of course, but it will still be long. Submitted as proof: Photo taken with crapcam (sorry about that). It turns out that 976 pages […]

Two excerpts from Hild-as-child

Sentences are something I’ve been thinking about a lot lately. I’ve always been a fan of clarity and simplicity: poetry masquerading as prose. Rhythm matters. Word choice matters. Metaphor matters. I love to vary the rhythm and shape of sentences in a paragraph–unless I’m going for a particular effect. But while writing about Hild, all […]

H. Rider Haggard and the Venerable Bede

** This is a cross-post from my personal blog, Ask Nicola ** Yesterday I was feeling torpid and decided to actually read some of the free books I downloaded a few weeks ago, last time I was feeling ill. I read King Solomon’s Mines by (Sir) H(enry) Rider Haggard. I’d always assumed I’d read it […]

an update

Perhaps this will surprise no one but I like the novel I’m writing. I’ve spent a 100,000 words taking Hild through childhood and am now poised to introduce her to young womanhood. Not a moment too soon. Don’t get me wrong. As I’ve said, I’m enjoying this novel–delighting in it, in fact. But writing that […]

I just got a fabulous grant!

The Authors’ Foundation, administered by the UK’s Society of Authors, have just given me a grant. Now I can do my research in England in person. Can you spell Bedes World? I’ll be in Yorkshire and Northumberland mostly–Bebbanburg, Goodmanham, Sancton, York (again), Whitby (again), hopefully Yeavering… Any other suggestions? Oh, this is going to be […]

2,000 year-old carnelians

*** This is a cross post from my daily blog because I feel guilty about not posting anything here for weeks. *** photo by Jennifer Durham Around my wrist I wear a set of 73 carnelians cut and faceted in Roman workshops in the first century. They were a present from Kelley for our tenth […]

pewter Hild

Medieval stocking stuffers! What a cool idea. (Via Heavenfield.) Pewter whatchamacallits from Aebba Art Gallery. I’ve always been very fond of pewter–though I hated polishing it when I was a child. It was always my job before Christmas: rub rub, polish polish, tuh. It was the old-fashioned kind of pewter, too, with lead; hand-hammered. Beautiful […]

most heinous use of a musical instrument–so far

I know very well (that is, I think I know) that ‘harps’ in Hild’s time were essentially lyres, like this: reproduction of Sutton Hoo lyre at the British Museum However, story-wise my notions of ‘harp’ are so strong that I’ve taken the liberty of giving Anglo-Saxons gut-strung lyres, like the one above, and the British–especially […]

Update on Hild, plus Where do they sleep?

illustration of 10th century (I think) sleeping arrangements I’ve been working on my Hild novel for a year now. She is twelve. I have 75,000 words. (To put that in context, most novels are around 100,000.) If you believe Bede’s suspicious symmetry, she lived to the ripe old age of 66–so this is turning into […]

Gemæcce

The story of making the novels about Hild of Whitby