I rarely re-post other authors’ work, but Chris Schuler’s excellent summary of John Sweeney’s recent talk at the Authors’ Club deserves a wide audience. Why break my own rules? Well, I was there, and I couldn’t have put it better myself.

In Chris’s words;

Last week at the National Liberal Club in London, the veteran investigative  journalist and author John Sweeney addressed a packed audience of Authors’ Club and NLC Ukrainian Circle members about his latest book, Murder in the Gulag: The Life and Death of Alexei Navalny, a frank, unvarnished portrayal of the charismatic but controversial Russian opposition leader who was murdered in an Arctic penal camp last February at the age of 47.

After he was introduced by Lucy Popescu, chair of the Authors’ Club, Sweeney pulled on the trademark orange beanie familiar to viewers of his video dispatches from Ukraine, which invariably begin ‘Day XXX of Vladimir Putin’s war on Ukraine,’ and sign off with ‘Vladimir Putin, do f— off.’ The four-letter expletive can rarely have resounded through the hallowed vaults of the National Liberal Club quite as often as it did in the course of his talk.

Early this year, Sweeney slipped on ice in Kyiv – where he still lives part time – and heard of Navalny’s death from his hospital bed. He knew the man personally, having met and interviewed him, and was deeply affected by the news. ‘He was a hero to me,’ Sweeney said, ‘tall, blond, blue-eyed, humorous and intensely charismatic,’ but also, he added, ‘an arrogant prick – but then you have to be to go against Putin.

‘I’ve met four Russians who challenged Putin: Anna Politkovskaya, Natalya Estemirova, Boris Nemtsov, and Navalny. In order, poisoned then shot, shot, shot, poisoned, now murdered’ – a reign of terror chronicled in Sweeney’s previous book, Killer in the Kremlin (Bantam Press, 2022).

‘Putin uses money and sex and terror to shut people up and stay in power. It didn’t work with Navalny – he wasn’t tempted by money, he had an amazing marriage to Yulia, and he was unafraid.’ People often wondered why Navalny returned to Russia from Germany after being poisoned with Novichok in August 2020. ‘In politics you have to be a risk-taker,’ Sweeney explained, ‘and he was a devout Christian, whose belief in the afterlife sustained him.’

Navalny’s opposition to Putin’s regime, Sweeney explained, sprang from his childhood. Although he was born in the Moscow region, his father was Ukrainian, and his grandparents still lived there, not far from Chernobyl, where the young Navalny spent many summers. After the nuclear disaster in 1987, his grandparents were evacuated, never to return. His childhood idyll had been taken from him by Soviet corruption and stupidity, and he soon detected the same mindset in Putin’s United Russia Party – ‘a party of crooks and thieves’, he called it.

Despite his admiration for Navalny, Sweeney did not shy away from the man’s flaws. Having joined Grigory Yavlinsky’s liberal party Yabloko, Navalny became disillusioned after they were intimidated into ‘managed opposition’, and was drawn instead to the energy of the far-right Russian nationalists. Although he later dissociated himself from them, it was, Sweeney remarked, ‘a tactical and moral mistake for which he never apologised’.

Taking questions at the end, in the week that President Biden authorised Ukraine to use US-supplied ATACMs against military targets inside Russia, and Putin threatened reprisals, Sweeney was asked if he was worried about escalation.

‘When Putin first threatened nuclear retaliation in September 2022, I was worried,’ Sweeney said. ‘But the following week, at the summit in Samarkand, Xi Jinping said there must be no nuclear adventurism. China’s economy is in a mess, and they need the West to keep buying their goods. If Putin disobeys, Xi will kill him.’

Murder in the Gulag: The Life and Death of Alexei Navalny, by John Sweeney (Headline Press, 2024). Amazon link here.

You’ll find this and other articles by Chris Schuler on Substack here.

The mind-set of medieval knighthood

Sometimes, but rarely, a historical document illuminates a figure so wonderfully that they leap the centuries. They land before us fully-formed and resplendent, with a crump of armoured boots in our modern dust. They stride into our world of dishonoured leaders and speak to us of the high ideals of chivalry.

Geoffroi de Charny

Meet Geoffroi de Charny, who died a hero’s death as the French standard bearer at the battle of Poitiers in 1356. He was cut down clutching the the oriflamme, the sacred banner of France, to the last. Among the French nobility of the time, de Charny not only epitomised knighthood but had – literally – written the book. His Book of Chivalry was intended to re-invigorate the French warrior class, widely seen as degenerate and lacking in military prowess, at a time when the Hundred Years’ War was raging and France had suffered a series of defeats at the hands of English and Gascon armies.

I came across de Charny while researching how a medieval knight would have thought and behaved. I wanted to shape a character in the novels that would become the Rune Song trilogy. De Charny’s book, translated by Elspeth Kennedy and brilliantly introduced by Richard W. Kaeuper (Univ. of Pennsylvania Press, 2005) forced me to re-think my preconceptions.

A few surprises

Forget any notion that chivalry was simply an elaborate kind of politesse, or a romantic dream of knight-errants being heroic to win a lady’s favour. It was a brutal, rigorous, warrior code, requiring absolute dedication to achieve prowess. And prowess, Charny writes, brings honour, the only truly worthwhile achievement. It was the gift of God, won with sword and lance, while holding one’s life lightly. ‘If you want to be strong and of good courage,’ he writes, ‘be sure that you care less about death than about shame’.

My second surprise was the expectation of piety. A knight should live his life well, so that if he suffered a mortal wound he could expect paradise. If he had fought in pursuit of a great deed of arms,  ‘he cannot regret the blow’.

De Charny draws many comparisons between the lived-religion of a cleric and the life of a knight, though he insisted that the trials of knighthood were more rigorous than any religious order. Just as clerics found God through fasting and deprivation, a knight found honour through adversity; what Kaeuper calls ‘righteous suffering’. The ultimate reward for both was heaven. Earthly comforts were permissible to knights in moderation, but Charny is scathing about over-indulgence; ‘the man who for his greedy gullet fails to make a name for himself, should have all those teeth pulled out, one by one, which do him so much damage as to lose him the high honour he might have acquired…’

A touch of fanaticism

Charny writes of war not as a horror, but as a God-given opportunity to learn martial skills and a pathway to honour. ‘And when, through the grace of God, they find out and witness such supremely novel affairs as battles, were they also to be granted the grace and favour of performing great deeds, then such men should indeed thank Our Lord.’ To modern thinking, this smacks of fanaticism. Zealotry. I even caught a whiff of the jihadi in some passages. So was de Charny’s ideal like the Templars, the monkish warriors of earlier centuries?

And a (courtly) eye for the ladies

Not quite. Celibacy has little place among the laity in de Charny’s world, although his references to ladies dwells mainly upon their ability to inspire knights to greater prowess. He unashamedly hints at the possibility of dalliances, even love affairs. ‘There is more perfect joy in being secretly in the company of one’s lady than one could have in a whole year, were it to be known and perceived by many… the most secret love is the most lasting and the truest.’ I found nothing to suggest he saw any inconsistency between this view and his piety.

Honour before riches

Unlike the vows of poverty expected of a religious order, a knight could acquire riches, provided his over-riding purpose was honour. ‘One should therefore set one’s heart and mind on winning honour, which endures for ever, rather than on winning profit and booty, which one can lose within one single hour.’ The true knight sought the greatest honour, not the greatest profit.

It is a theme that surfaces many times. A knight must gain his wealth honourably, for ‘unsullied poverty is worth more than corrupt wealth’. Riches must also be held lightly. ‘The more worldly goods a man acquires, the more reluctant he is to die and the greater his fear of death; and the more honour a man gains, the less he fears to die, for his worth and honour will always remain, and the worldly goods will disappear.’

Influence on the Rune Song trilogy

Those who have read the Rune Song trilogy will by now have recognised de Charny’s influence on the character of Humbert Blanc. Blanc is a courageous, decent, and occasionally infuriating knight. He’s a warrior who is humble in victory but accepting of adversity; his piety tells him that all that happens is the will of God. If you haven’t begun Rune Song, I suggest you start with Hammer of Fate.

Did de Charny ‘regret the blow’ as he felt his mortal wound on the lost field of Poitiers? I hope not. He lived, and died, by his own ideals. One thing is certain; the modest wealth of the de Charnys has long since passed away, but thanks to this excellent book, his fame and honour shine brightly.

Amazon links

You’ll find de Charny’s Knight’s Own Book of Chivalry on Amazon UK or Amazon.com

Hammer of Fate, like all the Rune Song trilogy, is published by Second Sky, an imprint of Bookouture / Hachette. It is available in paperback, audiobook, and ebook formats including Kindle Unlimited. It is also on Amazon UK or Amazon.com.

I am a member of  Amazon’s Associates Programme and receive an infinitesimally small portion of purchases made through the UK link.

I am excited to announce the imminent release of Blood of Wolves, which completes the Rune Song historical fantasy trilogy. What’s more, the publishers (Second Sky, an imprint of Bookouture/Hachette) have redesigned the covers for the whole series. Personally, I think they look great together:

Several book reviewers and bloggers have helped to promote the ‘cover reveal’, including The Plain-Spoken Pen. She, bless her, commented “I love this series… I wouldn’t care if the third book came covered in a brown paper bag, I’d be champing at the bit to read it. But this is a very cool cover!”

The Plain-Spoken pen will publish her review on 27th October. Other reviews have already appeared on the review site NetGalley. You can see them here and I’m delighted to say that so far they are all 5*.

There’s a synopsis of Blood of Wolves here, and you can pre-order the ebook on Amazon here. Release day is Friday, 27th October and it is coming out in ebook, paperback, and audiobook formats.

For more about Hammer of Fate, the first of the Rune Song series, you’ll find the synopsis here and the Amazon page here. For Runes of Battle, the second book, click synopsis or Amazon.

Enjoy! And if you need a little encouragement, let me share snippets from those early reviews:

“The last book in this epic and omg what a read. Another real page turner, action packed bloody battles. Great storytelling and great characters who I feel I really know… Highly, highly recommended.”

“This has been an amazing trilogy. I have been captivated and completely absorbed the whole way through…”

Hammer of Fate will soon be ready to go to print, ready for my heroine Adelais to be sent out into the world on 1st June.

Publishers Second Sky (an imprint of Bookoutoure/Hachette) sent out ‘Advanced Review Copies’ of Hammer of Fate in February, and the first reviews are coming in. I’m particularly pleased with this one: ‘There is something about a good fantasy book that always grabs me and lures me in, holds me hostage until I can finish it, and then leaves me pining for more. … I can only urge you to pick up this book and thrive in it…’

If you’d like to pre-order an ebook, it’s available here.

The final stages:

Editing is hard work. The finished book will be the end product not only of years of writing but of four cycles of editing:

Firstly my editor makes ‘structural edit’ suggestions, related to plot and characterisation. We then hand the agreed changes to a ‘copy editor’ for more nuanced revision. Line editing follows. Hammer of Fate is now at the final, proofreading stage when we discover infuriating glitches. Like runes, which are important to the plot. Kindle transposes them, turning the rune bjarkan, for example, from a correctly typeset ‘ᛒ’ into ‘B‘. The rune’s esoteric meaning of renewal becomes just ‘buh’. I am so glad I have a publisher to help.

Book 2 in the series has just finished the copy editing phase, and by my count the edits on the first two novels in the series have taken me about 110 full days of work since October. All this editing has left Book 3 on a cliff edge, with a key character facing a very tricky situation and begging me to ‘please please please come back and write me out of this’.

No pressure, then. You’ll find more about Hammer of Fate, including the publisher’s description here. Sign up to my newsletter here to hear announcements about subsequent releases in the Rune Song series.

Late last year I was invited to join the shortlisting panel for the 2022 Best First Novel Award, the UK’s longest-running prize for debut fiction. It has been a delight as well as a significant burden of reading. Over the next few weeks I’m going to highlight some BFNA gems by authors that are, by definition, little known. This won’t be the long-list (pictured below) since in the nature of panel discussions not all the books I thought worthy made the cut. However they resonated with me enough to want to share them.

The Best First Novel Award for debut fiction

I hadn’t expected to like this one so much; the context made me nervous. It’s a 25 year drama through the eyes of one woman in an intensely Republican, Catholic family near Omagh. It shows I should read outside my comfort zone more.

We follow the woman from her childhood with an emotionally abusive mother through to empty-nester, and it takes place almost entirely within the scattered farming community of one remote valley. It’s a story of love; parental, sibling, and amorous, and it hinges on communication and mis-communication, with heavy doses of Catholic morality, guilt, and hypocrisy.

I truly engaged with this story. The language is straightforward, unflowery, and only lightly sprinkled with Irish vernacular. The mother’s abuse sets the context for much that happens later, including a disastrous adolescence. By then I wanted to stand in the girl’s way shouting ‘don’t do that’. Before she is long into her marriage I was just as keen to slap some sense into her, but then we would not have a story. For a while it is a sharp portrait of a woman so wrapped around her own wounds that she does not realise that silence can cut deeper than words.

There’s a rich cast of characters, all well drawn, and enough humour to lift what could be a depressing tale. The reader ends up laughing, loving, and shouting with them all as if we were part of the ‘craic’. Brilliant.

One that also deserved to win: Lucy Jago, A Net for Small Fishes

More to come

DRACA: IN SUPPORT OF COMBAT STRESS

CHALFONT ST GILES AND JORDANS LITERARY FESTIVAL

SATURDAY 15TH MAY, 5PM, ONLINE

‘A war-damaged veteran on a mission to self-destruct. A yachtswoman who risks everything to pull him back. And between them, an old boat with attitude in a page-turner that will leave salt on your lips and a bruise on your heart.’

Draca was due to launch last year at the Chalfont St Giles & Jordans Literary Festival, until covid forced its cancellation. This year the organisers have invited me back to talk about Draca, the story behind the book, and my partnership with the veterans’ mental health charity Combat Stress. 

With social distancing rules still in force, all the festival’s presentations this year will be online. The upside is that we are no longer be constrained by the capacity of the lovely 17th century Friends’ Meeting House in Jordans. The downside is that I will not be able to offer you hospitality afterwards.

The talk will last for about 40 minutes plus Q&A, and is ticketed. If you would like to join me online please click here to buy a ticket (£5). All my speaker fees go directly to Combat Stress. 

HOW ARE WE DOING?

I’m often asked me how Draca is faring. The short answer is that until I receive a royalty statement, I don’t know. November’s royalties, of which a little over £600 went to Combat Stress, only covered receipts preceding the launch. The lack of bookshops, libraries, and speaking engagements since then won’t have helped sales, but I can say is that Draca is collecting a gratifying number of brilliant reviews.

In July and August last year Draca was also selected for the online book club The Pigeonhole, and I had the pleasure of seeing the overwhelmingly enthusiastic reactions of nearly 200 readers around the globe as they read and discussed each daily instalment. The Pigeonhole themselves commented ‘we love discovering gems like this’, and I honestly don’t know the club reader who said it was ‘the best book I’ve ever read’.

More details about Draca and an extract are here.

JOIN ME AT THE LITERARY FESTIVAL

I’ll share more on 15th May. I hope to see you there. Once again click here to buy a ticket.

I’m delighted to say that the online book club The Pigeonhole has selected Draca for serialisation commencing Sunday 26th July. They will release Draca in ten daily episodes ending on Tuesday 4th August. So if you’re not already enjoying the book, why not read it with a strictly-limited group of bookish people? What’s more, it’s free to join.

So how does The Pigeonhole work?

The Pigeonhole say:

‘We work with publishers to bring their users the best in modern fiction, from bestselling authors like Ken Follett to new voices. Our serialisations enable readers to interact with authors and other readers inside the book as they read and comment in real-time. Launched in September 2014, The Pigeonhole was nominated for the Digital Innovation Awards at the London Book Fair, and Future Book’s Digital Campaign of the Year. The Bookseller magazine named Pigeonhole’s founding editor Anna Jean Hughes as a Rising Star of the publishing industry.’

The Pigeonhole release selected books in daily serialisations called ‘staves’ to strictly limited numbers of readers, free of charge. They do invite you to leave a review at the end. You can read more about The Pigeonhole here.

Want to join in?

In the three days since The Pigeonhole selected Draca, take-up has been strong. Less than half the available slots remain. If you’d like to grab one while you can, you can sign up to Draca on The Pigeonhole here  and I look forward to ‘seeing’ you during the serialisation. Remember, it is free of charge.

Can’t wait?

If you want to know more about Draca, there’s a synopsis and extracts here. If you’d like your own copy to read, you’ll find it on Amazon Kindle here, Amazon paperback here, and through all good bookshops.

Enjoy!

The guys at the books podcast We’d Like A Word are making quite a name for themselves. Previous guests have included Graham Norton and Anthony Horowitz. I’m honoured to follow in their footsteps. In their mid June broadcast I shared the spotlight with General Sir Peter Wall, the President of Combat Stress. Combat Stress is the premier charity for veterans with complex mental health issues such as PTSD.

Paul Waters and Stevyn Colgan, the show’s producers, had chosen a theme of ‘should trauma influence stories’. Sounds heavy, doesn’t it? Just follow the links below and listen; we laughed. A lot.

We started by talking about Draca, my novel about broken relationships and misunderstandings where one character is a veteran with PTSD. General Wall has read the book and had some wonderfully enthusiastic words to say about it. Paul asked how much trauma can, or should, shape a story. That’s a serious question which prompted serious discussion, but which morphed into reminiscences of Armed Forces life and became just a little explosive. Best line of the broadcast came from Paul Waters, after one anecdote from General Wall: “Just think how far your career might have gone if you hadn’t been caught!”

Where to listen

The podcast is in three parts. Choose any of these links to listen:  Apple Podcasts  Google Podcasts  Spotify  Anchor FM

Sir Peter Wall and Combat Stress

Sir Peter Wall was Chief of the General Staff, the professional head of the British Army, until 2014. If you’d like to know more about Combat Stress and their outstanding work with veterans, their web site is here.

Draca

There’s more information about Draca, including extracts, on this site here. For Draca’s Amazon pages, go here for paperback and here for Kindle. At the time of writing, one month from launch, it is scoring a very gratifying 4.6 ex 5 with 20 five star reviews. Draca is also available via Waterstones, Foyles, and all good bookshops.

Draca’s launch was supposed to happen today. Tonight I expected to be sipping a celebratory champagne, basking in the glory of the first reviews. After all, all Draca’s wonderful supporters were going to have their copies early, weren’t they?

Enter Corona-chaos. I.E: Publishers, printers, distributors, and logistics companies all working with reduced staff on socially-distanced shifts. Massive dependency on Amazon, since bookshops and libraries are shut. Amazon working to priorities as arcane as their algorithms. End result:

1. Initial print run reaches publisher. Stacks of paperbacks. Yay! But too late for early copies to reach supporters before release day.
2. Publisher can’t get stock to Amazon. Decides to postpone launch.
3. Delaying Draca’s launch on release day proves to be technically impossible.
4. Publisher releases Draca anyway. Amazon will sell Kindle copies but are ‘Out of Stock’ on paperback. They probably won’t receive/accept stock into their system until early-mid June. [Don’t ask. I have. I still don’t understand.]

The way around Corona-chaos:

So here, lovely people, is how to acquire a print copy of Draca during Corona-chaos:

Go to the publisher, Unbound, here. For £9.99 they will ship you a copy, just like Amazon. They will even cover the cost of UK postage. For £4.99 they will also sell you an ebook or Kindle version if that’s what you want.

OR

Message me. Contact me via the web site. Email me, whatever is easiest. I am assured that a stack of copies is on its way, so when that arrives I will send you a signed copy, with a dedication if you wish, for £10 via PayPal. Just add your desired dedication to the PayPal message. And yes, I too will cover UK postage. While stacks last, as they say.

Simples.

For more information about Draca, including extracts, click here. No less an authority than General Sir Peter Wall calls it ‘a really cracking read’. Remember half the royalties go to the veteran’s charity Combat Stress.

Let me introduce you to ’George’. She’s a key character in my novel Draca, with almost 2/5 of the story in her ‘voice’. In a previous post I introduced Jack, the flawed hero of Afghanistan. George is a feisty orphan – with – attitude. She’s made her own way from care homes to be manageress of the local boatyard. As I crafted the book, George acquired a tough, shoulders-back manner that hid her vulnerabilities. By the time I had finished writing the book I think I was a little in love with her.

George is also a very competent yachtswoman. I’m an indifferent sailor, so writing credible storm scenes required a lot of research and imagination. That must have paid off; a former Yachtsman of the Year gave me an excellent quote for the cover.  ‘A cracking, believable yarn made even more authentic by the wonderfully descriptive sailing scenes...’

Here’s George at Jack’s grandfather’s funeral, observing his dysfunctional family and showing that ‘attitude’.

Orphan – with – attitude at Eddie’s funeral

George could learn a lot from watching people. At first, everyone looked the same. All in black, all with that funeral look as if they wore a passport photograph where their faces should be. She could make out the Ahlquist crowd, all hugs and kisses except Jack, and then there was an older man and two women who stood a bit apart, both more smartly dressed than the rest, and the only women in hats. A husband, wife and daughter, at a guess. The man was a short, lean, military type who stood very square. When people came up to the older woman, she offered her hand palm-down, fingers drooping, as if she expected them to go down on one knee and kiss it. No one stayed with them, and the three kept to themselves as if they knew it was pointless to try to talk. 

Jack moved between them and the rest, half belonging to both groups, neither oil nor water, looking stressed. Like all the men he was sweating in his dark suit, with spots of damp staining his shirt across his chest. The younger woman must be his wife, so the military man and the duchess were the in-laws, and the families didn’t get on. 

Jack waved when he saw George. Nothing too enthusiastic, but enough for her to wander over and say hello. She was ready for the mother-in-law’s fingers. If you slide your hand under that kind of regal greeting, then grip and twist, you can turn it into a proper handshake. The duchess didn’t like that. She didn’t like George’s looks, either. The duchess was tall enough for her eyes to be at the level of George’s hair, and George saw her wince. So what? George liked orange. It’s a strong colour, and it was only a streak. While Jack fumbled the introductions the woman’s eyes dropped so she was looking down her nose at George’s skirt, and her mouth pursed into a tight, wrinkly, cat’s–arse circle of disapproval. Maybe yellow was a bit bright for a funeral, but there wasn’t much call for dark, smart stuff in a boatyard. At least George had put a decent jacket over it, and she bet the duchess couldn’t tell that the jacket came from a charity shop.

Draca

Draca, described as ‘a really cracking read’ by General Sir Peter Wall, will be released by Unbound on 14th May 2020. Half the royalties will flow to the veterans’ charity Combat Stress. Click here for more details of the book, including stunning early reviews.

If you’d like to order the book there are links to many retailers including Waterstones and Foyles here. Just click the ‘buy’ link.

If you’d like to go directly to Amazon UK, the paperback is here and Kindle here.

Tomorrow

There’s another character with his own version of events to tell as the story unfolds. Jack’s father is a dominating, controlling presence, and just because he’s opinionated doesn’t mean he’s always wrong. You’ll meet him next.