Today I am pleased to introduce you to Paula Lofting, author of Sons of the Wolf. As well as telling you all about herself and her work she will also be giving away nine eBooks and one paperback. All you have to do to enter is simply email Paula at sonsofthewolf1066@googlemail.com for a chance to win. The drawing will be held on June 25th, and winners will be notified shortly after.
What inspired me to
write my novel: My journey
Thank you Judith, for allowing me
to do this guest blog on your fabulous blogsite. I am Paula Lofting and apart
from writing I am a Psychiatric nurse and mum to Connor 17, Catherine 18 and
Ron 25. I write historical fiction and I also re-enact the period I am
currently writing about, with an organisation called Regia Anglorum.
I have
always loved history right from a small child when I started reading books like
Dawn Wind and The Eagle of the 9th Chronicles by Rosemary Sutcliffe
and then as an older child, Leon Garfield and Charles Dickens. Later influences
came from Jean Plaidy, Bernard Cornwell, Mary Stewart, Edith Pargetter and
Sharon Penman. I’m sure there are many more I have forgotten. After dabbling in
different eras, I think I found my niche in the medieval period when I became
an avid reader of Sharon Penman’s books.
The pre-Conquest era, which is
currently my favourite period of interest, really only came to the fore for me
about 7 years ago when I attended a re-enactment of the Battle of Hastings and
although I knew about this period very well, I hadn’t realised what a tragic
story emerges from that fateful day, for King Harold and the people of England.
I wanted to know more and I remembered a book I had read when I was about 17
called The Golden Warrior by Hope Muntz. I remembered I really enjoyed it, but
back then my obsession with Harold and the 11thc was not even a twinkle in my
eye. That’s also when I got into re-enactment because having been inspired
enough to write a book set in this period, I also wanted to know what it felt
like to live in those days.
So, my long awaited novel that I
had wanted to write all my life had begun to form. The reason why it had taken
so long to happen was that for much of my life I had been engrossed in other
things and my creative streak had been oppressed by some difficult life events.
I’m of the belief that in life, things happen when they are meant to and this
was the time for me to write my book. I was ready. I piled into loads of reference books and dug
out some older books I had hanging around from earlier days, such as Frank
Stenton’s Anglo Saxon England and looked for the primary sources in them. My
favourite and most treasured acquisition was the Anglo Saxon Chronicles which
is a fantastic guide for what happened when. The sad thing about the AS
Chronicles is that it was written by some very lazy scribes, either that or the
information was not available for them. It does not go into great detail of events
and I have had to supplement the information with other works and my
imagination.
Before I got too far into my
research, I needed to think about a plot and some characters for my book. I
wanted to write with Harold as the main character, however I had read the
wonderful Harold the King by Helen Hollick which was a new version of his story
and because she had written such a brilliant book for him, it was going to be a
hard act to follow. So I began searching my mind for a character and a plot and
found further inspiration in a book called 1066 Year of the Conquest which was
written by David Howarth. In it he
describes the year of 1066 from the perspective of the ordinary folk,
particularly focusing on his home village of Little Horsted and the surrounding
areas. David Howarth has written many books on naval history but I believe this
was the only one in this era. By his own admission, It was not intended as an academic
book, but written very simply, relating the events to how it might have
affected the people of these Sussex villages in the 11th c. Through
the Domesday book, we are able to identify who owned land in the various
villages, hamlets and towns of Sussex. Horstede (as it was called back then) belonged
to a man called Wulfhere who held 5 hides and 30 virgates from King Edward the
Confessor. The amount of land Wulfhere held meant that he was a thegn,
(pronounced thane) and as such would owe military service to his King for his
land.
David Howarth’s writings conjured
up images in my mind of a strong warlike man, his longhall, the central feature
of a homestead surrounded by a wooden palisade. He lived with his family, and
the tenants (his villagers) who shared feasts with him around his hearth. I saw
the forest which surrounded the village and the children who ran through it,
playing amongst the trees and swimming in ponds damned by rocks. I pictured a
man who was returning home from battle with his loyal right hand man to be met
with this wonderful scene:
Smoking hearth fires billow out of the homes
that line the pathway to his hall. He waves and smiles as his tenants come out
of their cottages to greet him. He is filled with joy as he reaches his
gatehouse and crosses himself as he passes by the little chapel, giving thanks
to the Lord that he is home at last. His heart swells with delight upon hearing
the laughter of his children as they run to him with excitement.
Suddenly a story began to unfold in
my head and I realised that at last, I had my main character, Wulfhere. Nothing
was known about him other than what we can find in the Domesday Book. In order
to add a tiny bit of realism, I have used the names from the Domesday book for some
of the other characters. As with Wulfhere, nothing is really known about them,
other than what they owned. So for Wulfhere and his friends, I created lives
and personalities and that is how Sons of
the Wolf began.
The story centres on Wulfhere
mainly and his family but we also see historical characters like Earl Harold
Godwinson and his brothers, Edward the Confessor and his wife Edith and various
others. Wulfhere is a King’s thegn by hereditary right but he is commended to Harold
and as thus is bound by oath and loyalty to serve him. When his oldest daughter,
the wilful and headstrong Freyda, embarks on a forbidden relationship with the
son of Wulfhere’s adversary, Helghi of Gorde, old enmities between the two men
are re-opened and in order to restore peace to his jurisdiction, Earl Harold
orders the two men to allow their children to plight their troth, using the
ancient philosophy of a woman being the ‘peaceweaver’ in a feud. Although
Wulfhere agrees, he is not happy with the situation. The rivers of resentment
run deep between him and Helghi and he finds the idea of his daughter wed to
the son of his nemesis unpalatable. Urged on by his demanding wife, Wulfhere
has to find a way to extricate himself from the contract with Helghi without
compromising his loyalty to his lord.
Sons of the Wolf is also about battles and skirmishes, love and
betrayal. On bloody fields he fights for
his life, but sometimes the enemy is closer to home.
Available also in the US and on
kindle.
And soon to follow, the sequel
The Wolf Banner, will be launched later in 2013
