Is she more a Scolastica or a Wymarka?

I've talked about names before, and how important they are for a writer, sometimes shaping the entire story, and definitely shaping the character's arc.  Who is this hero and what overriding traits does he have?  What's going to be this heroine's biggest test and her largest vulnerability?

Not sure why, but the right names helps find all that out.

Oh, the crazy human psyche.

I love choosing medieval names.  Well, I mean, there are also a lot of repeats in the name department.   I mean, a lot.  Of repeats.  Like in this paragraph.  Whether Norman or English or French, you find the same names repeated in the historical documents.  Alice, Agnes, Joan, Beatrice.  John, Richard, Geoffrey, Peter.   Over and over and over again.  And all those folks, without surnames.  :shakes head:

But there are also a lot of great names.  Evocative names.  Illustrative names.  Juicy, oh-there-has-to-be-a-story-there names.

Men's names, like Adelard, Basewin, Tancred, Serle and Saer (hero coming).  Percival, Ives, and Everard.  And oh my, the Irish names.  Aedh, Faolán, Lúcás, Siadhal.  It's sounds like a poem to me.

And the women's names.  Scolastica, Petronilla, Dyonisia, Wymarka, and Diamanda.  And the Irish: Áine, Sorcha, and Dubh Essa (which looks frightening, but sounds /Dove-essa/).

In my own books, I've loved some names so much I would hug them if they weren't, you know, a name.  i.e. breath, i.e. difficult to hug. 


Finian O'Melaghlin (IRISH WARRIOR), yes, it is a mouthful, but he's proud of his name, and Senna de Valery, the woman who freed him from prison, and whose mother loved color so much she named her daughter one, then left her. 



Eva (DEFIANT), who had no last name, and her hero Jamie Lost, whose name was given to him by the men who loved him and the ones who used him.


Sophia Darnley's (DECEPTION) first name was something entirely different in early drafts of the story, but Kier kept calling her "Sophie," so I had to change her name.  Those heroes...nothing but trouble.


I love when a name fits!   And not just in my romances. 

Bilbo Baggins is about the most perfect, fitting character name ever.   As is Sherlock Holmes and Miss Marple.   And Hannibal Lecter. 

What character names 

have YOU loved? 

Tourney!

Okay, who loves a tourney?  I mean, besides me.

Pennants fluttering off the host's castle ramparts, villagers and nobles mingling in the busy grounds all around, merchants hawking their wares, performers juggling and wrestling.  While up in the lists, knights in shining armour preen and perform for ladies in the stands, who bestow their favors--a sleeve, a scrap of silk, and a smile--on their favorites. 




Originally, though, tournaments didn't much resemble our romantic notion of them.  The 'joust'--two men squaring off and taking a run at each other with lances--yeah, that was a latter addition, and even when the joust came to be part of the tourney, it was a prelude to the main event, the mêlée, a pitched battle with, well, pretty much no rules. 

Occasionally the type of weaponry was predetermined for the mêlée, but other than that, it was basically no-holds-barred fighting.  Lords came with their retinues, often comprised largely of men hired for the sole purpose of helping Lord Such-and-So kick Lord Whos-And-Whats knightly arse.  They came to fight, and to win. 

Oh, and to make a lot of money.  

The big money didn't come from official prizes, though, although those could be quite rich.  But the real prize was...ransom.

First came the cavalry rush with lowered lances, which quickly devolved into hand-to-hand combat, on foot, between the two opposing sides.  Death happened, although combatants were not (usually) killed intentionally.   Why kill a guy, when you can bankrupt him, and enrich yourself in the process?  Capture was a much better business plan. 

The loser had to 'yield,' then he and the victor agreed to the terms of the surrender.  Usually horse & armour were taken, and a price agreed-upon to buy them back.  Remember these horses were worth more money than a villager could make in a dozen lifetimes.  The same for armour.  Terms of the agreement were set down in a contract (yes, they signed a contract, right there on the battlefield, in a section called the 'refuge'.  Recognize it?? Cool, huh?) It was all very official and well-run. 

Except when it wasn't.

Tourneys were a dicey proposition for kings and counts. On one hand, tourneys were good training for war, could be useful for raising money, and for channeling the aggressive tendencies of all those young, male, armed citizens, who were so necessary in times of war, and so...unpredictable at all other times.

But they also wrecked destruction on the countryside and any unlucky villagers caught in the crossfire as the battle raged across the land, including farmland (!!)  Often, two villages were designated as the outer boundaries of the battleground, essentially assuring that armed knights in the heat of battle were going to come roaring through the town and across their tended fields.  Note: No village is on record as ever having requested such a dubious privilege. 

The larger concern for a medieval king was this: tourneys were a breeding ground for petty feuds, vengeance, and, at the top of any medieval lord's mind, rebellion.  

Perfect for romance fiction!  I can feel my brain cells firing up, ready to play with the ceremony and drama of a medieval tournament.  I see a dark-haired, hard-hearted hero, and the conceited, intelligent, alluring daughter of his worst enemy....  

Have you read any books with great tourney scenes??  Spill!

Not Medieval but...Castle!

It's not a medieval castle, but it's got medieval in it. 

While I was wasting time online, I ran into this gorgeous tidbit:

Château de Gudanes, in the Midi-Pyrenees region of France, built in the mid-18th century, was contructed on the site on a 13th century fortress.  Those medieval towers are within the Château today. 

The castle fell into disuse and survived destruction during the French Revolution. 






In the 1990's, an investment company bought it, planning to turn it into luxury apartments, but were denied permits (Go France!) 




Again it fell into disuse, until an Australian couple bought it and are now renovating it, very publicly. They have a website, blog, and run workshops.

What part of the restoration would you start with?  I'd be uncovering those medieval towers!

Interestingly, this region of France plays into my current work-in-progress.  I keep running into that, while I'm wasting time online.  I think I should take it as a hint and get back to writing.

More pictures:
Wimp
Château de Gudanes site

Sizzling Summer Heat - A Rock*It Reads contest

A heads up from the Silent One (that would be me, in relation to this blog)....

Rock*It Reads is kicking off the summer with a giveaway and contest.  10 ebooks plus a chance at a Kindle Paperwhite.  Signing up for the contest gets you signed you up for the Rock*It Reads individual authors' newsletters too, so you can stay informed of new releases. 

Win a Kindle Paperwhite!

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The Magic of Showers Or; The Shower and The Artist

It's a pretty well-established fact, that a lot of people get their best ideas in the shower. 

It's true for me.  Maybe not the best, but certainly an awful lot of good ones.

Dopamine is part of the reason, no doubt.  Anytime you can get a good dopamine shower, you'll be happier all around, and nice hot H2O showers tend to trigger the release of dopamine.

Additionally, they say (you know, 'them') negative ions have an effect on us.  They show up wherever there's water and attach to things like dust particles and negative ruminations about why multi-billionaire dollar international hedge funds can get away with a multitude of nefarious, self-serving crimes, while you can't go five miles over the speed limit to get your cat to the vet before she has her kittens in your lap and get away with it.  (You ruminate on this stuff too, right??) 

The ions drag attach to all this and drag it down, down to the ground, leaving the air fresher and your mind more capable of handling barking dogs and multi-billionaire dollar hedge fund managers and all the other impurities life slings your way.

And of course, for many moms, showers are The One And Only place we can get five minutes alone.

Sort of alone.  It's good enough.  This is powerful stuff, people.  Wet Alone Time matters.

But the real reason showers work is probably far more mundane, and far more important.  We're stationary.  We're reflective.  We're quiet.  We're not inundating our brains and senses with stuff.  Shiny, Bright, Sparkling, Noisy, OMG Look At This Funny Cat! stuff. 

There are no new ideas bombarding us in the shower, which is why you can get so many new ideas in the shower.

Reflective time matters.  Wandering minds matter.  A lot.  But we're so often plugged in and turned on, getting 'input' by bad music and good music and bad news and good news and other people's ideas about how to feel and think and be with it all.  There's always some heartbreaking new tragedy and some inspiring new triumph and it's just exhausting if you slow down and actually notice it all. 

Which we generally don't.  More often we run through it all, like a kid with a bubble wand.


But in the shower, there's nothing.  Nada.  Zilch.  Just you and your mind.  Your quiet mind and your wet body.  And the ions, of course.

So for me, shower time is pretty sacred.  No technology, no kids, just me and the ions.  And all those ideas.....

Do you get ideas in the shower?  Or is somewhere/something/someone else your idea incubator?

Time Travelling Writer

That's me these days.  Back and forth in time between several stories: a medieval, a Elizabethan, and a contemporary.

I'm liking it a lot--I don't like being stuck, so when I've hit a wall on one story, I can flip to another and still be productive.

Note: This is not me.

If I can't write on any of then, that's a big red flag there's something else going on.


Such as, I'm avoiding something.  Or I need a break.  Or I've  been buried beneath a pile of undone laundry that's just taken over the house.  Zombie laundry.


Whatever.  It's always something.


I used to think that me being stuck was a bit of a cop-out. I had a rather linear interpretation of being stuck: it meant I wasn't trying hard enough.


Well, really now.   How unwriterly of me, how unimaginative.  There are a hundred reasons I could be stuck.  (To wit, the zombie laundry pile.)

Note: The empty creative well.  Deep, huh?

I now know that sometimes you truly are stuck,  that "Can't" doesn't always mean "Won't" and that sometimes, the creative well has simply been depleted while your head was bent over the keyboard.


Got to make sure it gets refilled.


Fortunately, a change can be as good as a break, and that's where time-travelling comes into play.

Oil painting, 1620's by C.C. van Wieringen 

At present, I'm researching and writing about the major political players during Edward III's realm as well as import and export customs during that period; Elizabethan timepieces and the saltwater-logged stragglers from the Spanish Armada who washed up on Irish shores (did you know that happened??  Yes, it did!!); and financial fraud and money laundering schemes of the 21st century.

It's good to travel.

When you read my stories, I hope they make you feel like you're travelling too! 

Summer Doldrums

Summertime doesn't lend itself to full-depth writing, at least not for me.  School is out and so is the slip-n' slide.  Kids are everywhere, as are blue skies, green forests, and salty water.  I heed the call.

I think this has changed since becoming a parent.  I'm fairly certain I wrote with the same general velocity during summers as during the cold, grey days of winter.  It was much more about whether the muse was showing up than if the kids needed me to help carry the raft for them.

I think this is a good thing, for lots of reasons.  I think it's good to flex and change, to disrupt my routines for no reason but maybe a little fun. I might, sometimes, just the teeniest bit, get a little too work-focused.

It's also good because getting away from work and yes, even getting away from story, also feeds hte ceatove fire.  I'm the kind f girl for whom like begets like--writing begets more writing, eating tiramisu begets eating more tira-- 

Well, you get the point.

But there's also space for, well, space.  For all the loves of my life, which includes family as much as story.  Room for all the angles of who I am, which if friend and wife and mom. The past few summers have been all about deadlines, and my family got shortchanged in a major way.

It happens. It's the business. 

But this summer, I'm letting the other parts get top billing, and writing is taking a bit of a back stage. The stories are percolating, especially when I lay in bed at night or, if I have time, first thing in the morning, before I crawl out of bed.  I write down ideas, some days even take a few hours to work, btu it's all split up by jogs down the block after the ice cream truck and trips to the beach and bike rides on trails. For the most part, I'm letting the stories do their own thing this summer without a lot of interference from me. 

I'm pretty sure the stories will be all the better for it.  I'm fairly certain I will be too. 

I hope your summer is a shaping up to be time for you to follow the loves of your life, too! 

We'll catch up in the autumn!

The Minstrel in Disguise trick

One of my favorite parts of writing big, plotty stories is figuring out how the characters are going to circumvent the system or beat the odds to accomplish their goals.  

Often that means luring in the bad guy, escaping from an attack, or gaining access to a guarded castle.   

If you wanted to break into a guarded fortress, how would you do it?  

Sure you could send some poor soul to crawl up the privy chute, but can we all agree that's a last resort for this romance-novel invasion?  

How about the usual methods?  You could bribe someone, or maybe even seduce a door warden or a gardener or some other castle personage.   

Oh, but the time it would take.  The bribing, the seducing, the kissing, the convincing . . . .  

It'll never work.  You need in now. 

How about the minstrel disguise method?  Now we're onto something.  You just saunter up with your lute and juggling balls and offer to tell some tales, play some music, and share some news from far off places in exchange for room and board and a few coins.

Voila, we're in.

 Tricky.   Effective.  Like the ancient Trojan horse, your desires become the vehicle for your own demise.

Is there anything more romantic than that?  In a sad, tragic way.

Once inside, you could do any number of dastardly things: kidnapping: poisoning: spying: making a nice, juicy treasonous offer to the lord, one he'd never have listened to otherwise (at least not in public).  

Or you could just wander casually over to sally port door and open it, letting your armed comrades, who've been waiting in the woods outside, pour into the darkened castle and take it over.

Or you could do what Aodh Mac Con does CLAIMING HER.  He's not masquerading as a minstrel per sé.  And the heroine definitely does not open the gates out of any desire or greed, but rather a sense of honor and a lack of options.  

Still, it all unravels pretty quickly.   Good fun ensues.  

How about you?  How would you gain access to an enemy castle?  What tricks are up your sleeve?

(The image above is from http://digitalkey.biz/projects/siege-at-carrickfergus-castle/.  The site says: "
Siege! is a mobile app that uses interactive role play to bring the the 1315-16 Bruce Siege of Carrickfergus Castle to life. Produced in collaboration with NIEA, and funded by the Arts Council’s Creative Industries Innovations Fund,  the game uses interactive role play to explore Anglo-Norman military strategy and defensive architecture (see gallery). The app will contain atmospheric audio and video medieval re-enactments, and will use GPS to embed the game’s narrative in the grounds of Carrickfergus Castle to create an engaging and immersive learning experience.")

March Madness Blog Hop!

[Edited to add: Winners have been announced!  Congrats to Z and Shelly Hammond!]

  
March Madness is upon us.  Well, almost.

Close enough for women to know they're about to lose their husbands, boyfriends, brothers, uncles, nephews, and sometimes even male cats and dogs to the craze of college basketball finals.  Money, power, athletic competition, championships, and men in shorts: excitement all around, yes?

I admit, we're not big on basketball around here.   For some reason, it doesn't light the household fire.   We're more about baseball.  And hockey.   We also cheer for football (American) and soccer (also American, 'cause no one else calls it that but us). 

And while we're on the subject of sports for which we'd abandon our families, I'd appreciate more equestrian events--or actually, any equestrian events--but I'm not in charge of ESPN.   Weirdly.

Superhero Scramble LLC

 <-- Also, I would like more of this man.










Anyhow...when I lose the male members of my household to a sport, it's usually baseball and hockey.  Which have extremely long seasons.  Extremely.  Long.

Did I mention they're long seasons?

Fortunately, we have one TV, it sits in our family room-which-segues-into-our-kitchen, so we're pretty much all together for all of it anyhow.  I sit on the couch, they sit on the couch, friends sit on the couch.  We all occasionally leap to our feet (on the ground or sometimes onto the table or kitchen counter, depending).  

The only difference is, I have a book in my hand.  All the time.   I'm either reading someone else's or writing my own, hammering away at a manuscript while they're cheering away.  And we're all together.

(Another very small, probably indetectable difference, is that I might complain about sports rules and the possibility of head injury more often that they do.  Possibly.  Or not.  It's hard to say.)

Oh, and some of them experience occasional bouts of fears that I'm writing them into a book as I sit there typing.

Who, me?  "What?" I respond affectionately. "I write medievals  And believe me, you're no knight."

Although...I am branching out into contemporaries.  And with that, I make no promises.

So, what's it like for you?? 

Do you lose anyone in your family to special interests, hobbies, loves or obsessions?  Or maybe you and your partner share an obsession that takes you away from the rest of the world, together?

Two commentors get their pick of a signed print copy of any of these books from my backlist: THE IRISH WARRIOR, DEFIANT, or DECEPTION!  

 Sign up for my Book Release newsletter and double your chances to here on my blog!

"Like" my Facebook page (KrisKennedyBooks) and TRIPLE your chances!! 

Follow me on Twitter (@KrisKennedy) and yep, you guessed it--QUADRUPLE chance for my prizes.

Don't think you like medievals?  Sure you will!  Come check out the excerpts & see what you think.

And then, go check out all these awesome authors who I'm blogging with!  They're waiting to charm you.  And they're giving away prizes.
(Rules are below)

a Rafflecopter giveaway





RULES: Simply hop from blog to blog—the links are below—and “follow”, “Like”, “Friend” etc. the authors sites then leave a comment on their blog post. Each author is running their own giveaway as well as participating in the Rafflecopter Grand-Prize Giveaway of a Kindle Fire OR Nook Color, A $50 Amazon/B&N Gift Card, A $25 Amazon/B&N Gift Card, and 6 - $10 Amazon/B&N Gift Cards, as well as a “basket” of books. The event is live from March 5 – March 31st, 2013 to give you plenty of time to tour all the sites.

Rules: You must be 18 years or older as of 12:01AM March 5, 2013. No purchase Necessary. Avoid where prohibited. This event is open to worldwide participation (basket of books limited to US/Canada shipping address only)You are limited to one tweet, follow, like etc per day, however you can follow one blog, tweet about another, and like a 3rd's facebook page all on the same day. Be sure to follow the rules laid out by the individual authors about their respective giveaways, as they will vary form site to site. Rules and Terms are listed in the Rafflecopter. Grand-prizes will be announced on or about April 5th, 2013 on SnSreviews.blogspot.com <http://snsreviews.blogspot.com/> . While we will make every effort to contact you, it is ultimately the winner's responsibility to check winning status and claim their prize. Posted winners will have 5 days, from the date of post to contact host and claim their respective prize. If the posted winner fails to contact host, prize may be forfeited and awarded to another randomly drawn entrant and distributed without further notice.   

Machiavelli's Arrest Warrant

Okay, so here's this:

A British professor researching the history of town criers in Florence stumbled across the 500 year old arrest warrant for Machiavelli.  The actual document, the proclamation calling for his arrest.

Wow-y wow wow.   

He also found records of the payments made to the four horsemen "who scoured the streets of the Tuscan city for Machiavelli."

 Damn, that makes it all feel so scary and real to me. 

Real, because an actual person received that payment.  


These were real people living and dying and hunting each other down and fleeing.  They're not static historical figures, analyzed & figured out & frozen in images, flattened between the pages of a textbook.  

These were men who saddled up their horses that morning, men who needed that money, men who went home that night & maybe talked to their wives about their day, "Yeah, Giuliano wanted that guy, so we found him.  But...he looked scared. It's not going to go well for him." 

Scary, because I picture finding out about the arrest warrant.  Maybe you suspected it was coming, and this just is the awful thud of the other shoe dropping. 

Or maybe you thought you'd escaped the wrath of the d'Medici's.  Maybe. . .  maybe. . . .  No.  They didn't miss you, they didn't forget.  And now you're being hunted down by four professionals hired to bring you in. 

You have to know what's coming, right?   They don't want to have a conversation with you.  You were a high-ranking diplomat for the family that helped oust them, and now you're about to be brought low for it. 

Oh, and one of them is about to become Pope.

For me, this discovery brought this moment in history alive in a way its never been before. 

What about you??  When has a story--fictional or news--or an event or a conversation suddenly brought history alive?

Here's a link to the Telegraph article: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/italy/9871527/Briton-finds-500-year-old-arrest-warrant-for-Machiavelli.html

Naming Characters

Naming characters is so much fun!  Except when it's not!  

Sometimes names just appear on the page, as if by magic.  They're perfect.  And by 'perfect' I mean they're appropriately lyrical and hopefully flush with meaning, and also good in bed.  You know, for shouting out while in bed.  

You'd be surprised how many names this eliminates. 

Or heck, I don't know you. Maybe you wouldn't be surprised at all.  That's good with me.

First names are most important, first names and nicknames.  Last names matter less, especially in the middle ages.   For me, last names are like a frame for a picture.  They can do good work--enhance and and highlight and, well, frame--but they're not the work.


One thing I sometimes do when the perfect name doesn't magically appear on the page, is come up with words that are "flush with meaning," but would sound silly in English--like liar or sexy or magic or shapeshifter--then find translations of those words in different languages. 


This can be especially lucrative for last names and nicknames.  Yep, 'lucrative,' because the right name is wealth, isn't it?  As a reader you know that.  The perfect name is worth its weight in gold.

Can you guess which names in any of my books that appeared like magic, and which I had to work at?    

What names of fictional characters have you loved?  Any you hated?

New Blog!!

 Look, I'm Doing A Blog!

Trying my hand at a very loose blog.  "Loose" as in "It will show up intermittently, when writing stories leaves me time to write blogs."  "Loose" as in "I'll blog about whatever story-ness is on the radar," from research tidbits to what makes a hero to exclusive excerpts to...whatever else.  :)

 So pull up a chair, pop the blog in your RSS feed, and listen to the silence, occasionally interspersed with blogginess.  :)  And  whenever you have something to say, please say it!