This collection of short stories is now available, raising money for the Scoliosis Association UK and full of wonderful tales of King Richard III. Yes, that King Richard. Among the many fantastic stories, Grant Me the Carving of My Name (the title used with permission of the poet who first wrote them, Carole Ann Duffy),…
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Pre-Order: Grant me the Carving of My Name – A Collection of short stories inspired by Richard III
I am so excited to announce that pre-orders are now available for the ebook of Grant Me the Carving of My Name – a book of short stories inspired by Richard III. The book contains two stories by me – ‘Long Live the King’, a flash fiction about a possible alternative history, and ‘Myth and…
Read moreThe Lady Novelist pays her respects to King Richard III (part 2)
After a day exploring the Bosworth Battlefield Heritage Centre (and regretting that I’d missed the annual re-enactments of the battle in August) I rested my weary head in the splendid Richard III room at the Belmont Hotel. My possibly misplaced fondness for dear old Richard meant that I slept peacefully under the watchful eye of…
Read moreThe Lady Novelist pays her respects to King Richard III (part 1)
My relationship with Richard III is a bit rambling and has a few strange turns. Like most people, what I knew of Richard Plantagenet, Duke of Gloucester, boiled down to one simple story: he was a wicked, hunchbacked man who stole the throne and murdered his innocent nephews, before being cut down in battle while…
Read moreReview: Sycorax’s Daughters edited by Kinitra Brooks, Linda D. Addison and Susana Morris
Cedar Grove Publishing continues to produce intriguing books that focus on diversity, in both writers and subjects. After books like The Soul of Harmony, Fast Pitch and Pin Drop, Cedar Grove’s latest offering is Sycorax’s Daughters, a horror anthology written by African-American women. Sycorax is the mother of Caliban in Shakespeare’s The Tempest, but she’s…
Read moreReview: On the Twelfth Night by Jonathan Barnes
I reviewed the first two books of the Monstrous Little Voices series, Coral Bones by Foz Meadows and The Course of True Love by Kate Heartfield, back in January when the 5 novella series began its publishing schedule. The series has come out as a celebration on the 400th anniversary of the Bard of Avon’s…
Read moreReviews: Monstrous Little Voices, Books 1 and 2
2016 marks 400 years since the death of William Shakespeare, and Abaddon Books is celebrating with the publication of five novellas set in the faerie worlds of Shakespeare, with characters both well-known and new. The five interconnected stories are being published as e-books throughout the first quarter of the year, and will be released as…
Read moreReview: Hamlet at the Barbican, London
Shakespeare’s Hamlet is one of those plays so dense with ideas that you can easily see a dozen of them and get a different experience each time. Should Hamlet be young? He’s still at university, after all. Ah, but the gravedigger says of Yorick, “this skull has lain in the earth three and twenty years”,…
Read moreThe Lady Novelist Contemplates the Bard
Stratford Upon Avon. Birthplace of the Bard. The village where William Shakespeare’s relatively humble origins lead some to believe (rather snobbily, I think) that a fellow with a fairly ordinary education could not possibly have written plays which still resonated with audiences 400 years later (as though all, or even the best, education happens in…
Read moreMelbourne Literary: Newspaper House Mosaic
Newspaper House 247 Collins Street, Melbourne When the Herald and Weekly Times newspaper took possession of this 1884 building in 1932, it decided to commission a new facade. Artist Napier Waller took on the task of creating its gilded mosaic, inspired by Puck’s line “I’ll put a girdle round about the earth”, taken from Shakespeare’s…
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