Albion

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Extras, get your extras!

/ Albion, Writing and publishing

What’s an extra? Now and again, I write something extra. It can be a few thousand words, or thirty thousand. It can be a bit of backstory I need to write out to keep going in the book. Or something that happens after the book ends that affects future events. Sometimes, I just want to spend a little more time with those characters. Other times, it’s a chance to get a bit of a story from someone else’s perspective. I share these extras with my newsletter subscribers. And now I’ve got an easy way to let you know what extras there are (and what they cover). Check out the Extras page on my authorial wiki for a short summary of each available extra. Click through on the title for each one to learn more about it. Scenes from the extras are also on my books and extras timeline. Getting copies for yourself If you’re already getting my newsletter, starting on June 3rd, 2022, there’s a link at the top of every newsletter that will let you download whichever extras you like without putting in an email address. If you’re not already on my newsletter list, you can get all the extras here. You’ll need to enter your email address for each one (or sign up for one, get the first newsletter email, and then use the link there to get the rest. Up to you!) I hope you’ll stay around on my newsletter for news about what’s coming soon, more […]

Threading characters through books

/ Albion, Mysterious Charm

One of the things I love most about writing about Albion is being able to weave people through different books. Sometimes this is in a big way. All the books in the Mysterious Charm series deal with people who are friends or allies or co-conspirators (as the case may be) with Lord Geoffrey Carillon. But sometimes it’s more subtle. Take Farran Michaels, for example. He first appears (if you read the series by number, which isn’t chronologically in time) in the first chapter of Goblin Fruit as one of the young men apprenticed to the auction house. He turns up later in Magician’s Hoard as a representative of the auction house (he’s now a more senior apprentice). But how did he get there? And what’s with his particular gift for materia and objects? That’s where Seven Sisters comes in. While it’s his uncle who’s the hero of that book, Farran’s present for much of the action. I love being able to tuck those little touches in. Albion is a sizeable community, but it’s not huge. With only a few more academically focused magical schools, people who went to those schools tend to know each other. Others interact in significant but small professional communities. And, as an author, it’s a lot more fun to do a passing mention of a character I’ve already gotten to know in passing, rather than Random Standin#42. Readers new to the series with that book should be able to follow everything, but people who’ve read and

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Magical creatures

/ Albion, Mysterious Charm

As you’ve noticed if you’ve read Outcrossing, there are magical creatures in my books, as well as the ones we all know about. There are, broadly speaking, three categories. Animals we know and love These include your average ordinary wildlife – badgers, hedgehogs, ponies (Well, most of them. There are some magical ones, too.) Birds, snakes, lizards, all sorts of other beasties. A magical variant Sometimes there are magical variants of a given type. For example, the nightjar is an actual bird (with a very unusual sort of sound – you can hear an American cousin clearly starting at about 1:10 on this recording.) This piece in the Guardian about nightjars (and other fauna of the New Forest) delighted me, and describes them as “somewhere between a kestrel and a crocodile in appearance”. Twilight nightjars, however, are magical. They sound like the non-magical variety, and have the same shape. And nightjars do live in the New Forest. But where the non-magical species are usually brown or buff, the Twilight Nightjar is more like the darker varieties of a Victoria Crowned Pigeon, with a good splash of iridescence. Their feathers and eggs are used in various magical potions and workings. Entirely magical And of course, we have varieties of magical creatures who either live in Silence-warded spaces (so, fully magical), or like many creatures in our own world are not often seen. These include wandermists (a cat-sized winged dragon that appears to be largely made out of mist), or the ginsies,

Lammastide

/ Albion

Albion has a host of seasonal and agricultural festivals. Some are more celebration than anything else, others are about specific magical commitments tied to the land. In our world, you’ll sometimes see this festival called Lughnasadh, a festival devoted to the Irish god, Lugh. It was often celebrated with games and competitions and stories, as a connection to the funeral games he held for his foster mother, Tailtiu. (Lugh himself is neither particularly associated with the sun or the harvest: he was a god who was known for being skilled in many ways.) However, while there are a number of harvest rituals around cutting the first of the corn in Great Britain, there isn’t good evidence for a pan-Celtic festival, whether dedicated to Lugh or to anyone else. Cutting the first corn is a common element, but some places have links to ritual plays, others to bonfires, some are up on a hill, some are down near water… In the Anglo-Saxon tradition, there’s another name, and one that came down through the Christian church, later: Hlaef-mas, which became Lammas. This might involve baking a loaf of bread, breaking it into four pieces, and crumbling each piece in the corner of a barn to offer protection to the grain about to be stored there. It was also a great time for harvest fairs and gatherings, before the heavy work of the harvest began. A word about corn and grain: In historical works in and about Europe, you’ll often see the word

Behind the scenes: Who knows who?

/ Albion, Mysterious Charm

One of my early readers, reading Pastiche, asked me “Did Giles and Richard know each other before the War?” (Giles being Major Giles Lefton, hero of Wards of the Roses, and Richard being Lord Richard Edgarton, who appears in Wards of the Roses and On The Bias, and who gets the story of his own romance coming up in Pastiche.) They’re both upper class, well-educated, competently magical men in a relatively small community, so yes, they’ve been moving in similar circles for a good while. They are, however, a generation apart in age. Albion is not a massive community. Sparing you my spreadsheet of demographics for the moment, the community is roughly 250,000 people in the 1920s. There are about 200 families who hold a title (usually Lord of the Land [1]) and probably another 300 or so who are upper class and possibly of the minor aristocracy (cadet branches of the titled family lines, and so on.) (Those aren’t the only positions of power, of course. The Mysterious Power series will be getting more into some of that.) Their families: Richard, obviously, has a title, and comes from one of the noble families. Giles doesn’t, but comes from the minor aristocracy. His family have multiple properties. He’s well off enough personally that money is not an issue for him. They were both in Fox House at Schola, so they share at least one club, and probably more than that one. They certainly have run into each other at various

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Trellech

/ Albion

I got a great question from one of my early readers as he worked his way through Pastiche (coming soon to an ebook seller near you – likely August 7th or so.) His question: “Where is Trellech? I’m not finding it on a map.” There’s an excellent reason it’s hard to find. Trellech does still exist as a village in our world but it’s a tiny thing compared to what it once was. Also, in Welsh it’s Tryleg, and in English, one of about four options: Trellech, Trelech, Treleck, or Trelleck. Trellech is in Monmouthshire in Wales, northeast from Cardiff and just west of the river Wye. (Here’s a map.) It was one of the major cities of mediaeval Wales. Around the 1230s, the de Clare family established it as a major manufacturing town, producing iron and coal for munitions manufacture (as everyone of the period was deep in the wars between Wales and England). The de Clares had been powers in that part of the world for some time – William de Clare established Tintern Abbey in 1131. (This fact brought to you largely because I’ve been to Tintern Abbey, and think it’s gorgeous.) If you read much history around these centuries, you’ll find the de Clares thoroughly entangled in it. At its height in the late 1200s, it’s thought Trellech had about 20,000 people in it, making it larger than Cardiff, Chepstow, or a number of other cities in England and Wales. (By 1300, London was about 80,000

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