A New Novel - The Fetter Lane Fleece

One Year Anniversary!

Greetings my well regarded readers, all several of you, I hope that this warmer weather (in the north) has you champing at the bit to race out and enjoy the Summer.  Although there was that recent snow fall this last week even as far south as the English Midlands to set one worrying about the summer frolics without a heavy insulated jacket, which kind of ruins the Maying idylls in the fields.  Anyway that, after a fashion leads me to the meat of this article.  It is now one year since I released the first novel in my first Red Ned Tudor Mysteries tad ah!  Yes twelve months ago last week The Liberties of London was unleashed upon an unsuspecting reading public via Amazon.  In that time it has done pretty spectacularly selling well over three thousand ebooks.  The next stage as my readers have repeatedly asked for, is to produce this in solid paper form, and today I wish to announce that (at least for the US) it is one step closer, the second of the Liberties novellas has just been released.  So to give value to a print edition this will be combined with The Liberties of London and another soon to be released short story involving the nefarious Earless Nick and Canting Michael -A Counsel of Rogues.

  In the meantime as part of this anniversary of publishing I have the humble pleasure to announce the release of my latest ebook The Fetter Lane Fleece.  A novella length story similar to The Liberties of London it will be a free download from Amazon for three days from 12 am PST (Pacific Standard Time) on the 17/05/12 to 12 pm on the 19/05/12.  So pass the word to your friends download and enjoy.

In the meantime I’d like to make a heartfelt plea to all my readers, if you liked a book in the Red Ned or Dark Devices series please on my bended knee I beg you leave a review on Amazon.  A recent article in The Guardian points out how individual readers tend to be much better at judging the quality of a story than ‘official’ critics.  As an indie I appreciate your comments and feedback and I wish to thank those of you who have taken the time to post me their commendations and concerns, they have made a difference to my writing efforts and the quality of the st.

The Fetter Lane Fleece.

As readers will discover this story is set but a few days after the events of The Liberties of London and involves Ned once more venturing into the debateable territory of the Liberties.  A jaunt, that as you will soon discover probably required somewhat more sober thought and reflection, rather than the generous quality of fine wine and Red Ned’s usual impulsiveness. 

Once more the cover art is by the promising graphic designer Alexander House who has this past week hit eighteen.  My how time flies, I remember the day of his birth so clearly Nelson Mandela had just become President of South Africa.  So congrats Alex!  For my readers here’s a link to his Deviant Art page where he displays a fair array of his burgeoning talent.  In what we believe is a positive step into branding and marketing the future covers of the Red Ned series will be laid out as if they were wood cuts, similar to The Liberties of London cover.  Giving a much more Tudor feel and identity to the stories when they come up in an Amazon search, this may involve reworking some of the previous covers for The Cardinal's Angels and The Queen's Oranges, so if you have an opinion please let me know. 

The other standard layout we will be continuing for both the Red Ned and Dark Devices series is the inside page of sketch art which will refer to a key factor of the story.  Even as storytellers’ writers still understands that a picture is worth a thousand words, so this will help set the scene and provide a little more eye candy for the Historical Fiction reader.

Now as a treat and a taster I give you the prologue of The Fetter Lane Fleece. 

Regards Greg

Prologue. Fleeing the Fleece

The snow covered mound on the rough cobbles crunched with the solid impact of his body and Ned whimpered as he rolled. Oh Christ that…that stung! The icy crystals set the skin of his bare back aflame, especially the long bloody scratches from that cursed sign. Well he hoped it was only the shock of the snow and ice that aggravated his current condition. It didn’t pay to investigate too closely what lay under the few inches of snow in a Liberties street. Dead dogs, piles of mouldering rushes and steaming kitchen waste where amongst the lesser ills. At least, remarked his daemon, it wasn’t the Fleete Ditch, a river of turds and tanner’s discharge. He’d dangled over that last week, seemingly for hours, on the brink of imminent death by drowning, as had Earless Nick’s luckless minion. No, no fear of that fate tonight. Instead he only had to worry about daggers, swords, cudgels, a butcher’s cleaver or two and the savage fury of an irate punk. See, said his daemon, nothing to worry about.

Rolling with the momentum of his sudden exit Ned staggered to his feet, and rendered slightly unsteady by his too solid landing, began to stagger off down Fetter Lane towards Fleete Street. A loud chorus of howls and curses from the Wool’s Fleece informed him that his solo sojourn was going to be of a very short duration. Damn. Ned hopped on one foot as he tried to continue his forward passage while at the same time attempting to pull on his left shoe. As for the rest of his clothes, his better angel may scold him for looking more naked than the wild Irish or bare breeched Scots, but unlike them he did have the ability to cloth his present nakedness. Just not now, thank the blessed saints for the shroud of night, even if the extra cold was shrinking his cods and setting his skin a prickle with goose bumps. If he continued much further in this ‘exposed condition’, his bollocks would be lumps either side of his neck and not even an hours delightful cajoling by Mistress Adeline could draw his pizzle out from its hiding spot.

Oh by the blessed saints why did the Twelve days of Christmas have to be so damnedly cold? Or Reedman’s brother, the stupid measle, so bereft of brains or commonsense?

Ned’s foot stamped down upon a thin layer of ice instantly breaking through the crust and he sank knee deep into the resulting pothole. Oh Christ! Oh Christ! Oh…Of a sudden his mind froze over in white pain as the water and muddy ice, chilled by weeks of Lord Frost’s breath, fountained up drenching his not so dangling nearest and dearest cods. The world around him blurred and he tried to draw breath to scream. Richard Reedman, you miserable bastard! If his cods were damaged or blighted the fool was going to suffer.

An angry cry from behind told Ned he didn’t have time to cater for clutching his frosty manhood. He needed to move, or else. The motivation of a prime kicking and thumping plus sundry assaults with cudgels and knives prompted his flagging efforts, and shivering as if he had the ague, Ned pushed on. The cries though increased in volume as the foisters of the Fleece rallied for a chase. Damn, damn, damn! This plan looked so good back at the Sign of the Spread Eagle. His angel remarked waspishly that it was warm in there by the blazing fire and he’d a full tankard of Rhenish in hand, so...

“Ere’s t’ stinking measle who ‘it me!” the fair Delphina screeched.

“A shillin’ ta the one what brings ‘im down!” The slightly muffled nasally voice of Flaunty Phil added. A hand over his broken nose may have hindered his speech, though an eager roar and cheer still answered the call.

Ned ignored his other shoe, gave up any further attempt at pulling on his shirt, doublet and hose and instead found a new burst of speed. Damn this! He just had to stop this dreadful habit of helping out friends with their Liberties follies. It was proving to be dangerous to his health, and by Satan’s great black hairy balls, so perishingly cold!

********

Download the ebook from Amazon to see how Ned fares in his latest Liberties adventure.

Regards Gregory House

The Cardinal's Angels Published on Amazon

Good day to my growing legion of devoted readers.  I have some excellent news, the latest Red Ned novel has been released on Amazon, The Cardinal’s Angels is now downloadable from Amazon US/Australia and Amazon UK.  So browse over have a look at the sample and read the continuing tales of the Red Ned’s involvement in the affairs of the court of Henry VIII. 

After the excellent reception from readers of historical mysteries to the previous Red Ned novels The Liberties of London and The Queen’s Oranges (especially in the UK) I’m am pleased to announce the release of the third story- The Cardinal’s Angels

In this novel we step back a little in time to see how Red Ned Bedwell, apprentice lawyer and aspiring rogue, fell into the dubious company of Meg Back, her amiable brother Rob and their aptly named retainer Gruesome Roger.  In a similar vein to the other stories, this latest offering blends humour, realistic portrayals of Tudor life and the deadly drama of the Royal Court as the affairs of the mighty spill over onto the commons of England.  

Download a sample from Amazon and bring a little bit of Tudor London into your life, after all good historical fiction needs you!

As the author of this splendid work I naturally think its pretty good, as does my superbly talented editor (Jocelyn), and I could burble on for pages on how this is the equal to PF Chisholm in wit and dry humour or has the sense of thrilling adventure of Rory Clements.  I could even say it that it surpasses the literary style of gasp…Barbara Cartland, the doyen of Pink Prose.  But I won’t, I will be strong and refrain from the tempting indulgence.  For it is up to you, the actual reader to make a valued judgement on this novel and leave a note to others on whether it was entertaining and amusing.  Please don’t leave it to a publicist or kind old aunt Flo keen to help out a beloved nephew.  Leave a review and help Indie writers.

Regards Greg

The Queen's Oranges Released!

The Queen's Oranges by Gregory House

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


Now as the author I could gush wonderfully about this, saying the novel was the equal of Patricia Finney’s Firedrakes Eye or a better view of the Tudor turmoil than Phillipa Gregory or even a tour de force like CJ Sansom’s Shardlake series. I won’t. That is for you, the reader, to make your own judgement. All I can give you are the opinions of my beta readers. They’ve said it is a great piece of period mystery, blending a hefty splash of humour with the politics and machinations of Tudor England and so forth.

Since I don’t pay them, they aren’t relatives and they’ve all expressed an eager willingness to vet my future stories, then just maybe it could be…true? So why don’t you cruise on by download a sample and see what you think.

It gives me great pleasure to announce the release on Amazon Kindle of my first full length novel The Queen’s Oranges. Red Ned Bedwell Apprentice lawyer and aspiring rogue having recovered from his ordeals in The Liberties of London and several other difficult tasks from his lords and masters, is once more plunged into the labyrinthine complexities of Tudor politics. This story involves an unnatural double murder, smuggling and the strange hint of a devious plot circling the King’s annulment. For Ned life would be so much easier if he also didn’t have to rescue Meg Black from the suspicion of heresy or find a vanished royal official. Oh yes and of course there are always these damned oranges!

Available:

Amazon US/Australia



Amazon UK


Regards Greg

The Queen's Oranges



View all my reviews

The Queen’s Oranges- A Cover! A story in Itself!

Good day to my growing legion of devoted readers.  First off, before we start this instalment of Red Ned’s Tudor blog, I would once more like you to take a moment to continue to think of those around the world undergoing threat or privation.  Disasters happen, and then all too soon our attention is drawn away by some other media event.  However the effects of the Japanese Tsunami and the continuing spread of nuclear radiation contamination doesn’t vanish when you change channels.  I ask you that if it is possible please donate or support a local/international charity of your choice.

 

Now on to the latest Red Ned news!  The Liberties of London novella is now almost across the complete internet spectrum firstly here at Smashwords, then secondly via their affiliate program through Barnes & Noble’s Nook and Diesel so far.  According to their updates, Kobo and Android will soon follow, with Sony, and Apple lagging a tad.  Right now you can acquire this (‘ahem’ to quote Lady Dellingham) magnificent piece of Tudor period fiction for the trifling amount of 99c!  In the meantime it is definitely available on Amazon Kindle at this link.  For those of you who have continued to ask for a hard copy, sorry, I fear that will still have to be much, much later this year.  But thank you for your interest.

Now on to the second book in the Red Ned Series—The Queen’s Oranges.  Within the next few days it will be live on Amazon and I will attach the link to this blog page.  In the meantime I thought we’d look at the cover art process for this novel.  In keeping with the theme of the last book, The Liberties of London, we have used a composition of the story elements.  I believe this is much better than the headless bimbo theme currently in vogue for almost every piece of historical fiction.  A wonderful article on that theme can be found here or my satirical version on Prognostications and Pouting.  As inspiration we’ve looked towards the wonderful early Dutch still life paintings of the mid 16^th to 17^th century.  As you can see in Claesz’s Still Life with Overturned Jug, Glass of Beer, and Food, an oil on canvas painted in 1635,it is fantastically full of life and colour. 
 

 Now after all that lofty discussion and inspiration we return the humdrum of real life. It came time for us to get the work done.  As Indies we have only our own resources to draw upon.  Though rich in talent and in theory, wealthy in experience, we have only the most basic tools available for graphics.  Thus improvisation is … well for us it is everything as you shall soon read.

Plan the First

Alex was to colour his excellent pen and ink sketch in Photoshop via the wonderful graphics tablet his loving parents had scrimped and saved for.  Well two weeks into this process and next to nothing had happened.  Alex, it seemed, had vastly overestimated his skills in Photoshop illustration, and fearing the undoubted wrath of his enraged parents, (here read me), had stayed silently reticent on his progress (read here very, very little).  The final editing was in its last flurry and we were almost ready to put it all together and…we had nothing, no maps, no cover and only the pen and ink sketch.  At this stage you can understand my hair pulling which achieved new levels of exasperation as soon as I discovered that Alex had also packed his not–so–well laptop so full of…ahh teenage stuff that only the odd miniscule kilobyte had room to squeeze through and run the poor thing.

A peremptory instruction finally had Alex grumblingly burn all his …ahh stuff onto a box full of discs.  Apparently he’d been under the impression that the magic backup fairy in size seven and a half boots (again once more you should read me here) was going to wave his wand and it would all be solved.  Not this time! 

All that took yet another day. Then four hours later the battery on Alex’s laptop, having staggered gamely along seriously depleted, promptly keeled over.  For its effort we awarded it a posthumous VC for gallantry above and beyond the call of duty.

So after all this we were still up that infamous creek with only the very beginnings of a sketch of a paddle.  The editing had been finished but we lacked the essentials for an ebook, i.e. cover and maps.  At this stage Lady Fortuna cast us her smile Alex’s way, and a spare mint condition netbook with all the required programs was offered for use.  Well actually it was given to Alex to use by the school and it was dragooned immediately into service.  At last we had a graphics program, now for the maps et al.

Plan the Second

Initially Alex being a teenager wanted to use Google maps and then snapshot, filter, overlay, highlight, colourize and…well I’m sure you get the drift.  His ‘client’ felt this would result in another very long exercise where much play and fiddling on the netbook programs could ensure little actual progress.  The ‘client’ then made an executive decision and curtly instructed the following ‘get a pencil and a pad and draw the damned thing off the screen!’  That process took less than an hour, and within two days after a ‘little’ further supervision and checking, we had scanned the excellent inked final versions ready for use. 

Now for the vexing problem of the cover.  Meg had offered to colourise the pen and ink and for a little while this was tempting.  She does have outstanding skill with colour as you can see in this example.  However we were still stumped for a cover.  Then as inspiration does, it struck in the strangest of circumstances.  At three in the morning I suddenly woke up with a Eureka moment.  Photograph an arranged still life and then Photoshop it.  Yes it could work!  I explained my idea to my dearest Uber editor, who to my chagrin was firstly already awake, and secondly had sketched out the idea on the back of an envelope about ten minutes earlier.

Plan the Third

A photographic studio was not at hand, so once more it was time to improvise.  The laundry (a rather small room on the eastern side of the house) was the least cluttered and had the whitest walls for light reflection.  So this was cleared and my Turkish carpet was tapped to the wall and draped over the freezer to provide a setting similar to that in Holbein’s Ambassadors.  Then a quick search of our re enactment gear pulled up a turned ash bowl, a Tudor period style pewter tankard and my twist pattern long dagger.  All this was artfully arranged as I said earlier to match the style of an early Dutch still life.  Easy, just go mad with the camera at variety of angles and light levels, a piece of cake!

Well no it wasn’t quite.  All this activity and moving carpets around had naturally attracted the interest and attention of our cats, who it transpired all wanted to help and none were so keen or so ‘helpful’ as my muse Myrtle.  Every couple of shots we had to pause and lift off cats, rescue other cats from knocked off daggers, stop them from climbing up their new vertical play gym (my carpet) and so on. 

In the end we had some hundred shots to pick from, and on the advice of my Uber editor two were selected for treatment via basic effects on Photoshop. 

As with every stage of this ‘simple’ project we ran into another snag.  The font we’d used for title upon the cover for The Liberties of London was perfect for this.  However it was currently locked away in Alex’s hors d’ combat laptop.  Now did desperation take hold and Alex was ‘requested’ to search through whatever options were available to him as to text styles.  The result was four choices.  One was discarded pretty quickly as way too modern while the other three scrutinised for both period character and also importantly legibility.  After a quick post around to a few of our beta readers one stood out as the most favoured and the winner is…

All that process is for now concluded, but we feel that the still life theme is worth continuing, so we will field some preliminary ideas for our up coming novels The Trade of the Thames and The King’s Counsel both to be released towards Fall.

In the meantime, as a shameless self publicist, check out my Tudor frolic The Liberties of London.  Download a sample.  If you like it splurge that 99c and help support ‘indie’ authors so that we, the crafters and wordsmiths, can directly supply you the reader with the best fiction possible as soon as possible.

Regards Greg and in conclusion the shot we had to put in!

Still life with Myrtle