MM Historical Fiction Christmas Bonanza

Get swept away to times long past.
Thirteen authors share their love of history through fiction.
Follow the website links after my post to read the authors’  articles
about their books and then go pick up a great read
for half-price or less from December 12 – 24!

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As part of the MM Historical Fiction Christmas celebrations, I’m offering The Reluctant Berserker at the reduced price of 99c

 The Reluctant Berserker by Alex Beecroft.

Can we talk about that cover for a moment? It’s probably my favourite cover out of all my books and is by the inestimable Kanaxa

We worked hard on getting this cover right – by which I mean that Kanaxa worked hard, and I kept saying things like “can you make that helmet look more like a spangenhelm,” and “can we make it a round shield please?” But as a result of that unflinching back and forth we ended up with a cover that is not only beautiful but is also a kind of microcosm of the book itself.

Say “Early Medieval England” or “Viking Age England” and most people will think “Dark Ages.” It conjures up visions of grim horsemen, battleaxes, snake-prowed Viking ships running up the beaches, disgorging angry armoured men. Burning villages, looting, rapine, war. A bit like the Vikings TV series where everything that isn’t bloody is brown.

That would naturally make you think of dark colours, maybe some battlements, flames against a lowering sky and an atmosphere of oppression and threat.

And that was exactly what I didn’t want for the cover of this book.

I understand why so many people who write books set in this period focus on the battles between Saxon and Viking, the war and terror that that implies. After all, they tell you as a writer to focus on conflict and what more obvious conflict is there than two bunches of people trying to kill each other with swords?

But I wanted to do something that was a bit less obvious.

You see I love the Anglo-Saxons. I have done ever since I discovered that they were the closest thing to the Rohirrim you could get in the real world. I studied Anglo-Saxon art and archaeology at university and did a Masters degree focussing on the Saxons’ pre-Christian beliefs in magic, medicine and the gods. As a result of which I read most of their extant literature (in translation.) I even learned to read Old English, although I have thoroughly forgotten it by now, so that I could begin to appreciate the way they used their beautiful language.

For the last twenty years, I’ve been a member of the Saxon, Viking and Norman reenactment society Regia Anglorum, which has certainly helped me when it came to getting the small details of this book right. For example, here I am by the fire playing the same kind of bone whistle that Leofgar carries up his sleeve in the book:

And yes, I know exactly what it’s like to sit in a longhall on a cold winter’s night with your eyes streaming from the smoke, smelling like you’ve been kippered, and hearing the wolves howl outside. Even the wolf part is true – Regia has a longhall in Kent, just outside a nature reserve on which there are wolves. Close enough to hear it when they sing.

I love the Saxons’ art, the amazing colours and brightness of their illuminated manuscripts, the gold and glitter and garnet of their jewellery. I wanted some of that sense of light and colour in my cover and by Jove I think I got it.

I love the thoughtfulness and romantic melancholy of their poetry. They felt that they lived in a diminished age, that great things had happened in the past and nothing now lived up to it. They built their wooden halls in the shadows of Roman walls and made songs about “the ancient works of giants.”

They had a cooperative and really quite egalitarian society – much better for women’s rights, social mobility and the treatment of peasants and slaves than the Norman culture that replaced them.

So what I wanted in this book was to show that society working, in the last years before the Viking raids began to turn into a Viking invasion. I wanted to show that society at peace, so that I could look a bit closer at the kinds of things that war doesn’t leave time for: music, magic, gender and the social construction of masculinity.

We know very little about how the Anglo-Saxons treated gay men, so I’ve had to borrow from what we know of the Vikings’ attitude. I feel OK about this, as the Angles were essentially the same stock as the Vikings, they shared the same gods and many of the same words. They shared a past. It’s not a stretch to think that their beliefs about sex were similar.

It’s both good news and bad news. On the one hand no one is thinking same sex relationships are unnatural, illegal or damned. On the other, it’s a proof of your masculinity to be the top, but woe betide the bottom. He is the object of ridicule and the same kind of contempt that Victorian society dealt out to fallen women.

So there’s a conflict. How the hell do you negotiate a relationship of equals in a culture that’s preoccupied with the assumption that one of you must be the bitch? If you’re a well respected, high born, dangerous warrior, can you ever dare to be some man’s boy? And if you’re poor and beautiful and dependant on charity from your local warlord – like an itinerant bard – how do you get him to accept that you will never submit to him because you’re just as much of a man as he is?

These questions and many more are answered in the story, which does in fact contain numerous sword-fights, fist-fights and other types of conflict both magical and mundane. War, after all, isn’t the be all and end all of everything. Even a society at peace is not necessarily free of bandits, backstabbers, supernatural horrors and men with lethal levels of entitlement.

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Visit all the authors participating in this
MM Historical Fiction Blowout.
Discover a new author. Find a new book to read.
Click on the “website” links to read the authors’ posts.

Or go direct via this list 🙂

Alex Beecroft The Reluctant Berserker Era: Early Medieval/Dark Ages Saxon Amazon  All Other Formats $0.99 Website | Amazon author page | Facebook | Twitter

JP Kenwood February and December (Dominus Calendar Series 1) Era: Imperial Rome Amazon Worldwide $0.99/.99p Website | Facebook | Twitter | Archive of our Own

Brita Addams Beloved Unmasked Era: Early 20th Century New Orleans Dreamspinner | Amazon $3.00 Website | Newsletter | Facebook | Twitter

Summer Devon & Bonnie Dee Simon and the Christmas Spirit  (Victorian Holiday Hearts series) Era: Victorian Amazon | Smashwords | Kobo | B&N | iTunes $0.99 Website | BD Facebook | BDTwitter | SD Facebook | SD Twitter

Anne Barwell On Wings of Song Era: WWI – 1920 Dreamspinner  $2.50 Website | Twitter | Queeromance Ink | Newsletter |Facebook

Joanna Chambers Unnatural  Era: Regency Amazon Amazon (UK)  Nook  iBooks  Kobo  GPlay $1.99 Website | Facebook | Twitter | Goodreads

Wendy Rathbone Ganymede: Abducted by the Gods Era: Bronze Age, fantasy, alternate myth Amazon $1.99 Website | Facebook | Newsletter (get a free copy of “Letters to an Android”)

Christina E. Pilz Fagin’s Boy: The Further Particulars of a Parish Boy’s Progress Era: Victorian Amazon | Kobo | Apple | Smashwords|B&N $0.99 Website | Twitter | Tumblr | Pinterest | Facebook

Silvia Violet Revolutionary Temptation Era: American Revolution Amazon Global | iBooks | Kobo | BN $0.99 Website | Facebook | Twitter | Pinterest | Instagram

Deanna Wadsworth Wrecked  Era: pre-Civil War Key West, Florida Dreamspinner .89c Dec.19 only Amazon | Google | Google Play | Nook | Kobo | iTunes $2.99 Website| Twitter | Pinterest | Goodreads|Facebook

Michael Jensen Man & Monster  Era: 1799, America Amazon $1.99 Website | Twitter | Instagram | Facebook

Charlene Newcomb Men of the Cross (Battle Scars I) Era: Medieval – 12th century Amazon $0.99/99p Website | Twitter | Facebook