With the long nights of midwinter approaching, allow me to lighten your days with Circle of Witches: The Midwinter Blog Tour!

For ten days, starting on December 10th, I’ll be making daily stops at blogs all around the web for interviews, guest posts, contests, and other fun stuff! If you’d like to keep me company, please subscribe to my feed, follow me on Facebook, or hook-up with me on Twitter to keep track of me during the tour as it happens!

– Margaret

A GOTHIC ROMANCE.
MISTY MOORS. ANCIENT SECRETS. FORBIDDEN PASSIONS.

Her mother had always been afraid. That’s what Damaris remembered. From the time she was a little girl until the day her mother died, she had seen the fear in her eyes.

But now she understood. Now she was afraid, too.

Young Damaris wanted more than anything to be happy at Thornoak, the ancient manor owned by her aunt and uncle. Adventuring through the wide, open beauty of the Dale in the company of her rambunctious cousins she rediscovered a joy she had thought lost with the death of her parents. And in the deep, storm-tossed eyes of Lauran Ashbrigg she was surprised to find an entirely new emotion.

But even under the warm and inviting sun, Damaris is chilled by the undeniable fact that the family which claims to welcome and love her is hiding truths from her: The truth of the Lady Stone. The truth of the Old Ways. The truth of moon and star and witchcraft.

The truth of her mother’s death.

Kindle Edition – Kindle UK – Nook Edition – Smashwords

I’ve been waiting a long time for this.

It started back in 1983 or 1984. I had two young sons I had just reared out of infancy and it had been a long time since I had written everything. I needed to prove to myself that I could still do it. So when my husband took the children for a vacation to visit their grandmother and aunt in California, I spent my own vacation (from them!) to write Circle of Witches.

I proved my point, and a few years later that gave me the confidence to take the leap in writing The Novice’s Tale and launching my professional career.

Over the past twenty-plus years, however, I have periodically submitted Circle of Witches to agents and publishers — the gatekeepers of the written word in 20th century America. And I received the same response time and time again: “What a wonderful book! But I don’t know how to market it.” Or who to sell it to. Or who might buy it.

Apparently it is not historical enough to be a historical novel; nor romantic enough to be a romance novel; nor lurid enough to be a horror novel. People enjoy reading it, but the industry doesn’t know who they can sell it to. And so you haven’t been allowed to see it.

But the world has changed. The success of independent publishing being driven by the Kindle, Nook, and iPad — which I have experienced first-hand in reissuing my out-of-print Frevisse novels — allows authors like me to bypass the gatekeepers and marketers and deliver the book straight to the readers.

And I am so very excited, at long last, to be able to offer this book to all of you.

So, if Circle of Witches doesn’t fit comfortably into an existing genre, what sort of books is it? A gothic romance in the classic sense of the term: Strange secrets lurking the forgotten recesses of ancient manor houses. Damsels in distress. Dark mystery mixed with starry-eyed romance.

Or, as my son insists on saying, “it’s like Twilight and Jane Austen had a baby”. (He is truly a comfort to me in my declining years…)

Circle of Witches has been released for both the Kindle and the Nook. It can also be read on any iPad, Android, Windows PC, Mac, or Blackberry device using either the free Kindle Reading Apps or the free Nook Apps for those platforms. It will also be available through the iBookstore and Kobo.com shortly, but those outlets take much longer to process new e-books than Amazon or B&N.

– Margaret

Sins of the Blood is a collection of three Frevisse short stories — “The Witch’s Tale”, “The Midwife’s Tale”, and “The Stone-Worker’s Tale” — being released exclusively for the Amazon Kindle. It also includes the all-new and entirely original Guided Tour of St. Frideswide: In 40 pages, we walk through both the nunnery and the village of Prior Byfield, discussing the history of the setting and revealing details never-before-known.

(Well, never-before-known to anyone except me.)

St. Frideswide, as it has developed over the course of the Frevisse series, is something like an iceberg: 10% has been visible through the novels and short stories, but there’s this immense depth that I’ve built up “below the surface” (so to speak) that I’m excited to be able to share with you.

THE WITCH’S TALE

Witchcraft has come to the peaceful village near St. Frideswide, and its foul touch is striking down those closest to the church. Can Dame Frevisse thwart the servants of the devil before the hellfire of hysteria sears the souls of the faithful? Or is there more to this magic than meets the eye?

THE MIDWIFE’S TALE

“Sisters! Come back! Please don’t leave us yet!”

Cisily Fisher has died in childbirth and now the village of Priors Byfield is held in a grip of fear. Can Dame Frevisse find the root of misery behind a murderer’s sin before the next lethal blow falls? Or will the village be lost in a hue and cry of terror? The gentling touch of the midwife may calm the tortured soul… or give birth to a bitter death.

THE STONE-WORKER’S TALE

When Frevisse is given bishop-pardoned leave to visit her cousin Alice at Ewelme, she is enchanted by the work of the sculptor Simon Maye. But Simon is enchanted by the beauty of Elyn, one of Alice’s ladies in waiting. Clandestine meetings have given way to sinful lust, and now the two lovers have disappeared. The servants whisper that the lovers have eloped, and secretly pine for the passion to do the same. Lady Alice believes her sculptor has been stolen away by jealous rivals and rages at the injustice. But Frevisse alone suspects there may be some darker truth behind the midnight vanishing…

A GUIDED TOUR OF ST. FRIDESWIDE

And so we turn to St. Frideswide’s in rural northern Oxfordshire. Imaginary, yes, but fully realized as an ordinary place much like many others common across England in both rural and urban settings by the 1400s. A wealthy widow founded it in the 1300s, saw to its beginning, and endowed it with lands and other income to sustain it – alas, not so fully as she intended to do before she died…

Kindle Edition

Why is this a Kindle exclusive?

The short version is that I’m trying to introduce Dame Frevisse to new readers. Amazon offers a unique program called the Kindle Owners’ Lending Library: Any Amazon Prime member who owns a Kindle can borrow books from the Lending Library for free. I’m hoping that making Dame Frevisse a part of the Lending Library will expose new readers to her stories.

But in order to get your books included in the Lending Library, you have to offer a title exclusively through Amazon. I didn’t want to take any of my existing books off the market, so I created Sins of the Blood and “A Guided Tour of St. Frideswide” as something that I could enroll in the program.

What if you don’t own a Kindle? Well, there’s some good news:

(1) The three short stories — “The Witch’s Tale”, “The Midwife’s Tale”, and “The Stone-Worker’s Tale” — are still being sold separately as individual e-book titles through Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Smashwords, iBooks, Google Play, and many other online bookstores. (It’s also relatively easy to find used copies of the original short story collections they were published in.)

(2) There are a wealth of Kindle Reading Apps which will allow you to read Kindle e-books on any iPad, Android, Windows PC, Mac, or Blackberry device. Basically, if you’re reading this blog post you’ll be able to read Sins of the Blood on the same machine.

(3) All of the books that I directly control the rights to are sold DRM Free. That means there’s no copy protection on the e-book files: If you buy the e-book from Amazon, you’ll be able to freely and easily convert it to any e-reader of your choice.

– Margaret

Happy St. Frideswide’s Day. We may be the only people remembering it outside of Oxford, England, so we’ll just have to party all the harder on her behalf, right?

For those who have wondered where Frevisse’s unusual name came from, it’s the French version of Frideswide. Frideswide seems to have been effectively unknown outside the English Midlands, except for a single church dedicated to her in France as St. Frevisse. Frevisse’s wandering parents may have been just a touch homesick when their daughter was born in France and gave her a name that reminded them of home. So I am never over-sensitive about how a reader may choose to pronounce Frevisse’s name. There is the French version, the English version, the dialect version from some particular part of England — or of France, come to that — and far be it from me to claim there’s only one true way to say it. Knowing Frevisse, I’m sure she responds to all of them with equal ease.

It’s St. Etheldreda I feel sorry for. An Anglo-Saxon princess (like St. Frideswide), her name degenerated over the centuries to Audrey and then to the adjective tawdry. Frideswide may be pronounced “Fryswyd” today, but at least she hasn’t become an adjective. That I know of, anyway.

– Margaret

The story goes thusly: Margaret of Antioch was a beautiful virgin who became a Christian in the days when persecuting Christians was fashionable among the Romans. For repelling the advances of a Roman official, she was arrested and put to many torments. During this time she was cast into a dungeon where the Devil himself came to persecute her. It is said he appeared as a dragon and finally, annoyed at her refusal to be terrified, he swallowed her whole. Then, either because she was holding a cross or made the sign of the cross, the dragon’s body split open and Margaret emerged unharmed.

Of course she was eventually martyred — by beheading in her case — and became a saint and – of all things — the patron of women in childbirth. (The way that, say, St. Laurence who was martyred on a grill over a fire is the patron saint of cooks; or St. Apollonia who was battered with stones and had her teeth knocked out is the patron saint of dentists.)

St. Margaret often appears in medieval art. If your see a graceful young woman portrayed with a dragon — sometimes emerging from his belly, sometimes leading him by a collar around his neck and a chain – that will probably be St. Margaret.

But I am not sharing her story out of piety. My real purpose is to share this picture:

To share this picture and show the sort of wicked humor medieval people were comfortable with in their religion and because every time I see it — the look on the dragon’s face, with his “victim’s” skirt still trailing out of the his mouth as she rises out of his stomach – I laugh out loud.

But more than just the humor, this illustrates another of the reasons that I can never stop researching. If I hadn’t studied saints as a way to better understand the medieval world view, I wouldn’t know St. Margaret of Antioch’s story, and this picture would be simply something to frown over in blank puzzlement at what it was all about.  The medieval world is not ours, and if we don’t know what we’re looking at in their context, much of the richness of the medieval world escapes us.  Pictures and other artwork were often layered with meanings no longer readily grasped but understood almost automatically in medieval times.

Decades ago I stood on the green before the west front of Wells Cathedral, able to do little more that say, “Wow.  Look at all those statues.”  A few years ago I stood there again and found myself automatically starting to “read” that west front like some giant book. After all my years of research, trying to learn to “think medievally”, the iconography that went with each statue and even where they were positioned on the cathedral’s front were layered with meanings for me. It was a vastly exciting experience, not least because I hadn’t come there intending to read it. Without thinking about it, I simply, automatically, started to, just as a medieval person would have.

Which I suppose explains a lot about my occasional disorientation with the 21^st century?

– Margaret

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Paperback – International E-Book

Thomasine sat in the far corner of the window bench in Domina Edith’s parlor, her hands folded in her lap, her gaze on the sunlit, empty yard below. Sir Walter and Master Montfort and all their men were gone. Sir Walter had taken Lady Ermentrude’s household with him. There had been a great clatter, with shouting and creaking of wheels and clanking of harness, but now there was only the mid-morning silence with, distantly, the calling of workers in the fields. Everything in the past few days might not have happened, except for Martha Hayward’s coffin waiting in the church for someone to come and take it to her people. Read more »

Ela clutched at Frevisse’s sleeve. “When I saw what they were doing, I went the back way round, into the church! To Domina Edith. She said I was to come get you! And him!” She gestured wildly at Chaucer. “She said to hurry!”

“Damn him,” Chaucer said without passion, and went for the door.

Jerking her sleeve free from Ela’s fingers, Frevisse followed him, overtaking him at the foot of the stairs, in the cloister walk.  “Your men?” she asked. “Can they be of use?”

Chaucer shook his head. “There’d only be blood shed to no purpose. I’ll have to stop him with words or nothing.”

Breathless with fear as much as haste, Frevisse nodded, gathered up her skirts and ran. Chaucer followed her. Read more »

A friend once phoned me after reading – I won’t say which of my later books – to exclaim at me with apparent indignation, “You used your own disease in the story!”  What could I say but “Well, yes.  There’s no point in letting it go to waste.

It’s a quality authors have: everything that happens is grist for a story or a character.  More than once, I’ve been in the middle of some very real emotional crisis and become aware that in the back of my mind I’m thinking, “Remember how this feels.  You can use it in a story sometime.”  Shuffling between two nurses down a hospital hallway, still groggy from surgery and anesthetic, with tubes and drainage bottles hanging from me, what did I find myself thinking?  “Remember how this feels.  You can use it in a story sometime.”  And I did, giving someone a wound high in one shoulder because I had some idea of how much movement he might have afterward.  Pain to the point of screaming in the bone from cancer?  I used that experience in a story as a character’s motivation for a final desperate act.  Feeling the life go out of a well-loved cat as I held her…  Let’s just say grief doesn’t get in the way of using even the saddest things.

So have my experiences added depth to my books?  Oddly, I can’t honestly say one way or another.  Mostly I’ve seen the cancer as a great annoyance and distraction, getting in the way of my work.  But I suppose having the likelihood of one’s own death – not simply the fact that one is going to die but the knowledge of what shape that death is probably going to have – looking back at you day in and day out for fourteen years must certainly affect one’s relationship to the world and work.

What I’ve mostly found, though, is that I’ve been increasingly compassionate.  The more I hurt, the more I want other people not to hurt.  The more miserable I happen to be, the more I want other people to be as happy as they possibly can.  I suppose as this desire has grown in me over the years, it has informed my writing, because I find myself often highly indignant at the murderers in my books.  How dare they do something so vile, so selfish and dreadful?

Of course the fact that they are my murderers gives me occasional pause when I find myself angry at them.  After all, whose fault are they if not mine?  And even more so mine because in order to write them believably, I have to find something in myself that understands them, something in me out of which I can make them real.  I’ve had people say to me, “You’re really Frevisse, aren’t you?”  But the truth is that I’m all my characters.  (I add with a wicked grin:  Consider that the next time you encounter Alys.)

Now, thinking about it here, I have to consider that very possibly it is this need to look at the dark parts of me joined with my own bodily miseries that has roused and nourished in me this profound and aching desire for other people’s well-being.  Knowing what it is to hurt, I want other people not to hurt.  So when someone tells me that my books have given them comfort in a hard and hurtful time of their life, that gives me very great pleasure.

– Margaret

The woman servant who had come with Lady Isobel was seated on the bench outside their chamber. She made no move to stop Frevisse, but Frevisse paused, turned from her intent to talk with Sir John and Lady Isobel because so casual a chance to talk to the woman might not come again.

“God’s greeting to you,” she said lightly, and nodded her head toward the door. “Your lord is still hurting?”

The woman, obviously bored at sitting attendance here, brightened, glad to talk about troubles. “Indeed he is. Wearying my poor lady with his needs and her so good to him she’ll not deny him anything.” She lowered her voice and said, leaning forward as if to give a great confidence, “Fancy, a big, strong man like him letting some passing peddler muck with his tooth because he’s afraid to have it drawn!”

Frevisse was not interested in Sir John’s toothache, but asked without a qualm at her own duplicity, “Do you suppose it was all the quarreling brought it on this time?”

The woman shrugged. “It comes on anytime it feels like, but I’d not be surprised. All that shouting would make anyone’s jaw ache.”

“They argued all the night, I’ve heard. And Sir John told Lady Ermentrude to leave.”

“Now that’s not quite right but close enough. Sir John was the one who tried to quiet it between them, but hardly a word in edgewise they let him have. We could hear them right through the door of the solar most of that evening. But the next morning when Lady Ermentrude came to leave, hardly a word was passed among them, except Lady Isobel sent my lord out to say, nice as you please, that he hoped, it would all come right after she’d thought on it and wouldn’t she break her fast before she left.”

“And did she?” Read more »

They were at the door to the church, already remiss in talking in the cloister and unwilling to be any later for Vespers. They slipped into the church, made apologizing curtseys to Domina Edith, and took their places in the choir stalls.

But once in her place, chanting the verses so familiar they did not need her thoughts, Frevisse felt the creeping impact of Dame Claire’s assertion. If she were right, someone had tried to kill Lady Ermentrude not two times but three. And it had to have been someone not of the priory, for none of the priory people went with her to the Wykehams or met her on the way back. So who, then? Someone who went to Sir John’s and Lady Isobel’s with her – or met her there or on the road on the way back to St. Frideswide’s. Whoever it was, they came with her into the priory and stayed to try again – and again.

So some of the questions Frevisse had been asking were no longer ones that needed answering, but at the very least Thomasine could no longer be considered guilty. If Dame Claire were right, even Sir Walter and Master Montfort would have to accept that.  Except this was somewhat subtle reasoning, at least by Master Montfort’s standards. He would not take Dame Claire’s word for it. He would say she was lying to protect the nunnery and refuse to hear her. Or, being male, he would say a mere woman should not dare to offer some female notion as fact. Montfort, the fool, and Sir Walter, the arrogant fool, would never waste their valuable masculine time seeking the truth when they thought they already had it.

Suddenly Frevisse found the curses in today’s chanting of Psalm 109 very applicable. “Let his days be few; and let another take his office… Let his children be vagabonds… Let the extortioner consume all that he has; and let the stranger spoil his labor.” And she did not care if that curse fell on Master Montfort or on Sir Walter or on both of them, so well they both deserved it. Read more »