Castles, Customs and Kings

A few weeks ago, I mentioned that The White Rajah and Cawnpore had both been featured in 'English Epochs'. This is a blog covering much of British history and books written about it. 

The blog owner is Debra Brown, an American author with a passion for British (or she keeps insisting "English") history. She has just (together with M M Bennetts) edited a chunky book, Castles, Customs and Kings which will be published by Madison Street Publishing next month. As she was kind enough to draw my books to the attention of her blog readers, I'm returning the favour.

Castles, Customs and Kings is not a book to be read from cover-to-cover: the paper version comes in at about 500 pages. In any case, it's an anthology, rather than a single narrative. An impressive array of historical novelists have each contributed a short chapter on some aspect of British history that interests them. Obviously, most have chosen to write about the eras that they cover in their novels and a certain amount of more or less blatant plugging rears its ugly head.

As with all anthologies, there are significant differences in quality and style between the different chapters. However, the editors have done a good job of making sure that all of them pass muster. There are some contradictions between different authors discussing the same period. However, history is not an exact science, and I appreciated seeing the way in which different commentators came to different conclusions. Some chapters carried more authority than others and this is reflected in the fact that some produce bibliographic references and others do not.

I was surprised at the distinctly 'old-fashioned' feel of much of it. It reminded me of history is that I read as a child – books which were quaintly out of date even then. This is history as Michael Gove would have it. There is some social history, but generally the writers concentrate on battles and Kings and the doings of the rich and famous. I found the approach charming and reassuring. In the end, most people are more interested in the steps of the dances in the Regency period than they are in the detail of a skivvy's timetable. As an author who is unashamedly old-fashioned in my approach to historical writing, I rather enjoyed it. It did tell me things I didn't know and sparked an interest in some people and places I hadn't heard of before, but it is in no way a textbook. It's an amusing trot through British history and excellent bedtime reading, but don't expect it to help your children with their school exams.

Many of the authors seem to write historical romances and it is a book which will appeal particularly strongly to readers of this genre who want a little more history and a little less fiction. For me, it was literary comfort food – a recollection of childhood, warm and satisfying, if a little on the sweet side.

Love has no boundaries. Discuss.

Apparently, the planned film on James Brooke's life may feature his romance to a Brunei princess. Of course, I'm sceptical about this 'romance' as I am firmly convinced he was gay, but there are stories that he married a local princess. (Not that the two possibilities are entirely mutually exclusive.)

The person who told me this wondered if the idea of an inter-racial romance would work in a Hollywood movie. That raised an interesting point.

In Cawnpore, John Williamson leaves Borneo and travels to India, where he falls in love with an Indian noble. Although reviews of Cawnpore have been very good (better than for TheWhite Rajah), sales have been disappointing. I asked my publisher if she had any idea why this might be and she came up with a few. For example, things like the cover design might have put Cawnpore at a disadvantage. I think her instincts are sound and her ideas made sense. Then she said that she had noticed that stories featuring inter-racial romance generally did not sell well.

I was shocked. Yet it fitted with stuff I remembered from years ago, when I worked on romance magazines for teenage girls. Studies have shown that romance magazines featuring mixed-race couples on the cover sold significantly less well than those where the couple were both of the same race.

I wonder if this is still true. I have a horrible feeling that it is. I am sure everyone can tell me about Hollywood movies that do star a mixed-race couple, but they seem to be a tiny minority of all the hit films that Hollywood turns out. In an attempt to see if I was imagining this, I checked out Sky Movies' "Top 100 Rom-Coms at the box office" and didn't even see a black face until number 30, Coming to America. This starred Eddie Murphy. The love interest here was Shari Headley, who is also a person of colour. In fact, based on the top 30 films listed there, the love interest is as likely to be a different species (the mermaid in Splash) as a different race.

I know that, statistically, people are more likely to settle down with someone from their own racial group. But, living in multi-cultural London, I see mixed-race couples all the time. Only this morning, my Facebook feed was full of photos of friends of mine who married at the weekend and who are definitely not both the same skin colour. So why do we apparently struggle to accept in fiction what we see all around us in fact?

There is an obvious example of a successful movie featuring an inter-racial romance and that's Disney's hit, Pocahontas. But then, that's a cartoon.

Do we find it so difficult to accept that real-life people can love other real-life people with a different skin colour to their own? And, if this is the case, what does that say about us?

Reviews of 'The White Rajah'

I keep saying how important reviews are. It's not just Amazon. A lot of people are becoming disillusioned with Amazon reviews and there is a school of thought that says that the reviews on sites like Goodreads are a more reliable guide to the quality of book. So, for those of you who haven't seen them, here are some of the things people have said about The White Rajah in places other than Amazon.


On Goodreads:

A great 'little' read… It is written with a delicate touch, very cleverly taking the reader to the time and place, the characters, mainly based on real people, are believable, likeable and hateable with all the human frailties and characteristics that draw the reader in… Would recommend as a good read for one and all.

… full of rich details …

… This well-written biographical novel is a young man's adventure story as well as his moral coming-of-age…

Ripping yarn…

... Worth the read, that's for sure.

I loved this book…

Very well written and nicely done…


Smashwords

Absolutely brilliant. A fast paced, perfectly edited, superbly written novel that kept me enthralled from the first word…


Bloomsbury Review

... An interesting tale, well told...

Any reviews, anywhere, help sales (and The White Rajah is still selling, slowly but steadily). A few sentences saying what you like (or even what you hate) about the book are more important to potential readers than a star rating, so go ahead and knock yourselves out. Thanks.

English Epochs

I've just got back from a few days away, to see that 'English Epochs 101' featured Cawnpore last week, having covered The White Rajah the week before. Every Wednesday, 'English Epochs' features a few historical novels, giving some less well-known writers a chance to be seen. It's a useful service to readers and invaluable to writers, so I'm happy to mention it here.

When it's not helping out new writers, 'English Epochs' has posts on all sorts of oddities from English history. Whether it's health and medical treatment in Victorian England or the story of Simon de Montfort, there are some nicely laid out little snippets that may inform or entertain. They're not that easy to find, though. Look for the 'Popular Posts' listings toward the bottom of the right-hand side of the homepage or the index to the blog archive below that.

Why I should have settled for writing contemporary fiction

I'm working on a new book set around Napoleon's invasion of Egypt. At present (in my very first draft) it has this paragraph:

On Thursday 28 June, Burke and William walked as usual to the granite column and saw, but a few miles offshore, the sails of a naval squadron. Burke focused the telescope and saw, to his relief, not the tricolore of France but ...

I was about to write 'the White Ensign' when I thought to check. And yes, the modern White Ensign was only introduced as the standard flag for British warships in 1864. Thank you Wikipedia. Also courtesy of Wikipedia we have:

"Ships flew the colour of ensign corresponding to the squadron to which they were attached, which was in turn determined by the seniority of the admiral under whose command the ship sailed (a rear admiral of the red was senior to a rear admiral of the white)."

At the time of the Battle of the Nile, Nelson (who commanded the British force) was Rear Admiral of the Blue, so my sentence now ended with 'the Blue Ensign'. At this point a friend (well, he was a friend then) pointed out that the Blue squadron was generally assigned to patrol the Pacific. (Hence, he said, the fact that the Australian and New Zealand flags are based on the Blue Ensign.) Was I sure that it was the Blue squadron at the Battle of the Nile? And, to worry me further, he produced a painting showing one of the ships involved flying the White Ensign.

I shouldn't have let that painting bother me. Paintings are not photographs and battle pictures were very seldom done by artists who were actually at the scene. Sometimes I have seen quite famous paintings of incidents that I have researched thoroughly, and the paintings are simply wrong. In this case, I have had a look at a couple of paintings that were done not that long after the events. 'The Destruction of 'L'Orient' at the Battle of the Nile' is quite a famous painting done early in the 19th century and it shows a Red Ensign. Thomas Luny's much reproduced painting shows a White Ensign.

Still, there was clearly room for doubt, especially as none of the contemporary paintings I found had a Blue Ensign. So I started through the accounts of the battle. Most serious histories point out that Nelson was an Admiral of the Blue, but they say nothing about his ensign. I even found a contemporary account by someone who was there and who had logged every incident his ship was involved in, but, of course, he would have assumed that anybody reading his work would know what the colours were, so he doesn't mention them.

Finally, after a fruitless couple of hours, I decided to stick with the Blue Ensign. But I might call in on the National Maritime Museum to make sure.

And what difference does all this research make to the finished novel? One word. One word in a paragraph which may not even survive to the final draft.

And that, my friends, is why historical novels take so long to write and are worth every penny of their pathetically inadequate cover price.

Thank you JK Rowling - and thank you, readers!

So JK Rowling's latest sold 1,500 copies when published anonymously (having been turned down by one publisher who said it was "well written but quiet"). That's with proper distribution in bricks and mortar shops and with an endorsement by Val McDermid on the cover. It had good reviews too.

Although there has been the odd bitchy remark from fellow writers, JK Rowling does not attract the sort of loathing that is reserved for the likes of Dan Brown. This latest effort has probably increased the affection that many of us seem to feel for her. It was brave to publish anonymously and the good reviews suggest that there is more to her than hype. (Although I would have thought most people who had read her work should have realised that already.) Most importantly, it has made the rest of us feel a lot better about our own sales.

I got my latest royalty statement this week and, instead of burying my head in my hands and weeping, I consoled myself with the fact that, although I have practically no bricks and mortar distribution and Val McDermid doesn't know me from Adam, 'The White Rajah' has sold getting on for half as many copies as JK Rowling. The sad truth is that only 2% of published works sell more than 500 copies. I am delighted that 'The White Rajah' is part of that 2%.

Thank you to everyone who has put their hands in their pockets and bought a copy. Most of the people I know would say that they think that books are generally a good thing. But unless people are prepared to give unknown authors a chance, the reality is that we will end up with a few very popular authors producing new volumes featuring established characters while original writing that is not aimed firmly at the bestseller chart simply languishes and dies. JK Rowling has done everyone a favour by highlighting the difficulties that most authors face.

History can be complicated

There's a widespread view nowadays that European rule of what are now seen as Third World countries was a bad thing. Surely the Europeans were wicked colonisers? Perhaps we brought some good things but, on the whole, we were exploiting other countries and robbing them of their independence.

The White Rajah has, at its centre, the question of whether European rule conferred more benefits or did more harm. Was James Brooke a merchant adventurer, enriching himself at the expense of the natives of Sarawak? Did his paternalistic rule rob them of their independence? And were the military steps he took to maintain his rule legitimate defence or bloodthirsty vengeance?

The book tries to show both points of view. It's interesting, though, to see that at least some of the modern inhabitants of Sarawak have come down very firmly on one side of the argument - and it's not necessarily the one you would expect. A petition on the internet calls on the government of Malaysia to:

remove the labeled of 'Colonizer/Penjajah' to White Rajah of Sarawak in history textbook and other media and platform as it was offensive to Sarawakian and a fake and manipulative facts of history and study material for our young generation. 

In the interests of continuing to keep some sort of balance to the argument, I'll point out that there's a negligible number of signatures as yet. Let's see if that changes.

You can see the petition at http://www.gopetition.com/petitions/remove-labeled-of-colonizerpenjajah-to-white-rajah-of-sarawak-in-history-textbook.html