(click for sample PDF)

I’ve put together a little booklet containing the first chapter from A Play of Heresy. If you click here you’ll get a PDF that you can read online; peruse on your Kindle, Nook, or other e-reader; or print out as a cute little pamphlet.

– Margaret

I was not entirely in error when I posted I was “slowly bettering”, but a more accurate report seems to be “getting along, yes, but taking a boringly long time about it” and it’s keeping me from doing nearly as much as I would like.

Meanwhile, having posted notice here of Joliffe’s next book, A Play of Heresy, I have to comment on the description of it offered on Amazon.com, beset with errors as it is.  To the good, the first sentence is only slightly misleading – if it’s understood that “only slightly” is in comparison to the second sentence which has a completely false statement in it.  Still, on the whole, the description is better than what my publisher originally had in mind for the cover.  For reasons best known to those who wrote it, it gave away every major plot point except the answer to the final mystery.  A masterpiece of its kind, it did everything in its power to completely spoil just about every surprise the story contained.  I’m afraid you’ll have to take my word for it; for obvious reasons, I’m not going to quote it here!

I’ve come to appreciate that what goes on a cover to describe a book is a finer art than you might think.  Ideally, what goes on the cover should give enough detail to interest a reader in trying the book without giving so much away that there’s no point in reading the book at all.  At the same time, in an attempt to rouse interest, it shouldn’t be so inaccurate that the reader is annoyed when he discovers how badly he’s been misled.

Before my editor began kindly letting me see the proposed cover copy and allowing me to make changes to it, I had two unhappy experiences with too much being revealed, spoiling carefully crafted plot points.  Only once since then – due to a confusion of circumstances – has cover copy gone without my seeing it, and so on the jacket flap of the hardcover The Traitor’s Tale there are at least eleven errors of fact, including the name of the title character.  An impressive display of inaccuracy, to say the least!

– Margaret

The year is on the turn. The first leaves are scattered on the driveway, fallen without even troubling to change color, tired and done before their fellows still holding to the trees. But even their green is dulled, tired with the weeks of summer, the brightness faded. And while the days are still warm, there’s a different coolness to the nights, promising that soon a blanket, neglected all summer, will be needed toward dawn.

I love the changing times of year, when the sense of time passing is so clearly before us. Someone once asked me why I have so much weather in my books. I said because weather is so integral to life that to leave it out of a story lessened the texturing I try for in my writing. The same holds true with seasons. The time of year often weighs heavily on how the characters live their lives.

That said, I’d like to claim that the terrible, cold, wet weather that permeated The Servant’s Tale, The Outlaw’s Tale, and The Bishop’s Tale was not my fault. Chronicles covering those years tell how bad the weather was, and so the weather was bad in my stories, too. I promise you that I greatly enjoyed setting The Boy’s Tale in warm, dry, sun-filled summer days!

A little while ago I saw someone post their bookmark graphics to Facebook. And I thought: “I have some of those!” So here’s a little Joliffe for your enjoyment…

The image of Joliffe here is taken from a 15th century painting by Carlo Crivelli — “The Virgin and Child With Saint Jerome and Saint Sebastian”. When I saw it in a book of period paintings, I immediately thought, “That’s Joliffe”. I pointed it out to my son, and he surprised me by putting together these very handsome bookmarks (which I’ve been handing out for the past several months).

– Margaret

The almshouses which feature in both “Heretical Murder” and “Lowly Death” were founded in 1424 as part of the Charity of Sir Richard Wittington. This is the same “Dick Wittington” of nursery tales and Roald Dahl’s poem “Dick Whittington and His Cat”.

Whatever the reality of the cat and of the bells of London bidding him return, the historical Whittington was indeed “thrice Lord Mayor of London town” and died an extremely wealthy man, leaving provision in his will for the endowing of a library in London and these almshouses connected to a college of priests at St. Michael Paternoster church, all of which was duly done by his executors.  Much disappeared in the next century, courtesy of the Tudors, and the church burned in the Great Fire of the century after that but was rebuilt on the same site and is still there; and although Whittington’s library is gone, his almshouses still exist. Here’s an engraving of them from 1850:

Another from 1827:

And a last from 1880:

In 1966, the charity rebuilt the almshouses, moving from Highgate to East Grinstead. They now provide 56 homes for elderly ladies and a few married couples. Although no longer in the center of London, they still serve their original purpose after almost 600 years.

– Margaret

Most of The Murderer’s Tale takes place at Minster Lovel, the church and manor house of the Lovell family. As I mentioned in my author’s note for the book, this is a real place. You can still visit the ruins, which are both beautiful and haunting:

It was strange to so recently revisit a place filled with such life and hope in The Murderer’s Tale and then see these beautiful but utterly different photographs from centuries far-removed.

– Margaret

“The Stone-Worker’s Tale” and “Winter Heart” have been added to the Master Chronology of Frevisse and Joliffe Books. Both stories take place in 1454, two years after the events of The Apostate’s Tale.

– Margaret