Tag: magic

I’m delighted to welcome Sarah Dahl to my blog today to give us inside information on how she approaches her research.

Over to you Sara…

How research into a tricky topic creates magic on the page: Viking healing taken a step further

“Healer – The Gift of Dreams” is the fifth Tale in the Tales of Freya collection of sensual short stories.

Viking farmer Magnus is plagued by a demon. Since his wife’s death, the dreaded Mara tortures his body and mind. Powerless, he sends for a healer, the unexpectedly young and beautiful Audr … Are her sensual powers and his unleashed virility enough to banish the demon from his bed?

My heroes: the “simple” people

The Tales of Freya are set in the Viking age, and therefore require a lot of research into the period. I’m quite firm when it comes to the historical aspects of daily life and how people lived together then. The big politics and power play bore me. I don’t write kings and queens – my heroes are healers and housewives, warriors and monks. In every Tale I zoom into the lives of “simple people” and their desires and hopes, then give the stories a sensual and erotic twist. In the end, my characters are changed and set on a new path, which doesn’t always have to be a simple Happy Ever After.

Is there an authenticity of emotions?

Authenticity is key. I have trusted Viking age experts and re-enactors at hand to make sure the details are historically correct and events could have happened the way I write them. Even more important and harder to agree on is the psychological aspect, though: What and how did these people probably feel about certain things? What were their morals, expectations, rules of living together? What was their world view? Over time, I became more certain about what makes believable characters here. Luckily, my readers love the stories’ in-depth exploration of emotions and passions just as much as the authenticity to the period. But there is one very central aspect that so far I only touched lightly: Their spiritual world views and thinking.

Embracing the Vikings’ spiritual lives – finally

Because religion and beliefs are a very delicate and hard-to-grasp subject for today’s people (me included), I so far shied away from including too much spirituality in my stories. Yes, gifts to the spirits and gods were common and pagan rituals central to their lives, but: I didn’t want to overload my short stories with too much side-baggage and completely focus on the central plot line. And I admit to some reluctance to interpret too deeply what little we know today of the Viking spiritual lives. But then: as a self-respecting author setting her stories in the Viking age, I couldn’t avoid the topic forever. I didn’t expect it to be central to a sensual short story, though. Until I read a research piece that surprised me.

Sensuality in healing?

In one text about Viking spirituality the author hinted that, in contrast to our modern religions and healing, Viking healing rituals might very well have included sensual aspects. That of course made me listen up. Sensuality for healing? A hands-on and personal ritual that wasn’t only comforting and physically and mentally healing – but which included sexual aspects? Unfortunately, we don’t know much more. My experts were at a loss, too. Sources are just too scarce to judge. It was just a side note.

Daring to interpret and make it my own

The topic simmered in my writer’s brain, and I came up with the idea of a female healer (most were then female) and how she could create magic … to heal a desperate young man. Born was the story of the devastated Magnus, who, after the loss of his wife and child, is mentally and physically unable to go on with life. He calls for a healer, and instead of the old woman he expected he and the readers are surprised by young and attractive Audr. She sets to work with him, in a sensual ritual that includes his body and mind. But are her powers stronger than his demons? When she is gone, he finds that the greatest gift was always right in front of him …

Research reading as source for inspiration

The inspiration for this story came, as often, from reading a research piece, and thinking it further, wondering what the historical findings said about the people’s lives in that era. The research I had to do for Audr’s healing rituals was great fun, but I had to flesh out and interpret a lot. Sources are thinly spread and much is tinted by today’s views on the world. Which in turn also means a lot of writing freedom. I created a very personal and intimate ritual for Magnus, and something ignites between him and his healer that goes beyond what I imagine would be Audr’s approach with other patients. Audr’s spell is just too strong …

Author bio:

Sarah Dahl lives on the edge of the rural German Eifel and writes historical fiction (novels and short stories) primarily set in the Viking age. She also works as an editor, translates, and coaches new writers in German and English. She is interested in everyday life in bygone centuries and the human stories that may have occurred behind the hard, historical facts. Her author page is: sarah-dahl.com

Links: mybook.to/HealerSarahDahl

Amazon.com: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07BVWD3YD

Amazon.co.uk: https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B07BVWD3YD

Author page: sarah-dahl.com/books

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Many thanks Sarah; great stuff.

Happy reading everyone,

Jenny x

Guest Post from Tracey Norman: Thinking magic

By Jenny Kane

On November 18, 2017

In Audio, Blog, Books For Children, Fiction, Historical fiction, Jennifer Ash, Jenny Kane

Today I’m delighted to welcome fellow Exeter Author Association member and friend, Tracey Norman, to my site. Tracey is an actress, audio book narrator and writer…and there isn’t much she doesn’t know about witches. Why not grab a coffee and have a read…

Hi Jenny – and thank you for inviting me to talk about my writing!

I’ve written stories and poetry since I was very young, but it is only in the last couple of years that I have finally taken the plunge and decided to actually do something with my work. That all started in 2015, when I was invited to contribute a short story to Secret Invasion, a Lovecraftian-themed horror anthology which was being put together to raise money for MIND. I wasn’t hugely knowledgeable about Lovecraft’s work, so I decided to marry what I did know with my deep love of history. Thus, Dark Words was born.

The story is told from two perspectives, one modern-day and one from the 1930s, as an archaeologist works on a site on Dartmoor and accidentally uncovers not only a dark and horrific secret, but also why an entire village was drowned beneath a reservoir in the late 1930s. It takes as its inspiration the terrible mind control of “Asenath Waite” from Lovecraft’s The Thing on the Doorstep and the various artefacts which lie unseen and quiet beneath the waters of the Fernworthy Reservoir, not far from Chagford in Devon. Having spoken to a few archaeologists and curators about the submerged bridges, hut circles and boundary markers, I found that no one really knows much about the village – so in Dark Words, I have given it my own back story, as well as explaining why so much archaeology should be lost beneath the waters of a reservoir. Believe me, it was for the best….

The normally submerged, Fernworthy clapper and medieval pack bridge

I’m delighted to say that Dark Words has been accepted in another anthology, Fairy Tales and Folklore Reimagined, which is due out shortly from Between the Lines, a publisher in Minneapolis.

Something happened in 2016 which changed my perception of my writing forever. I accidentally became a playwright. In 2015, some friends and I had started Circle of Spears Productions, a professional audio production house and theatre company. Our initial focus had been on gathering authors and working with them to turn their books into audio. I thought it would be good if I could write something for us to perform for a summer season to build up the theatre side. Again, I wanted to blend my love of history into my writing, so I kicked a few ideas around and eventually hit upon the idea of preserving a moment in history by using the actual words spoken by those involved. I decided to try to use the words from a witch trial. This began a wonderful relationship with the fabulous team at the Museum of Witchcraft and Magic in Boscastle, Cornwall, who were incredibly supportive and helpful right from the outset and who introduced me to the woman who has since become an obsession for me.

Gimmerton case paper

In Lyme Regis, Dorset, in 1687, a woman named Deanes Gimmerton went on trial for witchcraft. Hers is one of the most complete written records of an English witch trial. The papers consist of four pages of witness evidence from one of her ‘victims’, his parents and the mother of a second ‘victim’, who had actually died two years previously as a result of being ‘bewitched’. What fascinated me the most, however, was the fact that the accusation had arisen after Deanes shared a pipe of tobacco with her young victim. A simple, everyday action that she probably didn’t think twice about and yet which had such staggering consequences.

My play WITCH tells Deanes Gimmerton’s story using three fictitious characters – Margery Scrope, the accused, Thomas Latimer, her accuser and Sir William Tyrell, the landowner-magistrate who has to evaluate the accusation to see if it should proceed to trial. However, as there was so little of Deanes herself in the papers – no indication of a plea or a verdict – I needed to research more widely to build Margery’s character and she ultimately became an amalgamation of the experiences of Deanes and about seven other women.

Tyrell, Margery and Latimer

WITCH was originally intended to run for a summer season at the Museum of Witchcraft and Magic (and a more fitting venue I cannot imagine). However, over the course of the summer of 2016, something changed. At our second performance, we were asked if we used it as Theatre In Education and this resulted in our first school booking. Since its premiere in July 2016, we have performed WITCH 54 times and have dates booked for 2018 already. WITCH has become its own entity and that, I think, is because it tells not just Deanes’s story, but the story of all the women – and men – like her, who found themselves accused of witchcraft as a result of some ordinary, everyday action like sharing a pipe of tobacco.

I am delighted to have been given a contract by Troy Books in Cornwall to expand on the research I did for WITCH and write a book about it. I have been looking further into Deanes’s story to try to find out what happened to her, but she is frustratingly invisible in the historical record. As I write this, I have just ordered a couple of documents from the National Archive, where I am spending the day on Friday of this week, to try to find some mention of Deanes in the legal records of 1687 and hopefully discover her fate. I am incredibly excited at the prospect of seeing the original court documents in the flesh, but as Deanes has been a huge part of my life for so long, I know that it will also be an incredibly emotional moment for me if the information I am seeking is actually in those documents.

So what leads on from witch trials? Well, for me, it was dragons. I have always been a rather eclectic writer and am totally unable to stick to just one subject or genre, so I followed WITCH by self-publishing a story I wrote for my daughter when she was about three years old. She is now ten, so it was about time something happened to this particular story! Sammy’s Saturday Job is the tale of a little dragon who desperately wants to be a firefighter, but when she finally gets the chance, everything goes wrong. She has to think creatively and persevere in order to put things right and save the day.

And now? Well, now it’s elves. And more dragons. The dragons haven’t appeared yet, but it’s high fantasy, so it won’t be long before they show up. At the moment, though, I am having some difficulty in persuading my elves to stick to the chapter plan. As someone who, in the past, just sat down and wrote with no plan anywhere in sight, the fact that I actually took the time to plot an entire book is nothing short of miraculous, so the elves really do need to get with the programme.

This is the first in a projected series of books about a young elf who turns her back on the life her influential family has mapped out for her and follows her as she travels the length of the Empire in which she lives, learning new skills and trying to find a place where she belongs. The central character is my gaming alter ego, who, again, has been with me for a long time and whose back story I really wanted to explore. However, when I was planning the first book, The Battle for Dragonheart, I realised that it was not her story that I needed to tell, but her mother’s. Then, as I started that story, I realised that it wasn’t her mother’s story, either – not entirely. A completely new character made herself known and Dragonheart, the first of The Fire-Eyes Chronicles, is her story.

I would have loved to be able to take part in this year’s NaNo, but unfortunately, I have to grab my writing time whenever and wherever I can in between everything else I do, so the chances of me reaching 50, 000 words in a month is, sadly, highly unlikely. However, I do have the advantage of being a member of the Exeter Authors Association, which provides me with plenty of opportunities to discuss my writing with other authors and the 2018 programme of events we have put together will certainly encourage me to ensure that Dragonheart is finished sooner rather than later. There are a number of books to plot in the Fire-Eyes series, as well as a bunch of rather interesting (non-sparkly) vampires waiting in the wings and periodically trying to grab my attention. It looks like 2018 will be a very busy year….

You can find out more about WITCH at www.traceynormanswitch.com

WITCH’s Twitter handle is @WITCHplayCoS

You can buy the audio play of WITCH from www.circleofspears.com/store

You can also follow me on Facebook – @TraceyNormanWITCHbook and @TraceyNormanauthor

Secret Invasion is available as a print on demand, with all proceeds going to MIND – https://www.justgiving.com/fundraising/secretinvasion

Sammy’s Saturday Job is available as an ebook and a paperback – https://www.amazon.co.uk/Sammys-Saturday-Job-Tracey-Norman-ebook/dp/B0736DL7KP

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Thank you ever so much Tracey- fabulous blog.

Happy reading everyone,

Jenny x

Meet Sammy Rambles!

By Jenny Kane

On February 8, 2017

In Blog, Books For Children, Fiction

Today I’m delighted to be joined by fellow Devon author, Jenny T Scott. Jenny has written a great children’s series, of dragons, magic, and mayhem. If you loved The Dragon Slayer’s Academy series, or Harry Potter, then you’ll love Sammy Rambles.

Greetings! Thank you Jenny Kane for the opportunity to talk about castles and dragons on your blog!

To start at the very beginning, Sammy Rambles is a ten year old boy who is being bullied at school. His parents decide he must change schools and by chance, they meet Sir Lok Ragnarok, headmaster of Dragamas School for Dragon Charming and things change very quickly.

In book one, Sammy Rambles and the Floating Circus, Sammy receives a dragon egg on his first day at school, which hatches into his very own dragon. But as he settles in and makes new friends, he learns of a dark fate hanging over the school. An enemy, known only as the Shape are trying to destroy all the dragons and close the school.

Not wanting to return to the bullies and his old school, Sammy sets about finding out who or what is behind the Shape and trying to stop them.

There are five books in the Sammy Rambles series and free sample chapters available to read at www.sammyrambles.com. Sammy has five problems to solve and he uncovers things about himself and his family along the way. Although the books weren’t written for a specific audience, I’ve had feedback that children as young as six are reading the Sammy Rambles books and their parents and grandparents are also enjoying the story, which takes place on multiple levels. Apparently, the oldest Sammy Rambles reader is aged ninety-six!

I wrote the whole Sammy Rambles story, around half a million words split over the five books, by hand, using pen and paper, filling many notebooks. As I’m not tied to a computer or laptop, I can write anywhere at any time and then type it all up later, preferably sitting on the floor beside the fire.

I used to write on my commute to work, in every room in the house, while walking around or sat on the sofa. There were times when it was too dark to write, so I bought a pen with a torch attachment and carried on writing. I even tried writing with my left hand as the ideas for the Sammy Rambles story, the characters, the plot and endless dialogue conversations just coming and coming and more than once I have fallen asleep with a pen in my hand.

Some of the characters definitely have traits of people I know, although no character is modelled on any one person. I remember sitting in a transport café and a father and his twin sons sat at the table next to me. The boys were being rather naughty jumping around the seats and backchatting their father. They were the inspiration for Sammy’s classmates Gavin and Toby. Some of Sammy’s teachers are loosely based on teachers I had, or would like to have had, at school. I challenge anyone not to have wanted Commander Altair as their housemaster.

At a recent ‘meet the author’ event, I was asked why Sammy was a boy and whether I had considered using a strong female role model instead. Looking back, I had many good role models, both male and female, if you look closely at the books, there are strong female characters, Sammy’s best friend, Dixie Deane, (who also has her own problems and story within the story). I have given Sammy’s mother a prestigious car and career as well as her caring nurturing side and a talent for baking iced buns and cookies. There are also strong female enemies in the stories so whether the protagonist was male or female, I feel I have a balance, even if it wasn’t something I consciously set out to achieve.

However, I definitely feel inspired to write about dragons, castles and mysteries and these are the types of books I enjoy reading the most. My favourite childhood books were by Alan Garner, Jill Murphy, Rosemary Manning, CS Lewis and JRR Tolkien. I spent hours on the Internet researching the etymology of names, places, delving into mythology, crystals and supernatural powers, which have spilled out into my writing. As the story progressed, I found I was writing about friendships, relationships, good times and bad times.

At the end of book three (Sammy Rambles and the Angel of ‘El Horidore), Sammy faces an impossible choice and throughout book four (Sammy Rambles and the Fires of Karmandor), Sammy endures much death and the destruction of his precious dragon world.

I didn’t set out to write a book of morals but there is the underlying theme of good versus evil and even the enemies have good traits which makes them harder to dislike. In Sammy Rambles and the Floating Circus these themes are introduced and I give the reader a flavour of the person Sammy will grow up to be. His wish “put wrongs to rights” is echoed throughout the series and it is not easy at times for Sammy to do the right thing.

I love visiting National Trust properties, English Heritage castles and taking long walks on Dartmoor. With a little imagination, you too could be driving down one of Devon’s narrow country lanes. Perhaps you are following a huge orange tractor like Sammy and his parents, and then suddenly, around the corner, there is a tall, towering castle complete with battlements, turrets and towers with flags flying from the top of the coned rooftops.

But, as in the books, not everyone believes in magic and not everyone can see the castle or the dragons flying around the turrets.

Thank you for reading this blog and I hope you believe in dragons. If you would like to read free sample chapters of the Sammy Rambles series, please head to www.sammyrambles.com. Or if you would like to meet at a Sammy Rambles event, please see www.facebook.com/sammyrambles. The Sammy Rambles books are available in paperback and Kindle versions and book one has just been released as an audiobook, recorded by Tracey Norman of Circle of Spears. The books are available on Amazon as well.

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Many thanks Jenny, for such a great blog. Good luck with all Sammy’s exploits!

Happy reading,

Jenny xx

Tag: magic

How research into a tricky topic creates magic on the page: Viking healing taken a step further

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Guest Post from Tracey Norman: Thinking magic

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Meet Sammy Rambles!

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