Anne's Blog

         J ust look at these paintings! Doesn’t your heart break for these brothers, “imprisoned” in the Tower of London and unaware of their fate? One of the paintings (Victorian, granted) shows the “murderers” hovering over those adorable boys.      What really happened to them? After July 1483, they were never seen again — or were they? This is probably the most intriguing mystery of English history after who was Jack the Ripper. It has gripped me for most of my adult life, too.      All I know, in my heart of hearts, is that Richard III was not the killer, although history loves to say he was!      So who were they, and why were they important? Edward, 13, and Richard, 11, were the only sons of King Edward IV and when Edward died suddenly at age 42, young Edward--I'll call him Ned to avoid confusion with his Dad--was named (but not crowned) King Edward V. In medieval times, it was never  a good idea to have ...

I was pleased to see, for a change, that The Lost King movie chose a nice-looking, undeformed young actor named Harry Lloyd to play the fantasy Richard. And he was downright pleasant throughout, unlike the character in the famous Shakespeare play! Harry Lloyd as Richard III Anyone who has read or seen Richard III  should know that our Will played hard and fast with the historical record. Such a brilliant play with an enviable lead for an actor, but oh so wrong in many ways. For example, there's the hunchback bit, which I covered in last week's blog. It was scoliosis--sideways curvature, not kyphosis--hunchbacked. Then there were the murders attributed to him on his way to "usurping" the throne--even that of Edmund Beaufort, duke of Somerset, who actually died in the first Battle of St. Albans when Richard was only three! How's that for a skilled toddler-warrior?  And his inappropriate, sleazy seduction of Anne Neville at the funeral of her husband, Edward, prince...

  Richard III's skeleton Was Richard really a hunchback? I get that question over and over during my book tours, and up until 2012, my answer was enigmatic. "We don't know," wasn't satisfactory, I know, but being a writer meticulous about accuracy, I chose not to even refer much to his physicality in all my books--except the last one, This Son of York.  I needed to write the final book in my series about Richard's family precisely so I could now set the record straight and answer the question truthfully. It added to his story immeasurably. No, he was not a hunchback: he had a bad case of scoliosis that developed gradually only during his teen years, which is very different from kyphosis (hunchback).   With the discovery of his skeleton under that car park in Leicester, the dreaded words "crooked spine" were used to describe what the osteologist saw in the makeshift grave. "Oh no," I thought, "and I haven't mentioned his back in any...

  .... to the US/Canada release of  The Lost King !   (right) Sally Hawkins as Philippa Langley, and (left) Philippa Langley and Richard III  The Stephen Frears directed film about the extraordinary story of finding Richard III’s bones under a car park in Leicester will be released in US on March 24th. What serendipity for me as I am now able to announce the publication of the Second Edition of  This Son of York , under my own EasterSmithPress. The book is newly available at all the usual on-line book-buying platforms .   I was lucky enough to get a sneak, pirated viewing of the film last week (I might get buried alive if I disclose the source!)and I was delighted to relive the whole exciting time for Ricardians in 2012.  I loved that Richard appears in the film as protagonist Philippa Langley’s muse, allowing her to “think” things through with him as he quietly stands by encouraging her monologues with a small smile, a nod of the head, or a raised eye...

 I have been doing some interviews with fellow Historical Novel Society authors who are launching a new book for more than a year now. Protagonist Anne Askew in Prize for the Fire sparked a lively 75-minute conversation with Rilla, which had to be reduced to 1,000 words for the article. I hope I captured Rilla's passion for her subject. https:// historicalnovelsociety.org/ launch-rilla-askews-prize-for- the-fire/

 I have had about a year and a half of getting excited about the possibility of a film about Richard III and now the release date of October 7th has been announced!  The Lost King will be premiered at the Toronto Film Festival in September, and how I would dearly love to be there with a boatload of my books to peddle outside the theater! The film is billed as a "comedy-drama" about one woman's quest to unearth the burial site of Richard after his mutilated body was ignominiously tied over the back of a horse and ordered buried "somewhere" in the Greyfriars monastery grounds in Leicester following the Battle of Bosworth. As soon as I heard that Sally Hawkins was cast to play the bones' discoverer, Philippa Langley, I took the liberty of sending my new book, This Son of York, to her publicist in the hopes it would reach her as she did her research for the movie. Sadly, I never heard if she received it. But I tried! Here's all you need to know! https://www....

  A s many of you who prefer listening to a reading have probably noticed, the narrator can make or break a book. The narrator for my first books was the award-winning former actor Rosalyn Landor. She made my characters come alive so well that I was pleased and proud of her work.  The same cannot be said for Royal Mistress! Despite my agent's insistence that the contract with Audible included hiring Roz Landor again, they ignored her and me and the result was not as pleasing IMHO. When it came to This Son of York 's publishing process, as many of you know, I was on my own; like so many of my fellow writers subject to the vagaries of traditional publishers, I was left out to dry. The result was contracting with Bellastoria Press , a small independent publisher, who did a beautiful job on creating and distributing the print and ebook versions, albeit leaving me alone to do marketing. But when it came to an audiobook, my husband and I thought long and hard as to whether to invest...