I have been a fan of Frank Barnard’s work for years, first becoming aware of his writing back in 2006 with the novel Blue Man Falling, based around a Hawker Hurricane squadron in the Battle of France. Frank has a fascinating background, including a career as a journalist, national service in the RAF and even…
Tag: Historical fiction
Historical fiction – where to draw the line
The issue of factual inaccuracy in historical fiction is a perpetual source of debate, and occasional outbreaks of controversy. Reports in the media today pick up on this issue with aspects of the new film Mary Queen of Scots labelled ‘problematic’ by a historian in a BBC report with the Telegraph going as far as…
Duelling and dualling – co-writing ‘Oath and Crown’
When I suggested – a little casually, truth be told – to the Random Writers group in the Autumn of 2015 that I was considering writing a novel about the William the Conqueror and was hoping to find a co-writer, I should have known two things. First, that the almost immediate volunteer would be Jules…
Interview with ‘Last Roundhead’ author Jemahl Evans
Air and Sea Stories is pleased to welcome Jemahl Evans, author of the critically acclaimed The Last Roundhead (Caerus Press, 2015) and the forthcoming sequel This Deceitful Light, which is due for publication in September. Jemahl graduated with an MA in History, focussing on poetry and propaganda during the Wars of the Roses, and started…
Two new William the Conqueror novels
Today is the 950th anniversary of the Battle of Hastings – the single battle that has perhaps done more to shape the destiny of England than any other. The fate of England, and indeed, Europe, looked very different in the evening of 14 October 1066 than it had early that morning. This seems a good…
New book of short stories released
The second Random Writers anthology of short stories, which I have co-edited with J.A. Ironside, is to be released soon – ‘Something Rich And Strange: The Past Is Prologue’ will be available for download on 12 December, and as a paperback shortly afterwards. ‘It started with the Zhar-ptitsa, the Firebird, as these things must. No,…
Shortlisted for the Bridport Prize
I am delighted to announce that my short story ‘Energy’ has been shortlisted for the prestigious Bridport Prize – I can be found somewhere here! Godinheaven. The car’s assaulting your senses, taking them over, torrent of colour, noise, it grips you and shakes you. Brake and your brain tries to escape through your eyesockets. You’re…
Writing the landscape
I’ve always been fascinated by landscape, and that fascination has shaped my identity as a writer. Ironically – or perhaps inevitably – I grew up somewhere with a particular kind of landscape that some people think of as no landscape at all. The flat expanses of North Essex do not share the character of the…
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