Crowvus Book Blog

 Every week we settle down for a family games night. This week was a game called £GREED , which is a variation on the long established dice game 5000 . It's a favourite in this household, as it is a precarious balance between tactics and gambling. Caesar's famous remark that "the die is cast" as he crossed the Rubicon, shows that he knew and acknowledged this balance. Dice are amongst the oldest continually used form of gaming. They have a long history in every single continent, although not always as the cubes we recognise today. Early forms of dice were made from bone, wood, or stones such as agate or marble. They did not always show numbers, but could also be used for fortune telling, with pictures and letters inscribed on them. As a player of Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay , I have always known that dice cannot be held at face value. They are regularly used in fantasy stories and situations to denote the power of luck and the ability to hold control over the realms of...

  Today's #HistFicThursdays blog is an exciting interview with  Ian Hunter ,   as part of his  Yarde Book Promotion  tour! Read on to find out about his influences, inspirations, and the adventures which readers can expect to share in with  Quetzalcoatl . But first, let's meet the book... Blurb Jessie Mason lives with her nose in the pages of history. But she is discovering that the past is a dangerous place where she doesn't belong, and knowledge alone is not going to save her. Jessie’s life has become a series of terrible challenges. Now she must lead her friends in the hopeless task Grandfather set them: hunt down and destroy the Time Stones. But her leadership has already failed. Tip has left them and Abe has simply disappeared, while she and Kes are trapped in the heart of an ancient empire in turmoil. Thrust into a fractured, threatened Mexica nobility, Jessie is immersed in a way of life, fascinating and disturbing in equal measure, yet powerless bef...

Today's #HistFicThursdays blog is a fantastic interview with  Cliff Lovette ,   as part of his  Yarde Book Promotion  tour! Read on to find out about his influences, inspirations, and the emotional rollercoaster on which  Circus Bim Bom carries readers away. But first, let's meet the book... Blurb Soviet circus performers arrived in America hoping to build cultural bridges. Instead, they became unwitting pawns in a Cold War game of international intrigue. When the first privately owned Soviet circus arrived in 1990 in America as the Soviet Union disintegrated, its elite performers expected to build cultural bridges through spectacular shows. Instead, this prestigious troupe faced a perilous journey through Cold War America. Circus director Yuri had to navigate treacherous waters where American mobsters, Soviet agents, and political forces circled like predators. Young aerialist Anton dreamed of becoming a clown against his family’s wishes, while forbidden romanc...

 The other day at Crowvus HQ, we were discussing our favourite Jane Austen novels. Amazingly, for saying there were four of us with a positive opinion, each person had a different favourite. Jane Austen's books, of course, are not historical fiction, but books written contemporaneously to what is now an historical era. But! All the multitude of spinoffs which her books have invoked are historical fiction.  Pride and Prejudice  is not my favourite Austen story, nor my second or third, but I absolutely love the series Lost in Austen . People hear the phrase "fan fiction" and immediately think lesser of it, but this is a little unfair. Fan fiction is not a new thing, it is how folk stories grew into legends, adventures becoming more daring with every telling. But what has changed is the way in which these stories are retold and the care which is now (quite rightly!) taken to preserve and protect the rights of the original author. In the case of Lost in Austen , this is not t...

 Today, in Caithness, the sun is shining and the air is clear. I'm sure it will come as no surprise to anyone reading this blog that, certain weathers and certain times of the year ignite certain music in me. And, on late winter days which are filled with sunshine, I am usually to be found singing the songs of The Spinners . Inevitably, I start humming different ones of their songs (and of course adapting them to be about Orlando and Jess) as I go around doing different things. But I remember almost all the words to them. I haven't heard a lot of them in years, but they are all there, rooted in my memory. It is truly fascinating to think about how these songs have passed through history. They are part of my own nostalgia, which is why crisp sunny mornings make me incapable of ignoring the temptation to sing them, but they are part of something much bigger. There are songs amongst them which are a newer step in the folk music movement. Songs like Silver in the Stubble are amongs...

 This week has been a mad one. Close to the start of the Christmas period, we found out that Mum would be having a thyroidectomy on Candlemas (the final day of the Christmas season). Of course, this was not enough to spoil Christmas. As readers of this blog are no doubt aware, Christmas happens in a big way in this house. But when the day finally arrived it was nonetheless met with, if not fear, definite nervousness. I'm pleased to say that the procedure seems to have been a great success! And wouldn't it have been? Thyroid treatment has been developing for over four thousand years. You know me - somewhat obsessed with putting doctors, nurses, physicians and surgeons in my historical fiction - I made a (very brief) wander into the realms of researching the topic. I was surprised by the results. The earliest I could find a reference to treatments for thyroid issues (in this instance a goitre) came in 2697BC, when the legendary Yellow Emperor recorded the use of seaweed in treati...