Today for #HistFicThursdays, I am delighted to once again be teaming up with The Coffee Pot Book Club , this time to share an excerpt from SP Somtow 's fantastic new book Nero and Sporus ! First of all, let's meet the book... Finally available in one volume! The decadence of Imperial Rome comes to life in S.P. Somtow's Literary Titan Award-winning novel about one of ancient history's wildest characters. The historian Suetonius tells us that the Emperor Nero emasculated and married his slave Sporus, the spitting image of murdered Empress Poppaea. But history has more tidbits about Sporus, who went from "puer delicatus" to Empress to one Emperor and concubine to another, and ended up being sentenced to play the Earth-Goddess in the arena. Nero and Sporus is available on #KindleUnlimited via this link . And here's an excerpt to whet your appetite: I suppose we were anxious to see who the surprise competitor would be, but no one was as surprise...
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Today, I'm so excited to introduce a book which is being launched next week at Sutherland Show (22nd July): The Folly at Raighvan Park by Judith Crow! Here's a little sneak peek at this upcoming release and a couple of its characters...
First of all, let's meet the book...
Blurb
Desperate to escape memories of a devastating railway accident, Lord Stretton accepts an invitation to Raighvan Park, the home of his childhood friend, Sir David Joyce.
But Stretton discovers that Raighvan Park is not the safe haven he had been seeking. The ghosts which have haunted him since the accident seem to have followed him, and the situation grows darker when human remains are discovered at Sir David’s proposed folly.
Are the ghosts of the accident still stalking him? Or is there something more sinister at work at Raighvan Park?
Guest Post
All the Gothic Horror I've written features - to different extents - an unreliable narrator. In The Devil's Servant, Reuben Fancroft is an old man suffering from dementia; in The Lady Who Dances in the Ashes, Lockman is haunted by the events of the story...
Lord Stretton is also a haunted man. Throughout the story, there are glimpses of the man he used to be, but his experiences in the first part of the book change him forever. Stretton is a man driven by regret, and it is this regret which sparks the darkness following him throughout the story.
But no amount of care could assuage my guilt at being responsible for so many deaths, and my feverish mind wandered repeatedly back to the nurse who had died in my arms. I bought medical and surgical books and pored over them, attempting to understand what I could have done differently, and convincing myself she would have survived if I had been a medically competent man. My mother did everything in her power to reassure me that I had done nothing wrong but, knowing her maternal bias, I could not believe her.
The main contrast in terms of characters is with his valet, Davis, who provides a constant support to his employer. While Stretton is haunted by darkness, Davis offers practicality which allows slivers of light into Stretton's world.
The thought of travelling on the railway was deeply unsettling. Each jerk brought a sickening lurch to my stomach and every moment when we slowed down took me back to the brakes of the two ill-fated engines. As we passed through a tunnel, I closed my eyes, certain I would never see daylight again and, when I opened them, I realised I must have fallen asleep or else fainted, as Davis was shaking my shoulder and trying to encourage me to disembark.
I rubbed my eyes and looked out of the window onto the bustling platform, allowing a warming sense of relief to burst through my body at having survived the journey. I left the train with a spring in my step, and Davis and I travelled together in the carriage which Sir David had sent for us.
“It’s beautiful,” I heard myself whisper. I did not know what made it so: it was not remarkable scenery at all, but the gentleness of the low-lying hills and the signs of industry brought a reality back into my life which had been missing since North Drystan.
“Tame, sir,” Davis replied.
I knew what he meant. It was innocent: full of gently rolling hills washing the landscape like the sea on a calm day.
I always find that the characters who are experiencing a "real" experience during a horror story or film are the ones which make it really terrifying. It's how you can believe that these creepy events could really happen... Hopefully Davis goes some way to making readers believe that Stretton's nightmares could really have stalked from Victorian Norfolk to the gentle hills of Leicestershire.
I always find that the characters who are experiencing a "real" occurrence during a horror story or film are the ones which make it really terrifying. It's how you can believe that these creepy events could really happen... Hopefully Davis goes some way to making readers believe that Stretton's nightmares could really have stalked from Victorian Norfolk to the gentle hills of Leicestershire.
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