Skip to main content

#HistFicThursdays - Inspirational Series: Our Flag Means Death

I can’t quite remember what inspired me to watch Our Flag Means Death . I have a vague recollection of watching a trailer on Facebook and then, eventually, picking up my phone and flicking through various streaming platforms, finally settling on that as my pick. What I was expecting was a farcical pirate romp. Maybe elements of The Muppets’ Treasure Island but with a little more adult content. Lots of hopeless pirates attempting swashbuckling tasks with comically poor results. Possibly a bit of Blackadder -esque historical humour. As anyone who has watched the series would be able to tell you, I was a little way off the mark. In fact, it is a delicious, hilarious and touching tribute to Wokeness. And I say this as a good thing: all people are welcome here. For me, watching it straight after finishing (or getting towards the end of, I can’t quite remember) my novel about Alexander the Great, the relationship between Stede and Blackbeard really resonated with me. What begins as a fascin...

#HistFicThursdays - Burning Secret - R J Lloyd - Guest Post

 
It's #HistFicThursdays, and I'm delighted to offer you a fabulous guest post from R J Lloyd, as part of his Coffee Pot Book Club tour. Discover the personal nature of this book, and why the author chose to tell Enoch's story in Burning Secret. But first, let's meet the book...

Blurb

Inspired by actual events, Burning Secret is a dramatic and compelling tale of ambition, lies and betrayal. 

Born in the slums of Bristol in 1844, Enoch Price seems destined for a life of poverty and hardship-but he’s determined not to accept his lot. 

Enoch becomes a bare-knuckle fighter in London’s criminal underworld. But in a city where there’s no place for honest dealing, a cruel loan shark cheats him, leaving Enoch penniless and facing imprisonment. 

Undaunted, he escapes to a new life in America and embarks on a series of audacious exploits. But even as he helps shape history, Enoch is not content. Tormented by his past and the life he left behind, Enoch soon becomes entangled in a web of lies and secrets. 
Will he ever break free and find the happiness he craves? 

Influenced by real people and events, Enoch’s remarkable story is one of adventure, daring, political power, deceit and, in the end, the search for redemption and forgiveness. 



Burning Secret is available via this Universal Link.

Guest Post

After retiring as a senior police officer, I turned my detective skills to genealogy, tracing my family history to the 16th century. However, after 15 years of extensive research, I couldn't track down my great-great-grandfather, Enoch Price, whose wife, Eliza, had, in living memory, helped raise my mother.

As a young girl, my mother could only remember hushed conversations about her nan's husband, Enoch, going to Florida to open a corset factory.

In June 2011, my cousin Gillian, a skilled family history researcher, after several dead-ends, called to say that she had found him through a fluke encounter. Susan Sperry from California, who had recently retired, decided to explore the box of documents given to her thirty years before by her mother, which she had never opened. In the box, she found references to her great-grandfather, Harry Mason, a wealthy hotel owner and powerful American politician from Jacksonville, Florida, who had died in 1919. It soon transpired that Susan's great-grandfather, Harry Mason, was, in fact, Enoch Price. From this single thread, the extraordinary story of Harry Mason began to unravel, leading me to visit the States to meet my American cousins. It was Susan Sperry and Kimberly Mason, direct descendants, who persuaded me to write Burning Secret, not as a biography, but as a thriller, merging fact with fiction, to tell the story of the extraordinary adventurer, rogue and chancer that he was. 

Burning Secret took another eleven years to research and write, and sadly, both Susan and Kimberly passed away before the novel was complete.

The more I researched, the more I realised how much more I needed to explore. Enoch is listed in the London Gazette as a bankrupt and was bound for two in the debtors' prison, from which few emerged unscathed. Abandoning his wife and three young daughters, he made for Florida. It was here, in Jacksonville, that he carved out his future, and, by hook or by crook, he amassed a fortune and became a powerful politician. While all of this time, his wife, Eliza, and daughters languished in poverty in the slums of Bristol, England.

Harry played a historically significant role in Jacksonville, arriving in 1881, only sixteen years after the end of slavery and the American Civil War, when Florida had fought on the defeated Confederate side. In 1888, Jacksonville was decimated by a deadly outbreak of Yellow Fever, and in 1901, the city was razed to the ground by the Great Fire of Jacksonville. Harry played a pivotal role in each of these catastrophes. Yet, undaunted, he was the promoter who, against fierce public opposition, brought the 1894 World Heavyweight Boxing Championship fight between Gentleman Jim Corbett and Charlie Mitchell to Jacksonville. His most outstanding achievement was building the Hotel Mason, Jacksonville, on the junction of Bay and Julia, which opened on 31 December 1913. The largest and most opulent hotel in Florida (demolished in 1978).

Surprisingly, whilst many of Harry's friends, business partners and historically important contemporaries are recorded in Jacksonville to this day, one must dig very deep into obscure records to find his name, and only one photograph of him survives, taken in 1903 when he was elected to the House of Representatives.

Harry is buried alongside his American wife at Evergreen Cemetery, Jacksonville, Florida.

Now, let's meet the author:

After retiring as a senior police officer, R J Lloyd turned my detective skills to genealogy, tracing his family history to the 16th century. However, after 15 years of extensive research, he couldn’t track down his great-great-grandfather, Enoch Price, whose wife, Eliza, had, in living memory, helped raise his mother.

It was his cousin Gillian who, after several more dead-ends, called one day to say that she had found him through a fluke encounter. Susan Sperry from California, who had recently retired, decided to explore the box of documents given to her thirty years before by her mother, which she had never opened. In the box, she found some references to her great grandfather, Harry Mason, a wealthy hotel owner from Florida who had died in 1919. It soon transpired that Susan’s great grandfather, Harry Mason, was, in fact, Enoch Price. 

From this single thread, the extraordinary story of Harry Mason began to unravel, leading R J Lloyd to visit the States to meet his newly discovered American cousins, and it was Susan Sperry and Kimberly Mason, direct descendants, who persuaded R J Lloyd to write the extraordinary story of their ancestor. 

R J Lloyd graduated from the University of Warwick with a degree in Philosophy and Psychology and a Masters in Marketing from UWE. Since leaving a thirty-year career in policing, he’s been a non-executive director with the NHS, social housing, and other charities. He lives with my wife in Bristol, spending his time travelling, writing and producing delicious plum jam from the trees on his award-winning allotment. 

You can find him on these links:
Keep up with the rest of the tour stops for Burning Secret by clicking on the banner below:

Comments

  1. Thank you for featuring RJ Lloyd today, with such a fascinating post.

    Cathie xx
    The Coffee Pot Book Club

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Masterworks: Legacy - Samantha Wilcoxson - Interview

  Today is the last of a series on nine interviews I'm sharing on the Crowvus Book Blog. These are from the authors of the short stories included in the  Masterworks  anthology by the  Historical Writers Forum . We're running through chronologically, some are video interviews, others are written. I am delighted to welcome the fantastic Samantha Wilcoxson, who is sharing the artist inspiration for her short story Legacy , as well as the appeal of James A. Hamilton, and the delights of researching. First of all, tell us a little bit about yourself, what you write (besides Masterworks!), and what inspired you to begin writing. I was inspired to write by my love of reading. After watching me read, write reviews, and keep journals for twenty years, my husband asked me why I didn’t try writing, so I did! Without really planning on it, I ended up writing historical biographical fiction. I’m drawn to a tragic tale but also to lesser known historical figures with emotive stor...

#HistFicThursdays - Apollo's Raven - Linnea Tanner - Book Blast

 If you've been following this blog for a little while, you might remember me sharing a fabulous guest post about this book in 2022 (which you can read here ). It's always great to welcome Linnea Tanner onto the Crowvus Book Blog, and I'm delighted to be taking part in her Coffee Pot Book Club book blast blog tour. So, let's meet the book... A Celtic warrior princess is torn between her forbidden love for the enemy and duty to her people. AWARD-WINNING APOLLO’S RAVEN sweeps you into an epic Celtic tale of forbidden love, mythological adventure, and political intrigue in Ancient Rome and Britannia. In 24 AD British kings hand-picked by Rome to rule are fighting each other for power. King Amren’s former queen, a powerful Druid, has cast a curse that Blood Wolf and the Raven will rise and destroy him. The king’s daughter, Catrin, learns to her dismay that she is the Raven and her banished half-brother is Blood Wolf. Trained as a warrior, Catrin must find a way to break t...

#HistFicThursdays - The Historical Fiction Community (and why I'm so glad I'm a part of it!)

 Today is the arrival of #HistFicMay, now in its third year. When I started it, I did it because I had really enjoyed meeting new writers through a similar #IndieApril list of prompts. I had a quick perusal to see if anyone had done a Historical Fiction one, saw they hadn't, and decided to set one up. It had the desired effect, and I have "met" (only online!) and discovered some wonderful writers and their books over the last couple of years. Community is a bigger thing than most writers realise. The more detached individuals may refer to community as networking, but the writing community is so much more than that. Don't get me wrong, I'm as introverted as they come, but without those people I have met during #HistFicMay or the online community of historical fiction writers, there are so many things I would never have known - sometimes even things which have led me to write certain scenes or books. I'm not saying you can't be a fabulous historical fiction ...