Wednesday, June 24, 2020

Books for sale

Since Covid-19 has canceled all live events for the foreseeable future, I have a few paperback copies of Songbird left on my shelf, reminding me of that fact.

If you don't yet have a copy, and would like to give it a try or maybe buy one as a gift, I'm offering them at $13.99 (below Amazon price), which includes a handwritten dedication, a cool Henry VIII bookmark, and US shipping.

Leave a comment here, or email me at karen @ karenheenan . com, and I'll send a PayPal or Venmo invoice.

Sunday, June 21, 2020

Father's day

And so it's Father's Day again.

The last Father's Day I had with my dad was in 1972. I probably got him a tie or something stupid like that, though the only time you'd catch him in a necktie would be when he was wearing his dress uniform. Which happened rarely.

But it didn't matter. Anything I did for the man was perfect. Before it became a common phrase, my dad already knew the sun shone out of my ass.

My mother behaved the same way, which may well explain some of my attitudes as an adult, but what I find interesting - also as an adult - is that she was almost jealous of how much he loved me. Like she didn't understand that a person could have that much love for more than one person at a time. That goes back to my mom's upbringing, and the scars that left her. Someday I'll be a good enough writer to write about my mother, that for now, I'll stick to Dad. He's easier.

He was twenty years older than Mom, which means he was fifty-two when I was born. He also worked a full-time and a part-time job, so I'm not sure how it is that so many of my childhood memories include him. He couldn't have been there as often as I remember him being. I think I just make more of the memories I have.

His work at the fire department was shift work, so his schedule changed. The worst was when he would get home after seven, coming up on my bedtime. I had already eaten, and was just killing time waiting for him. He would come in stinking of whatever fire had made him late, and all he wanted was to take a hot bath.

It was a strange quality time, the exhausted man in his bubble bath, the excited child sitting on the fluffy pink toilet seat cover, sharing their day, me asking one question after another. If I ran long and the water began to cool, he would turn the faucet with his foot and bring the tub back up to boiling again.

The other alone time I got with him was in the kitchen. He was a good, functional cook, as most firefighters are - he even taught my mom to cook when they got married - but when he was stressed or upset, he made candy. I'd wake to a gentle hand on my arm. L"go play in the kitchen," he'd say, and we'd sneak downstairs in the middle of the night and make fudge, or candy apples, or peanut brittle.

On one memorable occasion, we attempted a new recipe for sponge candy, and it boiled over on the stove top. We were still cleaning the kitchen when my mom stumbled downstairs at 6 a.m.

When we lost him, it was quick. He had bronchitis, with a wicked cough, something that happened every year. I woke up one morning and my mom told me he'd gone to the hospital. The first diagnosis was pleurisy, which sounded serious to a nine-year-old.

I was allowed to visit him in the hospital at the end of the first week, after my mom had been told it was lung cancer and that he wouldn't be coming home. The poor man - when I saw him I ran straight at him and slammed into his rib cage. I can't imagine how much it hurt, but also knowing him, he didn't mind a bit.

He died three days later. We moved not long after that, and my spectacularly unsentimental mother got rid of most of his things. I retrieved some of it from the trash and the donation bags, but it turned out she'd let some of him live on. Years later, I found his recipe cards in the back of her box, and quietly claimed them.

I still make his fudge when I'm stressed, though I don't always wait for the middle of the night.

Tuesday, June 16, 2020

A Wider World - Snippet

Kings Henry and Francis "wrestling"
Five hundred years ago this week, Henry VIII (and his court) journeyed to France to meet the French king (and his court).

I wrote about the Field of Cloth of Gold, as it came to be known, in Songbird, but it crops up again in A Wider World, because the (different) main character experiences some of the same events.


Henry's flagship, the Henry Grace-a-Dieu
Below is an excerpt from my next book, A Wider World:

***
As the king aged, so the court grew in importance. Looking back, we were a backwater country compared to the rest of Europe, but we knew it not—and if anyone did, they wisely did not speak of it.

In 1520, the cardinal arranged for a meeting to take place between King Henry and the French king. It was as much spectacle as summit, and certainly every noble with a guinea in his pocket to outfit his household was there, along with all the royal musicians and choristers, and enough servants to keep the whole production running smoothly.

It was my first time aboard ship, and while the majority of the choristers hung over the rail or confined themselves below, I stealthily climbed to the crow’s nest to catch my first glimpse of France as we crossed the narrow sea.

Calais looked no different than England, but it was. It was France. Another country. Where other languages were spoken and unfamiliar customs were the norm. It was like being handed an enormous, breathing book, and told I had just over two weeks to learn it all. I determined to try.
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***

Robin is young, but ambitious, and knows that his life will not always be that of a king's chorister - and it is not. Soon he grows up, attends Oxford, and crosses the narrow sea (the English Channel) again, on business not having to do with the King of England.

Stay tuned....

Thursday, June 4, 2020

Listening to myself

I'm working away on on my next novel, but there are still things to do with Songbird. One of them is the audiobook.

My publisher could have arranged to have it recorded, but I wanted to take a stab at it myself. I took a stab. I took several stabs. I never got beyond chapter 3. For some reason, hearing my own words in my own voice made me want to do nothing more than rewrite the whole book. It's a little late for that.

When I first announced my brilliant idea of self recording, an actress friend volunteered to read if I decided I didn't want to do it. I finally decided - intelligently - to take her up on her offer.

Because she's an actress, and because I sew, this is going to be a convoluted barter job. Somewhere down the line, she'll get a Shakespeare level costume out of this. In the meantime, she's recorded 12 chapters out of 24, and while it's still difficult to listen to my words read out, it's much easier when I'm not doing the reading.

Sometimes we're just too close to our own work.

Once the audiobook is done, given a final polishing by my publisher, and uploaded to Amazon and all the other usual venues, I'll have one or two copies to give away. Keep an eye out for that, sometime in the not too distant future.