Dark Age Breakfast - Katherine Roberts

Princess Rhianna Pendragon would like to invite you to breakfast at Camelot Castle to launch her second adventure Lance of Truth.

Regretfully, King Arthur will not be attending this year, since Prince Mordred killed him at the Battle of Camlann and Merlin whisked his body away to Avalon for safe keeping. But you might see the king's ghost, which sometimes appears at Camelot in the presence of his sword Excalibur, which Rhianna won back from the Lady of the Lake in her first adventure Sword of Light. We’re also hoping Queen Guinevere might put in an appearance later, if she manages to escape from Mordred’s dark tower, where he is keeping her hostage in a bid to get his hands on Excalibur - sorry, that should be hand (King Arthur chopped the other one off as they fought).

Welcome to the Great Hall of Camelot, where there’s plenty of room for everyone at the Round Table, since it is a magical table and can seat as many knights and their guests as required.

Weapons are not normally allowed at the Round Table when the knights meet. But for this special breakfast, you may bring a small knife or dagger to cut up your food. No forks or spoons, please. Princess Rhianna will probably use Excalibur to slice her food, but do not be alarmed – she's not allowed to blood her blade if she wants to take the sword back to Avalon and complete her quest.

Excalibur

Silver platters will be provided for royalty, and trenchers of stale bread for everyone else (please do not eat your plate before breakfast is served, since you will get crumbs on the table, which may interfere with its magic.)

CAMELOT BREAKFAST MENU

Fish

Our fish comes fresh from Lady Nimue’s lake, so if it has arms and green hair you’re advised to throw it back.

Meat

Wild boar and venison from the king’s lands.

Hare or rabbit pie (some of the squires can’t tell the difference).

Spicy sausages.

Fowl

Pigeon, quail, duck, a swan if we can catch one, and that old favourite, blackbird pie.

 For vegetarians

Selection of soft fruit from our orchards.

Porridge sweetened with honey from our hives.

Onions and cheese made from the milk of our prize flock of sheep.

To drink

A selection of Camelot ales

Dandelion wine

Elderflower cordial for the children.

Entertainment will be provided by Prince Elphin of Avalon, who (it is rumoured) has six fingers on each hand for making unearthly music. He might also sing a ballad.

 Sing a song of sixpence

A pocket full of rye.

Four and twenty blackbirds

Baked in a pie

When the pie was opened,

The birds began to sing;

Wasn't that a dainty dish,

To set before the king?

The king was in his counting house Avalon

Counting out his money;awaiting resurrection;

The queen was in the parlourMordred's tower,

Eating craving bread and honey.

The maid was in the garden,

Hanging out the clothes;

When down came a blackbird merlin

And pecked off her nose.

Virtual book signing will follow the breakfast, after which Rhianna Pendragon will leave for her next engagement, riding her fairy horse Alba.

All breakfasters will receive a souvenir grail, also supplied as a drinking vessel for the event – if yours appears to contain anything other than what you put into it, please notify the organisers at once, since the Grail of Stars (one of the four magical Lights Rhianna needs to bring her father back from the dead) vanished a few years back, and Arthur’s knights have been searching for it ever since.

Before you leave, please eat your plate to save on washing up, and take extra care when crossing the drawbridge on your way out. Camelot Castle accepts no responsibility for guests who fall into the moat while drunk or suffering from indigestion.

We hope you enjoyed your Dark Age Breakfast!

***

The Dark Age Breakfast is a virtual launch party for the Pendragon Legacy series, published October 1st 2012 by Templar.


Book 1: Sword of Light paperback and ebook
Book 2: Lance of Truth hardcover
 
More about the series at www.katherineroberts.co.uk

Retro Summer Reading Challenge - Katherine Roberts

Hooray! It’s summer! School’s out, the sun is shining (at last), and the Summer Reading Challenge for children aged 4-11 is in full flow at libraries across the UK. This year’s Story Lab challenge has an Olympic theme, and children can sign up to read six books of their choice over the summer holidays.


inside our beautiful new library


There's a website with author videos, a whole list of recommended new titles, and other incentives to encourage young readers to read... wait for it... for fun.

Such grand schemes did not exist when I was a child. I never saw a real-life author, whether at a book festival, in school, or online… well, there wasn’t an online back then, and barely any festivals existed, though you’ll be pleased to hear we did have schools. I can only assume authors did not do so many visits in those days, or maybe my school didn't have the budget for them.

Fortunately, I needed no encouragement to complete my own personal reading challenge. My local library was my primary source of books, and I would read three (the maximum you could take out with a child’s library ticket) every weekend, and as many as I could get away with during the summer holidays. Before it transformed into the modern library shown above - complete with air conditioned meeting rooms, several floors of new low-level shelving, computers, indoor garden, café, and specially commissioned sculptures with a literary theme - my childhood library looked like this:


my childhood library today, awaiting demolition


It had a nice setting in a leafy corner of the local park, and in those days it was not boarded up or covered in graffiti, of course. But to me as a child, the library and its surroundings did not matter. I just remember the books I found there and the stories they contained, which whisked me away from the real world into one of adventure and magic.

So here, especially for the History Girls blog, is the...

*** Retro Summer Reading Challenge ***

Think back to when you were a child (i.e. before you transformed into a rebellious teenager and started reading the equivalent of "Fifty Shades of Grey" secretly under the bedcovers by torchlight). What books and authors did you enjoy?

When I was that age, my favourite author was Andre Norton. I devoured her Witch World books, of which there were many.

I did not know that she was American. I did not even know for sure that she was a “she", though for some reason I assumed this. I did not know she also wrote science fiction, fantasy and historical novels for adults under three pen names: Andre Norton, Andrew North and Allen Weston. I did not know that none of these three names were actually the name she had been born with - Alice Mary Norton - which she legally changed in 1934 to Andre Alice Norton to "increase her marketability”, because most science fiction/fantasy and historical adventure at that time was written by men and assumed to be read by boys. (Interestingly, this is a game many female authors still play today... haven’t we moved on from gender typing yet?!) I did not know she won the World Fantasy Award for Lifetime Achievement in 1968, and published over 300 books between 1934 and 2005, when she died aged 93 still writing. To mark her wonderful career, the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America created the Andre Norton Award for younger science fiction and fantasy literature.

Wow. If I had known all that stuff about my favourite childhood author, would it have made me want to read her books any more eagerly? I think not. Andre Norton was still very much alive at the time I was reading her Witch World books in the early 1970’s, which was brilliant for me because she already had a long backlist by then but was also still producing new books. I discovered her all on my own, because her books looked interesting on the library shelves, had exciting covers, and - more importantly - there were a lot of them, so I knew I would not run out of reading material. I didn’t particularly want to meet her, or watch a video of her, or see her talk at a festival. I had no idea how old she was and I didn't care. I just wanted her to hurry up and write the next book. Which, happily, she did.

Andre Norton was another author who effortlessly combined historical adventure with science/fiction fantasy, a connection I wrote about in my earlier Hunger Games post for this blog. If she had been in mid-career today, she might even have been a History Girl. Her first book "Ralestone Luck" (published as her second novel in 1938) was an adult historical adventure that begins with these inspiring words:
How hold ye Lorne?
By the oak leaf,
By the sea wave,
By the broadsword blade,
Thus we hold Lorne!
The oak leaf is dust,
The sea wave is gone,
The broadsword is rust,
How now hold ye Lorne?
By our Luck, thus we hold Lorne!

I’m delighted to discover Andre Norton’s "Witch World" novels are now being republished as ebooks to bring them to a whole new generation - one of the unexpected joys of modern technology. What goes around comes around, as they say.

So who was your favourite author (or favourite book) when you were a child? Let us know in the comments below, and we’ll create our very own Retro Summer Reading Challenge list!

***

Katherine Roberts www.katherineroberts.co.uk writes fantasy and historical adventure for children.

Sword of Light, the first book in her Pendragon Legacy quartet about King Arthur’s daughter, has been chosen for this year’s Summer Reading Challenge in UK libraries. See Katherine's message to young readers.

Why I didn’t write The Hunger Games - Katherine Roberts

This might seem a strange thing for a grown up History Girl to say, but I’m a huge fan of the Hunger Games. I think I’d have loved them as a teenager too, though back in those days (we’re talking history here remember!) they would most likely have been published with a Gollancz yellow spine on the adult genre shelf as science fiction/fantasy… my first choice of reading after escaping the children’s library, because as far as I was concerned that’s where all the best stories were.

I've seen some wary reviews of the film, claiming it glorifies violence and (to quote the Sunday Times last week) “children killing children”. This is misleading. There’s certainly killing, yes, but first of all let's stop calling the Hunger Games and other stories like it a children’s book. No matter what the age of its youngest characters, it is young adult - a genre that did not exist when I was a teenager, although the books with their equally challenging stories were there if you looked in the right place (those yellow spines were a good place to start). Secondly, it's not really about the killing. Although a girl as young as 12 can - and does - die in the Hunger Games arena, these books are fiction of the dystopian tradition that digs through the veneer of our society to show us where we are headed if we are not careful, in much the same way that looking back at history and seeing where we have been can help us see what to avoid in the future. In fact, take away the hair and makeup and some rather sugary teenage smooching, and the Hunger Games is to my mind an adult sf read, equally as disturbing as Margaret Atwood’s “The Handmaid’s Tale” - another book I would recommend to HG fans.

In case you've had your head buried in the sand for the past few months, Hunger Games heroine Katniss Everdeen is a feisty girl picked (or "reaped" - note the Biblical reference) to take part in a vicious reality TV gameshow where teenagers must kill or be killed. She is forced into an impossible situation by her futuristic society, so she plays the game to help her family - and although reluctant to get involved in the bloodbath that follows the celebrity high jinks, eventually she kills too.

Katniss Everdeen - kill or be killed

The film has a 12A rating here in the UK, which worries me slightly because as a children’s author I am very aware of my responsibilities when writing for this impressionable age group. Which brings me back to the History Girls. Left to my own devices, I write fairly gruesome fiction. I've done my own bloody version of gladiators in the arena (published by a small press magazine back in the 90's), and I’d defy anyone to find a children’s book with a higher body count than my “I am the Great Horse”. But I got away with that one because it was about Alexander the Great’s atrocities, which are history and therefore strangely acceptable on the 9-12 shelf, in the way a dystopia like the Hunger Games would not be - or maybe writing from the POV of a horse helped pull the wool over people's eyes!

Yet fighting obviously appeals to children. So when it came to inventing my own feisty heroine for a younger market, I dived back into history/legend with the idea of making her more palatable for the age group and came up with King Arthur's daughter, Rhianna Pendragon. Being younger than Katniss, and inhabiting a children’s book rather than a young adult book, I knew from the start that Rhianna couldn't be the kind of heroine who goes around beheading people on every page, at least not if she is to remain a child's heroine for very long. That's why I set her story in Dark Age Britain, where swordplay is much more acceptable, and added magic from the Arthurian legend to sweeten the gore. Rhianna carries a sword, yes, but she cannot blood it if she is to complete her quest. This gives her an added moral dilemma, neatly sidestepping her needing to kill to be strong.

Rhianna Pendragon cannot blood her sword.

I believe both history and fantasy/SF can be used to address violence and other challenging subjects in a safe arena, whether you're writing for children, teenagers or adults - which might explain why my own writing appears to range across two disparate genres. It was touch and go whether I plunged back in time or forwards for "Sword of Light", since I also have a science fiction series in development... which makes me wonder how many fans of historical fiction out there are also fans of fantasy and SF, besides me?

Rhianna Pendragon stars in Sword of Light: Book 1 of the Pendragon Legacy (Templar hardcover £9-99)
Paperback and ebook coming in September 2012.

If you'd like to try my historical fiction for young readers, for 5 days only you can read The Great Pyramid Robbery (US readers click here) ebook free on your Kindle - offer ends midnight 9th April... pass the word!

More details of all my books can be found on my website http://www.katherineroberts.co.uk/ and blog http://www.reclusivemuse.co.uk/  

Our February competition winners

And the winners are:

The Girl in the Mask
Kit Berry
Astrid Holm
Chloe S

Please contact Jennie Younger (jennie.younger@oup.com) and give your land address



Sword of Light
Chloe S.
Orli
Astrid Holm
Kit Berry
Madwippit


Please contact Nic Wilkinson (nic.wilkinson@gmail.com) and give your land address


Congratulations!

Quest for Camelot – Katherine Roberts

By the time this post goes up, I’ll be in Wales doing publicity in schools for my new book Sword of Light. A rather strange choice for an author tour you might think… until you realise my book is about King Arthur’s daughter and part of it is set at Camelot. Since there isn’t a Geography Girls blog (at least not as far as I know... are you out there, Geography Girls?), I hope you won’t mind this post on Arthurian geography as a change from Arthurian history – after all, archaeological digs are a good way to uncover history!

Wales has long been associated with King Arthur. If you consider the red dragon on the Welsh flag, it makes perfect sense that Arthur Pendragon - the “head dragon” - should have lived and ruled there. But even Geoffrey of Monmouth, whose statue stands in the atmospheric Circle of Legends at Tintern station along with King Arthur's, admits that Arthur originated in England and the legend spread across the border.

Circle of Legends: www.thecircleoflegends.co.uk

Arthurian names abound from Cornwall, up the length of England and Wales, and as far as Scotland. In some parts of the west country you can't walk your dog without tripping over an "Arthur's stone", but as yet no historical evidence has been found of King Arthur's court and its Round Table. So where exactly was the famous Camelot?

1. Caerleon, Wales.
A popular choice with its Roman remains and mention by Nennius. Many Arthurian novels have been set here.

2. South Cadbury Castle, Somerset.
Another popular location, and the site of a dig by the Camelot Research Committee in 1966... they discovered evidence of an iron age hill fort but not of King Arthur. From this flat topped hill, you can see Glastonbuy Tor (sometimes called the ancient Avalon), and the village of Queen Camel is nearby. The River Cam could have been the location of Arthur's final battle against Mordred.

3. Kelliwic, near Padstow, Cornwall.
This is close to the River Camel and Camelford, which is another possible location for King Arthur’s final battle on the field of Camlann against his nephew Mordred.

4. Scotland
Many locations in Scotland have Arthurian names, and "Arthur’s Seat" is in Edinburgh. I favour Scotland for the villain of the story, Prince Mordred, but that might be because I'm a west country girl!

5. Hollywood
The fabulous medieval Camelot Castle of our much-loved Arthurian films is probably pure fantasy, but certainly very romantic.

6. In the sea
I recently came across this location in the TV series "Camelot", which placed Arthur's castle teetering on the edge of a nameless windswept cliff… the theory being that Camelot and its Round Table has long since crumbled away and fallen into the sea, which explains why we have found no trace of King Arthur’s court. Quite a neat idea.

7. Camelot Castle, Tintagel.
You can stay there today. Really. This one is not a ruin, and it's on my wish list for a Pendragon Legacy event... or, if the books sell well enough, maybe I'll book a night or two there to celebrate the end of the series!

So where did I decide to set my Pendragon Legacy series? Well... if you haven't guessed yet, you’ll have to read the first book to find out!

SWORD OF LIGHT (Book1 of the Pendragon Legacy) is now available in hardcover priced at £9-99, and if you're very quick there is still time to enter the History Girls February competition to win a FREE copy by naming a fairy horse (competition closes tomorrow, 7th March).

More details of the Pendragon Legacy quartet and Katherine's earlier books can be found at www.katherineroberts.co.uk

and you can follow Rhianna Pendragon on Twitter at www.twitter.com/PendragonGirl

February Competition

February competition


In case you missed this yesterday at the end of Anne Rooney's post about vampires, we are re-posting our latest competition today.

Two History Girls have new books out now and we have some to offer as prizes.

To win one of three copies of Marie-Louise Jensen's The Girl in the Mask, answer this question:


"If you were a notorious 18th Century highwayman (or woman in disguise), what alias would you give yourself?"



To win one one five hardbacks of Katherine Roberts' Sword of Light, try this one:


"If Lord Avallach gave you one of his fairy horses, what would you name it?"


Leave your answers in Comments below, mixed in with comments on Anne Rooney's blogpost.


Closing date 7th March.As usual, only UK entrants.

King Arthur: history or fantasy? – Katherine Roberts

This month sees the publication of Sword of Light, Book 1 of my Pendragon Legacy quartet about King Arthur’s daughter, published by Templar.

As you can tell from the cover art by talented New York artist Scott Altmann, this series belongs firmly at the fantasy end of my writing spectrum, whereas my previous novel “I am the Great Horse” (told by Alexander the Great’s warhorse Bucephalas) lay firmly at the historical end.

King Arthur is obviously less historical than Alexander the Great, even when authors try to stick to the facts, so I thought it would be fun to create a History Girls scale of 0-5 (where 0 is pure fantasy and 5 is historical fact) and try to grade some well-known elements of Arthurian legend. Do let me know if you disagree!

King Arthur
The good news is he probably existed. But if he did, then he’s likely to have been a Dark Age war leader rather than a great medieval king. Nennius tells us he lived in the 6th century following the departure of the Romans from Britain, when he fought several battles against the Saxon invaders.
Conclusion: Undoubtedly a hero, but a dead hero… all those rumours of him returning from Avalon when we most need him are obviously fantasy, because in my opinion we need him NOW.
HG rating 3

Mordred
King Arthur’s nephew, who killed the king on the battlefield of Camlann after a long and messy skirmish where just about everyone changed sides. The bad news is Mordred was probably real too, but unlikely to have been King Arthur’s son conceived under enchantment as Mallory would have us believe.
Conclusion: A villain of the darkest sort, ready to betray his friends and his own family to get what he wants.
HG rating 3

Camelot Castle
Arthur would have needed some sort of fortress in which to train his knights and lick his wounds after battle, but it’s more likely to have been an uncomfortable bachelor pad where nobody ever does the washing up, rather than the romantic high towers of legend.
Conclusion: An Englishman’s home is his castle, however humble.
HG rating 2

Round Table
Arthur and his knights had to eat their wild boar somewhere. I have a round table in my kitchen, but it wouldn’t seat many knights, and my “siege perilous” is a chair with a wonky leg rather than a magical seat where nobody dares to sit. Anyway, I’ve never seen the Grail appear floating above it in a ray of light… at least not yet.
Conclusion: Whatever shape it was, there was probably some dancing on it.
HG rating 2

Knights of the Round Table
Pretty sure to have existed, since there is historical evidence for mounted knights by the time of the Crusades, and Arthur’s secret weapon was meant to be mounted warriors who could ride quickly to battle. The much-loved medieval knights who joust in re-enactments today are their descendants.
Conclusion: We’re still knighting people today, so this is serious stuff.
HG rating 5

Avalon
Do you honestly believe Glastonbury Tor is a magical fairy island where Arthur’s body was taken after Mordred killed him?
Conclusion: If you do, then you should enjoy my book!
HG rating 0

Excalibur
If Arthur existed and Mordred existed, then a decent sword must have existed as well so they could fight each other. Who knows what Arthur called it? Probably a few rude things, if the battle was going badly. The Lady of the Lake stretching up her hand to reclaim Excalibur after Arthur’s death is pure fantasy, though warriors did offer their best weapons to water spirits, so there is some historical background to that story.
Conclusion: Every hero needs a good sharp sword.
HG rating 3

Merlin
The king’s enchanter. Traditionally an old man with a long white beard and staff looking a bit like Gandalf in “The Lord of the Rings”. More recently, a young boy with sticking-out ears in BBC’s TV series “Merlin”. Was he a druid? Maybe. Probably not a wizard, though.
Conclusion: More likely to drink blood in the sacred groves and scare people with his tattoos.
HG rating 1

Rhianna Pendragon
Who? She’s King Arthur’s daughter and the heroine of my new series. Pure fiction, you might think, except there’s a slim possibility Arthur did have a daughter or two lying around, since (male) historians like Nennius are unlikely to have thought a girl deserved writing about. And remember Celtic women did fight alongside their men, the most famous being Queen Boudicca who saw off the Romans.
Conclusion: Dare you to say I don't exist!
HG rating 0 1 2 3 4  5

Rhianna Pendragon drawn by Scott Altmann

For an author creating a work of fiction, high numbers on the history rating can be tricky. It sometimes feels like writing in a strait-jacket, making sure your historical characters do what they are supposed to do, when they are supposed to do it. Low ratings obviously offer more freedom, and a rating of 0 offers the most freedom of all – but it can be scary doing pure fantasy, since you have to make everything up. For me, the ideal rating is around 2 or 3. That’s enough history to anchor my story in people’s imagination and give me some background to work with, but enough freedom to invent a magical plot… making King Arthur's daughter an ideal choice.

SWORD OF LIGHT is published this month by Templar in hardcover. For all the latest gossip including links to reviews you can follow Rhianna Pendragon on Twitter at www.twitter.com/PendragonGirl
Katherine’s website is at www.katherineroberts.co.uk

Stepping twice into the river… from Song Quest to Sword of Light – Katherine Roberts

“You cannot step twice into the same river” according to Greek philosopher Heraclitus, who lived in Ephesus around 500BC… yet that is exactly what I am about to do! Having been sitting on the bank for five years since the publication of "I am the Great Horse", watching the water flow past, I am now ready to jump in again with the publication next month of the first book in a new Arthurian fantasy series about King Arthur’s daughter.

What Heraclitus means, of course, is that if you step into the river again… even only a fraction of a second after stepping out of it… then although it might look like the same river on the surface, it won’t be the same, because the water you stepped into last time has already flowed downstream, whereas the water you are stepping into now is new water that you’ve never experienced before. (At least, not unless last time you stepped into the river further upstream, then jumped out again, and ran faster downstream than the water flows, and timed it so you stepped in again at just the right moment when your original water caught up… but that is all rather exhausting to get your head around!)

My time out of the water watching the publishing river flow past, while undeniably frustrating, has shown me a few important things. First, for a children’s author, the river flows faster than it does for those of us who write adult books. We cannot (however hard we try) hold on to our fan base, any more than a mother can stop her children from growing up. The 9-year-olds who will be reading my Pendragon books were not even born when my debut novel Song Quest was published back in 1999. They might be the same age as those 9-year-olds who enjoyed Song Quest, but they are clearly not the same children.

Catnip, 2012

That’s why, at the same time as my new series is published, Song Quest will be republished for a new generation of readers. To today’s children, it should seem like a brand new book. Whether today’s 9-year olds enjoy it as much as those who are now 22 remains to be seen, since even fantasy books age, and I'm aware of the difference in style between Song Quest (leisurely and detailed and long at 70,000 words) and Sword of Light (fast and simpler and short at 50,000 words… all right, maybe not that short!). I suspect Song Quest’s readership today will be slightly older than the readership for Sword of Light, which might not be a bad thing.



Element, 1999

 The author’s experience is rather different, too. When Song Quest was first published by Element in 1999, there were no blogs like this one. There was no Twitter. There was only a limited, slow internet. I had a simple website, kindly put together by the British Fantasy Society as a favour to their members... a website I never even saw until it had been “live” for two years, because I didn’t have the internet connection required to view it. There was no email for me. I sent big packets of paper to my publisher, and they sent big packets of paper back. “Tracked changes” were something to do with railways, not Word files. Fans wrote to me on paper in real envelopes that came through the letterbox, rather than opened on Outlook Express. I did zero self-promotion, beyond walking into town and telling the owner of the local independent bookshop I had a book coming out.

I rode the rapids when Song Quest won the Branford Boase Award and I signed a seven book contract (on the same day!), and a year later flew to San Francisco to launch my second children's book Spellfall at the American Libraries Association conference. With several years of deadlines lined up and a lovely agent - Maggie Noach - on board, I got swept into the middle of the publishing river without even realising it, and the water was, on the whole, life-sustaining. Then at some stage - and I still don't know what I did wrong, because I never stopped writing - I found myself washed up on the bank. That taught me the second thing about publishing: a contracted book (or two or – in my case – twelve) does not a career make. Meanwhile, those publishing waters kept rushing noisily downstream, and those still swimming in them probably didn’t have time to notice, but a new stream appeared, quietly trickling alongside only visible to those of us sitting on the bank… ebooks and amazon's Kindle. In the absence of either publisher or agent, I dipped my toe into that little stream and sipped of its waters. It kept me alive.

Templar hardcover, 2012

Then Rhianna Pendragon came trotting out of the enchanted mists on her fairy horse, and I knew it was time to step into the main publishing river again. On the surface it still looked much like the same river… but Heraclitus was absolutely right, that river had changed. From something that looked inviting, it had become a roaring flood of debut authors fresh from university writing courses, pseudonymous series produced by the fiction factories, hotshot young agents and editors, and more and more new books. And it had become so NOISY! All those authors and publishers and agents now have blogs and Twitter accounts and singing, dancing websites, and appear at hundreds of new festivals that have sprung up all across the country talking about writing. The author’s job description has clearly changed.

So here I am! On the wonderful History Girls blog and elsewhere on the net, spending almost as much time writing these blog posts as writing my books. I’d much rather be sorting out the tricky plot holes in the middle of Book 3, which is carrying me downstream towards its deadline at an alarming rate. But I'm swimming again, and that’s got to be better than sitting on the bank thirsting for the publishing waters. (Though now, of course, I am a bit afraid of missing something that can only be seen from the bank...)

Thank you, Heraclitus, I think I understand now. And thank you, Templar, for inviting me back into the water!

Sword of Light is published by Templar in hardcover on 1st February.

Song Quest is republished by Catnip in paperback, also 1st February.

Meanwhile, you can follow Rhianna Pendragon on Twitter at www.twitter.com/PendragonGirl

Details of my other books (many now available as reasonably-priced ebooks for Kindle) can be found on my website at http://www.katherineroberts.co.uk/