The Mysticism of Cornwall - The Cheesewring

 I had never written a historical fantasy before, but time travel has always interested me. My novel, Beyond the Fall, was my first fantasy, sending a woman from the 21st century back to the 18th c. after she explores a neglected graveyard in Cornwall, England.

Cornwall became an obsession of mine. I've set several books there and read about the mysteries attached to this portion of England. My husband I traveled to North Cornwall for the first time to research one of my historical novels. On a misty, foggy day (how appropriate) we walked on the Bodmin Moor. The first sign we encountered was a tiny one that said Cheesewring with an arrow. In those dark ages days before the internet was so readily available, we scratched our heads, wondering what this could be.

Traipsing the mysterious moor over scrubby grass, glared at by disturbed sheep, I saw a strange rock formation in the distance and insisted my husband take my picture with it. Only when we arrived home, and I researched in a book I had, did I find that this granite tor had been the Cheesewring.

 

Located on the southern edge of the Bodmin Moor, the Cheesewring, or in Cornish, Keuswask, is a geological formation on Stowe’s Hill formed by centuries of weathering—harsh winds and rain. The name is derived from the piled slabs that resemble a cheese press.

Thirty-two feet in height, the tor is top-heavy, the fifth and sixth rocks of immense size and thickness. Four lower rocks support them, all perfectly irregular, the towering formation having no lateral support as it clings to the steep hill. It’s said the formation spewed from the earth, and crystallized as tubular granite.

 In local legend, the Cheesewring is the result of a contest between a man and a giant. The giants who dwelled in the Cornish caves were angry when Christianity was first introduced to the British Islands. The Saints had invaded their land, and the largest giant Uther was sent to chase them out. The frail Saint Tue proposed a rock throwing contest. If he won, the giants had to convert to Christianity. If Uther won, the Saints would leave Cornwall.

Uther easily threw a small rock to the top of Stowe’s Hill. Tue prayed for assistance. He picked up a huge slab, and found it miraculously light. They continued throwing, stacking the stones in perfect piles. When the score was twelve each, Uther tossed a thirteenth, but it rolled down the hill. Tue picked up his fallen stone, and as he lifted it an angel appeared to carry the slab to the top of the rock pile. At seeing this, Uther conceded, and most of the giants converted to Christianity.

In a book on Arthurian Legend, it’s said that the slabs turn and twist at certain times of the year. Or when the tor hears a cock crow.

Located adjacent to the Cheesewring Quarry and surrounded by other granite formations, this landmark was threatened with destruction in the late nineteenth century by the proximity of blasting operations, but was saved as a result of local activism.

 Later, to indulge in my time travel fantasy, I wrote Beyond the Fall.

Blurb: In Cornwall, England, Tamara researches her ancestors. Among gravestones she tumbles back to 1789 in the midst of grain riots. Will she fall for the secretive farmer, Colum, or struggle to return to her own time? Highly Recommended ~ History and Women

To purchase Beyond the Fall click HERE

For more on Diane Scott Lewis and her Cornish novels:

http://www.dianescottlewis.org

On olives, longevity and litigiousness

There's something serious about olive-trees. Gnarled, ironhard, producing grey-green leaves and succulent salty fruits often for centuries on end, they are frankly a bit special. Nowadays there is a connoisseur trade in ancient olive-trees, symbols of a timeless rustic lifestyle, old masters with bark on them.

In Greece olive oil was essential as a staple crop for local consumption and export, as it still is, and in Athens the trees were under regular inspection. Amongst them the sacred olive-trees were especially precious, as the un-named defendant of a lawsuit in around 395BC knew well. Scattered across the farms of Attica, some of them little more than stumps with fences around them, these trees were thought to descend from one presented to the infant city by Athene herself and were protected by religious law.

We know of the case, though not its outcome, from the speech written for the defendant by the professional speechwriter Lysias. The piece of land in dispute had once been confiscated from a discredited oligarch and since then resold to the defendant, who had proceded to rent it out to a series of tenants. The accusation had been made, for reasons unknown, that he had uprooted and removed a sacred olive stump from his land. This could have resulted in his exile and the confiscation of his property by the state, so the man's defence was robust.

The speech touches on several aspects of Athenian society. First the defendant denies that there had ever been this olive-stump on his land in the first place, then blames the Peloponnesian War, in which the Spartan army had devastated olive-trees, which take a generation to grow large enough to bear fruit, as a scorched-earth tactic. Why, he went on, should he do anything so stupid as to destroy a sacred object in broad daylight, when anyone could report him? Even if he had managed to keep it secret, his own slaves could have blackmailed him for ever after. In any case, there were no other olives on that piece of land and its absence would have been obvious for all to see. He has offered those same slaves for torture - a common tactic implying an absence of anything to hide - but his generous offer was spurned by his accuser, who dismissed slave evidence as unreliable.

The details go on, but the speaker ends with a familiar appeal. Since Athenian law concentrated not purely on the case but on the characters of the plaintiff and defendant, he plays up his services to the city - financing a trireme for the navy, supplying funds for a play at one of the dramatic festivals (themselves semi-religious affairs) - and piles on the sack-cloth and ashes. How unfortunate I would be, he says, driven into exile, torn from my children, leaving my mother destitute and my house deserted!

All about a tree-stump. But in the Athenian context it was a matter of enormous importance, bringing together religious belief, social and political jealousy, the master-slave relationship, past history, civic identity and the love of going to law. Being rich enough to equip a warship meant that this defendant was also rich enough to hire Lysias, but he had to deliver every word of the speech himself. On the Hill of Ares, before the King-Arkhon and jurors, with the prospect of exile in front of him, this unknown man was on his own.

It's in this context that I wrote A Pig in the Roses, which includes a trial held in this court - full details are at http://peteralanorchard.net/, along with my children's story The House in Athene Street, my short story collection Voices in the Past and the latest Anglo-Saxon story, Starlight.

STOP PRESS: A Pig in the Roses is a miserly $1.99 this week at Smashwords if you use coupon ST73U (offer ends on June 3).

Peter
http://www.peteralanorchard.net/
http://twitter.com/peteraorchard

Ancient Greece for mystery-lovers... and for children

As I wrote my ancient Athens mystery, A Pig in the Roses, I grew rather fond of the hero's family: Diokles himself, the determined but harrassed merchant with a lot on his mind; his wife Helike, a bustling country girl making a go of city life; their young daughter Xanthippe, bright-eyed and curly-haired, desperate to achieve some grown up dignity in spite of the activities of her much younger brother Euphemos, a self-absorbed bundle of chaos.

One of the elements I tried to maintain in what is in places quite a dark book - it contains several deaths and some murky social undertones - was the picture of a normal family coping with a desperate situation while trying to maintain their normality. There was no criminal investigation in ancient Greece, and it was the duty of the family to pursue an offender and bring cases to court, so Diokles is knocked sideways when his wife's uncle Makron, earning a living in town as a stonemason and living with his hypochondriac ex-slave mistress in Diokles' house, is hauled before a magistrate and accused of murdering his brother, an elderly farmer.

The book is set in 431 BC, at the beginning of the Peloponnesian War between Athens and Sparta, a time of country folk abandoning their villages to cram themselves into every available living-space in Athens, of tensions and divided loyalties. The chain of events involves several murders and all the family becomes involved. Diokles bears the brunt of it, with his persistence, trading contacts and tendency to jump in with both feet, but Helike makes important contributions through her dealings with other wives and spiky encounters with another key figure, Melitta, a young Samian courtesan.

Xanthippe and Euphemos, too, have their parts to play, and it was involving the children which made me think there was a story for young readers to be made out of the family, or characters based on them. The result was The House on Athene Street, a 10,000-worder for the 9-12s. This is a much more straightforward plot. Those who read both books will recognise the family, but most of the names are changed and the hero is an elder brother, the 13-year-old Hermippos, created for the children's story. Athene Street keeps the social context, ditches the politics and goes for a kidnap and chase plot involving the youngest child, the Egyptian girl Tiya, who keeps a perfume-stall, Tiya's uncle Wenamun, a length of rope, a pottery horse and rider and a stroppy red-head up a tree. Hermippos, naturally, saves the day, with lessons learnt about loyalty, bravery, co-operation, difference and the persistence of small brothers.

The difference in writing between the two? Not much, really. The Pig is much the more complex and has elements which children will not (probably should not) follow, but still qualifies as a 'cozy'. The parents are seen in a protective role in Athene Street, with the children to the front of the action, and nobody comes to much harm except the villain's dignity.

Both books are Smashwords titles, are available in all the usual formats and are scheduled to appear at the main ebook sellers as part of Smashwords' premium programme. All the details, summaries, buy links and excerpts are on my website, http://www.peteralanorchard.net/, and my Smashwords page.

Call Me Duchess by Maggie Dove

Hi Everyone,

I just received the cover for my forthcoming novel, Call Me Duchess. I wanted to share it with you and tell you a little bit about my book:

Grippingly suspenseful and romantic, CALL ME DUCHESS, is a stunning, young woman’s journey to find love in 1870 London while a dashingly handsome chaperone, a heinous villain, and her own lofty aspirations stand in her way. Left penniless by their father, Marguerite Wiggins and her sisters must find husbands during the London season or work as governesses by season’s end.
Determined to become the next Duchess of Wallingford, Marguerite is a woman in love who must make the difficult decision between following her heart or attaining her lifetime dreams and ambitions as a depraved rapist seeks to make her his next victim.

Historical Romance/Romantic Suspense, CALL ME DUCHESS is the second novel of the Windword Trilogy.
To be released by Eternal Press - January, 2011