How fast can you travel by horse anyway?

How fast could this horse go?

While working on my second historical mystery, From the Charred Remains, I came across a rather straightforward mystery of my own.  How long would it have taken to travel the fifty-plus mile trek from London to Oxford, by horse and carriage, in the mid seventeenth-century?

 I have some faint memory of an equation that claimed distance=rate x speed (and even worse memories of trying to apply that equation).  I don’t think that equation works, though, when you don’t know the weight of a cart, the strength of a horse, or the conditions of the roads. 

So I had to set some parameters. I needed the cart (wagon, really) to be able to carry two men and two women, along with two or three barrels or bags of miscellaneous supplies.  I needed the journey to take less than a day.   The wagon had to be decent, but more serviceable and sturdy, than luxurious. It had to be capable of traversing 50 or so miles of the muddy, unpaved London Road. Similarly, the horses had to be from a hearty stock, and affordable for hire by a journeyman. Not being an equestrian, a farrier, or a blacksmith (okay, let’s face it, I’m not even sure if I’ve ever even been on a horse), this has been a truly puzzling question. 

So doing a little digging into the Early English Books Online and a few other primary sources, I first learned what kinds of wagons would have been available to a London tradesman in 1666. Here, I relied mainly on woodcuts to show me pictures of how tradesmen conveyed goods.  Hackney carriages were available for hire, but those would not likely have been owned by a tradesman. Coaches (Berlins) were just coming into fashion, out of Germany, but again my tradesman would not have found such a vehicle suitable to his needs or budget. 

Wing / 1917:08 

As for the horses, I looked to Gervase Markham, a seventeenth-century self-titled “Perfect Horse-man,” who shared his “experienced secrets” on horse care and training. He mentions some different kinds of horses (or perhaps more aptly, the services horses can offer), including the “courier,” the “carter,” the “poulter,” and the “packhorse.”   

Unfortunately, throughout Markham’s lengthy 200+ pages of advice to the horse-challenged, I could only find one bit of useful information for my purposes.  He says: “In journeying, ride moderately the first hour or two, but after according to your occasions.  Water before you come to your Inn, if you can possibly; but if you cannot, then give warm water in the Inn, after the Horse hath fed, and is full cooled within, and outwardly dried.” He then went on to say something about applying copious amounts of “dog’s grease” to the horse’s limbs and sinews, but I think I wandered off the page at that point.

Then I needed to find out how fast two horses can even pull a wagon.  Throwing my question to the whims of Google yielded an oft-repeated response: a team can travel 4 miles an hour on paved or semi-paved roads. Horses can only travel a few hours at a time; so it looks like my fictional travelers will have to exchange horses several times at various coaching houses along the way. 

This would mean it would take my travelers 15 hours to travel from London to Oxford, which is FAR TOO LONG for the purposes of my story. Yet, I've always been extremely scrupulous in my attention to historical details. So my puzzle has resulted in another conundrum—bend the facts to fit my story, or bend my story to fit the facts? 

What to do? What to do? What would you do?

From the Annals of Awesome Historical Research

In other blog posts I have gone on at (too great) length about issues of historical accuracy. I do my best, and feel like the setting of my books is one of my book’s strengths, but I recently found en example of research that boggled my mind.

For those of you who don’t know him, Steve Hamilton has written a number of memorable mysteries, including a series about a former cop Alex McKnight, and The Lock Artist, a stand-alone novel that won the 2010 Edgar Award for Best Mystery. After reading The Lock Artist, I dove into his earlier novels, starting with A Cold Day in Paradise. (The McKnight series is set in the town of Paradise on Michigan’s Upper Peninsula.)

In Hamilton’s third book, 2001’s The Hunting Wind, McKnight is visited by an old friend with whom he played minor league baseball. Unlike McKnight, Wilkins was called up to the big leagues and pitched briefly for the Detroit Tigers. Here is where things got interesting, at least for me. Wilkins tells McKnight about his trip to The Show:

In 1971, when I went up to Detroit, there were a few of us who got called up together. You remember Marvin Lane, the outfielder, and Chuck Seelbach, the other pitcher? A couple guys from double-A, too.

 Do the names Lane and Seelbach ring any bells? Probably not, and if you’re like me, you assumed that Hamilton invented them. I mean he invented the rest of his characters, right? I mean why not make up names? They aren't actually characters, and who in their right minds would research the names of people who don't even appear in the novel?

I don’t actually know the answer to that last question, but in a tremendously strange coincidence, I do know Chuck Seelbach. After getting off to a great start as a pitcher, Chuck hurt his shoulder, and we now teach history at the same school (University School outside Cleveland, OH). 

This sort of attention to detail raised a variety of questions that I am still trying to figure out. First, given the long odds that anyone would recognize Lane’s and Seelbach’s names, why in the world would Hamilton go to the trouble of digging them up? In this, Hamilton seems to have two possible constituencies. The first of these is his readers, but the number of people who would recognize the names has to be vanishingly small. (I suppose it is possible that Tigers fans might be a bit more in tune with pre-Watergate roster moves, but there can’t be many of them who know that Marvin Lane isn’t a street in Ypsilanti.) 

Then there are the people (not many, I hope) who read that passage and then ran for their copy of Baseball Reference to see if these people existed. (Looks like they may not have had to go as far as I'd thought. I just checked, and the online version of Baseball Reference has been around since 2000. I find that kind of amazing.) In any event, I have to think that the number of people who a) recognized the players; or b) did not recognize the players, but cared enough to look them up is extremely small.

So we are back to the question, why did Hamilton bother? If it’s not for the readers, who is this detail for? The answer, I think, is that he did it for himself. He wanted to get every possible detail right, so he did the necessary legwork.

And that’s kind of cool.          

The Devil is NOT in the Details - Anacrhonism and historical fiction

When readers and writers discuss historical anachronism, they often focus on stuff. What saddle Anne Boleyn used, the fabric clothes were made of, the food people ate. And it is a good idea for authors to ensure they get the little things right, if for no other reason that some readers react to any anachronism the way Christopher Reeve does at the end of Somewhere in Time. (Spoiler alert.)

There is, however, an important distinction between not getting anything wrong and getting things right, a distinction that in many cases mirrors the line between the physical and mental worlds of the past.

"Help, help, I'm being oppressed!"

If a character goes to a medieval inn and orders a potato frittata and tea, the author has clearly done something wrong, and even an inattentive reader will notice.  But what if the character rides past a castle and, like Monty Python’s Marxist peasants, thinks thoroughly modern thoughts? Now the Pythons clearly went to an extreme here – which is what makes the scene work – but even the best authors of historical fiction make this mistake with far less amusing results.

For example, Adelia Aguilar, the protagonist of Ariana Franklin’s wonderful Mistress of the Art of Death, rejects the conventional wisdom on the causes of malaria and expresses doubts concerning the medical theories of Galen. This decision – or error, if you would prefer– is different than if she’d had Adelia drink bourbon or express a fondness for hot wings. While it is objectively impossible for Adelia to love southern whiskey and fast food, the question of whether it would have been  possible for a physician trained in Salerno to question Galen is far more subjective.

To be clear, yes, it is possible for Adelia to think these thoughts. But finding an educated physician in medieval Europe who questioned Galen is as likely as finding a modern physicist who challenges scientific method. These people might exist, but they are few and far between. (It’s also notable that Franklin’s protagonist keeps her thoughts to herself. If she expressed her doubts publicly, she would lose all credibility.)

 Note that Franklin’s anachronism here is not born of ignorance: There can be no doubt that she understands the medical mindset of medieval Europe. I think it is also clear why Franklin made this decision. She wanted readers to relate to her protagonist, and did not think that they could sympathize with a character whose assumptions about medicine and the human body were – to our modern eyes – obviously wrong. 

And this, I think, is what so disappointed me about the book. It’s not the just the anachronism, though I admit that I was aghast at that. I was more disappointed that Franklin simply did not trust her readers to understand and sympathize with a character who believed that blood-letting might be valid medical technique.

I am not arguing that portraying the interior lives of characters an easy task, and I admit that my own protagonist walks along the same fine line as Adelia, and sometimes she might cross it. But it is nevertheless the case that telling the truth about the past requires both an understanding of the time period and the courage to be honest with your readers.

Why do we need damaged protagonists?

One of the first pieces of advice you get when you start to write is that your protagonist cannot be too perfect. You need someone to whom people can relate, someone who has obstacles to overcome: most famously, Superman is bedeviled both by kryptonite and his attachment to Lois Lane; Matthew Scudder is an alcoholic; Indiana Jones is afraid of snakes, etc.

This truism came to mind this week when I finished two excellent mysteries, The Janissary Tree and The Mystic Arts of Erasing All Signs of Death. At one level, you would be hard pressed to find two more different books. The Janissary Tree offers a lush, detailed portrait of 19^th century Istanbul, and the ongoing conflict within the Ottoman Empire over whether to westernize, or maintain the traditions that had served the Empire so well for so long. Mystic Arts is a terse, brutal, profane, and very funny journey through the heart of Los Angeles, from the Santa Monica, to Hollywood, to the industrial wasteland of the Port of Los Angeles.

What the books have in common, however, is a damaged protagonist. For Yashim, the sleuth from The Janissary Tree, the damage is physical. He is a eunuch. In contrast, Mystic Arts’s Web Gilmore is physically whole, but he has suffered wounds of his own as the witness to a terrible act of violence. As I thought about these two men, I realized that despite the their differences – they are separated by time, culture, and religion – they have been affected in similar ways by their injuries. Yashim’s and Web’s wounds simultaneously ripped them out of the world they had known and thrust them into an entirely new existence.

Yashim’s castration pulled him from a more conventional life, and robbed him of many dreams he might have harbored. Although we only catch glimpses of his past, it becomes clear that it took him many years to overcome the rage he felt at his fate. He has no family, and no Turkish friends, save a similarly castrated prostitute. He is – as one character comments – a free lance. At the same time, however, Yashim’s castration ushers him into a position of power within the Ottoman government. Because he can be trusted not to father children, he is allowed access to the walled world of the Sultan’s court. Because of this, he is often sought out to perform politically delicate tasks, and government officials trust him to handle their affairs discreetly.

While Web is physically in tact, he is far less healthy than Yashim. A brutal and random death has driven him out of his life as a teacher, and he now spends every waking hour trying to alienate the one friend that he has left. But the violence he has witnessed also carries Web into the business of crime scene clean-up. (These are the folks who clean up the hazardous and bloody mess left behind when we exit this life violently.) Eventually Web discovers that the very experience that drove him out of teaching has allowed him to find not just a new job, but also a new basis for friendship. He and his co-workers all have seen death, too much death, at close range and this becomes a bond strong enough to overcome his obvious and deliberate misanthropy.

Of course this journey, as a protagonist follows the path from the disintegration of an old self to the creation of a new one, is no new thing. And it is only now that I see similar trends in my own work, as Bridget Hodgson (my protagonist) attempts to cope with the blows that life has dealt her, and does so by rethinking the meaning of family.

But it also seems to me that there is one very good reason why this story resonates so strongly with us: this is the nature of our own existence. We may not suffer the way that Yashim and Web have, but we do suffer. Whether it is by death, divorce, disease, or the myriad daily failures that are a part of life, we are constantly being ripped, screaming, out of our old existence and thrust into a new one. We read these stories because we want to know how to find our way in the strange new worlds that are always before us. If men like Yashim and Web can do this – and they have suffered far worse than we have – it gives us hope that we can do the same.

History Today complains that history is too popular.

In an article that can only be described as bizarre, Paul Lay complains that "Last week, for the first time, the number of historical novels sent to History Today for review outnumbered ‘real’ history books." Not only is there too much historical fiction, Lay doesn't like most of it:

The vast majority [of historical novels], however, are awful. And, despite the excellence of authors such as Leon Garfield, Rosemary Sutcliff and Michael Morpurgo, so are most of the historical novels aimed at the children’s market.

As a writer of history and historical fiction, I'm at a bit of a loss for a coherent response. My first question would be what Lay means by "awful." If he means poorly written, then the smarty-pants in me would respond that reading "real" history is hardly a solution.


The crux of his complaint seems to come at the end of the piece:

There’s no great harm in reading historical novels, nor writing them, but if anyone wishes to understand history, in all its complexity, they should read ‘real’ history and then they should write it. 

The mistake here is the the questionable assumption that people read historical fiction in order to understand history. While that might one goal for readers, I would argue that to be entertained, challenged, or intrigued, are equally important, if not more-so. (Were that not the case, then why bother with the "fiction" part of "historical fiction"?) And, though I wish it were not the case, "real" history with its infinite interpretations, and equally infinite shades of gray, does not always lend itself to fiction.


I am not, of course, defending bad history even in a fictional context. The past is not "Like Now, but with Hats." But given the desperate financial challenges faced by the humanities, isn't the enduring interest in the past a good thing? 


One might also wonder if "less" historical fiction would mean - as Lay seems to think - "better" historical fiction. It does not seem unreasonable to think that fewer books would also mean fewer good books. And it is certainly true that a smaller market for historical fiction would hurt authors such as Hilary Mantel just as much as the hacks. And who would want that?

Bloody Good Interview: Sophie Perinot on The Sister Queens

By Nancy Bilyeau

It’s always delicious when you find out a friend shares your interests, whether they be lofty or low. For example, my friend Harriet Sharrard, who worked at Good Housekeeping magazine the same years that I did, loves medieval tapestries (she’s actually a serious seamstress herself) and Russell Crowe. We spent one glorious afternoon at a Gladiator matinee—and it was not the first time seeing it for either of us. “Are you not entertained?” Russell roared. Um, quite.

Recently I became friends with a writer, Sophie Perinot, and then discovered a host of similarities. We both had other careers before trying historical fiction. We’ve both got children who could politely be described as active. And we are both fascinated by European history—often with the same people. Much as I hate to give away the treats of an interview, I got chills when I learned that Sophie is interested in the Valois Princess Marguerite. She’s one of my favorite 16th century Frenchwomen too!

Sophie’s debut novel, The Sister Queens, is an absorbing and moving story of two women I did not know much about at all. In Sophie’s talented hands, the queens in question, Marguerite of France and Eleanor of England, come to life magnificently. After finishing it, I had to know more about how Sophie wrote it, and so I lured her onto my group blog, A Bloody Good Read.


First, I’ll share a longer description of The Sister Queens:

Like most sisters, Marguerite and Eleanor were rivals. They were also queens.

Raised at the court of their father, Raymond Berenger, Count of Provence, Marguerite and Eleanor are separated by royal marriages--but never truly parted.

Patient, perfect, and used to being first, Marguerite becomes Queen of France. But Louis IX is a religious zealot who denies himself the love and companionship his wife craves. Can she borrow enough of her sister's boldness to grasp her chance for happiness in a forbidden love?

Passionate, strong-willed, and stubborn, Eleanor becomes Queen of England. Henry III is a good man, but not a good king. Can Eleanor stop competing with her sister and value what she has, or will she let it slip away?


Now, more background about Sophie:

In Spring 2012 Sophie Perinot’s debut novel, The Sister Queens, was released by NAL. She has both a BA in History and a law degree. Sophie left the law to pursue artistic interests, including writing. An avid reader, especially of classic literature, and life-long student of history, it seemed only natural that Sophie should write historical fiction. As someone who studied French abroad and a devotee of Alexandre Dumas, French history was a logical starting point. An active member of the Historical Novel Society, she has attended all of the group’s North American Conferences.

Active among the literary twitterati as @Lit_gal (a moniker she also uses at Agent Query Connect www.agentqueryconnect.com), Sophie is a regular contributor to the group writers' blog "From the Write Angle" http://www.fromthewriteangle.com. Find her on facebook at www.facebook.com/sophie.perinot.author.

And now, my interview with Sophie Perinot:

Nancy Bilyeau: For your first work of historical fiction, why do you think you were drawn to a century and a family that have not been written about that much?

Sophie Perinot: Fate. Seriously.

I’ve always been a sucker for sister-stories, all the way back to the March sisters in Little Women. I suspect that’s because I am half of a pair of incredibly close sisters (my first childhood memory is of my sister coming home from the hospital and we have been best friends ever since). I’d like to think that I discovered the story that became The Sister Queens because I view the world through a sister’s eyes.

So here is how I found Marguerite and Eleanor. The Sister Queens is not, in fact, my first work of historical fiction. That honor (dubious because the manuscript is not published) belongs to a novel set in the 16th century that helped me to find my marvelous agent. It was while I was researching that piece that Marguerite and Eleanor of Provence called out to me. They were in a note in a book on the history Notre Dame de Paris (Marguerite’s image is carved over that great church’s Portal Rouge), along with their younger sisters. The book revealed that these four women were raised at a court renowned for its culture and chivalry, connected to a “celebrity” family of the High Middle Ages (the Savoyards), and had all made politically important marriages, yet I had never heard of them. The fact that such significant women had largely slipped through the fingers of history made me angry. So, I started a file folder with their names on it and vowed to come back and tell their story. The Sister Queens is the result of that vow.


NB: How did you research the lives of the historical characters in The Sister Queens?

SP: I did a substantial amount of both primary and secondary source research for the book. But, as you know yourself Nancy, that’s not as onerous as it was even five years ago. Technology has greatly improved access to information (and experts) right from our desks—everything from the contents of scholarly journals to digital copies of manuscripts is now on-line. Being able to search WorldCat and Jstor from home rather than going through a reference librarian . . . who doesn’t love that?! Of course I travel to reach sources when I have to (or use that old standby the interlibrary loan) and I have stacks of old-fashioned books which I am constantly tripping over.


NB: What was your biggest research challenge?

SP: Knowing when to stop and accepting that I will never know everything.

As a historical writer I want to infuse my work with correct period details, I want to have a deep understanding of historical events that are the foundation of my story, and I want to remain as true as possible to the lives my characters lived, but I also need to meet deadlines. Doing fifteen years of research on a single project isn’t practical. I don’t believe it is necessary either, because I am not writing academic history (my sister does that by the way). So, I try to remember to respect history but not be smothered by it.

As someone who majored in history with a sister who is a professor of history I understand that historical interpretations change and even the “facts” as we know them aren’t set in stone. New information and artifacts are discovered. Old theories and artifact identifications are discredited. As a writer I get to make choices based on evidence—choices that support the narrative arch I am are trying to build. And I can (and do) explain those areas I chose to make potentially controversial choices in my author’s note.


NB: How do you think Eleanor and Marguerite are most similar to today’s readers?

SP: Sorry to get philosophical on you, but those things which are essential to our humanity haven’t changed in a thousand years. Marguerite and Eleanor wrestled with challenges and questions that face contemporary readers everyday. Issues like: What does it mean to be family? What does it mean to be loyal? What does it mean to love unsuitably? Why is every child desperate for parental approval, no matter how unsuitable the parent? Does being a good parent encompass a willingness to sacrifice personal happiness, or even your life, for your child?

In my opinion these are the kind of BIG questions that books should deal with. When novels confront life’s major issues, they remind readers of their own humanity and help them parse through issues in their own lives. What makes historical fiction unique is its setting, which I would argue is more than decorative. Historical context gives writers the chance to highlight just how universal certain themes are. It also provides a distance of sorts to help readers approach situations and questions that might be too raw or too personal in a contemporary context.


NB: In which ways are they most dissimilar?

SP: Marguerite, Eleanor and the people who surround them were products of their time and had to be portrayed accordingly. I tried to be true to 13th century attitudes in the book (though not to 13th century stereotypes, many of which lack truth or greatly oversimplify issues).

One major example (and I could describe dozens) were the religious attitudes of my characters—both in terms of the ways in which they manifested their faith and in terms of their attitudes towards non-Christian people. Yes Louis was an extreme example of 13th century piety, but the use of hair shirts, hair belts, and the practice of self-flagellation were not uncommon in that era. Such “mortification of the flesh” is certainly not standard practice in the Roman Catholic Church today. As for respect for people of other faiths, I certainly hope that we (or most of us) have moved beyond calling people “infidels” or making the type of off-handed anti-Semitic comments that were absolutely unobjectionable in 13th century Western Europe.


NB: How did you handle the challenge of dialogue? What would the English language of the 13th century sound like to our ears?

SP: It would be largely incomprehensible. So would French which, as it happens, was the language spoken by the vast majority of my characters. In the 13th century French was the language of both Louis IX’s French court and of Henry III’s English court. Royal support for English as the language of England had to wait another 100+ years, for Edward III. Given the impracticality of using 700+ year-old French and Occitan (the language that Marguerite and Eleanor were raised with), I decided early on to use the novel’s setting to establish the time period and let my characters speak clearly and unaffectedly. After all, I think they have some fairly important things to say. I included the occasional Occitan or French word (where the meaning is clear from context) for flavor. I also tried to avoid jarringly modern words.


NB: How much did you try to make their decisions relatable to modern customs and values? For example, Eleanor’s willingness to marry a much older man—a stranger—for the good of her family and to go to bed with him almost immediately after the ceremony. That doesn’t happen much today.

SP: I am not sure I did try. I expect readers to accept the facts and mores of the time in which The Sister Queens is set. Eleanor married at twelve. That was hardly out of the ordinary for her day. She would have considered herself an adult woman at the time (even if later – and I believe Eleanor comments on this – she realizes how far from grown up she truly was). Her society wouldn’t have thought “yuck” about her marriage to the twenty-eight year old King of England so I don’t present it in a “yuck” manner. Instead I hoped to make my audience see the marriage through Eleanor’s 13th century eyes.


NB: Did you have a favorite sister?

SP: I love both sisters. That is one of the things that made writing this book such a joy. Who I loved the best at any given moment depended on who I was writing.


NB: While writing their stories did you ever wish Marguerite or Eleanor would make a different decision than the one they actually did?

SP: Yes, but not too often. This is not to imply that their decisions were always wise, rather that my identification with them was so complete and my empathy for them was so strong that I stopped judging them. I think this is a function of the fact I wrote the book in first-person present tense. To do that I had to become each sister, just as an actress becomes a character to portray her convincingly. So, for example, when I was writing Eleanor if she regretted a decision I regretted it. But if she stubbornly defended it (even in the face of mounting evidence that it was a mistake) I found myself thinking, “Ill be darned if I’ll admit to Henry I am wrong” right along with her.

NB: How do you think they compare to other famous queen siblings who married for reasons of state, like Catherine of Aragon and Juana of Castile, or Marguerite and Elisabeth de Valois?

SP: I am not in a position to have an educated opinion about Catherine and Juana. I do, however, know quite a lot about the Valois. Marguerite de Valois is a major character in my next book. My conclusion—Marguerite and Eleanor were closer sisters and more important queens.

As Sisters: While Marguerite and Elisabeth de Valois spent some of their early years together at Saint-Germain (along with Claude de Valois and the young Mary Stuart), the girls were not close. This was likely the result of a significant age difference and the fact that Elisabeth left France to be married when Marguerite was only six (barely six at that). Elizabeth died in childbirth when Marguerite was still in her teens so there was no opportunity for a more adult relationship (interestingly Marguerite was proposed as her sister’s replacement by their mother, Catherine de Médicis). So, I don’t think it would have been possible to write a “sister story” about these two Valois sisters.

As Queens: I think the sisters from Provence win this contest as well. While Elisabeth de Valois had a warm relationship with her husband, Philip II of Spain, and prestige and influence within the Spanish court, she only lived to twenty-three and produced no male heir. So her reign cannot compair in terms of impact with those of my 13th century queens, both of whom lived more than six decades and produced the next King of their respective countries.

Marguerite de Valois lived into old age, just as Marguerite and Eleanor of Provence did. So she had sufficient years to make a political and a dynastic impact. Unfortunately she was not in a position to realistically do either. Her marriage to Henri of Navarre (eventually Henri IV of France) was never more than political, and she lived a great portion of her life removed from her husband and his court. Marguerite, who bore Henri no children, was eventually divorced. I would say she had more influence on art and literature than she did on French politics or history. She certainly was no competition for the younger of the Provencal sisters, Eleanor, who acted as regent of England.

------------------------------------------------------

Thank you for taking the time to answer my questions, Sophie!

For more information, go to www.sophieperinot.com

Bloody Good Interview: M.J. Rose on "The Book of Lost Fragrances"

By Nancy Bilyeau

M.J. Rose’s The Book of Lost Fragrances is the sort of read I adore: well-crafted suspense, vivid description, romantic tension, and, best of all, fascinating historical passages. I was lucky enough to score an advance copy a few months ago and I’m still luxuriating in its richness. The virtual blog tour for my own novel, The Crown, is still going strong, thanks to the divine Amy Bruno’s Historical Fiction Virtual Book Tours. When I saw that M.J. Rose just launched her own tour, I had to raise my hand. For the first time, I’m interviewing a fellow thriller author—and it’s great fun to use my journalistic background to take a seat on the other side of the (virtual) desk.

First, let me share a description of M.J.’s book, The Book of Lost Fragrances:

"A sweeping and suspenseful tale of secrets, intrigue, and lovers separated by time, all connected through the mystical qualities of a perfume created in the days of Cleopatra—and lost for 2,000 years.

Jac L’Etoile has always been haunted by the past, her memories infused with the exotic scents that she grew up surrounded by as the heir to a storied French perfume company. In order to flee the pain of those remembrances—and of her mother’s suicide—she moves to America, leaving the company in the hands of her brother Robbie. But when Robbie hints at an earth-shattering discovery in the family archives and then suddenly goes missing—leaving a dead body in his wake—Jac is plunged into a world she thought she’d left behind.

Back in Paris to investigate her brother’s disappearance, Jac discovers a secret the House of L’Etoile has been hiding since 1799: a scent that unlocks the mysteries of reincarnation. The Book of Lost Fragrances fuses history, passion, and suspense, moving from Cleopatra’s Egypt and the terrors of revolutionary France to Tibet’s battle with China and the glamour of modern-day Paris. Jac’s quest for the ancient perfume someone is willing to kill for becomes the key to understanding her own troubled past. The ancient perfume someone is willing to kill for becomes the key to understanding her own troubled past."

M.J. Rose is an internationally best-selling author of 11 novels and two books of nonfiction. The television series PAST LIFE was based on Rose's novels in the Renincarnationist series. She is one of the founding board members of International Thriller Writers and runs the blog Buzz, Balls & Hype.




Nancy Bilyeau: Hello, M.J.! How did you get the original idea for The Book of Lost Fragrances?

M.J. Rose: I was reading about Cleopatra (69 BCE to 30BCE), who was the last pharaoh of Ancient Egypt, and found she was fascinated with—and some say obsessed by— scent. Marc Anthony built her a fragrance factory, where he planted now- extinct flora and fauna, including groves of balsam trees (important in the creation of perfume at the time) that were confiscated from Herod.

In the 1980s a team of Italian and Israeli archaeologists believe they unearthed the factory at the south end of the Dead Sea, 30 km from Ein Gedi. Residues of ancient perfumes along with seats where customers received beauty treatments were found there.

Cleopatra was said to have kept a recipe book for her perfumes, entitled Cleopatra gynaeciarum libri. The book has been described in writings by historians Dioscorides, Homer and Pliny the Elder. No known copy of the book exists today.

When I read about that book, I knew I had the idea for a new novel.

N.B.: You have at least one character in this book that has appeared in previous books? But would you describe “Lost Fragrances” as a series?

M.J.R.: It’s a very loose series and it doesn’t have to be read in order. On purpose all of the books are written to be stand-alones. What does tie them together is each one touches on reincarnation. I am fascinated on how the past influences the present.

And yes, Malachai Samuels does show up as a character in all the books but he’s never the main character. He’s a reincarnationist in search of legendary lost “memory tools” which can help us access our past life memories.

N.B.: In this novel, I particularly liked the way you used point of view—you leap around very nimbly in the present and then you open up the past to describe very key events. What are the secrets to writing multiple points of view –and on different time tracks?

M.J.R.: I don’t know the secret. I didn’t even know there was one☺ But thanks so much for the compliment. I write and then rewrite forever.

N.B.: How do you research the past times in the book?

M.J.R.: I read a lot and make collages of images I find. Researching all these time periods is one of the most enjoyable parts of writing these books.

N.B.: Did you have a favorite past place to lose yourself in: Paris or Egypt?

M.J.R.: Paris for sure. The most magical city. I can’t spend enough time there.

N.B.: Do you use different “rules” for dialogue and action and descriptive writing in the past than in the modern-day sections?

M.J.R.: Not really rules, no. When I write, the scene plays out in my mind like a movie and the characters seems to help me stay in the right time.

N.B.: I really fell in love with the chapter early in “Fragrances” set in the family crypt. The way you described it made me feel as if I were there. Did you use a specific place to inspire you or was it all from imagination?

M.J.R.: Thank you. So much. I had once seen a photo of the angel sculpture I used in the tomb – I built the whole structure around that angle bathed in cobalt blue light.

N.B.: How much did you know of the history of fragrance creation before you started researching this book? How much additional research did you do?

M.J.R.: When I was in advertising I had a perfume account (one of the fragrances I did was Opium). I learned a lot about the current industry but only learned about the history when I started thinking about this novel. I did more than two years of research, reading dozens of books, meeting with many people in the business, and experimenting a bit with perfume myself.

N.B.: Do you have your own theories on reincarnation and how did they come into play in the book?

M.J.R.: I don’t have my own theories, no. But I’m endlessly fascinated by it.

N.B.: What about the power of scent and how it intertwines with reincarnation? Did you uncover fascinating little known facts and theories when writing this book?

M.J.R.: I think so, yes. One being that ancient cultures used incense – sometimes slightly hallucinogenic incense — to induce meditative states during which you could discover your past life.

N.B.: Finally, what is your favorite scent—and why?

I love many but I’d have say that my favorite is Âmes Soeurs, the Scent of Soul mates. It was created for my novel – a dream I had but never imagined would come true.

I had wanted to commission a fragrance from the tine I started writing the book and looked into it but to do it well with a really quality perfumer was astronomically expensive. And I gave up on that idea early on.

When I was writing the book – to keep in the world of scent – I burned a lot of candles. When I finished writing, I gave a copy of the book to the perfumer who’d created the candles that had inspired me the most: Frederick Bouchardy. (Joya Studios).

After he read the novel he contacted me and we met for tea in the Peninsula Hotel in NYC. He told me he loved the book and wanted to create his version of the fragrance at the heart of the novel. I was so astonished and honored, I actually started to cry.

Bouchardy even named the fragrance after one in the book: Âmes Sœurs the sense of soul mates. It has hints of Frankincense, Myrrh, Orange Blossom and Jasmine. I think it has a smoky uncommon finish that suggests the past and the future, and lost souls reunited.
* * *
Thank you for a fascinating interview, M.J. Rose! This novel, published by Atria Books, goes on sale March 13, 2012.

Confessions of a Genre Writer

In 2006, in my first online fiction workshop, I submitted two chapters from the historical thriller I’d begun writing. My fellow students critiqued my work; I critiqued theirs. The instructor, “T,” weighed in as well.

At the very end of the workshop, “T” sent me this email: “I'd love to see you produce some more material that seems a little ‘closer’ to you personally, closer to the bone. I mean, you're writing crime thrillers and historical novels, but how about trying to write a story that was closer in spirit to your own time, your own place, your own experience? I'm just saying, Please don't be afraid to write your fiction out of your own sense of character and personal concerns: these genres feel a little uncomfortable to me, and perhaps you haven't really discovered what your subject matter as a fiction writer is. All Best, T.”

This is not the sort of email a budding novelist wants to get.

I kept working on my historical thriller. This was what I wanted to do. I took more classes, determined to improve my craft. “T” had made genre sound like a dirty word but if I belonged in the genre sandbox, so be it. I enrolled in the mystery-writing workshop run by Gotham Writer’s Workshop and taught by a terrific guy named Gregory Fallis. Greg had been a medic in the military, a counselor in a women’s prison, and a private detective. Yes, the man had lived. To my tremendous relief, he didn’t look down on my Tudor England mystery thriller, set mostly in a Dominican priory outside London. In fact, he liked it. A lot. I worked on my chapters and read Greg’s assignments, novelists ranging from Dorothy Sayers to Walter Mosley.

I was working fulltime as a magazine editor and raising two young children, and when things got particularly crazy for a stretch my novel went into the proverbial drawer. Home sick with a fever in the autumn of 2009, I was seized by a sudden desire to go back to my thriller, only half written. Perhaps it was the 102-degree temperature talking, but I staggered to the computer and enrolled in the very next Gotham Writer’s Workshop course. It was “Advanced Fiction,” taught by a man named Russell Rowland. After I’d put through payment, I looked him up—Russell had a MA in creative writing and had written two highly respected modern novels, In Open Spaces and The Watershed Years.

“Oh, no,” I moaned, my head sinking into clammy hands. “He’s going to hate me.”

He didn’t. Russell was a supportive teacher from the start: astute and no-nonsense but never, ever patronizing. What’s more, in this class I found a group of fellow writers who gave me valuable feedback. This was when my book truly came together. I pushed through the middle and then, exhilarated, raced to the end. I finished the novel on my birthday, June 16^th, 2010, and signed with a literary agent the July 4^th weekend. My debut novel was sold in an auction at the end of the month to Touchstone/Simon&Schuster. The Crown will be officially published on January 10, 2012 in North America, and seven foreign countries through the rest of the year.

And yet yesterday I thought of “T” once more.

The memory was triggered by a Wall Street Journal article written by screenwriter and novelist Derek Haas, who has crafted the scripts for “2 Fast 2 Furious,” “Wanted,” and “3:10 to Yuma.”

The article began this way: “I'm sometimes asked to speak to a class of film or literature students at a university. Inevitably, a 22-year-old hipster with designer-chic black glasses and a permanent pout will raise his hand and ask, ‘What does it feel like to sell out?’ I smile. I tell the students, ‘Sell out? Are you kidding me? I sold in!’ "

Haas’s story resonated with me—of always wanting to write thrillers but facing “an upturned nose and haughty eye,” as he put it. “Write what you know,” he was told over and over. Come up with stories of “deep, dark emotional conflict.”

What my teacher—and the “write what you know” proponents Derek Haas faced—could never accept is that crafting a thriller is not a default mechanism for those of stunted gifts. Some of us want to write those sorts of books and scripts. I have always been enthralled by works of psychological suspense: Henry James’ The Innocents, Daphne du Maurier’s Rebecca, Patricia Highsmith’s The Talented Mr. Ripley.  One of the oddest aspects of “T’s” criticism was that only in modern stories could I infuse my work with “personal concerns.” I think Robert Graves, Mary Renault, Margaret Atwood, Caleb Carr, Ken Follett, and Patrick O’Brian have found ways to create complex and relatable characters—people churning with concerns--in historical settings!

Last week I opened a large padded envelope and pulled out my hardcover novel. My editor sent me the one fresh from the printer. I caressed the beautiful deep-gold and burgundy cover, and ruffled my 400 pages.  It was a moment of unadulterated pride.

You know what, “T”? This writer has found her subject matter.