Fan showcase: Prue Batten (part 3)

Read how a frivolous tweet in a moment of frustration got me dead to rights — hilarious!

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Below, the third and final part of my interview with Prue Batten, Richard Armitage fan and author of Gisborne: Book of Pawns, which appeared on Sunday. Part 1 of the interview is found here; Part 2 is here. Leave a comment on any segment of the interview for a chance to win a free e-book of this great title; rules of the giveaway are here. Or buy Gisborne: Book of Pawns on amazon for $2.99. And, for another interview with Prue and another opportunity to win a free ebook, go here.

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An image from the Très Riches Heures of the Duc du Berry, the most well-known fifteenth century illuminated manuscript, and one of Prue’s favorite medieval images.

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S: In Ysabel you created a worthy lover for Gisborne, someone with mettle and verve comparable to his own. Why was it necessary to replace Marian?

Prue Batten: I chose to write a non-traditional trope, so nothing from that story had any relevance, least of all the character of Marian. That version of character of Marian annoyed me, personally. Lucy Griffiths portrayed her beautifully, and indeed, she was cleverly written, but I despised her manipulation of Gisborne.

S: What were your sources of inspiration for Ysabel?

Prue Batten: My story required a new female counterpoint to Gisborne, and Ysabel grew out of my imagination. There was no source of inspiration as such. Or if there was, it was utterly subliminal. Sometimes it’s rewarding to see what eventuates when, as a writer, one merely allows one’s fingers to doodle an image on the keyboard. What became inspirational was to allow us to view Gisborne through Ysabel’s eyes. As the author, I found writing the first-person narrative a thrill a minute!

S: Ysabel bathes a lot. I promise to come back to the significance of bathing in medieval England, but first, as an author, why did you integrate bath scenes so centrally?

Prue Batten: I wasn’t aware I had! Even so, this story traces a physical journey as well as an emotional one. Travel by horse and foot is never clean, even now, let alone on dusty medieval roads and tracks. My research indicated that far from the idea of the unclean Middle Ages, Ysabel, as a noblewoman, would have washed, bathed, and generally kept herself clean. The entertainment industry would have us believe that medieval society was filthy, but even the so-called “great unwashed,” the peasants, bathed and/or washed often in streams and rivers in warmer weather. As an introduction to the research into the fallacy of dirt and lack of cleanliness, this quick online reference may be of interest.

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Much (Sam Troughton) enjoys the pleasures of a bath upon return to Locksley in Robin Hood 1.1. My cap.

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S: Another issue with bathing in a historical fiction is circumventing the hokey generic convention of the female protagonist as glimpsed by her lover. You decidedly avoid this, and indeed, on the one occasion I recall that Gisborne sees Ysabel while she washes, something decidedly different takes place. On the whole, your attitude toward eroticism is clearly defined and rather stringent. What kind of sex should readers anticipate finding in a Prue Batten novel?

Prue Batten: I write historical fiction / historical romance, not erotica. My view of my characters’ sexual activity is subtle and as private as a reader’s imagination. I would prefer to titillate a reader’s mind than have my characters’ sexual exploits laid out in blazing color. It’s a personal preference.

S: You’ve mentioned on your blog that writing Gisborne: Book of Pawns brought you back to medieval studies. What about the medieval world attracts you as a fiction author?

Prue Batten: First, the frequent lack of consensus about the period, even among academics and professional historians. The intense, persisting disputes give me room to move with my imagination because nothing is a given.

I also appreciate that the medieval era was nowhere as dark as we were originally told when I was at school; in fact, it was filled with all that encouraged the gestation of the Renaissance. When I studied medieval history at university forty-odd years ago, certain names sowed themselves deep into the subliminal levels of my mind – Abelard, the Venerable Bede, the Knights Templar, Cistercians, Hildegard von Bingen, and so on. I became fascinated with cloisters, with illuminated manuscripts, with troubadour and trovairitz. Once I started writing fiction, a medieval story seemed a marriage destined to be. And yet, had I known back then that I would subsequently write a story set in a medieval timeframe, I would have laughed at the ridiculousness of such an idea.

On the other hand, my lecturer, Father Rushton, would have been delighted! I would like to pay credit to him here. The way he delivered the story of the Middle Ages quite honestly created that original fascination. His was a generous, unpatronizing enthusiasm.

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New Year’s Day, from the Très Riches Heures. Source: wikipedia

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S: You’ve also wrestled with questions about how much history has to find its way into a novel. What’s your thinking at this point?

My favorite historical fiction writer is the late Dorothy Dunnett, whose novels are crammed with perfectly placed facts. Some readers say that reading them feels like wading through a research paper, but I find it stimulating beyond belief. Those fourteen novels are my “desert island” books. However, I am not Dorothy Dunnett. I write a simple story, paying attention to the time frame, using available research to world-build. But I don’t seek to inundate my readers with layer upon layer of fact. So, whilst I give them enough detail to believe in my characters and settings, I hope they feel free enough to follow the narrative at pace. I suspect that readers whose historical interests are sparked by reading my work will turn to non-fiction to increase their knowledge, anyway. I see myself as writing a historical fiction rather than a docudrama. Purists may reject my work on that basis, but I take that risk in order to tell the story.

S: Speaking as a professional historian of one of your “periods of interest,” who only occasionally reads historical fictions because she “knows too much,” I suspect it would be extremely difficult for novice authors to get everything exactly right, or to predict just which anachronism is likely to offend the historically-minded reader. There’s also the matter of how to deal with not-entirely-accurate stereotypes readers expect, like the “smelly” Middle Ages (see above re: bathing!), which are purveyed in film. On which specific issues did you decide to be very correct in this book?

Prue Batten: The time frame required dedication. It’s an immovable object. One must pay attention to politics, living, food, clothing, horses, dogs, weapons, castles, and so on. And words! Goodness, what words to use and not. Anachronism just waits to stab a writer from behind. For example, I used the word “jot” until my erstwhile editor, John, (and bless him in so many ways) pointed out its genesis in the English language in the early 1500s.

S: And where did you give yourself some leeway?

Prue Batten: I gave myself some leeway with glass. In the age of Richard and John, glass apertures were most likely found only in well-appointed churches and castles of the crown or high nobility. As Ysabel comes from a family of greater nobles, I chose to allow her father, from his position of wealth, to have glassed in some window spaces at Moncrieff. I also placed a glass window in the Priory of Saint Eadgyth’s, because it was a sister house to a large abbey, and of course, in Locksley Abbey. However, at the tiny Priory of Linn on the River Alun in Wales, we encounter only horn in the windows. I also took slight liberty with fabrics. One is constantly reminded in scholarly literature that most people wore wool (in varying degrees of quality) and linen. Ysabel has exposure to itinerant merchants from the Mediterranean, however, and because of the period’s vibrant sea-trade, I decided she and other nobles would have access to varied and beautiful fabrics.

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S: Gisborne: Book of Pawns is certainly not a slavish historical fiction. The literary work that it reminded me of most is “Patterns,” an imagist poem by Pulitzer Prize winner Amy Lowell (1874-1925) that was inserted into high school U.S. literature textbooks in the 1970s as an example of a feminist text. I raise this because both imagism and women’s roles are pertinent to your conception of the book. Imagism focused on the qualities that characterized an object in itself, rather than the flowery emotion around them. What images were particularly important to you as you wrote this book – or, what images are particularly important to Ysabel?

Prue Batten: Ysabel is the child of an effete father and a mother reared in the sphere of the courts of Aquitaine. It is therefore a given that she would be sensitive not only to natural but also man-made beauty and atmosphere. If one can imagine leafing through page after page of books on the wonderful artworks of the Middle Ages (from low to high), I wished to create images in readers’ minds of that world. The damp fens, thick forests, rutted roads, castle walls, the feel and look of fabric, the sounds of nuns singing, bells ringing, horses, food, tiredness, rotting smells, the tang of the sea, a man brushing your hand as he strides along beside you … the animal strength of a man in rut!

S: Like the imagist poets, your protagonist, Ysabel, is an unusually sober observer of the world around her, especially considering how brutally some of her illusions are ripped from her. What kind of woman is she?

Prue Batten: Categorically, Ysabel is a product of her era, defined by the precepts of the time. Whilst women were required to be subservient to their husbands, noblewomen could in fact hold great authority. Their spouses might be away serving their allotted time with their liege lord, or worse, dead, and wives would be responsible for managing estates, handling finances and settling disputes on the domain. Noblewomen did legally inherit property and become wealthy in their own rights, and therefore occupy corresponding status and thus great power. Her powerful personality notwithstanding, however, Ysabel is not a champion of feminism in a medieval world. She is merely a spoiled, naïve noblewoman beset by terrible circumstance. She can either fold like a piece of silk or develop intestinal fortitude. I leave it to the reader to determine if she does either.

S: Gisborne: Book of Pawns ends on a note that leaves the reader panting for more, but thankfully, I hear, the first chapter of the planned sequel is included as a teaser in this publication.

Prue Batten: The idea for the sequel came from a short story called “Gisborne” that I wrote for a miniature book press in America (www.bopressminiaturebooks.com) in 2011. That little piece prompted me to think hard about the ending of what has now become volume 1, and to see that, changed and manipulated, it might lead Gisborne down another, even more convoluted, road. Thus volume 2 (Gisborne: Book of Knights) had its genesis.

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Prue’s miniature book with Bo Press, which holds her story, “Gisborne.”

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S: Audiences who come to Gisborne from your two earlier published novels will know already that Richard Armitage inspired another character: Finnian of your Chronicles of Eirie series, who appears in its third volume, A Thousand Glass Flowers (2011). What’s the inspiration? Is there a connection between that character and Armitage, or are you looking at different facets of his performances for inspiration?

Prue Batten: Without doubt, it’s the latter. It might be from Clarissa, Spooks, Strike Back or even Robin Hood, but in each case I can isolate vocal tones, visual attitude, body language. A friend from the theatre said to me once: “Watch an actor and what he conveys with the least language.” And so I did and my Finnian and my Gisborne began to emerge.

S: Finnian is a Færan, a name that you derive from the Old English for “to terrify, to frighten.” I’m curious as to what aspects of Armitage’s work inspire your perception of terror or fright – how did you get there?

Prue Batten: Anyone who is damaged emotionally has the capacity to react in any number of unknown and frightening ways. It is that unknown threshold, that unseen tripwire that we know exists, that Armitage portrays very well: we see it in Guy of Gisborne, in John Thornton, and in Lucas North.

S: When asked directly, Mr. Armitage has been skeptical, even dismissive, about his role as literary muse. Fans, of course, may know better. Will you let him know about Gisborne: Book of Pawns?

Prue Batten: No. After receiving a copy of the bespoke book referred to above, he sent a kind letter from his home in the UK whilst on a break from filming in New Zealand. Patricia Sweet and I were so thrilled with the way the book sold (and is selling) that we decided he deserved one for being the inspiration. If he wanted, he could always auction it for one of his many charities.

S: Will you continue with the Chronicles of Eirie And when can we look for Volume 2 of the Gisborne series?

Prue Batten: Yes, there are at least two books to go in the Chronicles, one of which is three-quarters finished. As to volume 2 of Gisborne, I would love to have it ready for Christmas release, but I am so slow with my work that it may be this time next year!

S: After reading Gisborne: Book of Pawns, I know a lot of people will be eager for that. Thanks for taking so much time with this interview!

Prue Batten: Thank you and best wishes to you and all your blog readers!

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Prue Batten is a truly globalized personality. Read her own bio here. Judi interviewed her on writing. She talked about her attitude toward historical fiction in an interview supporting Richard Armitage’s Richard III ambitions. You’d think a lady who spends a lot of time on a complicated form of embroidery‘d be sedate, but she participates in those twitter novel projects, proving that she has a wild side. She’s fascinated by a thousand-year-old book. If she could have any superpower, she’d want to breathe underwater. She’s afraid of snakes.

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[Fan showcases are an irregular feature on “me + richard armitage.” These segments seek to highlight the opinions and activities of a cross-segment of the very diverse group of people who have become fans of Richard Armitage. Previous showcases can be found here: bZirk, Eli, LadyKate63, fitzg, Angieklong, khandy, jazzbaby1, Amanda Jane, Jane (part 1, part 2, part 3). I plan to continue this feature intermittently, so if you are interested in being interviewed, please let me know. My email address can be found in the sidebar under “About.” — Servetus]

~ by Servetus on February 29, 2012.