More adventures in moviemaking: Tarot videos?

Yes, tarot videos!

Those of you who have been recently following this blog know that I’ve become a bit obsessed of late with making videos for my books. But some of my fellow tarot artists have applied this thinking to videos for their decks. A post over at Mary Greer’s tarot blog spotlights a handful of tarot videos from Lisa Hunt, Joanna Colbert, Corinne Kenner, and others. The comments which follow are very interesting as well.

I’m curious to hear what your thoughts are. Which tarot videos do you like best? And why? Do you prefer longer or shorter videos? The more straight forward ones which just show the cards? Or the more atmospheric ones? I know for myself that shorter is better, since I’m always so short on time. But that’s probably just my personal preference.

Oh, and if you haven’t checked out my recent adventures in video making, here are the Youtube links:

Ask the Queens (1.02)
Good Queen (0.44)

Make sure to watch in HD, if you can. Coming soon: a video teaser for the Sacred World Oracle—not quite the same as a tarot video, but close enough. This video has been under development for the past month, believe it or not, so all this is coincidental yet timely.

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Last call: The book giveaway for Alisa Libby’s The King’s Rose ends tomorrow at midnight, April 9! Enter to win an autographed copy of this novel about Catherine Howard by leaving a comment here. I’ll be posting the winner on Friday’s Creativity post. Good luck to all.

• Filed under be-mused, blogs we read, tarot and oracles | 2 Responses

Publishing Monday: Paperback versus hardcover?

There’s an interesting post over on Australian author Justine Larbalestier’s site comparing the benefits of publishing a new book in hardcover versus paperback. (To clarify, this is about trade paperback originals, not reissues of books already published in hardcover and have presumably been reviewed as such.)

… back home in Australia, the vast majority of books are published in paperback. Hardcovers are exceedingly rare. But here in the US of A there’s a huge emphasis on hardcovers.

When I first asked about it, I was told that paperback originals don’t get reviewed. Thus the hardcover is more prestigious because it generates more attention. Many good reviews can lead to awards, and best book of the year listings, and lots of sales. A paperback original goes into the world unheralded and unreviewed and thus disappears into oblivion.”

This is a topical subject for me. Some of you may have noticed that my book Doomed Queens was published as a trade paperback original, rather than hardcover. This format was my choice—I simply felt that the book would work better as a paperback with a lower price point, given the quirky subject matter (and also the state of the U.S. economy). Frankly, I didn’t consider whether the paperback format would work against it when it came to garnering reviews. And, for the most part, I don’t think it has—though I might have reconsidered hardcover had I considered the review angle.

But back to Larbalestier’s post. She continues to make this interesting point:

I’m not convinced this is as true as it once was or that prestige is as important as people think it is. I believe that fewer and fewer buyers of books are paying attention to what old media reviewers say. Partly this is because the book review section has been disappearing from newspapers all over the USA, just as newspapers have been disappearing…. these days it seems that newspaper book review sections are holding less power than they once had when it comes to shaping a book’s fate….Whereas there are blogs, whose reviews I respect and trust….”

Do you think this is true? I know for myself, I still read book review sections and purchase accordingly—but that’s part of my fascination with the business of books. That written, I often buy books based on the recommendations of blogs as well as friends. So I suppose I’m a mixture of both. In either case, I don’t really think, “Oh, this book is being published only in paperback. I wonder if that means the publisher doesn’t have a lot of confidence in how good it is.”

I do have to say though that if I’m uncertain about how much I’ll enjoy a book, I’ll often wait for it to come out in paperback rather than splurge for the hardcover. Also, guilty admission: Superficial as it sounds, if I’m looking for a book to travel with, I prefer a paperback over hardcover. I like to travel light!

You can read the rest of Larbalestier’s post here.

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Reminder: The book giveaway for Alisa Libby’s The King’s Rose continues! You can enter to win an autographed copy of this novel about Catherine Howard by leaving a comment here.

• Filed under publishing, queens | 5 Responses

Tudors week: Interview and book giveaway with Alisa Libby, author of The King’s Rose

For this Creativity Friday, I thought it would be fun to interview another author about her work. Alisa Libby, author of the novel The King’s Rose, is my guest here today—perfect timing for Tudors week on this blog! Not only has she graciously agreed to answer all my questions, she’s also giving away a copy of The King’s Rose to one lucky commenter. (Details at the end of the interview.)

The King’s Rose is about teen queen Catherine Howard, the unfortunate fifth wife of Henry VIII. In most books about her, Catherine is usually described as a frivolous teenager with loose ways and a taste for shiny baubles. In Libby’s hands, Catherine takes on weight to become a thoughtful, tragic heroine caught between explosive familial expectations, romantic desires, and political plotting. An intense and haunting read.

Libby is also the author of The Blood Confession, a novel about Elizabeth Bathory. She lives in the Boston area with her husband. To learn more about The King’s Rose and Alisa Libby, visit her website.

BTW, if you’re just checking in now, earlier this week author Carlyn Beccia (The Raucous Royals) gave us a juicy guest post about Henry VIII’s fourth wife, Anne of Cleves. Yesterday, I wrote about Anne Boleyn, the king’s second wife who was incidentally a cousin of Catherine Howard; both women lost their heads and crowns for supposedly cuckolding the king. All of the queens mentioned during Tudors week are included in my book Doomed Queens.

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Kris Waldherr: In your first novel, The Blood Confession, you wrote about Elizabeth Bathory, the mad countess who murdered hundreds of young girls to bathe in their blood. In your second, you’ve written about Catherine Howard, an executed (some might even say murdered) young queen—sort of the flip side to Elizabeth. What inspired you to write about Catherine Howard? Are there any connections for you between these two historical figures?

Alisa Libby: I was drawn to both of these women because of their strange, illogical decisions. In spite of their differences, I had a similar reaction to reading about each of them: “What in the world was she thinking?” For Bathory, the question is for obvious reasons—she was a murderess with a very strange beauty regimen. As for Catherine, she was accused of having an affair with a groom of the king’s chamber during her marriage to King Henry. And this king had already beheaded a previous wife due to similar charges—her own cousin, Anne Boleyn. So, assuming that she was not framed for these crimes (making her that innocent would have made her less interesting to me) I wondered: what was she thinking? Was she deliberately cruel to King Henry, or overruled by passion and certain that her secret would be safe? I wrote both of my books to create a personal logic—though not always entirely logical—for each of my character’s seemingly inexplicable actions.

KW: One of the things which struck me the most about The King’s Rose was that your portrayal of Catherine Howard is compellingly sympathetic and very, very sad. Since you’ve written your novel in the first voice, it makes the young queen’s tragic choices very understandable; she’s clearly trapped by forces beyond her control. Was it difficult to come up with Catherine’s voice? How much did your own personality and life experiences influence the way you chose to present her?

AL: I found it very easy to believe that Catherine, being used as a pawn by her family, would have little choice in what happened to her. The fact that her life was controlled by others struck me as something teenagers may be able to relate to. I also had to imagine how Catherine’s early life would affect her character. She was shipped off to live with her step-grandmother, the Dowager Duchess of Norfolk, at the age of ten, after her mother’s death. This was not out of the ordinary, but it helped me imagine a girl with a deep desire for attention and affection. The trysts with two young men while she lived in the Duchess’s establishment could, I thought, support this claim. Catherine was wooed, to some extent, by Henry’s affections and—more importantly—his lavish gifts. This all made her seem like a real person to me, and her voice developed out of these decisions.

KW: Compared to most biographies and novels of Henry VIII and his ill-fated queens, The King’s Rose is somewhat revisionist. In many of these other books, Catherine usually comes off as the Lydia Bennett of Henry’s wives—a teenager more concerned with dancing, flirting, and finery than her role in history. (I’m especially thinking of her portrayal in Phillippa Gregory’s The Boleyn Inheritance.) Do you consider your portrayal of Catherine Howard more historically accurate? If so, why?

AL: I’m perfectly comfortable with agreeing that this is a “revisionist” history. It is fiction, after all, and though I did a good deal of research to get the details right, at a certain point a writer has to choose the story they want to tell and fill in the gaps that those history texts leave behind. I can’t actually purport to know what Catherine was thinking, or what she spoke to her ladies about, or whether or not she felt fear. But it’s my job as an author to fill in those details in a way I found both believable and interesting.

That said, Catherine does enjoy a fair amount of dancing, flirting and finery, but I couldn’t allow her to be only that and nothing else. While the accounts don’t paint her as the greatest thinker, I had a hard time imagining that she wouldn’t have had any trepidation about marrying King Henry—especially if she was in love with someone else at the time.

KW: Parts of The King’s Rose reminded me of fairy tales: in particular, Cinderella and Bluebeard. I also read a review which mentioned that The Blood Confession contained folkloric motifs reminiscent of Snow White. How important are folklore and fairy tales to your work as a novelist?

AL: I have a deep love of fairy tales. These stories are so embedded in our subconscious and in our lives that the connections are so easy to make. Catherine’s story is very much a Cinderella story—a terrifying one, but the similarities are still there. And the connection between Countess Bathory and the wicked queen obsessed with being “the fairest of them all” (and willing to murder in order to remain the fairest) was so natural. This only makes these old tales more fascinating to me: though fabulous, they are intrinsically connected to the human experience.

KW: The character of Henry VIII is difficult to parse in The King’s Rose, since we’re seeing him through Catherine’s eyes. Though they are a married couple, there’s a sense that there’s not truly intimate; she really doesn’t know him at all. At times, Henry is indulgent and loving to Catherine; other times, he is mercurial and violent, especially when you describe his decision to execute Margaret Pole. What’s your take on Henry VIII?

AL: Henry was a mix of contradictions, especially at this point in his life. From the accounts I read, he was unpredictable, constantly changing his mind on important matters. It was said that the king’s mind could be different after dinner than it was before. Also, I think that the nature of being king and wielding that kind of power made true intimacy impossible—even with his own wife. All of his closest advisors had their own best interests at heart. The selection of his brides was done with political motivations moving behind the scenes, even if Henry didn’t see them clearly. Catherine was not the “rose without a thorn” that Henry believed her to be, but her family was sure to make him think that she was.

KW: I was fascinated to read that you traveled to England to research The King’s Rose, and even visited Catherine Howard’s grave. What was that like? Any interesting (possibly supernatural) experiences to share? I read that there’s a rumor her ghost still walks Hampton Court.

AL: It was at Hampton Court that Catherine was first arrested, and supposedly she fled from the guards down a particular hallway screaming Henry’s name. The guards caught up with her and dragged her back to her room. Catherine never did see the king again, and was never able to explain to him her actions or beg his forgiveness. According to legend, Catherine’s ghost traverses this gallery shouting “Henry! Henry!”

My husband and I did walk down this very hallway on a ghost tour of Hampton Court. It was all very beautiful, but I didn’t see any ghosts there. I generally don’t have much luck (or misfortune, depending on how you look at it) in communicating with ghosts. I did have this wild fantasy of getting some message from beyond the grave—or at least receiving Catherine’s blessing in telling my version of her life. She was a real person, after all. I kept thinking, “I’m here. If you have anything you want to tell me, please say it now.”

Though I didn’t see her ghost, I did feel a profound sense of gratitude when we went to visit her burial place in the Chapel of St. Peter ad Vincula at the Tower of London. Catherine doesn’t often get visitors (unlike her cousin Anne, buried right beside her) but we had come a long way just to see her. I like to think that she was grateful.

KW: Finally, do you think there’s any way Catherine could have outwitted fate to live happily ever after?

AL: If she had become pregnant and given birth to a healthy boy, that would have saved her life. I don’t think any of her opponents would have been able to touch her: the king wouldn’t have allowed anything to besmirch the line of succession if it included another boy. If she had managed to do this (which may or may not have been possible, considering Henry’s age and health) and had no affairs—or at least been more discreet about them—she could have been safe. The king died in 1547, less than seven years after they were wed. She would have been in her twenties and honored as a Dowager Queen. She may have even been able to marry her darling Culpeper, if her family saw fit to allow it.

KW: What are you working on next?

AL: I hope to work on another historical novel soon, but right now I need a break from all of that research! It’s a daunting process, [ed: totally agree with Alisa there!] and I need to embrace it whole-heartedly in order to write a book. Right now I’m working on some contemporary fiction—a bit of an experiment. I hope it turns into a book someday.

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As I mentioned above, Alisa is generously giving away an autographed copy of The King’s Rose to one lucky person. Thank you, Alisa!!! To enter the raffle, leave a comment on this post before Thursday, April 9 midnight EST. One winner will be chosen at random and announced the following day in my next Creativity Friday post.

Good luck to all!

• Filed under creativity, friends and colleagues, giveaways and raffles, interviews, queens | 41 Responses

Tudors week: Doomed Queens bitter wisdom – Anne Boleyn

Tudors week continues! Yesterday, Carlyn Beccia gave us a guest post about Henry VIII’s fourth wife. Tomorrow, it’s Catherine Howard’s turn: We’ll be featuring an interview and book giveaway with Alisa Libby, author of The King’s Rose, a new novel about Henry’s fifth wife who shared the same fate as Anne Boleyn — at the block.

(BTW, if you don’t have Showtime, you can watch the first episode of the new Tudors season here.)

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“There are no Rules for love.”

As I mentioned in Monday’s post, Anne Boleyn was perhaps the most polarizing of fair Albion’s queens. Was Anne a witch with six fingers? Or an anti-Rome holy roller? A political pawn of her grasping family? Or just plain bad news? Here’s my opinion, adapted from Doomed Queens.

Anne Boleyn was hot stuff in Tudor England. With her dark hair and sultry looks, she was her generation’s Angelina Jolie amid a sea of Reese Witherspoons. (No offense to Reese.) No sixth finger either. (No offense to the polydactylous.) And she certainly was not a witch. Instead, the queen was rumored to have viewed herself as a religious martyr-in-the-making, after being condemned to death:

The king has been very good to me. He promoted me from a simple maid to be a marchioness. Then he raised me to be a queen. Now he will raise me to be a martyr.”

Though born in England, Anne Boleyn spent her formative years on the Continent as a lady-in-waiting to Margaret of Austria and Queen Claude of France. This time abroad polished Anne into a sophisticated woman able to converse wittily in French, dance with élan, and flirt in the best courtly love tradition, where you promise everything but grant nothing.

Anne returned to England from France in 1521 to marry her father’s choice of a groom. But the engagement was brought to a grinding halt for unknown reasons. Again, Anne was sent to court to serve a queen, this time England’s Catherine of Aragon. More happily, she fell in love.

The object of Anne’s affection was Henry Percy, who was considered a catch since he would inherit an earldom. But their marriage was forbidden by the powers that be—there was someone else who wanted Anne, a Henry more powerful than Henry Percy. And what Henry Tudor wanted, Henry got.

Anne never had a chance. King Henry VIII stalked her like prey, ignoring her refusals. To protect herself, all Anne could do was apply The Rules. Anne’s rule number one was don’t put out. Rule number two was hold out for the big gold ring. After all, Anne had a front row seat for what happens when a girl doesn’t follow the Rules: Her sister, Mary, had been the king’s mistress and was rewarded with two bastards for her efforts. Anne was smarter than this—and smarting from the king’s ending of her engagement. She determined to make Henry pay by granting her the ultimate favor of the crown.

It took Henry seven years to disentangle himself from his first wife Catherine of Aragon to marry Anne—long, tumultuous years that involved papal entreaties, courtroom dances, bribes to Rome, and the death of a cardinal. To gain Anne’s hand, Henry eventually resolved that he, as king, was England’s absolute religious authority. Not surprisingly, the king’s decision led to his excommunication. It also sent seismic waves throughout Europe, since it effectively sanctioned Martin Luther’s Reformation—man no longer required a priest to win God’s grace.

Amazingly, during these seven years Anne refused to sleep with Henry until just before their marriage. But she conceived quickly; by her coronation in 1533, her belly was already swollen with child.

It is difficult to ascertain exactly when and if Anne fell in love with Henry. Maybe power was an aphrodisiac; maybe she was trying to make the best of the inevitable; or maybe her family did encourage her to seal the deal with emotional coin. She once admitted, “I never wished to choose the King in my heart.” One theory suggests that Anne believed God had chosen her to be queen. She saw herself like Queen Esther, reforming a corrupt church by influencing a besotted monarch. She even encouraged the translation of the Bible into English, so ordinary people could read it without a priest.

Anne’s pregnancy resulted in the birth of a daughter, Elizabeth. Soon after, Henry admitted that he believed Anne had used witchcraft to capture his heart—clearly the bloom was already off the rose. Two stillborn sons later, the king sprang into action.

When the king was seriously injured during a jousting match, someone overheard Anne hysterically wonder what would happen if Henry died. Henry decided this amounted to a treasonous plot to kill him. He also claimed Anne had messed around with numerous men, including her brother.

A sham trial resulted in a verdict of death by burning or beheading—the choice was Henry’s pleasure. He showed mercy and chose beheading. Strangely enough, Anne’s jury included Henry Percy, who was forced to vote for her conviction. Henry decided to be a nice guy and sent for a French swordman rumored to be so skillful that Anne would feel no pain. She bitterly quipped, “He shall not have much trouble, for I have a little neck.” The queen was killed with a single sword stroke while kneeling upright midprayer.

Anne Boleyn was beheaded on May 19, 1536—quite the comedown for a woman who had initially won so much attention at the English court for her je ne sais quoi and unusual beauty. However, Anne’s legacy lived on through her illustrious daughter, Elizabeth I, who grew up to become perhaps the greatest queen of all.

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This is part of an occasional blog series. The text was adapted from my book DOOMED QUEENS: Royal Women Who Met Bad Ends, from Cleopatra to Princess Di (Broadway Books, $14.95).

Learn more or purchase DOOMED QUEENS here.

You can also consult the queens for advice from beyond the grave at AsktheQueens.com. Make sure the check out the new royal videos!

• Filed under queens | 5 Responses

Tudors Week: Was Anne of Cleves *really* a Flanders mare?
a guest post by Carlyn Beccia

It’s Tudors week here at Art and Words! Today, Carlyn Beccia has graciously offered up this guest post about Henry VIII’s fourth wife. Tomorrow, Anne Boleyn offers up some Doomed Queens Bitter wisdom. And on Friday, it’s Catherine Howard’s turn: We’ll be featuring an interview and book giveaway with Alisa Libby, author of The King’s Rose, a new novel about Henry’s fifth wife who shared the same fate as Anne Boleyn — at the block. (BTW, if you don’t have Showtime, you can watch the first episode of the new Tudors season here.)

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Historians have often wondered why Henry did not find his fourth wife, Anne of Cleves appealing. Part of the mystery lies in the fact that we have very few accounts describing her appearance and only two contemporary portraits. One portrait is the infamous betrothal portrait by Holbein which sealed her fate and the other is from the workshop of Barthel Bruyn the Elder (shown below).

Writers through the years have certainly not been kind to Anne. The reference to Anne looking more like a “flanders mare” than a princess was first made in the 17th century by historian Gilbert Burnet who criticized Holbein’s painting as taking, “the common compliment of his art too liberally.” Nothing could be futher from the truth. Holbein was known for his accuracy and attention to detail in his paintings. Most importantly, the whole purpose of sending him to paint Anne was to take a likeness. He did his job and was therefore never punished by Henry when the real life Anne did not meet his expectations.

Later historians have speculated that Anne was unattractive to Henry because she was “large-boned,” but I disagree with this assessment. Anne was reportedly tall and the layers of clothes certainly made her look like a stuffed sausage, but I suspect that Anne’s body type may have been closer to thin and gangly than big-boned. I have already written about some of Anne’s finer qualities in a previous post.

Find Me a Woman with Some Meat on Her Bones
Before marriage negotiations began with Cleves, Henry had instructed his advisors to find him a heavy-set woman for his fourth wife. His exact words (and a bit of an understatement) were, ‘I am a big man and in need of a big wife.’ Yet, Henry contradicted his own words with his previous actions for he tended to be more attracted to small-hipped women like Anne Boleyn and Jane Seymour. Perhaps his days of slim women were over at the point in which he began marriage negotiations for his fourth wife?

Digging deeper, there is obviously more to attraction then someone’s body build. And we also can’t forget about Henry’s political motivations toward the marriage for he may have simply not needed the alliance with Cleves as the marriage progressed. But Henry was obviously very much repulsed by his new bride too.

What did repulse Henry enough to annul the marriage and make Cromwell a head shorter?

The clue may be in the infamous rumor that Anne looked like a “Flanders Mare.”

What is a Flanders Mare?
A Flanders Mare is not the graceful and delicate horse of a queen. In Medieval times, Belgium Horses were prized in wars for their tremendous size and strength. (show above).

Colored like a Flanders Mare
These heavy, war-like draft horses were typically black and ranged from colors to bay, bay-brown to chestnut. They were rarely lighter colors like they are today. Many accounts report that Anne was of a darker skin tone, the opposite of the beauty ideal of the time. When Henry asked Lord Russell what he thought of his new bride he replied that ‘I take her not for fair, but to be of a brown complexion.’

Smells Like a Flanders Mare
I grew up around horses. I love horses. But let’s face it. No matter how much you love horses you cannot deny that they stink. One of the biggest turn-offs for Henry was Anne’s lack of hygiene. Maybe it was her smell that truly repulsed him? But wait….I have an even more far fetched theory.

As Skanky as a Flanders Mare?
Henry also told Anthony Denny, a member of the Privy Chamber, that she had ‘breasts so slack and other parts of body in such sort that [he] somewhat suspected her virginity.’ And if that was not bad enough he complained to his court physician of the ‘hanging of her breasts and looseness of her flesh.’ Could Henry have really suspected Anne’s virginity?

Later in the 17th century, Flanders Mares were not only prized for their strength, but also their eager willingness to pull heavy carriages. The Flanders Mares were mentioned in the diary of Samuel Pepys:

Thence to my Lord’s, where I found Mr. Pierce, the surgeon, and with him and Mr. Sheply, in our way calling at the Bell to see the seven Flanders mares that my Lord has bought lately, where we drank several bottles of Hull ale. Much company I found to come to her, and cannot wonder at it, for she is very pretty and wanton.¹

Pepys never really says who the “her” is but he seems to be making a double entendre between the horse wantonness and the unknown women. Interesting that he chose the always willing Flanders Mare to make his comparison. Perhaps the word “wanton” had a different meaning then? I suspect it means relatively the same thing.

In the eighteenth century, English writer and pamphleteer Daniel Defoe gives the prostitute and main character of his novel the fictitious name of Moll Flanders. He makes it clear that this is not her real name. In general, Defoe rarely named his characters and generally referred to people as “the elder brother” or “the nurse.” I doubt Defoe’s choice of Flanders was insignificant.

I personally believe that Henry was not attracted to Anne because of a combination of factors. She lacked refinement and grace (she couldn’t dance or play an instrument), her darker complexion was not the beauty ideal of the time, she smelled when Henry was fastidious about cleanliness, and most importantly she may have exhibited an eagerness to please that Henry found unattractive. Aside from Henry’s political motivations toward the match, we will never know for certain why the science of attraction failed, but perhaps if Anne had played hard to get she might not have reminded Henry of this eager draft horse.

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This post was adapted from the blog of Carlyn Beccia, the award-winning author of The Raucous Royals. (You can read my review here.) Beccia lives in a royal castle north of Boston with her princely cat, princess daughter and extremely kingly husband. Her biggest wish is to go back in time and share a glass of ale with Henry VIII and his six wives.

Learn more or purchase The Raucous Royals here.

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Sources
Starkey, David. The Six Wives of Henry VIII. New York, NY: Harper Perennial, 2004
Weir, Alison. The Six Wives of Henry VIII. New York, NY: Grover Press, 1991
Pepys, Samuel. The Diary of Samuel Pepys, Hayes Barton Press, 1660 – can be accessed online in Google Books.
Warnicke, Retha M. The Marrying of Anne of Cleves: Royal Protocol in Early Modern England, Cambridge University Press, 2000
Daniel Defoe Wikipedia Entry
Notes:
1: Weir (p.227 )

• Filed under blogs we read, friends and colleagues, queens | 2 Responses