Please help me welcome author Fil Reid who is sharing a bit about herself and her latest release…
Hello Fil and welcome! Please tell us a little about yourself.
I’m a British writer living in the South of England in a canal boat, which is where I do all my writing. I have five children but they’re all grown up now and have left home, so its just me, my husband, our rescue dog and our elderly cat on board our boat.
Where did you get the idea for the Guinevere series from?
About 25 years ago my husband and I went for the day to visit Glastonbury. We parked around the back and set off across the field to walk up there. He stopped with his tripod and took four photos of the hill on motordrive using infrared film. We kept on going, visited the summit and the ruined church tower up there and went home. That night he developed the film. In the first photo you can see the hill with the tower on top, in the second one the tower only is fading, in the third the tower has vanished and in the fourth it’s back again, clear as anything. We had no explanation for this, but I wondered if the fast shutter speed and infrared film had captured a momentary flashback in time to when the tower wasn’t on top of the hill. Then I wondered what would have happened had we been inside the tower when that happened… so the kernel of the idea for the Guinevere series was born. Took me a while to get round to writing it though.
What is the most difficult thing about writing a book?
I didn’t find anything at all difficult about writing the Guinevere series. I loved every moment of it and was profoundly sad when I wrote the last word of book six. I’ve just been writing a four book Regency series called The Cornish Ladies, due out from June next year, and that was harder to write. I didn’t know the world as well as I do the Dark Ages, I wasn’t quite as in love with my characters as I was with Arthur and Gwen. But I loved it nevertheless. There’s nothing hard about writing – the hard bit comes after when you have to do the publicity!
What was your first job?
My first job was working with horses. I’d been teaching children to ride on my sister’s old pony and someone told me about a weekend job at a local riding school. I did Saturdays and Sundays for some time and loved every minute of it. Horses were my other love, along with all things Arthurian, and I’ve done a lot of different horsey related jobs. My first full time job was on a Thoroughbred stud, but that involved no riding so I moved on to working as a stablegirl in a flat racing yard. I loved that too. I looked after four horses and got to ride out on the gallops twice a day and take the horses I cared for to race meetings. I was young and thin and brave. I wouldn’t do it now and they wouldn’t let me – too heavy and not nearly so brave!
What do you want readers to come away with after they read The Quest for Excalibur?
I’d like them to have a better understanding of Arthurian legend. I soon found out when I was writing these books that most people only seem to know about Lancelot and he wasn’t even contemporary. On top of that, he was French! Not a chance that I’d allow him to stick his nose into my books. I’d also like to think I’ve inspired them enough with my descriptions to go and visit some of the real places in my books – Vindolanda and Hadrian’s Wall, South Cadbury Castle, Tintagel, Glastonbury to name but a few. Almost all the places named in the books are real and can be visited.
If you were stranded on a deserted island and you could have 3 (inanimate) objects, what would they be?
I’d have a really useful knife – that’s what explorers always have. And I’d have a large box of matches which I’d keep perfectly dry but also never let the fire go out so I could conserve them. And maybe an axe for chopping up wood for the fire. Got to be practical things, I think, to help with survival.
What celebrity would you most like to be stranded on an island with?
Ray Mears for sure. If not him, then Bear Grylls, but I think Ray Mears would be altogether a nicer companion, and every bit as capable as Bear Grylls but not such a show off.
Have you written any other books that are not published?
I have, with the four coming out next year. But I’ve also got some children’s and YA books that I’d like to get published at some point. Fingers crossed. I like writing for children.
What do your friends and family think of your writing?
My husband is very supportive, and I often read aloud bits I’ve written or ask his advice about something I’m not sure of. He’s a human encyclopaedia and was very useful for all things ship related in my Cornish Ladies series. My daughter has been funny – she’s only just read the earlier Guinevere books. “Eww, Mum, I can’t read a book you’ve written if it’s got sex in it!” She seems to have got over that now, or she’s skipping those bits – they’re not very long. My sons are very impressed I think that their mum is now a published writer. The youngest is a writer himself – short stories for Dungeons and Dragons websites and magazines – but he never lets me see them! I’ve offered to proofread for him but he won’t let me.
Who is the most famous person you have ever met?
I met Princess Anne once, to do with Riding for the Disabled, and I met Alan Carr (a British comedian) while walking along the canal, but only realized who he was afterwards.
How much of the book is realistic?
Well, she travels in time, so that’s not realistic is it? And of course, there’s a bit of magic in the stories. You can’t avoid that with an Arthurian story. But apart from that I’ve tried to make everything as realistic and historical as possible. The Dark Ages is dangerous, dirty, a bit smelly, and full of inqualities Gwen can do nothing about. It’s not a safe place to live, and I make that obvious. The battles are not glorious events where the heroes win – they’re terrible things where even the winners suffer badly. I’ve made sure not to glorify them in any way. I like to think I’ve rendered a realistic picture of what it might have been like fifteen hundred years ago.
BLURB
Book Five of the award-winning historical romance series based on Arthurian legend.
Twelve years ago, 21st-century librarian Gwen decided to remain in the Dark Ages with the man she loves above all else – a man around whom endless well-known tales of legend and magic have been spun. King Arthur. Over the years, she’s carved a life for herself by her husband’s side, gently steering him in the direction she wants him to go, but always with an awareness that he’s a Dark Age king with a Dark Age view of the world.
Equipped with her prior knowledge of Arthurian legend, Gwen’s sole aim has long been to save her husband from the legendary fate she dreads hangs over him. But always, at the back of her mind, is the nagging doubt that whatever she does is already set in stone, and nothing she can do will change his future which is already her past.
Now, in book five of the Guinevere series, she’s all too aware that time is marching on, and that this fate might well be drawing closer to the man she gave up everything for.
Danger lurks in the most unexpected places, and long-hidden secrets threaten to rise to the surface. After a long, cold winter in their hilltop fortress, Gwen’s pleased to welcome traveling players to Din Cadan. But these players are hiding secrets of their own, and one of them has come with black deeds in mind. Gwen will have to fight harder than she’s ever done to save herself and thus her husband. And all evidence points to the hand of Morgana, Arthur’s wicked sister, manipulating everything from afar.
Throughout all of this, simmering in the background, is young Medraut, Arthur’s nephew. Unnoticed, despite still being only a boy, he’s been exerting his malignant influence over those around him, in particular, Gwen and Arthur’s son and heir. The wedge he succeeds in driving between Arthur and his son will carry forward into the cataclysmic events of the final book, The Road To Avalon.
But even Morgana can’t prevent Gwen discovering the truth behind the story of Excalibur and setting the legendary sword in her husband’s hands.
Excerpt: (Merlin is showing Gwen where Excalibur comes from)
The younger man reached for the sword with reluctance, his stubbly cheeks tear-stained, eyes anguished. Filthy fingers closed around the hilt. “My Lord, I will not rest until this sword lies in the hands of your wife.” His head bowed in supplication.
The dragon ring winked at me in the raw daylight, as the Emperor laid a hand on the young soldier’s bare, short-cropped head in benediction. Withdrawing his hand, the Emperor fumbled at the ring with awkward, bandaged fingers as the young man rose wearily to his feet, and slid the sword into the scabbard by his side.
The Emperor, his own cheeks wet with tears, held out the ring, gripped between finger and thumb. “Take this as well. It was my wife’s.”
It fell into the soldier’s open hand, and the young man turned it over, so the dragon rested uppermost on the filthy palm.
An overwhelming urge to reach out and snatch it washed over me, but the vision vanished. My eyes flicked open.
I was back on the wall-walk again, with Merlin still holding my hands and the dragon ring on my finger glinting in the afternoon sunlight.
My breath came hard and fast. “Was that sword Excalibur?”
“I don’t know, but I think so. This is the clearest I’ve seen him. All I can tell you is that every time I look, I see this sword gripped in that hand. That hand with that ring. This ring.” He indicated the ring on my hand. “And I believe that what I’m seeing, what I’ve just shown you, is Macsen’s defeat by the Emperor Theodosius. I think he knew execution awaited him and wanted to send his sword back to Britain. Perhaps it was a British-made sword – even linked to the Princess Elen, his wife.”
Buy link(s): https://www.amazon.com/Quest-Excalibur-Guinevere-Book-ebook/dp/B0CF6RN38F
About the author:
Fil Reid has loved King Arthur and horses for as long as she can remember. She could talk about both all day long, but she keeps that under control so as not to bore her husband and family too much. She has late-diagnosed Asperger’s syndrome and thinks her obsessions are far more interesting than those of her two Aspie sons – the Titanic and bellringing. There’s such a thing as hearing enough of bells.
She’s owned horses most of her life, just not now. But if she still had horses, her books would probably never have been written as she’d have been too busy riding every day. One of her favourite things to do is to visit the places in her books so she can describe them better. A certain amount of imagination is required, as of course they’ve changed a lot in 1500 years.
With her Guinevere series finished this year, she’s got some Regency romances out next year from June onwards – The Cornish Ladies series – and she’s just begun work on the books to follow them.
https://www.facebook.com/filreidauthor/
Author Alicia Dean 