I am giving a talk on my novel Almodis: The Peaceweaver at University of Reading this week. It is a seminar for history postgraduate students, and I will discussing the controversial relationship between historical fiction and history.
Ice Floes on the River
Last week I participated in a local authors’ salon organised by the Tourist Information Office in Laguepie, a village in the south of France, where I live part of the year. My novel, Almodis, is a fictionalised account of the life of the 11th century Countess of Toulouse and Barcelona. My book sat alongside French books on the history of the region and books for learning the ancient language of Occitan, which my heroine would have spoken. Whilst I was in Laguepie last weekend, the season turned, the village woke to a heavy frost and ice floes on the river Viaur – the same river that my heroine would have travelled along.
Now I’m working on my next novel, The Viking Hostage, which will be published by Impress in early 2014. The story is set in Limoges, France and Pembrokeshire in Wales. It recounts the tangled lives of a Norwegian woman sold into slavery in childhood, her Viking brother, a French heiress, and the Viscount of Limoges. Like Almodis, the seed for this novel, was a true account of a kidnap. The historical woman, Almodis de La Marche, was kidnapped by the Count of Barcelona and that historical fact set me to wondering how it had come about and why. In The Viking Hostage, the French heiress Aina of Segur, is kidnapped from an island monastery by Norse Vikings, days before she is due to marry the Viscount of Limoges. In the historical record (the Chronicles of Ademar de Chabannes), the Count paid an enormous ransom to the Viking raiders and got his bride back after three years. I am imagining what may have happened in those three years.
Print from a Viking brooch:
Posted in Books, Fiction, History, Writing
Leave a comment
Book Event in London
Tracey Warr
Almodis The Peaceweaver: An 11th century Female Lord
at The Guildhall Library, Aldermanbury, London EC2V 7HH
Tuesday 15 May 2012
5.45pm for 6pm talk followed by wine reception 7-8pm
Tickets are free but please book in advance as space is limited:
020 7332 1870
guildhall.library@cityoflondon.gov.uk
Tracey Warr will give a talk on researching and writing her first novel Almodis: The Peaceweaver, which is based on the extraordinary life of a medieval female lord who ruled substantial parts of southern France and northern Spain in the 11th century. Almodis de La Marche was the Countess of Toulouse and Barcelona. She was the great-grandmother of Eleanor of Aquitaine, Queen of France and then Queen of England. Tracey Warr is a writer and art history lecturer based in Laguepie, France and Oxford, UK. Her research included looking at works by medieval writers and historians, inspiration from medieval objects, poetry, manuscripts and cooking recipes, as well as visits to many of the sites she writes about in and around Limoges, Toulouse and Barcelona. Her next novel is set in 10th century Limoges, Norway and the Isle of Man, focussing on contacts between southern French and Viking cultures.
The talk will be followed by a wine reception and signed books will be available to buy.
Almodis: The Peaceweaver was supported by a Santander University Network Scholarship and shortlisted for the Impress Prize and the Rome Film Festival Book Industry Initiative.
Tracey Warr, Almodis: The Peaceweaver, published by Impress Books, Oct 2011
pbk £6.99 ISBN 978-1-90760-505-5
Posted in Books, Fiction, History, Writing
Leave a comment
Book Event in France
BOOK EVENT
Author Reading and Book Signing
at The English Library, Centre Sociale, Pl. du Hôpital St. Jacques, 12200 Villefranche du Rouergue, Aveyron, France
Friday 27 April 2012 2.30pm
http://www.bluemoonweb.net/English-Library
Tracey Warr, Almodis: The Peaceweaver, published by Impress Books, Oct 2011
pbk £6.99 ISBN 978-1-90760-505-5
Tracey Warr’s first novel Almodis: The Peaceweaver is based on the extraordinary life of a real medieval female lord who ruled substantial parts of southern France and northern Spain in the 11th century. Tracey Warr is a writer and art history lecturer based in Laguepie, France and Oxford, UK. Her research included works by medieval writers and historians, inspiration from medieval objects, poetry, manuscripts and cooking recipes, as well as visits to many of the sites she writes about in and around Limoges, Toulouse and Barcelona.
Posted in Books, Fiction, History, Writing
Leave a comment
Forthcoming Events
Fri 27 April 2012 2-4pm
The English Library, Place du Hopital St Jacques, Villefranche-de-Rouergue, France
I will give a talk on Almodis: The Peaceweaver
Tues 15 May 2012 6-8pm
The Guildhall Library, Aldermanbury, London EC2
I will give a talk on Almodis: The Peaceweaver
Almodis Reader Comments
Have received some wonderful feedback from readers of Almodis, such as: Dear Tracey Warr, I would like to complain: I started reading your novel in the bath and hours later realised that I’d read a third of the novel, was still in the bath, and I was freezing cold.
Writing the next novel
I’ve had an idea for a while that my next novel will be set in 10th century France and Norway and be called Sigrid: The Secret Viking, however I got off to a slow start for two reasons: it seems a kind of betrayal of my first heroine, Almodis, and the characters of her household, to turn to someone else!, but also I wasn’t quite sure who my secret viking was. My writing method is to research historical facts and then to imagine on and around those facts – so although Sigrid is a fictional character, I’ve been looking for the right historical facts to relate her to. I finally had a breakthrough with this and so, after several false starts, writing Sigrid is now under way, and begins in the slave market of Tallinn where three Norwegian children are being sold by Estonian pirates who captured them at sea…
