Kathryn McConaughy's Feast of Adventures

I've researched heraldry off and on for quite a few years as background for my Faerie Queen series. Of course, depending on when you are setting your King Arthur stories, the modern heraldry system might not yet have existed... but Edmund Spenser certainly did envision his knights and recreants as having distinctive arms. Of course, Spenser's descriptions of his knights' arms are tightly connected with what they symbolize in his allegory. For example, Sir Artegall, the hero of Spenser's story about justice, has a shield bearing a pair of scales. In order to give background characters heraldic arms, I like to figure out options that would be appropriate for them, even if the actual description of the arms doesn't make it into the book. (I can't imagine that many people would want to read about a shield "chevronny embowed of four and per pale Azure and Argent.") Some fun resources to look at for this include Scotland's Lyon King of Arms website, whic...

There are certain authors whose books I read over and over. Stephen Bly is one of those authors. He wrote a tremendous number of books, mostly historical and contemporary Western fiction, and even won a 2002 Christy Award. He grew up hearing stories of the Wild West days from his grandpa, worked on his grandpa's ranch when he was young, and later went on to be a pastor and then mayor of a tiny town next to a reservation. He wrote books for both MG and adult audiences. In The Dog Who Would Not Smile , the first book of the Nathan T. Riggins series, twelve-year-old Nathan goes on a quest through the late 1800s West. With the help of a dog who just won't stop following him around, he searches Nevada for his parents. The setup for the story seems like it could be scary, with a kid traveling alone through danger. But Nathan's straightforward personality, the helpful people he meets along the way, and God's clear protection keep this from being an anxious book. Instead, it...

The stories of King Arthur were written and retold over many centuries, rather than being set in any specific historical time. So, when you read them, you may encounter a real mix of historical arms and armors, as well as place names and cultural details. Still, research is one of my favorite things, so of course I have to at least try to place my stories in history. One of the big problems I struggle with is geography. What places and roads existed at any given time? Of the medieval maps of England that I've found, this one in Latin by monk Matthew Paris (circa 1250 AD) is definitely the most useful. You can find an interactive and translated version of it here:  Matthew Paris Annotated Map - Historia Cartarum While it's difficult to tell how different places are geographically related to each other on this map, it gives a lot of insight into what Paris thought was important. So we get some major geographic features, lots of bishoprics, towns, and occasional notes that just m...

First, the writing update. I've been trying to restrain myself from jumping into the final revisions of the next full-length book in my Faerie Queen series ( Guyon and the Quest for the Golden Mean ) because I'm trying to finish writing some nonfiction for my day job. Of course, that means my creativity has to come out somewhere else...  I've been working on a short (?) story about Arthur's older brother, Sir Kai, which I plan to serialize in my newsletter as soon as I get set up with a newsletter service. But the story just keeps GROWING. Kai has already acquired a raft of personal baggage based on the old Welsh legends about him, plus several Faerie curses and a sidekick who may be trying to kill him. (Kai wouldn't be all surprised about the trying-to-kill-him part. It would be the fact that this individual thinks of themself as his sidekick that he would find puzzling.) I'm guessing the story will be novella-length at least. So Kai the Coldheart , coming soon...

King Arthur was a huge part of my childhood, along with Robin Hood, and Andrew Lang's Fairy books. So I was surprised to find, when I asked my middle school students about their King Arthur knowledge, that most of them didn't know these stories at all! There are some great modern collections of King Arthur stories for younger readers, mostly based on Sir Thomas Malory's Le Morte d'Arthur . (That does mean that other Arthur stories tend to get left out... There are huge numbers of medieval and Renaissance-era Arthur stories, in over a dozen languages, from over a dozen countries in Europe. I'll talk about them here on the blog in future.) You can find many of these collections in your local library, in the children's or YA sections of your local used bookstore, or (of course) on Amazon. The most famous collections in English are probably Roger Lancelyn Green 's King Arthur and His Knights of the Round Table,  or Howard Pyle 's numerous books of King Arthu...

Now that you've read The Princess Who Knew the Truth as an ebook (or are waiting for your paperback copy to arrive), what can you read next? One of my favorite authors is Rachel Neumeier. Neumeier originally worked with a traditional publisher, but in recent years she's been successful publishing indie SF and fantasy. She writes both YA and adult novels. A LOT of YA and adult novels. Seriously, how does she write so much and so well, so quickly? One of my favorites of her YA novels is The Keeper of the Mist . Keri is a teenage baker in a tiny kingdom that's hidden from its enemies by magical mists around its border. But when the king dies after sabotaging the mists, his counsellors pass over his three peculiar sons and give the kingdom (with its growing enemy-empire problems) to his illegitimate daughter. That is, they give it to Keri. Keri doesn't want to be queen, but even less does she want her home to be destroyed. With the help of her resourceful best friend and a...