bunn

I got a rather charming drawing of Ambrosius from Sword at Sunset, for Sutcliff Swap.  I like it a lot.

I wrote one story for Sutcliff Swap this year  : There Will Be Commotions and Turbulent Times.  It is a late sixth-century Britain story, with Owain and Regina from Dawn Wind, plus Taliesin, who turned out to be visiting the area and donated the title. :-D

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I thought I'd finished this when I posted it to the Sutcliff Swap collection, but now I'm wondering if I want to write more about Taliesin.  He seems to be quite a strong personality.

And then I made a drawing :  "Hands off, My Friend" [On Ao3, with notes]
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The 2014 collection is open! I haven't read all the stories yet...

But I have read my gift, Fiat Justicia by opalmatrix. It's all about Aunt Honoria, a minor character in The Silver Branch who I personally consider to be more interesting than the protagonists, and she really lives up to that billing in this story, being both awesome and ruthless!

motetus drew me an Aunt Honoria as a treat, and she is a perfect fit with the story.  There is even more Aunt Honoria to look forward to in the other stories too.  She seems to be turning into something of a third century version of Judi Dench's M, which is a move that one can really only applaud delightedly.

With bonus extra Vikings!
I wrote two things for Sutcliff Swap this year, and both of them were kind of Vikingy:

Born in the Purple is ostensibly a Blood Feud story - although to be honest there is a bushel of history in there and not much more than a teaspoon of Sutcliff. My heroine, Anna Porphyrogenita, the princess of Constantinople who was sold to the Viking Rus in 988AD in return for an army, only appears by report in Blood Feud, and was a real person.

I had a lot of fun researching Constantinople and the Rus (although in the end there was less Rus than I'd intended).   It was a difficult story to write though, because it's basically the story about forced marriage that I managed to wangle my way out of writing when I wrote about Flavia.   I don't know why I chose to come back to that theme, given that I'm sure I've complained before that historical fiction has way too much rape in it, and far too few people with hernias or toothache or being trampled by cows.   Maybe next time I should make an effort and have everyone tragically trampled by cows or killed by a randomly collapsing building.

The second thing I wrote was:
Audrsaga, for osprey_archer. It's a Sword Song story, based on Sutcliff's last and posthumously published novel about a hot-tempered Viking boy who is given a five-year sentence of exile for murder in around 890AD, and spends the time wandering around Dublin and the Western isles as a sword-for-hire.   He ends up in the Hebrides and Caithness, working for first Thorstein the Red, and then his mother, Aud the Deep-minded.  Like Anna, Aud and Thorstein were real people.  Aud is one of the founder-figures of Iceland, so she appears in a number of the Icelandic sagas, as well as being one of the more memorable characters in Sword Song.    The prompt asked what Aud did after she sailed out of the book to settle on Iceland.

This was much easier to write!  According to both the sagas and Sutcliff, Aud was a portly lady in her early sixties, a Christian in a period when most Vikings weren't, and very definitely a personality.   If I hadn't been struggling to write about Anna at the same time it could easily have been much longer, and I think I may try to take it up to at least the point where Aud sets up her own settlement at Hvamm. 

« Back to Part 1

Esca shook his head, as if coming out of deep water. “You served in Isca Dumnoniorum yourself,” he said. “Don’t you remember hearing anything about hares while you were here?”

“Well, I was not there for very long,” said Marcus, “and I don’t think that the people I knew in Isca – the people who might have known about the sacred things – I don’t think they would have talked to me about something like that. Even the people I thought I knew...well, I was very young, and very new to the country.”
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Notes Here

I suspect that probably anyone who really wants to watch a three and a half hour play based on Sutcliff's Arthurian epic, Sword at Sunset has already picked up the link from http://blueremembered.blogspot.co.uk/ or http://rosemarysutcliff.com/ but just in case you didn't (and so I've got the link)


I haven't watched it yet, but am looking forward to it!

Also, muchly amused by this review: "Of the two or three weddings I have been forcibly removed from, the most memorable was in Lewes. “How can you say you don’t like Rosemary Sutcliff?” I angrily demanded of the classicist groom, “You’re getting married in the very Sussex Downs that fired her imagination.” The desk sergeant who brought me morning tea in the cells agreed."

And while I'm at it, there is this!

New Year's parties are, frankly, my idea of hell on earth, so here is a ridiculous story about the Tribune Placidus in an absurd fake moustache that I wrote while I was more or less ignoring the New Year. Happy 2014!

warnings: Placidus being... well, Placidus, and a bit creepy, honestly.
Word Count: 1070
Inspired by motetus's awesome card here: http://i.imgur.com/G8DaOJV.jpg
In which the Tribune Servius Placidus goes undercover in a ridiculous fake moustache, and learns that Yorkshire girls should really not be messed with.

(When Marcus asks Placidus what he thinks of Britain, Placidus replies "The girls are well enough, and the hunting. For the rest - Roma Dea! I can bear to leave it behind me!". I wondered which girls he had met, and how...)
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Title: Different for Boys
warnings: late pregnancy is not much fun.
Word Count: 1500

Summary:   A very pregnant Cottia realises that marriage to Marcus may not be the escape she had hoped, but talking to Esca helps.

I really should have got this beta'd before posting it, but I wrote it for the ninth-eagle fanmedia challenge, and ended up posting it well after the official deadline and only about 40 minutes before the really really mean it deadline, so there was So Much No Time.  Apparently I still have Lots of Thoughts about this book!

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( Notes, in which I witter on about Cottia and Esca a bit )

From Marcus Flavius Aquila, Primus Pilus of the First Cohort of the Ninth Hispana

Dear Mouse
I am sorry that it has been some time since my last letter. Things continue to be difficult here, and it has got worse since the news of the Emperor’s death reached us, so that it has been hard to find the time to write a proper letter.

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Notes( In which I become ridiculously excited that the archaeology appears to back up my fanfic.  )

I seem to have been a bit flighty and scattered about Sutcliff Swap this year.
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Finally I realised that at this rate I wasn't going to finish *anything*, and hurriedly wrote for melannen : 'Not The Emperor's Bodyguard' which is basically about how, when you get orders to go and re-occupy a remote Scottish fort that has been standing empty for about a hundred years, the place is going to be in the most awful mess when you get there.

If you are in the mood for art, I muchly recommend the painting 'Into the Emptiness Within Him' by motetus which captures that lovely moment where Aquila meets the High King Ambrosius and is given a sword superbly well.

My gift was "When in Calleva" about Cottia's Aunt Valaria's experience as an Iceni girl trying to settle into Romanised British society in Calleva after her marriage to Uncle Kaeso. It's a terrifying portrait of not-so-subtle social pressure, and really made me think. I had previously seen Valaria as almost a comedy cutout, but this gave her much more depth.