"The Tyrant and the Twins" is now available on Nook!

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PICTISH CAVALRY: AN EQUESTRIAN WEIGHT WATCHERS?

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  By Henrik Sendelbach, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=256522 Although I’m sure the Pictish sculptors had no intention of spending valuable time and energy carving sluggish, sickly animals into their masterpieces, the horses they did carve were clearly of the best quality. Vital, and evincing high energy and spirits, they prance across the stones, tossing their long manes in the stiff Scottish breeze. To affect this great health and energy, the Picts must have set aside a crop of grain intended solely for their animals. Oats are the preferred horse feed nowadays, but they were introduced late to Scotland. How late? And were they introduced in time to be utilized by our Pictish friends? Here, I again refer to Irene Hughson, who tells us that both wild and cultivated oats would have been well-established by the Pictish heyday.             But what about grass? Everybody knows that horses like e...
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ONE MORE DAY UNTIL "THE TYRANT AND THE TWINS"!!!

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Helmet from the Anglo-Saxon Sutton Hoo Burial Well, Folks, looks like I'm down to the wire!   The Tyrant and the Twins , Book I of The Annals of Anavere , comes out on Kindle tomorrow!  See below, for a quick look! Pictish or Briton Birdlip Mirror The Tyrant and the Twins is not a medieval romance.  Nor is it one of the many contemporary updates of Arthurian legend, peppered with modern jokes and slang.  It is, rather, the reworking of an ancient tale, embedded in an archaic time and presented as its fifth-century characters would have portrayed themselves. Herein, no white knight in shining armor rides the lists, a lady’s silken kerchief floating from his lance.  No wizard wearing a pointed hat waves a birchen wand to summon the wind.  No impossibly indefatigable hero rescues a damsel in distress.  No one disappears into a mysterious – and fictional – otherworld.  No quixotic fairy story, this. Instead, brutish warriors, contrastingly arm...
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ACHILLES AND PENTHESILIA: NECROPHILIA, OR SACRED MARRIAGE?

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  By ArchaiOptix - Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=88625666 Rage. The great bard, Homer, employed wrath as the driving force behind the events of his  Iliad , including the deaths of his leading man, Achilles – the warrior-hero of the Greeks – and the Amazon Wonder Woman, Penthesilea. For, had the warrior woman not first killed one of her own, she would not have been compelled to find redemption in battle against the Greeks. Perhaps, she would instead have died somewhere on her native steppes, unremembered. Such a death – our loss, as well as that of Penthesilea and her people – would have been sad, indeed. Her name would have then been forever lost to time and anonymity. That ancient name conveyed some connotation of sadness:  penthos  meant “sorrow” in Ancient Greek. The second syllable of the warrior queen’s name is not so easy to decipher. Maybe, it came from the Latin verb for “silence”:  sileo . Or perhaps it was som...
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