Interview: Anthony Anglorus - Author of "The Prince of Prigs"

I am very happy to spotlight author Anthony Anglorus today here at One Book Shy. I posted my review of Anthony's latest "The Prince of Prigs" here yesterday. I loved it!  I had a chance to do a quick interview with Anthony and thought I'd share a bit of our discussion with you. Enjoy!

Anthony Anglorus

After a lifetime of balancing books, Anthony turned his hand to writing them in 2009. His first book, The Other Robin Hood, is available as an ebook.  An Englishman still living in England, he married a Russian doctor in 1999 and will be moving to rural France after reaching retirement age - but the writing will continue. He is already working on the sequel to The Prince of Prigs, tentatively titled Dark Days, Dark Deeds. 

Website / Twitter / Goodreads

Welcome to One Book Shy of a Full Shelf Anthony!
What prompted you to make the jump from pushing numbers to putting your words to paper?
Boredom. I’d sold my business - well, most of it - and decided to learn more about a character I’d heard of, a highwayman who was from the small town in which I had been working. I discovered a fascinating tale and decided to try to write a book about it. It was purely for my own pleasure, but enough people commented on the storytelling that I eventually decided to see what would happen if I put it Out There. It (“The Other Robin Hood”) only sold a few, but by then I’d caught the bug; I loved writing, and people were telling me I was pretty good at it.

In the process of writing, I had assembled quite a library of research books on highwaymen, so I decided to stick with what I knew. After all, there’s little merit in a book when the author knows little to nothing about his subject - you have to know more than the majority of people.

I started searching for another highwayman. A few stood out, but one had been written about by Daniel Defoe, another by Charles Dickens so the list shrank - I think I write well but I have no intention of allowing any comparisons with such literary giants.

I would imagine your name will be on the list alongside Defoe and Dickens now. It is obvious you know your subject. 

What drew you to this particular time period?

A mixture of things. For one thing, one of the characters on my shortlist operated around that time - the English Civil Wars, mid 17th Century. For another, one of the frustrations when writing the first book was the lack of significant history happening behind the character. Here I had three civil wars, the execution of a king, the perversion of democracy, any or all of which provide a very rich framework for any book. Although some of it occurs within parliamentary debate, probably the most boring assembly of words ever concocted by man.

Parliamentary debate has never been more entertaining..

In your research, what did you find to be most difficult?

I wanted to make my story as close to the truth as possible. Most of the events in the book - indeed, in both books - actually happened, although not necessarily on the exact dates I have placed them. But with Captain James Hind, whilst there is a rich supply of tales about his activities as a highwayman, there is virtually nothing relating to his time as a military officer. I’ve never been a soldier so I have no idea what it is like and I did not feel at all comfortable making up any form of military action. This meant that there were chunks of time I couldn’t write about.

Other than that, it tended to be small things; what were the staple foods, how would Oliver Cromwell’s young daughter have addressed her father, this sort of thing - I’d often end up buying several books to get the answer to a single small point.

For me personally, these “small things” are really what drew me deeper in to the story.

Do you prefer to mold your characters to actual historical events or to tweak history to fit your vision?

History is the past. The past is there, it cannot be altered. For me, it is the framework around which I fit my characters and in fact, when plotting out my storyline the actual historical events affecting any of my characters (all of my characters are/were real people) are the first thing I put into place. I especially take careful note of where any significant character actually is throughout the period of the book. I can’t have Oliver Cromwell involved in something in London if he was actually in Ireland!

The current book, “The Prince of Prigs”, is almost totally true and I do tell you at the end what is fictional. But the sequel is coming more from my own imagination, and therefore remains a little fluid. However the framework sits there in plain view so that no-one can ever say to me “That can’t be true, he was doing this up there so he couldn’t be there.”

This allows me the escape that I can say “we know he was there, but we don’t know every detail of his movements. I can’t prove that this happened, but you can’t prove that it didn’t either!”

I'm sure that will help clarify it for some of our readers/budding writers out there.

And finally, when do you think we might see the next installment in this tale?

It’s barely started, but I’m working on clearing the decks to give me a clear run. I want to see it available within eighteen months of the first, although I don’t know if that will be possible.

Thank you so much for stopping in to visit with us and I hope you'll come back to share with us news of these further adventures. 

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~~~~~ Disclaimer:  All opinions expressed on this blog are 100% my own.  I do not receive monetary compensation for my reviews but do utilize affiliate links.  I may receive books in  order to facilitate a review, but this does not guarantee a good review - only a completely honest one.  Each review post denotes how I obtained the book.

Guest Post - First Person: A Matter of Perspective by Christine Amsden

I am really excited to welcome Christine Amsden to One Book Shy today as part of her tour with her great new book, Madison's Song (which I just happened to post a happy review of earlier today). A little bit about Christine:

Christine Amsden has been writing fantasy and science fiction for as long as she can remember. She loves to write and it is her dream that others will be inspired by this love and by her stories. Speculative fiction is fun, magical, and imaginative but great speculative fiction is about real people defining themselves through extraordinary situations. Christine writes primarily about people and relationships, and it is in this way that she strives to make science fiction and fantasy meaningful for everyone.

At the age of 16, Christine was diagnosed with Stargardt's Disease, a condition that effects the retina and causes a loss of central vision. She is now legally blind, but has not let that slow her down or get in the way of her dreams. In addition to writing, Christine teaches workshops on writing at Savvy Authors. She also does some freelance editing work, Christine currently lives in the Kansas City area with her husband, Austin, who has been her biggest fan and the key to her success. They have two beautiful children. Visit Christine at her website. 

First Person: A Matter of Perspective

by Christine Amsden

Whether a writer is a panster or an outliner, there is one question she must answer before getting started: First or third? For some the answer is simply a matter of personal preference, but even if that's the case it's important to think through the implications.

First person is a compelling viewpoint for many authors because it is easy to imagine ourselves as “I” and to tell a story that way. It's sort of what we do, isn't it? Play an elaborate game of make believe? But unless you're a dedicated hobbyist, you're not just telling this story for your own amusement. You're writing to an audience, and your audience may have a different perspective.

As a reader, I usually prefer third person – and I don't say this lightly because my Cassie Scot series is told in the first person (I'll get into why in a bit). I enjoy third person because in my readerly games of make believe, it is a little easier for me to pretend to be “he” or “she” than “I.” It also has the clear advantage of allowing me inside the heads of more than one character, deepening the story by bringing in multiple perspectives.

The third person limited omniscient is a great point of view which eliminates the distance between readers and characters. It puts us straight into their heads in a way that makes it a more intimate reading experience than first person. First person used to be the “close” point of view, but that's when it was competing with an omniscient version of third person. Nowadays, we have better options. Modern limited omniscient third person gets as intimate with the character as first person, but it eliminates distance in time. A first person narrator has, presumably, already lived through the events of the story and is telling them from the future. A third person narrator is right there in the moment.

But don't take this to mean that first person doesn't have a place. Of course it does! There is power in the first person narrator, but it has to be harnessed well and used wisely. As a reader immersing myself in a first person novel, it's more like a close personal friend is telling me their story in intimate detail. To get into it I have to like not only the story, but the person telling it and the way it's being told. Or to put it another way: Your narrator had better have character.

I'm just going to go out on a limb here and say this: If you can substitute “he” or “she” for “I” in a first person story and it's still basically the same, you've chosen the wrong point of view. If this is the case then you've thrown away all the advantage of first person while embracing all the disadvantages.

A first person narrator isn't just a narrator. He or she is a character telling a story. Their character will influence how they tell the story – including voice, style, and presentation method. First person narrators can get away with asides to the audience, or drop dark hints about what is to come (since they have already lived through it). A first person narrator can be unreliable – he can even lie to himself and believe it. He can also withhold information from the audience.

You can get away with breaking more rules in the first person than you can in the third. Ironically, this makes it harder to write. It's easier to effectively break rules once you know them and understand what they're for.

The power of a first person narrator is freedom of style.

I chose first person for Cassie, after a lot of agonizing deliberation, because she needed to tell her own story. It helped that the story (by which I mean the prominent series arc; the individual books are mysteries) is entirely about Cassie coming into herself as an adult. But you can tell a great story in the third person, even if it belongs to only one character. A first person story needs more. It needs a character who desperately wants to tell her own story. Cassie's got attitude, and she's talking right to you. “My parents think the longer the name the more powerful the sorcerer, so they named me Cassandra Morgan Ursula Margaret Scot. You can call me Cassie.”

I said earlier that as a reader, I usually prefer third person. I put the “usually” in there for a reason – I usually prefer third person because I run across too many first person stories that don't harness the power of first person. That don't have the right style or perspective, or that differ from a third person story only in the pronoun choice. The whole truth is that when first person is done well, it's my absolute favorite to read. But of course “done well” is also a matter of perspective. 

        

~~~~~ Disclaimer:  All opinions expressed on this blog are 100% my own.  I do not receive monetary compensation for my reviews but do utilize affiliate links.  I may receive books in  order to facilitate a review, but this does not guarantee a good review - only a completely honest one.  Each review post denotes how I obtained the book.