Virginia Crow's Blog: Crowvus Book Blog

 Well, this is the last #HistFicThursday blog before I launch Beneath A Darkening Sky at an event in Thurso on Monday 13th. Shame it couldn't be a Friday 13th, but we can't have everything!

One thing is for certain: October is the spookiest month. And not just because we have Halloween. Halloween could be a day later and October would still be the spookiest month...

Look at how the light retreats at this time of the year: up here, the seasons' turning drains away the daylight at a rate of 2.5hours...

Gwen is supposed to be home-schooled but her mum's mental health problems mean she isn't receiving any schooling. When it is clear that her mum needs hospital treatment to recover, Gwen is sent to an unusual boarding school where students are helped to communicate with spirits. While there, she is confronted with an unsettling truth about her past.

I read this book in a day, so that is always a good sign! I really enjoyed the mix of normal and...

 With global events reaching a boiling point, I've been thinking quite a lot about what makes a hero or heroine. Because it's an historical fiction blog, that's what I'm focussing on, but I'm pretty sure these thoughts can pass over onto other genres too.

The first thing is that the hero/ine does not have to be the main character. Tolkien said that Samwise Gamgee was the real hero of The Lord of the Rings (which can hardly come as a shock to anyone who has read it) but he was not the main - or ev...

 Today for #HistFicThursdays, I am delighted to once again be teaming up with The Coffee Pot Book Club, this time to share an excerpt from S. R. Perricone's fantastic new book Cobblestones!

First of all, let's meet the book...

The turbulent history of Post-Reconstruction New Orleans collides with the plight of Sicilian immigrants seeking refuge in America.

Antonio, a young man fleeing Sicily after avenging his father's murder, embarks on a harrowing journey to New Orleans with the help of Jesuit p...

 It's always easy when imagining history to assume that people spoke and acted differently from the way they do now. And, of course, that's largely true, in the sense that the language is permanently changing and that different fixations worm their ways into our day-to-day lives. But that's not to say attitudes have changed all that much.

According to many, many Facebook memes, Cicero once wrote, "Times are bad. Children no longer obey their parents, and everyone is writing a book." I am not a Cl...

I started writing my first book when I was still at school. It wasn't historical fiction, it was high fantasy, and it was the first of ten books, under the collective title The Watcher's Heir. I knew from the word go that it was going to have this number of books, although I didn't really work out exactly what would happen in each one. Twenty-five years on and the books are still not finished, although I now only have a couple more to go! Every Christmas I settle down and manage to write a chapt...

 Well, we're so close to release day for Beneath A Darkening Sky, and I've celebrated this by becoming a member of the Horror Writers' Association! I also had a set of author photos taken in a local graveyard, complete with an entire flock of sheep watching me as some previous visitor had left the gate open for them.

So now, I'm faced with the decision of which story to share with you. We've been through a few for this blog series, and I'm left with three: Guidman Trowie (a tale set in Orkney and...

 I'm quite confident that, if I start this blog with "remember the scythe?", most people reading it are going to immediately know where I'm pointing you to!

That's right: Poldark. Now, I know that the series with Aidan Turner and his famous scythe was actually a remake of an earlier programme, but let's just focus on this more recent iteration of Winston Graham's novels about the eponymous Cornish hero.

One of the things which is so wonderful about Poldark as a series - not only onscreen but even ...

 Welcome back to Middle Grade Monday! Today, I'll be discussing how to deal with adults in middle grade fiction because, and I hate to break this to you, kids just don't want to read about adults stealing all the fun.

Consider your favourite books from when you were younger. Mine was The Moon of Gomrath by Alan Garner. It's a story about a brother and sisters - kids, of course - who have magical adventure in the English countryside. There's danger, magic and battles. What's not to love?

And yes, t...

 I once answered a call for submissions based on ghost stories of my local area. Now, the funny thing with Caithness is: most people seem to believe in - and many people will share stories about how they've witnessed - supernatural happenings around the county. However, there aren't many well-known stories.

Of course, there's the standard young-maiden-falling-out-of-castle-window story for at least two of the castles up here, and there's the eerie story of the man whose brother locked him up in C...