Dark Triumph

As I wrote Dark Triumph, I wanted to be sure and populate the book with some of the colorful characters from the Middle Ages that I had come across in my research, and yet it had to feel organic to the story and not wedged in there.

As Sybella and the wounded knight were racing through the countryside, trying to escape pursuit, I had to do some serious thinking as to who they would actually run in to, and of those people, who would help, who would hinder, and who would turn them in in a heartbeat for a reward. Since they would need to slip into the forest to evade capture, I decided to draw from those who lived in the forests or obtained their livelihood from the woods, and settled upon a group of charcoal burners.

Oddly, it is often the outcasts in society who are most accepting of other outcasts. Their very disenfranchisement sometimes makes them more willing to challenge the status quo or thumb their nose at rigid authority. While charcoal burners were not (probably) true outcasts, they did keep to themselves somewhat, confined by their livelihood to dwelling in forests and tending their charcoal fires rather than living in cities or villages.

In the middle ages, one of the most efficient fuels at the time was charcoal. Coal itself was rare and difficult to mine with their technology, but charcoal could be made through the slow burning of wood, then stopping the process before the wood was fully burned to ash. Charcoal burning was a tricky thing, requiring fairly esoteric knowledge of how to build the fire pits just so, how to pile the wood so it wouldn’t burn too quickly, and how to read the smoke to discern when the charcoal was ready. There were a number of occupational hazards, primarily involving collapsed fire pits and burns. It was also an occupation full of hazard, for a stray spark or ember could start a conflagration in minutes.

As I continued to research charcoal burners, I came across a curious mention of the Carbonnari, a branch of Italian charcoal burners. They started off as a guild, as many medieval trades did, and developed into an organization or brotherhood similar to Freemansons, only with their charcoal burning trade being at the center of their rituals and organizations. While their organization and political involvement was most evident in 19th century Italy, it is believed the groups’ origins began in the middle ages. When I learned they had a French counterpart called the Charbonnerie, I knew I’d found my outcasts.

As a writer, a dozen questions immediately went off in my mind. Who were they? What would compel them to become political and engage themselves in the affairs of the kingdom? How would they make those decisions? And, most importantly in a world populated with patron saints, whom would they worship?

Any deviation from normal church doctrine in the middle ages was rigorously opposed, so it made sense to me that they would worship someone not approved by the church, one of the older gods who’d not make the transition to patron saint.

Dovetailing nicely with this was my personal fascination with the concept of the Black Madonna. There are various theories for the origin of the Black Madonna, whether it was simply the color of Jesus and Mary’s skin before Renaissance artists reimagined them as fair skinned and blonde, or an origin that spoke to possible African roots. There is some speculation that the huge popularity of the cult of the Virgin Mary in the middle ages was a redirecting of earlier earth/mother goddess worship.

But interestingly, over the years I’d also run into mentions of the Black Artemis, rumored to have been worshipped by the Amazons, or Black Demeter, the aspect of the earth goddess when she was in deep mourning for her daughter Persephone. I took all those threads and swirled them around until I had the Dark Matrona, the unsanctioned aspect of Dea Matrona, the former earth goddess now patron saint. I decided that her darkness would be of a more spiritual nature, not unlike the Egyptian god Osiris, for in the Egyptian pantheon, black was not only the color of the underworld, but regeneration as the rich dark silt from the Nile river allowed them to grow their crops each year, and so black was also the color of regeneration, which dovetailed nicely with the book’s themes of finding hope in the darkness.

 

New Dark Triumph Cover!

Wednesday, June 27

I’m so excited to share with you yet ANOTHER aMaZiNG cover created by the uber talented billellis! To be honest, the original Dark Triumph cover went through many trials and tribulations (maybe I’ll detail them for you all in an upcoming newsletter!) but this one makes up for that tenfold!

Dark_Triumph_Final

I love the richness of it, the beauty of the jeweled dagger feels like such a corollary for Sybella. Then of course the vipers swirling in the shadows pretty much sums up Sybella’s life. And really, it feels like we could all use a little of Sybella in our life right now, no?

The paperback reprint will also have extra content in the form of a new epilogue. A lot of you wanted just a teensy bit more at the end of the book, so we are happy to accommodate that wish. (I will put up a pre-order link as soon as the book goes live on bookseller sights!) And if you haven’t signed up for my newsletter–do! I have lots of deleted scenes from DARK TRIUMPH that I will be sharing in the coming months!)

Also, in case you missed it, there is more Dark Triumph content on the website, with an article on the charbonnerie, and the strong influences of some of my favorite fairy tales. If you haven’t seen them already, you might want to take a look.

Can’t wait to show you Mortal Heart’s new cover SOON! (Again, subscribers to my newsletter will see it in all its glory later this week, along with a deleted scene with Annith and Balthazaar.)

While Dark Triumph is not a true retelling, it does contain echoes of at least two of my favorite fairy tales: “Beauty and the Beast” and “Bluebeard.”

I suppose it’s inevitable to be influenced by “Beauty and the Beast” when one has a hero named Beast. I was drawn to his character in the first book because as a child, one of my greatest early literary disappointments was when the beast turned into a handsome prince at the end of that tale. I was heartbroken and felt I’d been cheated. I had grown attached to that kind, ugly, dear monster and I greatly resented the boring handsome dude who replaced him. So when I was casting around for some of Duval’s companions in arms, I came up with Beast. Like Sybella, he was larger than life and threatened to take over the story in Grave Mercy. That was when I realized he would need his own book. And who better to pair him with than a tortured beauty who also threatened to steal every scene she was in.

Also, I thought the themes touched on in the “Beauty and the Beast” fairy tale worked well for the story I was telling in Dark Triumph—that love can see beyond the external to our true essence. In fact, I think that is what makes a compelling romance; when the hero/heroine is able to see things in the other that no one else can. They recognize our secret hidden selves and respond to that. But there is a strong influence of another fairy tale in Dark Triumph as well. As I researched the history and folklore of Brittany, I discovered that the two historical seeds of one of the most fascinating fairy tales of my childhood—”Bluebeard”—had its roots in ancient Breton history.

The earliest seed for the “Bluebeard” tales can be found in Conomor the Cursed, who had been told that he would be slain by his own son. Consequently, whenever one of his wives became pregnant, he killed her. The second historical basis for Bluebeard occurred only fifty or so years prior to the events in Dark Triumph. Gilles de Reitz had been the Marshal of France and a nobleman who fought alongside Joan d’Arc in the Hundred Years War. But once the war was over and he returned to his holding, he is rumored to have been at the root of over a hundred gruesome child murders, and was tried and hung for those crimes.

“The Tale of Bluebeard” fascinated, even as it horrified me and hinted at a darkness and depravity my seven-year-old mind could only guess at. I was outraged on behalf of the young wife whose only sin was curiosity, and equally outraged that such a blood punishment should await her. And Bluebeard himself gave me nightmares, with his aggressive, bristling blue-black beard and the fleshy lips that were so often portrayed in the accompanying illustrations. I felt there was a warning there, although I was too young to grasp it.

All of those elements were definitely echoing in the recesses of my mind as I wrote Sybella and Beast’s story. Since Sybella’s story was so dark and dealt with many of those very themes I was so disturbed by when younger, it seemed especially important to give her a message of hope as well; that love had the ability to see beyond the façade she presented to the world and recognize her true essence.

DARK TRIUMPH Playlist

Sunday, February 17

Here is the playlist I created for DARK TRIUMPH (including links to the songs on YouTube.) I’m pretty sure I would be mortified to have anyone know  the number of times iTunes tells me I listened to each of these during the period I was writing the book!

“Voodoo” — Godsmack
“Boulevard of Broken Dreams” — Green Day
“Baba O’Riley” — The Who
“Carry On My Wayward Son” — Kansas
“Awake My Soul” — Mumford & Sons
“Pumped Up Kicks” — Foster The People (The medieval version in my head substitutes the word arrows for bullets.)
“Little Lion Man” — Mumford & Sons
“Lightning Crashes” — Live
” ‘Til Kingdom Come” — Coldplay
“Howlin’ For You” — The Black Keys (Another medieval assassin substitution — aiming for you instead of howlin’ for you.)
“Thistle & Weeds” — Mumford & Sons
“I Gave You All” — Mumford & Sons
“Jesu, Joy of Man’s Desiring” — Sarah Brightman
“Roll Away Your Stone” — Mumford & Sons

(photo by flickr's tuli nishimura)

Just popping in with some news. Well, lots of news, actually.

I’m HUGELY thrilled to report that GRAVE MERCY has made a number of year end, BEST OF 2012 lists–Publisher’s Weekly, School Library Journal, and Amazon! My sincere thanks to each and every one of you who read this book or blogged about it or recommended it to a friend. Truly, this entire year has been one amazing milestone after another, and seeing my name on those lists with so many authors I have admired for so long is just…gobsmacking.(I have been using that word a lot this year.)

Not only that, but it’s also on the Texas Library Association’s  TAYSHA’s list as well!

And speaking of the Texas Libarary Association, I have an exciting travel schedule shaping up for 2013 and will be going to lots of lovely places! Maybe I’ll even get a chance to meet YOU! (And no, that wasn’t a non-sequitur as I will be at TLA in 2013–so it was a totally logical segue.)

Aaaaand, the first official review for Dark Triumph is IN. It’s from Booklist, and it’s a STAR!!

My two favorite lines. Well, okay, three favorite lines…

“. . . in this book, the wounds are deeper as Sybella must come to terms with her past and how her secrets tie and untie her to a knight who is the bane of her existence and her hope for the future. LaFevers is that wonderful sort of storyteller who so completely meshes events, descriptions, and characters that readers get lost in the world she’s concocted. It’s a place where history mingles with mystery and love is never expected.”

::happy sigh::

And lastly, there is now a handy-dandy countdown widget for DARK TRIUMPH!

Feel free to add it to your blog!

We had a very fun Dark Triumph ARC giveaway on Twitter last week, and I will be having more in the coming months. I’ve also created a Facebook page for the His Fair Assassin books, so if you prefer to get your information and updates on Facebook, please feel free to LIKE the page. (Or even if you don’t–consider liking it anyway because it makes my publisher SO happy…)

DARK TRIUMPH: Chapter One

September 24, 2012

In honor of the ARCs going out, I thought I would post the complete first chapter of DARK TRIUMPH. (There is a partial first chapter posted on Amazon, but it cuts off far too soon!)   Nantes, Brittany 1489 I did not arrive at the convent of Saint Mortain some green stripling. By the time […]

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DARK TRIUMPH ARC’s

September 19, 2012

I just received word that DARK TRIUMPH ARC’s have arrived at the publisher! Yay! And eeeep! As promised, here is information on how to request one. Please note: I do not have any. And when I get some, it will be a very small amount, usually enough to give my local booksellers and to host […]

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DARK TRIUMPH Cover

September 7, 2012

  The fierce look on her face is SO Sybella! Also, I just learned that I hadn’t actually mentioned it before, but the His Fair Assassin books are a trilogy, so there is a third book planned after this one. It will tell Annith’s story.

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DARK TRIUMPH Update!

August 30, 2012

Hello, hello! Lest you are wondering, no, I have not been the victim of one of my own political type assassinations, I have just been beyond busy getting DARK TRIUMPH ready so you can all read it as soon as possible. (It releases April 2, 2013, for those of you wondering.) I am finishing up […]

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