Having a quiet Easter...

It's Easter Bunny time. Our model today is Smokey, a Netherland Dwarf, one of a long line of rabbits owned and cared for by my nephew Tom Underwood down in Devon.

Apart from being healthy, inquisitive and housetrained, Smokey clearly had immaculate taste in reading. On the top shelf are some of my English editions, including Chasing Rachel, which is coming out again this year in a revised download from Bookstrand.

In fact, the edits for Chasing Rachel turned up this morning, so I know how I'm going to be spending Easter. It has to be more relaxing to be a bunny.

Carols and capering: medieval dance

Four husbands into her career, Chaucer's Wife of Bath was still young and a lively soul, 'yong and ful of ragerie,/Stibourn and strong, and joly as a pie [magpie]./How koulde I daunce to a harpe smale,/And singe, ywis, as any nightingale,/Whan I had dronke a draughte of sweete wyn!' So how would she have danced?

Dancing in circles has gone on for who knows how long, and the medieval carol - a circular dance and the songs that went with it - was popular with everybody but the church. The songs, involving a leader who sang the verse, music from harp, pipe and tabor or the vielle (a predecessor to the violin) and the dancers providing the chorus, could get distinctly rowdy, and clerics could impose sanctions against those who moved in an unseemly fashion or sang colourful lyrics in churchyards.

The lyrics from early carols are hard to come by, but one popular carol from the thirteenth century, Angelus ad virginem, whose English version begins 'Gabriel fram Heven-king/Sent to the maide swete', has a bouncy tune ideal both for accompaniment with pipe and tabor and for the circular carol-dance. The music can be heard here, and possible steps have been suggested here.

Many dances thought of as medieval - such as the basse danse, branle and pavane - really belong to the Renaissance, when the first collections of dance music were made, but we can trace some formal dances like the saltarello, with its triple time and extravagant hop, back to the thirteenth-century.

If a solo dancer or tumbler took part in social dancing, there could be some seriously gymnastic capering. The sight of women dancing on their hands may have led to an emphasis on modesty in later instruction books such as Guglielmo Ebreo's fifteenth century Art of Dance, but in earlier times things were more freewheeling. A poem from the Benediktbeuren Manuscript of c.1230 ('Obmittamus studia') has a young student longing to abandon his lessons and go down into the street to watch the maidens dancing, 'white limbs moving/Light in wantonness,' as Helen Waddell translated it. Now that would have appealed to Chaucer.

Prisoners in the castle: dungeons and oubliettes

Medieval castles and dungeons tend to go together in people's imaginations and I have set important scenes in A Knight's Enchantment in a dungeon, where the heroine Joanna's father is being held. What we imagine as a typical dungeon, however - dark, underground, no windows, lots of chains - was less common in the Middle Ages than is assumed.

Take the word 'dungeon'. Its earliest form, donjon, meant a keep or tower, a strong defensive position. Over time that tower has been taken to mean a prison, often
underground in a castle. This form of prison was in fact an oubliette (meaning 'forgotten place') and was far darker and more grim than a dungeon, as can be seen in the photo of the oubliette in the castle at Warwick.

Famous dungeons include the Tower of London and those at Pontefract Castle and Alnwick Castle, though true dungeons in castles were not usual until later in the Middle Ages.

Often noble prisoners, captured and held for ransom in the dungeon, would be kept in a secure, comfortable place within the host's castle: certainly the room would be well-guarded, but we should not picture a Richard the Lionheart or Charles of Orleans languishing in the rat-infested, damp stone cell of imagination. Life expectancy in an oubliette would be short, and bad for the ransom business. 'Common' prisoners might be kept in gate houses, while those considered undesirable and disposable but not to be actually murdered could end up down with the rats in the oubliette.

DABWAHA 2010

Having been away for a while, I only discovered this morning that Blue Gold was chosen to participate in DABWAHA 2010, run by Dear Author and Smart Bitches, Trashy Books.

Whatever happens, I'm delighted to be nominated in some very strong company. If you want to take part in the voting, here's the link.

Here's the latest

Time rushes by! A Knight's Enchantment will be in the bookstores in late May/early June, which is not so far away now spring has sprung. To introduce the hero and heroine, I've posted a chunk from chapter one as an excerpt and you can read it here. I've also now sent off my fourth knight novel to Kensington, called A Knight's Prize.

In that connection, I'm working on a short blog about medieval dancing that will appear at the end of this month on Unusual Historicals.

There's an All Romance Ebooks party coming up and I'm offering Flavia's Secret as a door prize.

The audio version of A Secret Treasure comes out on April 12 from Audiolark and an electronic edition of my contemporary romantic suspense set on Dartmoor, Chasing Rachel, will be coming out some time this year from Bookstrand. More about that when I have it.

Moments in time: those magic moments

We all have 'magic moments' in our lives - those times when time itself seems to stand still and we are truly overwhelmed with joy: when we find our soul mate and recognise each other, when a child is born, when our love returns safely from a long journey. The happy exchange of flowers and other gifts, chosen with care and thought. Or that first loving kiss - and then others, and more.

Life is made complete by such moments.

Story and myth also has magic moments. Here are some of my favourites from well-known fairy stories and myths.

When the prince finds the glass slipper in Cinderella.

When Beauty tells the Beast she loves him and he is transformed.

When Gerda rescues Kai in the Snow Queen.

When Penelope tricks Odysseus into revealing who he is - by tricking him into describing their very unusal bed - and reunites with him at the end of The Odyssey.

Here are my magic moments - what are yours?

If you want to read about more 'Moments in Time' please go along to Classic Romance Revival. We are having a blog carnival event for Valentines, and there are prizes to be won! As a chance to win any one of my ebooks - which you can see down the right hand side of the blog and read excerpts - then please answer the following question -

How does Penelope trick her husband Odysseus into revealing who he is?


EMAIL ME the answer to lindsaytownsend@yahoo.co.uk and your name will go in the competition hat to be drawn. If you also go to the Classic Romance Revival blog and the other blogs listed in the blog carnival, you will have chances at many more prizes, including a 'grand prize'.

Happy Valentine's Day and Good Luck!