with Priscilla Royal
We are delighted to welcome author Priscilla Royal to Omnimystery News today.
Priscilla's 11th medieval mystery featuring Prioress Eleanor and Brother Thomas is Satan's Lullaby (Poisoned Pen Press; February 2015 hardcover, trade paperback, and ebook formats), and we recently had the opportunity to spend some time with her talking about her new book and the series as a whole.
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Omnimystery News: Prioress Eleanor was introduced in Wine of Violence, which was published in 2003. How has she, and other characters in the books, changed over the course of the series?
Photo provided courtesy of
Priscilla Royal
Priscilla Royal: I like fictional characters that change over time. Even if I am not happy with all the changes, they are friends. I still love them at 60 and perhaps more than when they were 20. When I started my series, Prioress Eleanor was 20 and Brother Thomas slightly older. Both reacted and suffered with that white heat passion we experience at that time. Now they are almost ten years older. Passions are still strong, but there has been change for both. There has to be. No one can survive at that intense level forever. The delight in having recurring characters is showing how life impacts each. New recurring characters are sometimes introduced; a few die. As for the last, there won't be any major deaths, but I do hope readers will feel a little sorrow with me when a minor character dies.
OMN: How much of your own personal or professional experience have you included in your books?
PR: None of my onstage characters is anyone I know. I have never been able to write real people. If I could, I suppose I'd be writing nonfiction. But no author is able to completely avoid tapping into personal acquaintance. Some of my characters share physical attributes with real folks. Prioress Eleanor and Brother Thomas look a lot like my maternal grandparents. Prioress Eleanor's cat is a blend of a few which have owned me over the years. As for my own experiences influencing the stories, I defy any writer to prove he/she has never done that. After seven decades, I've seen a lot. Something I've learned is bound to be used. As for actual events, I do bring in real 13th century events because current events impacted our ancestors just as they do us.
OMN: Describe your writing process for us.
PR: Before I even begin the book, I have to know theme, title, first and last chapter. With the first books, I let the story develop as I wrote. But my editor required a chapter by chapter synopsis as the first submission for editing to catch flaws. This meant I had to write the story first, then go back and do the synopsis. Over time, I have learned to write less of the junk draft and do more of the synopsis until I finally did a very extensive chapter by chapter synopsis first, then expanded the story based on that. I find I can avoid repetitions in action or dialogue, pace the story better, make sure the important characters act logically, and deal with other craft issues. In short, I have a very wise editor, and I am grateful to her for teaching me that technique. As for characters, I often feel like I am auditioning actors for a play. Many show up for inclusion in the new book. Most get "don't call us; we'll call you." On occasion, I have dumped a character with the promise that he/she will be in a future book. I don't start the book until I have the cast I want. And, yes, I do talk to these imaginary people as if they were real …
OMN: Tell us more about the setting for the series. Given that your books are medieval mysteries, how true are you to it?
PR: My books are set mostly in 13th century East Anglia, which may be real but almost 700 years later is a very different place to modern East Anglia. Sights, smells, climate, topography, insect or bird life, and vegetation are not at all the same. To some degree, I am dealing with an almost fictional place. To get around this, since records of things like weather are sketchy, I use common experience coupled with research. We all, for instance, feel hot in summer even if we are living in Finland. The medieval bee was large, black and hairy, not the cute little striped thing most of us know today. When I wrote about the real Amesbury Priory, I was fortunate enough to find Peter and Christine Goodhugh who provided me with photos, descriptions, and vast amounts of information about the now vanished priory. When I wrote about a medieval manor, I found one in Kent that had been researched extensively with information readily available on the Internet. The short answer is that I try to be as true as I can to a vanished life, but I also must use my own experience to make the feeling of a season or place come alive.
OMN: What kinds of books did you read when you were young?
PR: My parents were avid readers, although neither thought about finding children's books for me. While my mother read Henry James and my father Mickey Spillane, I devoured Classics Illustrated into the "tween" years. Then a flashbulb went off, and I flew into print books. My tastes included 19th century Russians, Greek theater, Nathaniel Hawthorne, and a lot of fun trash. Thank goodness, my parents let me read almost anything I wanted. But it wasn't until my mid-30s that I discovered mysteries with Agatha Christie and Ellis Peters. So I was a late-bloomer on reading books as well as discovering mysteries. That said, I have wanted to write since I was in Grade Three. Wanted is a polite way of saying I was maybe just a tad obsessed.
OMN: What do you read today for pleasure?
PR: For pleasure reading outside the medieval, I enjoy biographies, especially of other writers. (There is comfort in knowing I am not the only eccentric, although little could match Nerval walking his lobster.) My favorite fiction genre has become mysteries. From the work of Andrea Camilleri to Henning Mankell, Raymond Chandler to Catherine Pirkis, there is a wide range of styles, characters, and world views. And I do read series. Donna Leon's Brunetti, Ian Rankin's Rebus, and Peter Robinson's Banks are just three examples of my favorites because they have kept their main character three-dimensional and paced long series well. I quickly lose interest if I learn everything I need to know about a character in one to three books. I also love any book in which wit is not a lost art.
OMN: What's next for you?
PR: Another book in the Prioress Eleanor/Brother Thomas series. I knew it was time for the generational shift that happens when parents die. My prioress's father was friend and advisor to King Henry III so his heir, Hugh, and daughter, Eleanor, have always been secondary figures in the power play game. But Edward I has now been king for seven years, and it is time for Sir Hugh to take on his hereditary responsibilities to family and title. When parents die, it is always unsettling to the survivors, but when Baron Adam does, it means my main character and her brother acquire the privileges and dangers of greater influence in the world. This gives them pause as people and a new function as characters.
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Priscilla Royal grew up in British Columbia and earned a BA in World Literature at San Francisco State University where she discovered the beauty of medieval literature. Before retiring from the Federal Government in 2000, she worked in a variety of jobs, all of which provided an excellent education in the complexity of human experience and motivation. She is a theater fan as well as a reader of history, mystery, and fiction of lesser violence. When not hiding in the thirteenth century, she lives in Northern California and is a member of California Writers Club, Mystery Writers of America, and Sisters in Crime.
For more information about the author, please visit her website at PriscillaRoyal.com and her author page on Goodreads, or find her on Facebook.
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Satan's Lullaby
Priscilla Royal
A Medieval Mystery
It is the autumn of 1278. The harvest is in. The air is crisp. Dusty summer breathes a last sigh before the dark seasons arrive.
For Prioress Eleanor, dark times arrive early in Norfolk. The head of her order, Abbess Isabeau, has sent Father Etienne Davoir from its headquarters in France to inspect all aspects of Tyndal Priory from its morals to its roofs. Surely the Abbess would not have chosen her own brother for this rare and thorough investigation unless the cause was serious and she had reason to fear intervention from Rome. Prioress Eleanor knows something is terribly amiss.
The situation turns calamitous when Davoir's sick clerk dies from a potion sent by Sister Anne, Tyndale's sub-infirmarian. Is Sister Anne guilty of simple incompetence — or murder? Or, Davoir asks, did Prioress Eleanor order the death to frighten him away before he discovered the truth behind accusations she is unfit for her position? When Davoir himself is threatened, the priest roars for justice. Even expectant father Crowner Ralf, the local representative of the king's justice, has lost all objectivity. The most likely suspects are Anne, the woman Ralf once loved, the prioress he respects, and the Tyndal monk, Thomas, who is his closest friend. Who among the French and English assembled at Tyndal has succumbed to Satan's lullaby?
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