In case anybody’s wondered what I’ve been doing since I ended my Penn State activism and my failed campaign to win a seat on the BOT, here’s an explanation for much of my life over the last fourteen months or so. I’ve just published on Amazon (I’m sure it’s available on UK Amazon as well) an historical novel called
Eadric and the Wolves: A Novel of the Danish Conquest of England. It’s centered on a real English leader who was prominent in Anglo-Saxon England, and who inexplicably allied himself with the Viking invader Cnut. Like the smash musical hit
Hamilton, the story is a mixture of genuine history and creative fiction, and it attempts to show what English life was like around the year 1000 A.D.
This is the blurb on the back cover:
THE MORE THINGS CHANGE…
England in the year 1000, at the turn of the millennium, was a society divided. The majority of its residents were people of one culture, but a sizeable minority tended to see the world in a very different way. Hate crimes were common, and some religious figures talked about the end of the world. Finally, there were groups of foreigners who intended to wreak havoc on the general population, and some residents were blamed for the violence of those outsiders.
The terrorists were Vikings, and the attacks had been ongoing for two hundred years. The long-established residents were Anglo-Saxon, but many thousands of people with Scandinavian roots had established lives there, some families having had homes in England for over a century.
A young man named Eadric, coming from an insignificant family in the woodlands of Mercia, became a powerful political figure in English society. King Aethelred II named him ealdorman or earl, and he married the king’s daughter. However, he ultimately turned against the king and the royal family in favor of a Danish Viking.
This story provides a plausible explanation for an infamous betrayal.
The novel is available in paperback or on Kindle through Amazon. Please consider buying a few dozen or more copies for yourself and your friends--it is a great present for birthdays and holidays.
Amazon product ASIN 1544126530
And if anybody has any questions or comments about the book or the publishing situation or process, fire away!
I did mention Penn State in the short bio on the back of the book, so there's that!
