The truth is out there...if you look for it.

Nuova Stella scandal!!

On my twitter page I have been getting grief from the Cromwell Museum on social media because I said they were glorifying war at Dhogheda where Cromwell killed over 2000 people.

They also put up a Victorian painting of the raising of Basing House also saying it was a great victory - even though through research I found that Cromwell left some of his worst wounded soldiers in the basements, then burnt the house to the ground with them in it.
The villagers report hearing their screams.

They denied this and asked where I got my information from, so I sent them links some from the Imperial War Museum, which stated that it was the first War Crime and genocide of Catholics.  

Anyway this started a whole thing of others having a go at me,  asking where I found these things out.

As I have a book to write. I haven't got time to state where I got all my 25 years or so of research from. What papers, what libraries, what Museums, what living source. So anybody who keeps asking me questions should do the research themselves.

Try the Bodlien Library, go to the large country houses, talk to living relatives about their ancestors. I am at the moment in discussion with an Oxfordshire family about their famous Civil War relatives. I also mentioned that point scoring is also bullying, and it was time to draw a line under this now.

History is a strange and interesting subject, people will always "know for a fact" without anything to back it up, and yes history is mainly written by the winners.

That is why I spend my time digging up the untold stories of heroic women, as history was written by the men, and these women made history too.

A Farthing for Oxforde was written based on research of the facts of what it would be like to live during that time as a women, and it's not good.

Another Nuova Stella day

Our Logo is based on a 17th Century compass. A new star showing us the way. 

 

In the last two weeks our little company has gone from success to success, it's exciting and scary in equal measure - it's all happening so fast. 

Today the bookmarks arrived - looking spectacular - I might add. Just waiting for the books to arrive from the printers now.  This coming weekend our "Farthing for Oxforde" will be in the bookshops. Out on Amazon as an e.book and paperback later in the week.

 Anne, Lady Halkett (née Murray) (1623–1699

 

This is a waxwork of the real "Anne Farthing" - Lady Anne Halkett in her 80s just before she died in Scotland. Sitting at her desk at The Abbot House, Dunfermline in Fife. Unforunately she sits alone waiting for the house to re-open as a museum. Whereas our version of Anne made it back to Oxford.

 

The book is based on some of Anne's life, and some lives of other women who wrote letters,day books and diaries as they lived through the war.  

This is my take on what Anne Farthing looked like in her late twenties. Like many of the women I write about, there is no portrait of them that I could find.

 

Amazing Halloween Book Offer starts Monday!

 Halloween Special

All Halloween horror books reduced in price from Monday.  Scare yourself silly!

Also as a special treat - ALL The Hilary Long Mysteries series will  be reduced to 99p 

 Get to know Hilary, Overdown and her new friends.  As Stacey says "You wouldn't buy a bag for life if you lived in Overdown!"

Magic in the Air

The Cotswolds. A romantic view of a typical village. The last resting place of Agatha Christie, the place where M.C.Beaton and her Agatha Raisin mysteries live. It's a place many stars call home, handy for London, Oxford, Stratford on Avon, Birmingham, Bristol. also The Chipping Norton set. 

For the past 4 years it has been home to my fictional runaway millionairess called Hilary Long.

I wrote the Hilary Long mysteries when we moved to the Cotswolds, the mixture of honey coloured houses, and the interesting people living in them filled me with inspiration.

Hilary wasn't mean to be a sleuth. She was just trying to prolong her life after a court case found her business partner trying to undermine the City of London. She knew he would be out for revenge. In my research I found out that people who go into witness protection usually only survive two years. Shocking. So my character had to become someone else that no-one knew, not even the police.

Unfortunately she ended up in Overdown, a place where one of my minor characters, Stacey, says "you wouldn't buy a bag for life if you lived here!"

Where does the magic come in you ask?  Well all my books have supernatural events in them. When we first moved here I noticed the trees in the Cotswolds reach their arms to sky, the knots in the wood, have faces, dark things race across corners in my house. There are goblins and fairies that you almost see. Sometimes the cats catch something and you really don't know what it is. It has wings, green mostly, as they die they disappear.

I work in historic houses, sitting in a bedroom where the lady of the house commited suicide, I as a room guide, could feel her pain, near the window by her dressing table. Tangible, real.

So the paranormal crept in and stayed, involving research that scared me silly, but based on real spells, real events, even real people that I have met here.

Halloween is coming up, so as a treat a week before all the Hilary Long e.books will be reduced in price. Look out for:

Hope you enjoy these two. There are two previous books that lead up to these, but they also stand alone. So get a glass of wine, light a candle, and snuggle down to be scared witless!

 

Nuova Stella - PEARS!

Why Choose Nuova Stella as a name for our Publishing business?  A new star is rising, that's why!   Our Logo is derived from a 17thC Compass face in the Ashmolean Museum. A new star leading the way to the future.

Onwards to the pears!

!7th Century Cookery today, we have a glut of pears from our garden and I will be trying out a recipe from a very old Cookery book on how to preserve them for the winter. 

Basically pears in sugar syrup. The American puritans called it "canning pears" even though they put them in jam jars.

So this will go in the 17th Century Recipe book that will be released next year. I'm looking for a printer that will print colour photos of the final dishes that will not make the recipe book unaffordable.

The recipe book is taking longer as the weights and measures have to be altered for modern palates.

Hardly anyone these days uses six dozen eggs in a recipe!

So I have to leave it there as the pears await. I'll let you know how I get on.

Another day at the Office with Nuova Stella

The Office at the moment my dining room table. A bit homespun but in Oxford, living in a house with space for an office is expensive. We are talking London prices here.

Doesn't stop us doing the work though, at the moment we have:

info@nuovastella.co.uk
www.nouvastella.co.uk
twitter @NuovaPublishing
Facebook Nouva Stella publishing

We have a few problems working from home:

 Even though I was in the house, my book proofs were delivered in wet mud under a bush!

The boxes once emptied are apparently not big enough to hold a medium sized cat. Look at the face!  How cross?

Today I am updating our social media, which takes longer than you might think due to the interesting things you find on Twitter - like this surprise photo of my husband!



 
Have a good day everyone!

Welcome to Nuova Stella Publishing

Welcome to the new Nuova Stella Blog page.  It's me, yes it is, but it's time to really go for it!  I have an illustrator and designer and a new publicity officer on board, and me, the writer.

Today is super Thursday when 544 books are being released today. 

A Farthing for Oxford will be launched on Wednesday 24th October, just to be different. We will be visiting little bookshops and big bookshops in and around Oxford today, with FREE proof copies.

You can pre-order on info@nuovastella.co.uk - join us on Twitter @NuovaPublishing - it's already very busy.

The website just has a holding page at the moment, but more exciting information will be coming soon.  www.nuovastella.co.uk

We are looking for reviewers, bloggers and history enthusiasts.  So contact us.

Based on the loosely on the life and diaries of Lady Anne Halkett, 

a thoroughly researched fictional history based in the turbulent years of 

The English Civil War in Oxfordshire.

The daughter of the Kings' tutors, Anne has been sent to Oxford in disgrace. She is to have a new life living with her aunt Susannah and to learn the skills of a midwife. Her mother believes it to be a punishment. 

Anne sees it as freedom from her mother's tyranny.

She writes, scandalous for a woman, but as her life races through the years of the brutal

English Civil War, she finds she can survive, love and live, in spite of the times.