Cassandra Clark – Abbess of Meaux Medievals

When Cassandra Clark publishes a new book in her Abbess of Meaux series, medievalists rejoice. The ten-book series was sparked by a dream, and it focuses on the remarkable Cistercian nun Hildegard, during the turbulent reign of the boy king, King Richard II. Hi there. I’m your host Jenny Wheeler and today Cassandra talks about how the victors write history and being in New York on September 11. Six things you’ll learn from this Joys of Binge Reading episode: The dream that sparked a series The shock of September 11 The role of street theater and romance Her passion for the “wronged-King” Richard II Her staunch support of women’s agency What she’d do differently second time around Where to find Cassandra Clark:  Website: http://www.cassandraclark.co.uk/ Facebook: @authorcassandraclark  Twitter: @Nunsleuth What follows is a “near as” transcript of our conversation, not word for word but pretty close to it, with links to important mentions. Jenny: And now here’s Cassandra. Hello there Cassandra and welcome to the show. It’s great to have you with us. Cassandra: Hi, Jenny. Thanks for inviting me. Cassandra Clark, historical mystery author Jenny: I’m sure that when one of your books is published, you could probably hear the cheers from your kitchen window! People who are passionate about the period shout “Medievalist’s rejoice!” whenever a new one comes out.  So I wonder – was there Once Upon a Time moment when you felt” I must write fiction or my life will not have been fulfilled.” If there was such a moment, what was the catalyst for it?  Cassandra: Well, that’s really funny question because someone else asked me that a few days ago. I thought gosh, the first time I knew I wanted to be a writer was when I was five. I just felt it was magic. I’d learned to read and every book was like walking through into a new world and I just loved it so much. I didn’t get around to thinking about writing a novel until I was nine and strangely, I wrote one called Mystery of the Haunted Lighthouse because I’ve been reading a lot of Enid Blyton at the time. The magic of entering new worlds So that’s when it started, but it took a long time to start writing properly because I was also interested in theater. I’m mad about theater. I really love it. It’s got the same magic when the curtain rises. It’s just like opening a book. It’s another world. So I wanted to write for theater and that’s what I began with. I wrote a dozen plays, performed in different ways – on the stage, television, radio and so forth. Then I needed to make some real money and I for the next 15 years I simply wrote for money. I wrote contemporary romance, which I’d never heard of until I met a romance novelist. And she said yes, it’s quite well paid but it’s very hard. They get 30,000 submissions a year, so you haven’t much chance. But I was immensely lucky. My first one was accepted and from then on I wrote about one or two romances a year, which was brilliant because I was divorced and I had two small children. With no other means of support so it was it was a lifesaver to me. A career as a romance novelist Jenny: You sound as if you are very modest. I’m sure it took more than “luck” to break into that field. I guess that was a publishing house like Mills and Boon or Harlequin? Cassandra: Yes, and then I took a year out when both my girls had left school.  One was at drama school in London, and the other one was at Cambridge and I thought “huh. My daughter’s are students. I think I’ll be a student again.” So I did Malcolm Bradbury’s creative writing degree, an MA at Norwich,  and I re-found my love of theater. So I thought right. I’m going to change direction. I’m going to be a playwright. But then I had 10 years of disaster, which I won’t go into too much, but I thought I was going to lose my sight. My mother was in a wheelchair and she died. My father had a stroke which meant he couldn’t talk and he was a great talker in a previous life. And then I went to a writing workshop, in Edward Albee’s barn in New York, to finish a play and very next day, just after I’d arrived, it was September the 11th. So yes, I know. And my play started off with five dead people. ‘Rescued’ by a dream It wasn’t quite a comedy. It was about dark matter. Stuff like that. I like writing about factual scientific things. So when I could get a plane back home, I went home and then Edward Albee died very shortly after that. I think the shock of it affected him very very deeply. I didn’t know what to do. I had just started to found a theater company with a composer friend when he had a stroke and that had just fallen by the wayside. I didn’t know what I wanted to write. There was so many ideas that had been repressed for the previous 10 years. I didn’t know how to do it. And then I had a dream. People who like the idea of dreams and mystical things are intrigued by this, which I am I think.  I hadn’t smiled for about a year, and I woke myself up one night laughing my head off. And I thought “Ohhh  it’s a dream.” These three people having a good old Yorkshire banter and it was so funny. I wrote it down on. I always keep paper and pencil by my bed. The Priory of Swine – the historic model for the Abbess of Meaux murder mysteries. The strange paths of creativity I put it under the pillow and next morning when I woke up, I’d forgotten all about it . And then I rolled over, and found it….Wow! There was this little scene between these three strange people and it turned out that they were wearing medieval clothes. One was a nun. I knew nothing about nuns. And I thought “Oh, a short story. Write it down. Anyway, it’s still funny next morning. So I wrote it down and then I thought.” I don’t know what they’re doing.”  They’re having a drink but what are they drinking from? So I started to do a bit of research and it’s so magical the way it all fell into place, because in my research. I was homing on Richard II for some reason. That period, the late 14th century.  And by chance I heard of a Chronicle roughly from that time, which was held at the British Library. I went along, and they knew they had it, but they couldn’t find it. So I went to a wonderful little library called Dr. Williams Library. The serendipity of libraries It was one of those Victorian endowed libraries that they were so good and within 10 minutes they come back from their archive with these three really dusty volumes that clearly hadn’t been opened for a hundred years. Although they were in Latin there were little bits of English in the margins, and I struggled through it. It was a story of a place called Melsa – that’s the Abbey of Meaux. And it was written by the Abbot in 1395. So it became obvious. I had to write about that particular period. The Peasants Revolt really intrigued me,” because I thought what happened to all those amazing people who held London for four days in defiance of the Army, and the king and the church. They held it for the people.” And then lots of them were hanged and they dispersed, they went to live wild in the woods. There’s no record really of what happened after, and it really interested me. The Hollow Crown – The BBC rendering of Richard II’s story The charisma of Richard II So I started to research that whole thing and I thought I don’t want to start with The Peasant’s Revolt because I’m not an historian and there are so many sides to it.  It’s such a massive topic. It’s too much for one novel. So I thought, I’ll start a little bit later, when people are slightly recovering. Gathering their forces again, perhaps.  And the king, who made that really courageous dash into Smithfield to avert a massacre of the peasants when he was 14 years old? He really intrigued me as a character because he’s got such a bad press from the Lancastrians (who came after him.) Jenny: That’s Richard II that we’re talking about, isn’t it?  But just let pause for a  moment. this place Melsa you are talking about, is that spelled Melsa? Cassandra: That’s right. That’s the Latin name for Meaux. Jenny: And you knew about Meaux already didn’t you? Cassandra: I knew about Meaux, I didn’t know it was called Melsa. Jenny:] But how did you know about Meaux?  Cassandra: Well, it’s close to where I was brought up – in the East Riding, four miles from Beverly.  And five miles from Beverly is the village I was brought up in, called Cottingham. How it all came together It’s now been absorbed by the University of Hull but when I was a child, it was surrounded by woodland and it was very beautiful. It’s very old place. At one end was the Gothic church, endowed by the Black Prince, Richard II’s father, and at the other end of the village was the moated castle owned by the Wake family The Wakes are famous for one thing.  Lord Wake had a very beautiful wife apparently,  in Tudor times. Henry VIII was on the throne and he’d heard about this beautiful woman. So being Henry he thinks he’ll go to have a look. So he sent ahead saying I’m going to arrive and stay with you for a few days and Lord Wake was so terrified he thought that’s it! He’s going to take my wife. Apparently he set fire to his entire house, and they all escaped but Henry couldn’t stay there and Lord Wake’s wife was saved from his clutches. That’s the story I grew up with. Cottingham – Cassandra Clark’s childhood village A total segue from the main path Jenny: Do you think your dream, that somehow it had been seeded in your mind all those years before as a child? Cassandra: Yes, isn’t that strange how these things can come out later? Because I certainly haven’t thought about it. I knew there were two things I didn’t want to write. One was a crime novel. I’m not interested in people being killed and murdered and so forth.  And the other was a historical novel. I thought I’m not interested in either of those things.  I’d always been writing about contemporary issues and science and cutting-edge stuff, you know, politics and so on. Street Theater all that sort of thing. So this was a total segue from what I imagined was my main path. Jenny: Amazing, Cassandra: Maybe yes. Maybe a mistake. Who knows? Get thee to a nunnery . . . Jenny: Well you’ve now got ten of these books. So it’s something that’s developed a life of its own. Now your heroine Hildegard. Let’s talk a little bit about her, as she’s one of the really central characters of the whole series. Hildegard  becomes an abbess of Meaux. She’s a young widow of high social status, who decides to become a nun rather than remarry. That seems to me to be fairly cutting-edge. She joins a Cistercian Abbey in Yorkshire that we’ve already mentioned, at Meaux.  Can you explain for modern readers why a young woman of high birth would make such a choice? Prefer to be a nun than to have a second husband? Her husband gets killed off in Europe fighting and she has two children and she doesn’t want any more husbands or children apparently.  Cassandra: Mmm, yes, I think well childbirth was really dangerous in those days. There was massive infant mortality as well as mothers dying. I mean there’s a long list of royal women who died in childbirth, so you could understand her not wanting any more children. She’d done her bit, hadn’t she? Sweaty chain mail & other horrors Jenny: Yes. Cassandra: Also the choice would be, you know, some other military fellow, sweaty  in his mail shirt.  You know, all that stuff. And she likes beautiful things, and she’s very keen on having some sort of power and agency of her own and the Cistercian order seems absolutely tailor-made for anybody like that. It’s been called the Blue Chip company of the age. I don’t remember who said that but it implies that they were at the forefront of economic life in England. England was based on the wool trade in those days and the Cistercians owned vast acres of land for sheep farming. And they had a huge hand in what went on, and women were more or less equal in that sort of trade. The Prioress at Swine, it’s a little priory quite close to Meaux. You can walk across. It’s about two miles through marsh land between the two. So it was a kind of subsidiary of Meaux, and the nuns  owned massive amounts of land, most of it given to them by benefactors. And they had a very lively litigious relationship with the monks.  And this is all in the Chronicle. Challenging the men Jenny: Really? In that Chronicle in the Williams Library? Cassandra: Yes, yes, and it’s all there. The Abbot who wrote it makes no comment at all. But there’s one particular case where the prioress, who I’ve modeled my prioress Hildegarde on . . . . . She sounds terrific. She staged the very first sit-in that I know of.  The monks wouldn’t pay rent on some land. So she took them to court. Firstly to the archbishop’s court in York. The Archbishop found against her so she thought right. I’ll take it to the King’s Bench in London. So she went down to London to court and won, but the monks contested it. So she thought “right I’ll go to the Pope.” So she went – amazingly at this time when you think they traveled by horse and carriage –  she went down to Rome and the Pope found against her. So she thought “well I’m not having that, all these boys ganging up against me.” So she went back to Swine, got a dozen nuns or so and they actually sat in this disputed property and refused to come out. Rivalry between monks and nuns So, what the monks did was dismantle it, brick by brick and stone by stone, until that they won in a sort of way. Except that when they went back to find their horses, to go back to Meaux, the villagers at a place called Hedon nearby were so incensed and so much in support of the nuns. They stole all the horses and impounded them and wouldn’t let him have them back. The village of Hedon – supportive of the Cistercian nuns So the monks had to walk all the way back to Meaux. So in some ways the Prioress of Swine won that one. She was supposed to pay a fine to all these churches, who are all men of course, and she got such good terms, she was paying a tiny amount every year which went on for about three decades. So I think she actually beat them. But such an amazing character. You wouldn’t think that something like that happening. Jenny: I know that in your books Hildegard goes off to the Continent – to continental Europe so that’s all completely historically able to happen. I mean it did happen. Re-opening an ancient pilgrim’s way Cassandra: Yes, there’s a road that goes from London to Canterbury then across the channel.  It’s called the Via Francigena and it goes down to Rome. Hildegard only got as far as Florence, but it’s there and the former Italian Prime Minister Berlusconi  – he’s trying to open it up – or was trying to open it up and signpost it. Via Francigena – Canterbury to Rome Pilgrim’s Way. Yes. I always do thorough research as far as I can. I met some people called Pilgrims to Rome in London and they meet once a year, but they are totally intrepid.  I’m very much in awe of them because I would never do what they do, but they just set off walking with hardly any equipment. We were having a drink once and a phone call came through and it was from a lady in her sixties. She was walking alone. And she was just approaching Jerusalem. She’d done the Pilgrim Route.  It’s so stunning. She said “I’m almost there.” And I said, “Where is she?”  And she said “I’m just outside Jerusalem.” Walking the way – way back when There’s a very interesting document written by a monk in the 1350s about the route to Rome from Canterbury and how they did, it because it was sign posted and there was a retreat at the top run by monks, the St. Bernard’s. They had an open signposted route and everyone who stayed there left with some wine and some bread and some cheese to keep them going to the next staging post. But to get down the side they slide down on the hides of animals and this fellow described it all in immense detail. Jenny: That’s so interesting. At the center of these books is Richard II, this controversial King. As you’ve researched him, you’ve become really quite an expert on Richard II haven’t you? For those who don’t know very much about him, could you just perhaps give us a thumbnail sketch of this King.  He was a boy King and he reigned for 22 years didn’t he?  The son of ‘beautiful people’ Cassandra: That’s right. He was the son of the Black Prince, one of the most famous warlords in Europe at the time. His mother was known as Joan the Fair Maid of Kent because she was very beautiful. So these very glamorous parents had three children. They had an elder son called Arthur who died when he was five. And the second son was was Richard, who was really not brought up to be King and he then became king, not expecting to rule until his father reached a fairly advanced age. But tragically his father contracted a disease, something to do with wearing armor, and how it affects the skin. One or two Plantagenet war lords had the same sort of thing.  He had to be taken into battle in a litter towards the end, but he died in his very early 40s. Richard was left at 10 years old as king of England.  His grandfather Edward III had five sons and the Black Prince was the eldest. And then there’s one called Lionel who married an Italian daughter of the Duke of Milan call Violante. The Black Prince -stained by evil or the flower of chivalry? Bad boy Bolingbroke And then there was John of Gaunt, who was extremely ambitious and thought he should be king. I’ve got lots of theories about that which I’m slowly revealing in the next series, but I won’t tell you now because it’s too long. It’s going to become a history lesson. Jenny: Yes, you do say that history is  written by the winners and Richard has come out badly there because he was more or less pushed aside by was it one of John of Gaunt sons. Cassandra: Yes. It was John of Gaunt’s son Henry Bolingbroke. And he was about the same age as Richard – maybe there was about six months difference,-  but they were always, it seemed to me, in competition when they were children. Richard came back to London. He was born in Bordeaux. When he came back to London, Henry was the big lad on the corner if you know what I mean? Rivals from childhood There they were, both six or seven years old. And Henry had a nice gang of people including Mowbray, various people. He got his gang and Richard was the little blond frail outsider who spoke French. So I think from that moment on they were rivals. Jenny:Yes, and there were first cousins weren’t they? Cassandra: They were first cousins, yes. Jenny: He did reign for 22 years, but how did he meet his end? Cassandra: Oh, well, this was extraordinarily well-managed. I’ve just written the first book in a new series called The Hour of the Fox and I really wanted to give time to the events that led up to Richard’s murder, and how it came about, because the history books tend to gloss over it. Bolingbroke came back and usurped the crown. Well what did actually happen? And what was it like for ordinary people?  You really have to search through the Chronicles to find out. That’s because the first thing Bolingbroke did when he became Henry IV was sent his chaps around, much like Henry the 8th to all the monasteries. The victors write the history Henry sent them around to check out how much they got, and so how much money he would get if he took them over.  Bolingbroke went round to have all the Chronicles kept in the monasteries checked and if anything that was at all sympathetic to Richard II was recorded, it was taken out. Only two chronicles escaped and they are quite extraordinarily different to the other ones that do survive. So I’ve been getting a lot of primary source material from those and also primary source accounts from people who were traveling with Richard II.  What happened was he went over to Ireland to make a peace treaty.  He was very much in favor of peace, which set him against the warlord’s like Arundel all the aristocracy. They wanted war because they wanted more land. They wanted to reinstate themselves in France and so forth. Richard wanted to make peace treaties, which he did with France – in a  dynastic marriage with the French King’s daughter – as well as a peace treaty with the Scots. Clear way to usurp the throne He went over to Ireland to make a peace treaty with them. So for that reason, I quite admire him. He was so much against the grain at that particular period when society was intensely militaristic. While he was in Ireland, Bolingbroke was in exile at the same time as Thomas Mowbray because the two of them had been plotting together with the Earl of Arundel to depose Richard. They wanted war to continue and they want to be in control. Bolingbroke’s main rival for the throne was one of Edward III’s sons who’d been murdered. No one really knows by whom but he’d been sent to prison in Calais for plotting against Richard II so the Lancasterian story is that Richard II ordered his murder which is nonsense because he could have easily legally done away with him, but he didn’t, which was a mistake because it was used as a leverage for Bolingbroke who now found a way clear to the throne. The Hour of the Fox Bolingbroke hired a couple of ships and a few men sailed up to Ravens which a port is very near Meaux. Bolingbroke had many Lancasterian castles up there, and men who owed allegiance to him. They had to come out if they were called out, so he managed to acquire an army. He also then had access to all the funds of the Lancastrian dynasty which were massive. His father, John of Gaunt was said to be more wealthy than the king of England back in the 1380s. So he had access to huge amounts of money. He could pay archers for instance three times the going rate.  So he started to march down England without telling anybody where he was going.  This is where I’m getting now into first book of the new series – The Hour of the Fox… It’s very complicated to tell you the entire story. I wonder if I should just stop there. Richard was duped totally because Bolingbroke kept saying that all he wanted to do was come back to claim my inheritance. In fact, he clearly had his eye on the crowd. an English King starved to death English King starved to death? So he captured Richard II at Flint Castle, and took him as a prisoner to London put him in the Tower and it’s a complicated story, but eventually sent him up to Pontefract Castle where he was apparently allegedly starved to death. Nobody actually knows how he died. Pontefract Castle – where King Richard II died. Bolingbroke did everything he could after that to establish complete control. He was the first king to agree to the burning of heretics. I’m definitely going to write about that because not many people know about it as it’s so horrible. it was he burned a chap called William Sawtrey for not believing in the Eucharist. You know, he really stamped on freedom of thought.  Writing too. That’s how Chaucer’s involved in this. He fell foul of that sort of repression. William Sawtrey – the first heretic burned by Henry IV Revealing history’s hidden secrets Jenny: The Hour of the Fox – do you think that too, is going to turn into a series? Cassandra: It’s a bit like with the Hildegard one. I thought I’ll just write one, and then as I was writing that well maybe I’ll write two and that will be it. But I really don’t know. It’s such an intriguing complicated and relatively unknown story and it’s been travesty, I think by the Lancasterians and by their censorship. So I would like to bring into clarification various things that have been hidden for a very long time. Jenny: Do you think Hildegard is also going to continue parallel to this or have we seen the final Hildegard? Cassandra: You know, I thought Number 10 was probably going to be the final one. But I’m talking to people at Bewdley Abby and it was a Cistercian Abbey and had some weird connections with Meaux. Bewdley used to trade with Meaux. So there was a very lively young connection. And when I first moved to Lymington in the New Forest I saw a big sign Meaux Ales and I thought, how strange that’s a coincidence. And I did a bit of research and found out that there was this trade but also up in Meaux, when I went up there to have a look around, I spoke to somebody living in the Grange there and they were called Bewdley. I thought that’s so extraordinary. There was clearly people going down and settling you know, and they took the name of the place they came from. So I think Hildegard will go on and I think she’s going to come back to Bewdley in Book 11. She’s definitely going to go to Bewdley Bewdley – where Hildegard will probably appear in Book 11 Love in the cloisters Jenny: You’ve got an unfinished story there with the love interest or the sort of love interest in quotes that what happens in the end there Cassandra: What can happen, when they are both monastics? Jenny:  I don’t know what can happen but there’s certainly an attraction. Yes, you keep on thinking what’s going to happen? Cassandra: I know. People get very cross. I’ll come upon people who ask “What’s going to happen? Can they get together?” Jenny: We’re starting to come to the end of our time together, but I just wanted to talk a little bit beyond your books, to your wider career. You’ve mentioned that you were involved in street theater and you’ve written contemporary romance. Are you still doing any theater now?  Meaux heading for big screen Cassandra: Not really. In fact, just by chance I’ve met one or two theater people and I’m going to search out a script which I wrote but didn’t try to get performed anywhere. It’s about DNA and discovering that you’re not actually related to the people you think you are or that you’re related to somebody you didn’t think you would be. I think that’s a really interesting idea. Also there’s a film option on one of the books so that would be good. I’d like that. It’s for The Dragon of Handale, an American company. I just hope they can get it going. I’d love to see it on screen. I’m not sure who would play Hildegard.  I think Rachel Weisz, who I used to know when she was at Cambridge from my daughter. I think she’d be rather good.  But who would play Hubert? I don’t know. It’s got to be real heartthrob doesn’t it? Rachel Weisz – a first choice for the Dragon of Handale movie. The secret of Cassandra’s success Jenny: What do you think has been the secret of your success?  Cassandra: How do you mean? Jenny: You know, your books are very successful. You’ve got a traditional publisher. They’re widely known. I’d consider that that to be definitely something you could be proud of. Cassandra:  I just really surprised that you’ve heard of them and I’m really interested in how it strikes you. How medieval England strikes you when you’re in such a different environment. It must be very strange. You know I walk out of the door and I’m going look at a pile of stones in a building that was built in the 12th century or something. But when I was in Australia, I found I couldn’t do that and it seemed very odd. Researching medieval life Jenny: Of course, we do just have to rely on our imagination. Cassandra: Yes. Strangely I did my first research outside of The Chronicle when I was in Sydney. I found an amazing book about trade in the Middle Ages by chap called Peter Spufford . It was all about trade and profit in the Middle Ages. It went through every single thing – where it came from and the trade routes for it. It was absolutely packed full of facts – a wonderful book. The three months I was in Sydney, I used to read a chapter of week, as it was very densely packed with information. I was deciding whether to go to New Zealand and it’s my great regret that I didn’t actually do it. It’s much further from Australia’s than I realized! What Cassandra is reading now Jenny: We do call this The Joys of Binge Reading. I have to ask if you ever have been a binge reader. It sounds to me that maybe you’re reading is rather more serious, but you probably do have read some books for binge reading and if so, who would you like to recommend? Cassandra:  I haven’t done much reading this year because I’ve written two novels and it hasn’t left much time to read.  I’m dying to get back into re-reading people I love like Barbara Pym. She’s totally different to anything I’m doing. 1950s England with this sly wit which is absolutely hilarious. So I’ve read all her stuff. Barbara Pym a favorite author I like Henry James. I know a lot of people don’t, but in those very convoluted sentences you get a little bomb. I think he’s very clever at that sort of thing. And I love this Anglo Irish writer. I must recommend him. He’s called J. G. Farrell and he wrote an absolutely hilarious, but heartbreaking novel called The Siege of Krishnapur. It’s really about the end of Empire. It’s very clever. But because it appears to be about these people who are in danger of their life, surrounded and slowly starving to death, which sounds grim but he gets every ounce of satire out of it.   More writers to love The Siege of Krishnapur – J .G. Farrell – a favorite It’s quite heartbreaking and amazing and he wrote one also about the Irish troubles being Anglo-Irish, but sadly he died in a fishing accident at the beginning of his career but his book is really worth reading And then there is E.L Doctorow, the American writer. I’m just mentioning men.  And the late Donald Barthelme. I really like his experiments. I would binge on his stuff. And I like Jean Rhys. I’m just reading her last stories, some of which are very short. The last one of all is only about a page and a half, but it has such a punch. It’s extraordinary. It’s got more power than you know, a massive thousand-page saga. And I re-read a bit of Chaucer actually.  Jenny: Mmm. It wouldn’t be exactly be binge reading for most people would it? So looking back over your writing life. Is there anything that you do differently if you had a chance to do it over again?  The impact of the Twin Towers Cassandra: Yes. I wouldn’t have given up on theater so easily. I’d have kept a connection when I went back to look after my parents up in Yorkshire. I should have made more of an effort and I didn’t know. I regret that. I think actors are amazing. I don’t how they do it. Jenny: It seems very sad that your play that you were going to be working on at that Edward Albee workshop got so terribly interrupted. Have you ever had a chance for to go back to that? Cassandra: Yes, I did. I was working on the final draft and it was actually done at a theater up in Newcastle, as a rehearsed reading, but I didn’t go. I couldn’t bear it.  I just didn’t go, That was stupid. I regret that. Yes, I regret that. I should have been there and got it done properly. I haven’t written another play since then, since the Twin Towers. A novel of the War It was something so unbelievably awful. Although we were on Long Island. We were on the fringes and people were walking up the Island, covered in dust to escape. The planes were going over all night for fortnight or so, and we went out in a boat one day and the navy intercepted us. We had to prove who we were. It was a really horrible war. It was a war and I think it’s been forgotten because it was so horrible. It’s been forgotten and I’ve actually written a novel about it with that as the background rather than focusing on it because I just didn’t have the strength to do that, but it’s a novel I want to actually put in a its final draft this year, if I can.  I feel it’s got to be acknowledged. Work in progress for the next year Jenny: That leaves us very nicely into talking about what you are working on now? What have you got planned or in train for the next 12 months? Cassandra:  Hmm. Well, it depends on how things are received as you know. I’ve just sent off the final edits of The Hour Of The Fox last Thursday. So I’ve just got a copy editing to do next and anything that comes up from that and then depending on how things are if they do want another one and I hope they do, I’ll start researching that but in the meantime, I’m going to finish the one about The Towers. It is called Falling Through Water and it’s something I really just very much need to do. I’ll also look at this play. I’d love to get that done. I think it had a reading of it few years ago and it sounded really okay.  All the actors seemed to enjoy it so I may have a look at that. I’m little bit outside the theater scene living down in the New Forest. So it might be just too hard. The Dragon of Handale – being made into a movie A Dragon movie in the making Jenny: The Dragon of Handale script? Would you have a hand in the screenplay? Cassandra: I have to trust a script writer from an agency called Artists United for that. I haven’t even seen it, but I really like her. We have an email banter back and forth now and then. She’s written a lot of scripts and I’m sure she’s doing a good job. I Jenny: So where can people find you online? Cassandra: My blog is in the website. It’s just Cassandra Clark.co.uk I’m really bad at writing on the blog. I very rarely do it, but I resolved from now on to write at least one blog a week. I’m going to get this super fast fiber line. It takes so long to get online at present, and I just get bored and fed up. I forget what I’m doing and go off and do something else. But if it’s really fast, I’ll be able to do a quick blog or whatever I’m working on. Where we can find Cassandra online Jenny: That’s wonderful so we can find you at http://www.cassandraclark.co.uk/ I did read somewhere that you once said you hope to do one Hildegard book for every year that Richard reigned which would be 22 of them.  Is that still something you’ve got in the back of your mind? Cassandra: This is very much in the back of my mind. That’s why the other day I was thinking; “How old she was going to be by the time she gets to 22?”  She will still be walking around. She’ll have definitely taken over from the Prioress. The prioress will be about 110, I think. Jenny: Well, that’s wonderful. We’ve got a lot of Hildegard books to look forward to then it sounds like.  Cassandra: Oh, well, as long as people keep liking them then I’ll keep writing. Jenny: Thank you so much for your time Cassandra. It’s been wonderful talking. Cassandra: Thank you Jenny. If you like Cassandra’s medieval mysteries maybe you will also enjoy Candace Robb’s medieval mysteries set in York, also on the Joys of Binge Reading podcast. Thanks To Our Technical Support: The Joys of Binge Reading podcast is put together with wonderful technical help from Dan Cotton at DC Audio Services. Dan is an experienced sound and video engineer who’s ready and available to help you with your next project… Seek him out at [email protected] or Phone + 64 – 21979539. He’s fast, takes pride in getting it right, and lovely to work with. Our voice overs are done by Abe Raffills, and Abe’s another gem. He got 20 years of experience on both sides of the camera/microphone as a cameraman/director and also voice artist and television presenter. Abe’s vocal delivery is both light hearted and warm and he is super easy to work with no matter the job. You’ll find him at [email protected]