Mugglenet Academia Reloaded

At half past two on Sunday morning, I wasn’t tucked up in bed, I wasn’t having sweet dreams and I wasn’t in my pyjamas under a cosy duvet.

 

No, I was in the sitting room talking to about 15,000 people.

 

Yeah, okay, they weren’t all in the sitting room. Not only is neither the sofa or the house that big (some people would have to stand in the hall and that’s not very hospitable)  I’d have to shout very loudly if they were, the dogs would probably sulk- the cats certainly would - and the neighbours would be liable to complain.

 

No, what I was up to in the wee small hours was podcasting on http://mugglenetacademia.libsyn.com/ or https://itunes.apple.com/gb/podcast/mugglenet-academia/id523481044

 

The half two in the morning slot isn’t because of any fixed idea that authors and academics are naturally night owls, but simply to fit in with the way American time works in relation to British time.  So yawn and bring it on!

 

As you might have gathered, if you’ve kept up (and, naturally, you have kept up!) with D.Gordon-Smith’s various doings, I’m a real fan of Harry Potter and, much to my delight, this Sunday I was invited back to take part in the show celebrating the first anniversary of the Mugglenet Academia podcast.  There were all sorts of academics and professionals gathered together who had brought their expertise to cast their own particular light on the Harry Potter books, seen through the prism of their own particular subject.  There’s been law, philosophy, political science, folk tale structure and a shedload of other subjects.  Including, of course (this is me!) mystery writing.

 

So pour yourself a nice cup of tea or open a beer or have a glass of wine, go on over to Mugglenet Academia, put your feet up and enjoy some great chat.  What’s more, you can download it to listen to any time you like so you don’t have to wait up till gone two in the morning!

 

Blood From A Stone

I’m delighted to say that my new book, Jack’s seventh adventure, is out! If you look at the Books page on the website, you’ll see it in all its glory, but here’s a picture of the cover anyway.

The core of the mystery concerns a mega-valuable string of sapphires (this is fiction; those sapphires can be as valuable as you like. A merely Quite Expensive string of sapphires isn’t nearly as much fun to write about!) Now it’s taken for granted that the heroes and villains of a mystery have a backstory, but I pondered (as you do) about sapphires, did some reading up and – hey! The sapphires had a backstory too.

 

The best sapphires come from Ceylon or, as it’s now called, Sri Lanka, and granted that sapphires are pretty well indestructible, I thought it would be pretty cool to make them historic gems. The Ancient Romans knew about sapphires, so why not make them Roman? Yes, that had possibilities. When I was thinking about the book, there was a lot in the news about the Anglo-Saxon hoard discovered in Staffordshire, so why not make them part of a Roman hoard? I didn’t want Jack to discover them – that wouldn’t work in the story – so I put the discovery back a couple of centuries and made the sapphires an Eighteenth Century find, which gave me some great background for Breagan Grange, the country house owned by the Leigh family I was busily creating. The word “hoard” wasn't used in Georgian times to describe buried treasure, so I cast around and came up with the name “Breagan Bounty”, which seemed to fit.

 

Naturally when you get a string of sapphires as valuable as those in the Breagan Bounty, someone wants them...

 

 

 

Apparating in Chester Cathedral

I don’t know if you’ve ever heard of a Consistory Court.  I certainly hadn’t until last Wednesday, when daughter Jenny took me into Chester Cathedral and we saw one. Not any old Consistory Court, you understand, but the oldest surviving in England.  Here’s a photo of it.  It was established in 1541 and nothing seems to have changed much.   The court settles clergy disputes, but no one was disputing, so I was able to ask (without sounding too much like a numpty) “What’s that funny little chair doing, stuck out on the corner?”

The answer is that is wasn’t put there just for a laugh (although it must have made someone smile) but it’s where – get this – the apparitor or apparator.  He’s called the apparator because he serves the summons to witnesses to get them to appear.  Quite why he has to have a comic chair, I’m not sure, but there you go.

However, the word apparator immediately made me think of Harry Potter, of course, where one of the ways the wizards get from point to point is by apperating.

And why was Harry Potter at the forefront of my mind?  Because Elspeth was the student guest in the Harry Potter Podcast last week, talking about Harry Potter and history.  It’s on http://www.mugglenet.com/academia/podcast.shtml

Look, I know I’m Elspeth’s mother and yes, of course I’m biased, but I think she did brilliantly.  Listen for yourself and see what you think, but I was glowing with pride.

What you couldn’t see (as it was an audio and not a visual podcast) was the set-up.  It was tea-time in America which meant it was about one in the morning in Manchester and we had a bit of a problem.

We couldn’t broadcast from the dining room, because that’s got Granddad sleeping in it (long story, but he’s been living with us recently) and Granddad wouldn’t take kindly to his beloved grandchild bellowing about Harry Potter at one in the morning when he’s trying to have a nap.  That meant the adjacent sitting-room was out too and the internet is pants elsewhere downstairs.  So the bedroom was called in as a radio shack, which meant that Elsepth had pride of place and Lucy (who’s the biggest Harry Potter fan in the world: probably) and me tucked in round her, our place being to provide the Radio Star with red wine and scribbled notes and thumbs-up of congratulations.  Proud mum?  You bet.  It rocked!