My First Guest Blog Post!

I am proud to announce a momentous step in my writing journey: I just published my first guest blog post. It is for English Historical Fiction Authors, one of my favorite groups and sites.  Entitled “An Apologia for Thomas Boleyn,” my post examines the life of the much-maligned Sir Thomas Boleyn:

http://englishhistoryauthors.blogspot.com/2014/12/an-apologia-for-sir-thomas-boleyn.html

When I started, I thought it would be a relatively easy thing. After all, I had gotten comfortable with the basic premise of my own blog (to deliver interesting takes about the Tudors and what it’s like to write about them) and this was in-line with that mark.  With almost 20 completed posts, I had found my voice (enough of one, anyway…) and gotten into an easy writing rhythm. The topic of Sir Thomas Boleyn was an easy one because of the timing – the date I was given to write the post was the anniversary of Sir Thomas Boleyn’s elevation to the Earldoms of Wiltshire and Ormonde. I already had  a strong opinion on the issue – before I settled down to write about Jane Seymour, I had spent years preparing to write about Anne Boleyn and was comfortable with her family dynamics. Smooth sailing, right? Um, no.

It required more of an effort than I expected.  First, my posts are on the sassy side and about a single page long, while the EHFA runs scholarly articles that are closer to 3 pages long and require citations. Next, I realized that the topic I’d chosen was more complex than I’d realized.  There are so many details necessary to a real understanding of Sir Thomas Boleyn – and many of these can be gleaned only through guesses. We don’t have much evidence to illuminate his relationships with his daughters, we have to infer based on the scant historical record. My own opinions go back and forth. There are so many subtleties to his story, so many twists and turns. Go on any forum with a Tudor theme, and you will see the vitriol that he elicits, even though that is due to our own reframing of his life based on current societal norms.

Still, it was a worthwhile effort. It opened me up to a new style of article, a version that I will add here and there to round out my own blog’s repertoire. It got me thinking that I should go back and add some citations to my own shorter articles, to make it easy for my readers to pursue topics I’ve written about. And of course it gives me great pride to contribute to such a well-respected site.  It is another step on a journey that I am so very grateful to be taking.

If you got here from that post (and even if you didn’t), I’d love to have you share your thoughts…