Of All the Western Stars is a foray into the land of the Tudors. The novel, available on Kindle from Amazon.com, is a romance with history meeting science fiction as a young man, Ashur, time travels from five hundred years in our future to the world five hundred years in our past.
Lost and trapped, Ashur meets Lisette Weston, a young lady also trapped in the world of Tudor England. Obliged to marry for the good of family position, Lisette faces a loveless future of restriction and tedium until she finds Ashur and the magic he brings to her world.
But Ashur is not her shining knight come to rescue her and sweep her away with him. He is a fugitive from the future with a terrible burden of conscience for his own actions, pursued by those whose quest for vengeance against him will stop at nothing.
I’m Deb Houdek Rule, author of Of All the Western Stars. On the Warrior Princess Romance Writer blog site, I was the featured interviewee and guest blogger the week of January 17th, 2012. In the interview, I talk about how my romance novel came about, giving credit to my own romance with my now-husband, Geo Rule:
This novel came about because I was in the midst of the first real romance of my own with the man who is now my husband. We met online, on an Internet science fiction forum, the Heinlein Forum, in the early days before things like online dating existed, and had a long-distance romance from 2000 miles apart. While this frustrated, distant, but powerful romance of our own was taking place, I took my first trip to England, visiting the very locations I use in the novel. All these things twined for me from these experiences of my own—love with a distant, unreachable man in a strangely science fiction way combined with the locations and people of Tudor England. In many ways, Of All the Western Stars is a bit autobiographical!
You can read the entire interview and blog on Bernadette Marie’s website.
My historical-time travel-science fiction romance novel, Of All the Western Stars, is now available on Kindle from Amazon.com! You don’t need a Kindle to read Kindle books. Just select to purchase the novel, then Amazon will ask if you’d like to read the novel right away online, or if you’d like to download their free Kindle reading software.
Available at Amazon.com
Of All the Western Stars is a foray into the land of the Tudors. The novel is a romance with history meeting science fiction as a young man, Ashur, time travels from five hundred years in our future to the world five hundred years in our past.
About Tudorland:
Tudorland is the land of the Tudors of England in all its various incarnations, historical, theoretical, and fictional.
I first entered Tudorland at the age of eleven, when the movie Anne of the Thousand Days finally made it to our rural Minnesota town. This movie changed my world by opening up my realm of knowledge to this astounding view of the past and the people in it. I was thrilled, enchanted, excited and – yes – bitter.
Why was I bitter? I was bitter that no one had seen fit to let me know this glorious view of history existed. Why had it been hidden? Oh, we had “history” taught in our school, though I use even the word “taught” loosely. As I entered seventh grade world history class, I found a horrific approach to teaching that involved meticulously copying down a formal outline of events as read out by the ‘teacher’. Everyone who thinks history a dull and tedious recitation of dates and events must have had something similar inflicted upon them. Had that been my only view of history I may never have known what truly exists in the brilliant world of the past.
Fortunately, Anne of the Thousand Days rescued me from that bleak and gray view of history and let me step into Tudorland. To be sure, the realm of the Tudors is no longer my only historical interest. I am a U.S. Civil War researcher with published research credentials and documentary appearances. I’m also keenly interested in the Norse Viking era in Norway and Iceland. All eras of history hold an interest, as all eras intertwine and affect each other, but my first love has always been the era of the Tudors.
Since seeing that beloved movie so long ago, I have gathered all the books and movies I could upon the subject of the Tudors and their era. I have not done original scholarship on the era as there are too many others already doing so, but I do keep up with the current research and revelations. You will find book reviews and recommendations on this site, plus movie and television program reviews. Having traveled to many of the Tudor sites, I will also share my impressions, insights, and photographs. For my own writing, I have stepped into the fictional realm of Tudorland.
∞♥∞
Excerpts from Of All the Western Stars:
Whenever they walked together, Geraint watched the ground and Lisette watched the sky. Thus it was, as the twilight of that particular May Day spread its shadowy cloak of darkness, Geraint saved Lisette from falling down a steep embankment and very likely, in his retelling at least, from being killed.
But Lisette saw the shooting star.
He searched the room with his eyes again, thoroughly this time, pausing to contemplate each detail. Above him was a canopy just crude enough in construction to fetch a high price for its authentic look by some trendy, Terra-nostalgia designer. Dusty cobwebs graced the canopy’s peak, no doubt an artificial touch.
“Lights,” he said hopefully. Nothing happened. “Computer, voice control.” Nothing. An uneasy sensation began to creep over him. In his rush to escape he’d programmed in coordinates the ship was never meant to accept. He’d yanked out the temporal override circuits by force and fed his own, rough calculations into the system. The girl had spoken English, though with a strange accent. He was familiar with the accents and languages of most of the colony worlds…
“Computer?” he tried again, then tried a dozen other possible commands in as many languages. The room remained frighteningly inert.
Turning his head toward the far wall he saw a window deep set in a thick wall of stone and crumbly masonry. The glass, if it indeed was glass, was wavy and milky, full of imperfections. Crude. Primitive. The words repeated endlessly to Ashur as he scanned each detail of the room from the dried weeds scattered haphazardly across a less-than-clean floor to the scratchy sheets made of too-thick, uneven threads that covered him. This was detail beyond even museum quality, he realized. And no museum, nor the most accurate decorator, would ever try to recreate that smell. Where in the universe could he be?
∞♥∞
Ashur’s older brother had laughed at him once, saying, “You could be tossed into the very pit of Hell and you’d still find a way to get the most gorgeous woman in the place.” The memory brought a smile to Ashur’s lips. This may not be the pit of Hell… well, he amended, maybe it could. He’d spent much time learning old Earth history, yet there was far too much to memorize details of each era. Ashur tried to recall what he knew of the year 1518. Filth, famine, disease and ignorance, were the things that came to mind. Cowering and superstitious primitives, ugly and inbred… Yet that amazing creature Lisette who had appeared before him draped in a cloud of translucent white had been none of those things. The pure, sultry simplicity of her look gave her an allure that all the makeup, clothing and hair designers in the galaxy couldn’t match with their most expensive and exotic efforts.
Ashur imagined Lisette beside him on the Grand Promenade at night, the Nebula painting the sky with radiance such as had never been seen in Earth’s plain sky. He pictured her ready flush of delight as he squeezed her lovely hand and pointed out the twin moons racing across the heavens. She’d be wearing, he built the scene in his mind, a few wisps of luminous green fog clinging to, but not concealing, the crinkle of her nipples. Gems that glowed from within twined in her cascade of hair would sparkle like stars.
She’d be amusing in her innocence, her wide-eyed wonder at the marvels of his world, mistaking machinery for magic. Still, her native dignity, and his able strength guiding her, would make her a fine prize, a pretty new pet for his collection. His mother and father would beam with pride at him, proud of their second son… the rebel, the stray… the unregarded one…
The happy image shattered. Leaden reality enveloped Ashur like the stench of the cesspit that wafted in through the poorly fitted window casement. Here and now he was lost, trapped in time, his mother and father as yet a thousand years unborn. Even there and then they were dead, destroyed by his own hand. No matter that he’d had to do it, no matter that he’d had no choice. He had killed them, them and every being on that world far away in both time and space.
Of All the Western Stars is a foray into the land of the Tudors. The novel is a romance with history meeting science fiction as a young man, Ashur, comes from five hundred years in our future to the world five hundred years in our past. Available now from Amazon.com.