WELCOME TO RACHEL’S FICTION WRITING AND REVIEWS BLOG
This is where Rachel keeps you up to date with her novels and stories and also shares reviews, highlights and extracts from other authors.
Magna Carta Day: The Meadow Where a King Was Made to Yield, and the Woman Who Saved It from Ruin
Magna Carta was not born in a peaceful ceremony, but in a tense meadow surrounded by armed men, suspicion, and civil war. On Magna Carta Day, explore the real drama of Runnymede, King John’s tyranny, and the forgotten role of Nicola de la Haye — the woman who helped save England and Magna Carta itself.
How a Birthday Party at Chinon Kickstarted a Civil War (5 March 1173)
Today is my birthday 😁. And as birthdays go, I could have shared mine with worse people, because 5 March 1133 was also the birthday of Henry II of England, born at Le Mans, one of the most formidable rulers medieval Europe ever produced.
Henry II’s Birthday was 5th March
Soldier, lawgiver, empire-builder, father of eight legitimate children (and countless illegitimate ones), and a man whose family would become both his greatest weapon, his biggest headache, and eventually most spectacular downfall.
Which makes today a good day to talk about what happened on his fortieth birthday, in 1173. Because that evening a feast was held at Château de Chinon. The great hall would have been ablaze with candlelight and Henry, thinking he’d managed to control his spoiled, entitled (but courteous and generous) namesake son, allowed the goblets to be repeatedly refilled by his son’s own hand.
The drunkenness that followed led to everything that followed: the Great Rebellion, where Henry’s family were torn apart, and his throne would never feel secure again.
This event, and the Great Rebellion itself, runs through the heart of my novel Lady of Lincoln.
Big News: Lady of the Castle Shortlisted for the HNS First Chapter Competition
Lady of the Castle has been shortlisted for the Historical Novel Society's First Chapter Competition before it’s even been published, and and I'm still doing a happy dance about it! 🥳
This is my second Nicola de la Haye novel, still unpublished, still being polished, but somehow its opening chapter caught the attention of the HNS judges in the competitive 11th–16th Century Category. 😀
The competition honours exactly what makes historical fiction electric: that first page that drops you into another century and refuses to let go. Nicola de la Haye - castellan, survivor, one of medieval England's most remarkable women - has a story worth telling, and it’s wonderful that Lady of Lincoln has already won so many awards, but also that Lady of the Castle is being credited even before the book even exists in final form!
Lady of the Castle continues where Lady of Lincoln left off, following Nicola through the treacherous politics and passions of the late 12th century. I'm deep in final revisions. You can track my writing and publishing progress here.
Stay tuned!
All Souls’ Day: Soul Cakes, Prayer and Memory
As the bells of All Saints’ Day fall silent, a gentler sound takes their place — the slow, measured knell for the departed. 2 November, All Souls’ Day, was the moment when the living turned their hearts toward those still journeying through Purgatory.
The season of light ended not in mourning, but in hope — that love and prayer could reach beyond the grave. The word soul comes from Old English sawol, “the spiritual essence of a person.”
The “Mass of Souls,” or Soul Mass Day, was first proclaimed in 998 AD by Abbot Odilo of Cluny. He ordered that every monastery in his order should celebrate a Mass for “all the faithful departed.” From Cluny, the custom spread throughout Europe.
Yet its roots run deep into pagan soil. Romans had their Parentalia, a spring festival for the dead where families brought cakes and wine to tombs. Celts laid food on thresholds at Samhain to honour their ancestors. Christianity sanctified these gestures, and the offering of food became the offering of prayer.