Blog Tour Interview + Giveaway: The Secret Keeper

Please join me in welcoming Sandra Byrd to Let Them Read Books! We're celebrating Sandra's newest release, and the second novel in in Ladies in Waiting Series, The Secret Keeper: A Novel of Kateryn Parr. I read this last week and highly recommend it! (Click here to read my review.) Sandra generously agreed to sit down and answer a few questions for me, and she's brought along a copy of The Secret Keeper to give away, too!

Hey Sandra! Thank you so much for sitting down and talking with me about your new release, The Secret Keeper!

Thanks for having me on your blog!

Your first novel in this series was about Anne Boleyn. What led you to choose Henry's last wife, Kateryn Parr, as the subject of this novel?

I felt that while a lot of attention had been given Katherine of Aragon and Anne Boleyn, there were relatively few novels out that covered Kateryn Parr. She's often described as the wife who "survived," but she was a dynamic woman in her own right, with a powerful story, and I wanted to tell it.


In my author's note, I explain that I found Kateryn to be a warm and loving wife and stepmother, a generous emotional and financial benefactress, a learned and devout woman whose extraordinary books sold tens of thousands of copies and went back for many printings. She was also a beautiful woman who had a blind spot for a bad boy, a wry sense of humor, and was known to make mistakes and lose her temper a time or two. I think she would have made a great friend.

Where did you draw your inspiration for Juliana St. John's character?

I think that friends are often foils for one another. So, in my first book, Anne had the more outgoing character and Meg had to fall back a bit more to make that friendship work. In this book, Kateryn is a more easy going queen and that allowed Juliana to be a bit more of a whip. In a lot of ways, this is a coming of age story for Juliana. I wanted to explore motherhood, in all its many forms, and Juliana allowed me to do that. I drew from what I knew of women of the time, and while the other two books have ladies in waiting protagonists that actually lived, for my Mary Seymour story arc, Juliana had to be a fictional composite. It was great fun to write her as she matured from girl to woman.

Thomas Seymour is a historical figure who seems to be shrouded in controversy. How did you form your conclusions about him as you were crafting his character?

I started by thinking about what I knew of the two women who loved or cared for him--Kate Parr and Elizabeth Tudor.  Both women were sharp, emotionally honest, insightful, and smart. I just didn't believe that both of them would have fallen for or had affection for a complete dolt. And the fact is--Seymour did seem to have waited to marry Parr. If he had been the ambitious climber he's popularly described as there were a number of high born women he could have married before the age of 39. The fact that he was prepared to marry her as Lord Latimer's widow, showed his affections for her, I think. I believe he got caught up in the power that the Seymours wanted when their nephew was King; I think he had sibling rivalry with his older, more certain brother, Edward. If he couldn't get the "official" power he thought he deserved was going to get it through the back door through the royal children. That was his downfall.

In The Secret Keeper, the Countess of Sussex also has prophecies. Is there historical basis for this aspect of the story?

Absolutely. Her name is Anne Calthorpe. Although I found a few sources, one quick bio of her can be found at Kathy Emerson's terrific webpage of Tudor women:
http://www.kateemersonhistoricals.com/TudorWomenC-Ch.htm

Emerson says that Calthorpe, "was at court when Katherine Parr was queen and shared her evangelical beliefs. Along with other ladies at court, she was implicated in the heresy of Anne Askew. In 1549 she was examined by a commission "for errors in scripture" and that "the Privy Council imprisoned two men, Hartlepoole and Clarke, for "lewd prophesies and other slanderous matters" touching the king and the council. Hartlepoole's wife and the countess of Sussex were jailed as "a lesson to beware of sorcery."

I extrapolated from that, and what I knew of the time, for my story. Women have traditionally had very active prophetic gifts, something that the church at large has overlooked during centuries of male dominance. I wanted to bring that forward in a book wherein women were actively using their intellectual and spiritual gifts as well as whatever power they had at hand.

What kind of research did you do in preparation for this novel?

I read dozens of books, biographies, abstracts, articles. I visited England--when I was at Hampton Court Palace, the royal chapel had on display a copy of the marriage vows that Kateryn took when she married Henry, promising to be bonny at bed and at board! I engage a wonderful historical research assistant, Lauren Mackay, who is a Tudor scholar in her own right, to read the completed manuscript and point out any errors or historical discrepancies. I truly care about getting the history right.

Do you have any advice for aspiring Tudor fiction writers?

It's a crowded field with new Tudor books coming every year. But when we writers are passionate about a topic, it comes through on the pages and the reader catches that enthusiasm, too. So write what you love, but find a new angle.

What are you working on now?

I am finishing up a manuscript for the third Ladies in Waiting book, told through the voice of one of Elizabeth I's principle women, someone I knew very little about before I researched the book, but came to love. I hope the readers will love her, too!

Thanks, Anne!

And now for the giveaway!

I've got one copy up for grabs!

To enter, simply leave a comment or question for Anne along with your email address. That's it!

This giveaway is open to residents of the U.S. and Canada and ends at 11:59pm on Friday, June 22, 2012. Winner will be selected at random. Thanks, and good luck!

This giveaway is closed and the winner has been selected. Stay tuned for more giveaways!

The Secret Keeper is on a blog tour!

Click here to view the tour schedule!
Visit Sandra's website!