Blog Tour Guest Post: An Abiding Fire by M.J. Logue

Please join me in welcoming M.J. Logue to Let Them Read Books! M.J. is touring the blogosphere with her new novel, An Abiding Fire, the first book in a mystery series featuring characters from her Uncivil War series. I'm happy to have her here today with a guest post about one of her favorite pastimes, which also would have been a popular pastime in the 17th century, although her protagonist wasn't so fond of it! Read on and enter to win an ebook copy of An Abiding Fire!

How do you solve a murder when you are one of the suspects?

1664, London

Life should be good for Major Thankful Russell and his new bride, Thomazine. Russell, middle-aged and battle-scarred, isn’t everyone’s idea of the perfect husband for an eligible young woman, but the moment Thomazine set eyes on her childhood hero, she knew they were destined for one another.

But Russell, a former Roundhead, now working for the King’s intelligence service, was never going to have a simple life in Restoration London.

Unable to shake suspicions of his Parliamentarian past, someone seems hell-bent on ruining his reputation — and his life.

Whispers about his sister’s violent murder follow him and accusations of treason abound.

When more deaths occur, Russell finds himself under suspicion.

He is ready to escape from the capital, but Thomazine is determined to find the truth and clear the name of the man she loves.

But who is the real killer, and why are they so keen to frame Russell? More importantly, will they succeed?

And has Thomazine’s quest put them all in mortal danger?

Amazon  ~  Goodreads

Having a Twitter chat earlier today with a fellow Sapere author, we were discussing embroidery. Seems it's fallen from grace a little of late, and, reader, I am here to tell you that I embroider, and I'm proud of it!

It started as a portable thing to do with my hands at re-enactment events and it sort of growed, like Topsy. (If you're wondering at this stage what this has to do with my writing, keep reading...although if you've already read Abiding Fire, you probably know where this is headed!) It started as little fancies in the corners of things and now it's a cap which is the joy of my heart, all covered with flowers and bugs and beasties, pea-pods that open to show little golden peas, bees with three-dimensional wings...lovely things that are nice to touch as well as to look at.

Which got me to thinking about Thomazine Russell, and the rather significant ribbon she embroiders for her husband-to-be at the beginning of the book. Obviously, it has a consequence in the book she never imagined – no, as they say, spoilers – but such a trivial, pretty little slip of silk would have been fairly important in any young woman’s life.

In the 17th century ribbons were a big part of dress: buttons were fiddly and expensive to make, as were brass hooks and eyes, but any halfway competent young woman could use a tape loom at home to produce lengths of tape for everyday fastenings. Silk-weaving was a much more profitable activity undertaken by professionals, and there are some amazing examples still extant of brocaded and metallic silk ribbons commercially woven. A ribbon was a popular lovers' gift, an inexpensive trinket which was both useful and intimate, and it was a custom at many weddings to have knots of coloured ribbon, symbolizing tying the matrimonial knot, which were loosely sewn to the bride's skirts which would then be pounced on and pulled off by friends and family as mementoes. One merchant’s wedding in Exeter in 1635 lists amongst its expenses the princely sum of £5/13s for his ribbons and favours. That’s a lot of ribbon.

My poor Thomazine, you understand, has not the patience for extreme embroidery like mine. Fortunately for her, the old-fashioned fitted jackets with their formal repeating motifs and brightly coloured silks, had fallen out of fashion by the time she gets married, although silk ribbons are still a significant part of male fashion, worn in great loops and mop-heads about the person. (I think we can safely agree that fashionable men’s attire in the Restoration period was never going to be a high point in the sartorial curve, you know?)

Sadly for her, needlework had not fallen from grace altogether as a genteel pursuit for young ladies, and so it's entirely conventional that she should embroider a length of silk ribbon as a love-token for her husband-to-be - conventional, and very likely about the limits of that young lady's creative patience. Russell himself - being a little more austere in his dress than the prevailing fashion – was hardly likely to complain about a certain limitation in the haberdashery department, but is happy to takes his bridal favour exactly in the loving spirit in which it was intended, no matter how amateurish the needlework. (Some of the real-life amateurish needlework is adorable, I might add. It somehow appeals to me that not every woman in the seventeenth century was an embroidery goddess, but went ahead and did it anyway. Boss-eyed lions, blue grass, and anatomically weird beasts every which way.)

Seventeenth century women embroidered not only for pleasure, though, but as a symbol of status - both of their skill with the needle, and of having a sufficiency of leisure time to produce this beautiful and intricate work for domestic use. The professional workshops of the Tudor age now had to meet the competition of large numbers of enthusiastic amateurs. The spread of domestic embroidery reached every conceivable flat surface: sheets, valances and coverlets, table carpets, cupboard carpets, cushions for benches and chairs, coifs, stomachers, sleeves, handkerchiefs, bags, hawking gear, needlecases, book covers, bookmarks, book cushions, shoes, gloves and aprons.

One of the charming things to me about Stuart textiles is the symbolism of the designs: my own personal recurring motifs are the rosemary plant and the bee, representing respectively remembrance and bravery. For instance carnations, in the Netherlands, were worn by a bride on her wedding day – she would hide the flower about her person, and the groom had to find it – and consequently pinks turn up in a lot of embroidery as a symbol of marriage; you often find them in pictures of newlyweds. Thomazine’s rosemary sprigs represent remembrance, or rather not-forgetting – after all, she never did – but also the scent of rosemary was thought to keep you youthful, and that’s her affectionate little dig at their age difference.

No, it’s a funny thing, sitting in my chair by the window with my needle and my silks, I feel a joy and a connection to the women I write about, a pride in the work of my hands.

Although, to be fair, I think I’m probably better at it than Thomazine Russell.

About the Author:

M.J. Logue (as in cataLOGUE and epiLOGUE and not, ever, loge, which is apparently a kind of private box in a theatre) wrote her first short novel on a manual typewriter aged seven. It wasn’t very good, being about talking horses, but she made her parents sit through endless readings of it anyway.

Thirty-something years later she is still writing, although horses only come into it occasionally these days. Born and brought up in Lancashire, she moved to Cornwall at the turn of the century (and has always wanted to write that) and now lives in a granite cottage with her husband, and son, five cats, and various itinerant wildlife.

After periods of employment as a tarot reader, complaints call handler, executive PA, copywriter and civil servant, she decided to start writing historical fiction about the period of British history that fascinates her – the 17th century.

Her first series, covering the less than stellar career of a disreputable troop of Parliamentarian cavalry during the civil wars, was acclaimed by reviewers as “historical fiction written with elegance, wit and black humour” – but so many readers wanted to know whether fierce young lieutenant Thankful Russell ever did get his Happy Ever After, that the upcoming series of romantic thrillers for Sapere Books began.

Get in touch with M.J.:

She can be found on Twitter @Hollie_Babbitt, lurking on the web at asweetdisorder.com, and posting photos of cake, cats and extreme embroidery on Instagram as asweetdisorder.

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