An Interview with Lee Henschel Jr. – Historic Naval Fiction | Historic Naval Fiction

Historic Naval Fiction is pleased to have obtained an Interview with Lee Henschel Jr. author of the first book in a new series, The Sailing Master.

What can you tell us about your book The Sailing Master without spoiling the plot for readers?

I meant for this story to resonate with a great range of readers . . . a story for lovers of sea novels, particularly for those who love the golden age of sail. But, just as importantly, if not more so, I wanted to to create a main character who readers care about, who see themselves in the character, or to learn how life is for someone very different than them.

Well, The Sailing Master certainly provides a great plenty of the naming of things on a sailing ship, of descriptions of the sea and the weather, the sounds and the smells, the feel of HMS Eleanor as she rolls on a big sea. Foreign ports.And we also follow the thoughts and feelings of the narrator, Owen Harriet . . . his first day aboard Eleanor, how it was the first time he went aloft, the endless procession of characters. Making friends. Loosing them.The story is a coming of age for the narrator, Owen, spoken in his own charming (I hope) vocabulary and cadence. I hope to have created a main character who people will love . . . someone whose voice they hear.

The book is the first in a proposed series. What are your future plans for it?

In Book One the reader understands from almost the first page that Owen Harriet is writing his story in retrospect . . . as the personal log of an older man returning to England on his final voyage. The series begins in 1798, and will end with the Crimean War, about 1854.As for future plans, I don’t know how many books the series will include. At first I thought four, but it appears there will be quite a few more than that.Book Two—The Long Passage was completed in November, 2015, and I’ll send it to my publisher in January of 2016.

Read More: An Interview with Lee Henschel Jr. – Historic Naval Fiction | Historic Naval Fiction

An Interview with Chris Fasolino – Historic Naval Fiction

Historic Naval Fiction is pleased to have obtained an Interview with Chris Fasolino whose new novel, Men of Promise, was released in August 2015.

What can you tell us about your book Men of Promise without spoiling the plot for readers?

Men of Promise is about a voyage of exploration to the South China Sea. The idea for the book really came from my realization that voyages of exploration, an exciting part of maritime history, have not received as much attention in fiction as naval warfare has. I think that a novel, and hopefully a series, focused on exploration will bring something new to the seafaring genre while staying true to its swashbuckling spirit. And the South China Sea, with its fabled dangers of pirates, typhoons, and coral reefs– all of which are important in Men of Promise– is an exciting setting for a nautical adventure.

The character of the hero, Captain Bowman West, is also an important part of the novel. As the story begins, West is a Royal Navy captain recovering from nearly fatal wound. He loves the ocean, but is weary of warfare; so, with the help of an old friend in the Admiralty, he determines that his next voyage will be one of discovery. West has a sense of curiousity that makes him appreciative of the exotic places that he visits, and he has the ability to use his wits, as well as his courage, in dealing with the dangers of the journey.

The book is the first in a proposed series. What are your future plans for it?

Read More: An Interview with Chris Fasolino – Historic Naval Fiction

An Interview with Robert N. Macomber – Historic Naval Fiction

Historic Naval Fiction is pleased to have obtained an Interview with Robert N. Macomber whose new novel, The Assassin’s Honor, will be released on 1 October 2015.

What can you tell us about your new book The Assassin’s Honor, without spoiling the plot for readers?

In December 1892, a foreign assassination team in the Caribbean targeted one of the most famous men in the world. What happened with those assassins is little-known, but ended up changing how a significant part of history evolved into the world we know today. The storyline in The Assassin’s Honor is woven around those amazing events. A spy thriller, right out of history!

In The Assassin’s Honor, U.S. Navy Captain Peter Wake is finally out of the naval espionage work he excelled at but despised. Now, after 29 years in the Navy, he has the dream assignment of every naval officer ~ command of a newly commissioned ship, U.S.S. Bennington, on independent patrol duty. After being a lonely widower for 11 years, his personal life has also changed, for he has found true love again, this time with a beautiful lady of foreign descent.

But everything changes when he is summoned to his squadron commander at Key West. Wake’s old skills are needed to decipher a cryptic chart fragment and a coded message. It doesn’t take him long to uncover that in eight days an important man will be killed. But who? And where? Plunged back in the sordid life he thought he left behind, Wake takes his ship and crew on a journey involving the Imperial German Navy in Mexico, Cuban revolutionaries in Key West, and Spanish secret operatives in Tampa.

Nothing is as it seems, war hangs in the balance, and time is running out.

Read More: An Interview with Robert N. Macomber – Historic Naval Fiction

An Interview with Alan Lawrence – Historic Naval Fiction

Historic Naval Fiction is pleased to have obtained an Interview with Alan Lawrence whose new novel, The Massacre of Innocents, was recently released.

What can you tell us about The Massacre of Innocents without spoiling the plot for readers

?The plot, the historical events within which the story develops, as well as the people within the story all bring essential ingredients to the mix, but the most important one is the depth, dialogue and realistic nature of the principal characters. I have strived to add this strength and colour to my own characters, and to illustrate the thoughts, concerns and emotions affecting them within the bloody events of the story; to show how these events affect them.

Read More An Interview with Alan Lawrence – Historic Naval Fiction.

An Interview with Jay Worrall – Historic Naval Fiction

Historic Naval Fiction is pleased to have obtained an Interview with Jay Worrall whose new novel, A Sea Unto Itself was recently released.

What can you tell us about A Sea Unto Itself without spoiling the plot for the readers?

A Sea Unto Itself centers around a mystery. The year is 1799. The young French General Napoleon Bonaparte has established himself in Egypt at great cost the year before. The question is why? Opinions in London are divided. The majority believe that this upstart Napoleon conquered the fabled land of the Pharaohs in order to advance his reputation and bring glory and wealth to himself and France. A less widely held view is that Bonaparte has a greater strategic objective in mind—the conquest of Britain\’s extremely valuable colonies in India. Without the vast wealth derived from these possessions London could hardly execute the war. Charles Edgemont, still a relatively junior captain in the Royal Navy, is given a new command—the Cassandra, 32—and ordered to join a small squadron at the southern end of the Red Sea whose purpose is to prevent the French from exiting the sea and sailing on to the subcontinent. A problem is that the Admiral commanding this squadron openly ridicules any notion that the French would even contemplate such an attempt, much less be able to amass the resources necessary to carry it out. It will be up to Captain Edgemont to determine whether he is correct or not.

Read More An Interview with Jay Worrall – Historic Naval Fiction.

An Interview with Matthew Willis – Historic Naval Fiction

Historic Naval Fiction is pleased to have obtained an Interview with Matthew Willis whose new novel, Daedalus and The Deep, was recently released.

What can you tell us about Daedalus and The Deep without spoiling the plot for readers?

It’s based on the historical sighting of a ‘sea serpent’ by officers from HMS Daedalus while sailing in the Atlantic in 1848. The novel is a fictionalised account of what might have happened next. It’s the story of a Midshipman with a secret, a Captain with an obsession and Lieutenant with ideals as they go up against a sea serpent with a mission.

The 1840s was a period of rapid change – steam was starting to challenge sail, the Navy was starting to become more professional and ‘modern’, and was struggling to adjust to being a peacetime force. The Navy’s officers – as with the landed classes in England – were starting to become a lot more interested in science, and doing their jobs scientifically. For me, the notion of a ship in the midst of that cauldron of upheaval stumbling across a hitherto-unclassified creature was a fascinating thing to explore. Not to mention a really good basis for an adventure story, pitting a fantastic creature against one of the last Napoleonic-era frigates. At its heart, this is a novel about modernity versus tradition, man versus nature, and growing up.

via An Interview with Matthew Willis – Historic Naval Fiction.

An Interview with William H. White – Historic Naval Fiction

Historic Naval Fiction is pleased to have obtained an Interview with William H. White whose new novel in the Edward Ballantyne series, Gun Bay, will be available shortly.

What can you tell us about your new novel Gun Bay without spoiling the plot for readers?

Well, the climax of the story is no secret; 10 ships – 9 merchants and 1 RN frigate – foundered on the reef at the eastern end of Grand Cayman Island in 1794. It is called, to this day, “The wreck of the ten sail” so no surprises there. The story details Edward Ballantyne’s arrival on board HMS Convert, the formerly French frigate that is assigned to escort the 58 ship convoy from Port Royal Jamaica to England. He sails from England in October 1793 as supernumerary in a 64 . . . and so it begins. All manner of fictitious and real events conspire to land him on the reef.

Read More An Interview with William H. White – Historic Naval Fiction.

An Interview with Helen Hollick – Historic Naval Fiction

Historic Naval Fiction is pleased to have obtained an Interview with Helen Hollick whose new novel in the The Sea Witch series, Ripples in the Sand, was recently released.

What can you tell us about Ripples in the Sand without spoiling the plot for readers?

In this fourth adventure Captain Jesamiah Acorne again finds himself in trouble, (trouble follows him like a ship’s wake) but the action has moved from the Caribbean and North America to England and Spain. He has a cargo of tobacco to sell – legally, I might add, although he also has a substantial amount of contraband aboard. Tiola, his wife, is also aboard but she is very ill. The crew assume she is suffering from acute seasickness, but in fact her energy of Craft is being drained by the malice of Tethys, goddess-spirit of the sea, who wants Jesamiah for herself. Tiola must find out why Tethys is obsessed with Jesamiah in order to put an end to the on-going feud between them – if Tiola fails, then she could lose Jesamiah to the sea.

Our charmer of a rogue, meanwhile, has his cargo to sell, meets with relatives he did not know he had, and the notorious Doone family of Exmoor. Unwittingly he becomes embroiled in the Jacobite rebellion of 1719 in which there was an attempt to put James Stuart back on the English throne through a great armada of ships. (The Spanish did not seem to learn the lesson of a previous such attempt during the reign of Elizabeth I !) He is also to meet with an old flame… and somehow get himself out of the difficulties he finds himself in…

I decided to bring Jesamiah to England for two reasons; the first to make a change of scene, the second because it is easier for me to research the details of my home country – and County, for I have recently moved from London to Devon. I now live about 15 miles from where Ripples In The Sand is set!

Tiola is more to the fore in this story, we find out a little of her past and how she came to be ‘involved’ with Jesamiah’s ancestors and his own birth.

I originally decided to use Bideford, Devon, as a setting for this book as my good friend and treasured editor lives near there – imagine my astonishment (and delight) when undertaking more detailed research I discovered that in the early eighteenth century Bideford was one of England’s leading ports for the Virginia tobacco trade – I had no idea of this when I was thinking up the original plot!

via An Interview with Helen Hollick – Historic Naval Fiction.

An Interview with David Healey – Historic Naval Fiction

Historic Naval Fiction is pleased to have obtained an Interview with David Healey whose new novel in the The Sea Lord Chronicles series, First Voyage, was recently released.

What can you tell us about First Voyage, without spoiling the plot for readers?

I imagined this book as a sea adventure story for boys, and so the focus is on Alexander Hope, a young teenager who finds himself on a Royal Navy frigate. He quickly makes friends—and enemies—as he tries to find his place and make himself useful in this unique world that is life aboard a frigate. This is something of an alternate reality in that in this world there is an aerial corps of gryphon flyers and some remnants of magic. Now imagine that Alexander discovers he has inherited some of this magical ability from his ancestor who defeated the Spanish Armada two centuries before. Suddenly Alexander isn’t so ordinary anymore, and a great number of people will want to use him for their own devices.

Read More An Interview with David Healey – Historic Naval Fiction.

An Interview with Joan Druett – Historic Naval Fiction

Historic Naval Fiction is pleased to have obtained an Interview with Joan Druett whose new novel in the Wiki Coffin Mystery series, The Beckoning Ice, will be available on Amazon shortly.

What can you tell us about The Beckoning Ice, without spoiling the plot for readers?

In this, the fifth book in the Wiki Coffin mystery series, it is February 1839, and the ships of the United States Exploring Expedition are thrashing about dreaded Cape Horn, on their way to a rendezvous at Orange Harbor, Tierra del Fuego, on a crazy mission to be the first to find Antarctica. A sealing schooner hails the brig Swallow with a strange tale of a murdered corpse on an iceberg- surely an impossible case for Wiki Coffin to solve, especially as he is soon distracted by a violent killing on board. Threatened by vicious murderers himself, he is forced to voyage as far as the beckoning ice before the double case is concluded.

via An Interview with Joan Druett – Historic Naval Fiction.