The Lion Rampant springs from the dramatic history of Henry II and Eleanor of Aquitaine, 12th century monarchs of England and France. Most of the events are historical fact, but this is a novel and I have therefore taken artistic licence to illuminate their story. While the mysticism, spiritual experiences and piety that affected people in those times may seem strange to contemporary readers, it is soundly based in history.
The book is self-published. Not long ago I would not have considered self-publishing because of the stigma attached to it. Aside from family histories, it was reserved for writers exhausted by rejections from publishing houses. It was known as ‘vanity publishing’. The internet revolution changed all that. Writers are cutting themselves free of what often feels like a captive breeding program. But this new wave is in its infancy. Maybe it will thrive or maybe publishers will find a way of rewarding authors a greater percentage of the retail price of books, encouraging them to return for the complex task of transforming something often poorly constructed, misspelled and ungrammatical into a beautiful and coherent object of desire.
An outstanding team worked on my manuscript. I want to thank Jody Lee for editing, Graham Rendoth of Reno Design for the design and publishing management, Deb McInnes of DMCPR Media for publicity and for steering me through the world of social media, and Dennis Jones of Melbourne, my distributor, who sold The Lion Rampant into bookshops. My literary agent, Margaret Gee, who organised the publication of the first novel in this series, The Young Lion, was, as ever, on hand for help and advice. I am most grateful to her.
There are two more books to come in this Lion series; The Lion in Torment and The Lion’s Heart.