I don't normally read historical, but this looked too great to pass up!!!
Please welcome JoAnn Spears with her new book Six of One to Quill or Pill!
Six
of One, a Tudor Riff
JoAnn
Spears
Genre: Historical fiction, satire, women's fiction,
chick lit, alternative history, historical fantasy
ASIN: B006OPKZE6
Number of pages: 304
Word Count: 79,000
Book
Description:
“Six of One” is the ultimate
‘girls’ night in’…with the six wives of Henry VIII. It’s the most fun you can
have with your nightdress on! Join
Dolly, the Tudor-obsessed heroine of “Six of One”, on a Yellow Brick Road
journey to the alternate reality of an all-girl Tudor court.
It all begins when Dolly loses
consciousness on the eve of her marriage to the six-times- divorced Harry. She awakens in the company of the Tudor women
she’s studied all her life. They have a mission to accomplish, and Dolly may be
just the girl who can help them do it.
As a warm-up to her life-changing
interview with the six wives of Henry VIII, Dolly gets to dish with lots of the
other fascinating females of the Tudor era. She learns things she never guessed
about the Princes in the Tower from their sister, Elizabeth of York…Henry
VIII’s mom. She talks sex with Henry’s
sisters and scholarship with his daughters. She even gossips with the help,
since Kat Ashley and Bess of Hardwicke are among the ladies on hand.
Of course the heart of the story
is in Dolly’s interview with the six wives of Henry VIII. It turns out there’s
something to each of the wives’ stories that’s been held back all this
time. You won’t believe what really
happened…or will you?
“Six of One” offers no tragedy,
no excuses, and no apologies. It does have lots of broad humor, not to mention
tons of puns. And—for a change—a happy ending
Excerpt
from “Six of One”: Chapter Nineteen, Of Real Estate Celestial and Terrestrial
It was hard to imagine the woman
who was facing me at any kind of rest at all. Hers was not the tremulousness
that enervated Jane; the edginess that snapped, crackled, and popped from
Elizabeth; or the self-fueled neurosis of Arabella. This woman radiated energy
that was pure, simple, boundless, and efficient—it was as if she had a nuclear
reactor under her farthingale.
“What, still in your nightdress,
Dolly? You are quite the slugabed!” the woman said. “Perhaps I am a slugabed,
but I’m very properly attired for a honeymoon, don’t you think?” I asked, in
what I hoped was a roguish manner. (You have to be very careful with roguish
when you are over forty.)
“I should say that you are, with
nothing but a nightdress on!” the woman answered. “Most of our guests request
panties as soon as they get here. Of course, I don’t feel the need for them,
myself.” At first, I admired how well this woman did roguish, but then I
remembered that panties did not hit the fashion scene until well after the Elizabethan
era.
“And I notice that you are still
fixed on that honeymoon with your Harry, Dolly. You won’t be, once the wives
have declaimed themselves. Or perhaps you will be. I have learned the hard way
never to underestimate human frailty or human stupidity. After all, we women of
the court are all still here, aren’t we? Each of the guests we have entertained
here over the centuries was an opportunity, a squandered opportunity. Six
wives! You would think that between them, or should I say amongst them, they
could get it right.”
I would have cast my vote for
amongst, but was unable to get a word in edgewise.
“Six fools!” the woman continued.
“Like so many cats in a sack! Squalling, clawing, fur flying, wound licking,
but not one iota of effectual sense! So here they stay. Here we stay.”
I had learned from the younger
Tudor contingent what the mission of the women here was. What they hadn’t told
me was exactly how or why the ladies who were here came to be here, and it was
something I wanted to know. I was sure it would be useful information to have.
It might keep me from putting my foot in my mouth and spare the bedpost any
more abuse because of my blunders. And if the six wives were as cantankerous as
this woman claimed they were, it might spare me some abuse as well.
“There’s not much any of them can
tell you about success at matrimony; you ought to listen to me, Dolly, dear,”
she went on. “I’ve had four husbands: one or two missteps along the way, but
success overall and no regrets. My head stayed on my shoulders, and my feet
stayed squarely on the ground—of which I had plenty; I saw to that.”
Does she mean plenty of feet or
plenty of ground? I wondered. On the other hand, perhaps she meant plenty of
feet of ground. Maybe she meant plenty of square feet, but that would surely
have made purchasing shoes difficult. A woman as enterprising as this one
seemed to be probably dealt more in acres, if not miles, than square feet, and
the silken espadrilles that peeked out from beneath her gown appeared to house well-shaped
feet. The woman above the feet was likewise well-shaped and not at all
unattractive—if you like the spiky type.
“I needed the ground, you see,
for my building,” she explained. “Bricks and mortar, my dear, bricks and
mortar—the best insurance for a woman’s security and a woman’s standing. A
woman needs a place to keep her people and her possessions safe and secure
under her weather eye.”
Under her weather thumb is more
like it, I thought. This building fool could only be Bess of Hardwicke, a woman
whose name is seldom seen in print without the word “redoubtable” in front of
it. I wondered if anyone ever called her redoubtable to her face. I redoubted
it.
About
the Author:
JoAnn Spears spent a lot of time
trying to figure out whether she wanted to major in English or History in
college. Life stepped in, and she wound
up with a Master’s Degree in Nursing instead.
A twenty-five year nursing career didn’t extinguish that early interest
in books and history. It did however stoke a decidedly gallows sense of humor.
The story of the six wives of
Henry VIII was JoAnn’s favorite piece of history. She read the classic variations and the
feminist variations, the tragic spins and the vindicating spins. She witnessed the success of the pop culture,
soft-core Tudor offerings of recent vintage. It occurred to her that the one
thing that hadn’t been brought to a full length novel about the Tudors was a
gallows sense of humor. The Tudors certainly qualified for it, and JoAnn had
plenty to spare.
The first ‘real’ book JoAnn ever
read was “The Wizard of Oz”. She
returned to the Yellow Brick Road for inspiration for a new kind of Tudor
novel, and “Six of One” was born.
“Six of One” was begun in JoAnn’s
native New Jersey. It was wrapped up in her new Smoky Mountain home in
northeast Tennessee, where she is pursuing a second career as a writer. She
has, however, obtained a Tennessee nursing license because a) you never stop
being a nurse and b) her son Bill thinks she should be sensible and not quit
her day job.
While “Six of One” is a different
kind of historical fiction novel, JoAnn is a downright stereotypical lady
author. She admits to all of the cats,
flower beds, needlework, and obsessive devotion to Jane Austen and Louisa May
Alcott that you’d expect.
Twitter: @joannspearsrn
