Blog Followers

I was delighted to see that Karen Lieb is following my blog. I know her from the Florida Writers' Network , an online group of FWA members. She's a talented lady who writes both fiction and non-fiction, and in starting the network, has given Florida writers a way to reach out to other writers, to give help and get advice. There are groups for almost all genres. Maybe I'll get her to squeeze time from her busy schedule to do an interview right here soon.

In my historical romance, Jeanne of Clairmonde, Jeanne meets Queen Joan (Jeanne, in French) in the palace.
History calls this queen Lame Queen Joan, as she had a crippling disability. She was royal in her own right, as her father was the Duke of Burgundy, and her mother was a daughter of King Louis IX.
Joan married Phillipe, the first Valois king, at Reims in 1313. Chroniclers saw Queen Joan as being strong-willed and intelligent, too much so for a woman, but they had to concede that she ruled with fair and capable hands during her husband's campaigns fighting the English in the Hundred Years War.
Scholarly and wise, Queen Joan sent manuscripts to her son to read, and was also responsible for having many contemporary works translated into vernacular French.
Joan died of the plague at age fifty-five and was buried at the Basilica of St. Denis, but her tomb was destroyed during the French revolution.