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Kathleen Lea, Geoffrey Ashe and Leo Hicks all mention Sir Anthony Standen’s trip to Constantinople in articles, taking the account bearing his name on the title page at face value. Leo Hicks S.J. in The Embassy of Sir Anthony Standen, Recusant History, April 1963 states that Standen was in Constantinople in 1578 or before, citing …

Continue reading “MYSTERY BOOK”

I wrote in my first blog that I would say more about Sir Anthony Standen, the inspiration for Sir Edward Latham. Standen’s actions and motives are sketchy; they can support opposing characterizations. When a spy’s handler advises him in letters to write like a Catholic and the spy does, it’s hard to pinpoint his real …

Continue reading “Chasing Elizabethan Double-agent Anthony Standen”

Members of my writers group asked me what influenced me in creating Latham? Initially, a spy I knew as a friend, then fiction and non-fiction. But a documentary offered me the most compelling crawl around a spy’s emotional innards. The Green Prince is an interview with the son of a Hamas leader—the Green Prince—who spied …

Continue reading “A CRAWL AROUND THE EMOTIONAL INNARDS OF ONE MODERN SPY”

My publisher asked me what it might have been like for Latham to hold all those secrets, spying for the Catholic side first, then a double agent for Elizabeth. As I conceive him, Latham isn’t burdened by secrets. They excite him, as rare diamonds thrill jewelers, because he uses them to make things happen, in …

Continue reading “The Secret of Thrills; or, the Thrill of Secrets”

When Latham left Elizabeth’s court to serve Catholic Mary, Queen of Scots and her husband, Henry Stuart Lord Darnley, I had to sidle into that notoriously miserable marriage. These coins tickled me! Mary minted the first one on their marriage. Its inscription is Henricus & Maria, with handsome Darnley’s big head taller than his wife’s. …

Continue reading “MARY QUEEN OF SCOTS KNEW HOW TO STOMP ON A NARCISSISTIC ROYAL HUSBAND”

Welcome to my blog and thank you for your interest in my debut novel The Reversible Mask.. I will be posting each week. The first question is how I got entangled in this tale. Why did I have to write it? Several years ago I was in bed at night reading this book: It’s ALL …

Continue reading “Dear Reader Friends”