This is a guest post I wrote for RoloPoloBookBlog. For the original post, click here.
Title: The Wounded Cavalier Artist: William Shakespeare Burton Medium: Oil on canvas Size: 36″ x 41″ Location: Guildhall Art Gallery, London Image Source: Wikimedia Open Source
For the first book, I’ve drawn inspiration from a Pre-Raphaelite painting by William Shakespeare Burton, titled The Wounded Cavalier. It’s set during the English Civil War. I used to spend hours as a teenager staring at it on my bedroom’s wall. No Tom Cruise or Brad Pitt for me!
I can’t explain how the idea of threading the stories of the Cavalier, the Maiden and the Puritan with that of Madison and Rupert has come to me. I guess we’d call that creativity! But the Cavalier’s story is the first story I told to myself as a teenager. I kept wondering what happened to those three characters, what were their backgrounds, secret love and heartbreaks. I could feel it wasn’t a happy ending though. So through Oxford Whispers, I’ve managed to give them some kind of second chance and redemption.
The second book in the trilogy is titled Oxford Shadows. Again, I’ve used an artwork as a starting point for the plot. This time it’s music, a melody titled Greensleeves. It’s very famous here in England. One of the reasons is that Henry the Eighth is rumored to be the composer. He would have written that piece of music during his courtship of Anne Boleyn… But I put my own spin on it.
No idea for the next and final installment though… Totally open to suggestions!
