Cathie Dunn writes...

Today, I'm delighted to welcome back author, Emma Rose Millar . Her rip-roaring adventure, Five Guns Blazing , is out now. Plenty of drama, passion - and pirates. Well worth checking out! Over to Emma... (c) Museum of London   London - A Forbidden Place Full of Vice and Temptation We were taken after the final case of the afternoon was heard, on a waggon with ten others, through the cobbled streets, past the ramshackle pie shop, the confectioners and the apothecary. The air was filled with the stench from the sewers, and from discarded oranges and pears which lay blackening on the ground. There were clamorous cries from market traders selling off the last of their wares for the day and the hollow trotting of horses’ hooves upon the stones as they pulled along carriages, in which ladies sat holding handkerchiefs to their faces. It was nearly dusk, and the girls in their gaily coloured slammerkins had already begun to appear one by one, and gather in small clusters which...

Today, I welcome author Emma Stein who tells us more about how she created the country of Anglina for her novel, Into the Void , released through Tirgearr Publishing, and what locations she based it on. Welcome, Emma...  I created the different places Horace visits using some of the cultural theories I studied as a graduate student in Art History and my experiences as a non-EU immigrant in Europe. For example, the society of the very first place Horace visits--and the site of the first catastrophe during his voyage--is based on Marcel Mauss's theories on gift-giving. I had always intended on setting this section of the book on islands because I wanted Horace to travel by ship at the beginning of his journey, but it was only after some friends showed me photographs from their recent trip to Cuba that I decided the islands would be tropical. The other locations are based on or parody places I have actually lived or places very close to where I lived, and this is reflec...