More Medieval Magic!

We're excited to feature a guest post hosted by C. Lee Mckenzie and find out more about our good friends Pete and Weasel. 

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Thanks for hosting Pete and Weasel on your amazing blog. We’re excited to be here. I thought I’d tell your readers why I set this story where I did, and what I found out while writing Some Very Messy Medieval Magic (SVMMM). 

I love history, so sending Pete and Weasel off to the past was sheer joy for me. I chose 1173 because I’d been reading about Richard I, and he fascinated me. In SVMMM, he’s still young and not the king yet. In fact, he’s off to France to join his brothers in a plot to overthrow his father, King Henry II.

The more I learned about Richard, the more I had fun writing a “highly fictional” account of Pete and Weasel interacting with him. 




Here are two facts about him: 

1. He didn’t care much for England. He only spoke French and adopted their customs and manners. Well, Eleanor of Aquitaine was his mom and English was the commoner’s language, but since I couldn’t write the book in French, I took the liberty of making Richard bi-lingual. 

2. He loved to hunt and he loved to sing. From all accounts, he had an excellent voice. He became a knight and later a warrior during the Crusades where his volatile nature didn’t show off the supposedly “gentler virtues” of a knight. He did seem to charge into battle a lot, so that’s why he was called Coeur de Lion, the Lion-Hearted. The descriptions I read were that he was “tall, well built and with hair mid-way between red and yellow.” He must have been quite an interesting guy.

Castle Beynac 

I’d just finished this story when friends asked me to go with them to France, and guess what? I wound up in castle Beynac where Richard spent some time. The wall around castle and the fireplace in the main hall were the way I’d imagined. The scullery, too. Then when I found the “toilet” I was so pleased to find it matched my description to a T! 

I love first-hand research so much better than what I do online, and when I see the real thing and it supports all that I’ve read, I jump up and down and clap my hands.

I hope readers will enjoy the time travel back to 1173 and the characters that are very loosely based on people of that time. Of course, I had to have a witch or two, after all without those witches, I would never have started this series. 

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Read Lizzy's review of Alligators Overhead, The Great Timelock Disaster, and Some Very Messy Medieval Magic, plus check out an interview with C. Lee Mckenzie!