I've been pounding away at the keyboard, seriously. You can hardly see the letters anymore, my nails have been scraping them off so much! This has been almost all to bring you a book that's really important to me: Our Lady's Troubadour and Other Miraculous Tales from the Cantigas de Santa Maria in Honor of Alfonso X, el Sabio.
Alfonso X is my favorite king because he has a reputation for loving learning. His legacy includes histories, astronomy, legislation, and his masterwork, the Cantigas de Santa Maria, which is the largest collection of Marian miracles ever set to music. They survive in four deluxe manuscripts that emphasize how important these songs were to the king.
November 23, 2021, marks 800 years since the birth of Alfonso X. There are a few conferences, concerts, and plays scheduled in places such as Toledo and Sevilla, but for a while there, the pandemic made it seem none of that would be possible. So I ramped up a project I'd started years ago, adapting some of the stories from the Cantigas into a short story collection.
With a last push during confinement (lockdown), and the go-ahead from my publisher, Encircle Publications, years of love, devotion, writing, and editing, have resulted in Our Lady's Troubadour, ten short stories set in an ideal medieval Spain with problems and perils, but always happy endings. It will release on November 17, 2021, in hardcover, paperback, and ebook.
November 17 was the birthday of my beloved husband, Stanley, so I'm touched to be able to add that small tribute to this project that's so important to me.
The cover is based on one of the miniatures in the most important Cantigas codex. In it, Alfonso X himself points out to St. Mary and attendant saints and an angel all the wonderful ways he's sung her praises. Alfonso is shown to have direct access to St. Mary many times in the Cantigas, and this (unorthodox, bordering heretical) close relationship is unique in medieval European art. I always love something wonderful that much more if it's unique.
More about this joyful new book coming soon!
Este tributo desde el fondo de mi corazón sale el mismo día 17 de noviembre en castellano con el título de Trovador de Santa María. El 3 de diciembre, habrá en Zamora una presentación del libro con música, y con un poco de suerte, también en Toledo.
(This heartfelt tribute will appear simultaneously in Spanish as Trovador de Santa Maria, and I'm planning an in-person book launch in my medieval city of Zamora, hopefully with an appearance to follow in Toledo.)
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