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Thursday 14 April 2016

L is for...Luck Bringer

#HNSIndie
Click Here for a list of other A-Zers
Luck Bringer











Throughout April I have invited 26 authors who had been selected as Editor's Choice by the Historical Novel Society Indie Reviews
 to help me out with the 2016 A-Z Blog Challenge...

Except to be a little different I interviewed 
their leading Character/s...

Today's Character is from :




HH : Hello! I believe you exist in Nick Brown’s  novel – what is the title of the book, and would you like to introduce yourself - who you are, what you do etc?
My name is Mandrocles, I was a wild youth on the Island of Samos when my father persuaded his friend, the Greek general, Miltiades, to take me with him on his way to the Persian wars. I was there at all the key stages of the fight to save democracy. I saw how it really happened and left the true record. I passed this on to archaeologist and ancient historian Nick Brown and he put it in a series of novels beginning with ‘Luck Bringer.’

HH : Where and when are you? Are you a real historical person or did your author create you?
I’m from Greece in the 5th century B.C. Nick believes he created me but if you asked the great general, Miltiades, he’d confirm my contributions.

HH: In a few brief sentences: what is the novel you feature in about?
It’s about how the men and women of Athens lived and loved and changed the world by facing up to the unbeatable Persian army on the beach at Marathon.

HH:  I ‘met’ my pirate, Jesamiah Acorne on a beach in Dorset, England -  how did your author meet up with you?
He met my ghost on the beach at Limnionas when he was examining my father’s estate for archaeological evidence. I had to wait a long time for him. He’d researched and written about the period so was susceptible to my manipulation of him.

HH: Tell me about one or two of the other characters who feature with you - husband, wife, family? Who are some of the nice characters and who is the nastiest one?
I’ve loved twice: Elpinice, daughter of Miltiades, but she was too far above me and Lyra a flute girl who I loved and should have married. I don’t want to talk about this, it still hurts. The best man I’ve ever met is the great poet and warrior Aeschylus, my shield companion. The worst is the renegade son of Miltiades, Metiochus, who one day I will kill.

HH: What is your favourite scene in the book?
I should say it is the moment we broke the Persian centre at Marathon but in my heart it’s the night of innocent love I spent in the olive groves above the sea with Elpinice.

HH: What is your least favourite? Maybe a frightening or sad moment that your author wrote.
At the end at Marathon when we were fighting to capture the Persian ships, I killed a youth, younger than me, I should have spared him but the killing rage was upon us. I still see the look in his eyes in my dreams.

Master Nick Brown
HH: What are you most proud of about your author?
Mandrocles: I should say it’s that he has walked the ground and researched the facts but the real truth is that he gave me my own voice.

HH: Has your author written  other books about you? If not, about other characters?
How do you feel about your author going off with someone else!
Yes we are stuck with each other. He has written about my journey to Thermopylae in ‘The Wooden Walls of Thermopylae’ and he is currently writing about how Athens saved the world in ‘The Curse of Athena.’
He also writes a series of archaeologically based supernatural thrillers: ‘Skendleby’, ‘The Dead Travel Fast’, ‘Dark Coven’. The fourth in the series ‘Green Man Resurrection’ is to be published next year. I don’t mind this as it gives me a break from him but I resent the fact they sell better than my story.


HH: As a character if you could travel to a time and place different to your own fictional setting  where and when would you go?
I would go to Skendleby in the 21st century at the time of the festival which you call Christmas. There I would enjoy the company of others of the restless dead.


Thank you that was really interesting!
Now where can readers of this A-Z Blog Challenge find out more about you and your author?
Twitter  @NickBrownAuthor

Buy on 
Amazon UK 

Here is the company we will be keeping on this 
A-Z Blog Challenge!

APRIL
A 1st  Friday - Aurelia  - Alison Morton
B 2nd Saturday  - Bloodie Bones - Lucienne Boyce
C 4th Monday - Man in the Canary Waistcoat Susan Grossey
D 5th Tuesday - Dubh-Linn  - James Nelson
F 7th Thursday - Fortune’s Fool- David Blixt
H 9th Saturday - The Love Letter of John Henry Holliday - Mary Fancher
K 13th Wednesday - Khamsin- Inge Borg
L 14th Thursday - Luck Bringer   - Nick Brown
N 16th Saturday - A Newfound Land  - Anna Belfrage
O 18th Monday - Out Of Time  - Loretta Livingstone
P 19th Tuesday  - Pirate Code  - Helen Hollick
Q 20th Wednesday - To Be A Queen – Annie Whitehead
R 21st Thursday  - The Spirit Room - Marschel Paul
U 25th Monday  - A Just And Upright Man - John Lynch
X 28th Thursday – The FlaX flower – AmandaMaclean

So call back tomorrow 
To meet the next exciting Character! 
(unless it is Sunday - in which case, I'll have something different 
but just as interesting !)


11 comments:

  1. Seems a partnership made in heaven: Mandrocles contributes the fact, Nick adds the voice :)

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  2. Love and War; two never-ending events in Man's existence - a good thing for writers, for what else can give us such intricate stories.
    But you, Nick, not only write them - you live them on location (sigh of envy).

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    1. Yes where would we be without conflict as our basic plots!

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  3. Mandrocles was Master Nick influenced at all by Mary Renault's books? And what first got him interested in the ancient world. Were Latin and Greek involved or did he avoid those torments!Incidentally he has produced a very beautiful cover to honour you!

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  4. Very interesting blog. I like the idea of meeting the ghost of your character - I do believe that our imaginations, when they're fired up enough, really do bring the people of the past before our very eyes.

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  5. My goodness, we are getting about on this blog. One minute it's the Land of the Pharoahs, then it's Jacobites, now Ancient Greece, plus all times and places in between. Fascinating stuff.

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  6. It is one of those covers I have seen before somewhere, don't know where. When they talk about brand recognition this is it. They say you have to see something 3 times before you buy it - so it's nearly got me now!

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Helen