Why I Love Books about the Middle Ages
You may read that headline and wonder about it—aren’t my books about spiritual warfare and the End Times? Well, they are now, but my writing journey began way back when… the eighth century, to be precise.
Let me start at the beginning.
Once upon a time, I wanted to become a writer. I decided to start by writing a romance novel, because I had a friend who wrote romance novels for a living, and that just seemed like fun. I’d read a lot of romance novels in college on the weekends as a break from all the literary stuff that hurt my brain after a while. In fact, I have to say I learned a lot about writing from reading romance novels: intricate plotting, setting, historical detail, surprise twists—romance novels have them in spades.
My favorite novels centered on medieval history, so I decided to write a romantic medieval novel. I cast about for a subject and landed upon Charles Martel and the Battle of Tours. Charles was the most fascinating real-life hero I’d ever encountered, and his story seemed to me the stuff of legend. I was shocked it wasn’t better known.
It took me over twenty years to write what came to be called The Hammer of God (under my “other” name Gina Miani), and then I spent another ten years re-writing it. In the last few months, I have revisited the novel, updated the cover, added a few chapters from previous versions, and did some editing. I’m happy to say that I think the novel holds up after all these years—it’s still my favorite.
Hammer may seem a huge departure from my other books, but it’s really where I began. It was also the novel that started me on the journey to re-discovering God after a long hiatus from my faith. But in a way, Hammer isn’t such a departure at all. It’s about warfare, battles, a subject that has always interested me ever since I worked for the US Army in Germany back in the eighties. My current books are also about warfare, just of a different kind, although I will say that in the last book of the Forlorn series, the battle is going to get real.
So what are my favorite novels of the Middle Ages? Besides Hammer, of course. I’m so glad you asked! I wrote a blog post about them for Shepherd.com, which you can find at this link. One of the books, The Wolf and the Dove, was the very first medieval romance novel I ever read. You could say it started this whole thing. I hope you will check it out!
GINA DETWILER is the author of PENNY’S JOURNAL: FORTUNE LOST, the latest novel in the FORLORN series. You can find out about all her books at www.ginadetwiler.com
