My First Book Signing!

My very first book signing has been scheduled for Saturday, February 11, 2012 from 1:00 to 3:00 p.m. at Hastings Bookstore in Stillwater, OK. The first five copies of So Faithful a Heart, Special Edition were shelved at Hastings last Monday, and when I went back to check on Friday, two copies had already been sold! I'm hoping this will be a trend, and also hoping to get into more stores very soon!

Happy Birthday, Nancy Storace

Anna "Nancy" Storace

Mozart's original Susanna

27 October, 1765 to 24 August 1817

Agendas, distortion, and shoddy research

As the author of two passionate novels about the love between two real people in history, I'll be the first to admit that I had an agenda when I wrote them; that being to tell a great story that was as factual as I could make it and at the same time entertaining and compelling for the reader. That's why I took 10 plus years to research before I started writing, and why I made a detailed timeline of Nancy Storace's life and laid it against a timeline of Mozart's to make certain the events that I described in my novels could have taken place in the time and place in which I described them. As an historian, this was extremely important to me, for I didn't want the integrity of my work questioned, nor did I want to distort the facts to make them fit my agenda.

All of this is to say that because I am such a stickler for historical accuracy and detail, I'm troubled and even angered by writers who aren't as meticulous with their research or who have agendas that don't line up with history, so they either distort the facts or omit them altogether. I was rather ruthless and unforgiving in my criticism of Geoffrey Brace in the afterword of When Love Won't Die, for his distorted facts and blatant omissions of key events in Nancy's life (in his biography of Nancy entitled Anna Susanna), which were key evidence to the beliefs of many noted Mozart historians in the love affair that most likely existed between Mozart and Storace.

Today I was reminded again, why historical accuracy is so essential by a friend who is reading another novelized account of Mozart's life which focuses on the events surrounding the courtship and subsequent marriage of Mozart and Constanze Weber. In this particular novel is a conversation that takes place between Mozart and Constanze (who is not yet his fiance), where she questions his devotion to her, because she had been told that there were rumors going around Vienna that he was in love with the new English singer in town and that they had been seen together at parties and other musical events. Mozart vehemently denies that he's in love with Nancy Storace and tells Constanze that the only love he feels is for her, and dismisses Constanze's fears by convincing her that what she's heard is only idle gossip. I have read this novel (a few years ago), and had forgotten about that passage. This scene was obviously inserted to push the agenda that Mozart was never in love with Storace in the first place, and that his affections had always belonged to Constanze. However, what was interesting about this situation is the fact that Nancy Storace didn't even arrive in Vienna until six months after Mozart and Constanze were married, so this conversation, while it could have taken place, wouldn't have taken place until sometime in 1783 or 1784 and not in 1781, and would have arisen out of a wife's jealousy and not over a girl's questioning her suitor's devotion.

See how easily things can be distorted to meet an agenda by simply changing the timeline?

On the road to legitimacy

It's strange that even in this age of mass communication, web marketing, Ebay purchasing and selling, Ebooks & Ereaders, Amazon.com, etc., that the public still doesn't consider a book "legitimate" until it is available for purchase in a "brick & mortar" bookstore. Well, today I am happy to announce that So Faithful a Heart: Special Edition is soon to be available at Hastings in Stillwater, Oklahoma, with a local author book signing to be announced sometime after the beginning of the new year. This will be the first step towards making my book available in brick & mortar bookstores throughout the entire state of Oklahoma as well as nationwide. I'm truly excited about this new development, and will keep friends and locals posted once I get an actual date for the book signing.

It begins with the first step...

"When Love Won't Die" to be reviewed at History Undressed

Noted historical fiction romance author/reviewer Eliza Knight, at History Undressed has announced that she will review So Faithful a Heart: When Love Won't Die in the coming months. Some will recall that last year she reviewed the first novel in the So Faithful a Heart series, The Love Story of Nancy Storace & Wolfgang Mozart and left this fabulous review. I'm only too excited and honored that Ms. Knight has enthusiastically agreed to read and review the second, and look forward to it in the next few months. (She says her queue is quite long right now!) I'll keep everyone posted.

My Apologies to My First Readers

Today I happened to go to the Amazon.com page for the print version of my new book, So Faithful a Heart: When Love Won't Die, Special Edition and found that they had dropped the price from $23.50 to $16.92 and was quite upset over it. Normally, it wouldn't have bothered me, but (a) I wasn't notified that they were going to do this, (b) the book has been out for less than a month and I've barely had a chance to market it, (c) my first readers, who paid the regular list price, will go to my page to leave reviews only to find that they paid nearly $10.00 more and (d) in dropping the price so low within the first month of its release it looks bad on me and on my book and indicates that Amazon doesn't have much faith in its success (although how an independent author is supposed to have roaring success within the first month of their book's release is beyond me).

My apologies to my first readers who paid a much higher price for their books. I assure you, this was not my doing. I set the price at $23.50 with the thought that this was reasonable for a 530 page, 180,000 word novel that was written, edited, and published with such high quality as this one has been. I could see Amazon lowering the price after six months or so, if the book wasn't selling well, but not within two weeks of the marketing page's debut. That's simply ridiculous. Believe me, Amazon HAS heard from me on this.

Look what arrived in the mail today!

It looks like I have some books to sign! 

(They're beautiful, aren't they?)

Available in ALL Ereader formats

If you own an Ereader, but it's not a Kindle, I've thought of you, too. My newest book is available at Smashwords.com in ALL Ereader formats including Epub, Nook, Palm Doc, and RTF.

So what's it all about?

I've had several people ask me what my new book, So Faithful a Heart: When Love Won't Die is all about since everyone who read the first book knows the ending to Nancy and Wolfgang's love story. After several people read The Love Story of Nancy Storace & Wolfgang Mozart, they came to me and said that they fell so in love with Nancy Storace that they wanted to know the rest of her life's story. So it was with those requests in mind that I wrote the sequel, When Love Won't Die.

Set in the late 18th century through the early 19th century (starting in 1791 to 1817), When Love Won't Die tells of Nancy's struggle to move past the unexpected death of her lover, Wolfgang Mozart, and go on with her life and career. Although Mozart is dead, he looms large throughout the entire story, right to the end, through the letters that he wrote to Nancy throughout the course of the last five years of his life.

Nancy is confronted with the formidable task of going on despite her loss and is met with the challenge of opening herself up to love again. In this story we meet the young tenor, John Braham, who emerges as the new love interest. A student of Nancy's former voice instructor, Venanzio Rauzzini, Braham's relationship with Nancy begins when Rauzzini introduces them and asks Nancy to sing in the 19-year-old tenor's debut concert in Bath.

When Love Won't Die is filled with many of the characters that readers of the first book will know such as Nancy's older brother, Stephen Storace and her mother Elizabeth, the jolly and heart-warming Irish tenor, Michael Kelly, and the composer and dear friend of Mozart's, Joseph Haydn. There is also a host of new characters, all whom Nancy knew and with whom she shared close relationships including, Napoleon Bonaparte, Lord Admiral Horatio Nelson & his mistress Emma Hamilton, the famous English singer/actress Elizabeth Billington, and the famous English architect, Sir John Soane. There's even an element of intrigue in the underlying subplot involving Mozart's widow, Constanze and her new husband, the Danish dipolmat, Georg Nissen!

So Faithful a Heart: When Love Won't Die is NOW AVAILABLE at Amazon.com in a picture-illustrated combined Special Edition with a re-edited and newly rewritten version of book One, So Faithful a Heart: The Love Story of Nancy Storace & Wolfgang Mozart. It is also available in Kindle Ebook at Amazon.com and will soon be available in all other Ebook formats at Smashwords.com.

So Faithful a Heart, Special Edition Now on Kindle!

So Faithful a Heart, Special Edition, including Book I, The Love Story of Nancy Storace & Wolfgang Mozart, and Book II, the sequel When Love Won't Die is now available for purchase on Amazon Kindle!

The love story continues...

When Love Won't Die: Cover Blurb

Thanks to Nellie Kampmann, author of A Haunted History of Columbus, Ohio for the cover blurb for So Faithful a Heart: When Love Won't Die--Special Edition. 

"What do you do when you wake up one morning to find love’s fondest hopes and dreams have been shattered in a single night? Famed 18th century opera singer Anna Storace faces this question when life and death conspire to keep her apart from her beloved Mozart. Anna’s struggle takes her on a sweeping adventure from the glittering stages of Europe, to its war torn battlefields, and back to her bucolic haven in the English countryside. Based on the true story of Anna Storace’s life, So Faithful a Heart: When Love Won’t Die is a whirlwind of loss, romance, betrayal, intrigue, and eternal love." 

On Schedule for October 1st Release

That's right! So Faithful a Heart: Speical Edition including Books One and Two, The Love Story of Nancy Storace & Wolfgang Mozart and When Love Won't Die, is on schedule for release on October 1st, 2011!

What do you do when you wake up one morning to find love’s fondest hopes and dreams have been shattered in a single night? Where do you run, and to whom?

So Faithful A Heart: When Love Won’t Die is the continuing saga of the woman who Mozart vowed would own his heart forever, and the story of the man who tries to steal her heart from him. Set against the background of one of the most turbulent times in Western Europe, When Love Won’t Die gives you a window into the lives of some of the greatest and most colorful men and women in history!

So Faithful A Heart: When Love Won’t Die, the exciting and passionate sequel to So Faithful A Heart: The Love Story of Nancy Storace & Wolfgang Mozart, by author, K. Lynette Erwin.

Available in a Special Combined Edition, including a specially rewritten and re-edited version of So Faithful A Heart: The Love Story of Nancy Storace & Wolfgang Mozart.

On October 1^st, 2011, the love story continues…

When Love Won't Die: The Continuing Story, Afterword & Acknowledgments

The greatest challenge a writer faces when creating an historical fiction piece based on the lives of real people is the balancing of the actual historical facts with good story-telling. Often the cold, hard facts fail to meet the criteria that make for a good story with the rises, peaks, and falls in the proper places. That was not the case with the life of Anna “Nancy” Storace, for her life was so packed with famous people and events that I had to choose which notable historical events and figures to highlight and which ones to give slight mention to or no mention at all. To say Nancy Storace led an interesting and exciting life is a vast understatement, and it has been both an honor and a sheer pleasure to devote the better part of thirteen years in getting to know this amazing, fascinating and courageous woman. I have to admit that now that I’m finished with the telling of her story, I’m really going to miss her. 

After becoming familiar with this incredible character through both academic and personal research, it is baffling to me that only one biography has been written about her. It’s by a British lay music enthusiast and researcher, Mr. Geoffrey Brace, and it is here I will thank Mr. Brace for his exhaustive research and for compiling and organizing the facts and events of her life into one, concise work. Brace’s book, Anna…Suanna: Anna Storace, Mozart’s first Suanna: her life, times and family (Published by Thames Publishing 1991), has been invaluable to me and has served to provide the factual “skeleton” upon which I have structured both So Faithful A Heart novels.

My greatest disappointment in Brace’s work, however, is in some of the incorrect data and the deliberate omission of the event towards the end of Nancy’s life which appeared to be a major catalyst in the progression towards her final illness and death. In an apparent effort to press his own admitted agenda of separating Storace from the belief held by some of the most noted Mozart historians (most notably Alfred Einstein), that there at least existed an emotional affair between Mozart and Nancy (Brace himself even admits that both of Mozart’s first biographers, Joseph Lange and Georg Nissen claimed that Mozart was in love with Nancy), Brace failed to make even casual mention of the maid’s testimony at Storace’s death inquest regarding the visit from the two “German” men and their demands that Nancy hand over the “letters from Vienna”.

I also found other facts that were skewed to apparently manipulate the reader to his view, as well as some other statements that were simply based in poor research, the two most glaring regarding Nancy’s close friendship with Lady Emma Hamilton. The first is where he stated that Nancy most likely attended Admiral Horatio Nelson’s funeral and sat with Emma. It is a well-established fact that Lady Hamilton was forbidden to attend the funeral of Lord Nelson, so it is more likely that Nancy either didn’t attend at all or, if she did, sat near her common-law husband, John Braham, who sang at the funeral. The other was at the end of the book where he states that Emma Hamilton attended Nancy’s funeral on 2 September, 1817 which would have been impossible as Hamilton died in exile in Calais, France on 15 January, 1815. These two glaring errors, along with Brace’s apparent need to skew and omit important details and facts made it difficult to trust anything in the book that wasn’t backed-up with hard documentation.

Brace was also very free about casting value judgments on the relationships between Nancy and various important people in her life such as her brother, Stephen, her son, Spencer, and her common-law husband of twenty years, John Braham, labeling them as bordering on an “unhealthy closeness” and using terms such as “pathetic devotion” in regards to her commitment to Braham. I’d personally like to know how Brace found himself so in the midst of these relationships that he could make such judgment calls, and how, after he had gleaned so many facts about Nancy Storace that screamed otherwise, he could ever say that this woman was “pathetic” about anything. The truth is that there wasn’t a pathetic bone in the woman’s body; Brace’s own research proves it. He had the facts (well most of them anyway), but his insights into the facts were pitifully lacking.

History has long taken a hard, and I will add unfair view of strong, independent, successful women like Anna Storace. One of the most unfair views that seem to run common among historians familiar with Storace’s life and career is the idea that she was involved in a “string” of unsuccessful love affairs. In Nancy’s nearly fifty-two years she was only involved in three, what can be documented and proven, “love affairs”, (aside from her disastrous marriage to John Fisher, which I don’t in any way count as a love affair). The three were with Francesco Benucci, who was Mozart’s original Figaro, the Spanish composer Martin y Soler, and the English tenor, John Braham (I don’t include Mozart because no affair between them has been documented other than through hearsay and circumstantial evidence, although I believe there is plenty of both to establish the probability of an affair and that it was one of the two most significant in her life). How anyone could judge these affairs as unsuccessful is beyond me. Were they unsuccessful simply because they ended?  I’d like to know what the criteria were in making this judgment.

The obviously most significant documented love affair was with John Braham. It lasted twenty years, produced a child (who grew up to be an educated and respected member of British society), brought in a tremendous amount of material wealth to both parties, and in Braham, produced one of the greatest singers Great Britain has ever known. If that isn’t success, I don’t know what is! The relationship ended badly, but its tragic ending in no way diminishes its duration and accomplishments. Again, how does one define success in a love relationship—simply by one that ends only in “till death do us part”? I’ve known many a marriage that lasted fifty years or more that didn’t produce half the amount of success created in the twenty years that Nancy Storace spent with John Braham.

I’d also like to fill my readers in on some of the factual details concerning the fates of both Braham and the couple’s son, Spencer. According to Brace, after Braham’s marriage to seventeen-year-old Frances Bolton, he went on to have six children and to die in 1856 a “pillar of Victorian society.” He was regarded as the finest tenor England had ever known, and also according to Brace, continued with his rather disingenuous and cynical attitude towards his profession as a musician by playing up to whatever audience for which he happened to be singing at any given time. Lack of integrity continued to follow him through the rest of his life and in all aspects of his life, including his relationship with his son, Spencer.

William Spencer Harris Braham was fifteen years old (not fourteen, as Brace miscalculates in his book), at the time of his mother’s death. Spencer was never reconciled with her death; going on to blame his father for the decline in Nancy’s health that led to her demise—something for which his father never forgave him. Apparently Nancy never did find the copy of the Last Will & Testament she searched for, and perhaps destroyed it by accident, along with the “letters from Vienna” on the day to which her maid, Miss Walthen (“Emma” is a name I gave her after my inability to find her actual first name), testified at Nancy’s death inquest. Because Nancy’s will was never changed, the bulk of her massive estate was not passed on to Spencer as she intended, and the ₤2000 designated to Braham in the older will, did go to him. However, Braham in this case did do the right thing and gave it back to his son in the amount of ₤150 annually. Spencer struggled in school for several years after his mother’s death, but eventually did go on to obtain both a B.A. and M.A. from Oxford. With the help of his father, he obtained a post in the clergy and married in 1851, changing his surname to Meadows (the name of his wife’s family), to rid himself of any connection to his father. It was quite obvious that the animosity between them lingered on until Braham’s death. Spencer, too, had six children and when he died in 1883, he held the post of rural dean of Chigwell, Essex. 

Finally, I would like to express my thanks to the people who have worked with me, inspired and encouraged me, and lent their help and expertise:

First, I would like to thank my daughter, Lauren Weaver, for lending her knowledge of the French language as well as helpful information and an excellent timeline outlining the periods of the French Revolution and Napoleonic Wars.

Special thanks go to Dr. D. Allen Scott for writing the Foreword to this book. There are certain people who come into your life and you know from the moment you meet them that they’re there for a special reason. Allen is one of those people to me. I can honestly say that without Dr. Scott’s encouragement and inspiration, neither of my So Faithful A Heart novels would have been written.

As always, I appreciate the unending love, support, expert advice, listening ear, patience, and professional assistance of my life partner, S.K. Waller. There is no greater joy than sharing one’s life and work with one’s best friend.

Last but not least, my heartfelt thanks go to the lovely, talented, warm, spirited and courageous woman whose life and career inspired these novels, Anna “Nancy” Storace. I only hope I did your story justice, Signora. Thank you for a life well-lived and for choosing me to be your messenger. Brava, Prima Buffa!

K. Lynette Erwin

Summer, 2011

So Faithful A Heart: When Love Won't Die

What do you do when you wake up one morning to find love’s fondest hopes and dreams have been shattered in a single night? Where do you run, and to whom?

So Faithful A Heart: When Love Won’t Die is the continuing saga of the woman who Mozart vowed would own his heart forever, and the story of the man who tries to steal her heart from him. Set against the background of one of the most turbulent times in Western Europe, When Love Won’t Die gives you a window into the lives of some of the greatest and most colorful men and women in history!

So Faithful A Heart: When Love Won’t Die, the exciting and passionate sequel to So Faithful A Heart: The Love Story of Nancy Storace & Wolfgang Mozart, by author, K. Lynette Erwin.

Available in soft cover and digital formats in October, 2011.

The love story continues…

Of Press Kits, Photo Shoots, Sell Sheets & Sequels

This week has been exciting and at the same time confusing and exhausting. Over the last several days my partner S.K. Waller and I have been learning some of the ins and outs of marketing a book and we've been trying to implement some of the things we've learned. One of the most important things we've discovered is that a Press Kit is absolutely essential for the successful marketing of a book and without one, an author can never hope for their work to take off. So, with that in mind, and realizing that it could cost thousands of dollars to put together a professional Press Kit, Steph, (who has done this kind of thing before with her own music career), put together both of our Press Kits in less than a week complete with professional quality photos, Press Releases, Sell Sheets, Title Sheets, and all the other things that are needed for a successful press kit. She is now offering her services professionally at Alla Breve Books for any author (or soon-to-be author) in need of a professional Press Kit, at very reasonable rates.

In the meantime, I've been working on the sequel to So Faithful a Heart: The Love Story of Nancy Storace & Wolfgang Mozart, which is entitled So Faithful a Heart: When Love Won't Die. I've finished the outline and am now writing the synopsis and doing a little more background research. This novel covers the period between 1791 and 1817, and encompasses a different time in history than the first book, most importantly, the French Revolution and the rise of Napoleon, so the setting has changed just a bit. Mozart is every bit as much a part of this story as in the first book, but his presence is felt as a "ghost" (figuratively speaking), that haunts Nancy's memories and her life and threatens to come between her and her other relationships. It promises to be every bit as compelling a story as the first and I'm extremely excited about it!

So Faithful a Heart: When Love Won't Die

Yes, that's what it says; I'm writing the sequel to So Faithful a Heart: The Love Story of Nancy Storace & Wolfgang Mozart. It's the rest of the story beginning from the point of Mozart's death until Nancy's death twenty-six years later. Filled with all the longing, tenderness, and passion of the original story, When Love Won't Die tells how Nancy goes on, all the while trying to forget her love for Mozart but discovering that no matter how much she throws herself into her career, or even into the arms of other lovers, the love she shared with him keeps coming back to haunt her.

Projected release is late summer of 2011.

Happy Valentine's Day: The Breath of Love

A breath of love
From our sweetheart
A sweet refreshment
Will give a helping hand to the heart.

The heart which, nourished
By hope, by love,
Has no need of a better bait.

Now Available on Kindle at Amazon.com

So Faithful a Heart: The Love Story of Nancy Storace & Wolfgang Mozart is now available in a Kindle Edition for only $5.99. Download yours now, HERE. Don't own a Kindle and/or can't afford one? You can download a FREE Kindle reader for your PC, Netbook, or iphone HERE.

Happy 255th, Birthday Wolfgango

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart

27 January, 1756 to 5 December, 1791

The Villain You Love to Hate and Hate to Love: Count Almaviva

Ah! Count Almaviva. How could a man be so cold and uncaring? How could he be so unfaithful to his lovely wife? And with her personal servant girl who's engaged to be married to his valet? Only Mozart and da Ponte could create a character so strong, so compelling...someone you hate to love and love to hate.

Simon Keenlyside sings the Count's aria, Hai gia vinta la causa.

Beloved Cherubino

By far the most beloved character in Le Nozze di Figaro has to be the 14-year-old boy who is in love with love, Cherubino. Mozart and da Ponte created the role to be sung by a woman wearing men's clothing (a trouser role), and since that time it has been one of the most coveted roles for mezzo-soprano.

This scene features one of the most beloved Cherubinos of all time, Frederica von Stade, singing the aria "Non so piu".

Mozart Week: Le Nozze di Figaro Act I: Via, resti servita

In this comical scene between the servant Susanna and the noblewoman Marcellina, we see the classical tension between the servant working class and the nobility. To say that Mozart and da Ponte removed the "politics" from Le Nozze di Figaro is a fallacy. Figaro is chocked full of the revolutionary politics of the time with the Count's servants working to outwit him and undo his plans at every turn.

Notice the slurs in the violins that sound like cats "meowing", indicating the "cat fight" that breaks out between them.

Marcellina (curtsying): To greet you, my lady, I'm honored supremely.
Susanna (curtsying): By your recognition I'm flattered extremely.
Marcellina (curtsying): Please enter before me.
Susanna (curtsying): No, no, you go first!
Marcellina: I beg you, ignore me!
Susanna (mocking): Your noble position, fine and patrician, inspires respect.
Marcellina (mocking): I know my position, bow to tradition, fine and patrician, with all due respect.
Marcellina: The bride of the hour!
Susanna: A lady of station!
Marcellina: The Count's little bella!
Susanna: The pride of the nation!
Marcellina: Her attitude!
Susanna: Dignified!
Marcellina: Her posture!
Susanna: Your age!
Marcellina: I swear I shall fly at her in one minute more!
Susanna (aside) Decrepit old battle ax, I'll settle your score.
Marcellina: I praise your deportment without reservation.
Susanna: And I, your experience and broad reputation!
Marcellina: So young and so pretty!
Susanna: The belle of the city!
Marcellina: What distance between us!
Susanna: The true Spanish Venus!
Marcellina: So innocent!
Susanna: Durable!
Marcellina: So simple!
Susanna: So old!
Marcellina: How dare she make fun of me, it is a disgrace!

It's Mozart Week!

Because January 27th, is Mozart's 255th birthday, I'll be celebrating by posting a scene from his opera, The Marriage of Figaro every day through this coming Thursday. Mozart regarded Figaro as one of his greatest triumphs and the role of Susanna, created for Nancy Storace, is considered one of the most coveted soprano roles.

Today I've featured the opening scene in Act I of Le Nozze di Figaro. Starring Bryn Terfel as Figaro and Alison Hagley as Susanna.

The Music: Exsultate Jubilate

In the year 1772 when Mozart was 17, he and his father, Leopold, traveled to Italy where he was commissioned to compose an opera (Lucio Silla), for the theater in Milan. It was there that Mozart was introduced to an amazing castrato (adult male soprano), named Venanzio Rauzzini, whom young Mozart said "Sings like an angel". Mozart composed his motet Exsultate Jubilate especially for Rauzzini and it was premiered on 17 January 1773 in Milan.

Only a few years later, Rauzzini moved to England and became a noted and respected voice instructor. When Nancy Storace turned 11 years old, her father turned her vocal instruction over to Rauzzini who, after hearing that some damage had been done to her voice (most likely due to over-singing and too much intense performing at such a young age), forbade her to perform for a year while he worked with her to undo the damage.

Rauzzini finished out his life and career in England and died in Bath in April of 1810 at the age of 63. Nancy Storace and her then common law husband, the English tenor, John Brahm (who had also been a student of Rauzzini's), erected a stone plaque in his memory.

The following is the Alleluia from Mozart's Exsultate Jubilate. Sung by male soprano Michael Maniaci.