Come Visit Patria!

I mentioned in my last post the first in the series of my Patria series of humorous adventures for middle grade readers, Stout Hearts & Whizzing Biscuits. Well, Stout Hearts is now available at Amazon, and very soon will also be available at Apple’s iBook Store, as well as at Barnes & Noble. The audiobook will also be available this coming week, probably on Tuesday. News on that still to follow.

Here’s a link to the Stout Hearts page on Amazon: http://www.amazon.com/dp/B0060O7RQU

And here is a synopsis of the book:

When Oliver Stoop, age 11, moves with his family to a remote piece of land in northern Indiana, he soon discovers that someone is already living there—an entire kingdom of someones, in fact. These are the good citizens of Patria, a secret land founded by refugees from the Trojan War who sailed across the Atlantic in a reconfigured Trojan Horse—3,000 years ago!  

For Oliver, Patria is a land of wonders—and for the first time in his life, friendship. There's young Prince Farnsworth Vesuvius, inventor of the Magna-Pneumatic Whizzing Biscuit Blaster, and his formidable sister, Princess Rose, whose inedible, stone-hard biscuits provide the blaster's ammunition. But there's also the rest of the eccentric and lovable Patrian Royal Family, the boy warriors in the Potawatomi Indian Camp, not to mention the Viking kids from the Geat Village, newcomers to the area who only arrived 1,000 years ago. 

Yet when the noble Knights of the Blue Sock threaten to drive off the Stoops by force of arms, Oliver has to decide where his loyalties lie, and whether he has the courage to undertake the quest that is both Patria's, and his family's, last, best hope of peace.

So come on and follow Oliver on his adventure in Patria! It will be fun for the kids in your life—and for the kid in you.

Trojan Tub Entertainment’s Kingdom of Patria interactive website is on schedule to debut this coming Tuesday, November 1. Expect more background on Patria, blogs from Oliver, Rose and Farnsworth, free short stories, and opportunities for kids to join one of two Patria-related clubs. All coming Tuesday at: http://kingdomofpatria.com

That beautiful cover art that I’ve placed at the top of this post was illustrated by Theodore Schluenderfritz. The Kingdom of Patria website is designed by Snap Design.

Stout Hearts & Whizzing Biscuits

The first review of my humorous children's middle grade novel, Stout Hearts & Whizzing Biscuits: A Patria Story, is in!


"A funny, clever children's book that absorbs you into Oliver Stoop's adventures from the moment the first biscuit is fired."
Rachel Dove, Kindle Book Review


OK, so it's just a blurb. But the full review should be in by the weekend. Watch this space!


And starting next Tuesday, November 1, Stout Hearts & Whizzing Biscuits will be available as an ebook from Amazon's Kindle Store, Barnes & Noble's Nook Store, and Apple's iBooks store.


Also on November 1, my company, Trojan Tub Entertainment, will unveil the Kingdom of Patria website featuring an immersive experience related to my Patria series of middle grade novels: free short stories, interactive features, contests, audio, and more! A great place for kids and the entire family to come and read and play. 


The audiobook of Stout Hearts & Whizzing Biscuits will also be available on November 1. More news on that front coming soon! 

Shakespeare's Blackfriars Playhouse--in Virginia

My family and I just spent a marvelous weekend in Staunton, Virginia (pronounced by the locals as “Stan-ton”). One of the things that took us there--other than views of the brilliant autumn leaves in the glorious Virginia countryside-is the town’s replica of the Blackfriars Theater in London, the indoor companion theater to the Globe that was used by Shakespeare’s company, the Lord Chamberlain’s Men, later to be known as the King’s Men.

Unsurprisingly given the name of “Blackfriars,” there is an interesting connection of the theater to English Catholic history--though the connection is to a rather sad episode: the dissolution of the Catholic monasteries by Henry VIII. Here is what Shakespeare scholar Stephen Greenblatt has to say about the Blackfriars Theater in his captivating book on Shakespeare, Will in the World (New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 2004):

"During the rein of Elizabeth, in 1596, the entrepreneur James Burbage (the father of the famous actor) paid six hundred pounds for property that had, until the dissolution of the monasteries, been part of a large friary, belonging to the order known as the Friars Preachers or Black Friars [i.e., the Dominicans]. The location was a desirable one: though it was within the city walls, it was a “liberty” and hence outside the jurisdiction of the city fathers. A theater had already been established twenty years earlier in one of the Blackfriars halls, where a succession of children’s companies had performed. But this enterprise had collapsed after eight financially troubled years, and the indoor theater had gone silent. The enterprising Burbage smelled a profit, if he could reopen it for performances by what was then the Lord Chamberlain’s Men. He had built the Theater, one of England’s first outdoor playhouses; now, by reconstructing the hall where the children’s companies had played, he would open England’s first indoor playhouse for adult actors. The location was prestigious--not in the suburbs, hard by the bearbaiting arenas and execution grounds, but right in the heart of the city. The Blackfriars hall was much smaller than the Globe, but it had the great advantage, given the vagaries of the English weather, of being roofed and enclosed. It was, at least by comparison with the open amphitheaters, a place of decorum and even luxury. Disorderly crowds would not stand restlessly around the stage; instead, everyone would be seated. Hence admission prices could be greatly increased--from the mere pennies at the Globe to as high as two shillings in Blackfriars--and, it was possible to illuminate the hall by candlelight, there could be evening as well as afternoon performances" (pp. 366-67). 

We saw two performances at the Blackfriars Playhouse put on by the repertory company of the American Shakespeare Center: on Friday night, Henry V, and on Sunday afternoon, The Tempest. Both performances were hugely enjoyable, living up to the company’s motto of “serious fun.” Both performances aimed at being as accessible as possible, and they mostly hit the mark extremely well, though at times giving in a bit too much to buffoonery and sexual gags (not in Shakespeare’s text).

But it was a charming discovery to find this replica of the Blackfriars Theater in a small town in central Virginia. It is a testimony to what the arts--privately funded as far as I can tell-can be in our polity.