Lord Dunem was based upon Sir John Gielgud

In my new book, “Invito Rex”, we meet the king’s chief of staff and political advisor, Lord Ashford Dunem. He is an officious, proper and cruel leader who is put in a very difficult position early in the story, and spends the rest of the book scrambling to keep the kingdom intact.

Ashford was born the son of an Austrian duke. As a youth, his ancestral land was contested between warring German and Croatian forces. Ashford rose to prominence by helping his father protect their title and lands. When German forces captured the Duke, Ashford earned his own title after convincing his people to accept German rule. He stopped widespread bloodshed, but his family and friends rejected him, forcing him out of the kingdom.

Recently, I’ve heard a lot of people talking about publishing. Not so much the difficulty of self-publishing, with the formatting, the editing, the plot, the characters, the marketing, or any of that. No, what I’ve seen the most is hand-wringing about just hitting that big red “publish” button. They say, “I just don’t know if I’m ready to expose myself to the whole world like that.”