Showing posts with label novel. Show all posts
Showing posts with label novel. Show all posts

Sunday, January 6, 2013

Traditional Perfumes and Medicines


Judith, the heroine of my book Love of Shadows, is a perfume-maker by profession and a healer by calling. One of the things I have really enjoyed about writing this book was finding about traditional perfumes and medicines, as I like to make my novels as accurate as possible.

In the book Judith and her Shadow, Sarah, go on several journeys looking for new recipes and raw materials, which they bring back to their home in the fictional city of Pharsis and transform into medicines and perfumes. Judith inherits her former employer's workshop where there is a large copper still. This is used to create the essential oils which Judith uses in both her medicines and perfumes. 

On one trip they come across a goatherd, whose flock browse among the wild rockroses. The rockrose produces a scented resin called labdanum, which sticks to the fleece and is gathered by shepherds and sold to perfume makers. On another Judith is inspired by the scents of the forest to design a perfume based around oakmoss. But their finds aren't just useful for making perfumes but for making medicines too - oakmoss is used for wounds and labdanum for coughs.
Love of Shadows by Zoe Brooks

"I had always felt most alive, when I was healing. Without healing I was a tin top spinning out of kilter soon to catch the ground. It took all my energy to hold myself from skidding into chaos."

But in the city of Pharsis traditional women healers are banned from practising and the penalty for breaking the law is death by hanging. After being arrested and interrogated twice Judith is careful to avoid suspicion, but then scarlet fever breaks over the city like a poisonous wave, leaving in its wake the small corpses of children. What will the young healer do?

Love of Shadows is the second novel in The Healer's Shadow trilogy, which began with Girl in the Glass, and follows the lives of Judith and her Shadow, Sarah. It is a study in grief, love and defiance.

Purchase Links

You can find out more about me on:

Love of Shadows will be touring with Goddess Fish to blogs every monday for the next two months.



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Posted by Zoe Brooks at 5:25 PM 1 comments
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Love of Shadows Excerpt 2



Earlier today I shared with you the first excerpt from my new book Love of Shadows. Here is the second excerpt. Having experienced an abusive relationship the young healer, Judith, resists getting involved with men. Despite this she falls for a good man called Bruno, but Judith's personal demons mean that the course of true love is not going well. 

Midnight. He wasn’t coming back. And who could blame him? Not me. Wasn’t that what I had wanted – to drive him away? I was so good at that.

Where was he?

I went to the window and looked out. The moon was full now, but scarred by thin clouds. The ship stood dark against the water. A wind had got up, the trees were tossing their heads. Down at the beach the shingle would be creaking under the weight of the waves. Where was he? This was a bad night to walk in.

What had he done to deserve this? Nothing. All he had done was fall in love with me and, worse, admit it. That was a terrible crime to be sure.

All night I sat by the window watching for his return, wanting it and dreading it. For what was there to say? If he had struck me, it might have been easier. I deserved that. I deserved a beating. And I had had so many I didn’t deserve. But he had done nothing, only looked at me and gone.

I was so tired. I leant my head against the window frame and looked out. The sea on its furthest edge was beginning to grow silver. Soon the barges would begin their journeys north. I hoped that he would be on one, going somewhere where people loved him. I was so tired of everything, of myself most of all. My eyes closed.
Posted by Zoe Brooks at 4:22 PM 1 comments
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Love of Shadows Excerpt


Hello Goddess Fish, thank you for allowing me to take part in today's party. Today I will be talking about my book Love of Shadows.

Love of Shadows is the second novel in The Healer's Shadow trilogy, which began with Girl in the Glass. Set in an unnamed country the story follows the life of Judith and her Shadow Sarah. Their mentor and employer has just died as the book opens and Judith is struggling with grief, when she is arrested:

“Your second accuser, as I’m sure you will have worked out, was your mistress’ nephew. He claimed that you murdered her deliberately to get her money. A simple case of murder in the eyes of law, no fudge there.

“Both your accusers are men who if they found someone dying in the street would not stop to help, or rather they would – they would help themselves to whatever was in the dying man’s pocket. No, I don’t like either of them, but that doesn’t make their accusations wrong.”

He sifted through the folder and produced Elma’s legal will and her real one – the letter to me. There were nicotine stains on his fingers as they unfolded the fine notepaper my mistress always used for special letters. Holding it in one hand and the cigarette in the other, he read in silence. I had planned to keep the letter forever to remind me of her, lest I forget some day that that fine singular old woman had loved me. I knew that was in part why she had written it, knowing how much I doubted myself and others. I treasured it more than any money Elma could have given me and here it was an object of little interest in a police file, to be stowed in some drawer perhaps or worse waved in court as evidence to condemn. That young interrogator was nothing compared to this man, the Rottweiler knew how to worm under the skin without stunts or threats.
About Me:I am Zoe Brooks, a British writer and poet. I spend half my life in a partly restored old farmhouse in the Czech Republic, where I write all my novels and poetry. I aim to write popular books, which have complex characters and themes that get under the reader's skin.

I was a successful published poet in my teens and twenties, (featuring in the Grandchildren of Albion anthology). My long poem for voices Fool's Paradise is a finalist in the forthcoming EPIC ebook awards. More recently I have begun writing novels: Girl In The Glass - the first novel in a trilogy about the woman and healer Judith was published on Amazon in March 2012, followed by Mother of Wolves and Love of Shadows.

To buy the book visit:

You can find out more about me on:

Love of Shadows will be touring with Goddess Fish to blogs every monday for the next two months.
Posted by Zoe Brooks at 12:21 PM 1 comments
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Sunday, November 4, 2012

Love of Shadows Excerpt One

Hello Goddess Fish, thank you for allowing me to take part in today's party. Today I will be sharing with you all four excerpts from my new book Love of Shadows. 

 Love of Shadows is the second novel in The Healer's Shadow trilogy, which began with Girl in the Glass. Set in an unnamed country the story follows the life of Judith and her Shadow Sarah. Their mentor and employer has just died as the book opens and Judith is struggling with grief, when she is arrested.

“Your second accuser, as I’m sure you will have worked out, was your mistress’ nephew. He claimed that you murdered her deliberately to get her money. A simple case of murder in the eyes of law, no fudge there.

 “Both your accusers are men who if they found someone dying in the street would not stop to help, or rather they would – they would help themselves to whatever was in the dying man’s pocket. No, I don’t like either of them, but that doesn’t make their accusations wrong.”

 He sifted through the folder and produced Elma’s legal will and her real one – the letter to me. There were nicotine stains on his fingers as they unfolded the fine notepaper my mistress always used for special letters. Holding it in one hand and the cigarette in the other, he read in silence. I had planned to keep the letter forever to remind me of her, lest I forget some day that that fine singular old woman had loved me. I knew that was in part why she had written it, knowing how much I doubted myself and others. I treasured it more than any money Elma could have given me and here it was an object of little interest in a police file, to be stowed in some drawer perhaps or worse waved in court as evidence to condemn. That young interrogator was nothing compared to this man, the Rottweiler knew how to worm under the skin without stunts or threats.

I am Zoe Brooks, a British writer and poet. I spend half my life in a partly restored old farmhouse in the Czech Republic, where I write all my novels and poetry. I aim to write popular books, which have complex characters and themes that get under the reader's skin.

I was a successful published poet in my teens and twenties, (featuring in the Grandchildren of Albion anthology). My long poem for voices Fool's Paradise is a finalist in the forthcoming EPIC ebook awards. More recently I have begun writing novels: Girl In The Glass - the first novel in a trilogy about the woman and healer Judith was published on Amazon in March 2012, followed by Mother of Wolves and Love of Shadows.

To buy the book visit:

You can find out more about me on:

Posted by Zoe Brooks at 10:37 AM 2 comments
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