On the eighth day of Christmas, On the Tudor Trail gave to me… the chance to win a paperback copy of The Path to Somerset by Janet Wertman!

To be in the running to win this book, leave a comment after this post.

Conditions of Entry

For your chance to win The Path to Somerset by Janet Wertman, you must be subscribed to On the Tudor Trail’s newsletter (if you are not already, sign up on our homepage where it says ‘Free Enewsletter Subscription’).

Then simply leave a comment after this post between now and 31 December 2018. Don’t forget to leave your name and a contact email. Please note that I have comment moderation activated and need to ‘approve’ comments before they appear. There is no need to submit your comment twice.

This giveaway is open internationally.

One winner will be randomly selected and contacted by email shortly after the competition closes. Please ensure you’ve added natalie@onthetudortrail.com to your address book to avoid missing my email.

Good luck!

Find Out More

A Note from the Author – Janet Wertman

I do love that Natalie does this giveaway every year. I especially love seeing all the Tudor books – and realizing just how many of us are drawn in by this endlessly-fascinating topic!

For myself, I waded into the field with Jane the Quene as the first installment in a trilogy about the Seymour family. That book skewed towards romance because of who Henry was at the time (and specifically, how he acted with HER) – but then I followed it up with The Path to Somerset which turned out to be all Game-of-Thrones. This wasn’t a total surprise – I had a long list of deaths stuffed into my outline – but I hadn’t realized how tormented Edward would be. I also hadn’t expected that even my writing process would change: during Jane the Quene, I got my best critique notes from the romance writers – but during The Path to Somerset, I became best friends with the guy who wrote Russian spy novels (right now I am writing The Boy King and firmly ensconced on the YA side of the table…).

That was why I was so excited about the portrait I used for the cover. I actually “found” it – unexpectedly. I thought I was going to have to use Holbein’s portrait, in which Edward was indeed the guy that Imperial Ambassador Van Der Delft described as “looked down on by everybody as a dry, sour, opinionated man.” But then I happened to visit Sudeley Castle in England and saw it on the wall. I recognized my Edward from across the room, though I had never seen him before. Sudeley has never taken the detailed “art photos” that museums have – heck, they never even uploaded it to their website! If you look, the portrait is NOWHERE on line. Even when you try to search it through its famous painter, Antonis Mor (Antonio Moro), it’s not on his list of works. But it truly is my Edward, the intense, tormented soul who rises through Henry’s crazy years…

I wish all of you luck in the giveaway! And I hope you love The Path to Somerset (and loved Jane the Quene)!

About the Author 

Janet Ambrosi Wertman grew up within walking distance of three bookstores and a library on Manhattan’s Upper West Side – and she visited all of them regularly. Her grandfather was an antiquarian bookdealer who taught her that there would always be a market for quirky, interesting books. He was the one who persuaded Janet’s parents to send her to the French school where she was taught to aspire to long (grammatically correct) sentences as the hallmark of a skillful writer. She lived that lesson until she got to Barnard College. Short sentences were the rule there.  She complied. She reached a happy medium when she got to law school – complicated sentences alternating with simple ones in a happy mix.

Janet spent fifteen years as a corporate lawyer in New York, she even got to do a little writing on the side (she co-authored The Executive Compensation Answer Book, which was published by Panel Publishers back in 1991). But when her first and second children were born, she decided to change her lifestyle.  She and her husband transformed their lives in 1997, moving to Los Angeles and switching careers.  Janet became a grantwriter (and will tell anyone who will listen that the grants she’s written have resulted in more than $26 million for the amazing non-profits she is proud to represent) and took up writing fiction.

There was never any question about the topic of the fiction: Janet has harbored a passion for the Tudor Kings and Queens since her parents let her stay up late to watch the televised Masterpiece Theatre series (both The Six Wives of Henry VIII and Elizabeth R) when she was *cough* eight years old.  One of the highlights of Janet’s youth was being allowed to visit the Pierpont Morgan Library on a day when it was closed to the public and examine books from Queen Elizabeth’s personal library and actual letters that the young Princess Elizabeth (technically Lady Elizabeth…) had written.

Janet is thrilled to have released the first two books in The Seymour Saga trilogy: Jane the Quene, which tells the story of Jane Seymour’s marriage to Henry VIII, was published in 2016; and The Path to Somerset, which chronicles Edward Seymour’s rise after Jane’s death to become Lord Protector of England and Duke of Somerset (taking us right through Henry’s crazy years) was just released this year. They will be joined in 2020 by The Boy King, which will cover the reign of Jane’s son, Edward VI, and the string of betrayals he suffered.

Visit Janet Wertman’s official website.