Get ready for How the Hangman Lost His Heart!

Dear Reader,

            Sages tell aspiring writers to ‘write what you know’.  But what happens if what you know is a story about a hangman and a hatbox?  ‘Have a go,’ said my editor dubiously.  So I did.

            The result is How the Hangman Lost His Heart, originally entitled Uncle Frank’s Head, since my five times great uncle Frank Towneley’s head is, I suppose, what the book is about.  Hung, drawn and quartered in 1746 for supporting flighty Bonnie Prince Charlie against the decidedly unflighty King George II – my family have always preferred romance to realism – the story rests on the fact that the whole of Uncle Frank did not lie peacefully in his coffin until the 1950s.  Most of him was collected up after the execution, but his head had some fine adventures of its own before it, too, was finally laid to rest.  Even then there was a final twist. 

Twists are meat and drink to novelists.  In the untwisting of Uncle Frank’s, I had more fun than is strictly legal for authors.  The beginning may unnerve you – it unnerved me – for executions are never pleasant.  Yet they must be told as they were.  And anyway, Uncle Frank was in good hands, which is why this novel is not a tragedy but a romp, although I shall take it as a great compliment if you cry at the end.

K.M. Grant