Interview with C.W. Gortner, Author of The Last Queen

C.W. Gortner is the author of the historical novels The Secret Lion and the most recent, The Last Queen, just released by Random House. The Last Queen is the first-person fictional story of the infamous Juana la Loca, or 'Mad Queen' of Spain, and took six years to research and write. In this interview, Gortner talks about the novel, his inspiration for it, and how he was able to find the right agent and land a contract with a major New York Publisher.

Thanks for being here today. Why don’t you begin by telling us a little about yourself?

I write historical fiction; my new novel is The Last Queen, published by Ballantine Books, Random House. I’m passionate about books, animal rights and the environment. I’ve lived in the San Francisco Bay Area for the past twenty –five years but I’m half-Spanish by birth and also call Spain home. I hold an MFA in Writing with an emphasis on Renaissance Studies and have traveled extensively to research my work. It took many years to get a major offer from a large publisher; in the meantime, while I wrote, despaired and made secret pacts with every known spiritual entity for a break-through, I fed myself by working as a fashion marketer, editor, case manager, and administrative analyst. I published my first novel, The Secret Lion, with an independent print-on-demand publisher and, to my utter surprise, sold 8,000 copies online, which led to interest from my current agent and my sale last year to Ballantine. That, too, came as a complete surprise!

Tell us a bit about your latest book, and what inspired you to write such a story.

My novel The Last Queen is the first-person story of Juana of Castile, the last queen of Spanish blood to inherit the throne, and of her tumultuous relationships with her parents Isabella and Ferdinand, and her unwavering determination to fight for her throne against her husband Philip of Hapsburg. Known as Juana la Loca, the Mad Queen, Juana’s story is hardly mentioned outside of Spain, though she was the sister of Henry VIII’s first wife, Catherine of Aragon, and mother of the Emperor Charles V. Her life was full of drama, intrigue and passion, certainly worthy of a historical novel.

I’ve been fascinated by Juana for most of my life. In my childhood I lived near a ruined castle that had belonged to Juana’s parents. I’d clamber to its highest tower and think that Juana had touched these same stones, perhaps marveled, as I did, at the beauty of the Andalucian landscape. During a school trip to Granada, where Juana is buried, I found myself entranced by the marble effigy of this woman, whose face is turned away from the figure of her husband beside her. Most school children in Spain know the tale of Juana la Loca but I immediately wanted to know more. What was she like in real life? Did she really pull her husband’s bier behind her throughout the country, venerating his corpse? Was she truly mad? What happened to her to plunge her into such despair?

It took six years to research and write The Last Queen, including several trips to Spain and scrabbling in dusty archives. The challenge after the research was to sort through it all and decide what I wanted to write about. Fortunately, it quickly became clear that I wanted to focus on the woman herself— the fallible, humane, courageous and often lonely woman, whose experiences, while different from ours, certainly, are universal in the struggle to balance life and duty, betrayal and love. Juana has been dismissed, ignored and maligned by history but I discovered that she was an extraordinary figure for her time, and I felt she deserved a chance to tell her side of the story.

Article Author: Mayra Calvani

Mayra Calvani is the National Latino Books Examiner for Examiner.com.

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