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Southern West
Virginia native Charles Randolph Bruce was born and raised there in
the highlands in which his Scottish ancestors settled in the late
1700s. His interest in telling the heroic story of Robert the Bruce,
King of Scots 1306 -1329, was sparked by his family’s tradition that
they descended from the great medieval warrior king.
Carolyn Hale Bruce was born in the Roanoke Valley, Virginia, where
her 18th century ancestors include those with the
Scottish surnames Agnew, Fraser, Thompson, and Davidson, among
others. She wrote and had published two pictorial histories of her
hometown.
The
writers were panelists on the nationally distributed Book TV (C-span
2) hour and a half segment entitled “Successful Self-Publishing” at
the Virginia Festival of the Book on March 29, 2008.
Now, having spent the last decade in
researching, writing, illustrating, and promoting the Rebel King
series of novels, Charles and Carolyn have traveled tens of
thousands of miles to attend scores of games in dozens of states
from Florida to Maine, Texas to Colorado, to promote their works and
talk with other Scots about their hard-fought history. They have
appeared on local television and radio shows in diverse markets, and
have been written up in many newspapers and magazines. Every year
new venues are added to their nearly nationwide wanderings.
Presently they are working on High
King of Ireland, the fourth book in the epic saga of The Bruce,
his “ragtag” army, and their attempts to free and maintain their
homeland from enslavement by English king Edward I (a.k.a.
“Longshanks” and “Hammer of the Scots”) and his son Edward II. The
authors are also working at furthering their desires to create a
documentary for airing on suitable cable television channels in the
near future, and to put their
novels on the big screen as
several feature-length theatrical films, the last of which would be
released on June 24th 2014, the 700th
anniversary of the Scots’ victory over the far-greater army of
Edward II at Bannockburn.
Also in the offing is the planned
fifth volume of the series, which will carry the story through the
end of Robert’s life in 1329. |
