A piece of history: The Battle of Toulouse

10 April 1814
The last major battle of the Peninsular War was fought over the important southern French city of Toulouse and - like many of the Duke of Wellington's attacks on fortified strongholds - proved a bloody affair.
It was also an unnecessary battle as Napoleon Bonaparte had abdicated four days earlier.

The Six Frenchmen Series

Just a word about the Six Frenchmen to introduce them:

Even though the threat of Napoleon had been averted by his imprisonment on Elba; there were whisperings that men were plotting to cause his escape and some of those men were Englishmen who had become traitors to their own country.

The six Frenchmen had not exactly been released from the British army, they were instead assigned to ferret out the traitors hopefully before Napoleon would be allowed to escape and this was why they were on their home turf; this was of course a top secret mission of which only certain members of the war department were aware and if they lost their lives, their deaths would not be acknowledged by the army.

The French men were brothers who owned homes up and down the coast of the English Channel even as far as Plymouth. The war department decided that with six watchers whose homes were strategically, conveniently placed to observe without undue suspicion, all the goings on in the channel; it was better for the six Frenchmen to be home instead of fighting the war on the other side of the channel especially since Napoleon had been defeated and was in exile.

 It was ironic that with a name such as French, the six men were fighting against France; it was also ironic that their mother was a French Émigré and who had taught her boys to speak fluent French, German, Spanish and Italian with a perfect accent and some of the boys had even taken her coloring. What could be better to fight against Napoleon than Frenchmen who were English yet spoke fluent European languages; how much better to thwart the enemy could it be?

The six were usually referred to as the Six Frenchmen, which was indeed confusing to French patriots, and that was more than likely why their campaigns against the enemy had always been successful; adding their perfect accents and language to the mix was indeed enough to confuse the enemy. It would be possible to arrange meetings with those English traitors who didn’t know who the Frenchmen actually were and glean enough enemy information to hang the traitors and confound the enemy.

   This business was not any less dangerous than what the French brothers had already been doing and could prove to be more so; they’d all been given leave to relax for a few months in London to give the impression they’d been released from the army before going to their various homes. Complications arose in the well thought out plans because as each brother returned to his home, he became involved with a woman whom he was unable to resist and each woman came with her own set of problems to solve. It is well known that Napoleon did escape from Elba eventually despite the efforts to prevent it but the Corsican monster was not the only monster needing to be eradicated. Was the Dragon German, French, Italian, or English and what debauchery was he involved in? Could the French men overcome both monsters and solve the young ladies problems too? Only I know the answers. I am almost finished writing the first in this series and I hope those who readit will enjoy it as much as I enjoyed writing it.

Sonnet 18 by William Shakepeare

Shall I compare thee to a summers day
 Sonnet 18
William Shakespeare

Shall I compare thee to a summer's day?
Thou art more lovely and more temperate.
Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May,
And summer's lease hath all too short a date.
Sometime too hot the eye of heaven shines,
And often is his gold complexion dimmed;
And every fair from fair sometime declines,
By chance, or nature's changing course untrimmed.
But thy eternal summer shall not fade
Nor lose possession of that fair thou ow'st;
Nor shall death brag thou wand'rest in his shade,
When in eternal lines to time thou grow'st,
So long as men can breathe or eyes can see,
So long lives this, and this gives life to thee.

I thought this was appropriate for any of my novels

New Book Cover for, 'The Ghostly Whisper'

The Ghostly Whisper

My book is in the process of being published it will soon come out for sale, I am very excited and hope others will read and enjoy what I have written. Brenda

Twilight Continued on fanfiction.net

If you enjoy vampire stories:

I need to acknowledge and thank Stephanie Meyers for her different idea of what a vampire can be and it is not necessarily the bloodthirsty creature who craves only human blood but there is a different kind of vampire who is considered ‘vegetarian’ and instead drinks animal blood. Stephanie created stories focused on teenage love, the stories enjoyed particularly by teenagers but many adults enjoy her stories too; these vampires obsessed one adult who couldn’t wait to read the fourth book, not yet published. I, who am that adult, decided to write my own version of the fourth book by using the same characters and adding a few of my own; the fourth book became more than one book of a continuing saga. In order to follow and understand my book it is necessary to read the original Twilight books, since reference is made to certain occurrences from those books, one through three, and then, upon a arriving at a fork in the road, take the next step. Do you want to read the teenage version of the fourth book that Stephanie Meyers created (perhaps you already have) or travel into―definitely― the more adult vampire world, the world I, Brenda Britton, created? I created a world of vampires living within a parallel world of humans and enjoying a symbiotic relationship with those humans. The majority of vampires are human bloodsuckers and the majority of humans do not know vampires exist even though they live side by side with them.

Stephanie Meyer’s character, Bella, intends to become a vampire because she wants immortality with her love, Edward. At the end of the third book, it has been decided Bella will marry Edward and become a vampire even though Edward isn’t completely sold on the idea of having a vampire wife. Most of his family is in agreement with Bella but there is one dissenter, Rosalie. There are certain quirks that make up Bella that I expected Stephanie to bring out when Bella became a vampire so I decided to include them in my story too. The first, most obvious, was Bella’s aversion to human blood even as a human, and the second most obvious was Edward’s inability to read her mind. Bella was also oversexed when it came to Edward in that she would have preferred to consummate their relationship prior to marriage but the old-fashioned Edward held off. I decided this was an important factor in the more adult book although I agree with Stephanie that teenagers should not be encouraged to partake in sexual relationships prior to marriage and teenage books should not encourage it.

My book is based on the premise that when humans change to vampires, they become more of what they were as humans. They become more beautiful, stronger, faster, more intelligent, perfect memory, and hearing that is more acute. Human traits also become more pronounced, sexual inclination being one of them, but with Bella, other aspects make her different from most vampires. The vampire world has different rules and mores than the human world and these things Bella must learn in order to fit in; she must also learn to respect the Volturi since they are the leaders of the vampire world she is now a part of. The Cullen’s welcome Bella into their family but she has no idea how different the human world was in comparison to what she’s now encounters as a vampire. The Cullen’s bring her gradually into their fold and teach her vampire basics but the reason Edward held off changing her becomes apparent when Bella is drawn into something completely beyond her expectations and she’s encouraged to learn from teachers that are more forceful and more compelling. The irony of it is, the Cullen’s allow Bella’s education of her new existence; the question is, would Bella have agreed to change if Edward had given her the complete truth of what her status would be upon becoming a vampire? To Edward’s credit at least, he was unable to explain anything about the vampire world Bella didn’t figure out for herself and although saving his soul was a major factor, he tried hard to discourage her because of several other issues that eventually become apparent. My book dwells on what Bella learns and how she learns to cope with her new freakish vampire identity; there is also danger, sex, and intrigue for her to contend with since those things seem to follow her. Most characters remain as they were in Twilight but there are some changes and new characters to either love or hate. The Cullen family are the same but one finds out more about them and how they accumulate their wealth; one also learns how Bella’s human family copes with the new, and to them, a different Bella. To all you Jacob fans, Jacob is included in my book but not to the extent he was in Twilight; this is definitely an ‘Edward’ book since he was my hero. The Volturi are still the overlords of the vampire world but I gave Aro a somewhat different personality, a vampire who Bella at first fears but then they become inextricably involved; nevertheless, he remains a person of great power to be respected by vampires and feared by humans. I hope you enjoy coming into my world of vampires; this will not detract from what Stephanie Meyers started but hopefully will enhance your enjoyment. I call it tying off loose ends but suggesting the story can be infinite in length just as vampires are eternal; this then is the never ending story.
Author Brengal