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Wendy J. Dunn’s Dear Heart

© Sara Webb Quest

Author Wendy J. Dunn's Dear Heart, How Like You This? novel about Anne Boleyn, the lovely, ill-fated Queen, has won two prestigious awards: the 2003 ABPA Glyph Award Winner for Best Adult Fiction and First Runner Up in the Writers Notes Award. More importantly, it has won a slew of rave reader-reviews.

One Barnes and Noble reviewer said: "Step into Wendy J. Dunn's utterly romantic, always haunting and spiritually-unforgettable tale of the love affair between Anne Boleyn -- second wife of Henry VIII -- and her cousin Thomas Wyatt, rake, poet and impassioned lover, torn between his undying love for his cherished 'Anna' and her unexpected destiny as Queen of England. And look down the kaleidoscope to pity this man his burden."

SQ: Wendy, thank you so much for this opportunity to share your book and other projects! What motivated you to create Dear Heart, How Like You This?

WD: Thank you for the opportunity of this interview, Sara! So - what motivated me to create Dear Heart? Sir Thomas Wyatt! It's really his fault; once I started writing my response to his poem - a short story, I innocently thought - he just wouldn't go away. He so wanted to tell this story and defend Anne Boleyn that it felt like some kind of possession. I discovered Sir Thomas Wyatt's poetry as a teenager. I was so drawn to the poem that inspired the book, but it took years before I realized this one poem held the key to the world of Sir Tom and Anne Boleyn.

SQ: It is as if Sir Thomas, from heaven, gave you these words to write. What is the book's central plot?

WD: "Dear Heart" is very much a story of love, loss and letting go. Tom develops a close bond to Anne and her brother George very early in his life. Tom's bond to Anne is more than just close - he loves her, heart and soul. Separated at the close of Tom's childhood, they come together again at court as teenagers. Tom's now married -- an arranged marriage that's already crumbling. His Anna is in love with her greatest love, Hal Percy. But the King lusts after her and, through Wolsey, destroys her one chance of true happiness by destroying her union with Hal. Anne swears she'll get back at Wolsey and the King, but while she does bring the great Cardinal ultimately down, her relationship with the King becomes far more complex. Anne discovers something Tom already knows: she is the fly and not the spider.

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