Today, I am chatting with author Marthese Fenech about her sweeping historical novel, Eight Pointed Cross, the first book in her Siege of Malta trilogy.
Set against the turbulent world of the sixteenth-century Mediterranean, Eight Pointed Cross is an epic story of conflict, courage, divided loyalties and ordinary people caught in extraordinary times.
Marthese joins us today to talk about the history behind the novel, the characters who bring that history to life, and the incredible amount of research that goes into recreating a world five centuries in the past.
Publication Date: 12th May 2026
Eight Pointed Cross takes readers to the Mediterranean in 1551, when the Ottoman attack on Malta and Gozo brought devastation to the islands. What drew you to this particular moment in Maltese history as the starting point for your Siege of Malta trilogy?
When I was twenty and visiting Malta, I went to see The Malta Experience. Watching the Great Siege of 1565 play out on the screen inspired me. I knew immediately that I had to tell this story. But as I began researching, I realised that the events of 1565 didn't happen in isolation or on a whim. There was a long history of tension, rivalry, shifting alliances and conflict behind them. The further back I went, the more I could see that this particular storm had been brewing for decades.
The smaller scale invasion of 1551 seemed almost like a springboard. It was a devastating event in its own right, particularly for Gozo, where thousands of people were carried off and enslaved, but it also marked a significant turning point in the relationship between the Knights of St John and the Ottoman Empire. It changed the strategic reality of Malta and helped set the stage for what would eventually become the Great Siege. So although Eight Pointed Cross builds toward the events of 1551, I wanted to take readers on the journey that led there. For me, history rarely begins at the moment we think it does. I needed to go beneath the famous story, discover what came before it, and share that with readers.
Domenicus is caught between his responsibilities to his family and his own hopes for the future. What kind of protagonist did you want him to be, and how does the increasingly dangerous world around him shape the choices he makes?
I wanted Domenicus to feel like a real young man rather than a conventional heroic figure. He does start off as an idealist, a romantic even, naïvely believing that those in charge actually have citizens’ best interests at heart. In some ways, his coming-of-age is inseparable from the coming-of-age of the world around him. He has ambitions and hopes for his own life, but he is also deeply tied to his family and to the obligations that come with belonging to a particular time and place. As he grows, he realizes he doesn't have the luxury of simply deciding what he wants and pursuing it. His environment has a way of narrowing his choices.
That was important to me because one of the things I find most fascinating about historical fiction is the question of how ordinary people respond when history suddenly intrudes upon their lives. Domenicus begins with his own ideas about the future, but as the political and military situation deteriorates, he is forced to make increasingly difficult choices and face some rather demoralizing realities. He has to decide what kind of man he wishes to become and what he is willing to sacrifice to achieve that.
Katrina's story gives readers another perspective on life during this turbulent period. How important was it to show the experiences of women alongside the military and political events unfolding around them?
Showing the experiences of women was absolutely essential. When we think about military history, particularly a story involving the Knights and the Ottoman Empire, it is very easy to focus on commanders, battles, fortifications, and political decisions. But women weren't standing on the sidelines while history unfolded around them. During sieges, women took up arms and actively participated in the defence. They boiled tar, collected errant cannonballs, kept cauldrons boiling, threw rocks and incendiary devices, and even fired arrows or guns when necessary. Some dressed as knights to make the enemy believe the defences were more heavily manned than they actually were. And these women were exposed to exactly the same danger as the men. They weren't simply risking their lives to support the men; they were risking their own lives to defend their homes, their families, and their communities.
Katrina allowed me to explore that reality, while also giving women a voice and agency beyond the battlefield. I wanted her story to have its own weight rather than having her exist as someone's wife, daughter, or romantic partner. And I confess that I put a little of myself into her. Katrina speaks bluntly, says what she thinks, and isn't particularly interested in being told what she can or cannot do. :) There is something very satisfying about writing a woman who refuses to accept the limitations others try to press upon her. History is made up of more than the people whose names appear in official records, and particularly for women, so much of their experience has been left in the gaps. Fiction allows us to imagine those lives while still respecting what we know about the historical period.
Demir allows readers to experience events from the Ottoman side of the conflict rather than viewing the story solely through the Maltese perspective. Why was it important to you to portray characters on both sides as individuals rather than simply dividing the novel into heroes and enemies?
Because history is almost never as simple as "us versus them." One of the things that drew me so strongly to this period was the extraordinary complexity of the Mediterranean world. People belonged to different religions, empires, cultures and political systems, but they were also individuals with families, friendships, ambitions, fears, and loyalties of their own.
Demir allows the reader to see the Ottoman world from the inside rather than through the eyes of someone who considers it the enemy. I refused to write a story in which one side was inherently good and the other inherently evil. That’s just not reality, no matter what some current voices on the world stage might suggest. People can do terrible things while still being recognisably human, and people on opposing sides can share remarkably similar hopes and fears. For me, allowing readers to care about characters on both sides makes the conflict more powerful. It reminds us that war is made up of individual human beings. My goal is that readers will root for Maltese and Ottoman characters alike, cheer for their successes, lament their losses, and wish for them to all prevail—despite that they can’t all prevail.
You have a personal connection to Malta and have visited many of the places that feature in the novel. How did experiencing those landscapes firsthand influence the way you recreated the sixteenth-century Mediterranean world?
My personal connection to Malta certainly informed much of the way I describe the island, and the opportunities I’ve had to travel abroad for research have provided an absolute treasure trove of sensory details I could never have captured from a textbook or photograph alone. There is a tremendous difference between knowing that a place is hot, dry, and surrounded by sea and actually standing on a Maltese fortification in the middle of summer, feeling the stone radiating heat beneath your feet, and the salty wind coming off the harbour. I have walked the streets, stood on the walls, explored churches and fortifications, and spent time looking at the landscape from the same kinds of vantage points my characters would have known. Those experiences taught me a new language of sorts, giving me a physical vocabulary that allowed me to bring scenes to life.
It also made me much more conscious of what has changed and what hasn't. The landscape can be a bridge across centuries. A particular stretch of coastline, the colour of the stone, the quality of the light, the way the sea looks from a particular height. These details can make the sixteenth century feel close, perhaps even alive.
The Mediterranean of this period was a complex world of competing powers, cultures, religions and loyalties. What aspects of sixteenth-century life proved particularly fascinating to research?
We often tend to think of the past in neat national categories, but the sixteenth-century Mediterranean doesn't really work that way. People, goods, languages, ideas, religions, and political ambitions were constantly moving across the sea. Malta itself sat at an extraordinary crossroads between Europe, North Africa, and the Ottoman world.
The layers of identity and loyalty fascinated me. A person could have very strong religious convictions while also having political, familial, or economic loyalties that complicated their faith. Trade connected people who were supposedly enemies. Empires depended upon networks that crossed cultural boundaries. The Mediterranean could be a highway, a source of wealth, and a terrifying battlefield, all at once. The more I researched, the more I realised that the Mediterranean wasn't a briny backdrop to the story. It was one of the forces that shaped every character's life—this body of water brought the knights to Malta, carried Angelica’s enslaved mother away, took Augustine from his family when he served on caravans, provided the Maltese with food, and, ultimately, brought both progress and war to Malta’s shores.
Although the novel is rooted in real events, your fictional characters must live and move within the gaps left by the historical record. How do you decide when to remain firmly guided by documented history and when to allow your imagination greater freedom?
History provides the framework, but I do the plot weaving. The major historical events, dates, political realities, and things we know actually happened have to be respected. I don't want to change history simply to make the story more convenient. But historical records inevitably leave enormous gaps, particularly when it comes to the lives of ordinary people. That is where a historical novelist has room to work.
My responsibility is to make sure that my imagination remains faithful to the truth of the period, even when I'm inventing the details. If I don't know exactly what a particular person said on a particular day, I can imagine it, but I need to understand what that person could plausibly have known, believed, feared, and experienced at that moment. The research gives me the boundaries, but I can expand the world within those boundaries. Also, I do have the built-in advantage of being Maltese, so the language, customs, landscape, religion, and social rhythms are all very familiar to me. I did need to get acquainted with the other worlds, starting with the Ottoman Empire, to make sure I portrayed the characters who hail from outside Malta as accurately as possible.
Eight Pointed Cross combines warfare and political upheaval with family relationships, love, loyalty and personal ambition. How important was it to keep the human consequences of conflict at the centre of such a large-scale historical story?
The human consequences are the heart of the trilogy. Historical fiction is a story told through a character's lens. The setting and scale can be enormous, but the human condition is timeless. I think the reason historical events continue to matter centuries later is because of what they meant to individual people. A battle might be recorded in a few lines of a history book, but for the people who lived through it, those few lines could represent the loss of a parent, a child, a home, a livelihood, or an entire way of life—culture, religion, freedoms.
That's what I wanted to keep at the centre of Eight Pointed Cross. The military and political events give the story its scale, but the characters give those events meaning. I want readers to understand not just who won or lost, but what those victories and defeats cost the very people involved, especially the ones who didn’t have wealth, a prominent name, or an estate far removed from the battle to which they could safely retreat. The larger the historical canvas becomes, the more important it is to keep returning to the individual human being standing in the middle of it.
Your own love of adventure and travel seems particularly well suited to a novel filled with danger, journeys and conflict. Do those interests influence the way you approach action and adventure when writing?
Very much so. I love travel because it allows me to experience the world rather than observe it, and I think that naturally influences the way I write. I'm interested in what a place feels like, sounds like, smells like, and even how it affects the body. That physicality is particularly important when I'm writing action. I love to challenge myself physically, and I take note of how I’m feeling as I do so. In fact, my husband and I live in British Columbia in Western Canada for a few months every year and spend as much time as possible in the mountains hiking and climbing and paddling down rivers. Physical exertion gives me perspective and opens up my mind to so many creative possibilities. Pushing past my edge is invigorating and very rewarding from a creative perspective. The ideas flow because the emotion and effort these activities elicit can be applied to any scene.
I've also deliberately pursued experiences that help me understand the physical realities behind the writing. I've become a certified archery instructor, taken fencing lessons, and practiced at a gun range, for example. Those experiences don't mean I can literally reproduce what a sixteenth-century person experienced, but they give me a better understanding of movement, fatigue, distance, weapons, and the body. Action and adventure writing works best for me when grounded in the physical world.
As the opening novel in the Siege of Malta trilogy, Eight Pointed Cross introduces readers to characters and conflicts that will continue to develop across the series. What did you most want to establish in this first book about the world—and the people—readers will follow through the trilogy?
I wanted to establish a world that felt vast, complicated, and alive, but I also hoped readers would become emotionally invested in the people who inhabit it. The trilogy advances toward events we know from history, so the challenge was never merely to create suspense about what would happen—a simple online search can provide that information. The real question is what those events will mean for the characters.
It was also important for me to establish that there are no easy lines between loyalty, love, faith, ambition, and survival. The characters are going to be tested by a world that is becoming increasingly dangerous, and the choices they make early in the story will have consequences much further down the road. Part of why I write in the present tense, even though my books are set five hundred years ago, is that I try to avoid making history feel comfortably distant. I’d like readers to feel the heat, the fear, the uncertainty, and the choices as though they are happening now, rather than looking back at them from a safe five centuries away. Most of all, I want readers not to feel that they have been told the history of Malta, but rather that they have stepped inside it, alongside the characters who live there.
A huge thank you to Marthese Fenech for joining us today. It has been an absolute pleasure chatting with her about Eight Pointed Cross and discovering more about the remarkable history behind the novel.
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See you on your next coffee break!
Take Care,
Mary Anne xxx