First Excerpt
From the Shakespeare & Beyond Blog at the Folger Shakespeare Library
“Heartwarming”
July 25, 2025: Blue Mountain Rose was excerpted on the Folger’s Shakespeare & Beyond blog. They wrote: “Julie Hammonds’ heartwarming novel takes readers backstage at a Shakespeare festival banking on a production of Hamlet to save its fortunes.”
Introduction
Blue Mountain Rose: A Novel in Five Acts is the story of the venerable Blue Mountain Rose Theatre Company, which is preparing to produce Hamlet amid the financial strains of the Great Recession. In this excerpt from act 1, scene 9, the cast is gathering for the first time. The scene features Peter Dunmore, their Hamlet, a British stage actor who recently played a vampire in a blockbuster movie and became a reluctant worldwide celebrity. He’s acting at the Rose under a fake identity to hide from fans and the media. Paparazzi discovered his previous hideout and took an embarrassing photo. Richard Keane is the company’s longtime executive director. His assistant, Kate Morales, manages the company. She and Peter are becoming friends during weekly ski outings.
Excerpt
The nearer they’d come to the all-hands meeting, the more nervous Peter felt. Someone in the cast might recognize him from his movie or remember him from London. Peter could imagine in detail the scene in which his cover was blown and he had to either face the consequences or turn and run once more, straight to the airport for the next plane out.
He’d fought the better angels of his nature throughout one Monday ski. Finally, reluctantly, he asked Kate about the cast list, not wanting to lean on their friendship but curious beyond the limits of his self-control. She’d been coy. Richard never shared the list publicly ahead of the first meeting, she’d told him. The secret created a bit of theatricality Keane immensely enjoyed.
But it’s a matter of life and death, Peter thought, recognizing immediately that it wasn’t. “Then never mind,” he’d told Kate. … Read the full excerpt.
Second Excerpt
From the Prologue of Blue Mountain Rose, published by Soulstice Publishing
Prologue
Kate uses the master key to open the wrought iron gate, then clangs it shut behind her and slides the deadbolt home. A copper coin embossed with the masks of Tragedy and Comedy swings from her key ring. She rubs it for luck as she returns the key to her pocket; superstitious, perhaps.
She walks through the open yard where the groundlings stand on summer evenings, sometimes raucous and other times rapt. Climbing the stairs into the lowest audience gallery, she drops a cushion onto the front bench and settles in. Only now does she look up. The familiar sight of this open-air Elizabethan stage always lifts her spirits.
The Blue Mountain Rose Theatre wears its winter robes. Removable rolling doors seal the inner stage in the offseason, and waterproof drapes protect the elaborately carved balcony railings from snow. Supported by two gaudily painted posts, a built-in roof called “the heavens” shields the outer stage. Beneath that holy protection, how many times has doomed love sighed away its brief hour?
The stage is Rome and Verona, palaces and London streets, alehouses and battlefields. Eleven years of joy and drama flash across her mind. Prince Hal, carousing shirtless with Falstaff and his merry ruffians; Rosalind and Celia, innocents at play in the Forest of Arden; Mark Antony, holding the restless crowd spellbound with the power of words.
In half an hour, a crew will knock at the backstage door, and their work of preparing the theatre for Hamlet will begin. Tech rehearsal starts in a week, and on this day in late April there is much to do. Kate’s clipboard holds the list of tasks needed to ready the Rose for her sixty-third season. Though the crew know their jobs, Kate is their hub, the center of a wheel that must turn smoothly from now to October. She must be ready to answer questions, give directions, and guide the work when the crew finds new wear and damage from this winter’s snow and rain.
She will be ready; Kate is always ready. But here in these stolen moments before the day’s rush, she doesn’t have to think about any of it. She can simply sit in this enchanted space and breathe.
To read the rest of this excerpt, email Publicity Manager Myles Schrag and request the full excerpt. It includes the first 25 pages (the Prologue and the first four scenes in Act 1). A complete Review Copy is also available in multiple formats for those who might purchase the book at wholesale, write a review, or book the author for an interview or speaking engagement. Contact us to request it!
Frontispiece art is based on a sketched reconstruction of Shakespeare’s Globe Theatre by Joseph Q. Adams; Science History Images/Alamy Stock Photo
