1. Your novel, A Very Private Grave, has a modern heroine, but the plot requires she study the past to learn ancient truths. How challenging was it to delve into the past while staying true to the present? As a writer of historical novels, do you find it easier and more fun to play in the past or to write in the present?
You’re very right, Paul. This is a contemporary novel, but in order to solve the brutal murder of Felicity’s favorite monk and to prevent St. Cuthbert’s fabled treasure from falling into the wrong hands she and her church history lecturer must explore the events of centuries past.
Since most of my novels are set in Britain and I live 7000 miles away in Boise, Idaho, the research is always a challenge— whether historical or contemporary. I have to plan my stories very carefully and do all the research I can from home in order to make the absolute maximum use of my time on site.
Once I’m there, though, I don’t find much difference between researching the present or digging into the past. I go to all the places my characters will be going to and learn everything I can about it— past and present.
Since all of the Monastery Murders books are contemporaries with lots of digging around in the past I think I have the best of both worlds, as you say, “playing in the past and writing in the present.” I would hate to have to choose between them.
2. What prompted you to write this story?
I have wanted to tell Saint Cuthbert’s story since I first “met” him many years ago at Durham Cathedral. That a life of such simple, quiet holiness could have been so influential that it is still inspiring people more than 13 centuries after his death really intrigued me. I had convinced three previous editors to publish a similar story, but something else always got in the way of the writing. I think the time just wasn’t right. When our daughter went off to study in a monastery in Yorkshire and I got acquainted with the monks the background for The Monastery Murders began to take vibrant shape in my mind.
3. Are you writing a new novel at the moment? Can you tell us anything about it?
Oh, thank you for asking, Paul. Writers always want to talk about their current projects, don’t we? Book 2 in the series A Darkly Hidden Truth, which involves such disparate characters from the past as the enclosed mystic Julian of Norwich, Peter the Great and the Knights of Malta will be out this fall.
So I am hard at work on book 3 which I am calling An Unholy Communion as a working title. This is another story I’ve wanted to tell for many years: Wales from the very beginning with the birth of Saint David, Wales’ patron saint, in the sixth century, through the Roman occupation and on into the early 20th century with the Welsh Revival to today.
I have just returned from a research trip to all the scenes I will be developing, but I’ll have to say I didn’t stumble over a single dead body— some things are best left to fiction.
Click here to find her book on Amazon.
No comments:
Post a Comment