It took a while to come to a profound realization: I wasn’t me anymore. At least not most of the time. Pieces of the real me coalesced at times, making me all the more aware that I had lost myself—gone down the wrong road and was driving ever farther away from my true self and goals. Yet I kept trying to fit everything into my schedule: the day job, my growing writing career, my part-time teaching job. The workweek of all these components grew until there was absolutely no time for anything else. Things started to fall apart as intense stress took its toll. People close to me worried.

It’s interesting to view people’s interpretations of who you are once you’ve become sculpted into another identity: the institution’s/corporation’s notion of who that personality should be for a particular role, your best attempt to adopt that personality, and how you actually portray it, with elements of your true self shining through. But when you suddenly wake up and are faced with a reflection of yourself you no longer recognize, it’s time to take action or take the blue pill and live life as a passive somnambulant. A road that can only lead to regret in the long-term.

I first heard Johnny B. Truant on the Self-Publishing Podcast with Sean Platt and David Wright. Every Thursday, I sat at my desk with headphones on, listening to these guys succeed on their own terms. I wanted in, to achieve what they’re doing so successfully, but the idea of leaving my full-time office job to pursue my own venture was terrifying. One week, Johnny announced the release of How To Be Legendary, a free book providing guidance on achieving the dreams and goals most people keep putting off. I was one of those people, and I was starting to hate myself for it.

Then a few months ago, a friend who coauthored Howard’s Gift gave me an advance copy of the book, having mentioned me in the acknowledgements. Reading it in conjunction with How To Be Legendary was a profound experience.

New doors had been opening up all around me for the past few years, but I continued to go about my routine, making up a lot of excuses about why I should pass each one by. In Howard’s Gift, Harvard Business School Professor Howard Stevenson talks about inflection points, times when you have an opportunity for change, be it positive, negative, or a combination of the two. As I read the book, the impact of all those lost opportunities hit me full force. I considered all the variables and elements required to my plan being feasible: NOW was exactly the perfect time to make my move.

After a series of conversations with family and friends, we agreed that change was not only possible, but essential. I began to plan for a freelance career and gave my notice at the full-time job. But…the question remained: Could I pull this off and fill my time with enough to get by?

It was as simple as asking. I was presented with a wealth of opportunities. Everyone I spoke with had a suggestion, a person for me to contact, and the network continues to expand every day. Even though I’m not officially “launched” on my new career path, I feel surprisingly calm. I’m taking a couple of weeks off to rest up, and toward the end of June, I’ll start down a path I’m forging for myself. Soon a new page will appear on this site with information on the freelance venture. I’m under no illusions—I know this will be hard work and it will take time to get fully established. But I’m grateful for an incredibly supportive network of friends, family, and colleagues who are helping me along the way. And I finally feel like myself again.

Here’s the link to the free PDF of How To Be Legendary, and a big thank you goes out to both Johnny B. Truant for making it available. Take the red pill and see how far the rabbit-hole goes. Go be legendary.

I’ve participated in NaNoWriMo twice. And I played by the original rules—a new story, told from the beginning, typos and gaping plot holes be damned as, for the first time, I wrote directly into the computer, eschewing my preferred method of fountain pen and paper. I vowed never to lose, and wrote reams of rambling to help me develop the story. Characters interviewed each other to discover their motivations. Sparks of ideas turned into random scenes, parsed out into their own section in Scrivener, to be moved into their proper place in a future draft. I soared past the 50,000-word mark each time.

So when I signed up for April’s Camp NaNoWriMo, I figured this would be a piece of cake (pardon the cliché, a deadly writers’ faux pas, I know), especially since word counts were customizable. I set a nice, low bar of 15,000. And here I am, it’s April 27, and I have just 10,646 words. I don’t think I’ll manage much more by the April 30 deadline.

It’s more than the intense schedule bearing down on me this week. If there was ever a time to embrace my inner Viking warrior, it is now. But there are several factors at play here, and I’m content with walking away, not having met my goal.

I decided to join the rebels. Rebels don’t start an original story from the beginning. They work on revisions and a variety of other projects. Rebels have their own threads on the NaNoWriMo forums, ad are welcomed by the people who run the program.

It felt good to be a rebel this time. I pulled the manuscript from November, started over, and am slowly working on the draft. When working on the first draft, speeding through the writing process felt liberating. I wasn’t toiling over sentences and I focused on building the scaffolding of the novel. Some great scenes came up in moments of inspiration that may not have come up if I had been laboring and toiling and agonizing over just the right way to phrase a sentence.

The second draft is a more thoughtful process. The second draft strings together the rescued bits from the first. From the scaffolding, I’m building something much more detailed and complete. It won’t be ready to go to an editor at the end of the second draft, but I’m sharing it with other writers on Scribophile and revising as I go. The story requires a lot of worldbuilding. As one of my writing instructors has often said, you learn the whole writing process over again with each novel.

As Camp NaNo says on their site, “an idyllic writers retreat, smack dab in the middle of your crazy life.” This month was far from idyllic, but crazy is a spot-on description. As I turn to the editing the story which will be published later this year, I walk away from this experience happy that I made at least a little time for Camp NaNoWriMo. A rebel in two senses: working on a revision, and feeling satisfied enough not having met my super low word count? Maybe so. I’ll be joining them again in July, to be sure, and once again, I’ll be in the rebel camp, continuing the second draft. Maybe I’ll see you there.

I recently signed with Grit City Publications, the makers of Emotobooks. They specialize in short and serial fiction and the stories are illustrated with expressionistic art. The name of the story is Captured Possessions, and grew out of research I did while working on Dark Lady of Doona. During the war between Spain and England in 1588, one of the armada’s ships was captured by Sir Francis Drake. The prisoners worked on an English estate until their release was negotiated. Among the prisoners, it is said, was a woman who disguised herself as a man so that she could travel with her lover into war. It is believed she haunts the place where she was held, now called Torre Abbey. This is her story. We’re in the very early stages of production, but the story is expected to be released later this year. They’ve posted an announcement here. Do check them out. They have a great range of stories, and as a fan, I’m thrilled to be welcomed into the Grit City community as one of their authors.

On April 12, I’m participating in a panel discussion called “Paths to Publishing,” hosted by the Harvard Extension Alumni Association. Plans for this have been in the works for quite a while, and I’m happy to see it come to fruition. The event will be webcast live, and I will provide a link as soon as it’s available. In the meantime, though, for Boston-area folks, the registration page can be found here. Joining me as moderator will be Pulitzer Prize-winning author Paul Harding, who was my workshop instructor while I worked on my master’s at the Extension School. The other authors are journalist and historian Linda Kush, ALB ’05 (The Rice Paddy Navy: U.S. Sailors Undercover in China), historical fiction writer James Redfearn, ALM ’02 (The Rising at Roxbury Crossing), and journalist Paul Reid, ALB ’90 (The Last Lion: Winston Spencer Churchill: Defender of the Realm, 1940-1965).

Both of these opportunities have been a fantastic way to kick off the post-Mayan Apocalypse that never happened. I knew 2013 was going to be special, and with an upcoming wedding and hopes to move into a larger space better suited to me and my husband, it just keeps getting better.

In the meantime, we’re in the lead-up to Camp NaNoWriMo, April edition. Thankfully, the organizers now allow adjustable word counts, so I don’t have to commit to 50,000 words while in the midst of preparing Captured Possessions, organizing and participating in the panel, and working on a new novel (just reached chapter three!). I’m actually joining the rebel contingent for Camp NaNoWriMo and will be focusing on the novel already in progress, which also happens to be the one I worked on in November. Only I pretty much scrapped the November version and am starting from scratch again. Oh, and working those two jobs I have. It might be my busiest year, but so far, it’s also one of the best ever. A big thank you to everyone who helped me get here.

The last thing I ever expected to write about was Middlemarch. I’ve long had a difficult relationship with this book, but round three with it taught me new appreciation for it, particularly when I got to the end. And I don’t mean because I think I’ve read it for the final time, but because I finally read the back matter of the Norton Critical Edition, where the notes and essays on literary criticism are. It was there I discovered something rarely seen: an author’s own notes on a novel. The thought process, the crafting behind the magic, was revealed.

Titled “Quarry for Middlemarch,” these intricate notes offer a behind-the-scenes view into how George Eliot researched the novel. Eliot details political decisions that influenced nineteenth-century English society; the university exam periods at Oxford and Cambridge; and a tremendous amount of scientific research about cholera; the history and treatment of delirium tremens; and numerous excerpts from The Lancet, which was a relatively new publication in Eliot’s time.

I was riveted. Reading “Quarry for Middlemarch,” I felt like I was viewing a magician’s secrets. How often does one get to see this kind of thing? Which other expanded and annotated versions of other novels reveal the research behind the novel? I have an annotated Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit, and I actually took courses on Tolkien’s medieval resources and the languages he developed, but I want more. Something about having access to the research informs me as a writer. What stays in the notebook and what takes off in the story and gives it life—the magical essence that makes readers hold onto it? Medieval alchemists rarely, if ever, shared their secrets. One theory of the history behind the word “gibberish” makes the claim it was based on eighth-century alchemist Jabir ibn Hayyan, whose name in Latin became “Geber.” He was so paranoid about others stealing his secrets he created his own writing system and Geber eventually transformed into gibberish. As I read “Quarry,” I felt like I could finally dissect Middlemarch, and my appreciation for it was far higher than ever before. George Eliot wanted to examine marriage, science, and massive change, primarily in the form of the burgeoning Industrial Age, new scientific research, and politics impacting the very structure of society.

I’m addicted to research. Notes from dozens of history books are compiled into binders, one for each novel I plan to write. For stories where worldbuilding is necessary, I’ve created my own languages, maps, and world histories. The good news is that most of my research is done for the next few novels. The bad(?) news is that I always find more excellent history books to read and add to my notes. But after having spied into the creative mind of George Eliot, it made me wonder: who, if anyone, is going to go through my research after I’m long gone? If my stories make an impact and last, will “Quarry for Dark Lady of Doona” appear in the back matter of some annotated version of the book? Will some grad student, teacher, or writer find something of value there? Well, here’s a note to future researchers, if they care to know: seek out the original opening to Dark Lady of Doona. It had a certain rhythm to it that set the narrative tone, even though it “told” more than it “showed.”

Teaching the Vampire in Literature

“Welcome to my house! Enter freely. Go safely, and leave something of the happiness you bring!”—Dracula, 1897.

In 2002 I began a short story about the wife of the historical figure Vlad Dracula. I was in a sorrowful state of mind at the time, and the story served as a vehicle to process what was happening. A couple of years later, as I began a master’s program in literature and creative writing at Harvard Extension School, the story became the focus of many of the creative writing workshops I signed up for. A long-time Goth girl, I wanted to pay homage to Bram Stoker, so in a sense, my first novel is a work of fan fiction. As passionate as I was about this story, I knew there would be a specific niche audience for it. I toiled over it every night after work, writing through the night until the novel was complete. It served as the heart of my thesis, and after graduating, I began the long search for an agent, just as the great recession hit. Long story short: I self-published The Veiled Mirror: The Story of Prince Vlad Dracula’s Lost Love in 2010.

Coincidentally, the associate dean for the humanities at Harvard Extension had been developing a course about vampires. A few months after I published The Veiled Mirror, she contacted me and asked if I would serve as one of the teaching assistants for the course, called The Vampire in Literature and Film. I was honored (and stunned!) by the offer, and didn’t hesitate to accept. What did I learn? All vampire stories have an element of fan fiction—err, I mean pays homage—to what came before. This formula works in many types of literature. We began with the earliest works, Coleridge, Polidori, de Fanu, Byron, and of course, Stoker. As we moved into the modern works: Anne Rice, Charlene Harris, Rachel Caine, Tom Holland, Laurell K. Hamilton, Stephenie Meyer, and Elizabeth Kostova, the pattern became clear. There are certain expectations for a vampire story, and there is disappointment when these are not met. It’s part of the definition of any genre—certain traits are endemic to each one. However, each vampire story must contain some new innovative element that makes the work unique, or else all vampire stories would wind up the same. How to strike this balance is the question.

It reflected the experience I had while workshopping a novel I’ve been working on for years. Initially, it was a Gothic retelling of 1001 Nights with vampires as the central characters. My classmates’ comments were often similar: “But, shouldn’t she be sleeping in a coffin filled with earth from her homeland?” “Wait, you said there was a photo of him—shouldn’t it be impossible to take a photo because it’s like a reflection?” And so on and so forth. What we have now in most modern vampire fiction is a lengthy explanation, somewhere in each story, where the ground rules are set. Think of the introduction to Interview with the Vampire, where Louis dispels myth after myth. Garlic has no effect. He likes looking at crosses because he finds them beautiful. Once Anne Rice built a foundation where readers could suspend their disbelief, the plot could proceed.

With each new generation of vampire fiction, one still can find homage to the old stories, though. The basics are often still there: vampires tend to represent the aristocracy, with few exceptions. Dracula himself pops up fairly regularly. Some new innovation using a stake, garlic, or silver helps defeat or at least hinder the vampire, such as the ultraviolet-infused bullets in Underworld.

Even though it’s hip to balk at trends and many people roll their eyes when talk of vampires comes up, it cannot be denied that the popularity of the vampire story endures for a reason. The first time this course was offered, two hundred students signed up and the enthusiasm was off the charts. The enthusiasm didn’t diminish when it was offered again the following year. In fact, many students offered suggestions to the dean about which books she should include in the future. Various media channels have asked the dean for interviews, articles, and even though the course hasn’t been offered since 2011, the requests keep coming. The course will be offered again soon with a revised syllabus, and I expect we’ll see high participation again. And while my own writing has taken a different path, I still have a special place in my heart for vampire fiction. How can I not? It’s how I got my start as a writer.

To read an excerpt of The Veiled Mirror, please click here. Thank you for visiting, and enjoy the rest of the stops on the Vampire Bite Blog Hop!

Callum laughed. “I told you, Granía. She’s an exceptional cook. Is that why you came to visit me? My army, my food—is that all you care about?”

I walked up to him and grabbed him by the front of his coat. “That’s not all and you know it.”

His eyed widened in feigned terror. “I guess we give you run of the camp, boss.”

I craved a hot meal. Callum’s famed cook served us piping hot salmon pie. I savored the buttery crust and salmon with dates and almonds made up the filling. After a few bites, I put my spoon down. “That’s it. I’m taking her with me. If all goes as planned, we’ll be celebrating Richard’s becoming the MacWilliam, and we’ll need a feast.”

“I should hope that if we succeed, I’ll be invited to this celebration, in which case I’ll gladly bring my steward and his wife. She can cook for you then. But she comes home with me. She’s the heart of this camp,” he said.

I smiled. “Come for the battle, stay for the celebration of victory.”

—Dark Lady of Doona, Chapter 6

We’re enduring the onslaught of the fiercely named blizzard “Nemo.” Yes, I could think of the captain of the Nautilus in Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea. However, due to Disney’s relentless marketing tactics, all that comes to mind is a goofy clown fish. The joke’s on us, though, since the city of Boston is completely snowed in. People who own Minis are not able to distinguish their little cars from a snow drift. It’s a good day to stay inside and cook.

Coincidentally, Granía O’Malley was treated to the same recipe after an epic storm as well, in the Dark Lady of Doona. The first time I made this salmon pie, my sweet-toothed husband loved it, but I found it to be overly sweet. As I continued to modify the recipe, I found adding onion and crumbled bacon balanced the flavors nicely.

Medieval-style Salmon Pie with a Tangy Shallot Sauce

Ingredients:
crust
(Either use store-bought crust, or, if you’re feeling adventurous, make your own—I followed the recipe in the Joy of Cooking)
2 1/2 cups flour
1 tsp sugar
1 tsp salt
2 sticks butter
1/4 cup shortening
1/3 cup plus 1 tbs ice water

filling
1 1/2 lb. salmon fillet, sliced in small chunks
1 medium red onion, chopped
3 to 4 strips bacon
1/2 teaspoon ginger
1/2 teaspoon cloves
1/2 teaspoon cinnamon
1/2 teaspoon nutmeg
1/2 teaspoon black pepper
1 teaspoon salt
1 tsp. ras el hanout spice mix (optional, but highly recommended!)
1/2 cup dates, chopped
1/2 dried figs, chopped (I’ve also used fig preserves, such as Dalmatia Fig Spread, flavored with orange)
1/2 cup golden raisins
1/4 cup almond milk
1/2 cup slivered almonds

Directions:

To make the crust, mix the flour, salt, and sugar in a bowl. Working quickly, cut butter into the dry ingredients. Use pastry blender to chop butter into pea-sized bits. Add shortening, and mix in blender—do not over-stir and let it get soft. Drizzle water and blend. You may need to add another tablespoon or so of ice water to have the dough stick together enough. Divide dough in half, press each into a round disk. Wrap each one in plastic and refrigerate for a minimum of 30 minutes. If you’ve never made pie crust before, I’d recommend reading up on the process—it can be tricky!

Preheat oven to 375 F.

In a skillet, cook bacon until crispy and set aside. Cook chopped red onion in bacon fat, until browned.

In a bowl, mix dates, dried plums, raisins, salmon, and spices together. Add onion and crumble in bacon. Pour almond milk over and mix gently until the milk is completely soaked in. Arrange the filling in the pie crust, with the dried fruits toward the bottom and salmon chunks toward the top. Sprinkle with almonds.  Bake the spiced salmon pie for about 40 minutes or until the crust is golden brown.

Tangy shallot sauce: 
2 shallots
1/2 stick butter
1 cup white wine
1 tbs smooth Dijon mustard
5 tbs crème fraiche
1 tbs finely snipped chives

For the sauce, peel, halve and finely chop the shallots. Melt the butter in a small pan, stir in the shallot, and cook gently for about 5 minutes until soft. Stir in the mustard and then add the white wine. Boil, uncovered, until reduced by half. Stir in the crème fraiche and chives. Simmer, stirring frequently, until sauce thickens.

Serve a generous ladle of sauce over each serving of pie. Enjoy!

Served with a side of cucumbers sauteed in butter and dill sauce

Callum poured ale as we ate. He fell silent, watching the hearth. He pushed his plate away and turned to the fire to stretch out his legs.

I liked the silence. The rocking of the ship settled into my bones and I knew the feeling would still be there as I drifted off to sleep. The phantom rocking sensation was usually a comfort but now provoked haunting images. “The Aifa was destroyed so quickly I didn’t have time to think about it,” I finally said with a sigh. “The lightning must have struck dead center. I’ve never seen anything like it, and you know how long I’ve been on the sea.”

“You’re fortunate, Granía. If it’s to be read as an omen—”

“I know. Though I worry my luck may run out.”

“Don’t let doubt make you unsteady,” he said. “With doubt comes defeat.”

“True enough. I should consider my plan,” I said.

“You should rest. It’s late,” he said, standing. I admired how his golden curls reflected the warmth of the fire. He removed his fur-lined vest and laid it over the back of his chair. “Care for some mead?”

“I can’t rest, but my men are welcome to. How long before you can gather your men? How many of them can help with my ships? I have good craftsmen, but I need lumber to make repairs, and more supplies. I hate to come up and take just about everything you have, Callum. I’ll pay your men well. We have support from all of Connaught. We’re sure to win with an army as big as this.”

He reached out to hold my hand as he slid the glowing amber glass toward me with the other. “I’m giving you my cook for this effort, Granía. What else could you ask for?”

I slid my plate toward him. “Another slice of salmon pie.”

“You must be the beloved cook I’ve heard so much about,” I said.

She had a lilting laugh. “Ah, these men, they know no better. They’re just grateful for a hot meal.” Her gentle demeanor reminded me of my daughter. I wondered what Margaret must have thought sometimes when Carraigahowley Castle was overrun with men from my fleet.

“Well, you have an admirer in me, too,” I said. I glanced with interest at the stone griddle she placed before the fire. “What are you making?”

“Now that everyone has eaten, I’m having my own breakfast. Care to join me for some oatcakes and leeks?” She smiled as she reached for a wooden bowl.

—Dark Lady of Doona

When I started writing Dark Lady of Doona, I wanted food to feature in it more prominently than in my first novel. I’ve become rather attached to the practice of making recipes that would have been familiar to the characters in my stories. It’s a wonderful way to connect with the characters, and my hope is that my delving into the details about cooking, that readers will be able to relate more closely to the time and place being described in the story. While researching the Tudor era, I came upon a recipe for oatcakes. Knowing the popularity of leeks and cheese, I created a feast of a breakfast for a hungry female captain who commands her own fleet. As Granía O’Malley stops in the Hebrides to hire mercenaries to join her husband’s army, she enjoys oatcakes topped with buttered leeks. I’ve altered the recipe somewhat here, based on numerous experiments. And the addition of the spicy sausage patties? Well, they happen to be a favorite of my husband, and they go well with the meal. It’s a fabulous brunch to prepare on a cold, rainy morning, and keep an eye to the sea for any galleons that may pass by!

Oatcakes Topped with Herbed Goat Cheese and Leeks

(And a Side of Spicy Orange Sausage Patties) 

Goat Cheese Spread

Ingredients
8 oz. goat cheese
1 to 1½ tsp. Herbes de Provence
Zest and juice of one lemon

Blend in food processor, keep at room temperature until serving time.

Braised Leeks

Ingredients
2 large bunches of leeks (about 6 to 8), thoroughly rinsed and cut into small rings
half stick butter
3/4 cup chicken broth
1½ tsp. Herbes de Provence

Melt butter in deep skillet, add leeks and cook over medium heat for five minutes, until they soften. Add broth and Herbes de Provence, and braise, stirring occasionally as it reduces, for about fifteen minutes, until sauce thickens and leeks are soft.

Oatcakes

Ingredients
1 1/2 cups steel-cut oats
1 cup flour
1/2 cup sugar
1/2 tsp. baking soda
1/4 tsp. salt
1/2 cup chilled vegetable shortening, cut into pieces
1/4 cup buttermilk

(Note: I often add a pinch of powdered ginger and nutmeg to this mixture–highly recommended!)

Preheat oven to 350F. Grease large baking sheet with butter. In large mixing bowl, mix oats, flour, sugar, baking soda, and salt. Add shortening and mix using hands until mixture is coarse and well-blended. Add buttermilk and stir dough.  Make large-cookie sized rounds and place on baking sheet.

Bake oatcakes until golden, for about 15 minutes, turning once midway through.

Preparation: Top each oatcake with goat cheese spread and leeks.

Spicy Orange Sausage Patties

1 lb. ground sausage (or pork)
1/4 c. bread crumbs
2 tbl. orange juice
2 tsp. maple syrup
2 tsp. finely chopped cilantro
1/2 tsp. hot paprika or chili powder
1/2 tsp. salt
1/2 tsp. black pepper

Combine all ingredients and mix well. Heat nonstick pan over medium heat. Form each patty about 1/2 inch thick. Place in pan and fry, turning once, about 5 minutes per side, until cooked through.

Apollo and the Muses on Parnassus
Hans Holbien, 1533

I’ve learned an important lesson since Dark Lady of Doona was published three weeks ago. Don’t call your next novel a sure thing. For months, I was convinced my third novel would be a story set in 1880s Arizona. I published Doona, pulled out my research notes for the new novel—got organized, wrote a plot outline, wrote the first page . . . and . . . nothing. My heart wasn’t in it. Not sure if I love the idea of the story more than actually writing the story.

The epic fantasy brewing in my imagination since the mid-1980s evolved yet again. I’ve been indulging in worldbuilding for days—developing a language, creating characters and coming up with new histories for the world. It might just emerge at the top of the list. I’ve been staying up way too late every night, scribbling in a journal I’ve dedicated to this story alone. And yet . . .

My dystopian/speculative fiction project from NaNoWriMo 2012 also calls. The Muse is busy, darting between three possible choices for the third novel. While the Muse is distracted, the other novels-in-waiting call out with increasingly loud voices.

I’ve blogged about my 50-page curse in the past. After completing my first novel, I thought I knew what I wanted to work on next, but then I cycled through several stories. I did months of meticulous research and wrote the first three or four chapters to each. The good news is that I have a ton of research done for numerous novels, it’s just a matter of choosing the one to focus on.

This time, I recognized that I was repeating this pattern before too much time went by. I’m trying to cut this vacillation down to two weeks. By the end of January, my decision will be made. Or the Muse will make it for me. Either way, I’ll write every day until this gets sorted out. And in concert with this decision-making process, opportunities to promote Dark Lady of Doona are coming up, so there will be a lot of writing going on in any case!

Full cover art for the paperback edition

The second novel is published! I seem to be holding to a tradition. My first novel was published on January 1, 2010. Dark Lady of Doona was released as an ebook on December 29, and the paperback was being uploaded and processed on January 1, 2013. It is now available across the various booksellers, including Smashwords, Amazon, Apple, and Barnes and Noble. More books available = more things to do on the blog, so Her Raven Domain underwent a redesign. Exciting things are in the works. I think it’s going to be a banner year for Her Raven Domain.

It’s great to see the second novel out there. As some people have commented, now that there is more than one, it feels real. I’m eternally grateful for all the communities of indie authors I’ve connected with in the past couple of years. The Alliance of Independent Authors, the groups on Google+, Goodreads, and Facebook, all have provided me with wonderful advice and support.

I remember walking back from the library with four books about Granía O’Malley in the summer of 2005. I assumed this would be an easy one to write, and it was, in the sense that the characters were vivid in my imagination. But then came the complications of writing historical fiction…

It wasn’t just about the infamous pirate queen of 1500s Ireland. Focusing just on Granía made the story fall flat, regardless of how entertaining her crew was in the first few chapters. I dug deep, studied the war between England and Spain, and suddenly, it became a spy novel set against a historical backdrop. There are elements in the plot that seemed to be a stretch, but isn’t any good sailor’s yarn? The fountain pen flowed and the characters acted it out. Then I stopped and put the manuscript aside. I finished my master’s degree and published The Veiled Mirror. I took on a part-time teaching assistant job in addition to my day job and filled every waking second with some kind of work.

Then came the weekly writer’s group. Over the course of several months, I shared the first 50 pages of three novels in the works and asked my friends which one was the most compelling. Which story did they want to see play out? The vote was unanimous: Dark Lady of Doona. Not wanting to spend my first NaNoWriMo experience as a rebel and write something I’ve worked on before (though that may happen this year, just to be realistic about my projects!), I wrote the draft for my third novel, which may be released by the end of this year. Somehow, in the midst of all of this, Dark Lady of Doona underwent several revisions, and was published by my crazy, self-imposed deadline.

A virtual book tour is happening this spring, and I’m participating in all kinds of blog hops, guest posts, and so on, while the new projects come to fruition. Where to next? The theme of real women marginalized by history continues, and the third novel is set in 1880s Arizona. Stay tuned! (And maybe set the date for January 1, 2014, insha’allah?)

1. Your debut novel, Cephrael’s Hand, was the winner of The Written Arts Award for both the best fiction and the best Sci-Fi/Fantasy categories–congratulations! So tell us, what was the inspiration behind this story, and can you tell us a little bit about it?

I started the first version of Cephrael’s Hand when I was going through a difficult time in my life. I needed the cathartic joy that I’d always found in writing. I didn’t set out to write a novel—just to write. That first draft had no planning, no world-building, no design. It was pure creative inspiration. And it was awful!

But the characters… I had brought them into being, and they insisted that they had a story to tell. It took my growing as a writer—and over a million words tossed into the trash—to finally tell their story properly.

Cephrael’s Hand is the result of a philosopher’s approach to fantasy. It’s the story of one man’s steadfast determination to save the realm he swore to protect, and his willingness to do anything it takes to accomplish that end—even to betray those he loves. It’s the story of the unlikely pieces (men and women) who unknowingly fall beneath his shadow, and of the players who follow him. Ultimately, it’s a story of salvation.

I see fantasy as a metaphor for life in this world. We all face tests of our honor. We’re all working to accomplish our goals and flourish and prosper. Few of us set out to do evil. Yet evil is done. Goals are abandoned. Integrity is compromised. We totter precariously on thin wires as we move through the labyrinth of life. I strive with my series to illuminate those wire-thin paths, that we might find solid ground beneath them.

2. Without giving away too much, can you reveal what’s in store for the readers when they crack open Cephrael’s Hand?

If you listen to my critics—too many characters! But this is an epic fantasy dealing with a conflict that spans multiple kingdoms. It takes a team to save the world.

Hopefully you’ll meet interesting characters and a world you can easily find your own place within.  You’ll discover pirates, princes, star-crossed lovers and philosopher-soldiers. You’ll see many characters who are not as they appear, and a few who are exactly as they seem. You’ll find adventure on a perilous road with prince Ean val Lorian, and farcical escapades with Trell of the Tides and the pirate Carian vran Lea.

You’ll often wonder who is good and who is evil—because most villains in real life are cloaked in shades of gray.

3. Can you tell us more about some of the key concepts that inspired the world of Cephrael’s Hand?

The story is crafted out of many of the philosophies I’ve studied. As I was planning <em>Cephrael’s Hand</em>, I had been reading about game philosophy. Game philosophy speaks on the importance of games in our lives and takes a look at their composition (barriers, purposes and freedoms) and their anatomy (pieces, players, maker of games). It’s a compelling concept with abundant applications, and I became immediately interested in exploring the ideas more via the story of <em>Cephrael’s Hand</em>.

Balance is another concept that threads throughout the story. Exploration of this idea comes out of my study and practice of yoga. If ever a concept permeates our lives, the pursuit of balance is one. Whether seeking to balance work and parenthood, our social commitments and our private lives, or even just the juggle of that list of a thousand things we’ll never get to, every one of us is seeking balance in some fashion. Placing this concept within the framework of a fantasy story embellishes it with a magical lure.

4. The Cephreal’s Hand constellation plays an important role in the book. Is there a real life constellation that plays a similarly important role in your life?

I can’t say that a particular constellation is important to me personally, though I’ve studied Astrology for many years. But I’m drawn to the idea, both scientifically and philosophically, that we are all connected somehow with each other and the broader universe. String Theory and General Relativity play to this idea from the perspective of science. Certainly, if we are connected to the stars in some esoteric way, then the actions of the stars can impact us. Astrology believes this, and the graphing of natal charts proves an underlying truth in this ancient, mystical and often misunderstood science. Philosophies far and wide declare that we’ve descended or separated from a universal oneness and teach karmic values with the intent of helping us return or re-ascend to that harmonious state.

The concept of Balance in Cephrael’s Hand stems from this idea of universal connectivity.

5. Ever since a linguist named Tolkien came along, language has been a very important aspect of the epic fantasy genre. What inspired the various languages in Cephrael’s Hand?

The desert languages are based on Farsi or Arabic, depending on the tribe. Farsi is one of the oldest  languages still in use today, and its traditions lent themselves well to the Kandori culture, which is one of Alorin’s oldest races. Likewise Arabic, being originally a language of the nomadic tribes, seemed the correct base from which to draw the language of the Akkad.

Even older than both of these languages in my novel is Old Alaeic, which is the original language of the angiel, the Maker’s blessed children, and of the two original races: the zanthyrs and the drachwyr. Old Alaeic draws primarily from Gaelic root words. I chose Gaelic because the language maintains some of the earliest roots of our Indo-European linguistic heritage. Its spellings and pronunciations are almost universally reminiscent of mythological beings from ancient times and are often associated, especially in the fantasy genre, with elves, Druids or other mystical races.

6.  Which other authors have served as influences and inspiration for your own work?

I love lyrical writing, so my bookshelves host an eclectic mix (albeit heavily weighted with fantasy and science fiction). Those who first come to mind from the fantasy genre are Anne Rice, Patrick Rothfuss, and Jacqueline Carey, all of whom carry on a great and fabulous romance with the English language, much to the ecstasy of millions. Being able to string words like pearls into a story that reads at times like poetry in motion seems the greatest pinnacle of storytelling skill.

7. It’s been said that one of the most time-consuming processes of writing epic fantasy is world building.  Without giving too much away, what are a few of your favorite world aspects and what inspired them?

As I wrote in a recent guest post, world-building and the magic system developed for the world are intimately connected. We can’t really describe a fantasy world without talking about the magic that rules it, because so much of what we understand about the world derives from our understanding of how the physical laws of the world work.

In creating my world of Alorin, I established five “strands” of the lifeforce known as elae. These strands are a way of describing and codifying the lifeforce which is the source of energy in the world, but they are only one way of describing it. While most of the viewpoints I am writing from agree with describing the lifeforce in terms of “strands,” there are other races in Alorin who have codified it differently, darkly, or with less purity for lack of philosophical simplicity.

I love exploring different viewpoints and imagining how each would describe a universal energy. I love examining the cultures that seek to describe this energy and how their ideals might alter their understanding of it. For example, the Adept race believes that Adepts are born with the ability to work one of the five strands, but only one. Yet some of the “Wildling” races are known to be able to innately work more than one strand.

The Fhorgs race works blood sacrifice to fuel their magic. Would their magic work without such sacrifice? The Adepts believe that it would. Yet within the Adept philosophy, a working of magic requires faith both in the existence of power and in one’s ability to manipulate it. If the Fhorgs don’t believe themselves able to wield the lifeforce without letting blood, it follows that magic would become unavailable to them simply because of their lack of belief. Moreover, because the Fhorgs don’t limit their ideas of their magical ability to a five strand approach, it’s possible they might achieve more through the wielding of it–or not. These are existential questions for these two races, questions which set them at odds with each other. Questions from which derive conflicts and persecutions, intrigues and betrayals.

Such explorations fuel both world-building and magic-system building, because their delineation establishes how the world works, how the people of the world interact with the energy that fuels it, how they interact with each other, and how they use the energy itself to work arcane acts.

8. You grew up in a house full of musicians, but your creativity emerged in the form of writing. Have you always felt called to write?

I always thought I would end up with a career in music like the rest of my family. I grew up harboring such an appreciation of these accomplished, classical musicians all around me, it seemed a natural course to follow in their footsteps.

Instead, I stumbled into writing the way one sometimes bumps into providence, colliding with it accidentally. I happened to take a creative writing class in high school. My creative writing instructor believed the best way to teach writing was to send her students out to actually write. So I did—hundreds of pages over the next few years. Writing became both an outlet for my creativity and the escape reading had always provided. I know I share that love affair with many authors.

9. At one time or another, most writers hit the wall and their work stalls because of the dreaded writer’s block. What do you do to get around or over this mental wall to resume writing?

Usually I turn to music—either composing it or listening to it. If I can find a great new song, sometimes that will help inspire me out of the hole. When a scene just isn’t working, I’ve learned to go back to where I was last doing well in the story and scrap everything that came after. It’s an agonizing process, but often necessary.

10. The Dagger of Adendigaeth, Book 2 in your series, has just been published. How has your vision expanded from book 1 to book 2, and what kind of creative growth have you experienced in your process this second time around?

We grow as writers with every novel—at least I believe that’s the goal. Many of the things I gained in writing The Dagger of Adendigaeth are intangible, ineffable understandings of myself and my creative process. I think of those times of being fabulously, fantastically stuck and the final moment of inspiration that launched me out of that depressing well. I think of the plot twists that came to me completely without warning, and the absolute magic that is the creative process.

The thing I loved most about writing this book was being able to explore so many viewpoints—especially the viewpoints of those characters who might be viewed as antagonists. But I don’t and never have seen them that way. It’s my greatest purpose in writing this series to be able to show the motivations and ideals that mold and shape each character. The more we can understand each other, the closer to a peaceful coexistence we will find, whether in the microcosm of our lives or the broader political and religious zones.

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About Cephrael’s Hand:  Two brothers find themselves on opposite sides of a great battle, neither knowing the other is alive… A traitor works in exile while preparing for the disaster only he knows is coming… A race of beings from beyond the fringe of the universe begin unmaking the world from within… And all across the land, magic is dying. Cephrael’s Hand is the first novel in the award-winning series A Pattern of Shadow and Light. Get it on Amazon and Barnes and Noble.

About the author: Melissa McPhail is a classically trained pianist, violinist and composer, a Vinyasa yoga instructor, and an avid Fantasy reader. She lives in the Pacific Northwest with her husband, their twin daughters and two very large cats.  Visit Melissa on melissamcphail.com, Twitter, Facebook, or GoodReads.