The day of returning light. After the many long dark nights going deeper and darker it’s always uplifting to know that we’ll start seeing a little more light each day now. From times in the far distant past people have celebrated this day, finding hope and expectation in the light’s return.
Newgrange passage tomb, Ireland
I’ve mentioned before the ancient passage tomb of Newgrange in Ireland, a few miles north of Dublin. Some 5,000 years ago the people built this tomb with little more than stone tools, constructing it with such precision that on Solstice morning rays from the rising sun flash through a high doorway and stream down the narrow, 62-foot-long passage into an interior chamber, filling it with light. For what purpose? We do not know. They did not leave written word to tell us. But we can imagine.
In my new upcoming book set in ancient Ireland I describe the moment and offer the beliefs of my characters. It’s a major locale for multiple scenes. And when you read the story you will experience Solstice morning with them.
The etched kerbstone at Newgrange showing the doors to the passage
The above photo shows the upper door for the light and part of the lower door for people to enter. The carved lines on the threshold stone inspire the protagonist of my story in her artistic creations.
This is the book my new literary agent, Joëlle Delbourgo, has offered to represent. So I look forward with hope that it will soon see the light.
I’m delighted to announce that I just signed with an agent to represent me on my newest historical novel set in ancient Ireland. Her name is Joëlle Delbourgo, her agency a boutique literary agency based in the greater New York City area.
JoëlleDelbourgo
Only three days after my return from the Seattle conference I got a surprise email from Joëlle, President and Founder of Joëlle Delbourgo Associates, who I had queried a couple of months before. I had sent her ten pages of my book as she requests for all submissions. Now she wanted a full manuscript.
She has a stellar background. She founded her agency in 1999. For more than twenty years before that she was a senior editorial executive at HarperCollins and Ballantine Books, a division of Random House, so she knows both sides of the publishing world. Her list of sales is impressive.
With considerable excitement I sent her my manuscript. In less than two weeks she wrote to tell me she loved my book. She wanted to talk.
We had a wonderful conversation by phone. She knew my characters. She knew my story so well she pinpointed several specific issues that can make it stronger. And she offered to represent me. I was thrilled.
It just so happened that she had traveled to Ireland last summer for the first time so she knows the land of my characters too. I’m convinced there’s a bit of magic in those green hills.
Just back from a great writers conference in Seattle put on by the Pacific Northwest Writers Association (PNWA). Here I am on the last day with Pam Binder, PNWA President and program director of this annual event. Every year she puts together another fabulous conference with her excellent team.
Pam Binder, PNWA President, conference program director, on the left, me on the right.
When I went downstairs looking for an I-was-there photo to add to my comments on the 2025 conference I was hoping I might find Pam to get her picture, and there she was at the registration desk, happy to oblige. I also wanted to thank her one more time for coming to my rescue in the pitch session.
These conferences offer a chance for authors to meet agents and editors face to face and pitch their projects to them. It’s always upbeat at these PNWA conferences, everybody encouraging each other to do their best. I think that atmosphere starts at the top. An award-winning New York Times bestselling author, Pam knows the business, and she’s always ready to help an author reach the next level.
Bohonagh Stone Circle, West Cork, Ireland
I pitched my newest novel set in ancient Ireland featuring the People of the Stones, those mysterious stone circles and other megaliths scattered across Ireland and Britain’s west coast and on down the Atlantic seaboard.
In my story it’s 750 B.C. and the Celts wouldn’t have been in Ireland yet, but we know where they were–in Hallstatt, Austria, so my protagonist has to go there.
The goal for the author pitching an agent or editor is to get a request for material, a few chapters maybe, or 50 pages, or, best of all, the full manuscript. I’m happy to say I got a positive response from every pitch. But it wasn’t entirely simple.
Imagine the setup. All of the authors who’ve signed up for a particular block of time are led into a room where the agents and editors are sitting behind a very long table. The authors get in line for a person they want to pitch to, and each gets four minutes to describe their project and convince that person to ask for part or all of it. At the end of your four minutes a bell rings and you have to skedaddle because you don’t want to crimp the time for the person in line behind you.
So I was pitching one person and we were having an extended conversation when the bell rang. She handed me her business card and said I could stay a bit to finish the conversation because no one was behind me. But then someone did come up behind and I hurried to leave. I went out into the hall and realized I had no idea what the person I just pitched wanted from me. Maybe she told me but in the confusion I didn’t hear it. Did she want to see any of my work? I didn’t know. So in somewhat of a daze I wandered down the hall to the registration desk, where a man asked if he could help me. I saw Pam Binder looking through some papers and said, “I think I need Pam.”
I told her what had happened. She thought about it a minute, then said, “You need to go back in and get in her line again and ask her.”
Pam didn’t send me. She led me. And with her as my escort I did exactly as she said. The person greeted me and answered with enthusiasm, “I want to see the full manuscript. I want to read this.”
Yay! Now, I’m not giving away names. That’s for later, if it works out in the long run. But pitching is a challenge. Encapsulating your book into a few words that pique a desire to read it. And these positive moments are bits of gold. Thank you, Pam.
With hugs to send me off, Pam took this goodbye picture of me in my signature hat.
Happy. Optimistic. Glad for a few more bits of gold.
Here I am in one of the hotel’s pleasant courtyards near the end of this whirlwind event, feeling happy about all the wonderful connections I made this time.
Great writing conference in Seattle a little over a week ago. I decided last minute to fly up and attend so I could pitch my new historical novel set in ancient Ireland. I was delighted by the responses from agents I pitched and have now sent off the queries with material they asked for. Fingers crossed. It’s all in the words of course. Hope they love it.
I so enjoy the people at these conferences. Everybody has a story. They are, after all, storytellers. When you meet someone they often ask what you write and you tell the story about that and of course you ask them and hear their story. Attendees also encourage each other. After the pitching begins you share with each other how your pitches went and maybe glean a little information on someone you hope to pitch next. A very upbeat, mutually encouraging atmosphere.
I stopped over in Portland to see family on the way home. One of my daughters just got a new job in Portland and I hadn’t seen the new place yet. Now all my kids are in Oregon for the first time in ten years. I’m so glad. A couple of photos below show views from our walks on a hill overlooking downtown Portland. That’s Mount Hood on the hazy skyline in the second photo.
Looking down to the Portland city center from the heights near Washington Park.A city building seems to echo the sharp peak of Mount Hood behind it.
It’s older than Stonehenge. Older than the pyramids of Egypt. Newgrange. More than 5,000 years ago Neolithic people with only stone tools built this mound with such precision that the rising sun on the morning of the winter solstice would stream down a long, narrow passage to the vaulted chamber of the interior and fill it with light. There beneath a meticulously corbelled roof the bones and ashes of their dead waited.
Two doors enter the passage. The one above receives the sunlight. The one below, partially hidden behind the carved kerbstone, receives the people. I was here with a tour group. I would soon go in.
No one knows what those carved symbols mean, and the guide told us the triple spirals have never been seen anywhere else. We offered our thoughts. I suggested life, death, and rebirth. The people in my stories of ancient Ireland would believe this.
The photo of the upper door was taken for me by a nice, very tall man in my group. I took the lower one. That’s as far in as we were allowed to take pictures. The way is narrow. Sometimes you have to scrunch your elbows in. Sometimes you have to duck under low stone before you enter the inner chamber once visited by the ancients.
I was like a child before Christmas. I barely slept the night before my tour to this amazing site. The tour would also take me to another passage tomb in the same area, Knowth, and to the Hill of Tara. A worrisome drizzle followed our bus as we rolled out of Dublin, first stay on my overseas trip this spring. When I planned the trip I knew I would not rent a car this time, so I chose bases from which I could take tours or just excursions on my own by local bus or train.
I gave myself a day for jet lag and to explore Dublin enough to find my way to the place the tour bus would pick us up the following morning. This was my first tour of the trip. And one of the more important. When I read online about the Newgrange Tours by Mary Gibbons, I knew I wanted to take her tour. It was the right one. No question. But who knew on the 22nd of December when I reserved it what the weather would be on the 19th of April. I just had to hope.
The drizzle let up when we reached the Hill of Tara, the first stop on our tour. But it was blustery out. I had to forego the hat and pull up my hood. I was glad for every layer I wore. I had chosen Tara as an important site in my new book, this place of myths and legends and making of kings. I’d visited Tara once before, some years ago, but I hadn’t retained a good sense of it. Pictures don’t do it justice. They don’t quite show how high it rests over the surrounding plains. I did remember the mound. It’s a passage tomb also, not as large or elaborate as Newgrange, but from the same era. The name “Tara” is apparently later than my story’s time but I use it, as I sometimes do when a place would be difficult to identify for readers without the familiar. I call it Tara Mound for the tomb there, not the Hill of Tara.
Our group trekked across the rich green grass, and over the henges, the circular ditches and rims on the ground where ancient deeds occurred. It was evidently a gathering place for many years, and I used it so in my story. I imagined my character trekking across it with me and heard our excellent guide, Mia Craig, mention to someone that scholars believe Newgrange was only in use for 600 years. That concerned me. I had my people using it much later. When our group began to meet up at the gift shop before moving on to our next stop I saw her standing alone and walked over to ask her about that. She reassured me. “They don’t really know,” she said, “and there’s an old Irish saying, ‘You don’t want to let facts get in the way of a good story.'”
We laughed together. I told her I tried to get things as right as I could, which was why I was back in Ireland. She didn’t think I should worry about using the site for my characters. Of course scholars can interpret the presence of objects. Not so easy to interpret the absence. That’s where I can fill in the gaps with my world-building.
The drizzle came back, windshield wipers on the bus working hard as our tour headed toward Knowth, another intriguing site along the River Boyne, this one with multiple passage tombs like chicks around a mother. But they can tell from its shape that the large mound in the center came after the others because its irregular shape accommodates them.
By the time we got to Knowth, again the rain stopped and we gathered around the local guide, a good-looking man with silver hair and bright blue eyes. He started by asking if anybody had been there before. I raised my hand and said I had been to Newgrange. Twice. He asked when, and I told him. With a twinkle in those blue eyes he suggested I could probably give this talk as well as he. I said only if I could follow an old Irish saying our tour guide just told me about, that you don’t want to let facts get in the way of a good story.
He chuckled and said, “Well, we try to keep to the facts here.”
One of his comments startled me when he told about recent DNA studies which showed that the early Neolithic people who built these tombs came out of Anatolia, people with tawny skin and dark-brown eyes, whereas those who followed came from the steppes of Russia with their pale skin and blue eyes, like his. From my own studies I understood that the early Anatolians were likely worshipers of a Mother Goddess and may have been matriarchal, while those from the northern steppes worshiped sky gods and were patriarchal. My ancient series draws together the worlds of Minoan Crete and Ireland, so when he mentioned Anatolia I recalled reading that DNA evidence shows that the Minoans also came out of Anatolia.
Whoa! Were these people kin? Would their oral histories reflect similarities? It was mythologist Joseph Campbell who inspired me to bring the two islands together when he wrote of a second hearth west of Crete where at the same time as the Minoans the early Irish showed through their myths a similar culture with strong women and the worship of a Mother Goddess. Now the DNA evidence in Ireland appeared to confirm that connection. A thrilling discovery for me.
Next stop on the tour was the Newgrange visitor center. We were getting close to the main show. Drizzle picked up again. The visitor center was wonderful, more elaborate than my last visit. I don’t think there was a center the first time. We just drove up to the site. Now they would take us from the center on special buses on a predetermined schedule. We wore pink bands on our wrists to indicate our time slot. The schedule gave us time for lunch in their pleasant lunch room and to visit the displays. I didn’t want a big meal so I opted for a scrumptious raspberry scone with raspberry jam. They even heated it for me. Wonderfully decadent.
After lunch I especially enjoyed a walk-through at the visitor center where shadowy deer and birds moved among silhouettes of forests. Nice illusion. Among the trees several screens showed films of the three significant passage tombs along the River Boyne–Newgrange, Knowth, and a third that isn’t open to the public, Dowth. The High Tombs of my ancient Irish stories. A drawing portrayed a dog, its appearance based on bones found there. He looked just like the dog in my new story that I imagine resembling an Irish Wolfhound, though the breed is much newer. There he was! My dog Tormey!
We crossed the River Boyne on our walk to the Newgrange buses that would carry us to the site, a skiff of mist in our faces, heavy skies overhead. I had scoured Google maps and online photos, trying to see how big a river this was. Could a person ford it on foot? Or would they need boats or rafts? On that bridge I got my answer. I would keep my character on a boat.
When our bus pulled in to Newgrange the clouds parted like an opening curtain and a bright sun came through. I climbed out of the bus, looked up and saw it, white quartz face aglitter. The marvel that is Newgrange.
This is the place where my Clan of the Grey Wolf lives, their clan mother a dear friend who’s like a second mother to my protagonist Levaen.
The local guide split our group to take half at a time in the passage into the interior of the mound, while the other half were free to wander the site. Just what I had hoped. I wanted to wander around and get the lay of the land. What about my description from a ridge above? Well! There isn’t a ridge above. The mound lies on the ridge itself and the encircling pillar stones are much lower in the back, the kerbstones at the mound’s edge following the downward slope until they are completely covered with turf. The river is visible, but distant. Revisions I’ll need to make.
The mound had long since collapsed when excavations in the 1960s and 70s brought it back to its original state as nearly as could be determined through meticulous study of what they discovered. From my reading it appears that the passage and vault with its corbelled roof were basically intact, although some of the uprights in the passage were leaning and had to be straightened. It’s a bit more complicated, but that seems to be the gist of it. Scholars still argue over the white quartz facing, but they found a pile of the quartz in front that must have been used somehow, and quartz facings from the period have been found on other sites. It certainly offers a dramatic impression.
Finally it was my turn to go in. My heart raced when I stepped inside the narrow passage, scrunched my shoulders, dipped my head. I’m a little claustrophobic, and we were warned about that. But I knew I could do it. I had done it before. Somehow memory slips away and the moment becomes new. I drew a full deep breath when I got through the passage and entered the spacious vault. I looked up at the intricate layers of perfect corbelled stones, each course of slabs partly resting on the one below, up to the capstone high above me. The interior is shaped like a cross with the elongated passage as the shaft, three extensions inside, one to the left, one to the right, one straight ahead, where stone basins held the bones or ashes.
For the tour they turned out the lights and shone a single light down the passageway to represent the rising sun on winter solstice that would fill the chamber with light. In my story that light embraces the spirits in the bones or ashes and carries them out the passage to lift them to the stars where they will await rebirth. Now I felt the wonder of it.
When the tour was over I exclaimed to Mia, our tour guide, “That was the best!”
Every place seems to have a certain personality, a character you can only know in its presence, so when I write a story and spend any amount of time in a particular place I want to reflect the sense of it. That’s why I want to go there, to know it, and thus better knowing it, let my reader know and feel what I felt there.
As my followers may remember I recently completed a historical novel set in ancient Ireland and surrounding lands. I had already visited many of these places when researching the series that’s related to this story, but happenings differ and characters may look at their world from different perspectives. Can she, for instance, see the river from there?
This is Newgrange, the ancient passage tomb built some 5,000 years ago by Neolithic people who walked there long before my characters. It’s older than Stonehenge, older than the pyramids of Egypt. My story opens in 750 BC. And yes, she can see the river from this spot outside the tomb. She won’t try to ford it, though. It’s much too deep and swift. I’ve seen that now. She’ll take a boat across, as I’d written it.
I have visited Newgrange twice before, in 1993 and in 2004, but not only was I working on different stories then, I did not have a digital camera that would allow me to share such a photo here on my website or on other social media. I carried my small Nikon digital camera I took on my 2018 trip and a newer iPhone than I had then. And I sought out better pictures as well as research photos to help me hone my descriptions.
Late last year I began contemplating this trip. I decided I would limit it to Ireland, home of my protagonist, and Hallstatt, Austria, homeland of the proto-Celts, where she spends a considerable amount of time. For quick stops I can take trips by Google Map, but for long stays I want to soak a place in. I had visited the charming village of Hallstatt once before in 2006 when I traveled there with my Austrian friend Tilly. But I was researching a different book then, one that fell by the wayside. Now I wanted to see Hallstatt with the new book in mind.
I had forgotten how steep the mountains, how stark the limestone cliffs, how sparkling the lake. Yes, the quaint houses will ever climb that bluff, the iconic church steeple pierce the sky. But as I wandered the single street, climbed the many steps, found the waterfall I knew was there and included in my story, I enjoyed a sense of it I did not have before.
I didn’t rent a car so in Ireland I picked bases from where I could take tours or just go on my own by bus or train. I started with eight nights in Dublin. Then to Limerick for five nights. And a five-night return to the heart of my story, Rosscarbery, staying at the Rosalithir B&B with my wonderful hosts Catherine and Finbarr O’Sullivan. My third visit with them. The last visit in 2018 had been much too short and left me with critical questions on the setting. The new visit would answer questions I didn’t even know I had. A vital visit for understanding the lay of the land. And the water. The beach.
This was the rugged eastern headland I needed for one of my stories. Golden Eagle Bay in the world of my characters was broader than I thought on my brief stop in 2018. It took me several walks, especially over the newly improved Cliff Walk on the western headland to figure it out. From there I looked back and the setting became quite clear, the revisions I would have to make.
It was moments like this that I confirmed my need for this trip. Yes, it was time to travel again. Yes, I wanted to revisit these special places, but with that discovery and more I found answers to questions I hadn’t thought to ask.
In the next several blog posts I’ll share the journey–from Dublin to Salzburg, Austria, where I stayed a couple of nights on either side of my Hallstatt excursion because of its access to an airport. A lovely spot itself where I stayed in an amazing 17th century seminary converted into a hotel. The adjoining church even had a domed roof.
I’ll add the posts to the new “Going There” list on the sidebar as I publish each one.
I’m just back from an excellent conference in Seattle where I went primarily for the purpose of pitching agents for my new historical novel set in ancient Ireland. I was happy that my friend from my Eugene writers group, Kristine Jensen, attended also.
Here we are in one of the many halls at the DoubleTree by Hilton hotel with a lovely interior garden behind us.
PNWA (Pacific Northwest Writers Association) always offers a good conference. People are friendly and mutually supportive, but it’s especially nice to have someone there that I know. Kris was also pitching agents for her new novel.
It’s an intense program because stakes are high. We both scheduled two pitch blocks.
These are 90-minute sessions where everyone who has reserved a certain block pours into a large room where agents and editors wait behind a long table. You get in line before an agent or editor you’ve chosen and when it’s your turn you sit across from that person and pitch your work. You have four minutes. Then the buzzer goes off and you hurry to the line of another agent or editor on your list.
I had four agents I particularly wanted to pitch, and I was glad I had reserved two blocks. The first day I only had time for two. Fortunately the second day I was able to pitch the other two. And that’s when magic happened.
This is my oh-my-goodness-she-loved-my-Ireland-setting-and-my-storyline face. I was so happy.
All four agents and one editor asked me for material. That’s the goal. Whether you get everything said or not, you want that invitation to send pages, chapters, or even a full manuscript, as requested. Whatever you forgot to say or decided not to say because of the strict time limit, you can say in a cover letter.
On one of my pitches I had taken the end of a very long line of people waiting to pitch to this particular agent. I was afraid the 90 minutes would end before I got to her. But I eventually saw that I would make it. I stepped up to the blue line where the next author to pitch had to wait. A lady who was a volunteer helping things run smoothly stepped close to me and asked what I was pitching. I said it was a historical novel set in ancient Ireland. She spoke softly because we needed to be quiet, but she let me know how much she loved Ireland and the special places there. By the time the buzzer went off and it was time for me to pitch she had me in a zone of delight over my story.
I sat down in front of the agent and with the confidence just instilled in me told her I had a historical novel set in ancient Ireland. Her eyes lit up. Her whole face. She loves Ireland. She’s part Irish. And when I relayed my story points, my protagonist’s dilemma, the conflict, the tension, she responded with such enthusiasm I was thrilled.
Here’s Kris after the pitching was over, serene in the knowledge that she had made some good contacts for her wonderful story set in 60s South Dakota. She got requests for all her pitches too. We went to a couple of workshops afterward, feeling good and somewhat drained. One of the things I like about this conference is that you meet many authors who are seeking that positive response, and you’re plugging for them as they’re plugging for you. So there’s a lot of “How did you do?” “How did it go?”
So it’s nice to rest up a bit. My room was about a mile from the lobby, or almost that, but it was a room with a view. The blue peeking through the trees below that building in the distance is a lake.
Here’s the nearest elevator on my trek to the room, which better shows the lake.
And from inside the elevator.
Later that evening I happened to see the volunteer who had encouraged me so much before that pitch. She smiled. “It went well, didn’t it?”
“Yes, it did.”
“I saw her face,” she said. “I knew.”
You never know when you’re going to meet an angel, just when you need one.
The story waits, ready to be written from a skeletal document inside the computer, a hard copy of that framework in the blue notebook shown below. The outline.
In my mind I see not the words but the people and places, like the wondrous temple of Knossos on the Greek island of Crete. And the green fields of Ireland that resemble my own green knolls on this soft May afternoon in Oregon.
The grand pillars of Knossos.Green fields of Ireland.
The characters are almost as real to me as my neighbors—because I move inside them as I show their story. I laughed with delight when I heard travel guide Rick Steves comment about the ancient Romans. They “were just people, like you and me, without electricity.”
True, they had different customs, but they felt joy and sadness and love and fury just as we do. For me it has always been exciting to imagine what life was like in ancient times—or will be in the future. I love Star Trek too. But these ancient times in these two unique islands caught my heart.
To outline or not to outline?
Authors often hold strong views on that question. Non-outline writers may insist they’d be hemmed in by an outline. Outliners like me can’t imagine drawing all those threads together without one. I would never let the outline stop me from taking new directions. But I’m not just keeping threads together for one book.
This is a series that follows two great families through the generations—the high priestesses and kings of Crete, the clan mothers and chiefs of Éire. This new story begins about 100 years after the opening scenes of Book One in the series. I have to keep track of them all.
Besides consistency, each story requires new research. Scholars keep digging and adding more information. Sometimes I find details—either new or new to me—that affect other stories in the series. For instance when I first started writing about voyages from Crete to Ireland I assumed it would take many months to make the journey. But I found a website where you could enter names of modern ports, designate the speed of travel, and voila. They give you the overall trip time. I had to cut the time dramatically. Of course I had to determine from other sources how fast the ancient ships might go with their single square sails and ranks of oarsmen. I found estimates for similar Viking ships, other estimates for simple rowing, prevailing winds that would increase or decrease the speed.
In other instances when you’re writing a tight storyline where you want a lot to happen in a day you have to figure out what you can fit into that day and roughly what hour events can happen—even though I can’t express time in hours for people who lived by the sun, moon, and stars, not the clock. Another website tells exactly when dawn and dusk happen on any given day in any given setting. It’s not just how fast a ship can go, but a horse, a man, a woman. All these details take time to calculate. I don’t want to stop in the middle of a fast-moving scene to figure it out. So that goes into the outline. From that the rough draft can move swiftly.
Now this new one is ready for me to plunge in and live it as the words flow.
When we’re called to shelter the walls may feel tight. Yet I’m grateful to be able to shelter on our farm. Walks on the mountain have brought daily joy. Spring has come and gone. Summer’s here. The lavender’s in bloom.
I’m also grateful my work is here, and I can immerse myself in that. I’m working on the series, two trilogies, one centered in ancient Minoan Crete, the other in ancient Ireland. They’re complete now. But before my agent sent Book One to a new publishing house recently she suggested I review it.
Review it.
Two simple words. But it meant going through the whole thing. So in silence I entered that world once again–and found places to heighten the tension, smooth the flow. After she sent that off it occurred to me that if I found places to improve in Book One, maybe I’d better review Book Two–which led to reviewing Book Four, one I had recently revised dramatically. And once I read that I thought I’d better make sure the required changes in the opening of Book Five still worked. I got caught up in that story and didn’t really know where to stop, so I read it all. Book Six is a bit long and I think I should see if I could trim it a little–which will require a full read. But I got to thinking about Book Three, which I had skipped because it has always read so well, thanks to my muse who breathed so much of that story into my ear. What if I could make it just a bit better? I reviewed it. No big changes but worth the read.
Because I have been so deep into this, I haven’t been on social media much. It’s in the silence that I make progress.
Before I launch into Day One about my recent research trip through Greece and Portugal, the UK and Ireland, it occurs to me that it might help clarify my reasons for this journey and my reasons for writing the ancient historical series if I backtrack to the beginning. My focus on the Greek Isle of Crete started in 1994 when I set out to research a mystery novel on that exotic Mediterranean island. I had been writing books and pursuing publication for about 14 years, without success. I had moved from Roseburg, Oregon, to San Francisco in late 1989, ending a long-term marriage, and I was seeking answers for my life.
During this time I read a New York Times bestselling book by Riane Eisler called The Chalice and the Blade, where she describes nothing less than the overturning of the world’s cultural norms from woman-centered civilizations to a patriarchal world ruled by contentious warriors. I was fascinated. One chapter stood out for me, where she describes Crete as the “essential difference.” Because of its isolation in the Mediterranean Sea, this island remained one of the last holdouts of those woman-centered cultures. Its primary city of Knossos offered stunning revelations about these Bronze Age people when archeologists began uncovering the fabulous ruins some 100 years ago. Eisler describes Crete as the most advanced technological culture ever found where women were not dominated by men. I wanted to see this place.
Room in the Palace/Temple of Knossos
When I visited Knossos and stepped into the partially reconstructed ruins of its central structure, the place seemed to wrap itself around me like a mother’s loving arms. I no longer wanted to write my mystery novel. I wanted to immerse myself in this world and come to know the mystery of the ancients who once thrived there.
Prince of the Lilies Fresco, Knossos
The British archeologist Sir Arthur Evans who uncovered Knossos in the early 1900s was struck by what he found–grand staircases and pillar-lined corridors, technological wonders like flush toilets and an elaborate drainage system, frescoes revealing a free and sensuous lifestyle with women standing proud at the center. He believed he’d found a matriarchy but as a man of his times he thought they needed a king to run it. He saw this as the Palace of King Minos mentioned by Homer and Hesiod. But later scholars suggest it may have been a temple, an idea I adopted for my books, and I drew from one of Eisler’s thoughts on King Minos, depicting him as a Mycenaean warrior with designs on Crete–and a couple of Cretan women.
Part of Knossian Procession Fresco
While in Crete I met a man who helped me understand the attraction, the delight, the frustration that can happen when cultures clash. The experience found its way into my story which opens on this peaceful isle on the day the warriors come.
The frescoes shown here are reproductions of originals that are housed in the excellent Archaeological Museum in nearby Heraklion, Crete, the island’s primary modern city. The bull-leaping fresco appears in the opening scene of my book now called Beyond the Waning Moon. And readers will experience a bull-leaping event in the second scene when the protagonist faces a fierce bull in the court.
Bull-Leaping Fresco, Knossos
I wrote the book and continued editing and revising for several years as I sought its publication. Riane Eisler kindly critiqued the opening and when I addressed her concerns she called the result powerful, responding “Brava!” The novel eventually became a finalist in the Pacific Northwest Writers Association Literary Contest. The next year I found a way to tie the people of Crete to their counterparts in the distant isle of Ireland, another place that had touched me deeply and where I have personal roots.
My search for life’s answers led me to mythologist Joseph Campbell and especially his four-volume work, The Masks of God. My focus riveted on his discussion of Ireland and how he could see behind the Irish myths to a culture of Mother Right, essentially a matriarchy that would have preceded the later patriarchy. As Eisler points out in Chalice and the Blade, this isn’t the flip side of patriarchy where women rule over men but more of an egalitarian society accepting the full worth of both genders. Neither writer suggests any kind of utopia but at least a much more equal situation than we came to know.
I first visited Ireland in 1993 because of my Irish roots and had set one of those mystery novels there. But I wanted to tap into the ancient times that paralleled my Cretan story and find the lost culture of Mother Right, which Campbell talked about.
Rocky Headlands on Irish Coast
The Cretans of the first book in my ancient saga decide to send out a fleet in search of a place the warriors haven’t come. These early Cretans were known as great mariners, their frescoes and other art showing them sailing around the Mediterranean. I figured if they could sail around the eastern Mediterranean they could surely venture to the west and even out through the gate to the Atlantic, as long as they kept the shores in sight. But for a little excitement they get caught in a horrific storm and one ship crashes on the rugged rocks on Ireland’s south coast. Voila! A sequel–albeit loosely tied.
I completed the sequel in 2004 and went back to Ireland in the spring of that year, focused now on stone circles and this rugged south coast near Rosscarbery in County Cork.
Bohonagh Stone Circle Portal, Ireland
I again entered the PNWA literary contest, and this Irish one was a finalist too, just one year after the Cretan book. I thought I was surely on the road to publication then, but could not find an agent for these stories of strong women facing formidable challenges of their time. I began to get discouraged.
My father died in 2007 and I decided to keep the farm founded by my great-great-grandmother Martha in 1868. I left the ancient stories on the shelf and pursued a story about Martha, discovering I had a strong woman in my family who’d faced challenges of her own time. Finally I found an agent, Rita Rosenkranz, who helped me meet my goal of publication with Martha’s story.
But I hadn’t forgotten the ancients. I had a flash of inspiration about the Cretan story and decided to make substantial changes. When I finished those I realized I definitely needed another sequel that would be closely tied. I wanted to launch into it but I had another story set in the same pioneer period as Martha’s story. My agent and I agreed I should take advantage of the publisher’s interest and bring that pioneer story out first.
By the spring of 2014, with the two pioneer stories in the pipeline, I finally had time to draft the closely tied sequel to the Cretan book. By Christmas I was ready to write one more book to continue the ancient line, but it just wasn’t happening until my muse started whispering to me. I told about that experience on a blog post here so won’t repeat it. This fourth book was drafted by the spring of 2015. I had planned to write a fifth that would bring Crete and Ireland back together but realized I had a 16-year gap in the Irish years. Why not fill the gap with another story?
South Gate to Castro do Zambujal, Portugal
Because of all the questions I had left at the end of the first Irish book, I wanted to portray the events of those 16 years. I would take readers to the homeland of the Iberians who’d been capturing slaves off the coast of Ireland. I would show my bad guy in his personal haunts.
But the Iberians couldn’t all be brutes, could they? I learned about their amazing citadel of Zambujal north of today’s Lisbon. They must have enjoyed a sophisticated culture I needed to know more about.
And I would take readers to the Great Isle of Britain where my protagonist runs into some intriguing outlaws in the Lake District of northern England.
I finished the rough draft of the gap story in 2016. Then in 2017 I drafted the sixth book, which took me back to Iberia.
Part of Almendres Cromlech in Cork Forest, Portugal
I had never been to the Iberian peninsula, where there’s a stone circle (or oval) more ancient than the circles of Ireland. I needed to see that, as well as Zambujal. And I had never been to the Lake District in England.
Also, the new books ventured into places in Greece and Ireland I hadn’t visited before. Thus the need for another trip. Once you’ve crossed the pond, that’s the biggest single expense. I decided I might as well put it all together.
So, that’s how the project started and why the extended trip. Next up, I invite you to come with me on my solo journey in Greece and Portugal and my continued trek with writer friend Lynn Ash through the British Isles. I’ll start the next post with Day One in Heraklion, Crete, and the nearby site of Knossos I have come to love.
