One of my favourite storytellers isour guest this week.

Jill has been a guest with us before, a little over a year ago. 

If you missed it, please go HERE and discover the novel that precedes the one we are talking about today.

 

Please note the Jill’s secondmedieval novel, The Arrows of Fealty, willbe launched on SundaySeptember 21st at the Writers’ Federation of Nova Scotia,1113 Marginal Road, Halifax, NS, from 3:30 until 5:00. Bookmark will be on handselling copies.

The book will also be available onall the usual online channels.

I’ve been awriter for a long time. Writing genre fiction taught me the basics ofstory-telling. Mentorships with two excellent poets, one in Winnipeg and one inHalifax, honed a love of language and a respect for the power of words. Mypoetry collection was shortlisted for two awards, my three middle-grade and twoyoung adult novels garnered various nominations and awards and I began to thinkthat maybe, just maybe I wasn’t wasting my time – I have a rampant inner criticand am all-too frequently assailed by self-doubt. Perhaps these twocharacteristics lead to my compulsion for revising? Is the opposite ofself-doubt the conviction that each sentence as it’s first tapped on the screenis perfection itself?

Did I think, when I delved into researching the 14th centuryten years ago, that I would write two novels about serfs living in a smallvillage in southwestern England who become embroiled in war, plague andrebellion? The short answer? No. Would I have kept going, had I known? Oh yes!The medieval period fascinates me, the characters have become part of me,writing – it’s very clear – is what I want to do, along with striving, always,to make the next book better than its predecessor. I hope you’ll read TheArrows of Fealty and judge for yourself.

I live in Bedford, Nova Scotia, and love gardening, walking (stirs thebrain cells), canoeing and reading. Four of my current favourite novels are PatBarker’s trilogy about the women of Troy, and Percival Everett’s James, basedon the journey by Huck Finn and Jim down the Mississippi River, but brilliantlyretold from the point of view of Jim, the slave on the run. Also, I’m delightedto have discovered Sarah Dunant’s historical novels, set in Renaissance Italy.

 

Title: TheArrows of Fealty

 

Synopsis:

The protagonistof The Arrows of Mercy, my firstmedieval novel, is Edmund of Flintbourne. TheArrows of Fealty tells the story of Haukyn, Edmund’s second son. As a serf,Haukyn owes fealty to the lord of the manor and his life is tied to the soil, yethe craves adventure beyond the boundary stones of his village. In 1373, heleaves for John of Gaunt’s campaign in France. There, during five months ofcombat and loss, futility and atonement, he learns how armour-clad knights canbe brought as low as any serf.

Home again, he iscaught between two women, pretty Annabel and Ilotte of the sloe-black eyes.Neither marriage nor fatherhood tames his restless spirit. When a knight whowas his sworn enemy in France becomes the new lord of the manor, Haukyn leadshis neighbours in rebellion against ancient custom and unjust taxation.

England’ssouthern counties march in open revolt to London, where Haukyn witnesses theking grant freedom to every serf in the country. Unimaginable freedom. Afreedom that will bring consequences.

 

TheStory Behind the Story:  

WhenI enter what I call the “brooding” phase of a new novel, which entails walking theneighbourhood with a notebook in my pocket, staring vacantly at the sky thenmadly scribbling something down, I don’t have a theme in mind, nor do I have anargument I want to get across or a lesson I want you to learn. Far from it. Ibegin with character and scene, listening and watching, hoping for scraps ofdialogue, for an inkling of conflict and action, for the yearning that can soeasily engulf each one of us. Henry James wrote, ”What is character but thedetermination of incident? What is incident but the illustration of character?”The two enmeshed, inseparable. This does, however, tend to slide over animportant facet of historical novels, in which entire populations can be caughtup in history – a war, a famine, a plague, a rebellion – events imposed uponthem from outside. When the story describes how they react and their strugglesto survive, then incident and character resurface.

I’moften the last person to know the themes that lie behind what I’ve written.  After my third middle-grade novel waspublished in 2013, someone said to me, “This book is about loneliness,” and Ithought, shocked, you’re right, of course it is, and I never realized it.Instead, unknowingly, I must have trusted that by digging deeply enough into mycharacters’ lives and whatever was impinging on them, the theme or themes wouldemerge.

 

 

 

Jills website – please go HERE.

Buy the book HERE.

Scribbler: Tell us about your writing habits. Morning, late night, anytime? Music or solitude? What is your beverage of choice while writing?


Jill: No music. Silence, please. No company. I’m an introvert and someone leaning over my shoulder in the study would finish me off. Beverage? Water. Snack? Dark chocolate. Could I write without it? Doubtful.

I’m a morning person – don’t ever expect even minimal intelligence from me past nine o’clock at night. Consequently, I sit down at the laptop immediately after breakfast five days a week, and put in three or four hours of concentrated writing. Some days it goes well, others not…if I had to choose whether talent, inspiration or perseverance is the most important attribute for a writer, I’d probably choose perseverance. A morning person, indeed: when I’m working on a book, I often wake at 2 a.m. with Edmund crumbling soil between his fingers, Haukyn cursing the ragwort in the fields, Ilotte in the stocks railing at her tormentors. I grab the notebook by the side of the bed and write all this down, and sometimes in the morning it’s legible, and sometimes it even ends up on the screen. Oh, and every morning I start by revising what I wrote the day before: a good way to get back into the story. In the big picture, I write the first scene and keep going until I reach what feels like the end, not by any means following an outline, but usually with some sense of the arc of the story.

Revision is my middle name. When the manuscript is as polished as I can make it, and I’m so close to it that it could be full of holes and I wouldn’t see a single one of them, I send it to my trusted UK editor at The Literary Consultancy in London for substantive editing (one of my weak points). Almost all his suggestions are incorporated, alongside my own copy editing. This can take weeks or, more often, months.

For me, the ending is hugely important. I can’t tell you how many times I rewrote the last six or seven pages of The Arrows of Mercy.

Knowing when to stop revising is also hugely important. The original manuscript of The Arrows of Mercy was over 150,000 words, which I pared down to 113,000. Revision as subtraction. I was so intent on not repeating this mistake that The Arrows of Fealty was too sparsely written and the UK editor said things like, “Jill, this scene needs fleshing out. Jill, this character isn’t developed enough.” Revision as addition. Supposedly – if I write a trilogy – the first draft of the third novel won’t need any revision. Right? Don’t bet on it!


My warm thanks to Allan Hudson for his ongoing support of local authors.



You are most welcome, Jill. 
I’m looking forward to reading the story. Thanks for being my guest this week and I wish you continued success with your writing.

A HUGE thank you to all our visitors and readers.