What fun it was being interviewed for the wonderful book site: My Bookish Ways!

US cover for AGAINST A DARKENING SKY

Here’s the first question:

Congrats on the new book! Will you tell us a bit about Against a Darkening Sky and what inspired you to write it?

Thanks so much. Against a Darkening Sky is set in the 7th century – at the moment when Christianity swept across England. It’s the story of Wilona, a young woman who survived the plague that wiped out her village. She stumbles off the moors into Ad Gefrin, one of King Edwin’s royal compounds and is apprenticed to Touilt, a revered healer and seeress. When King Edwin arrives, proclaiming a conversion to Christianity, life becomes very dangerous indeed for Wilona and Touilt, as their faith in the old gods puts them in defiance of the king’s desires.

Never a good thing to go against the wishes of kings.

It’s also the story of Egan, an Irish monk sent to oversee the development of the new religion. Egan is a young man of deep and simple faith, who experiences God in nature as much, if not more, as in the politically theologies of Roman Christianity. Of course, this puts him at odds with the institutions of power as well. Egan and Wilona have more in common that one would first think.

The book is really an examination of what happens when one’s personal experience of the Sacred – whatever that may be – finds itself in opposition to institutional dogmatic theology, as relevant a question today, I hope, as it was in the seventh century. At least, that’s what I say about the book. My publisher tends to say it’sOutlander meets The Mists of Avalon meets Game of Thrones. Snort. I can live with that!

If you’d like to read the rest, you can do so by clicking here.  Thanks so much!