EPISODE 620 - Jill MacLean - Canadian Author of a Poetry Collection, Non-fiction Historical biography, Young Reader and Young Adult Novels
Jill MacLean is the Canadian author of a poetry collection, a non-fiction historical biography, three novels for young readers, two young adult novels, and The Arrows of Mercy, historical fiction for adults set in medieval England, released in 2023. The Arrows of Fealty, a stand alone sequel to The Arrows of Mercy, will release in September 2024.
Jill MacLean’s somewhat truncated biography:
Although I was born in England in Berkshire (the county where my medieval novel, The Arrows of Mercy, is set), I left there many years ago, and happily took out Canadian citizenship in 1970.
I began writing poetry in the nineties, along with completing a Masters degree in theology, and my poetry collection was published in Manitoba in 2003. My young grandson then asked me to write him a book – and changed the direction of my life. Three middle-grade novels and two Young Adult novels followed in fairly quick succession (you can check them out under Publications).
All five novels were contemporary, four were set in Newfoundland (where my family lived for seventeen years), and four overtly dealt with bullying.
Was I in danger of falling into a literary rut?
If so, what to write next?
The hiatus was frightening; but gradually there surfaced my abiding fascination with the medieval period, and even more gradually characters began to emerge, chief among them Edmund – I know from the beginning he would be an archer. I also knew I wanted to write about war and its aftereffects, as well as plague (this was well before Covid) – and that I did not want to write about aristocrats. Edmund and his cohorts are peasants, serfs, villeins, the lowest of the low.
I read widely about rural life in mid-14th century England, my son drove me around the back lanes of Berkshire in search of the exact setting, and I started to write in 2015. The novel was initially intended for a young adult audience, but morphed into fiction for adults – I wanted no constrictions.
Because I was in love with the research, and assumed you would be too, I wrote a sprawling, unmanageable mess of a novel, and then spent years (literally) cutting it back until it was the length it needed to be.
The Arrows of Mercy was launched.
Although set in 1348, the novel’s themes of plague, PTSD and scorched-earth warfare (think Syria and Ukraine) are all-too relevant to today’s world.
https://jillmaclean.mywriting.network/about-me/
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