FAQ
Your debut novel is set in medieval Wales. What got you interested in the subject? Are you Welsh?
My ancestors were Vikings. This explains my high tolerance to hot water and my persistent interest in Celtic countries. Outright sack-and-pillage is frowned upon in this day and age, so this interest manifests itself in the acquiring of knowledge.
Of course, my longboat is packed and ready just in case.
So, why Wales? I can thank David MacCaulay and Gwyn Williams.
When I was in the sixth grade, my gifted enrichment program did a unit on medieval culture. One of the books available for our perusal was Castle by David MacCaulay. (If you’ve never read it, Castle is a slice-of-life tour through a fictional castle in Wales with the most lovely and detailed illustrations.) This book pulled me so firmly into the medieval world that I don’t think I’ve ever really left. Castle made the middle ages feel familiar, approachable and real.
I went straight to my public library and systematically checked out every book on medieval Wales, then the middle ages in general. When I’d read them all, I started harvesting titles from bibliographies and bugging my mother to get books for me on interlibrary loan. This was how I learned how crass MacCaulay’s anglicizations were, but by then I was off to the races with other things, most notably When was Wales? by Gwyn Williams.
Williams’ dissection of traditional scholarship on medieval Wales introduced me to the idea that history isn’t facts, but a collection of narratives written by human beings for a given purpose. The Wales that Williams presented was a complicated, fascinating place where history wasn’t encapsulated in the past, but had real and immediate bearing on the present.
Plus, I couldn’t resist the blindings and castrations and the sort of dysfunctional families that give anything in other eras a run for their money. These people feel real to me. These people are real to me.
Do you speak Welsh?
Dw i ddim yn medru siarad Cymraeg yn dda, ond dw i’n dysgu.
Wait, what?
I can’t speak Welsh well, but I’m learning.