Writers are not our characters, most times, though these characters may draw upon our lives, our experiences, our quirks.
Macbeth and Gruach, the main characters of Upon the Corner of the Moon, definitely are not “me” except that I was drawn to the story and felt the urge to tell it – an urge that stayed with me for almost 30 years.
I first came across the facts about the historical Macbeths when I was researching an earlier novel. I did not realize how thoroughly this story had been reversed: Macbeth was a rightful king based on Celtic traditions and ruled for 17 years, being called “The Righteous” and “the ruddy king of plenty.”
How did he become a villain?
Macbeth was cousin to Duncan, and yes, he did kill him – but in battle when Duncan invaded his territory. Duncan’s son Malcolm Canmore eventually claimed the throne through primogeniture and the Celtic system of electing kings was erased. Chroniclers grafted Macbeth’s story with various legends to shape a monstrous, murdering usurper. Shakespeare found this tale in Holinshed’s Chronicles, shaped it to please King James and included the witches that so fascinated the king.
As to “Lady Macbeth,” we know little more than her name and her father’s name. We do know that she was married to a man called Gillecomgan, also killed in battle by Macbeth, and then married Macbeth. I had to do a great deal of speculation in building a plausible life for her but drew on scholarship from a number of areas including archaeology of the Picts and the study of ancient goddess religions.
This book is the first of two telling the story of the historical Macbeths, hewing to the record where it exists and speculating to fill in the gaps. The Last Highland King will come out in 2027.
My earlier book with Regal House, In the Lonely Backwater, featured the distinctive voice of Maggie, who owes a lot to the solitary girl that I was, simultaneously lost and found between the wonders of the natural world and the books she carried everywhere.
I grew up in New York State, near the headwaters of the Allegheny River. My parents owned fields and woods that I knew well before I learned to read. I fished with my dad and wandered a patch of old-growth forest. Books sustained me — Twain, Poe, and Tennyson in addition to Shakespeare, all in the tall bookcase upstairs – along nature guides, and A Girl of the Limberlost that featured another rural wanderer. Like Maggie, I brought back my finds and interpreted them, generally to amused interest.
After high school and a few erratic years where I took jobs in factories and donut shops while in community college, I slid south along the Allegheny’s path to find myself at the other end of that river system, attending West Virginia University on the banks of the Monongahela. Propelled by the desire to write, I’d determined to become a journalist, as a blue-collar kid lacking mentors to help me along the path toward becoming a novelist and poet.
For nearly twenty years, I worked as a reporter and editor for daily newspapers in the northern coalfields of West Virginia, covering everything from train wrecks to murders to acid spills in the rivers, along with government beats and the “hook and bullet” column that let me hang with scientists at the Department of Natural Resources. During that time, I homesteaded a hill farm with my then-husband, building a house and barn, planting an orchard and organic garden — and, of course, wandering with my dog and gathering wild foods and always writing.
My first poetry chapbook and my first novel, both deeply engaged with the natural world, came out in 1988. Neena Gathering, a post-apocalyptic tale based on the landscape around that farm, was long out of print before being brought back as a classic in the genre. Like In the Lonely Backwater, it features a teenage narrator, though at its debut, Young Adult was not yet a thing and it was listed with general SF paperbacks. I still love that book, and it has many fans who’ve applauded its reissue.
Things change. The marriage ended and I found myself with a small farm I couldn’t manage and the editorship of a newspaper destined for sale. I headed to the Piedmont of North Carolina for a job with the News & Record, living outside of Appalachia for the first time in my life. The move brought new adventures, from getting my MFA at Queens University of Charlotte, to the publication of more poetry and fiction, to learning how to sail. A 25-foot Hunter docked at Lake Kerr was direct inspiration for Maggie’s world of the marina and the landscape of the farms and piney woods of the coastal plain.
I had the pleasure of working with Kevin Watson at Press 53 for all three of my full-length poetry collections and my novel Blood Clay, set in North Carolina. I was delighted when West Virginia University Press, which had also released my short fiction collection, decided to publish To the Bones, a horror/mystery set in the coalfields. It was acclaimed as “a parable of capitalism and environmental degradation” and in the sequel, Dead Hand, Darrick and Lourana flee to Ireland in search of answers to questions raised in the first book.
And then my Queens classmate Pam Van Dyk made me aware of Regal House, and I met Jaynie Royal and all the wonderful folks at my most excellent publisher!
Another marriage came and went, and I found myself freed to wander more widely. Solo hiking was pure pleasure, even when I was quite lost on the trails near Les Eyzies-de-Tayac, slogging through the rain along the Great Glen Way in Scotland, or following the music in Donegal and Dingle. Trailheads beckon me, from the Mountains to the Sea trail in North Carolina to the coastal vistas of San Francisco Bay.
Along the way, I’ve published poetry widely, in The Georgia Review, The Missouri Review, Chautauqua, and journals across the U.S. as well as Scotland, Ireland, and Greece. Work has also appeared in some fine anthologies, including Eyes Glowing at the Edge of the Woods and Ghost Fishing: An Eco-Justice Poetry Anthology.
I have been a creative writing fellow for North Carolina and West Virginia, the Kentucky Foundation for Women, and the National Endowment for the Arts. I’m professor emerita of creative writing at North Carolina A&T State University and continue to teach writing workshops.
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