I’m chatting with novelist
Mary Mackey today about her new release The Village of Bones: Sabalah’s Tale. It’s
historical fiction with elements of fantasy and science fiction.
Bio:
Mary Mackey is the
bestselling author of fourteen novels, including The Earthsong Series — four
novels which describe how the peaceful Goddess-worshiping people of Prehistoric
Europe fought off patriarchal nomad invaders (The Village of Bones, The Year The Horses Came, The Horses at the Gate, and The Fires of Spring). Mary’s novels have
been praised by Marion Zimmer Bradley, Pat Conroy, Thomas Moore, Marija
Gimbutas, Marge Piercy, and Theodore Roszak for their historical accuracy,
inventiveness, literary grace, vividness, and storytelling magic. They have
made The New York Times and San Francisco Chronicle Bestseller Lists,
been translated into twelve foreign languages and sold over a million and a
half copies.
Mary has also written seven collections
of poetry including Travelers With No
Ticket Home and Sugar Zone, winner
of the 2012 PEN Oakland Josephine Miles Award and finalist for the Northern
California Book Awards. Garrison Keillor has featured her poetry four time on The
Writer’s Almanac. A screenwriter as well as a novelist and poet, she has
also sold feature-length screenplays to Warner Brothers as well as to independent
film companies. This winter her original script for a short fictional film
entitled Time Piece will be filmed in
L.A. by director Renée De Palma. Time
Piece, which takes place during the last months of World War II, is
dedicated to disabled veterans and designed to raise money for those who suffer
from PTSD.
At www.marymackey.com, you can get the latest
news about Mary’s books and public appearances, sample her work, sign up for
her newsletter, and get writing advice. You can also find her on Facebook and follow her on
Twitter. Mary’s literary
papers are archived in the Sophia Smith Special Collections Library, Smith
College, Northampton MA.
Welcome, Mary. Please tell us about your current
release.
The Village of Bones is a prequel to my bestselling Earthsong Series about
Prehistoric Europe which also includes the novels The Year the Horses Came, The Horses at the Gate, and The Fires of Spring. In The Village of Bones, I take readers
back 6000 years to meet a Stone Age society in harmony with the earth,
Goddesses who walk on water, giant snakes that predict the future, passion,
betrayal, a beautiful young priestess on the run, a magical child who needs to
be saved from Beastmen, shape shifting, time travel, a sexy lover who’s not
human, plus some very scary giant sharks.
Dorothy Hearst, author of The Wolf Chronicles, has said: "Mary
Mackey’s The Village of Bones, gives
us the vivid adventures of The Clan of
the Cave Bear, the magic of The Mists
of Avalon and Lord of the Rings,
and the beauty of Avatar. Filled with
the belief that love drives out fear, it contains stunning twists that will
leave you wanting more."
What inspired you to write this book?
I was inspired to write The Village of Bones after reading The Civilization of the Goddess and The Language of the Goddess—two amazing
non-fiction books by the late Maria Gimbutas. Dr. Gimbutas was a professor of
Paleo-archaeology at UCLA. Her research into European Stone Age societies has produced
evidence of peaceful cultures which worshiped the Earth as the Great Goddess
who brought forth all life. In these cultures, men and women were equals,
genocidal warfare was unknown, and the Earth itself was cherished as sacred.
Excerpt from The
Village of Bones:
1
Walking on Water
The West Coast of the Black Sea: 4387 B.C.E.
Sabalah
dug her paddle into the water and raced toward shore. Her arms were burning,
her shift was soaked in sweat, and her breath was coming in gasps. She paddled
with all her strength, not daring to look over her shoulder. She had to go
faster, or she wasn’t going to make it.
Twenty-one seasons old and barren, the midwives had said. What a fool she’d been to
try to run away from their words, but how could she have known? She’d gone down
to the wharf this morning in a bad temper and a defiant mood, and now she was
paying the price. When she set out, the sun had been shining and the Sweetwater
Sea had been as calm as a lake. In front of her, sunlight still lay on the
water in big golden puddles, and she could see the fishing boats bobbing gently
beside the wharf in waves no more than a handspan high.
Beyond the wharf, Shara rose up, white and lovely,
its twenty temples and hundred motherhouses perched along the south bank of the
river like a flock of doves. As far as she could tell, nobody in the city had
noticed the approaching storm yet. Why should they? There was no need to keep
watch on the sea. This wasn’t storm season, and the city had never been
attacked or invaded as long as anyone could remember.
Dear
Goddess, she prayed, please let me get to safety before the wind hits! At
least she was making progress. She was close enough now to see the procession
of mothers and children winding their way up the honey-colored cliffs to the
Temple of Batal. The ceremony that bound them together today was the reason she
had gone off by herself for what should have been a quiet sail on a calm sea.
She could not bear to watch them celebrate their love for each other, because
she had no children and never would have any. She didn’t want a life dedicated
to mothering other people’s. She wanted a baby of her own, and if the midwives
were right and the Goddess had other plans for her, that was just too bad.
Still feeling defiant, she dug her paddle into the
water again and felt the boat lurch forward. She was close enough now to see
the fishing nets drying on the beach. I’m going to make it! she thought.
The instant the words formed in her mind, the sun
went out like a lamp, the air turned green, great black clouds boiled over her,
and bolts of lightning flashed so close the mast of the boat seemed to jump
sideways. Looking over her shoulder, she saw that a giant wall of water higher
than the walls of the city had risen out of the sea. Above it, there was
nothing but churning darkness.
As the darkness engulfed her, the boat bucked and
rose out of the water like a kite. The linen sail shredded and the mast snapped
like a dry stick. Into your hands, oh Goddess, she prayed as her body
arced through the air and slammed into the great wave. And then everything was
water, fury, salt, terror, and drowning.
Later, she sometimes wondered if she had died at
that moment. How else could she explain the peace that settled over her when
she finally stopped struggling and let the wave pull her under, or the feeling
that she was no longer in her body, but outside of it looking at it as if it
belonged to someone else?
Slowly, she sank toward the bottom until she
seemed to float above a garden of stones. Her shift billowed around her like a
cloud. Over her head, just below the tossing waves, schools of fish flew like
flocks of wingless birds. So this was death. A simple return to the Mother.
Nothing to be feared.
Or perhaps this wasn’t death. Maybe she was merely
crazed from lack of air and hallucinating the way the pearl divers of Shara
sometimes did when they came to the surface with pearls in their mouths and
couldn’t remember their own names or recognize the faces of those who loved
them; because the next thing she knew, she was being sucked back up toward the
surface through a tube of churning foam.
As her head
broke out of the water, the pain and fear came back. She fought to breathe, but
the air was such a mix of rain and saltwater that each time she inhaled she
felt as if she were still drowning. Kicking her feet, she flailed at the waves,
but she wasn’t strong enough to resist the force of the storm. She could feel
herself getting weaker. She was going to go under again, and this time she
wouldn’t be able to fight her way back to the surface.
Suddenly, her
right hand struck something solid. Grabbing for it, she found herself clutching
the broken mast of the boat. The wooden spar bobbed up and down in front of
her, hitting her in the forehead and chest. Ignoring the battering, she wrapped
her arms around the mast and pulled herself on top of it.
As she lay there,
panting and gasping, the storm suddenly stopped—not all of it, just the part
that was raging around her. One moment, she was fighting to stay on top of the
mast so she wouldn’t drown. The next, she was drifting in a tranquil circle of
green water. Within a space about the size of the floor of a temple, the wind
had died down so completely that she could hear the soft lapping of the waves
beneath her, but when she looked outside of that circle of peace, she could see
the storm still beating its way toward shore. It was as if a wall of
transparent fury enclosed her. Where the waves still roared and the wind still
screamed, everything was dark and terrifying. But where she floated, there was
a green-gold light that seemed to come from no obvious source.
Trembling with
cold and fear, she took a deep breath and allowed herself to relax her grip on
the mast. This was too real to be a dream. She could feel the splinters of the
mast digging into her chest, taste salt in the water she was coughing up.
As she lay
there giving into the sobbing that had been bubbling up in her throat ever
since the boat capsized, a woman emerged from the wall of crashing waves and
walked across the sea toward her. Sabalah abruptly stopped crying and stared at
the woman, stunned. This was impossible! She had to be dreaming! But if it was
a dream, it was different from any dream she had ever had.
The woman kept
walking, stepping over the waves as if they were furrows in a field of wheat.
Her flowing dress was blue as a summer sea; her hair long and green, twined
with seaweed and pearls. Her skin was dark and light at the same time, her eyes
so bright, they glowed like the last flash of the sun when it falls into the
sea in midsummer.
Sabalah closed her eyes
and clung to the mast trembling. Was she going mad? Was she dead after all? A
sweet scent suddenly filled the air like the perfume of roses blown across
water. Don’t be afraid, the woman said. I’ll do you no harm. Open
your eyes and look at me.
“I’m afraid if
I look into your face, I’ll die,” Sabalah whispered.
Nonsense,
the woman said with a touch of impatience that reminded Sabalah of her mother. Open
your eyes right now.
Sabalah opened
her eyes and saw that the woman was standing on the water so close to the mast
that the hem of her robe was touching it. Repressing an urge to scream in
terror, she summoned all her courage. “Who are you? How can you walk on water?”
You don’t
recognize me?
Sabalah shook
her head and felt saltwater drain out of her ears.
The woman’s
laughter was like the sound of a wind chime. I am Amonah, Goddess of the
Sea, and water is my path. I can walk above it or beneath it as I wish.
“Could I walk on water
too?” It was a crazy question under the circumstances, but Sabalah was in no
condition to think before she spoke.
The Goddess laughed again. No, my child. You
would sink like a stone.
Sitting down
beside Sabalah, Amonah let Her feet dangle in the water. They were bare except
for toe rings of rose-colored coral. She
must have weighed nothing, because the end of the spar didn’t tilt the way it
would have if a flesh-and-blood human being had sat there.
I have news
for you that will bring you great joy. Amonah’s tone was casual as if She
and Sabalah were two friends sitting on a bench in Shara sharing a piece of
honey cake and talking about the weather. You’re going to bear a magical
child.
“But I can’t.
I’m barren.” The word “barren” was bitter in Sabalah’s mouth.
For a third
time the Goddess laughed. Not anymore. Leaning over She gave Sabalah a kiss on
the cheek. At the touch of the Goddess’s lips, Sabalah felt her womb leap in
joy.
Rising to Her
feet, Amonah again stood on the water. She was fading now, becoming
transparent. “Wait!” Sabalah cried. “Please don’t go. Tell me who the father of
my baby will be. Where will I find him?”
“Don’t worry. The father of your baby will find you.” . . .
What exciting story are you working on next?
I’m working on a sequel to
The Village of Bones. In it, Sabalah,
the heroine of The Village of Bones, is
searching the dark forests of Northern Europe for the man she loves. She’s
carrying a dangerous book of prophecy which can destroy the world if it falls
into the wrong hands, and as she tries to flee from danger, she accidentally runs
straight into the arms of strange, dangerous, half-human creatures left over
from the Ice Age.
When did you first consider yourself a writer? I thought of myself as a writer very early in life. I
began telling stories to other children before I could read. Recently, when I
was going through my papers to send them off to be archived in the Sophia
Special Collections Library at Smith College, I found my first novel, a hand
illustrated book written on blue and red lined paper entitled Saturn’s Mystery Ring. It was dedicated
to my mother, and I wrote it when I was nine years old.
Do you write full-time? If so, what's your work day
like? If not, what do you do other than write and how do you find time to
write?
For many years I was a
Professor of English at California State University Sacramento where I taught
Creative Writing and Film. I wrote twelve novels during the years when I was
teaching full-time. I found time to write by being very organized and only
focusing on the task at hand. When I wrote, I didn’t think about my classes.
When I taught, I didn’t think about my writing. I was totally there, totally
available to my students.
I loved teaching and
enjoyed helping younger writers find their voices and get published, but since
I retired for CSUS, I’ve been able to write full time. My typical work day
involves writing for about five hours beginning in the morning around 9:00 am.
In the afternoons, I do errands, hang out with my friends, take walks with my
husband, and do other things that have no connection to writing.
I follow this schedule
every day, six days a week. The seventh day is my vacation day. On that day, I
kick back and do something fun like going to a movie or taking a trip to the
seashore. I think it’s extremely important to balance life and work or you run
the danger of burning out. In my experience, burnout is one of the major causes
of writer’s block.
What would you say is your interesting writing quirk? My most interesting writing quirk is that I use a
trance technique to enhance my creativity. It’s a personal technique that I
created years ago, and it keeps my mind flooded with ideas, images, characters,
plots, and all sorts of other riches. Thanks to creative trancing, I have not
had writers’ block since I was in my late twenties.
I have never taught this trance
technique, but recently, the Visionary Fiction Alliance persuaded me to
describe it. I’ve just written a guest blog post for them entitled “Using
Creative Trance to Write Visionary Fiction” that went live on their website on October 10th.
As a child, what did you want to be when you grew up?
A writer. I’m related to Samuel
Clemens (Mark Twain) through my father’s family. My parents used to read Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn to me when I was a small child. I remember
thinking: “Writing is something people in our family do. I want to write
stories too.”
Anything additional you want to share with the readers?
A page a day is a
novel a year.
Links:
Thanks for being here today, Mary!
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