Today’s special author guest is H R Conklin to chat with me about her new young adult fantasy, The Eternity Knot, book 4 in the Celtic Magic series. H.R. is doing a virtual book tour with WOW! Women on Writing, The Muffin. Full list of tour dates and link to stops is here and below.
Welcome, H.R., please tell us a little bit about yourself.
I grew up in the rural mountains of Northern California where my mother gardened and my father played the bagpipes, as well as spending long hours in the theater where my parents were a dancer and an actor. This undoubtedly led to my overactive imagination and love for nature. I currently live in San Diego with my husband, two children, and three dogs. I used to teach kindergarten at a public Waldorf charter school in which I told many fairy tales to the children and made up stories in my spare time. Now I am a Story Circle Leader and guiding parents in homeschooling at a Waldorf school.
Please tell us about your current release.
The Celtic Magic series is a unique tale connecting modern day California to the Scotland of centuries ago. This is a coming-of-age story about Mairi following the Celtic wheel of pagan holidays through the seasons in which she learns that the Celtic myths of her childhood are actually her family legacy. Mairi and family travel through time and realms battling druids and faerie folk, discovering that the faeries are angry about how humans are neglecting the earthly realm.
Mairi has been shown the future and knows humans must change their ways. Continuing on their path of disconnect with Nature will cause the destruction of human life. Tasked by the Seelie Fae to save the human world, Mairi and friends seek out ancient wisdom in the stories of old. The Queen of the Unseelie Fae decides humans have to prove themselves worthy of the Earthly Realm, or die trying. Dark magic makes Mairi push harder to find the answers she needs, but the Undersea Faerie Queen is weighing in and Mairi is uncertain whose side she is on. When young people representing cultures from all of the continents share their knowledge, Mairi finally feels the seeds of hope. Deadly faerie magic is working against humanity, but humans and faeries are working together like never before. Now Mairi must put all the pieces together before time runs out for human life on Earth, and for once she’s starting to feel worthy of the task.
Join Mairi and friends in the exciting conclusion to the Celtic Magic series with The Eternity Knot.
What inspired you to write this book?
The conversation that has been going on for quite a while now surrounding cultural appropriation first inspired me to look into my ancestry which include the Celtic culture. Through studying the Celtic myths, and how so many of them are considered to be true by the Celtic people, a story began to form. I’ve always had a strong desire to help “save the earth” and I began to wonder if the nature spirits (aka faeries) would really put up with human neglect of our planet. There is so much to explore in the Celtic stories, and the Celtic Wheel of the Year became a natural way to divide up the myths. Mairi and her family sprang to life, bringing me along for a journey I’ll never forget.
Excerpt from The Eternity Knot:
Mairi and friends stepped out of the faerie tunnels into a lush wild garden where an old woman was bent over a mugwort plant. She was harvesting the leaves and placing them into her basket. In the distance was a small house with graying wood walls and a brown roof heavy with winter’s decomposing leaves.
All around the edge of the garden, Mairi saw people her own age stepping through veiled doors of their own. They were people with all shades of skin and hair, with features that represented every corner of the Earth. They wore mostly modern clothes, telling Mairi they were, at least, from the same time as her.
The beings leading them were like Elen in their unearthly regal bearings, but unlike each other in every way. Mairi guessed they must be goddesses, too. There was a blue goddess with four arms leading one group of young people with varying warm skin tones and black or brown hair. Mairi supposed they might be from India. She kind of remembered seeing a picture of such a goddess once.
Sweeping her eyes over the growing crowd, she noticed a group of tall fair-haired, light-skinned people led by an even taller blonde goddess carrying a basket of apples. Maybe from Norway? She made a note to learn about more goddesses and gods once her life settled down.
The eclectic crowd was filling in, forming a circle and Mairi noticed Otter, River, and Forest across from her. A girl with shoulder length black hair she didn’t know leaned against River. Raven! Mairi smiled when she realized Raven was doing better, though she looked tired. River raised his free arm and waived, grinning. They were led by a goddess wearing a brown cedar bark and green moss dress, moss hanging in her long, braided hair. Gyhldeptis! It’s neat to see her for myself! Her friends across the circle were looking at Elen in much the same way.
Scanning the circle a bit more, she saw Mina in jeans and a tank top accompanied by the same kids Mairi had seen in Mami Wata’s realm. They were led by a woman with ebony skin, pearls threaded in her long black spiraling hair. Her dress of blue and white layered, sheer fabric gave the illusion of ocean foam pooling around her feet. Mairi caught Mina’s eyes and smiled, unsure of how she would be met, but wanting to be friendly regardless. Mina nodded at her, acknowledging her presence, and returned to her group. It was enough for Mairi.
Completing her scan of the crowd, she turned her attention to the old woman in the center. The woman stood slowly, her bent back preventing her from standing up straight, and brushed a clump of gray hair away from her face. Seeing everyone surrounding her, the old woman cackled, completing her image of an old hedge witch.
“So, you’ve come, have you? Come to see old Rowena working in her garden?” She cackled again, a bit of spittle flying. “No, no you haven’t.” She shook her head, smiling into her chest, talking to herself more than anyone in the circle. Her form became hazy, as if seen through a foggy shower door, and began to stretch up tall, glowing and radiant.
“You’ve come to see Gaia, Prithvi, Ala, Atira . . . heh, heh . . . you’ve come to see me though I have many names and many forms.”
As she spoke each name, her form flickered and changed, melting from one to another to another, each one more beautiful than any being Mairi had yet to see.
“It’s the Earth Mother you’ve come to see, to beg forgiveness? Or perhaps to ask for advice?”
Earth Mother looked around the circle with eyes of marbled blues and greens and browns, swirling like the earth seen from space. She stared out of a face unfathomably perfect, piercing them to their inner core. She spoke in a voice that sounded like the wind in the trees, like the river pouring down the mountain, like the earth settling after an avalanche, like the fire overpowering the forest. Beautiful and frightening, she held her audience captive.
“Welcome, my children, welcome home. You may call me what you please. I have many names for I have been named and described by all my children in the image that fits each in their own visage.”
What exciting story are you working on next?
I’m playing around with a journal for young women to use in order to go on a similar journey to learning about one’s self as my main character Mairi took in the Celtic Magic series. Questions and anecdotal stories will encourage women to delve into their ancestral culture and myths, to trace their maiden tree of family names (book 1), to discover the death rituals that their ancestors once followed (book 2), to work through journaling questions to reach deeper into their own shadowed corners (book 3) and to look outward into the world to find what passions they have or which activist opportunities might call to them (book 4). At the very least, it’s a journal I would have liked to have had access to as a young woman or teen, so I assume there are others who will also be interested in it.
When did you first consider yourself a writer?
I’ve always written. Silly stories and poems as a young child, and stories made up in my mind on the long drive from my mountain top home into the town in the valley below, but never written down. I loved English class, though I by no means excelled. I just loved writing. I was always happy to take a written exam, essays didn’t bother me. I often wrote in journals in my twenties, writing down the antics and trials of my children and rewriting family traumas into palatable fairy tales. I never thought of myself as a writer, as in an “author”. It seemed out of my means. Then, one day, I decided I would do it, that I could do it. I would write a novel. That’s when I bloomed.
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?
No, I don’t write full time. I try to dedicate a couple of hours a day to writing, but I’m not super organized. I write whenever the urge hits me. I have a personal goal to schedule my writing to be at a consistent time of day. What takes up most of my time, other than during summer hours, is teaching. I’ve been a teacher in some compacity since I was 19. I spent this past year during the pandemic being a homeschool guide to parents who weren’t ready to send their children back to school. That was fun because it gave me more flexibility to write when the ideas hit and I enjoyed studying the curriculum for all of the grades.
What would you say is your interesting writing quirk?
I write on anything available to me when an idea hits me. I’ve written on old mail. I have so many journals that I begin writing in then set down and if it’s not near me when an idea hits, I grab a different one. I’ve written entire short stories in Notes on my phone. I kind of think of myself as a nutty professor, only I’m a nutty writer. I don’t really mind. I’ve always been a bit impulsive.
As a child, what did you want to be when you grew up?
My ideas varied so much. I think I first wanted to be an archeologist, then got discouraged when a boy in my class knew all of the dinosaur names and I didn’t. Then I wanted to be a model and fashion designer. I loved reading Katie Keene comics (part of the Archie series.) Then I wanted to be an aerospace engineer because I liked math puzzles and the career test I took in high school told me that was what I was suited for. Lol! I ended up studying Child Development instead. I also loved doing my friends hair in high school and planning prom was super fun, so hair stylist and party planner crossed my mind. I think I’m really just a very curious person, so teaching has been a good career for me. Segueing into writing actually made sense because my writing topics require me to be curious and do a ton of research, just like teaching does.
Anything additional you want to share with the readers?
I make a request at the end of the book, asking for readers who are inspired to write their own story of a child from another culture participating in a similar journey as Mairi’s, a child trying to solve the crisis of healing the planet by following the myths of another culture. I sincerely hope I’ll get at least a few stories sent to me. I think they would be fun to read.
Links:
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Thanks for being here today, H.R.
BLOG TOUR DATES AND STOPS:
July 19th @ The Muffin https://muffin.wow-womenonwriting.com/2021/07/hr-conklins-eternity-knot-of-celtic.html
July 21st @ The Faerie Review
Join Lily at the Faerie Review as she shares her review of H.R. Conklin’s latest book The Eternity Knot; part of the Celtic Magic Series. This is a great book for anyone who enjoys a modern take on myths and fairytales! https://www.thefaeriereview.com/
July 29th @ The Knotty Needle
Judy at the Knotty Needle shares her review with readers after reading H.R. Conklin’s The Eternity Knot – part of the Celtic Magic Series. Don’t miss Judy’s insightful review! https://knottyneedle.blogspot.com/
July 31st @ Author C.K. Sorens
Fellow Author C.K. Sorens shares her review of The Eternity Knot – the latest release by H.R. Conklin and part of the Celtic Magic series. Don’t miss today’s peer review! https://www.cksorens.com/blog
August 1st @ Bring on Lemons with Cathy Hansen
Wisconsin entrepreneur and educator, Cathy Hansen reviews the latest novel in the Celtic Magic Series – find out what Cathy has to say about The Eternity Knot as she shares her thoughts with readers at Bring on Lemons. http://bringonlemons.blogspot.com/
August 2nd @ Author Anthony Avina
Fellow author Anthony Avina shares his review of H.R. Conklin’s The Eternity Knot. This book is part of the Celtic Magic Series – readers of all ages will delight in this special story! https://authoranthonyavinablog.com/
August 3rd @ A Storybook World
Readers at A Storybook World will hear from guest blogger H.R. Conklin on the topic of Symbolism in Fairytales. Conklin just release The Eternity Knot – another 5 star book in the Celtic Magic series, but she’s taking time to share her author expertise with readers today! Don’t miss this fabulous opportunity to learn from Conklin! http://www.astorybookworld.com/
August 4th @ Author Anthony Avina
Earlier this week, readers at Author Anthony Avina’s blog read Anthony’s review of H.R. Conklin’s The Eternity Knot. Today readers will hear from Conklin herself as she shares a guest blog post titled: “Symbolism Reflected in Stories from Around the World” . Don’t miss this fantastic opportunity to learn more about The Celtic Magic series! https://authoranthonyavinablog.com/
August 5th @ The Knotty Needle
Judy at the Knotty Needle shares her review of The Eternity Knot by H.R. Conklin. This is book 3 in the Celtic Magic series and it is guaranteed to delight readers of all ages! Don’t miss Judy’s review! https://knottyneedle.blogspot.com/
August 6th @ Beverley A. Baird
Today’s guest post for readers at Beverley A. Baird is written by H.R. Conklin. Conklin is the award winning author of the Celtic Magic Series and she recently released her latest title: The Eternity Knot. Don’t miss a chance to read today’s guest post titled: “Parenting Wisdom Shared Through Storytelling”. https://beverleyabaird.wordpress.com/
August 7th @ World of My Imagination with Nicole Pyles
Nicole just finished reading The Eternity Knot by H.R. Conklin and can’t wait to tell readers at World of My Imagination all about it. Don’t miss today’s review by Nicole to find out more about this title as well as the others in the Celtic Magic Series! https://worldofmyimagination.com/
August 8th @ Word Magic; All About Books with Author Fiona Ingram
H.R. Conklin pens today’s guest post about fairies and mythology as she visits fellow author Fiona Ingram at Word Magic. Don’t miss this opportunity to hear from Conklin and find out more about her latest release: The Eternity Knot; part of the Celtic Magic series! http://fionaingramauthor.blogspot.com/
August 9th @ Bring on Lemons with Crystal Otto
WOW! Blog Tour Manager, Crystal Otto reviews the latest novel in the Celtic Magic Series – find out what Crystal has to say about The Eternity Knot as she shares her 5 star review with readers at Bring on Lemons. http://bringonlemons.blogspot.com/
August 10th @ Bring on Lemons with Libby
Libby is a young artist who enjoys many genres of books – she shares her thoughts with readers at Bring on Lemons today – her deep thoughts about The Eternity Knot by H.R. Conklin. This book is part of the Celtic Magic series and Libby is excited to read all the books. Readers will delight in her youthful perspective and her energy! http://bringonlemons.blogspot.com/
August 11th @ HERE!
August 18th @ Jill Sheet’s Blog
Today, readers at Jill Sheet’s Blog will hear from H.R. Conklin on the topic of “How Symbolism in Fairy Tales of Old Help Us Today”. Stop by to learn more about The Eternity Knot (part of the Celtic Magic Series) and learn from this talented author. http://jillsheets.blogspot.com/
August 19th @ Wildwood Reads with Megan
Readers at Wildwood Reads will hear from Megan as she reviews The Eternity Knot by H.R. Conklin. Don’t miss an opportunity to learn more about The Celtic Magic Series and this latest release! https://wildwoodreads.com/