Curse of the Celts

and its Calan Gaef, as it already has some wider recognition.

There are also some truths which could have gone one way or another. My Romans swear by Hades, which was the name of hell in Ancient Greek mythology. The Romans had Tartarus, but by the time Virgil was writing the Aeneid he gave Tartarus as the lowest level of… Hades.

Also, the “Americas” – I looked to find a more Native name for the continent, and found while many North American nations used the Great Turtle or Turtle Island there is also evidence to support the concept of the name “America” (variations in Old Norse, Ommerike; Mayan, iq’ amaq’el; Algonquin, Em-erika etc), predating “Amerigo Vespucci” by some centuries, which is wild. There is some research which suggests that Vespucci’s first name just fit the discovery narrative. So, in the interests of keeping it simple I went with the name we know today.

Ultimately, this is a work of fiction and I am no scholar, but if you are, and your better knowledge or my interpretations of elements have been twisted here in a way that pulled you out of the story, then I beg your forgiveness. But then I expect you will already be all too aware that all research and all interpretations of the past are imperfect. As it is inevitably no more than a collection of events told by people – storytellers all.

What were some of your foremost sources of inspiration?

Calendar and Festivals

I’ve always enjoyed how thinly papered-over the pagan calendar is by Christian festivals. Our month names are happily a mash of pagan and Roman names, which allowed me to keep them too.

Most ancient calendars simply followed the sun and the seasons, and in the world outside the Empire it was easy to peel this back and include the first two familiar festivals the Celts celebrate here.

Samhain

Arriving in the Celtic world on October 31^st meant we crossed from the tech world to the pagan world with a bang.

As a child I was terrified of Hallowe’en, trick-or-treating hadn’t really swung back across the Atlantic, and it certainly didn’t entail dressing as a movie princess.

I was taught that this night was when the veil between this world and the next was thin, and anything could cross over. We were encouraged to disguise ourselves so the púca wouldn’t take us. The candle in the pumpkin so popular today originated in the US with Irish immigrants who had carved out harder roots to place that all important light in the window to keep dark spirits out even as it welcomed the spirits of departed family and friends for whom a place was laid at the table.

Beyond the otherworldly who prowled outside in the dark, inside we bobbed for apples and told fortunes. And ate a fruit cake called Barmbrack, the delight of which as a child was finding the hidden futures within, a coin or a ring wrapped in paper that foretold fortune or love. This inspired the autumnal apple cake Devyn eats – my sister was given an apple cake recipe years ago that my family adore. (Odlums.ie have a version of it. Yum.)

Yule

The Winter Solstice or midwinter arrives between the 19–22 of December. Current holiday celebrations are a mix of the festivities of the ancients – the Roman Saturnalia before the Winter Solstice and the Norse Yuletide, which covered the twelve days after. Many elements of our December holiday season are drawn from those festivities. The druids cut mistletoe on the Solstice, Celts lit bonfires and the Norse lit Yulelogs to brighten short days. The wheel of the year turned and began anew, marked with wreaths of holly and ivy. Wassail or in Ireland going on the Wren and singing for treats is today more familiar as carolling.

Basically eating, drinking and making merry in the darkest days of winter has changed little enough over the millennia.

Wales

I originally mapped Cassandra, Devyn and Marcus a fairly direct route north to Cumbria, and was utterly shocked when everyone veered off course into Wales. But Devyn needed to go home – at first I wasn’t sure why…

But much of Devyn and the Griffin were gifts of Welsh history and lore. The Griffin is more classically from Greek and Middle Eastern legend but Welsh lore contains a creature called the Adar llwch gwin, which is very similar.

In book one, I played with the history of the Tudors, which rooted my inspiration in Wales. I think this came about because as a teen I read Crown in Candlelight by Rosemary Hawley Jarman and was blown away to learn that a penniless Welsh archer, Owain Ap Tewdwr, a lowly descendent of the Princes of Gwynedd, became lover (and possibly husband) to Henry V’s French widow, Catherine of Valois. Two generations later a Tudor was on the throne of England. I adore the tangle of intention, bloodline and outcome…

The Griffin origin story here begins with 12^th-century Llewelyn Ap Iorweth, one of the most beloved Princes of Gwynedd, which I threaded through the centuries to the Glyndŵr line for the 15^th-century Owain Glyndŵr, another celebrated Prince of Wales. In the bloodlines of the princes of Gwynedd, Powys and Deheubarth, it’s not beyond the realms of possibility that these bloodlines merged… and if not, well… fiction.

Exploring the World of The Once and Future Queen The Journey North

Henley and the Chilterns

Living in west London, this was a favourite walking destination – this part of England is spectacular, the winding river Thames here dotted with small islands, the rolling hills, the deep forests.

Oxford

The city of dreaming spires is Mecca for the bookishly inclined.

The history and learning, the beautiful grace of its architecture. The home of walled colleges, cosy pubs, hidden lanes…

The Severn

Crossing the Severn feels to me like the Shannon in Ireland, something about home being west of it. As it was here for Devyn.

The Shannon has a goddess and, I was delighted to realise, so too