Guest Blog: J.S. Dunn

This week, we're welcoming author J.S. Dunn, who is celebrating the release of Bending the Boyne, set in ancient Ireland. J.S. is here to talk about the novel, answer questions and give away a copy. Here's the blurb:

Eire, 2200 BCE: Warriors bring long bronze knives and strange customs to ancient Ireland, including their Night of the Dead. The young astronomer Boann and the enigmatic Cian need all their wits and courage to save their people and their great Boyne mounds. Banished to far coasts, Cian discovers how to outwit the invaders at their own game.


Tensions on Eire between new and old cultures and between Boann, Elcmar, and her son Aengus, ultimately explode. What emerges from the rubble of battle are the legends of Ireland’s beginnings in a totally new light.

***

Give some clues about the meaning of that title and unusual cover!
Bending refers to change and having to adapt. The Boyne passage mounds in Ireland were built before the Pyramids, or Stonehenge. Why were the great mounds abandoned around 2200 BCE?


The front cover uses an abstract photo of a mound entrance. For more photos see www.Newgrange.com.


What inspired you to write about Ireland at 2200 BCE?
BENDING THE BOYNE journeys to the ancient, sacred heart of Ireland in a tale of gold and greed. The impetus was part myth and part archaeology, and wanting to bridge the gap for the modern reader.


Jean Auel’s Clan series opened up the Paleolithic, made that era accessible in modern fiction. BENDING THE BOYNE moves ahead several thousand years. This novel adds myth to the brew, with a chaser of Irish wordplay. It is bang-on with the latest about the early Bronze Age.


How did you develop characters for this story?
The heroine Boann appears early in Irish myth, then vanishes. Her short tale is a tangled web. Thursday’s blog excerpt quotes the Dindshenchas “...they made the sun stand still to the end of nine months...” That is the first Who’s Your Daddy gossip item, about the birth of her son Aengus. BENDING THE BOYNE riffs on Boann’s fragmented myth. A culture clash, and conjecture about who is Aengus’ father, develop into a tragic resolution.


Boann and Aengus and certain characters have astronomy symbolism. Boann represents the Milky Way; her son Aengus is the reborn solstice sun. Other references to the myths are tongue in cheek. For readers not familiar with Irish myth, reading the novel’s Glossary of names is recommended.


This novel recycles the earliest myths with a fresh spin, so that new concepts of “Celts” can replace outdated images. Barry Cunliffe in his new treatise Celtic From The West (2010) with linguist John Koch, points the way forward: that a Gaelic culture came from Europe’s far west coasts and not central Europe, and that the Gaelic tongue probably arose along the coasts as a common trading tongue—more than a thousand years earlier than the Iron Age, or Roman occupiers.


How did you research this era?
BENDING THE BOYNE evolved over a decade of reading the medieval myth texts and research using current sources, i.e., excavation reports and recent articles and books. I had a property in Ireland and from there traveled the north Atlantic coasts, seeing as many megaliths and associated museums as possible. With a geologist, I hiked to ancient copper and gold mines high in the Spanish Pyrenees. Given the excellent local wines and goat cheeses, those climbs were very worthwhile!


Several academics kindly read drafts and commented. Archaeologist William O’Brien related that he had been inspired by Lein, the ancient smith. O’Brien excavated the Isles’ oldest copper mine at Lein’s Lake Of Many Hammers, ca 2400-2200 BCE, and his find supports the astonishing antiquity of Gaelic myth.


Who is the target audience for Bending The Boyne?
Easy answer: forty million Irish Americans! Seriously, any HF reader will gain by approaching this ancient setting with an open mind. Fans of prehistory or astronomy enjoy this novel. Those who have some background in Irish literature and myth, or Irish history, will see allegory and puns like finding shells on a beach.


Do you have any more novels planned?
A second novel is underway, set later in the Bronze Age as a separate narrative rather than a series. There is ample material to do a third novel, or a nonfiction travelogue of the Bronze Age in northern Europe.


Thank you, J.S. and good luck with Bending the Boyne. 


Be sure to leave your comment for a copy of the novel.


Find J.S. Dunn at seriouslygoodbks@aol.com and www.jsdunnbooks.com


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Excerpt Thursday: Bending the Boyne by J.S. Dunn

This week on Excerpt Thursday we're welcoming author J.S. Dunn, who is celebrating the release of Bending the Boyne, set in ancient Ireland. Join us Sunday when J.S. will be here to talk about the novel, answer questions and give away a copy. Here's the blurb:

Eire, 2200 BCE: Warriors bring long bronze knives and strange customs to ancient Ireland, including their Night of the Dead. The young astronomer Boann and the enigmatic Cian need all their wits and courage to save their people and their great Boyne mounds. Banished to far coasts, Cian discovers how to outwit the invaders at their own game.

Tensions on Eire between new and old cultures and between Boann, Elcmar, and her son Aengus, ultimately explode. What emerges from the rubble of battle are the legends of Ireland’s beginnings in a totally new light.

** An Excerpt from Bending The Boyne **

It was then they made the sun stand still
to the end of nine months—strange the tale—
warming the noble ether
in the roof of the perfect firmament.

From: Metrical Dindshenchas

NIGHT OF THE DEAD (SAMHAIN)

Boann woke with the rising sun, feeling the child lying dormant in her, waiting. The intruders’ feast on this night had little importance to her.

Fools: they thought her Starwatchers’ great passage mounds held gold. .

So far her marriage to Elcmar had not improved relations between the two groups. She had little protection in the camp with Elcmar away. If the warriors chose another champion before he returned, what would become of her?

She located the shaman Bresal, surrounded by an audience. He had commandeered a cooking pit to soak imported cloth in a rare blue, fussing with his male slave over whether it was vivid enough and evenly dyed. The women slaves who normally did the cloth dyeing stood back in disapproval: men should never be allowed near the dyeing process as that would bring bad luck. Also the dye had spoiled that fulacht fiadh, banjaxed it for any cooking or brewing.

Bresal looked up and nudged his slave. “Wonder how she’s keeping, with her man away? A woman on her own!” The shaman leered. “If they are all breeders, we won’t have to bring in many women here a’tall.”

Boann saw at once that the shaman was in rare form. She raised her chin, shoulders back “Good sun to you, Bresal. I’m after having my bath and breaking the fast. I shall be joining my father Oghma, the Dagda, and others as we observe the sun set. With your consent, Cliodhna shall accompany me.”

Bresal swayed over the dripping cloth, as if not sure why tonight’s sunset would be so important. “Should Elcmar’s wife be absent as we begin celebrating the Night of the Dead?” His lips pouted, his face struggled to evaluate all the portents and specifically any negative results for him.

He inclined his sweaty round head. “Are you aware of our feast tonight?” he asked.

“I am not familiar with this Invader custom. Please explain more to me if you would.” She waited for Bresal to go off on a tangent and he promptly did so.

“The Night of the Dead is a major feast, the beginning of the new year for us Invaders. It might have significance for the Quiet Ones as well.” Boann stiffened at his using that term for her people but he babbled on, heedless.

Bresal described the presence of the dead walking among the living. Huge fires would be lit so that the spirits could see and thus not disturb the living. He detailed how he selected the animals to be slain and how he would publicly examine their entrails in order to predict the coming crops and success at various endeavors. Bresal ended with a flourish.

“Your presence is highly necessary for all this as the ard ri’s wife, and notably so in Elcmar’s absence.” He looked at her extended midsection and up to catch her eye. “We can make you a new tunic but not in this blue fabric, I’m afraid. That color is reserved to shamans, and to Elcmar. That is, if Elcmar were here with us. Alive, to be sure. For this feast of the dead.” He hicupped and swayed again.

“I quite understand. Thank you, Bresal. Whatever color would suit me.”

Boann grabbed her small bundles and fled with Cliodhna. The two women slipped like water between the camp huts and passed unnoticed by a sentry dulled by cold and the prior evening’s drinking. They scurried over the plank bridge across the bank and ditch and into blue autumn light.

Once underway through the forest, Boann spoke openly. “Night Of The Dead! Already most of the slaves are frightened out of their wits from talk of spirits walking among them, great bonfires or not. These slaves have enough to fear from the living.”     

She could only imagine the mayhem that would occur upon poor animals. She had seen enough of the murky approach taken by Bresal and his followers.

For Invaders this night marked the beginning of the new year. They counted time in darkness, that is, from nightfall to nightfall. The shaman Bresal hinted to her that he could halt the sun. He dared to say that Invader ships brought the great dust cloud that ruined the past growing season. He seemed to have little idea of either the sun’s or the moon’s movements.

Free of the camp’s environs, her boldness grew. A few more steps, and she decided not to return to Elcmar’s camp until after this child was born.

She must survive to winter solstice, one more moon. She crossed her arms, defending the life in her swelling body.