A Murder in Michaelmas, Jeanette Sears Shares her Busy Literary Life

Jeanette, welcome to International Christian Fiction Writers! We are so privileged to have an internationally known C. S. Lewis scholar visit us.  Before we get to talking about your new novel tell us about your contribution to Women and C. S. Lewis.

Thank you so much, Donna, for inviting me.  It’s great to speak with you, and thank you for asking about my non-fiction as well as fiction.  Yes, I was asked by one of the editors of Women and C S Lewis, the wonderful Carolyn Curtis, if I would write a short opinion-piece for this Lion Hudson book which has been published in the UK and USA this summer.  The aim was for around 30 contributors who regularly research and write on Lewis to say what influence he has had on them, particularly in the area of Lewis and women.  Did Lewis have a bad attitude to women? Has his teaching had a negative impact on them?  That was the sort of question we were to address in our response.  Well-known writers such as Alister McGrath, Michael Ward, Colin Duriez, Crystal Hurd, Monika Hilder, Randy Alcorn, Malcolm Guite, Holly Ordway, David C Downing, Don King and others all chipped in to reassert Lewis’ reputation and standing in this area.  I suspect the piece that’s most critical of Lewis is probably mine!  I take him to task on the subject of women priests.  But basically we’re all fans who are very grateful to him for his influence on our lives and we hope that this book on a popular level will be interesting for fans and critics alike.

And you also published a guide to C. S. Lewis’ Oxford, didn’t you?

Yes, I’m glad to say that The Oxford of J R R Tolkien and C S Lewis has sold around 7,000 copies and is in Blackwell’s and the main tourist shops in Oxford.  I had been taking people on Inklings tours of Oxford and approached Oxford Heritage Trails who had published walking tours on different themes for many years.  I’m glad to say it’s become their best seller, even beating the one on Lewis Carroll and Alice in Wonderland!

Now, tell us about A Murder in Michaelmas. Of course, I loved it because it’s set in Oxford, revolves around Arthurian legends and has an American heroine— subjects all dear to my heart. It must have been quite a challenge weaving all those strands together.

I thought you might like it!  I’ve just enjoyed reading your ANewly Crimsoned Reliquary, so I suspect we have a lot of interests in common!  I lived in Oxford for 10 years - as an ordinand at theological college, a curate, a student chaplain, and a Summer School Director for a college - so I got to know the life there from the inside.  I found myself using it as a setting for a murder mystery very naturally, as of course have many before us.  Oxford seems to bring murder out in people, in literature at any rate!  (By the way, I used to live on Fairacres Road in Iffley, as did your heroine for a while.)

Have you always had a love of things Arthurian?

Not particularly.  No more so than any other Brit - perhaps it’s in our DNA.  But I wanted to have a plot that reflected the medieval setting of Oxford and that could easily include the theme of witchcraft and the occult.  I had been to the Oxford Arthurian Society (which sadly no longer exists) and so made up my own Lancelot and Guinevere Society.  I thought this could be a re-enactment group where students dress up as characters from Thomas Malory’s Le Morte d'Arthur, the nastier characters as well as the good guys.  Was the murder a re-enactment that went horribly wrong, or did the victim’s death have some other cause?  You may have noticed that I also love the Preraphaelites, and often quote them at the beginning of chapters.  Well, they loved Tennyson and the Arthurian legends, and so I suppose I love Arthur because I love them.  Of course, C S Lewis rather liked them as well - I really love That Hideous Strength in which he draws on these medieval stories.

Why did you choose to work with an American heroine?

My heroine, Eve Merry, was originally written as British, but then it occurred to me that her being American would work better, especially as a contrast to the English upper-class hero and fellow student Crispin Martin de Beauchamp-Massey.  She’s studying Theology, he’s reading English Literature.  She’s from a poor background, he’s rich.  She’s a Christian (although struggling after her father’s death), while Martin is a bit of a cynic.  So I thought to have them as different nationalities would add to the conflict and interest.  I lived in Boston, Massachusetts, for 4 years in the 1980s so I thought I could have Eve heralding from there, plus Oxford is blessed with many keen and enthusiastic American students, so I figured that would fit well too

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Eve and Martin are such interesting characters. Will we be seeing more of them? Do you envision this book as being the first in a series?

Oh, thank you.  Yes, I hope this will be a series.  I’ve started writing the second ‘Merry and Massey Mystery’ - it’s called Death of a Sluggard.  The first mystery had the theme of Christianity versus the occult; this one has the debate between Religion and Science as the ideological background which the murder throws up.  Eve and her friend Charlie Boscombe, who is a Biochemistry student, will be tackling the so-called New Atheists, with eccentric help from the irrepressible Martin of course.

 

Your website says you’ve been a church minister, a university lecturer, a London bookseller and a writer. What a wonderful variety of experience. Do you find all this background helping you in writing your novels?

Definitely.  I’m sure you find that as a writer now you have to also be a public speaker, event planner, book seller, sales and marketing expert, teacher, pastoral counsellor, etc etc, as well!  So it all comes in handy, whether it’s plotting the books, talking about them in public, or getting people to buy them.  My children’s novel (although really it’s for everybody) called Pig’sProgress began as stories I told to live audiences at church and school.

You also lecture on Dorothy L. Sayers— another of my favorites. How has a love of Sayers influenced your writing?

She’s my heroine.  I first read her Clouds of Witness when I was 10 and immediately wanted to be a writer.  I include talking about her on my Inklings tours of Oxford, even though she wasn’t officially an Inkling.  As a theologian and a writer of murder mysteries, she’s got to be my patron saint.  If I can reflect any of her intelligence, style, faith and imagination in my writing, who could ask for more?

You have so much to keep up with it must be hard to keep all your hats in a row. What’s next for you?

Mmm, you’re right, it can be tricky combining everything.  At the moment I have a lull in speaking events so there’s more time to concentrate on the writing.  I’ve been finishing a comic literary novel called The Last Romantic.  Then I’ll be writing the first of (I hope) a series of murder mysteries set in my home town of Nottingham.  Oh, and finishing Death of a Sluggard, and working on more non-fiction on C S Lewis and Dorothy L Sayers.

Jeanette, thank you so much for taking time in your busy life to be with us today. Is there anything else you’d like to share with our readers?

It’s been my pleasure.  The next publication is my contribution to C S Lewis at Poet’s Corner (Wipf and Stock) which should be out fairly soon.  One of the highlights of recent years was being able to be part of the events surrounding the inclusion of Lewis in Poet’s Corner in Westminster Abbey, and this is the written form of those events, plus lectures and blogs it inspired.

And where can we find you and your books on the web?

 My web address is www.jeanettesears.com and my books can be accessed on Amazon from there.

Posted by Donna Fletcher Crow. A Newly Crimsoned Reliquary, set in Oxford, is the latest in her Monastery Murders series