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