AustLit

Author's note:

In the gentle glow of firelight ad old man, his hands hardened from a lifetime of tilling the soil, warmed himself against the winter. His eyes brightened as I opened a bottle and found a seat opposite him. He told me that no one listened to his stories these days. By the time that bottle of whiskey was gone I had heard one or two of his tales, but I'm certain he kept the best stories to himself.

Music and storytelling have been a part of my life since childhood. My grandmother was a talented tale-weaver who had a gift for meshing different stories together. Her style was to overlap her tales into one long legend that explained the origins of the Irish people. In the early 1980s I travelled to Ireland and there was privileged to meet some very fine storytellers. The legends and anecdotes I heard inspired me to record as much as possible. In my enthusiasm I filled notebooks with wise and humorous sayings I picked up, as well as the general gist of some fascinating tales.

When I returned to Australia I put the notes away and got on with earning a degree in the arts. It was ten years before I looked at the scribblings again. By that time I had a much better knowledge of folklore and the storyteller's craft.

Then by a remarkable chance, almost as if it had happened in one of those stories, I met a mentor who would become my literary agent: Selwa Anthony. She suggested I write a story based on some of the tales I had collected, At first I envisaged a much broader storyline which incorporated the origins of the mystical Tuatha-De0Denaan and their traditional rivals the Fir-Bolg. I even planned to end the tale in the time of the Viking incursions into Ireland.

But as I had no idea whether the first book would ever be taken up or even prove popular, I decided to focus on just one small section of the story. So it was I started the long tale in the middle with the arrival in Eirinn of Bishop Palladius, the first Roman missionary, in the fifth century after Christ. The Circle and the Cross was so well received I soon had an offer to complete a trilogy. By the time The Song of the Earth was published my first novel was already a bestseller and the last in the Wanderers series, The Water of Life was in preparation.

Now I'm getting on with the rest of the story.