The Silver Wheel of destiny that guides all our futures...

My latest book, The Silver Wheel, was inspired by the Lindow Man, a bog body discovered in 1984. Lindow Man had apparently been bludgeoned, strangled and stabbed. The “overkill” of his death and the fact of his being found in a bog caused many archaeologists to believe he was ritually sacrificed, possibly as a means of petitioning the Celtic gods to aid the Britons in their struggle against the invading Romans. From that hypothesis came the time period and the central conflict of The Silver Wheel.

The Roman conquest of Britain has been told from the Roman perspective; I wanted to tell the story from the side of the native Celts. The Silver Wheel started out as a historical novel, but no sooner had I created her than my heroine, Sirona, who is training to be a Drui, or spiritual leader of her tribe, began having visions. Then other supernatural things began to happen:  magical transformations, a spirit wolf that both kills and protects, visits to the Other Side and other out-of-body travel. Ultimately the mystical/spiritual aspects became the most important parts of the story, to the point that a friend of mine who writes inspirational fiction joked that I should enter it in the inspirational category of a book contest. And she wasn’t entirely joking, as the theme of the book is that while the Romans conquered the Celtic Britons in a traditional sense, the spiritual power of the Celts has prevailed in the British Isles, especially in Wales, the land of Sirona’s tribe.

Along with this greater theme, the book is about a young woman (and two young men) coming of age and finding their destinies. About the importance of relationships and love, and the value of knowledge and learning in shaping the future. Perhaps most importantly, the book celebrates the sacredness of the natural world and the spiritual gifts this world offers us, things we often ignore and discount in our modern time.  As Sirona muses about her highland homeland:  Beautiful things and agreeable surroundings didn’t fill the void within her heart as this place did. Such things didn’t feed her spirit. Only the gifts of the goddess did that: The warmth of the sun. The music of flowing water. The sweet breath of the wind. The lacy, green loveliness of a budding tree in spring. The perfumed radiance of a hawthorn bush in bloom. The beguiling curve of a hill. The splendor of all the creatures of this realm: the fleet, wary doe flashing through the trees, a hawk swooping through the sky, the bright blaze of a fox hunting in the meadow, the sleek, silent glint of trout feeding in a shallow stream. Those were the things that gave richness and meaning to life.

  In this era where the balance and even survival of the natural realm and our fellow creatures is threatened on all sides, we would do well to remember this.