AN INTERVIEW WITH SHERYL BRENNAN

Sheryl, I’m happy to have you with us, this month. Welcome.

Hi Deborah! I’m happy to be here, thank you for having me.

You stated in your bio that you put writing aside for 20 years, and you asked yourself why you stopped. Did an answer to that question come to you?

As we women usually do, I put parts of myself aside for marriage, family, children, school, work… in essence, life. I remember thinking all those years, “Gee, I really should get back to writing again.” Those thoughts were typically a result of completing a research paper at school (one of my favorite things to do during my tenure at the University of Louisville, believe it or not), but then something else would pop up and take my focus again. Once I graduated college, I suddenly had a tremendous amount of time on my hands. After ten years in school, studying until midnight while working full time, sometimes with a job or two on the side to make ends meet, and raising a family, I thought getting that diploma would be the answer to a lot of prayer and feelings of disconnectivity I had in my life. It wasn’t. Instead, I felt incomplete, like a part of my life was still missing, but I didn’t know where to look to find it.

You say you felt incomplete until you began journaling to figure out why, which led to writing. How does writing complete you?

I’ve always been somewhat of a visual/verbal learner. By writing my feelings and then reading them out loud, I could “see” and “hear” what was going on; a therapy of sorts. Since I have been writing, I feel such a tremendous amount of joy and peace. The rest of the world just melts away as I write about the movies I see in my head. When I can’t write, I feel like I’m missing my best friend.  

I’ve read that you have experience in volunteer journalism. Can you explain to us what that entails?

Volunteer journalism was an avenue of service offered by my church, Southeast Christian. It was a blessing to be able to use one of my talents to write feature articles for our newspaper, The Southeast Outlook. My first assignment was to interview two of the recipients of a grant program called Harvest Grants. Blessed by abundance from the congregation, Southeast established the program to help churches in and around the Louisville area obtain seed money to begin programs for their own church community. I prayed emphatically that I could put down on paper effectively the things the recipients told me. When the articles came out, I felt very proud to have told a story that others wanted to read. More than 70,000 people subscribe to the Southeast Outlook and it was a privilege to be a part of the volunteer journalistic team. To give back to my church with the talent that God gifted to me.

Places like the American South, Ireland, Wales and Italy are woven into your stories. Have you visited or lived in any of these locations?

I have lived in New Jersey, New York, and Pennsylvania, but most of my life has been spent in North Carolina, Tennessee, and Kentucky. I think that qualifies me as a southern belle. LOL. This past March I stayed for two glorious weeks touring Ireland and meeting friends I had emailed and chatted with. Italy I have not visited as of yet, but I am constantly singing in Italian. Did I mention I sing opera?  

Please tell us about Celtic Sacrifice.

Celtic Sacrifice is a historical romance set in 16th century Ireland during the end of the English/Irish Nine Years war. The story follows Ceana O’Hagan, the daughter of the chieftain of Dungannon, whom her mother’s clan of O’Connor feel is the key to a generation’s old prophecy. Over the course of the book, we get to see Ceana’s personal struggles with love, religion, and her own place in the world. There is a very interesting political plot twist that I won’t give away… but it shakes Ceana’s beliefs down to their very foundation.
One of the overall themes in the book is that God, by any name you call him, has a plan for you. (Jeremiah 29:11) Free will being what it is, one of my constant prayers is that if I am straying off that path, he will guide me back to it. I’ve seen this play out in my life many times, and am asking my readers to email me when they have finished reading the book to tell me about a time when they felt a higher power was guiding their own steps.

Your protagonist, Ceana, is a Druid priestess. For those of us who don’t know, will you explain what they do?

One of the myths about druids is that they sacrificed human beings as part of their ritual. Although the Gauls were known for this practice, it certainly wasn’t true of the Celtic Druidic religion that revered nature. Their celebrations centered around the seasons. In Ireland there are many monuments still standing in effigy to the old beliefs. Newgrange is one of those monuments and is awe-inspiring.

Throw out every pretense that you have about a druid priestess. These women were very learned healers, midwives, astronomers, engineers, counselors, warriors and leaders. Some married and had families, while others lived in secluded orders, such as Catholic nuns do today.

It was no easy task to become a priestess. Initiates had to attend special schools and study for twenty years before earning the title of the religious elite.

Druid priests and priestesses were also the advisors to tribal leaders and enforced a code of conduct called the Brehon Law, which is the foundation of many English Laws.
 
Druids were such a powerful presence in Ireland they could easily pass from one warring tribe to another without incident. Because druids were so intensely trained, in later periods of history they were forbidden to carry weapons of any kind. It was believed that with mere words, they could conquer their enemies and cause all sorts of hardship. So you never wanted to get on the bad side of your priestess. LOL.

The book cover looks great. Very mysterious. Did you have input in its design?

Thank you! I really like it. The cover artist, Dale Ankrum, did a fabulous job. Dale asked for a synopsis of the book and a few ideas on what I envisioned my cover to look like. I quite literally gave him 1000 words. Dale came back with the first iteration, which included a headshot of the heroine in druid robes. My editor and Kelly, the CEO of Underdog suggested we change the girl to a raven, as I use the raven symbolically throughout the story. Dale made the change and WHOALA! There you have it.

What do you like to do when not writing?

Sit on my screened in back porch with a good cup of coffee in my jammies, play with my kiddo’s, sing, travel, hang out with friends, dance… anything to have fun and de-stress.

Where can readers go to learn more about you and your writing?

Just log on to www.sherylbrennan.com. I have lots of information, contests, a newsletter, pictures of my trip to Ireland, and excerpts from a few of my works in progress there for readers to peruse.

One last question, Sheryl. What do you read just for fun?

LOL… this is going to sound geeky, but I love a good historical research or self-help book. I try not to read within my genre when I am creating so I don’t take on someone else’s voice. However, when I am in between projects, I enjoy reading a good medieval or renaissance historical romance. Preferably Celtic themed, although the last two books I read for fun were Pillars of the Earth and The Red Tent.

Thank you for taking the time to chat with us today, Sheryl, and we wish you all the best with this book.

Thank you for the opportunity to be here today, Deborah. This was fun!

See additional archived interviews! Click Here