SEDGWICK—Sedgwick author Mary Duncan is busy promoting
the second novel in her Eyes of Garnet trilogy, titled Sightless, and is well on her way to completing the third novel, to
be published next year.
In the
first novel, Eyes of Garnet, Duncan introduces the central character, Catriona Robertson, and her family during the rebellion
of the Scottish Highlanders of 1745, and the reader learns that Catriona, known as Cat, possesses the gift of second sight,
allowing her to see into the future. She becomes the seer for the clan Donnachaidh, and the story takes us up to the end of
the uprising.
Duncan brings
the history of the time to life and weaves historical accuracy into her fictional story recreating the day-to-day life of
those troublesome times.
In
Sightless, Cat leaves the British Isles to search for her father who had been captured by the British and sentenced to indentured
servitude in the American colonies. The story follows Cat on an adventure to Boston, a meeting with pirates, and eventually
to the rock-bound coast of Maine where she meets the Penobscot Indians and confronts an evil Mohawk shaman who wishes to decimate
the Penobscot people.
A stickler
for historical accuracy, Duncan writes in the opening of the book under the heading Acknowledgments, “The author would
like to thank my husband Dan Duncan for his sometimes aggravating attention to detail and for saying, ‘That’s
it? I was expecting more.’ I always knew when I had it right because he would smile at the end of the reading.
“My editors, Cathy Emmons, Casey Devine, Barbara Martin,
Caroline Spear, Cathy Funaiole-Intoci, and Margaret Whalen. One can’t have too many eyes!
“The Penawahpskewi Cultural and Historic Preservation
Center on Indian Island, Maine, for making sure the Penobscot words and pronunciations were accurate. They also assured me
that the Penobscot had been Christianized during the 1600s, so the names of my characters were not what they would have been
called during the mid-1700s. I chose the alteration of historical fact because I just couldn’t wrap my mind around calling
an Indian shaman Bob. Weliwoni!
“The Wilson Museum in Castine, Maine, for the details of Pentagöet in the mid-1700s, and for telling me about
the apple and pear orchard planted by the French that Cat used to make her pies.”
Duncan was born into a Navy family in Washington, D.C., 50 years ago. Her
father’s naval career took the family all over the world. One of her earliest memories has to do with their stay in
Egypt. Although only 4 years old at the time, the pyramids, camels and the Nile River were so impressive she remembers the
sights and sounds she experienced to this day. Her father is of Greek heritage and her mother of French ancestry.
Later the family moved to Townsend, Mass., where she attended
local schools and graduated from North Middlesex High School. She has a sister and two brothers and many nieces. Trained in
graphic arts, she found employment at New England Business Service, where she worked for 20 years in all areas of the graphic
arts with the exception of actually running the press. She did extensive graphic design, which shows in the covers of her
two published books. She started her graphic career in the era of hot type and worked on into the digital age. “It was
an interesting 20 years,” she said.
She was married in 1980 and went on a four-year honeymoon in Wyoming, Montana and Oregon with her husband, Dan, to fulfill
their dream of becoming ranchers. Finally after living four years on a monthly income of $600, they decided their dream had
been realized and moved to New Hampshire, where her husband became a photographer and she returned to her first love, painting.
Becoming a novelist was the
result of trying to trace her husband’s genealogy. Dan Duncan is of Scottish ancestry and wanted to know more of his
lineage, so Mary took it upon herself to conduct the search for his roots. “I was trying to find a link for my husband’s
family, where it was from. So far, I am still in Nova Scotia.”
However, the history of Scotland interested her and she started reading about the history of
the country, especially during the 1700s.
As she read about the period and the clans, she discovered the Outlander series by Diana Gabaldon, novels about Jamie Fraser,
a Scottish Highlander from the 18th century, and his time-traveling wife, Claire.
While doing her own research of Scotland’s history, Duncan noticed
that Gabaldon used a lot of Scottish words and phrases, but the language was alien to her.
Determined to be as authentic as possible, Duncan enrolled
in a class of Scottish Gaelic offered by Wayne Smith of Surry.
With four or five classmates, she began to become more familiar with the very difficult Gaelic
language. “Learning was always fun,” she said. Once she familiarized herself with the language, she decided to
take all the history she had studied and work it into a fictional story. She felt that, to complement her effort to achieve
authenticity with the language, she would need a glossary of terms, which she has included in the back of the two books she
has published. Without the glossary, she said, terminology and pronunciations looked like gibberish.
She also used that same approach when writing about the Penobscot
Indians in her second book. Duncan did, however, take poetic license in giving Indian names to her Native American characters,
even though in actual fact, the Penobscot of the time had become Christianized and were sporting names like Bob.
The Indian shaman who figures prominently in the second book
was originally named “xxxx” she said because she just couldn’t bring herself to call him “Bob.”
While writing her books she has six sets of eyes to assist her in accuracy and in time it became a running joke, with her
editors demanding she give “xxxx” a name. Finally she did. She named him Far Eyes.
She started writing in 2002-03. “I felt something had
to be different with my life.” She said she met with a woman who read crystal stones and gems like others would read
tarot cards.
The crystal reader,
without having been told anything by Duncan about her life, told Duncan she had come to a crossroads in her life. “I
didn’t know what I wanted to do, but she told me to say the first thing that came into my head. I answered, ‘Write.’”
“I then said, ‘I
don’t know how to write.’ It was an epiphany for me. Of course I knew how to write; I had been a Macintosh trainer
and had written training manuals.” She didn’t know how to be a novelist, but not knowing how to do something has
never stopped her from trying, she said.
“I kind of live in a dream world when it comes to painting, my first love, or writing. I prefer my own little pictures
and thoughts. I don’t write about this time.”
She has other goals as well as her novels. “I’ve already written the screenplay.”
In her Web site she has already selected the actors she would want playing her characters.
“I would like to film in Scotland for four or five months,” she
laughed.
Duncan’s story
telling is ruled by the characters she creates in her mind. “They rule the roost,” she said. “I am just
the typist. It is always a surprise.” Already at work on the third book in the series, she said, speaking about the
plot, “I have no idea where it is going. I can’t say. I don’t know. I just let it go. I may have little
things, bits and pieces that I want to add. In November of 1755 there was a large earthquake off Cape May, felt in Boston.
I found that interesting and realized that somehow they (the characters) have to be in Boston in November of 1755. I need
to put that in the book, but that is as far as I can go. They take it from there and it is as fresh and new to me, because
I don’t know where she (Cat) is going.”
Duncan said, “I do not write in the summertime. When working [at her job] I work, not on the
book. In the winter I’ll write four days a week, writing seven to eight hours at a time. I stop to research on the Internet,
and some times I just need to go to the library and read up on history.” During a writing session, she said, she can
complete anything from two pages to a chapter.
She likes to start writing early in the day, getting started around 7:30 to 8 a.m. Sometimes she writes
a little longer than normal if she becomes excited and wants to see how things are going to end. When she is not writing,
Duncan is the office manager for the Blue Hill office of Penobscot Bay Press.
Duncan does not spend a lot of time with other writers discussing literature.
There are some get-togethers, she said, but that is mostly among the poets in the area. “I would be more interested
in meeting with writers to discuss marketing,” she said.
She is a member of the Maine Writers’ Alliance and will be attending a book-signing session
in Portland after Thanksgiving sponsored by the alliance and Portland Public Library.
Although she is on a list of publications put out by her publisher, Duncan
has to do the bulk of promotion for her book. Her publishing company, she said, is a small one and does not stockpile and
distribute a mass quantity of books. “It is print on demand,” she said. The book is distributed somewhat, but
a lot of the legwork is done by her. She is always looking for markets, she said, because distribution is the key. “Writing
is the easy part.”
She
said many other authors tell her they spend more time writing synopses, and seeking markets and publicity than they do writing.
“I’d be willing to pay somebody to do that.”
“I really target the Scots, the Highland Games. I go where they go. They are looking for
writing about Scotland.”
On September 20 she will be attending the Highland Games in New Hampshire, signing books.
“There will be 10,000 kilted men, a huge crowd, all
wanting to be Scots and dressing like it.” She hopes to widen her readership from just Scotsmen to those who enjoy New
England history, now that she has introduced Cat to the coast of Maine.
She has signed books at the library in Blue Hill as well as area bookstores.
Duncan said, “Writing is a solitary life. I tend to
live in a daydream. My husband can tell when I have that glassed-over look in my eye. I am never without something to write
about. I never sit and stare at a blank page.”
Referring again to writing the screenplay about her novels, she said it was an entirely different project.
A novel can be more than 360 pages, she said, but Hollywood doesn’t want more than 120 pages for a screenplay. To convert
a novel to a screenplay, she said you have to cut entire scenes, eliminate chapters and characters, to put it all down on
paper. It is a very different way of writing.
To date, she said, she is two-thirds of the way through her third novel in the trilogy. It usually takes her two years to
write a book, but this one might take just a year and a half.
She has already selected the title for her fourth novel and this time the book will be written
in the first person as a man.
To learn more about author Mary Duncan and her books, visit www.eyesofgarnet.com.
