Mel Keegan comments on AN EAST WIND BLOWING

This one was the easiest to write of any novel I've done to date, and for the best of reasons. It grew out of one of my long-time hobbies, Celtic archaeology, so the research was already done ... and the location is perfect: my family's roots are in that part of the world for several generations. For me, the writing was as much a "vacation at the keyboard" as the Jamaica story, and a lot more of a keyboard vacation than the South Australian piece, which is local (which equals everyday usual, even ho-hum). The characters in EAST WIND are, again, young in years, but you have to remember that most people in their era didn't live past 35. My characters are 16 - 18, and equivalent to young people of about 22 - 25 in their own world. This is always a major problem when you're writing in an era 1000 years and more in the past for us: I try to avoid directly mentioning a character's age, because it can skew the reader's perceptions. In Ronan's and Bryn's world, if you weren't already mostly grown up by the time you were twelve, chances are you won't be growing up! (Same thing with WHITE ROSE: in fact, the squires were 10 and 12, and the young soldiers were 14 and 15; I had to modify the picture for a my story, or we'd have eyebrows raising in all directions. The scope of EAST WIND (which is a large book compressed into a small space ... GMP used a very small type) gave me the space to work with the characters, have them change, mature and grow. There is a sequel to this novel — it's actually an "Arthurian" story! But with the apparent dissolution of the paperback list at Millivres this project was shelved at the synopsis stage. The book was never written.