Pump Up Your Book Chats with Author J.S. Dunn

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About J.S. Dunn

J.S. Dunn resided in Ireland during the past decade, and from there pursued early Bronze Age culture along the Atlantic coasts of Spain, France, Wales, and Ireland. In 2006, the author attended the Dover Boat symposium (UK) regarding the earliest known Atlantic plank boat. The research for BENDING THE BOYNE yielded many friends in diverse fields including archaeology, geology, and Bronze Age tool-making.

This is a debut novel and won the 2011 Next Generation Indie Award for historical fiction.

Find out more about the author visit http://www.jsdunnbooks.com or on Facebook at http://www.facebook.com/pages/Bending-The-Boyne/192198197473429

About Bending the Boyne

The great Boyne passage mounds are older than the Pyramids, and Stonehenge. Why were these great mounds abandoned around 2200 BCE?

2200 BCE: Changes rocking the Continent reach Eire with the dawning Bronze Age. Marauders invade the island seeking copper and gold and their long bronze knives challenge the peaceful native starwatchers. The young astronomer Boann and the enigmatic Cian need all their wits and courage to save their people and their great Boyne mounds. Tensions build on Eire between new and old cultures and between Boann, Elcmar, and her son Aengus, and eventually explode. What emerges from the rubble of battle are Ireland’s oldest legends in a totally new light.

BENDING THE BOYNE uses the new paradigm that “Celtic” culture developed along the north Atlantic coasts (not in central Europe) and arose in the early Bronze Age. This story appeals to fans of the Bronze Age, ancient astronomy, and archaeology. The tale echoes with literary heroes: Swift, Yeats, Flann O’Brien, and many others.

On Bending The Boyne

Q: Can you tell us why you wrote your book?
Like the person who was asked why they climbed the mountain: because the mountain was there. —This is the first fiction regarding early Ireland to use bang-on accurate archaeology with the myths. It also exposes the reader to the new concept for Gaels, that the Gaels arose along the Atlantic coasts ( not central Europe) and at a far earlier date than previously thought.

Q: Which part of the book was the hardest to write?
This novel required a labor of love, ten years of research and writing to produce solid new historical fiction about an era that is just beginning to be understood.

Q: Does your book have an underlying message that readers should know about?
Bending The Boyne is intended to make the early Bronze Age accessible to modern readers like Jean Auel’s Clan series did for the Paleolithic era. Those readers familiar with Irish myth or European prehistory will see a subtext that the average reader may not have.

This novel also refers to modern notions of celebrity, and to the Troubles and Irish politics, and has a layer of puns which refer to the literature of Yeats, Swift, Flann O’Brien, and other authors.

On Writing

Q: Do you remember when the writing bug hit?
I had no idea this is an illness!

Q: What’s the most frustrating thing about becoming a published author and what’s the most rewarding?
Frustrating perhaps would be the inherent delays in publishing – editing, conversion to files in different formats, proofing and re-proofing. Rewarding is the other 99% of it and the interesting reactions from readers, even those who don’t “get it”.

Q: Do you have a writing tip you’d like to share?
Never give up.

Q: Where’s your favorite place to write ?
Writing of Bending The Boyne involved a great deal of travel of the Atlantic coasts of Spain and France, while living in Ireland, so this author learned to write anywhere. In fact it was pleasant to write notes at night in a parador in Spain or a country house in France after a day of touring megaliths and museums, and the experiences and impressions would be fresh. The manuscript was written in several countries.

On Childhood

Q: Were you the kind of child who always had a book in her/his hand?
Yes. Is that unusual?

Q: Can you remember your favorite book?
All of them. I read everything: cereal boxes and Shakespeare and comic books and Dickens and newspapers and Jane Austen.

Q: Do you remember writing stories when you were a child?
No, too busy reading.

On Book Promotion

Q: What was the first thing you did as far as promoting your book?
The publisher sent out advance review copies and I began setting up the author website, at least six months in advance of publication.

Q: Are you familiar with the social networks and do you actively participate?
Facebook is a good interactive tool to meet readers, post information, and answer questions; in addition to the author website.

Q: How do you think book promotion has changed over the years?
It has a circus atmosphere, seems less concerned with substance and the book itself.

On Other Fun Stuff

Q: If you had one wish, what would that be?
That these questions were not so silly.

Q: If you could be anywhere in the world other than where you are right now, where would that place be?
Ireland, of course, working in my garden where it was so quiet one could hear the bees buzzing.

Q: Your book has just been awarded a Pulitzer. Whom would you thank?
Big thanks to all those listed in the Acknowledgments pages of Bending The Boyne, including the patient drivers who helped me find ancient sites, often in remote places and far from where we thought they’d be. Also thanks to the academics who consented to read fiction in order to vet the details.

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Question of the Day

How do you make sales happen for you?

A lot of hard work! I sponsor a lot of on line parties, festivals and contests. Book sales don’t magically happen, believe me. An author has to work hard to earn her readers. And then she has to work hard to keep them by giving them something they’ll enjoy reading. I try hard to make my books worth a reader’s time.

-- Sheila Roberts, Author of Winter at the Beach