Today’s guest blogger is Jeanne Ann Macejko, a mystery writer as well as an illustrator of children’s books. She’s been a marketing/public relations professional, an English teacher, a university instructor of illustration and graphic design, and a medical illustrator/photographer. She also trained with the Peace Corps in the Caribbean and taught English in rural Ireland. With that background, of course she has something to tell us.

Another Time. Another Place

I was born in the wrong place and time. Like a stranger in town, I’m an ex-patriot in my own soul and live with an abiding sense of non-belonging. I am not, however, alone.

I often meet people who also believe that they were meant to inhabit a different city, or country, or planet, but were somehow delivered to the wrong address and century. They are not ALL writers either.

Maybe such notions are proof of genetic memory. It explains the mania for discovering our ancestry. Such fantasies could also be outgrowths of art and literature—fairy tales, or the Outlander series, perhaps the paintings of Van Gogh or Rimsky-Korsakov’s Scheherazade. Or is it as simple as yearning to be somewhere else, anywhere except this here and this now? In our imaginations, not only is the view beautiful, but so are we. Imaginary careers are important and meaningful; daydream partners wealthy and glamorous and friends so much more interesting.

Writers transport readers to distant locales and exciting situations. This is the engine that drives genre fiction. Authors spend weeks researching places they never actually lived. In the old days, you would find us in dusty libraries, digging through crumbling paper or squinting at disintegrating microfiche. Now writers do most of our research at home on our personal computers. Through the magic of the internet, we can even stroll along distant streets to scope out potential settings. Which is a good thing, because trans-oceanic voyages rarely figure into the budget.

If you’ve read this far, you may think you are one of us—one of those displaced souls from a different venue and time warp. I hope you find or have found your locus on the compass. Because once you connect with your essence, it will energize you creatively.

Although mine was a Welsh/Irish family, we were 100% American. We ate no traditional foods, sang no ethnic songs, belonged to no fraternal organizations and celebrated neither St. Patrick’s Day nor St. David’s Day. When I discovered the term Celtic, I realized immediately that for me, this word meant home. I couldn’t wait to get there.

On my first trip abroad, 92 years after my great-grandparents left, I re-connected with my Welsh relations. Many journeys have followed. My encounters in Wales and Ireland fuel my creativity. Through photography, drawings and writing, I have explored landscapes and people who are more real and immediate to me than my Texas neighborhood.

Of course, Wales was where I found her—Fair Rosamund Clifford. Born 800 years ago in a Norman castle overlooking the River Wye, Fair Rosamund became the mistress of Henry Plantagenet and was murdered by his jealous Queen. Poets, playwrights and novelists have been telling her story ever since.

In Keystone Corpse, a contemporary detective investigates a grisly murder. To solve the crime, he must uncover the suspect’s Medieval motives. The castles, homes, hillsides and pubs of the book are authentic places; the historical figures are as close to truth as the centuries will allow. And to underscore how vital finding my personal past was, one of my Welsh cousins is a retired homicide detective—the perfect technical consultant.

JIM:  Jeanne is putting the Kindle version of Keystone Corpse on sale for just .99 for this Friday, Saturday and Sunday (August 5, 6, and 7). Normally it is 2.99.  Click here to see the Kindle site for this book.

And surely you have a comment related to this topic.  Are you where you were meant to be?  Have you always been there?