Mary Devlin

Author/singer MARY DEVLIN is quite well known in the fields of astrology and New Age thought. She is a certified Professional Member of the American Federation of Astrologers, and was trained by Marcia Moore in karmic astrology and past-life regression. Mary's many published works include books such as I AM MARY SHELLEY, ASTROLOGY AND PAST LIVES and ASTROLOGY AND RELATIONSHIPS, and YOUR FUTURE LIVES, THE PSYCHOLOGY OF SPIRIT, and the recently-released MEDIEVAL MUSIC, MAGICAL MINDS, as well as a significant number of magazine articles. She has had a passion for medieval studies almost since she learned to read. A BA in English, she specialized in the heroic and medieval ages, including study of Chaucer and other medieval poets. Her current works in progress include LOVE, SEX AND THE SPIRITUAL LIFE, THE LOST MUSIC OF IRELAND, and TAROT OF THE RISHIS, a combination book and Tarot card deck based on Hindu mythology, in conjunction with noted San Francisco artist Steven Johnson Leyba. She has lectured on these subjects all over the United States and in England and Holland.

Mysteries have been a passion for Mary since she discovered Nancy Drew at the age of eight, and were expanded to romantic suspense when, in high school, she became an avid fan of Victoria Holt and Mary Stewart. Her love of medieval studies and her enthusiasm for mysteries eventually led her to Ellis Peters, Edward Marston, Candace Robb, Sharan Newman, and Peter Tremayne. She decided to make a detective out of noted poet/astrologer Geoffrey Chaucer, and the result is the short story contained in CONUNDRUM and the first in a series of mystery novels featuring Chaucer, MURDER ON THE CANTERBURY PILGRIMAGE, which is now available through amazon.com and in your favorite bookstores. A second Chaucer mystery, THE LEGEND OF GOOD WOMEN, is now in the works. Another of Mary's mysteries is PORTRAIT OF VICTORINE, a novel of romantic suspense set in the contemporary Paris art world. DEVON WAKEFIELD, a historical romance set in 18th-century Australia, was released at Christmas of 2001.

A trained actress and screenwriter, Ms. Devlin studied acting at Estelle Harman’s Academy, and screenwriting under Travis Pike in Los Angeles and Ken Valentine at San Francisco’s Film Arts Foundation. While living in Los Angeles from 1977 through 1989, she appeared on stage in Moonchildren and in several films, including And Now for the Murder written, produced and directed by Carl Binder. She also wrote and produced William the Conqueror, a historical docudrama, as well as a documentary on firewalking and a number of music videos.

Ms. Devlin is also an accomplished vocalist. Classically trained in both opera and bel canto, she was a folk singer for a number of years before discovering medieval and Renaissance music. An Anglophile who divides her time between London and the San Francisco Bay Area, she performed for several years with a London-based medieval ensemble called The Lion Tree, and at the same time maintained a solo career concentrating on songs of the Elizabethan period. She was highly praised for her performances for the London Film Festival, and her work has been featured on both radio and television. Presently she directs the Sherwood Consort, a medieval ensemble which has recently produced and performed a revival of the medieval comic opera, Le Gieus de Robin et Marion. In addition to singing, she plays lute, gittern, and harp, and played the role of one of the musicians in Le Gieus de Robin et Marion. The Consort has released two CDs, Between March and April: Music of Medieval England, and Robin Loves Me: The Legend of Robin and Marion. Both CDs have received good reviews. Other CD projects now in the works include One Day as I went Riding, a collection of motets and troubadour and trouvère songs from medieval France, and Monk, Take Thy Foot Away, a collection of medieval pieces by women poets and composers and the men who loved them.

From 1999 to 2001, Ms. Devlin sang with the Women's Antique Vocal Ensemble (WAVE), directed by Cindy Beitman, a group specializing in medieval and Renaissance sacred music. She has also studied and performed with Shira Kammen, Joel Cohen, Anne Azema, and the Oakland Symphony Chorus.

Ms. Devlin is also an amateur painter, primarily influenced by and interested in the Impressionists. She has traveled all over the world, from Mexico to Australia to Kenya to all parts of Europe, and has spent a considerable amount of time in Paris, France. She is the mother of two sons, Thomas and Allan Dye, both accomplished musicians and award-winning cartoonists, and a daughter, Laura Meador, a real estate management specialist. Ms. Devlin currently lives in Los Angeles, CA, with her three cats, Cricket,
Erin and Draupadi. Visit Mary online at http://www.winged-horse.com/authors/marybio.htm, http://www.winged-horse.com/authors/astroboo.htm and http://www.winged-horse.com/mysteries/mysteryb.htm

Pageonelit.com: Where did you grow up and was reading and writing a part of your life? Who were your earliest influences and why?

Mary Devlin: I grew up in the Washington, D. C. area, and I have been reading and writing ever since I can remember. I learned both early, and tried to write stories of my own as early as the first grade. My very earliest influence was the Oz books, because I had a very young uncle who loved them and had collected them all, so everyone in the family would read them to me. But as my reading improved, I moved on to reading my parents' library - just whatever was there, I didn't care. There was a book that touched a lot on English history, and I was drawn to that like moths to a flame.

As far as mysteries go, I would have to cite the Nancy Drew mysteries as my earliest influences. Combine that with a growing fascination with English history, and you have the initial threads that led to what I'm doing now.

 

Pageonelit.com:Why do you write?

Mary Devlin: I can't help it. I couldn't stop if I wanted to. There's something in me that drives me to write, whether it's mystery novels, astrology or music texts, or anything else that tickles my fancy. It helps me, first of all, as far as learning goes, because everything I do requires a lot of research. But as to why? I write because I must. That's all I can say.

 

Pageonelit.com:You have three novels in the mystery genre - What is it about writing/reading a mystery you enjoy?

Mary Devlin: Well, I've always been a sucker for a good mystery. Following the clues and revealing the truth has always been a source of great fascination to me. I like puzzles too. I guess that's what it is. I remember pondering when I was in the fourth grade and studying American history: What really DID happen to the Lost Colony? And in ninth grade, when I was studying world history, it hit me: What really DID happen to the Dauphin of the French Revolution? Was Napoleon murdered? Did Richard III REALLY murder the Princes in the Tower? Who was Jack the Ripper? That kind of puzzle has always intrigued me.

What's really fun about writing the mysteries is that I create the puzzle, then leave clues for the reader to solve it. That is really delightful - especially when fans write to me and say, "I never thought it could be him!" My son once read the manuscript of PORTRAIT OF VICTORINE and said, when he was about halfway through it, "Your hero's really dumb. Can't he see it's obviously - (and here he named a character in the book.)" Well, it wasn't that character at all - and my son perhaps knows me better than anyone else in my life! THAT was a compliment!

 

Pageonelit.com: Tell us a little about each of your mystery books -- MURDER ON THE CANTERBURY PILGRIMAGE, PORTRAIT OF VICTORINE and DEVON WAKEFIELD. How are these books the same? How are they different?

Mary Devlin: Aside from the settings - MURDER ON THE CANTERBURY PILGRIMAGE takes place in 14th-century England, PORTRAIT OF VICTORINE in contemporary Paris, and DEVON WAKEFIELD is set in colonial Australia - they basically have different themes. CANTERBURY uses the poet Geoffrey Chaucer as a detective, and the murder takes place on the pilgrimage that inspired his CANTERBURY TALES. It explores all the various human relationships that could have taken place on that pilgrimage, and speculates beyond what's revealed in the Tales - and also brings in the politics and religious attitudes of the times.

VICTORINE starts out with the usual Mary Stewart format for a novel of romantic suspense. A young American woman comes to Paris to take a job, finds herself embroiled in a web of crime involving art theft and forgery, which eventually expands into murder. I've always been a fan of the Impressionists, and the plot of this novel is based on things that happened back in the days of the French Impressionist art movement.

DEVON isn't really a mystery per se, though there are mysteries contained in it. It's a historical romance - with the usual plot of boy meets girl, boy loses girl, boy gets girl, happy ending. But it's also a character transformation novel. The heroine, a London aristocrat who is transported to Australia by mistake, finds herself and who she really is in the farming projects that caused Australia to grow. The hero, a lieutenant in the Royal Navy who, once he gets to Australia, can't wait to get back to England, does go back - and finds London society shallow and vapid and longs for Australia. Their reunion finds them two changed individuals - but who still love each other as much as ever.

 

Pageonelit.com: Many mystery writers have their sleuth carried over in each novel - Any plans to do this with any of your characters? Why or why not? What makes a good mystery sleuth?

Mary Devlin: My second Chaucer mystery, THE LEGEND OF GOOD WOMEN, should be out by the first of the year. I'm hoping that I can continue to use Geoffrey as a detective for as long as possible. Chaucer is a fascinating individual of many talents, and I love working with him and all his friends!

I have another hero who is featured on my mystery website, CONUNDRUM, whom I'd like to see on TV. He's a Hollywood entertainment lawyer - sensitive and insightful as well as a skilled attorney named Patrick O'Shaughnessy. He has a fourteen-year-old son who's an aspiring forensic pathologist with the mind of a young Sherlock Holmes. I have written several short stories about O'Shaughnessy, but no novels yet.

What makes a good mystery sleuth is personality. I remember years ago, when I was reading one mystery novel after the other to find out what makes a good mystery novel, realizing that people remember the foppish Hercule Poirot, the irascible Nero Wolfe, and the cold but appealing Sherlock Holmes, while they forget Inspector Septimus Finch. I don't remember the name of the author who created Inspector Finch, but I realize that even though she had a great gift for creating ingenious puzzles, I really didn't enjoy her mysteries, because Inspector Finch had no personality, no traits that set him apart from everyone else in the police force. You need to create a character that is memorable.

That was around the time I was creating O'Shaughnessy. Once I realized that, I went in and added some extra traits to my detective - the sensitivity and intuition few male detectives admit to, a love of playing the piano, and a fascination with old Hollywood movies and movie stars. And the more I wrote about him, the more he revealed himself to me.

Chaucer, of course, was ready-made, but I had ideas about him that were never in the history books. We actually know very little about Chaucer's personal life - only about his public life. But it is clear from the Canterbury Tales, and from his famous TREATISE ON THE ASTROLABE, that he was an astrologer like me - and so I made astrology one of his tools in solving mysteries. For my research for THE LEGEND OF GOOD WOMEN, I actually picked a birth date for one of the characters and did a chart for him for a real date and time on my computer - and outlined how Chaucer determined that he had been murdered from that chart.

The point I'm making here is that a good mystery sleuth has to be INTERESTING. Readers have to find him or her appealing, amusing, and interesting enough so that they care about what he has to say.

 

Pageonelit.com: You are an established astrologer with several books on the subject - Tell us how you learned the art of astrology and talk a little about your books THE PSYCHOLOGY OF SPIRIT, ASTROLOGY & PAST LIVES, ASTROLOGY & RELATIONSHIPS and YOUR FUTURE LIVES.

Mary Devlin: I began studying it seriously when I was about thirteen. I read my birthday horoscope in the newspaper and it was just like me! I asked my mother how that could be, since everyone thought astrology was bunk, and she said, "No, it's not bunk. There's something to that."

I got into it when I had two babies at home. I couldn't go out, and I wanted a challenge, so when some astrology books caught my eye at the library I checked them both out. The rest, they say, is history.

I began studying past-life regression and karmic astrology with New Age pioneer Marcia Moore back in 1976. She died about three years later, but ASTROLOGY AND PAST LIVES is her legacy to me. The discoveries in the book are all my own, as are any mistakes, but it was Marcia who got me started in that direction. And I wrote ASTROLOGY AND RELATIONSHIP to satisfy my own frustration about the nature of human relations!

THE PSYCHOLOGY OF SPIRIT was born when a friend of mine was talking about someone who had committed suicide in at least two lives. My friend said, "This soul had a chronic problem." A chronic problem spilling over several lives? This idea was what set me off to creating a model for a psychology that encompassed reincarnation and the effects of past lives on the current life. Personally, I'm very proud of that book - and very grateful to my friend!

 

Pageonelit.com: You are an experienced published author - What advice can you offer for those writers who are working on their first novel?

Mary Devlin: The same as any author would: Read, read, read, read!!!!! But don't just rush through the book. Savor every word as you would a piece of Swiss chocolate. Notice how the author creates character, a sense of place and time, a sense of suspense, or romance, or whatever. The mystery author Marcia Muller once said that you should write the book you want to read. I can't emphasize that enough. Don't try to write something that doesn't really interest you just because you think it's more likely to sell. There will be no soul in it, and readers will know that.

 

Pageonelit.com: What has been your feedback from readers? What do they say to you about their interpretations of your books?

Mary Devlin: Wow, that's loaded! I could write an encyclopedia on that. For my astrology and reincarnation work, I'm afraid that for many of my readers, my work brings up more questions than answers - and I make notes of their questions for other books. THE PSYCHOLOGY OF SPIRIT, for example, tries to answer some of the questions that grew out of ASTROLOGY AND PAST LIVES.

The feedback from my novels seem to center on the characters. They all want to know where I get them! But unfortunately, that's never easy to answer. Every character contains a part of me - and a conglomeration of many other people. For example, Agatha, Chaucer's friend in MURDER ON THE CANTERBURY PILGRIMAGE, is a lot like me - but also bears a strong imprint from my paternal grandmother! Manjiree, the aboriginal shamaness in DEVON WAKEFIELD, is reminiscent of some of the aboriginal women I met when I was in Australia - but there's a lot of Marcia Moore in her as well!

 

Pageonelit.com: Who are your favorite writers and why?

Mary Devlin: Ellis Peters, Edward Marston, Bernard Cornwell, Anne Perry, Sharon Kay Penman, Peter Tremayne, Candace Robb, Kate Sedley and anyone who writes good historical mysteries, because they combine my two greatest literary interests: mystery and history! And their books are also very well crafted - they're better literature than the average mystery novel. I would recommend them to anyone.

 

Pageonelit.com:What's next?

Mary Devlin: First THE LEGEND OF GOOD WOMEN, then a historical epic I'm writing with my partner Carol Huffstickler set in the time of the Emperor Julian. Also LOVE, SEX AND THE SPIRITUAL LIFE, and a book on Irish medieval music - though that won't be out for awhile.

 

Pageonelit.com:What was the last book you read?

Mary Devlin: THE BAWDY BASKET by Edward Marston. Great!

 

Pageonelit.com: Do you have any hobbies? What are they? How do they enhance your writing?

Mary Devlin: No hobbies. I used to paint some, but no time for that now. The writing, music and research all keep me very busy. But my knowledge of painting was a great help to me when I wrote PORTRAIT OF VICTORINE.