O R Melling
The main character in People of the Great Journey is a writer of fairy tales who’s invited to a week-long retreat in a great mansion on the Isle of Lewis, northern Scotland. Each day she’s introduced to mystical healing practices and each night she has strange dreams and visions. You might say it’s Eat, Pray, Love crossed with Harry Potter, lol!
You write for both adults and young adults, so do you have a preference between the two?
When you write for children and young adults you have much more affect and influence on them than when you write for adults. The books that get us through our childhood stay with us for life. That said, I such freedom writing this story. I could say anything I wanted and I could deal with subject matter I would consider too harrowing for younger readers.
You live by the sea, so how inspirational is this for your writing?
It was only when you asked me this question that I realised how many scenes in all my books take place near water whether it’s lakes, rivers, loughs, seas, bays or oceans! Not surprising really. I like to go deep diving into the human psyche and Jungians say that bodies of water represent that aspect of our humanity.
To what extent does this book draw on your experience of travel, shamanic studies and mystical experiences?
All my books reflect travel adventures of some kind and all have a soul, a spiritual or mystical underpinning. People of the Great Journey was a long time in the making. I had been trying for years to find a ‘container’ for my shamanic, fairy and mystical experiences, i.e. a story-line and a literary structure that would allow me to explore them. I had always wanted to write a novel in the style of Herman Hesse’s Steppenwolf and Journey to the East, but from a feminine perspective, with more feeling and humour, still philosophical but warmer … hotter even! (Hence my chapter ‘Sex and Chocolate.’) There was always a vague plot about a woman’s spiritual journey but it all finally coalesced when I took a week-long advanced course at the Irish Centre for Shamanic Studies in Dunderry, Ireland which included a Sweat Lodge, Breathwork sessions, and various shamanic modules. At last a structure and time frame into which I could pour … everything!
Why did you decide to set the book on a remote Scottish island?
I’m honestly not sure when I decided to set the book in the Outer Hebrides. I had travelled there as part of a megalithic mystery tour with my dear departed friend, Dr Nena Hardie, a Jungian psychologist (but not, in fact, my therapist, that was a literary conceit that worked nicely into the plot!). It was our second such jaunt as we shared a fascination for stone circles and cairns. The tales surrounding the Callanish Stones were one more addition to the story that arrived by magic. So much of the book unfolded that way!
How much have your studies aided your writing over the years?
I was fortunate in that I attended university in Canada in the early 1970s when you
could take a true liberal arts degree with no programmes, majors or minors. I took courses in everything that interested me e.g. classical and modern philosophy, Celtic mythology and literature, politics of Latin America, China and Africa, theology, Anglo-Saxon law, palaeography, the science fiction novel, Yeats’s poetry ... My Master’s Degree was in early Irish history and included Hiberno-Latin and mediaeval Latin. All of these studies informed my world-view and influenced my thought, and I remember my professors with great fondness and gratitude.
You have seven sisters and two brothers so how much do these mix of personalities provide you will inspiration for your characters in your books?
Don’t think I want to touch this one. Anyone from a large family would understand, lol. Actually, anyone from any family would understand! Truth is, I would love to write a book about my mad family - what a cast of characters and such a story! - but I haven’t got up the courage yet. Maybe when I am in my 70s.
Who do you most like to read?
I’m omnivorous in my tastes, fiction and non-fiction, always several books on the go, though I’ll read a novel in a day or two. Right now I’m reading In Search of the Panchen Lama by Isabel Hilton (re-read for research), Ayahuasca in My Blood: 25 years of Medicine Dreaming by Peter Gorman, Ulysses and Us: the Art of Everyday Life in Joyce’s Masterpiece (I can feel myself getting more intelligent as I read), The Dog of Heaven by Khatagin Go.Akim, translated by Bill Infante (fables about wolves, I picked up in Outer Mongolia), Mrs Crowl’s Ghost and Other Stories by Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu and The Lazy Man’s Life: The Life and Times of Thaddeus Golas, compiled and edited by Sylvain Despretz.
What is next for you?
I’m just finishing a year and a half dedicated to my teacher, Panchen Otrul Rinpoche, a Tibetan lama who lives in Ireland. I’ve been helping to run his retreat centre in the Irish countryside and I wound up travelling with him to India, for the teachings of the Dalai Lama, and Outer Mongolia, as his personal attendant, a great honour and peak experience of my life. But soon I must get back to writing! I have several projects demanding my attention: my first work of non-fiction based on my experiences with the lama and his centre and my travels with him; and three film projects, a television series called The Celtic Princess, which has just been optioned by the British producer of the Vikings series (very exciting) and two screenplays, one based on People of the Great Journey (expressions of interest from Hollywood!) and one set in a Tibetan Buddhist Centre, about a woman dealing with her young son’s suicide. I’m really looking forward to writing all of these.