Kathleen McGowan – Exploring the Legends of the Divine Feminine
For years, I kept The Ballad of Tam Lin on the back burner as a book I would one day write, perhaps in a series exploring women in Celtic legends, which is one of my great passions. But fate intervened when I fell in love. My newlywed husband, Philip Coppens, has a home in Scotland, within an hour’s drive from these magical locations where the legends of humans having encounters with the Otherworld remain strong to this day. It was in spending many hours climbing through the stunning, mythical locations of the Scottish Borders from whence the original Ballad of Tam Lin first emerged that I became inspired to use it as the launching point for this series. Further, it is one of the lesser known legends, yet in my opinion, arguably the greatest – a perfect place to begin!
Listen to Kathleen’s interview with Philip Coopens about The Ballad of Tam Lin on Spirit Revolution
OM Times: Your next project is telling the story about Anne Boleyn, the second wife of Henry VIII. What interested you about her?
When I wrote my first novel with Mary Magdalene as my protagonist, The Expected One, I never thought I would find a muse to equal that great lady. I did not believe there could ever be a character as romantic, as powerful, as courageous and as tragic as the great Magdalena. I certainly could not have dreamed then that Anne Boleyn would become the single greatest inspiration of my writing life. How could I? I knew what everyone knows about Anne: she was the second wife of Henry VIII, the one who lost her head because of her scandalous behavior. But as I embarked upon three intense years of research for my novel of the Medici family and the birth of the Renaissance, The Poet Prince, strange and unexpected ties pulled me into Tudor history unexpectedly.
