Secrets Revealed: An Interview with Maggie Elizabeth Harrington Author DJ Swykert

Maggie Elizabeth Harrington is the story of a young woman in a remote 1890's northern Michigan mining town trying to save a pack of young wolves from a bounty hunter. A terse historical love story of a young woman's struggle with environmental and moral issues, concerning the slaughter of wolves, and the church's condemnation of her love for a young man, are as real in today's global world as they were for young Maggie over a century ago.

Maggie Elizabeth Harrington is suitable for young adult and adult readers.

   

I interviewed heartland author, DJ Swykert about writing Maggie Elizabeth Harrington:

      How did you get the idea for this story?

Sometimes when writing the lines between reality and fiction become a bit blurry. I began Maggie Elizabeth Harrington intending to write a historical story about a lonely woman who loses her mind after being jilted by her lover. I ended up with a novel about a young woman in a remote northern Michigan mining town trying to save a pack of wolves from a bounty hunter. It wasn’t difficult to figure out how the transition occurred. I had agreed to watch a pair of arctic hybrids for a friend and soon found myself attached to the ten-week old hybrid wolf pups and fascinated by their behaviors. My reality became my fiction. Maggie would be someone who would want to protect these beautiful animals from bounty hunters. The story of Maggie Harrington and her wolves unfolded almost as if it were writing itself and the farther it progressed the more my interest in wolves increased.

      This work is fiction, however, I am wondering if the town of Central Mining, MI, is based on a real place?

There actually is a village of Central Mine. It’s located on the Keweenaw Peninsula in northern Michigan and has been a ghost town since the end of the 1890’s. My grandfather bought one of the vacant houses to use as a hunting camp. I have visited the village, church, cemetery, and the remnants of the mining structures many times to familiarize myself with the setting for this story.

      Did you grow up (or ever live) in a mining town? Or in a town as small as Central Mining is in the book?

I own a home in Mohawk, Michigan, which is another small mining village about twenty miles east of Central Mine. I lived there for ten years and currently use it as a summer home.

Have you ever worked in, or at, a mine?

No, the closest I ever came to a mine was driving a truck. Okay, that’s not very close. But my mother is from a family of copper and tin miners that date back to the 14^th century in Cornwall, so I had lots of access to facts about the process of mining.

      Discuss the process you used in deciding to make the protagonist a 13-year old female.

I originally began the story believing I would quickly advance Maggie into adulthood and the story would become mostly about her adult life. But when the wolves entered the story, the book kind of took its own course from there. What I intended for the beginning of a story, became the story, far longer than I ever anticipated. I have since written a sequel titled Alpha Wolves, in which Maggie is now twenty-three. There is a wolf in the story, but it is more of a love triangle Maggie becomes mired in than an animal rescue story.

      Why did you choose to write in first person?

I’d never written in first person before. But I think this point of view (POV) works best for the kind of slow internal story this is about Maggie’s idealism. I think in order for the story to work the reader has to know exactly what Maggie is thinking and feeling, and first person does this, personalizes the reader to the character. I believe the story draws most of its power from her voice, which I’ve been told is very compelling.

      How and why did you become an expert on wolves?

When I decided to keep the two arctic hybrid pups I did a lot of research. I worked at a university where there is a professor, Rolf Peterson, who has studied the wolves on Isle Royale for over thirty years and several documentaries have been made of his work. I learned a lot from his studies, and researching wolves at the library. But most of what I found about their personalities came from raising the two hybrids, which I had for eleven years. Both are gone now. Currently I feed all the feral cats who live in the alley back of my house, along with a possum and a raccoon.

If you have published a hard copy of this book, which came first, the hard copy or the ebook version? Why?

The book has had three printings. The first was by a small regional publisher in Michigan who released it in paperback only. I then gave the rights to a startup e-publisher who released it in both electronic formats and paperback. i is now available in both formats by TL Bliss, its third publisher.

      Are any of your books self-published? Why or why not?

I haven’t self-published my books. I believe there are editing and design advantages to going through a publisher who has invested in the book. I’m not knocking self-publishing, but I just think a professional can do a better job of book production and editing than I can myself. Editing your own work is very difficult. Often your mind will read what you “intended” to write, not what you “actually” typed on the page. And when you edit, your mind will continue to read through the mistake. This is how you end up with so many errors in a self-published book that an editor would have corrected. Also, for this edition of Maggie, I was able to use my own cover art, which is a picture of an actual gray wolf taken in front of the Red Dog Mine in Alaska by a friend of mine.

      Is there anything else you'd like readers to know about you or this book?

Maggie Harrington is an actual historic person. The story is fictional, she is not. She is buried in the Eagle Harbor Cemetery just outside of Central Mine, Michigan. I have been to her grave many times. It gives me the chills to stand over her grave, knowing I fictionalized a story about her lonely life. My father, when he was a boy, met the historic Maggie. She was an eccentric old woman living alone in the same mining house as in the story.

Links to the book.

www.magicmasterminds.com/djswykert

https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/329386

http://tlblisspress.blogspot.com/p/dj-swykert.html

Amazon Kindle:  http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00DPC2CJC  

Amazon Paperback:  http://www.amazon.com/dp/1490515674

Author Bio:

DJ Swykert is a former 911 operator. His work has appeared in The Tampa Review, Detroit News, Monarch Review, Lunch Ticket, the NewerYork, Zodiac Review, Barbaric Yawp and Bull. His books include Children of the Enemy, Maggie Elizabeth Harrington, Alpha Wolves, The Death of Anyone and The Pool Boy’s Beatitude. You can find him at: www.magicmasterminds.com. He is a wolf expert.

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