A Remedy in Time
05 Tuesday Jan 2021
Posted in That's life
Blog Archives
JENNIFER MACAIRE – A CROWN IN TIME
03 Friday Apr 2020
Posted in That's life
Today Jennifer is here to answer a few questions and tell us about her book!
If you could only read one more book before reading became illegal what would it be and why?
Jennifer – Shades of the Handmaid’s Tale, where women are forbidden to read! Perhaps if I could only read one book, it would be that one – to remind me that change can be brought about by just one person resisting.
If you could be a character in any book, who would it be?
Jennifer – I’d be Hermione Granger – a muggle-born magician with a magic wand, and cool friends in a cool school!
What is the title of the book that you are going to tell us about?
Jennifer – A Crown in Time
How did you come up with the title?
Jennifer – It is a time travel, the heroine must save the crown of France, so in the end it was an easy call.
Where did the idea for this book come from?
Jennifer – I went to the St Chapel one day in Paris and heard that it had been built to hold the crown of thorns, brought back from a Crusade. I started researching the Crusades. They were pretty awful, and so the idea of writing about a time traveler going back and taking part in one just grew on me.
Which character in this book is your favourite and why?
Jennifer – I like my heroine best – she’s one of my strongest heroines. She’s going back in time as a punishment, she knows she’s fated to be stranded there, that she can never return, but she has a job to do and she does her best to fulfill her mission.
Where can we buy the book?
Amazon (UK, US, AU), Waterstones, etc.
How can your readers keep in touch with you?
my Face book page: https://www.facebook.com/TempusU/
twitter @jennifermacaire
Son of the Moon
12 Sunday May 2019
Posted in That's life
Son of the Moon tour –
Review by Rae Reads – Review
We are now on book three of The Time for Alexander Series and in a way I do think you can read it as a standalone because Jennifer Macaire has managed to weave the characters back stories into this book. However to get the best understanding of the characters and what has happened so far I would suggest reading them in order.
In Son of the Moon we catch up with Ashley as she travels with Alexander and his army through India. Jennifer Macaire really did bring the story to life with all the wonderful descriptions of the setting, the food and the people. In a way I think this is probably my favourite book so far just because everything seemed to fall into place. I know the characters pretty well by now and the story had an extra bit of depth to it especially as we see Ashley find something she has been searching for since book one (I’m trying to keep it as vague as I can in case you do want to start the series from the beginning)
Then add in the drama of treacherous characters and Ashley really has to watch her back! I also started to feel Ashley’s apprehension as time begins to be marching even more quickly towards when Alexander will die. Ashley and Alexander’s romance is passionate and fiery but they work so well together! I loved all of the myths that were included I knew some but it was great to hear new ones and this is one of the things that I enjoy most about not only this book but the series.
Son of the Moon is told with historical detail showing legendary battles, snippets of mythology along with putting the author’s own spin on things. This has created a brilliant mix of fun, light and dark times with happiness, sadness and danger throughout. I can’t wait to see what will happen next!
Son of the Moon by Jennifer Macaire @jennifermacaire @rararesources #BlogBlitz #Giveaway #Review
BUY LINK
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Nine facts about one of the characters in my book ‘Welcome to Paradise’
27 Saturday Apr 2019
Posted in That's life
From Raven’s Ramblings Blog – the wonderful writer, Raven McAllan, invited me for a Nine for the Weekend –
Nine facts about one of the characters in my book ‘Welcome to Paradise’
Over to you, Jenn…
Hi Raven and thank you so much for this opportunity!
9 interesting things about my heroine Sugar, in “Welcome to Paradise”
1) Sugar would think she was too boring to write about – she would be embarrassed with all this attention. You see, she’s super shy. She grew up with a huge scar that cut her face nearly in two. A wave dashed her into the rocks at the foot of cliffs and cut her face. In St Thomas, the rocks are volcanic and can be as sharp as glass. She had to wait until she’d stopped growing to get the scar fixed.
2) I wrote the whole book without mentioning her name once. When it was done, my editor said, “But what is the heroine’s name?” Once, in the book, someone called her “Sugar”. It was a term of endearment, but it became her name.
3) I based a lot of Sugar’s story on my own childhood, because I grew up in the Virgin Islands. The people, the birds, the insects (& the tarantulas!), and the beaches are all part of my life.
4) The house Sugar lives in is the replica of a house I used to live in. It had a balcony that overlooked the ocean, a hibiscus garden, and a path that led down the cliffs to the sea.
5) Sugar speaks fluent Spanish, because her grandparents are from Puerto Rico. She loves to go to Puerto Rico to visit them – they let her watch TV – (something her parent on’t have in their house!)
6) What happens to Sugar in Germany was the hardest part of the book for me. Abuse is a sensitive subject, and it was incredibly difficult to write about it. After, I had to address the story of her father’s abuse, and that was hard too.
7) Sugar’s fiancé, Reliance, is named after a boat I fell in love with.
8) Sugar and Reliance make love in a secluded bay that is a copy of the one I used to swim in when I was living in St. Thomas. Sometimes at night, during the hottest part of the year, phosphorescence glows in the shallows. It’s incredibly beautiful, (and very romantic!)
9) Sugar becomes a model, and I used my experience to describe her work, which was a lot of fun!
Blurb: Growing up on an island paradise isn’t as easy as one might think. Sugar is infatuated with the boy next door, worried she won’t make the cheerleading squad, and even more worried that she will. She is paranoid that because of the horrendous scar on her face, no one really expects her to succeed at anything. Her sister is smart, her mother is a legendary model, and her father is a famous artist. Her family’s success sets a high bar for her to live up to.
Everything changes for Sugar when a plastic surgeon removes her scar. The surgery makes her beautiful, but she makes the shocking discovery that being beautiful can be awful. When she finally discovers who she is, and what she wants from life, it nearly destroys her tightly knit family. She must confront abuse, an elopement, loss, and a secret her father has kept from her all her life. Sugar is struggling to pull everything together and find her own version of ‘Happily Ever After’.
Email: jennifermacaire@gmail.com
Twitter: @jennifermacaire
Website/blog: www.jennifermacaire.com
Amazon author page: http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=ntt_athr_dp_sr_1?ie=UTF8&field-author=Jennifer+Macaire&search-alias=books&text=Jennifer+Macaire&sort=relevancerank
Welcome to Paradise buy links:
Thank you!!!!
Jenn
How much sex is too much sex in historical fiction?
26 Tuesday Feb 2019
Posted in That's life
I write historical fiction with a dash of science fiction (time travel), fantasy (Greek and Nordic mythology), and romance (my heroine, Ashley, shares her life with two men – Alexander the Great and his lover, Hephaestion). When I started writing this story (believe me) I had no idea it was going to turn into a steamy, sensuous series. It started out as a short story commissioned by a magazine about time travel. But the fact is, when I started researching and found out most of what we know about Alexander the Great is hearsay and that I could let my imagination run wild – it went wild!
Author interview “Sassy style”
20 Sunday Jan 2019
Posted in That's life
From Wise Words blog: A sassy author interview, prizes, a fab book… what more do you want! .@jennifermacaire .@rararesources #historical #timetravel #funbooks
https://louisewise.blogspot.com/2019/01/a-sassy-author-interview-prizes-fab.html
Jennifer Macaire is a brave author who has agreed to be interviewed in a style that many authors shy away from—derogatory. The sassier the answers to WWBB’s rude questioning method the better!
So welcome, Jennifer, and let’s get the ball rolling, shall we? In your book, the protagonist, Ashley Riveraine (what kind of name is that, Jeeze!), gets pitched back in time some 300 years BC (before chocolate) and meets Alexander the Great—her hero.
Hero? Oh, come on! Okay, I’ll go with it for now. So, is Ashley Riveraine happy now their story has been told or is there more to come (God help us!)?
The funny thing is, this was going to be a short story. I started out as a journalist writing articles for magazines, and at the same time, I wrote a few short stories and published them. One was nominated for the Push Cart Prize, and I’m afraid it went straight to my head.
I set about writing a short story about Alexander the Great not dying and going on to conquer the world (you see how things can get out of hand – one mosquito gets squashed, and we’re speaking Greek instead of English and the Romans never got to build their straight roads anywhere. Much less paperwork too, and we’d still be offering sacrifices to Zeus.
We could always offer this book!
We could, but as my neighbour’s rooster wakes me up every morning at the ass-crack of dawn I was thinking more about sacrificing the rooster… anyhow, I was going to send The Road to Alexander to a Sci-fi magazine as a time travel tale and things got out of hand.
I didn’t realize Alexander would kidnap Ashley – I forgot how omnipresent gods and goddesses were at that time. And I didn’t realize how crazy Alexander’s mother was, and, to make a long story short, there are 7 books in the series.
Seven! Jeeze… you get less for murder! Okay, so give me the best one-liner from your poor excuse of a book.
I realized I was now over three-thousand years older than my own mother.
Do I have to elaborate?
Please don’t.
Good, because the instructions say a ‘one-liner’, so to go on and explain would be a clear indication of my inability to follow the simplest instructions, which is why I did so badly at school, and why my husband has given up trying to tell me what to do…)
Yawn, so basically, you’re the same as all the rest of the authors on Amazon, and you’re the Next Best Thing. I don’t think so. Come on, tell me why I should spend time reading YOUR book over more well-received authors?
Oh, come on – who likes best sellers, I mean, besides the teeming masses. But you know the teeming masses yearning to be free – it says so on the Statue of Liberty (written in Gothic Script somewhere around her big toe, I think). So, feel free to try something different – the hero and heroine don’t hate each other on sight! The hero is Alexander the Great, and how much more heroic can you get? There is action and adventure! It’s based on real history (at least part of it is – it’s time-travel, so there is a slight wobble in reality. Be prepared!).
It’s a mad, tongue-in-cheek romp across mixed genres of Sci-fi, romance, adventure, and history. It’ll make you laugh and cry. Oh, and there’s lots of hot, bouncy sex. (If you like that sort of thing. Otherwise, just skip those parts!) But most of all, just relax, sit back, and enjoy your trip back in time. You can always close the book and come back to the present – but Ashley is stuck in the past!
Hang on, there, lady. Bouncy sex? Sex that’s bouncy? I may just have to read this malarkey of a book! So, spill, as an author have you ever regretted anything, i.e. written your own review (or written a bad review on a competitor’s novel), argued online, copied someone else’s idea? Any juicy naughtiness at all?
Mark Twain once said, ‘The kernel, the soul, let us go further and say the substance, the bulk, the actual and valuable material of all human utterances is plagiarism.’
In a way, he was correct. We, the people of the present, are standing on the shoulders of those who went before us. Our stories, our art, our science – it’s all based on work that our ancestors did. We simply keep it growing, expanding on it – but we invent nothing brand new. (And stop screaming, ‘The Internet!’ that’s just another way of communicating, and there are more ways of doing that than stars in the sky… I exaggerate, but you get my gist).
I wrote The Road to Alexander after falling in love with ‘Outlander’, so the time travel element was copied from the fantastic Ms Gabaldon. She may have gotten it from H.G. Wells – who in turn, got it from somewhere else.
Time is an interesting subject. I’d like to say I was the only one who ever wrote about Alexander the Great, but Mary Renault did a fabulous job with her series of historical fiction novels – if you haven’t read them, you’ve missed a rare treat.
As for arguing or regretting, or writing bad reviews, I’ve only written two bad reviews, and both were for novels that featured super-alpha-male-control-freaks, and I’m a staunch feminist.
I have argued online, but that was then. Nowadays I just refer people to PubMed (peer-reviewed scientific publications) or Snopes and let them learn for themselves. I never wrote my own review, but I encouraged my daughter to read one of my children’s books and write her own review. It was awful, but this proud mama didn’t mind – I fixed up the spelling, changed a few words (terrible to great, boring to amazing,) and had it published…. well, not really, but it’s an idea. Probably not an original idea – those are all taken!
Describe your writing style in ten words or less. I’ll begin with the first two: Crap, dull…
Pedantic springs to mind. That’s what my editor kept saying. ‘Jennifer, you’re being pedantic again. No one needs to know where the army’s food came from, just tell them what they ate and be quick about it.’ Or, ‘Jennifer, three pages on oral hygiene in ancient times is going to put readers to sleep. I barely got through it without dozing off. Scratch that. I dozed off twice.’
Otherwise, my style has been variously described as fluid, engaging, easy-to-read (not my fault – my editor keeps correcting my spelling and grammar!), and one reviewer—who said the book had way to too much sex in it—admitted it was ‘well-crafted and proficient’. Hmm. Was he talking about my writing or about the sex scenes?
Fuck knows! He certainly wasn’t my husband! All right, just for a laugh, share with us one of the WORST reviews you’ve had.
I’ve had so many – where to begin? Let’s see – one said (1 star): ‘Why, oh why must the ‘heroine’ of these sort of time travel books be so smug, so captivating to their target and so unreal. No-one in their right mind is like this. Go away Ms Macaire, and think real. I suppose I have been spoiled by Diana Gabaldon whose heroine at least shows some reticence towards the hero or Jodie Taylor who is constantly amusing and deep by turns.’
I like this review on so many levels – it perfectly describes Ashley, who arrives from the future feeling smug and superior to the ancients (Pride goeth before destruction, and a haughty spirit before a fall, Ashley!). It compares the book to Outlander and the St Mary’s series, both of which I adore – (thank you, terrible review, for at least hitching my book to their star for a brief instant before you demolished it).
It is confusing in that it acknowledges the book as being time travel, then beseeches me to ‘get real’. That’s where I’m not sure if she doesn’t like the alacrity Ashley and Alexander (trying to think of another word starting with ‘A’ and failing here…) fell in love, or was it the improbability of Ashley being a real person?
At any rate, I enjoyed having my book in the same paragraph as my two favourite writers! (There are other, more brutal reviews, but they actually had more stars, so the readers must have liked the cover art or something.)
What qualifications do you have for writing in your genre? (Apart from waking up in the morning, that is).
I was afraid someone would ask me this one day. Can I take the fifth? No? Well, #1: The book is science fiction (I love science and work with scientists as an information researcher – I know, it doesn’t count, sorry!) with a #2: time travel element (I have the worst case of left/right, before/after, letters, and numbers, dyslexia. So time has no meaning for me. It’s a miracle every time I show up at work or to an appointment. #3: It’s in English (I was born in the USA and grew up in the Caribbean, which accounts for that part, anyway). #4: It’s set in Ancient Greece, and my mother is a history teacher. She gave me lots of hints about where to look for information on Alexander the Great. No, she didn’t help me – how many of your teachers wrote your assignments?
Many authors use their qualifications to show off their so-called talents, i.e. crime writers are often coppers (or police, for the non-Brits present) and the book becomes boringly technical. How have you managed to keep your knowledge low key? Or haven’t you bothered?
When I was a kid, I was skinny, had glasses, big teeth, and was dyslexic. I was also clumsy because my glasses didn’t correct my huge astigmatism, which meant I could not catch a ball, no matter how gently it was tossed to me.
I was the last to be chosen in gym for the teams, and, on one sad Valentine’s day, at a party, the boy I had a gigantic crush on threw chocolate kisses at me, telling me I could only keep the ones I caught. I caught none.
Sobbing, I went into the house, collided with his father, and made him drop his finest bottle of wine that he’d been keeping for a special occasion. I stared at the mess, listening to the howls of rage, wishing I could become invisible or at least grow some sort of backbone and stop snivelling (I was nine years old at this time, so excuse the melodrama).
At dinner, the grown-ups drank their not-so-nice wine and glared at me. The other kids snickered. And I decided I’d show them – I’d become so knowledgeable about dinosaurs I’d write and illustrate a fabulous book, and they would come begging for an autograph. This has nothing to do with the question – or everything, depending on how you look at it. I’m actually quite knowledgeable about dinosaurs but have managed to keep all that info out of my books.
Sorry, I asked! Jeeze… whinge, whinge, whinge, me, me, me… If your book disappeared forever, do you think it’ll be missed?
Honestly? No, I don’t think it will be missed at all unless you’ve somehow time-travelled to read all the series and missed the first one and decided you had to read from the beginning. Then it might be missed. Maybe. I’m not sure anything on this earth is irreplaceable except maybe chocolate. I would definitely miss that. And coffee.
Don’t forget the wine. Not expensive wine, obviously, as you drop that! Describe your perfect death (in case I must kill you. Touch my wine and I will!)
Need you ask? Death by chocolate – of course!
and now…
The Road to Alexander
by
Jennifer Macaire
What do you do when the past becomes your future?
The year is 2089, and time-travelling journalist Ashley Riveraine gets a once in a lifetime opportunity to interview her childhood hero, Alexander the Great. She expects to come out with an award-winning article, but doesn’t count on Fate intervening.
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| Purchase Link |
Alexander mistakes Ashley for Persephone, goddess of the dead, and kidnaps her, stranding her in his own time. Being stuck 3000 years in the past with the man of her dreams wouldn’t be so bad if the scientists of the Time Institute hadn’t threatened to erase Ashley from existence if she changes history.
Ashley must now walk a tightrope, caught up in the cataclysmic events of the time, knowing what the future holds for the people she comes to love but powerless to do anything to influence it.
Join Ashley on her hilarious, bumpy journey into the past as she discovers where her place in history truly is…
Jennifer Macaire is an American living in Paris. She likes to read, eat chocolate, and plays a mean game of golf. She grew up in upstate New York, Samoa, and the Virgin Islands.
She graduated from St Peter and Paul High School in St Thomas and moved to NYC where she modelled for five years for Elite.
She went to France and met her husband at the polo club. All that is true. But she mostly likes to make up stories
A time-travel interview
28 Monday May 2018
Posted in That's life
MEET JENNIFER MACAIRE
My guest today is Jennifer Macaire. I invited her to join me on this blog after reading her novel The Road to Alexander, a timeslip novel about a journalist in the distant future who travels back in time to interview Alexander the Great.
EJ I must confess, Jennifer, that I do not usually read time-travel novels. They make it all seem too easy, with no technical or philosophical problems. But time travel in The Road to Alexander seems worse than a major operation, complete with pre-op and anaesthetic. It was so realistic I am convinced you are a time-traveller – but I suppose you can’t admit it or you will be ‘erased’. Is that so?
JM Actually, I’m free to tell anyone. Nobody so far has believed me! As long as I don’t do anything to change the future, there’s no risk.
EJ I believed you arrived in the present era in the United States but have since lived in many places. Can you tell me something about this and what you did in all these settings?
JM I arrived in NY, in 1960. I next stopped in California, and after that, Samoa in the Pacific. During that time, I masqueraded as an infant. My parents were teachers and loved to travel. We lived for a while in the Caribbean, then I flew to NYC where I posed as a model. I travelled to Paris, where I hooked up with a polo player. The polo circuit took us from Florida to England to France to Argentina for a while. When our children were born, we decided to settle in France and that’s where we are now – well, except for a few voyages from time to time – or to some time or another.
EJ That all seems too glamorous to spend your time writing. What moved you to become a novelist?
JM It isn’t easy to hold a job down when you’re travelling so much, so I started writing when we were in Argentina. We were hours away from any town, in the middle of the pampa, and the twins were small. I had a lot of free time because my husband was often gone days at a time looking for horses. I wrote my first stories there – on the back porch, watching the twins play in the garden in the shade of the eucalyptus trees. At night we slept in a room room heated by a softly crackling fire and lit with oil lamps. We had no electricity, but we had running water. On the estancia were ponies, sheep, and cattle; and we could see deer, burrowing owls, and wild ostriches in the plains. It was magical, like time travelling to a different century. Nowadays, while working on my writing, I work part time as an assistant in a dental office here in France and, thanks to the wonders of modern technology, part time as an assistant to a researcher in Australia.
EJ Did you have difficulty finding a publisher?
JM I did! It surprised me, because I’d been writing and selling magazine articles and short stories, and I’d naively thought that a time travel book would be easy to sell. It might have been, but it wasn’t “romantic” enough, oh, and there is a threesome because Ashley falls in love with Alexander’s lover, Hephaestion. It’s not serious enough for a history book, and it’s kind of funny. So, yes, it was rejected by at least ten publishers and twice as many agents. One agent asked for the full series. I printed it up and sent it in a box the size of a volkswagen. I never heard from her again. I suppose she used the manuscript as a table for a while. It seemed odd that she asked for the whole series and never wrote back until I re-read her letter and saw she just wanted a full manuscript – of book one. Did I mention there are seven books in the series? I sold the series to a terrific outfit in Australia, which published books 1-3 and then folded. Meanwhile I kept writing and sold a few more books. I have a pen name and write erotica. But this series has always been my favorite, so I was thrilled when it was accepted by a publisher in the UK last year.
EJ Have you always been interested in the Ancient World? Did you know a great deal about Alexander before you started work on your trilogy?
JM My mother is a history teacher and I’ve always been interested in history. I didn’t know much about Alexander the Great, but I’m keen on research, so when I decided to write about him, I researched for nearly a year. I had piles of information, most of which I didn’t use or got chopped in editing (note from editor: Jennifer, you’re being pedantic again…)!
EJ Do you think you would have fallen in love with Alexander had you met him – indeed did you fall in love with him?
JM When I met him, he was just starting his “great adventure”, as he calls it. He was young and brash, and had an incredible charisma. I think, if I were Ashley, I would have fallen under his spell. It’s undeniable that he was someone special – I often wonder what the world would have been like had he lived to govern Persia, Egypt and Greece. What would have happened with Rome? Would he have gone to Africa, as he’d dreamed of doing? He was quite simply capable of anything. It’s hard to resist someone with such energy and optimism.
EJ Your books are quite playful in the sense that they play with history rather than re-living it. Have you ambitions to be a more serious historical novelist?
JM I would love to try my hand at a more serious historical novel, but I’m afraid I’m more of a science fiction writer. I did write a book set in the time of the Crusades, but again, it’s a time slip. I can’t seem to get around that. Putting a modern person back in time is an interesting way to perceive the distance that separates us. One author I admire immensely is Connie Willis. Her “The Doomsday Book” is one of my favorite time slip novels. She’s a science fiction/history/romance writer, which is more in line with what I love to write.
EJ What are you planning to do after the Alexander trilogy?
It’s not a trilogy. It’s a septology! Book III is due out in September, and book IV will appear in December if all goes according to plan.
EJ Can you tell my readers where they can find out more about you?
JM My blog is here (https://jennifermacaire.wordpress.com/) and my author showcase is here (https://authorjennifermacaire.wordpress.com/) the Facebook page for my series is here (https://www.facebook.com/TimeforAlexander/) You can write to me at jennifermacaire@gmail.com – at least until my next time slip – although I usually try to come back ahead of time. My twitter handle is @jennifermacaire
EJ Thank you, Jennifer. My review of The Road to Alexander should appear in the November issue of Historical Novels Review and on the Historical Novel Society website.
JM Thank you, Edward! It was my pleasure! 
MEET JENNIFER MACAIRE
24 Thursday Aug 2017
Posted in That's life
Source: MEET JENNIFER MACAIRE
Edward James, a talented author, world traveller, historian, and adventurer has interviewed me for his blog, BusyWords ! I think Mr James’s life sounds just fascinating, so after reading my interview, why not peruse his blog and read some of his short stories, or get one of his novels (I’m going to get The Frozen Dream as soon as my review stack is finished!)
Edward James My guest today is Jennifer Macaire. I invited her to join me on this blog after reading her novel The Road to Alexander, a timeslip novel about a journalist in the distant future who travels back in time to interview Alexander the Great.
EJ I must confess, Jennifer, that I do not usually read time-travel novels. They make it all seem too easy, with no technical or philosophical problems. But time travel in The Road to Alexander seems worse than a major operation, complete with pre-op and anaesthetic. It was so realistic I am convinced you are a time-traveller – but I suppose you can’t admit it or you will be ‘erased’. Is that so?
Jennifer Macaire Actually, I’m free to tell anyone. Nobody so far has believed me! As long as I don’t do anything to change the future, there’s no risk.
EJ I believed you arrived in the present era in the United States but have since lived in many places. Can you tell me something about this and what you did in all these settings?
JM I arrived in NY, in 1960. I next stopped in California, and after that, Samoa in the Pacific. During that time, I masqueraded as an infant. My parents were teachers and loved to travel. We lived for a while in the Caribbean, then I flew to NYC where I posed as a model. I travelled to Paris, where I hooked up with a polo player. The polo circuit took us from Florida to England to France to Argentina for a while. When our children were born, we decided to settle in France and that’s where we are now – well, except for a few voyages from time to time – or to some time or another.
EJ That all seems too glamorous to spend your time writing. What moved you to become a novelist?
JM It isn’t easy to hold a job down when you’re travelling so much, so I started writing when we were in Argentina. We were hours away from any town, in the middle of the pampa, and the twins were small. I had a lot of free time because my husband was often gone days at a time looking for horses. I wrote my first stories there – on the back porch, watching the twins play in the garden in the shade of the eucalyptus trees. At night we slept in a room room heated by a softly crackling fire and lit with oil lamps. We had no electricity, but we had running water. On the estancia were ponies, sheep, and cattle; and we could see deer, burrowing owls, and wild ostriches in the plains. It was magical, like time travelling to a different century. Nowadays, while working on my writing, I work part time as an assistant in a dental office here in France and, thanks to the wonders of modern technology, part time as an assistant to a researcher in Australia.
EJ Did you have difficulty finding a publisher?
JM I did! It surprised me, because I’d been writing and selling magazine articles and short stories, and I’d naively thought that a time travel book would be easy to sell. It might have been, but it wasn’t “romantic” enough, oh, and there is a threesome because Ashley falls in love with Alexander’s lover, Hephaestion. It’s not serious enough for a history book, and it’s kind of funny. So, yes, it was rejected by at least ten publishers and twice as many agents. One agent asked for the full series. I printed it up and sent it in a box the size of a volkswagen. I never heard from her again. I suppose she used the manuscript as a table for a while. It seemed odd that she asked for the whole series and never wrote back until I re-read her letter and saw she just wanted a full manuscript – of book one. Did I mention there are seven books in the series? I sold the series to a terrific outfit in Australia, which published books 1-3 and then folded. Meanwhile I kept writing and sold a few more books. I have a pen name and write erotica. But this series has always been my favorite, so I was thrilled when it was accepted by a publisher in the UK last year.
EJ Have you always been interested in the Ancient World? Did you know a great deal about Alexander before you started work on your trilogy?
JM My mother is a history teacher and I’ve always been interested in history. I didn’t know much about Alexander the Great, but I’m keen on research, so when I decided to write about him, I researched for nearly a year. I had piles of information, most of which I didn’t use or got chopped in editing (note from editor: Jennifer, you’re being pedantic again…)!
EJ Do you think you would have fallen in love with Alexander had you met him – indeed did you fall in love with him?
JM When I met him, he was just starting his “great adventure”, as he calls it. He was young and brash, and had an incredible charisma. I think, if I were Ashley, I would have fallen under his spell. It’s undeniable that he was someone special – I often wonder what the world would have been like had he lived to govern Persia, Egypt and Greece. What would have happened with Rome? Would he have gone to Africa, as he’d dreamed of doing? He was quite simply capable of anything. It’s hard to resist someone with such energy and optimism.
EJ Your books are quite playful in the sense that they play with history rather than re-living it. Have you ambitions to be a more serious historical novelist?
JM I would love to try my hand at a more serious historical novel, but I’m afraid I’m more of a science fiction writer. I did write a book set in the time of the Crusades, but again, it’s a time slip. I can’t seem to get around that. Putting a modern person back in time is an interesting way to perceive the distance that separates us. One author I admire immensely is Connie Willis. Her “The Doomsday Book” is one of my favorite time slip novels. She’s a science fiction/history/romance writer, which is more in line with what I love to write.
EJ What are you planning to do after the Alexander trilogy?
It’s not a trilogy. It’s a septology! Book III is due out in September, and book IV will appear in December if all goes according to plan.
EJ Can you tell my readers where they can find out more about you?
JM My blog is here (https://jennifermacaire.wordpress.com/) and my author showcase is here (https://authorjennifermacaire.wordpress.com/) the Facebook page for my series is here (https://www.facebook.com/TimeforAlexander/) You can write to me at jennifermacaire@gmail.com – at least until my next time slip – although I usually try to come back ahead of time. My twitter handle is @jennifermacaire
EJ Thank you, Jennifer. My review of The Road to Alexander should appear in the November issue of Historical Novels Review and on the Historical Novel Society website.
Jennifer Macaire 