JuNoWriMo Featured Author: Margaret McNellis

Meet some of your fellow JuNo WriMos in our Featured Author series each Monday and Wednesday during June.

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Margaret McNellis
Margaret McNellis

I was so excited to find JuNoWriMo last year, even though NaNoWriMo was right around the corner. Unfortunately I won’t be able to participate in NaNo as I usually do because I will be training for my 2nd degree black belt test which will demand much of my free time…so June is really going to be my “write with wild abandon” month!

As for myself, I fell in love with writing fiction during my last semester of college. I started playing around with writing fanfiction but then got frustrated with not having complete creative ownership of the characters I was writing–along with all of the other story elements. I started writing my own stories, which mostly featured zombies as a main element. I didn’t particularly like writing the gory parts, but used the presence of the zombies as a catalyst by which to take a deeper look at the human condition.

In August of 2008, I started taking classes with the Long Ridge Writers Group. 2008 was also my first year participating in NaNoWriMo. I’ve won all years since then except 2009, when I was traveling in Turkey for half of November (though I did make an attempt, and got to about 25K). In 2010 I became an municipal liaison for the CT shoreline region, and remained in that role for three years. I really liked growing the region (we saw 150% growth in those years!) and adding pre-event writing workshops to the schedule.

In 2011 I began taking a course on novel writing with the Long Ridge Writers Group, which gave me the ability to dive into historical fiction, which I’ve fallen in love with (as it fits so nicely with my Art History degree). Since then, I’ve been working mostly in historical fiction, but have been mixing other genres into the mix since historical fiction lends so well to that.

The name of my JuNoWriMo novel is “The Price of Freedom” and it is also historical fiction. The basic synopsis is that it begins with the emigration of James Badcocke circa 1640 from England to Rhode Island, and follows through to his son and the founding of one of Rhode Island’s prominent colonies.

The back story for my book, I think, is pretty interesting. I was doing some genealogical research on my family and learned that, against the belief amongst most in my family, my ancestors did not arrive in the late 19th century–at least not for the first time. I traced my lineage back to the Badcocke/Babcock family, one of the more prominent New England families. I learned that James Badcocke Senior traveled from England to Rhode Island around 1640–and while there are records of him in England and records of him in New England, his name doesn’t exist on any ship manifest.

I decided to write a story based on his passage, on the presumption that he traveled under a pseudonym. From that, I created a fictional account wherein his brother, Sir Richard, forces him to take his family out of England and to the New World, because of a difference in religious beliefs. He learns later that his brother has actually murdered someone and used his disappearance to distract from the scandal of the murder (among other subplots).

I have started work on this novel. I worked on it for NaNo 2012 and while I reached the 50K mark, I estimate it needs at least another 50-100K to be finished, and would like to accomplish at least the 50K during the month of June.

Find Margaret online:

Twitter: @mmcnelliswrites

Facebook page: MMcNellisWrites

Blog: http://mmcnellisblog.com

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