ABOUT ME
Karen Maitland writes:
The medieval world has long held a fascination for me, but for eighteen months, I experienced the medieval lifestyle for real, in a rural village in Nigeria. I lived without running water, electricity or sanitation, bargaining for dried fish in the market place and constructing my own oven. Like our medieval ancestors, I quickly learnt that if you wanted to eat at night you had to make sure you collected firewood, water and food during daylight. It's not easy fetching water from a river by candlelight.
I was born in 1956 and, like my characters in Company of Liars, I've spent much of my life travelling, spending my early childhood in the sunshine of Malta and later journeying to the ice and snow of the Arctic and Greenland. In my working life I've done all kinds of jobs from cleaner to lecturer, egg packing to dance-drama, before I finally started writing for a living in 1996.
My first novel, The White Room, a modern thriller about terrorism, was written in the evenings after work, and was based on my experiences as a student in Belfast during 'The Troubles'. It was short-listed for the Authors' Club Best First Novel award, leading to string of commissions to write creative non-fiction books, which meant that I was able to take a job-share to give me more time to write, and then finally give up the day job to write full time. I began to work on my medieval mystery, Company of Liars, and thanks to manuscript appraiser, Hilary Johnson I was lucky enough to be taken on by my brilliant agent, Victoria Hobbs.
I now live in the beautiful medieval city of Lincoln, which together with the wild salt-marshes of Norfolk, around Blakeney and Salthouse, provide great inspiration for my novels. The tiny office at home where I write houses the pride of my dolls' house collection, a 'medieval' Great Hall laid out for a meal, complete with a tiller used to exercise the longbows and a wolfhound stretched out in front of the roaring fire. I've used features of this hall in my forthcoming novel The Owl Killers.
I love to grow medieval herbs, such as pennyroyal and St John's Wort. I also attempt to cook the medieval dishes I mention in the novels. So you'll find a few of my favourite medieval recipes appearing on this website from time to time.
I'm a member of the Crime Writers' Association, the Historical Novel Society and the Society of Authors. And I am very proud to announce that I've joined my great literary heroes by becoming one of the Medieval Murderers.
