The Fergus Author Interview
Author Tori Grant Welhouse answers reader’s questions.
Questions & Answers
Where did the idea for The Fergus come from?
Many things came together in the writing of the novel, which I called HERALD THE FERGUS for the longest time, but in the end we shortened to THE FERGUS.
First, my son’s father died. He was very Scottish, and away from Scotland I worried that my son wouldn’t have a sense of the Highlands in the same way.
Second, I lost my sister after a long illness. We all hoped until the very end. So here I was dealing with two significant deaths in a short amount of time. I felt like I was drowning in grief. I had to do something with it.
Then my brother dared me to write something mystical, and I started to think about the question: What if? What if death didn’t happen or behave like we thought it did? What if it behaved differently? And if it behaved differently, how would it behave?
How did you come up with the characters?
I knew the main character had to be a teen-aged boy. An awkward teen-aged boy dealing with his own grief, not at home with himself or his village or his father.
His grandmother represents the wisdom and legacy of the Highlands that he misses.
Deirdre is his companion and his counterpoint in many ways, and ultimately a love interest because I think a romance is the most hopeful kind of novel.
The banshee came to me in a dream. I woke up with her image clear as could be, and her saying, “I shuttle between life and death.” I thought it would be more interesting to make her a banshee-in-training as opposed to a fully-fledged banshee.
Did you make any structural changes to the book as you wrote it?
The first draft of the book was written in alternating chapters, each from Rork and Deirdre’s points of view. After finishing the book, I had an group critique at a writer’s conference and the feedback was unanimous that I needed to write the book from only Rork’s point of view. So that was the first major rewrite.
Perhaps Deirdre’s will be the next story I tell.
What did you learn about writing?
Writing a book is a commitment. It takes time. You set your goals, and you write to the goals. It’s helpful to have a supportive family, along with readers honest enough to give you good feedback and an editor who believes in the story.
But apart from that what I learned is I also needed to give myself room to imagine and to wonder, and that I shouldn’t be shy about sharing a character’s inner thoughts. Just because I knew what he was thinking didn’t mean readers would, and I had to get all that on the page, which I hope I did.
About The Fergus Author
Tori Grant Welhouse was an MFA student in London when she met her first husband and eloped to Scotland, a wild and haunting country she fell in love with. Her son was born in Aberdeen, the silver city by the sea, after an incredible ambulance ride through the Scottish Highlands. She is a widely published poet with three chapbooks. Her most recent poetry chapbook, Vaginas Need Air, won the 2020 Etching Press chapbook contest. She is an active volunteer with Wisconsin Fellowship of Poets.
Tori Grant Welhouse
Tori Grant Welhouse