The pandemic was well under way when I crossed paths with Amy Marie Turner. Despite seeing her at least several times a week, we’ve yet to meet in real life, but our friendship is one of the surprising gifts of having lived through COVID.
We are both historical fiction wonks and share a predilection for research, sorting through time and testimony in a quest to reanimate the different worlds of our characters, coaxing them out to tell their stories.
Working on these projects, we are together almost every day, in zoom meetings which take place at https://www.thewritersroom.space.
It’s during these sessions, when I wrestle with my work, that I look up and see Amy’s steady gaze present on my screen. Her coloring lends itself to the clarity of the landscape which she calls home and her eyes are a shade of blue sometimes found in God’s country (aka Colorado), where she lives with her partner, photographer David W. Shaw.
Amy’s debut novel, The Voyage of the Pleiadesis the sweeping, lush, adventure of Victorian naturalist, Linnea Wren. While Linnea is fictional, much of her world is inspired by the intrepid biologist and painter, Marianne North, whose prodigious output can be seen in Britain’s Kew Gardens.
Read the rest of the interview by novelist Carrie Hayes (Naked Truth) here.
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