Finding Purpose in The Needle of Avocation by Mark Baker

In this episode, I'm chatting with Mark Baker, author of The Needle of Avocation listed in the Textile Arts category on Art In Fiction.

Watch on YouTube: https://youtu.be/BKX2HsA43_c

• The genesis of The Needle of Avocation as the third book in the Cuthbert series
• Creation of the "It" girl of the 8th century, the heroine of the first two novels in the series, led to the creation of her sister Hilda in The Needle of Avocation
• Why embroidery as a basis for the novel and how it became both Hilda's shield and her refuge
• The development of HIlda's character and the choices she must make to find balance
• Why Mark chooses to write about the Anglo-Saxon period in England
• The status of women in the Anglo-Saxon period and how it changed for the worse under the Normans
• What we know (and don't know) about textile arts in the 8th and 9th centuries, and its purpose (and the purpose of art in general, historically)
• Reading from The Needle of Avocation
• One thing Mark learned from writing his novels
• How Mark researches his novels
• What Mark is working on now

Press Play now & be sure to check out The Needle of Avocation on Art In Fiction: https://www.artinfiction.com/novels/the-needle-of-avocation

Mark Baker's website: https://gmbaker.net/

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Transcript

Carol Cram

Hello and welcome. I'm Carol Cram, host of The Art in Fiction Podcast. This episode features Mark Baker, author of The Needle of Avocation, listed in the Textile Arts category on Art in Fiction. The novel is the third book in the Cuthbert's People series. Mark also writes the newsletter Stories All the Way Down. He lives in Nova Scotia, Canada.

Welcome to The Art in Fiction Podcast, Mark. 

Mark Baker

Thank you very much. I'm really glad to be here. 

Carol Cram

Well, I really enjoyed The Needle of Avocation. It's the third book in your Cuthbert series. So, tell us a little bit about the genesis of both the series and the place that this book plays in it.

Mark Baker

Sure. Going right back to The Wistful and the Good, the first book in the series. That was, like, 15 years of writing that. And it started out as being about this Norse trader who lands in a small village on the Northumbria coast, a month after the great Viking raid on Lindisfarne.

It was the 9/11 of the Anglo-Saxon world, and it was 9 /11 that got me thinking about that. Okay, what's going to happen to this guy if he lands on this? But he was this good-hearted, self-righteous, loyal. He was a good guy; he wasn't very interesting.

And I invented what I call the “It” girl of the eighth century, Elswyth, as a foil. And she was beautiful and accomplished and flighty and always dreaming of distant lands. And at a certain point in after six revisions of Leif's story didn't work, Elswyth came along and said, Hey, how about me? How about you make it about me? Because, you know, characters talk to you after a while. 

Carol Cram

Yes, they do. 

Mark Baker

And so, I rewrote it as Elswyth's story. And that worked. Then stuff really started to be interesting about her situation because she was be married to the local alderman, or alderman's son. 

In Anglo-Saxon nobility, your sort of basic soldier is the thane. So, he will have an estate with freemen and slaves on it, and then the regional governor is the alderman, and so that's a step up. But she falls in love with Leif, and this leads to a punch up, and people dying on the beach, and Elswyth sails off in circumstances that look very fishy to Hilda. But Hilda again was created as a foil for Elswyth. 

Carol Cram

And Hilda is the main character in The Needle of Avocation. 

Mark Baker

Hilda is the main character in The Needle of Avocation. But she was created as a foil. I mean, her first appearance was that she came upon Elswyth and Leif together and accuses, you were kissing!

She’s twelve at the time, right? It's like, aha! Caught my elder sister! But because she was to be a foil for Elswyth, Elswyth is beautiful and outgoing, and all of these things, and because I'd already decided that Elswyth's great bête noire is her embroidery. She's supposed to be making her wedding dress, and she's supposed to be doing all the embroidery and she's bad at it and she's not getting on with it and she's delaying and delaying, which is symbolic of the fact that she's not ready to marry because if she finishes her dress, well then. So it was that symbolism and then I said, okay, Hilda's the foil. 

So, what's Hilda going to be good at? Embroidery. 

Carol Cram

That makes sense. 

Mark Baker

That's literally how it got to be embroidery. That, and my sister has done embroidery all her life and she participates in some big international embroidery thing. I don't know. I honestly don't know what it is she participates in. I just know occasionally I see a Facebook post saying, I did this for this project and this for this project. 

But that was it. That's where the embroidery came from. It's where Hilda came from. And then I wrote another book about Elswyth. And then Hilda, because characters talk to you, Hilda came along and said, Why are you writing all these books about Elswyth? Write a book about me! 

And that's literally the genesis of A Needle of Avocation.

Carol Cram

And she is such a compelling character is Hilda. You know, she is definitely very different from her sister, isn't she? So, what were you trying to show with the development of Hilda as opposed to Elswyth? 

Mark Baker:

Elswyth is like an open flower. 

Carol Cram

Yes. Good analogy. 

Mark Baker

Hilda is the tight little bud that doesn't want to open. And the book is very much about vocation, obviously. That's where the title comes from. And, yes, Hilda is really good at what she does. I mean, she is the finest needlewoman in Northumbria.

But she is that because it was her sword and shield. It was the one thing she could hold over Elswyth. It was a place she could retreat to when everybody was fussing about Elswyth and ignoring Hilda. She had her obsession. And the obsession blossoms into something rich and wonderful, but it's still a shield. It's a refuge. 

Carol Cram

Good point. 

Mark Baker

And that's the conundrum, the dilemma. It's the thing that makes her interesting to me as a character because that's where she's comfortable. But she's all by herself in that little enclave where she produces wonders. But what happens if the world tries to draw her out?

Now, it's one thing if, you know, somebody escapes from the world by collecting matchboxes. Like Brideshead in Brideshead Revisited, I think he has a matchbox collection. Well, that's just hiding from the world. That's all that is. That's all that obsession is doing.

But Hilda’s obsession is making something wonderful. And so, you can't just say to her, well, you're just hiding. Give that up. Come out, get married, have kids, become an alderman's wife. If she does that, something real is lost. 

It's a dilemma of some substance. As I got into that, I more and more thought that's typical of art. To do art to a really high level, you have to be obsessive. 

Carol Cram

Essentially, Hilda's journey is to find balance, isn't it? Between her obsession as an artist, and I guess that's what we're all trying to find. Because there is quite an element of romance in the novel. Presumably that's intentional. 

Mark Baker:

Yes. Well, because that's the other temptation. There’s a line that Mother Wynfred, the abbess, has. She says all wickedness is simply one love that eats all the other loves. And I thought, that's one of those lines, you know, how sometimes you're not even thinking about it. You're just typing away and you write the perfect line, and you look, oh, how did I do that?

Carol Cram

I wish it happened all the time. That's what keeps us working. 

Mark Baker

Exactly. Yeah. So, I wrote that, and I realized, wait a minute, that's true of everybody. In the novel, that's true of in one way or another. Because Edith, her mother, is desperately trying to raise the money to free her other family members from slavery because Edith was born a slave and she seduced Attor, the lord of the manor, Hilda's father, and ever since she's been trying to find a way to raise money to get her other. And what she's after is the morning gift of an alderman's wife. 

Because that was how it worked in the Anglo-Saxon period. When a woman married, the husband would give her a morning gift, which is a piece of her own property, that was sort of the surety for herself and for her children. If he decided to put her aside, or if he died, that was hers.

It's almost like getting your divorce settlement on the day that you marry. 

But she's after this money, right? This is the only way she can get that money. And, in The Whistle and the Good, she's essentially pimping out Elswyth to the alderman's son to get that.

And then in this book, she's trying to do it again to Hilda. But while Elswyth, in the first book, says oh, sure, mother, no problem, that sounds like a great idea, Hilda's much more thoughtful about this and goes “no”. 

Carol Cram

She wants to go to a convent, doesn't she, at some point in the novel.

Mark Baker

Yeah, she does. I mean, if you're a woman in Anglo-Saxon England who isn't going to marry, then a convent is where you go. It is where you go if you're widowed, if you're abused. St. Agnes and the Selkie deals a great deal with this. Like, it's the home for everybody whose vocation isn't marriage.

This is where you go. As it would be for men. If your avocation wasn't marriage as a man, you could probably make bachelorhood work, kinda. Probably a sort of a household soldier. But other than that, it would be a monastery. 

Carol Cram

Yes. 

Mark Baker

So, it's not that she's entertaining any great religious conviction. It's not a religious avocation, but it would let her take her avocation to art and spend her life on it.

Carol Cram

Yes. She wants to do that so she can embroider all the time. 

Mark Baker

Exactly. It becomes another refuge for her.

Carol Cram

And it's interesting, her struggle in order to figure out, does she really want to do that? Which is really about more of the book, isn't it? Her journey was great. I really enjoyed reading the novel for that. 

So, what was it about this period, Anglo-Saxon England, that has now fascinated you? Three books and another one coming, I believe. So why that period? 

Mark Baker

In part, my mother was born in County Durham. I've stood before Cuthbert’s Tomb in Durham Cathedral many times. I visited Lindisfarne several times. And I know I like those liminal places, the village on the edge.

I mean, I'm living in a small town in Nova Scotia, right? Those places and the people of those places fascinate me and so I was already very much aware of Lindisfarne, very much interested in its art, the Lindisfarne Gospels and what have you.

So when 9/11 happened and I'm like, Oh,, that's interesting. You know, all these people who've been just living ordinary lives in the west, you know, just minding a shop and what have you, and suddenly they are the enemy among us. What's that like? 

And I'm a great believer that if you want to examine a contemporary issue like that, it's better to take it way into the past.

Carol Cram

Yes. 

Mark Baker

Any current issue, suddenly everybody's taking a side. And so your book, if it doesn't take a side, then both sets of people throw stones through your window, right? But if you go back, well, who's supposed to be on the side of Vikings versus Anglo-Saxons?

You know, most of them are on the side of the Vikings, frankly, which is quite disturbing if you think about it. But that is the point, that you take it back far enough and now you can look at the issue without the modern passions clouding it and you could start to ask those same questions. And as I said, Lief is like the good guy, right?

He's the innocent and all of that. Well, and so is Hilda, really. I mean, Hilda’s not there of her own volition. She's being pushed along, and she has this opportunity to say no. I mean, this was part of Anglo-Saxon law as well. 

Carol Cram

Which is interesting. 

Mark Baker

The Norman conquest changed the status of women. 

Carol Cram

Things were better for women prior to that, were they not? 

Mark Baker

Oh yes. Yes. Well, I mean the whole business of the morning gift, the right to refuse, all of that, so she can refuse, she can say no, but so much falls apart if she does.

Carol Cram

Yes. 

Mark Baker

And so, she is very reluctantly going with the flow, and then things start to happen, both good and bad. Her prospective mother-in-law is trying to bully her out of marrying her son. But she's also meeting new friends in Claennis, and then Anfeld turns up and she actually likes him. He likes her, which she really can't get her head around because she's not used to any man having any eyes for anybody but Elswyth. 

The idea that anybody would notice her for anything other than her embroidery is just totally foreign. 

Carol Cram

Yes, it was a fascinating period and the place of women in that period was new to me and I found that very interesting because I write 14th-century Italy. Not all my books, but some of them. And women could not say no. If your dad said you're marrying him, that's what you did.

So, I found that fascinating that they did have quite a bit more freedom before the Anglicans, before the Normans came. They just wrecked everything, didn't they? 

Mark Baker

Well, I mean, this is one of the things I'm kind of passionate about in historical fiction. When we say freedom, we have to understand what it meant. Because it wasn't individualism. Individualism is death. What we think of individual liberty would have been exile. You have to belong. 

Carol Cram

Yes, it was about community, which has actually been the same throughout most of history. 

Mark Baker

Exactly. 

Carol Cram

And that's why I think we're having problems now because we've kind of lost that, haven't we?

Mark Baker

We have. People have become, not only today, is like, okay, you can go out and be completely independent. You need a money economy where you can work for money, or you buy stuff for money, and there's a police force to look after your safety.

So, you can go off and be. You can live an individual life, without danger to your health and welfare. What it does to your psyche is another question, but you can do that. 

Carol Cram

So, I wanted to just circle back a little bit to embroidery again, just briefly, because in your research, did you discover that embroidery played a major role in that period, in the clothing of that period. Or is there even much to research from that? It's such a long time ago. 

Mark Baker

C. C. Humphreys, I think it was, was saying in your interview with him that the further back you go, the more leeway you get. And boy, you get a lot of leeway when you start to go back to 800 or 700 A.D. 

I have this wonderful book by John Blair called Building Anglo-Saxon England. I was trying to figure out what does a hall look like? What does a fortification look like? And it is this great, big, thick, illustrated volume, the upshot of which is we don't know. We know what the foundations look like, or rather, we can see dark spots in the ground in a row, which we think are post holes.

What was built on top of it? We don't know. 

And similarly with clothing, I mean, we don't have really any embroidery before the Bayeux tapestry. That’s French.

Carol Cram

But then the fact that that actually was done in what, 1000 or whatever, shows you that they probably did have embroidery 300 years earlier.

Mark Baker

Yes. I mean, it's a very reasonable supposition. And we see embroidery in other places and embroidery further back. But I mean, this is, like, a really wet part of the world and wood and cloth. I did read somewhere that they discovered a tiny piece of, like, 8th- or 9th-century cloth and it's, like, you know, this big and it's all moldy and black and stuff but we really have no idea what they were doing.

There's a theory that they would have had wall hangings and I have some of that in the book. And then there's at least a theory that they were sort of hanging mud and wattle panels over that because the posts would rot and the thing would fall down after a while so you could actually take all the panels off, put in new posts, and hang the panels back on.

That's one of the theories in Blair's book anyway. And then to insulate that, you would have wall hangings. And maybe they're tapestries. Maybe they're just blankets. We don't know. And it makes sense that they would have had richly embroidered clothing, because that was how you demonstrated your wealth.

You know, if you find these buried hordes and things like the Saxon Woo ship and all that, you get all these brooches and things. There's no bank. And you can't go out and buy a Ferrari. So, if you want to say, hey, I'm a rich guy, you're wearing it. 

And so, it is a reasonable supposition that richly embroidered clothing like I describe in the book would have been part of it. Can I prove it? Nope.

Carol Cram

But also, it was women's work and that's what women, especially highborn women would do, embroidery. 

Mark Baker

Yes. I mean, this is why, you know, the old description of men and women is the distaff side and the spear side of humanity. The distaff is for spinning. So, this was all the fabric arts were the quintessential work of women and so it allows that. The brooches and all that stuff, that's probably the work of men, but embroidery, wall hangings, tapestries was probably the work of women. 

Carol Cram

I do find it interesting. There's been quite a few novels lately about needlework and the textile arts, which is one of the reasons I included it as a category. And it does tend to be women's work, and it is now finally coming into its own and being recognized as being just as amazing. 

And you bring that out in your book as well, how good she was. It's just as valid as the Sistine Chapel or something like that. And the fact that it was done by women has sort of kept it down.

Mark Baker

And it doesn't have the same permanence. 

Carol Cram

No, and it doesn't have the same permanence, for sure. But it was just as valid and the skill and the artistry that went into it, just like the Bayeux Tapestry. Yes. I just love that thing. I've seen it. 

Mark Baker

You know, there is also this aspect that we think of great art today as sort of the museum piece. And artists today, of course, are after a show in the gallery. Because art is art. But all the art, I think, of this time, even the illustrated manuscripts and everything, was much more integrated in the life. It was conspicuous consumption. All these brooches and stuff had practical applications as well.

Carol Cram

It was practical. 

Mark Baker

It wasn't gallery art, because there were no galleries. 

Carol Cram

That’s really a 19th-century thing in a way, because most art for many, many hundreds of years was religious art. So, it had a purpose.

Mark Baker:

It had a purpose. It was teaching. I mean, although those great illustrated cathedrals, this was a teaching tool for an illiterate population. Teach them the Gospels. 

Carol Cram

So, would you like to do a short reading from The Needle of Avocation? 

Mark Baker

Sure, I could do that. The context here is that she has been trying to escape from all of the preparations and hide away and ply her needle and people keep coming to her and asking her to do this and that. 

There was much to be done in preparation for the wedding of an alderman's son and the week of events that preceded it.

There were meals to prepare, guests to greet, expeditions to plan, decorations to create and hang. A bride in her glory could have found endless occupation. Elswyth would have been everywhere and with everyone and making herself generally beloved. Hilda wished only to avoid it all and find quiet places to ply her needle.

With needle and thread, she could make order and grace and beauty. Though her subjects were of earth, yet on her cloth, they attained the fixity and virtue of the stars. Her figures danced and yet were ever still. No clumsiness, no vice, no drunken quarrels, no jealousy, No madness marred them. Among them was neither preeminence nor neglect.

All were born in beauty and perfectly made, perfectly loved. No clumsiness or want of care could mar their making. And if her fingers slip or her eyes play false, so seldom nowadays, all imperfections could be picked out and made right. Her beasts Her men, her maidens, were of Eden, this she knew, and in this her comfort lay.

In the world she could not pick out and to make over the contradictions of her own nature, the defects of her form and character, which she knew to be the cause of her neglect and her discontent. But all that was as nothing while her needle was in her hand.

Alas, she did not know peace long. And it was Moira, once again, who disturbed her. 

“What does she want this time?” Hilda asked, without looking up, when she heard her sister's footsteps approaching. 

“It's not mother. It's Lady Kyneburg who wants you this time. Apparently, it's my job to know where you are all the time.”

“Did she say what she wanted?” Hilda asked, resignedly tucking her needle into her cloth once more. 

“She wants you to come to her!”

“All right, I'm coming. Thank you.”

Kynberg, lady of Bamburg, mother of Anfeld, wife of Kenrick, had a room reserved for herself, a room without the tools of any occupation, a room reserved entirely for her own leisure. No such place existed anywhere in Twyford, and Hilda, when she had first seen it years ago, had been a dog with wonder and envy at it.

It was hung with the richest tapestries, warmed by a small brazier, the smoke of which drifted up lazily to a concealed smoke hole in the roof. It was furnished not with benches, but with chairs. Chairs with arms and backs, covered with cushions and soft furs. In addition to its windows. It was lit with lamps and candles, which gave quite enough light that, if she chose, she could work her needle all through the tedium of winter evenings.

If there was anything in the prospect of marriage to Anfeld that appealed to her, it was that she might one day become mistress of this room.

Carol Cram

That's great. Thank you. You really get a good sense of Hilda and also the importance of the needle to her. 

So, one of my goals with The Art In Fiction Podcast is to inspire other authors, so share with us one thing you've learned from writing your historical novels that you didn't know before.

Mark Baker

I think when I started, I spent all kinds of time trying to dream up plots. And the trouble when you do that, when you sort of work away on plot, plot, plot, plot, plot, and then you say, okay, characters, now we've got a plot. Let's go do it. 

And the characters sort of go along with this for a while and then they go, no. Did you not read what you wrote on page five? You think I'm going to do that? No. And I came to learn that plot all comes out of character. And I call it the theory of the two loves. The character has two things that they love and either those two things are incompatible from the start or circumstances are going to lead them to a place where they are incompatible and where they have to choose.

And really, everything that happens in The Needle of Avocation is Hilda has these two passions. In a sense, she discovers another one along the way, but she does want to do right by her family. She also wants to dedicate her life to embroidery. And this prospect of marriage, and this is the reason why I have a scene very early on, where Keinberg, her prospective mother-in-law, is going to say, look, you're the greatest needle woman in Northumbria.

You realize that as an alderman's wife, you'll have no time for that. I mean, she's trying to discourage her, but scenes like that just kind of start to come to you when you've got the right conflict, because all you're trying to do then is shepherd your character along to the point where they have to go, is it this or is it the other thing? It's what James Scott Bell calls the mirror moment. 

Carol Cram

Yes. I've read James Scott Bell. I like the mirror moment, that's a concept, yes. 

Mark Baker

And the great thing about it is, and I see so many people who are trying to spin out plots and that they are creating technical problems for their characters. Okay, fine, nothing wrong with the technical problem. But if there is no moral problem behind it, then okay, you solved the technical problem. Great. Moving on. What next?  Or you postpone solving the technical problem, which then is just boring because we're waiting for you to solve the problem. But when it's this choice, this basic moral choice, your character is resisting,that's the whole drama. They don't want to make the choice. That gives you that extension, that gives you the whole arc of the novel and whatever choice they make, there's a cost to that. And that gives the thing weight.

And that, to me is the biggest thing I learned. And it's funny, you know, part of learning to write is learning to read, and it's like, you can read a book that's structured exactly like that. This is a great book, I love it, but you haven't understood that that was what made that book great.

Carol Cram

Exactly.                                                                            

Mark Baker

And then you try to write something, and you know you're not there. It just, you know, just not. When I finally sort of go back and forth from reading to writing, that's what it is. It's the inner moral problem that postpones things while maintaining tension. That's the key to a novel.

You've got to postpone the resolution while maintaining the tension. And that's the moral problem. 

Carol Cram

That's excellent advice. Yes, I like that. Postponing? 

Mark Baker

Postponing the resolution while maintaining tension. 

Carol Cram

Postponing the resolution while maintaining tension. Because I like that very much. I will keep that in mind as I'm working on my current book. 

Mark Baker

And the thing is, only a moral problem does that. No technical problem can do that. That has to be a moral problem. It has to be a choice of values. 

Carol Cram

Good point. So, tell us a little bit about your process. Do you start with research, or do you kind of do it as you go along? Or how do you approach it? 

Mark Baker

I think so much of historical fiction today is really documentary. I mean, that's a big part of the appeal. If you're reading something like Patrick O'Brien, all of those sea stories, like, so much of it is in that detail.

So, it is a documentary element as well as the drama. That's not really what I'm writing historical fiction for. I mean, I recognize it's an element of the appeal and it appeals to me and other historical novels, but that's not my big driver. I'm not trying to be documentary. I'm trying to find the right stage to set that moral drama because there are all kinds of dramas you just can't stage today.

You just can't. The situation could never arise. I couldn't write Elswyth's story. I couldn't write Hilda's story really either because those circumstances just would not pertain. And so, I have to go into the past to write that. And that's what I'm looking for. So, there's a kind of research there that says, what are the physical conditions? What are the traditions? What are the customs that create the stage for that moral drama that I want to stage? 

Carol Cram

Right. 

Mark Baker

That has to happen first. I've got to find that stage. Once I found it, then I research on the fly. You get that moment, you go, Oh, I was just about to say, blow out a candle. Oh, did they have candles? Not sure. You do need some general appreciation, like, for the arc of history and stuff to even ask the right question for that, right?

So, in some sense, all historical reading you do is relevant because it lets you ask that question. Then you can go off and do that little tiny bit of research.

And then there's the, okay, I need some business here. There's a scene in The Wistful and the Good where one of the characters has been badly burned. And Edith, Hilda's mother, has to take care of him. And so, I'm going, okay, what did they do? So, you go back to Bald’s Leechbook, which is the great medical text of the Anglo-Saxon world, and some plant boiled in a copper vessel or something, which turns out actually there's good medicine in that. Like it actually makes sense. And the copper vessel makes sense. They would have had no idea why, but they knew it did. And there's a lot of stuff involved with each book that actually works.

So, it's things like that, but you need that bit of business. But I do that research on the fly. I fully understand the people who do it the other way, who will go and just immerse themselves. And then I don't wanna do that, though, because if I do that, then I'm looking for a way to bring that in. 

Carol Cram: 

Yes. I did the research, so therefore I've gotta put it in the book. I'm actually like you. I tend to do sort of general reading and then I do it, as I need it. I don't want to know too much because the main thing is the character's journey.

And then the history you want in there because it's historical fiction, but yes, not too much; less is more, for sure. 

So, what are you working on now? You have another book coming out, don't you. 

Mark Baker: I have actually two books that I'm releasing, almost within a couple of months of each other. One of them is an 18th-century or early 19th- century story called The Wrecker's Daughter.

Which is another one of these things set in liminal places. This is a small village in Cornwall during the Napoleonic Wars. And wreck ships and they steal the cargo. and this is another one of these, like, there's no history for that. Like,, who was there to write it down?

Historians argue about whether it even happened. So that's just actually come out. And then I have another book in this series, which is called The Wanderer and the Way, which I'm actually currently serializing on my Substack. 

Carol Cram

Oh, good idea. 

Mark Baker

It's, like, how do you find the audience, right? Different ways to put it in front of people. And that actually goes back to Elswyth, but it's actually the first real historical character in the series, because it's Theodemir of Iria Flavia, who was the bishop who, in the second or third decade of the ninth century, is responsible for discovering the bones of St. James in Santiago de Compostela, which then becomes the Camino, the great pilgrimage route. 

And so, I had sent at the end of, spoiler alert for the St. Agnes and the Selkie, but Elswyth ends up going off to Spain at the end of it. And then I needed to get her back because, as you would notice, there's an epilogue.

Carol Cram

Yes, I did read that. 

Mark Baker

So, I have to get her back now. Because she appears at the end of the book. And this was the book I wrote to get her back. And I brought her along the route of the Camino. With this guy who will eventually become the bishop. I'm a fan of the thing, so. 

Carol Cram

Oh, that sounds fascinating. I want to read that now. Because I'm actually off to Santiago in about two months. My husband's an artist and he has an exhibition at a museum there. 

And then are you working on a new one? Like, those ones are almost published.

Mark Baker

The Wrecker’s Daughter is published, and I will publish The Wanderer and the Way probably shortly before it finishes serializing, probably around March. And I'm working on Book Five now, which was Moira

Moira shows up as the younger sister, and it's the book where I'm going to bring everybody back.

Carol Cram

Oh, good. 

Mark Baker

Everybody from all of, well, except not the Spanish people, but the people from the first three books will all come back together. I'm actually calling it, at least the working title is, The Synod of Twyford, which was a real event, except it happened a hundred years earlier because that was when Cuthbert was summoned from Lindisfarne to become Bishop of Lindisfarne, which is why I use Twyford as the village they came from.

So yeah, that's just in the early stages at this point. 

Carol Cram

Oh, you're keeping busy. Thank you so much, Mark, for chatting with me. This has been really interesting. 

Mark Baker

Well, thank you. It's been fun. I really appreciate the opportunity.

Carol Cram: 

I've been speaking with Mark Baker, author of The Needle of Avocation, listed in the Textile Arts category on Art Fiction at www.artinfiction. com. 

Be sure to check the show notes for a link to Mark's website at www.gmbaker. net. 

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