Special Guest Interview with Steven A. McKay, Author of The Heathen Horde (Alfred the Great Book 1)

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Northumbria, AD 864. Viking warlord Ragnar Lothbrok is captured and killed in brutal fashion, an event that will shape the future of the nation for decades to come.

Mercia, AD 868. Alfred, son of Wessex and heir to the throne, draws his first blood on the battlefield. It will not be his last.

A devastating scourge from the north is coming to Britain, one that will bring armies and entire kingdoms to their knees. Travelling along the whale road in their feared longships, the Great Heathen Army move fast, striking with a savagery unmatched, in a seemingly unstoppable tide of blood and iron.

I'm pleased to welcome author Steven A. McKay to The Writing Desk:

Tell us about your latest book

My newest novel is called The Heathen Horde and it’s the first in a trilogy about Alfred the Great. This first book follows Alfred from around the time he first faces the Vikings in battle, as the sons of the fabled Ragnar Lothbrok are travelling around England raiding and pillaging. At that time Alfred was an aetheling, a prince, of Wessex, and his older brother Aethelred was king, so The Heathen Horde covers the events that saw Alfred eventually taking the throne. 

As you might expect, there’s a LOT of battles so it was an interesting book to write as I had to make sure there was more to it than just constant fighting and folk being killed! People nowadays have certain ideas about Alfred, and also about the Vikings, and I think some readers will probably be surprised by how I portray them in the book. 

Alfred was not the weak, pious man you see portrayed in some stories – he was a warrior who fought in the shieldwall and struggled with his Christian faith because he couldn’t help indulging in “carnal” pleasures! Similarly, not all Vikings were savages – they enjoyed poetry and stories and were expert craftsmen as well as cleaner than people give them credit for nowadays.

 
So The Heathen Horde is very much a thoroughly researched novel with a solid foundation in historical fact, but, as with all my books, I aim to tell an entertaining STORY that will captivate the reader. That’s my ultimate goal. Hopefully I’ve managed it.

What is your preferred writing routine?

For the past year and a half I’ve been lucky enough to be a full-time writer. This is my job now, so I have a certain freedom to write when I feel inspired. In saying that, if I don’t write books, I don’t earn any money, so I stick to a fairly rigid routine, writing every weekday and usually for an hour or two on a Sunday as well. 

I don’t have a set number of words I aim for every day, but it is important to get SOMETHING done or I feel like I’m being lazy! Even when I’m away on holiday with the family I’ll take my laptop and try to get a bit of editing done. It's a good life, and certainly a privileged one, and self-discipline is a huge part of my routine now, even more than it was when I had a full-time day job.

What advice do you have for new writers?

Don’t force yourself to write every day, but do be diligent and make sure you’re making constant, steady progress on your book. It won’t write itself, so put the hours in when you’re inspired and, if you’re not inspired, go for a drive or take the dog for a walk and let the ideas come to you so that when you next sit down at the laptop you’ll have some idea of what you’re going to write about.

Another massively important piece of advice is to really believe in yourself and the quality of your writing. My first novel, Wolf’s Head, was rejected by a few publishers and agents, which was upsetting, but I never once felt like that book wasn’t good enough. I completely believed Wolf’s Head told a good story and readers would enjoy it if they could only get their hands on it. Every writer should have that same unshakeable confidence in their work – if YOU don’t think it’s good, why should anyone else? So believe in yourself, and do whatever you can to get your book out there.

What have you found to be the best way to raise awareness of your books?

Doing interviews with well-known bloggers/authors like yourself, Tony, has always been a good marketing strategy for me over the years. It gets me and my books in front of an audience already interested in the subject matter, and it’s good fun too! In terms of paid advertising, I find Facebook ads give decent results without spending too much money so I would recommend those.

 
Local newspapers are always looking for content too, so it might be worthwhile for authors to reach out to those and ask if they’d like to do an interview with you. It might not sell thousands of books, but it’s always good to be seen in as many places by as many people as possible I think.

Tell us something unexpected you discovered during your research

To be honest, researching The Heathen Horde was ALL quite unexpected for me. I grew up in Glasgow so my school didn’t teach us anything about Alfred the Great, an English king, which meant I had really no idea what to expect when I started reading about him. I was very pleasantly surprised to discover his life was the perfect backdrop for a series of novels! 

You have all the ingredients you need, from famous Viking raiders like Ragnar Lothbrok and his sons, to a charismatic Alfred who suffers from mysterious ailments while also being a great warrior, and the clash between both these sides – heathen vs Christian – which lasted for Alfred’s whole life. There’s victories and defeats, highs and lows, and parts which sound so incredible – miraculous even - that I wouldn’t have made them up for a purely fictional novel!

What was the hardest scene you remember writing?

This might sound weird, but you’ve probably heard of actors taking on a part and getting so into the role that they start to feel like they’ve ‘become’ the person they’re portraying. Val Kilmer thinking he was Jim Morrison from The Doors is the one that comes to my mind.

 
Anyway, I didn’t believe I was Alfred the Great but the scenes where he was suffering from stomach pains I found quite hard to write. There’s been much discussion in recent years about the cause of those stomach pains, with Crohn’s Disease and IBS being the favourites amongst scholars. Whatever they were, I firmly believe they were caused by stress – I’ve suffered from similar physical ailments which were caused by anxiety or fear. 

It seems logical to me that a king, facing the constant threat of a Viking invasion along with all the other problems he had to deal with, would struggle with physical manifestations of stress.
The problem for me was, while writing those scenes, I too started to get pains in my stomach and sides! As I say, that might sound weird, but when you’re trying to get into the mind of your characters, I think it can affect you in ways you might not expect.

What are you planning to write next?

I’ve just finished the second book in the trilogy so it will be onto book 3 next. Before that, however, I plan on writing a short story. Every winter, for the past eight or nine years, I’ve published a novella/novelette set at Christmas and starring my Forest Lord characters, Tuck, John Little, and Will Scaflock. Usually they have some mystery to solve, sometimes based on a true crime story I’ve heard about, so the heroes will go about medieval England in the snow and wind, dealing with baddies and setting the world to rights before enjoying a hearty Christmas feast with their fellow villagers.

I love writing those, and it’s become a tradition many of my readers really enjoy too. This year, with all the focus being on my Alfred the Great trilogy, I won’t have time to write a longer winter story, but I hate the thought of not continuing the tradition, so I plan on writing a short tale and giving it away for FREE to everyone subscribed to my email list.

If you’d like to join the list and hopefully get a free Christmas tale, you can sign up HERE. Previous books in that mini-series include Sworn to God, Faces of Darkness, and The House in the Marsh.

Do you have any more news you’d like to share?

For the past eighteen months or so I’ve been co-hosting a podcast with fellow author Matthew Harffy. Rock, Paper, Swords – the Historical Action Adventure Podcast sees us chatting about all aspects of writing, from cover design to prologues to planning and everything else. We also interview guests and have managed somehow to entice such legendary figures as Bernard Cornwell, Simon Scarrow, Dan Jones, Ben Kane, and even Ian Anderson from Jethro Tull onto the show for a chat!

Fans of history and historical fiction should give it a listen as we’ve got a ton of great episodes with plenty more to come in 2024! Find us on Apple iTunes, Spotify, Amazon Music and all the usual places, or check us out HERE.

Steven A. McKay

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About the Author

Steven A. McKay was born in Scotland in 1977. He says, 'I enjoyed studying history – well, the interesting bits, not so much what they taught us in school. I decided to write my Forest Lord series after seeing a house called “Sherwood” when I was out at work one day. I’d been thinking about maybe writing a novel but couldn’t come up with a subject or a hero so, to see that house, well…It felt like a message from the gods and my rebooted Robin Hood was born. My current Warrior Druid of Britain series was similarly inspired, although this time it was the 80’s TV show “Knightmare”, and their version of Merlin that got my ideas flowing. Of course, the bearded old wizard had been done to death in fiction, so I decided to make my hero a giant young warrior-druid living in post-Roman Britain and he’s been a great character to write. I was once in a heavy metal band although I tend to just play guitar in my study these days. I’m sure the neighbours absolutely love me.' Find out more at his website https://stevenamckay.com/ and find him on Twitter @SA_McKay.