Lori Benton Interview

The long awaited sequel to THE WOODS EDGE is finally out!

A FLIGHT OF ARROWS

by

Lori Benton

 Twenty years past, in 1757, a young Redcoat, Reginald Aubrey stole a newborn boy—the lighter-skinned of Oneida twins— during the devastating fall of Fort William Henry and raised him as his own.

No one connected to Reginald escaped unscathed from this crime. Not his adopted daughter Anna. Not Stone Thrower, the Native American father determined to get his son back. Not Two Hawks, William’s twin brother separated since birth, living in the shadow of his absence and hoping to build a future with Anna. Nor Lydia, who longs for Reginald to be free from his self-imposed emotional prison and embrace God’s forgiveness— and her love.

Now William, whose identity has been shattered after discovering the truth of his birth, hides in the ranks of an increasingly aggressive British army. The Redcoats prepare to attack frontier New York and the Continentals, aided by Oneida warriors including Two Hawks, rally to defend it. As the Revolutionary War penetrates the Mohawk Valley, two families separated by culture, united by love and faith, must find a way to reclaim the son marching toward them in the ranks of their enemies.

 Lori was kind enough to agree to an interview so here she is.

Besides the time period that your books take place in, which time period would you most like to visit?

I’ve long been interested in the pre-Roman Iron Age Celtic cultures of Great Britain (BC to first century AD). While I would never want to live during that time, I’d like to see what the people looked like, dressed like, to walk through their hill-forts and crannogs and brochs. One day I’d like to visit some of these sites in Wales and Scotland. Perhaps Ireland too. 

Do you have a favorite character that you’ve written? Favorite character someone else has written?

I tend to feel closest to the characters I’m currently writing. But it’s impossible to pick one of my own as a favorite.

Time was I’d have said Hadassah, from Francine Rivers’ Mark of the Lion books, as far as a favorite character someone else has written, but I’ve read many great characters since then so that’s a hard one to answer as well. I’m also partial to Brother Cadfael of the medieval mystery series by Ellis Peters. And Father Tim in Jan Karon’s Mitford books. 

How much research is associated with your books? A lot, I know, but how much time do you spend researching vs writing?

How much time isn’t something I’ve kept track of. I research in snatches (because unfortunately I’ve reached the age where reading can put me to sleep in 10 minutes flat), anywhere and everywhere, some of it for a few weeks before I start writing. I keep reading stacks of books while I’m writing, even during the editing stages. Some books I know I need to get through and they wait in a pile by my desk. Some are around for looking up key subjects. Sometimes I’ll come across something that needs researching on the day while I’m writing the current scene. For instance, with the current work in progress, I’d never have thought ahead of time I’d need to know the technique of paddling a canoe upriver for a long stretch of miles until I decided to have a character do just that. I have to write more than I research or the book would never get finished, but I do a lot of both.

Did you travel to this area and visit the forts there? Are they preserved, or are they just memory?

I would love to visit Fort Stanwix and Fort William-Henry, both of which are preserved (or rebuilt near their historical location) in New York and welcome visitors with interpreters and reenactors. I’ve had to content myself with photos, videos, and written descriptions.

Do you have a hard time transitioning between the world you’re writing about and the real world?

I’m not one of those writers who can write anywhere, and just block out the world around me. I need quiet and long uninterrupted blocks of solitude. Being interrupted makes it hard to get back into the story world, but I can be jarred out of it instantly by a phone ringing or a dog barking.

What I find more difficult is trying to write one novel while editing or promoting another. Switching between two story worlds, two casts of characters, can get a little confusing. My head might be full of the themes and characters of the book I’m writing but I still have to keep all of those things about the story I might have last seen months ago fresh in my mind too, to talk about them in interviews. I find it hard to hold that much in my head with the kind of focus I used to have before I was published and I could work on one novel at a time, but I think this will grow easier with practice. 

You’ve set part of the book during a battle. Battle scenes can be confusing, so much is happening all over the place. Can you share any tips for writing actions scenes and keeping them detailed and clear, but not so overburdened you lose tension?

Yes, they certainly can be confusing. But like any good scene, a battle scene is about your point of view character (the one you are “seeing” the story through), what he wants and what he’s doing to get it. Once I know that, it’s a matter of reading every account of that particular battle I can get my hands on, or enough to feel I have a good handle on how it unfolded. Then I create a timeline of the battle, including every detail I can find, down to the weather and what every significant historical player was doing and when, and weave my characters through it all, making them wind up in the right place and time to notice or participate in enough key historical details so the battle isn’t too confusing for the reader. But as Two Hawks notes at one point during the book, He’d heard his father say that to judge a battle when you are in the midst of it is hard to do. Mostly a battle is what happens an arm’s length away. So a little confusion is reasonable. I attempted to show the battle in A Flight of Arrows from as many different viewpoints as possible, so each would contribute to a (hopefully) understandable whole. There’s always the device of having someone sum up events of a battle afterward if the viewpoint I’m writing from was too busy staying alive to have perceived the shape of things happening around him. 

Was it harder writing a sequel, knowing you had to stay true to not only the book you were writing, but the previous book also?

In this case not too hard, because I originally conceived these as one book. So I knew while writing The Wood’s Edge what the main plot line of the second book would be. I’d say the hardest part was finding the balance of jumping straight into the second half of the story while never assuming all readers would have read The Wood’s Edge first. I had to think long and hard about how to catch readers up on all that happened in the first book without bogging down the opening of the second book for readers who had read the first and didn’t need catching up.

Writing is your career, do you have any hobbies?

I do. Right now it’s mainly baking and cookie decorating. Since I began volunteering with the grounds crew at my church one day a week, I found a group of hard-working young people who are willing to eat what I bake (something I’m not meant to be doing too much of, sadly!). While I decorate or bake I like to listen to audio books, so I’m filling that creative writing well while finding an artistic outlet in the baking. I also love to hike our Oregon mountains with my husband and dog, in the hopes of seeing wildlife (a bear and a wolf are my most exciting sightings thus far). We sometimes take our bows with us for target practice. I’m also attempting to learn to play the cello.

Thanks, Lori!

I have some bookmarks to give away to some lucky people so leave a comment below!


I've interviewed Lori before and you can find those interviews about an earlier book THE PURSUIT OF TAMSEN LITTLEJOHN, and THE WOODS EDGE, which is the first book in the pathfinder series.


You can find Lori at her website
her pinterest board  
Or you can find a flight of arrows here on Amazon.