Not to sound morbid, but I love to see how writers handle the deaths of their lead characters. Here are some of my favourites…

I won’t presume to say anything definitive about a subject as vast as the role of nature within Western literature. But it has been on my mind because of my work with the epic Old English poem Beowulf.

In the 1000+ years we’ve known the story of Beowulf, poor Grendel has gotten all the bad press.

The monster has been universally reviled as the polar opposite of Beowulf’s human virtues. It took the American novelist John Gardner, in his wickedly funny novel Grendel (1971), to ask a few questions:

Let’s say you wake up one morning and you're completely disoriented. You worry you've time traveled to sixth-century Scandinavia. It happens to all of us at times, surely.

Here are some clues…

That’s the question Miracle Max shouts in the ear of Westley in The Princess Bride. Our mostly-dead hero dredges up two words from the romantic depths of his soul: “True love.”

Which only shows how the ideal heroic character has changed.

Back when I was doing research for Bones and Keeps, my historical fantasy about Beowulf, I was casting about in the epic Old English poem that tells his story, looking for events that would make good plot points for my novel.

It’s the iconic image — the hero riding off into the sunset, alone again after saving the day.

But no one truly rides alone.

Weird — ‘wyrd’ in the original Old English — is a weirdly complicated concept. Just ask the great hero Beowulf...

Roughly speaking, weird means fate or personal destiny.

I will be honest up front — I’ve never seen the 2007 movie Beowulf directed by Robert Zemeckis. I couldn’t bring myself to sit through its distortions of the epic poem about the hero.

Speaking as a woman, I feel I struck the lottery, being born into a liberal democracy where my human rights are protected both by law and by custom.

But I’ve sometimes thought, if I had to be born somewhere and sometime else, where and when would it be?

Spoiler alert — I have no answer to that question. No one does. Sometimes we can’t even agree on who the monsters are. But setting aside the existential question, the reality is that they can come crashing into our lives at any time.

I spent nine months narrating an audiobook version of my novel about Beowulf and it taught me a few things…

Writers of historical fiction must remain true to the historical record while telling an old story that will engage a modern audience.

It’s tricky...

On an adventure with my colleague Dr. Margaret Procter to track Beowulf, the hunt for Heorot was our starting point. Heorot, the hall of the Danish king Hrothgar, is where Beowulf killed the monster Grendel.

In my novel Bones & Keeps, Beowulf stations warriors on the volcanic island now called Jan Mayen.

Food crops won’t grow and the fish taste of sulphur, so what do you do?

Why, ferment a shark, of course.

I had to kill off a major character in my first novel because he was the son of a historical figure who’s known to have died without heirs. I actually ended up killing him twice (it’s complicated) but I hated doing it. And yes, it put me in a real funk.

Even when I was a teen devouring stories of fabulous adventures, it used to drive me nuts when the characters never ate or rested, or did any normal human things as they traversed the haunted forest or the vast reaches of space.

There’s no one-size-fits-all answer but I follow the advice given to screenwriters—if a detail doesn’t advance plot or characterization, I cut it out in favour of detail that will.

I was railing the other day about good advice (“write every day”) given too often in the wrong circumstances. But today I feel rhapsodic about the one piece of good advice that has never failed me…