Featured Interview With Shawn P McCarthy
Tell us a little about yourself. Where were you raised? Where do you live now?
I was raised in the Finger Lakes area of Central New York. After living in Washington DC for 12 years, my family and I settled in Massachusetts. I have a wife, two kids, and two grand-kids, plus big goofy yellow lab and a spoiled rotten cat.
I have a fascination with history and historical fiction. For a couple of years, I worked at the Smithsonian Institution. So that was a historian’s dream. My son also went to preschool right in the museums, so he also was exposed to fascinating things at a young age.
During that time I managed to keep my hand in with other writing, including a few articles that I wrote for The Washington Post. But I never gave up on my dream to write books. First non-fiction business books, and then historical fiction. My new book, Local Honey, is my tenth book.
At what age did you realize your fascination with books? When did you start writing?
I was lucky because I knew I loved to read at a young age, and also I wanted to be a writer early on. By my early teens I planned to be a novelist, but when it came time to go to college, I was bitten by the journalism bug. I received a degree in journalism from Saint Bonaventure University and wrote for newspapers for five years.
But newspapers were starting their decline in readership, and since my wife and I wanted to start a family, I went back for a Master’s degree and made a career switch, first to non-profits and eventually to the corporate world. During that time, I developed a deep interest in historical fiction. I respected how the stories could take readers to a specific time and place, while also tapping into human emotions that are evocative and timeless.
Who are your favorite authors to read? What is your favorite genre to read. Who Inspires you in your writings?
I am a huge fan of historical fiction, and that’s also what I write. Thus I’m a fan of writes like Hilary Mantel, Ken Follett, and Colleen McCullough.
I’m inspired by authors who understand wordlbuilding as part of the stories they tell. People talk a lot about “worldbuilding” in connection to fantasy or science fiction stories. But historical fiction builds a different kind of world. It reconstructs a slice of the past and lets the reader walk through it, seeing the sights from that time and touching things that may no longer exist, while also feeling and understanding human emotions that remain eternal. The best historical fiction writers are able to do that, and I aspire to do the same.
Tell us a little about your latest book?
I’m about to publish Local Honey, a novel set in 1951, long before terms like “PTSD” were part of the public lexicon. It tells the story of Jim Yarrow, a wounded World War II veteran who returns home to small-town Massachusetts where he manages to find peace, family, and a comfortable routine. But even though that’s soothing, his calmer life doesn’t fully silence the echoes of war, which really has had an affect on his whole town.
Local Honey is also the story of Becky Bivens, a destitute but resilient woman returning to her childhood home ten years after her mother’s scandal forced them to flee. Intent on rebuilding her life as a simple beekeeper, Becky finds her past waiting for her—a past that includes Yarrow. The book is a study of haves vs have-nots in post-war America, and how people get drawn into situations that are beyond their control, forcing them to make stark choices about their lives and who they will listen to.
• The 1950s were a pivotal time in America.
o The country was still recovering from the trauma of the Second World War, while also entering a period of great economic expansion.
o But the decade also came with strict social rules and crippling class divisions. Not everyone was able to participate in the new prosperity,
o While the book is at times serious, humorous and touching, there is a cloud of desperation and moral ambiguity that hangs in the background.
It took me just under two years to write the book, and probably 40% of that time was doing intense research into the early 1950s and the look, fel and attitudes of that era.
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