This month’s issue of Celtic Life has an interview with me 🙂

http://www.celticlifeintl.com/sarah-woodbury/

With two historian parents, author Sarah Woodbury couldn’t help but develop an interest in the past. She began writing historical-romance fiction when the stories in her head overflowed and demanded she let them out. Recently we spoke with her about her passion and profession.

What are your own roots?
My roots are in England, Scotland, and Wales. From Scotland, my most famous ancestor is my multiple great-grandfather, Donald McKay, the Boston Clipper Ship builder. He was a Highland McKay from Thurso, whose father had fought for the British during the American Revolution, but then came home to find that his family lands had been ‘cleared’. He accepted land in Nova Scotia, and then Donald moved to Boston as a young man. From Wales, my ancestors come through—among others—my umpteenth great grandfather, William Woodbury, who self-identified as a Welshman when he arrived in Salem, Massachusetts in 1628. I am also descended from a host of Morgans, Thomas’, Kemries, Johns, Rhuns etc.  The line I’ve researched most successfully descends from Llywelyn ap Ifor born around 1300.  Six generations later, Sir John Morgan (1448) was knighted. One of my readers kindly researched my ancestry back all the way to the Lord Rhys (d. 1197) and Hywel Dda of Deheubarth. Woodbury is, of course, a very Saxon name, and those roots lie in Somerset.

Why are those roots important to you?
Family history is, in many ways, the stories we tell about ourselves—those key moments in our family’s past that inspire us today. While I can take no credit for the choices of my ancestors, I can both learn from them and be inspired by them.

What inspired you to become a writer?
I had stories in my head that I wanted to tell. It took probably ten years to work up the courage to tell them. I had been a creative child, but around the age of 12, committed myself to the endeavor of school, to the point that I received my Ph.D. in anthropology in 1995 when I was 27. I had four children along the way, and it was really working with them and seeing their creativity that encouraged me to once again tap into my own.

Read the rest here … http://www.celticlifeintl.com/sarah-woodbury/