3 Things I Learned at M. Kenan's First-Ever English Event

Hey! Last week I attended a webinar hosted by Riva Pomerantz for her writing ‘club’, Masterpiece, also open to paid guests. She hosted beloved author M. Kenan for the first time ever for an English-speaking audience! (Get the event recording here for $25.) Here are some interesting tidbits I learned:

1. The author of the Khazar Kingdom series and Wildlands is Maya Kanan. She is brilliant, insightful, deep, and curious about everything. Hearing her speak is like reading one of her books.

2. Although she does a lot of historical research, she says “A historical novel is not a history book,” and would adjust some facts to fit into the plot, within reason. The human aspect, though, is always 100% accurate - her primary research is doing “inner research”, checking in against herself.

3. Maya’s niche is 17 to 19 year old boys, who she feels don’t have enough to read. (A real surprise - and I’m not sure that’s who her primary audience is in America.) That’s one of the reasons all her main characters are male. Another reason is that she doesn’t feel comfortable describing female characters physically for tzniyus reasons, so this gives her more liberty to do what she wants.

Also, here’s a note: A while ago I mentioned that M. Kenan had a book coming out Pesach time. I was wrong about that, as she says there are no English projects going on currently. The 4th and final book in the Khazar Kingdom series will be out in Hebrew by Pesach.