Speaking of that, Cockrell wasn\u2019t prepared for how busy, or productive, her retirement would be. After 26 years working at Hollins as an educator and the first director of the university\u2019s children\u2019s literature program, Cockrell hung up her academic regalia in 2018\u2014but since then she\u2019s felt anything but \u201cretired.\u201d In addition to continuing her work as managing editor of The Hollins Critic<\/em>, Cockrell has published three<\/em> new books, nearly one a year, and not slim children\u2019s books (as one might expect from the former director) but rather meaty works of historical fiction.<\/p>\n \u201cIt feels wonderful\u2014had pretty much decided I was probably not going to publish anything else and that was fine,\u201d said Cockrell about her post-retirement inspiration. The Hollins alumna hadn\u2019t published a new book since 2011, and even though she was the founding director of Hollins\u2019 children\u2019s literature program, which under her leadership branched into multiple degrees and certifications, Cockrell\u2019s writing career has been solely focused on fiction. \u201cThis whole thing has been a huge and gratifying surprise, especially the success of the new books.\u201d<\/p>\n Her newest novel, The Shadow of the Eagle<\/em>, will be available online and in bookstores on May 26, and it\u2019s the first in a new three-book series of Roman-era historical fiction called The Borderlands<\/em>. Set nearly 2,000 years ago along the fringes of the Roman Empire in modern-day Britain, The Shadow of the Eagle<\/em> follows Faustus Valerianus, the son of a Roman father and a British mother, as he joins the legendary general Agricola\u2019s campaign to conquer all of the British Isles, pitting Faustus (in a very Faustian pact) against his allegiance to the empire and the bonds of his own blood. The book has already received some high praise, being described by major Roman history writer Simon Scarrow as \u201ca brilliantly realized world of Imperial ambition and Native resistance and the inevitable clashes that arise.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cWhat keeps me interested about the Romans is how wonderfully and appallingly like us they are,\u201d said Cockrell. \u201cThey are the template for Western government but also for Western colonialism, with their self-assured conviction that Roman civilization was a boon to any conquered people. And these days, it\u2019s pleasant to go live some other \u2018when\u2019 for a while.\u201d<\/p>\n “This whole thing has been a huge and gratifying surprise, expecially the success of the new books.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n Of course, this isn\u2019t Cockrell\u2019s first fictional foray into the past. Her 1979 debut novel Legions of the Mist<\/em> also took place in ancient Britain and was inspired by Rosemary Sutcliff\u2019s fictional account of the mysterious disappearance of the Roman Ninth Legion. \u201cThe Legions of the Mist<\/em> was actually begun my senior year at Hollins as a January Term project,\u201d recalled Cockrell. \u201cIt took me 10 years to get up the gumption to finish it. After that, because I wanted to quit my day job, I signed on with a book packager who specialized in historical series and I wrote three Roman books (as well as a lot of others) for them.\u201d<\/p>\n In the tradition of many Hollins alumnae\/i before her, Cockrell was breaking new ground, working in a genre that was generally frowned upon for women. However, even though her first novel had been published under her own name, the next three would be published under a nom de plume: turning Cockrell into Damion Hunter, a male. \u201cIt wasn\u2019t my decision,\u201d said Cockrell. \u201cWhen I got a contract to write The Centurions<\/em> series for a book packager in the \u201980s, they insisted on pseudonyms, partly because they wanted to be able to continue a successful series if the writer got bored with it. But I\u2019m sure that picking a male name was deliberate. It was held that women didn\u2019t write historical adventure. In fact, a fan once told me that another reader (a woman!) had told him that the series couldn\u2019t be any good if a woman wrote it.\u201d<\/p>\n Although The Centurions<\/em> series was published under another name, it led to many more opportunities for Cockrell, who was able to stretch her creative legs. Since then, she has written in many other genres, including contemporary fiction, mythological fiction, and even young adult with What We Keep Is Not Always What Will Stay<\/em> (named a Best Book for Children by the Boston Globe<\/em>), all books published under her own name.<\/p>\n However, after her publisher was acquired by another house in 1998, Cockrell\u2019s older titles as Damion Hunter fell out of print, where they languished for years. That is, until right after her retirement from Hollins, when the UK publishing house Canelo emailed Cockrell out of the blue wanting to reprint The Centurions<\/em> books as well as Legions of the Mist<\/em>. \u201cThey found that the old pseudonym had some name recognition among Roman fans, and you never want to waste that,\u201d said the Hollins alumna. \u201cBut I wanted my name on them. So we settled on publishing both the old and the new books as \u2018Amanda Cockrell writing as Damion Hunter.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n That turned out to be a wise decision. Since then, Cockrell has been in a writing frenzy, penning The Wall at the Edge of the World<\/em> in 2020 (a sort of sequel to Legions<\/em>) and The Border Wolves<\/em> in 2021, the fourth and final volume in The Centurions<\/em> that had been canceled more than two decades before. \u201cThis was the surprise of my retirement,\u201d said Cockrell. \u201cAll my Roman books are now back in print!\u201d<\/p>\n And Cockrell doesn\u2019t appear to be slowing down. She\u2019s already hard at work on Edge of Empire<\/em>, the second of Faustus\u2019 stories in The Borderlands<\/em>. \u201cRoman fiction is hot right now,\u201d said Cockrell, always aware and writing about the fickleness of history. \u201cI have no idea why, any more than I do why it wasn\u2019t hot 30 years ago. My one conclusion is that the publishing biz is a crapshoot, but we knew that.\u201d<\/p>\n Former Director of Hollins’ Children’s Literature Program Amanda Cockrell Finds Post-Retirement Success in Writing s a writer, Amanda Cockrell \u201969, M.A. \u201988 has a good understanding of how the past repeats and variates itself. \u201cThe adage holds that those who […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":11133,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[132],"class_list":["post-10909","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-featured","tag-spring-2022"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.糖心传媒.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10909","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.糖心传媒.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.糖心传媒.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.糖心传媒.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.糖心传媒.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10909"}],"version-history":[{"count":16,"href":"https:\/\/www.糖心传媒.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10909\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":11177,"href":"https:\/\/www.糖心传媒.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10909\/revisions\/11177"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.糖心传媒.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/11133"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.糖心传媒.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10909"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.糖心传媒.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10909"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.糖心传媒.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10909"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"Shadow](\"https:\/\/www.糖心传媒.edu\/magazine\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/05\/Shadow-of-the-Eagle-cover_300.jpg\")
<\/p>\nJeff Dingler is a current creative writing M.F.A. student and marketing intern.<\/h6>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"