The Isle Fincara Trilogy is down-to-earth fantasy fiction, set on an imaginary Celtic island a thousand years ago and a world away. I say ‘down-to-earth’ because, once you have accepted the altered time and place, the realities of the Island world dictate the possibilities open to the characters. It is a ‘portal fantasy’ - a story where the main character is transported into another existence. C S Lewis' Narnia books are classic examples. So is Philip Pullman's Northern Lights trilogy. Both these writers have succeeded in making their alternative worlds convincing, and I was particularly pleased when a reader wrote:

It is notoriously difficult to create an internally consistent and convincing alternative universe - something I think Rivett has achieved magnificently.

In Irish legend there is an island, variously called Fianchaire, or Finchaighe, or by its anglicised version, Fincara. Long ago, by druidic enchantment, it was sunk beneath the waves of the North Atlantic. Brian, one of the sons of Turenn, was tasked to find the cooking-spit of the women of Fincara.
P.W. Joyce, a scholar of Gaelic myth, wrote in 1879:

...the Gaelic tales abound in allusions to a beautiful country situated under the sea – an enchanted land sunk at some remote time and still held under spell. In some romantic writings it is called Tír-fa-tonn, ‘the land beneath the wave’; and occasionally one or more of the heroes find their way to it . . . The island of Fincara and the beautiful country seen beneath the waves by Máel Dúin are remnants of the same superstition.

Then Brian put on his water-dress, with his helmet of transparent crystal on his head, and, telling his brothers to await his return, he leaped over the side of the ship, and sank at once out of sight. He walked about for a fortnight down in the green salt sea, seeking for the island of Fincara; and at last he found it.

My story began before ever I heard this legend, but it immediately fitted with it, and Fincara gave its name to the Island of my invention. In another world, a parallel reality, perhaps Fincara remains above the waves, and one need not put on a diving suit to reach it. Using the conventions of the portal fantasy and a parallel world, my Island has a different fate. Out beyond the Western Isles, in the ocean we call the Atlantic and still on the surface, an unwitting time-traveller from our own day arrives.

The Seaborne

When the idea for The Seaborne first came to me, I was like John: imagining how, were I to be in his situation, I might impress the locals. By the time I came to write the book - and in large measure, as a result of writing it - other considerations pressed upon me. I now see it as a meditation on the multiple impacts of technology in the world. Technology has revolutionised society, bringing myriad changes we have welcomed as benefits. It has also brought the Bomb and nuclear waste, taken people off the land and into the cities, and created the circumstances for the complex of environmental crises now faced by us all, displacing people and augmenting refugee numbers.

The Priest's Wife

While writing The Seaborne I became acutely aware of the patriarchal character of the society John Finlay was thrown into. Shinane tried to stand up to it but, so far, her scope is limited. I felt the need for a strong woman to break through. Then Morag suggested herself, and I sat down and started writing. In writing about Morag I drew on my own experience of depression, when I felt at an impasse. I remembered the help I experienced from a wider circle that enabled me to break through. In writing about Father Aidan I have drawn on what I have witnessed of intolerance and the hand of an authority that seeks to wield power and control over people's lives, crushing them. Shareg Micheil, who was as patriarchal in his outlook as anyone when the Trilogy began, shows his quality in being willing to ‘think outside the box’ and find, through Morag, a way to sidestep that iron hand.

The Shareg

Three stories have been running through the Trilogy. One is obvious: that of John/Dhion, the man from our own times who wakes into a society that challenges his authenticity. His story must be brought full circle. Dhion took a back seat in The Priest's Wife, but now he returns to centre stage, facing his own sense of self-doubt as a stranger, a foreigner. And where must his priorities lie: with family, or with town? The second theme was developed in The Priest's Wife, Morag's story. Yet her winning through brought a tension that has yet to be resolved. The shareg and the archpriest represent the poles of a classical medieval church-versus-state power struggle. It culminates in imprisonment, ends in war. And the third line? When I was developing the character of Shinane in The Seaborne I left an enigmatic hole in her psyche. We saw it in her longing to learn to read, and again in her ‘mountain-top’ experience; in the small voice inside her: your gift is something rarer, something still hidden. The last book follows these lines, reaching fulfilment in the final chapters.