Maria Yrsa Rönneus – authour, artist, graphic designer. As a child, she wanted to grow up to be three things: a ballerina, a farmer, and a writer. Born and raised in rural Sweden, rambles through fields and forests shaped her and continue to influence all her work; animals and plants are ever present. Whether images or words, she immerses herself wholly in her work. The majority of her stories are written in English and, most commonly, in the genres of historical fiction, contemporary romance, or short stories inspired by Scandinavian mythology and folklore. She and her husband live in the southern tip of the Scandinavian peninsula. Your Regency Tales remind me of works by Jane Austen and Oscar Wilde in terms of setting, characters, humor, and social commentary. Where have you drawn inspiration from for the series in general and specifically Offers of Atonement? Thank you. It’s a great compliment to be compared to Austen and Wilde, and both are indeed role-models to me. At the same time, I’m writing for 21st century people, and I try for my own and original style. Inspiration comes from everywhere, from everything I’ve ever experienced or read, from everyone I’ve ever met. Having dated a fair few “bad boys” in the past, I know that it’s generally more of an ordeal than an adventure. The first idea for Offers of Atonement was born as an attempt to write the trope of “bad boy transformed to great boyfriend” in a way that felt credible. Offers of Atonement is book 5 in your Regency Tales Series. Each book can be read as stand-alones. How does Offers of Atonement differ from the other books in the series? All the novels are character-driven, and the stories are told from the characters’ POV. It sort of follows organically that the story-telling hinge on their personality and outlook on life. Captain Hartcourt is a cynical fish in murky waters and so, this story is a shade darker than the others. That said, it’s been some years since I wrote the first one and I have also evolved as a writer in that time. Your descriptions often bring the past to life, through all the senses. How do you capture a past setting so well and ensure its accuracy, even in such everyday details? Imagination and research, lots and lots of research. I spent four years researching and writing Offers of Atonement. Of course, some things are impossible to know exactly – the odours of a 19th century sugar refinery for example. Though there still are sugar refineries, they’re nothing like what they were back then so, even if you’d been to one, it wouldn’t have been the same. Here’s where an aptitude for kitchen disasters helps, I’ve failed with enough batches of Christmas toffee to know what burnt sugar smells like. Not everything is that different from our own time; I was raised in the country, in a 19th century farmhouse that gave me first-hand experience of wood stoves, outhouses, and so on. Your main characters, Lady May and James Hartcourt, both have quirks that really add to their characters, whether it’s May’s superstitious stories or Hartcourt’s reliance on the deck of cards he carries. These parts of their characters suit them well and make them seem even more real. Do you actively work to create your characters or do they come to you fully formed? It varies; some characters show up more or less complete, others take more work to flesh out. Hartcourt has been a minor character in some of the previous books, so his personality had developed in my mind over several years. May was harder to get a grip of. When the book begins, she has very limited experience of the world; the tiny village has been her whole life. Yet, she has quite firm opinions and having her tell little anecdotes to back up her theories was also a device to show something of her past life and the village. In Offers of Atonement, you revisit some characters introduced in earlier books in the Regency Tales. How has it been revisiting characters from new perspectives? It was hard actually to try to see favourite characters in negative light. I had to flip the perspective, making good – sanctimonious, caring – overbearing, witty – patronising etc. Not everybody reacts the same way to things or people, we interpret things differently. But that’s life, isn’t it? Who has been your favorite character to write and why? Lord Peter Whysleigh, definitely. Partly because he’s such a useful supporting character – he’s been messenger, comic relief, spanner in the wheels. But also because of his personality; he’s shameless, says what others merely think, but it’s impossible to be angry with him. Yet, there is a depth to him that he only lets people glimpse. In both Oaths of Affection and Offers of Atonement, you write strong women main character, who are capable of taking on an otherwise horrible situation and turning it on its head. They manage to create their own agency in a world that often limited women. How do you figure out the creativity for your characters to navigate such a world? As you rightly point out, middle and upper class women were, as a rule, bound in daughterhood, wifehood, even widowhood, successively. The history of working-class women is different entirely. For unmarried, upperclass women in early 19th century England, that bond was financial and conventional rather than legal, that is, it was the convention that young men were given means and opportunity to independence and young women were not. The fourth part of Regency Tales – Orbits of Attraction – deals with this in particular. Upperclass women were typically not taught any skills that could lead to useful employment. Then as now, there can’t be agency without means to support oneself. So, I try to figure out what courses of action might realistically have been open to them and then I try to think what they, given their character, might have done. You are covering topics that are still relevant today, including homophobia and disparity between economic classes. How do you balance the modern with the archaic to tackle these conversations? Looking at the world as a whole, I’m afraid not much has changed. Humanity is still largely struggling with the same issues broadly speaking. Offers of Atonement deals with concepts of rebellion, oppression, and domestic terrorism, but also about perspectives – who’s the hero depends on one’s point of view. It also aims to highlight the importance of the ability of changing one’s mind. Historical accuracy is not always comfortable. You had mentioned setting aside personal feelings to still adhere and achieve accuracy. How do you accomplish that and why is that important? The present is a product of history. We all exist in our own historical context but that context is what it is because of what happened before. History explains the present if you will. To have any hope of understanding our society or even ourselves, we must also understand how we got here. Revisionism damages that understanding. I would prefer a story that ends in a happy ever after for every one, but for the sugar refinery workers, for the child prostitutes, for the chimney boys, for the dogs that were bred only to live their entire lives to run in a wheel, it rarely did. I feel I owe it to them to not turn my eyes away. When I wrote of the aftermath of the battle of Waterloo in Odyssey of Attachment (RT3) I cried constantly and had nightmares for weeks. Can you talk a little about the tools and techniques you utilize for tackling such topics in a historical setting and tips and tricks for accomplishing this? Two that really stuck out to me were when you chose to use humor and the push back by some characters in a genuine give-and-take seen in dialogue. I wrote my first historical fiction when I was seven. It was a funny piece about how Napoleon had his nose shot off. My teacher had me read it out loud to the class and everyone laughed. I realised then that if you can make people laugh, they listen. Once you have their attention, you can talk about serious things. Letting characters discuss and debate is a good way of raising issues, showing different points of view, and at the same time avoid coming off as preachy. Regency Tales six and seven are outlined, but I haven’t started writing them yet. Number six is set later in 1820, just after Offers of Atonement ends, and will, as usual, reconnect us with some of our old friends. The most exciting news right now is that I’m currently writing on something completely different – a sort of Mediaeval-esque fairy tale about three princes, a prophecy, and the damsels that will save them from distress. Follow Maria Yrsa Rönneus on Social Media! "We shall need a corpse." When Captain James Hartcourt’s best friends ask him for an unusual favour, he doesn’t hesitate. Losing fortunes at cards, London’s shady underworld, his mother’s schemes – few things faze him. Until he meets Lady May. Destitute but determined to retrieve the family estate, Lady May arrives alone in London with a proposition he cannot refuse. She discovers that Captain Hartcourt is a cardsharp with emerald eyes and dangerous kisses, but soon she must wonder whether he is a murderer too. Mixing the profound with the hilarious in a rare formula, Offers of Atonement, brings the early 19th century to life in vivid colours. This literary, romantic comedy comes with a gritty twist. Inspired by writers like Austen, Wilde, and Wodehouse, this is wholly original story by Maria Yrsa Rönneus. Offers of Atonement is the fifth stand-alone novel in the Regency Tales – a series of captivating and remarkable dramas of love and jealousy, friendship and deceit. TW: Contains profanity, mild sex, violence, attempted rape.
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Interview with John St. Clair about his debut novel, Stalin's Door! John St. Clair started his career as a novelist after spending 25 years battling fraud and abuse in the cyber realm. John St. Clair lives with his wife in the northern Virginia suburbs. Stalin's Door is his debut novel. Tea enthusiast. | Cautiously pessimistic. | He/Him. | Pro em dash and pro Oxford comma! ***Spoilers will be marked in red with a clear warning!*** You mentioned in previous interviews that you consider yourself both a pantser and plotter. How much of genre do you feel affects that? JS: Just to level set for the readers of this interview: a “pantser” will typically not know in advance how a story is going to play out—they will just write and see where it leads them. A “plotter” on the other hand likes to have all the details in their story worked out before putting pen on paper. To be honest, I don't assess the genre I'm writing in before making the decision on how to go about writing it. I find that my approach of thinking of the overall story arcs first, often for an extended period of time, will give me the greatest chance at nailing down what I like to call “the 50,000 foot view” of the story. From there, it's just fun to fill in the gaps with a little pantsing. I will admit that in the moment of writing, I am often surprised at where I end up! Was the construction of the novel, the organization of the different sections and corresponding perspectives, planned? What was your process? ***SPOILERS*** JS: For the technical construction of Stalin's Door, and considering its complexity, I did absolutely plan out the sections beforehand. Eagle eyed readers will have no doubt picked up on a few things. In the first section, “Zhenya's Tale,” there's a progression from Spring to Summer to Fall to Winter, over consecutive years, with each season becoming progressively darker in tone. Also, you'll notice that the ages of the protagonists increase with each section; Zhenya as young girl, then Sava as an early middle-aged man, then Lera as an older middle- aged woman, and finally Zhenya as an old woman. I wanted to show the passage of time and in the same way offer different perspectives from each of the main characters' points of view. Were your characters “walk-ons,” just coming to you, or were they carefully constructed? JS: The three main characters in Stalin's Door; Zhenya, Sava, and Lera were all absolutely carefully constructed, and fleshed out before I started writing. Each of the minor charactersless so. You write three different perspectives that include age and socioeconomic backgrounds. You mentioned in a previous interview that Lera was a favorite between the three. Was there a character and perspective that you found most difficult to write? ***SPOILERS*** JS: An excellent question! While every author certainly “loves” all of his or her characters, I do admit a certain first amongst equals when it comes to Lera. That said, I did find that the writing of the character of Admiral Krayevsky to be, shall I say, challenging. You'll recall that the age of the admiral and that of Sava, are equal, with their birthdays only 2 days apart. And their careers within the Soviet Navy were wildly divergent. I wanted the admiral to be like a foil to the character of Sava, so I took great care in writing his story too. Was there a part of your own writing that surprised you or did you know everything that was going to happen? JS: Stalin's Door, the novel, had an interesting birth, so to speak. The first part, “Zhenya's Tale” was written as a short story first, and was known simply as Stalin's Door. I sent it out to some beta readers and received some excellent feedback. Later, I added what would become “Sava's Tragedy” and entitled it Behind Stalin's Door. Both the first and second parts were now the size of a novella and I again sought out feedback from my beta readers. Once I finished the novella, I knew I had a great shot of turning it into a full fledged novel with the additions of “Lera's Yarn” (Beyond Stalin's Door) and “Zhenya's Allegory” (Return to Stalin's Door) the third and fourth parts to the story. All along the way I was still doing all that arduous historical research to ensure my story was as authentic as possible. ***SPOILERS*** Getting into the nitty-gritty details definitely surprised me. Some scenes that turned out even better than I could have hoped for were: the reception-party where Stalin makes an appearance, the scene with Zhenya, Lera, and the hooligan guards at the train depot on the way to the Gulag, and scene with Zhenya and Lera in the cemetery at the end of the novel. How much of your story is “research-based” versus character driven? JS: In any historical fiction piece, unless it's outright historical fantasy, I feel that the author should strive to make it as genuine as they can. This is the reason it took me 5 years of research to try and make Stalin's Door as authentic as I could. Details—even down to the most minute ones—matter. Now that said, my characters have to live within that world that is well documented. I'm trying to tell a story within a framework: a world and a time that my readers haven't been to or lived in. My characters faced challenges and ordeals that fit within the known facts of where and when I placed them into. My job as a writer was to make that as interesting and compelling to read as I possibly could! I’ve heard historical fiction authors discuss that sometimes history or the story itself is sacrificed for the other. Did you find this to be the case in writing Stalin’s Door? Do you agree with this belief? JS: I think it's perfectly fine to tell whatever kind of story you want to—and make whichever sacrifices you need to. However, to be clear, if the author deviates a great deal from the established facts of history, then the work should be either labeled fiction, or historical fantasy. My goal was always to write my story within the genre definition of Russian historical fiction, so my “goalposts,” so to speak, are very well defined and known. I tried extremely hard to stay within these goalposts, for the sake of accuracy and authenticity. Through Lera and Sava’s sections, you explore events before, and that led to, Stalin. With so many individual events occurring within a single period of time, how do you decide what to include? JS: This is a terrific question! The period of time that's central to my novel, known as the “Great Terror” may only be a couple of years, however there was so much to tell! I really had a tough time deciding. That said, when writing from the first person, past tense point-of-view, my decision on what to include event-wise became a lot more clear. Only knowledge known to the narrator, or events experienced by the narrator are going to be passed on to the reader. If I as the author wanted to “pass on” something important history-wise to the reader, then I had to make sure the characters in my novel actually experienced them. This is exactly why Sava goes to work for the NKVD, and why Lera is exiled to the Gulags. They experienced these things, and could tell their stories first hand. I felt this was a stronger and more genuine way to tell my story! What didn’t make it into the finished book, research-wise and otherwise? What was cut in the editing process and how did you decide what to cut? JS: Believe it or not, I don't have a lot of “bonus scenes” that got left on the cutting room floor. For the most part, what is in the book is exactly what needed to be in there. Of course the time periods I explored in my story could have been even bigger if I wanted, however I felt that the way I structured it, with three very different characters, in three distinct points of time in their lives, and three distinct locations—made my story riveting. When reading Stalin’s Door, I couldn’t help but draw connections to other events in history that shared similarities. How conscious are you of the similarities between other events of different times and places to the ones you wrote about? JS: To be honest, when writing historical fiction, I always want to ensure I'm as accurate as possible for the time period I'm writing about. So, to answer this question, if there are similarities between what is happening in Stalin's Door, and what is happening elsewhere in history, it's likely because history tends to repeat itself. George Santayma had said, “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.” Do you agree? Do you hope Stalin’s Door can help us remember? JS: I absolutely agree with this terrific quote, and am distraught to say that autocratic and dictatorial rule are still very much rampant in today's world. My novel, I hope, can paint a dire picture of what can happen when that autocratic and dictatorial rule are left unchecked. So in a way, I do hope it can serve as a warning and a deterrent. Have you ever visited Russia or the museum at The House on the Embankment? If not, do you ever wish to visit? JS: I have not yet visited Russia. I definitely would like to, one day. Certainly the trip would include going to the wonderful House on the Embankment, in the heart of Moscow, and its on-site museum. I fear that the current geopolitical situation and world events will prevent this trip for many years to come, unfortunately. Another author had described your writing style in Stalin’s Door as “memoir.” After reading the book, it feels like the perfect description. Was this intentional? Do you feel this is reflective of your style in general, or was it unique to Stalin’s Door? JS: Writing Stalin's Door and giving it that memoir “look and feel” was definitely intentional, as I have an affinity for the first person, past tense perspective. I don't know if it's reflective of my style, however it was the very best choice I could make for telling this story. All the events are witnessed, or recounted, by the narrators. If something isn't known to the narrator, it won't be known to the reader. In this way, more than any other I can think of, one truly is living inside the head of the protagonist. This is more intimate, and much more rewarding, I feel. You have a bit of a fantastical element to your story. As a writer, did you always intend to mix genres? What inspired this aspect of your story? ***SPOILERS*** JS: I do admit I felt it was taking a bit of a risk when I added in these fantastical elements. Thankfully they are tiny, in my opinion, and don't distract from the more pure historical fiction elements. That said, in one very obvious case, when Zhenya is reunited with Lera, it was necessary to bring in a little fantasy. I always knew they would meet each other at the end of the novel, and quite frankly, I'm not sure there was any other way to go about it! In my opinion, a good historical fiction entices the reader to want to learn more and there is always more to learn. What questions do you hope the readers walk away with? Where are you hoping they go next? What are you hoping to spark in them? JS: A fabulous question! In so much of my feedback, I've been told that I've inspired my readers to go and investigate the time period I refer to a lot, that of the “Great Terror” that overwhelmed Moscow, and all of Russia, in the mid to late 1930s. Readers have also looked up and researched the Gulags, the specific Russian naval ships I mentioned, and even the House on the Embankment, not to mention the 800-pound gorilla in the room: Joseph Stalin himself! I hope they can come away with a greater understanding of this specific time period, that echos even today within Russia itself. Is there anything else you'd like to share with current or future readers? JS: I consider myself extremely fortunate to be able to write and I am truly thankful for all the readers my book has found—and will find! I am always working on something new; micro- fiction and short story contests, anthology submissions, and my second novel which I hope to have out soon: Lucky Dainéil McElheney! I appreciate the time you took to interview me, Ellie! Read more about John St. Clair and Stalin's Door on The Red Head Notes blog, including a review, interview, and guest post! Stalin's Door In the dangerous time of Russia’s Great Terror, a knock on the door late at night could mean only one thing! Stalin’s Door is the unforgettable story of three extraordinary individuals who lived during the time of Russia’s Great Terror. They share a terrible fate which will forever intertwine their lives. Zhenya is the strong young daughter of an important government official, who is growing up fast in a privileged government enclave. Sava is a devoted husband, unceremoniously dismissed from the Soviet Navy, who considers a new opportunity. Lera is a wise grandmother who bears a crucial responsibility, while forced into exile in the outland of Siberia. |
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