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.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorGathering dust in the depths of my mind, random thoughts dusted off and put out there for the world to see... Archives
November 2023
Categories
All
|
Ellie Lieberman |