Maria Yrsa Rönneus's Blog, page 3

Sunday Punk

Ageing is a peculiar thing, Dear Reader. It is at once a universal experience and an individual one and there is no way to predict what yours will look like. One thing is fairly certain, it won’t be whatever you had pictured it.

It takes many years to grow old, yet it creeps up on you and hits you unawares. But it isn’t just your body that changes, you age on the inside as well. You change, reassess, learn, and hopefully grow. You mellow, accept, conform. I’m told it’s a good thing but as I light an evening candle (I’m getting too old to burn the midnight oil) I can’t help but wonder what my teenage self would have to say.

Dead Kennedy’s legendary drummer, D.H. Peligro, was one of my teenage idols and, reached today by the tragic news of his death, I am saddened and can’t help but wish to turn the clock back just a little more than just the hour to winter time.

I think this is him doing an ace job as usual on the song ‘Halloween’ (1982)

Thank you for the music, Mr Peligro!

Until next time, where ever you are, Dear Reader, be well!

Saturday Giveaway

Dear Reader, the rain is gently sprinkling tender spring verdure this morning making it a perfect day for seedlings to grow and for humans to treat themselves to day reading. To assist in the latter, I am offering the first novel in Regency Tales  free on Kindle today.

Read reviews here and here. The offer is valid for 24 hrs, on May 21st, American PDT. If you haven’t already, make sure to get it now and tell your friends!

Meanwhile, Dear Reader, I shall be slogging away at writing novel number 5 in Regency Tales. This novel and I haven’t gotten along very well, I must admit. It has taken more time than with previous books to really get to know the characters and to “feel” the story. Now, however, I hope that we’re past the rough patch.

April and May are my favourite months; everything is green and flowering and it’s not yet too hot. A magical day last month I snapped this picture of one of my much beloved sakura trees.

Most of the sakura blossoming is over for this year, now it is time for lilacs and apple trees to shine. And if the sun comes out, it’s a perfect day to read in the dappled shade with a cool beverage of choice!

With that, Dear Reader, I wish you a lovely Saturday!

Review revel

Squee!

Dear Reader! Today I’m so excited by a new review of Oaths of Affection by the lovely Jennie over at RedHeadNotes.

What impressed me the most was her dialogue, which is often clever, playful, and humorous, yet always era-appropriate.

Whilst any review is appreciated by a writer, a five star review like this is a treasure. And I don’t mean just for marketing. I have written before of the self-doubts that inevitably creep up on you in the solitary conditions of a novelist, so to have one’s work so thoroughly understood and appreciated is sheer ambrosia. It is the fuel that keeps writers going in a world of so much rejection.

So head over there and read her reviews!  Follow @TheRedHeadNotes on Twitter to make sure not to miss out on any reading tips!

With this, Dear Reader, I hope you’ll have as happy a day as I’m having!

I’m not that interesting

When I embarked on my creative career, I never anticipated its insatiable demand for bios. Website after website urges me: “Tell us about yourself”. There are places where it’s warranted, sure, but half the time I just want to reply: “Look mate, I’m not that interesting.” Because, let’s face it, most of us aren’t.

And I never read other people’s bios: I don’t have to know about someone’s childhood, education, or love of dogs to appreciate their work. In fact, I prefer not to have my impression of a work tainted by any biases I subconsciously hold so that I can judge it by its own merits.

Because more often than not, it feels as if it’s you personally that’s reviewed and judged rather than your work. Yet when rejection comes, as it inevitably does in all creatives’ lives, you’re told not to take it personally.

I want to talk about my work, my projects, my characters, not myself. I want to sell paintings and books, not myself. I don’t want to be a brand.

Perhaps I would not loathe it so much if the bios weren’t such an agony to write. Dilly-dallying over what tone to strike, what to share and what’s TMI. For every thing that you write, one person is drawn in but another is alienated, make no mistake.

Whilst I have a number of bios of varying lengths stored some websites deserve the effort of a more original approach. Consequently, much of today was spent writing a new one for a profile in a kind of author’s index. It’s a privilege and a good opportunity to be included in it obviously, but it’s still equally hard.

As a child, I wanted to grow up to be three things: a ballerina, a farmer, and a writer. Many years and five published novels later, I think that one out of those three isn’t bad.

Amongst my earliest memories is crayoning by the kitchen table and making up stories about the drawings, and I’ve been doing that ever since. Yet it was decades before I had enough courage to pursue it professionally; when I finally did, it was burnout from stress and childhood abuse that tipped the scale.

At university, I studied art and philosophy mainly, but also film, literature, physics, and logic. I tried many different professions: teacher, project manager, care assistant, library assistant; I’ve been a cabbie and (briefly) a prison guard. I pursued a career in politics and was elected for public office. But, whilst many of these roles were rewarding, great privileges even, they were never a perfect fit. I treasure all of these experiences as they make me better at what I was meant to do – tell stories.

Born and raised in rural Sweden, rambles through fields and forests shaped me and continue to influence all my work; animals and plants are ever present. Whether images or words, I immerse myself wholly in my work. There’s a story behind every brush stroke, an image behind every word, although only a small fraction ever gets processed enough to share with others.
The majority of my 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.

Being a life-long history buff, I like to fancy myself a bit of an amateur historian and digging through archives and chasing facts for my novels is precisely my idea of a good time. Luckily, I also enjoy dancing, else I might never have met my husband. We live in the southern tip of the Scandinavian peninsula where, in the words of Voltaire, we cultivate our garden.

Well, what do you think, Dear Reader? Too long? Too wordy? Too casual? TMI? Too dumb?

What do you include in a longer bio?

Well, hubby’s put dinner on the table so I have to dash. Have a lovely Wednesday night, Dear Reader, where ever you are.

Germination

Being a writer sometimes means not writing.

There is the dreaded writer’s block and then there are the patches of general lack of motivation that inevitably happen in every professionally pursued endeavour. Both can be worked through with various techniques, the rub lies in finding what does the trick for you.

Personally, I deal with both in much the same way: I step away from the keyboard. In doing something completely different, I try prying my mind out of the story. Which, if I am honest, can be harder than it sounds.

Which brings me to the different kinds of not-writing that are part of the writing.

There are various approaches to writing a novel; to some extent your choice of method is contingent on what sort of novel you’re writing but, overall, it’s not possible to say that one way is superior to another. It’s all about finding your own process.

A dear friend of mine – an author of high fantasy – sits down and hammers out 20K words in a flurry of activity. As easy as pie. She doesn’t plot or plan the story, she follows where the story leads. But then a lengthy procedure of edits and revisions ensues.

To writers of historical fiction, research is a sometimes exciting, sometimes tedious non-writing part of writing; something authors of fantasy doesn’t have to bother about. But even that aside, my own process is the diametrically opposite. I can spend hours, days even, agonising over a single sentence and I struggle to move on before I’m contented. Once I have a first draft, edits are mainly about checking spelling and grammar.
Before I start, I always write a synopsis and, whilst it doesn’t carve the story in stone, it does provide a general map of the story line.

This has something to do with my genre; historical events happened on certain dates and my story has to fit into that pre-existing narrative. Let’s take e.g. a man in possession of a London townhouse in 1820. Now 1820 was an election year, and owning a house would entitle you to vote, meaning that this character would have been busy voting on the day of the election in his constituency. Say that the townhouse was in Red Lion Square, Holborn: in 1820, it would have been in the Middlesex constituency, for which elections were held on the 17th of March. That character can’t then e.g. be scampering off to the country a week before, because the speed of travel wouldn’t have allowed him to return on time.

There will always be key dates like this over the time span of a historical novel; events that a character, given their particular circumstances, can’t ignore without losing their credibility as historical figures. I.e. characters have to act and react in ways that are believable, given their era, social status, sex, nationality etc or the story will simply be 21st century in fancy dress.

But, at least for me, the non-writing of the writing process extends beyond plotting and researching. It goes beyond rational thinking and even beyond reason.

It’s about feeling the story.

Laugh, love, cry, hate, fight, I go through the full spectrum of emotions with my characters. Recently, I wrote a scene where the two MCs argue, and one of them said some really mean things to the other and I was so mad at him!
Yes, Dear Reader, I realise precisely how insane that sounds, but being a writer means taking your imaginary friends to a whole new level. Sitting by the laptop, I laugh maniacally, cry my eyes swollen, or force my hubby to act out fighting scenes on the living room floor. He’s been a dock worker, a cattle thief, a huge bird, a dog, even a svivel chair.

I picture a character so vividly that I feel their presence, I can almost see them at the corner of my eye. I know instinctively how they would react in any given situation and I even find myself having conversations with them as myself. This is why it I find it so hard to get my head out of a story once I’m in it. Then, once I’m out, it can be equally hard to get in again.

When I can’t, that’s when I feel unmotivated or blocked.

Typically, it is other people that ruin it. Other people wanting to have conversations about things other than your story. I know, right? People are weird. What could possibly be more interesting, more urgent?

I joke of course, few of us can ignore the demands of everyday life to live permanently in la-la land. Dear Reader, I don’t have any revolutionary recipe or advice. Having a quiet space of your own, an understanding and supportive spouse, and good measures of dilligence and discipline do help but it’s not foolproof.

That’s when I resort to manual labour. This time of year is perfect for gardening. Just being in the moment, feeling the sun on your cheek, the scent of manure in your nose, the sting of sciatica in your back. Ah, there’s nothing like it! You get your daily dose of vit D, exercise, and a good night’s sleep… and sometimes, between the birds’ twitters and the rustle of dead leafs in your rake, you stumble across a bit of inspiration.

Gardening’s not for everybody, but I’m a firm believer in the connections between exercise, nature, health, and creativity. Find your thing, but break a sweat doing it, and creativity will come.

On that note, Dear Reader, I leave you with a poem because a clear blue sky is calling for me to go outside. Have a sunny start of the week, where ever you are!

Headache haiku

Just popping in to tell you, Dear Reader, that I got 1,100 words down yesterday, today I got 974 and a headache.

It’s way too early in the season, but it actually feels like we’re going to get a thunderstorm. Must dash, I’m afraid, I need to nap before the Liverpool – Benefica match later.

With that, I wish you a headache free Wednesday evening, Dear Reader, where ever you are.

Snowy Saturday

Dear Reader, the spell of radio silence doesn’t mean  that I have been idle, to the contrary, I have been busy with my university classes and trying to make time to write on ‘Offers of Atonement’ (Regency Tales 5).

The creative writing class has turned out to be a huge disappointment as the teacher doesn’t teach and any feedback we receive on our assignments are from class mates, which is a bit like the blind leading the lame. Had I known this in advance I would not have applied but am now obliged to finish it.

The other class is one of Mediaeval and Early Modern Irish Love Poetry, which includes a good chunk of Irish history and it’s all very interesting to me as I know very little of either before hand.

It’s time to apply to courses for the fall semester and I had planned on applying for another writing class, but given my experience this term, I’m having second thoughts. It’s at a different uni and with a different teacher but still…

In other news, ‘Offers of Atonement’ is progressing, if very slowly. I am currently slogging on at about 37K.

Sadly, my ‘Orbits of Attraction’ cover didn’t make the next round, but thank you to all the lovely people who voted for it!

Speaking of covers, I did finish the set of four covers for Zenka Wistram’s ‘Between Saga’. The damaged text file is still not done though, which is why they are not yet uploaded to Amazon.

What do you think?

April has treated us to a bout of blizzards and snow is once more covering our garden. And whilst my gardening plans have had to be suspended, it hasn’t put the hamper on the birds’ gushes over spring. The dawn choir is as exuberant as ever. This was my view from my bedroom early this morning.

With this little update, I wish you a fantastic weekend, Dear Reader, come snow or shine!

 

Please vote for my cover!

Dear Reader, I entered my cover of Orbits of Attraction into a contest of cover of the month over at Allauthor. If you like it or otherwise enjoy my work, please consider giving it your vote, as it would help promote my work.

As it happens, Orbits of Attraction is still free with Kindle Unlimited so if you haven’t already, make sure to grap a copy now! It is the 4th in my Regency Tales series but all the books can be read separately.

If you already have voted or purchased my books, thank you so much for your support!

Have a lovely Tuesday, Dear Reader, where ever you are!

Book Review: Oaths Of Affection by Maria Yrsa Rõnneus.

The greatest joy a writer knows are the moments when someone read your work and really enjoyed it. Words, as lovely as these, are humbling. Thank you so much.

Stylus Reviews

* Thank you to the author for providing me with a free copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.

Title: Oaths of Affection [Regency Tales #1]

Author: Maria Yrsa Rõnneus

Genre: Historical Fiction, Romance

Tags: love, adventure, mystery, inheritance, elopement, post-war, nightmares, jealousy, tragedy.

Published Date: December 16th, 2019.

“O my Luve is like a red, red rose that’s newly sprung in June; o my Luve is like the melody that’s sweetly played in tune. So fair art thou, my bonnie lass, So deep in luve am I; and I will luve thee still, my dear, till a’ the seas gang dry.”

– Major Arthur Hastings, Oaths of Affection.

After the tragic loss of her parents, Lady Marigold is forced to live with her spiteful aunt, whose animosity for her has been fostered by years of resentment. Serving as nothing more than a chaperone for her beautiful…

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Let’s spread some love!

Happy Valentine’s Day, Dear Reader! Today when we celebrate love, we tend to focus on romantic love, and there is nothing wrong with that – it deserves to be celebrated because isn’t it just a fantastic feeling!? – nevertheless, it’s apt to remind ourselves of a truth acknowledged by my favourite author already two centuries ago: love comes in all shapes and sizes and they’re all equally valid.

I’ve put together a little doodle that might help you spread the love, Dear Reader. Share, download, print, do with it what you want.

And on that note, let me share something else that I love immensely and which brings me joy everytime I read it.

The fountains mingle with the river
And the rivers with the ocean,
The winds of heaven mix for ever
With a sweet emotion;
Nothing in the world is single;
All things by a law divine
In one spirit meet and mingle.
Why not I with thine?—

See the mountains kiss high heaven
And the waves clasp one another;
No sister-flower would be forgiven
If it disdained its brother;
And the sunlight clasps the earth
And the moonbeams kiss the sea:
What is all this sweet work worth
If thou kiss not me?

Percy Bysshe Shelley

It seems such a simple poem, but is in actuality quite complex. It is perfection. If I ever become half as good a writer, I shall be contented.

As you might suspect from my style of writing, I have indeed started anew on the fifth volume of Regency Tales – ‘Offers of Atonement’. It takes place in 1820, the year when Prinny succeeded to the throne and the Regency formally ended. Poor Jane had been dead already three years, and it would be two more years until Shelley drowned in a boating accident.

Legend would have it that his inextinguishable heart would not burn in the pyre on that Italian beach, and that his wife, Mary Shelley, was so devoted to him that she kept it in her desk drawer until her own death nearly thirty years later. Much of what is known of the circumstances of Shelley’s death comes from the accounts of his novelist friends who, being Victorian novelists, did not shy away from melodramatic embellishment. The truth of what really happened and what Mary really kept in her desk, we might never know but, today, Dear Reader, I prefer to believe that the fiery passion of Shelley’s heart could not, would not, be quelled even by death.

Firm believer in true love and happy-ever-afters as I am, I have to say that saving your beloved’s heart in your desk is macabre sooner than romantic. But then Mary Shelley did write ‘Frankenstein’ after all.

The first volume of my Regency Tales, ‘Oaths of Affection’, tells the story of a couple that shares an indomitable bond. Let me read you the beginning:

And with that Dear Reader, I love you all and I hope you shall have a day that fills your heart.