Rampant: An Interview with Diana Peterfreund: Part 1

[Denise, Coalition Overlord]

Here's the first installment of my interview with Diana Peterfreund. Obviously, SPOILERS involved. If you have any follow-up questions please post in the comments, Diana has agreed to stay in touch if anyone else has any questions. Enjoy!


• Let’s get this one out of the way: Do unicorns poop rainbows?

I have no idea where that came from! It’s certainly not part of any mythology I know of. Probably derived from all those unicorn trapper keepers with winged unicorns traipsing along rainbow paths. I wonder if there’s some sort of Oxford English Dictionary of Online Memes that can trace that idea back to the first person who hypothesized that unicorns defecate refracted light. Whatever it is, it certainly caught on.

• Why did you choose to write about killer unicorns?

One of the reasons I wrote the book was to explore the other facets of the unicorn legends—ones that aren’t as familiar to modern audiences or western audiences. There are all these stories about them being very dangerous and potentially deadly and I wanted to bring that into the mainstream.
The kernel of the idea came when I thought I overheard someone on TV talking about unicorn hunters (they almost certainly were not) and the phrase stuck in my head and sat there, simmering. Who would hunt unicorns? Why would they hunt unicorns? Later, I had a dream about being chased by a very scary unicorn-like monster. I started doing research into various unicorn legends and I was shocked to discover that the legend I knew was just one tiny part. That there WERE killer unicorns, that there WERE unicorns who were nothing whatsoever like white horses with horns.

• What kind of research (and how long) involved?

I got the idea for the book in early 2005, sold it in 2007, and finished writing it in 2008. So… many years of research and development! If you read my bio on the back of my book, you can see some of the types of research I did while working on the story.

o The types of unicorns

The names of the five types of unicorns in my book are drawn from different unicorn legends from around the globe. I decided to reconcile some of these very different unicorn legends by saying they were different species of unicorns, the way a lion and a clouded leopard are different species of great cat.
I read a lot of books about unicorns, including medieval bestiaries, which were quite amazing, given as they tended to be written by people who had never seen most of the animals they were talking about—whether they were real animals or not. What seems more realistic to you if you’d never seen these creatures: something like an elephant, a massive creature with huge ears, huger tusks, and a NOSE that can pick you up and toss you around; or something like a unicorn, which looked kind of like a deer except with one horn?
Some of the names, such as “einhorn” are simply the word unicorn in another language (German, in this case). Kirin in some Asian languages is the modern word for “giraffe” – both unicorns and giraffes were thought to be this same Asian mythical creature – only it turns out there actually are giraffes.
You can read more about the various types of unicorns on my website, in the “unicorn research” section.

o Italy

I actually spent a summer in Italy when I was in high school, though my experience wasn’t nearly so dangerous! I was in a school program similar to Giovanni’s. I’ve been back to Rome twice since, once specifically as a research trip for the book. We visited all the locations I put in the book (like the Borghese Museum and the Etruscan Necropolis, which I spent a whole day scrambling all over), and stayed in the neighborhood where I located the Cloisters. The actual cloisters courtyard in the book borrows heavily from the old cloisters in the Cathedral of Rome, which is just up the street. As soon as I saw the alicorn shaped spiral columns, I knew it had to be mine. You can see a photo of it here, along with lots of other photos from my Italy research trip: http://bit.ly/1GXWKX

o Alexander the Great

I read books and articles on him, especially from the classical sources (Plutarch, etc.) and researched the Alexander Romances, which were a series of contemporary biographies of Alexander. Many of them were translated and embellished over the centuries, which is why rumors about, say, the exact nature of Alexander’s warhorse Bucephalus could be passed down as fact, complete with illustrations of a big white unicorn surrounded by piles of human bones. (You can actually see pictures of that illustrated manuscript on my website, in the unicorn research section.)

o Greek and medieval mythology

I’m kind of a mythology nut. I took over seven years of Latin in high school and college. I spent a summer studying archaeology. I was almost a Classics major. My name is Diana. It sorta soaked in. (In passing, it’s funny to be always typing my name in the book, especially since some of the magic in the novel is a gift from “Diana.” Very meta, yeah?)

o Hunting, archery

I’m so fortunate that my father-in-law introduced me to one of the premiere female bowhunters on the east coast, I studied with her, learning the ins and outs of bowhunting and archery. Though she and her husband use modern weaponry, she also has a large collection of old arrowheads and other ancient weaponry, and a lot of knowledge about those, as well. I read books on bow hunting and the history of archery as well.