Thank you, Jim, for agreeing to give this interview for Tudor England suite101 to talk about your historical novel set in an amazing period of Poland's history!
To start us off, and because I know it is a wonderful tale of perseverance and determination, would you like to share with my readers your journey that saw you take on the mantle of "published author."
(deep breath) It took 25 years. A friend suggested I look at the translation of his ancestor's diary from the 1790s. The story of Anna Maria took hold and never let go. I always knew it would get out there. Three agents and three publishers later Push Not the River was released by a first rate house, St. Martin's Press. The president of St. Martin's requested a sequel, and my four-page summary, written on a weekend, was purchased by the end of that week! I have since submitted the full manuscript, and it will come out early in '06.
I think I can guess, but can you tell us please why you called your novel Push Not the River (BTW - I love both the title and your novel's beautiful cover!!)
"Push not the river; it will flow of it's own accord" is a Polish proverb I came across. It seemed to fit well as a theme and also in connection to my quest to see it published. A twin theme in the novel is stated by Anna's father: "Sometimes you have to place yourself in the way of destiny."
Whist writing, did you deliberately set out to create parallels between "the metamorphosis of a nation" and the story of a woman seizing hold of her own destiny?
Not consciously. It was just amazing that Anna's own personal crises came at one of the most important crisis points in the Commonwealth of Poland. She ends her diary just as the country faces dissolution at the hands of its neighbors.
From the start, besides the passing of a country's way of life, I saw in Anna's diary parallels to Gone with the Wind. Anna is a more complex Melanie heroine archetype while Zofia is the Scarlet (siren/trickster) of the piece. Interestingly, many of the first critics and readers also pointed out the parallels.
This is a question I am personally very curious about and pondered over quite a lot: the interesting facet of serendipity happening to so many fiction writers. Many times I wrote what I thought was simply fiction, only to be amazed to discover that this event really happened to my character. As well as this, so many things just happened along the way, helping me write my WIP.
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