What do you know?
Today I'm delighted to welcome author Leonora Meriel to my blog. I've just started reading her novels, Woman Behind the Waterfall and The Unity Game, and I find myself wondering, if we're supposed to write what we know and use our imaginations, how does what the author knows feed into imagining the stories she tells? Since she's here as a guest on my blog, I get to ask:
Thank you so much for being my guest today, Leonora, and I'm eager to learn your answer. Ove
To what extent do you draw on your own life
in her writing,
and to what extent does what you "know" feed into
what you imagine?
Thank you so much for being my guest today, Leonora, and I'm eager to learn your answer. Ove
There are different ways of
knowing things.
I have been to New York and
Kyiv and Shanghai I know what these cities are like.
I have also been in love, and
I know how that feels.
I have known things with my
body – fear, mistrust, attraction.
And I have had experiences
when I have known things with my soul – known them so deeply and entirely and
without any prior knowledge – and they have turned out to be absolutely true.
In my writing, I use every
level of knowing and I also make sure my characters use these levels of knowing
as well.
My first novel “The Woman
Behind the Waterfall” was set in Ukraine, a country I had got to know and love
from living there for 10 years and learning the language. I was painstakingly
careful to get every detail of Ukrainian life accurate and I had several
research trips to different areas and had Ukrainian speakers check my language.
However, the novel is magical
realism, and so I also had one of my characters merge into birds and air and
storms and plants. I feel that this is part of my knowing, as I have
experienced this unity in occasional moments of my life, and I combined these
personal moments with the imagination of a child in order to achieve a
character who could transform from a girl into other spirits.
My second novel was set in
New York, another city where I had lived and knew intimately. Once again, I was
incredibly careful with every detail, and re-visited the city and walked the
streets to check the colour of the rain on flashlights and streetlights; to
check the menu items in the diners and how far the river jogging paths
stretched.
However, this second novel
“The Unity Game” was also set on a distant planet, and in an after-life
dimension. So…… where does knowledge fit into this scenario?
Well, I had researched
after-life / near-death experiences widely and also reported alien experiences.
So I had a strong body of knowledge from an Earth perspective. And when I came
to write the novel, my characters created worlds and took me to places they
wanted to inhabit and discover. I would not strictly call this knowledge, but I
would say that I was very open to the possibilities of a far wider-reality, and
the realities that I wrote about became extremely vivid for me in their
creation. In a way, these other realities have now become a part of my own
knowledge. I suspect other writers have experience this as well – other worlds
opening up to them from delving into novels.
Every one of my books
contains parts of my life, from my experiences as a mother, to a young professional
in New York, to drinking home-brewed vodka (“horilka”) in Ukraine – and each of
them also contains many layers of knowledge gathered through my mind, through
my heart, through my body and through my soul.
But the most special
knowledge - is that which I have gained through the writing of my books – the
new worlds that have been born. I cannot believe that they don’t exist
somewhere, somehow – or how else did they flow through my pen with such
insistency?
This is something I will
ponder for all my life.
About the Author
Leonora Meriel grew
up in London and studied literature at the University of Edinburgh in Scotland
and Queen’s University in Canada. She worked at the United Nations in New York,
and then for a multinational law firm.
In 2003 she moved
from New York to Kyiv, where she founded and managed Ukraine’s largest Internet
company. She studied at Kyiv Mohyla Business School and earned an MBA, which
included a study trip around China and Taiwan, and climbing to the top of
Hoverla, Ukraine’s highest peak and part of the Carpathian Mountains. She also
served as President of the International Women’s Club of Kyiv, a major local charity.
During her years in
Ukraine, she learned to speak Ukrainian and Russian, witnessed two revolutions
and got to know an extraordinary country at a key period of its development.
In 2008, she decided
to return to her dream of being a writer, and to dedicate her career to
literature. In 2011, she completed The Woman Behind the Waterfall, set in a
village in western Ukraine. While her first novel was with a London agent,
Leonora completed her second novel The Unity Game, set in New York City and on
a distant planet.
Leonora currently
lives in Barcelona and London and has two children. She is working on her third
novel. And you can find her online at...
"The Woman Behind
the Waterfall" is literary fiction
and magical realism
Heartbreak and
transformation in the beauty of a Ukrainian village.
For
seven-year old Angela, happiness is exploring the lush countryside around her
home in western Ukraine. Her wild imagination takes her into birds and flowers,
and into the waters of the river.
All that
changes when, one morning, she sees her mother crying. As she tries to find out
why, she is drawn on an extraordinary journey into the secrets of her family,
and her mother's fateful choices.
Can Angela
lead her mother back to happiness before her innocence is destroyed by the
shadows of a dark past?
Beautiful,
poetic and richly sensory, this is a tale that will haunt and lift its readers.
The Unity Game" is science fiction with philosophy
WHAT IF THE EARTH YOU KNEW WAS JUST THE BEGINNING?
A New York banker is descending into madness.
A being from an advanced civilization is racing to stay
alive.
A dead man must unlock the secrets of an unknown dimension
to save his loved ones.
From the visions of Socrates in ancient Athens, to the birth
of free will aboard a spaceship headed to Earth, The Unity Game tells a story
of hope and redemption in a universe more ingenious and surprising than you
ever thought possible.
Metaphysical thriller
and interstellar mystery, this is a 'complex, ambitious and thought-provoking
novel' from an exciting and original new voice in fiction.
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