Note from Shawna: This
interview was originally posted at the interviewer’s own author website http://www.maggie-secara.com . Maggie is such a fabulous interviewer
that I asked her permission to share over here at Here Be Magic. Enjoy!
MSW: Hi,
Shawna! What's the story about your new book?
Shawna Reppert: How far will even a good man go to save the home and the
people he loves? In The Stolen Luck, Lord James Dupree has to answer
that very question when he embarks on a perilous journey with an elven
slave.
The ancient elven talisman known as the Dupree Luck once made the Dupree wine
prized above all else, and that wine made the family’s fortune. Bur James’s
father has been murdered and the Luck stolen, and both the thief and the Luck
have disappeared into the Lands Between. The vineyard is failing and creditors
are closing in; James’ only hope to recover the Luck is Loren, an elven slave
he risked much to win in a card game.
Despite his abhorrence of slavery, James cannot free Loren until the elf has
helped him cross over to the elven lands to recover the Luck, and so James
violates ancestor’s beliefs and traditions in an attempt to save his ancestral
home. But James finds owning another person changes him in subtle ways. A
friendship grows between Loren during the desperate journey that may kill them
both before they can reclaim the Luck. James need to command Loren is at odds
with that friendship. Worse, James finds himself falling for Loren. The crisis
of conscience escalates when a hidden enemy moves against them. James must
choose between the Luck he needs and the elf he has come to love. He was
prepared to gamble his honor for the Luck, but his heart and his soul are
really what’s at stake.
MSW: What would you say inspired you the most when you were developing this
story line? What kept you going?
Shawna Reppert: It all started with a comment a friend of mine had made.
I can’t even remember the context, but she said that the tragedy of imbalance of
power is not just what it does to the powerless, but also what it does to the
soul of the one in power. I tucked it away in the back of my mind as a theme I
wanted to explore in fiction.
Shortly after, I got to talking with another friend about tropes that are too
often badly handled in fiction. We both agreed that the master/slave
relationship came near the top of the list of badly done plot devices. If
someone is a slave owner raised in a culture where slavery is the norm, that
person is unlikely to have moral qualms about treating another person as
property. Someone who doesn’t believe in slavery is unlikely to have a slave.
Of course, being a writer, I instantly challenged myself to find a way to make
the trope work as realistic and interesting fiction. I realized I could take a
character adamantly opposed to slavery and give him a compelling reason to
acquire and keep a slave. The moral stakes that drive him have to be high
enough to equal the immorality of owning another person.
The obvious question is why? And what does the character in this dilemma do?
And what effect does the decision have on them?
The earlier
comment about imbalance of power came to mind. At this point, the whole thing
remained an intellectual exercise.
But a few months later, I was stuck in a hotel room because the pipes had
frozen in my home. There was about six inches of layered snow and ice on the
roads with more falling, and I couldn’t get back to check on my house. Daytime
television couldn’t keep my mind off the possibility of disaster.
I was working on another novel at the time, but kept getting blocked. So I dug
the idea about slavery and imbalance of power out of the dusty recesses of my
mind and started writing.
I soon found myself absolutely hooked on the characters and world I had
created. There was no turning back.
MSW: The motif of
slavery is a very chancy one and likely to make many readers uncomfortable. Can
you talk a little about that? Your choices, decisions, intentions, and so on?
Shawna Reppert: I realized from the beginning that the book was going to
be a tough sell because of the slavery motif. Not that I had any qualms about
my approach as described above, but I was afraid editors and readers would find
the topic so unsettling that they wouldn’t see past the word ‘slave’ to look at
how I was exploring the theme. It’s absolutely not your typical master-slave
trope story, but rather the antidote. Unfortunately, when you try to turn a
trope inside out, it’s hard to pitch it without everyone seeing the original
trope.
I actually abandoned the novel several times because I was so uncomfortable
with the idea of taking it through the pitch process once it was complete, but
the novel kept riding me and demanding to be written.
I still get raised eyebrows when I try to tell people about the novel, and I
find myself talking fast to convince my audience that no, it’s not one of those
novels. One of the few bad reviews I got on Goodreads was from someone who was
looking for BDSM and didn’t find any (what my one friend called ‘a bad review
that’s actually a good review’)
MSW:
The Stolen Luck is essentially an adventure, which is also a love
story not only between two men, but between master and slave. Was that part of
your original intention, or did the characters surprise you?
Shawna Reppert: That was very much not part of the original plan. When
the story started moving that way, I knew it was going to make the dynamic even
more uncomfortable for everyone, including myself. But at the end of the day,
the best books are the ones that aren’t ‘safe’ but take us beyond our comfort
zone and make us think.
The attraction between James and Loren arises very organically out of who the
characters are. I actually fought writing it at first, nearly as hard as the
characters fought the attraction itself, but in the end the story not only
demanded to be written, it demanded to be written in a certain way.
And from the
rules-of-writing standpoint, the attraction between them is a very powerful
dynamic. As a writer, you always ask yourself how you can make your
protagonist’s situation even worse. James is honorable down to the core. He
tells Loren that he would take no one against their will, not elf nor maid nor
mortal man, and a slave cannot consent because a slave cannot refuse. He means
what he says, and when he finds himself more and more in love with Loren, his
heart is breaking with the things he cannot, in conscience, express, and his
original dilemma takes on even more depth.
For Loren, it’s hard enough to come to terms with the fact that he has learned
to like and respect his new master. He senses James’s feelings before he
acknowledges his own, and his fondness for the man makes him hurt for his
heartache.
When he finally realizes his own feelings, he knows he must keep them hidden.
In his view, no good can come between love between a slave and his master, nor
between an elf and a mortal man.
I realized I had set up the ultimate impossible love, and though I consider
myself a fantasy writer, not a romance writer, it was just too good to pass up.
MSW: When I’m writing, I
sometimes enjoy the research even more than the writing, and sometimes stumble
over amazingly useful details quite by accident. Did you have to do any
research for this book? If so, what kind of topics did you pursue and what sort
of places did they take you?
Shawna Reppert: Oh, I had a lot of fun researching this book. I live in
the heart of Oregon’s
wine country, probably the reason my subconscious gave me a vintner
protagonist. The year I started the first draft, local wineries had gotten
together and offered Wineology 101, a self-guided wine tour with tastings and
lectures on various topics about wine and winemaking at each stop.
Usually when a writer goes out to research, she comes home with an armload of
books, not half a case of wine.
More important, I learned about the risky nature of the vintner’s life, which
gave me a nice thematic pairing with James’s skill with cards. I learned how to
talk about wines, and sampled a port that was pure ambrosia and became the
inspiration for the fortified wine James shares with Loren on their first night
at Dupree Manor. I learned about some of the technical growing decisions that
made the basis for James’s conversations with elven vintners in the Lands
Between. I learned about the importance of timing the harvest (‘the crush’ as
winemakers call it), which gave me a ticking clock where I needed one to
ratchet up the tension.
And I saw and heard firsthand the passion of vintners for their wines and for
their vineyards, which allowed me to imbue James with that very passion.
MSW: What can we look
for from you in future books?
Shawna Reppert: I am preparing to indie-publish an
urban fantasy, Ravensblood, set in a parallel-universe version of Portland, Oregon.
It’s a world of impossible choices, where sometimes death magic is the lesser
of the evils and a dark mage struggles to save the Three Communities and his
own soul.
Corwyn Ravenscroft, last scion of a family of dark mages, struggles to save the
Three Communities and his own soul. He turns spy against his master, who would
overturn the democratically elected Council in favor of the ancient system
where the most powerful mage ruled. His contact with the Council is Cassandra,
a former apprentice and former lover, whom he once betrayed. Cass is a Guardian
now, trying to live down her dark past until that past
came to her
door, begging for help.
Ravensblood has gotten rave reviews from all my preliminary readers,
including a woman from France
who liked it so much that she came out to the Pacific
Northwest on vacation so I could take her on the Ravensblood tour
of Portland and
surrounding areas.
Hopefully that will keep readers satisfied while I finish and market my newest
work-in-progress, a steampunk/Victorian detective novel. Sort of like Sherlock
Holmes if Holmes was a reluctantly-involved werewolf, Watson was a woman
alchemist with attitude and Lestrade wasn’t and idiot.
There’s also a medieval fantasy making the marketing rounds and trying to find
a home with traditional publishers, a sequel to Ravensblood outlined and
awaiting my attention, and plans for a series of novels to follow the
steampunk/Victorian detective novel.
