Continuing the Convo: A Spoilery Q & A with Genevieve Gornichec

I am so excited to finally post this conversation I had with Genevieve for you all. When we hosted her at Dog-Eared for the release of her second novel The Weaver and the Witch Queen. I felt like we could have kept talking forever—and I wanted to ask so many questions about parts of the book that would have spoiled it for anyone who hadn’t read it yet! So this is a continuation of our Cocktails and Convo event with her where you can learn more about the making of the book, what Genevieve was thinking when writing certain parts, and more.

And again, here there be spoilers! So if you haven’t finished Weaver (which, what are you doing here?? Go finish it now!), read at your own risk.

Without further ado, my conversation with National Bestselling author, Genevieve Gornichec:

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Mariah: I remember reading an earlier draft of Weaver, and one of the characters I really struggled with was Halldor–our trans raider who was part of the group that killed Oddy and Signy’s mom and brother. In the published version, however, I love him–you nailed the enemies to lovers vibe with both couples in this book, but especially between Halldor and Oddny. How did you go about writing this relationship? What did you do so that the reader loves Halldor instead of hating him?

Genevieve: Thank you so much! This is something that I worked really hard on. I know it looked really bad in the beginning, but I really tried to make it clear in the text that raiding was just something that people in this time period did—they had an entirely different set of values than we do. I didn’t want to sugarcoat the brutality of the Viking Age or romanticize it, but I also had to find common threads that modern reasons could connect to.

Earlier drafts of the novel included a lot of Halldor and Oddny’s interactions (at the expense of Eirik and Gunnhild’s), but I’d cut a lot of them for the third draft, which is what you’d read. For the fourth draft, which is the one that was published, I did end up putting a lot of those back and giving them more screen time, and really tried to give their relationship the screen time it needed.

M: You have said many times that you weren’t interested in rehabilitating these historical figures. What were some of the hardest parts of history to wrangle with so we wouldn’t hate the characters?

G: This was so tough. Definitely one of the most difficult things I had to deal with was Eirik’s storyline and the fact that he does kill his brothers, but really, it all boiled down to, of all things, a translation. In the edition of Heimskringla that I’d been using, it said that he decided to go kill his brother Rognvald for being a sorcerer. So at first, I wrote Eirik as a total bad guy with no conscience, because I personally had no sympathy for him and I didn’t think readers would sympathize with him either.

But between drafts two and three, I was browsing a more recent translation for inspiration and found something interesting: The same line in this text says that Eirik was instructed by his father to go kill his brother. And when I checked this against the Old Norse version, it tracked (the word is technically more like counseled/advised, but I can see how it would be more accurately rendered as “instructed”; it’d line up with King Harald’s character more to say that he doesn’t give advice, he gives orders). Suddenly, in Eirik, I had a character I could actually let myself get close to—a complicated, troubled man rather than a cartoon villain—and the entire story came together in a way it hadn’t before.

M: From very early in the book you can tell Gunnhild does not have the best relationship with her mother, to put it lightly. Her decision to marry Eirik seems to be almost entirely made just to spite her mother. How did you balance writing the positive mothering figures with this very negative one? Does Gunnhild worry about what kind of mother she would be?

If you haven’t already, you must read Genevieve’s debut novel The Witch’s Heart

G: I think a lot of this goes back to some baggage I had about my debut novel The Witch’s Heart as well as my own shifting ideas about motherhood. In TWH, Angrboda isn’t perfect, but she gives it her all (literally). I didn’t want to make it seem like motherhood (or daughterhood) looks the same for everyone. Many of people I know, in fact, have fraught relationships with their mothers. So I tried to reflect multiple experiences instead of making every single mother in the book as selfless as Angrboda. Gunnhild’s mother Solveig is downright abusive; Queen Gyda is a bit cold, but ultimately ends up in Gunnhild’s corner; and even the positive figures like Heid and Yrsa have their issues.

I really hope that I get to write about what kind of mother Gunnhild is going to be, because that is something she’d definitely worry about, especially when she herself has a daughter. (She and Eirik have eight or nine children depending on the source—seven or eight boys, and just one girl, smack in the middle of the birth order, and named for Eirik’s mother Ragnhild.)

M: What inspired the magic in this book? Did you have strict rules in mind when you wrote it? What do you think your animal embodiment would be? What about mine??

G: The magic in the book was inspired by the Old Norse literary sources. Magic was part of the landscape in the Viking Age; it was something that just existed, and everyone knew it. The supernatural wasn’t even supernatural—just natural! Ghosts and zombies are talked about so casually in the medieval Icelandic sagas that you’d think they were just wandering around every day causing problems (and in at least one saga, getting sued for it. I can’t even make this up).

As such, from what I was able to gather from my research, the magic is kind of all over the place—there really aren’t rules or instructions for how it worked, which is unsurprising because the folks who wrote down these stories (hundreds of years after they supposedly happened) had converted to Christianity, so they weren’t exactly trying to write a sorcery guidebook (if they even knew how the magic “worked”). So I had to add some parameters when I was writing, so it would make sense within the narrative. Otherwise it would’ve been a total free-for-all! 

I think my mind would probably manifest as a cat. I have no idea what yours would be!

M: Were there moments where readers’/reviewers’ reactions genuinely surprised you? Characters that people love that you weren’t expecting?

G: Honestly, I did not expect people to come so hard for me over the dialogue. What happened there was that in earlier drafts, I definitely made it more archaic, and my beta readers were not fans because everyone sounded very stilted, and so serious, too. So I went back and added contractions in their speech, and when writing subsequent drafts, things like the humor and the banter just developed along with the characters. At the end of the day, I’d rather have them sound like real people rather than cardboard cutouts, even at the expense of “historical accuracy.” But I may have been having too much fun with the dialogue, so that’s something I’m definitely going to keep an eye on in future works.

I’m totally not surprised that some people found Gunnhild “unlikeable,” or to see that Arinbjorn seems to be a popular guy. And of course you’ve got people tagging me in stuff saying, “Wah! What was the point of having a TRANSGENDER character?!* That’s TOO MODERN! Why does everything have to be GAY nowadays?!” and every time I see that, the next book gets even more queer! Sorry, I don’t make the rules.**

*Trans people have always existed and I will fight about it.

**In this case I really do, and I’m actually not sorry at all.

M: Are there any moments you really wanted to include that you had to cut? What darlings did you have to kill? Cough up the gold that lies on the cutting room floor.

G: So originally there’s a five-year time skip after The Duel and a ton of stuff happens there, and before that we get a glimpse of what Signy’s captivity and rescue are like; after that she returns to Norway and hangs with Gunnhild, and becomes romantically involved with one of my favorite couples (not going to spoil that in case I ever get to write it). Originally Oddny doesn’t even know she’s alive until right before the battle at Alreksstadir, which she hurries to join as soon as she finds out Signy is there. We also get to meet Thorolf’s brother Egil, who’s barely mentioned in Weaver. His saga is what a lot of this novel was based on. He’s a total wild card and I had an absolute blast writing him. He gets on great with Halldor and Oddny’s adopted daughter Steinvor, who by that time is seven years old and has (unfortunately) made Egil her role model. We’re talking:

Steinvor came to sit down beside Egil and said, “I killed my first man the other day.”

“I know,” Egil said. “I was there.” He eyed her. “How many winters have you had, girl?”

“Seven,” said Steinvor proudly.

“Hmm,” said Egil, with something like approval. “I was also seven when I killed my first man.”

If this is the way the story had gone, Oddny and Halldor would’ve had their work cut out for them, tbh.

Basically all of that had to go because I was too much over the word count. And Egil had to go because it was too late in the novel to introduce a new antagonist. So instead of cutting Egil from a story about Gunnhild (which I was morally opposed to doing, since he ultimately becomes Gunnhild’s lifelong arch-nemesis), I rewrote the entire ending so that the story would cut off before she and Egil even meet. A story about Gunnhild that completely removes Egil would pointless, so just imagine him waiting in the wings, gleefully anticipating the mayhem he will soon get to cause.

M: Is there anything in the book that you know for a fact is not historically accurate but you wanted to include anyway?

G: The duck-patterned silk panel that Gunnhild sews onto her dress definitely is not as ridiculous as I made it out to be. I just got a kick out of the idea of Gunnhild going, “Eirik hates fun, and these ducks are fun, so he will hate them, and I want to see that vein in his forehead burst when I walk out to meet his father for the first time wearing ducks,” and her friends going, “Uh, hey, question—what is wrong with you?”

M: Now that the book has been out for a while, how have you felt about its reception? Are there scenes you now wish you’d included? Any points you’d like to clear up? Funny stories from signings or in reviews?

G: There are plenty of other things I’d like to clarify, but the author is dead, as they say. If I would have answered these questions a few weeks ago I might have answered differently, but at this point I’m just grateful that anyone likes it at all! I worked my ass off on this book and I’m proud of it, even if there’s a lot more I wish I could have done with it. But if I had waited to make it “perfect,” it would have never been published at all, I guess.

My absolute favorite story is that at my release day signing at Barnes and Noble in Mentor, Ohio, when a reader told me that she and her friends called Skadi “The Goddess of Home Depot.” I absolutely cackled. I think about that at least once a week and it always makes me smile. I hope those readers are having a wonderful day. 

And I can’t deny that probably one of the best moments of my life was at our talk at Dog-Eared Books was my dramatic reading of that bit where Eirik and Gunnhild first meet, and how I left off at a bit of a cliffhanger so when I shut the book, everyone was like, “AWWWWWWW!” So gratifying. (Sorry!)

M: Any other specific parts you want to talk about/give background on? 

G: Not really! I just had a lot of fun writing it even when it was tough. Thank you for these questions and for having me on the blog!

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I was so happy to get to have this conversation with Genevieve, and I hope you all had fun learning more about The Weaver and the Witch Queen. For further reading make sure to visit her website.

And if you like hearing from authors, make sure to check out the rest of our Behind the Book and Continuing the Conversation author series.