commentaries

We’re winding down to the end of these chapter commentaries. Just a few more to go, and they should all be pretty spoilerific, so stay away from them if you haven’t read the book. Two tidbits for you today, both Ohnica-centric. First up, she didn’t appear in the climax at all in the first few drafts of the book. She popped up here and there earlier to talk to Tomas, but at the end, he was on his own. How then, did he manage to defeat Ajax? Well, in the first draft of the book, he discovered (in the climax–in […]

When I set out to write Vodnik, I had no intentions of making it into a modern retelling of a fairy tale. I’ve read many of those, and I really enjoy them (particularly Shannon Hale’s Goose Girl and Orson Scott Card’s Enchantment), but this wasn’t One of Those Stories. And so imagine my surprise when, during the revision process, I took a look at this chapter, and suddenly realized that I had somehow pulled a Sleeping Beauty without really meaning to. It’s not a strict retelling, by any means, but the basics are there. You’ve got the girl who pricks

Aha! Here we have the chapter where the scene from the cover occurs at last. Interestingly enough, this was one of the last scenes I added to the book–if not the last. I added the specific Bigot Gang scenes when I wanted to make the racism conflict more real and immediate to Tomas, as opposed to the general feeling of resentment that the conflict was in the first few passes. And since I added them in chronologically, the scene where he finally whups ’em came last. (Even then, I didn’t have this scene right away. Believe it or not, originally

I spent a lot of time in this book trying to make it as realistic as possible. That might sound like a strange way to talk about a book where vodniks and vilas exist, but what I mean is that I did a fair bit of research to make sure everything that *could* be realistic, was. For example, I wanted to describe the hospital correctly. The geography of Trencin had to be true to life. In this chapter, Tomas’s father researches how to find a grave in Slovakia. The results he gets are actually the results you would get. While

Welcome to Chapter Twenty-Seven. Hard to believe I’ve been doing these things for this long now. We end at Chapter Thirty-Three, so only six or so left after this one, and then it’ll all be finished. I decided to talk about communication this week, mainly because I see it as being one of the big reasons much of the plot ends up actually happening. Poor communication. Tomas doesn’t talk to his parents, Katka insists on keeping secrets. Lubos, Babka, the vodnik–everybody’s lying to everyone else in one way or another throughout the novel. This wasn’t the easiest thing for me