Hello Ava! My name is Nathalie DeFelice, and I am one of the writers for The Nerd Daily. I am so excited to have the privilege to interview you about your upcoming release Innamorata! This book is so vivid and vicious, and I am so excited for others to pick this up as well.
Innamorata is a decadently dark gothic fantasy for readers who love “haunting atmospheres, morally tangled characters, and stories where love becomes doom” (Booklist, starred review) and the first in a duology.
First off, I wanted to start off with a quick question about the cover, because I. AM. OBSESSED! How involved were you able to be when it came to what the final cover looked like?
It was a very collaborative process with the art director, my editor, my agent, and myself all weighing in and giving feedback. The first thing I did was send over the Pinterest board I made for the cover, which included a mock-up I made myself in Photoshop (link here, if they’re interested?) It’s really cool to see how similar the final cover ended up being! We really all had a shared, cohesive vision right from the beginning.
Each and every one of the characters in Innamorata fascinated me, but I am so curious how Agnes’ character came to be?
I actually started with the relationship between Agnes and Marozia—that was the book’s raison d’être. I read a lot of case studies and academic material about selective mutism, the condition which Agnes has. She is able to speak physically but does not for psychological reasons.
One of the case studies I read was from the ‘80s, about two sisters who had been badly traumatized by the Troubles in Northern Ireland. The younger one was selectively mute, and she had this fascinatingly enmeshed, codependent relationship with her older sister, where the power dynamic between the two was often unclear. A good deal of manipulation underlies cases of selective mutism. Agnes in particular uses her silence to manipulate her environment because she is powerless otherwise. It is her last resort, and her weapon. And Marozia occasionally wields that weapon for herself.
This book left me unsettled in ways I can’t even begin to describe. How do you prepare to get into the headspace of the stories that you write?
I read and re-read the books that I used for inspiration, in particular Boiardo’s fifteenth-century epic romance Orlando innamorato, of which Innamorata is a loose retelling. Another big inspiration for the gothic atmosphere was Mervyn Peake’s series Gormenghast. I accustomed myself to their prose style, their motifs and symbols. Innamorata is very metafictional, so it directly references those and other works. You kind of have to settle yourself into it, testing the margins and limits of your own comfort and desires. Eventually it just becomes second-nature, like, why wouldn’t I write this way?
If you could give yourself an epithet, what would it be and why?
Ha! I went down a Wikipedia rabbit hole and made a long, long list of historical epithets before choosing the ones I wanted for Drepane’s monarchs. Some of my favorites that didn’t get used: the Crouchback, the Boneless, the God Manifest, and Blood-Stand-Still.
When you are exploring dark themes in books, particularly violent ones, what internal processes do you go through before putting thoughts to words? (Please let me know if this question makes sense at all)
I don’t really separate out “dark content” from any other form of content. The writing, mechanics-wise, is the same. I don’t choose to write “dark themes” because they are dark; I choose to write them because it’s what the narrative calls for. So I don’t really question them by virtue of them just being “dark.” It’s all just part of the larger themes of the story.
For Innamorata in particular, all of the most gruesome and objectionable content comes directly from the source material, Boiardo’s innamorato. So it was really intuitive to include it. I’ll always recommend Natalie Cleaver’s article, “Humanism’s Other Inheritance: The Brutal Intertextuality of Boiardo’s Rocca Crudele” to readers who are curious about my process of adapting these dark themes. It’s available for free online.
And if you’re truly galled by the content, take it up with Boiardo’s corpse! Agnes will eventually figure out how to ask him.
Any word on when we will get the second book in The House of Teeth duology?
I just turned in the first draft to my editors, so hopefully around this time next year! I actually really wanted to publish it as one massive, 350k word/1,000 page tome, but my publisher (understandably) did not go for it. I’m hoping for an omnibus edition someday!
