Blog Tour: Savage Her Reply by Deirdre Sullivan

Happy Friday, Book Dragons!

Today is my stop on the blog tour for Savage Her Reply by Deirdre Sullivan. I was invited to join a zoom meeting with Deirdre to find out more about the book, the myth it inspired and had the opportunity to ask some questions at the end. My review will follow in the next week or so!

Happy reading!

For those who don’t know, Savage Her Reply is a retelling of Irish myth The Children of Lir. and it sounds amazing! It has been illustrated by Karen Vaughan, they’re stunning! Deirdre spent two years researching (a year of reading) and writing Her Savage Reply, alongside her full-time teaching job, usually on weekends, holidays and sleepless nights.

Deirdre originally wanted to tell Aife’s story in Tangleweed and Brine, as she’s always been drawn to Aife. When it came to writing Aife’s story, it didn’t fit as the other stories inside are more fairytale territory and so it became it’s own book. It was originally meant to be a novella, ending up a full length book. I love it when that happens!

During the writing process Deirdre would set daily word count goals, while intensely writing it was 1000 words a day. Deirdre would then go back to more reading to prepare for the day’s writing. When writing the book, she wanted to make sure it was also accessible for a non Irish audience, as she wasn’t sure how well known the legend was outside Ireland.

We were also treated to a live reading from the book, which only added to my excitement, I cannot wait to read it! I could go on for hours because the whole meeting was fascinating, I could go on for hours, I think now might be a good time to move onto my questions and wrap things up.

Questions:

Her Savage Reply is a retelling of The Children of Lir, what made you choose this particular myth?

Just the connection that I felt to it and kind of the question that it raised in me that I hadn’t answered yet. I think that’s the space, like if there was a perfect story that you absolutely adored, I think it would be quite difficult to retell it. I love the story of the Children of Lir but I wanted to explore it and I wanted to interrogate it and that’s what drew me to it.

This one I hear get asked at Waterstones events a lot and I’ve always found the answer very interesting. Are you a plotter or a pantster?

I’m absolutely a pantser. When I have to plot I find it constrains me. I was working on a project recently where I’d had to do a detailed synopsis of how it would go before I began, and I found that really really difficult. You know I’m a writer, but but I’m also a teacher so I want to follow the rules. But then at the same time the story takes you to unexpected places and I find it much more freeing to just let it go where it wants to go. What I do is I edit from very very early on.