Spotlight and guest post: Ronel the Mythmaker and the Irascible Immortals!

 

 

Welcome to Ronel Janse van Vuuren and her Irascible Immortals series! 

To celebrate the release of a collection gathering this series of mini-novels in one volume, I've invited the author to talk to us about the structure of this set of stories, and to answer the question,

“Why a collection of short works instead of a novel?”

Here's Ronel's reply:

I’ll do my best to answer this question without any spoilers about the plot.

Climate Change has been something that’s affected my life personally the last couple of years with more heatwaves, floods and scary lightning storms without rain. I’ve also seen people acting really weird because of social situations, alcohol or the pandemic. And I wondered: What if several someones were behind all of this and what if it could be crazier?

I wanted to showcase a different character in each situation, getting to know the world and other characters from a different perspective each time. As the tension builds from one wild adventure to the next, I wanted to be able to jump not just through place and time, but also to the headspace of a character best suited to the situation. Some needed to let the dust of millennia fall from them to realise that being alive isn’t so bad after all, while others needed to work through grief and betrayal.

My pet peeve in a novel is having too many main characters who co-narrate the story. So I got past that by presenting it as pieces of the whole that can be enjoyed separately. It also works well for those who only have short blocks of time to read. Almost like a TV series with episodes you can watch at will. The first five can even be read as standalones. I recently heard that this format is called a “mosaic novel”.

We live in a world with short attention spans, limited free time, and a lot of competition for said attention and time, so we need to work with what we have.

I used my warped sense of humour, the need to focus on fixing Climate Change, and remembering that we should live and not just exist, to add different layers to this series about various gods and goddesses having way too much fun messing with mortals.

It was a fun experiment with storytelling.

 

About the author:
 

Award-winning Dark Fantasy author Ronel Janse van Vuuren writes about kick-ass heroines, the duality of being human and loves to use folklore to underscore her point.

She’s a Rottweiler pack leader, chicken wrangler and horse servant.

All of her books are available for purchase from major online retailers.

Find Ronel online: https://linktr.ee/miladyronel

Since this is also Read an Ebook Week at Smashwords, the first in the series is free, just this week!

Her books are also available directly from her website.

 

Thanks for stopping by, Ronel, and best of luck with the new release--and whatever you choose to write next!

©Rebecca M. Douglass, 2025
 As always, please ask permission to use any photos or text. Link-backs appreciated.



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