AUTHOR INTERVIEW
Marigold Deire Dicer
continuing to work on whatever assignment occupied my life that week.
That attitude where it’s a part of your life and you accept it and just need
to ‘push through’ is unhealthy, but common.
Once I graduated uni and got a job as a geologist my anxiety issues largely
abated, but then when the mining boom crashed and I was working much
harder and longer these issues came back. It was then I realised I needed
to change what I was doing with my life. I didn’t want to ‘push through’
anymore, so I gave in. I quit my job, and now I’m back studying in a
completely different career – high school teaching. We’ll see if this works.
Anita’s anxiety issues are helped when she gets her magic, which heals her
as instinctively as her lungs breathe (and we know emotional and mental
states can be influenced by hormone releases, particularly adrenaline), but
What gave you the inspiration to write your novel, The Black
Swan Inheritance?
I’ve always loved witchcraft lore, and wanted to write a series that built on
the older mythologies of magic and women. The Black Swan Inheritance
barely scratches the surface in that respect, but I wanted to focus the first
book on Anita’s emotional growth and maturity. That’s where the anxiety
issues came in.
While university can be a wholly liberating experience after the highly
structured and socially distorting experience of high school, it comes with
its own negative experiences. Trying to become an adult when you’ve a
skewed perception of the result, trying to ‘succeed’ in studying and
therefore life (theoretically) can and does drive people crazy. I drew on my
it is also helped when she finds a purpose in life other than striving to
become a doctor. She realises the difference between having an expectation
of her future and actually wanting to create her future – the difference
between ‘should want to’ and ‘want to’.
Can you briefly tell us readers what your novel is about?
The Black Swan Inheritance falls firmly into the ‘New Adult’ genre,
where the protagonist is stuck somewhere between the excuse of youth
and the need to bear responsibility for her actions. Even though she’s
young, Anita already has a past she wants to run away from, and she
needs to learn to accept her past, who she is, and work out who she wants
to be.
It’s also got awry magic and monsters, along with cults, other realms,
and some truly disturbed individuals.
I like to think of it as equal parts New Adult and Urban Fantasy, which I
like to think of as Nerves & Necromancy.
own experiences of anxiety attacks when writing Anita’s. Although we
studied different degrees and had different life experiences, we both had
issues with reaching the golden tier of ‘success’, and I know many others
who do. I had anxiety attacks for years where I just felt I had to put up with
them and wait for them to pass before getting back to the desk and
http://www.universalcreativityinc14.wordpress.com