Sara-Jayne Poletti
asked
Deanna Raybourn:
Can you tell us more about your inspiration for Stoker in the Veronica Speedwell mysteries?
Deanna Raybourn
Veronica has one inspiration--the larger-than-life lepidopterist Margaret Fountaine. Stoker has many! Right away, I knew I wanted him to have a privileged upbringing, so that dictated his family origin story, but I also wanted trouble there, so I created some difficult circumstances that have ostracized him from his siblings and drove him to run away at an early age. Because he's a natural historian in the Victorian age, he didn't just sit behind a desk, theorizing; he went out and explored, collecting specimens and preserving them for transport. That's something he has in common with men like Charles Darwin and Thomas Henry Huxley. He also owes something to explorers like Roy Chapman Andrews and Carl Akeley, adventurers who were not afraid to head off into the unknown and shape how we look at the world. Akeley in particular married his field experiences with the changing role of museums; he largely invented--and certainly popularized--the dioramas that are the centerpiece of natural history museums around the world today. Stoker, too, is eager to take his field experiences and devise the best way to preserve knowledge and share it with the curious public.
On a personal level, he is bedeviled, which makes him all the more fun to write! I wanted him to have a horrific experience in his past--one borrowed from the field experiences of Carl Akeley and vastly embellished--that influences him throughout the series. I like the idea that, unlike my previous series, this time the largest character arc belongs to the male. Veronica is very much her own person with a great sense of who she is; even when the ground shifts under her feet, it doesn't take her that long to regain her equilibrium. Stoker, on the other hand, is struggling. He is at a crossroads when the first book begins, and we see him continue to reassemble the pieces of his life, trying to determine what is left of the man he once was and who he wants to be in the future. I am having a VERY good time writing him!
On a personal level, he is bedeviled, which makes him all the more fun to write! I wanted him to have a horrific experience in his past--one borrowed from the field experiences of Carl Akeley and vastly embellished--that influences him throughout the series. I like the idea that, unlike my previous series, this time the largest character arc belongs to the male. Veronica is very much her own person with a great sense of who she is; even when the ground shifts under her feet, it doesn't take her that long to regain her equilibrium. Stoker, on the other hand, is struggling. He is at a crossroads when the first book begins, and we see him continue to reassemble the pieces of his life, trying to determine what is left of the man he once was and who he wants to be in the future. I am having a VERY good time writing him!
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