Castelli Book Club

“I write because I can't draw.

 A piece of paper and a pen,

and I just go,

whatever comes to my head,

I write a paragraph and then

decide where the story

might go"

"Meet the author"

Tatiana Strelkoff

Tatiana Strelkoff is an active member of the Castelli Book Club and a writer. She recently published "Kelly Full Circle", the third instalment of the Changer Trilogy and we read it this month.

The book is a work of coming of age fiction written for young adults. The tale begins in "The Changer" when Jeremy discovers and gets trained on his gift to change into an animal. Then it continues in "Jeremy and the Crow Nation"" where he and his friends fight to save animals used for test purposes. Now in the last part "Full Circle" we learn that Kelly goes on with her life alone but fulfils Jeremy's legacy, helping animals without resorting to violence, bringing them to work alongside humans in an animal reserve dedicated to people afflicted by mental disorders like autism, PTSD or simple loneliness. No more spoilers for now ... if you want to know the rest you better buy the books !

We had the Book Club meeting in her garden, trying to be careful and follow the Covid-19 social distancing protocol. Of course we took advantage of this opportunity to delve deeper into her work and satisfy our curiosity.

Enjoy.

Tatiana, tell us about you, how did you know you wanted to be a writer and how old were you when you heard the calling, so to speak?

This is so easy. I used to draw but wasn’t so good at it. When I was 9 or 10 years old, I was at my uncle’s ranch where I used to wake up quite early, I went outside, there was a little hill and I was watching the sun come up and I wanted to draw so bad but I knew it was a waste because I was awful at drawing, and it occurred to me sitting there that I could describe it, I could write it, so I raced downstairs rummaged through his desk, got a pen and a pad, ran upstairs again and wrote what I saw. When they all woke up I went down and said “Look, look I wrote this about the sunrise”, they loved it, they were just over the moon and I got such a motivation that I thought “Hey, I can do this”. So ever since then I’ve loved to write. I started with poems, I wrote prose poems. I had teachers who would submit them for awards and things like that. It was mostly poetry.

You write mostly for young adults, why did you choose such a demographic, is it because that age is particularly innocent and full of hope and dreams?

In college I took a Children’s Literature Course, and got really interested in the power of children’s literature, I mean if you really want to change the world, if you can get kids thinking of stuff it’s a much better result than you can get from adults. Some of my favourite children’s authors were aiming to do just that. That’s how it started, the age group, why kids, because a lot of what I’m writing I write in the hopes to have kids think about it and maybe change things that need changing. Kids are magnificent because they take things at face value but they also take a subject, think about it later on, elaborate it and maybe 2 weeks later ask you something else about it.

In terms of writing a specific thing, it’s always been a piece of paper and a pen and I write, I just go. I usually write a paragraph, whatever comes to my mind and then decide where the story might be going, sometimes it works really fast, like The Changer, which came out fast and my editor said it could make a great sequel. I didn’t agree at first, I said “I can’t possibly write on spec”, but he planted a seed and little by little I would get scenes in my mind, I would make up stories while I clean house, while I do dishes, I would do dialogues and think about things, have people talking and so the sequel took form in my mind. It took a while though and when that came out he said it would be a great trilogy, so here we go again, the same thing happened, but the last one took a really long time cause it required a lot of research.

How did you get the idea for the book, did you use some kind of native American legends or did you just make it up?

It’s a mix, native Americans and many tribal people (Eskimos and African cultures as well) have this concept of “shape-shifting” and taking on an animal consciousness, usually in order to hunt them, not to preserve them, but the idea that this is possible and there are some who can do this is a fascinating concept to me.

When I first wrote The Changer (more than 20 years ago) I didn’t have anything, I just started to write, that first paragraph came out of nowhere, it just came and I added to it little by little. Sometimes when that happens it comes by itself, you almost feel like you’re not making it up, it’s coming out of your pen, it’s telling itself. Which wasn’t the case for Kelly Full Circle, for which I had to research because there were a lot of things I had to pull together, so it’s not just inspiration, it all has to fit, it all has to flow and feel real. 15 years old kids have to read it and relate, that’s hard cause they don’t like being preached at and they hate being told what to do, so you hope they come to it because they get into the story, they get into the character, that sort of thing.

Your writing has a strong visual element. Did it ever occur to you that it would make a wonderful educational movie?

Yes I thought about it hundreds of times, I would love to have this opportunity because it would reach a much wider audience. I was told that I’m a visual writer, it must be because I originally wanted to draw.

In the second book the lead characters devote themselves to activism to save mistreated and tortured animals while in the third book they choose a different path trying to change the world without violence, they focus on changing people’s perception of animals. Is it a message you are giving? Do you personally believe this is the right way?

Yes I do. That’s why I really wanted to juxtapose the Animal Liberation Front because that group you can say they are great and they do a lot of good stuff but the problem is you don’t know who you’re dealing with and you could just be dealing with lunatics (like the Brad character) who only have personal motivations. I honestly believe violence begets violence because it’s like a fuse, it just never stops. When you free animals, they find a way to fight back, can you imagine being in jail for 30 years without killing anybody, just because you blew up a mink farm? Because you ruined their font of earnings they make you pay such a high cost that in the end it’s wrong and you don’t solve anything. I prefer advocating for the long term even if you don’t see the result right away.

This trilogy covers many issues about animals abuse or mistreatment, one of the probable causes being the fact that Science does not consider them capable of feelings and emotions, while nowadays we have plenty of video evidence on the web about animals showing sorrow, fear and affection. Have you experienced that? And what about using animals to help humans?

Yes, absolutely. I think all of us who love animals have experienced it. In the book I also tried to focus on animals helping humans (i.e. pet-therapy). I researched it. My only personal experience is my sister’s dog, that was an eye opener, because that dog does amazing things. I found out all the ways animals can help people who suffer from psychic disorders or physical disabilities. Most of the story is based on real things.

Tell us about your next project.

I am working on something completely different. It’s a love story set in the early 1920s between a Russian woman whose father is a priest at Fort Ross Russian Orthodox church in San Francisco and a British commander of a ship who helps Russians escape from Soviet Union via China.