About the Author: “Nataly Gruender was born and raised in Arizona and found an escape from the desert heat through her library card. She studied English, Creative Writing, and Classics at the University of Arizona and is a graduate of the Columbia Publishing Course. Giving in to the siren call of New York, Nataly booked it across the country, and when she’s not working or writing she likes to pet other people’s dogs and spend too much time in used bookstores. She currently lives in Brooklyn, NY” (Bio from Hachette Book Group).
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Vanshikha Vij: Who would you say are your biggest inspirations and how are they reflected in your writing (if at all)?
Nataly Gruender: You can’t toss a stone in the field of Greek mythology retellings without hitting something inspired by Madeline Miller’s works, and my writing is no different. Miller’s Circe was one of the first retellings that dusted off and unfurled the story of a vilified woman from Greek myth, and I was absolutely entranced by the way she explored Circe’s life and made the witch from the Odyssey approachable to modern readers. My goal for Medusa was very similar. I wanted to see the full scope of Medusa’s life, told from her perspective, in a retelling that would encourage people to reevaluate what they thought they knew about this monster from Greek mythology.
VV: Do you have any other projects in the works that you might be able to share something about? Even something about what other genres or audiences you might be interested in writing in/for the future?
NG: I do have another project in the works and it takes inspiration from more mythology, though this time its roots are in Scottish folklore. I don’t want to reveal too much but I think I can say that I finally got to do a deep dive into the stories about selkies, the seal shapeshifters, as well as a mysterious occurrence at a lighthouse.
VV: What are some themes you’d like to explore in any upcoming projects or a theme that you’ve explored in Medusa that you are really proud of?
NG: A common thread I’m seeing in my projects is that I’m drawn to stories that unveil vilified women in mythology by giving them the space to explore their humanity. Medusa is famously a monster that even the most heroic men fear, but how did she become that way, and why? If we see the events that led to her transformation into a monster, would we still think of her as such? The main theme that seems to be shining through is questioning what monstrosity means to these women when they are the ones in charge of the narrative.
VV: Have you had any memorable experiences with people who’ve read your books that you’d be willing to share?
NG: Recently I was able to attend a book club organized by someone I’ve been a fan of in the book community, which was such a wonderful experience in itself to be able to talk to the members of the book club and answer their questions. But it was also so fun to meet the organizer who was also very interested in Medusa since college and get to talk about our mutual obsession with her myth. It also felt like a stamp of approval that someone as invested in Medusa’s myth enjoyed the book!
VV: How did you get into becoming an author? Is this something you’ve always wanted to do? Do you have any advice for anyone who might be interested in writing something that requires so much historical knowledge? What is your favorite part of your job?
NG: Surprisingly, I was not a huge reader as a kid, but once my mother finally got me to sit through a whole book I knew I was in it for the long haul. I went to college for creative writing and English and despite the awful, persistent question I would get asked about my majors (“What are you going to do with that?”), I knew I was in the right place.
While Medusa is technically a historical book, mythology is much more flexible than factual history. I think the most important aspect was keeping the foundations of the story, like the setting and the characters, consistent so that the mythological elements felt solid within the outline of Medusa’s world. I had a lot of wiggle room with Medusa, as only a few parts of her life are ironed out within the original myths, and I was able to create much of her story within the greater world of Greek myth.
My favorite part of writing is getting to explore ideas that are exciting to me. I was fascinated by Medusa for a long time, and getting to explore her story in full made me care about her even more. Similarly, my future work is inspired by other myths and ideas that I find captivating, and I hope that translates through my writing.
VV: What was the hardest part about creating Medusa? What was it like starting off as your thesis project?
NG: I had the most difficulty writing the ending. Of course, the myth has its own, very well-known ending that I had to work with, but I didn’t want Medusa’s story to conclude the way her original myth did. The purpose of the story was to reclaim the myth for Medusa, and navigating her tragic fate with a conclusion that was satisfying to me was a challenge, but I’m satisfied with how it worked out.
Getting to start writing Medusa’s story as my thesis project was incredible, because I had nothing but time and resources to research her myth, explore the paths I wanted the story to take, and figure out who Medusa was. I think the thesis itself ended up being only a quarter of the whole story, but it gave me a great jumping off point to dive into the rest of the book.
VV: There are many versions of how Medusa came to be in her most well known form. How did you decide which version of Medusa’s story you’d like to go with for your book?
NG: A lot of my early research was dedicated to answering this question, but once I had all the different origin stories lined up it was clear which one offered the best foundation for the retelling I wanted to write. I wanted the reader to go through Medusa’s life as a mortal and her transformation into the terrifying gorgon they probably recognized from other myths, and then I wanted them to travel alongside her as she navigated her new power and isolation. I wanted the reader to see past the snake hair and stone-making gaze to recognize the woman Medusa had always been, and how her monstrosity was never a detriment.
VV: I absolutely loved seeing the different relationships Medusa had with other divine beings, especially Dionysus! If you could be friends with any figure (God or otherwise) from Greek mythology who would it be and why?
NG: I would love to be friends with Hermes, the messenger god, because he has his hands in nearly every aspect of the mythological world. He would be a great companion to have if I wanted a guide to Olympus or the Underworld, and as a well known trickster, I think he’d be entertaining as well!
VV: What do you hope readers might get out of reading your book?
NG: Whether readers were familiar with Medusa’s myth before diving into the book or not, I hope they come away from it with a new perspective of who Medusa was as a woman, a monster, and a myth. Having the story retold through Medusa’s perspective is meant to reclaim the myth for Medusa but also for the reader who might recognize a part of themselves within her.
VV: Do you think that there is a stigma surrounding writing modern and/or feminist retelling books? Have you ever experienced someone saying so? Is there anything you wish people knew about writing books like Medusa or their importance?
NG: Rather than a stigma, I think there’s a great hunger for retellings like Medusa, and I am a part of that audience looking for stories that take women we thought we knew and spin them into full-fledged characters that are good, evil, and often both. Myths have been told and retold for centuries, either through oral tradition or written down, and the current trend of retellings is reflecting the lives and desires of the modern reader and their society. I think myth retellings are an important touchstone in taking a familiar story and turning it on its head so that we see how far we’ve come.
VV: What are some of your favorite books? Do you think they’ve impacted the way that you wrote or approached your own book?
NG: A few of my favorites are The Song of Achilles by Madeline Miller, A Restless Truth by Freya Marske, If We Were Villains by M.L. Rio, and The Adventures of Amina al-Sirafi by Shannon Chakraborty. My personal reading tends to lean further into fantasy than my own writing does, but I’ve always loved how the fantasy worlds are grounded in a reality that I can still relate to. I definitely tried to accomplish this with Medusa’s world, and like I mentioned before, the act of retelling a myth for a modern audience revitalizes the story for me.
VV: Can you describe the process of writing Medusa from the idea or inspiration of it to the final publication?
NG: I think this process is different for every writer, and it was certainly a very long and confusing road for me at times. Beginning the story as my thesis and working with my advisor gave me a great foundation to start, but notably I graduated into the beginning of the Covid lockdown and my original plans after college were disrupted. I dedicated that time into finishing the story and going over it in seemingly endless passes to do line edits, larger edits, and so on. I believe it was almost two years between when I wrote the starting pages to when I felt I finally had something ready for other people to read. There were many hiccups during that time when I felt like the story would never make it past my computer.
I then began the process of querying for an agent, which was intimidating, but with the guidance of my thesis advisor and after researching how to craft a good query letter, I sent it out. I was luckier than most and managed to find an agent whose interests aligned almost perfectly with my own, and once I signed with her I went right back into editing Medusa many more times before she then sent it on submission to publishers.
Again, this process looks different for everyone, but the Fates must have been feeling generous with me because an editor expressed interest in the story much more quickly than I expected. Once I signed with my publisher, it was back to editing again. Luckily, the many, many passes I’d done on my own and with my agent meant that the story was nearly ready by the time it reached my editor. We did a few changes, I got to see concepts for the cover, the book got a new title, and then I didn’t think about it for a couple months as it went off to production.
Receiving my first physical copy in the mail was surreal. Leading up to the month of publication, the reality that my book was about to hit the shelves and be available for anyone to read set in, and it was almost too much to comprehend. The story had been just a file on my laptop for so long, but seeing it physically in people’s hands, hearing lovely feedback from the people who weren’t just my friends or family, and knowing that I actually accomplished what I had set out to do was an incredible feeling. I’m extremely thankful to everyone who helped me at every stage of this process, because no book is the work of a single person.
Vanshikha Vij, Pine Reads Review Writer