The Wild Hunt is on...

Sangu Mandanna shares more with us about her story of Vanya and the wild hunt, mythology, the magic of libraries and the importance of creating characters with ADHD for readers to identify with.

Can you tell us more about where the story for Vanya & the Wild Hunt came from?

It was a hodgepodge of lots of different things! Partly my love of libraries, partly my obsession with mythology and folklore, and partly the fact that I’ve always adored stories about magic schools but also never felt like I could see myself in any of them.

When I was growing up, there were almost no characters in fantasy fiction that looked like me or thought like me. I’m delighted that that’s been changing over the last ten years or so and I’m honoured to be a part of it.

Is the Wild Hunt something you became aware of through myths & stories or your own creation?

I wish I could take credit for it, but it’s a myth that’s existed for centuries! A lot of cultures have a legend or folktale about a wild, magical hunt.

It appears in stories about fairies, the ancient Greeks had the goddess Hecate and her pack of hounds, Norse myths had Odin and his hunters, ancient India had the storm god Rudra and the Maruts in their chariots… the way the story crosses borders is the coolest part of it for me and it’s something I lean into in the book as well.

The merging of the different parts of Vanya’s story ~ the bookshop, home, school, Auramere ~ feel seamless. Was this intentional for her as much as for the reader?

Yes! I wanted readers to feel like the different parts of Vanya’s story flowed into each other, but I also wanted that seamlessness to reflect Vanya as a character too. One of her core, defining traits is how well she adapts to sudden, unexpected changes.

While that might seem like a good thing, and it certainly has its uses, it’s also a sign that she’s stifling or masking the way she really feels. There’s this stereotype that neurodivergent people don’t respond well to change, but a large number of us actually do respond very well to it because we’ve learned how to mask.

When you created Vanya had she already taken shape in your mind or did evolve with the story developed?

She was actually incredibly clear to me. In fact, that’s quite unusual for me as a writer! My characters aren’t usually clear to me at the start and, other than a few traits, they don’t take proper shape until I’ve worked the story out quite a bit.

I don’t often meet characters as fully formed as Vanya was when I first thought of her! She does evolve as a character over the course of the book, of course, but I always knew what that journey would be and she was so vivid to me right from the start.

How difficult was it to set the scene, to develop Vanya as a character before sending her to Auramere?

I think it’s always a tricky balance when you’re writing fantasy for young readers because, on the one hand, you need to be able to establish a proper sense of what the character’s world is like before big, magical things happen to them but, on the other hand, the pace of the story has to be fast enough that readers don’t lose interest.

For me, it was a lot of trial and error, of writing several versions of the early chapters and making sure the world felt truly grounded before sending Vanya off to Auramere.

Has the idea of a magical library always been a dream of yours? Do you feel at home when you are in libraries? Any favourites?

A magical library has always been a dream! In Vanya and the Wild Hunt, some of the books actually talk to her and, honestly, there was absolutely nothing I’d have loved more when I was a child. (Or even now as an adult!)

Any bookworm who thinks of their favourite books as beloved friends has probably wished at some point that their books really could be their friends. As for libraries in the real world, I love them too. They may not be magical, but they do have their own kind of magic. Tons and tons of books? For free?! It’s an extraordinary thing and so, so important for so many kids who can’t access books any other way.

What gave you the idea of Vanya having ADHD. How did that help you to shape the story?

I always knew Vanya was going to have ADHD. I have ADHD too and was only diagnosed a few years ago when I was already in my thirties, and I often think about how different my childhood might have been if I’d understood this about myself then instead of falling into a harmful pattern of believing I was just “lazy” or “awkward.”

So I wanted to write the sort of magical, fantastical adventure I always loved reading as a child and also make sure it starred a girl who happens to have ADHD. Sometimes it’s very useful to her. Sometimes it gets her into trouble. That’s the nature of it and I wanted to portray that as authentically as I could so that young readers who might feel the same way Vanya does are able to see themselves in her and recognise that they’re absolutely not “lazy” or “awkward.”

(That said, I do want to stress that the way Vanya thinks and feels is very much a representation of the way my ADHD works, and I’m by no means trying to speak for everyone who has it!)

Can you share with us your favourite story from myth or folklore & tell us why it is one of your favourites?

This will probably come as a surprise to nobody, but one of my absolute favourite pieces of folklore is the myth of the Wild Hunt. I love that it’s a story that’s been repeated and reimagined in countless cultures throughout history. I also love that it conjures up such incredible, vivid pictures in my mind when I think about it, like white wolves racing through a forest with a shadowy rider at the head of the pack or a mighty Norse god thundering into battle with magical riders behind him.

Do you plan to give Vanya more adventures?

Vanya is absolutely going to have more adventures! The second book in the series will be out next year.

Sangu Mandanna's Vanya and the Wild Hunt is out now, published by Macmillan Children's Books. Read my review on the Armadillo home page.

My thanks to Sangu and to Anna at Macmillan for making this Blog possible.