Irascible Immortals – Ronel Janse van Vuuren #A2Z2025 #booksky

Week 2 of the A to Z Challenge and I’m continuing the illustration theme, but today the main feature is an Interview with Ronel Janse van Vuuren, who not only is promoting her Irascible Immortals books this month, but also doing the A to Z Challenge – AND – she created all this year’s graphics! Thank you, Ronel!

My ten Princelings books and the two for younger readers, Messenger Misadventures and Cavies of Flexford Common all have illustrations. Most are chapter headings. Cavies is designed for younger readers (c 7 yrs old, Key Stage 1 in UK educational parlance). That has illustrations throughout.

Feel free to comment below!

The A to Z is a blog hop, so do go to other people who are doing it. You can find the links here.

Interview with Ronel Janse Van Vuuren

Hi Ronel! Great to see you here. A2Z posts are supposed to be short, but this one is definitely not. So I’ll let people go to your blog to find out more about you. You can tell me what’s not there…

So, what’s a secret that isn’t in your formal bio

My formal bio says I’m a Rottweiler pack leader, but that doesn’t tell the full story. My Rottweilers sleep in my room… and sometimes on me when it’s cold or they’re scared (thunderstorms freak them out). You can learn a lot more (like my favourite kind of horse) on my about author page on my website. https://www.ronelthemythmaker.com/about-author/

The Irascible Immortals series is out now…Why did you pick to write dark fantasy books?

I write (mostly) for adults and YA. That was a conscious decision as I’ve tried writing for children but my themes were a bit dark… hence, dark fantasy as my chosen genre. Though the genre kind of chose me. 

For those who don’t know what this genre is, here’s a short description: Dark fantasy is all about examining the human condition, looking at the consequences of actions and decisions, and how the beliefs we hold can change the way we see our world. It is at ease with the gore and horror inherent in its darkness, but it doesn’t aim to frighten. (It’s not horror.) Dark Fantasy has many anti-heroes and “normal” people who have to do unsavoury things for the greater good.

I have a podcast episode about this with a longer explanation if you’re interested. (There’s a transcript, too, if you’d rather read than listen.) https://www.ronelthemythmaker.com/the-faeries-and-folklore-podcast-by-ronel-what-is-dark-fantasy-podcast-faeries-folklore/

Hmm, I might check that out, thanks. When you are not writing, what do you like to do?

I research folklore creatures and create podcast episodes about them. And I love to read. But that’s perhaps a bit too closely related to writing. I like being outside. As my bio says, I’m a horse servant and chicken wrangler. This mainly translates to me cleaning stables, cleaning chicken coops, working in the vegetable garden so they can have fresh veggies, and playing in my favourite area: the compost heap. I know the last is probably the weirdest… It’s all a lot of fun, though. I also enjoy cooking (from scratch) and pretending I’m in the MasterChef Kitchen.

Oh, I’m with you on compost heaps, my biggest regret since my wrists got overstrained is I can’t turn my compost heap. Enough of me… Tell us about the Irascible Immortals Series and how it came to be.

Climate Change has been something that’s affected my life personally the last couple of years with more heatwaves, floods and scary lightning storms without rain. I’ve also seen people acting really weird because of social situations, alcohol or the pandemic. And I wondered: What if several someones were behind all of this and what if it could be crazier?

Going from various gods and immortals being bored and just having a bit too much fun messing with humans to bringing about destruction was just a case of indulging my inner psychopath. LOL. I was listening to a Nightwish album and “Symphony of Destruction” came up and it just clicked: Pan and Poseidon clean up their domains, cause havoc among humans, and whatever happens next isn’t their problem.

At first, it only built to no-one doing anything to fix the Warp (the result of Pan and Poseidon’s competition) and adding to the mayhem – Isis bringing Osiris back from the dead was probably the craziest. But after a while, I realised that I didn’t like things hanging there without any conclusion. That’s when I wrote a couple of stories to end the series and published them all together in “Smoke on the Water”.

Going from mayhem to fixing it, meant finding an antagonist behind it all. It was fun finding someone that is even more powerful than ancient gods like Ra. It also worked well with foreshadowing I (unintentionally) added in the first book.

We live in a world with short attention spans, limited free time, and a lot of competition for said attention and time, so we need to work with what we have. I added my warped sense of humour to lighten the heavier themes in this series. Each book has its own main character and a full story arc (and can usually be read in 30 minutes).

What’s next for your writing? Are you working on a new story?

I’m working on an MG/YA series featuring a girl and her dog (obviously a Rottweiler) who accidently end up in Faerie. Or is it by accident? I’ve been working on this series on and off for over a decade… We’ll see how fast I can finish it (I’m a slow writer) so there isn’t too much of a delay between releases. I’m about halfway through writing the series and I’ve approved covers for all the books last month (no changing the titles now!). I’ll keep you in the loop, Jemima.

Great. I’m reviewing Queen of the Night for Q, so more books from you will be fantastic! Anything else you want readers to know?

A peacock I named Galahad had moved onto my property a couple of years ago and believes he owns me… You can see photos of him on my Instagram. https://www.instagram.com/miladyronel/?hl=en

The Illustrations

Today I have an INSECT (specifically a Banded Demoiselle, a member of the dragonfly family) that I did during my art group challenge in February, and also showing you three INNS from the book series, although I could have added another inn sign 🙂

Here we have the King’s Head Inn at Sowerby Row, in Traveler in Black and White. The king loses his head every Halloween! The Prancing Pony is the nearest coaching inn to Vexstein, and a major junction. The Inn of the Seventh Happiness (7H in the books) is a major junction in the middle of a vast plain. It gets a lot of overnight traffic (and this is the revised, extended version of the illustration!)

I start by using pencil (Derwent Cassell HB or 2B) on paper. Then I use an inkpen over to create the line drawing (I have a set of three Pilot Drawing pens, nos 01, 03, and 05). After that, I usually erase the pencil. By book 9 I was doing all my illustrations on the iPad, and I could take a JPEG copy of a hand-drawn castle, and amend it, or change it about a bit, rather than start from scratch.

These come from books 4 the Traveler in Black and White, 7. Willoughby the Narrator, and 10 Princelings Revolution. I think 7H features in all the books except Talent Seekers, but it is mentioned in that!

I’m Jemima Pett, author, blogger, illustrator and guinea pig wrangler. My interests are in fantasy, environment, science (inc. fiction) and thrillers, to name a few things. This is my nth AtoZ Challenge. Mostly I talk about books. This time I’m talking about something I do without much thinking about… my illustrations.