To celebrate the release of the new charity anthology, Children of War (review), I am doing a series of author interviews and guest posts, featuring several of the authors who wrote a short story for this anthology. This multigenre anthology supports the children of Ukraine. All proceeds of this anthology will be donated in perpetuity to the Voices of Children Foundation in Ukraine or another similar charity. This foundation is “a Ukrainian charity providing counselling and other forms of psychological support to war-trauma victims. The charity was established in 2015 and has been working with volunteer psychologists to bring art therapy and mobile psychologists to the most vulnerable in Ukrainian society, victims now of yet another armed conflict.”
To kick off the series, we will give the word to Astrid V.J., who is also the organiser of this anthology. Those of you who have been following my blog for a while know that I’ve already read several of her works, including Naiya’s Wish (review), The Destitute Countess (review), and the charity anthology Enchanted Forests which contributes to the protection of the rainforest (review).
Astrid’s story in Children of War is Child of Destruction. This is a fantasy story about child soldiers and it’s the backstory to one of the characters of Astrid’s Warring Lions novel. Check out my review of the anthology for more info!
Author Interview
About the author
Hobbies: Writing, reading, cross stitch, fencing, violin
What was your favourite book as a kid? That’s really hard. I was obsessed about a lot of books. ‘Momo’ by Michael Ende is one of them, the ‘Harry Potter’ series is another, and ‘His Dark Materials’ Trilogy by Phillip Pullman is also one that got me totally into conspiracy theories for a while.
What kind of a book would you love to write one day? I’ve always wanted to write a historical fiction novel about Mary Reed, one of two female pirates who sailed under Red Rackham. The research I’ll need to do for it is honestly scaring me off. When I am able to support myself fully on my writing, this might become a possibility.
What is your motto as a writer? Anything is possible.
About the anthology
Why did you decide to write a story for this anthology? The cause is close to my heart and I also happened to have a side character from a previous book who fit the requirements for the anthology, so it just seemed like it was meant to be.
If there was one message linked to this that you could pass on to the world, what would it be? War is a terrible thing. People do horrible things to other human beings under the pressure of war. And war doesn’t end when the peace treaty is signed. It will follow the people who lived it for the rest of their days. So the best way we can honour that and make a difference is by remembering this truth and seeking a future where peaceful solutions are the norm, not the exception.
Quick Round
Tropical island or Antarctica? Antarctica, because there’s a region of it called “Princess Astrid Land”
Night or day? Day. I am such a fader at parties…
Ice cream or pizza? Both. I make both. They are awesome.
Coffee or chocolate? Chocolate. Coffee? Bleh! Yucky stuff. Gimme some chocolate any day!
Culture or nature? BOTH! Sorry, but really. This has been stated most eloquently by Donald Olding Hebb: “To ask how much heredity contributes to intelligence is like asking how much the width of a field contributes to its area.” Nature and nurture together make the individual who they are. You cannot claim one is more important than the other as both have influence.
Guest Post: Literature for Peace
Mother Teresa famously said, “I will never attend an anti-war rally; if you have a peace rally, invite me.”
The power of words truly cannot be understated. When we focus on the negative, we will create more negativity in our own lives and that will spill over into the world. If we want positivity, we have to be careful about the words we use.
In that sense, yes, the title of this book fosters more of the negative realities we face, but it is also deliberate. Children and war do not belong together. I find it terribly disheartening that this year, UNICEF released a report titled “25 Years of Children in Armed Conflict” – it is such a prevalent problem that a UN organization had to create a report on it! Just think about that! Did you know more than 93 000 children have been recruited and used in wars since 2005? Or that more than 104 100 children have been killed or maimed in that time? This is simply unacceptable. If we are going to make a change and bring lasting peace, we need to know the facts and I fear too few people take the time to inform themselves, but because of that, these atrocious facts get brushed under the carpet. Wars end and the children whose childhoods were stolen end up growing into unstable adults suffering from complex PTSD, a result of their war trauma. Such individuals then go on to perpetuate the atrocities because it is what they know or it is how they respond to situations. This is why this book is armed with the knowledge of how war affects children.
But there is more. Most of these stories contain a granule of hope, a seed for change and the potential to create an understanding for lasting peace. Whether it’s about healing the trauma or seeking out that which is greater than the individual, or something else, each story brings a seed for peace. It is up to all of us to nurture the seeds and grow them into saplings that might one day develop into fully fledged trees to cover the earth in peaceful tranquillity.
For now, we have a lot of work to do. Too many children find themselves so far from the concept of ‘peace’ that we have a long way to go to get to the goal, but it can be done. Informing ourselves, whether it’s through reports like the one mentioned here from the UNHCR or through fiction, like ‘Children of War’, we can bring about lasting peace if we know what we are working towards.
On that note, I’d like to leave you with a quote from one of the contributions in this anthology:
“Live your life as if it was borrowed, so that when the time comes to give it back, you could say that it was put to good use.”
Elena Shelest, The Borrowed Life