Mindy: Welcome to Writer Writer Pants on Fire, where authors talk about things that never happened to people who don't exist. We also cover craft, the agent hunt, query trenches, publishing, industry, marketing and more. I'm your host, Mindy McGinnis. You can check out my books and social media at mindymcginnis dot com and make sure to visit the Writer Writer Pants on Fire blog for additional interviews, query critiques and more as well as full transcriptions of each podcast episode. at WriterWriterPants on Fire.com. And don’t forget to check out the Writer, Writer, Pants on Fire Facebook page. Give me feedback, suggest topics you’d like to hear discussed, and let me know if there is someone you’d love to see a a guest.

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Mindy: We're here with Tetyana Denford. She was the author of The Child of Ukraine, which released this month, and originally this book was a self-published novel, although it is very much also kind of memoir, family history, and the story of your grandmother. So why don't you tell us a little bit about that and a little bit about the background behind this book.

Tetyana: It's so nice to be here chatting about it. I'm always happy to chat about this story because it's so cinematic and so epic, it doesn't sound real, but it's based on true events. So when I published this book in 2020, it was originally called Motherland. There's a lot of stories about women, motherhood, daughters and mothers in that relationship, but also there is a statue in Ukraine called Mother Motherland. It's very famous because it's this woman holding a shield and a sword, and you can see it in the center of Kyiv. My grandmother, she practically raised me for about five years when my parents were working, so I would hear lots of stories about her family and her farm. And she didn't speak very much English, so she and I would exclusively speak in Ukrainian, which is my first language. And she would tell me all of these amazing colorful stories about escaping the war. There was a piece to the puzzle that I only found out about in 2015, and that prompted me to write the book, but her story was that she escaped her childhood home when she was 18 because her brothers were murdered by Stalin's police. They were collected and rounded up with a lot of other political activists, and they were thrown into prison and shot by firing squad. She left her home at 18 - never saw her parents again.

There was German occupation as well as Russian, and the lesser of two evils was to kind of help the Germans defeat the Russians. Do whatever you have to and then come back, and she never did, because it wasn't safe. So she was in a labor camp. She met the man who would be my grandfather and then they, after the war, fled to Australia, because Australia at that point was providing land and work for immigrants and citizenship after you worked the land for three years. So it had seemed like a good deal, even though it was in the middle of nowhere, in the Dust Bowl. They traveled there and something happened to her, without giving away any spoilers, it is quite a tragedy. And she was forced to make a decision that basically changed the course of her life. So they immigrated to New York. It kind of reads like a memoir, but it has a little bit of history, obviously, in it as well. And I had to thread all of these pieces together as a novel. I didn't know all of the very specific details. So it couldn't be a memoir, but I wanted it to cross a lot of genres, if that makes sense. I wanted it to be appealing for people who don't necessarily always read historical fiction. I didn't want people to look at it and go, "Oh God, it's gonna be really politically heavy or information heavy." There's a little bit of everything in it. And I think that's what people are connecting to. The general kind of umbrella feeling is that it's about a family, and it's about love, and it's about loss and motherhood, and parenthood and marriage.

Mindy: And those are all themes that apply across humanity.

Tetyana: I wanted people to be drawn to that. I wanted to prompt people even to ask questions within their own families. Because we grow up sometimes with grandparents and even great-grandparents, and we don't really, when we're younger, we don't actually ask them anything. We see them as these elders. We see them as a very specific role. And actually, this book, for me anyway, reminded me that they are also human beings with their own baggage, and that's so important.

Mindy: The lens through which we most often struggle is seeing our parents as real people. And I think though that it can complicate things much further when you have to actually think of your grandparents as real people who were young once and who were going through everything that you've gone through too and probably more. I agree. I think as youth we often feel like we're the interesting ones. It's like, no, actually, everything that you're doing, they already did, and we should be talking to them and getting their stories.

Tetyana: With the backdrop of war, I want people to understand that what is happening in real time, to not just Ukraine but a lot of cultures, is something that we have to learn about and ask questions of our parents, grandparents. Otherwise, how do we change the narrative? How do we raise children to appreciate their own living history right in front of them?

Mindy: It is very much forefront, and people that could not have told you what colors were in the Ukrainian flag now are intimately aware of it. It's part of the larger conversation now. It's not a new story. This has happened before.

Tetyana: Oh yeah. When all of these unfortunate events started happening in February, the mentality was, well, we're ready. We've been ready for this for decades. It's not anything new. These are the stories, almost in parallel, the stories that were happening to our grandparents and great-grandparents and great-great-grandparents. It's wildly upsetting that it's so similar, and it's the same playbook. I was speaking to a journalist friend of mine who's in Ukraine, and I was saying, enough is enough. Now we use our literature, our art, our activism. Now, this is the watershed moment. Now we are the future, the younger generation Ukrainians who are saying, "That's it." We are using social media to then push a new narrative forward. I was reading somewhere that I think this is the most photographed and recorded war in modern history. And it helps that we have a President who's not some dusty old politician, who actually represents the future, the modern young Ukrainians who are taking to these social media channels and saying, "Hey, pay attention."

Mindy: From what you're hearing from family and friends that are still over there or in the moment that are there every day, does it feel like it's different this time?

Tetyana: I think it's half and half. They're exhausted by it. It feels like the same thing over again. I think if they try and, it's difficult, but if they try and remove themselves from the devastation that's happening right in front of their eyes, they know that they have a much farther reach than they ever have when it comes to reaching the media. Western media is kind of complicated because sometimes it seems like it's playing both sides. But Ukraine is now being seen in a very different way. Maybe more in lines of the humanness behind who we are instead of what the media has portrayed us historically within the lens of a scandal, or gangsters, or mafia, or rent a bride. All of those things have been quite damaging and maybe now, even though it's so unfortunate what's happening, maybe now people are looking at us slightly differently. They assume that we're just some dumb bunch of farmers, when actually, we are wildly industrious, creative, intelligent - all these amazing things that nobody really kind of understood before.

Mindy: So you mentioned the media. You also work as a translator for Frontline News since 2014. So can you talk a little bit about that experience? And did that serve as motivation in some ways to work with your grandmother's material and get that family story out there?

Tetyana: That's an interesting question actually. Nobody's asked me that. I think so. When they reached out to me during the Revolution of Dignity, it was through a friend of mine who I went to college with. She very kindly put them in touch with me saying, "Listen, I know you speak Ukrainian fluently. They might need somebody." And then since then, it's been an absolute honor and joy to work with Frontline because they are one of the few news outlets that really push a very truthful and painful narrative. Not just Ukraine, but they expose a lot of what's happening in the world when it comes to politics and world events. I think it really maybe planted a seed without me really knowing that it did. I started working with them in 2014. 2015 is when I got the call from my mother about this massive secret within the family that nobody knew about, and I started writing notes. And then I thought, I'm the only one that can write this. I'm an only child. This needs to be recorded somehow. All of these kind of events, because it is... It was completely unbelievable and cinematic and I thought, "Okay, well, I can do this." But I do think that Frontline reminding me of what my insides were, and by that mean I've always been a proud Ukrainian. But I've never really had many opportunities to really fly that flag proudly in the sense that I was living in the UK 'cause I'd moved there with my English husband and we had started a family. And there was no Ukrainian community that I could connect with. So I was a little bit removed. But having that reignited who I was, deep down. And my grandmother was still alive then, and I was still in contact with her. And all these things started happening all at once. That, I think, really just started kind of blossoming within me. And then when I started going out on submission to try and get traditionally published, initially, with Motherland, I received so many amazing responses from agents, but at the time they're like, "yeah, historical fiction, especially about Ukraine, it's not gonna sell." Because it's timing. It's a business. I didn't take it personally, but I was still proud of the story, that's why I self-published. But now, all of these things are happening all at once. They converged in this massive mountain for me and for so many other Ukrainians. I'm just proud that I'm part of it, and part of this larger momentum and this group of people that are like, Okay, now let's all start paying attention.

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Mindy: So coming back to the book and talking about the actual process of writing it. You said that your mother had contacted you, there was this family secret, and your grandmother was still alive. So were you able then to work with her in terms of the content?

Tetyana: I would have liked to. She blocked out a lot of the trauma for a lot of reasons, which people will discover in the book, but it was too painful for her. And the only thing that I could do was work with my mother on a lot of the information. And she would glean information, not just verbally, but she managed to find records - court records, documents - of what had happened to her in Australia. So that was the extent of my research. I couldn't go too deep with my grandmother because she, for over 60 years, she had completely erased the memory of what had happened to her. She had to block out what she had had to do and the people that she was in contact with. For her to survive her life, it had to have never happened. So when my mother confronted her with this information, and I say confronted, they met for a glass of wine and dinner a few times. And it took a while for her to get it out of her, and then my grandmother would talk to her. But it's not something that I think I would have felt comfortable talking to her about because it's older generation. You don't talk about that stuff with your grandchildren. Not even with your children normally. But my mother managed to get that. So I worked with my mother on research, and then I worked with genealogical records, Ancestry dot com as far as passenger lists. And I remember telling her I was writing a book based on the story of her life, and she looked at me and goes, "Mishka" - it means little mouse in Ukrainian - she goes, "Mishka, why would you write a book about my life? It's not that interesting." I remember thinking, she probably says that because there were so many women in her position at the time. Not just Ukrainian, but after the war, so many families that were separated, and so many people who were displaced, and women who had to go through a lot of trauma that was not recognized because it was a man's world, especially then.

Mindy: There is that narrative of, yes, there was this incredibly traumatic and momentous thing that happened to me, but I'm not special. It happened to a lot of people. That's harrowing that someone can have something that traumatic happen and for one thing, of course, have to block it out, but for another to just be like, "you know, it's not that special."

Tetyana: I look back, and I always thought, to my mind, my grandmother, and my mother, but my grandmother especially, just... I felt like she was made of steel. I know so many Ukrainians where we've had the same conversation. Well, you see it now. You see what Ukrainians are like. They are just relentless. I wanted to convey that in the book. Ultimately there's always a villain. Yes, there's a villain in my book, definitely. But the characters of my family made choices that probably were not popular. They sometimes became unsympathetic characters, and that's what I wanted. I wanted people to go on that journey and think, "I don't know how I would have behaved when all of this was thrown at me." I wanted people to feel conflicted and eventually sympathetic because my grandfather was, in real life, he was abusive emotionally. He was kind of even physically abusive. There was conditioning that led to that and we find that out in the book.

Mindy: So talking then about the path of publication for this book. You said that you had originally aimed for the traditional publishing model with this, and you didn't have any luck because timing, like you said. And that is a really typical story. And I think it is very interesting and one that is super relevant to my audience is that you can write something and it can be a great book, and it can be a wonderful story, and it can be something that a lot of people would connect with and find moving, and it can have great writing, and the narrative can be super strong. But if the market isn't open to it at the moment, it's not gonna land. So if you could talk a little bit about the process at the beginning with this book and then how it ended up where you are today.

Tetyana: One of my favorite things is talking about the process of writing and getting a book to publication, 'cause I've learned a lot. And what I imagined it would be turned out to be very different. One of the most important things is even when you're submitting, you have to give yourself the best chance you can. So your query letter, your email that you write to them as a pitch, it has to be so compelling and so good, and you also have to embody the business of getting a book to publication. You're not just some starving artist who sits in the corner and hopes for the best. You have to carry yourself in a way that engages an audience, engages the agents. You have to sell it. I was very lucky in the sense that when I was sending out the first three chapters of my manuscript and I had the query letter down, and I personalized each letter to each different agent. Because you do your research and you make sure everything is pointing to yes. It doesn't guarantee, but at least you feel good about what you're presenting. In the first couple of months, I received 12 full requests. It's a unicorn. Like, a full request is a big deal. And then the request came back eventually and they're like, "You have such beautiful writing, but we needs more of this, or we need more secondary characters. We need more tension. The market isn't great." There are all these kind of factors that were in the way.

Agents, I realized, are human beings. They're doing a job. It's not personal, and every single one of these agents that responded to me in kind, even though it was a rejection, they were so nice about it. A couple of agents actually wanted me to change the story and re-submit it, and I thought, "Oh, I'm not sure I can do that because this is based on a true story, and I know you wanna make it compelling and commercial, but I kinda wanna stick to what happens." They were all so lovely, and I made so many wonderful connections. And we are still friendly and still connected, and they are so supportive. And it made me realize that it's just one aspect of the business, and I see so many amazing writers who are waiting for the yes, waiting for an agent, and I thought to myself, am I gonna sit around and wait for somebody to open the door? Or am I gonna open it myself? Because ultimately, why am I doing this? Am I writing to be on a best seller list? Am I writing for the fame and the money? Because if that's true, I'm in the wrong business. I want to write a book to get it on a shelf.

I began the process of teaching myself how to self-publish, and I made a lot of mistakes along the way. I didn't hire an editor, so I was practically going blind after eight drafts. I started a Kickstarter just to raise money for upfront costs, like having a book designer help me with the cover. And to get a hard cover at the time, Amazon, it was not allowing hardcover books. And I wanted a hard cover book of Motherland. So I went to Lulu, which is a different self-publishing platform, and they allowed hard covers, but it was hard to work with them. When it was finally launched, and so many people supported me on Kickstarter, it was wildly powering, and it made me so happy that people wanted to read the story. I made money within the first couple of months. Again, it's not what I'm doing it for, but it was a little bit of validation, like people want to buy my words. I really want people, especially now, when we have all of these amazing platforms - like Amazon is now doing hard cover, can self-publish a hard cover. There are so many brilliant authors out there that don't need to wait. It's a very fickle industry. It's really hard. Yes, it's great to have an agent because they open doors for you to get into magazines and newspapers, and they kind of push and market. But knowing the behind the scenes, teaching myself the behind the scenes of what goes into publishing a book, then put me in a really interesting position to feel like not just a writer but having a business brain, and approaching it in a really knowledgeable way. And two years later, I get a call out of the blue, or an email rather, from the Hachette imprint, Bookouture, saying, "Listen, we're really interested in signing you." Now, again, I was like, "Oh, this is great," but a lot of writers jump at it, at the chance to be with a publisher. And this is direct to publisher. This is not an agent going to book a tour saying, "Hey, how about you publish my client's book?" They reached out to me saying, "your writing is so compelling," and they were so kind and it was so lovely. But when we had a meeting, I said to myself, "I do not want to be in a position where I'm hat in hand going, Yes, whatever you can give me, I'll take." Because I have a very specific vision about how I want to work with my publisher. And if they are not collaborative and they treat me like a cash cow, then I am very happy to keep self-publishing. And having that, being in that empowered position, I've got myself here. Now, what can you do for me? How can we work together? And they presented themselves in such an amazing professional and forward-thinking way, I was really happy. Eventually after a couple of meetings, they ended up signing me and again, it's not about the advance. It's not about the money and the fame and whatever. It's about getting people to be impacted by my work. That feeling is priceless. When people say to me, "Oh my gosh, I've handed your book to a friend of mine or the reading group, and they're asking so many questions about their own family," all of that is just beyond. That's exactly what I'd hoped to achieve as an author.

Mindy: So tell me about them finding you. How did Hachette go about discovering you? Were they looking for stories about the Ukraine? How did you pop up on their radar?

Tetyana: This is a little bit cynical, but I think publishers and agents were observing what was happening since February. I think probably were looking for the angle as to how we can get more voices and stories about Ukraine out there. The best thing you can do is amplify what's happening and not within a war narrative lens. It's about the humanity behind what's right next door. When February happened, I kind of went into high gear Ukrainian mode. I wanted people to understand that if they wanted somebody who was connected to Ukraine, but in a modern way, I'm one of those people. So I managed to make sure that all of my social channels were very focused on Ukraine creators, literature, art, activism. What I didn't want to do is put the focus on... Russia is evil, talking about Putin... All of that, it's so negative, that even though that was the reality, I wanted people to understand about who Ukrainians were. So I put myself in hyper-focus, and I'm pretty sure, if I'm not mistaken, that a couple of the editors at Bookouture were already following my Instagram and my social media. So they were aware of me because I'd only spoken about my family story over the years, but now it went into overdrive. And I think they were just kind of maybe monitoring me. Maybe I was the atypical writer. I'm very social media friendly. So I kind of cover all grounds, and I think they were probably, if I'm not putting words in their mouth, I think they were just interested in what I had to offer as far as kind of a well-rounded author that they might be able to work with.

Mindy: I really, again, just love that idea of you having a great story and good writing and a powerful narrative, but just the timing not being there. I was just looking at your Instagram. Obviously, that is where you're really super active. With that in mind, last thing, why don't you let listeners know where they can find you online and where they can find the book, The Child of Ukraine.

Tetyana: I feel like I'm everywhere. I have a website, Tetyana Denford dot com, and you can find links to order any of my books. I've also self-published some poetry books. People can drop me their email there and that way they can stay updated. I'm on Twitter at Tetyana Writes - quite active on there, as well as my Instagram, which is the same handle at Tetyana Writes. I also do a show that I host called The Craft and Business of Books, and it basically interviews editors, publicists, agents, authors about the behind the scenes of their experience about being traditionally published and even self-published. I'm part of a documentary with Frontline News coming out at the end of the summer about what happened in Ukraine. It's not easy viewing. I love Frontline, and I think it's gonna be a beautiful and harrowing documentary. And The Child of Ukraine, you can find it on Amazon. It's out on audio, ebook, as well as print everywhere.

Mindy:          Writer Writer Pants on Fire is produced by Mindy McGinnis. Music by Jack Korbel. Don't forget to check out the blog for additional interviews, writing advice and publication tips at Writer Writer Pants on Fire dot com. If the blog or podcast have been helpful to you or if you just enjoy listening, please consider donating. Visit Writer Writer Pants on Fire dot com and click “support the blog and podcast” in the sidebar.