N. K. Blazevic, Inspired by Nature

N. K. Blazevic was born in Montreal and currently lives in Saint-Andre-D’Argenteuil, Quebec, where she has become a passionate beekeeper. She studied art for a year in college but she could not nurture her talent or interest there. She was much more interested in being outdoors. She fled to the countryside of the Quebec Laurentians where she apprenticed for a stone mason and cultivated her love of art and animals. She considers herself a student of life with a keen interest in the natural world. She hopes her book Grimenna can not only entertain and enchant readers, but can help to promote a green renaissance.

Interview with N. K Blazevic

NK BlazevicWhat type of stories hold the most fascination for you?
Along with romantic fiction I think good old fashioned fairytales and myths hold the most fascination for me. I love them all, from Grimm fairytales to greek myths or Native American Folktales to Celtic lore.

What inspired you to write fiction and what continues to inspire you?
What inspired me was probably all the other works of fiction out there and realizing there was nothing stopping me from doing it too. I enjoy fiction because I can use it as a creative outlet for emotions and feelings I probably otherwise wouldn’t know what to do with. It’s therapeutic and relaxing. I also enjoy creating my own worlds over which I have complete dominion. If I don’t like the law of gravity I can change it. It’s pretty addictive.

We see by your bio that the two major points of influence in your life are art and nature. Where do these things intersect for you? And as a follow-up, where do they diverge?
Good question! Nature is the ultimate muse. She is a limitless realm of inspiration. Usually when I am out and about in the natural world I have this maniacal drive to catalogue and capture everything I see. I regularly overload my phone and camera with pictures. It’s just all so beautiful and curious. Art is a way of expressing the human emotional part of my observations. A rock is a rock, a nicely shaped deposit of minerals eroded and sun beaten. Until you add art! You can sketch the rock and suddenly there is an undine strewn in melancholy across it waiting for her mortal love to return to her. I usually insert some sort of human aspect into a natural scene, it’s like a way of connecting or communicating with it and getting to know it from my own human perspective. I think art and nature are pretty inseparable. Art is pretty much the human channel through which nature and also human nature is expressed and explored.

You have many different methods of expression for your artistic side. Which medium do you most enjoy working in and why?
I deeply enjoy a black ball point pen and regular old computer paper. This is where all my ideas are first conceived. It’s brain candy.

You are a Beekeeper. How did you learn this skill and why do you practice it?
I learned the practical side from my partner Stephen who is a second generation beekeeper. I am learning a lot of alternative beekeeping theory via correspondence from beekeeping associations in Europe to integrate into our current methods. Honeybees did originate from Europe. They seem to be very forward thinking and have progressive ideas about bee centred beekeeping and how to sustain bees in our currently collapsing agricultural environment. I practice beekeeping because they are critical to human survival and in todays landscape they need stewardship and protection. I have many miles to go before I sleep as Robert Frost would say. Many things to learn and improve but my partner and I are both very determined to keep bees in this world.

Tatiana BlazevicWhat is your favorite (read) book and why?
The Pillars of the Earth by Ken Follet. I don’t have the words to express how much it moved me. Just, wow.

What is the book you dream of writing and haven’t yet?
i would actually like to one day create a graphic novel. Maybe of Grimenna!

Background information on Grimenna
It all started with my little sister Tatiana. She was born with a congenital heart defect which left her hospitalized for most of her life. She underwent serious reparative surgeries and towards the end received hundreds of blood transfusions. The one thing that truly bound us together was my story telling which I started orally in the back of my grandmothers car. Because she was in the hospital so much I invented characters to join her there, drawing them and writing them for her. For every lengthy hospital visit I tried to procure a new instalment of some grand made up story. The main character of Grimenna is her avatar, her method of escape from the hospital. I don’t really know what she loved more, the fact that she had her own character and her own story or that I was writing for her and only her. When the time came and she passed the story was a mess, I mean I had to come up with so many adventures at this point the story had stopped making sense. Years later I put it together in the format we see today with the great help of the EDGE team. I know she would have really loved it. This is my way of remembering her and I am most thankful for it.


More about N. K. Blazevic

Grimenna

Listen to an excerpt from Grimenna.

amazon kindle 

 

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An Introduction to Grimenna and the author

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