“I prefer to live beyond trends than allow myself to be simplified”: Helelena Sokovenina

Actually, this interview was published a year ago, but only in paper edition. Now we have the whole thing online, so I'll leave it here.

In short, here I am, Helena Sokovenina, the founder of "Adventure Press" and a writer who is mistakenly considered a children's.

Raised on adventure literature, Helena Sokovenina writes in her own books about the non-trivial adventures of knightly rogues-advertisers, the recognizable relationships of a modern schoolchild with his parents, and the vibrant “inner kitchen” of the magazine’s editorial staff. In her books — crossing eras humor, and attention to detail.

Is writing a calling or more like a craft?

I think this is more of a curse, akin to selling your soul, but, seriously, it’s just a way to live. There are people like me, for whom storytelling is their main life tool. A way to understand yourself and others, to see reality from the outside, to compare the past and present, to tell people what you consider important. This is something close to psychotherapy. But don’t confuse literature with expressive writing: publishers and editors even have a “swearing” for poor authors: “this text is not literature, but psychotherapy.” 

The fundamental difference between venting and literature is that the writer is directed towards the reader: to convey information, to find points of intersection, to make contact, to become an interlocutor for the reader. The psychotherapy text is all about emotions: the author simply pours out. The psychotherapists do not recommend reading such texts, not only giving them to others, but also to re-read them yourself. The goal is just to be genuine which gives you an opportunity to be able to sort out your thoughts later, beyond your writing. The form doesn’t matter.

For a writer, it’s the other way around: contact with the reader is critically important.

How did you deal with reading as a child and a teenager? What was the way you entered the world of books?

They just forgot me by the bookshelf (laughs). Our house was right next to the Daugava embankment. My father grew up with adventures at sea, dreamt of becoming a sailor and often went to the harbour as a child, and so did I. I always felt some promise in the air, and the shelf of adventure books was always part of that world for me. It was as if Jules Verne, Conan Doyle, Herbert Wells and Jack London had personally promised me something. I was also lucky in pre-school; they read to us a lot, and many of those books would frighten modern parents: the stories of London and Seton-Thompson, the stories of Saltykov-Shchedrin and the fairy tales of the peoples of the world - especially them. Now, as an adult reader, I understand that in the USSR, isolated from the world, our teachers tried to give us children as complete a picture as possible of different cultures, to make us feel part of life - not easy, perhaps, but interesting. When you study the cultures of other countries, you see the differences, but you also see the similarities.

When did you realize that writing was your path?

There is a funny story. I remember I was about four years old, and the teacher at my preschool said: "We have Pushkin Street here in Riga, our Lena Sokovenina lives there.”

The lesson was, naturally, about Pushkin, we were reading his fairy tales. But somehow I became wondering whether such an important street name obliges me to do something (laughs). In fact, what made me a writer, on the one hand, was constantly listening to spoken language. It was interesting for me to try to imitate someone's way of speaking. But I was too shy for parodies, so I went into a mental dialogue with an imaginary interlocutor. This still has been one of the normal states for me ever since.

On the other hand, angry dissatisfaction played a role: I was so puzzled how poorly people understood each other. Therefore, in my mind I was always trying to explain something to adults. They are so hasty at making conclusions. 

Seriously, even at three years old you are amazed at how easily people jump to conclusions and how little interest they have in learning anything.

Where do the characters in your books come from? 

I wondered what would happen if I met them in reality. I don't mean, for example, Uncle Artemius ("U.A.'s System Errors"), because he is quite real, he even allowed me to use his real name. Petya Oslikov is my son in detail, but in general he is any child of his age. 

My favourite way to find a hero is real life. This does not mean that everything is copied directly from it. For example, the heroes of "The Improvisers" are actually a complex mixture: here are my favourite types from the books I grew up with: the generous rogues of O. Henry, "Jack Vosmerkin the American" by Nikolay Smirnov and the real us. 

I have a colleague and friend, Oona Anderson, she and I do the same stand-up as Fedya Letny and Leo Beryozkin does in my books. But, you see, as girls we were considerably losing. It would all have ended in marriage, quickly and boringly, I thought, and I made the characters men, even with the spoken up slogan "no women". I did it precisely because of the boredom of ordinary life. 

It's how unbearably boring we make our lives that creates heroes for me. They are the answer to my own questions. What do I have to do to live differently? I just thought, if I were different, what would I get out of it? Is it possible to make lemonade out of lemons and turn my weaknesses into my victories, and if so, what would be the way?

Your books are shortlisted for literary competitions and win. Is this part of the book community important to you?

Speaking about the “Kniguru” competition, it was something like a brotherhood: mutual support and assistance. I am really grateful to them. This is the real path for young authors. Personally for me, the criterion is the readers themselves, not the awards. If they buy my books, I go: oh, good, it worked. As it has happened to Petya Oslikov. I see that the children are happy, they are finally heard; parents are happy, things become clearer to them. As for indignant reviews of conservative parents or childless critics, who cares?

If people don’t buy the book, as was the case, for example, with “The Improvisers,” then yeah, I know I was being complicated again. But there's nothing I can do about it 

This is a certain difficult moment: the cultural vector of nowadays is such that people are taught to be not even simple, but primitive. Everything else is out of scope. I'm more comfortable living outside the boundaries than allowing myself to be simplified. All this efficient management is not good for anyone. We can’t keep a balance, we have no control, just as Dostoevsky said: no matter what we take on, hold us up, seven people!

Well, if everyone likes the book, as was the case with “Uncle Artemius System Errors,” I’m just happy. Let's give credit to my fantastic editors, because, honestly, it wasn’t until Anastasia Ponomareva, the production editor, and Anastasia Shevchenko, the literary editor, read the text, that I realized it was about an IT guy, a geek, and it comes that I, in turn, was also a geek, like all reading people now, judging by the success of the book. It was a remarkable match. The right team for a book is even more than half the success.

Your Adventure Press electronic publishing house has existed for more than 10 years; how would you describe its fate - what people and events became significant in its life path?

As for Adventure Press e-publishing house, we jokingly call it an almshouse. The 2007 appropriate age law in Russia has made us marginalized. We have always been rebellions, I am afraid. I created a publishing house that would unite children and adults, rather than separate. You know, in Russia, there is no even such term as cross-generational. All content is separated now for kids or for adults, and I consider this a crime.

 I don’t understand and don’t want to understand how it is even possible to isolate children from real life and what is its goal. I see how steadily the curve of teenage mental disorders has been rising during the last decades, and all I can do here is just keep going. Our audience has never changed significantly, except that our readers and I, like birds of a feather, continue to find each other all around the world. 

We can talk about the phenomenon of "playing England", for example, some of our books are addressed to those who grew up with the Soviet "Holmes" and the whole cohort of British-lovers, but this moment is also dying out these days. However, I believe that if we shift the emphasis slightly more towards parody, the "Imaginary England" series will be maintained and even expanded. After all, a huge number of people around the world are interested in understanding and digesting English culture, its humour, and - this is a complicated bit - dealing with all our misunderstandings; the parodies seem to be a way.

Your books are published by Samokat, what is the relationship like?

We had a common interest (apart from my basic job there as a publishing editor) in that I was trying to develop the direction of e-books. We have a few interactive projects. For example, Svetlana Lavrova's wonderful spy novel "Trilobites Are Not to Blame" was published in two formats: Paper for children - by Samokat, and electronic, for everyone - by us. This is a kind of experiment; the publisher, Irina Balakhonova, and I wanted to see how two different formats would be perceived by the public; whether they would help or hinder each other. 

You know, this is so much "Adventure Press" text. Knowing that publishers are reluctant to take a risk on something new - although Trilobites is undoubtedly a very new, outstanding thing - and that an e-book without a paper book will simply go unnoticed in Russia, I took the risk of proposing a joint project to Samokat. We still don't believe it, but we did it! 

The second experiment is the interactive project "Improvisers", in which a single plot crosses two eras, two countries, two duos of characters. We are all still wondering whether it was the same plot or two separate stories.

It was very interesting to create the entire crossing worlds universe.

Today it is fashionable to think of “universes”: Marvel heroes, Harry Potter, The Lord of the Rings, etc. Tell us, in which universes do you feel at home? Holmes? Jules Verne?

You just listed all my universes. I still feel at home with O. Henry's characters, and Edgar Poe, and the Jane Eyre universe is also mine. New favorites are all using the book universe. Such authors like Jasper Fforde's Thursday Next series, Neal Stephenson with The Dodo Inc. or Felix Palma with The Victorian Trilogy are included. These are worlds strongly connected to the classics, unrestrainedly ironic and self-ironic, and yes, this is very much my thing. Well, let’s not forget Pratchett, of course. 

I don’t recommend anything to anyone, but it’s great if someone is inspired along with me.

The full interview was published in the magazine “Perspective. Generation of Search" No. 4/2023.