The Ring of the Dark Elves follows a cursed ring through gods, elves, giants, and mortals until the heroic Sigurd and shieldmaiden Brynhild are caught in a tragic struggle between love, betrayal, and fate. What drew you to the cursed ring as the foundation for this novel?

I first listened to Richard Wagner’s operatic cycle, The Ring of the Nibelung, and realized I had never heard the story before. Not surprising, since Wagner created it by fusing Norse sagas with German medieval epic and myths. In his work, the enchanted ring causes all the trouble, just as in Tolkien’s trilogy. It’s a great symbol for love of power and the corruption it can cause.

How did you balance staying faithful to Norse mythology with making the story accessible to readers unfamiliar with the original legends?

Much of mythology is based on human nature, so it’s not hard to translate it into more accessible terms. We are not as distant from our ancestors as we like to think. We still suffer from jealousy, envy, greed and the pangs of love.

Sigurd and Brynhild’s relationship becomes the emotional heart of the novel. How did you approach developing their romance within a story whose tragic outcome is rooted in myth?

A myth is a traditional story explaining some natural phenomenon in a supernatural sense. Almost any of our lives could be told as a myth. Love is a mysterious, powerful emotion and/or decision which we only partially understand. I believe it’s the foundation of our existence. When I was a child, looking at sunlight on a tree, I had a revelation in which I saw that love is what sustains the universe. So I just told their story like any other love story, which is powerful enough in itself.

The novel shows powerful characters discovering that they cannot fully control fate. What did you want readers to take away from that theme?

When I’m writing, I don’t really think about themes. I just focus on what’s happening to the characters, what drives them, and the consequences for them. Odin, lord of the Aesir, tries to postpone the end of the world, which isn’t wrong, but he learns that he can’t force other people to follow his agenda. Gunnar, indeed all of the Giukung royal family, use deception and manipulation to increase their power, and learn that it ends in ruin.

Sigurd seeks truth and honor, and like many of our heroes even to the present day, is destroyed by those who hate goodness.

It would be a bleak tale, if it were not that it is not the last word. I left hints in the book that Odin and his Aesir are not the final arbiters of fate; the runes of truth and justice are carved as deep as a spear is long into the World-Ash Tree, and the Aesir did not carve them there.

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