Maria Semenova is a writer who can be safely called one of the "pillars" of Slavic fantasy. An excellent Slavic historian, translator, and laureate of many literary prizes.
Biography
Semenova was born in Leningrad (now St. Petersburg) on the first day of November 1958. Both parents were scientists; smart topics were always read and discussed in the family. Therefore, Mary began to read early and possessed an indefatigable imagination, telling her loved ones stories that were born in her head even before she learned to write.
Parents didn’t take their daughter’s “creativity” seriously, but in the eighth grade, a book describing the Norman conquests in 1066 fell into her hands. From this began a real passion, first to the history of the northern peoples, and then to the past of the Slavs as a whole.
After school, Semenova did not dare to choose a literary activity for herself, and yielding to the entreaties of her parents, in 1976 she went to get higher education at LIAP, having received the profession of an engineer. It was in his student years that the famous novel by Semenova, “The Lame Smith”, was written.
Career
At first, writing remained only Mary's hobby. At first she worked as a software engineer for about ten years, and she never regretted it. And yet, her novels, novels, historical works and stories periodically appeared, but so far were put aside.
In 1989, Semenova’s first book was published in Children's Literature, followed by the second, in the more serious Lenizdat, and in 1992, Maria finally left her job at a research institute and resigned as a translator and translated Western fiction into Russian in a book publishing house.
Semenova was indignant at the monotony and clichés that reigned in these books, designed for a "wide readership", tired of the monotonous orcs, elves and gnomes scattered over the pages of absolutely any fantasy, and then she decided to combine Slavic mythology with traditions of the genre and historical knowledge in her books.
The legendary Wolfhound was born hard. In order to reliably depict scenes of skirmishes, the writer was engaged in hand-to-hand combat for a long time, in order to understand the topic of magic in more detail - she attended a psychics school, studied ancient navigation, was engaged in sailing and horse riding "To know what I am writing about."
She is the author of the historical encyclopedia "We are Slavs", in which she popularly stated everything that scientists learned about the history of Slavic tribes, having done a tremendous job.
In 1995, the first book of the Wolfhound cycle saw the light of day and was a real shock to science fiction lovers. Semenova wrote his story further, focusing on six books, and also published other novels and novels in the genre she created, which included elements of Celtic, Scandinavian, Slavic and Germanic history and mythology.
Maria Vasilyevna Semyonova was looking forward to an adaptation of the story of her beloved character, but although the film about Volkodav became one of the rental leaders, she was completely disappointed with him, saying that the book was "just castrated."
