Michael Gregorio Biography, Books, and Similar Authors

Interview

Donna Chavez chats with the husband and wife writing team of Michael G Jacob and Daniela De Gregorio, coauthors of the Hanno Stiffeniis series about the third book in the series, A Visible Darkness, the dangerous business of amber collection and the next book in the series. Also, in a separate piece the authors explain the story behind the series.

As I read A Visible Darkness I was fascinated by the act of collecting amber. Michael and Daniela were kind enough to answer my questions plus give a bonus teaser about the next Hanno Stiffeniis novel already in the works!

There is, it seems, a rich history surrounding Baltic amber. How much did you know about the amber trade before embarking on your novel? How did you research this?

We were looking for an original setting for the third story in the series, and the Baltic coast seemed the ideal place, given that amber has been collected on the shore for many centuries. It was a dangerous job. You could be swept off your feet, drowned or maimed. We were fascinated by the bravery and the desperation of young girls working in the sea, searching for precious amber deposits, sometimes stealing what they found, often being murdered for it. There was plenty of scope for a novel based on the world of amber.

We knew very little when we started, but it's surprising what you can discover. We read books from the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, notably "Succini Prussici" by Phillip Jacob Hartmann, and the ancient laws which governed the gathering of amber in Prussia, and the punishments for ...