#49: Why Heartless Hunter Was Kristen Ciccarelli's Last Chance

Mm.

[laughs] So yeah.

Okay, I'm fascinated, 'cause we're gonna jump into Heartless Hunter-

Okay

... now, and I wanna come back to the outlining process, 'cause now I have so many questions.

Okay.

What was the first spark for Heartless Hunter? How did it first begin?

So, okay, so the first spark for Heartless Hunter was probably my, like, low-key obsession with, um, The Scarlet Pimpernel.

[laughs] Maybe you've, in your deep dive, have, like, come across this.

I have come across this.

[laughs]

[laughs] Um, so when I was in elementary school, we studied...

I don't know how, I don't think it's in the curriculum, um, but we, somebody taught us, um, The Scarlet Pimpernel, which is, most people at, like whenever I go to an event, I always say, "Have you..." If, if The Scarlet Pimpernel comes up, I always ask who has read it, and, like, maybe there's one person.

So it's not a very well-known book, um, and it's also a play, um, they turned it into a play.

Um, and our class went to see the play in Stratford at the Stratford Festival, and ever since then, um, I've just been like, like I said, like, kind of low-key obsessed with the story.

So it's about, it's set during the French Revolution, um, and it's, um, there's this character, Marguerite, who is this French, um, actress, I believe.

I may be getting that wrong.

Um, I think she's a French actress, and she's married to this foppish, um, aristocratic man.

Um, and so she's French and he's English, um, and she's, like, she's so fed up with her, with her foppish husband.

Um, and in the, in the background, there is this, like, mysterious person called the Scarlet Pimpernel who is rescuing, um, aristocrats in France from the f- from the purge, from being executed, and s- and, like, kind of, um, bringing them back to England where they'll be safe.

And in the course of the story, Marguerite gets f- she gets kind of blackmailed by the man who is hunting for the Scarlet Pimpernel, and, um, I won't ex- I won't spoil who it is-

[laughs]

...

but basically, um, like, there's just like, there's a mystery, there's romance, there's swashbuckling, there's, like, kind of like this masked vigilante.

There's, like, all of these things that I just were, like, just really stole my imagination.