Dissecting Rosetta Yorke
Who is Rosetta Yorke?
Rosetta Yorke lives in a little North Yorkshire village where owls hoot and foxes shriek in the night. She writes ghostly horror, sci-fi, and Gothic romance short fiction. Studying Old English poetry and Old Norse sagas at Durham University fostered her love of language, whilst summers spent excavating Anglo-Saxon graves and a late Iron Age logboat made her appreciate how the lives, loves, and concerns of people from the past are still as relevant today as they were back then. Her affinity for all things dark stems from those long-ago weeks she spent crouched ‘six feet under’, releasing restless skeletons in a race against time before fragile earth walls collapsed on her, or municipal contractors redeveloped the site.
Rosetta is married, with two grown-up sons and two young grandsons. By day, she’s the evil empress in a pillow castle who repels trebuchet missiles fired by teddy bear armies; by night, masked and cloaked, her imagination rows an ebony gondola through silent fog-shrouded canals to a sinister Venetian palazzo or gallops a black horse away from the Revenue men over windswept Yorkshire moors down to a smuggler’s sea. Her short stories and poetry have been published in anthologies by Black Hare Press, Stygian Lepus Magazine, Undertaker Books, Mocking Owl Roost, HorrorAddicts.net, Dragon Soul Press, and Dark Rose Press.
Find Rosetta here:
Website: rosettayorke.wordpress.com
Amazon: www.amazon.com/author/rosetta-yorke_uk.1
Goodreads: www.goodreads.com/user/show/61837889-rosetta-yorke
BookBub: www.bookbub.com/authors/rosetta-yorke
Facebook: @RosettaYorke.UK.Author
Instagram: @rosettayorke1
Bluesky: bsky.app/profile/rosetta.bsky.social
LinkTr.ee: lintr.ee/rosettayorke
Pinterest: uk.pinterest.com/rosettayorke
YouTube: www.youtube.com/@rosettayorke
Tell us about yourself. When did your passion for reading and writing start?
My earliest memories are of sitting curled up on a window seat with a book. I inherited my love of reading from my mum who was a primary school teacher. She used to joke that when I had my head in a book, I wouldn’t notice if a bomb exploded next to me. Writing came much later, once my sons were grown up. Mum was always my cheerleader and the sounding board for my story ideas. Without her encouragement and enthusiasm, I wouldn’t be an author today. Since Mum’s death last autumn, I draw my creative strength from the miniature mohair teddy bear she made me which sits on the table next to where I write.
How much of your writing is ‘write what you know’ or ‘researched to death’?
Definitely ‘researched to death’! There are two reasons for this. One, I’m obsessed with historical accuracy. I dread making a glaring error that screams at my readers and spoils their enjoyment, especially as many of my stories are set in real locations. Two, research is so much fun. I love diving down online rabbit holes and, in the process, uncovering fascinating new information that always sends my story ideas flying off at unforeseen tangents. As a result, my writing has become more adventurous and, ironically, more successful, which has given me more confidence in all aspects of my life. It’s always a wrench to tear myself away from research and start the actual writing.
Have you ever based a character on someone you know?
No, but I frequently channel my feelings about a family member’s abusive ex into my creativity, using those hostile emotions to fuel the darkness and horror in my stories. It’s a therapeutic process and a great way of relieving my stress—infinitely preferable to resorting to physical violence!
Do recurring themes appear in your stories?
Friendship, trust, ghosts, death, hope, and resilience are themes that often recur in my stories.
Is there a story you must write, and have you written it yet?
A decade ago, I wrote the rough first draft of a time-travel romance set mainly in eighteenth-century Venice. Subsequent family and health crises meant I had to shelve the novel, but the story refuses to stay quiet. Little does it realize, my writing’s changed direction in recent years—any revisions I make now will herald the onset of darkness and horror for the characters within its pages.
Which other authors are you friends with, and how do they help you be a better writer?
I first met Pamela Kenney on Twitter/X, where she’s @PKenneyWriter. We’ve been firm friends and writing buddies for over five years now. She’s always supportive, practical, motivating, and gives bracing advice which never fails to put the rejections I get in perspective and to encourage me to resubmit. I love her wryly humorous books, including the Retired Cop Cozy Mysteries series featuring quirky Meg Spencer, a recently retired homicide detective, who only wants peace and quiet but instead keeps finding dead bodies, everywhere she goes. They’re a great read. You can find them here:
If you could tell your younger writing self anything, what would it be?
Stop agonizing over ' How to…’ books, blogs, and videos—the best way to learn how to write is simply to go ahead and do it. Don’t stress. Don’t procrastinate. Just write.
What does literary success look like to you?
For me, it means the day when I can pick a book off my bookshelf, read my name and title on the cover, and when I open it, find my story inside. It would have to be a hard copy—e-books are convenient, but they don’t feel as real or stir my emotions like the tactile experience of holding a book in my hands, seeing its beautiful cover, stroking its smoothness, smelling that unmistakable scent of paper, and hearing the flutter of its pages. I can lose myself entirely in a physical book in a way I never can in an e-book. When the postman brings me a parcel containing my author’s copy of The Island of No Return, I will feel I’ve attained literary success.
Have you ever Googled yourself? What did you find out that you didn’t already know?
It had never occurred to me to do so! Now that I have, I’ve discovered Google has more than six pages of references to my name, which is mindboggling!
In Relation to your book: 
What sparked the idea for this book?
By chance, I discovered that numerous women at the turn of the century were locked away in mental asylums simply for being suffragettes. (Other reasons for female inmate admissions listed by one asylum for 1864-89included: ‘RELIGIOUS ENTHUSIASM’,‘NYMPHOMANIA’,‘MENSTRUAL DERANGED’, ‘WOMENS TROUBLE’, and clearly most alarming of all,‘NOVEL READING’!
This sparked the germ of an idea for a horror story set in a mental asylum. Shortly afterwards, my husband showed me a 1920s fountain pen, called ‘The Neptune’, which he’d found on his grandfather’s old desk. Consequently, my initial idea crystallized into a modern-day ghost story set in a derelict mental asylum. (As you read The Island of No Return, the significance of the pen becomes clear.)
Why did you choose the island as the setting of this book?
My favourite setting for my stories is Vence, so I investigated what happened in the past to Venetians who were deemed mentally ‘agitated’. My research revealed they were forcibly taken across the lagoon by gondola and immured on Poveglia, a small island eleven miles from Venice. Poveglia, as featured on The Island of No Return’s front cover, has a grim history.
In the eighteenth century, it was Venice’s quarantine station for infectious diseases, including the bubonic plague. In the 1920s, part of its hospital complex was turned into a mental asylum, complete with a ‘mad’ doctor who carried out barbaric experimental treatment on his patients. The hospital closed in 1968 and became derelict.
A decade ago, the Italian government permanently closed the abandoned island to public access. I couldn’t have found anywhere more perfectly suited for my story’s setting than Poveglia.
What challenges did you encounter to finish it?
I was fortunate enough to find several online videos posted by ghost hunters who had visited Poveglia, some before and some after the island was closed to the public.
In the videos, the hospital complex was clearly derelict and overgrown with trees and vines. However, although the ghost hunters helpfully showed the interior of numerous buildings in various states of collapse, the main challenge I faced was that none of them visited the entire complex or explained which building they were inside. I spent ages trying to equate anonymous dark corridors, wrecked staircases, and rubble-filled dormitories to faded rectangles on an old sketch plan of the site. The hospital’s precise layout is an important plot component, and I didn’t want to get it wrong.
Another challenge was deducing how someone in the 1920s would have reached the belfry of the now inaccessible twelfth-century bell tower—by interlinked ladders and landings, or by a staircase? Eventually, I tracked down another Italian bell tower of similar age and design and used its interior layout for my story.
How did you come up with the stars/MCs of this book?
I needed three friends who would risk illegally landing on a prohibited island patrolled by the Venetian police, and a reason why they would want to do so. My research revealed the international Young Architects Competition for 2016 had posed the theoretical challenge of reinventing Poveglia Island into a ‘dream university campus’. This solved all my problems: my MCs became three British architect students who decide to steal a march on rival countries’ teams by visiting the ruins on the actual island, rather than relying on digital information provided by the competition organizers.
What’s your favourite scene?
The scene in the psychiatric ward where Lauren searches for her missing friends, Kim and Ryan, and encounters an unexpected ally.
Is there a particular message that you hope readers will take from the book?
However bad things may seem, don’t despair—there is always hope.
Thank you, Rosetta, it was a pleasure to learn more about you and your writing world.
