How I Got the Idea for Svetlana Krüsh
by Chris Orcutt
My wife, Alexas, and her sharp-tongued sisters gave me a feeling for how Svetlana talks—crisply, with authority. Alexas is much sweeter than Svetlana ever would be, but she knew what I was going for with the character and acted as my consultant on the feminine aspects of Svetlana.
As a longtime fan of Ian Fleming’s work, I always preferred the James Bond novels to the movies, and of the movies, I much preferred Sean Connery’s Bond over Roger Moore’s. However, I did like The Spy Who Loved Me for Barbara Bach’s character, Major Amasova (Agent Triple-X), and for the tension between her and Bond. She is hands-down the sexiest Bond “girl” in all of the films (with Goldfinger girl Jill Masterson—painted in gold—running a close second), and the way she looks in that dress she wears in the film makes me drool every time.
Next, at the time I was creating Svetlana, I was teaching English as an adjunct professor at Baruch College in Manhattan. For some reason, Baruch is a magnet for smart, hardworking, and in some cases, insanely beautiful, Ukrainian-American girls. (Kind of makes you wonder about the Chernobyl disaster.) During my tenure at the college, I had the good fortune of teaching maybe 10 such young women. And one of them had the first name of Svetlana.
Finally, I have always been interested in chess, so much so that I competed in tournaments and had a (very modest) national rating. Women chess players intrigued me, and I actually dated one for a while (she wasn’t a pro, but she could kick my ass). So I started researching professional women players to build Svetlana’s character, and I saw one who intrigued me: Alexandra Kosteniuk, referred to as “the Anna Kournikova of chess.”
This stirred my imagination: what if my chess-playing “Watson” were both brilliant and gorgeous? (I don’t want to limit the reader’s imagination, but Svetlana’s looks were inspired by Barbara Bach and one of the Victoria’s Secret models, Adriana Lima.) For the character’s last name, I combed through the listings of ranked women chess players, and one, Irina Krush, grabbed me. I loved the implication of her “crushing” another player, but I wanted the sound of the long “u” because it sounds sexier. (The idea of this sound came from the cover of a men's magazine in which Heidi Klum was the featured model. The subheader on the cover read, "Heidi Klum — Rhymes with 'Boom-boom'," and that otherwise useless factoid stuck.) To give Svetlana a similar sound in her last name, I modified her backstory so she was estranged from her father, and to distance herself from him she added an umlaut (ü) to her last name.
Thus, Svetlana Krüsh.
Or, as Svetlana might say, Quod Erat Demonstrandum.
Q.E.D.
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The character name "Svetlana Krüsh" and the novel name "A Real Piece of Work" are copyright ©2008 by Chris Orcutt. All rights reserved. This document may not be reproduced, in part or its entirety, without written permission of the author.