What’s it about?

Amy’s tale starts in 1884 and is a fast-paced chase across the British Empire.  Her quarry is Thomas Payne, the man who sold her into a brothel.  We have spectacular fights, Celtic folklore, and a whiff of steampunk.  Vengeance runs hand in hand with the slow recovery from trauma.  Eventually we have our showdown, our meeting of victim and prey, and then for Amy everything goes so sadly wrong.  What she gets isn’t what she needed.  Shots ring out and a broken woman flies away…

Who’s she like, give me contemporary pointers!

If Sally Lockhart had the grit of Lisbeth Salander and was moving in the darkness of Caleb Carr’s New York, then I think we would have a taste of young Miss Amy Grace. 

Why this tall tale, what has Amy got that others haven’t?   

To start with she passes both Bechdel and Mako Mori, she is a truly rounded and independent character, not a facsimile, not a simpering damsel waiting to be rescued.  She has flaws, failings, depths of despair.  She has all of these, and she has triumphs too.  Amy is driven, focused and vulnerable. 

She can channel the battle calm and power of warrior priestesses from Irish legend, but she isn’t dependent or driven by this energy – it aids, it does not dominate or define her.  The violence isn’t without consequence, she is knocked down, she is cut, and she bleeds, she suffers for her trials. 

Amy isn’t some big-busted Amazonian caricature, she is a petite 5’2” woman with a tower of red hair, and a temper to match.  She drinks whiskey, smokes, and dabbles with drugs.  She seeks no male companion to complete her, instead her occasional itches are scratched by warm and obliging women.  Amy is the amalgam of many things, but above all she is an interesting character without current equal or comparative singular reference.  She has all the potential to carve a space for herself in the literary world – she just needs a helping hand to get started. 

Every teller of tall tales gets here.

Each and every scribbler of stories reaches this point.

Are we kidding ourselves?

Do these scribbles really have value?

Would anyone really pay good money to read your writing?

Introspection is a lonely place.

I feel my stories have merit, I am adamant that they are ripe for commercial exploitation.

If you print them, you WILL make money.

And therein lies the crux.

Nobody else believes me.

My path is lonely, is one of solitude, the loneliness of a long-distance runner…

To stop, or to make one last push?

We are at that tipping point.

To go on, or to stop.

The will once so resolute, this we are slowly losing.

Stay safe – remain sane!

Ever write anything so dark, so gruesome, that if it was ever to make it to celluloid, protests and riots would be a real possibility?

Did you ever scribble something that was so dark that Beta readers now avoid eye contact?

I have such a segment.

I’ve added it, taken it away, and then reinserted it.

It is cruel, on any objective measure it is indeed a dark collection of words.

But I wrote it.

I’m not a dark man, a sadistic or remotely cruel man, but write this thing indeed I did.

Writers somehow find those dark images and bring them into the light.

It is strange.

Quiet unassuming tea drinking man describes depravity…

I could delete it and many related passages.

I could paint it all magnolia sweetness and light with all the dramatic tension of an episode of the Brady Bunch.

I could, but I won’t.

Yin/Yang.

Darkness/Light.

Evil exists, glib euphemistic descriptors don’t do it, and especially for those who suffer and then survive, the truth of such events needs to be told. 

I’m not a bad/sad man hiding behind blue eyes.

Empathy is key.

Respect paramount.

Torture porn isn’t my thing.

Maybe folk will wince, feal uncomfortable and read on – I hope they do.

Stay safe – be kind to yourself and be kind to as many other people as you can!