What story to write? Fran and Lucy
What sparked the idea that eventually burst into the flaming torch of your manuscript? The history of the house you live in, a political idea, or your own daily struggles? Fran and Lucy from the 2023 MA cohort tell us their sources of inspiration.
Photo by Ethan Hoover on Unsplash
“The idea for Luna and the Sky Gods began with an itch to write about a world where animals and pets were expendable – only having any worth if they could be useful. I wasn’t sure what direction this story would take until towards the end of the first semester when I wrote the first 500 words and Luna appeared on the page – a determined, but lonely deaf girl who will do anything to save her dog from adults who will happily kill an animal rather than cure it. Luna’s deafness surprised me as I had no intention of putting so much of myself on the page but after a term of widening my reading and writing horizons, it felt a natural, albeit scary decision to take. Luna’s story has been a journey of discovery both creatively and at a deeply personal level. From those initial nerve-wracking sessions of sharing Luna’s deaf experience of the world, I’ve grown in confidence, and as with all good character arcs, Luna and I finish the story different people to the ones who began it.”
Fran’s u
pper MG own-voice fantasy adventure is called Luna and the Sky Gods.
When 12-year-old Luna’s beloved dog, Seven, becomes ill, she knows the wardens of the Golden Isles will take him away forever. But escape isn’t easy because the wardens protect Luna and the other orphans from the prowling wolves and monstrous cloudraptors that circle the island. Luna needs help, but being deaf, the only person she trusts is her brother, Wink. When things go terribly wrong, she must learn to work with the other children — and even the animals they’ve been brought up to fear — in order to secure a life of freedom, not just for Seven but for everyone.
“Our house is an old house, and as many old places do, it has stories to tell. When we moved in, we began peeling back some of the layers of the lives that had been led within its walls and it revealed some of its secrets. This made me wonder even more about the people who had lived here before us. How many might have been squeezed into what we think of as a quite small house? What would life have been like then? What stories would they have to tell? I didn’t know very much about coal mining in Somerset until we moved here. Our house, along with its neighbours, was built for the families of the men and boys who worked in the mines. On a visit to the local museum, where there was a special exhibition about the children of the mines, my imagination was sparked. I have two sons – if we had lived in our house back then, they would both have left school at ten and gone to work in the mine. It felt as though the ghosts of the past were telling me about life back then, and maybe that’s why my story is full of them. I began writing in the place where my story is set. When I started the MA I intended to develop a new story, and during my first year I did. But these characters just wouldn't leave me alone, and so here they are in Iris and the Invisibles.”
Iris and the Invisibles is an upper MG supernatural adventure.
When Iris and her dad move to Batchley to make a fresh start after she’s had a bad time at school, everything changes. Iris discovers that she can see the dead. Always having invisible friends more than real friends, Iris discovers that they are actually ghosts. Her new-found ghost friend, Albie, and elderly neighbour, Betty, give her a mission to discover the truth about Albie’s death. Iris is just beginning to feel she belongs somewhere when she encounters Aterquar, an ancient force lurking below Batchley. It threatens not only to bleed its darkness into the world around her, but also the very lives of Iris and her family.