Silent Scream Author: Angela Marsons Stops By

Happy Thursday!! 

I have a very special guest for you all today; Angela Marsons, author of the soon to be published Silent Scream. I'm reading this right now and I can't wait to post the review for you, and i'm even more excited about YOU getting a copy and letting me know what you think of it too! 

Set in the Black Country, this is the DEBUT D.I. Kim Stone Novel, and even half way through... I want to know what D.I. Kim Stone's next investigation will be!  Before I give it all away... i'm going to hand over to the Author herself, Angela to tell you a little bit more about Silent Scream. 

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Silent Scream is the first book I've written based in my own area of the Black Country.  Stories written prior to this had been focused on areas I thought a reader would find more appealing or glamorous.

After all, the Charles Dickens's novel, The Old Curiosity Shop, describes the factory chimneys that "poured out their plague of smoke, obscured the light and made foul the melancholy air".

And It is widely felt that J.R.R. Tolkien based the grim region of Mordor on The Black Country.

However, my favourite anecdote is that when traveling through the area Queen Victoria would gently lower her carriage blind.

So, why would I chose to base Silent Scream in such a place?

When I started Silent Scream I wrote it just for me, without any real intention of it meeting the outside world.  This gave me the freedom to set the book wherever I wanted to and found that my own area suited the main character very well.

I quickly learned that the area is not named for the thick black smoke that poured from industrial chimneys but for the outcropping coal seam that turned the soil black.

By the 1620's there were 20,000 'smiths' within a 10 mile radius of Dudley Castle.  Many of which were individual smallholdings used by families to supplement their income.

The area has a rich heritage in manufacturing chains and anchors.  The main anchor for the Titanic was forged in Netherton and was pulled through the streets to Dudley Port by 20 shire horses.

A strike that began in Wednesbury in 1913 grew to include 40,000 workers across The Black Country and was fundamental in establishing the first minimum wage.

As I researched the history of The Black Country I found myself wanting to explore the difficulties faced by the area since the decline of the steelworks and coal mines, but keep a sense of its dark and industrial past.

It is now, more than ever, a place I am proud to call my home.