Showing posts with label Dudley Castle. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Dudley Castle. Show all posts
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.
***
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.
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.
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