My Search for a Heroine - warts and all

Before you are a selection of eye-catching dystopian artworks of eye-catching female characters. They are magnificent, sexy and desirable. All images are done by various female artists that I would readily applaud. 

1. Then I ask myself, why do we always imagine sexy heroines in fantasy or dystopian worlds?

2. Is it because we men want to fall in love with them and ride off into a post-apocalyptic sunset? 

3. Yet all of these artists, of the images here, are women. 

4. Do they imagine such things too? 

5. Are they catering to an audience of just men? I don't think so, because many a female enjoys post-apocalyptic fiction too. 

My Search for a Heroine.

At my old writing class in Leigh-on-Sea, Essex, we had a tutor named Marian Hughs. She said, always use the things around you to write a story. Such things are your tools. She is right. Also, other people close to me had tools. And making a good story always has roots that can be dug up and re-fashioned for different uses.   

I always wanted to do a strong female character in the dystopian London of H.G. Wells' War of the Worlds. Therefore, I sat down and had a good think on the matter. I did not want sexy ladies who had walked off of the catwalk to slip harmoniously into the role of a dystopian world hero. In fact, I wanted real Earthy people of our everyday world thrown into this diabolical dystopian world. I wanted to turn individuals inside out and justify doing it because of the smashed world about them. Nothing normal remained. Only abnormal was acceptable. Ugly and wrinkled was the new beautiful. 

I needed my heroine to be completely controversial in every way. I wanted an old severe-looking battle axe. Something that would make the average male stop dead in his tracks. But then an old ill-favoured looking woman who is decent and good. Someone that anyone, (male or female) could see was a once moral and kind person. A well-intentioned and determined wrinkled old individual that had justifiably become a complete contradiction in the normal world but an acceptable and welcome twisted character in Victorian London's post-apocalyptic, Martian invaded, city of the dead.   

My third pastiche novel is called, The Last Days of Purgatory. It is set in the alternative post-apocalyptic Victorian London. A city that has fallen under the invasion of Martian driven tripod machines. Again, it is like the second story; the Martians are dying of various things. The huge alien machine monoliths are all over the city but most are just dormant and dead. I said most, but some are still active and my twisted heroine and her two misfit companions are up against those few rouge alien machines that wander the city.

The idea of my new heroine came from two sources. As a child, I often asked my mother about her childhood. The way many children ask or are told of things our parents did at our age. My mother and aunt would get full of bile when they spoke of their infant years in a convent. My mother was born in London, November 1939 and my aunt was a couple of years older. They were put on a train and sent to a distant convent run by nuns early in the war. Many children were evacuated from the cities due to bombing etc.

My Aunt Gladys can remember my Grandmother waving them off on a train while a young nun tried to console them. The nun was overseeing the matter and escorting the evacuees to where ever the convent was. My aunt also told me that my mother was very young and was sitting on the train and gurgling the way very young infants do. She was not aware of what was happening.

My mother's first memories of growing up were in this Roman Catholic convent and she said she new Gladys, (my aunt) was her sister. She could not remember who her mother was but she knew Gladys was her kin. They had other older siblings but only Gladys and my mother were at this convent. Both my mother and aunt said the nuns were very strict and would chastise them all in harsh ways. Often beating them and locking them in a cupboard under the stairs. Even today, my aunt shakes with anger when recollecting the dark days of the convent. They both admit it was a very miserable time. 

My Grandmother never visited them once during the war and towards the end, my nan, another aunt, and an infant uncle were buried alive when a doodlebug hit Hobady Road in Poplar - East London where their house was. It was obviously during a bombing raid and near the end of the war. The doodlebug (as they called it) hit further along the terraces and the entire block of houses collapsed like a deck of cards or perhaps a domino effect might be a better way of describing it. 

All my relations survived the housing collapse and were dug out by rescue services. However, my Grandmother had sustained very bad head injuries and was taken to the Royal London in Whitechapel, I believe. As a consequence, my mother and aunt remained in the convent even longer than most children because my Grandmother needed to convalesce and recover from her head traumas. 

One thing, of the convent, that stood out in my mother's memory was an old Irish nun who was kind to them. She would often protect them from the other more stricter nuns. She said this old nun was harsh of manner and ugly, yet she always looked after them and often turned her bile on the nuns who might be too strict with the children. As a consequence, the children of the convent often flocked close to her. My mother included. She said this old nun died during her stay at the convent and many of the children were upset and a little scared because she would not be able to protect them from the other strict nuns of the convent.

One day, my Grandmother turned up at the convent and my mother and aunt were taken home to Poplar in East London. My mother was six years old by this time and she was in awe of her elder siblings she met for the first time. She often spoke of the strange yet kind old nun at the convent, but can't recall her name. She maintains, to this day, that the old Irish nun was kind to them but died.

I also saw a wall mural somewhere. It was of a nun wearing a criss-cross belt of bullets like a Mexican bandit and holding a rifle with a telescopic sight. It might have been a Banksy graffiti piece but I can't say for sure. It was fabulously controversial and I remembered thinking to myself, "Where and when would such an image be acceptable?"

I have had great fun writing The Last Days of Purgatory - (The Martian Apocalypse of Victorian London) My heroine is a combination of this graffiti wall mural and the late old nun of the obscure convent where my mother and aunt spent their war years.